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TERMS STARTING WITH
The Gods are Personalities and Powers of the dynamic
The gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 346
The Gods cannot be transformed, for they are typal and not evolutionary beings, they can come for conversion, that is to say, to ^ve up their own ideas and outlook on things and con- form themselves to the higher Will and Supramcntal Truth of the Divine.
The gods in (he ovcrmcntal plane have not many heads and arms ; this is a vital symbolism, it is not necessary in other planes.
TERMS ANYWHERE
According to one account, the creation of the world and especially of mankind is ascribed to Bel. He is also called father of the gods; and his consort, Belit, is called mother of the gods. His eldest son is Sin, god of the Moon. Bel also brings about the deluge which destroys humanity, showing his dual aspect of evolver and destroyer.
According to popular tale, Fenris grew so rapidly that the gods became alarmed lest he devour the sun prematurely and tried repeatedly to restrain him with heavy chains with no success. The dwarfs forged a magic thread, Gleipnir (lissom bond), with which the gods bound the wolf, but only when one of the gods, Tyr (Mars), agreed to hold his hand in its jaws. Tyr sacrificed his hand, so that Fenris would be harmless until the end of the cycle.
According to the Old Testament, the building of the temple was completed, but it was used for its high purposes only briefly. Allegorically this was during the Golden Age of the childhood of the human race — the building was complete only as regards childhood when the gods walked among mankind and were their divine instructors; but humanity was not yet truly human, for manas (mind) had not yet been awakened by the manasaputras of whom Hiram Abif was a type. It is here that Masonic tradition should be studied together with the Biblical account. Then with the awakening of manas, and the eating from the Tree of Knowledge and hence the power to choose between good and evil — in other words, with the beginning of self-directed evolution, the temple was desecrated again and again. “The building of the Temple of Solomon is the symbolical representation of the gradual acquirement of the secret wisdom, or magic; the erection and development of the spiritual from the earthly; the manifestation of the power and splendor of the spirit in the physical world, through the wisdom and genius of the builder. The latter, when he has become an adept, is a mightier king than Solomon himself, the emblem of the sun or Light himself — the light of the real subjective world, shining in the darkness of the objective universe. This is the ‘Temple’ which can be reared without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron being heard in the house while it is ‘in building’ ” (IU 2:391).
adhidaiva ::: that which pertains to the Gods (non-material powers) ; the subjective phenomenon of being.
ADHYATMA YOGA. ::: The principle of adhyātma yoga is, in knowledge, the realisation of all things that we see or do not see but are aware of, - men, things, ourselves, events, gods, titans, angels, - as one divine Brahman, and in action and attitude, an absolute self-surrender to the Paratpara Purusha, the transcendent, infinite and universal Personality who is at once personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, self-limiting and illimitable, one and many, and informs with his being not only the Gods above, but man and the worm and the cold below.
Aditi devatamayi ::: Aditi full of the gods. [cf. Katha 2.1.7]
Aditi (Sanskrit) Aditi [from a not + diti bound from the verbal root da to bind] Unbounded, free; as a noun, infinite and shoreless expanse. In the Vedas, Aditi is devamatri (mother of the gods) as from and in her cosmic matrix all the heavenly bodies were born. As the celestial virgin and mother of every existing form and being, the synthesis of all things, she is highest akasa. Aditi is identified in the Rig-Veda with Vach (mystic speech) and also with the mulaprakriti of the Vedanta. As the womb of space, she is a feminized form of Brahma. The line in the Rig-Veda: “Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha” has reference to “the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence” (SD 2:247n). In one of its most mystic aspects Aditi is divine wisdom.
Aditi ::: the indivisible conscious-force and ananda of the Supreme; the Mother; the infinite Mother of the gods; supreme Nature or infinite Consciousness.
Aditi: The name (Sanskrit for boundlessness) of a Vedic goddess, mother of the gods known as Adityas; she is identified at times with the earth, at times with the sky, and at other times is hailed as a cow.
Aditi ::: the Vedic goddess of infinite being, the mother of the gods, manifested here as the earth-goddess (Pr.thivi2); the adya-sakti, the indivisible consciousness (cit), force (tapas) and bliss (ananda) of the Supreme.
Adonis [from Hebrew ’ādōn lord] Title of the Babylonian god Tammuz, whose cult was imported into Asiatic Greece. A beautiful youth beloved of Aphrodite, he was killed by a boar. Aphrodite was so grief-stricken that the gods of the lower world allowed him to spend half of every year with her on earth. His death and resurrection were symbolized in annual festivals.
Adyo Sakti ; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the Supramental Ishvara comes into manifestation through her — the Supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.
Aegir represents the waters of space in all their various aspects. In Norse myths he is the giant who brews the mead for the gods when they feast at the stellar and planetary “tables” — when they imbody in worlds. He and his consort Ran have nine daughters who are the waves. Aegir has two servants, Eldr (fire) and Fimafeng or Funafeng (spark), possibly St. Elmo’s fire and phosphorescence in the sea. An aspect of Aegir is Hler (lee, shelter). Blavatsky regards Ogir (Aegir) or Hler as “the highest of the Water-gods, and the same as the Greek Okeanos” (TG 239).
Aeolus (Greek) In Greek and Roman mythology, son of Hippotes, appointed by Zeus as guardian of the winds. He lived on the island of Aeolia in the far west, its steep cliffs encircled by a brazen wall. There he kept the winds confined in a cave, letting them out as he pleased or as he was commanded by the gods. Later he was said to dwell on an island north of Sicily.
Aether, Ether (Greek) [from aitho shining, fire] The upper or purer air as opposed to aer, the lower air; the clear sky; the abode of the gods. In Classical antiquity it denoted primordial substance, Proteus or protyle, the unitary source both of all substances and energies, the mask of all kosmic phenomena. Often used loosely to embrace a domain which extends from the All-Father himself down to the atmosphere of our earth. Vergil speaks of “Jupiter omnipotens aether,” and Cicero describes aether as the ultimate zone of heaven encircling, embracing, and permeating all things. At one time a member of the pantheon and object of veneration, at another the quest of the alchemist in search of the “absolute element” which would give him power over nature, and finally a hypothetical medium of science for conveying light waves.
Again, Epicurus based everything on sensation in order to bring people back to actual experience, as opposed to vain outlooking speculation, as a solid foundation for an ethic. He was not an atheist in the modern sense, for he explicitly says that there are gods, but not the gods of the anthropomorphic religionists. In the same way, he did not teach a selfish individualism, but that the way to final freedom is within oneself; and when he depreciates the State and sundry social or political theories, he was merely opposing the futile abstractions then prevalent under these names.
Agneyastra (Sanskrit) Āgneyāstra [from āgneya fiery weapon from agni fire + astra missile weapon, arrow] Fiery weapon; one of the magic weapons used by some of the gods and heroes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The Vishnu-Purana (3:8) recounts that the agneyastra was given by the sage Aurva to his disciple King Sagara. A magic weapon said to have been “wielded by the adept-race (the fourth), the Atlanteans” (TG 9), and to have been built of “seven elements” (SD 2:629). It can signify a weapon of fiery character used in physical warfare, or on a cosmic scale can denote the employment of a force of nature by an intelligent being either for offensive or defensive purposes. In archaic thought fire, in its abstract sense, is almost equivalent to spirit, and permeates the sevenfold nature of the universe.
’Aher (Hebrew) ’Aḥēr To be after, behind, secondary, another; the plural ’aherim, especially when used in conjunction with ’elohim, means “other or strange gods,” which were supposed to be merely idols. As the Hebrew scriptures themselves show, the ancient Hebrews never at any time denied the existence of the gods of other peoples, but being utterly and strongly tribalistic, their own god Jehovah was to them supreme. Their tribal god is the regent of the planet Saturn, who was their planetary hierarch, and consequently, to them, the supreme god — the god over all other gods. Had the Jews been born as a people under the regent of some other planet, the hierarchical regent of this other planet would then have been in their opinion the supreme god.
Ahura (Avestan) [from the verbal root ahu conscious life; cf Sanskrit asura] The lord of life, the one life from whom all proceed; as daevas who were originally gods of the Aryans changed to demons among the Iranian branch of the Aryans, asura also changed to demons among the Indians. In the earlier Vedas, asura is especially used for Varuna, the ruler of the heavenly sphere. “The Mazdean Scriptures of the Zend Avesta, the Vendidad and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the Asuras to their legitimate place in Theogony . . .” (SD 2:60-1).
Airyanmen Vaeja, Airyena-Vaegah, Airyana-Vaeja (Avestan) Airyam-Veg (Pahlavi) “The Aryans (the noble ones) are said in the Avesta to have had their original home in the far land of Airyana Vaeja (the cradle land of the Aryans), the first among the lands created by Mazda. It was at the center of the earth and in its very center stood the mountain Harabareza. This corresponds with the Hindu descriptions of the Land of the Gods with Mount Meru at its center” (Taraporewala, The Religion of Zarathushtra). The Aryans divided the universe into seven regions or keshvars: 1) Arzah or Arzahe; 2) Shabah, Sava-Cavahe; 3) Fradadafsh, Fradadhfsha; 4) Vidadafsh, Vidadahfshu; 5) Vorubarst, Vourubaresti; 6) Vorugarst, Vourujaresti, Vouruzaresti; and 7) Khvanuras, Ganiratha, Hvaniratha. The seventh land is situated in the middle of the other six. According to the introduction of Abu-Mansouri’s Shah-Nameh (the older Shah-Nameh), the seventh land, which the kings named Iran-Shahr (Airya-Vaeja) is also in the middle of the other six.
“All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement.
Also a series of asterisms or lunar mansions placed in three classes: that of the gods, men, and rakshasas.
Although in Greek mythology the gods are said to dwell on Olympus, three of the main Olympian divinities, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades (or Pluto), had their habitats respectively in what may be called heaven or the inmost world of spirit, the cosmic spaces or the waters of space, and the underworld of the universe. Yet these three same divinities, because of their permeant cosmic forces or energies, and strictly on the law of analogical reasoning, had the same functions and occupy the same relative places in the minor forms of their respective manifestations: as, Zeus in the sky, Poseidon in the oceans of the globe, and Hades or Pluto in the underworld of our earth. Or again, the twelve great gods of the Mediterranean peoples may be considered to be the twelve main cosmic and intelligent powers whose all-permeant nature and activity is as apparent in the universe itself as in every atom or minor division thereof.
Amal: “If nothing existed except the Gods there would be no mediating passage for the spirit awaking in matter and moving towards the higher regions and reaching the glory of the Oversoul after much labour and gradual process.”
Ambrosia (Greek) [from ambrotos immortal from a not + mortos or brotos mortal; cf Sanskrit amṛta from a not + the verbal root mṛ to die; Latin immortalus from in not + mors death] In Classical myths variously the food, drink, or unguent of the gods or divine wisdom, connected with nectar; anything that confers or promotes immortality. Equivalent to the Sanskrit amrita and soma and the northern European mead. In a Chinese allegory, the flying Dragon drinks of ambrosia and falls to earth with his host. The laws of evolution entail a so-called curse or fall upon virtually all the hosts of monads frequently called angels, whereby they are cast down to the nether pole and undergo peregrinations in the realms of matter; in the case of many such “fallen angels,” this involves imbodiment or incarnation on earth. Man himself at a stage of his evolution experiences a similar “descent” and speeding-up, due to the impulses of the immortal urge within his breast to grow, progress, evolve, and become cognizant of larger reaches of truth. This is evident in the highly mystical Hebrew story of the forbidden Tree and in the various legends pertaining to soma in Hindu literature.
ambrosia ::: n. --> The fabled food of the gods (as nectar was their drink), which conferred immortality upon those who partook of it.
An unguent of the gods.
A perfumed unguent, salve, or draught; something very pleasing to the taste or smell.
Formerly, a kind of fragrant plant; now (Bot.), a genus of plants, including some coarse and worthless weeds, called ragweed, hogweed, etc.
ambrosia ::: Something especially delicious or delightful to taste or smell, divinely sweet; in Classical Mythology, the food of the gods.
ambrosia ("s) ::: something especially delicious or delightful to taste or smell, divinely sweet; in Classical Mythology, the food of the gods.
Ambrosia: The food of the gods of Greek mythology.
Amenti, Amentet (Egyptian) Amenti, Ȧmentet. The underworld (Tuat), the hidden place or secret region. The 15th or last house (Aat) of the Tuat, called Amentet-nefert (beautiful Amenti) and described as the dwelling place of the gods, where they live upon cakes and ale — in this respect similar to the Scandinavian Valhalla, the heaven world or devachan. The afterworlds were also referred to as Sekhet-hetep or -hetepet (the fields of peace), called in Greece the Elysian Fields, under the dominion of Osiris, lord of Amenti. Some of the texts speak of Amenti as situated far to the north of Egypt, although it is more commonly referred to as the Silent Land of the West. Other texts place it either below or above the earth, and the deceased is pictured as needing a ladder to ascend to the region.
Ammon-Ra (Greek) Ámmōn-Rā Amen-Ra (Egyptian) Ȧmen-Rā. When the princes of Thebes had conquered all rival claimants to the sovereignty of Egypt and established themselves as rulers of the dual Empires, they followed in religious, mystical, and occult matters the thought of the powerful priesthood of Thebes. Thus after the 12th dynasty a new manner of visioning the ancient god Ammon came into prominence, under the name Ammon-Ra, although the latter’s preeminence as chief god of Egypt did not occur until the 17th dynasty. The attributes of the hidden deity Ammon were combined with the solar god Ra, and this deity was acclaimed by the priests as the chief of the gods of Egypt. Ammon-Ra seems to be devoid of most, at least, of the mystical symbols that are present in representations of the older deities, although the hymns to the god that were carefully prepared by the priests incorporated all the attributes and phraseology prevalent in the other scriptures.
Among the dwarf names in the Eddas are typical animal characteristics, such as Antlered or Speedy. There are also more general names such as Sindre (vegetation) and Brock (the mineral world). At the formation of our globe earth Sindre and Brock, sons of Ivaldi, regent of the former earth — now the moon — created suitable gifts for the gods Odin, Thor, and Frey in competition with Loki and Dvalin (human nature). Their respective gifts were:
Amon-Ra: The Egyptian king of the gods, creator of the universe; originally the god of Thebes, later supreme god of all Egypt.
Amrita (Sanskrit) Amṛta [from a not + mṛta dead from the verbal root mṛ to die] Immortality; the water of life or immortality, the ambrosial drink or spiritual food of the gods. According to the Puranas, Ramayana, and Mahabharata, amrita is the elixir of life produced during the contest between the devas and asuras when churning the “milky sea” (the waters of life). It has been stolen many times, but as often recovered, and it is still preserved carefully in devaloka.
Amrita: The drink or food of the gods of the Vedic myths. Identified with the soma drink (q.v.).
amrta (Amrita) ::: 1. immortality. ::: 2. the nectar of immortality, ambrosia, the food or drink of the gods; the immortalising delight of the divine ecstasy. ::: amrtam [nominative]
Amsa, Amsu (Sanskrit) Aṃśa, Aṃśu Fragment, particle, part; name of one of the adityas in the Mahabharata; also of Surya (the sun) whose solar energy was so tremendous that the divine architect Visvakarman cut off an eighth part of his glory. From the luminous fragments (amsa) which fell to earth, Visvakarman made a number of implements for the gods, including Vishnu’s discus and Siva’s trident. In the Bhagavad-Gita (15:7), Krishna emanates an amsa of himself which, becoming a jiva (monad) in the world of living beings, draws to itself manas (mind) and the five senses which originate in prakriti (nature).
Anaktes, Anakes (Greek) Also Anactes, Anaces. Kings, chiefs; applied by Homer and other Greeks to the gods, as for instance the Dioscuri. When used of creative powers, they are identified with the kabeiroi, corybantes, curetes, etc.
ananke ::: "In Greek mythology, personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield.” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
Ananke ::: “In Greek mythology, personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield.” (Mother India) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
Anastasis (Greek) Rising up; used in referring to the dead and to resurrection. However, this ancient mystical term was originally used for the rising of the initiant when, having completed the dread trials of initiation, he rose a new man, one who was reborn, or what in India was called a dvija (twice-born). Another significance belonging from earliest times to the cycle of initiation is that when a person through severe training, initiation, and a complete turning away from things of matter to things of spirit, had succeeded in becoming at one with his inner god at least on occasions, he was then considered to have arisen or to have become resurrected out of all the lower ranges of kosmic life, and to have attained self-conscious existence in the spirit. Having attained anastasis, he took his place in the hierarchy of light or compassion as one of the co-laborers with the gods.
Anatum or Antum (Chaldean) Consort of the god of heaven, Anu, supreme god of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon. Whereas Anu represented heaven and height, Anatum represented the earth and depth. She was regarded as the mother of the gods, as well as being the mother of the god Ea or Hea. “Astronomically she is Ishtar, Venus, the Ashtoreth of the Jews” (TG 21). Anu and Anatum correspond to Ouranos and Gaia in Hesiod, and therefore in one of her mystical significances Anatum corresponds with the Hindu prakriti.
an exceeding of the law of the physical body, ::: the conquest of death, an earthly immortality"; the "ambrosia of the gods", a rejuvenating "nectar" induced by certain practices of yoga to trickle down from a subtle centre in the head; identified with soma1, "the sweetness that comes flowing from the streams of the upper hidden world, . . . the divine delight hidden in all existence which, once manifest, supports all life"s crowning activities and is the force that finally immortalises the mortal".
Anu (Chaldean) Supreme god of the Babylonian pantheon, king of angels and spirits, ruler of destiny, lord of the city of Erech or Uruk — later Ur. One of the loftiest of Babylonian divinities, part of a trinity with Enlil and Ea, he was especially the god of heaven, creator of star spirits and of the demons of cold, rain, and darkness. His consort Antum or Anatum was mother of the gods. Anu was the concealed deity; in the Chaldean account of Genesis, he is the passive deity, however, “the primordial chaos, the god time and world at once, chronos, and kosmos, the uncreated matter issued from the one and fundamental principle of all things” (IU 2:423).
Anukis [Greek from Egyptian Ȧnqet from ȧnq to surround, embrace] Third of the triad of deities of Elephantine, consisting of Khnemu, Sati, and Anqet or Anukis. Her worship was common in northern Nubia, but later centered at Sahal, where her principal temple was situated. At Philae she was identified with Nephthys or Neith, it being common to regard Khnemu as a form of Osiris: hence Sati and Anqet became associated with Isis and Nephthys. However, Anqet is also represented with the disk and horned headdress of Isis and is called the lady of heaven, mistress of all the gods; giver of life and of all power, and of all health and joy of heart. The goddess is also associated with the embracing waters of the Nile, though the root itself shows that she is the embracing and all-surrounding cosmic life as well as it minor functions in manifestation. The ascriptions given to Anukis as the giver of life and of all power associate the goddess with the moon, whether in the cosmogonical or lower generative sense.
Anzu or Zu (Babylonian) The lion-headed eagle, often portrayed as “master of the animals.” Plotting to assume sovereignty and command the gods, he stole the Tablet of Destinies (DUB-šima-a-ti) from the empty throne of his master, the high god Enlil, then flew off to hide in the inaccessible mountain. Warrior-god Ninurta was sent to battle Anzu, slay him, and return the Tablet. George Smith’s 1875 translation (cited in SD 2:283n) was tentative at best and is now superseded by modern translations such as in Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 1989.
Aphrodite (Greek) Greek Goddess of love and beauty, in older times regarded as signifying the harmony of cosmos. Originally the daughter of Zeus and Dione, a lunar deity like Aphrodite, both being represented with the horns of the moon or of the zodiacal sign Taurus; but the same deity in ancient mystical philosophy may be at once mother, wife, and daughter — so difficult is it to find among our common notions a symbolism that will convey the full meaning anciently intended. Later, under Eastern influence, she was said to have been born from the sea foam and to have landed in a seashell on the isle of Cythera. A sea goddess as well as an earth goddess of gardens, groves, and springtime, she was the wife of Hephaestus and connected also with Ares and Adonis; mother of Eros. As Aphrodite Urania, she was identified with the goddess of heaven Astarte, and later under Platonic influence came to represent spiritual love as opposed to earthly love, represented by Aphrodite Pandemos. Among her analogs are Isis, Ishtar, Mylitta, Eve, Vach, etc., all the mother of all living beings and of the gods, cosmically. The Romans identified Aphrodite with Venus, and the Egyptians with Hathor.
apotheosis ::: n. pl. --> The act of elevating a mortal to the rank of, and placing him among, "the gods;" deification.
Glorification; exaltation.
Apsu (Babylonian) Abzu (Sumerian) Also Ab Soo. The primordial deep; the waters of space in the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma Elish (when on high). From Apsu and Tiamat were born all the gods, man being fashioned from the clay of Apsu in a Sumerian version, and from the blood of Kingu, son and second consort of Tiamat, in Enuma Elish. The deep is the abode of Ea (wisdom) who saves humanity from destruction by Apsu, Apsu being transformed into still or stagnant subterranean waters.
Arachne (Greek) In Greek mythology the daughter of the dyer Idmon of Colophon, who was so skillful a weaver that she dared to challenge Athena to a competitive trial. Indignant because Arachne had presumed to depict the amours of the gods in her weaving, Athena tore her work, Arache hung herself, and Athena turned the presumptuous maiden into a spider, doomed to spin her web forever. The amours of the gods woven by Arachne signify the weaving of the marvelous web of manifested existence in all its intricate hierarchical structure.
Aries (The Ram): The first sign of the zodiac. Its symbol () represents the head and horns of the ram. In astrology, it is a symbol of offensive power—a weapon of the gods, hence an implement of the will. The Babylonians sacrificed rams during the period when the Sun occupied this sign, which occurs annually from March 21 to April 20. Astrologically and astronomically it is the first thirty-degree arc beginning at the point of the Spring Equinox. It is the “leading” quality of the element Fire: positive, diurnal, movable, dry, hot, fiery, choleric and violent. Ruler: Mars. Exaltation: Sun. Detriment: Venus. Fall: Saturn. Symbolic interpretation: Sprouting seed; fire in eruption; a fountain of water; a ram’s horns.
aruspex ::: n. --> One of the class of diviners among the Etruscans and Romans, who foretold events by the inspection of the entrails of victims offered on the altars of the gods.
arya (Aryan) ::: the good and noble man; the fighter; he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance; he who does the work of sacrifice, finds the sacred word of illumination, desires the gods and increases them and is increased by them into the largeness of the true existence; he is the warrior of the light and the traveller to the Truth.
As a proper noun, the name of a deity, also applied as a title to the gods Agni, Siva, and Rudra. See also ABHAVA
As Egypt was divided into the North and South, the deity took on two aspects: Hap-Reset, the North Nile, pictured with a cluster of papyrus plants upon his head, and Hap-Meht, the South Nile, depicted with lotus plants. He was called the vivifier, creator of things which exist, father of the gods. In one aspect, Hap was identified with Osiris, especially Osiris-Apis or Serapis; thus Isis came to be regarded as his consort. Likewise he had absorbed the attributes of Nu, the primeval watery abyss from which Ra, the sun god, emerged on the first day of the new world period; therefore he was designated the father of living things, for without the waters of Hap, all living things would perish. Blavatsky points to his psychopompic role and his equivalence with the angel Gabriel (BCW 10:55-6).
Asgard: In Norse mythology, Odin’s headquarters, home of the gods, also housing the Valhalla, hall of the chosen among those slain in battle.
Asoka (Sanskrit) Aśoka The name of two celebrated kings of the Maurya dynasty of Magadha. According to the chronicles of Northern Buddhism there were two Asokas: King Chandragupta, named by Max Muller the Constantine of India, and his grandson King Asoka. King Chandragupta was called Piyadasi (beloved of us, benignant), Devanam-piya (beloved of the gods), and Kalasoka (the Asoka who has come in time). His grandson received the name of Dharmasoka (the asoka of the Good Law) because of his devotion to Buddhism, his zealous support of it and its spreading. The second Asoka had never followed the Brahmanical faith, but was a Buddhist born. It was his grandfather who had been converted to the new teaching, after which he had a number of edicts inscribed on pillars and rocks, a custom followed also by his grandson; but it was the second Asoka who was the more zealous supporter of Buddhism. He is said to have maintained in his palace from 60,000 to 70,000 monks and priests, and erected 84,000 topes or stupas throughout the world. The inscriptions of various edicts published by him display most noble ethical sentiments, especially the edict found at Allahabad on the so-called Asoka’s column in the Fort.
As the progenitor of real physical man, Daksha was son of the Prachetasas and Marisha, the first of the “egg-born.” He “establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. But this mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, as one may think, and required long ages before it became the one ‘natural’ way. Therefore, his sacrifice to the gods is shown as interfered with by Siva, the destroying deity, evolution and progress personified, . . . Virabhadra, ‘abiding in the region of the ghosts (etherial men). . . . created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas, (or Raumyas).’ Now, however mythical the allegory, the Mahabharata, which is history as much as is the Iliad, shows the Raumyas [hairy ones] and other races, as springing in the same manner from the Romakupas, hair or skin pores. . . .
As the smith of the gods, he is related to the kabiri, the instructor of mankind in the metal arts. He made thunderbolts for Zeus, armor, jewelry, and other items for the gods, and is said to have molded the first woman, Pandora, which was sent to Epimetheus.
As time went on certain deities became more prominent in theological thought and speculation, acquiring celestial attributes as well as earthly ones, such as Ba‘al, Astarte (made equivalent to Isis by Plutarch), and the Tyrian Melqarth (associated with Herakles). Originally each masculine deity had the title Ba‘al (“lord,” equivalent to Babylonian Bel), and the feminine deities had the title of ’Amma (mother), just as the ancient Hebrews spoke of their ’em or ’ammah (fountain, beginning, womb, mother). The gods were called ’elomim or ’elim, from the original Shemetic root ’el. The god of the moon was Sin, the deity of the flame or lightning was Resh Reshuf and Eshmun was the god of vital force or healing (worshiped especially at Sidon) — clearly ’Eshmun is from the Shemitic verbal root ’esh (fire, cosmic fire or vitality) — cosmic vital electricity or fohat. Blavatsky states that the Phoenicians also propitiated the kabeiroi, deities of Samothrace.
Astraea (Greek) [from astr star] Star maiden; daughter of Astraeus and Eos, or of Zeus and Themis. Themis, born of Uranus and Gaia (heaven and earth), signifies law, order, equity, as does her daughter Astraea, who lived among men in the Golden Age as the goddess of justice. But when wickedness prevailed in the bronze age, she was the last of the gods to withdraw, with her sister Aidos (modesty), and is found among the stars of Virgo. Another myth says that Zeus, when he carried off Ganymedes, the personified object of lust, threw Astraea back on earth again, where she fell on her head. Ganymedes is Aquarius, and the astronomical meaning refers to an inversion of the poles, which brings Aquarius into the northern celestial hemisphere and places Virgo upside down in the southern half (SD 2:785).
As universal space, it is also known as Aditi, in which lies inherent the eternal and continuously active ideation of the universe producing its ever-changing aspects on the planes of matter and objectivity; and from this ideation radiates the First Logos. This is why the Puranas state that akasa has but one attribute, namely sound, for sound is but the translated symbol of logos (speech) in its mystic sense. Akasa as primordial spatial substance is thus the upadhi (vehicle) of divine thought. Further, it is the playground of all the intelligent and semi-intelligent forces in nature, the fountainhead of all terrestrial life, and the abode of the gods.
Asura: In Hindu mysticism, a fallen angel or demon, hostile to the gods (devas).
asura ::: n. --> An enemy of the gods, esp. one of a race of demons and giants.
Asura (Sanskrit) Asura [from the verbal root as to breathe] A title frequently given to the hierarch or supreme spirit of our universe, as being the primal “Breather”; also a class of spiritual-intellectual beings. In Hinduism it commonly signifies elemental and evil gods or demons. “Primarily in the Rig-Veda, the ‘Asuras’ are shown as spiritual divine beings; their etymology is derived from asu (breath), the ‘Breath of God,’ and they mean the same as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahma’s thigh, and that their name began to be derived from a privative, and sura, god (solar deities), or not-a-god, and that they became the enemies of the gods” (SD 2:59).
asura ::: [Ved.]: the Lord; used in the Veda as in the Avesta for the deva, but also for the gods, his manifestations; it is only in a few hymns that it is used for the dark Titans; [Later] : the strong or mighty one, Titan; a [hostile] being of the mentalised vital.
Asurendra (Sanskrit) Asurendra [from asura a class of deities + indra] The lord of the asuras; as Indra was popularly called the chief of the gods, so Asurendra is similarly the chief of the asuras.
Asvattha(Sanskrit) ::: The mystical tree of knowledge, the mystical tree of kosmical life and being, represented asgrowing in a reversed position: the branches extending downwards and the roots upwards. The branchestypify the visible kosmical universe, the roots the invisible world of spirit.The universe among the ancients of many nations was portrayed or figurated under the symbol of a tree,of which the roots sprang from the divine heart of things, and the trunk and the branches and thebranchlets and the leaves were the various planes and worlds and spheres of the kosmos. The fruit of thiskosmic tree contained the seeds of future "trees," being the entities which had attained through evolutionthe end of their evolutionary journey, such as men and the gods -- themselves universes in the small, anddestined in the future to become kosmic entities when the cycling wheel of time shall have turnedthrough long aeons on its majestic round. In fact, every living thing, and so-called inanimate things also,are trees of life, with their roots above in the spiritual realms, with their trunks passing through theintermediate spheres, and their branches manifesting in the physical realms.
Aten (Egyptian) Ȧten. The disk of the sun and its vivifying, light-giving beams. Extended during the 18th dynasty to become the basis of a new religion under Amenhetep III and his son Amenhetep IV. They endeavored to arouse a more devotional feeling in the life of the Egyptians in opposition to the rigorous formalistic worship prescribed by the priests of the time, with its animal sacrifices and rigid ceremonialism, stressing the most material aspect of the gods as represented in the popular mythology. Incense and flowers decked altars, instead of blood sacrifices; joyousness pervaded the new capital city, while architects and painters created new ideas in their works. However, his successor Tut-ankh-Amen, reinstated the worship of Amen-Ra under the direction of the priests. The worship of Amen or Ammon was an idea in conception far older than and philosophically and mystically superior to the conceptions which clustered about the newer worship of Aten. This newer worship, with the ideas woven into its meaning by the monarch and his wife, was not only a reform when contrasted with the rigid ritualism into which the worship of Amen had degenerated, but actually was an attempt to infill the minds of the Egyptian people with the joyousness of the solar orb itself as the vehicle of the recondite, secret, and highly mystical Amen, abstract and highly philosophical. This illustrates how a noble worship can become ritualistic and empty, and how a more sensuous but more joyous worship can be used in a revivalistic sense to awaken a new religious devotion in the hearts of the multitude.
Atharva Veda (Sanskrit) Atharva Veda One of the principal Vedas, commonly known as the fourth; attributed to Atharvan or Atharva. The Rig-Veda states that he was the first to “draw forth fire” and institute its worship, as well as the offering of soma and prayers. Mythologically, Atharvan is represented as a prajapati, Brahma’s eldest son, instructed by his father in brahma-vidya: thus was he inspired to compose the Veda bearing his name. At a later period he is associated with Angiras and called the father of Agni. The Atharva-Veda, considered of later origin than the other three Vedas, comprises about 6000 verses, 760 being hymns, consisting of formulas and spells or incantations for counteracting diseases and calamities. The hymns are of slightly different character from those in the other Vedas: in addition to reverencing the gods, the worshiper himself is exalted and is supposed to receive benefits by reciting the mantras.
Atmu, Atum (Egyptian) Ȧtmu, Ȧtum [from tem to make an end of, complete] Also Tem, Tum, Temu. A form of the sun god, represented as bringing the day to its close, thus associated with the evening sun — whether of our ordinary day, or of the ending of a manvantara. “I am the god Tem, the maker of the sky, the creator of things which are, who cometh forth from the earth, who made the seed of man to come into being, the Lord of things, who fashioned the gods, the Great Gods, who created himself, the Lord of Life, who made to flourish the Two Companies of the Gods. . . . My coming is like unto that god who eateth men, and who feedeth upon the gods” (Egyptian Book of the Dead, Budge 258-60).
Atonement Reconciliation brought about by a re-formation of the lower, so that it may become at one with the higher. Hence a number of Occidental mystics refer to the processes of atonement involving the foregoing idea as at-one-ment. In its best sense atonement means the becoming at one between the human ego and its spiritual counterpart, where the life or vitality of the lower personal man is offered up as a sacrifice, willing and utterly joyful, to the higher self. Thus the life which the hierophant is enjoined to offer is not his physical life, but the undesirable and imperfect life of his lower self, the selfish personality. The custom of sacrificing helpless animals — a custom protested against by Gautama Buddha in particular — is but an instance of the way in which lofty spiritual teachings or initiatory ceremonies can degenerate into repellent or cruel rites. Nevertheless, “the atonements by blood — blood-covenants and blood transferences from gods to men, and by men, as sacrifices to the gods — are the first keynote struck in every cosmogony and theogony; soul, life and blood were synonymous words in every language . . . The mystic meaning of the injunction, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves’ [John 6:53] . . . [has] to be interpreted with the help of three keys — one opening the psychic door, the second that of physiology, and the third that which unlocks the mystery of terrestrial being, by unveiling the inseparable blending of theogony with anthropology” (BCW 8:181-2).
Audlang (Icelandic) [from audr void + langr long] One of several heavens of the Norse Eddas; one of “the three gradually ascending planets of our ‘Chain’ ” (SD 2:100), these unseen globes usually designated E, F, and G in theosophical literature. Audlang is evidently one of the “shelves” (planes) of substances different from our matter, of which these unseen globes are built. Beyond Audlang lie other heavens: Grimnismal in the Edda enumerates twelve mansions of the gods on their appropriate shelves.
Avesta (Avest, Pers) Apstak, Avestak (Pahlavi) Law or the basic foundation, the sacred scriptures of the Mazdeans. The language of the ancient Aryans was the language of the Vedic hymns and also of the Gathic chants of Zoroaster, these being so close that a mere phonetic change often suffices to translate a passage from one into the other. Because of this connection “the Mazdean Scriptures of the Zend-Avesta, the Vendidad and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the Asuras to their legitimate place in theogony” (SD 2:60-1). Zend, on the other hand, traditionally designates the Pahlavi commentary on the Avesta. The Yasnas are the principal writings of the Zoroastrians; and in their oldest portion, the Gathas, the original philosophy of Mazdeism is expressed in a spirited poetic language. The Vispered (Pahlavi) or Visperataro (Avestan) [from vispe all + ratavo warriors, spiritual teachers] is an appendix to the later Yasnas which deals with the ritualistic aspects of the Mazdean faith.
Ayur Veda (Sanskrit) Āyurveda [from āyus life, health, vital power + veda knowledge] One of the minor Vedas, generally considered a supplement to the Atharva-Veda, one of the four principal Vedas. It treats of the science of health and medicine, and is divided into eight departments: 1) salya, surgery; 2) salakya, the science and cure of diseases of the head and its organs; 3) kaya-chikitsa, the cure of diseases affecting the whole body, or general medical treatment; 4) bhuta-vidya, the treatment of mental — and consequent physical — diseases supposed to be produced by bhutas (demons); 5) kaumara-bhritya, the medical treatment of children; 6) agada-tantra, the doctrine of antidotes; 7) rasayana-tantra, the doctrine of elixirs; and 8) vajikarana-tantra, the doctrine of aphrodisiacs. Medicine was regarded as one of the sacred sciences by all ancient peoples and in archaic ages was one of the knowledges or sciences belonging to the priesthood; and this list of subjects shows that the field covered by its practitioners was extensive. Its authorship is attributed by some to Dhanvantari, sometimes called the physician of the gods, who was produced by the mystical churning of the ocean and appeared holding a cup of amrita (immortality) in his hands.
Azure Seats [from Persian lazhward lapis lazuli] Azure means a blue color, also the sky, hence celestial, referring to the causal realms of being, where the gods of kosmic intelligences function. Thus the azure seats of the gods conveys the abode of the spiritual forces that govern the universe in its manifold operations.
Babylon [from Assyrian “gate of the gods”] An ancient, celebrated city on the Euphrates said to have been founded by the Assyrian monarch Ninus or his legendary wife Semiramis. In ancient times one foci through which Brahmanical esoteric wisdom from India was diffused in Asia Minor, and its cosmogony forms a link between those teachings and the cosmogony of the Hebraic Bible.
Bagavadam (Tamil) According to Blavatsky, a scripture on astronomy and kindred subjects (TG 48). The time periods in it differ from present-day reckonings: 15 solar days make a paccham; two paccham (30 days) make a month — equivalent to only one day of the pitris. Two of such months make a roodoo; three roodoo, an ayanam; two ayanam, a year. However, this year of mortals is but a day of the gods.
Balder, Baldr (Icelandic) The best, foremost; the sun god in Norse mythology, the son of Odin and Frigga and a favorite with gods and men. His mansion is Breidablick (broadview) whence he can keep watch over all the worlds. One of the lays of the Elder or Poetic Edda deals entirely with the death of the sun god, also mentioned in the principal poem Voluspa. Briefly stated: the gods were concerned when Balder was troubled with dreams of impending doom. Frigga therefore set out to exact a promise from all living things that none would harm Balder, and all readily complied. One thing only had been overlooked: the harmless-seeming mistletoe. Loki, the mischievous god (human mind), became aware of this, plucked the little plant, and from it fashioned a dart. He approached Hoder, the blind god (of darkness and ignorance) who was standing disconsolately by while the other gods were playfully hurling their weapons against the invulnerable sun god. Offering to guide his aim, Loki placed on Hoder’s bow the small but deadly “sorrow-dart.” Thus mind darkened by ignorance accomplished what nothing else could: the death of the bright deity of light. Balder must then travel to the house of Hel, queen of the realm of the dead. Odin, as Hermod, goes to plead with Hel for Balder’s return, and Hel agrees to release him on condition that all living things weep for him. Frigga resumes her weary round and implores all beings to mourn the sun god’s passing. All agree save one: Loki in the guise of an aged crone refuses to shed a tear. This single taint of perverseness in the human mind condemns Balder to remain in the realm of Hel until the following cycle is due to begin. Thus death is linked with the active human mind, Loki. As the bright sun god is placed on his pyre-ship, his loving wife Nanna (the moon goddess) dies of a broken heart and is placed beside him, but before the ship is set ablaze and cast adrift, Odin leaned over to whisper something in the dead sun god’s ear. This secret message must endure unknown to all until Balder’s return, when he and his dark twin Hoder will “build together on Ropt’s (Odin’s) sacred soil.”
balder ::: n. --> The most beautiful and beloved of the gods; the god of peace; the son of Odin and Freya.
Bali (Sanskrit) Bali Daitya king who through devotion and penance became ruler of the three worlds (heaven, the upper air, and patala). Vishnu as the dwarf avatara regains these for the gods by means of his three superhuman steps or strides. (BCW 13:158, 4:367). See also VAMANA-AVATARA
barhih. ::: in the Veda, the seat of sacred grass on which the gods are invited to sit at the sacrifice.
Belit, Belita (Bab, Chald, Assyr) Chief lady; a title applicable to any important goddess in the pantheon, applied especially to Nin-lil, consort of Bel (or En-lil) at Nippur, where she was known as mother of the gods, ruler of heaven and earth. The title was likewise later applied to Ishtar (Greek Beltis).
Bifrost, Bilrost, Bafrast (Icelandic, Scandinavian) [from bifast to tremble] Via tremula (the trembling way), the rainbow; the rainbow bridge in Norse mythology, also called the asbru (bridge of the aesir), separating the realm of the gods (Asgard) from that of men (Midgard), while giving access to it. Guarding the bridge is Heimdal, the whitest aesir, who will blow the gjallarhorn when the world comes to an end and the gods withdraw to their sacred ground (Ragnarok). Then Bifrost falls when the sons of Muspel storm over it. It is said that each day the gods cross Bifrost to meet in council at the fount of Urd (the norn that represents the past or causation), but Thor must ford the river, as his lightnings would set the bridge on fire.
Bod-lhas (Tibetan) [from bod (bö) Tibet + lha spirit, divine being (cf Sanskrit deva)] A name of the civil capital of Tibet, Lhasa [Tib lha-sa place of the gods].
Bragi is synonymous with spiritual intuition which, united with the mind (Loki), is the means of human liberation. His consort, the goddess Idun, daily gives the gods the apples of immortality.
Brahma devanam prathamah sambabhuva ::: Brahma first of the Gods was born. [Mund. 1.1.1]
Brahma “symbolizes personally the collective creators of the World and Men — the universe with all its numberless productions of things movable and (seemingly) immovable. He is collectively the Prajapatis, the Lords of Being; and the four bodies typify the four classes of creative powers or Dhyan Chohans . . .” (SD 2:60), these four bodies being ratri (night) associated with the creation of the asuras; ahan (day) associated with the gods; sandhya (evening twilight) associated with the pitris; and jyotsna (dawn or light) associated with the creation of men.
Brahmavidya (Sanskrit) Brahmavidyā Brahma-knowledge, divine knowledge; equivalent to theosophia, the wisdom of the gods. The secret or esoteric science or wisdom about the universe, its nature, laws, structure, and operations.
Brhaspati (Brihaspati) ::: [Ved.]: the Master of the creative Word (the stress in the name falling upon the potency of the Word rather than upon the thought of the general soul-power which is behind it). [Later]: spiritual teacher of the gods; guardian of the planet Jupiter; chief of the high priests of the world.
Brihaspati (Sanskrit) Bṛhaspati [from bṛh prayer + pati lord] Sometimes Vrihaspati. A Vedic deity, corresponding to the planet Jupiter, commonly translated lord of prayer, the personification of exoteric piety and religion, but mystically the name signifies lord of increase, of expansion, growth. He is frequently called Brahmanaspati, both names having a direct significance with the power of sound as uttered in mantras or prayer united with positive will. He is regarded in Hindu mythology as the chief offerer of prayers and sacrifices, thus representing the Brahmin or priestly caste, being the Purohita (family priest) of the gods, among other things interceding with them for mankind. He has many titles and attributes, being frequently designated as Jiva (the living), Didivis (the bright or golden-colored). In later times he became the god of exoteric knowledge and eloquence — Dhishana (the intelligent), Gish-pati (lord of invocations). In this aspect he is regarded as the son of the rishi Angiras, and hence bears the patronymic Angirasa, and the husband of Tara, who was carried off by Soma (the moon). Tara is
Brisingamen (Icelandic) [from brising fire + men jewel] In Norse myths the fire jewel represents the fire of enlightened intelligence in the human race, pictured as a gem which the goddess Freya wears on her bosom. She is the spiritual power imbodied in the planet Venus and the protectress of evolving, aspiring humanity. Her gem has on more than one occasion been stolen by Loki — the mischievous lower mind — which brought grief to the gods, who have the well-being of humanity at heart. Once the precious gem was in grave danger: the matter-giant Trym (our physical globe earth) stole Thor’s hammer of creation and destruction and hid it deep beneath the ground, and for its return he demanded that Freya become his wife. The story relates that she snorted with such fierce outrage that the gem was shattered.
Budha (Sanskrit) Budha [from the verbal root budh to awake] As an adjective, intelligent, wise, clever, fully awake; hence a wise or instructed person, a sage. In mythology, Budha is represented as the son of Tara (or Rohini), the wife of Brihaspati (the planet Jupiter). Tara was carried off by Soma (the Moon), which led to the Tarakamaya — the war in svarga (heaven) — between the gods and asuras (the latter siding with Soma against the divinities). The gods were victorious and Tara was returned to Brihaspati, but the parentage of the son she gave birth to was claimed both by Brihapati and Soma: he was so beautiful he was named Budha (cf SD 2:498-9). Upon Brahma’s demand, Tara admitted that Budha was the offspring of Soma. Budha became the god of wisdom and the husband of Ila (or Ida), daughter of Manu Vaivasvata, and in one sense stands for esoteric wisdom.
Bur (Icelandic) [from burdr birth] Emanation of Buri, primeval root of being in the Norse Eddas. From Bur sprang the creative trinity: Odin (Allfather), Vile (divine will), and Vi or Ve (awe, sanctity). These three forces produce the systems of worlds where the gods feast at the stellar and planetary tables on mead (experience of life).
Cadmus, Cadmilus (Greek) Son of Agenor, king of Phoenicia, and brother of Europa, husband of Harmonia, and father of Semele; legendary founder of Thebes, who slew the dragon, planted its teeth, and built the city with the help of some of the soldiers that sprang from the teeth. He and his wife were finally turned into serpents by the gods. Said to have introduced into Greece an alphabet, possibly based upon 16 characters derived from either Egypt or Phoenicia. He belongs to the class of heroes, who succeeded the reigns of the gods and demigods on earth and who were parents and instructors of mortals.
caduceus ::: n. --> The official staff or wand of Hermes or Mercury, the messenger of the gods. It was originally said to be a herald&
Caduceus: The wand of Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods. A cosmic, magic, or astronomical symbol; its significance changing with its application. Originally a triple-headed serpent, it is now a rod with two serpents twined around it, and two wings at the top. The entwined white and black serpents represent the struggle between good and evil—disease and cure. (Cf. Aaron’s Rod.)
Chaos(Greek) ::: A word usually thought to mean a sort of helter-skelter treasury of original principles and seedsof beings. Well, so it verily is, in one profound sense; but it is most decidedly and emphatically nothelter-skelter. It is properly the kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds of beings and thingsfrom former manvantaras. Of course it is this, simply because it contains everything. It means space, notthe highest mystical or actual space, not the parabrahma-mulaprakriti, the Boundless -- not that. But thespace of any particular hierarchy descending into manifestation, what space for it is at that particularperiod of its beginning of development. The directive principles in chaos are the gods when they awakenfrom their pralayic sleep. Chaos in one sense may very truly be called the condition of the space of asolar system or even of a planetary chain during its pralaya. When awakening to planetary action begins,chaos pari passu ceases.
Ch’i: Chinese for force, spirit. Used in esoteric terminology also for breath, the vital fluid. Also as the name of the Spirits of Earth (the gods of the ground and the grain, mountains, rivers and valleys).
Christianity, in addition to a great many so-called pagan ideas, also inherited and adapted Jewish sacrificial ideas, but the word became limited to the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world, and the sacrifice by man of his personal desires to the behests of his divinity. The true origin of the Christian atonement is in the Mysteries, when the hierophant offered his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin (IU 2:42). The general sense in theosophy is that of sacrificing one’s temporal interests to a lofty ideal.
Churning of the Ocean The agitation of milk, separating the uniform fluid into butter and buttermilk, is used as a figure with various applications, but chiefly to a stage in cosmogenesis when the one cosmic substance becomes differentiated into the “cosmic curds.” By this churning, according to the Hindu tale, is produced amrita, the cosmic soma, the fluid of immortality; but inevitably at the same time is produced visha (poison), this being the polar qualities in the cosmic forces, and likewise in ethics good and evil. The Ocean of Milk or Life, space, is churned by the gods; the radiant essence curdled and spread throughout the depths. It is said in the Satapatha-Brahmana that this took place in satya yuga, but the reference here is to cosmic yugas, a period before the earth’s earliest formation. The allegory however may apply to the initial stages of cycles of various magnitudes, and has also astronomical and geographical applications to the formation of world-stuff out of primary matter and to the dvipas or climatic zones, whether celestial or terrestrial, which are spoken of as seas of milk or of curds.
Cynocephalus [from Latin canus dog + cephalus head] The dog-headed ape (Simia hamadryas) which in Egyptian mythology was called Amemet (eater of the dead) whose master was Thoth or Tehuti. In the Judgment scene in The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Amemet is represented as seated by Thoth, ready to inform his master when the pointer marks the middle of the beam on the balance, when the heart is being weighed in the scales. After Thoth makes his announcement to the gods concerning the result of the weighing of the heart, the company of the gods decree that Amemet shall not be permitted to prevail over the successful candidate.
Dache-Dachus (Chaldean) “The dual emanation of Moymis, the progeny of the dual or androgynous World-Principle, the male Apason and female Tauthe. Like all theocratic nations possessing Temple mysteries, the Babylonians never mentioned the ‘One’ Principle of the Universe, nor did they give it a name. This made Damascius (Theogonies) remark that like the rest of ‘barbarians’ the Babylonians passed it over in silence. Tauthe was the mother of the gods, while Apason was her self-generating male power, Moymis, the ideal universe, being her only-begotten son, and emanating in his turn Dache-Dachus, and at last Belus, the Demiurge of the objective Universe” (TG 93).
Daemon or Demon [from Greek daimon, Latin daemon] A god, angel, or celestial power or spirit, of varying degrees of ethereality, and ranging from the supreme deity of the hierarchy, through the greater gods, down to mere genii and lemures. Originally the term applied to deity in general, but later it usually was referred to beings intermediate between the gods and mankind, representing the powers and functions of gods. The Greeks and Romans sometimes used the term for the human divine egos. Philsophers such as Plato divided the daemons into three classes, “the first two are invisible; their bodies are pure ether and fire (Planetary Spirits); the Daimons of the third class are clothed with vapoury bodies; they are usually invisible, but sometimes, making themselves concrete, become visible for a few seconds. These are the earthly spirits, or our astral souls” (BCW 6:187).
daitya ::: an enemy of the gods (devas), the "opposing or too violently forward-striving Titan"; any of the sons of Diti, meaning "the division, the separative consciousness", who is the mother of the Titans as Aditi is the mother of the gods.
“Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, still devoid of an individual Ego, and having merely the passive capacities. Brahma, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts; when, obeying the command, he made ‘inferior and superior’ (avara and vara) progeny (putra), Bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will gave birth to females. . . . to the gods, the Daityas (giants of the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle and the Danavas (Titans and demon Magicians) and other beings.
Danava(s) (Sanskrit) Dānava-s Children of Danu (or Danayu) and Kasyapa, often identified with the daityas and asuras, and held to be enemies of the gods or devas. The titans and demon-magicians of the fourth root-race, almost identical with the daityas or giants and irreconcilable opponents of those groups of the fourth root-race who were the upholders of ritualism and idol-worship.
Danu (Sanskrit) Danu A daughter of Daksha; by Kasyapa, mother of the danavas, often called in Hindu story demons, giants, or titans because almost the same as the daityas. Opponents of the gods of mere ritual or ritualistic ceremonies.
Demon(s) [from Greek daimones, Latin daemons] In many of the later religions, such as Christianity, either the gods of rival religions, nature spirits of paganism, or the exuviae or shells of the dead. Actually demons are a relatively modern misapprehension of a large class of nature sprites which in ancient thought comprised a vast range of spiritual, semi-spiritual, and astral beings, existing in different degrees of evolutionary unfoldment, and therefore classified into groups from the fully self-conscious down to the only partly conscious elementals of the astral realms. The teaching regarding daimones was extremely recondite; the later medieval Christian Demonologies, however, dealt almost exclusively with beings of low grade and of an astral character lacking moral sense and self-consciousness, which for ages have been called in European countries by names such as fairies, sprites, goblins, hobgoblins, pixies, nixies, and brownies. See also DAEMON
"Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
“Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit.” Essays on the Gita
deva ::: a god, a divinity; "a dynamic being manifested in Prakriti for the works of the plane to which he belongs"; any of the "cosmic godheads presiding over the action of cosmic principles", brahman "representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature"; the Divine, the supreme and universal Deity (isvara, purus.a) "of whom all the gods are different Names and Powers"; the seventh of the ten types of consciousness (dasa-gavas) in the evolutionary scale: mind concentrated in vijñana, exceeding itself.
devabhasa ::: [the language of the gods, applied to the Sanskrit language].
devakridanudarsanam ::: as watching the sports of the gods. [Bhagavata Purana]
Devamatri (Sanskrit) Devamātṛ Mother of the gods; a title of Aditi, kosmic or mystic space. Aditi is the Vedic Goddess-Mother from whose matrix the sun and planets were born, identical with the higher ranges of akasa, the spiritual essence pervading the space of any solar system; primordial kosmic substance in its highest or spiritual parts. Aditi therefore is the mystic womb of nature out of which all comes for the period of a kosmic manvantara, and into which again all sinks after the kosmic period of evolution has ceased and pralaya begins.
Devanagari: Literally, the letters of the gods; the characters of the Sanskrit script.
devanam adabdha (adabdhani) vratani ::: [the inviolate laws of the working of the gods]. [Ved.]
devanam dhruva-vratani ::: [the fixed laws of working of the gods]. [Ved.]
devanam prathama vratani ::: [the first laws of working of the gods]. [Ved.]
devan devayajo yanti madbhakta yanti mam api ::: [they who worship the gods go to the gods, but My devotees come to Me]. [Gita 7.23]
devaputrah ::: sons of the gods.
Devasarga (Sanskrit) Devasarga [from deva divine + sarga emanation, emission, creation] Divine emanation or emission; the creation of the gods, the last of the first series of creations enumerated in the Vishnu-Purana. It “has a universal reference; namely, the Evolutions in general, not specifically to our Manvantara; but the latter begins with the same over and over again, showing that it refers to several distinct Kalpas. For it is said ‘at the close of the past (Padma) Kalpa the divine Brahma awoke from his night of sleep and beheld the universe void.’ Then Brahma is shown going once more over the ‘seven creations’ in the secondary stage of evolution, repeating the first three on the objective plane” (SD 1:454).
Devavardhaki (Sanskrit) Devavardhaki Architect of the gods; a title given to Visvakarman, who according to Hindu mythology was the cosmic demiurge or world-former.
devayana (Devayan) ::: a journeying of the gods or to the gods. ::: devayanah [plural]
Devayana (Sanskrit) Devayāna [from deva spiritual being + yāna path] The way of the gods.
Dhyana(Sanskrit) ::: A term signifying profound spiritualintellectual contemplation with utter detachment from allobjects of a sensuous and lower mental character. In Buddhism it is one of the six paramitas ofperfection. One who is adept or expert in the practice of dhyana, which by the way is a wonderfulspiritual exercise if the proper idea of it be grasped, is carried in thought entirely out of all relations withthe material and merely psychological spheres of being and of consciousness, and into lofty spiritualplanes. Instead of dhyana being a subtraction from the elements of consciousness, it is rather a throwingoff or casting aside of the crippling sheaths of ethereal matter which surround the consciousness, thusallowing the dhyanin, or practicer of this form of true yoga, to enter into the highest parts of his ownconstitution and temporarily to become at one with and, therefore, to commune with the gods. It is atemporary becoming at one with the upper triad of man considered as a septenary, in other words, withhis monadic essence. Man's consciousness in this state or condition becomes purely buddhi, or ratherbuddhic, with the highest parts of the manas acting as upadhi or vehicle for the retention of what theconsciousness therein experiences. From this term is drawn the phrase dhyani-chohans ordhyani-buddhas -- words so frequently used in theosophical literature and so frequently misconceived asto their real meaning. (See also Samadhi)
Dhyanipasa (Sanskrit) Dhyānipāśa [from dhyānin divine being + pāśa rope] The rope of the gods (dhyanis); another way of referring to a great Ring-pass-not which hedges off the phenomenal world from the noumenal kosmos.
dish ::: n. --> A vessel, as a platter, a plate, a bowl, used for serving up food at the table.
The food served in a dish; hence, any particular kind of food; as, a cold dish; a warm dish; a delicious dish. "A dish fit for the gods."
The state of being concave, or like a dish, or the degree of such concavity; as, the dish of a wheel.
A hollow place, as in a field.
Distinct from the living giants are the thurses or frost giants, symbolizing periods of nonlife when the gods are absent in their supernal heavens.
divine ::: a. --> Of or belonging to God; as, divine perfections; the divine will.
Proceeding from God; as, divine judgments.
Appropriated to God, or celebrating his praise; religious; pious; holy; as, divine service; divine songs; divine worship.
Pertaining to, or proceeding from, a deity; partaking of the nature of a god or the gods.
Godlike; heavenly; excellent in the highest degree;
dragon of the dark foundation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother, Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, Master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, — Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.” The Secret of the Veda
Dragshed (Tibetan) drag dshed. “Wrathful” deities; protective deities in a terrifying form, represented as bearing the dorje, the diamond scepter of the gods. Also applied to high initiates who represent on the human plane the same type of power of a wholly beneficent character that the kindly and powerful divinities are supposed to wield.
Durga ::: “In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
durga ::: "In Hindu religion, the goddess who is the Energy of Shiva and the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother. She is the slayer of many demons including Mahisasura. Durga is usually depicted in painting and sculpture riding a lion, having eight or ten arms, each holding the special weapon of one or another of the gods who gave them to her for her battles with demons. (A; Enc. Br.)” *Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
Dvalin (Icelandic) [from dvala delay; or Swed dvala coma] A dwarf in ancient Norse mythology, the comatose or entranced human nature corresponding to the lesser elements of character; not entirely animal but not completely evolved as a human being, he accurately describes the imperfect, growing, and changing human self. Together with the skilled intelligence of Loki, Dvalin created appropriate gifts for the gods Odin, Thor, and Frey. See also DWARFS
Dyfed (Welsh) Modern Pembrokeshire, called Gwlad Hud a Lledrith (Land of Illusion and Phantasy). Closely associated with the family of gods, Pwyll, Rhianon, Pryderi — gods of the underworld or Otherworld — and in some way regarded as being close to the Otherworld. The builders of Stonehenge brought one of their circles of stones from the Preselen Mountains in Dyfed; one suspects their motive to have been to give a certain consecration to the place with stones from the Land of the Gods of the Otherworld.
Emanation ::: An emanation of the Mother is something of her consciousness and power put forth from her, which so long as it is in play is held in close connection with her and, when its play is no longer required, is withdrawn back into its source, but can always be put out and brought into play once more. But also the detaining thread of connection can be severed or loosened and that which came forth as an emanation can proceed on its way as an independent divine being with its own play in the world. All the Gods can put forth such emanations from their being, identical with them in essence of consciousness and power though not commensurate.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 105
Ephialtes (Greek) In Greek mythology a titan, son of Poseidon, who with his brother Otus makes war on Olympus and puts Ares in chains for l3 months. At the age of nine years each brother was 54 feet high and 36 feet broad. These two titans as types refer to the late Lemurians of the third root-race, and also to the earliest Atlanteans, known for their huge size, daring spirit, and their wars against the gods or Sons of Light. However, they were not demons in the Christian sense; for these early races were simply the gigantic early mankind in which self-consciousness expressed itself in high pride, the love of material power as compared with spiritual, and in works of material or physical achievement.
Eros (Greek) Love, desire; represented in the Hesiodic theogony as one of four self-existent deities, the others being Chaos, Gaia, and Erebos; otherwise as the son of Aphrodite by either Ares, Zeus, or Hermes. Eros is the cosmic force which causes the unmanifest to seek self-manifestation: it is divine love, will, desire; the desire to manifest in creative activity, and thus to give life and existence to all beings. This desire, which “arises first in It” (SD 2:578), is in the gods and in all nature. After the worlds have been manifested, Eros then becomes, under the form of fohat, the ever-active force which brings together and combines the elemental atoms. “Fohat, in his capacity of Divine Love (Eros), the electric Power of affinity and sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the one absolute, into union with the Soul” (SD 1:119). Eros, like his synonyms kama, amor, and cupido, acts on many planes.
Ethics ::: The theosophical teachings are essentially and wholly ethical. It is impossible to understand the sublimewisdom of the gods, the archaic wisdom-religion of the ancients, without the keenest realization of thefact that ethics run like golden threads throughout the entire system or fabric of doctrine and thought ofthe esoteric philosophy. Genuine occultism, divorced from ethics, is simply unthinkable becauseimpossible. There is no genuine occultism which does not include the loftiest ethics that the moral senseof mankind can comprehend, and one cannot weigh with too strong an emphasis upon this great fact.Ethics in the theosophical philosophy are not merely the products of human thought existing as aformulation of conventional rules proper for human conduct. They are founded on the very structure andcharacter of the universe itself. The heart of the universe is wisdom-love, and these are intrinsicallyethical, for there can be no wisdom without ethics, nor can love be without ethics, nor can there be ethicsdeprived of either love or wisdom.The philosophic reason why the ancients set so much store by what was commonly known as virtusamong the Latins, from which we have our modern word "virtue," is because by means of the teachingoriginating in the great Mystery schools, they knew that virtues, ethics, were the offspring of the moralinstinct in human beings, who derived them in their turn from the heart of the universe -- from thekosmic harmony. It is high time that the Occidental world should cast forever into the limbo of explodedsuperstitions the idea that ethics is merely conventional morality, a convenience invented by man tosmooth the asperities and dangers of human intercourse.Of course every scholar knows that the words morals and ethics come from the Latin and Greekrespectively, as signifying the customs or habits which it is proper to follow in civilized communities.But this fact itself, which is unquestionable, is in a sense disgraceful, for it would almost seem that wehad not yet brought forth a word adequately describing the instinct for right and truth and troth andjustice and honor and wisdom and love which we today so feebly express by the words ethics or morals."Theosophist is who Theosophy does," wrote H. P. Blavatsky, and wiser and nobler words she neverwrote. No one can be a theosophist who does not feel ethic-ally and think ethically and live ethically inthe real sense that is hereinbefore described. (See also Morals)
euhemerism ::: n. --> The theory, held by Euhemerus, that the gods of mythology were but deified mortals, and their deeds only the amplification in imagination of human acts.
Euhemerism: The view that explains religious myths as traditional and partially distorted accounts of historical events and personages; from Euhemerus, Cyrenaic philosopher (c. 300 B.C.), who advanced the theory that the gods of mythology were deified heroes. -- G.R.M.
Euhemerization The theory of Euhemeros, a Greek of about 316 BC, that the ancient Greek myths were imaginative or allegorical renderings of historical events, the gods once having been mortals or men, and their deeds the poetized actions of archaic human worthies. Hence to euhemerize is to interpret myths as having been once historical events. It is sometimes used in The Secret Doctrine as equivalent to anthropomorphism. A great deal of archaic mythology, however, is the half-forgotten and often distorted racial tradition or memory of events in the lives of once semi-divine humans, who actually were in most cases the demigods, god-men, or initiates of the later third and early fourth root-races.
Euthanasia [from Greek eu well +thanatos death] Easy death, a painless death; used for the practice of mercifully killing people who would otherwise suffer a painful death. To decide if a person should or should not be kept alive by artificial means or a life ended by artificial means requires almost superhuman discernment. An individual is not his body nor even his mind, but fundamentally a spiritual being. Physical suffering from bodily ills, however unpleasant, provides an opportunity to meet and dispose of certain karmic causes, and thereby learn and grow. Aside from the difficulty of preventing abuses in legalized euthanasia, the ethical and spiritual questions surrounding artificial prolongation and shortening of life remain extremely complex. The Stoics held that life is a gift of the gods and therefore no person has the right to reject that gift — for oneself or another — until the gods themselves call it back.
Fate ::: Fate seems a more mysterious power imposing itself on men, despite all their will and endeavour, from outside them and above—daivam, a power from the Gods.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 5, Page: 353
Fate [from Latin fatum that which is divinely decreed from fari to speak] The regents of the kosmos, acting as karmic agents of past destiny, are said to be the establishers of fate or destiny for the world or universe then beginning its manvantaric evolution. They establish in the noumenal worlds the roots, and in the phenomenal worlds the fruits, of the essential laws of being. Fatalism is the belief that human beings have no free will; however, in actual fact, though perhaps we cannot maintain our own personal will against the laws of the universe except in very moderate degree, yet we have considerable latitude to make experiments and learn from our mistakes. The Latin fatum means the laws of nature or the will of the gods, personified as the Parcae or three Fates, the Greek Moirai. In the best sense therefore it means our lot, appointed by the destiny born of our own past thoughts, feelings, and acts. See also KARMA; MOIRA
Fimbulvetr (Icelandic) [from fimbul mighty + vetr winter] In Norse mythology, the immensely long period of nonlife intervening between cycles of universal existence, equivalent to the Sanskrit pralaya. In the Edda it is interchangeable with the frost giant Ymer or Ymir, who is “slain” by the gods at each new creation.
Fire is spoken of as the Primary in the Stanzas of Dzyan: “The Spirit, beyond manifested Nature, is the fiery breath in its absolute Unity. In the manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit of Nature, the terrestrial god. And in, on, and around the Earth, the fiery Spirit thereof — air, fluidic fire; water, liquid fire; Earth, solid fire. All is fire — ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of which is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in nature and its mind. Pro-Mater is divine fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the Preserver. The primitive names of the gods are all connected with fire, from Agni, the Aryan, to the Jewish god who ‘is a consuming fire’ ” (ibid.).
First fruits: The offering of the first produce of the earth, the first animals killed or trapped in the hunting season, the firstlings of the flock, etc., to the gods most concerned with that particular activity which produced these first fruits, etc., or to the priests of those gods. In ancient days, the practice extended sometimes also to the first child of a man.
“For the gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the infinite Mother; the way to immortality is the upward way of the gods, the way of the Truth, a journey, an ascent by which there is a growth into the law of the Truth, rtasya panthâh.” The Renaissance in India
For there is a continuous scale of the planes of consciousness, beginning with the psychical and other belts attached to and dependent on the earth plane and proceeding through the true independent vital and psychical worlds to the worlds of the gods and the highest supramental and spiritual planes of existence.
foundling ::: A foundling of the Gods she wanders here
frigga ::: n. --> The wife of Odin and mother of the gods; the supreme goddess; the Juno of the Valhalla. Cf. Freya.
Frost Giants, Rime Thurses In the Norse Eddas, the primeval hrimthurses [from Icelandic, Scandinavian hrim rime + thurs, thruse giant] or frost giants are ponderous, motionless, totally mindless and stupid, to illustrate that their characteristics are those of nonliving, inert matter, not formed or organized in any way. They are the equivalent of the Greek Chaos. They represent ages of nonlife between manifestations of universes, corresponding to the Sanskrit pralaya (dissolution). They depict graphically the stage of utter cold, unmoving “wavelessness” when no atoms move and therefore nothing exists. The frost giant from whose limbs the creative deities brought into being the spheres of life in the universe is named Ymir. His slaying marked the creation of worlds, when the gods “raised the tables” (spheres) where the deities feast on the mead of experience. The rime-thurses are said to be born from Ymir’s feet.
Gandharvas (Sanskrit) Gandharva-s Hindu devas or divinities called celestial singers or musicians. Esoterically they are intermediaries between the gods and mankind, and hence can be called the instructors of humanity in the secret science.
Ganesa (Sanskrit) Gaṇeśa The Hindu god of wisdom, son of Siva, who lost his human head which was replaced by that of an elephant. As he who removes obstacles, he is invoked at the commencement of any important undertaking, likewise at the beginning of books. In some respects he is thus equivalent to the Egyptian Thoth or Thoth-Hermes, the scribe of the gods. Ganesa is the chief or head of multitudes of subordinate spiritual entities — a necessity if as the god of wisdom he accomplishes his cosmic labors through subordinate hierarchies of intelligent and semi-intelligent beings, acting as their director or guide in forming and guiding nature.
garden of the Gods
Giant The universal tradition of gigantic human beings and beasts points back to the Lemurian and Atlantean races, which were physically gigantic as compared with humankind of today. Also often popularly used as an equivalent of demons, titans, daityas, asuras, danavas, gibborim, jotuns, etc., here having reference to the powers of earth who contended against the gods in the early periods of the formation of the globe and its populations.
God(s) and Goddess(es) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature’s hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.
Gods ::: It was the hour before the Gods awake.
gods ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature.” *The Upanishads
Gods ::: The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 26
Gods ::: “The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of the principles of Nature.” The Upanishads
gods "the necessary static elements, ::: Space, the ordered movements of the worlds, the ascending levels, the highest goal"; in later Hinduism, the Preserver of the world, one of the "three Powers and Personalities . of the One Cosmic Godhead", of which the other two are Brahma, the Creator, and Śiva or Rudra2, the Destroyer; also regarded as the Lord himself (isvara) who incarnates in the avataras, and the one deva of whom all the gods are manifestations; in the Record of Yoga, usually a subordinate aspect of Kr.s.n.a, sometimes identified with Pradyumna as the personality of the fourfold isvara whose sakti is Mahalaks.mi.Vis Visnu-Narayana
Gods ::: The old pantheons were builded upon an ancient and esoteric wisdom which taught, under the guise of apublic mythology, profound secrets of the structure and operations of the universe which surrounds us.The entire human race has believed in gods, has believed in beings superior to men; the ancients all saidthat men are the "children" of these gods, and that from these superior beings, existent in the azurespaces, men draw all that in them is; and, furthermore, that men themselves, as children of the gods, arein their inmost essence divine beings linked forever with the boundless universe of which each humanbeing, just as is the case with every other entity everywhere, is an inseparable part. This is a truly sublimeconception.One should not think of human forms when the theosophist speaks of the gods; we mean the arupa -- the"formless" -- entities, beings of pure intelligence and understanding, relatively pure essences, relativelypure spirits, formless as we physical humans conceive form. The gods are the higher inhabitants ofnature. They are intrinsic portions of nature itself, for they are its informing principles. They are as muchsubject to the wills and energies of still higher beings -- call these wills and energies the "laws" of higherbeings, if you will -- as we are, and as are the kingdoms of nature below us.The ancients put realities, living beings, in the place of laws which, as Occidentals use the term, are onlyabstractions -- an expression for the action of entities in nature; the ancients did not cheat themselves soeasily with words. They called them gods, spiritual entities. Not one single great thinker of the ancients,until the Christian era, ever talked about laws of nature, as if these laws were living entities, as if theseabstractions were actual entities which did things. Did the laws of navigation ever navigate a ship? Doesthe law of gravity pull the planets together? Does it unite or pull the atoms together? This word laws issimply a mental abstraction signifying unerring action of conscious and semi-conscious energies innature.
Golden Fleece In Greek mythology, the fleece of a ram sent by the gods to save Phrixus and Helle, son and daughter of Athamas and Nephele, from their stepmother Ino. Flying through the air, it bore them towards Asia Minor. Helle drowned in the sea (at the Hellespont), but Phrixus arrived at Colchis. There he sacrificed the ram to Zeus and presented the fleece to king Aeetes, who hung it in a grove of Ares. Later, a generation before the Trojan War, Jason and the Argonauts brought the fleece back to Greece with the aid of Aeetes’ daughter Medea.
Gorgon (Greek) In Greek mythology, three sisters with wings, brazen claws, enormous teeth, and serpents instead of hair on their heads. The one usually meant is the mortal Medusa, once a beautiful maiden turned into a gorgon by the gods. She was overcome by Perseus who avoided her fatal glance, which would have turned him to stone, by using a mirror. Pegasus, the winged horse, sprang from her severed neck. Evidently the gorgons represent one of the powers which rule the lower realms of nature which have to be overcome by the aspirant to wisdom in the initiatory trials.
Gullveig, Gultweig (Icelandic) [from gull gold + veig thirst, drink] The Norse Edda’s principal poem, Voluspa, contains a cryptic allusion to Gullveig as “thrice burned, thrice reborn, yet still she lives.” Speared by the gods, “thirst for gold” arose each time from her baptism of fire more beautiful than before. She was the cause of the first war in the world when the aesir (creative gods) were ousted from their heavenly abode by the vanir (superior gods), the latter remaining in Asgard.
Hathor (Greek) Het-Hert (Egyptian) Ḥet-Ḥert [from ḥet-ḥert the house above] One of the oldest known Egyptian deities. Het-Hert refers to the sky or heaven, known by the Greeks as Hathor. Originally, Hathor was a cosmic goddess, consort of Ra, mother of light — the production of which was considered the opening act in cosmogony, producer of the twin deities Shu and Tefnut (the sky and the moisture of the sky). Later she was regarded as the great Mother, bringing forth all the gods and goddesses — Mother Nature personified. She has been associated with all the goddesses of Egypt, partaking of all their attributes; but her principal title was Lady of Amentet (the Holy Land or underworld).
Havyavahana (Sanskrit) Havyavāhana The fire of the gods; the sacrificial fire which receives offerings to the gods. In the Puranas, Suchi, the solar fire, is made its parent.
Hel (Icelandic) [from helju hell, death] The mythical regent of the Norse realm of the dead, depicted as half black or blue and half flesh-colored. In myths the representative of death is usually said to be a child of mind: in the Edda she is the daughter of Loki (fire of mind) and of the giantess Angerboda (boder of regret). She rules the nine worlds of death which correspond to the nine worlds of life, and apportions to each arrival a domicile appropriate to that soul’s merit or demerit. Some may frolic in sunlit meadows, others suffer agony beneath the lower gates leading to Niflhel [from nifl cloud + hel death] where matter is ground to extinction. The realm of Hel with its varied accommodations resembles the Greek Hades more than the hell of popular belief where evil souls are sent for punishment. Rather, the kingdom of death is a restful interlude where souls spend a fitting time in their rightful environment. The Eddas relate that elves (human souls) sleep among the gods when they are feasting on the mead of a past period of life (experience); thus the resting souls are present in the divine spheres even through unconscious of their surroundings.
Heliopolis was the principal seat of his worship, it being held that at that spot, with his consort Nut, he produced the great Egg of Space, out of which emerged the sun god in the shape of a phoenix (bennu). Because of this he was styled the Great Cackler. Another of his titles was Erpat (chief of the gods), as he is more like the Hindu parabrahman than even Brahma, and hence the womb of cosmic being. A favorite representation of Seb is that of a prostrated man, one hand pointing to heaven, the other to earth — the prostrated form representing the earth — over whom bends a woman, Nut, her body being spangled with stars — representing the sky.
Hephaistos, Hephaestus (Greek) A fire god, child of Zeus and Hera, equivalent to the Latin Vulcanus or Vulcan. He is twice cast down from Olympus, to which however he returns; thus he is a messenger of the gods to earth, and appears on various planes as a manifestation of cosmic fire. He is a kabir, a cosmic teacher of men, whom he instructed in the use of fire and the metallurgic arts. Jupiter, or the four-faced or four-sided Brahma, partakes of all four elements and disputes his fiery function to Hephaistos. The volcanic island of Lemnos, on which Hephaistos is said to have fallen when cast from Olympus, was sacred to him.
Hera: In Greek mythology, the sister and wife of Zeus, queen of the gods, goddess of marriage.
Hermaphrodite [from Greek Hermes + Aphrodite] The form and typical nature of both the god and goddess in one individual. Androgyne also relates to a dual-sexed human being. Thus, the hermaphrodite imbodies nature’s universal polarity on its lower planes, which polarity is an emanation from the non-dual or non-bipolar mental and spiritual realms. In an abstract sense, this is a personification of the universal polarity in nature on its lower planes, wherein the so-called masculine and feminine principles are the opposing but coordinating agencies, often called positive and negative, in their creative and generative aspects. “The ancients taught the, so to speak, auto-generation of the Gods: the one divine essence, unmanifested, perpetually begetting a second-self, manifested, which second-self, androgynous in its nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to everything macro- and micro-cosmical in this universe” (SD 1:398).
Hermes (Greek) Greek god, son of Zeus and Maia, the third person in a triad of Father-Mother-Son, hence the formative Logos or Word. He is equivalent to the Hindu Budha, the Zoroastrian Mithra, the Babylonian Nebo — son of Zarpa-Nitu (moon) and Merodach (sun) — and the Egyptian Thoth with the ibis for his emblem; also to Enoch and the Roman Mercurius, son of Coelus and Lux (heaven and light). Among his emblems are the cross, the cubical shape, the serpent, and especially his wand, the caduceus, which combines the serpent and cross. The name has been used generically for many adepts. To Hermes were attributed many functions, such as that of inspiring eloquence and healing, and he is the patron of intellectual, artistic, and productively agricultural pursuits. The nature and functions of this divinity express themselves to our mind as light, wisdom, intelligence, and quickness — especially in an intellectual sense. He was the messenger of the gods, and also the psychopomp or conductor of souls to the netherworld. In his lower aspects he is often made to serve as the inspirer of gross misuses of intelligence such as clever theft — thus illustrating that even the noblest qualities have their dark side.
Hermes: The ancient Greek god of herds, guardian of travellers, messenger of the gods, conductor of the dead to the underworld. The Romans identified him with Mercury. In Egypt, he was identified with Hermanubis, and chiefly with Thoth, the god of learning, and in the Roman imperial period he was worshipped as a revealer of divine wisdom by which men may become a new man, a Son of God.
Hermod (Icelandic) [from her host, army + mod might, courage] A son of Odin in Norse mythology, equivalent to Hermes or Mercury, messenger of the gods. Best known for his memorable journey to the kingdom of Hel on behalf of the gods, when he was sent to entreat the queen of death to give up the sun god Balder whose death at the hands of his blind brother Hoder had been brought about by Loki (in some versions Odin himself undertakes the errand).
hero ::: n. --> An illustrious man, supposed to be exalted, after death, to a place among the gods; a demigod, as Hercules.
A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person.
The principal personage in a poem, story, and the like, or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related; as Achilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and Aeneas in the
Hiram Abif is a type-figure of all the saviors of humanity who sacrificed themselves for the salvation of mankind, a direct human representative of its prototype among the divinities, such as Odin and Visvakarman, the builder and artificer of the gods. Hiram Abif is also the type-figure of the individual’s inner god, crucified upon the cross of material existence.
Hlidskjalf (Icelandic) [from hlid side, gate; or from hlifd protection + skjalf shelf, bench, plane] The word may mean either that the gods are arrayed by our side in the struggle of life; or deriving it from the Scandinavian lida (to suffer), it could be by extension of meaning the “shelf of compassion,” whence their protection extends over the human race. In the Norse Edda, it is on Hlidskjalf that Odin is enthroned with his consort Frigga and whence he is able to survey all worlds. Frey, the deity of our terrestrial world, also oversees his domain from this vantage point.
Hoddmimir’s Holt (Icelandic) [from hodd treasury + Mimir, Mimer a giant, the root of matter + holt grove] In Norse myths the sacred grove where is guarded the treasury that is being sought by the gods in matter during manifestation. In that grove Lif and Lifthrasir, the immortal principles in humanity, are secreted when the world has ended its lifetime and before it is reborn.
Holy City Many spiritual traditions symbolize the goal of human attainment or the abode of the gods as a holy city. With the Hindus, Brahmapura is the capital of Brahma on Mt. Kailasa in the Himalayas or on Mt. Meru, as well as being the inmost chamber of the heart. According to the Chhandogya Upanishad (8:1:1), within the Brahmapura “is an abode, a small lotus-flower; within it is a small space (antarakasa). What is within that, should be searched out; that, assuredly, is what one should desire to understand.” Hiranyapura (golden city) stands for the sun and for the invisible, etheric regions of space; while the Siddhapura or White Island is both the indestructible home of adepts on earth and the poles of the earth or Mt. Meru.
Honer was sent as a hostage to the vanir at the battle of the gods (the war in heaven) and will remain captive until the final confrontation at Ragnarok, when the gods withdraw to their own spheres.
Hotar: Sanskrit for caller. Priest-magicians who invoke the gods by reciting ritual formulas and improvised chants.
hotr (Hotri) ::: the priest of the sacrifice, he who calls and brings the gods and gives them the offering. [Ved.] ::: hota [nominative]
Hotri (Sanskrit) Hotṛ An offerer of an oblation with fire, or burnt offering; hence a sacrificer, a priest. As used in the Rig-Veda, one of the four kinds of officiating priests at a sacrifice: he who invokes the gods by reciting the mantras from the Rig-Veda. In the Anugita the plural is used symbolically for the seven senses, which are represented as being seven priests: “the senses supply the fire of mind (i.e., desire) with the oblations of external pleasures.” Thus these seven are the causes of emancipation (cf TG 146).
Hrada (Sanskrit) Hrāda According to a legend in the Puranas, there was in the night of time a war between the gods and the asuras or daityas, beings who opposed ritualism and dogma, which lasted one divine year. On this occasion the gods were defeated by the daityas under the leadership of Hrada.
I Am That I Am (Hebrew) ’Ehyeh ’Asher ’Ehyeh A title given by Jehovah to himself, a variation of I-am-I, indicating that Jehovah, whatever he may claim to be, is merely one of the gods of the manifested world, a Demiourgos, and not the Supreme. See also ’EHYEH
ichor ::: n. --> An ethereal fluid that supplied the place of blood in the veins of the gods.
A thin, acrid, watery discharge from an ulcer, wound, etc.
Ida (Icelandic, Scandinavian) [from ida eddy, whirlpool] The restless, ever-moving; in the Norse Eddas the Field of Ida is the plain in the center of Asgard, abode of the gods, where the aesir assemble to hold counsel; comparable to the Vigridsslatt (plain of consecration) where human heroes struggle against the forces of darkness during their life cycle. Each plain is appropriate to the world and its denizens and each has its corresponding heavenly sphere above it (cf SD 2:100). The remaining aesir gods gather on the Field of Ida after Ragnarok, nothing else of Asgard having survived.
Ida or Ila (Sanskrit) Iḍā, Iḷā Refreshment, flow; the goddess of sacred speech, similar to Vach; in the Rig-Veda called the instructress of Manu, instituting the rules for the performing of sacrifices. The Satapatha-Brahmana represents Ida as arising from a sacrifice which Manu had performed for the purpose of obtaining offspring. Although claimed by the gods Mitra and Varuna, she became the wife of Manu, giving birth to the race of manus. In the Puranas, she is daughter of Vaivasvata-Manu, wife of Budha (wisdom), and mother of Pururavas. In some accounts she is born a woman, becomes a man named Sudyumna, then rebecomes a woman before finally becoming a man again. This refers to the androgynous third root-race, as well as to the later part of the second root-race.
I-em-hetep or Imhetep (Egyptian) I-em-ḥetep Imouthis, Imouthes (Greek) Also Imhotep, Imhot-pou. He who comes in peace; the Egyptian deity presiding over medicine, especially in connection with its learning and science; a son of Ptah who, with his brother Nefer-tem, was regarded as the third member of the great triad of gods at Memphis. The Greeks equated him with Aesculapius. He was regarded as the god of study and in later times took on some of the attributes of Thoth or Tehuti as the scribe of the gods. During their life he healed men’s bodies; after their death he superintended the preservation of their bodies, and was regarded as one of the protectors of the dead in the underworld. He is termed the Logos-Creator in conjunction with Kneph (SD 1:353).
Ifing (Icelandic, Scandinavian) [from if, ef doubt] In Norse mythology, a wide, ever-flowing river which runs between Asgard (court of the gods) and Jotunheim (home of the giants where the worlds of the living are formed). This river never freezes over to form an ice-bridge which might be traversed by the unworthy, but all human souls must eventually cross the river Doubt and also the river Time (Tund) in order to gain the realm of the gods.
If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and many-sided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable…
Igigi: A Babylonian term for the gods or spirits of heaven in general, or specifically, for the gods or spirits embodied in those stars which were above the horizon at any one time.
In ancient Egypt there were thirty Dynasties of kings, as enumerated by the historian Manetho. But the Egyptian priests told Herodotus that there were three divine dynasties which preceded the reign of the human kings: that of the gods, of the demigods, and of the heroes. China too had its divine dynasties which preceded the human dynasties: thus the Chow rulers are placed at 1100 BC, but they were again preceded by the Sheng and the still earlier Hea (or Hia) dynasties. The Greeks taught the existence of divine dynasties followed by human, and Plato tells of divine and semi-divine instructors who first taught mankind the arts, sciences, and agriculture. The same general tradition is found in ancient America. The ancient Chaldeans used the figures 4 3 2 in their calculations concerning the time periods of their dynasties, which they said extended backwards from themselves for a length of 432,000 years.
“In ancient times in India, and in the homeland of the Aryans before they reached India by way of Central Asia, this very early Aryan speech was used not only by the Aryan populace, but in the sanctuaries of the Temples was taken in hand and developed or composed or builded to be a far finer vehicle for expressing abstract religious and philosophic conceptions and thoughts. This tongue thus composed or developed by initiates of the Aryan stock, because of this formative work upon it was finally given the name Sanskrita, signifying an original natural language which had become perfected by initiates for the purpose of expressing far more subtle and profound distinctions than ordinary people would ever find needful. So great was the admiration in which the Sanskrit language thus perfected was held, that it was commonly said of it that it was the work of the Gods, because it had thus become capable of expressing godlike thoughts: profound spiritual subtleties and philosophical distinctions. Thus it was that Sanskrit is really the mystery-language of the initiates of the Aryan race; as the Senzar of very similar history was the mystery-language of the later Atlanteans; and is still used as the noblest mystery-language by the Mahatmas.
In another aspect the hippopotamus goddess was the female counterpart of Set and the mother of the sun god, whom she brought into the world at Ombos. “In Egyptian symbolism Typhon was called ‘the hippopotamus who slew his father and violated his mother,’ Rhea (mother of the gods). His father was Chronos. As applied therefore to Time and Nature (Chronos and Rhea), the accusation becomes comprehensible. The type of Cosmic Disharmony, Typhon, who is also Python, the monster formed of the slime of the Deluge of Deucalion, ‘violates’ his mother Primordial Harmony, whose beneficence was so great that she was called ‘The Mother of the Golden Age.’ It was Typhon, who put an end to the latter, i.e., produced the first war of the elements” (TG 142).
In connection with ’elohim, ruah denotes the rational and purposive mental quality of the gods — the mental breath or power appearing mainly in humans, feebly in animals. It was regarded in Genesis as moving over the chaos at the creation, and operating in and through the universe, producing that which is noble and good in man and leading him to virtue. Cosmic ruah is in many respects equivalent to the Third Logos of Greek philosophy. A similar meaning implied exceptional soul powers, as in the inspired ruler and the prophet; hence the prophetic spirit — which was often represented as passing from one person and resting in another.
Indra (Sanskrit) Indra Vedic god of the firmament, supporter or guardian of the eastern quarter of the visible kosmos, whose functions somewhat parallel those of the equivalent of the four Maharajas. Indra, Varuna, and Agni were considered among the three highest gods of the Vedas, although the triad of Vayu, Surya, and Agni is frequently mentioned, Indra often taking the place of Vayu. Indra is often described as the champion of all the gods and overthrower of their enemies, especially the conqueror of Vritra, the great cosmic serpent. Indra thus has numerous parallels with the St. Michael of the Occident, and some of his functions are identic with Karttikeya, the god of war.
"In Greek mythology, a giant with a hundred arms, a son of Uranus and Ge, who fought against the gods. He was hurled down by Athene and imprisoned beneath Mt. Aetna in Sicily. When he stirs, the mountain shakes; when he breathes, there is an eruption. (M.I.; Web.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
“In Greek mythology, a giant with a hundred arms, a son of Uranus and Ge, who fought against the gods. He was hurled down by Athene and imprisoned beneath Mt. Aetna in Sicily. When he stirs, the mountain shakes; when he breathes, there is an eruption. (M.I.; Web). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
In Hebrew allegory the connection among the ideas associated with Jehovah is this same archaic verity which in Hebrew Qabbalistic thought is exemplified as ’Adam Qadmon; and the word transliterated as Jehovah in a collective sense refers to the Benei ’Elohim (sons of the gods).
In Hindu literature the number seven continually appears: the saptarshis (the seven sages), the seven superior and inferior worlds, the seven hosts of deities, the seven holy cities, the seven holy islands, seas, or mountains, the seven deserts, the seven sacred trees, etc. In Greece seven was often connected with the gods and goddesses: Mars had seven attendants, seven was sacred to Pallas Athene and to Phoebus Apollo — the latter with his seven-stringed lyre playing hymns to septenary nature as well as to the seven-rayed sun; Niobe’s seven sons and seven daughters, etc.
In later mythology Surya is particularly identified with Savitri as one of the twelve adityas of the sun in the twelve months of the year, and his seven-horsed chariot is described as driven by Aruna (dawn). Surya was represented also as the husband of Sanjna (spiritual consciousness, cosmic or human), and the offspring of Aditi (space), mother of all the gods. One legend represents Surya as crucified on a lathe by Visvakarman — his father-in-law, the creator of gods and men, and their carpenter — and having an eighth part of his rays cut off, which deprives his head of its effulgency, creating round it a dark aureole — “a mystery of the last initiation, and an allegorical representation of it” (TG 313).
In legend, the seven daughters of Atlas (Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope, Merope, Alcyone, and Celaeno), who complained to the gods because they were pursued by Orion and were then changed into pigeons or doves and made into a constellation. Atlas represents the Atlantean root-race, and the daughters are the seven subraces. They married gods and became the mothers of heroes and the founders of city-states. They are connected with the destiny of nations, which is shaped by the events of their past lives, so that truly our destiny is written in the stars. In India, as the Krittikas, they were the wives of the seven rishis, six visible, one concealed; and the function of the rishis is concerned with times and events.
In Norse mythology giants represent ages of manifest existence and each giant exhibits traits belonging to his particular eon. The giantesses who are his daughters represent lesser cycles of time within his longer age. Thurses are the gross, inert aspects of the elements which serve as vehicles for the imbodiments of conscious energies in worlds. They are represented as evil in most myths because their nature is opposed to the dynamism of the gods. Hence the gods and thurses or giants are constantly at war.
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
In the ancient Scandinavian conception of the World Tree (Yggdrasil), the dew that fell from this cosmic tree was called honey-dew, and was gathered by the bees — the initiates who through successes in passing the rites are enabled to bring themselves into synchronous harmony with the different cosmic powers and planes, and thus become channels or interpreters of cosmic wisdom to humanity. The idea is akin to the real meaning of the ambrosia of the ancient Greeks, which was the food of the gods — standing for the ancient wisdom.
In the Eddas the aesir are in perpetual opposition to the jotunn (giants; Icelandic jotnar), as energy is opposed to inertia. When the gods withdraw at Ragnarok, the universe ceases to be. The aesir’s reign or life was preceded by a period of quiescence, during which nothing existed. This was Ymir, the frostgiant, the transformed Bargalmer (Icelandic Bergelmir), fruitage of a previous cycle of universal life, who was “saved on a boatkeel” or “ground on the mill” to furnish substance for the succeeding world. This was to be created by All-father Odin and his two brothers, Vile and Vi (or Ve). The frost giant is killed — transformed — by the three gods, and from his substance (Orgalmer) the worlds are created. They are sustained by Trudgalmer until the gods again withdraw. In his capacity of creator Odin is named Ofner (opener), energic counterpart of Orgalmer, while at the end of a cosmic life he becomes Svafner (closer) and paired with Bargalmer.
In The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the deceased must learn to master everything he encounters in the underworld, and does this through the instruction of Thoth, who also teaches the pilgrim the way of procedure. Finally when the deceased reaches the stage of judgment, it is Thoth who records the decree pointed out to him by the dog-headed ape on the balance, the scales of which weigh the heart against the feather. The gods receive the verdict from Thoth, who in turn announce it to Osiris, enabling the candidate to enter the realm of Osiris, as being one osirified. Thus Thoth is the inner spiritual recorder of the human constitution, who registers and records the karmic experiences and foretells the future destiny of the deceased, showing that each person is judged by himself — for Thoth here is the person’s own higher ego; as regards cosmic space, Thoth is not only the cosmic Logos, but its aspect as the intelligent creative urge inherent in that Intelligence.
“In their most mystical meaning, the union of Swayambhuva Manu with Vach-Sata-Rupa, his own daughter (this being the first ‘euhemerization’ of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ila are a secondary and a third form), stands in Cosmic symbolism as the Root-life, the germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the worlds, angels and the gods” (SD 2:148).
In the mystic language of ancient time, a holy mountain universally signified a school of esoteric teaching. Just as a mountain on earth raises its summits towards the free heaven, and therefore mystically towards spirit and the gods, so in the ancient esoteric schools the training and the initiations conducted raised the neophytes or initiants towards the spirit, both cosmically and inner, and hence likewise towards the gods. See also PARNASSUS
In the Qabbalah it is said that creation was accomplished during the twelve hours of a day: “The ‘twelve hours of the day’ are again the dwarfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are like the 12,000 divine years of the gods, a cyclic blind. Every ‘Day of Brahma’ has 14 Manus, which the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in this the Chaldeans, have disguised into 12 ‘Hours.’ The Nuctameron of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. ‘The Dodecahedron lies concealed in the perfect Cube,’ say the Kabalists. The mystic meaning of this is, that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into matter (the 12,000 divine years) take place during the four great ages, or the first Mahayuga” (SD 1:450).
“In the Rig Veda Indra is the highest and greatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly spiritual nature. In the Puranas Indra becomes a profligate, a regular drunkard on the Soma juice, in the terrestrial way” (SD 2:378). Indra corresponds with the cosmic principle mahat and in the human constitution with its reflection, manas, in its dual aspect. At times he is connected with buddhi; at others he is dragged down by kama, the desire principle.
In The Secret Doctrine Omoroka (the moon) presides over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings slain by the dhyanis; and further, while the gods were generated in svabhavat (mother-space), the reflection of wisdom became on earth Omoroka — the Chaldean Thalatth, the Greek Thalassa.
In this simultaneous development of multitudinous independent or combined Powers or Potentials there is yet—or there is as yet—no chaos, no conflict, no fall from Truth or Knowledge. The Overmind is a creator of truths, not of illusions or falsehoods: what is worked out in any given overmental energism or movement is the truth of the Aspect, Power, Idea, Force, Delight which is liberated into independent action, the truth of the consequences of its reality in that independence. There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole truth of being or the others as inferior truths: each God knows all the Gods and their place in existence; each Idea admits all other ideas and their right to be; each Force concedes a place to all other forces and their truth and consequences; no delight of separate fulfilled existence or separate experience denies or condemns the delight of other existence or other experience. The Overmind is a principle of cosmic Truth and a vast and endless catholicity is its very spirit; its energy is an all-dynamism as well as a principle of separate dynamisms: it is a sort of inferior Supermind,—although it is concerned predominantly not with absolutes, but with what might be called the dynamic potentials or pragmatic truths of Reality, or with absolutes mainly for their power of generating pragmatic or creative values, although, too, its comprehension of things is more global than integral, since its totality is built up of global wholes or constituted by separate independent realities uniting or coalescing together, and although the essential unity is grasped by it and felt to be basic of things and pervasive in their manifestation, but no longer as in the Supermind their intimate and ever-present secret, their dominating continent, the overt constant builder of the harmonic whole of their activity and nature….
Into the elivagar massed in Ginnungagap (formless or sacred void) fell showers of sparks from Muspellsheim (home of fire), the energic counterpart of Niflheim (home of clouds, nebulae), creating a vapor — Ymir, the frost giant from which the gods created worlds. Ymir is then said to have given rise to the race of rime-thurses — matter giants, for “all their kin is ever evil.”
iris ::: n. --> The goddess of the rainbow, and swift-footed messenger of the gods.
The rainbow.
An appearance resembling the rainbow; a prismatic play of colors.
The contractile membrane perforated by the pupil, and forming the colored portion of the eye. See Eye.
A genus of plants having showy flowers and bulbous or
isvari (ishwari; iswari) ::: the all-ruling Goddess (devi), "the Worldisvari Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance".
It is only in this world that the action of fate seems extraneous to human will, for in reality we are the weaver of our own fates. The Morai are karmic agents or forces rather than karma, which is fundamentally the law governing universal equilibrium. In its essence the constant working of cosmic harmony, karma must of necessity manifest itself in multimyriad forms and manners — in and through multimyriad agents or forces. Karma being essentially the law of cosmic unity and concord, it is only the individuals which disturb this universal equilibrium who can feel the reaction therefrom, whether in one life or in a later one; but the karmic effects are by no means always identic with the originating causative action of the individual, because of the karmic agents of many kinds through which karma works. Thus, the gods, all human beings, the earth itself, and all its component forces and substances are karmic agents constantly interacting upon each other; so that while abstractly the action of karma is infallible and infinitely unerring and cannot ever be escaped or set aside, its reactions upon the individual who broke its laws may take place in diverse ways and usually through agents or instruments, since karma is no individual or cosmic god.
Ized, Izad (Pahlavi, Pers) A class of ancient Zoroastrian deities subordinate to Ahura-Mazda and carriers of his will. In the Avesta, the Yashts are addressed to the izeds. In the Bundahish, Neryosengh, the messenger of the gods, is referred to as an ized, as is Anahita, the goddess of the waters.
Janus (Latin) [from janua a gate] Oldest and most exalted of the Roman gods, he was called the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things, the origin of all organic life and especially human life; from him sprang all wells and rivers, and he had power also on the seas. He had no Greek counterpart, and may originally have been a god of sun and light, who opened and closed the day; later he was especially the god of beginnings and endings, such as the closing and opening of cycles, symbolized in his statues by his having two faces, one before and one behind, visioning the future and the past; also of all doors, entrances, and passages, he being pictured as a porter with a staff and key. He was saluted every morning, at the beginning of all the months (calends), and at the first of the year. When the Romans began their year near the winter solstice (153 BC), they called the month Januarius, the month of Janus, as the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. They connected the name Janus with Dianus, one aspect of the divine sun, whose feminine is Diana, the moon.
japa. ::: incantation; a spiritual discipline involving the meditative repetition of the Lord's name or a mantra as a means to a continual recollection of His presence; uttering the names of the gods or sacred mantras, like OM, either mentally or spoken softly as a method of spiritual practice
Jehovah-Tzabaoth, -Tsebaoth, or -Sabbaoth The seventh Sephirah of the superior septenary, identified with Netsah (triumph), who “esoterically . . . corresponds with Haniel (human physical life), the androgyne Elohim, with Venus-Lucifer and Baal, and finally with the Letter Vau or Microprosopus, the Logos. All these belong to the formative world” — also with Siva, Saturn, and the angel Michael or Mikael; “Mikael and his angels, or Jehovah-Tzabaoth (the ‘Host’) who refused to create as the seven passionless, mind-born, sons of Brahma did, because they aspire to incarnate as men in order to become higher than the gods — fight the Dragon [of esoteric wisdom], conquer him, and the child of matter is born” (BCW 8:148). See also TSEBA’OTH (SD 1:459)
Jhumur: “The gods. From his (Death’s) point of view they are unreal. Because he wants to prove that he is the final arbiter and that all is bound by him, nothing else really matters. At this point in the argument this is what he wants to emphasize, that Savitri must accept her limitations.”
Jotunheim (Icelandic, Scandinavian) [from jotunn giant + heimar home, land] In Norse mythology, the home of the giants, one of the nine worlds of the Eddas, described as beyond the ocean which surrounds Midgard, and separated from the home of the gods (Asgard) by Ifing — the river which never freezes over. Jotunheim stands for the material spheres of life visited by the gods who gain the “mead” of wisdom by embodying in worlds. Such a sphere is the earth and so also are the other planets and celestial bodies, though of varying evolutionary status.
Jotunn, Jotun (Icelandic) Giant; in the Norse Edda the giants represent the material spheres in which gods embody, thus enlightening those dark worlds while gaining there the “mead” of experience. There are giants of varying types and degrees. The ultimate source of matter (Sanskrit mulaprakriti) is named Mimir in the Edda. Other giants represent periods during which the gods animate a world, race, or other living being. Each named giant is a life period or material embodiment of a god; it exists for as long as the energizing deity is embodied, and dies, slain by the hammer of Thor, at the end of that period. Within the long span of a giant’s life a number of giantesses, “daughters” of the giant, represent smaller cycles, races or subraces of the giant, their father. A giant is thus both a manifest entity and the lifetime of such an entity, thus paralleling the aeons of Greek mythology.
Juno: In Roman mythology, wife of Jupiter, queen of the gods, mistress of heaven and earth, patroness of marriage and female virtue.
Jupiter: Chief deity, lord of heaven and earth, king of the gods of the Romans. Identified with Zeus of the Greeks.
Ka (Egyptian) Ka plural kau. Equivalent to the astral double, model-body, or linga-sarira. The ancient Egyptians held that when a human being was born, the ka was born with him and remained with him throughout his life. Even after death it remained in the tomb with the corpse; it was popularly believed that the offerings placed on graves were made to perpetuate the ka. Furthermore, the gods possessed them, each deity being said to have many kau; thus in one text the god Ra is said to possess seven bau (souls) and 14 kau. Even cities were held to possess kau in the heaven world.
Kaf, Kaph, Ghaf (Persian) Kāf, Kaph, Ghāf, Kaofa (Avestan) Kaofā, Kafor (Pahlavi) Mountain; in Persian tradition the sacred mythological mountain, comparable in many respects to the Hindu Mount Meru; regarded as the abode of the gods and the place whither heroes travel in order to reach the sacred land beyond these mountains. Hushenk, the hero, rode there on his twelve-legged horse, while Tahmurath went on his winged steed. It is the abode of Simorgh or Angha, the legendary bird of knowledge. In the “Aghre-Sorkh” (Red Intellect) of 12th century mystic philosopher Sohrevardi, Ghaf is referred to as the abode of intellect, surrounding the world with eleven peaks that only initiates can pass through. He says that the Night-Lightener Jewel (Gohar-e-Shab Afrooz) can be found in Mount Ghaf. This jewel receives its brilliance from the tree of Touba which is on Mount Ghaf.
Kailasa (Kailas) ::: the mountain on whose summit Śiva is said to dwell, according to a popular tradition which translated inner truths "into terms familiar to our physical and objective experience, . . . turned the rarer heights of subtle substance into material heights and placed the abodes of the gods on the summits of physical mountains". kaivaly kaivalyananda
Kailasa (Sanskrit) Kailāsa A lofty mountain in the Himalayas; in mythology Siva’s paradise is placed upon Kailasa, north of Lake Manasasarovara. The god of wealth, Kuvera, also is said to have his palace there. Because of the occult history attached to Mount Kailasa, Hindu metaphysics not infrequently uses Kailasa for heaven or the abode of the gods.
Kamadhenu (Sanskrit) Kāmadhenu [from kāma desire, wish + dhenu milch cow] Also Kamaduha, Surabhi. The mythical cow belonging to the sage Vasishtha, produced by the gods at the churning of the cosmic ocean. She is supposed to grant all desires and hence is termed the cow of plenty. This allegory refers to the appearance of the earth in space as the mother of all that later is — at least so far as our globe is concerned — the earth being mythologically considered to be milked and thus producing food. Many archaic mythologies have such an emblem of generative fertility.
Kandu (Sanskrit) Kaṇḍu In the Puranas, a sage and yogi whose holiness and pious austerities awakened the jealousy of the gods. Kamadeva, as lord of the gods, sent one of his apsarasas, Pramlocha, to tempt the sage. He lived with her for several centuries, which seemed to him only as one day. Finally the sage, returning to his senses, repudiated her and chased her away, whereupon she gave birth to a daughter, Marisha, in an extraordinary manner. Blavatsky compares this legend to the temptation of Merlin by Vivien, and Sarah’s temptation of Pharaoh in the Old Testament (SD 2:174-5&n).
Karmabandha (Sanskrit) Karmabandha [from karma action, activity + bandha bond, fetter] The bonds of karma or action; the repeated existences of an entity brought about by the karmic bonds of continuation, born of thought, feeling, and action. A being which has no karmabandha has attained freedom from the enthralling chains and attractions of material existence; but such a jivanmukta nevertheless has karma belonging to and suitable to the plane on which it then is. Thus a jivanmukta can rise above karma relative to the lower realms of being; but as long as any entity, however high, endures as an individualized monadic center, it inevitably produces karma of some kind appropriate to its own high sphere of life and activity. For the meaning of karma is action or activity of any kind — spiritual, intellectual, psychological, astral, or physical. We human beings, living in the lower planes, produce karma corresponding to us and our environment; but the gods, because individualized and active beings in their own spheres, produce of necessity karma corresponding with their own lofty state.
Karma(Karman, Sanskrit) ::: This is a noun-form coming from the root kri meaning "to do," "to make." Literallykarma means "doing," "making," action. But when used in a philosophical sense, it has a technicalmeaning, and this technical meaning can best be translated into English by the word consequence. Theidea is this: When an entity acts, he acts from within; he acts through an expenditure in greater or lessdegree of his own native energy. This expenditure of energy, this outflowing of energy, as it impactsupon the surrounding milieu, the nature around us, brings forth from the latter perhaps an instantaneousor perhaps a delayed reaction or rebound. Nature, in other words, reacts against the impact; and thecombination of these two -- of energy acting upon nature and nature reacting against the impact of thatenergy -- is what is called karma, being a combination of the two factors. Karma is, in other words,essentially a chain of causation, stretching back into the infinity of the past and therefore necessarilydestined to stretch into the infinity of the future. It is unescapable, because it is in universal nature, whichis infinite and therefore everywhere and timeless; and sooner or later the reaction will inevitably be feltby the entity which aroused it.It is a very old doctrine, known to all religions and philosophies, and since the renascence of scientificstudy in the Occident has become one of the fundamental postulates of modern coordinated knowledge.If you toss a pebble into a pool, it causes ripples in the water, and these ripples spread and finally impactupon the bank surrounding the pool; and, so modern science tells us, the ripples are translated intovibrations, which are carried outward into infinity. But at every step of this natural process there is acorresponding reaction from every one and from all of the myriads of atomic particles affected by thespreading energy.Karma is in no sense of the word fatalism on the one hand, nor what is popularly known as chance, onthe other hand. It is essentially a doctrine of free will, for naturally the entity which initiates a movementor action -- spiritual, mental, psychological, physical, or other -- is responsible thereafter in the shape ofconsequences and effects that flow therefrom, and sooner or later recoil upon the actor or prime mover.Since everything is interlocked and interlinked and interblended with everything else, and no thing andno being can live unto itself alone, other entities are of necessity, in smaller or larger degree, affected bythe causes or motions initiated by any individual entity; but such effects or consequences on entities,other than the prime mover, are only indirectly a morally compelling power, in the true sense of the wordmoral.An example of this is seen in what the theosophist means when he speaks of family karma as contrastedwith one's own individual karma; or national karma, the series of consequences pertaining to the nationof which he is an individual; or again, the racial karma pertaining to the race of which the individual is anintegral member. Karma cannot be said either to punish or to reward in the ordinary meaning of theseterms. Its action is unerringly just, for being a part of nature's own operations, all karmic actionultimately can be traced back to the kosmic heart of harmony which is the same thing as saying pureconsciousness-spirit. The doctrine is extremely comforting to human minds, inasmuch as man may carvehis own destiny and indeed must do so. He can form it or deform it, shape it or misshape it, as he wills;and by acting with nature's own great and underlying energies, he puts himself in unison or harmonytherewith and therefore becomes a co-worker with nature as the gods are.
Karttikeya was born for the purpose of killing Taraka, the too holy and wise deva-daimon, who had obtained through austerity all the knowledge and yoga powers of the gods. Karttikeya is equivalent to Michael, Indra, and Apollo. See also GHARMA-JA
Kashaya-vastra (Sanskrit) Kaṣāya-vastra Red-colored cloth; in the Puranas, the rishi Vaisishtha was asked by the gods to bring the sun, Surya, to satyaloka. The sun told him the worlds would be destroyed if he left, but the sage offered to place his kashaya-vastra in place of the sun’s disk, which he did. This red-colored cloth is the visible body of the sun. Blavatsky comments that “the ascetic’s dress being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital principle in man’s blood, — the symbol of the vital principle in the sun, or what is now called chromosphere” (BCW 5:157).
Kaspar One of the three Magi or wise men in Christian legend. In Egypt the scribe of the gods or the recorder was Tehuti (Thoth), who was also the god of wisdom, equivalent to Hermes or Mercury: always present at initiations, and the presiding influence, as initiator, at all ancient initiations. Looking at the Christian story in this context, infant is a name for a “newly born” initiate, who thus is a twice-born (Sanskrit dvija). The star refers to the esoteric wisdom which taught the wise men of the time that the cycle in its turning had brought about the birth of an avatara, a manifestation on this earth of a certain starry or solar divinity. See also BALTHAZAR; MELCHIOR
Kathenotheism: A term invented by Max Müller which literally denotes one at a time -- theism. It symbolizes the Vedic monotheistic practice according to which the position of the gods is so arranged that each God is supreme in turn, in which the titular god is always changing without entailing a denial that the other gods exist. -- H.H.
Khepera (Egyptian) Kheperȧ [from kheper to become, be born, arise into manifestation] Originally one of three aspects of the sun: “I am Khepera in the morning, and Ra at noon-day, and Temu in the evening.” Later each of these aspects developed into a separate deity. Khepera was the god of regeneration and development in growth, a spiritual power regulating reimbodiments and transmigrations and the deity presiding over the Egyptian form of the creation, where he is the only thing in existence besides the watery abyss, Nu. The deity of the universe, Nebertcher (a form of Ra) says: “I am he who came into being in the form of the god Khepera,” the hieroglyphic text representing the word by the scarab surmounted by a circle. The universe, then, is but the re-manifestation of a previous universe: the scarab standing for rebirth and regeneration, and the circle for karmic destiny in the universe as containing the seeds of life, brought into activity through reimbodiment or rebirth. The primeval deities Shu and Tefnut were brought forth by Khepera, who was the developer of everything which comes into manifested being from latency. In The Book of the Dead Khepera is called the father of the gods.
Kneph or Knouphis (Egyptian) Kneph or Knouphis. An alternative form of the deity Khnum or Khnemu, associated with Egyptian cosmogony. One of the gods of creative force: “as Chnoumis-Kneph, who represents the Indian Narayana, the Spirit of God moving on the waters of space, as Eichton or Ether he holds in his mouth an Egg, the symbol of evolution; and as Av he is Siva, the Destroyer and the Regenerator; for as Deveria explains: ‘His journey to the lower hemispheres appears to symbolize the evolutions of substances, which are born to die and to be reborn.’ Esoterically, however, . . . Chnoumis-Kneph was pre-eminently the god of reincarnation” (TG 82-3). All these solar gods are the personification of the attributes of one god, representing various aspects of the phases of generation and impregnation.
Kronos (Greek) In Greek mythology, the youngest of the titans, son of Ouranos (heaven) and Gaia (earth). His mother gave him a sickle, emblem of karmic reapings in the course of time, when he led the war against his father. After castrating his father, he became ruler of the gods and, so he would not suffer a similar fate, he swallowed all his children by his wife-sister, Rhea. Eventually, however, he was overthrown by his youngest son, Zeus. In some accounts he was imprisoned in Tartarus, in others he was reconciled with Zeus and reigned with Rhadamanthys on the Islands of the Blessed.
Kshira-samudra (Sanskrit) Kṣīra-samudra The ocean of milk, which was churned by the gods, according to Puranic legend. The sea of milk and curds is the Milky Way and the various congeries of nebulae. The allegory of the churning of the ocean of milk refers to a time before the kosmos was evolved. Vishnu, who here stands for aeonic preservation of karmically developed kosmic stuff or matter, is its intelligent preserver, and churns out of the primitive ocean (the chaos of a universe in pralaya) the amrita or immortal essence which is reserved only for the gods. See also KURMA-AVATARA
Kurma-avatara (Sanskrit) Kūrma-avatāra The Tortoise avatara; a descent of Vishnu, the sustainer of life, in the form of a tortoise. In the Puranas, a portion of cosmic Vishnu descended as the kurma to restore to mankind the mystic nectar (amrita), the essence of life and truth, as well as other holy and precious things needful to humanity, which had been lost. Vishnu ordered the gods to churn the sea of milk that they might procure once more these precious things, and he promised to become the tortoise on which the mountain Mandara as a churning stick should rest. Out of the sea of churned milk arose the 14 precious things, and with these the gods won their authority over the demons once more. Cosmically this churning of the sea of milk relates to a period before the earth’s formation, the sea of milk being the expanse of space populated by the nebulae and diffuse star-stuff, the seeds and substance of future worlds and their hierarchies.
Lakshmi (Sanskrit) Lakṣmī Prosperity, happiness; the Hindu Venus, goddess of fortune and beauty who sprang with other precious things from the foam of the ocean when churned by the gods and demons for the recovery of the amrita. She is variously regarded as the wife or sakti of several of the great gods, notably Vishnu.
LAMENTING AND COMPLAINING. ::: This is a icrapcra- ment which the gods will not help because they know that help is useless, for it will either not be received or will be spilled and wasted ; and all that is rdjasic and asiiric in the world despises and tramples upon this kind of nature.
Land of the Eternal Sun From immemorial time mystics and occult philosophers have consistently taught of the existence of a land where the sunshine is perpetual, the abode of the gods whose particular function it is to oversee the destinies, not only of mankind, but of other hierarchical groups occupying the earth. Any attempt to fix a geographical locality as this land of the eternal sun has never been successful, for it is no geographical locality, but a region mystically said to be at the top of Mount Meru or the north pole of the earth.
Les Dieux [French] ::: "The Gods", title of a book by Paul Richard.
Lhasa or Lhassa (Tibetan) lha sa [from lha gods + sa place] Place of the gods, equivalent of the Sanskrit deva-bhumi. The capital city of Tibet, situated on the banks of an important tributary of the Tsang-po River; hither converged trade routes from Turkestan, Siberia, Mongolia, China, and India, as well as from the other parts of Tibet. Though called the Forbidden City, it was only so to Europeans, very few of whom were ever permitted to penetrate into the interior of Tibet. As well as being the most flourishing and prosperous city, it was the abode of the Dalai Lama and his government before the conquest of Tibet by the Chinese. Before it became the capital, Lhasa was apparently known as Ra-sa, “place of the goats.”
Limbs The Qabbalah speaks of the limbs of Microprosopus, of ’Adam Qadmon (the Heavenly Man), and of the Sephiroth. In Hindu writings, especially the Puranas, the beings created from the limbs of Brahma remain without progeny, whereas his mind-born sons become the creators. In Egyptian mythology Osiris-Ptah or Ra creates his own limbs by creating the gods destined to personify his phases.
Madhav: “Here is the Mother of all the Gods and all the Powers; she is the mediatrix, standing between the Supreme above and the earth below and firmly linking the earth to the Supreme.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The allusion is to the Vedic legend which narrates how the dark powers of the nether regions, i.e. the subconscient—and the still below—steal and hide the riches of the Gods in their subterranean chambers. They are called the Panis, thieves.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The guardians of eternity, the gods, the higher gods, …” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “This creation is an ordered manifestation of the Divine. There is a central Will, expressing the originating Truth-vision, impelling the whole movement. But also there are special emanations from the Divine charged with specific tasks in the organisation and maintenance of the emerging creation. These are the gods and goddesses, deities, Powers and Personalities that are in charge of their respective domains, on different levels of existence. Each world has its own guardians entrusted by the Supreme Creative Spirit with the work of building and furthering the manifestation of the particular Truth-principle that pushes for expression in that world-formula.” Readings in Savitri Vol. I.
Magna Mater (Latin) The Great Mother, the mother of the gods, a title given to many Asiatic goddesses at the time when the Romans were in Asia; identified by the Greeks with Rhea, daughter of Ouranos and Gaia, wife of Kronos, and mother of Zeus and other gods. In Asia the name was given specially to Cybele, whose worship later became degraded into licentious rites. Every nation had its own chief goddess, or mother goddess, who was called Great Goddess, exactly as the Latins did with their own Magna Mater.
Mandara (Sanskrit) Mandara A sacred mountain which in Hindu mythology served the gods and asuras as a churning-stick on the occasion of the churning of the ocean for the recovery of the amrita and 13 other precious and holy things, which had been lost during the preceding deluge. See also KURMA-AVATARA
Marduk: In Babylonian mythology, the king of all the gods, determiner of destiny, god of magicians and magic arts.
mata devanam aditer anikam ::: Mother of the gods, force of the Infinite. [RV 1.113.19]
mercury ::: n. --> A Latin god of commerce and gain; -- treated by the poets as identical with the Greek Hermes, messenger of the gods, conductor of souls to the lower world, and god of eloquence.
A metallic element mostly obtained by reduction from cinnabar, one of its ores. It is a heavy, opaque, glistening liquid (commonly called quicksilver), and is used in barometers, thermometers, ect. Specific gravity 13.6. Symbol Hg (Hydrargyrum). Atomic weight 199.8. Mercury has a molecule which consists of only one atom. It was
Meruloka ::: the world of Meru, the mountain of the gods at the centre of the earth.
Midgard serpent: In Norse mythology, a great snake-like monster (Midgardsormr) which lies in the sea, coiled around the earth; one of the offspring of Loki. At the end of the world, the serpent will come out of the sea and join the attack of the other monsters and giants on the gods, and will kill Thor with its poisonous breath.
Mirku (Chaldean) Noble crown; the savior from death of the gods, regarded as the creator of the Dark Race (Zalmat-qaqadi). The class of intelligent beings in the universe who through evolution bring about progressive unfolding growth from within outwards of all beings and entities, who thus are at one stage of their evolution the Dark Race, because sunken in matter, but are saved by the germs of intelligence expanding into cosmic realization within themselves. Hence the describing of intellect or intelligence as noble crown.
Mixcoatl: An ancient Mexican god of war, thunder and hunting; according to the Aztec cosmology, one of the gods aiding in the creation of the world.
Muluk-taoos, Muluk-taus (Arabic, Yezidi) The lord peacock; symbol of the principal deity worshiped by the Yezidis, who is regarded as accomplishing the work of creation under the command of the supreme Deity. Although looked upon as a fallen angel and the source of all evil, he is not named the Devil, but is the emblem of intellectual pride on the one hand, and of hundred-eyed cosmic intelligence or intellect on the other: referring to the equivalent Persian legend of the creation of the peacock by the Evil One. The hundred-eyed peacock, however, may also stand for initiation, wisdom, the bird of the gods and goddesses connected with secret learning (SD 2:514; TG 218).
Mut, Mout (Egyptian) Mut, Mout. Mother; the second member of the triad of Thebean deities, generally known as the Lady of Thebes, and holding with Amen-Ra (Ammon-Ra) the principal position among the gods of the New Empire. Although mother of Khensu (or Khonsu — the third member of the triad) and wife of Amen-Ra, she is often called his mother. Her attributes are those of the world-mother, the inscriptions upon the ruins of her temple at Thebes address her as “Lady of Heaven, Queen of the Gods, she who giveth birth, but was herself not born.” Sometimes she is represented with androgynous aspects (with the head of a man and with the phallus). She is associated with Isis and Nekhebet, although more often made equivalent to Nut, goddess of the watery deep, mother of the gods, and of all that is. Mut also in many respects has the characteristics that were attributed to Hathor.
Myth: (Gr. mythes, legend) The truth, symbolically, or affectively, presented. Originally, the legends of the Gods concerning cosmogonical or cosmological questions. Later, a fiction presented as historically true but lacking factual basis; a popular and traditional falsehood. A presentation of cosmology, employing the affective method of symbolic representation in order to escape from the limitations of literal meaning. -- J.K.F.
mythology ::: n. --> The science which treats of myths; a treatise on myths.
A body of myths; esp., the collective myths which describe the gods of a heathen people; as, the mythology of the Greeks.
na hi te bhagavan vyaktim vidur deva na danavah ::: neither the gods nor the titans, O blessed Lord, know Thy manifestation. [Gita 10.14]
Name ::: “Name in its deeper sense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power, quality, character of the reality which a form of things embodies and which we try to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen in this sense, we might say, is Numen; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character of being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is nameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the names and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because they are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence.” The Life Divine
name ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Name in its deeper sense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power, quality, character of the reality which a form of things embodies and which we try to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen in this sense, we might say, is Numen; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character of being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is nameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the names and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because they are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence.” The Life Divine
Nanna The Norse goddess of the now-dead moon, wife of the sun god Balder. When Balder was slain by his blind brother Hoder with the fateful mistletoe twig, Nanna died of a broken heart and was placed beside her husband on his pyreship. Her half-sister is Idun, the present earth goddess corresponding to the Greek Gaia. Idun continues to carry out Nanna’s task of supplying the gods with the apples of immortality of which they must partake daily to preserve their youth.
nectar ::: 1. *Myth. The life-giving drink of the gods. 2. The juice of a fruit. 3. A delicious or invigorating drink. *nectar-cup.
nectar ::: n. --> The drink of the gods (as ambrosia was their food); hence, any delicious or inspiring beverage.
A sweetish secretion of blossoms from which bees make honey.
Nectar: The drink of the gods of Greek mythology.
Neith or Net (Egyptian) Neith or Net. One of the most ancient Egyptian deities, the Lady of the West. Her characteristic symbol is the arrow; later Greek writers equated her with Pallas Athene. In late dynastic times, Net was closely associated with Hathor, but in the earliest records she is connected with the primeval watery ocean or cosmic chaos, from which arose the sun god Ra. More often she was associated with Isis — her concrete or manifested self — being called “the great goddess, mother of all the gods, mistress of heaven who came into being in the beginning.” Net is portrayed as the virgin mother, suckling the infant Horus, similar to the representations of Isis. The famous passage given by Plutarch (Isis and Osiris ch 9) generally attributed to Isis, was said to have been found engraved upon a statue of Net. Plutarch also states that the Egyptians often called Isis Athene, signifying “I have come from myself” (ch 42).
Nekhebet (Egyptian) Nekhebet. A daughter of Ra, who in later texts becomes completely identified with Hathor, being styled the mother of the gods, she who brought forth light, etc. She and her sister Uatchit in the Underworld act as helpers of the dead. See also MUT
Nidhogg is also the devourer of the dead who sucks cadavers at the end of the world. When the gods leave for their own spheres at Ragnarok, Nidhogg absorbs the dregs of a defunct universe.
Niflheim (Icelandic), Nebelheim (German) [from nifl mist, nebula + heim home] In Norse mythology, the home of mists in which nebulae form. When the heat from Muspellsheim (home of fire) meets the mist-cold vapors of Niflheim in Ginnungagap (the gaping void), Ymer, the frost giant, comes into being. He is used by the gods to create “victory worlds” wherein souls can evolve. Niflheim has also been regarded as a Hades where the dead are sent, but this appears to refer to the disposition of the forms (bodies) of departed souls.
niobe ::: n. --> The daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Her pride in her children provoked Apollo and Diana, who slew them all. Niobe herself was changed by the gods into stone.
nr̄.h. (nrih) ::: (apparently the plural of nr., whose more regular forms nrh are narah. [nominative] or nr̄.n [accusative]) literally "men", a term used in the Veda for "the gods as the male powers or Purushas presiding over the energies of Nature".
Nuntius, Nuntium (Latin) Messenger; applied to Mercury as messenger of the gods. See also HERMES
Nut (Egyptian) Nut. Also Noot, Noun, Nout, Nu. Goddess of the sky or cosmic space — whether of the solar system or the galaxy — daughter of Shu and Tefnut, wife of Seb (the cosmic earth or outspread space), mother of Osiris and Isis, and of Set and Nephthys or Neith; the heavens personified. Some manuscripts distinguish between Nut, the day sky, and Naut, the night sky, although the two are but lower and higher aspects of one cosmic divinity. Her attributes partake of those of the other nature goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon: she is addressed as Lady of Heaven, who gave birth to all the gods. The favorite representation of Nut is of a woman bending so that her body forms a semicircle — a part of the endless circle of space — upon which the stars are portrayed, while her consort, Seb, prostrate beneath her, completes the circle. Again, the solar boat is represented sailing up over the lower limbs, in order to pursue its journey over the day sky; and sailing down her arms to complete its cycle in the night sky.
Odr (Icelandic) Mind, wit, soul, sense; in Norse mythology, cosmic mind, corresponding to the Sanskrit mahat. The name Odin is derived from it when Odin represents the Allfather. In one legend reminiscent of the Egyptian tale of Isis, Odr is the husband of Frigga, who weeps golden tears as she searches the worlds for him. Here he may stand for one of the divine ancestors of the human race, and his long journeys are the peregrinations made by the monad, Odr’s spiritual aspect, through the worlds of form and matter. Odr is used for song or poetry in many compound words such as odar-smidr (song smith), odar-ar (speech oar, the tongue), odraerir (inspirer of wisdom, the vessel containing the blood of Kvasir: inspiration brought to the gods from higher gods).
"Of course, the gods exist — that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds — gods and Asuras, etc.” Letters on Yoga
“Of course, the gods exist—that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds—gods and Asuras, etc.” Letters on Yoga
Ogygia An island inhabited by the nymph Calypso, far from Greece to the west, on which Odysseus was shipwrecked. Despite her promise of immortality if he stays, Odysseus wishes to leave, and the gods compel her to let him go after seven years.
olympic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Olympus, a mountain of Thessaly, fabled as the seat of the gods, or to Olympia, a small plain in Elis.
Olympus: A mountain in southern Thessaly; its perpetually cloud-capped peak (9,794 feet high) was believed to be the abode of the gods of the Greek-Roman pantheon.
Olympus (Greek) The abode of the great gods in Grecian mythology in Homer and Hesiod. Such heavenly abodes are usually associated with mountains, such as the Hindu Meru, the Greek Atlas, and the Hebrew Sinai; in this case the name was given to the summit of the range dividing Macedonia from Thessaly, but there were other mountains called Olympus. Later philosophers, perhaps more mystically minded, placed Olympus in the zenith, as the abode of the divinities. There were many Olympuses, the references in story occasionally being to the higher globes of the earth-chain, and in a cosmic sense the higher planes of the solar system. At one time in Greek legend both the gods and their abode had a character of voluptuousness, comparable with the Hebrew Eden (which means “delight”), the heaven of Indra, or the abode of the Arabian houris; but this was when degeneracy had set in and the people had forgotten the significance of the deities, and lost the key enabling them to interpret the myths and allegories forming their respective mythologic religions.
One aspect of its use by the gods is the purification that ensues in those against whom the bolt is cast, as well as the gods meting out justice by its means. A more mystical reference to dorje, however, alludes to the higher triad of the human constitution which, if continually held in view, purifies the lower quaternary as the thunderstorm does the earth’s atmosphere.
One is reminded of the Hebrew story in Genesis, where the ’elohim fear lest man, represented by Adam, should eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and become like unto them. The conception behind these jealousies of divinities is a warning in popular form that while the noblest human duty is to become like the gods — our spiritual parents — yet before we can, we must have brought forth from within ourselves the divinity latent there, lest we bring disharmony and the selfish interests of the human material world into the serene and law-abiding cosmic spheres of the divinities.
On the cosmic scale Ragnarok brings to a close a universal cycle of activity. When a world dies the god Heimdal, guardian of the rainbow bridge between the realms of the gods and Midgard, domain of humanity, blows the Gjallarhorn, summoning the gods of life to the final battle against the forces of destruction. Lesser judgments take place when single world systems reach their term, as recorded in the “Lay of Odin’s Corpse” (Odins Korpgalder), which deals with a death of one planet, and relates the deities’ efforts to elicit from the planetary soul an accounting of its past cycle of activity.
On the next level Odin is again instrumental in creation. Here his brother creators are named Honir and Lodur. The gods of this second trinity correspond to the Hindu tattvas: Odin stands for air (breath, spirit), Honir for water (fluidity, intelligence), and Lodur for fire (energy, will and vital heat). They found on the earth “Ask (ash) and Embla (alder), indeterminate,” and gave to these vegetative life forms out of their own nature the properties needed to complete the human constitution.
Ovid tells that after Deukalion’s flood, Zeus ordered Prometheus and Athene to create a new race of men out of mud; he made them in the image of the gods with an upright posture, after Epimetheus had succeeded in fashioning only mindless creatures. This represents a stage in the history of the downward arc of evolution, which may be interpreted cosmically, geographically, and in relation to man. It is in one sense the descent of the manasaputras, agnishvattas, and other Sons of Flame, who endowed the mindless forms with the divine spark; so that Prometheus is Lucifer, Phosphoros, the Light-bringer, the serpent of Eden, etc.
Palaemon (Greek) palaimon. The wrestler; applied to Herakles and Melicertes, a name of Phoenician origin, taken from the Phoenician divinity Melcart. Ino, daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas, flying from her husband, sprang with her child Melicertes into the sea; the gods out of compassion made her a sea goddess and her son a god under the name of Palaemon.
Pandavarani (Sanskrit) Pāṇḍavāraṇi [from Pāṇḍava son of Pāṇḍu + araṇi figuratively mother] Matrix or mother of the Pandavas; a title given to Kunti in the Mahabharata. Similar to surarani (matrix or mother of the gods) because surarani is used for Aditi (space).
pandora ::: n. --> A beautiful woman (all-gifted), whom Jupiter caused Vulcan to make out of clay in order to punish the human race, because Prometheus had stolen the fire from heaven. Jupiter gave Pandora a box containing all human ills, which, when the box was opened, escaped and spread over the earth. Hope alone remained in the box. Another version makes the box contain all the blessings of the gods, which were lost to men when Pandora opened it.
A genus of marine bivalves, in which one valve is flat,
Pantheon (Greek) A temple dedicated to all the gods; also, figuratively, the totality of the gods.
pantheon ::: n. --> A temple dedicated to all the gods; especially, the building so called at Rome.
The collective gods of a people, or a work treating of them; as, a divinity of the Greek pantheon.
Pantheon: The collective name of all the gods of a tribe, race or nation. Also, a temple dedicated to all the gods.
Para handatar; para handandatar: A Hittite term for a special force through which the gods govern, individual to each god.
Patala (Sanskrit) Pātāla [possibly from the verbal root pat to sink, fly down or alight] Nethermost, farthest underneath; the reference being not so much to locality or position in space, as to quality — grossness, heaviness, or material substance. The seventh, lowest, and most material tala. It is used in Hindu literature to signify the hells, underworlds, or infernal regions, or the antipodes or Myalba. The corresponding loka or pole is bhurloka. “Meru — the abode of the gods — was placed . . . in the North Pole, while Patala, the nether region, was supposed to lie in the South. As each symbol in esoteric philosophy has seven keys, geographically, Meru and Patala have one significance and represent localities; while astronomically, they have another, and mean ‘the two poles,’ which meaning ended by their being often rendered in exoteric sectarianism — the ‘Mountain’ and the ‘Pit,’ or Heaven or Hell” (SD 2:357).
Peiru-un (Chinese) The traditional founder of China and progenitor of the Chinese peoples. According to legend this king, beloved of the gods, was warned by two oracles of the impending catastrophe awaiting the island-continent of Ma-li-ga-si-ma, which because of the iniquity of its giants sank to the bottom of the sea. He therefore set out with his family on the ocean and arrived on the shores of China. This is the Chinese version of the sinking of the continent of Atlantis.
Phanes, Phanes-Protogonos (Greek) [from phaino to make visible, appear, shine forth + protogonos first-born] In Orphic mythogony, Aether (the Father, spirit) and Chaos (the Mother, primordial matter) produce the world-egg, silvery and gleaming white, out of which Phanes, the Third Logos, is born. He is the Orphic counterpart of Eros, the divine love which sets the atoms of spirit in motion, and is both male and female, mythologically said to have golden wings which carry him everywhere and four eyes gazing in every direction. As Phanes, he is the first of the five cosmic rulers successively to appear; parent of the gods, the demiurge and creator of the world. Being thus the primordial father of gods, of the world, and hence of men, every such derivative offspring from Phanes contains Phanes in itself. Thus man, as an individual, contains Phanes as the primordial essence or original force of his own being. From another point of view, Phanes is equivalent to cosmic mahat, which as the universal formative spiritual power of the universe is at once the parent as well as the primordial substance of whatever is — as well as cosmic intelligence.
PISaCA. ::: Demon ; beings of Ihc lower vital planes, who arc in opposition to the Gods.
Polytheism The doctrine of and belief in a plurality of gods, cosmic spirits, or celestial entities under whatever name they may be described. The word came into use as a correlative of monotheism — the doctrine as of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems, of one and only one God. The unphilosophical nature of monotheism, which in the Occident is quite different from the significance of divine unity, is shown by the subterfuges resorted to in order to supply its deficiencies. As divinity cannot be successfully imagined as individually concerned with every operation in the universe, the general term nature is used to denote a kind of secondary god; while the progress of science has analyzed this into various laws and forces, which paradoxically enough perform somewhat the same functions as the gods of polytheism, except in their wrongly supposed lack of intelligence. Less sophisticated and more profound intellects have never ceased to believe in a whole range of cosmic hierarchies, running from divinity down to the so-called nature spirits, and traditional peoples have always looked upon these as powers which are often dreaded and can be propitiated. Even Christianity has its saints, and its theology speaks of Angels and Archangels, of Dominions and Thrones, etc. As soon as we depart from the simple primeval idea of a universe filled with intelligent beings — and indeed formed of these beings themselves — of numerous hierarchies, grades, and kinds, we land in a maze of abstractions and contradictions.
Porphyrion (Greek) Lurid, fiery; a gigante or giant born of the blood (vitality) of Ouranos (heaven) falling upon the earth. These giants were more human than the titans, and continued the war against the Olympian gods, which symbolizes the struggles which took place during the descending arc of evolution, cosmically and among the races of mankind, between the lower material forces and the celestial powers from above. Porphyrion is slain by the gods with the help of Hercules and buried in the abysses of earth.
Porphyry refers to the Magi as the learned men among the Persians who are in the service of the deity (Abst 4:16), while Philo Judaeus describes them as the most wonderful inquirers into the hidden mysteries of nature: holy men who set themselves apart from everything else on this earth, “contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated others into the same mysteries, which consist in one holding an uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life” (IU 1:94-5). It is likely that the use of the name and the order survived in times when their true dignity was no longer apparent.
Poseidon (Greek) One of the twelve great Olympian deities, a son of Ouranos and Gaia, brother of Zeus and Hades; represented by the Latins as Neptunus. The brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are respectively the gods of heaven, the intermediate world or water, and of the underworld; and these represent the three great generalized powers or forces, each one ruling or vitalizing his respective third of the seven manifest cosmic planes. Poseidon presides over water, especially the ocean, and over horses, which he brought forth by a stroke of his trident on the earth. His symbols are the dolphin, one of his executive ministers; the trident; and the horse. It is Poseidon who shakes the earth and raises and quells storms at sea. He had numerous offspring by many wives, both mortal and immortal; mostly of a violent unruly character like himself — titans and giants. He stands as a personation of the spirit and race of Atlantis; for he is lusty, sensual, and at war with heaven. To consummate his intrigues, he assumes the forms of various animals — a way of alluding to bestial Atlantean black magic. The symbol is complex, for he is also a dragon. He is related to the northern constellations of Draco, Delphinus, and Pegasus (or Equus, the horse). Equivalent to Chozzar of the Peratae Gnostics and the good serpent of the Nazarenes (cf SD 2:578). As god of the waters he parallels Idaspati, Narayana, Vishnu, and Varuna.
Powers of darkness, the Veilcrs in Night; beings of. the middle vital plane who are in opposition to the gods. ' • ^
powers ::: Sri Aurobindo: "These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
powers ::: “These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers (the former gods, purve devah , as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos.” Letters on Yoga
Prasraya (Sanskrit) Praśraya [from pra-śri to approach, defer to, show respect towards] Respectful demeanor, civility; synonymous with vinaya. It is the “ ‘progenetrix of affection.’ A title bestowed upon the Vedic Aditi, the ‘Mother of the Gods’ ” (TG 260).
proceed on its way as an independent divine being with its own play in the world. All the Gods can put forth such emanations from their being, identified with them in essence of conscious- ness and power though not commensurate.
Puranas(Sanskrit) ::: A word which literally means "ancient," "belonging to olden times." In India the word isespecially used as a term comprehending certain well-known sacred scriptures, which popular and evenscholarly authorities ascribe to the poet Vyasa. The Puranas contain the entire body of ancient Indianmythology. They are usually considered to be eighteen in number, and each Purana, to be complete, issupposed to consist of five topics or themes. These five topics or themes are commonly enumerated asfollows: (1) the beginnings or "creation" of the universe; (2) its renewals and destructions, ormanvantaras and pralayas; (3) the genealogies of the gods, other divine beings, heroes, and patriarchs; (4)the reigns of the various manus; and (5) a resume of the history of the solar and lunar races. Practicallynone of the Puranas as they stand in modern versions contains all these five topics, except perhaps theVishnu-Purana, probably the most complete in this sense of the word; and even the Vishnu-Puranacontains a great deal of matter not directly to be classed under these five topics. All the Puranas alsocontain a great deal of symbolical and allegorical writing.
Purohita (Sanskrit) Purohita [from puras foremost, in front + hita from the verbal root dhā to place] One who has been placed foremost; a family priest or domestic chaplain. In Hindu myths the deity of the planet Jupiter, Brihaspati, was called the purohita of the Hindu Olympus and the spiritual guru of the gods.
Ragnarok (Icelandic) [from ragna plural of regin ruler + rok sentence, judgment, reason, ground, origin] In Norse mythology, the time when the ruling powers (gods) return to their ground, are reabsorbed in their divine origin. The judgment is their evaluation of the life that has just been completed. Ragnarok has commonly been called the twilight of the gods, probably because of confusion with rokkr (twilight). It has also been interpreted as they age of fire and smoke, because in Swedish rok means smoke. However, in Icelandic it has a more sacred meaning referring to wonders and signs, and the departure of the gods to their home ground, the source of their being.
Ragnarok: In Norse and Teutonic cosmogony, the end of the present state of the world, when a new age of righteousness on a new earth will be accomplished by a battle between the gods and the evil giants, in which evil will be overthrown.
Rahu: In Hindu mythology Rahu is a daitya (demon) who possessed an appendage like a dragon’s tail, and made himself immortal by stealing from the gods some amrita—elixir of divine life—which they obtained by churning an ocean of milk. Unable to deprive him of his immortality, Vishnu exiled him from Earth and made of him the constellation Draco: his head is called Rahu, and his tail Ketu. Using his appendage as a weapon, he has ever since waged a destructive war on the denouncers of his robbery, the Sun and the Moon, which he swallows during the eclipse. The fable is presumed to have a mystic or occult meaning.
Ray: In ancient Akkadian literature, the source or symbol of the divine power of the gods; the loss of the rays to another god meant loss of supernatural powers and functions.
R.bhus (Ribhus) ::: the name of three Vedic gods or demigods, the "arRbhus tisans of Immortality"; they "are represented as human beings who have attained to the condition of godhead by power of knowledge and perfection in their works" and act as "energies of formation and upward progress who assist the gods in the divinising of man".
“Real Devanagari — non-phonetic characters — meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs used in the inter-communication between gods and initiated mortals. Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or referring to, reading and writing. It was the language of the gods” (ibid. 423).
Records of ancient medicine in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, etc., tell of the temples being used as hospitals, with priest-physicians supported by the state giving every care to the sick who came, both rich and poor. In addition to material means of treatment — many of which we have rediscovered — these devotees of the gods of healing used special incense, prayers, the “temple sleep,” invocations, music, astrology, etc., which we regard as harmless superstition of an earlier day. However, such conditions, intelligently adapted to each case, in making a pure, serene, uplifting atmosphere around the sick person, would invoke the influences of wholeness within and without him. By putting the inner man in tune with his body, his disordered nature-forces manifesting as disease would tend to flow freely in the currents of health. Natural magic is as practical as the unknown alchemy which transmutes our digested daily bread into molecules of our living body.
Ribhu (Sanskrit) Ṛbhu Clever, skillful, inventive; applied to Indra, Agni, and the adityas in the Rig-Veda. As a noun, an artist, smith, builder. Also the name of three semi-divine beings, Ribhu, Vaja, and Vibhvan, the name of the first being applied to the three; “thought by some to represent the three seasons of the year, and celebrated for their skill as artists; they are supposed to dwell in the solar sphere, and are the artists who formed the horses of Indra, the carriage of the Asvins, and the miraculous cow of Brihaspati; they made their parents young, and performed other wonderful works; they are supposed to take their ease and remain idle for twelve days (the twelve intercalary days of the winter solstice) every year in the house of the Sun. (Agohya); after which they recommence working; when the gods heard of their skill, they sent Agni to them with the one cup of their rival Tvashtri, the artificer of the gods, bidding the Ribhus construct four cups from it; when they had successfully executed this task, the gods received the Ribhus amongst themselves and allowed them to partake of their sacrifices; they appear generally as accompanying Indra, especially at the evening sacrifice” (M-Wms Dict). In the Puranas, Ribhu is a son of Brahman, while Sankaracharya’s guru enumerates him as one of the seven kumaras (SD 1:457).
Rig Veda: The oldest part of the Vedas (q.v.), consisting of hymns to the gods.
Ropt (Icelandic) [from hroptr crier, prophet (cf hroptatyr crier of the gods), slandered, maligned] In Norse mythology, the name by which Odin is known in Valhalla where his heroes, the One-harriers, are brought by the Valkyries when they have been “slain” on the field of battle. As the initiator or higher self of any human aspirant, Odin is said to be maligned for he not only instructs and inspires, he also subjects the soul to the severe testing it must undergo before it can be admitted to the Hall of the Elect (Valhalla). Hence only the successful initiate recognizes Odin as Ropt.
Rulers, Divine The nations of antiquity, such as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, had traditions of early racial divine rulers and spiritual dynasties which preceded their human kings. In the later races, these rulers stood for the dynasties of the gods, rishis, pitris, manus, etc., who are said in theosophy to have incarnated themselves in the third root-race on this globe during our present round, and to be born again and again as spiritual teachers in succeeding cycles for the instruction of nations, among whom they appear from time to time.
Rupa(Sanskrit) ::: A word meaning "form," "image," "similitude," but this word is employed technically, andonly rarely in the popular sense in which it is commonly used in English. It signifies rather an atomic ormonadic aggregation about the central and indwelling consciousness, forming a vehicle or body thereof.Thus the rupa-lokas are lokas or worlds where the body-form or vehicle is very definitely outlined inmatter; whereas the arupa-lokas are worlds where the body-forms or "images" are outlined in a mannerwhich to us humans is much less definite. It should be noted that the word rupa applies with equal forceto the bodies or vehicles even of the gods, although these latter to us are purely subjective or arupa. (Seealso Loka)
Sacrifice The performance of sacred rites, but with the more restricted sense of ceremonies of invocation, communion, or propitiation between man and gods. Scholars, in studying these universal rites, are at a loss to find an essential significance by which to gather them all into one class, and as to which to include and which to exclude from such a class. Sacrifices may take the form of a meal offered to the gods or shared with them, an oblation of first fruits of the harvest or flocks, or a propitiation or act of atonement. The Romans dedicated a portion of food or a libation to the lares or other deities; the Hebrews offered the first fruits of the harvest or the yearlings of the flock. The word also has the meaning of an act of self-dedication for a noble cause.
Sadhya (Sanskrit) Sādhya [from the verbal root sādh to finish, complete, subdue, master] To be fulfilled, completed, attained; to be mastered, won, subdued. As a plural noun, a class of the gana-devatas (divine beings), specifically the jnana-devas (gods of wisdom). In the Satapatha-Brahmana of the Rig-Veda their world is said to be above the sphere of the gods, while Yaska (Nirukta 12:41) gives their locality as in Bhuvarloka. In The Laws of Manu (3:195), the sadhyas are represented as the offspring of the pitris called soma-sads who are offspring of Viraj; hence they are children of the lunar ancestors (pitris), evolved after the gods and possessing natures more fully unfolded; while in the Puranas they are the sons of Sadhya (a daughter of Daksha) and Dharma — hence called sadhyas — given variously as 12 or 17 in number. These various manners of describing the ancestry of the sadhyas originated in different ways of envisioning their origin. In later mythology they are superseded by the siddhas, the difference between sadhyas and siddhas being in many respects slight. Their mythological names are given as Manas, Mantri, Prana, Nara, Pana, Vinirbhaya, Naya, Dansa, Narayana, Vrisha, and Trabhu. Two of the names are two of the theosophic seven human principles — manas and prana; while Nara and Narayan, are other aspects of man, human or cosmic. Blavatsky terms the sadhyas divine sacrificers, “the most occult of all” the classes of the dhyanis (SD 2:605) — the reference being to the manasaputras, those intellectual beings who sacrificed themselves in order to quicken the fires of human intelligence during the third root-race. “The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every Manvantara” (SD 2:90); thus they are called ajitas, tushitas, satyas, haris, vaikuntas, adityas, and rudras. The key to the various names given to these higher beings lies in the composite nature of each one of them. In every manvantara and in each minor cycle of a manvantara, every being unfolds another aspect of itself, just as mankind unfolds new but latent powers and senses in each age. Special names were often given to each of the sevenfold, tenfold, or twelvefold aspects of these high beings.
Sakti(Sanskrit) ::: A term which may be briefly defined to mean one of what in modern Occultism are called theseven forces of nature, of which six are manifest and the seventh unmanifest, or only partly manifest.Sakti in general may be described as universal energy, and is, as it were, the feminine aspect of fohat. Inpopular Hinduism the various saktis are the wives or consorts of the gods, in other words, the energies oractive powers of the deities represented as feminine influences or energies.These anthropomorphic definitions are unfortunate, because misleading. The saktis of nature are reallythe veils, or sheaths, or vehicular carriers, through which work the inner and ever-active energies. Assubstance and energy, or force and matter, are fundamentally one, as modern science in its researches hasbegun to discover, it becomes apparent that even these saktis or sheaths or veils are themselves energic tolower spheres or realms through which they themselves work.The crown of the astral light, as H. P. Blavatsky puts it, is the generalized sakti of universal nature in so far as our solar system is concerned.
Sakti (Sanskrit) Śakti [from the verbal root sak to be powerful, energetic, have force] Universal energy, the feminine aspect of fohat; one of the seven forces of nature, of which six are manifest and the seventh partly manifest. It is energy that proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it. Popularly, the wives or consorts of the gods — the energies or active powers of these deities represented as feminine influences.
Sakwala (Sinhalese, Cakkavāḷa in Pali) Gautama Buddha uttered this “word” (bana) in his oral instructions to denote “a solar system, of which there is an infinite number in the universe, and which denotes that space to which the light of every sun extends. Each Sakwala contains earths, hells and heavens (meaning good and bad spheres, our earth being considered as hell, in Occultism); attains its prime, then falls into decay and is finally destroyed at regularly recurring periods, in virtue of one immutable law. Upon the earth, the Master taught that there have been already four great ‘continents’ (the Land of the Gods, Lemuria, Atlantis, and the present ‘continent’ divided into five parts of the Secret Doctrine), and that three more have to appear. The former ‘did not communicate with each other,’ a sentence showing that Buddha was not speaking of the actual continents known in his day (for Patala or America was perfectly familiar to the ancient Hindus), but of the four geological formations of the earth, with their four distinct root-races which had already disappeared” (TG 285). See also SAHA
Sankhasura (Sanskrit) Śaṅkhāsura A daitya said in Hindu legend to have waged war against the gods and to have conquered them, upon which he stole the Vedas and hid them at the bottom of the sea, whence they were rescued by Vishnu in the form of a fish. There are also vague references in connection with one of the dvipas (Sankha-dvipa) and it is tempting to suppose that they are connected. Another Hindu legend mentions the killing of Sankhasura by Krishna — another instance of the way in which this avatara is placed in many different ages as the Krishna spirit in the world rather than as any incarnated avatara of that name: the death of Krishna is stated as having begun the kali yuga in 3102 BC, whereas Sankha-dvipa was one of the great islands of the Atlantean continental system of several million years ago.
Sarama (Sanskrit) Saramā [from the verbal root sṛ to run] The fleet one, the runner; the dog belonging to Indra and the gods, the divine watcher “over the golden flock of stars and solar rays.” She is the mother of the two dogs called Sarameyas. Some European etymologists connect the names of the Greek Hermes and Helena with Sarama or Sarameya. Sarama has certain elements of mystical similarity to Agathodaemon in Greek Gnosticism, and to the Egyptian Hermes-Anubis, one of the dogs (vigilance) which watch over the celestial flock (occult wisdom and its students) (cf SD 2:28).
Sarcophagus (Greek) Flesh-eating; limestone in Assus in the Troad had the property of consuming the bodies placed in coffins made of it, and so was called sarcophagos lithos (flesh-eating stone) or lapis Assius (stone of Assus), and the name came to be applied to stone coffins in general. A sarcophagus was placed in the adytum of a temple and mystically signified the matrix of nature and resurrection. In initiation ceremonies the candidate, representing the energizing ray, descended into the sarcophagus representing nature’s fecund womb, and emerged therefrom, which symbolized resurrection after death. In the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, the candidate descended into the sarcophagus, where his body was entranced while his spiritual ego confabulated with the gods, descended into Amenti or the Underworld, and did works of charity to invisible beings; being carried during the night before the third day to the entrance of a gallery where the beams of the rising sun awoke him as an initiate.
Sastra-devatas (Sanskrit) Śastra-devatās [from śastra weapon + devatā celestial being, god] The gods of divine weapons; in the Mahabharata and Ramayana, the lords or conscious agents behind the mystical powers exercised by the great-souled heroes, rather than the weapons themselves. They are likewise in ancient Hindu conception the self-conscious, conscious, and quasi-conscious powers behind the forces of nature, especially those forces which can wreak injury or damage in the phenomenal world, such as earthquakes, tidal waves, storms of all kinds, and lightning.
Satya loka: In Hinduism and occult terminology, the world or plane of absolute purity and wisdom, the abode of the gods.
Sekhem (Egyptian) Sekhem. A shrine or sanctuary; the gods of the shrine; the vital power of a human being; any power, spiritual or physical; as a verb, to read, be strong, etc.
Serapis [from Greek Sarapis from Egyptian Ȧsȧr-Ḥāpi Osiris-Apis] The most important deity at Alexandria during the time of Ptolemy Soter, its worship spread throughout Egypt and into the Roman Empire, establishing itself firmly even in Rome. Plutarch recounts that Ptolemy Soter in his desire to make Alexandria the chief center of his empire, sought to unite Greeks and Egyptians in a common worship. He dreamed that a strange god appeared to him and, on telling his friends, one said that he had seen such a statue at Sinope. The king immediately imported this statue, the Greeks, declaring that it represented Pluto, ruler of the underworld, with his guardian dog Cerberus, while the Egyptians stated that it portrayed Asar-Hapi (Osiris in the underworld) with Anubis. Plutarch states that Osiris is the same as Sarapis, “this latter appellation having been given him, upon his being translated from the order of Genii to that of the Gods, Sarapis being none other than that common name by which all those are called, who have thus changed their nature, as is well known by those who are initiated into the mysteries of Osiris” (On Isis and Osiris, sec 28).
Shechinah is equivalent to Devamatri or Aditi — mother of the gods; to Vach; the music of the spheres of Pythagoras; and the Holy Ghost in the Christian Trinity. Shechinah is always regarded as feminine in the Qabbalah, “And so it is considered in the exoteric Puranas, for Shekinah is no more than Sakti — the female double or lining of any god, in such case. And so it was with the early Christians whose Holy Spirit, was feminine, as Sophia was with the Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabala or ‘Book of Numbers,’ ‘Shekinah’ is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a State, like Nirvana, not subject or object or anything except an absolute Presence.
Shen (Chinese) In Taoism, when employed in relation to yang, it refers to the celestial or spiritual, hence the gods; in relation to man it is generally translated soul. Yang is defined as a supreme, universal shen — living, creating, dividing itself into an infinite number of shen — depositing the shen in the various beings of the worlds. “The shen are omnipresent; it is they which perform the unfathomable work of the Yang and the Yin. These two vital breaths (of the universe) create the beings; their peregrinating hwun (or shen) are the causes of the changes (in nature), from which, accordingly, we may learn the actions and manners of the kwei and the shen” (I Ching, Hi-ts’ze 1).
Shinto (Japanese) [from shin god + to, tao way, path] The way of the gods; applied to the popular religion in Japan prior to Buddhism. Japan was considered to be the land of the gods — a conception current among nearly all ancient peoples, each one of which looked upon its own land as the land of the original divine incarnations — and the ruler (mikado) as the direct descendant and actual representative of the sun goddess (Tensho Daijin). Spiritual agencies were attributed to all the processes of nature, and a reverential feeling inculcated toward the dead. Hero worship took the direction in the prevalent belief that noble-minded warriors should be exalted nearly to the position of demigods.
Sibika or Sivika (Sanskrit) Śibikā, Śivikā The weapon of Kuvera, the Vedic god of wealth equivalent to the Greek Pluto; made out of the parts of the divine splendor of Vishnu, a sun god, and filed off by Visvakarman, the architect of the gods.
Sif (Icelandic) [plural sifjar affinity, kinship] Thor’s wife in Norse mythology; the singular form occurs only in the proper name of the goddess whose golden hair is the harvest, pride and joy of all the gods. Sif is guardian of the sanctity of marriage and the ancient law which forbade the union of any couple more closely related than through the fifth generation.
Silik-muludag (Akkad) The god among all the gods, offspring of the abstract divine wisdom — the great unseen divine, represented by the Akkadians as dwelling in the shoreless sea of space — cosmic spirit. In a more particular sense, referred to as the merciful guardian of humanity.
Siloam, The Sleep of [from Hebrew the verbal root shalam wholeness, completion, perfectness, peace, health] Used by one of the highest schools of initiates in Asia Minor, Syria, and upper Egypt for one of the processes of initiation. While the candidate was plunged in deep sleep, his spiritual ego was enabled to confabulate with the gods, descend into Hades, or perform works of divinely spiritual character. When the neophyte begins the holy sleep of Siloam, he leaves the body, and his consciousness enters into the river of Lethe, the pools of quiet, where the complete work or great work of inner understanding takes place. After this he is rendered whole or perfect, is completed and is safe, and is the master of the peace and quiet of inner unity — masterhood. The same holy event has been known in all times and among all peoples under various names.
Sin (Chaldean) The moon; also the Babylonian and Assyrian moon deity called Enzu (the lord of wisdom) and Nannar (the illuminer). The wisdom is that of the lower manas, the reflection of the higher, and this wisdom can all too often become the dark wisdom of evildoing and sorcery. Temples to Sin were erected in all the principal cities of the two empires, named E-gish-shir-gal (house of the great light). The worship of the moon deity predominated at Ur and Harran, and he was portrayed as an old man with flowing beard, having the crescent as his symbol and 30 as his number. Sin was known as father of the gods, creator of all things; and some of the ancient nations held that the moon was parent of the sun, and that the moon in its turn was once eons ago a sun itself.
Sisumara (Sanskrit) Śiśumāra [from śiśu child + māra killer] The child-killer; a group of stars and constellations said to resemble a dolphin, porpoise, or tortoise; held to be a form of Vishnu, and often considered as a representation of the great circle of time. As an imaginary belt, a symbolic representation of the celestial sphere, or a theoretical revolving zone or belt within which move the celestial bodies — which are the bodies of spiritual entities. This constellation has the “Cross placed on it by nature in its division and localisation of stars, planets and constellations. Thus in the Bhagavat Purana V., xxx., it is said that ‘at the extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is directed toward the South and whose body is in the shape of a ring (Circle), Dhruva (the ex-pole star) is placed; and along that tail are the Prajapati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; and across its loins the Seven Rishis.’ This is then the first and earliest Cross and Circle, into the formation of which enters the Deity (symbolized by Vishnu), the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kala, on whose plane lie crossways all the gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time; — who, as the philosophy has it, all die at the Mahapralaya” (SD 2:549).
Sisyphus The crafty; in Greek mythology, a son of Aeolus (the keeper of the winds), the most cunning of all men. He was punished in the underworld by being compelled to roll a heavy stone block up a hill, only upon reaching the summit to have it roll down again, where upon he repeats the processes endlessly. Some ancient authors say he had betrayed the Mysteries of the gods; so that one intent of the legend was to point out to the masses that betrayal of the secrets of initiation brings inevitable retribution. It also may illustrate the vanity of human ambitions, which flourish hopefully right up to the point of expected attainment, only to meet with disappointment; again it may refer to certain experiences of the disembodied relics of our personality, doomed to repeat vain acts until the energy which prompted them is worn out.
Skrymir and other giants exemplify also the gigantic forebears of our human race who inhabited the earth when forms were not yet coarse and weighty. Every mythic history contains references to giants: “in nearly every mythology — which after all is ancient history — the giants play an important part. In the old Norse mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom the sons of the gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of deities and men” (SD 2:754).
Skrymir (Icelandic, Scandinavian) A Norse giant, also called Utgarda-Loki (Loki of the outermost court), representing the worlds of illusion (matter) in which the gods (consciousnesses) are misled. A well known tale relates how Thor, Loki, and Thor’s servant Tjalfi are subjected to a number of “eye-shines” (illusions) and ignominiously outperformed by the giants in a series of contests, all by means of deceptive appearances.
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"Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods" is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharva itthâ padam asya rakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâti devânâm janimâni adbhutah. The ‘births of the gods’ is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma is the Gandharva, the Lord of the hosts of delight, and guards the true seat of the Deva, the level or plane of the Ananda; gandharvaitthâpadamasyarakshati. He is the Supreme, standing out from all other beings and over them, other than they and wonderful, adbhuta, and as the supreme and transcendent, present in the worlds but exceeding them, he protects in those worlds the births of the gods, pâtidevânâmjanimâniadbhutah. The ‘births of the gods’ is a common phrase in the Veda by which is meant the manifestation of the divine principles in the cosmos and especially the formation of the godhead in its manifold forms in the human being.” The Secret of the Veda
“Soma was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brahman — the simple Grihasta, or priest of the exoteric ritual. Thus Brihaspati — ‘guru of the gods’ though he was — still represented the dead-letter form of worship. It is Tara his wife — the symbol of one who, though wedded to dogmatic worship, longs for true wisdom — who is shown as initiated into his mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom. Soma is thus made in the allegory to carry her away. The result of this is the birth of Budha — esoteric Wisdom — (Mercury, or Hermes in Greece and Egypt). He is represented as ‘so beautiful,’ that even the husband, though well aware that Budha is not the progeny of his dead-letter worship — claims the ‘new-born’ as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and meaningless forms. Such is, in brief, one of the meanings of the allegory” (SD 2:498-9).
“Soma was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brahman — the simple Grihasta, or priest of the exoteric ritual. Thus Brihaspati — ‘guru of the gods’ though he was — still represented the dead-letter form of worship. It is Tara his wife — the symbol of one who, though wedded to dogmatic worship, longs for true wisdom — who is shown as initiated into his mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom. Soma is thus made in the allegory to carry her away. The result of this is the birth of Budha — esoteric Wisdom — (Mercury, or Hermes in Greece and Egypt.) He is represented as ‘so beautiful,’ that even the husband, though well aware that Budha is not the progeny of his dead-letter worship — claims the ‘new-born’ as his Son, the fruit of this ritualistic and meaningless forms. Such is, in brief, one of the meanings of the allegory” (SD 2:498-9).
stubh ::: the rhythm that affirms the gods; the Word considered as a power which affirms and confirms in the settled rhythm of things. [Ved.]
Suchi (Sanskrit) Śuci White, purified, resplendent; one of the three personified fires, whether in the kosmos or man, a son of Agni-abhimani and Svaha. Agni-Abhimani, his three sons — Pavaka, Pavamana, and Suchi — and their 45 sons, constitute the mystic 49 fires of occultism. Suchi, the solar fire or saurya [from surya the sun], is the parent to Havyavahana, the fire of the gods. Also a name of Indra. See also ABHIMANI
Suddhasattva (Sanskrit) Śuddhasattva [from śuddha pure + sattva goodness] Pure goodness, reality per se; a state of conscious spiritual egoity or egoship, and at the same time pure spiritual essence. Considered from the substance viewpoint, it is a supermaterial or ultramaterial essence or substance which to us is invisible, yet on its own plane luminous if not indeed light itself. Of this stuff or essence the bodies of the highest dhyanis and the gods are formed. It is spiritual substance without adulteration of the differentiated matters of the lower cosmic planes.
sudha ::: nectar or amrta; the food or drink of the gods.
Sudha (Sanskrit) Sudhā Welfare; the food and beverage of the gods, skin to amrita, the substance which gives immortality; equivalent to the ambrosia and nectar of ancient Greece.
Sunahsepha (Sanskrit) Śunaḥśepha In ancient Hindu legend, for instance in the Ramayana, the son of the sage Richika, corresponding in some ways with the Hebrew Isaac. His father “sold him for one hundred cows to King Ambarisha, for a sacrifice and ‘burnt offering’ to Varuna, as a substitute for the kings’ son Rohita, devoted by his father to the god. When already stretched on the altar Sunasepha is saved by Rishi Visvamitra, who calls upon his own hundred sons to take the place of victim, and upon their refusal degrades them to the condition of Chandalas. After which the Sage teaches the victim a mantram the repetition of which brings the gods to his rescue; he then adopts Sunasepha for his elder son” (TG 313).
Supramental Creation ::: Characteristically the old world, the creation of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, was an age of the gods, and consequently the age of religions. As I said, the flower of human effort towards what is above it gave rise to innumerable religious forms, to a religious relationship between the noble souls and the invisible world.And now, all these old things seem so old, so out-of-date, so arbitrary — such a travesty of the real truth. In the supramental creation there will no longer be any religions.The whole life will be the expression, the flowering into forms of the divine Unity manifesting in the world.
Ref: CWM Vol.09, Page: 151
Surabhi (Sanskrit) Surabhi Sweetly-smelling, lovely, charming; a name for the earth, also for the mystical cow of plenty, Kamaduh, one of the 14 precious things yielded by the ocean of milk (space) when churned by the gods to produce the worlds. Among other meanings in all ancient lands, both bull and cow were emblems of the moon and of its manifold generative and productive influences.
Surarani (Sanskrit) Surāraṇi [from sura god, divinity + araṇi the disk in which fire is kindled] The matrix of the gods; applied to Aditi, the mother of the gods. A somewhat similar term, Suravani [from avani the earth, whether as the cosmic element or our grossly material globe] is applied to the earth as the mother of the gods or Aditi. The term sura, equivalent to deva, shows that these beings are in intimate connection with Surya (the sun), and thus are solar entities.
Surt (Scandinavian) Surtr (Icelandic) [from svartr the black] Also Surtur, Surter. A Norse fire giant, the world-destroyer in the Edda. In the Norse myths Surt will lead the hosts of Muspellsheim (home of fire) at Ragnarok, when the gods depart the realms of life, and the worlds perish in universal conflagration. Surt himself will slay Frey, the bright god, and when all the combatants are slain, Surt will fling his firebrand, and everything animate or inanimate will be plunged into an ocean of fire, and the nine homes will be no more. Surtarlogi (flame of Surt) represents the volcanic and cosmic forces which will cause the destruction of our world when its life is over. The world, universe, or solar system becoming an ocean of cosmic flame or light refers to the ending of a manvantara and the opening of pralaya. The ocean of fire is the passing of matter back into its primordial fiery spiritual nature and the nine homes are the nine or ten cosmic planes, the nine grades or divisions of the cosmic hierarchy.
Suttung, Suttungr (Icelandic) In the Norse Edda, a giant who guards the mead (of experience) in the depths of matter, where the gods must find it and raise it to higher levels. Odin is said to have enlisted the aid of a squirrel or bore to penetrate the mountain in which the mead was hidden, and to have entered through the borehole in the guise of a serpent. Once in, he seduced Suttung’s daughter into giving him a draft of the precious mead.
Svaha (Sanskrit) Svāhā [from su good, excellent, virtuous + the verbal root ah to speak, say] One of the daughters of Daksha and consort of Agni; also an exclamation used in making oblations to the gods, meaning Hail! May a blessing rest on! or So be it!
Svarloka (Sanskrit) Svarloka [from svar heaven + loka world, place] Heaven-world; the fifth counting downwards of the seven lokas. The corresponding tala and nether pole is talatala. Svarloka is also exoterically said to be a paradise situated on Mount Meru, the abode of Brahma and Vishnu, and the Hindu Olympus, “described geographically as ‘passing through the middle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either side.’ On its upper station are the gods, on the nether (or South pole) is the abode of the demons (hells)” (SD 2:404). The sphere of influence of svarloka is said to reach to the pole star. See also JANARLOKA
taliscd vita], middle vital and lower vital planes) who arc in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too arc
Tantra(s)(Sanskrit) ::: A word literally meaning a "loom" or the warp or threads in a loom, and, by extension ofmeaning, signifying a rule or ritual for ceremonial rites. The Hindu Tantras are numerous works orreligious treatises teaching mystical and magical formulae or formularies for the attainment of magical orquasi-magical powers, and for the worship of the gods. They are mostly composed in the form of dialogsbetween Siva and his divine consort Durga, these two divinities being the peculiar objects of theadoration of the Tantrins.In many parts of India the authority of the Tantras seems almost to have superseded the clean andpoetical hymns of the Vedas.Most tantric works are supposed to contain five different subjects: (1) the manifestation or evolution ofthe universe; (2) its destruction; (3) the worship or adoration of the divinities; (4) the achievement orattainment of desired objects and especially of six superhuman faculties; (5) modes or methods of union,usually enumerated as four, with the supreme divinity of the kosmos by means of contemplativemeditation.Unfortunately, while there is much of interest in the tantric works, their tendency for long ages has beendistinctly towards what in occultism is known as sorcery or black magic. Some of the rites or ceremoniespracticed have to do with revolting details connected with sex.Durga, the consort of Siva, his sakti or energy, is worshiped by the Tantrins as a distinct personifiedfemale power.The origin of the Tantras unquestionably goes back to a very remote antiquity, and there seems to belittle doubt that these works, or their originals, were heirlooms handed down from originally debased ordegenerate Atlantean racial offshoots. There is, of course, a certain amount of profoundly philosophicaland mystical thought running through the more important tantric works, but the tantric worship in manycases is highly licentious and immoral.
Tantras (Sanskrit) Tantra-s Loom, the warp or threads in a loom; a rule or ritual for ceremonial rites. Religious treatises teaching mystical and magical formulas for the attainment of magical powers, and for the worship of the gods; treating of the evolution of the universe and its destruction; the adoration of the divinities; the attainment of desired objects, especially of six superhuman faculties; and methods of union (usually given as four) with the supreme divinity by contemplative meditation. They are mostly composed in the form of dialogues between Siva and his divine consort or sakti Durga, who is worshiped as a personified female power.
Tantra: That body of Hindu religious literature which is stated to have been revealed by Shiva as the specific scripture of the Kali Yuga (the present age). The Tantras were the encyclopedias of esoteric knowledge of their time; the topics of a Tantra are: the creation of the universe, worship of the gods, spiritual exercise, rituals, the six magical powers, and meditation.
Tara-daitya (Sanskrit) Tāra-daitya A daitya or danava described in the Puranas as practicing such severe spiritual and intellectual tapas as a yogi, that the gods feared lest he surpass them; therefore he was slain by Vishnu.
Tarakajit (Sanskrit) Tārakajit Conqueror of Taraka, name given to the Hindu god of war, Karttikeya, because he conquered Taraka, a daitya whose austerities had made him formidable to the gods — the daityas being those early beings or races who, because of their developing intellectual powers, were found to be identical with the asuras, who were opposed to the more or less passive spiritual forces — devas or suras. In another sense, because of this developing intellectuality, the daityas, somewhat like the Greek titans or giants, were the opponents of the gods of mere ritualistic or scholastic theory, and hence the enemies of puja (ritualistic sacrifices).
Tarakamaya, Taramaya (Sanskrit) Tārakāmaya, Tārāmaya The war in heaven; the struggle between the gods and the asuras for the rescue of Tara or Taraka, the wife of Brihaspati, who had been carried off by Soma. This war may be interpreted in many ways. Spiritually, the gods with Brihaspati as their head represented ritualistic, ceremonial, and exoteric worship, and the asuras were the allies of Soma who was the parent of esoteric wisdom (SD 2:498-9). See also TARA
Taraka (Sanskrit) Tāraka The daitya or giant-demon whose yoga austerities were so extraordinary that he had obtained all the divine knowledge of yoga-vidya and occult powers. The gods feared his superhuman powers and Skanda or Karttikeya, the god of war, was miraculously born to destroy him.
Tara’s abduction gave rise to the Tarakamaya — the first war in heaven. The earth was shaken to its very center and turned to Brahma requesting him to restore Tara to her husband, which request was granted. Soma had for his allies the Daityas and Danavas, whose leader is Usanas (Venus) and Rudra (Siva), while the gods who sided with Brihaspati were led by Indra.
Tara, Taraka (Sanskrit) Tārā, Tārakā The wife of Brihaspati (Jupiter). The Puranas relate that Soma, the moon, carried Tara off with him, which brought about the great war in heaven between the gods and the asuras. Brahma put an end to the war and had Tara restored to Brihaspati. She then gave birth to a son, Budha (esoteric wisdom), whom she claimed was the son of Soma.
Tehmi: “The hour just before dawn. The Gods awake with the dawn in the Veda. The Gods are called ‘Ushabuddha, ‘those who awake with the dawn’. All the gods are sons of light except Agni who burns also in the light and the darkness.”
Telchines (Greek) [from thelgo to enchant] A race of ethereal or semi-ethereal beings or genii, said in one legend to be descended from Poseidon, god of the sea — supposed to have lived especially in Crete, Cyprus, and Rhodes. They are represented as cultivators of the soil and ministers to the gods; as sorcerers and envious demons; and as teachers of metallurgy and other useful arts to mankind. They are in one aspect the kabeiroi and titans, in another the Atlanteans. The telchines have been connected mystically because of similar attributes with the Latin Vulcan and even with the Hebrew Tubal-cain.
Thalatth, Thallath (Chaldean) Thalassa (Greek) Sea, ocean; mystically the great generative principle of the spatial deeps. Thallath was the sea, personified as a goddess in the cosmogony of Berosus; used as one of the names of the great deep or abyss, Tiamat, or Chaos. It could breed only monsters, but was destroyed by Belus, and then the gods created heaven and earth. The reference is to the mystical waters of space, or the more concrete aspect of space itself, as the great source or womb of cosmic manifestation, out of which all things come and into which at the end of the cosmic manvantara all things again return. The moon is connected in its cosmogonical function with the waters of space.
“The ancients believed in the power of man by magic practices to command the services of the gods: which gods, are in truth, but the occult powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests themselves, in which they reverenced only the attributes of the one unknown and nameless Principle. As Proclus the Platonist ably puts it: ‘Ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity. . . . and applied for occult purposes, both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a certain similitude, they deduced divine virtues into this inferior abode.’ Magic is the science of communicating with and directing supernal, supramundane Potencies, as well as of commanding those of the lower spheres; a practical knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature known to only the few, because they are so difficult to acquire, without falling into sins against nature” (TG 197).
"The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal.” The Life Divine
“The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal.” The Life Divine
The Apsaras then are the divine Hetairae of Paradise, beautiful singers and actresses whose beauty and art relieve the arduous and world-long struggle of the Gods against the forces that tend towards disruption by the Titans who would restore Matter to its original atomic condition or of dissolution by the sages and hermits who would make phenomena dissolve prematurely into the One who is above phenomena. They rose from the Ocean, says Valmiki, seeking who should choose them as brides, but neither the Gods nor the Titans accepted them, therefore are they said to be common or universal. The Harmony of Virtue
The arani (dual) represent the father and mother elements in nature, the creative, generative energy producing the offspring from the receiver, the mother. While the male/female metaphor has application physiologically, it may be interpreted cosmically: “this idea of the creative power of fire is explained at once by the ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark” (M. G. Dech 261); again “The ‘female Arani,’ the mistress of the race, is Aditi, the mother of the gods, or Shekinah, eternal light — in the world of Spirit, the ‘Great Deep’ and Chaos; or primordial Substance in its first remove from the Unknown, in the manifested Kosmos” (SD 2:527).
The Babylonian hero-creator is Marduk, whose prowess against the monstrous forces of Tiamat (matter) caused the gods to endow him with the power to overcome them and to complete the creation of heaven and earth.
The deceased, entering the domain as a khu, performs the same activities that he did on earth: plowing, reaping, sailing his boat, and making love. On entering Amenti, Anubis conducts the soul to the hall of Osiris where it is judged by the 42 judges and its heart is weighed against the feather of truth. If the soul passes the test, it goes to the fields of Aalu. If the names of the 15 Aats, the 7 Arrets (circles), the 21 Pylons, as well as the gods and guardians of these domains are all known, the deceased is enabled to pass from one mansion to the other, and finally to enter the Night Boat of the Sun, which passes through the Tuat on its way to arise in the heavens. The shades who miss this boat, the unprogressed egos, must remain in the afterworld or kama-loka, while those who enter the boat are carried to the heaven world or devachan where they wander about until they return to earth for rebirth. This refers to the passing from world to world by the ego proficient in knowledge of the “names,” and thereafter entering the secret or invisible pathways to the sun. The knowledge of the names indicates spiritual, intellectual, and psychic development, by which the ego of the defunct is no longer attracted to the lower spheres, but having knowledge of them correctly answers the challenges and thereafter follows the attraction upwards and onwards.
The Edda’s frost giants should not be confused with the giants and their daughter giantesses, or giant maidens, which represent periods of life and activity. The gods are energic consciousnesses (monads) at all-varying stages of evolution; the giants are their physical expressions or forms, whose lifetimes, however long, are limited. The giants’ daughters represent lesser life periods, several daughter races together comprising their father-race.
The Egyptian god Tem is connected by Blavatsky with fohat, for Tem is “spoken of as the Protean god who generates other gods and gives himself the form he likes; the ‘master of life’ ‘giving their vigour to the gods’ (chapter lxxiv.) He is the overseer of the gods, and he ‘who creates spirits and gives them shape and life’; he is ‘the north wind and the spirit of the west’; and finally the ‘Setting Sun of Life,’ or the vital electric force that leaves the body at death, wherefore the defunct begs that Toum [Tem] should give him the breath from his right nostril (positive electricity) that he might live in his second form” (SD 1:673-4).
The end of the world is vividly portrayed in the foremost poem of the Elder Edda, Voluspa, which depicts horrors presaging the departure of the gods from this sphere of life. However, this is by no means the end for it is followed by a new creation, when a reborn earth is seen arising in serene beauty and contentment.
::: "The Gods are Personalities and Powers of the dynamic Divine.” *Letters on Yoga
“The Gods are Personalities and Powers of the dynamic Divine.” Letters on Yoga
The Gods are Personalities and Powers of the dynamic
"The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
“The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
The gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 346
"The gods are the powers of Light, the children of Infinity, forms and personalities of the one Godhead who by their help and by their growth and human workings in man raise him to the truth and the immortality.” The Secret of the Veda
“The gods are the powers of Light, the children of Infinity, forms and personalities of the one Godhead who by their help and by their growth and human workings in man raise him to the truth and the immortality.” The Secret of the Veda
::: "The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
“The Gods, as has already been said, are in origin and essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces.” Letters on Yoga
The Gods cannot be transformed, for they are typal and not evolutionary beings, they can come for conversion, that is to say, to ^ve up their own ideas and outlook on things and con- form themselves to the higher Will and Supramcntal Truth of the Divine.
The gods in (he ovcrmcntal plane have not many heads and arms ; this is a vital symbolism, it is not necessary in other planes.
"The Gods, who in their highest secret entity are powers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in their proper home, are in their knowledge truth-conscious'' and in their action possessed of theseer-will"".” The Life Divine
“The Gods, who in their highest secret entity are powers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in their proper home, are in their knowledge truth-conscious’’ and in their action possessed of theseer-will’’.” The Life Divine
The golden hawk was often identified with the bennu (the Egyptian phoenix), and there was also the hawk of the gods itself which was regarded as an offspring of the god Tem and associated with Horus in his aspect of the son of Osiris.
The Hindu rishi Narada, representing one of the most recondite and still living spiritual influences on earth, is said to have descended in bygone times into the regions of Patala, and to have been delighted with what he found there. On his return to the celestial regions, he gave to the gods a glowing account of the beauties of the hells, stating that they abounded in everything ministering to luxury and sensuous delight. For precisely these reasons, Patala as the lowest of the talas, has been called the infernal regions or hell. To beings evolving in the spheres of matter, these spheres are extremely pleasant despite the pain and suffering that invariably accompany sojourn in all astral spheres, which the talas are. What the evolving entities lose in spiritual power, intellectual bliss, and higher faculty, is compensated for by the attachments and bonds of a sensuous character, tying them temporarily to these realms.
The language of incantations or mantras is the element-language composed of sounds, numbers, and figures. He who knows how to blend the three will call forth the response from the regent-god of the specific element needed. For, in order to communicate with the gods, men must learn to address each one of them in the language of his element. Sound is “the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which opens the door of communication between Mortals and the Immortals” (SD 1:464).
The later Atlanteans were noted for their magic powers, wickedness, and defiance of the gods, and this tradition is preserved in many legends, such as the Biblical Tower of Babel, which derived from still older Chaldean scriptures. The legendary stories of wicked antediluvian giants warring against heaven are common in every mythology. The defeat of the giants, in some at least of these legends, results in the confusion of tongues — the break-up and dispersal of a great racial division of mankind.
The mystical drink has been known in all ages and among all peoples. The ancient Teutonic tribes, whether of the Germanic or Anglo-Saxons, spoke of their divine mead, the drink of the gods. The Hindus spoke of Soma, the direct distillation from the moon and from the overseeing and guiding eye of the sun; the Greeks of the Homeric age spoke of ambrosia or nectar, a drink of the gods which renewed their understanding and gave them inspiration as well. Another branch of the Greeks belonging to the Dionysian and Orphic branches of mystical thought, spoke equally mystically of the mystic wine, and also of the mystic cereal, partaken of during the Mysteries, and it is from this last that the mystical wine and cereal or bread of the Christians was taken over almost completely from the Dionysian Eucharist, only among Christians even from quite early times it became degraded into actual blood and flesh of Jesus.
theogony ::: n. --> The generation or genealogy of the gods; that branch of heathen theology which deals with the origin and descent of the deities; also, a poem treating of such genealogies; as, the Theogony of Hesiod.
The old Greeks said that a divine fluid or ichor ran in the veins of the gods. It is also our physical destiny in the far distant future to evolve into bodies without blood as we understand it, in which nobler currents of conscious life will circulate.
theomachist ::: n. --> One who fights against the gods; one who resists God of the divine will.
Theomachy: Battle against the gods; opposition to the divine will.
Theomachy [from Greek theomachia] Fighting against the gods, as the titans did; or a battle among the gods, as occurs in Homer.
Theomachy: (Gr. theoi, machein, battle against the gods), a term implying opposition to the divine will. -- K.F.L.
theomachy ::: n. --> A fighting against the gods, as the battle of the gaints with the gods.
A battle or strife among the gods.
Opposition to God or the divine will.
The opening words of the Bible refer directly to the activities of the ’elohim, for this is the sole divine name mentioned in Genesis 1:1-2. De Purucker translates these verses from the original Hebrew as: “In a host (or multitude), the gods (Elohim) formed themselves into the heavens and the earth. And the earth became ethereal. And darkness upon the face of the ethers. And the ruah (the spirit-soul) of the gods (of Elohim) fluttered or hovered, brooding” (cf Fund 99-100). He goes on to say that “we see that the Elohim evolved man, humanity, out of themselves, and told them to become, then to enter into and inform these other creatures. Indeed, these sons of the Elohim are, in our teachings, the children of light, the sons of light, which are we ourselves, and yet different from ourselves, because higher, yet they are our own very selves inwardly. In fact, the Elohim, became, evolved into, their own offspring, remaining in a sense still always the inspiring light within, or rather above . . . the Elohim projected themselves into the nascent forms of the then ‘humanity,’ which thenceforward were ‘men,’ however imperfect their development still was” (Fund 101-2).
Theophany [from Greek theophaneia from theos god + phainesthai to appear] The appearance of a god; a degree in the ancient Mysteries, where the candidate was illumined by his own inner god, and differing from epiphany in being of a more lasting nature. In Christian ecclesiasticism, used for the incarnation of the Christos. In the outer or Lesser Mysteries it meant the showing of representations of the gods to the people — as at the festivals held at Delphi. See also THEOPATHY; THEOPNEUSTY
The original from which the Hebrew Genesis was later compiled is lost. Yet even as the latter has reached us — first veiled, then probably remodeled by Ezra with shiftings that confuse the chronology — despite important words and clauses mistranslated by European scholars, its resemblance to the esoteric account is unmistakable. For Jehovah, who gave the human body and (physical) breath of life, is the hyparxis of Saturn and an earthly, not a celestial, hierarchy. The human mind and spirit are essentially emanations from the immortal spiritual monad coeval with the universe, and subsequent human evolutionary development was both from and aided by the elohim, a spiritual host. Adam and Eve, once mind appeared in them, enter the path of self-directed evolution, a reference to the second and third Eves mentioned above. The eating of the fruit of the tree is the awakening or lighting of mind in man. It shows Eve as consorting with spiritual, not demoniacal, forces and incidentally reconciles the two creation stories. Like the serpent, the tree is an ancient and universal symbol of sacred and esoteric knowledge. To eat of its fruit is to acquire the knowledge that only the gods possess, and the possession confers immortality under the law.
Theosophy or the wisdom-religion is the study of the ancient wisdom of the gods, and comprises in any one period that particular portion of knowledge which has been delivered to those who study it; whereas occultism in any age is that portion of the ancient wisdom dealing with matters which at such time are secret, hid, and unknown to the multitude. Thus occultism is that portion of theosophy which has not yet been openly and publicly promulgated. Occultism is founded on the principle that Divinity is concealed — transcendent yet immanent — within every living being. As a spiritual discipline occultism is the renunciation of selfishness; it is the “still small path” which leads to wisdom, to the right discrimination between good and evil, and the practice of altruism.
The overmind is the region of the gods, the beings of divine origin who have been charged with supervising, directing and organising the evolution of the universe; and more specifically, since the formation of the earth they have served as messengers and intermediaries to bring to the earth the aid of the higher regions and to preside over the formation of the mind and its progressive ascension. It is usually to the gods of the overmind that the prayers of the various religions are addressed. These religions most often choose, for various reasons, one of these gods and transform him for their personal use into the supreme God.
The overmind is the world of the gods.
“The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually ‘as one of the gods,’ and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve, ‘lest Man should become as one of us’ ” (SD 2:498-9&n).
The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit — thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning. “The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were ‘male and female,’ ” i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135). See also DEITY
There is an automatic phase of free will in the purposeful instinct which marks the various activities of even minute and lowly forms of life. The unself-conscious beasts are protected, and therefore guided, by the wills of celestial beings who make the so-called laws of nature, yet even the beasts instinctively choose to run true to their own inner types or svabhava. They unconsciously will to be themselves and to copy no other. They have free will exactly in proportion to their consciousness, just as any person has it in the higher degrees of his intelligence and more active intuition. Thus human beings have the power to work out their evolution, for the kingdom of heaven is taken by strength. The gods have gone ahead on the pathway towards omniscience — so far as our universe is concerned — by their own individual efforts consciously to act with an ever-enlarging measure of harmony with the one divine will. Thus the volume or power of free will is in strict proportion with the degree in which the entity has brought forth the central spark of divine willing fire which animates all that is. Nevertheless no single being or entity has completely unfettered and perfectly irresponsible free will, because of its relative imperfection and because of its inescapable subordination to greater wills, each such entity ever evolving from its stage of imperfection as it ascends along the scales of being: those on the higher rungs of the hierarchical ladder consciously willing in ever-enlarging degree to follow the greater divine will which holds all in its keeping.
There is only one psychic being for each human being, but the beings of the higher planes, eg. the Gods of the Overmind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by send- ing different emanations into different bodies.
The sagas depict Thor as blunt, hot-tempered, without fraud or guile, of few words and ready blows. His chariot, drawn by the two goats Toothcrusher and Toothgnasher, has an iron whiffletree, and sparks fly from its wheels and from the goats’ hooves. Thor’s fiery eyes color the scarlet clouds, his beard is red, on his brow he wears a crown of stars, and under his feet rests the earth whose defender he is. His chariot cannot cross the rainbow bridge, Bifrost, for its lightnings would set the bridge on fire, so the god daily fords the river beneath it when he attends the Thing (parliament) of the gods.
The Sama-Veda is mystically described as having come forth from or been inspired by the sun. It is said by Hindu Vedic specialists to have reference to the pitris (ancestors), while the Rig-Veda has the gods as its object, and the Yajur-Veda men as its object.
“These advanced entities are otherwise known as the Solar Lhas, as the Tibetans call them, the solar spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa, and who during the third Root-race thus sacrifice themselves in order to give us intellectual light — incarnating in those senseless psycho-physical shells in order to awaken the divine flame of egoity and self-consciousness in the sleeping egos which we then were. They are ourselves because belonging to the same spirit-ray that we do; yet we, more strictly speaking, were those half-unconscious, half-awakened egos whom they touched with the divine fire of their own being. This, our ‘awakening,’ was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation of the Manasaputras, or the Sons of Mind or Light. Had that incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have continued our evolution by merely ‘natural’ causes, but it would have been slow almost beyond comprehension, almost interminable; but that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, their immense love, though, indeed, acting under Karmic impulse, awakened the divine fire in our own selves, gave us light and comprehension and understanding; and from that time we ourselves became ‘Sons of the Gods,’ the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awakened, our eyes were opened, responsibility became ours; and our feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, wonderful, leading us inwards back to our spiritual home. . . .
These stories refer in part to an actual great deluge in the world’s history, mainly to the sinking of the great and smaller islands of the Atlantean continental stretches. In many if not all the versions, we find that a race had become so corrupt that nature or the gods would no longer tolerate it, and destroyed it and brought forth a new race. There is usually a type-figure, like the Hebrew Noah, who builds an ark or other vessel of salvation, thus saving from the waters the righteous few to be the seeds of the new race. In many versions are traditions of the destruction of the preceding root-race, Atlantis, by water, and of the saving of various groups of human remnants to found new civilizations on lands, then or shortly later geologically speaking, emerging from the ocean. But besides the particular application to this latest cataclysm in the earth’s history, the story refers to cataclysms in general, to the death of old races and the birth of new ones. The evolution of the earth goes on pari passu with that of the beings upon it. These stories are evidently allegorical as well, with reference to cosmological facts. See also ARK
The shield or protection of Ullr has a special meaning as he is the god of a “cold” (unformed) world: one of the most highly spiritual of the globes in our sun’s realm. The lay called Grimnismal promises that “the blessing of Ull and all the gods is his who first touches the fire” of this supernal sphere. The mansion of Ullr is named Ydalar — the primal dells of rain and storms, and the root and sacred source of earth’s existence.
Theurgy (Greek) theurgia [from theos god + ergon work] Mystery-term popularized by Iamblichus for a method of individual communion with the gods, or bringing the gods down to earth. It consisted in purifying the psycho-astral links between the mind and its divine counterpart, whereby the theurgist was not only brought into conscious communion with his own higher self, but also with other divine entities. The first school in the Christian period
theurgy ::: n. --> A divine work; a miracle; hence, magic; sorcery.
A kind of magical science or art developed in Alexandria among the Neoplatonists, and supposed to enable man to influence the will of the gods by means of purification and other sacramental rites.
In later or modern magic, that species of magic in which effects are claimed to be produced by supernatural agency, in distinction from natural magic.
The use of drugs in initiatory ceremonies of any kind, however, is a relatively late and degenerate practice, and has never at any time been, nor will it ever be, introduced by the Mother-Lodge coming down to us even from the middle of the third root-race. With it the old tradition burns more brightly than ever that the true soma, the true mead of the gods or wine of the spirit, is the raising of the human into the spiritual by aspiration, training, and strict following of the traditional laws of discipleship, so that finally the neophyte feels the sunlight from above stealing through the moon of his mind.
“This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest ‘spirit’ of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his ‘irrational soul,’ or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her—the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga
Thor (Scandinavian) Thorr (Icelandic) [from thonor thunder; cf Swedish tordon, German donner] Best known as the Norse god of thunder and lightning, champion of the gods and subduer of giants in the ongoing battle between these opposites: gods meaning energy and giants typifying inertia. Like the Latin Jupiter, Thor controls the weather and represents the planet Jupiter. The hair of his beautiful wife Sif represents the golden harvest, whether of grain or of experience — the mead or nectar of the gods.
Thoth, Thot (Greek) Tehuti (Egyptian) Teḥuti. Egyptian god of wisdom, equivalent to the Greek Hermes, Thoth was often represented as an ibis-headed deity, and also with a human head, especially in his aspect of Aah-Tehuti (the moon god), and as the god of Mendes he is depicted as bull-headed. Although best known in his character of the scribe or recorder of the gods, holding stylus and tablet, this is but another manner of showing that Thoth is the god of wisdom, inventor of science and learning; thus to him is attributed the establishment of the worship of the gods and the hymns and sacrifices, and the author of every work on every branch of knowledge both human and divine. He is described in the texts as “self-created, he to whom none hath given birth; the One; he who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars; the enumerator and measurer of the earth [cosmic space] and all that is contained therein: the heart of Ra cometh forth in the form of the god Tehuti” — for he represents the heart and tongue of Ra, reason and the mental powers of the god and the utterer of speech. It has been suggested that Thoth is thus the equivalent of the Platonic Logos. Many are his epithets: his best known being “thrice greatest” — in later times becoming Hermes Trismegistus.
Thoth was also arbiter of the gods as in the battle between the god of light and the god of darkness, restoring the equilibrium which had been destroyed during the conflict. Similarly in the fights between Horus and Set, when the evil has a temporary ascendancy, Thoth restores harmony. Interestingly,
Thrud(r), Thrudgelmir (Icelandic) Trudgalmer (Swedish) [cf Greek gymnazein, Scandinavian idrott sport, German drude] The dynamic principle, Thor on a cosmic scale, where this dynamism is the primary force to emerge from the great Unknown at the start of any period of manifestation. In this capacity Thrud appears before any of the gods, as does the Hindu Kama and Greek Eros.
Thunderer ::: An epithet for Jupiter or the Deity. Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter; /ˈjʊpɪtɛr/; genitive case: Iovis; /ˈjɔːvɪs/) or Jove is the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder in myth. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as sacrifice.
Thurse (Icelandic) [possibly related to Danish tosse fool] Giant; the difference between the giant and the thurse, as these terms are used in Norse mythology, is subtle. From the tales it would appear that giant is used most often to indicate the passage of a long time (cf Greek aeon), whereas the thurse aspect is accentuated to show the senselessness of matter uninspired by the gods.
Tiryaksrotas (Sanskrit) Tiryaksrotas [from tiryak horizontal, lying crosswise, crooked + srotas stream, current] Those animals in which the digestive canals are involved or crooked; according to the Puranas, the fifth of the seven creations of living beings by Brahma, the creation of sacred animals. “The esoteric meaning of the expression ‘animals’ is the germs of all animal life including man. Man is called a sacrificial animal, and an animal that is the only one among animal creation who sacrifices to the gods. Moreover, by the ‘sacred animals,’ the 12 signs of the zodiac are often meant in the sacred texts . . .” (SD 1:446n).
Titans: The giants of Greek mythology who made war on the gods.
To Xenophanes is due the saying: "The gods of the Ethiopians are dark-skinned and snub-nosed, the gods of the Thracians are fair and blue-eyed; if oxen could paint, their gods would be oxen."
Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.
transcendent ::: Sri Aurobindo: "A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence — and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal — of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth — a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Transcendent, the Universal, the Individual are three powers overarching, underlying and penetrating the whole manifestation; this is the first of the Trinities. In the unfolding of consciousness also, these are the three fundamental terms and none of them can be neglected if we would have the experience of the whole Truth of existence. Out of the individual we wake into a vaster freer cosmic consciousness; but out of the universal too with its complex of forms and powers we must emerge by a still greater self-exceeding into a consciousness without limits that is founded on the Absolute.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences. The human being is here on earth the highest power of the third term, the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge.” The Life Divine
The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her — the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities.” Letters on Yoga
**Transcendent"s.**
Tvashtri (Sanskrit) Tvaṣṭṛ The divine artist and carpenter of the gods, father of the gods and of the sacred creative fire, and therefore equivalent to the Greek cosmic Demiurge. Maker of divine weapons, such as Indra’s Thunderbolt, and teacher of the ribhus or adityas, he was considered as the great patron of initiates. The Tvashtri of the Vedas is synonymous with the Visvakarman of the Puranas. Many of the functions ascribed in Hindu legend to Tvashtri are reminiscent of similar functions ascribed to the Greek Hephaestos or Latin Vulcan.
Twilight of the gods: In Norse mythology, the final battle between the gods and their enemies, the evil giants.
Typhoeus, Typhon (Greek) Typhoeus in Hesiodic theogony is a son of Tartarus and Gaia, a fire-breathing titan with a hundred heads and begetter of destructive hurricanes. He rebels against the gods and is killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt and buried under Mount Etna. Typhon was originally his son — post-type of himself — but the two were later identified. He represents the necessary counterpart of Zeus, as darkness is of light, Set of Osiris, or Satan of God. He is the Dragon Apophis, the Accuser in The Egyptian Book of the Dead, murderer of Osiris, destroyed by Horus; the dark side of Zeus, as Set is the dark side of Osiris, and night the dark side of day; Python, Loki, Rahu, and falling demons in general. In one form he is the dragon slain by St. Michael or St. George.
Uchchaih-sravas (Sanskrit) Uccaiḥ-śravas [from uccaiḥ aloft, high above + śravas ear] Long-eared, he who hears what is above, one having spiritual or inner hearing; the white horse of Indra, one of the 14 precious things that issued from the waters churned by the gods in Hindu legend, regarded as the prototype and king of horses. In this connection one is reminded of the many statues of the buddhas with pendant ears, symbolizing a spiritual power — he who hears the cries of all.
Veda an image of the Gods, the male power in Nature. Again, the bull is vihana • of Siva.
Vedas, dating from 2000 BC or earlier, consisting of several mythological and poetical accounts of the origin of the world, hymns praising the gods, and ancient prayers for life and prosperity; "praise verse"
Vedas, she is the Mother of the gods from whose cosmic matrix the heavenly bodies were born
visve devah (Vishwadevas) ::: the All-gods or all the Gods; the universal collectivity of the divine powers.
“was founded by Iamblichus among certain Alexandrian Platonists. The priests, however, who were attached to the temples of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Greece, and whose business it was to evoke the gods during the celebration of the Mysteries, were known by this name, or its equivalent in other tongues, from the earliest archaic period. Spirits (but not those of the dead, the evocation of which was called Necromancy) were made visible to the eyes of mortals. Thus a theurgist had to be a hierophant and an expert in the esoteric learning of the Sanctuaries of all great countries. The Neo-platonists of the school of Iamblichus were called theurgists, for they performed the so-called ‘ceremonial magic,’ and evoked the simulacra or the images of the ancient heroes, ‘gods,’ and daimonia (divine, spiritual entities). In the rare cases when the presence of a tangible and visible ‘spirit’ was required, the theurgist had to furnish the weird apparition with a portion of his own flesh and blood — he had to perform the theopaea, or the ‘creation of gods,’ by a mysterious process well known to the old, and perhaps some of the modern, Tantrikas and initiated Brahmans of India” (TG 329-30).
way, the upward ::: Sri Aurobindo: "For the gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the infinite Mother; the way to immortality is the upward way of the gods, the way of the Truth, a journey, an ascent by which there is a growth into the law of the Truth, rtasya panthâh.” The Renaissance in India
What then is the explanation of the otherwise contradictory statements in the Bible regarding Solomon? Even from a historical and ethnological standpoint one may find a clue, for along purely exoteric lines there is nothing foreign in Solomon’s “idolatry” and his worship of other deities. The same racial strain ran through all the surrounding peoples as in Israel, and the respective worships, gods, and goddesses were all closely interrelated, derived from the same Babylonian concepts, appearing under different names — Blavatsky shows the identity of the mystery gods of the Phoenicians, Chaldeans, and Israelites (SD 2:3). The gods and goddesses of the nations surrounding the Jews were all theologically interrelated, aspects or permutations of the same basic idea; and, as worshiped by the people, all were variants and, in their exoteric forms, degradations of the original conception on which every great theogony and cosmogony was built (cf SD 2:535 et seq).
Wheel of life: (1) Samsara (q.v.)—(2) A wheel often depicted in Tibetan paintings, setting forth the basic beliefs in reincarnation found in Lamaism. The endless circumference of the wheel is symbolic of immortality; the three prominences of the hub symbolize the three great vices, ignorance, lust and anger, a lapse into which will make the wrongdoer reincarnate as an insect or other low life-form in his next life; the six spokes symbolize the six principle divisions of life and religion: the gods, the demigods, hell, the tortured souls, human beings, and animals.
When there is something in the nature that has to be got over, it is always drawing on itself incidents that put it to the test till the sadhaka has overcome and is free. At least it is a thing that often happens especially if the person is making a sincere effort to overcome. One docs not always know whether it is the hostiles who are trying to break the resolution or putting it to the test (for they claim the right to do it) or whether it is, let us say, the gods who are doing it so as to press and hasten the progress or insisting on the surety and thoroughness of the change aspired after. Perhaps it helps most when' one can take it from the latter standpoint.
Within its sacred precincts, the Aesir and Asynjor (gods and goddesses) meet to assess the previous life of the world tree and to determine their course for the future. The Lay of Odin’s Corpse give insight into the gods’ council following the death of a planet, and their difficulty in extracting the essence of that experience.
yajna ::: sacrifice; action consecrated to the gods, works; the Master of Works.
yajna &
Yet on the upward arc of an evolutionary cycle, partaking of this sacred ambrosial food signifies initiation, the partaking by the initiant in the Mysteries of the “drink” of spiritual immortality. This drink is symbolized by the cup and its contained liquid, but actually is the receiving into the consciousness from the inner nature of the life-giving streams, the draught of everlasting life, or the elixir of life. After partaking of this ambrosial elixir, brought about by lives of selflessness and by final initiation, the adept learns to live in the minor and intermediate spheres of the solar system as a fully self-conscious co-laborer with the gods in their cosmic work. Such are the higher nirmanakayas, true buddhas, etc.
Yggdrasil: The world-tree of Norse mythology, whose leaves are always green. Fire will destroy it in the twilight of the gods.
Zaotar: Ancient Persian for caller. Priest-magician who invokes the gods by reciting ritual formulas and improvised chants.
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1:Attribute all to the Gods. ~ Archilochus, #KEYS
2:If it pleases the gods, so be it. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
3:Let us be silent, -- so we may hear the whisper of the gods. ~ Emerson, #KEYS
4:When the gods want to punish us, they grant our desires." ~ Ancient Greek saying., #KEYS
5:The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle #KEYS
6:Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die. ~ Sappho, #KEYS
7:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun." ~ Alan Watts, #KEYS
8:sunrise
is where
the Gods live ~ Kobayashi Issa,#KEYS
9:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
~ Alan Watts,#KEYS
10:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #KEYS
11:Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
~ Plotinus,#KEYS
12:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.
~ Diogenes,#KEYS
13:absent of the Gods
it all goes to ruin
fallen leaves ~ Matsuo Basho,#KEYS
14:on a journey
traveling with the gods
numbering the days ~ Matsuo Basho,#KEYS
15:All the gods and goddesses are only varied aspects of the One. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
16:Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton, #KEYS
17:Know thyself, and thou shalt know all the mysteries of the gods and the universe.
~ the Temple of Apollo at Delphi,#KEYS
18:Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand. ~ Hippocrates, Regimen, IV, 87, #KEYS
19:The Ancestors fashioned the gods as a workman fashions iron. ~ Rig Veda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
20:They have all withdrawn, deserting shrine and altar, the gods by who this realm once stood firm. ~ Virgil, Aeneid II.351-52, #KEYS
21:All the gods and goddesses are only varied aspects of the One. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
22:Love is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
23:The gods love what is mysterious and dislike what is evident." ~ "The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, (about 700 BC) a treatise on Ātma, #KEYS
24:That man to me seems equal to the gods,
the man who sits opposite you
and close by listens
to your sweet voice ~ Sappho,#KEYS
25:If you knew what the Gods have in store for you, you would run naked and dance on the beach.
~ Vikings, The Seer to Rollo, Vikings,#KEYS
26:The gods make use of our forgotten deeds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #KEYS
27:The gods cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #KEYS
28:Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
29:The gods have been created by Him, but of Him who knows the manner of His being? ~ Rig Veda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
30:The gods use instruments,
Not ask their consent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Short Stories - I, Act Five,#KEYS
31:True nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought and influenced by the mind
~ Dion Fortune,#KEYS
32:And you sit in the lap of the Gods." ~ Arjuna Ardagh, (b. 1957), author & founder of the "Living Essence Foundation." See "How About Now?", (1999), #KEYS
33:Know thyself and thou shalt know the universe and the gods. ~ Inscription of the Temple of Delphi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
34:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.
~ Aleister Crowley,#KEYS
35:Of what use are the gods
If they crown not our just desires on earth? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
36:From light lips and casual thoughts
The gods speak best as if by chance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
37:And this is the life of the Gods, and of Godlike men, a life without love of the world, a flight of the Alone to the Alone. ~ Plotinus, #KEYS
38:Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #KEYS
39:this tree born
in the time of the gods
now in autumn
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
40:trusting in the Gods
a little butterfly
in autumn
~ Kobayashi Issa, @BashoSociety#KEYS
41:on a journey
traveling with the gods
numbering the days
~ Matsuo Basho, @BashoSociety#KEYS
42:All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A Strong Son of Lightning, #KEYS
43:The realms of the gods and demons ~ heaven, purgatory, hell ~ are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell, Myths of Light, #KEYS
44:The favours of the Gods are too awful to be coveted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To His Sister, #KEYS
45:Man is the creator of the gods whom he worships in his temples. Therefore humanity has made its gods in its own image. ~ Hermes, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
46:The Gods prodigiously sometimes reverse
The common rule of Nature and compel
Matter with soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#KEYS
47:There is always a reason to live. The Gods will set you on the proper path. There is a deeper purpose to the path you have been set upon, one that has yet to reveal itself.
~ Sura,#KEYS
48:Who knows this ruler within, he knows the worlds and the gods and creatures and the Self, he knows all. ~ Mundaka Upanishad I.210., the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
49:This world is a people of friends, and these friends are first the gods and next men whom Nature has made for each other. ~ Epictetus, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
50:He who thus knows, "I am the Eternal", the gods themselves cannot make him other, for he is their own self. ~ Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
51: And needed not the splendour of a robe.
All objects were like bodies of the Gods,
A spirit symbol environing a soul, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02:14, The World-Soul,#KEYS
52:Fear of the gods arose from man's ignorance of God and his ignorance of the laws that govern the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Godward Emotions, #KEYS
53:The reason meant for nearness to the gods
And uplift to heavenly scale by the touch of mind ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
54:But like a shining answer from the gods
Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, [T5],#KEYS
55:Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortals heart,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
56:The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,
The rapture that the gods sustain he bore. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods,#KEYS
57:Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,
All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
58:Love is a honey and poison in the breast
Drunk by it as the nectar of the gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,#KEYS
59:Worshippers of the gods go to the gods,
worshippers of the ancestors go to the ancestors,
worshippers of the goblins go to the goblins,
worshippers of me also go to me.
~ Bhagavad Gita, 9, 25,#KEYS
60:Always ascends the zigzag of the gods
And upward points the spirit's climbing Fire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#KEYS
61:He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,#KEYS
62:Whether on earth or in the abodes of the gods, all beings are upon three evil paths; they are in thepower of existence, desire and ignorance. ~ Latita Vistara, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
63:Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
64:A screened Necessity drives even the gods.
Over human lives it strides to unseen ends;
Our tragic failures are its stepping-stones. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act IV,#KEYS
65:A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,#KEYS
66:Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
67:He whose senses have become calm like horses perfectly tamed by a driver, who has rid himself of pride and concupiscence, the gods themselves envy his lot. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
68:He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
69:Speak the truth, do not abandon yourself to wrath, give of the little you have to those who seek your aid. By these three steps you shall approach the Gods. ~ Dhammapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
70:The gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the infinite Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - II, #KEYS
71:This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;
Time and result are the gods'; with these things be not thou troubled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
72:We should not make comparisons between the gods. When a man has really seen a divinity, he knows that all divinities are manifestations of one and the same Brahman. ~ Ramakishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
73:Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,
They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
74:The gods wrest our careful policies
To their own ends until we stand appalled
Remembering what we meant to do and seeing
What has been done. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act IV,#KEYS
75:Only of one thing
Man can be sure, the will in his heart and his strength in his purpose:
This too is Fate and this too the gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
76:God's Desire
Lo, how all shakes when the gods tread too near!
All moves, is in peril, anguished, torn, upheaved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
77:These sages breathed for God's delight in things.
Assisting the slow entries of the gods,
Sowing in young minds immortal thoughts they lived, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Quest,#KEYS
78:Her pragmatism of the transcendent Truth
Fills silence with the voices of the gods, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06,#KEYS
79:Time's works
The giant's and the Titan's furious march
Climbs to usurp the kingdom of the gods
Or skirts the demon magnitudes of Hell; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
80:Too hard the gods are with man's fragile race;
In their large heavens they dwell exempt from Fate
And they forget the wounded feet of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#KEYS
81:For such a man, one who neglects no effort to set himself from now in the ranks of the best, is a priest, a minister of the gods, a friend of Him who dwells within him. ~ Marcus Aurelius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
82:Mind's voices mimicked inspiration's stress,
Its ictus of infallibility,
Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#KEYS
83:None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,
All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
84:Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
85:Free from the happiness desired by slaves, delivered from the gods and their adoration, fearless and terrible, grand and solitary is the will of the man of truth. ~ Nietzsche, Zarathoustra, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
86:The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #KEYS
87:Walled from ours are other hearts:
For if life's barriers twixt our souls were broken,
Men would be free and one, earth paradise
And the gods live neglected. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#KEYS
88:The beasts are mortal, but they do not know or fully understand that fact; the gods are immortal, and they know it - but poor man, up from beasts and not yet a god, was that unhappy mixture: he was mortal, and he knew it. ~ Ken Wilber, Up From Eden, p. x., #KEYS
89:fools! whose pride
Absurd the gods permit a little space
To please their souls with laughter, then replace
In the loud limbo of futilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lines on Ireland,#KEYS
90:Busy the gods are always, Thrasymachus son of Aretes,
Weaving Fate on their looms, and yesterday, now and tomorrow
Are but the stands they have made with Space and Time for their timber, ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,#KEYS
91:Temple-ground
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy nature's abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
92:A man has certain debts to pay: his debts to the gods and rishis, and his debts to mother, father, and wife. He cannot achieve anything without paying the debt he owes to his parents. A man is indebted to his wife as well. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
93:Wise are the gods in their silence,
Wise when they speak; but their speech is other than ours and their wisdom
Hard for a mortal mind to hold and not madden or wander. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
94:Heed these Words, You who Wish to Probe the Depths of Nature: If You Do Not Find Within Yourself that Which You Seek, Neither will You Find it Outside. In You is Hidden the Treasure of Treasures. Know Thyself and You Will Know the Universe and the Gods. ~ The Oracle of Delphi, #KEYS
95:Wast thou not made in the shape of a woman? Sweetness and beauty
Move like a song of the gods in thy limbs and to love is thy duty
Graved in thy heart as on tablets of fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,#KEYS
96:None is greater than he. The gods themselves will have to descend upon earth and it is in a human form that they will get their salvation. Man alone reaches the perfection of which the gods themselves are ignorant. ~ Vivekananda, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
97:Obstructing the gods' open ways he makes
His own estate of the earth's air and light;
A monopolist of the world-energy,
He dominates the life of common men. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
98:A border sovereign is the occult Force.
A threshold guardian of the earth-scene's Beyond,
She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
99:It was the hour before the Gods awake.
Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone
In her unlit temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence marge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 01.01,#KEYS
100:Just as the fly settles now on an unclean sore and now on the sweetmeats offered to the gods, so a worldly man's thoughts stop for a moment on religious subjects and the next stray into the pleasures of luxury and lust. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
101:One on another we prey and one by another are mighty.
This is the world and we have not made it; if it is evil,
Blame first the gods; but for us, we must live by its laws or we perish. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
102:The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,
The rapture that the gods sustain he bore.
Immortal pleasure cleansed him in its waves
And turned his strength into undying power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods,#KEYS
103:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest." ~ Plato, (428/427 or 424/423 - 348/347) Greek philosopher, Wikipedia., #KEYS
104:Though a man should have lived a hundred years consecrating his whole life to the performance of numerous sacrifices to the gods, all this is far from having the same worth as a single act of love which consists in succouring a life. ~ Fa-khen-pi-, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
105:Just as a fly settles now on an unclean sore in the body, now on the offerings consecrated to the gods, so the mind of a worldly man stops for a moment upon religious ideas, but the next it strays away to the pleasures of luxury and lust. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
106:How shall they prosper who haste after auguries, oracles, whispers,
Dreams that walk in the night and voices obscure of the silence?
Touches are these from the gods that bewilder the brain to its ruin. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
107:Dead is the past; the void has possessed it; its drama is ended,
Finished its music. The future is dim and remote from our knowledge;
Silent it lies on the knees of the gods in their luminous stillness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
108:Man's house of life holds not the gods alone:
There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
Inhabitants of life's ominous nether rooms,
A shadowy world's stupendous denizens. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Parable of the Search for the Soul,#KEYS
109:Pride is not for our clay; the earth, not heaven was our mother
And we are even as the ant in our toil and the beast in our dying;
Only who cling to the hands of the gods can rise up from the earth-mire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
110:Leave to the gods their godhead and, mortal, turn to thy labour;
Take what thou canst from the hour that is thine and be fearless in spirit;
This is the greatness of man and the joy of his stay in the sunlight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
111:The gods have invented
Only one way for a man through the world, O my slavegirl Briseis,
Valiant to be and noble and truthful and just to the humble,
Only one way for a woman, to love and serve and be faithful. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
112:I fear not for the angry frown of Heaven,
I flinch not from the red assault of Hell;
I crush the opposition of the gods,
Tread down a million goblin obstacles. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
113:Transient, we made not ourselves, but at birth from the first we were fashioned
Valiant or fearful and as was our birth by the gods and their thinkings
Formed, so already enacted and fixed by their wills are our fortunes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
114:2. O knower of all things born, high-kindled, iron-tusked, touch with thy ray the demon-sorcerers; do violence to them with thy tongue of flame, the gods who kill,28 the eaters of flesh, putting them off from us shut them into thy mouth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire, 2 - Other Hymns, #KEYS
115:Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where burns for the high houselord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
116:Who can point out the way of the gods and the path of their travel,
Who shall impose on them bounds and an orbit? The winds have their treading,-
They can be followed and seized, not the gods when they move towards their purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
117:Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible. ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
118:Then as now men walked in the round which the gods have decreed them
Eagerly turning their eyes to the lure and the tool and the labour.
Chained is their gaze to the span in front, to the gulfs they are blinded
Meant for their steps. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
119:In those days the world teemed, the people multiplied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamor. Enlil heard the clamor and he said to the gods in council, "The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel." So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind. ~ Anonymous, #KEYS
120:Such were a dream of some sage at night when he muses in fancy,
Imaging freely a flawless world where none were afflicted,
No man inferior, all could sublimely equal and brothers
Live in a peace divine like the gods in their luminous regions. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
121:The knowledge of mortals is bound unto blindness.
Either only they walk mid the coloured dreams of the senses
Treading the greenness of earth and deeming the touch of things real,
Or if they see, by the curse of the gods their sight into falsehood ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
122:All over earth men wept and bled and laboured, world-wide
Sowing Fate with their deeds and had other fruit than they hoped for,
Out of desires and their passionate griefs and fleeting enjoyments
Weaving a tapestry fit for the gods to admire, who in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
123:Earth that was wakened by pain to life and by hunger to thinking
Left to her joys rests inert and content with her gains and her station.
But for the unbearable whips of the gods back soon to her matter
She would go glad and the goal would be missed ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
124:This is the burden of man that he acts from his heart and his passions,
Stung by the goads of the gods he hews at the ties that are dearest.
Lust was the guide they sent us, wrath was a whip for his coursers,
Madness they made the heart's comrade, r ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
125:Surely the gods protect, yet is Death too always mighty.
Most in his shadowy envy he strikes at the brave and the lovely,
Grudging works to abridge their days and to widow the sunlight.
Most, disappointed, he rages against the beloved of Heaven;
S ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
126:Though the people hear us not, yet are we bound to our nation:
Over the people the gods are; over a man is his country;
This is the deity first adored by the hearths of the noble.
For by our nation's will we are ruled in the home and the battle
An ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
127:Evil is worked, not justice, when into the mould of our thinkings
God we would force and enchain to the throb of our hearts the immortals,—
Justice and Virtue, her sister,—for where is justice mid creatures
Perfectly? Even the gods are betrayed by o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#KEYS
128:How soon is spent
This treasure wasted by the gods on man,
This happy closeness as of soul to soul,
This honey of the body's companionship,
This heightened joy, this ecstasy in the veins,
This strange illumination of the sense! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,#KEYS
129:The occult priest should be capable of instructing anyone in the procedures of emotional engineering. The main methods are the gnostic ones of casting oneself into a frenzied ecstacy, stilling the mind to a point of absolute quiescence, and evoking the laughter of the gods by combining laughter with the contemplation of paradox.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
130:The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes
And guide its giant stumblings through the void,
Have given to man the burden of his mind;
In his unwilling heart they have lit their fires
And sown in it incurable unrest. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness,#KEYS
131:God's Tread
Once we have chosen to be as the gods, we must follow that motion.
Knowledge must grow in us, might like a Titan's, bliss like an ocean,
Calmness and purity born of the spirit's gaze on the Real,
Rapture of his oneness embracing the soul in a clasp ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,#KEYS
132:Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Works, #KEYS
133:Suffering is the food of our strength and torture the bliss of our entrails.
We are pitiless, mighty and glad, the gods fear our laughter inhuman.
Our hearts are heroic and hard; we wear the belt of Orion:
Our will has the edge of the thunderbolt, o ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, The Children of Wotan,#KEYS
134:All was gold and gold and gold, a torrent of golden light pouring down in an uninterrupted flow and bringing with it the consciousness that the path of the gods is a sunlit path in which difficulties lose all reality.
Such is the path open before us if we choose to take it.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II, The Path of Yoga, The Path, [T5],#KEYS
135:To share the suffering of the world I came,
I draw my children's pangs into my breast.
I am the nurse of the dolour beneath the stars;
I am the soul of all who wailing writhe
Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
136:'O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
137:The Transcendent
This is what is termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation through her - the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and Personalities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga,#KEYS
138:The sorrow by which Nature's hunger is fed,
The oestrus which creates with fire of pain,
The fate that punishes virtue with defeat,
The tragedy that destroys long happiness,
The weeping of Love, the quarrel of the Gods,
Ceased in a truth which l ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
139:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called? ~ Aleister Crowley, #KEYS
140:There are gods of the Overmind who are the great creators of the earth - until now. There are the gods of the Vedas who are mentioned in everything that has come down from the Rishis. And there are the gods of the Supermind, those who are going to manifest on earth, although of course they exist from all eternity on their own plane. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #KEYS
141:He who knows that He is the supreme Lord, becomes that, and the gods themselves cannot prevent him...He who adores any other divinity, has not the knowledge. He is as cattle for the gods. Even as numerous cattle serve to nourish men, so each man serves to nourish the gods...That is why the gods love not that a man should know That. ~ Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
142:The gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that. And a man will worship something have no doubt about that, either. He may think that his tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of his heart, but it will out. That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #KEYS
143:But Indra does not turn back from the quest like Agni and Vayu; he pursues his way through the highest ether of the pure mentality and there he approaches the Woman, the manyshining, Uma Haimavati; from her he learns that this Daemon is the Brahman by whom alone the gods of mind and life and body conquer and affirm themselves, and in whom alone they are great. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena And Other Upanishads, 83, #KEYS
144:The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #KEYS
145:...the conception of a Truth-consciousness supramental and divine, the invocation of the gods as powers of the Truth to raise man out of the falsehoods of the mortal mind, the attainment in and by this Truth of an immortal state of perfect good and felicity and the inner sacrifice and offering of what one has and is by the mortal to the Immortal as the means of the divine consummation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret Of The Veda, [68],#KEYS
146:Bjorn: I'm sorry to hear of Helga's death. We knew each other a long time. Since I was a boy.
Floki: I too am dead, Bjorn. A part of me died with my daughter, Angrboda, a second part with Ragnar, and the last part of what was Floki died with my sweet, sad Helga. What I am now is nothing. And all this nothing I give to the gods to do with as they please. And I shall be an empty ship with no rudder set upon their endless sea. And where they take me, I shall go.
~ Vikings,#KEYS
147:Humans are great experimenters, constantly exploring, searching, and struggling to gain power over themselves, over nature, even over the gods. Through this entire struggle and self-torture, we have also made ourselves "sick," and it is no wonder that we find the ascetic ideal springing up everywhere. Though it may seem to deny life, the ascetic ideal is supremely life affirming, as it says "yes" to life in the face of hardship and sickness. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, #KEYS
148:To those who ask you, Where have you seen the gods, or how do you who are so devout know for sure that the gods exist? I answer, first of all, that even to the very eye, they are in some manner visible and apparent. Secondly, neither have I seen my own soul, and yet I respect and honour it. So then for the gods, by the daily experience that I have of their power and providence towards myself and others, I know certainly that they exist and therefore I worship them. ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12, 21, #KEYS
149:He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place.
Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.
A last and mightiest transformation came.
His soul was all in front like a great sea
Flooding the mind and body with its waves;
His being, spread to embrace the universe,
United the within and the without To make of life a cosmic harmony,
An empire of the immanent Divine.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,#KEYS
150:The Japanese have a proverb: "The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth." The boon bestowed on the worshiper is always scaled to his stature and to the nature of his dominant desire: the boon is simply a symbol of life energy stepped down to the requirements of a certain specific case. The irony, of course, lies in the fact that, whereas the hero who has won the favor of the god may beg for the boon of perfect illumination, what he generally seeks are longer years to live, weapons with which to slay his neighbor, or the health of his child. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon, #KEYS
151:As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple-door to things beyond.
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,#KEYS
152:In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a 'great daemon' (202d). She goes on to explain that 'everything daemonic is between divine and mortal' (202d-e), and she describes daemons as 'interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above...' (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimonion (literally, a 'divine something')[16] that frequently warned him-in the form of a 'voice'-against mistakes but never told him what to do.
~ Wikipedia, Daemon,#KEYS
153:13. The Magic Flight:If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becomes a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
154:Vainly the sands of Time have been strewn with the ruins of empires,
Signs that the gods had left, but in vain. For they look for a nation,
One that can conquer itself having conquered the world, but they find none. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Ilion
Self-conquest
When one conquers a difficulty or goes forward, it creates a right current in the atmosphere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: The Right Attitude towards Difficulties
Self-Conquest
Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation,#KEYS
155:If the magician wishes to put himself into or out of any emotional state, then he should be provided with the techniques to accomplish this. The process requires no justification
- that he wills it is sufficient. One cannot escape emotional experience in a human incarnation, and it is preferable to adopt a master rather than a slave relationship to it. The occult priest should be capable of instructing anyone in the procedures of emotional engineering. The main methods are the gnostic ones of casting oneself into a frenzied ecstacy, stilling the mind to a point of absolute quiescence, and evoking the laughter of the gods by combining laughter with the contemplation of paradox. ~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
156:The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness. As in the stories of the cannibal ogresses, the fearfulness of this loss of personal individuation can be the whole burden of the transcendental experience for unqualified souls. But the hero-soul goes boldly in-and discovers the hags converted into goddesses and the dragons into the watchdogs of the gods. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, #KEYS
157:Lila is by no means the last word. Passing through all these states, I said to the Divine Mother: 'Mother, in these states there is separation. Give me a state where there is no separation.' Then I remained for some time absorbed in the Indivisible Satchidananda. I removed the pictures of the gods and goddesses from my room. I began to perceive God in all beings. Formal worship dropped away. You see that bel-tree. I used to go there to pluck its leaves. One day, as I plucked a leaf, a bit of the bark came off. I round the tree full of Consciousness. I felt grieved because I had hurt the tree. One day I tried to pluck some durva grass, but I found I couldn't do it very well. Then I forced myself to pluck it. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
158:Thus slowly I lift man's soul nearer the Light.
But human mind clings to its ignorance
And to its littleness the human heart
And to its right to grief the earthly life.
Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,
Only when infinity weds the finite's thought,
Can man be free from himself and live with God.
I bring meanwhile the gods upon the earth;
I bring back hope to the despairing heart;
I give peace to the humble and the great,
And shed my grace on the foolish and the wise.
I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved.
Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth's soil;
Man's mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth
And body bear the immense descent of God."
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces,#KEYS
159:11. The Ultimate Boon:The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
160:The Gods, who in their highest secret entity are powers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in their proper home, are in their knowledge 'truth-conscious' and in their action possessed of the 'seer-will'. Their conscious-force turned towards works and creation is possessed and guided by a perfect and direct knowledge of the thing to be done and its essence and its law, - a knowledge which determines a wholly effective will-power that does not deviate or falter in its process or in its result, but expresses and fulfils spontaneously and inevitably in the act that which has been seen in the vision. Light is here one with Force, the vibrations of knowledge with the rhythm of the will and both are one, perfectly and without seeking, groping or effort, with the assured result.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind as Creator 132,#KEYS
161: There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distri bute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
162:Above her little finite steps she feels,
Careless of knot or pause, worlds which weave out
A strange perfection beyond law and rule,
A universe of self-found felicity,
An inexpressible rhythm of timeless beats,
The many-movemented heart-beats of the One,
Magic of the boundless harmonies of self,
Order of the freedom of the infinite,
The wonder-plastics of the Absolute.
There is the All-Truth and there the timeless bliss.
But hers are fragments of a star-lost gleam,
Hers are but careless visits of the gods.
They are a Light that fails, a Word soon hushed
And nothing they mean can stay for long on earth.
There are high glimpses, not the lasting sight.
A few can climb to an unperishing sun,
Or live on the edges of the mystic moon
And channel to earth-mind the wizard ray. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day,#KEYS
163:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear...
...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars.~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Selected Stories and Other Writings,#KEYS
164:The earth too, one with the surrounding mass of darkness and inconscience is asleep and insentient. She has to wake up and start on her journey moving forward, unveiling her secret mysteries towards the supreme revelation, the Divine incarnation in matter. The Gods are awake, in order to awaken the earth. A first ray is sent down and it touches as it were the sleeping Mother. The Divine Ray is just like a finger of a child touching her mother trying, as it were, to persuade her to open her eyes and look at her child. The first ray, however, comes not as a caress to the inert being of darkness, it is a sharp prick, even a hard blow. Such is the first impact of light upon dead matter; and the light is thrown back, as an unwelcome intruder, into what it came from; and the darkness grovels in its old groove. The second stage comes when the impact is not felt as a pain or something totally foreign and strange; its touch is felt as something soothing, something that heals an eternal sore. But this too was not suffered long and the light has to go back again. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, On Savitri, #KEYS
165:O King, thy fate is a transaction done
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny's book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body's torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate, - they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit's walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 06:02 The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#KEYS
166:If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others.
There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind Mind and the Overmind Maya,#KEYS
167:If we are religious-minded, perhaps we will see the gods who inhabit this world. Beings, forces, sounds, lights, and rhythms are just so many true forms of the same indefinable, but not unknowable, Essence we call God; we have spoken of God, and made temples, laws or poems to try to capture the one little pulsation filling us with sunshine, but it is free as the wind on foam-flecked shores. We may also enter the world of music, which in fact is not different from the others but a special extension of this same, great inexpressible Vibration. If once, only once, even for a few moments in a lifetime, we can hear that Music, that Joy singing above, we will know what Beethoven and Bach heard; we will know what God is because we will have heard God. We will probably not say anything grandiose; we will just know that That exists, whereupon all the suffering in the world will seem redeemed.
At the extreme summit of the overmind, there only remain great waves of multi-hued light, says the Mother, the play of spiritual forces, which later translate - sometimes much later - into new ideas, social changes, or earthly events, after crossing one by one all the layers of consciousness and suffering a considerable distortion and loss of light...
~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure Of Consciousness,#KEYS
168:To see life steadily and see it whole is only permitted to a Perfect and Infinite Consciousness standing outside Time, Space and Conditions. To such a divine Vision the working out of preordainment may present itself as a perfect, immediate and unhindered consummation. God said, 'Let there be Light' and, straightway,there was Light; and when the Light came into being, God saw that it was good. But to the imperfect finite consciousness, Light seems in its inception to have come into being by a slow material evolution completed by a fortuitous shock of forces; in its operation to be lavished with a prodigal wastefulness since only a small part is used for the purposes of life; in its presentation to be conveyed to a blinking and limited vision, hampered by obstacles and chequered with darkness. Limitation, imperfection, progression and retrogression are inseparable from phenomenal work, phenomenal intelligence, phenomenal pleasure and satisfaction. To Brahman the Will who measures all Time in a moment, covers all Space with one stride, embraces the whole chain of causation in one glance, there is no limitation, imperfection, progression or retrogression. He looks upon his work as a whole and sees that it is good. But the Gods cannot reach to His completeness, even though they toil after it; for ever He outruns their pursuit, moving far in front. Brahman, standing still, overtakes and passes the others as they run.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad,#KEYS
169:37 - Some say Krishna never lived, he is a myth. They mean on earth; for if Brindavan existed nowhere, the Bhagavat (6) could not have been written. - Sri Aurobindo
Does Brindavan exist anywhere else than on earth?
The whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the material eye. Each thing manifested here has its principle, idea or essence somewhere in the subtler regions. This is an indispensable condition for the manifestation. And the importance of the manifestation will always depend on the origin of the thing manifested.
In the world of the gods there is an ideal and harmonious Brindavan of which the earthly Brindavan is but a deformation and a caricature.
Those who are developed inwardly, either in their senses or in their minds, perceive these realities which are invisible (to the ordinary man) and receive their inspiration from them.
So the writer or writers of the Bhagavat were certainly in contact with a whole inner world that is well and truly real and existent, where they saw and experienced everything they have described or revealed.
Whether Krishna existed or not in a human form, living on earth, is only of very secondary importance (except perhaps from an exclusively historical point of view), for Krishna is a real, living and active being; and his influence has been one of the great factors in the progress and transformation of the earth.
8 June 1960
(6 The story of Krishna, as related in the Bhagavat Purana.) ~ The Mother, On Thoughts And Aphorisms, volume-10, page no.60-61),#KEYS
170:Musa Spiritus :::
O Word concealed in the upper fire,
Thou who hast lingered through centuries,
Descend from thy rapt white desire,
Plunging through gold eternities.
Into the gulfs of our nature leap,
Voice of the spaces, call of the Light!
Break the seals of Matter's sleep,
Break the trance of the unseen height.
In the uncertain glow of human mind,
Its waste of unharmonied thronging thoughts,
Carve thy epic mountain-lined
Crowded with deep prophetic grots.
Let thy hue-winged lyrics hover like birds
Over the swirl of the heart's sea.
Touch into sight with thy fire-words
The blind indwelling deity.
O Muse of the Silence, the wideness make
In the unplumbed stillness that hears thy voice,
In the vast mute heavens of the spirit awake
Where thy eagles of Power flame and rejoice.
Out, out with the mind and its candles flares,
Light, light the suns that never die.
For my ear the cry of the seraph stars
And the forms of the Gods for my naked eye!
Let the little troubled life-god within
Cast his veils from the still soul,
His tiger-stripes of virtue and sin,
His clamour and glamour and thole and dole;
All make tranquil, all make free.
Let my heart-beats measure the footsteps of God
As He comes from His timeless infinity
To build in their rapture His burning abode.
Weave from my life His poem of days,
His calm pure dawns and His noons of force.
My acts for the grooves of His chariot-race,
My thoughts for the tramp of His great steeds' course! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,#KEYS
171:Received him in their deathless harmonies.
All things were perfect there that flower in Time;
Beauty was there creation's native mould,
Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.
There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams
And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;
Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,
And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;
Dream walked along the highways of the stars;
Sweet common things turned into miracles:
Overtaken by the spirit's sudden spell,
Smitten by a divine passion's alchemy,
Pain's self compelled transformed to potent joy
Curing the antithesis twixt heaven and hell.
All life's high visions are embodied there,
Her wandering hopes achieved, her aureate combs
Caught by the honey-eater's darting tongue,
Her burning guesses changed to ecstasied truths,
Her mighty pantings stilled in deathless calm
And liberated her immense desires.
In that paradise of perfect heart and sense
No lower note could break the endless charm
Of her sweetness ardent and immaculate;
Her steps are sure of their intuitive fall.
After the anguish of the soul's long strife
At length were found calm and celestial rest
And, lapped in a magic flood of sorrowless hours,
Healed were his warrior nature's wounded limbs
In the encircling arms of Energies
That brooked no stain and feared not their own bliss.
In scenes forbidden to our pallid sense
Amid miraculous scents and wonder-hues
He met the forms that divinise the sight,
To music that can immortalise the mind
And make the heart wide as infinity
Listened, and captured the inaudible
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods,#KEYS
172:The link between the spiritual and the lower planes of the mental being is that which is called in the old Vedantic phraseology the vijnana and which we may term the Truth-plane or the ideal mind or supermind where the One and the Many meet and our being is freely open to the revealing light of the divine Truth and the inspiration of the divine Will and Knowledge. If we can break down the veil of the intellectual, emotional, sensational mind which our ordinary existence has built between us and the Divine, we can then take up through the Truth-mind all our mental, vital and physical experience and offer it up to the spiritual -- this was the secret or mystic sense of the old Vedic "sacrifice" -- to be converted into the terms of the infinite truth of Sachchidananda, and we can receive the powers and illuminations of the infinite Existence in forms of a divine knowledge, will and delight to be imposed on our mentality, vitality, physical existence till the lower is transformed into the perfect vessel of the higher. This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads, the result of which was the possession of the One, the Infinite, the beatific existence, the union with God, the Immortality. By possession of this ideal plane we break down entirely the opposition of the lower and the higher existence, the false gulf created by the Ignorance between the finite and the Infinite, God and Nature, the One and the Many, open the gates of the Divine, fulfil the individual in the complete harmony of the cosmic consciousness and realise in the cosmic being the epiphany of the transcendent Sachchidananda. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 2.15, #KEYS
173:Daemons
A daemon is a process that runs in the background, not connecting to any controlling terminal. Daemons are normally started at boot time, are run as root or some
other special user (such as apache or postfix), and handle system-level tasks. As a
convention, the name of a daemon often ends in d (as in crond and sshd), but this is
not required, or even universal.
The name derives from Maxwell's demon, an 1867 thought experiment by the physicist James Maxwell. Daemons are also supernatural beings in Greek mythology,
existing somewhere between humans and the gods and gifted with powers and divine
knowledge. Unlike the demons of Judeo-Christian lore, the Greek daemon need not
be evil. Indeed, the daemons of mythology tended to be aides to the gods, performing
tasks that the denizens of Mount Olympus found themselves unwilling to do-much
as Unix daemons perform tasks that foreground users would rather avoid.
A daemon has two general requirements: it must run as a child of init, and it must
not be connected to a terminal.
In general, a program performs the following steps to become a daemon:
1. Call fork( ). This creates a new process, which will become the daemon.
2. In the parent, call exit( ). This ensures that the original parent (the daemon's
grandparent) is satisfied that its child terminated, that the daemon's parent is no
longer running, and that the daemon is not a process group leader. This last
point is a requirement for the successful completion of the next step.
3. Call setsid( ), giving the daemon a new process group and session, both of
which have it as leader. This also ensures that the process has no associated controlling terminal (as the process just created a new session, and will not assign
one).
4. Change the working directory to the root directory via chdir( ). This is done
because the inherited working directory can be anywhere on the filesystem. Daemons tend to run for the duration of the system's uptime, and you don't want to
keep some random directory open, and thus prevent an administrator from
unmounting the filesystem containing that directory.
5. Close all file descriptors. You do not want to inherit open file descriptors, and,
unaware, hold them open.
6. Open file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 (standard in, standard out, and standard error)
and redirect them to /dev/null.
Following these rules, here is a program that daemonizes itself:
~ OReilly Linux System Programming,#KEYS
174:As far as heaven, as near as thought and hope,
Glimmered the kingdom of a griefless life.
Above him in a new celestial vault
Other than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,
As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,
An archipelago of laughter and fire,
Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.
Towered spirals, magic rings of vivid hue
And gleaming spheres of strange felicity
Floated through distance like a symbol world.
On the trouble and the toil they could not share,
On the unhappiness they could not aid,
Impervious to life's suffering, struggle, grief,
Untarnished by its anger, gloom and hate,
Unmoved, untouched, looked down great visioned planes
Blissful for ever in their timeless right.
Absorbed in their own beauty and content,
Of their immortal gladness they live sure.
Apart in their self-glory plunged, remote
Burning they swam in a vague lucent haze,
An everlasting refuge of dream-light,
A nebula of the splendours of the gods
Made from the musings of eternity.
Almost unbelievable by human faith,
Hardly they seemed the stuff of things that are.
As through a magic television's glass
Outlined to some magnifying inner eye
They shone like images thrown from a far scene
Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize.
But near and real to the longing heart
And to the body's passionate thought and sense
Are the hidden kingdoms of beatitude.
In some close unattained realm which yet we feel,
Immune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,
Escaping the search of sorrow and desire,
In bright enchanted safe peripheries
For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.
In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,
Across a subtle vision's inner field,
Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory's trail.
Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
175:Mother of Dreams :::
Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,
Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the shadows slanting?
Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;
Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;
There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.
What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?
Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,
Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?
Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances?
Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?
Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,
Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.
Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,
Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.
Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.
Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.
High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;
Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;
I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have healed the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master,
Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.
For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal;
There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.
From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;
Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.
Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time to the peak of divine endeavour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems,#KEYS
176:On that spring day in the park I saw a young woman who attracted me. She was tall and slender, elegantly dressed, and had an intelligent and boyish face. I liked her at once. She was my type and began to fill my imagination. She probably was not much older than I but seemed far more mature, well-defined, a full-grown woman, but with a touch of exuberance and boyishness in her face, and this was what I liked above all .
I had never managed to approach a girl with whom I had fallen in love, nor did I manage in this case. But the impression she made on me was deeper than any previous one had been and the infatuation had a profound influence on my life.
Suddenly a new image had risen up before me, a lofty and cherished image. And no need, no urge was as deep or as fervent within me as the craving to worship and admire. I gave her the name Beatrice, for, even though I had not read Dante, I knew about Beatrice from an English painting of which I owned a reproduction. It showed a young pre-Raphaelite woman, long-limbed and slender, with long head and etherealized hands and features. My beautiful young woman did not quite resemble her, even though she, too, revealed that slender and boyish figure which I loved, and something of the ethereal, soulful quality of her face.
Although I never addressed a single word to Beatrice, she exerted a profound influence on me at that time. She raised her image before me, she gave me access to a holy shrine, she transformed me into a worshiper in a temple.
From one day to the next I stayed clear of all bars and nocturnal exploits. I could be alone with myself again and enjoyed reading and going for long walks.
My sudden conversion drew a good deal of mockery in its wake. But now I had something I loved and venerated, I had an ideal again, life was rich with intimations of mystery and a feeling of dawn that made me immune to all taunts. I had come home again to myself, even if only as the slave and servant of a cherished image.
I find it difficult to think back to that time without a certain fondness. Once more I was trying most strenuously to construct an intimate "world of light" for myself out of the shambles of a period of devastation; once more I sacrificed everything within me to the aim of banishing darkness and evil from myself. And, furthermore, this present "world of light" was to some extent my own creation; it was no longer an escape, no crawling back to -nether and the safety of irresponsibility; it was a new duty, one I had invented and desired on my own, with responsibility and self-control. My sexuality, a torment from which I was in constant flight, was to be transfigured nto spirituality and devotion by this holy fire. Everything :brk and hateful was to be banished, there were to be no more tortured nights, no excitement before lascivious picures, no eavesdropping at forbidden doors, no lust. In place of all this I raised my altar to the image of Beatrice, :.. and by consecrating myself to her I consecrated myself to the spirit and to the gods, sacrificing that part of life which I withdrew from the forces of darkness to those of light. My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.
This cult of Beatrice completely changed my life.
~ Hermann Hesse, Demian,#KEYS
177:The supreme Form is then made visible. It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of existence, who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods. Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and sweet and terrible world, and overcome with marvel and joy and fear he bows down and adores with words of awe and with clasped hands the tremendous vision. "I see" he cries "all the gods in thy body, O God, and different companies of beings, Brahma the creating lord seated in the Lotus, and the Rishis and the race of the divine Serpents. I see numberless arms and bellies and eyes and faces, I see thy infinite forms on every side, but I see not thy end nor thy middle nor thy beginning, O Lord of the universe, O Form universal. I see thee crowned and with thy mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence."
But in the greatness of this vision there is too the terrific image of the Destroyer. This Immeasurable without end or middle or beginning is he in whom all things begin and exist and end.
This Godhead who embraces the worlds with his numberless arms and destroys with his million hands, whose eyes are suns and moons, has a face of blazing fire and is ever burning up the whole universe with the flame of his energy. The form of him is fierce and marvellous and alone it fills all the regions and occupies the whole space between earth and heaven. The companies of the gods enter it, afraid, adoring; the Rishis and the Siddhas crying "May there be peace and weal" praise it with many praises; the eyes of Gods and Titans and Giants are fixed on it in amazement. It has enormous burning eyes; it has mouths that gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction; 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 are hastening into its tusked and terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between its teeth of power; the nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into its mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean or like moths that cast themselves on a kindled fire. With those burning mouths the Form of Dread is licking all the regions around; the whole world is full of his burning energies and baked in the fierceness of his lustres. The world and its nations are shaken and in anguish with the terror of destruction and Arjuna shares in the trouble and panic around him; troubled and in pain is the soul within him and he finds no peace or gladness. He cries to the dreadful Godhead, "Declare to me who thou art that wearest this form of fierceness. Salutation to thee, O thou great Godhead, turn thy heart to grace. I would know who thou art who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings." ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita, 2.10_-_The_Vision_of_the_World-Spirit_-_Time_the_Destroyer,#KEYS
178::::
As an inner equality increases and with it the sense of the true vital being waiting for the greater direction it has to serve, as the psychic call too increases in all the members of our nature, That to which the call is addressed begins to reveal itself, descends to take possession of the life and its energies and fills them with the height, intimacy, vastness of its presence and its purpose. In many, if not most, it manifests something of itself even before the equality and the open psychic urge or guidance are there. A call of the veiled psychic element oppressed by the mass of the outer ignorance and crying for deliverance, a stress of eager meditation and seeking for knowledge, a longing of the heart, a passionate will ignorant yet but sincere may break the lid that shuts off that Higher from this Lower Nature and open the floodgates. A little of the Divine Person may reveal itself or some Light, Power, Bliss, Love out of the Infinite. This may be a momentary revelation, a flash or a brief-lived gleam that soon withdraws and waits for the preparation of the nature; but also it may repeat itself, grow, endure. A long and large and comprehensive working will then have begun, sometimes luminous or intense, sometimes slow and obscure. A Divine Power comes in front at times and leads and compels or instructs and enlightens; at others it withdraws into the background and seems to leave the being to its own resources. All that is ignorant, obscure, perverted or simply imperfect and inferior in the being is raised up, perhaps brought to its acme, dealt with, corrected, exhausted, shown its own disastrous results, compelled to call for its own cessation or transformation or expelled as worthless or incorrigible from the nature. This cannot be a smooth and even process; alternations there are of day and night, illumination and darkness, calm and construction or battle and upheaval, the presence of the growing Divine Consciousness and its absence, heights of hope and abysses of despair, the clasp of the Beloved and the anguish of its absence, the overwhelming invasion, the compelling deceit, the fierce opposition, the disabling mockery of hostile Powers or the help and comfort and communion of the Gods and the Divine Messengers. A great and long revolution and churning of the ocean of Life with strong emergences of its nectar and its poison is enforced till all is ready and the increasing Descent finds a being, a nature prepared and conditioned for its complete rule and its all-encompassing presence. But if the equality and the psychic light and will are already there, then this process, though it cannot be dispensed with, can still be much lightened and facilitated: it will be rid of its worst dangers; an inner calm, happiness, confidence will support the steps through all the difficulties and trials of the transformation and the growing Force profiting by the full assent of the nature will rapidly diminish and eliminate the power of the opposing forces. A sure guidance and protection will be present throughout, sometimes standing in front, sometimes working behind the veil, and the power of the end will be already there even in the beginning and in the long middle stages of the great endeavour. For at all times the seeker will be aware of the Divine Guide and Protector or the working of the supreme Mother-Force; he will know that all is done for the best, the progress assured, the victory inevitable. In either case the process is the same and unavoidable, a taking up of the whole nature, of the whole life, of the internal and of the external, to reveal and handle and transform its forces and their movements under the pressure of a diviner Life from above, until all here has been possessed by greater spiritual powers and made an instrumentation of a spiritual action and a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 179,#KEYS
179:The recurring beat that moments God in Time.
Only was missing the sole timeless Word
That carries eternity in its lonely sound,
The Idea self-luminous key to all ideas,
The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum
That equates the unequal All to the equal One,
The single sign interpreting every sign,
The absolute index to the Absolute.
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
It hoped to soar into the Ineffable's reign:
A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown.
So it towered up to heights intangible
And disappeared in the hushed conscious Vast
As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven
Built by the aspiring soul of man to live
Near to his dream of the Invisible.
Infinity calls to it as it dreams and climbs;
Its spire touches the apex of the world;
Mounting into great voiceless stillnesses
It marries the earth to screened eternities.
Amid the many systems of the One
Made by an interpreting creative joy
Alone it points us to our journey back
Out of our long self-loss in Nature's deeps;
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being's goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
It is within, below, without, above.
Acting upon this visible Nature's scheme
It wakens our earth-matter's heavy doze
To think and feel and to react to joy;
It models in us our diviner parts,
Lifts mortal mind into a greater air,
Makes yearn this life of flesh to intangible aims,
Links the body's death with immortality's call:
Out of the swoon of the Inconscience
It labours towards a superconscient Light.
If earth were all and this were not in her,
Thought could not be nor life-delight's response:
Only material forms could then be her guests
Driven by an inanimate world-force.
Earth by this golden superfluity
Bore thinking man and more than man shall bear;
This higher scheme of being is our cause
And holds the key to our ascending fate;
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter's house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
Its influences and godheads of the unseen,
Its unthought logic of Reality's acts
Arisen from the unspoken truth in things,
Have fixed our inner life's slow-scaled degrees.
Its steps are paces of the soul's return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are.
An idol of self is our mortality.
Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;
They consent to share her doom of birth and death;
They kindle partial gleams of the All and drive
Her blind laborious spirit to compose
A meagre image of the mighty Whole.
The calm and luminous Intimacy within
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#KEYS
180:The ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians had some very interesting, dramatic ideas about that. For example-very briefly-there was a deity known as Marduk. Marduk was a Mesopotamian deity, and imagine this is sort of what happened. As an empire grew out of the post-ice age-15,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago-all these tribes came together. These tribes each had their own deity-their own image of the ideal. But then they started to occupy the same territory. One tribe had God A, and one tribe had God B, and one could wipe the other one out, and then it would just be God A, who wins. That's not so good, because maybe you want to trade with those people, or maybe you don't want to lose half your population in a war. So then you have to have an argument about whose God is going to take priority-which ideal is going to take priority.
What seems to happen is represented in mythology as a battle of the gods in celestial space. From a practical perspective, it's more like an ongoing dialog. You believe this; I believe this. You believe that; I believe this. How are we going to meld that together? You take God A, and you take God B, and maybe what you do is extract God C from them, and you say, 'God C now has the attributes of A and B.' And then some other tribes come in, and C takes them over, too. Take Marduk, for example. He has 50 different names, at least in part, of the subordinate gods-that represented the tribes that came together to make the civilization. That's part of the process by which that abstracted ideal is abstracted. You think, 'this is important, and it works, because your tribe is alive, and so we'll take the best of both, if we can manage it, and extract out something, that's even more abstract, that covers both of us.'
I'll give you a couple of Marduk's interesting features. He has eyes all the way around his head. He's elected by all the other gods to be king God. That's the first thing. That's quite cool. They elect him because they're facing a terrible threat-sort of like a flood and a monster combined. Marduk basically says that, if they elect him top God, he'll go out and stop the flood monster, and they won't all get wiped out. It's a serious threat. It's chaos itself making its comeback. All the gods agree, and Marduk is the new manifestation. He's got eyes all the way around his head, and he speaks magic words. When he fights, he fights this deity called Tiamat. We need to know that, because the word 'Tiamat' is associated with the word 'tehom.' Tehom is the chaos that God makes order out of at the beginning of time in Genesis, so it's linked very tightly to this story. Marduk, with his eyes and his capacity to speak magic words, goes out and confronts Tiamat, who's like this watery sea dragon. It's a classic Saint George story: go out and wreak havoc on the dragon. He cuts her into pieces, and he makes the world out of her pieces. That's the world that human beings live in.
The Mesopotamian emperor acted out Marduk. He was allowed to be emperor insofar as he was a good Marduk. That meant that he had eyes all the way around his head, and he could speak magic; he could speak properly. We are starting to understand, at that point, the essence of leadership. Because what's leadership? It's the capacity to see what the hell's in front of your face, and maybe in every direction, and maybe the capacity to use your language properly to transform chaos into order. God only knows how long it took the Mesopotamians to figure that out. The best they could do was dramatize it, but it's staggeringly brilliant. It's by no means obvious, and this chaos is a very strange thing. This is a chaos that God wrestled with at the beginning of time.
Chaos is half psychological and half real. There's no other way to really describe it. Chaos is what you encounter when you're blown into pieces and thrown into deep confusion-when your world falls apart, when your dreams die, when you're betrayed. It's the chaos that emerges, and the chaos is everything it wants, and it's too much for you. That's for sure. It pulls you down into the underworld, and that's where the dragons are. All you've got at that point is your capacity to bloody well keep your eyes open, and to speak as carefully and as clearly as you can. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get through it that way and come out the other side. It's taken people a very long time to figure that out, and it looks, to me, that the idea is erected on the platform of our ancient ancestors, maybe tens of millions of years ago, because we seem to represent that which disturbs us deeply using the same system that we used to represent serpentile, or other, carnivorous predators. ~ Jordan Peterson, Biblical Series, 1,#KEYS
181:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.
Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.
Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,#KEYS
182:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,#KEYS
183:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The gods favor the bold. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 2:Even the gods love jokes. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 3:Leave the rest to the gods. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 4:The gods have their own laws. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 5:The gods have their own rules. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 6:Ask the gods nothing excessive. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 7:The gods behold all righteous actions. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 8:The deeds of men never escape the gods. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 9:The gods have become our diseases. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 10:Fear first created the gods. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 11:The gods help them who help themselves. ~ aesop, @wisdomtrove 12:The gods see the deeds of the righteous. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 13:The gods love those of ordered soul. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 14:Man is greater than the gods. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 15:Those whom the gods love grow young. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 16:Beauty- it was a favor bestowed by the gods. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 17:Take the goods the gods provide thee. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 18:Pray the gods do not envy your happiness! ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 19:Slow but sure moves the might of the gods. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 20:The worshiper is the father of the gods. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 21:If the gods do evil then they are not gods. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 22:Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 23:Even the gods are moved by the voice of entreaty. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 24:It is said that gifts persuade even the gods. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 25:The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 26:To live without evil belongs only to the gods. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 27:Let my heart be wise. It is the gods' best gift. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 28:Of all the gods only death does not desire gifts. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 29:We have complicated every simple gift of the gods. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 30:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 31:A Letter is a Joy of Earth - It is denied the Gods ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 32:Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 33:I wonder do the gods know what it feels like to be a man. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 34:The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 35:Know we how many tomorrows the gods intend for our todays. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 36:The Gods cannot help those who do not seize opportunities. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 37:Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 38:Respect the gods and the devils but keep them at a distance ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 39:The friendship of a great man is a favor of the gods. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 40:Who knows whether the gods will add tomorrow to the present hour? ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 41:There is as much confusion in the world of the gods as in ours. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 42:The saying goes that the gods leave a town once it is captured. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 43:Whom the Gods love die young no matter how long they live. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 44:The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 45:Respect the gods, but have as little to do with them as possible. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 46:The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 47:When a man takes the road to destruction, the gods help him along. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 48:All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 49:For by the will of the gods Fate hath held sway since ancient days. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 50:To be famous when you are young is the fortune of the gods. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 51:The gods bestowed on Max [Beerbohm] the gift of perpetual old age. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 52:If you don't know how to serve men, why worry about serving the gods? ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 53:Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain? ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 54:Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove 55:Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 56:Perfection belongs to the Gods; the most we can hope for is excellence. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 57:Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 58:Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient? ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 59:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 60:Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length? ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 61:Heaven rewards the pious; those who cherish the gods Themselves are cherished. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 62:It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 63:Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 64:The ways of the gods are long, but in the end they are not without strength. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 65:Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 66:We must believe in the gods no longer if injustice is to prevail over justice. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 67:Are the gods not just?' & 68:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little. ~ diogenes, @wisdomtrove 69:Know yourself and fit yourself to new fashions. For there is a new ruler among the gods. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 70:Believe me, the gods spare the afflicted, and do not always oppress those who are unfortunate. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 71:Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 72:Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made (Latin). ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 73:For the gods, though slow to see, see well, whenever a man casting aside worship turns folly. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 74:It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 75:When the anger of the gods is incurred, wealth or power only bring more devastating punishment. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 76:Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can do nothing against that man. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 77:It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 78:You have to decide to servant the gods of materialism all around us or the true and the living God. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 79:As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for. ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 80:Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god? ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 81:Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don't sit down without one of the gods. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 82:They are not wise, then, who stand forth to buffet against Love; for Love rules the gods as he will, and me. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 83:The Gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies; they are the trees and the plants and the seeds. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 84:That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 85:What is to be taught I learn; what is to be discovered I seek; what is to be prayed for I sought from the gods. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 86:The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 87:The gods at will can shape a gladder strain, and from the lamentations at the graveside, a song of triumph may arise. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 88:What is Death, so it be but glorious? & 89:Grateful for his mistakes, man should be the gods, because by overcoming the faults the stronger force is developed. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 90:A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 91:And this is the life of the Gods, and of Godlike men, a life without love of the world, a flight of the Alone to the Alone. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 92:If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 93:Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 94:When the gods know that a god hath fallen, With this kindly feeling They do encourage him& 95:Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 96:Only one accomplishment is beyond both the power and the mercy of the Gods. They cannot make the past as though it had never been. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 97:Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 98:In the elder days of art Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the Gods are everywhere ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 99:When an oath is taken ... the mind is more attentive; for it guards against two things, the reproach of friends and offence against the gods. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 100:I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 101:They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 102:The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 103:If all the world be worth thy winning. / Think, oh think it worth enjoying: / Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee, / Take the good the gods provide thee. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 104:There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 105:If you are going to try, go all the way or don't even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 106:Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world? ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 107:The gods have sent medicines for the venom of serpents, but there is no medicine for a bad woman. She is more noxious than the viper, or than fire itself. ~ euripedes, @wisdomtrove 108:Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ... but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 109:It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 110:Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 111:There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 112:The Gods occupy the loftiest regions, men the lowest, the demons the middle region... They have immortality of body, but passions of the mind in common with men. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 113:To give oneself ernestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep aloof from them, that may be called wisdom. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 114:Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 115:The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 116:Best of children, sisters arm-in-arm, we must bear what the gods give us to bear& 117:Every evildoer began by despising the Gods; and one not previously corrupt, taking to this contempt, even though in other respects not wholly bad, becomes an evildoer by the very fact. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 118:The gods, (if gods to goodness are inclined If acts of mercy touch their heavenly mind), And, more than all the gods, your generous heart, Conscious of worth, requite its own desert! ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 119:The world, an entity out of everything, was created by none of the gods or men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and reg- ularly becoming extinguished. ~ heraclitus, @wisdomtrove 120:Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.) ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 121:[Hermes addresses Prometheus :] To you, the clever and crafty, bitter beyond all bitterness, who has sinned against the gods in bestowing honors upon creatures of a day& 122:For every nation that lives peaceably, there will be many others to grow hard and push their arrogance to extremes; the gods attend to these things slowly. But they attend to those who put off God and turn to madness. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 123:Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts: Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed By hymns of praise. From him alone of all The powers of heaven Persuasion holds aloof. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 124:Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it. Let the rest of your days be spent as one who has whole-heartedly committed his all to the gods and is thenceforth no man's master or slave. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 125:As those that pull down private houses adjoining to the temples of the gods, prop up such parts as are contiguous to them; so, in undermining bashfulness, due regard is to be had to adjacent modesty, good-nature and humanity. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 126:& 127:The gods should certainly be revered, but kept at a distance... . The way is not beyond man; he who creates a way outside of man cannot make it a true way. A good man is content with changing man, and that is enough for him. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 128:If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: & 129:thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this for a truth: the thing thou seekest is already here, "here or nowhere," couldst thou only see. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 130:If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 131:John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 132:Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly. ~ democritus, @wisdomtrove 133:If the gods have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not all-powerful. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither all-powerful or benevolent. If they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist? ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 134:The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 135:Gods should be iridescent, like the rainbow in the storm. Man creates a God in his own image, and the gods grow old along with the men that made them... But the god-stuff roars eternally, like the sea, with too vast a sound to be heard. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 136:Watchful are the Gods of all Hands with slaughter stained. The black Furies wait, and when a man Has grown by luck, not justice, great, With sudden overturn of chance They wear him to a shade, and, cast Down to perdition, who shall save him? ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 137:To the Greeks, the supreme function of music was to "praise the gods and educate the youth". In Egypt... Initiatory music was heard only in Temple rites because it carried the vibratory rhythms of other worlds and of a life beyond the mortal. ~ plutarch, @wisdomtrove 138:The truth Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives By suffering. Nothing speaks the truth, Nothing tells us how things really are, Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain. And this is how the gods declare their love. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 139:But & 140:It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 141:Man's highest blessedness, In wisdom chiefly stands; And in the things that touch upon the Gods, & 142:Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 143:We should not speak of one that prospers well As happy, till his life have run its course, And reached its goal. An evil spirit's gift In shortest time has oft laid low the state Of one full rich in great prosperity, When the change comes, and so the Gods appoint. ~ sophocles, @wisdomtrove 144:Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 145:If you have no love, do what you will - go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems - you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 146:Aegistheus, the kings have another secret... . Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the Gods can do nothing against that man. It is a matter for men to handle amongst themselves, and it is up to other men and to them alone to let him flee or to destroy him. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 147:It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 148:I have found that you have only to take that one step toward the gods, and they will then take ten steps toward you. That step, the heroic first step of the journey, is out of, or over the edge of, your boundaries, and it often must be taken before you know that you will. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove 149:The gods retain their threefold task: they must exorcize the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death, and they must compensate them for the sufferings and privations which a civilized life in common has imposed on them. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 150:Men! She could not understand why so many women feared them. Hadn't the gods made them with the most vurnerable part of their guts hanging right out of their bodies, like a misplaced bit of bowel? Kick them there and they curled up like snails. Caress them there and their brains melted. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 151:I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 152:The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the easy life of the gods would be a lifeless life. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 153:Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. America, too, will have to strain its energies, crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons, and mud-demons, before it can become a babitation for the gods. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 154:I'm not going to get involved in a debate with you. Just remember this: the gods give, and the gods take away. Even if you are not aware of having been granted what you posses, the gods remember what they gave you. They don't forget a thing. You should use the abilities you have been granted with the utmost care. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 155:I pray the gods some respite from the weary task of this long year's watch that lying on the Atreidae's roof on bended arm, dog- like, I have kept, marking the conclave of all night's stars, those potentates blazing in the heavens that bring winter and summer to mortal men, the constellations, when they wane, when they rise. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 156:And in that far distant day when the gods become wholly beautiful, or we at last are shown how beautiful they always were, this will happen more and more. For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 157:Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this is the secret of greatness.If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological Gods, and in all the Gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 158:An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods. ~ epicurus, @wisdomtrove 159:Truth alone triumphs, not untruth. Through truth alone lies the way to Devayana (the way to the gods). Those who think that a little sugar - coating of untruth helps the spread of truth are mistaken and will find in the long run that a single drop of poison poisons the whole mass ... The man who is pure, and who dares, does all things. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 160:Softly sweet, in Lydian measures, Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures. War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble; Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying. If all the world be worth the winning, Think, oh think it worth enjoying: Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee. ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 161:I sit here drunk now. I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here without committing murder or being murdered; without having ended up in the madhouse. as I drink alone again tonight my soul despite all the past agony thanks all the gods who were not there for me then. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 162:I pray the gods will give me some relief and end this weary job. One long full year I've been lying here, on this rooftop, the palace of the sons of Atreus, resting on my arms, just like a dog. I've come to know the night sky, every star, the powers we see glittering in the sky, bringing winter and summer to us all, as the constellations rise and sink. ~ aeschylus, @wisdomtrove 163:You may control a mad elephant; You may shut the mouth of the bear and the tiger; Ride the lion and play with the cobra; By alchemy you may learn your livelihood; You may wander through the universe incognito; Make vassals of the gods; be ever youthful; You may walk in water and live in fire; But control of the mind is better and more difficult. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 164:I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 165:Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me - the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love - He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 166:The gods were bored and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase in population. Adam was bored alone, then Adam and Eve were bored together; them Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the people were bored en masse. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 167:The Aztec gods and goddesses are, as far as we have known anything about them, an unlovely and unlovable lot. In their myths there is no grace or charm, no poetry. Only this perpetual grudge, grudge, grudging, one god grudging another, the gods grudging men their existence, and men grudging the animals. The goddess of love is goddess of dirt and prostitution, a dirt-eater, a horror, without a touch of tenderness. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 168:It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 169:The ancient man approached God (or even the gods)as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God is in the dock. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 170:Oh, I can see it happening, age after age, and growing worse the more you reveal your beauty: the son turning his back on the mother and the bride on her groom, stolen away by this everlasting calling, calling, calling of the gods. Taken where we can't follow. It would be far better for us if you were foul and ravening. We'd rather you drank their blood than stole their hearts. We'd rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 171:Think of all the years passed by in which you said to yourself I’ll do it tomorrow, and how the gods have again and again granted you periods of grace of which you have not availed yourself. It is time to realise that you are a member of the Universe, that you are born of Nature itself, and to know that a limit has been set to your time. Use every moment wisely, to perceive your inner refulgence, or ’twill be gone and nevermore within your reach. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 172:[Not parroting.] My old Master used to say, "It is all very good to teach the parrot to say, & 173:When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces? ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 174:This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women. There is my creed. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 175:Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god. ~ plato, @wisdomtrove 176:There is no God separate from you, no God higher than you, the real "you." All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your own reflection. God Himself is your image. ‚ÄúGod created man after His own image." That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god and fall down at his feet and worship him; and when this dream comes, we love it ! ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 177:The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 178:Rosemary bubbled with delight at the trunks. Her naivete responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers, unaware of its complexity and its lack of innocence, unaware that it was all a selection of quality rather than quantity from the run of the world's bazaar; and that the simplicity of behavior also, the nursery-like peace and good will, the emphasis on the simpler virtues, was part of a desperate bargain with the gods and had been attained through struggles she could not have guessed at. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 179:. . .in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and - from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone. . .the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 180:At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 181:When a child first catches adults out - when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just - his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 182:Ideas have become far more important to us than action - ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present - that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Even the Gods love jokes. ~ Plato, #NFDB
2:Even the gods love jokes. ~ Plato, #NFDB
3:The gods are leaving. ~ Jos Rizal, #NFDB
4:The Gods have meant ~ Ruth St Denis, #NFDB
5:Leave the rest to the gods. ~ Horace, #NFDB
6:The gods have their own laws. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
7:...the Gods too love a joke. ~ Plato, #NFDB
8:Only the Gods are real. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
9:The gods have their own rules. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
10:All men have need of the gods. ~ Homer, #NFDB
11:may the gods be with you ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
12:Whom the gods love dies young. ~ Menander, #NFDB
13:The Gods rank work above virtues. ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
14:Ask the gods nothing excessive. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
15:He whom the Gods love dies young. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
16:What the Gods want happens soon ~ Petronius, #NFDB
17:He whom the gods love dies young. ~ Menander, #NFDB
18:Keep challenging the gods ~ Scott Westerfeld, #NFDB
19:Let the gods speak softly of us ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
20:the gods are created by poets" --Ovid ~ Ovid, #NFDB
21:The gods don’t make mistakes. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
22:The gods too are fond of a joke. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
23:If it pleases the gods, so be it. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
24:The gods behold all righteous actions. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
25:The gods love to fuck with us. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
26:If it pleases the gods, so be it. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
27:Mathematics is the Life of the Gods. ~ Novalis, #NFDB
28:The deeds of men never escape the gods. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
29:The gods have become our diseases. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
30:Uneven numbers are the gods' delight. ~ Virgil, #NFDB
31:Fear first created the gods. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
32:Speak of the Gods as they are. ~ Bias of Priene, #NFDB
33:The gods help them who help themselves. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
34:The gods see the deeds of the righteous. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
35:"The gods have become our diseases." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
36:The gods help them that help themselves. ~ Aesop, #NFDB
37:The gods love those of ordered soul. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
38:The gods play games with men as balls. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
39:We are the playthings of the gods. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
40:Wi-Fi is a blessing from the gods. ~ Darren Shan, #NFDB
41:Astrology reveals the will of the gods. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
42:Jacob was a gift from the gods. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
43:Man is greater than the gods. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
44:the gods play no
favorites. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
45:How the gods must have laughed ~ Christian Cameron, #NFDB
46:Take the good the gods provide thee. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
47:Those whom the gods love grow young. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
48:What Were the Gods Thinking?” list. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
49:Whom the gods notice they destroy. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
50:Beauty- it was a favor bestowed by the gods. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
51:Do the gods of different nations ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
52:Fear in the world first created the gods. ~ Statius, #NFDB
53:It's up to poets to revive the gods. ~ Jim Harrison, #NFDB
54:Lha Gyal Lo! (Victory to the gods) ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
55:Pray, for all men need the aid of the gods. ~ Homer, #NFDB
56:The gods are on the side of the stronger. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
57:Thank the gods and pass the hot sause ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
58:Who hearkens to the gods, the gods give ear. ~ Homer, #NFDB
59:Perfection belongs to the Gods; the most ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
60:Pray the gods do not envy your happiness! ~ Euripides, #NFDB
61:Pulque - lightning nectar for the Gods. ~ Steve Olson, #NFDB
62:The sacrifice of Diogenes to all the gods. ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
63:Not even the gods fight against necessity. ~ Simonides, #NFDB
64:Slow but sure moves the might of the gods. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
65:Sometimes the gods give you a break. ~ Richard Bachman, #NFDB
66:Take the goods the gods provide you. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
67:The gods need heroes. They always have. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
68:The worshiper is the father of the gods. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
69:To hate excellence is to hate the gods. ~ Mary Renault, #NFDB
70:Ah yes, the gods use us mortals as footballs! ~ Plautus, #NFDB
71:Dancers are the messengers of the gods. ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
72:If the gods do evil then they are not gods. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
73:I will storm the gods, and shake the universe. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
74:Men create the gods after their own images. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
75:Nearer the gods no mortal may approach. ~ Edmond Halley, #NFDB
76:Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
77:Even the gods are moved by the voice of entreaty. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
78:I grew up in the arms of the gods. ~ Friedrich H lderlin, #NFDB
79:I will storm the Gods and shake the Universe ~ Euripides, #NFDB
80:Mercury ~ Messenger of the Gods shar.es/cL6M8 #astrology, #NFDB
81:The gods are watching, but idly, yawning. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
82:I am old, but the Gods still love me. ~ Erich von Daniken, #NFDB
83:It is said that gifts persuade even the gods. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
84:The gods are what has failed to become of us ~ W S Merwin, #NFDB
85:The gods thought otherwise.
Dis aliter visum. ~ Virgil,#NFDB
86:A man takes what the gods thrust upon him. ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
87:And this stuff about the gods.” She grabbed my ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
88:The gods' service is tolerable, man's intolerable. ~ Plato, #NFDB
89:To live without evil belongs only to the gods. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
90:A culture finds the gods it needs. ~ Kevin Crossley Holland, #NFDB
91:Heaven rewards the pious; those who cherish the gods ~ Ovid, #NFDB
92:...humanity generally gets the Gods it deserves. ~ Tom Holt, #NFDB
93:If any man obeys the gods, they listen to him also. ~ Homer, #NFDB
94:In wondrous ways do the gods make sport with men. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
95:The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
96:Calling to the gods, she's every inch a goddess. ~ E L James, #NFDB
97:Let my heart be wise. It is the gods' best gift. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
98:Men mock the gods until they need them, Kaz. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
99:The gods do not fight against necessity. ~ Simonides of Ceos, #NFDB
100:The gods, not out of mercy, have made me strong. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
101:Cheeseburgers,’ Percy said. ‘Food of the gods. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
102:Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
103:It is dangerous for a woman to defy the gods; ~ Anne Spencer, #NFDB
104:Makes you wonder if the gods are always right. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
105:Of all the gods only death does not desire gifts. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
106:Power came from the rituals, not from the gods. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
107:Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter. ~ Buster Keaton, #NFDB
108:Thank the Gods! My misery exceeds all my hopes! ~ Jean Racine, #NFDB
109:the demons of to day are the gods od yesterday. ~ Jon Skovron, #NFDB
110:The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
111:The gods are fugitive guests of literature. ~ Roberto Calasso, #NFDB
112:The gods sustain and guide all their works. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
113:We have complicated every simple gift of the gods. ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
114:How can there be such anger in the minds of the gods? ~ Virgil, #NFDB
115:May the gods always send me stupid enemies. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
116:Not even the gods fight against necessity. ~ Simonides of Ceos, #NFDB
117:The gods are fugitive guests of literature. ~ Roberto Calasso, #NFDB
118:Which of us can say what the gods hold wicked? ~ Carol Goodman, #NFDB
119:Whoever truly worships the gods loves their priests. ~ Statius, #NFDB
120:All the gods are dead except the god of war. ~ Eldridge Cleaver, #NFDB
121:If the gods do a shameful thing, they are not gods. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
122:If you can't please the gods, trick them. ~ Lesley Nneka Arimah, #NFDB
123:The gods look in pleasure on penitent sinners. ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
124:There are many roads to happiness, if the gods assent. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
125:A grief-stricken man is driven to defy the gods. ~ Clive Cussler, #NFDB
126:Even the gods couldn't devise a fates so twisted. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
127:I was born for killing—the gods made me to ruin. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
128:The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside. ~ Homer, #NFDB
129:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
130:Then the lights went out, and Shadow saw the gods. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
131:Thou oughtest to know, since thou livest near the gods. ~ Horace, #NFDB
132:Whoever obeys the gods, to him they particularly listen. ~ Homer, #NFDB
133:The gods alone know, what kind of wife a man will have. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
134:The gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
135:The gods give to mortals not everything at the same time. ~ Homer, #NFDB
136:The gods love to laugh at a happy man, however. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
137:All that is from the gods is full of Providence. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
138:more 27 and 53,'i said. 'Food of the gods,' he said ~ David Almond, #NFDB
139:Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
140:The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
141:There is no part of me that is not of the Gods. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
142:Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
143:Even in the darkest times the gods are always there. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
144:A Letter is a Joy of Earth - It is denied the Gods ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
145:For you can always tell the gods by their appetite. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
146:Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
147:On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
148:The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged. ~ Paul Auster, #NFDB
149:Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
150:When we tell our stories, the gods hear our sorrows. ~ Cathy Ostlere, #NFDB
151:Fury from the heavens; fury at the gods - inseparable. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
152:It was too much... the gods would not permit such joy. ~ Eva Ibbotson, #NFDB
153:I wonder do the gods know what it feels like to be a man. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
154:Mathematics is the language in which the gods talk to people. ~ Plato, #NFDB
155:The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
156:The gods have given you wealth and the means of enjoying it. ~ Horace, #NFDB
157:The gods - if they existed - detested happiness. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
158:the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
159:The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
160:The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
161:When dealing with the gods, one deals with danger. ~ Yasmine Galenorn, #NFDB
162:Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
163:He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent. ~ Cato the Elder, #NFDB
164:If a man obeys the gods they’re quick to hear his prayers. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
165:I feel like the gods have certainly patted me on the head. ~ Dane Cook, #NFDB
166:It's the priests who have demands, not the gods. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
167:Know we how many tomorrows the gods intend for our todays. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
168:Love is powerful. It can bring the gods to their knees. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
169:of every night you must be open to the Gods, and if ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
170:Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
171:The Gods cannot help those who do not seize opportunities. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
172:tiny mortals tampering with chariots of the gods. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
173:We ignore the gods and fill our minds with trash. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
174:When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
175:From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods. ~ Virgil, #NFDB
176:He couldn't offend the gods with a pointed stick. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
177:In dreams, the gods watch over us. Awake, we're on our own. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
178:Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
179:Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
~ Plotinus,#NFDB
180:Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men. ~ Horace, #NFDB
181:Respect the gods and the devils but keep them at a distance ~ Confucius, #NFDB
182:The Ancestors fashioned the gods as a workman fashions iron. ~ Rig Veda, #NFDB
183:The designer always has to leave room for the gods. ~ Robert Bringhurst, #NFDB
184:The gods loves to punish whatever is greater than the rest. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
185:When the gods come among men, they are not known. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
186:Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
187:Every comic can report a few 'gift from the gods' moments. ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
188:Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
189:I like the night and the sky better than the gods of men. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
190:Remember, this is war. The gods are at war for your soul. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
191:Respect the gods and buddhas, but never rely on them. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #NFDB
192:The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
193:The Gods give with one hand and take with the other. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
194:The more we deny ourselves, the more the gods supply our wants. ~ Horace, #NFDB
195:They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide. ~ John Banville, #NFDB
196:If I am unable to make the gods above relent, I shall move hell. ~ Virgil, #NFDB
197:If you are wise, be wise; keep what goods the gods provide you. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
198:It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
199:It is not the rituals of worship that please the gods. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
200:The gods give that man some profit to whom they are propitious. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
201:The mills of the gods grind slowly....but they grind to dust. ~ Greg Iles, #NFDB
202:Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored. ~ Ian Fleming, #NFDB
203:Ultimately the gods of pleasure can’t satisfy our desires. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
204:Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising. ~ Cyril Connolly, #NFDB
205:Man's responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
206:May the gods show their mercy... The Alexion would not. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
207:the fool had been branded for the slaughter by the gods. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
208:The friendship of a great man is a favor of the gods. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
209:The gods never let us love and be wise at the same time. ~ Publilius Syrus, #NFDB
210:The gods wanted war?
They were about to get it. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
211:The populace drags down the gods to their own level. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
212:We Ask the Gods for Answers and They Give Us Questions ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
213:Who knows whether the gods will add tomorrow to the present hour? ~ Horace, #NFDB
214:Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
215:Deos fortioribus adesse. The gods support those who are stronger. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
216:Exceeds man's might: that dwells with the gods above. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
217:If the gods sent you to fight here, then the gods are fools. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
218:Man's first and greatest victory must be won against the gods. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
219:Most men do nothing to deserve what the gods throw their way, ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
220:No matter how much I crave peace, the gods have other plans. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
221:Respect the gods and Buddhas, but do not depend on them. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #NFDB
222:There is as much confusion in the world of the gods as in ours. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
223:The saying goes that the gods leave a town once it is captured. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
224:To the gods belong power, and to us the work of our hands. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
225:Whom the Gods love die young no matter how long they live. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
226:Creation is man's immortality and brings him nearest to the gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
227:Do the gods sleep well at night? I think maybe they do. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
228:Govern your tongue before all other things, following the gods. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
229:How could Quing-jao know what the gods meant by anything? ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
230:…it will be possible, in the time of the wolf, to kill the gods. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
231:Piety and holiness of life will propitiate the gods. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
232:The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
233:when the gods created mankind, death they dispensed to mankind, ~ David Rose, #NFDB
234:When the gods were more manlike, Men were more godlike. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
235:Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
236:You are making Socrates's mistake of assuming the gods are good. ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
237:Zeus, the Lord of the Gods, wore a dark blue pinstriped suit. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
238:Disciple : The gods do not care whether man is killed or not. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
239:Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #NFDB
240:Respect the gods, but have as little to do with them as possible. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
241:Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods thyself a Goddess. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
242:The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
243:The gods changed their war cry to: “RUN!” “HELP!” And: “MOMMY! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
244:The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
245:The Gods give of their best, not their worst, to men! ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
246:The gods use their chosen hard, but reveal little to them. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
247:Create your own myths; that is how the gods got started. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, #NFDB
248:Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts. PLOTINUS ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
249:that the gods made a bridge from earth, to heaven, called Bifröst? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
250:The dead were legion and the gods had their own secret agenda. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
251:The Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
252:The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
253:The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
254:The one sin the gods never forgive us is that of being born women. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
255:Truly, when the gods set their faces against you, you are fucked. ~ Robert Low, #NFDB
256:When all shoot at one mark, the gods join in the combat. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
257:When a man takes the road to destruction, the gods help him along. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
258:All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
259:All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
260:But as Nietzsche said, ‘The gods furl their flags at boredom. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
261:Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers. ~ Virgil, #NFDB
262:For by the will of the gods Fate hath held sway since ancient days. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
263:The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
264:To be famous when you are young is the fortune of the gods. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
265:To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
266:All the gods and goddesses are only varied aspects of the One. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
267:But the boy already had a god of his own. And the gods were selfish. ~ R F Kuang, #NFDB
268:Let us be silent — so we may hear the whisper of the gods. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
269:Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
270:The gods bestowed on Max [Beerbohm] the gift of perpetual old age. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
271:The only thing you can count on is that the gods make other plans. ~ Janie Chang, #NFDB
272:We would have to think the gods had no minds, to pray for murderers. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
273:When the gods give you another look at the world, best enjoy it. ~ Leigh Bardugo, #NFDB
274:Who knows if the gods above will add tomorrow's span to this day's sum? ~ Horace, #NFDB
275:You judge the gods by who bows down at their altars?" Ai Ling asked. ~ Cindy Pon, #NFDB
276:All the gods and goddesses are only varied aspects of the One. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
277:A woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
278:If you don't know how to serve men, why worry about serving the gods? ~ Confucius, #NFDB
279:The gods approve The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
280:There. Let the gods of friendship and common sense strike him dead. ~ Kelly Moran, #NFDB
281:Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain? ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
282:Charm is the seal of the gods upon woman. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #NFDB
283:For business, our internet love affair was a gift from the gods. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk, #NFDB
284:He lived far from the gods, but in his mind he was at home with them. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
285:I don't want to be any closer to the gods than death will bring me. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
286:Love is powerful, Piper. It can bring even the gods to their knees. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
287:Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
288:My job, one of them, in science, was to find the gods inside of us. ~ Howard Bloom, #NFDB
289:Sometimes, the gods are kind. And hubris is the worst of sins. ~ Christian Cameron, #NFDB
290:The gods attend to great matters, they neglect small ones. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
291:The gods envy me because they cannot die. ~ Giannina Braschi in "Empire of Dreams", #NFDB
292:The gods you do not pay are the ones that can curse you best. ~ Barbara Kingsolver, #NFDB
293:Though the favourites of the Gods die young, they also live ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
294:Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods. ~ Peter A Levine, #NFDB
295:While the gods remained more human, the men were more divine. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
296:With our mortal minds we should seek from the gods that which becomes us. ~ Pindar, #NFDB
297:Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
298:A true writer is someone the gods have called to the task. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
299:How I envy you creative people - creativity is a gift from the gods ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
300:It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
301:The flesh is the clay of the gods. Only the chosen can be sculptors. ~ Michael West, #NFDB
302:The gods are fair, and they use our little vices to punish us ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
303:The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life ~ Lucan, #NFDB
304:The gods were great, but what good was greatness if you didn't love? ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
305:The gods were great, but what good was greatness if you didn’t love? ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
306:Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man. ~ Plato, #NFDB
307:Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient? ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
308:Are the Gods real or is Ike Karton just crazy? And the answer is: Yes. ~ Mark Leyner, #NFDB
309:Come, then! Face Ravelle! The gods have sent your doom, motherfuckers! ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
310:From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us. ~ David Antin, #NFDB
311:It sounds to me like the gods of sneaking out have smiled upon Lucy. ~ Suzanne Young, #NFDB
312:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
313:Never honor the gods in one breath and take the gods for fools the next. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
314:Of all the gods nailed to the cross, Discord was the most beautiful. ~ Norah Labiner, #NFDB
315:So why not care for that side of you, where you and the gods are equals? ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
316:Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length? ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
317:A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
318:A good commander can beat the odds. A great commander can beat the gods. ~ Jack Kirby, #NFDB
319:Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die. ~ Sappho, #NFDB
320:Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness? ~ Homer, #NFDB
321:Nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
322:Poets are never allowed to be mediocre by the gods, by men or by publishers. ~ Horace, #NFDB
323:The Gods did not count time spent fishing in the hours of a man's life. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
324:The gods make use of our forgotten deeds. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate, #NFDB
325:Tis the old secret of the gods that they come in low disguises. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
326:You're in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don't. ~ Sam Mendes, #NFDB
327:Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die. ~ Sappho, #NFDB
328:...for when the gods have made up their minds they do not change them lightly. ~ Homer, #NFDB
329:If we neglect our privileges, the gods take them from us. ~ Constance Fenimore Woolson, #NFDB
330:It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
331:...let the gods distinguish between the wiched and the merely incompetent. ~ Glen Cook, #NFDB
332:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
333:On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
334:The Gods are unkind and deny us knowledge of what the future holds ~ Peter L Bernstein, #NFDB
335:The most natural path in the world is to adopt the gods of our parents. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
336:They wanted them to look like the Gods.
God doesn't look like this. ~ James Rollins,#NFDB
337:Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
338:Anyone who desires to see the gods face-to-face is a great fool, ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
339:Calum patted her shoulder and prayed to the Gods of Balanced Equations ~ Anne McCaffrey, #NFDB
340:Clovis,’ Nico growled, ‘for the gods’ sake, stop dreaming so powerfully! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
341:it rained as if the gods were disconsolate, as if spring were a sorrow, ~ Claire Messud, #NFDB
342:Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods. ~ Plato, #NFDB
343:Man invented the gods. Then the gods went off on their own, but not far. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
344:Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
~ Alan Watts,#NFDB
345:The gods are hard to handle — when they come blazing forth in their true power. ~ Homer, #NFDB
346:The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
347:The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
348:They were the gods of this strange little heaven, and I was their guest. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
349:This only is denied the Gods: the power to remake the past. —ARISTOTLE ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
350:A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods. ~ Plato, #NFDB
351:Actually it’s two cups. And yes. Coffee is the elixir of the gods. ~ Denise Grover Swank, #NFDB
352:Are the gods not just?' 'Oh no, child. What would become us us if they were? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
353:Each and every being has an innate ability to heal as a gift from the gods. ~ Mikao Usui, #NFDB
354:None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man, it has always been. ~ Empedocles, #NFDB
355:One cannot come closer to the gods than by bringing health to his Fellow Man. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
356:The best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
357:The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost. ~ Akwaeke Emezi, #NFDB
358:The ways of the gods are long, but in the end they are not without strength. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
359:When a man cannot fight he would curse. The gods like to feel needed. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
360:Death must be an evil and the gods agree; for why else would they live for ever? ~ Sappho, #NFDB
361:If, as Niko asks, you show them mercy, then the gods will be well pleased. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
362:Prometheus stole fire from the gods so that humans could become like gods. ~ Alan Russell, #NFDB
363:When a man cannot fight he should curse. The gods like to feel needed. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
364:Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked. With your own voice,' he said. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
365:Yes, she was still breathing—and by the gods, he would keep her that way! ~ T L Shreffler, #NFDB
366:Friendship is the gift of the gods, and the most precious boon to man. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, #NFDB
367:Know thyself and thou shall know all the mysteries of the gods and the universe. ~ Various, #NFDB
368:Mankind, in all his lusts, punishes himself. The gods have to do very little. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
369:Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was every granted by the gods to man. ~ Plato, #NFDB
370:The gods don’t care about men, no more than kings care about peasants. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
371:The path of the gods is a sunlit path in which difficulties lose all reality. ~ The Mother, #NFDB
372:We must believe in the gods no longer if injustice is to prevail over justice. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
373:Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain. I’m not even a god. ~ Jack Campbell, #NFDB
374:Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
375:Sometimes I feel like I'm writing pornography in the notebook of the gods. ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
376:The gods are blind. And men see only what they wish" - Tyrion Lannister ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
377:The gods have been created by Him, but of Him who knows the manner of His being? ~ Rig Veda, #NFDB
378:You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you. ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
379:Disbelieve nothing wonderful concerning the gods, nor concerning divine dogmas. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
380:If the gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
381:The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent in fishing. ~ Herbert Hoover, #NFDB
382:When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
383:Without the gods, how would I sing?' I asked.
With your own voice,' he said. ~ Erica Jong,#NFDB
384:He too,I think,should pray to the deathless ones himself.
All men need the gods... ~ Homer,#NFDB
385:Men in no way approach so nearly to the gods as in doing good to men. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
386:One of the lessons of history is that the gods can be silent in many languages. ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
387:The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. She'd ~ Larry Niven, #NFDB
388:The gods give, like twin flowers,
power and ruin, memory and oblivion. ~ Gabriela Mistral,#NFDB
389:The gods help those who help themselves, and my word, didn't I help myself. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
390:Time has nothing to do with the gifts that the gods give you; it's what you do. ~ Anita Baker, #NFDB
391:Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
392:Use him wisely. Few have been given such a weapon by the gods or Fates before. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
393:Chose me because I was good at it. At suffering. That is whom the gods choose. ~ Douglas Clegg, #NFDB
394:If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
395:In a thousand ages of the gods I could not tell thee of the glories of Himachal. ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
396:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little. ~ Diogenes, #NFDB
397:It was said that the gods favored fools because they were entertaining to watch. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
398:The world the gods made is too big for us, so we make ourselves a smaller one. ~ Sarah Micklem, #NFDB
399:Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
400:Are the gods not just?"
"Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were? ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
401:As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. ~ Protagoras, #NFDB
402:But I like not these great successes of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
403:Give someone the power of the gods and he will become as indifferent as the gods. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
404:If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
405:Men mock the gods until they need them, Kaz.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
406:Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, To lead those false who trust it. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
407:Of course we all would like to foretell the future and make contact with the gods. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
408:Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break a dead resistance in the mortal's heart ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
409:Surely you do not believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof? ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
410:Then the gods become no gods; death becomes no death; life becomes no life. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
411:...the path of the gods is a sunlit path in which difficulties lose all reality. ~ ~ The Mother, #NFDB
412:The souls of heroes are forged by the gods and tempered with the pain of life. ~ Brian Rathbone, #NFDB
413:This atheism concerning the gods of men pertains hereafter to any possible faith ~ Paul Ricoeur, #NFDB
414:Why would the gods care what happens to a child who doesn’t care about himself? ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
415:As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
416:Don’t spit into heaven... Don’t tell the gods your plans; they’ll only laugh. ~ Joseph Monninger, #NFDB
417:Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god? ~ Virgil, #NFDB
418:If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
419:If we don't have the omnipotence of gods, we at least can destroy like the gods. ~ Ernest Becker, #NFDB
420:Pully, hauly, tug with a will; the gods wiggle waggle, but the sky stands still. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
421:The battlefield of the gods is your heart. Your heart is shaped by your thoughts. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
422:The gods gave you a brain, boy,' he'd say. 'If you want to honor them, use it. ~ Mercedes Lackey, #NFDB
423:He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
424:Immortality is only for the gods," he whispered. "I wonder how they can stand it. ~ Barry Hughart, #NFDB
425:Immortality is only for the gods,” he whispered. “I wonder how they can stand it. ~ Barry Hughart, #NFDB
426:I saw my real gods . . the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
427:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.
~ Diogenes,#NFDB
428:It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
429:It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
430:Know thyself and thou shalt know the universe and the gods. ~ Inscription of the Temple of Delphi, #NFDB
431:Let the gods into your life and you rapidly lose faith in the natural laws. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
432:The tragic hero usurps the function of the gods and attempts to remake the world. ~ Helen Gardner, #NFDB
433:Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know! ~ Tom Stoppard, #NFDB
434:Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature. ~ Paul Gauguin, #NFDB
435:(‘With stupidity, even the gods struggle in vain.’) Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) ~ William Blum, #NFDB
436:As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
437:He whom the gods love dies young, whilst he is full of health, perception, and judgment. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
438:Human sacrifice empowered the gods with the spiritual life source of their victims. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
439:If extravagance were a fault, it would not have a place in the festivals of the gods. ~ Aristippus, #NFDB
440:If I and my two children cannot move the gods, the gods must have their reasons. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
441:If the gods weren’t long dead, I might accuse them of lining up to take a shit on me. ~ Luke Scull, #NFDB
442:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
443:Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
444:The gods, if they exist, are just the people who happen to live on the other side. ~ Brendan Myers, #NFDB
445:The gods of Djelibeybi In the river kingdom of Djelibeybi, the national religion ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
446:The gods to each ascribe a differing lot: Some enter at the portal. Some do not! ~ Ford Madox Ford, #NFDB
447:We drink to the gods,” Amiit said, raising his bowl. “May they never drink to us. ~ Daniel Abraham, #NFDB
448:When the gods amused themselves at a man’s expense, they had a tendency to overdue. ~ Josie Litton, #NFDB
449:When you love someone it catches the attention of the Gods, who punish you. ~ Cinda Williams Chima, #NFDB
450:Who can gauge all the ways in which the Gods who've created you craft your life? ~ Bill Willingham, #NFDB
451:have already in the fourth act killed all the Gods- for the sake of morality! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
452:Never ask the Gods for life set free from grief, but ask for courage that endureth long. ~ Menander, #NFDB
453:People in big empty places are likely to behave very much as the gods did on Olympus. ~ Edna Ferber, #NFDB
454:Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods. ~ A Bartlett Giamatti, #NFDB
455:The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
456:The gods throw the dice and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
457:They become gods, and the gods become tyrants, and the tyrants become slave masters. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
458:But I'd rather not add to my regrets. The gods know I got a queue of the bastards. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
459:Coming in Fall 2015 Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book One The Sword of Summer ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
460:Death is an ill; 'tis thus the Gods decide: / For had death been a boon, the Gods had died. ~ Sappho, #NFDB
461:guile was no match for the world and that hubris would always be punished by the gods. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
462:Having come from the light and from the gods, here I am in exile, separated from them. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
463:If we are the toys of the gods are not perhaps the gods themselves mere children? ~ Michael Moorcock, #NFDB
464:In nothing do humans approach so nearly to the gods as doing good to others. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
465:In the financial sector, those whom the gods want to destroy they first teach math. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
466:Know yourself and fit yourself to new fashions. For there is a new ruler among the gods. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
467:No god would do this to him, he said. Not even the all the gods in the underworld. ~ Nicole R Taylor, #NFDB
468:Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
469:The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
470:The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
471:We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
472:And may the gods keep us from a world where only the people who deserve love get it. ~ Daniel Abraham, #NFDB
473:Believe me, the gods spare the afflicted, and do not always oppress those who are unfortunate. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
474:If there is one thing that I have come to hate more than the gods, it is time. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
475:In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
476:Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
477:O, why should nature build so foul a den, Unless the gods delight in tragedies? ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
478:The gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
479:The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage. I ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
480:The skirts of the gods Drag in our mud. We feel the touch And take it to be a kiss. ~ Christopher Fry, #NFDB
481:UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
482:Always, he whispered. The gods do not always answer, but they are always listening. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
483:Even Zeus, the grandest of the gods, is no match for the goddesses of vengeance. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
484:... Life can be savored only if you look to the future and leave vengeance to the gods ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
485:Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them. ~ Plato, #NFDB
486:The girl had hoped for fog, but the gods ignored her prayers as gods so often did. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
487:Ugliness, n.: A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
488:You are given the gifts of the gods; you create your reality according to your beliefs. ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
489:and has found that the world, and the gods, and heaven are ... within his own Self. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
490:Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
491:Every thing has been achieved except for the gods to rule; for no one is free save Jupiter. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
492:For the gods know I
speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
493:He was Loki, a being who only half belonged to the Gods; his father was the Wind Giant. ~ Padraic Colum, #NFDB
494:It is unwise for them to be so very happy, for the gods will feel the need to humble us. ~ R L LaFevers, #NFDB
495:Love is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#NFDB
496:Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
497:Our souls are but leaves in a storm, and only the gods know where we will come to rest. ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
498:Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad (Latin). ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
499:The gods do make playthings of us. But it is we mortals who provide them with tools. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
500:The gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
501:You are not alone. You are part of the Olympian family. The gods have not abandoned you. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
502:It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little. ~ Diogenes of Sinope, #NFDB
503:I wondered why the gods no longer came to earth. It would make belief so much easier. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
504:May your dreams be gifts from the gods and may you open them with excitement and pleasure. ~ Harley King, #NFDB
505:On any occasion when one can discover the cause of events, one should not resort to the gods. ~ Polybius, #NFDB
506:Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive made (Latin). ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
507:The gods were not, in fact, smiling upon me. I at least hoped they weren't laughing at me. ~ Jeff Strand, #NFDB
508:Thor—the Batman or James Bond of the gods—has once again conquered the forces of evil. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
509:Without the interns to do their nefarious bidding, the gods turn to other tricks. ~ Carmen Maria Machado, #NFDB
510:Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that’s my advice. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
511:And the gods did not kill for hubris-for hubris, they let you live long enough to learn. ~ Alexander Chee, #NFDB
512:For the gods, though slow to see, see well, whenever a man casting aside worship turns folly. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
513:I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned. ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
514:Play out the game, act well your part, and if the gods have blundered, we will not. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
515:The Gods are the incarnation of what we can never be. The weariness of all hypotheses … ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
516:The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quotation and Originality, #NFDB
517:There is nothing which power cannot believe of itself, when it is praised as equal to the gods. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
518:You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods. ~ Robert Collier, #NFDB
519:Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer ~ Morihei Ueshiba, #NFDB
520:Farden, I swear to the gods, I will carry you through this door myself if you don’t hurry up! ~ Ben Galley, #NFDB
521:He whom the gods love dies young, while he is in health, has his senses and his judgments sound. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
522:If the gods cannot recognize your names,” she warned, “they will never hear your prayers. ~ Michelle Moran, #NFDB
523:If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you. But you must be ready for it. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
524:It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
525:It is the men of this land who are bloodthirsty and they lay their own guilt on the gods. ~ Edith Hamilton, #NFDB
526:I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
527:Nothing's promised us by the gods. Isn't that all the more reason to love while we can? ~ Livia Blackburne, #NFDB
528:Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book. ~ Mark Z Danielewski, #NFDB
529:We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
530:Will you walk the road to your destiny, or must the Gods drag you to it unwilling? ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
531:And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes Heaven drowsy with the harmony. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
532:Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
533:Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies. The gods on murtherers fix revengeful eyes. ~ George Chapman, #NFDB
534:Do not look upon this world with fear and loathing. Bravely face whatever the gods offer. ~ Morihei Ueshiba, #NFDB
535:Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? ~ Plato, #NFDB
536:Man hunts and fights. Woman contrives and dreams; she is the mother of fancy, of the gods. ~ Jules Michelet, #NFDB
537:May the gods defend me from heroes with duct tape. And heroes always seem to have duct tape. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
538:Mire is the man who hears not the gods when they cry to his bosom. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion, #NFDB
539:One sort of believes in recycling. But one believes in it as a kind of palliative to the gods. ~ Fay Weldon, #NFDB
540:Religion would have us believe that immortality is reserved for the gods. We remain skeptical. ~ Fiona Paul, #NFDB
541:So you can go down there and see the gods, sell Girl Scout cookies door-to-door or whatever? ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
542:The gods rule us still. They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
543:Undisturbed by fears and unspoiled by pleasures, we shall be afraid neither of death nor the gods. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
544:When the anger of the gods is incurred, wealth or power only bring more devastating punishment. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
545:Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small… and you will escape the jealousy of the great. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
546:You've injured me, Farshooter, most deadly of the gods;
And I'd punish you, if I had the power. ~ Homer,#NFDB
547:Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eons of the gods. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
548:Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
549:every study of the gods, of everyone’s gods, is a revelation of vengeance toward the innocent. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
550:Given the diverse raiment life sports, one never knows what the guises of the gods may be. ~ Stephanie Mills, #NFDB
551:Instead of preparing to die, prepare to live in the midst of all the exaltations of the Gods ~ Brigham Young, #NFDB
552:Life is loneliness, broken only by the gods taunting us with friendship and the odd bonk ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
553:Men resemble the gods in nothing so much as in doing good to their fellow creatures. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
554:Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can do nothing against that man. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
555:The gods cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Bhawani Mandir, #NFDB
556:They say he was fearless. And we’ve all got a bit of our fathers in us. The gods know I do. ~ Nicholas Eames, #NFDB
557:Which reminded me...I still owed the gods a debt. "You're a genius," I (Percy) told Annabeth. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
558:Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising. —Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
559:I could mend my soul no more than my face. Unless the gods helped. And why did the gods not help? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
560:Is something good because the gods approve of it? Or do the gods approve of it because it is good? ~ Socrates, #NFDB
561:Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
562:Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
563:The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
564:Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small... and you will escape the jealousy of the great. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
565:A good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and his affairs are not neglected by the gods. ~ Plato, #NFDB
566:No man who is not willing to help himself has any right to apply to his friends, or to the gods. ~ Demosthenes, #NFDB
567:The gods are capricious, and I was about to amuse them. And Alfred was right. I was a fool. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
568:The gods do make playthings of us ... but it is we mortals who provide them with the tools. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
569:The gods," he said. "Imprisoned in a thought. And perhaps they were never more than a dream. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
570:Do not try to find out - we're forbidden to know - what end the gods have in store for me, or for you. ~ Horace, #NFDB
571:Of all the things which a man has, next to the gods his soul is the most divine and most truly his own. ~ Plato, #NFDB
572:The gods listen, Rain. Put a thought out there often enough, and they'll think it's what you want. ~ C L Wilson, #NFDB
573:The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it... ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
574:The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to? ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
575:Which reminded me...I still owed the gods a debt.
"You're a genius," I (Percy) told Annabeth. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
576:And to kill time while awaiting death, I smoke slender cigarettes thumbing my nose to the gods. ~ Jules Laforgue, #NFDB
577:...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance towards the innocent. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
578:[...]every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance toward the innocent ~ John Irving, #NFDB
579:It does not do to neglect the gods of a place, whoever they may be. In the end, they are all one. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
580:It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity. ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
581:Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion. ~ Cyprian, #NFDB
582:Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof? ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
583:The battle with the gods thus hinges on our own mortality! Creativity is a yearning for immortality. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
584:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. ~ Guy Kawasaki, #NFDB
585:Whether the gods are inside or outside makes very little difference to whether there are gods. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
586:How wealthy the gods would be if we remembered the promises we made when we were in danger. ~ Jean de La Fontaine, #NFDB
587:If oxen and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate the gods in their own image. ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
588:The Gods know what it is to be eternal, and they love to toy with mortals who use absolutes. ~ Josephine Angelini, #NFDB
589:The myths about Hades and the gods, though they are pure invention, help to make men virtuous. ~ Diodorus Siculus, #NFDB
590:It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
591:The gods’ most savage curses come to us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
592:Tyson, thank the gods. Annabeth is hurt!” “You thank the gods she is hurt?” he asked, puzzled. “No! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
593:Tyson! Thank the gods, Annabeth is hurt!" "You thank the gods that she is hurt?" he asked, puzzled. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
594:Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves? ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
595:You have to decide to servant the gods of materialism all around us or the true and the living God. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
596:Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
597:If mortals wait until the gods remake the world to their liking to be happy, they are already in hell. ~ Bette Lord, #NFDB
598:Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god? ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
599:Then why do the gods even let me live? It would be safer to kill me.” “You’re right.” “Thanks a lot. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
600:They seem to think the females belong to the males here rather than the way the gods truly intended it. ~ G A Aiken, #NFDB
601:whether in peace or in war, man generally speaking is the best thing that ever happened to the gods. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
602:Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
603:For I am yearning to visit the limits of the all-nurturing Earth, and Oceans, from whom the gods are sprung. ~ Homer, #NFDB
604:In the end, we are what our pasts have made us and we live the lives the gods have chosen for us. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
605:Madness has a purpose! It’s a gift from the Gods, and like all their gifts it comes with a price, ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
606:One soul is enough, I know, to pay the debt for thousands, if one will go to the gods in all good faith. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
607:Sometimes the gods smile,” he grunted. “Yes, sir.” And sometimes they kick you over and stomp you flat. ~ Tanya Huff, #NFDB
608:The confounding of all right and wrong, in wild fury, has averted from us the gracious favor of the gods. ~ Catullus, #NFDB
609:The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
610:The veneration in which some people hold the gods says more about those people than about the gods ~ James Lovegrove, #NFDB
611:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
612:We pulled slow and steady through the darkness and we hammered the ears of the gods with prayers. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
613:you put too much faith in the power of the gods, if you think they can give and take away the shape of things ~ Ovid, #NFDB
614:All the gods in a mortal body dwelt, bore a single name. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, A Strong Son of Lightning, #NFDB
615:Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
616:How gracious are the gods in bestowing high positions; and how reluctant are they to insure them when given. ~ Lucian, #NFDB
617:Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else... Even the gods. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
618:If the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we've earned a little annihilation. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
619:I swear, the reason for full moons is so the gods can more clearly see the mischief they create. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
620:Know thyself, and thou shalt know all the mysteries of the gods and the universe.
~ the Temple of Apollo at Delphi,#NFDB
621:The gods are nothing more than the creations of humans needing something to blame for their problems. ~ Andy Peloquin, #NFDB
622:The Gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; what we dread can be conquered. ~ Luc Ferry, #NFDB
623:The gods use instruments,
Not ask their consent. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Short Stories - I, Act Five,#NFDB
624:Tyson! Thank the gods, Annabeth is hurt!"
"You thank the gods that she is hurt?" he asked, puzzled. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
625:Justice is in the hands of the gods, an old poet wrote, mortal hands hold only mercy and the sword. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
626:Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand. ~ Hippocrates, Regimen, IV, 87, #NFDB
627:So it is that the gods do not give all men gifts of grace - neither good looks nor intelligence nor eloquence. ~ Homer, #NFDB
628:That such baseness could occur alongside events of staggering significance was like a joke from the gods. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
629:The gods grow jealous of too much contentment anywhere, and they show their displeasure all of a sudden. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
630:Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
631:Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don't sit down without one of the gods. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
632:From space this Earth is incandescent with abominations - the gods write their signature in our entrails ~ Steve Aylett, #NFDB
633:Luck is not a magical ability or a gift from the gods. Instead, it is a way of thinking and behaving. ~ Richard Wiseman, #NFDB
634:Nothing that is really good and admirable is granted by the gods to men without some effort and application. ~ Xenophon, #NFDB
635:Only the gods tell him what to do, and you should beware of men who take their orders from the gods. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
636:Thank the Gods Below for paranoia. I classified it as a survival skill rather than a neurotic condition. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
637:The Gods have proclaimed Christ to have been most pious, but the Christians are a confused and vicious sect. ~ Porphyry, #NFDB
638:The world will fall, the gods will die, and I will never achieve a perfect score on this stupid machine. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
639:To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.
~ Aleister Crowley,#NFDB
640:We are all, as ever, the playthings of the Gods, and none of us can say what our tomorrows may bring; ~ Dennis Wheatley, #NFDB
641:Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot harm me,’50 he says, and: ‘If it pleases the gods, so be it. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
642:He spotted, for example, the importance of religion, or ‘fear of the gods’, in controlling Roman behaviour, ~ Mary Beard, #NFDB
643:Ignorance and fear create the gods, enthusiasm and deceit adorn them, and human weakness worships them. ~ Graham McNeill, #NFDB
644:It's not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here. ~ Vikram Seth, #NFDB
645:So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
646:The gods are cruel not because they make us work. They are cruel because they allow us to hope. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett, #NFDB
647:The Lord God has often lost out when competing with the gods of entertainment for our time and attention. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
648:The poets are nothing but interpreters of the gods, each one possessed by the divinity to whom he is in bondage. ~ Plato, #NFDB
649:These athletes can be considered the gods in certain ways and the fans can be considered parishioners. ~ Michael Strahan, #NFDB
650:They are not wise, then, who stand forth to buffet against Love; for Love rules the gods as he will, and me. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
651:Thus do the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it--the only satisfactory theodicy! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
652:We don't know enough, we'll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted. ~ Robinson Jeffers,#NFDB
653:...a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
654:Men knew better than they realized, when they placed the abode of the gods beyond the reach of gravity. ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
655:The gods destroy the heroes with a sudden blow, but they grind us mediocrities for weary, weary years. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
656:The gods where like the weather; sometimes good, sometimes bad, and either way, always beyond her. ~ Michelle Sagara West, #NFDB
657:Tyson, thank the gods. Annabeth is hurt!'
'You thank the gods she is hurt?' He asked, puzzled.
'No! ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
658:When science drove the gods out of nature, they took refuge in poetry and the porticos of civic buildings. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
659:You do not swing in a shield wall, you stab. May the gods ever send me enemies who swing their blades. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
660:Collaboration, it turns out, is not a gift from the gods but a skill that requires effort and practice. ~ Douglas B Reeves, #NFDB
661:Ever since the gods created the world, mortals have been forgetting from where their blessings come. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
662:How I miss the Hetawa baths! The gods put hot water and fragrant oil in this world for a reason, I tell you. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
663:If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead! ~ Edward Weston, #NFDB
664:Let us go whither the omens of the Gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is now cast." XXXIII. ~ Suetonius, #NFDB
665:must not trouble the gods with our affairs; they take no heed of our angers and disputes."Plutarch.] ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
666:Of course, it couldn't last. Those whom the gods would destroy utterly, they first give a taste of heaven. ~ Cory Doctorow, #NFDB
667:Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it. Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
668:The gods had been dead for fifteen years, after all, but their hate had lingered, and ruled in their stead. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
669:Then he had felt in his heart: “A path lies before you which you are called to follow. The gods await you. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
670:Three things are required of man—to worship the gods, to do no evil, and to maintain manly behavior. ~ Donna Fletcher Crow, #NFDB
671:We are like he who the gods have condemned to push the boulder up the hill only to watch it roll back down. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
672:All words have power, of course, but names are the most potent of all, which is why the gods had so many. ~ Joanne M Harris, #NFDB
673:For, as the myths tell us, it is by defying the gods that human beings have best expressed their humanity. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
674:If you did not know at age five that the gods are made up beings and the myths made up stories, you are a fool. ~ Suetonius, #NFDB
675:That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
676:Think not to match yourself against the gods, for men that walk the earth cannot hold their own with the immortals. ~ Homer, #NFDB
677:What does one do when one needs to pray to the gods for patience but a god is causing the need for patience? ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
678:What is to be taught I learn; what is to be discovered I seek; what is to be prayed for I sought from the gods. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
679:Whether in peace or in war, man, generally speaking, is the best thing that could have happened to the gods. ~ Jos Saramago, #NFDB
680:with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
681:Having come from the light and from the gods, here I am in exile, separated from them. —Fragment of Turfa’n M7 ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
682:He had done as his dreams had told him, but dreams know more than they reveal, even to the wisest of the gods. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
683:Human thought is thought that opens up into the future, and the future is inescapably the domain of the gods. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
684:I had at least loved Psyche truly. There, if nowhere else, I had the right of it and the gods were in the wrong. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
685:Praise be to the Weaver and all the gods!' said Shalhassan of Cathal. 'Finally she's done something adult! ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, #NFDB
686:The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies... they are the trees and the plants and the seeds. ~ Plato, #NFDB
687:The gods offer no reward for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it.” -Mark Twain ~ Angela Roquet, #NFDB
688:There was a moment of silence and then Sutherland breathed, “But, darling! Gossip is the food of the gods. ~ Andrew Holleran, #NFDB
689:Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
690:Faith in one’s own destiny was among the most valuable of the gifts which the gods could bestow upon a man, ~ Arthur C Clarke, #NFDB
691:Hope is that tiny light that the gods have given us so that we can find our way through our darkest hours. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
692:I am an ant in the battlefield of the gods. There's no room for pride or ego, and barely enough room for survival. ~ Susan Ee, #NFDB
693:It is said by some that the gods show us their bitter humor by molding us into what we hate most in others. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
694:Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. ~ Thucydides, #NFDB
695:Of what use are the gods
If they crown not our just desires on earth? ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#NFDB
696:Pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods or both. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
697:Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it.
Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed. ~ Orson Scott Card,#NFDB
698:Ruling the world is child’s play. To truly rule your soul is like ruling creation. It is above even the gods. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
699:The gods and myths of Babylon and Nineveh are in many cases modifications or developments of Sumerian theology; ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
700:The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston, #NFDB
701:What is Death, so it be but glorious? 'Tis a sunset; And mortals may be happy to resemble The Gods but in decay. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
702:When we are stirred to lament the loss of the gods, it is more than likely the gods who are doing the stirring. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
703:For what we are about to receive . . . ,” murmured someone over the command net. “May the gods make us thankful. ~ David Drake, #NFDB
704:If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end! ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
705:I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
706:Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
707:The gods we ourselves have created ruled us for centuries! What a great comedy! And what a great tragedy! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
708:The world is ashes and the gods are a horror. Tell me, Learned, what other place is there for me to go? ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
709:Ungit tells me things. I hear of terrible doings in this land, mortals aping the gods and stealing the worship due ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
710:Creativity is neither the product of neurosis nor simple talent, but an intense courageous encounter with the Gods. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
711:Deos placatos pictas efficiet et sanctitas. - Piety and holiness of life will propitiate the gods. ~ Cicero, De Officiis. II. 3, #NFDB
712:Fate is never too generous even to its favorites. Rarely do the gods grant a mortal more than one immortal deed. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
713:Man is the creator of the gods whom he worships in his temples. Therefore humanity has made its gods in its own image. ~ Hermes, #NFDB
714:No matter what the world said, my magic was beautiful. Even without powers, the gods had blessed me with a gift. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
715:Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods. ~ Ludwig van Beethoven, #NFDB
716:She told herself she should concentrate on those things in her control, not what was in the lap of the gods. ~ Elisabeth Storrs, #NFDB
717:That is how the worlds will end, in ash and flood, in darkness and in ice. That is the final destiny of the gods. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
718:The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
719:An old art spreading rumours about / Paradise, it begs outside the gates / Of the gods: the active gods come out. ~ Peter Porter, #NFDB
720:Flirting with random women in a tavern? That sounds like Helios. Well, it sounds like most of the gods, actually. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
721:From light lips and casual thoughts
The gods speak best as if by chance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#NFDB
722:If I am the pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make my mind up for me. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
723:If I'd been listening closely, I'd have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
724:The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
725:“The only freedom the gods grant usIs this: to submitOf our own free will to their sovereignty.” ~ Ricardo Reis/ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
726:But Ubba? Only the gods tell him what to do, and you should beware of men who take their orders from the gods. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
727:Even then, she knew that there is no such thing as sure. There is no absolute anything. The gods love to fuck with ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
728:If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the Gods must clearly smile on hunting. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
729:If you call upon the Gods and they answer, who is there to oppose or to challenge the integrity of your Path? ~ Andrew D Chumbley, #NFDB
730:My father, an occasionally wise man, once said that we were blessed only when the gods remained ignorant of us. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
731:On the day the gods chose for his destruction, Peter Hale ate his breakfast on the terrace of his condominium. ~ Phillip Margolin, #NFDB
732:The gods at will can shape a gladder strain, and from the lamentations at the graveside, a song of triumph may arise. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
733:The world will fall, the gods will die, and I will never achieve a perfect score on this stupid machine. -Dionysus ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
734:We are the gods of the atoms that make up ourselves but we are also the atoms of the gods that make up the universe. ~ Manly Hall, #NFDB
735:Who knows this ruler within, he knows the worlds and the gods and creatures and the Self, he knows all. ~ Mundaka Upanishad I.210, #NFDB
736:all the gods are the same unknowable mystery, just as each face of a jewel strikes light in a different direction ~ Kate Constable, #NFDB
737:Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
738:Like most Chinese, I am basically a fatalist - too sophisticated for religion and too superstitious to deny the gods. ~ Bette Lord, #NFDB
739:Our magic,’ said Tozi’s mother, ‘comes not from the gods, or from men, but from the source of all created things. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
740:Usually he didn’t bother the gods, and he hoped the gods wouldn’t bother him. Life was quite complicated enough. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
741:You're saying the gods don't have free will." "The power to make mistakes," Penny said. "Only we have that. Mortals ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
742:Despise all those things which when liberated from the body you will not want; invoke the Gods to become your helpers. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
743:Give people the power of the gods, and they'll eventually run down like wind-up toys for lack of reasons to go on. ~ Karl Schroeder, #NFDB
744:He's like a God. You worship the gods, but you don't go out with them. You only like guys like that from a distance. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
745:If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
746:My advice," he added in a whisper, "would be to make your peace with the gods, for I fear you will face them shortly. ~ Darren Shan, #NFDB
747:That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, an all to make a song for those to come. ~ Homer, #NFDB
748:The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible ….” So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind. ~ Ronald Wright, #NFDB
749:Usury lives in the pores of production, as it were, just as the gods of Epicurus lived in the space between the worlds. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
750:Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shpwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
751:You walked the path the gods ordained for you, Xena, Athena mind-whispered. You are not here to change it. No, ~ Martin H Greenberg, #NFDB
752:Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
753:Beginning to doubt the gods, there is only Atman...and where is Atman found but in the self? But where is this self? ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
754:Even when the gods stood on the side of righteousness, they were concerned with the act more than with the intent. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
755:Liquor does this? Even after you’re sober?” “A cruel joke, isn’t it? The gods put a price tag on everything, it seems. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
756:May the gods damn you all! (Talon)
The gods don’t damn us, we damn ourselves by our words and deeds. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
757:That man to me seems equal to the gods,
the man who sits opposite you
and close by listens
to your sweet voice ~ Sappho,#NFDB
758:The world will fall, the gods will die, and I will never achieve a perfect score on this stupid machine.
-Dionysus ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
759:We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
760:Whatever a man imagines he can attain, if he doesn't become too arrogant and encroach on the rights of the gods. ~ Charles Lindbergh, #NFDB
761:Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
762:Even then, she knew that there is no such thing as sure. There is no absolute anything. The gods love to fuck with us. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
763:For the gods, instead of what is most pleasing, will give what is most proper. Man is dearer to them than he is to himself. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
764:Gegen die Dummheit kämpfen selbst die Götter vergebens ("Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain") ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
765:Grateful for his mistakes, man should be the gods, because by overcoming the faults the stronger force is developed. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
766:If you knew what the Gods have in store for you, you would run naked and dance on the beach.
~ Vikings, The Seer to Rollo, Vikings,#NFDB
767:Surely all the world has rolled upside down. Perhaps the gods have gotten drunk on comet-wine again, like in the tales. ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
768:The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
769:The gods of the Greeks were like helpless children compared to humankind today and the powers we now wield. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
770:This world is a people of friends, and these friends are first the gods and next men whom Nature has made for each other. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
771:We took out our heavy revolvers (all of a sudden there were revolvers in the dream) and joyfully killed the Gods. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
772:A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream. ~ William Faulkner, #NFDB
773:And this is the life of the Gods, and of Godlike men, a life without love of the world, a flight of the Alone to the Alone. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
774:But he’s like a god. You worship the gods but you don’t go out with them. You only like guys like that from a distance. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
775:Don't fear the gods,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure. ~ Epicurus,#NFDB
776:He who thus knows, “I am the Eternal”, the gods themselves cannot make him other, for he is their own self. ~ Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, #NFDB
777:If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
778:It is a law, of the gods which is never broken, to sell somewhat dearly the great benefits which they confer on us. ~ Pierre Corneille, #NFDB
779:Life is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh… or else you'll weep yourself to death. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
780:She had dared to dream beyond what someone else had ordained her destiny to be, beyond what even the gods had destined. ~ Mia Sheridan, #NFDB
781:That students of philosophy ought first to learn logics, then ethics, next physics, last of all the nature of the gods.”1 ~ David Hume, #NFDB
782:The gods being always close to men perceive those who afflict others with unjust devices and do not fear the wrath of heaven. ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
783:The Gods play games with us, but if we open ourselves then we can become a part of the game instead of its victims. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
784:We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
785:When the gods know that a god hath fallen, With this kindly feeling They do encourage him-- Be thou a god again and again. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
786:Because not wanting the prize the gods have arranged for you - that just might offend the hell right out of them. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
787:Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle! ~ Stevie Wonder, #NFDB
788:Live with the gods. And he does so who constantly shows them that his soul is satisfied with what is assigned to him. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
789:Some people are just born evil. You know, in the good old days, they threw those babies off cliffs to appease the Gods. ~ Emily Goodwin, #NFDB
790:Where the body went, the mind followed. Give someone the power of the gods and he will become as indifferent as the gods. ~ Rick Yancey, #NFDB
791:(Brian) Fawcett himself had scribbled in a letter to a friend, 'Those whom the gods intend to destroy they first make mad! ~ David Grann, #NFDB
792:Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
793:The Gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us—the first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them. ~ William Bridges, #NFDB
794:The language of men was involved with only one hemisphere in order to leave the other free for the language of the gods. ~ Julian Jaynes, #NFDB
795:Truly, we are the gods' own children, forged in the fire of our tortured pasts, but also blessed with unimaginable gifts. ~ R L LaFevers, #NFDB
796:Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods? Where's the street-wise Hercules, to fight the rising odds? ~ Bonnie Tyler, #NFDB
797:whether or not people get the gods that they deserve, they tend to get the gods (and demons) that their animals deserve— ~ Wendy Doniger, #NFDB
798:Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love. ~ Kate Chopin, #NFDB
799:I know the gods exist, whether i believe them worth worshipping is an entirely different matter.
Brakandaran té Carn ~ Jennifer Fallon,#NFDB
800:It's not the gods
But our own hearts
We need to fear.
The evil starts
Against all odds
Not there but here. ~ Vikram Seth,#NFDB
801:Mitt der Dummheit k a« mpfen G o« tter selbst vergebens. Even the gods themselves struggle in vain against stupidity. ~ Elsa Schiaparelli, #NFDB
802:reminding him of what he once intended to be before he ate the apple of wisdom and became as the gods and devils. ~ Grace Livingston Hill, #NFDB
803:To live the life the gods have given you, you must clutch wisely, then run. Run like the houds of hell on a sinner's scent! ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
804:We should use all the tools the gods gave us,” Juliette said. “Except for the one you wield, this power to make others fear. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
805:A fierce unrest seethes at the core, of all existing things:, it was the eager wish to soar, that gave the gods their wings. ~ Don Marquis, #NFDB
806:Better and safer is an assured peace than a victory hoped for. The one is in your own power, the other is in the hands of the gods. ~ Livy, #NFDB
807:Durkheim be damned, those of us who actually honor the Gods believe that there is more to religion than social mummery. ~ Galina Krasskova, #NFDB
808:Of all the Gods, Love is the best friend of humankind, the helper and healer of all ills that stand in the way of human happiness. ~ Plato, #NFDB
809:Though the favourites of the gods die young, they also live eternally in the company of gods." - Friedrich Nietzsche ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
810:He came to understand the difference between the gods' blessed and a smart man. His uncle was one. His father the other. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
811:I’m not above using unsavory beings to kick the Gods’ asses, but the Phantoms are too unpredictable for my taste,” I said. ~ Laura Kreitzer, #NFDB
812:Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods. ~ Elaine de Kooning, #NFDB
813:It is not for the gods to decide whether or not Man exists - it is for Man to decide whether or not the gods exist. ~ J Michael Straczynski, #NFDB
814:The gods are for whatever we wish. That is the point of gods. The gods will carry me onwards, and that is all that matters. ~ Kieron Gillen, #NFDB
815:The gods do make playthings of us,” the priest-king acknowledged. “But it is we mortals who provide them with the tools. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
816:To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
817:You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.”
“The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals. ~ Lev Grossman,#NFDB
818:A certain peace is better and safer than a victory in prospect; the former is at your own disposal, the latter depends upon the gods. ~ Livy, #NFDB
819:And the fact remained, whatever games the gods played, it was hard-working dirt-poor bastards like him who suffered for it. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
820:Frailty and cruelty are our gifts to the world. Who is to say that suffering is not the greatest of all gifts from the gods? ~ Douglas Clegg, #NFDB
821:How did you end up with an assassin and newly crowned king as your confidantes?"
"The gods have a wicked sense of humor. ~ Mary E Pearson,#NFDB
822:I could only hope he’d be called up soon to return to his regiment, and if the gods be just, kicked in the head by a horse. ~ Mary E Pearson, #NFDB
823:Loudly she asked the gods to defend her in her innocence; silently she prayed for her accusers to suffer sudden, painful deaths. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
824:Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
825:The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
826:The Soul is the sum of all the gods. "All the gods are this one Soul, and all dwell in the Soul." (Manu Smṛti 12.119. [13]) ~ Alain Dani lou, #NFDB
827:To deny ones' true nature and the gifts given you by the gods is to tempt disaster. You cannot hide behind the mask forever. ~ Midori Snyder, #NFDB
828:Well, the gods love a man who laughs at hardship.” “Hardship is boring as all hell. Gotta find laughs if you can’t stay drunk, ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
829:A Spartan, seeing a man taking up a collection for the gods, said that he did not think much of gods who were poorer than himself. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
830:It depends on what you mean by the word religion. Certainly I don't go to temples and pray to the gods or anything like that. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
831:Nobody knows better than I that the gods exist. Whether I believe them worthy of adoration is an entirely different matter. ~ Jennifer Fallon, #NFDB
832:That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
833:The Egyptians treated her like a pharaoh even though she was from a Greek family and a woman. She worshipped the gods of Egypt. ~ Terry Deary, #NFDB
834:Truly the gods have not from the beginning revealed all things to mortals, but by long seeking, mortals discover what is better. ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
835:We're going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools of America. ~ Pat Buchanan, #NFDB
836:A day will come when the European god of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the Nile. ~ William Winwood Reade, #NFDB
837:A religion is a kind of group dream. ~ Weston La Barre, “Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion,” Flesh of the Gods (1972), p. 264, #NFDB
838:Blessed is he who has acquired a wealth of divine wisdom, but miserable he in whom there rests a dim opinion concerning the gods. ~ Empedocles, #NFDB
839:Homer invented these fictions and attributed human powers to the gods; I wish he had attributed divine powers to us ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
840:I do not have an act. I just do Eartha Kitt... I want to be whoever Eartha Kitt is until the gods take me wherever they take me. ~ Eartha Kitt, #NFDB
841:If men think that a ruler is religious and has a reverence for the Gods, they are less afraid of suffering injustice at his hands. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
842:Isn't man but a blossom taken by wind, and only the mountains and the sea and the stars and this land of the gods everlasting? ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
843:One act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one's time in religious offerings to the gods . . . ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
844:Only one accomplishment is beyond both the power and the mercy of the Gods. They cannot make the past as though it had never been. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
845:Talking to the gods had been a much more comfortable proposition when there had seemed no danger of Their talking back. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
846:The gods are nothing more than the creations of humans who require something to blame for their problems," the Hunter scoffed. ~ Andy Peloquin, #NFDB
847:The gods have said, and the Greeks also, that when a man wishes to evade his duties he can summon any illness to assist him, ~ Taylor Caldwell, #NFDB
848:The word I use is hubris. Our word for arrogance that scrapes the stars, for violence and towering rage as ugly as the gods. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
849:And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
850:And this Kino knew also - that the gods do not love men's plans, and the gods do not love success unless it comes by accident. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
851:As a breath on glass, - As witch-fires that burn, The gods and monsters pass, Are dust, and return. (“The Face of the Skies”) ~ George Sterling, #NFDB
852:If you have a good spine, the gods will chase you. Nobody has psychological or emotional problems, everyone has a bad spine. ~ Bikram Choudhury, #NFDB
853:Naglfar—a ship constructed from the fingernails of the dead, sails the end of the world to wage war against the gods. ~ Tom Sweterlitsch, #NFDB
854:Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the Government. —Bertrand Russell ~ Graham E Fuller, #NFDB
855:This is what it had come to. Glitter. How he thought glitter had been a good idea, the Gods only knew."
- Charles' thoughts ~ K F Breene,#NFDB
856:Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
857:As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. ~ Voltairine de Cleyre, #NFDB
858:Even the gods were impressed. They descended from Olympus and loaded Hercules down with so much swag, it got embarrassing. Hermes ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
859:I am the goddess of the Mist,” Hecate explained. “I am responsible for keeping the veil that separates the world of the gods from ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
860:I’m aware of the cruelty of the gods, but they do believe in balance.” “Without that balance, the world would be a cold, dark place. ~ Lia Davis, #NFDB
861:Once upon a time, there was a man as great as the gods…
But even the great can tremble with fear.
Even the great can fall ~ Mary E Pearson,#NFDB
862:Sometimes, when the gods aren't looking and destiny loses its way, even good people get a taste of good luck in their lives. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
863:Still, from what he had observed in Annawadi, the fact that a boy knew about the gods didn’t mean the gods would look after the boy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
864:The ancients rightly called this internal longing for wholeness “fate” or “destiny,” the “inner voice” or the “call of the gods.” ~ Rcihard Rohr, #NFDB
865:The reason meant for nearness to the gods
And uplift to heavenly scale by the touch of mind ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#NFDB
866:These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge. ~ Claude Levi Strauss, #NFDB
867:You must never deprive the people of their belief in
the power of the gods, and you must never deprive yourself of it either. ~ Karen Essex,#NFDB
868:An old sculptor said of his carvings, whose backs were to be out of all possible inspection, “But the gods will see." Every ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
869:Before the gods that made the gods had seen their sunrise pass, the white horse of the white horse vale was cut out of the grass ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
870:But like a shining answer from the gods
Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Call to the Quest, [T5],#NFDB
871:Every great legend begins with that one person who raises an angry fist to the sky and flips off the gods in defiance. Acheron ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
872:Forewilled by the gods, Alexander,
All things happen on earth and yet we must strive who are mortals, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
873:He often referred to Rush’s three members—Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee—as “the Holy Trinity” or “the Gods of the North. ~ Ernest Cline, #NFDB
874:Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods, magnificent, which they give of their own will, no man could have them for wanting them. ~ Homer, #NFDB
875:Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
876:You don't go after poetry, you take what comes. Maybe the gods do it through me but I certainly do a hell of a lot of the work. ~ Phyllis Gotlieb, #NFDB
877:Among my kindred, it is said that the gods of the deep places created stone to house us, iron to serve us, and gold to feed us. ~ Jonathan Moeller, #NFDB
878:As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
879:Every man is capable of doing good to another, but to contribute to the happiness of an entire society is to become akin to the gods ~ Montesquieu, #NFDB
880:In the elder days of art Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the Gods are everywhere ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
881:Is that not the Promethean fable, that the fire stolen from the gods will light men their way even while it burns their hands? ~ Zia Haider Rahman, #NFDB
882:Outside the port, the slashed rock of the unnamed asteroid tumbled and spun in dynamics known only to the gods of chaos mathematics. ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
883:Suddenly, the gods have stopped saying yes and have started making really obnoxious farting noises. In my face. With their armpits. ~ Jody Gehrman, #NFDB
884:The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace. ~ Thomas M Disch, #NFDB
885:The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows. They are polluted off'rings, more abhorred! Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
886:True nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought and influenced by the mind
~ Dion Fortune,#NFDB
887:—What is it about wine, Harry?
—What d'ya mean?
—What is it that cures us?
—Made to glorify the gods. And dull the idiots. ~ Colum McCann,#NFDB
888:While the Gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in their day of decadence that a strong light beats into heaven. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
889:You heard the decree of the gods, boy. You’ve become entirely too close to this mortal. You are hereby banned from further contact! ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
890:As far as the gods go, right now is a trickster moment we’re living in, more than goddess time, Zeus time, or any other kind of time. ~ Martin Shaw, #NFDB
891:Blood and chaos is the wine and meat of the gods—most of them, anyway. Especially the ones most eager to meddle in mortal affairs. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
892:He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armor shouting "All the Gods are bastards! ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
893:No, I will finish what I started, here, at Glimpa’s Arch. The act belongs to me, the consequence, pleasing or not, belongs to the gods. ~ J Z Colby, #NFDB
894:Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
895:The gods are alone, and when they stroll, by chance, on earth, they are pathological cases or buffoons, or histrions...who are despised! ~ Rachilde, #NFDB
896:The king of the gods took away this man’s family, everyone that he loved—and still this particular man did not surrender. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover, #NFDB
897:The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
898:He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
899:Knowing that the gods exist makes one less likely to mistake oneself for a god. In this way myths help tell the ego what it is not. ~ Edward Edinger, #NFDB
900:The gods have died, and we distrust our dreams. We emerge from the void, stare back at it for a short while, and then rejoin the void. ~ J G Ballard, #NFDB
901:Enjoy your life, fill your belly with wine and food, and accept death. The Gods kept immortality for themselves, death is the lot of man. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
902:Harder! Harder! Strike at it, for the gods’ sake! It’s a Parthian, not your grandmother! I swear if you don’t put some effort into— What? ~ M C Scott, #NFDB
903:He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.' ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
904:If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
905:I knew and cared nothing about the will of the gods. I only knew that I would land where I myself had been cast, wherever that would be. ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
906:Keeping the Gods first doesn’t mean that you withdraw from life, rather it informs every aspect of the way you engage with living. ~ Galina Krasskova, #NFDB
907:Present day kings aren’t very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation, and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
908:There's no shame in loving life above death. Otherwise I would be dead. What use would that be to the gods, who will not die themselves? ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
909:The true nature of the gods is that of magical images shaped out of the astral plane by mankind's thought, and influenced by the mind. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
910:Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.- ~ Langston Hughes, #NFDB
911:You can pretend it's a play,' I told him. 'Such small things do not anger the gods. Plays only anger the mortal men who watch them ~ Danielle Bennett, #NFDB
912:As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! ~ Rudyard Kipling,#NFDB
913:A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
914:Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
915:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods. ~ Plato, #NFDB
916:The favours of the Gods are too awful to be coveted. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest, To His Sister, #NFDB
917:Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
918:After all, suffering, though of course unwanted, has its uses. Without it we would be like the gods, never longing for release from saṃsāra. ~ ntideva, #NFDB
919:By all the gods, I desire you, but you must know that you have my love. It's given, sieva. Wholly entrusted to you. Have a care with it. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
920:Drink," says the White Logic. "The Greeks believed that the gods gave them wine so that they might forget the miserableness of existence. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
921:I don’t need to be reminded that we’re up to our heads in dark water. I just want you boys to remember that we’re the gods-damned sharks. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
922:Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortals heart,
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#NFDB
923:The others agreed that the gifts of the ancients and the gods were sometimes confusing, and Desidora did eventually decide to stay in. ~ Patrick Weekes, #NFDB
924:Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
925:all the best, greatest, purest and worthiest things in life are beyond all market-value and that the gifts of the gods are not for sale. ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
926:Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
927:Being is good, but getting rich is better.... If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as poor Caligula. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
928:Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
929:I'm surprised your mother never turned you in."
"She tried once. Nyk put the fear of the gods into her."
-Galene & Fain ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
930:The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,
The rapture that the gods sustain he bore. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods,#NFDB
931:There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
932:Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. —Albert Einstein ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
933:You have debased my child....You have made him a laughingstock of intelligence...a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere. ~ Lee De Forest, #NFDB
934:Be not too hasty either with praise or blame; speak always as though you were giving evidence before the judgement-seat of the Gods. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
935:It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
936:Love is a honey and poison in the breast
Drunk by it as the nectar of the gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,#NFDB
937:Safety is an illusion, as is faith without temptation. We’re imperfect, unlike the gods, but in that imperfection we may yet make them jealous. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
938:The gods damn you, look what you've done! If I want to grow this back, I'll have to endure the most terrifying sex imaginable! Gaahhhhhhh! ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
939:When an oath is taken ... the mind is more attentive; for it guards against two things, the reproach of friends and offence against the gods. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
940:As Nietzsche said, "God is dead". The gods die but the Titans gain power.
Technology is just the clothes, the armour, of the Titans. ~ Ernst J nger,#NFDB
941:"Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly." ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
942:Honour your parents; worship the gods; hurt not animals. ~ Triptolemus, according to Porphyry (On Abstinence IV.22) From his traditional laws or precepts., #NFDB
943:If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
944:It is not simply to show power...that a man...throws coppers into the sea...In doing this he is also sacrificing to the gods and spirits... ~ Marcel Mauss, #NFDB
945:It was fate, I thought. Just fate. We think we control our own lives, but the gods play with us like children playing with straw dolls. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
946:Our mind is the scene upon which the gods perform their plays, and we don’t know the beginning and we don’t know the end. ~ Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, #NFDB
947:The gods! long since they hold us in contempt,
Scornful of gifts thus offered by the lost!
Why should we fawn and flinch away from doom? ~ Aeschylus,#NFDB
948:The Gods prodigiously sometimes reverse
The common rule of Nature and compel
Matter with soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act II,#NFDB
949:The movement of time is guaranteed by the birth of generation after generation, a never-ending succession that fills the gods with fear. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin, #NFDB
950:But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to the gods. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
951:I swear to the gods that if you answer one more of my questions with a question, I am going to go all Tyson and bite your damned ear off... ~ Nicole Peeler, #NFDB
952:I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
953:I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
954:The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he. ~ Plato, #NFDB
955:They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
956:Those who are guided by reason are generally successful in their plans; those who are rash and precipitate seldom enjoy the favour of the gods. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
957:if you can rid your life of realities by night and keep your days as one long dream always, then you will indeed be blessed of the Gods. Gath, ~ Dave Duncan, #NFDB
958:In the beginning the gods did not at all reveal all things clearly to mortals, but by searching men in the course of time find them out better. ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
959:In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods are everywhere ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,#NFDB
960:Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Gods. Your nights will flame with fire. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
961:O that the gods would bring to a miserable end such fictitious, crazy, deformed labours, with which the minds of the studious are blinded! ~ William Gilbert, #NFDB
962:Prometheus had stolen fire from the gods and suffered the consequences. I had returned the gift of the gods, and the price had been my dreams. ~ Jim C Hines, #NFDB
963:Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state. ~ Plato, #NFDB
964:So in a sense it’s we with faith who create gods, not the gods who create us. And, if that’s the case, then it’s we who created the universe. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
965:Truth is for the gods; from our human point of view, it is an ideal, towards which we can approximate, but which we cannot hope to reach. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
966:He felt, in a way so familiar as to be almost dreary, the chosen victim of the gods, the self-admitted traitor, the one destined for judgment. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
967:I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
968:The gods used to walk among us.
True, said death.
Why did you leave?
Ah, sweet child, it was your people who left us. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
969:Menopause: it had to be the gods’ ironic warning to (or just plain nasty trick on) humanity for having artificially extended the life span, ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
970:The two commandments go beneath social performance and social appearance to the deep, elemental, defining issue of “God versus the gods. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
971:Always ascends the zigzag of the gods
And upward points the spirit’s climbing Fire. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind,#NFDB
972:Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy labour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
973:It is the mind that makes us rich and happy, in what condition soever we are, and money signifies no more to it than it does to the gods. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
974:I've definitely had my fair share at shaking my fists at the gods of Hollywood, but I'm learning that I cannot think that way or I will go crazy. ~ Sarah Drew, #NFDB
975:The gods of one age become the devils of the age to follow. The priests look forward to the age to come and see only the end of the world. ~ Lon Milo DuQuette, #NFDB
976:The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods. ~ Paul Lafargue, #NFDB
977:The realms of the gods and demons - heaven, purgatory, hell - are of the substance of dreams. Myth, in this view, is the dream of the world. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
978:Vídarr is the name of one, the silent god. He has a thick shoe. He is nearly as strong as Thor; in him the gods have great trust in all struggles. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
979:What the gods most ask of us is that we attend them-bear conscious witness to their energies, of which their forms are but their material husk. ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
980:Where is the chief abode or holy place of the gods?" Hárr answered: 'That is at the Ash of Yggdrasill; there the gods must give judgment everyday. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
981:Whether on earth or in the abodes of the gods, all beings are upon three evil paths; they are in thepower of existence, desire and ignorance. ~ Latita Vistara, #NFDB
982:But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods
can defend a man, not even one they love, that day
when fate takes hold and lays him out at last. ~ Homer,#NFDB
983:Her pragmatism of the transcendent Truth
Fills silence with the voices of the gods, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life,#NFDB
984:I can't tell you if this is the right path; the future is too mountainous to see to far ahead. ... Only 'the gods' know what awaits us at its end. ~ Max Brooks, #NFDB
985:“Religion would have us believe that
immortality is reserved for the gods.
We remain skeptical.”
-THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE ~ Fiona Paul,#NFDB
986:Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all along. Fate wins. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
987:Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
988:The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration. ~ Paul Brunton, #NFDB
989:Froi heard Zabat's voice echo over and over again throughout the gorge. Wonderful. The gods had found a way of multiplying the idiot's voice. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
990:I am yours. I've always been yours. I'll be yours here on earth, in Elysium. I'll fight the gods if I have to. I'll stand before them and declare ~ Mia Sheridan, #NFDB
991:If death be the last thing I do, why, I pray the gods and heroes of my people that I try to do it as well as I have done more pleasant things. ~ Alice Borchardt, #NFDB
992:I'm very happy with what the gods have given me. I take life as she presents herself to me, and whatever you see in my face is what I have earned. ~ Eartha Kitt, #NFDB
993:In this dog-eat-dog world, he thought, when you get old and even common sense hurts, a crumb of kindness or pity is a dish fit for the gods. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
994:Remember how long you have been putting off these things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods, and yet do not use it. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
995:Speak the truth do not become angered and give when asked, even be it a little. By these three conditions one goes to the presence of the gods. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
996:The artist was notoriously cantankerous and he assumed, at first, that we were trying to mock the gods, and him, with a prank or a hoax. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
997:Those who make them [idols] will be like them, and so will all who trust in them” (see Ps. 115:1–8). We become like the gods that we worship! ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
998:A sole thing the Gods
Demand from all men living, sacrifice:
Nor without this shall any crown be grasped. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Love and Death,#NFDB
999: Chapter XVI.--He Disapproves of the Mode of Educating Youth, and He Points Out Why Wickedness is Attributed to the Gods by the Poets. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1000:Come, sir, come,
I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love.
Look, here I have you, thus I let you go,
And give you to the gods. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1001:If all the world be worth thy winning. / Think, oh think it worth enjoying: / Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee, / Take the good the gods provide thee. ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1002:Madam, you’re complicating our night, so before we come in and complicate yours, kindly cork your bullshit bottle and close the gods-damned window! ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
1003:The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1004:I could be stronger than all the gods in the pantheon, Maia, but without you it means nothing. Nothing.” - from Rosanna Leo's For the Love of a God. ~ Rosanna Leo, #NFDB
1005:If by religion we mean a belief in humanity rather than the gods, an effort to make man better and a little happier, then yes, I'm very religious. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
1006:Life and treasure and fame to cast on the wings of a moment,
Fiercer joy than this the gods have not given to mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1007:Nearly everyone in ancient Egypt exhorted the gods to let the Pharaoh live 'forever. These collective prayers failed. Their failure constitutes data. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1008:Show me someone untroubled with disturbing thoughts about illness, danger, death, exile or loss of reputation. By all the gods, I want to see a Stoic! ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1009:The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and the righteousness of men. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1010:Among whom the gods bless, high on the list are the music people, who tune into celestial vibe-brations and give mortals a taste of immortal sensations. ~ Ruby Dee, #NFDB
1011:An animal more like the gods than these, more intellectually capable and able to control the other beasts, had not as yet appeared: now man was born, either ~ Ovid, #NFDB
1012:If I am a pawn of the gods, it is because they know me so well, not because they make up my mind for me."
Eddis, "The Queen of Attolia ~ Megan Whalen Turner,#NFDB
1013:It is the gods who have been accused. They have answered her. If they in turn accuse her, a greater judge and a more excellent court must try the case. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1014:Let us revenge this with
our pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know I
speak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1015:That is what we do each time we see someone who falls in love with evil strategies, until we hurl him into misery, so he may learn to fear the Gods. ~ Aristophanes, #NFDB
1016:There are always those to whom all self-revelation is contemptible, unless it ends with a noble thanks to the gods for the Unconquerable Soul. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
1017:This was a man who moved like the gods were watching: every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
1018:To every religion the gods of other religions are only notions concerning God, but its own conception of God is to it God himself, the true God. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1019:We're more Christian than the Pope. And, I mean, that's not our religion. We pray to the Gods of our conquerors... all black and brown people. ~ Immortal Technique, #NFDB
1020:(“Don’t lurk, Brenner. You’re an acolyte. Acolytes look worried all the time. Like they’re afraid they’ll do something the gods will disapprove of.”) ~ T Kingfisher, #NFDB
1021:Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1022:Ezri, if you need to hit me, then by the gods hit me. If that's what you need, I won't fight you for a second. Not ever. Just...tell me what you want. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
1023:For life is a trumpery thing at best, isn't it? A few moments, a few words, between dark and dark. But in true love you keep company with the Gods. ~ Winston Graham, #NFDB
1024:How amazing it is to be alive Anyone who lives and breathes and puts both feet on the ground, What possible reason could he have for envying the gods ~ Paul Claudel, #NFDB
1025:Many things the gods achieve beyond our judgement,'" said the sorrowful girl. "'What we thought is not confirmed and what we thought not God contives. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
1026:Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1027:The gods have chosen to entertain me with chronic eyestrain headaches. Very poisonous episodes. So I don't do a lot of reading anymore except on tape. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1028:The gods want to bring a better day, and you are their messengers. Trust not in all you see. Trust only in your hearts. And in us, who love you both. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
1029:There must, whether the gods see it or not, be something great in the mortal soul. For suffering, it seems, is infinite, and our capacity without limit. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1030:A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end. ~ Walter Savage Landor, #NFDB
1031:Fear of the gods arose from man’s ignorance of God and his ignorance of the laws that govern the world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Godward Emotions, #NFDB
1032:Gone is the trust to be placed in oaths; I cannot understand if the gods you swore by then no longer rule, or men live by new standards of what is right. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1033:I don't give a damn, laddie. Until the actual moment, when they cut me down, I shall still be looking to win. And the gods of war are fickle at best. ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
1034:I fear that there will be no neat ending to this, in the manner of the old Greek plays. Where the Gods descend, and all is explained, and tidied away. ~ Paul McAuley, #NFDB
1035:If you are going to try, go all the way or don't even start. If you follow it you will be alive with the gods. It is the only good fight there is. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1036:I will set up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written, and where no man’s name is written yet I will raise a monument to the gods. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1037:Kill them. Kill them all. Remind the world what it means to be Arya. Remind the world what it is to walk with the gods.
– Syoddhan Kauravya ~ Krishna Udayasankar,#NFDB
1038:Kill them. Kill them all. Remind the world what it means to be Arya. Remind the world what it is to walk with the gods.
– Syoddhan Kauravyaw ~ Krishna Udayasankar,#NFDB
1039:Music is still the antidote for the nameless...Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is all sufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods... ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1040:Save your energy,” he said. “The future changes as we stand here, else we are the game pieces of the gods, not their heirs, as we have been promised. ~ Margaret Weis, #NFDB
1041:Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
1042:The gods know what's important, what's wrong about you. They know everything. If you go out searching for the Holy Grail, they won't let you find it. ~ Tom Spanbauer, #NFDB
1043:The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
1044:Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world? ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1045:Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
1046:Man is a venerating animal. He venerates as easily as he purges himself. When they take away from him the gods of his fathers, he looks for others abroad. ~ Max Jacob, #NFDB
1047:Sixty years ago, these men and women broke the heavens, and made the gods weep. They had spent the time since learning how hard it was to run a world. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
1048:Some say those are just stories, but I don’t believe that. The gods rule us still. They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
1049:The gods have sent medicines for the venom of serpents, but there is no medicine for a bad woman. She is more noxious than the viper, or than fire itself. ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1050:There are those who believe destiny rests at the feet of the gods, but the truth is that it confronts the conscious of man with a burning challenge. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
1051:The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
1052:They are dying, the old oracles sent to Laius, now our masters strike them off the rolls. Nowhere Apollo's golden glory now -- the gods, the gods go down. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1053:Ah, reader! I would the gods had made thee rhythmical, that thou mightest comprehend the thousandth part of my labours in the evasion of cacophony. ~ Thomas de Quincey, #NFDB
1054:I don't know why the gods made Fate our master then gave us a fighting spirit, perhaps only for their own amusement, perhaps to give us a thirst for life. ~ Scott Oden, #NFDB
1055:Knowing what I know now…it would be harder. But I would hope…I would pray, Royse, that the gods would still lend me such foolishness in my need. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1056:Most religions live from a narrative that shapes their relationship with the divine other, God or the gods, and with the human other, the stranger. ~ Timothy Radcliffe, #NFDB
1057:My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and—oh, yeah—head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1058:The earliest Greek philosopher's criticized Homer's mythology because the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egotistic and treacherous. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1059:The strands (the gods) weave out of our mortal lives are like a pattern visible only from the heavens; we here on earth can only guess at their designs ~ Steven Saylor, #NFDB
1060:We swallowed a few bites-not to much scince the food of the gods can burn you to ashes is you overindulge. I guess thats why you don't see many fat gods ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1061:Achilles tilted back his head, clenched his fists, and roared his triumph to the gods, to the ghost of Patroclus, to the city of Troy, to the whole world. ~ Jodi Taylor, #NFDB
1062:He whose senses have become calm like horses perfectly tamed by a driver, who has rid himself of pride and concupiscence, the gods themselves envy his lot. ~ Dhammapada, #NFDB
1063:I gazed at him, silhouetted in the moonlight from the window - feeling soft inside, when I never felt soft, and worshipful, when I thought the gods had died. ~ Amy Lane, #NFDB
1064:In his tent, Achilles grieved with his whole being and the gods saw he was a man already dead, a victim of the part that loved, the part that was mortal. ~ Louise Gl ck, #NFDB
1065:In the flesh,” Maharet said. “In the flesh all wisdom begins. Beware the thing that has no flesh. Beware the gods, beware the idea, beware the devil. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1066:O, that the gods
Would set me free from this unhallow'd place,
Though they did change me to the meanest bird
That flies i' the purer air! ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1067:This basic theme . . . how long can human beings be successful without falling victims to their own pride or . . .to the jealousy of the gods? P. 106 ~ Carl Gustav Jung, #NFDB
1068:I mean, we think we believe that the gods are wise and just and powerful, but what we really believe is that they are like our father after a long day. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1069:Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1070:Speak the truth, do not abandon yourself to wrath, give of the little you have to those who seek your aid. By these three steps you shall approach the Gods. ~ Dhammapada, #NFDB
1071:The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods. ~ Bill Cosby, #NFDB
1072:This observe, thy task in thy destiny noble or fallen;
Time and result are the gods’; with these things be not thou troubled. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1073:We forgot, we made errors, argued ambiguities, and twisted meanings to suit our own ends. And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. Now ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
1074:Face time with the kids wasn’t a priority for Norse deities—maybe because they had hundreds or thousands of children. Or maybe because the gods were jerks. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1075:Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1076:The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
1077:The gods, who are not ignorant of the future, usually speak through the mouths of children and madmen. I also understand that they favor alcoholics. ~ Adolfo Bioy Casares, #NFDB
1078:"While trauma can be hell on earth, trauma resolved is a gift of the gods—a heroic journey that belongs to each of us." ~ Peter A. Levine, Ann Frederick, Waking the Tiger, #NFDB
1079:And so it came that White Fang learned that the right to punish was something the gods reserved for themselves and denied to the lesser creatures under them. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1080:My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and — oh, yeah — head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1081:None of us know when our time is up. The gods gave us one gift—to know when our loves would come. The part of life. It would be greedy to ask for more. ~ Dhonielle Clayton, #NFDB
1082:That was the message. For me, alone among mortals, the gods send their messenger to tell me to stop whining. That’ll teach me to go hide in a temple. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
1083:The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1084:We live by oaths and we can die by them. To give an oath is to harness a life to a promise, and to break an oath is to tempt the punishment of the gods. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
1085:Expedit esse deos et, ut expedit, esse putemus. - The existence of the gods is expedient and, as it is expedient, let us assume it. ~ Ovid, The Art of Love (c. AD 2) I, 645, #NFDB
1086:Food sacred to the manes or to the gods must be given to a man distinguished by sacred knowledge, for hands, smeared with blood, cannot be cleansed with blood. ~ Guru Nanak, #NFDB
1087:Have you any idea of what you’ve unleashed? (Hades) Cruelty, pestilence, wrath, violence, ultimate suffering…what other gifts did the gods bestow on him? ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1088:He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The World-Stair,#NFDB
1089:I fought side by side with the gods and some other demigod…Harry Cleese, I think.” “Heracles?” Piper suggested politely. “Whatever,” Bacchus said. “Anyway, I ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1090:Percy," Grover said, "the gods really don't appreciate people sitting in their thrones. I mean like turn-you-into-a-pile-of-ashes don't appreciate it. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1091:The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1092:we’re often worse than pagans. True pagans had a reverence for nature and the gods. Today we worship ourselves and our tools. That sin defaces the world. ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
1093:advancing Nephilim. She could now see their skin and faces. Their entire bodies were covered in occultic tattoos, displaying their new allegiance to the gods. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1094:But as the Interdiction has shown us, the gods function perfectly well whether we believe in them or not, so why devote all that energy to a pointless purpose? ~ N K Jemisin, #NFDB
1095:But know this, if you let me go, you’ll regret it forever, because sometimes the gods run out of patience with fools and take back the gifts they’ve offered. ~ Alexis Morgan, #NFDB
1096:He claims that the gods, and we, are both right here all the time, a shadow’s thickness apart. We’ve no distance to cross at all to get to each other. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1097:If you go to space, you'll look down and see no national boundaries. You'll never see the gods people are killing each other over, but they're incredibly real. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1098:It goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise, in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1099:Not as the ways of other mortals are theirs who are guided,
They whose eyes are the gods and they walk by a light that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1100:The gods spend the wealth the universe gathers, they scan the wonders and fling them to nothingness. That's why they're the gods! I told you they were devils. ~ Fritz Leiber, #NFDB
1101:The story never ends, but our part in the tale does, for a while, and I’m in the mood for some happy-ever-aftering! We earned it, as the Gods themselves know! ~ S M Stirling, #NFDB
1102:You’re beautiful, Finnie, but by the gods you have never been more beautiful than you are right now, spread before me, wrapped in my wool and filled with me ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1103:It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1104:It is one thing to have the gift of seeing the spirits and hearing the Gods who move about us as we come and go; but it is a gift of darkness as well as light. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
1105:The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price." Success is on sale in the world market place. All who are willing to pay the price can buy it. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1106:There are plenty of people out there judging us every day of our lives and for every move we make. The gods of guilt are many.You don't need to add to them ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
1107:There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1108:There’s war between the gods, Uhtred, war between the Christian god and our gods, and when there is war in Asgard the gods make us fight for them on earth. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
1109:Thoughts arise in the hostage's tormented brain. In the hospital, patients feel they are returning to childhood; in prison, they age. The gods blind themselves. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
1110:Have you any idea of what you’ve unleashed? (Hades)
Cruelty, pestilence, wrath, violence, ultimate suffering…what other gifts did the gods bestow on him? ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1111:I’m special,” I declared sarcastically. I actually was special, but not in a kick-the-gods-asses kind of way. More in the dropped-on-my-head-at-birth kind of way. ~ Jaymin Eve, #NFDB
1112:Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1113:Only of one thing
Man can be sure, the will in his heart and his strength in his purpose:
This too is Fate and this too the gods ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1114:Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road. And only those arrive who choose to. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1115:Perhaps the gods are kind to us, by making life more disagreeable as we grow older. In the end death seems less intolerable than the manifold burdens we carry ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
1116:Quilters are so confident of a perfect product that they have a tradition of introducing a flaw into a quilt on purpose, in order not to offend the gods. ~ Carol Fisher Saller, #NFDB
1117:Sometimes, the stars line up, the gods smile, and love gets a fighting chance. Just a chance. That's all it can really hope for. No guarantees, no certainties ~ Tess Gerritsen, #NFDB
1118:Hero,” said Machaon to his sister who was still muttering to her gods. “Please stop. Surely the gods would have heard you by now … let’s try not to annoy them. ~ Sulari Gentill, #NFDB
1119:It reminded me to never take the story of any god or spirit or magical being to be all true. If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation? ~ Marlon James, #NFDB
1120:Let us try to see things from their better side: You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes; Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods That thorns have roses. ~ Alphonse Karr, #NFDB
1121:Badness can be got easily and in shoals; the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows; ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
1122:[…] either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1123:His mouth moved up to my ear. “Let me stroke you, swear to the gods, sweets, you loosen up just a hint, I’ll make you come so hard you’ll think you’ve exploded. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1124:Perhaps the gods punish us by bringing us face to face with our own foolish mistakes, condemning us to watch our children fall into the same traps that crippled us. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
1125:We should not make comparisons between the gods. When a man has really seen a divinity, he knows that all divinities are manifestations of one and the same Brahman. ~ Ramakishna, #NFDB
1126:changed. A few details might, but the big picture always remained the same. Than realized that none of the gods was really all that different from Sisyphus who, each ~ Eva Pohler, #NFDB
1127:...either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business... ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1128:In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
1129:It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods. ~ Martin Scorsese, #NFDB
1130:Maybe, she thought with some perversity, it wasn’t the gods who controlled the universe, but cats. Cats who toyed with humans as a puppeteer would a marionette. ~ Kristen Britain, #NFDB
1131:Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that we devise their misery. But they themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1132:Only one way to win when you're being chased by someone bigger and tougher than you. Turn straight around, punch their teeth out, and hope the gods are fond of you. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
1133:The Gods occupy the loftiest regions, men the lowest, the demons the middle region...They have immortality of body, but passions of the mind in common with men. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1134:The lesson seemed to be twofold: do not anger the gods, but if you must, at least make sure your city isn't next to a lake, as that's just asking for trouble. ~ Jonathan L Howard, #NFDB
1135:There's a lot of humiliation in
living, but that's okay, for if
the gods are always laughing,
then surely at times they must
be laughing with us. ~ J Andrew Schrecker,#NFDB
1136:When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods. ~ Leon Battista Alberti, #NFDB
1137:Hit me again, and I'll report you to the authorities. Follow me to my bed one more time, and I swear to the gods, I'll search for the most painful way to murder you. ~ Kien Nguyen, #NFDB
1138:In other words, our destiny is to become the gods that we once feared and worshipped. Science will give us the means by which we can shape the universe in our image. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1139:The gods of the realms are many and varied -- or they are the many and varied names and identities tagged onto the same being. I know not -- and care not -- which. ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
1140:The role of the poet in "destitute times" is to keep the memory of the gods alive, to inspire people to reimagine them, and find the courage to believe in them anew. ~ David Tacey, #NFDB
1141:Deut. 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Psa. 82:1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1142:Forgetfulness of grief I yet may gain;In some wise may come ending to my pain;It may be yet the Gods will have me glad!Yet, Love, I would that thee and pain I had! ~ William Morris, #NFDB
1143:He fought the men and he slayed the monsters and he bested the gods, and at last the hero, having conquered all, earned the thing that he wanted most. To go home. ~ Victoria Schwab, #NFDB
1144:I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak that is paradise. Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
1145:The Gods we worship write their names on our faces.” The face is carved from within by invisible tools; our thoughts, our moods, our emotions are the chisels. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1146:The world in many ways would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled. There would have been fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power. ~ William Paul Young, #NFDB
1147:For surely the gods would know better than she what to make of this hot, beautiful grief, the gods who had, after all, created her with such a fierce, lonesome soul. ~ Thea Harrison, #NFDB
1148:The drive to create music that is pure is my highest priority. Sometimes I'll get extremely technical, and other times I'll just kind of go with the gods of music. ~ John Frusciante, #NFDB
1149:The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
1150:And like everyone whom the gods spoil without reason, I feel a kind of anxiety buried at the heart of my happiness. It's all too beautiful, too flawless, too complete. ~ S ndor M rai, #NFDB
1151:But death is a thing that comes to all alike. Not even the gods can fend it away from a man they love, when once the destructive doom of leveling death has fastened upon him. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1152:For all the Gods are one god (...) and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and their is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley, #NFDB
1153:For here now is the age of iron. Never by daytime will there be an end to hard work and pain, nor in the night to weariness, when the gods will send anxieties to trouble us. ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
1154:Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the Presidency, I think of him. ~ Vaclav Havel, #NFDB
1155:How seven days had passed since she had disappeared from existence.
That it would take the eyes of the gods to find her.
Or the heart of the Lumateran exile. ~ Melina Marchetta,#NFDB
1156:It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1157:None has been able to hold all the gods in his bosom unstaggered,
All have grown drunken with force and have gone down to Hell and to Ate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1158:She had prayed for someone else, anyone else but Den. She'd been hoping for a nice, quiet man like Papa. Instead, the gods had sent her the man who'd scorched the world. ~ C L Wilson, #NFDB
1159:There is always a reason to live. The Gods will set you on the proper path. There is a deeper purpose to the path you have been set upon, one that has yet to reveal itself.
~ Sura,#NFDB
1160:There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1161:Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn't worth the time and effort. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
1162:For the one (what is dear to the gods) is of the sort to be loved
because it is loved; the other (the holy), because it is of the sort to be loved,
therefore is loved. ~ Plato,#NFDB
1163:I have learned that it is one thing to kill in battle, to send a brave man's soul to the corpse hall of the gods, but quite another to take a helpless man's life... ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
1164:In his tent, Achilles
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal. ~ Louise Gl ck,#NFDB
1165:Is there anyone who has conquered the gods and lived continuously in that victory? Sooner or later retribution has always come. Do not be contemptuous of men or monkeys. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
1166:It has been my experience that if you defer to the gods with the full reverence and respect that they deserve and expect, they are often inclined to return the compliment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1167:I will not stand by and let any man believe his death is an act of one of the gods. They don't deserve the credit. This is just nature, a side effect of mortality - H ~ Katie Hamstead, #NFDB
1168:Some hate us, think us outlaws to hang at the gallows. Some fear us, think us demons to burn at the stake. Some worship us, think us children of the gods. But all know us. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1169:The Greeks, it will be recalled, regarded Eros, the god of love, as the eldest of the gods; but also as the youngest, born fresh and dewy-eyed in every living heart. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1170:There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise. ~ Sophocles,#NFDB
1171:The woman laughed, shoulders bouncing. "I think the gods eat suffering. That's why they've put it everywhere you look: so anywhere they go, they'll always be fed. ~ Edward W Robertson, #NFDB
1172:Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1173:turned out Queen Metaneira was there with her family and her household guards, offering sacrifices to the gods in celebration of the birth of her newest son, Demophoon. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1174:We're pieces on a gameboard, Dr. March, and some of us are more powerful than others. You. Me. Her. We're the ones the gods want. We're the ones they're fighting over. ~ Richelle Mead, #NFDB
1175:You ask me, I welcome new gods. Bring them on. The god of the guns. The god of bombs. All the gods of ignorance and intolerance, of self-righteousness, idiocy and blame. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1176:You will, if you're wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it. ~ Freya Stark, #NFDB
1177:Furthermore, it goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead and otherwise in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1178:God's Desire
Lo, how all shakes when the gods tread too near!
All moves, is in peril, anguished, torn, upheaved. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#NFDB
1179:I was left with a sensation of having encountered a monster, in the ancient sense of the original Latin word, “monstrum”: “an omen or warning of the will of the gods.”4 ~ Peter Vronsky, #NFDB
1180:Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1181:Kill her. Hide the body. If only he could…Damn, stupid conscience. Why had the gods given them that gift? It definitely should have come with a return policy.’ (Syn) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1182:Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1183:Most of us are safe. If you're not a delirious dream the gods are having, if your beauty doesn't trouble the constellations, nobody's going to cast a spell on you. ~ Michael Cunningham, #NFDB
1184:Therefore, if the gods are immortal and eternal, what need is there of the other sex, when they themselves do not require succession, since they are always about to exist? ~ Lactantius, #NFDB
1185:These sages breathed for God’s delight in things.
Assisting the slow entries of the gods,
Sowing in young minds immortal thoughts they lived, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Quest,#NFDB
1186:This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1187:To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1188:You must go home eventually."
"I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,#NFDB
1189:By taking these three steps you will get closer to the Gods: First, Say the Truth. Second: Don't let you get Angry. Third: Give, even though you have so little to give. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1190:Furthermore, it goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1191:Holly. In the name of all the gods, stop shooting energy into all-energy beings. Just how stupid are you? The bots quivered and meshed, growing larger and more aggressive. ~ Eoin Colfer, #NFDB
1192:I once heard the survivors of a colony of ants that had been partially obliterated by a cow's foot seriously debating the intention of the gods towards their civilization. ~ Don Marquis, #NFDB
1193:Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet. “You came!” Jake shouted. “You really came!” “I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1194:The gods are dead, but the "gods" are alive and well-- or, I would say, the literal is dead, but the metaphorical is alive and well. ~ Michael Vannoy Adams, The Mythological Unconscious, #NFDB
1195:The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense. Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
1196:The idea that we are the gods now, and we are doing things that our ancestors think are god-like is not a rhetorical question. You know what I mean? We really are as gods. ~ Jason Silva, #NFDB
1197:The Roman religion was in fact of the nature of a bargain: men paid certain sacrifices and rites, and the gods granted their favour, irrespective of right or wrong. In ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1198:At times such as these, you get a good, humble feeling, like the gods made this place, this moment, first and concocted you as an afterthought just to be there to enjoy it. ~ Wells Tower, #NFDB
1199:For such a man, one who neglects no effort to set himself from now in the ranks of the best, is a priest, a minister of the gods, a friend of Him who dwells within him. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1200:Furthermore, it goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise, in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1201:In addition to the arts and poetry, we might say that depth psychology devotes itself to tracking the gods in a godless time. This is a thankless task, but a necessary one. ~ David Tacey, #NFDB
1202:To give oneself ernestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep aloof from them, that may be called wisdom. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
1203:when it comes to the caprices and manipulations of the gods or God, whichever philosophy you may embrace, we are all of us merely pawns in their games, rather than players. ~ Peter David, #NFDB
1204:Esagila meant “House of the Raised Head.” Marduk meant to raise himself above the heads of all the gods. He wanted to rule in the heavens as Nimrod wanted to rule on earth. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1205:Greece is the home of the gods; they may have died but their presence still makes itself felt. The gods were of human proportion: they were created out of the human spirit. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
1206:In fact I think the Gods love people like Tristan who sway effortlessly before the winds of fate and spring back with a smile, looking on life always with blithe optimism. ~ James Herriot, #NFDB
1207:In her time, she has known the evil that men do. But nothing matches with the evil of the Gods, who, having created humanity, now spend their days teasing and testing it. ~ Thrity Umrigar, #NFDB
1208:Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns. ~ Homer,#NFDB
1209:Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1210:Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how often a certain day and hour as it were, having been set unto thee by the gods, thou hast neglected it. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1211:The gods of the realms are many and varied-or they are the many and varied names and identities tagged onto the same being. I know not-and care not- which. Drizzt Do’Urden ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
1212:Time's works
The giant’s and the Titan’s furious march
Climbs to usurp the kingdom of the gods
Or skirts the demon magnitudes of Hell; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#NFDB
1213:Best of children, sisters arm-in-arm, we must bear what the gods give us to bear-- don't fire up your hearts with so much grief. No reason to blame the pass you've come to now. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1214:Free from the happiness desired by slaves, delivered from the gods and their adoration, fearless and terrible, grand and solitary is the will of the man of truth. ~ Nietzsche, Zarathoustra, #NFDB
1215:I will deny I ever said this, of course, but the gods need heroes. They always have. Otherwise we would not keep you annoying little brats around." I feel so wanted. Thanks. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1216:Set honour in one eye and death i' the other, And I will look on both indifferently, For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honour more than I fear death. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1217:Too hard the gods are with man’s fragile race;
In their large heavens they dwell exempt from Fate
And they forget the wounded feet of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Word of Fate,#NFDB
1218:We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in. ~ R A Salvatore, #NFDB
1219:As Xenophanes wrote: The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, All things to us, but in the course of time, Through seeking we may learn and know things better. This ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1220:I don't believe in God. I believe gods and devils are within us. It's our own battle. Our life's battle is to appeal to the gods within us, and to fight the devils within us. ~ Eddie Izzard, #NFDB
1221:If I promise to be the soul of charitability and kindness, will you release me of my torment?” I asked the gods, any of them, I didn’t care which one was listening. “What’s ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
1222:Loki was a shape changer and a trickster. He could turn into animals like fish, horses, and falcons. At times, Loki helped the gods, but his tricks also made them angry. ~ Mary Pope Osborne, #NFDB
1223:Mind’s voices mimicked inspiration’s stress,
Its ictus of infallibility,
Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,#NFDB
1224:One of the reasons people find me a believable actor is that I don't seem like one of the gods from Olympus. I seem like someone who was lucky enough to be let into Olympus. ~ John C Reilly, #NFDB
1225:Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished. ~ Tacitus, #NFDB
1226:That is the power you must one day command. Let them think every breath of theirs is a gift, not from the gods, but from you. Do this, and you will become a god among them. ~ David Dalglish, #NFDB
1227:The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1228:Walking into the night, he was in control of his world. He would shape it with the gods and demons into an understanding of forces, each with its own price, marked in blood. ~ Brian Catling, #NFDB
1229:Who are you, Hockenberry, to thwart Fate and defy the Will of the Gods?
I am me, Thomas Hockenberry. I am fed up with these power-addled thugs who call themselves gods. ~ Dan Simmons,#NFDB
1230:And of all the gods who might help them, the only ones not affected by the Greek–Roman schism seemed to be Aphrodite, Nemesis, and Dionysus. Love, revenge, wine. Very helpful. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1231:And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~ Ben Bova, #NFDB
1232:Because it is my destiny, Zabdas! Because I've always known the gods made me for something more -- more than just a wife, just a mother, just a woman. They made me for power! ~ Libbie Hawker, #NFDB
1233:Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1234:Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that [the gods] devise their misery. But [men] themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns. ~ Homer,#NFDB
1235:Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal’s heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain,#NFDB
1236:The Creative Artist and the poet and saint must fight the actual gods of our society—the god of conformism as well as the gods of apathy, material success and exploitative power. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1237:Those who become aware of the death of the gods, and bring this tragic news to humanity, inhabit a psychic space which is full of danger. ~ David Tacey [referring to Nietzsche and Holderlin], #NFDB
1238:A screened Necessity drives even the gods.
Over human lives it strides to unseen ends;
Our tragic failures are its stepping-stones. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act IV,#NFDB
1239:Surface-dwellers had an expression about the wrath of the gods. Since goblins didn't really care for gods, they had an alternate expression-they called it the wrath of the chef. ~ Jim C Hines, #NFDB
1240:What love had been given her she wished to give to others. Most times they didn’t much want it but hounds, horses, cats, and dogs did and they were a gift from the gods, too. ~ Rita Mae Brown, #NFDB
1241:Are you suggesting that the gods have trouble acting together, young lady?" Dionysus asked. Yes, Lord Dionysus." Mr. D nodded. "Just checking. You're right, of course. Carry on. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1242:But remember, when you pray to the gods, that men stood like the heroes of old at Marathon, and were better. And that they are still no better than the women who bear them. ~ Christian Cameron, #NFDB
1243:I am Isis, Queen of this country. I was instructed by Mercury. No one can destroy the laws which I have established. I am the eldest daughter of Saturn, most ancient of the Gods. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
1244:I thought how we might have to yell to be heard by Higher Power, but that's not saying it's not there. And that is faith for you. It's belief even when the gods don't deliver. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
1245:The gods, the immortals, were the inventors of death and corruption; yet with one or two notable exceptions they have lacked the courage to try their invention out on themselves. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
1246:these sacrifices sustained the cosmic cycle: Maize became blood, and blood was then transformed back into maize. Sacrificial victims were referred to as “tortillas for the gods. ~ Tom Standage, #NFDB
1247:Here is a lesson to you—do not envy the gods; pity us, for we are fixed in our divine function, while you are free to do as you please. We must be wise whereas you may be fools. ~ Vera Nazarian, #NFDB
1248:I will produce a lowly Primitive; "Man" shall be his name. I will create a Primitive Worker; He will be charged with the service of the gods, that they might have their ease. ~ Zecharia Sitchin, #NFDB
1249:Theocracies are hell. A sign of a diseased culture. For who speaks for the gods but the temples? And the temples have their own agendas that have little to do with the gods. ~ Terry Mancour, #NFDB
1250:Your place in life you can always change, whether you have the gift or not. But you cannot change what the gods have made you. The sooner you accept that, the happier you'll be. ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
1251:I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity," Marcus said. "Charity toward whom?" "Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn't make a world better than this. ~ Daniel Abraham, #NFDB
1252:I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said. “Charity toward whom?” “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this, ~ Daniel Abraham, #NFDB
1253:I decide to go out and spend all my money on underwear, then throw them about the room to
decide my fate like a satiny, lace-gusseted I Ching. Let the gods of Beau Bra decide. ~ Belle de Jour,#NFDB
1254:I poured out a libation on the mountain top … I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle … When the gods smelled the sweet savour they gathered like flies over the sacrifice ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
1255:I saw you from my deck, you know,” he whispers in my ear. “Before coming aboard. You’ve never looked more beautiful, Evie. And I’ve never begged the gods to steer my ship faster. ~ Sarah Henning, #NFDB
1256:MEDEA: The gods know who was the author of this sorrow.
JASON: Yes, the gods know indeed, they know your loathsome heart.
MEDEA: Hate me. But I tire of your barking bitterness. ~ Euripides,#NFDB
1257:Our world is a dream of the gods. Maybe they have other dreams. But all we have is this story unfolding, and in the script of this world, nothing's going to bring Altan back to life. ~ R F Kuang, #NFDB
1258:Someone stake that bastard, please, and for the sake of the gods, dust Benny off the table by the fountain. The powder’s disgusting and it’s getting into the blood. (Apollite) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1259:The gods are the guardians and increasers of the Truth, the powers of the Immortal, the sons of the infinite Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, Indian Spirituality and Life - II, #NFDB
1260:Every evildoer began by despising the Gods; and one not previously corrupt, taking to this contempt, even though in other respects not wholly bad, becomes an evildoer by the very fact. ~ Plotinus, #NFDB
1261:Inspiration is a message-in-a-bo ttle from the distant shore, a window into the other world, a tap of the muse's finger, the grace of the gods. It comes when you least expect it. ~ Phil Cousineau, #NFDB
1262:I will deny I ever said this, of course, but the gods need heroes. They always have. Otherwise we would not keep you annoying little brats around."
I feel so wanted. Thanks. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1263:The Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light. ~ Sallust, #NFDB
1264:The way to peace is to be content with yourself, honor the light of reason within, live in harmony with others, and be grateful to the gods for the universe and your role in it. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1265:Your true nature doesn't come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, 'Take us to your leader. ~ Tarsem Singh, #NFDB
1266:For Tempus...was a dozen storm gods' avatar; no army he sanctified could know defeat; no war he fought could not be won. Combat was life to him; he fought like the gods themselves. ~ Janet Morris, #NFDB
1267:He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods—the gods of human manufacturing—despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1268:In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at night when it is cloudy, for the gods are not lenient as of old. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
1269:One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1270:Perfection shall remain the boring privilege of the gods, while our bungling, messy world every night shall be lived as if it were the last and every day as if it were the first. ~ Eduardo Galeano, #NFDB
1271:The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
1272:The gods, (if gods to goodness are inclined If acts of mercy touch their heavenly mind), And, more than all the gods, your generous heart, Conscious of worth, requite its own desert! ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
1273:The typical conservative Roman was far too practical for that. If you didn’t know by age five that the gods were made-up creatures and the myths invented stories, then you were a fool. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1274:When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1275:Yet the success of plans and the advantage to be derived from them do not at all times agree, seeing the gods claim to themselves the right to decide as to the final result. ~ Ammianus Marcellinus, #NFDB
1276:Chapter 3. That the Romans Did Not Show Their Usual Sagacity When They Trusted that They Would Be Benefited by the Gods Who Had Been Unable to Defend Troy. And these ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1277:Let him grow taller,she asked the gods.Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him grow as tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1278:As the Takers see it, the gods gave man the same choice they gave Achilles: a brief life of glory, or a long, uneventful life in obscurity. And the Takers chose a brief life of glory. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
1279:I knew: the gods turned once, in their madness,
Men into things, not killing humane senses.
You’ve been turned in to my reminiscences
To make eternal the unearthly sadness. ~ Anna Akhmatova,#NFDB
1280:No matter what ugliness and destruction you may witness around you, I want you always to believe that the tiniest glimpse of beauty here and there is a reflection of the gods' abode. ~ Vaddey Ratner, #NFDB
1281:One should not inquire too closely where ancient legends about the gods are concerned; many things which reason rejects acquire some color of probability once you bring a god into the story ~ Arrian, #NFDB
1282:The words men used to describe the gods were the words they used for fetters or bonds, things which held the world together, within bounds, preventing the breakout of chaos and disorder. ~ A S Byatt, #NFDB
1283:I bless the gods for not letting my education in rhetoric, poetry, and other literary studies come easily to me, and thereby sparing me from an absorbing interest in these subjects. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1284:It's disgraceful how these humans blame the gods. They say their tribulations come from us, when they themselves, through their own foolishness, bring hardships which are not decreed by Fate. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1285:Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to conform --that God is not the author of all things, but of good only. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1286:Listen, if you walk into a whorehouse and find yourself getting sucked off, it’s because you put some money on the counter, not because the gods transported a pair of lips to your cock. ~ Scott Lynch, #NFDB
1287:Madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1288:The farther afield you go, the more you are going home ... as if the gods put us down with a certain arbitrary glee in the wrong place and what we seek is who we had really ought to be. ~ Diane Arbus, #NFDB
1289:What is the difference between the Christian God, and the gods of the other religions?" He simply, yet profoundly answered, "The main difference is this: The God of Christianity exists. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1290:What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn’t exist if there weren’t people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people’s heads. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1291:As the saying goes, behind every great man is an even greater woman. I guess playing Hera [in Wonder Woman] means that I'm, well, not only Queen of the Gods, I'm better than he is! ~ Marg Helgenberger, #NFDB
1292:But if the gods only cursed us, then we would hate them. And if they only blessed us, then—well, then we’d care nothing for their laws because we’d respect nothing but our own pleasure. ~ Kate Elliott, #NFDB
1293:fools! whose pride
Absurd the gods permit a little space
To please their souls with laughter, then replace
In the loud limbo of futilities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Lines on Ireland,#NFDB
1294:If a man goes up into Parnassus after sunset, why should he not see strange things? The gods still walk there, and a man who would not go carefully in the country of the gods is a fool. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
1295:Mathilde let him eat two doughnuts, and his eyes filled with tears because they were the most amazing doughnuts in the history of glazed doughnuts, food of the gods. He was full of joy. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
1296:No one rules the world forever, the gods grow jealous. If someone is constantly successful or too powerful - be it Alexander or Napolean or Hitler - the gods will eventually destroy him. ~ Ruskin Bond, #NFDB
1297:On earth, Sky Mother created humans, her children of blood and bone. In the heavens she gave birth to the gods and goddesses. Each would come to embody a different fragment of her soul. ~ Tomi Adeyemi, #NFDB
1298:The prayers of most religions generally praise and thank the gods involved, either out of general piety or in the hope that he or she will take the hint and start acting responsibly. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1299:What the gods said was heard by each combatant in his own language, and according to his own understanding. It boiled down to: I. This is Not a Game. II. Here and Now, You are Alive. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1300:Your hunter has a destiny to bear the mark of the gods. Only one true warrior receives such an honer - one who will lay down his own life for another's"
...
"You are the protector. ~ M R Merrick,#NFDB
1301:And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1302:, But the streets need cleaning, brother," Gromph said.
"That is why the gods gave us magic, brother," Jarlaxle replied in the same smug tone. "To perform the mundane tasks of life. ~ R A Salvatore,#NFDB
1303:I can’t be sure, but I think perthro is his…what do Christians call it? A ‘Hail Mary pass.’ He was throwing that rune like you’d throw dice from a cup, turning our fate over to the gods. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1304:Infinite hopes—and fears—may both be yours. Be sure that, whatever else you get, you will not get justice.” “Are the gods not just?” “Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were? But ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1305:- The myths are dead. The gods are dead. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms are dead. There is only the State, and the People.
- No, Monsieur Robespierre. There is much more than that. ~ Neil Gaiman,#NFDB
1306:We call on the gods, and the gods well know
what storms torment us, sailors whirled to nothing.
But if we are to live and reach the haven,
one small seed could grow a mighty tree - ~ Aeschylus,#NFDB
1307:We were human, mortal and fallible. We forgot, we made errors, argued ambiguities, and twisted meanings to suit our own ends. And in so doing, mayhap we reshaped the gods themselves. ~ Jacqueline Carey, #NFDB
1308:where are the gods the gods hate us the gods have run away the gods have hidden in holes the gods are dead of the plague they rot and stink too there never were any gods there’s only death ~ Ted Hughes, #NFDB
1309:Build slow and sure; 'tis for life, young man. In the elder days of art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere. — Longfellow. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1310:False gods - the gods of human understanding - despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1311:For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. 5 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1312:Hugo learned that Prometheus had created humankind out of mud, and then stolen fire from the gods as a gift for the people he had made, so they could survive. So Prometheus was a thief. ~ Brian Selznick, #NFDB
1313:i once heard the survivors
of a colony of ants
that had been partially
obliterated by a cow s foot
seriously debating
the intention of the gods
towards their civilization ~ Don Marquis,#NFDB
1314:Schiller. A German dramatist of three centuries ago. In a play about Joan of Arc, he said, ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.’ I’m no god and I’ll contend no longer. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1315:The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. It is said that even the gods must die." He winks. "But not without one hell of a fight. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
1316:There were a million stars. Were they the gods? They seemed so far away, cold, indifferent and irrelevant – silent witnesses to the drama unfolding on a tiny rock called earth. There ~ Anand Neelakantan, #NFDB
1317:We mustn't keep meeting like this. Communications between the people of the moon and earth is forbidden...it is the way of the gods...we mustn't fall in love...but its already too late. ~ Naoko Takeuchi, #NFDB
1318:Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
[Preface to Brissot's Address to His Constituents (1794)] ~ Edmund Burke,#NFDB
1319:Healing the sick was once considered a sacred gift bestowed on mortals by the gods. Let the investors find their recompense in the good they have done and not in monetary returns alone. ~ E A Bucchianeri, #NFDB
1320:Heimthra' was the word used for longing: for home, for the past, for things to be as they once had been. Even the gods were said to know that yearning, from when the worlds were broken. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, #NFDB
1321:He is encompassed himself, in the steering clasp of hand on shoulder and scrubber-fluffed noggin bobbing in prayer to the gods of cock, filled with grace from the sacred font of the phallus. ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
1322:He is Jason and Hercules and Perseus---a figure so strong and beautiful and heroic that the blood of the gods must flow through him, because how else could a being so fine exist in this world? ~ J Kenner, #NFDB
1323:He likes to humble our foes by making them seem ridiculous. As he said to me the other day, ‘Kill a man, and you cede him honor in the eyes of the gods. Laugh at him and you shame him'. ~ Raymond E Feist, #NFDB
1324:Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1325:Thanks to the gods I didn't spend much time while growing up with my grandfather's mistress and preserved the flower of my youth, waiting for the proper time to demonstrate my virility. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1326:The gods hate those who plan badly, and help those with good friends, good swords, and good sense. Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that’s my advice. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
1327:The gods wrest our careful policies
To their own ends until we stand appalled
Remembering what we meant to do and seeing
What has been done. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act IV,#NFDB
1328:The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that. ~ Ben Nicholson, #NFDB
1329:There’s an old saying: ‘be careful what you wish for; you might get it.’” “Oh, gods.” A quaver shook Ilya’s voice. “The bargains we make with the gods never fall out as we think they will. ~ Kate Elliott, #NFDB
1330:And my commander always says, when we go about our business in the city, that when you look at the state of mankind you are forced to accept the reality of the gods.'
(Captain Carrot) ~ Terry Pratchett,#NFDB
1331:As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. ~ Protagoras, #NFDB
1332:In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1333:It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are – who knows? Best ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1334:Perhaps such things pass for virtue among the gods. But how is there glory in taking life? We die so easily. Would you make him another Pyrrhus? Let the stories of him be something more. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
1335:Accept the universe
As the gods gave it to you.
If the gods wanted to give you something else
They’d have done it.
If there are other matters and other worlds
There are. ~ Alberto Caeiro,#NFDB
1336:Do not go to others for the answers. Look in your own heart, search your own faith. You will either find the answer or come to see that the answer is with the gods themselves, not with man. ~ Margaret Weis, #NFDB
1337:I heard a cry and awoke and found that I had dreamed, and looking out of my house into the street I found that a flash of lightning had killed a child. Then I knew that the gods still lived. ~ Lord Dunsany, #NFDB
1338:The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1339:The world, an entity out of everything, was created by none of the gods or men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and reg- ularly becoming extinguished. ~ Heraclitus, #NFDB
1340:Valmiki the Poet held all the moving world inside a water drop in his hand.
The gods and saints from heaven looked down on Lanka,
And Valmiki looked down at the gods in the morning of Time. ~ Valmiki,#NFDB
1341:Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
1342:Are you suggesting that the gods have trouble acting together, young lady?" Dionysus asked.
Yes, Lord Dionysus."
Mr. D nodded. "Just checking. You're right, of course. Carry on. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1343:despair is ultimately destructive to oneself and a burden to others; and that if one persists in it, the gods will sooner or later lose patience and give one something to really despair about. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1344:Reeve kissed like he was made for kissing her, as if he'd been custom-designed by the gods of kissing to touch her lips, and taste her mouth, and drown her in kisses as she'd always wanted. ~ Lauren Blakely, #NFDB
1345:The abode of God, too, is wherever is earth and sea and air, and sky and virtue. Why further do we seek the Gods of heaven? Whatever thou dost behold and whatever thou dost touch, that is Jupiter. ~ Lucan, #NFDB
1346:What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1347:With venom in its heart, the Viper will ignite the world to discover the king amongst men. The world will weep. The Gods will scream in their temple. The flood will open. The end will come. ~ Daniel Arenson, #NFDB
1348:Be deaf to those who love you most of all; they pray for bad things with good intentions. And, if you would be happy, entreat the gods that none of their fond desires for you may be brought to pass. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1349:Enoch did not care about the rebellion. He did not care about the gods. He did not care about anything anymore. His Edna was gone. Now, only his son Methuselah kept him anchored to this earth. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1350:I know that it is likely that as worship of the gods declines, faith between men and all human society will disappear, as well as that most excellent of all virtues, which is justice. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1351:Naturally, since [the Sumerians] didn't know what caused the flood anymore than we do, they blamed the gods. (That's the advantage of religion. You're never short an explanation for anything.) ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
1352:The gods do not grant miracles for our purposes, but for theirs. If you are become their tool, it is for a greater reason, an urgent reason. But you are the tool. You are not the work. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1353:We mustn't keep meeting like this. Communications between the people of the moon and earth is forbidden...it is the way of the gods...we mustn't fall in love...but its already too late...... ~ Naoko Takeuchi, #NFDB
1354:...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
1355:So the gods pulled alternately on the rope of this violent and evenly balanced battle, to make it taut over the two sides. The rope was indestructible and no one could break it; but it broke many men. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1356:The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1357:Confidence, of course is an admirable asset to a golfer, but it should be an unspoken confidence. It is perilous to put it into speech. The gods of golf lie in wait to chasten the presumptious. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
1358:Every moment of my peace was a lie, for it came only at the gods’ pleasure. No matter what I did, how long I lived, at a whim they would be able to reach down and do with me what they wished. ~ Madeline Miller, #NFDB
1359:He writhed at the thought and vowed by the gods of magic, by all three gods of magic, that he would never return to Solace until he could do so with pride in himself and with power in his hand. ~ Margaret Weis, #NFDB
1360:I believe in the gods; or rather I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us; I believe they are completely absent minded. ~ Jean Giraudoux, #NFDB
1361:If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1362:I have tried to write Paradise
Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise.
Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made. ~ Ezra Pound,#NFDB
1363:Temple-ground
Man, shun the impulses dire that spring armed from thy nature’s abysms!
Dread the dusk rose of the gods, flee the honey that tempts from its petals! ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1364:that all pretensions to being self-made hide the reciprocal truth, that we have unpayable debts to the world around us, to our community, to our forebears, to the ancients, to nature, to the gods. ~ Lewis Hyde, #NFDB
1365:The LORD will be awesome against them; s for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and t to him shall bow down, each in its place, all u the lands of the nations. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1366:There is no trade anymore, you're not nothing, you didn't kill Caidi, you're going to be the most beautiful-dangerous Incendiary the gods have ever seen, and I fucking love you. Deal with it. ~ Carole Cummings, #NFDB
1367:Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods. ~ Socrates, #NFDB
1368:Beware, Diomedês! Forbear, Diomedês! Do not try to put yourself on a level with the gods; that is too high for a man's ambition. The immortal gods are one race, men that walk upon the earth are another. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1369:He had the sense that the gods was just another name for time, but he felt that it would be as stupid to say such a thing as it would be to suggest that against the gods we can never prevail. ~ Richard Flanagan, #NFDB
1370:It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails. ~ Louis L Amour, #NFDB
1371:It was the actions of Jupiter and Saturn that quite inadvertently created life on Earth — not the gods of the Roman pantheon, but the giant planets, which once orbited much closer to the sun. Driven ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1372:Just as he reached the point of utter exhaustion, he happened to read Raymond Radiguet’s dying words, ‘God’s soldiers are coming to get me,’ and sensed once again the laughter of the gods. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
1373:Life just is and the gods have their plans for us. We're powerless against them. In the end, we are what our pasts have made us and we live the lives the gods have chosen for us."
-Syn ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1374:A tendency of human groups to “diabolize” the gods of their neighbors seems to be a constant theme throughout history and a cause for continuing difficulties to historians of religious ideas. ~ Stephen E Flowers, #NFDB
1375:One thing that I get from a lot of people with American Gods is people saying that they would love some kind of glossary with a list of all the Gods and who they are, so that they can look them up. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1376:Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1377:Art in the twenty-first century may come to constitute a form of mediation between human and post-human consciousness, just as in past cultures it has been used to mediate between mankind and the gods. ~ Max More, #NFDB
1378:Do not interrogate silence because silence is mute; do not expect anything from the gods, nor should you try to bribe them with gifts, because it is in ourselves that we must look for liberation. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1379:Jen was in turmoil; she was grappling with self-esteem issues and a failed attempt at anorexia. I was in the right place at the right time, and the gods were finally ready to cut me some slack. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
1380:"Nobody can achieve happiness through preconceived ideas, one should rather call it a gift of the gods. It comes and goes, and what has made you happy once does not necessarily do so at another time." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1381:Priests are meant to pass on the word of the gods, minister to the poor, and provide the services offered by their temples. No one said anything about being holy. Not even the gods are truly holy. ~ Andy Peloquin, #NFDB
1382:She’s alive,” Leo said. “Thank the gods and pass the hot sauce.” Frank frowned. “What does that mean?” Leo wiped the chip crumbs off his face. “It means pass the hot sauce, Zhang. I’m still hungry. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1383:So what options were left?
Kill her. Hide the body.
If only he could...Damn, stupid conscience. Why had the gods given them that gift? It definitely should have come with a return policy. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1384:The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human. ~ Margot Adler, #NFDB
1385:About the gods I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist or what they are to look at. Many things prevent my knowing. Among others, the fact that they are never seen. ~ Protagoras, #NFDB
1386:Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.
I want to be a soldier. A hero.
You'll grow out of it. ~ Steven Erikson,#NFDB
1387:[Hermes addresses Prometheus :] To you, the clever and crafty, bitter beyond all bitterness, who has sinned against the gods in bestowing honors upon creatures of a day--to you, thief of fire, I speak. ~ Aeschylus, #NFDB
1388:Once apparently the chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1389:One of the greatest of a great man's qualities is success; 't is the result of all the others; 't is a latent power in him which compels the favor of the gods, and subjugates fortune. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
1390:Water was a state of mind. If you think it your friend when you swim in the river or wash away the dirt, why call it your enemy when it comes from the heavens? From the cup of the gods themselves. ~ Kate Furnivall, #NFDB
1391:You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods. ~ Theodore Roethke, #NFDB
1392:Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1393:Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1394:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1395:The mathematical phenomenon always develops out of simple arithmetic, so useful in everyday life, out of numbers, those weapons of the gods: the gods are there, behind the wall, at play with numbers. ~ Le Corbusier, #NFDB
1396:To see myth psychologically is not to psychologize, that is, to say that something is only psychological. Rather it is to acknowledge that a psychological view is all we have left. ~ James Hollis, Tracking the Gods, #NFDB
1397:When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods’ gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1398:Wise are the gods in their silence,
Wise when they speak; but their speech is other than ours and their wisdom
Hard for a mortal mind to hold and not madden or wander. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
1399:All lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
1400:Around me celestial flowers are falling in a crystal shower. Or are they the tears of the gods who crowd the skies, looking down in sorrow and admiration at my final act of self-respect? ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
1401:Göt·ter·däm·mer·ung (in Germanic mythology) the downfall of the gods. German, literally 'twilight of the gods', popularized by Wagner's use of the word as the title of the last opera of the Ring cycle. ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
1402:Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all things which are disreputable and worthy of blame when done by men; and they told of them many lawless deeds, stealing, adultery, and deception of each other. ~ Xenophanes, #NFDB
1403:Rooster was a bad slave. He had no use for anyone, not even the gods. Not that he was angry at the gods, like some I'd met. He just dismissed them entirely. There were no gods, and that was that. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1404:The drunk answers every assault with smirking equanimity,’ observed Haut, pouring his cup full again. ‘All reasoned words thud like pebbles in the sand. Made immune, I imbibe the nectar of the gods. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1405:The gods we prayed to when we were young used up their time so long ago. They cannot answer anymore.
They never liked us, did they?
Gods don't "like". They love, they hate, they ignore... ~ Neil Gaiman,#NFDB
1406:the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going around to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1407:Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness; and reverence towards the Gods must be inviolate. Great words of prideful men are ever punished with great blows, and, in old age, teach the chastened to be wise. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1408:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1409:How many hands were shook and names were signed
and pipes were passed congenially in a circle,
before the first of the used-car dealerships rose up
on the ground where the gods had walked? ~ Albert Goldbarth,#NFDB
1410:I have to finish what I started. I’d have had that beast on my spear by now, except for Prince Meleager. He saw me wound it and thought I was in danger. The gods protect me from men who mean well! ~ Esther M Friesner, #NFDB
1411:Later that day, shortly before the sun sank in the wintry sky, despite the best efforts of the medics, Arra Sails closed her eyes, made peace with the gods of the vampires, breathed her last...and died. ~ Darren Shan, #NFDB
1412:Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people. Chosen. Favored by the gods. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1413:Together we made our way down to the street level. Neither of us said a word. The music was awful--Neil Diamond or something. I should've made that part of my gift form the gods: better elevator tunes. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1414:When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1415:Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1416:Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly."
"I want to be a soldier. A hero."
"You'll grow out of it. ~ Steven Erikson,#NFDB
1417:Everywhere in the world the industrial regime tends to make the unorganized or unorganizable individual, the pauper, into the victim of a kind of human sacrifice offered to the gods of civilization. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
1418:He was like some tragic figure in Greek mythology whose offenses against the gods had caused them to design for him this exquisite torture: you must desperately need to see what you cannot bear to see. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
1419:It is the greatest and the tallest of trees that the gods bring low with bolts and thunder. For the gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves. ~ Herodotus, #NFDB
1420:Men imagine gods to be born, and to have clothes and voices and shapes like theirs....Yea, the gods of the Ethiopians are black and flat-nosed, and the gods of the Thracians are red-haired and blue-eyed. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1421:On the day the Gjallerhorn is blown, it will wake the gods, no matter where they are, no matter how deeply they sleep.
Heimdall will blow Gjallerhorn only once, at the end of all things, Ragnarok. ~ Neil Gaiman,#NFDB
1422:to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music and the company. ... the gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table. ~ Storm Jameson, #NFDB
1423:What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1424:Even the gods felt close, drawn to witness all that was to come. Witness, or to seize the moment and act directly. A nudge here, a tug there, if only to appease their egos… if only to see what happens. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1425:I fear not for the angry frown of Heaven,
I flinch not from the red assault of Hell;
I crush the opposition of the gods,
Tread down a million goblin obstacles. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces,#NFDB
1426:Men ask for health in their prayers to the gods: they do not realize that the power to achieve it lies in themselves. Lacking self-control, they perform contrary actions and betray health to their desires. ~ Democritus, #NFDB
1427:Oh where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none join in fear of the gods? ~ Euripides, #NFDB
1428:Our eyes were on the Other-world, the stars, the gods.
We didn’t keep watch on the world around us.
And when we eventually lowered our heads and studied the waters closer to home, it was too late. ~ Darren Shan,#NFDB
1429:That the gods die from time to time is due to man’s sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone. ~ Carl Jung, Collected Works of CG Jung, Volume 9, #NFDB
1430:Ever wonder why the gods created man, Grom? I personally think that we're the original reality show. They were so effing bored that they created us just so that they could feel better about themselves ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1431:ho'oponopono (Hawaiian):
Solving a problem by talking it out. After an invocation of the gods, the aggrieved parties sit down and discuss the issue until it is set right (pono means righteousness). ~ Howard Rheingold,#NFDB
1432:In fact, my mother always says that emotions are what the gods gave us to distract us from the pain of life. They are what make life bearable and what keeps us going no matter how hard it gets. (Alix) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1433:Such, then, was my position: to care for almost nothing but the gods and heroes, the garden of the Hesperides, Launcelot and the Grail, and to believe in nothing but atoms and evolution and military service. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1434:The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Man in the Universe, #NFDB
1435:The opinions held by most people about the gods are not true conceptions of them but fallacious notions, according to which awful penalties are meted out to the evil and the greatest of blessings to the good. ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
1436:Walled from ours are other hearts:
For if life’s barriers twixt our souls were broken,
Men would be free and one, earth paradise
And the gods live neglected. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, Act I,#NFDB
1437:You know what I mean. Is it true the folk hereabouts”—he pointed to the land ahead—“are cripples? Missing half their hindquarters?”
“The fauns? Cripples?” I laughed. “By the gods who made them, no! ~ Harry Turtledove,#NFDB
1438:As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life. ~ Diogenes La rtius, #NFDB
1439:Wast thou not made in the shape of a woman? Sweetness and beauty
Move like a song of the gods in thy limbs and to love is thy duty
Graved in thy heart as on tablets of fate. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ahana,#NFDB
1440:I'm not saying you were wrong, Royesse. This time. I'm saying you were running blindfolded. And if it wasn't headlong into a tree, it was only by the mercy of the gods, and not by any care of yours. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1441:May the gods have mercy on whoever pisses them off, because Zarek and Jericho will have none for them. (Madoc) You’d better be glad I’m flattered by that. Otherwise I’d gut you. (Zarek) Ditto. (Jericho) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1442:That sort of news travels faster than horses, faster than boats. The messengers of the gods carry rumors through the sky the way bees carry pollen and drop them from their wings onto the earth below. ~ Megan Whalen Turner, #NFDB
1443:This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1444:world rotted as we slid from light into darkness, getting ever nearer to the black chaos in which this middle world would end and the gods would fight and all love and light and laughter would dissolve. ~ Bernard Cornwell, #NFDB
1445:Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, “Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters.” More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1446:You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door. ~ Robert Collier, #NFDB
1447:A hopeless exile from his native home, From death alone exempt—but cease to mourn; Let all combine to achieve his wish'd return; Neptune atoned, his wrath shall now refrain, Or thwart the synod of the gods in vain. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1448:Am I doing anything? I do it with reference to the good of mankind. Does anything happen to me? I receive it and refer it to the gods, and the source of all things, from which all that happens is derived. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1449:Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.
راست بگو، تسليم خشم نشو، اگر از تو كم خواستند ببخش؛ با اين سه به خدايان مي رسي ~ Confucius,#NFDB
1450:That's what the gods are! An answer that will do! Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1451:What’s your point, Legal?” “The point is that there are plenty of people out there judging us every day of our lives and for every move we make. The gods of guilt are many. You don’t need to add to them. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
1452:God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods... ~ Socrates, #NFDB
1453:If we stay as we have been, then we will die, just as a pool dries up in the summer if there is no rain. We must change if we want to live. But we must also remain who we are and who the gods gifted us to be. ~ Kate Elliott, #NFDB
1454:Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
1455:Thousands of years ago, after the big Titan—God war, the gods had sliced him to bits with his own scythe and scattered his remains in Tartarus, which is like the gods’ bottomless recycling bin for their enemies. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1456:Plato found fault that the poets of his time filled the world with wrong opinions of the gods, making light tales of that unspotted essence, and therefore would not have the youth depraved with such opinions. ~ Philip Sidney, #NFDB
1457:The people cursed the gods, and as the end loomed near, the religion of old was destroyed as the people realized their gods were false, nothing more than wishful imagination. False gods could not save them. ~ Michael R Hicks, #NFDB
1458:This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.
Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,#NFDB
1459:Would Grandmother scold him? Would she say, “Frank! Thank the gods, you've come. I'm surrounded by monsters.”
More likely she'd scold him, or mistake them for intruders and chase them off with a frying pan. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1460:Apollo had changed Hyacinth into a flower to protect him. I would give Alex back control so she could protect herself instead of making the decision for her. That's how we were different from the gods. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
1461:In Destroyer of the gods I focus on several major features of early Christianity that made it distinctive, even odd or bizarre .We don't today realize just how different early Christianity was in that context. ~ Larry Hurtado, #NFDB
1462:Now you must excuse your Raja for he must suffer to give audience to the prince of Punt, a pompous old fool, who believes that his frequent flatulencies are the echoes of the Gods applauding his non sequiturs. ~ Piers Anthony, #NFDB
1463:That person fearing for his life went to the beer section, which again is admirable, beer is the nectar of the gods. Then grabs Keystone Light? Are you kidding me? I’d rather eat the can than drink those contents. ~ Mark Tufo, #NFDB
1464:The gods always spoke ambivalently, and sometimes they even changed their minds in the middle of your asking them a question. Divination was a matter of ascertaining the future through inherently unreliable methods. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
1465:the gods did not desire flawless souls, but great ones. I think that very darkness is where the greatness grows from, as flowers from the soil. I am not sure, in fact, if greatness can bloom without it. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold, #NFDB
1466:The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again. ~ Brad Pitt, #NFDB
1467:Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1468:If it be aught toward the general good, Set honor in one eye and death i' th' other, And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more than I fear death. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1469:If there is one thing in this world that I was raised and trained to know, it is that there is only so much you may ask of the gods. Victory in battle is their lightest gift; a quiet heart is your own concern. ~ Peter S Beagle, #NFDB
1470:Isn’t it only through laughter that we become one with the gods and thus can endure life and can overcome all the horror and waste and suffering here on earth? …Isn’t it only through laughter we can stay human? ~ James Clavell, #NFDB
1471:Perhaps he should have fallen to his knees and given thanks to the gods for their unlikely victory but the red harvest sword-hacked and arrow-stuck about the ruin did not look like a thing to give thanks for. ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
1472:So you, the kings, you too must reflect upon this punishment, because the immortals are here in the midst of manking, observing those who do not hold the gods in awe...but grind each other down with crooked judgements ~ Hesiod, #NFDB
1473:That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1474:where are the gods
the gods hate us
the gods have run away
the gods have hidden in holes
the gods are dead of the plague
they rot and stink too
there never were any gods
there’s only death ~ Ted Hughes,#NFDB
1475:Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of the true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. ~ William Robertson Smith, #NFDB
1476:Emerson has said, "When half-gods go, the gods arrive." That is a very doubtful maxim. Better say, "When God arrives (and only then) the half-gods can remain." Left to themselves they either vanish or become demons. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1477:(Fenris was a giant wolf of Norse mythology who, it was prophesied, would return one day to fuck everything up, and such were the ground rules of that mythos that there was nothing the gods could do about it). ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
1478:I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces? ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1479:Malick to Jacin: "There is no trade anymore, you're not nothing, you didn't kill Caidi, you're going to be the most beautiful-dangerous Incendiary the gods have ever seen, and I fucking love you. Deal with it. ~ Carole Cummings, #NFDB
1480:May the gods have mercy on whoever pisses them off, because Zarek and Jericho will have none for them. (Madoc)
You’d better be glad I’m flattered by that. Otherwise I’d gut you. (Zarek)
Ditto. (Jericho) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1481:Haven’t you ever noticed that people who win say it’s because the gods know they are in the right, but if they lose, it wasn’t the gods who declared them wrong? Their opponent cheated, or their equipment was bad. ~ Tamora Pierce, #NFDB
1482:Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1483:lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names . . . well, it usually says more about them than it does about us. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1484:Let him submit to me! Only the god of death is so relentless, Death submits to no one—so mortals hate him most of all the gods. Let him bow down to me! I am the greater king, I am the elder-born, I claim—the greater man. ~ Homer, #NFDB
1485:None is greater than he. The gods themselves will have to descend upon earth and it is in a human form that they will get their salvation. Man alone reaches the perfection of which the gods themselves are ignorant. ~ Vivekananda, #NFDB
1486:Thousands of years ago, after the big Titan-God war, the gods had sliced him into bits with his own scythe and scattered his remains in Tartarus, which is like the gods’ bottomless recycling bin for their enemies. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1487:We were surrounded by thirty-foot-tall giants who were about to kill us. Then the sky opened up, and the gods descended."
"Grandad," the kids said, "you are full of schist."
"I'm not kidding!" he protested. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1488:For every nation that lives peaceably, there will be many others to grow hard and push their arrogance to extremes; the gods attend to these things slowly. But they attend to those who put off God and turn to madness. ~ Sophocles, #NFDB
1489:it will help you a great deal to keep the gods in mind as well. What they want is not flattery, but for rational things to be like them. For figs to do what figs were meant to do—and dogs, and bees … and people. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1490:Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest”. Thus ~ Johan Huizinga, #NFDB
1491:No. I cannot believe that. I must believe that the gods do not send us trials that we cannot endure. It would have been easier to believe that if he hadn’t seen so many people broken by the trials they had endured. ~ T Kingfisher, #NFDB
1492:Oh you who are born of the gods, easy is the descent into Hell. The door of darkness stands open day and night. But to retrace your steps, and come back out into the brightness above, that is the work, that is the labor. ~ Virgil, #NFDB
1493:The gods whispered to you once, Finnikin. And you listened. But they are proud and refuse to speak to those who do not believe that there is something out there mightier than the minds and intellect of mortals. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
1494:There were others, such as Jack London,who offered their readers such a respite from the miserable horror of existence that their books were like gifts from the gods. (Character of Tristan Sadler in "the Absolutist") ~ John Boyne, #NFDB
1495:Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1496:What husband is he who abandons his wife? What wife is she taken without love? The gods demand of us action and the use of our free will! That is piety, not to buckle beneath necessity’s yoke like dumb beasts! ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1497:1.2) On Gender of Gods & Goddesses:"Well, perhaps it is under their inspiration that Nature made (the gender differentiation). It is certainly not because it appeared on earth that it is like that with the gods.." ~ The Mother, #NFDB
1498:Historically, the gods of an existing religion become the demons of the conquering religion. That doesn’t make one evil and the other good, it just means that one tribe is better at waging war than the other. ~ Christopher Penczak, #NFDB
1499:It is unfair that one person should suffer in order for others to be blessed. If the gods were powerful enough to shape our destinies, why couldn't they just send us a good fortune untainted by sorrow? ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
1500:Man is weak, greedy, craven, lustful, prey to every species of vice and depravity. He will lie, steal, cheat, murder, melt down the very statues of the gods and coin their gold as money for whores. This is man. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
293 Integral Yoga
137 Poetry
81 Occultism
38 Philosophy
34 Yoga
34 Psychology
25 Fiction
25 Christianity
24 Hinduism
17 Mythology
9 Philsophy
9 Mysticism
1 Thelema
1 Islam
1 Education
1 Buddhism
1 Baha i Faith
1 Alchemy
230 Sri Aurobindo
127 Nolini Kanta Gupta
78 The Mother
58 Satprem
31 Carl Jung
30 James George Frazer
28 Aleister Crowley
22 Sri Ramakrishna
21 H P Lovecraft
20 Vyasa
17 Saint Augustine of Hippo
17 Friedrich Schiller
13 Ovid
12 Plato
12 A B Purani
10 Anonymous
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson
8 Swami Vivekananda
8 Lucretius
8 Jorge Luis Borges
7 William Wordsworth
7 Percy Bysshe Shelley
7 George Van Vrekhem
6 William Butler Yeats
6 Robert Browning
6 Nirodbaran
6 John Keats
5 Plotinus
5 Jordan Peterson
4 Walt Whitman
4 Joseph Campbell
4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Sri Ramana Maharshi
3 Rabindranath Tagore
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Aristotle
3 Aldous Huxley
2 Patanjali
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Henry David Thoreau
39 Savitri
30 The Golden Bough
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
23 The Synthesis Of Yoga
21 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
21 Lovecraft - Poems
20 Vishnu Purana
18 Essays On The Gita
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
17 Schiller - Poems
17 Magick Without Tears
17 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
17 Collected Poems
17 City of God
16 Record of Yoga
15 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
14 The Secret Of The Veda
14 Mysterium Coniunctionis
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
13 The Life Divine
13 Metamorphoses
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
13 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
12 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
12 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
11 Liber ABA
11 Agenda Vol 03
10 Kena and Other Upanishads
10 Essays Divine And Human
9 Emerson - Poems
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 Of The Nature Of Things
8 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
8 Anonymous - Poems
8 Agenda Vol 02
8 Agenda Vol 01
7 Wordsworth - Poems
7 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
7 Shelley - Poems
7 Preparing for the Miraculous
7 Isha Upanishad
6 Yeats - Poems
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
6 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
6 Letters On Yoga I
6 Keats - Poems
6 Browning - Poems
6 Aion
6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
5 The Human Cycle
5 Talks
5 On the Way to Supermanhood
5 Maps of Meaning
5 Labyrinths
4 Whitman - Poems
4 The Practice of Psycho therapy
4 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 Some Answers From The Mother
4 Raja-Yoga
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Agenda Vol 08
4 Agenda Vol 05
3 Words Of Long Ago
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 The Perennial Philosophy
3 The Bible
3 Tagore - Poems
3 Questions And Answers 1956
3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
3 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
3 Poetics
3 Letters On Yoga IV
3 Agenda Vol 07
3 Agenda Vol 06
2 Walden
2 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2 Symposium
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Questions And Answers 1953
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Goethe - Poems
2 Faust
2 Crowley - Poems
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 04
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the Gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There was an aspirant, a student who was seeking after knowledge. One day there appeared to him a white dog. Soon, other dogs followed and addressed their predecessor: "O Lord, sing to our Food, for we desire to eat." The white dog answered, "Come to me at dawn here in this very place." The aspirant waited. The dogs, like singer-priests, circled round in a ring. Then they sat and cried aloud; they cried out," Om We eat and Om we drink, may the Gods bring here our food."
Now, before any explanation is attempted it is important to bear in mind that the Upanishads speak of things experiencednot merely thought, reasoned or argued and that these experiences belong to a world and consciousness other than that of the mind and the senses. One should naturally expect here a different language and mode of expression than that which is appropriate to mental and physical things. For example, the world of dreams was once supposed to be a sheer chaos, a mass of meaningless confusion; but now it is held to be quite otherwise. Psychological scientists have discovered a methodeven a very well-defined and strict methodin the madness of that domain. It is an ordered, organised, significant world; but its terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered.
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The Word has four breasts. the Gods feed on two, SWAHAKAR and VASHATKAR, men upon the third, HANTAKAR,and the Ancestor upon the fourth, SWADHA 2
Ritualistically these four terms are the formulae for oblation to four Deities, Powers or Presences, whom the sacrificer wishes to please and propitiate in order to have their help and blessing and in order thereby to discharge his dharma or duty of life. Svh is the offering especially dedicated to Agni, the foremost of the Gods, for he is the divine messenger who carries men's offering to the Gods and brings their blessing to men. Vaatkr is the offering to the Gods generally. Hantakr is the offering to mankind, to our kin, an especial form of it being the worship of the guests,sarvadevamayo' tithi. Svadh is the offering to the departed Fathers (Pitris).
The duty of life consists, it is said, in the repaying of three debts which every man contracts as soon as he takes birth upon earth the debt to the Gods, to Men and to the Ancestors. This threefold debt or duty has, in other terms, reference to the three fields or domains wherein an embodied being lives and moves and to which he must adjust and react rightly -if he is to secure for his life an integral fulfilment. These are the family, society and the world and beyond-world. the Gods are the Powers that rule the world and beyond, they are the forms and forces of the One Spirit underlying the universe, the varied expressions of divine Truth and Reality: To worship the Gods, to do one's duty by them, means to come into contact and to be unitedin being, consciousness and activitywith the universal and spiritual existence, which is the supreme end and purpose of human life. The seconda more circumscribed fieldis the society to which one belongs, the particular group of humanity in which he functions as a limb. The service to society or good citizenship entails the worship of humanity, of Man as a god. Lastly, man belongs to the family, which is the unit of society; and the backbone of the family is the continuous line of ancestors, who are its presiding deity and represent the norm of a living dharma, the ethic of an ideal life.
From the psychological standpoint, the four oblations are movements or reactions of consciousness in its urge towards the utterance and expression of Divine Truth. Like some other elements in the cosmic play, these also form a quartetcaturvyha and work together for a common purpose in view of a perfect and all-round result.
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the Gods feed upon Svdh and Vaa, as these represent the ascending movement of human consciousness: it is man's self-giving and aspiration and the upward urge of his heart and soul that reach to the Gods, and it is that which the immortals take into themselves and are, as it were, nourished by, since it is something that appertains to their own nature.
And in response they descend and approach and enter into the aspiring human soulthis descent and revelation and near and concrete presence of Divinity, this Hanta is man's food, for by it his consciousness is nourished.
This interchange, or mutual giving, the High Covenant between the Gods and Men, to which the Gita too refers
With this sacrifice nourish the Gods, that the Gods may nourish you; thus mutually nourishing ye shall obtain the highest felicity3 is the very secret of the cosmic play, the basis of the spiritual evolution in the universal existence.
the Gods are the formations or particularisations of the Truth-consciousness, the multiple individualisations of the One spirit. The Pitris are the Divine Fathers, that is to say, souls that once laboured and realised here below, and now have passed beyond. They dwell in another world, not too far removed from the earth, and from there, with the force of their Realisation, lend a more concrete help and guidance to the destiny that is being worked out upon earth. They are forces and formations of consciousness in an intermediate region between Here and There (antarika), and serve to bring men and gods nearer to each other, inasmuch as they belong to both the categories, being a divinised humanity or a humanised divinity. Each fixation of the Truth-consciousness in an earthly mould is a thing of joy to the Pitris; it is the Svadh or food by which they live and grow, for it is the consolidation and also the resultant of their own realisation. The achievements of the sons are more easily and securely reared and grounded upon those of the forefa thers, whose formative powers we have to invoke, so that we may pass on to the realisation, the firm embodiment of higher and greater destinies.
III. The Path of the Fathers and the Path of the Gods
One is an ideal in and of the world, the other is an ideal transcending the world. The Path of the Fathers (Pityna) enjoins the right accomplishing of the dharma of Lifeit is the path of works, of Karma; it is the line of progressive evolution that, man follows through the experience of life after life on earth. The Path of the Gods (Devayna) runs above life's evolutionary course; it lifts man out of the terrestrial cycle and places him in a superior consciousness it is the path of knowledge, of Vidya.4 The Path of the Fathers is the soul's southern or inferior orbit (dakiyana, aparrdha); the Path of the Gods is the northern or superior orbit (uttaryaa, parrdha)The former is also called the Lunar Path and the latter the Solar Path.5 For the moon represents the mind,6 and is therefore, an emblem that befits man so long as he is a mental being and pursues a dharma that is limited by the mind; the sun, on the other hand, is the knowledge and consciousness that is beyond the mindit is the eye of the Gods.7
Man has two aspects or natures; he dwells in two worlds. The first is the manifest world the world of the body, the life and the mind. The body has flowered into the mind through the life. The body gives the basis or the material, the life gives power and energy and the mind the directing knowledge. This triune world forms the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune realitySat, Chit and Ananda.
The one, however, is not completely divorced from the other. The apparent, the inferior nature is only a preparation for the real, the superior nature. The Path of the Fathers concerns itself with man as a mental being and seeks so to ordain and accomplish its duties and ideals as to lead him on to the Path of the Gods; the mind, the life, and the body consciousness should be so disciplined, educated, purified, they should develop along such a line and gradually rise to such a stage as to make them fit to receive the light which belongs to the higher level, so allowing the human soul imbedded in them to extricate itself and pass on to the Immortal Life.
And they who are thus lifted up into the Higher Orbit are freed from the bondage to the cycle of rebirth. They enjoy the supreme Liberation that is of the Spirit; and even when they descend into the Inferior Path, it is to work out as free agents, as vehicles of the Divine, a special purpose, to bring down something of the substance and nature of the Solar reality into the lower world, enlighten and elevate the lower, as far as it is allowed, into the higher.
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The central secret of the transfigured consciousness lies, as we have already indicated, in the mystic rite or law of Sacrifice. It is the one basic, fundamental, universal Law that upholds and explains the cosmic movement, conformity to which brings to the thrice-bound human being release and freedom. Sacrifice consists essentially of two elements or processes: (i) The offering or self giving of the lower reality to the higher, and, as a consequence, an answering movement of (ii) the descent of the higher into the lower. The lower offered to the higher means the lower sublimated and integrated into the higher; and the descent of the higher into the lower means the incarnation of the former and the fulfilment of the latter. The Gita elaborates the same idea when it says that by Sacrifice men increase the Gods and the Gods increase men and by so increasing each other they attain the supreme Good. Nothing is, nothing is done, for its own sake, for an egocentric satisfaction; all, even movements relating to food and to sex should be dedicated to the Cosmic BeingVisva Purusha and that alone received which comes from Him.
VII. The Cosmic and the Transcendental
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It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal Brahman described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimmortalities, the Veda would say that form the inner core of the pyramid of creation. They form a rising tier and are ruled respectively by the GodsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their emanations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth-principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two aspects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic force and drive. In the first aspect he is more often considered as the Lord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second aspect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
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"How many Gods are there?" Yajnavalkya was once asked.13 The Rishi answered, they say there are three thousand and three of them, or three hundred and three, or again, thirty-three; it may be said too there are six or three or two or one and a half or one finally. Indeed as the Upanishad says elsewhere, it is the One Unique who wished to be many: and all the Gods are the various glories (mahim) or emanations of the One Divine. The ancient of ancient Rishis had declared long long ago, in the earliest Veda, that there is one indivisible Reality, the seers name it in various ways.
In Yajnavalkya's enumeration, however, it is to be noted, first of all, that he stresses on the number three. The principle of triplicity is of very wide application: it permeates all fields of consciousness and is evidently based upon a fundamental fact of reality. It seems to embody a truth of synthesis and comprehension, points to the order and harmony that reigns in the cosmos, the spheric music. The metaphysical, that is to say, the original principles that constitute existence are the well-known triplets: (i) the superior: Sat, Chit, Ananda; and (ii) the inferior: Body, Life and Mindthis being a reflection or translation or concretisation of the former. We can see also here how the dual principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 14 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity of the Reality. But what is this one and a half to which Yajnavalkya refers? It simply means that the other created out of the one is not a wholly separate, independent entity: it is not an integer by itself, as in the Manichean system, but that it is a portion, a fraction of the One. And in the end, in the ultimate analysis, or rather synthesis, there is but one single undivided and indivisible unity. The thousands and hundreds, very often mentioned also in the Rig Veda, are not simply multiplications of the One, a graphic description of its many-sidedness; it indicates also the absolute fullness, the complete completeness (prasya pram) of the Reality. It includes and comprehends all and is a rounded totality, a full circle. The hundred-gated and the thousand-pillared cities of which the ancient Rishis chanted are formations and embodiments of consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and therefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not always the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect form (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment; the Gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the eye cannot see nor the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
'Kavi' is an invariable epithet of the Gods. The Vedas mean by this attribute to bring out a most fundamental character, an inalienable dharma of the heavenly host. All the Gods are poets; and a human being can become a poet only in so far as he attains to the nature and status of a god. Who is then a kavi? The Poet is he who by his poetic power raises forms of beauty in heavenkavi kavitv divi rpam sajat.1Thus the essence of poetic power is to fashion divine Beauty, to reveal heavenly forms. What is this Heaven whose forms the Poet discovers and embodies? HeavenDyaushas a very definite connotation in the Veda. It means the luminous or divine Mind 2the mind purified of its obscurity and limitations, due to subjection to the external senses, thus opening to the higher Light, receiving and recording faithfully the deeper and vaster movements and vibrations of the Truth, giving them a form, a perfect body of the right thought and the right word. Indra is the lord of this world and he can be approached only with an enkindled intelligence, ddhay man,3a faultless understanding, sumedh. He is the supreme Artisan of the poetic power,Tash, the maker of perfect forms, surpa ktnum.4 All the Gods turn towards Indra and become gods and poets, attain their Great Names of Supreme Beauty.5 Indra is also the master of the senses, indriyas, who are his hosts. It is through this mind and the senses that the poetic creation has to be manifested. The mind spreads out wide the Poet's weaving;6 the poet is the priest who calls down and works out the right thinking in the sacrificial labour of creation.7 But that creation is made in and through the inner mind and the inner senses that are alive to the subtle formation of a vaster knowledge.8 The poet envisages the golden forms fashioned out of the very profundity of the consciousness.9 For the substance, the material on which the Poet works, is Truth. The seat of the Truth the poets guard, they uphold the supreme secret Names.10 The poet has the expressive utterance, the creative word; the poet is a poet by his poetic creation-the shape faultlessly wrought out that unveils and holds the Truth.11The form of beauty is the body of the Truth.
The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness forms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creator. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creator,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and form to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic working. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path for the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing forward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the world of felicity.
--
The Poet creates forms of beauty in Heaven; but these forms are not made out of the void. It is the Earth that is raised to Heaven and transmuted into divine truth forms. The union of Earth and Heaven is the source of the Joy, the Ananda, that the Poet unseals and distributes. Heaven and Earth join and meet in the world of Delight; between them they press out Soma, the drink of the Gods.
The Mind and the Body are held together by means of the Life, the mid-world. The Divine Mind by raising the body-consciousness into itself gathers up too, by that act, the delight of life and releases the fountain of immortal Bliss. That is the work and achievement of the Gods as poets.
Where then is the birth of the Poets? Ask it of the Masters. The Poets have seized and mastered the Mind, they have the perfect working and they fashion the Heaven.
--
All the Gods are poetstheir forms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the Gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy born of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-Form, the architectonic conception of the work or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, the vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
The Vedic Poet is doubtless the poet of Life, the architect of Divinity in man, of Heaven upon earth. But what is true of Life is fundamentally true of Art tooat least true of the Art as it was conceived by the ancient seers and as it found expression at their hands.32
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
A good many attri butions in other symbolic areas, I feel are subject to the same criticism. The Egyptian Gods have been used with a good deal of carelessness, and without sufficient explanation of motives in assigning them as I did. In a recent edition of Crowley's masterpiece Liber 777 (which au fond is less a reflection of Crowley's mind as a recent critic claimed than a tabulation of some of the material given piecemeal in the Golden Dawn knowledge lectures), he gives for the first time brief explanations of the motives for his attri butions. I too should have been far more explicit in the explanations I used in the case of some of the Gods whose names were used many times, most inadequately, where several paths were concerned. While it is true that the religious coloring of the Egyptian Gods differed from time to time during Egypt's turbulent history, nonetheless a word or two about just that one single point could have served a useful purpose.
Some of the passages in the book force me today to emphasize that so far as the Qabalah is concerned, it could and should be employed without binding to it the partisan qualities of any one particular religious faith. This goes as much for Judaism as it does for Christianity. Neither has much intrinsic usefulness where this scientific scheme is concerned. If some students feel hurt by this statement, that cannot be helped. The day of most contemporary faiths is over; they have been more of a curse than a boon to mankind. Nothing that I say here, however, should reflect on the peoples concerned, those who accept these religions. They are merely unfortunate. The religion itself is worn out and indeed is dying.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Gadadhar grew up into a healthy and restless boy, full of fun and sweet mischief. He was intelligent and precocious and endowed with a prodigious memory. On his father's lap he learnt by heart the names of his ancestors and the hymns to the Gods and goddesses, and at the village school he was taught to read and write. But his greatest delight was to listen to recitations of stories from Hindu mythology and the epics. These he would afterwards recount from memory, to the great joy of the villagers. Painting he enjoyed; the art of moulding images of the Gods and goddesses he learnt from the potters. But arithmetic was his great aversion.
At the age of six or seven Gadadhar had his first experience of spiritual ecstasy. One day in June or July, when he was walking along a narrow path between paddy-fields, eating the puffed rice that he carried in a basket, he looked up at the sky and saw a beautiful, dark thunder-cloud. As it spread, rapidly enveloping the whole sky, a flight of snow-white cranes passed in front of it. The beauty of the contrast overwhelmed the boy. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and the puffed rice went in all directions. Some villagers found him and carried him home in their arms. Gadadhar said later that in that state he had experienced an indescribable joy.
--
Born in an orthodox brahmin family, Sri Ramakrishna knew the formalities of worship, its rites and rituals. The innumerable gods and goddesses of the Hindu religion are the human aspects of the indescribable and incomprehensible Spirit, as conceived by the finite human mind. They understand and appreciate human love and emotion, help men to realize their secular and spiritual ideals, and ultimately enable men to attain liberation from the miseries of phenomenal life. The Source of light, intelligence, wisdom, and strength is the One alone from whom comes the fulfilment of desire. Yet, as long as a man is bound by his human limitations, he cannot but worship God through human forms. He must use human symbols. Therefore Hinduism asks the devotees to look on God as the ideal father, the ideal mother, the ideal husband, the ideal son, or the ideal friend. But the name ultimately leads to the Nameless, the form to the Formless, the word to the Silence, the emotion to the serene realization of Peace in Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. the Gods gradually merge in the one God. But until that realization is achieved, the devotee cannot dissociate human factors from his worship. Therefore the Deity is bathed and clothed and decked with ornaments. He is fed and put to sleep. He is propitiated with hymns, songs, and prayers. And there are appropriate rites connected with all these functions. For instance, to secure for himself external purity, the priest bathes himself in holy water and puts on a holy cloth. He purifies the mind and the sense-organs by appropriate meditations. He fortifies the place of worship against evil forces by drawing around it circles of fire and water. He awakens the different spiritual centres of the body and invokes the Supreme Spirit in his heart. Then he transfers the Supreme Spirit to the image before him and worships the image, regarding it no longer as clay or stone, but as the embodiment of Spirit, throbbing with Life and Consciousness. After the worship the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to Its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshipping the Transcendental Reality with material articles — clothing That which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal That which cannot be limited by space, feeding That which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before That whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But through these rites the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to realize God as the All-pervading Consciousness.
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
--
Totapuri arrived at the Dakshineswar temple garden toward the end of 1864. Perhaps born in the Punjab, he was the head of a monastery in that province of India and claimed leadership of seven hundred sannyasis. Trained from early youth in the disciplines of the Advaita Vedanta, he looked upon the world as an illusion. the Gods and goddesses of the dualistic worship were to him mere fantasies of the deluded mind. Prayers, ceremonies, rites, and rituals had nothing to do with true religion, and about these he was utterly indifferent. Exercising self-exertion and unshakable will-power, he had liberated himself from attachment to the sense-objects of the relative universe. For forty years he had practised austere discipline on the bank of the sacred Narmada and had finally realized his identity with the Absolute. Thenceforward he roamed in the world as an unfettered soul, a lion free from the cage. Clad in a loin-cloth, he spent his days under the canopy of the sky alike in storm and sunshine, feeding his body on the slender pittance of alms. He had been visiting the estuary of the Ganges. On his return journey along the bank of the sacred river, led by the inscrutable Divine Will, he stopped at Dakshineswar.
Totapuri, discovering at once that Sri Ramakrishna was prepared to be a student of Vedanta, asked to initiate him into its mysteries. With the permission of the Divine Mother, Sri Ramakrishna agreed to the proposal. But Totapuri explained that only a sannyasi could receive the teaching of Vedanta. Sri Ramakrishna agreed to renounce the world, but with the stipulation that the ceremony of his initiation into the monastic order be performed in secret, to spare the feelings of his old mother, who had been living with him at Dakshineswar.
--
Totapuri asked the disciple to withdraw his mind from all objects of the relative world, including the Gods and goddesses, and to concentrate on the Absolute. But the task was not easy even for Sri Ramakrishna. He found it impossible to take his mind beyond Kali, the Divine Mother of the Universe. "After the initiation", Sri Ramakrishna once said, describing the event, "Nangta began to teach me the various conclusions of the Advaita Vedanta and asked me to withdraw the mind completely from all objects and dive deep into the Atman. But in spite of all my attempts I could not altogether cross the realm of name and form and bring my mind to the unconditioned state. I had no difficulty in taking the mind from all the objects of the world. But the radiant and too familiar figure of the Blissful Mother, the Embodiment of the essence of Pure Consciousness, appeared before me as a living reality. Her bewitching smile prevented me from passing into the Great Beyond. Again and again I tried, but She stood in my way every time. In despair I said to Nangta: 'It is hopeless. I cannot raise my mind to the unconditioned state and come face to face with Atman.' He grew excited and sharply said: 'What? You can't do it? But you have to.' He cast his eyes around. Finding a piece of glass he took it up and stuck it between my eyebrows. 'Concentrate the mind on this point!' he thundered. Then with stern determination I again sat to meditate. As soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared before me, I used my discrimination as a sword and with it clove Her in two. The last barrier fell. My spirit at once soared beyond the relative plane and I lost myself in samadhi."
Sri Ramakrishna remained completely absorbed in samadhi for three days. "Is it really true?" Totapuri cried out in astonishment. "Is it possible that he has attained in a single day what it took me forty years of strenuous practice to achieve? Great God! It is nothing short of a miracle!" With the help of Totapuri, Sri Ramakrishna's mind finally came down to the relative plane.
--
The Knowledge of Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi had convinced Sri Ramakrishna that the Gods of the different religions are but so many readings of the Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed by human tongue. He understood that all religions lead their devotees by differing paths to one and the same goal. Now he became eager to explore some of the alien religions; for with him understanding meant actual experience.
--- ISLAM
--
Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, the right-hand man of Keshab and an accomplished Brahmo preacher in Europe and America, bitterly criticized Sri Ramakrishna's use of uncultured language and also his austere attitude toward his wife. But he could not escape the spell of the Master's personality. In the course of an article about Sri Ramakrishna, Pratap wrote in the "Theistic Quarterly Review": "What is there in common between him and me? I, a Europeanized, civilized, self-centred, semi-sceptical, so-called educated reasoner, and he, a poor, illiterate, unpolished, half-idolatrous, friendless Hindu devotee? Why should I sit long hours to attend to him, I, who have listened to Disraeli and Fawcett, Stanley and Max Muller, and a whole host of European scholars and divines? . . . And it is not I only, but dozens like me, who do the same. . . . He worships Siva, he worships Kali, he worships Rama, he worships Krishna, and is a confirmed advocate of Vedantic doctrines. . . . He is an idolater, yet is a faithful and most devoted meditator on the perfections of the One Formless, Absolute, Infinite Deity. . . . His religion is ecstasy, his worship means transcendental insight, his whole nature burns day and night with a permanent fire and fever of a strange faith and feeling. . . . So long as he is spared to us, gladly shall we sit at his feet to learn from him the sublime precepts of purity, unworldliness, spirituality, and inebriation in the love of God. . . . He, by his childlike bhakti, by his strong conceptions of an ever-ready Motherhood, helped to unfold it [God as our Mother] in our minds wonderfully. . . . By associating with him we learnt to realize better the divine attributes as scattered over the three hundred and thirty millions of deities of mythological India, the Gods of the Puranas."
The Brahmo leaders received much inspiration from their contact with Sri Ramakrishna. It broadened their religious views and kindled in their hearts the yearning for God-realization; it made them understand and appreciate the rituals and symbols of Hindu religion, convinced them of the manifestation of God in diverse forms, and deepened their thoughts about the harmony of religions. The Master, too, was impressed by the sincerity of many of the Brahmo devotees. He told them about his own realizations and explained to them the essence of his teachings, such as the necessity of renunciation, sincerity in the pursuit of one's own course of discipline, faith in God, the performance of one's duties without thought of results, and discrimination between the Real and the unreal.
--
The more the body was devastated by illness, the more it became the habitation of the Divine Spirit. Through its transparency the Gods and goddesses began to shine with ever increasing luminosity. On the day of the Kali Puja the devotees clearly saw in him the manifestation of the Divine Mother.
It was noticed at this time that some of the devotees were making an unbridled display of their emotions. A number of them, particularly among the householders, began to cultivate, though at first unconsciously, the art of shedding tears, shaking the body, contorting the face, and going into trances, attempting thereby to imitate the Master. They began openly to declare Sri Ramakrishna a Divine Incarnation and to regard themselves as his chosen people, who could neglect religious disciplines with impunity. Narendra's penetrating eye soon sized up the situation. He found out that some of these external manifestations were being carefully practised at home, while some were the outcome of malnutrition, mental weakness, or nervous debility. He mercilessly exposed the devotees who were pretending to have visions, and asked all to develop a healthy religious spirit. Narendra sang inspiring songs for the younger devotees, read with them the Imitation of Christ and the Gita, and held before them the positive ideals of spirituality.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
the Gods.
This Reason and Law is the Bond of the Great Lie.
--
been the most acceptable offerings to all the Gods, but
especially the Christian God.
--
circumstances of the Equinox of the Gods.
The word "Phoenix" may be taken as including the
--
crapulence. The priests of the Gods were carefully
chosen, and carefully trained to fulfill the sacrament of
--
sonally, at the Equinox of the Gods. (It is the flame
desending upon the altar, and licking up the burnt
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Matter, which, however the too ethereally spiritual may despise it, is our foundation and the first condition of all our energies and realisations, and the Life-Energy which is our means of existence in a material body and the basis there even of our mental and spiritual activities. She has successfully achieved a certain stability of her constant material movement which is at once sufficiently steady and durable and sufficiently pliable and mutable to provide a fit dwelling-place and instrument for the progressively manifesting god in humanity. This is what is meant by the fable in the Aitareya Upanishad which tells us that the Gods rejected the animal forms successively offered to them by the Divine Self and only when man was produced, cried out, "This indeed is perfectly made," and consented to enter in. She has effected also a working compromise between the inertia of matter and the active Life that lives in and feeds on it, by which not only is vital existence sustained, but the fullest developments of mentality are rendered possible. This equilibrium constitutes the basic status of Nature in man and is termed in the language of Yoga his gross body composed
The Three Steps of Nature
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefa thers fashioning the Gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The overmind is the region of the Gods, the beings of divine
origin who have been charged with supervising, directing and
--
progressive ascension. It is usually to the Gods of the overmind
that the prayers of the various religions are addressed. These religions most often choose, for various reasons, one of these gods
0.09 - Letters to a Young Teacher, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
drink from the cup of the Gods who are immortal.
To receive the divine grace, not only must one have a great
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The New Humanity will be something in the mould that we give to the Gods. It will supply the link that we see missing between gods and men; it will be the race of embodied gods. Man will attain that thing which has been his first desire and earliest dream, for which he coveted the Gods Immortality, amritatwam. The mortalities that cut and divide, limit and bind man make him the sorrowful being he is. These are due to his ignorance and weakness and egoism. These are due to his soul itself. It is the soul that requires change, a new birth, as Christ demanded. Ours is a little soul that has severed itself from the larger and mightier self that it is. And therefore does it die every moment and even while living is afraid to live and so lives poorly and miserably. But the age is now upon us when the god-like soul anointed with its immortal royalties is ready to emerge and claim our salutation.
The breath and the surge of the new creation cannot be mistaken. The question that confronts us today is no longer whether the New Man, the Super-humanity, will come or if at all, when; but the question we have to answer is who among us are ready to be its receptacle, its instrument and embodiment.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
1.2
--
In her there was the anguish of the Gods
Imprisoned in our transient human mould,
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To humanise the Divine, that is what we all wish to do; for the Divine is too lofty for us and we cannot look full into his face. We cry and supplicate to Rudra, "O dire Lord, show us that other form of thine that is benign and humane". All earthly imageries we lavish upon the Divine so that he may appear to us not as something far and distant and foreign, but, quite near, among us, as one of us. We take recourse to human symbolism often, because we wish to palliate or hide the rigours of a supreme experience, not because we have no adequate terms for it. The same human or earthly terms could be used differently if we had a different consciousness. Thus the Vedic Rishis sought not to humanise the Divine, their purpose was rather to divinise the human. And their allegorical language, although rich in terrestrial figures, does not carry the impress and atmosphere of mere humanity and earthliness. For in reality the symbol is not merely the symbol. It is mere symbol in regard to the truth so long as we take our stand on the lower plane when we have to look at the truth through the symbol; but if we view it from the higher plane, from truth itself, it is no longer mere symbol but the very truth bodied forth. Whatever there is of symbolism on earth and its beauties, in sense and its enjoyments, is then transfigured into the expression of the truth, of the divinity itself. We then no longer speak in human language but in the language of the Gods.
We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
--
And if there is something in the creative spirit of Sri Aurobindo which tends more towards the strenuous than the genial, the arduous than the mellifluous, and which has more of the austerity of Vyasa than the easy felicity of Valmiki, however it might have affected the ultimate value of his creation, according to certain standards,14 it has illustrated once more that poetry is not merely beauty but power, it is not merely sweet imagination but creative visionit is even the Rik, the mantra that impels the Gods to manifest upon earth, that fashions divinity in man.
James H. Cousins in his New Ways in English Literature describes Sri Aurobindo as "the philosopher as poet."
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Moves in some prophet cavern of the Gods,
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
--
The strength, the silence of the Gods were hers.
3.41
--
Her walk kept still the measures of the Gods.
4.4
--
Years like gold raiment of the Gods that pass;
Her youth sat throned in calm felicity.
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is spiritual matter and spiritual manner that can never be improved upon. This is spiritual poetry in its quintessence. I am referring naturally here to the original and not to the translation which can never do full justice, even at its very best, to the poetic value in question. For apart from the individual genius of the poet, the greatness of the language, the instrument used by the poet, is also involved. It may well be what is comparatively easy and natural in the language of the Gods (devabhasha) would mean a tour de force, if not altogether an impossibility, in a human language. The Sanskrit language was moulded and fashioned in the hands of the Rishis, that is to say, those who lived and moved and had their being in the spiritual consciousness. The Hebrew or even the Zend does not seem to have reached that peak, that absoluteness of the spiritual tone which seems inherent in the Indian tongue, although those too breathed and grew in a spiritual atmosphere. The later languages, however, Greek or Latin or their modern descendants, have gone still farther from the source, they are much nearer to the earth and are suffused with the smell and effluvia of this vale of tears.
Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
01.03 - Sri Aurobindo and his School, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo's sadhana starts from the perception of a Power that is beyond the ordinary nature yet is its inevitable master, a fulcrum, as we have said, outside the earth. For what is required first is the discovery and manifestation of a new soul-consciousness in man which will bring about by the very pressure and working out of its self-rule an absolute reversal of man's nature. It is the Asuras who are now holding sway over humanity, for man has allowed himself so long to be built in the image of the Asura; to dislodge the Asuras, the Gods in their sovereign might have to be forged in the human being and brought into play. It is a stupendous task, some would say impossible; but it is very far removed from quietism or passivism. Sri Aurobindo is in retirement, but it is a retirement only from the outward field of present physical activities and their apparent actualities, not from the true forces and action of life. It is the retreat necessary to one who has to go back into himself to conquer a new plane of creative power,an entrance right into the world of basic forces, of fundamental realities, into the flaming heart of things where all actualities are born and take their first shape. It is the discovery of a power-house of tremendous energism and of the means of putting it at the service of earthly life.
And, properly speaking, it is not at all a school, least of all a mere school of thought, that is growing round Sri Aurobindo. It is rather the nucleus of a new life that is to come. Quite naturally it has almost insignificant proportions at present to the outward eye, for the work is still of the nature of experiment and trial in very restricted limits, something in the nature of what is done in a laboratory when a new power has been discovered, but has still to be perfectly formulated in its process. And it is quite a mistake to suppose that there is a vigorous propaganda carried on in its behalf or that there is a large demand for recruits. Only the few, who possess the call within and are impelled by the spirit of the future, have a chance of serving this high attempt and great realisation and standing among its first instruments and pioneer workers.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The weeping of Love, the quarrel of the Gods,
Ceased in a truth which lives in its own light.
--
Air rippled round the argosies of the Gods,
Strange riches sailed to him from the Unseen;
--
Covered by the forged signatures of the Gods,
Detect the magic bride in her disguise
--
A recorder of the inquiry of the Gods,
Spokesman of the silent seeings of the Supreme,
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
However, we are concerned more with the immediate past, the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher, something greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign faculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless it were draison. The human attribute par excellence is Reason. Exactly so. But the fact is that man is not bound by his humanity and that reason can be transformed and sublimated into other more powerful faculties.
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All that the Gods have learned is there self-known.
There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
--
Its law of the opposition of the Gods,
Its list of inseparable contraries.
--
She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods
And cut through vistas of intuitive sight
--
Aspired in a crescendo of the Gods
From Matter's abysses to the Spirit's peaks.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the Gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways. She has done with man as an essentially human being, she has brought out the fundamental possibilities of humanity and perfected it, so far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of experiment the evolving of another life, another being out of her entrails, that will be greater than the humanity we know today, that will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and kindlier rapture."4 So the Gods are cowards! Where
then is their greatness and their splendour? Why do we
--
"The Titans are stronger than the Gods because they have agreed with God to front
and bear the burden of His wrath and enmity; the Gods were able to accept only the
pleasant burden of His love and kindlier rapture."
--
not, I see no need for us to worship the Gods, great or small. Our
adoration ought to go only to the Supreme Lord, who is one in
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still, the conception of duty cannot finally and definitively solve the problem. It cannot arrive at a perfect harmonisation of the conflicting claims of individual units; for, duty, as I have already said, is a child of mental idealism, and although the mind can exercise some kind of control over life-forces, it cannot altogether eliminate the seeds of conflict that lie imbedded in the very nature of life. It is for this reason that there is an element of constraint in duty; it is, as the poet says, the "stern daughter of the Voice of God". One has to compel oneself, one has to use force on oneself to carry out one's dutythere is a feeling somehow of its being a bitter pill. The cult of duty means rajas controlled and coerced by Sattwa, not the transcendence of rajas. This leads us to the high and supreme conception of Dharma, which is a transcendence of the gunas. Dharma is not an ideal, a standard or a rule that one has to obey: it is the law of self-nature that one inevitably follows, it is easy, spontaneous, delightful. The path of duty is heroic, the path of Dharma is of the Gods, godly (cf. Virabhava and Divyabhava of the Tantras).
The principle of Dharma then inculcates that each individual must, in order to act, find out his truth of being, his true soul and inmost consciousness: one must entirely and integrally merge oneself into that, be identified with it in such a manner that all acts and feelings and thoughts, in fact all movements, inner and outerspontaneously and irrepressibly well out of that fount and origin. The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or haltna me thate na tas thatuh but weave out a faultless pattern of symphony.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
They are the Gods.
Naturally, this is a way of speaking which corresponds to a
--
of the Gods?
The vibrations of evil are in truth less powerful than the vibrations of good.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In effect, according to tradition, the first divine forces that emanated for the creation were the Asuras, who turned into demons. the Gods were created later to repair the disorder engendered by the demons.
So'ham, the traditional mantra of the Vedantic path, which declares that the world is an illusion.
0 1958-07-19, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We are the distorting intermediary between the purity of the animal and the divine purity of the Gods.
***
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Evidently the Gods of the Puranas are a good deal worse than human beings, as we saw in that film the other day1 (and that story was absolutely true). the Gods of the Overmind are infinitely more egocentric the only thing that counts for them is their power, the extent of their power. Man has in addition a psychic being, so consequently he has true love and compassionwherein lies his superiority over the Gods. It was very, very clearly expressed in this film, and its very true.
the Gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than man. In this film, it was proved that through their capacity for love and self-giving, men can have as much power as the Gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
Certainly man is nearer the Supreme than the Gods. Provided he fulfills the necessary conditions, he can be nearerhe isnt so automatically, but he can be, he has the power, the potentiality to be.
Anusuya: wife of the rishi Atri and endowed with a great inner force. In her husband's absence, three gods came (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) disguised as brahmins and asked her for something to eat. Then they refused to eat unless she served them naked. Since they were brahmins, she could not send them away without feeding them, so by her inner power, she changed them into babies and served them naked. This film was shown at the Ashram Playground on August 5, 1958.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(Concerning; the Agenda of August 9, 1958, on the Gods of the Puranas)
the Gods of the Puranas are merciless gods who respect only power and have nothing of the true love, charity or profound goodness that the Divine has put into the human consciousness and which compensate psychically for all the outer defects. They themselves have nothing of this, they have no psychic.1 The Puranic gods have no psychic, so they act according to their power. They are restrained only when their power is not all-powerful, thats all.
But what does Anusuya represent?2
She is a portrait of the ideal woman according to the Hindu conception, the woman who worships her husb and as a god, which means that she sees the Supreme in her husband. And so this woman was much more powerful than all the Gods of the Puranas precisely because she had this psychic capacity for total self-giving; and her faith in the Supremes presence in her husb and gave her a much greater power than that of all the Gods.
The story narrated in the film went like this: Narada, as usual, was having fun. (Narada is a demigod with a divine position that is, he can communicate with man and with the Gods as he pleases, and he serves as an intermediary, but then he likes to have fun!) So he was quarrelling with one of the goddesses, I no longer recall which one, and he told her (Ah, yes! The quarrel was with Saraswati.) Saraswati was telling him that knowledge is much greater than love (much greater in that it is much more powerful than love), and he replied to her, You dont know what youre talking about! (Mother laughs) Love is much more powerful than knowledge. So she challenged him, saying, Well then, prove it to me.I shall prove it to you, he replied. And the whole story starts there. He began creating a whole imbroglio on earth just to prove his point.
It was only a film story, but anyway, the goddesses, the three wives of the Trimurti that is, the consort of Brahma, the consort of Vishnu and the consort of Shivajoined forces (!) and tried all kinds of things to foil Narada. I no longer recall the details of the story Oh yes, the story begins like this: one of the three I believe it was Shivas consort, Parvati (she was the worst one, by the way!)was doing her puja. Shiva was in meditation, and she began doing her puja in front of him; she was using an oil lamp for the puja, and the lamp fell down and burned her foot. She cried out because she had burned her foot. So Shiva at once came out of his meditation and said to her, What is it, Devi? (laughter) She answered, I burned my foot! Then Narada said, Arent you ashamed of what you have done?to make Shiva come out of his meditation simply because you have a little burn on your foot, which cannot even hurt you since you are immortal! She became furious and snapped at him, Show me that it can be otherwise! Narada replied, I am going to show you what it is to really love ones husbandyou dont know anything about it!
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.
--
Oh, the story was very lovely all along. There was one thing after another, one thing after another, and always the power of Anusuya was greater than the power of the Gods. I liked that story very much.
It ended in a (Oh, the story was very long; it lasted three hours!) But really, it was lovely throughout. Lovely in the way it showed that the sincerity of love is much more powerful than anything else.
--
(Shortly afterwards, the disciple again brings up the topic of August 9, where Mother had said that the Gods are a good deal worse than human beings)
It should be said that we are speaking of the Puranic gods, because the Christians, for example, do not understand what this can mean. They have an entirely different conception of the Gods.
It could apply to the old Greek mythology, though.
--
There is something similar between the Puranic gods and the Gods of Greek or Egyptian mythology. the Gods of Egyptian mythology are terrible beings They cut off peoples heads, tear their enemies to pieces!
The Greeks were not always tender either!
--
They are beings who belong to the progressive creation of the universe and who have themselves presided over its formation from the most etheric or subtle regions to the most material regions. They are a descent of the divine creative Spirit that came to repair the mischief in short, to repair what the Asuras had done. The first makers created disorder and darkness, an unconsciousness, and then it is said that there was a second lineage of makers to repair that evil, and the Gods gradually descended through realities that were ever moreone cant say dense because it isnt really dense, nor can one even say material, since matter as we know it does not exist on these planesthrough more and more concrete substances.
All these zones, these planes of reality, received different names and were classified in different ways according to the occult schools, according to the different traditions, but there is an essential similarity, and if we go back far enough into the various traditions, hardly anything but words differ, depending upon the country and the language. The descriptions are quite similar. Moreover, those who climb back up the ladderor in other words, a human being who, through his occult knowledge, goes out of one of his bodies (they are called sheaths in English) and enters into a more subtle bodyin order to ACT in a more subtle body and so forth, twelve times (you make each body come out from a more material body, leaving the more material body in its corresponding zone, and then go off through successive exteriorizations), what they have seen, what they have discovered and seen through their ascensionwhe ther they are occultists from the Occident or occultists from the Orientis for the most part analogous in description. They have put different words on it, but the experience is very analogous.
0 1959-05-19 - Ascending and Descending paths, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When you follow the ascending path, the work is relatively easy. I had already covered this path by the beginning of the century and had established a constant relationship with the SupremeThat which is beyond the Personal and the Gods and all the outward expressions of the Divine, but also beyond the Absolute Impersonal. Its something you cannot describe; you must experience it. And this is what must be brought down into Matter. Such is the descending path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo; and there, the work is immense.
The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender1). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forwardoh, not even a real step, just a little step!everything starts grating; its like stepping on an anthill And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for themthey have only to let it be done.
0 1959-06-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The earthquake he mentioned promises to be a kind of pralaya (as X put it), for not only Bombay will be touched. This is what he said: America supports Pakistan, but the Gods do not support Pakistan, and Pakistan will be punished by the Gods. HALF of western Pakistan, including Karachi, will go into the sea. The sea will enter into Rajasthan and touch India also
X then said that India would side with America against the Communist bloc (in spite of Americas support to Pakistan), and furthermore, that the day India sides with America, America will cease supporting Pakistan. In any case, it will be the end of Pakistan.
0 1959-06-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, I have prayed with so much truth in my heart that I am sure the Gods will come to help me, and that you will help me, too. I think not only of Sujata, but of all these destinies that are being stifled within me.
Your child,
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yesterday, I suddenly saw a huge living head of blue lightthis blue light which is the force, the powerful force in material Nature (this is the light the tantrics use). The head was made entirely of this light, and it wore a sort of tiaraa big head, so big (Mother indicates the length of her forearm); its eyes werent closed, but rather lowered, like this. The immobility of eternity, absolutely the repose, the immobility of eternity. A magnificent head, quite similar to the way the Gods here are represented, but even better; something between certain heads of the Buddha and (these heads most probably come to the artists). Everything else was lost in a kind of cloud.
I felt that this kind of yes, immobility came from there: everything stops, absolutely everything stops. Silence, immobility truly, you enter into eternity.I told him it wasnt time!
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the Vedas, the panis and dasyus represent beings or forces hidden in subterranean caves who have stolen the 'Riches' or the 'Lights', symbolized by herds of cows. With the help of the Gods, the Aryan warrior must recover these lost riches, the 'sun in the darkness,' by igniting the flame of sacrifice. It is the path of subterranean descent.
Indra represents the king of the Gods, the master of mental power freed from the limitations and obscurities of the physical consciousness.
The body-consciousness.
0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
T. asks, Why dont the Gods help us? Why do they keep us in bondage?
Thats not what Sri Aurobindo means! He means he doesnt WANT to be limited by the Gods, not even by their powers. He wants to be vaster than they are: vaster, more total, more complete. Its not a question of getting rid of their influence but of becoming more than that.
(silence)
0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But what can be translated is this kind of sensation that the sequence of cause and effect, of purpose, of goal, all seems to be very far below, very, very DISTANT, very humanperhaps divine, too (from the viewpoint of the Gods it may be like this also, I dont know), because in the consciousness of the universal Mother it is still there, there is still this ardent love to serve: To do Your Will. That is still there, so its there with the Gods also.
(silence)
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Narayana: another name of Vishnu, one of the Gods of the Hindu trinity. He watches over the creation, whereas Brahma is the creator and Shiva the destroyer.
Rakshasa: demon of the vital plane, as opposed to an asura, a demon of the mental world.
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): Well, heres what has happened. Whats to be done? Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasnt Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didnt pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the Gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fallits the old story of the Fall, this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasnt enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the Gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. Thats the story of the first Descent. But youre speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, arent you?
Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why dont things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a descent?
--
Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well and this is a very concrete experience these initial mentalized forms, if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Natures evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial formsthis is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since its connected with the history of the earth); but anyway its a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the Gods of the overmind,4 or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfectmore perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in SavitriSavitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full powerwhen things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.
People cant understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well5 (personally I have never found it so, although its probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing. They have to live it first!
--
In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the 'Overmind' represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the Gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations the world that has ruled mental man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, 'This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, but in receiving it divides, distributes, breaks up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds.' In the words of the Upanishad, 'The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid.'
Mother is referring to the book Satprem will write on Sri Aurobindo, which prompted the questions posed in this conversation.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In this respect, you say somewhere that the Gods too must incarnate to become fully conscious.
Yes, because.
How is this possible? Arent the Gods already fully conscious?!
No, they have no psychic being, so that whole side of life does not exist for them.
--
Yes, but arent the Gods conscious of the Divine?
Listen, mon petit, they are conscious of their own divinity, and of that above all!
--
I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. Theres a ledge above the pillars there, where all the Gods used to sitShiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didnt have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concepteach one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was the basis of popular worship,7 and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had only the sense of their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation.
Except for Krishna. In 1926, I had begun a sort of overmental creation, that is, I had brought the Overmind down into matter, here on earth (miracles and all kinds of things were beginning to happen). I asked all these gods to incarnate, to identify themselves with a body (some of them absolutely refused). Well, with my very own eyes I saw Krishna, who had always been in rapport with Sri Aurobindo, consent to come down into his body. It was on November 24th, and it was the beginning of Mother.8
--
It was this: Krishna consented to descend into Sri Aurobindos bodyto be FIXED there; there is a great difference, you understand, between incarnating, being fixed in a body, and simply acting as an influence that comes and goes and moves about. the Gods are always moving about, and its plain that we ourselves, in our inner beings, come and go and act in a hundred or a thousand places at once. There is a difference between just coming occasionally and accepting to be permanently tied to a bodybetween a permanent influence and a permanent presence.
These things have to be experienced.
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The secret lies in matter. Because Agni is imprisoned in matter and we ourselves are imprisoned there. It is said that Agni is without head or feet, that it conceals its two extremities: above, it disappears into the great heaven of the supraconscient (which the Rishis also called the great ocean), and below, it sinks into the formless ocean of the inconscient (which they also called the rock). We are truncated. But the Rishis were men of a solid realism, a true realism resting upon the Spirit; and since the summits of mind opened out upon a lacuna of lightecstatic, to be sure, but with no hold over the worldthey set upon the downward way.6 Thus begins the quest for the lost sun, the long pilgrimage of descent into the inconscient and the merciless fight against the dark forces, the thieves of the sun, the panis and vritras, pythons and giants, hidden in the dark lair with the whole cohort of usurpers: the dualizers, the confiners, the tearers, the COVERERS. But the divine worker, Agni, is helped by the Gods, and in his quest he is led by the intuitive ray, Sarama, the heavenly hound with the subtle sense of smell who sets Agni on the track of the stolen herds (strange, shining herds). Now and again there comes the sudden glimmer of a fugitive dawn then all grows dim. One must advance step by step, digging, digging, fighting every inch of the way against the wolves whose savage fury increases the nearer one draws to their denAgni is a warrior. Agni grows through his difficulties, his flame burns more brilliantly with each blow from the Adversary; for, as the Rishis said, Night and Day both suckled the divine Child; they even said that Night and Day are the two sisters, Immortal, with a common lover [the sun] common they, though different their forms (I.113.2,3). These alternations of night and brightness accelerate until Day breaks at last and the herds of Dawn7 surge upward awakening someone who was dead (I.113.8). The infinite rock of the inconscient is shattered, the seeker uncovers the Sun dwelling in the darkness (III.39.5), the divine consciousness in the heart of Matter. In the very depths of Matter, that is to say, in the body, on earth, the Rishis found themselves cast up into Light that same Light which others sought on the heights, without their bodies and without the earth, in ecstasy. And this is what the Rishis would call the Great Passage. Without abandoning the earth they found the vast dwelling place, that dwelling place of the Gods, Swar, the original Sun-world that Sri Aurobindo calls the Supramental World: Human beings [the Rishis emphasize that they are indeed men] slaying the Coverer have crossed beyond both earth and heaven [matter and mind] and made the wide world their dwelling place (I.36.8). They have entered the True, the Right, the Vast, Satyam, Ritam, Brihat, the unbroken light, the fearless light, where there is no longer suffering nor falsehood nor death: it is immortality, amritam.
***
--
The voyage draws to its close. Agni has recovered its solar totality, its two concealed extremities. The inviolable work is fulfilled. For Agni is the place where high meets lowand in truth, there is no longer high nor low, but a single Sun everywhere: O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the Gods; thou makest to meet together the godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below (III.22.3). O Fire O universal Godhead, thou art the navel-knot of the earths and their inhabitants; all men born thou controllest and supportest like a pillar (I.59.1). O Flame, thou foundest the mortal in a supreme immortality thou createst divine bliss and human joy (I.31.7). For the worlds heart is Joy, Joy dwells in the depths of all things, the well of honey covered by the rock (II.24.4).
The day before, Mother had listened to the passage of the manuscript concerning 'The Secret of the Veda.' Several extracts from it are included in the Addendum to this conversation.
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact, the books he wrote (especially the first one, The Living Ether) were based on my knowledge; he put my knowledge into French and beautiful French, I must say! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote the Gods (it was incomplete, one-sided). Then he became a lawyer and entered politics (he was a first-class orator and fired his audiences with enthusiasm) and was sent to Pondicherry to help a certain candidate who couldnt manage his election campaign single-handed. And since Richard was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took this opportunity to seek a Master, a yogi. When he arrived, instead of involving himself in politics, the first thing he did was announce, I am seeking a yogi. Someone said to him, Youre incredibly lucky! The yogi has just arrived. It was Sri Aurobindo, who was told, Theres a Frenchman asking to see you. Sri Aurobindo wasnt particularly pleased but he found the coincidence rather interesting and received him. This was in 1910.
When Richard had finished his work, he returned to France with a poor photograph of Sri Aurobindo and a completely superficial impression of him, yet with the feeling that Sri Aurobindo KNEW (he hadnt at all understood the man that Sri Aurobindo was, he hadnt felt the presence of an Avatar, but he had sensed that he had knowledge). Moreover, I think he always held this opinion, because he used to say that Sri Aurobindo was a unique intellectual giant without many spiritual realizations! (The same type of stupidity as Romain Rollands.) Well, my relationship with Richard was on an occult plane, you see, and its difficult to touch upon. What happened was far more exciting than any novel imaginable.
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And as She plunged into the earth, a second series of emanations was sent forth the Godsto inhabit the intermediary zones between Sachchidananda and the earth. And these gods (laughing) well, great care was taken to make them perfect, so they wouldnt give any trouble! But they are a bit a bit too perfect, arent they? Yes, a bit too perfect: they never make mistakes, they always do exactly as theyre told. In short, rather lacking in initiative. They do have some, but.
In fact, they were not surrendered in the way a psychic being can be, because they had no psychic in them. The psychic being is the result of that descent. Only human beings have it. And thats what makes humanity so superior to the Gods. Theon insisted greatly on this: throughout his story, humans are far superior to gods and should not obey themthey should only be in contact with the Supreme in his aspect of perfect Love.
I dont know how to put it. To me, those gods always seemed (not those described in the Puranas, theyre different well, not so very different!) but the way Theon presented them, they seemed just like a bunch of marshmallows! Its not that they had no powerthey had a lot of power, but they lacked that psychic flame.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Sri Aurobindo's terminology, the Overmind represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the Gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations the world that has ruled mental man till now.
***
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Did I ever tell you? Last time I went down for the pujas (was it last year or the year before? I remember nothing any more, you know: it all gets swept away, brrt!). Yes, it was the year before last, in 60, after that anniversary.6 (Durga used to come every year, two or three days before the Durga puja.) I was walking as usual and she came; that was when she made her surrender to the Supreme. Those divinities dont have the sense of surrender. Divinities such as Durga and the Greek gods (although the Greek gods are a bit dated now; but the Gods of India are still very much alive!). Well, they are embodimentswhat you might almost call localizationsof something eternal, but they lack the sense of surrender to the Supreme. And while I was walking, Durga was therereally, it was beautiful! Durga, with that awesome power of hers, forever bringing the adverse forces to heel and she surrendered to the Supreme, to the point of no longer even recognizing the adverse forces: ALL is the Supreme. It was like a widening of her consciousness.
Some interesting things have been happening in that world [since the supramental descent]. How can I explain? Those beings have an independence, an absolute freedom of movement (although at the same time, they are all a single Being), but they had the true sense of perfect Unity only with the supreme Consciousness. And now with this present intervention [Mothers], with this incarnation and the establishment of the Consciousness here, like this (Mother makes a fist in a gesture of immutable solidity), in such an absolute way (I mean there are no fluctuations) HERE, on earth, in the terrestrial atmosphere, this incarnation has a radiating action throughout all those worlds, all those universes, all those Entities. And it results in small events,7 incidents scaled to the size of the earthwhich in themselves are quite interesting.
0 1962-06-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A little later, Mother refers to a passage from the preceding conversation in which she said that her present incarnation on earth didnt have a merely terrestrial effect but an effect on all the other worlds as well and particularly on the Gods.)
None of those beings, those gods and deities of various pantheons, have the same rapport with the Supreme that man has; for man has a psychic being, in other words, the Supremes presence within him. These gods are emanationsindependent emanationscreated for a special purpose and a particular action which they fulfill SPONTANEOUSLY; they do it not with a sense of constant surrender to the Divine but simply because thats what they are, and why they are, and all they know is what they are. They dont have the conscious link with the Supreme that man hasman carries the Supreme within himself.
--
Vedism is in contact with the Gods and, THROUGH the Gods, with the Supreme; but it is not in direct contact with the Supreme there is no inner, psychic contact. That's what Sri Aurobindo says (I myself know nothing about it!). But with the Vedanta and the devotees of Krishna, it is the god within: they had a direct contact with the god within (as in the Gita).
Shortly afterwards, Satprem asked:
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let me tell you in brief one or two things about what I have long seen. My idea is that the chief cause of the weakness of India is not subjection nor poverty, nor the lack of spirituality or dharma [ethics] but the decline of thought-power, the growth of ignorance in the motherl and of Knowledge. Everywhere I see inability or unwillingness to thinkthought-incapacity or thought-phobia. Whatever may have been in the middle ages, this state of things is now the sign of a terrible degeneration. The middle age was the night, the time of the victory of ignorance. The modern world is the age of the victory of Knowledge. Whoever thinks most, seeks most, labors most, can fathom and learn the truth of the world, and gets so much more Shakti. If you look at Europe, you will see two things: a vast sea of thought and the play of a huge and fast-moving and yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe is in that. And in the strength of that Shakti it has been swallowing up the world, like the tapaswins [ascetics] of our ancient times, by whose power even the Gods of the world were terrified, held in suspense and subjection. People say Europe is running into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions and upsettings are the preconditions of a new creation.
Then look at India. Except for some solitary giants, everywhere there is your simple man, that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti but only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the easy word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; there even an ordinary laborer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But there is still this difference: there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddlenebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sensewe owe it to our forefa thersand whoever has that sense has at his disposal such Knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get that Shakti one must be a worshiper of Shakti. We are not worshipers of Shakti. We are worshipers of the easy way. But Shakti is not to be had by the easy way. Our forefa thers dived into a sea of vast thought and gained a vast Knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on in their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The force of thought diminished and with it also the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an achalayatana [prison], our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues, any permanent resurgence of India is improbable
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The overmind isnt part of the intellect. Its the domain of the Gods.
It is the domain of the Gods, and thats what has been ruling the earth. All the Gods men have known, worshipped and had contact with are there.
Yes, a domain of gods, with godlike lives and godlike waysits not the Supermind.
--
I dont believe the Gods have access to the Supermind.
Yes, the Gods stop at the overmind.
I am unfamiliar with the purely Hindu traditions, but the Gods are the beings the Vedas and people of Vedic times were in touch wi that least I think so. I learned what I know about the Gods before coming here, through the other tradition, the Chaldean. But Thon used to say that this tradition and the Vedic (which he knew well) were outgrowths of a more ancient tradition common to both. The story goes, according to him, that the first Emanations, who were perfectly independent, separated themselves from the Supreme in their action, creating all the disorder thats what caused the creations disorder. Afterwards the Gods were emanated, to repair the evil that had been wrought and to organize the world according to the supreme Will. Of course, this is a childlike way of putting it, but its comprehensible. So all these gods work in harmony and order. Thats what the ancient tradition says.
As far as Ive understood, the Indian tradition has embraced everything that came from the first Emanations, since all the Gods of destruction, of unconsciousness and of suffering are included in its pantheon.
In the end, I think its up to each one to name what he wants the way he wants. Thats how I have always felt. Even in Hindu tradition it is written: Man is chattel for the Gods; beware of the Gods.
All this is merely a question of language to mewords to suit each one according to his nature.
--
This region just overlooks the earth and the mind (including the very highest mind). But evolution I mean TERRESTRIAL evolution, with its particular rhythm which is more condensed, more concentrated and, you could say, more focused than universal evolution as a wholethis terrestrial evolution has, with the human species, created a kind of higher intellectuality capable of passing through the overmental region, the region of the Gods, and reaching a higher Principle directly.
But this overmental region, this region of the Gods with the power to govern the universe and, PARTIALLY, the earth, does have its own reality. You can come into contact with it and use it; the Vedic forefa thers used it, occultists use it, even Tantrics use it. But theres another path which, distrusting the Gods, bypasses them through a kind of intellectual asceticism, as it were, wary of forms, of images, and differing expressions, which rises straight as an arrow, proud and pure, towards the supramental Light. That is a living experience.
Sri Aurobindo preached the integral yoga which includes everything, so one can have all the experiences. Indeed, the universe was clearly created as a field of experience. Some people prefer the short, straight and narrow paths thats their business. Others like to dawdle along the wayand thats their business! And some are drawn to have all the experiences, and thus they often wander for a long time through the overmental world. And of course, the vast majority of those who have RELIGIOUS aspirations are thus put in touch with various deities, where they stopits enough for them.
--
Actually, this domain of the Gods belongs to our side, although on a godlike scale: with the Gods power, their possibilities, their consciousness, their freedom; and their immortality, too. In other words, a godlike life I think most human beings would be more than satisfied with it!
And as all the stories tell us, sometimes the Gods come to earth to have some fun. I know that some come and take on a human body to have a psychic being but not all. Most of them simply enjoy having human contact. In any case, they have bodies in their own domain theres no sense of being bodiless. They have bodiesimmortal ones.
Yes, but in the Supermind as well?
But the Gods dont go to the Supermind!
No, what I mainly want to know is the difference when you cross to the other side, into the Supermind the difference in vision between the Supermind and the overmind.
--
This is just what I am observing these days. To me, the overmental consciousness is a magnified consciousness: far lovelier, far loftier, far more powerful, far happier, far with lots of far mores to it. But. I can tell you one thing: the Gods dont have the sense of Oneness. For instance, in their own way they quarrel among themselves, which shows they have no sense of Oneness, no sense of all being one, of all being various expressions of the Divine the unique Divine. So they are still on this side, but with magnified forms, and powers beyond our comprehension: the power to change form at will, for example, or to be in many places at the same timeall sorts of things that poor human beings can only dream of having. the Gods have it all. They live a divine life! But its not supramental.
The Supermind is knowledgePure Knowledge. Yes, it is knowingknowing what is to be known.
--
The experience of the Gods has never been more than a distraction for mean amusement, a pleasant diversion; none of it seems essential or indispensable. You can treat yourself to the luxury of all these experiences, and they increase your knowledge and your power, your this and your that, but its not particularly important. THE thing is altogether different.
We can do without the Gods. We can have access to the Supermind without any of these experiences, theyre not indispensable. But if you want to know and experience the universe, if you want to be identified with the Supreme in His expression, well, all this is part of His expression, in varying degrees and with varying powers. Its all part of His experience. So why not treat yourself to that luxury? Its very interesting, very interesting but not indispensable.
I think that once you are identified with the Supreme and He has chosen you to do a work on earth, then He quite naturally grants you all these things, because it increases your power of action, thats all. Thats all.
--
Sri Aurobindo didnt put too much emphasis on the Overmind. The one significant point is that the Overmind has ruled the world through the different religions. And it is the dwelling place of all the Gods, all the beings humans have made into gods in their religions. Those beings exist in their own world, and some humans, coming in touch with them, have been overwhelmed by their powers and their superiority, and have made gods and religions out of them.
But its better not to emphasize this [in your book]. As I have said, we can bypass that plane, or even pass through without knowing it. It interested me to read in the Vedas that if you dont ascend the way youre supposed to, if you try to bypass the Gods, then unpleasant things happen to you and your way is blockeddo you remember that?1 That gives you an idea of what it is. Its like an intermediary zone, far superior to the earth, but still intermediary. Some have tried to cross it without stopping; and there, they say, you run into trouble. Personally, I am not sure, I can only speak of my own experience: there was always a sense of fraternityas you can imagine! I knew them, I was on friendly terms with them, so there was no question of bypassing them or not!
But I have a strong impression that that world is still a magnified version of our own, and part of the old path; it has nothing to do with the Supramental Creation, which will bring to earth the sense of the Supreme and the Unique.
--
But the Gods belong to the present curve. The overmind belongs to this curve.
Those gods are all very nice! For some people theyre unbearable at times (Mother laughs), but theyre really very nice! They have their faults, they have their good points, but with me they have always been very nice!
--
Oh, yes! He used the word Narayana because he hadnt yet developed his own terminology; but he isnt referring to the Gods: its the supramental experience.
***
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A little later, Satprem returns to the previous conversation on the Gods:
But do those gods exist independently of human consciousness? Theyre not human creations?
--
No, no! I mean all the things and forms in the overmind itself (the raiment of the Gods, for instance, their jewels and crowns there are all kinds of things in the overmind). In those worlds there are all kinds of forms, which we translate into images from terrestrial life but its only a translation.
Take the Gods raiment, for example. Their raiment, which they change at will in the same way they change their forms, is made not of physical but of overmental substance, and that substance contains its own light. Its like that with everything, its all. Theres no sun casting light and shadows: the substance is self-luminous.
And beyond, in the Supramental?
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All those zones of artistic creation are very high up in human consciousness, which is why art can be a wonderful tool for spiritual progress. For this world of creation is also the world of the Gods; but the Gods, I am sorry to say, have absolutely no taste for artistic creation.1 They feel absolutely no need for permanence in formsthey couldnt care less! When they want something, there it isall they have to do is want it. When they wish a particular surrounding or atmosphere, it takes form all by itself at their wish. They get everything the way they want it, so they feel no need for fixed forms. Man, on the other hand, who doesnt get what he wants the way he wants it, must make an effort to create forms, and thats why he progressesart is a great means of spiritual progress.
But about those great waves of music that interest me I had the impression they must be located well above the world of thought.
0 1962-11-10, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother listens to Satprem read a chapter from his manuscript entitled "Under the Sign of the Gods," in which he speaks of the overmind's inadequacy for attaining the plenitude of evolution, Afterwards, Mother tells what she saw while he was reading.)
Theres a kind of cadence.
--
But the Gods may not be so pleased; after all, I say the overmind is inadequate!
Of course they will!
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Satprem reads a passage from his manuscript dealing with the Ashrams bright period in 1926, when Mother had made an overmental creation and the Gods were beginning to manifest.)
In the end, Sri Aurobindo told me it was an overmental creation, not the Truth. These were his very words: Yes, its an overmental creation, but thats not the truth were seeking; its not the truth, the highest truth, he said.
I made no reply, not a word: in half an hour I had undone everything I undid it all, really everything, cut the connection between the Gods and the people here, demolished absolutely everything. Because you see, I knew it was so attractive for people (they were constantly seeing the most astonishing things) that the obvious temptation was to hang on to it and say, Well improve on itwhich was impossible. So I sat down quietly for half an hour, and I undid it all.
We had to start over again with something else.
0 1962-12-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious. The supramental light was coming down before November,2 but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped.3 Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, thats the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary. And the battle seems endless; one digs and digs, said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: I have been digging, digging. Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies. Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation. But Agastya doesnt lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: Not in vain is the labor which the Gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings.
(Rig-Veda I.179)
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The deeper significance of figures There are countless traditions, countless scriptures which I took great care not to follow. But the deeper significance of figures came to me in Tlemcen, when I was in the Overmind. I dont remember the names Thon used to give to those various worlds, but it was a world that corresponded to the highest and most luminous regions of Sri Aurobindos Overmind. It was above, just above the Gods region. And it was something in accord with the Overmind creation the earth under the Gods influence. That was where figures took on a living meaning for menot a mental speculation: a living meaning. That was where Madame Thon recognized me, because of the formation of twelve pearls she saw above my head; and she told me, You are that because you have this. Only that can have this! (Mother laughs) It hadnt even remotely occurred to me, thank God!
But figures are alive for me. They have a concrete reality.
0 1963-09-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day, the process was less complete, but it was something similar, a first hint: K. had sent me an article he wanted to publish somewhere with quotations from Sri Aurobindo and myself, and he wanted to make sure it was correct and he hadnt muddled it (!) In one place, I saw a comment by him (you know how people delight in wordplays when they are fully in the mind: the mind loves to play with words and contrast one sentence with another), it was in English, I am not quoting word for word, but he said that the age of religions was the age of the Gods; and, naturally, as our Mr. Mind loves to play with words, it made him say that, now, the age of the Gods is over and it is the age of Godwhich means he was deplorably falling back into the Christian religion without noticing it! And just as I saw his written sentence, I saw that tendency of the mind which loves it and finds it very oh, charming, such a nice turn of phrase (!) I didnt say anything, I went on to the end of his article. Then where that sentence was I saw a little light shining: it was like a little spark (I saw that with my eyes open). I looked at my spark, and in the place of God, there was The One. So I took my pen and made the correction.
But my first translation was The All-Containing One, because it was an experience, not a thought. What I saw was The One containing all. And innocently, I wrote it down on a paper (Mother shows a little scrap of paper): The All-Containing One. But just then, I saw what looked like someone giving me a slap and telling me, Not that: you should put The One, thats all. So I wrote The One.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had X told about a rather interesting encounter of mine with Ganapati1 (quite a few years ago), and how he had promised to give me whatever I needed and actually gave it for quite a long time, certainly more than ten years, and generously so. Then everything changed in the Ashram. It was after the war, the children came and we spilled over; we became much more complex, much larger, and began to be in touch with foreign countries, particularly America. And I continued to be in contact with Ganapati; I cant say I used to do a puja to him (!), but every morning I would put a flower in front of his image. Then one morning I asked him, Why have you stopped doing what you had been doing for such a long time? I listened, and he clearly replied, Your need has grown too large. I didnt quite understand, because he has at his disposal fortunes larger than what I needed. But then, some time afterwards, I had this told to X, who answered me from the height of his punditism, Let her not be concerned with the Gods, I will look after that! It was needlessly insolent. Then I turned to Ganapati and asked him, What does all that mean? And I clearly saw (it wasnt he who answered, it was Sri Aurobindo), I clearly saw that Ganapati has power only over those who have faith in him, which means its limited to India, while I needed money from America, France, England, Africa and that he has no power there, so he couldnt help. It became very clear, I was at peace, I understood: Very well, he did his best, thats all. And its true that I keep receiving from India, though not sufficiently; especially as since Independence half of India has been ruined, and all those who used to give me a lot of money no longer do, because they no longer canit isnt that they no longer want to, but that they no longer can.
For instance, M. was greatly interested in my story about Ganapati, and I saw that there was a connection between him and Ganapati, so I told him, But turn to him and he will give you the right inspiration. And since then M. has been perfect, really; all that he can do he does to the utmost of his ability. So all this is very good.
But there is a considerable difference between the real fact, that is, what this body [Mothers body] represents, and Xs conception. He has always remained all the way down. This is what, in fact, had ruined his health for a time. And the odd thing is that every time he was ill and CONSENTED to inform me, he was instantly curedhe KNOWS this, but still his first instinct is always to turn to the Gods with his ordinary puja.
It was the same thing with you I saw that. He regards you like this (gesture of looking down on Satprem), and then, youre not a pundit (!), you havent had the religious education of the countryhe regards you as a beginner, he isnt at all conscious of where your mind is, of where your mind can reach. I told him, but even that he doesnt quite understand. But once, I saw (it was at the time when I was giving him meditations downstairs), he had made a remark that was quite preposterous on the fact that people here meditated with eyes closed and that I, too, had my eyes closed when I meditated. It was reported to me. That was long ago, years ago. He was going to come and see me the next morning, so I said, Wait, my friend, Ill show you! And the next day, I meditated with my eyes open (Mother laughs)the poor man! When he went downstairs, he said, Mother meditated with her eyes open, she was like a lion!
--
No, I am not imagining things: I know! He said that thing (had Sri Aurobindo been here, he would have had a good laugh!), Oh, the Gods, she should let me look after them, I know better than she does! You understand, when I was giving meditations in the hall downstairs, they were all thereadd: Shiva, Krishna, all the Gods of the Indian pantheon were there, seated like this (gesture in a circle) to follow the meditation.
Krishna sometimes I walked with him for hours in conversation. At night, when I was very tired from my work, he would come and sit on the edge of my bed, I would put my head on his shoulder and fall asleep. And it lasted for years and years and years, you knownot just once by chance.
0 1964-07-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The one safety for man lies in learning to live from within outward, not depending on institutions and machinery to perfect him, but out of his growing inner perfection availing to shape a more perfect form and frame of life; for by this inwardness we shall best be able both to see the truth of the high things which we now only speak with our lips and form into outward intellectual constructions, and to apply their truth sincerely to all our outward living. If we are to found the kingdom of God in humanity, we must first know God and see and live the diviner truth of our being in ourselves; otherwise how shall a new manipulation of the constructions of the reason and scientific systems of efficiency which have failed us in the past, avail to establish it? It is because there are plenty of signs that the old error continues and only a minority, leaders perhaps in light, but not yet in action, are striving to see more clearly, inwardly and truly, that we must expect as yet rather the last twilight which divides the dying from the unborn age than the real dawning. For a time, since the mind of man is not yet ready, the old spirit and method may yet be strong and seem for a short while to prosper; but the future lies with the men and nations who first see beyond both the glare and the dusk the Gods of the morning and prepare themselves to be fit instruments of the Power that is pressing towards the light of a greater ideal.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1964-08-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Narada was a demigod, immortal like the Gods, who had the power to appear on earth whenever he wished. Janaka, Mithila's king at the time of the Upanishads was famed for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, even though he led a worldly life. This is how Sri Aurobindo refers to him: 106"Sannyasa [renunciation of worldly life] has a formal garb and outer tokens; therefore men think they can easily recognise it; but the freedom of a Janaka does not proclaim itself and it wears the garb of the world; to its presence even Narada was blinded."
***
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its an amused way of looking at religions and all the Gods the way you would look at they are like theater performances. Theyre pastimes; but thats not what can teach you to know yourself, not at all, not at all! You must go right down to the bottom.
And it is this, this descent to the very bottom, in search of but it isnt an unknown, it isnt an unknowna bursting (it really is like a bursting), that marvelous bursting of the Vibration of Love; that is it is the memory. And the effort is to turn it into an active reality.
0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To me, its very simple. Narada was a demigod, as we know, and he belonged to the overmental world and was able to materializethose beings dont have a psychic being. the Gods dont have in themselves the divine spark which is the heart of the psychic being, since only ON THE EARTH (I am not even referring to the material universe), only on the earth was there the Descent of divine Love that was the origin of the divine Presence in the heart of Matter. And naturally, as they dont have a psychic being, they dont know, they have no knowledge of the psychic being. Some of those beings even decided to take on a physical body in order to experience the psychic beingnot many.
They generally did it only partially, through an emanation, not through a complete descent. It is said, for instance, that Vivekananda was an incarnation (a vibhuti) of Shivas; but Shiva himself I have had a very close relationship with him and he clearly expressed the will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for supramental life, he will come. And almost all those beings will manifest they are waiting for that moment, they do not want the present struggle and darkness.
--
Narada: a wandering sage who goes about playing the vina. Immortal like the Gods, he appears on earth whenever he wishes. He is mentioned as far back as the Upanishads.
It was in fact an attack of tuberculosis.
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I saw the other dayit was very interesting, the very day he was on his way here (I wasnt thinking of him I never think of people), suddenly I saw all that the knowledge of the pundits and those who profess to follow a spiritual life (the whole class of sannyasins, pundits, purohits,1 etc.), all that that represents. (I am not referring to religions in other countries: its specific to India.) And they are people who have a knowledge, a mental knowledge, of course, but very precise and very exact, of the movements in relation to the Overmind: all the Gods and godheads and their ways of being and the relationships between men and gods; and they have tried to organize and formulate the relationships men have with gods so that, as was said in the past, men would not be the cattle of the Godsthey have tried to change the human position with regard to deities. Its interesting, its a whole interesting field which to me does not represent the true thing. They on their part think that is spiritual lifeits not spiritual life, but it is a higher mental region which borders on the Overmind, which even enters into the Overmind, and which is completely organized; its a sort of legislation of the relationships between men and gods. From that point of view, its interesting.
I saw that very clearly: the place it has in the universal organization. And if its in its place, then its quite all rightwhen a thing is in its place it becomes very good.
0 1965-07-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In other words, all the intermediate states of being, also the Gods, the entities and all those things. And it spoke with a power and a sort of dignityyes, it was dignity, almost pride, but not an arrogant pride, nothing of the sort. It was the sense of a nobility.
The supreme Lord alone can satisfy me.
0 1966-02-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thons idea (which also fits with the teaching here in India in which they say it was the sense of separation that created the whole DisorderDeath, Falsehood and all the rest), Thons idea was that those first four Emanations, that is, Consciousness, Love, Life, and Truth (Love was the last, I think, but I no longer remember what he said), those four individual emanated Beings, according to him, in full consciousness of their power and existence, cut themselves off from their Origin. In other words, they wanted to depend only on themselves, they didnt even feel the need to keep the connection with their Origin (I am putting it very materially). So then, that cut is what instantly caused Consciousness to become Unconsciousness, Love to become Suffering (it wasnt Loveit was actually Ananda which became Suffering), Life to become Death and Truth to become Falsehood. And they hurled themselves into the creation like that. Then, there was a second creation, which was the creation of the Gods, to mend the mischief caused by those four (the story is told in almost a childlike way in order not to be abstract, in order to become concrete). the Gods are the second emanation and they came to mend. In India and everywhere, they were given various names and functions, and they are found in the Overmind region, that is to say, above the physical quaternary, the material quaternary. And the function of those gods is to mend the damage wrought by the others. And the region in which the others (the first Emanations) concentrated is the vital region.
All this can be translated philosophically, intellectually and so on. It is told as a story so that the most physical intellectuality may understand. But in principle, its the separation from the Origin that created the whole Disorder. And, as far as I know, in India too the Upanishads say the same thing; Sri Aurobindo, at any rate, says that Disorder came with the sense of Separation. So those are different ways of saying the same thing. In one case, seen in a certain way, its a willed separation; in the other case, its an inevitable consequenceinevitable consequence of of what? I dont know.
Because, according to theogonies, the Gods have remained in contact with their Origin and they feel themselves to be the representation of the Origin, as in the Indian theogony in which they say that Shiva is the representative of the SupremeBrahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, Shiva, the transformer and all three are conscious representatives of the Supreme, but partial ones.
Its perfectly obvious that those are only manners of speaking. There are indeed entities, they do exist, but its only a way of telling the story; in one way or another, its the same thing. Metaphysics is also one way of telling the story. And one isnt truer than the other.
0 1966-04-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I saw that, it was so amusing! I saw it all. Oh, it was an extraordinary experience. All of a sudden I was outside and, I cant say above (but it was above), but outside the whole human creation, outside everything, everything man has created in all the worlds, even in the most ethereal worlds. And seen from there, it was I saw that play of all the possible conceptions men have had of God and of the way to approach God (what they call God), and also of the invisible worlds and the Gods, all that: one thing came upon another, one upon another, it all went by (as its written in Savitri), one thing upon another went by (gesture as if on a screen), one upon another with its artificiality, its inadequacy to express the Truth. And with such precision! A precision so accurate that you felt in anguish, because the impression was of being in a world of nothing but imagination, of imaginative creation, but in nothing real, there wasnt a feeling of of touching the Thing. To such a point that it became yes, a terrible anguish: But then, what? What? Whats truly TRUE and outside all that we can conceive?
And it came. It was like this: (gesture of self-abandon) the total, complete self-annulment, annulment of that which can know, of that which tries to knoweven surrender isnt an adequate word: a sort of annulment. And suddenly it ended with a slight movement as a child could have who doesnt know anything, doesnt try to know anything, doesnt understand anything, doesnt try to understand but who abandons himself. A slight movement of such simplicity, such ingenuousness, such extraordinary sweetness (words cant express it): nothing, just this (gesture of self-abandon), and instantaneously, THE Certitude (not expressed, lived), the lived Certitude.
0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with the Gods, mon petit, the same thing! The relationship with all those beings of the Overmind, with all those gods, the form those relationships take depends on the human consciousness. You can be The scriptures say, Man is cattle for the Gods but thats if man ACCEPTS the role of cattle. There is in the essence of human nature a sovereignty over all those things which is spontaneous and natural, when its not warped by a certain number of ideas and a certain amount of so-called knowledge.
We could say that man is the all-powerful master of all the states of being of his nature, but that he has forgotten to be so.
--
This relationship with the Gods is extremely interesting. As long as man is dazzled, in admiration before the power, beauty, realizations of those divine beings, he is their slave. But when they are, to him, ways of being of the Supreme and nothing more, and when he himself is another way of being of the Supreme, which he must become, then the relationship is different and he is no longer their slavehe is NOT their slave.
Ultimately, the only objectivity is the Supreme.
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a subject I found very interesting, in the beginning I even wanted to give a class1 on it, when the School had only thirty children or so: a class on religions showing the whole course, from the Gods with the heads of birds or jackals to cathedrals. Oh, when I was just five, I was revolted by that God who really was a wicked character and caused bloodshed.
So we could have a city of religions. But we would have to re-create the atmosphere.
0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have often wondered if the memory of physical forms is what makes me see that world in that way, or IF IT IS really like that. Sometimes there is no doubt because it has its own specific character, but at other times I have a doubt and wonder if its not in the active memory. Because at that moment I am very conscious, everything is extremely natural, you understand; and its permanent: I find the same things in the same places again, sometimes with slight differences, but differences made necessary by action. That is to say, its a coherent world, not wild imaginings. But to what extent are those forms the reflection of material forms? To what extent ARE they really like that, or do we SEE them that way? I am not very sure yet. I had the same problem in the past when I used to go into the Overmind and see the Gods: I always had a kind of hesitation as to whether they really are like that, or whether we perceive them like that because of our physical habits. There, after a time I reached a conclusion, but here, physically?
Strangely, there are no doors, no windows, no ceiling or floor, all that is self-existent and does not appear to be subject to the law of gravity, that is, there isnt the earths magnetic attraction, yet what you write with (laughing) looks like a fountain pen! What you write on looks like paper; the documents are placed in what look like filing cabinets. You do feel that the substance isnt the same, but the appearance is very close. And I am still wondering about that appearance: is it because of our ordinary cerebral function that we put the appearance upon things, or is it really like that?
0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the Gods have a divine ego. Thats what was really interesting this morning. They feel they exist in themselves, by themselves, for themselves (Mother clenches her fist). Only, of course, theres no comparison with the sordidness of the human ego.
But thats what was so interesting this morning. Once these divine egos have abdicated, and depending on the extent of that abdication, it will mean an EXTRAORDINARY transformation in the creation. It was like a vision being worked out slowly (Mother closes her eyes), almost with images, as if you saw the entire earth (gesture like a hall) and the image of Durga (gesture enveloping the earth), and the two together, it was quite lovely.
--
How He has used the Gods, how He uses everything, how He has used the Adversaries everything. Its all ways of being, and everything leads where we must go.
***
0 1967-11-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But anything higher than him man has been used to thinking of as divine beings; that is to say, bodiless beings, appearing in the light, anyway all the Gods in human conception but its not that at all!
(long silence)
0 1969-08-30, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother actually said "the overmental being." This confusion will often take place, probably because Mother found this vocabulary quite cumbersome. But this next being clearly has nothing to do with the overmind or the world of the Gods.
In May 1968, the student uprising in France.
0 1970-10-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
0 1972-03-29a, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In an interview in a Swedish magazine, Malraux had said, For the last fifty years, psychology has been reinstating the demons in man. Such is the real result of psychoanalysis. Faced as we are with the most frightening threat humanity has ever known, I believe that the task of the next century will be to reinstate the Gods in man.)
August 2, 1955
--
I seem to find in Sri Aurobindos work an answer that meets yours and develops it for the question is indeed to reinstate the Gods IN man after having reinstated the demons, as you rightly stated in the Swedish article but I also find there an answer to the agonizing question constantly raised by your characters from The Royal Way to The Walnut Trees of Altenburg. Indeed, all of them seek a deeper notion in man that will deliver them from death and solitudethis is THE question of the West, to which Sri Aurobindo brings a solution at once dynamic and illuminating. Hence, I am taking the liberty of sending by surface mail one of Sri Aurobindos books in the original English entitled The Human Cycle. I hope it will interest you.
I call on you rather than any other contemporary writer because I think your works embody the very anguish of the West, an anguish I have bitterly experienced all the way to the German concentration camps at the age of twenty, and then in a long and uneasy wandering around the world. Insofar as I have always turned to you, daring and searching with each of your characters what surpasses man, I am again turning to you because I have a feeling that, more than anyone else, you can understand Sri Aurobindos message and perhaps draw a new impetus from it. I am also thinking of a whole generation of young people who expect much from you: more than an ideal of pure heroism, which only opens the doors (as does all self-offering) on another realm of man we have yet to explore, and more than a fascination with death, which also is only a means and not an end, although its brutal nakedness can sometimes open a luminous breach in the bodily prisonwhere we seem to have been immured alive and we emerge into a new dimension of our being. For we tend too often to forget that it is for living that your heroes think so constantly of death; also I think that the young people I mentioned want the truth of Tchen and Katow, the truth of Hernandez, Perken and Moreno [characters in Malrauxs novels] beyond their death.
0 1972-04-15, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What Sri Aurobindo called overmind is the realm of the Gods.
So it isnt necessary to pass through that.
Oh, no, the realm of the Gods stands apart. I dont think it has much to do with the earths problems. Only sometimes those gods enjoy meddling in earthly affairs. But they dont have much in common with the great Movement of transformation.
Yes, quite so.
02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Gods are in a great fix. Where is Agni? How is it that the comrade has disappeared all on a sudden? The Sacrifice the great work has to be undertaken. And he is to be the leader, for he alone can take up the burden. There is no time to be lost, everything is ready for the ceremony to start and just at the moment the one needed most is nowhere. So the Gods organise a search party to find out the whereabouts of the runaway god.
The search party consists of Varuna, Mitra and Yama. We shall presently understand the sense of the selection. They look about here and therein ten directions, it is mentioned and at last spot the defaulting god hiding within a huge thick strong cloak or caul. They hail him and ask him to come out and take up his charge. Agni refuses: he says he is not competent to undertake the burden; indeed that is why he ran away and they must not force him. the Gods explain, entreat, encourage Agni. They say and assure him that no harm will come to him, rather he will flourish and prosper and become immortal. He is mighty and he will become almighty as he takes up his work and proceeds with it. Agni accepts in the end and marches out with the Gods.
What does this parable mean? First of all then we must know what Sacrificea Vedic sacrificeis. Sacrifice symbolises the cosmic labour, the march of the universe towards its goal, the conquest of Light over Darkness, the ascent of manhood to godhead, the flaming rise and progress of consciousness to its supreme expression and embodiment. It is the release out of Inconscience and Unconsciousness to consciousness and finally into the super-consciousness.
Sacrifice consists essentially in lighting the fire and pouring fuelofferingsinto it so that it may burn always and brighter and brighter. It calls the Gods, also, it is said, ascends to them, brings them down here to live among men, in men. It lifts men from the ordinary life and consciousness, takes them to the abode of the Gods. In other words its function is to bring down and infuse into the human vessel the godly consciousness and delight and power. Its purpose is to divinise human life. Through the sacrifice man offers his present possessions, his body and life and mind to the Deity and deities and by this surrender and submission constant and unfailing (namas) he awakens the Divine in him the Agni that is to lead him to the divine consummation.
Fire then is the energy of consciousness secreted in the heart of things. It is that which moves the creation upward, produces the unfolding evolution that is history, both individual and collective. It is kindled, it increases in volume and strength and purity and effectiveness, as and when a lower element is offered and submitted to a higher reality and this higher reality impinges upon the lower one (which is what the rubbing of the arai or the pressing of the soma symbolises); the limitation is broken, the small enters into and becomes the vast, the crooked is straightened and leng thened out, what was hidden becomes manifest. This is described as the progression of the sacrifice (adhvaraadvanceon the path). That is also the victorious battle waged against the dark forces of Ignorance. The goal, the purpose is the descent and manifestation of the Gods here upon earth in human vehicles.
But this Fire is not normally available. It is lost, imbedded in the thick petrified folds of unconsciousness and inconscience. Man's soul is not an apparent reality. It has to be found out, called forth, brought to the front. Even so, in the normal consciousness, the soul, the divine fire is a flickering, twinkling, hesitating spark; it is not sure of itself, not certain of its destiny. Yet when the time is ripe and the call comes, the Gods, the luminous forces from above descend with all their insistence and meet the hidden godhead: Agni is reminded of his work and destiny which nothing can frustrate or cancel. He has to consent and undertake his sacrificial labour.
Agni feared and tried to escape from the burden of his responsibility. He wrapped himself in a thick and vast cloak and hid in the depths of far waters. That is the parable way of describing the difficulty, the apparent impossibility of the undertaking Agni has to shoulder. Curiously however he has taken shelter just in the spot which seemed safest to him, from where begins his work, whose nature and substance he has to transform, that is to say, the nether regions of inconscience which is to be raised and transfigured into the solar region of the supra-consciousness.
One interesting point in the story is the choice of the Gods who formed the search party. They were Mitra, Varuna and Yama. Varuna is the god of the vast consciousness (Brihat), the wide universal, the Infinite. His eye naturally penetrates everywhere and nothing can escape his notice. Mitra is harmony and rhythm of the infinity. Every individual element he embraces and he holds them all together in loving unionhis is the friendly tie of comradeship with all. Finally Yama is the master of the lower regions, the underworld of physical and material consciousness, where precisely Agni has taken refuge. Agni is within the jurisdiction of this trinity and it devolves upon them to tackle the truant god.
There is another point which requires clarification. As a reason for his nervousness and flight he alleges that greater people who preceded him had attempted the work, but evidently failed in the attempt; so how can he, a younger novice, dare to go the same way? Putting the imagery back to its psychological bearing, one play explain that the predecessors refer to the deities of the physical, vital and mental consciousness who ruled the earth before the emergence of the psychic or soul consciousness. It is precisely because of the failure or insufficiency of these anteriorin the evolutionary movementand inferior gods that Agni's service is being requisitioned. Mythologically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said that the Olympian godsZeus and his companywere a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the Titans. Titans were the Asuras and Rakshasas who reigned upon earth before the advent of the mentalsattwichuman being, Manu, as referred here.
--
The Colloquy of Agni and the Gods
(RigvedaX. 51.)
the Gods
I) Huge and firm was that covering with which you shrouded yourself and entered into the waters.
--
II) Who saw me? Which of the Gods saw my multiple body all around? O Mitra! O Varuna! Tell me, where do they dwellall the blazing fuel that move to the Gods?
the Gods
III) O Agni! god self-conscient, we seek you, you who have entered variably into the waters and into the growths of the earth. You shine richly. Yam a has seen you as you flame out of your ten seats.
--
IV) O Varuna! I fled because I was afraid of the work of the priest. the Gods must not yoke me to that work.
That was why I imbedded my body variably so that I as Agni may not know of that pathway.
the Gods
V) Come, O Agni! Man, the mental being, desires to do the sacrifice, he has made everything ready, and you dwell in obscurity!
Make easy-going the path that leads to the Gods, with a happy mind carry the offering.
Agni
--
the Gods
VII) We shall make your life undecaying, O Agni! so that no harm comes to you when engaged in the work.
So, carry to the Gods their share of the offering; a happy birth you have, a happy mind you must carry.
Agni
--
the Gods
IX) The offerings that precede, the offerings that follow, offerings pure and simpleall forceful, may you enjoy. May this sacrifice be yours entirely. The four quarters bow down to you, O Agni!
02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Erect like a mountain-chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
--
A cube and union-crystal of the Gods;
A Mind shall think behind Nature's mindless mask,
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Asura triumphs everywhere for a while because his power is well-built, perfectly organised. Human power is constituted differently and acts differently; it is full of faults and flaws to start with and for a long time. There is no gap anywhere in the power of the Asura, no tear or stitchit is streamlined, solid, of one piece; it is perfection itself in its own kind once for all. Man's being is made up of conflicts and contradictions; he moves step by step, slowly and laboriously, through gradual purification; he grows through endeavour and struggle. Man triumphs over the Asura only in so far as he moulds himself in the ways of the divine power. But in the world, the Divine and his powers remain behind, because the field of actuality in front is still the domain of the Asura. The outer field, the gross vehiclebody and life and mindall this is constituted by Ignorance and Falsehood; so the Asura can always establish there his influence and hold sway and has actually done so. Man becomes easily an instrument of the Asura, though often unwittingly; the earth is naturally in the firm grasp of the Asura. For the Gods to conquer the earth, to establish their rule in the earth consciousness requires labour and endeavour and time.
No doubt, the violences indulged by men in older times, especially when they acted in groups and packs, were often inflamed and inspired by an Asuric influence. But today it must be clearly seen and recognised that it is the Asura himself with the whole band of his army that has descended upon the earth; they have possessed a powerfully organised human collectivity, shaped it in their mould, using it to complete their conquest of mankind and consolidate their definitive reign upon earth.
--
We believe that the war of today is a war between the Asura and men, human instruments of the Gods. Man certainly is a weaker vessel in comparison with the Asuraon this material plane of ours; but in man dwells the Divine and against the divine force and might, no asuric power can ultimately prevail. The human being who has stood against the Asura has by that very act sided with the Gods and received the support and benediction of the Divine. The more we become conscious about the nature of this war and consciously take the side of the progressive force, of the divine force supporting it, the more will the Asura be driven to retire, his power diminished, his hold relaxed. But if through ignorance and blind passion, through narrow vision and obscurant prejudice we fail to distinguish the right from the wrong side, the dexter from the sinister, surely we shall invite upon mankind utter misery and desolation. It will be nothing less than a betrayal of the Divine Cause.
The fate of India too is being decided in this world-crisison the plains of Flanders, on the steppes of Ukraine, on the farthest expanses of the Pacific. The freedom of India will become inevitable and even imminent in proportion as she becomes cognizant of the underlying character and significance of the present struggle, deliberately takes the side of the evolutionary force, works for the Gods, in proportion as she grows to be an instrument of the Divine Power. The instrument that the Divine chooses is often, to all appearances, faulty and defective, but since it has this higher and mightier support, it will surely outgrow all its drawbacks and lapses, it will surmount all dangers and obstacles and become unconquerable. Thisis what the spiritual seeker means by saying that the Divine Grace can make the lame leap across the mountain. India's destiny today hangs in the balance; it lies in the choice of her path.
A great opportunity is offered to India's soul, a mighty auspicious moment is come, if she can choose. If she chooses rightly, then can she arrive at the perfect fulfilment of her agelong endeavour, her life mission. India has preserved and fostered through the immemorial spiritual living of her saints and seers and sages the invaluable treasure, the vitalising, the immortalising power of spirituality, so that it can be placed at the service of terrestrial life for the deliverance of mankind, for the transfiguration of the human type. It is this for which India lives; by losing this India loses all her reason of existenceraison d'tre the earth and humanity too lose all significance. Today we are in the midst of an incomparable ordeal. If we know how to take the final and crucial step, we come out of it triumphant, a new soul and a new body, and we make the path straight for the Lord. We have to recognise clearly and unequivocally that victory on' one side will mean that the path of the Divineof progress and evolution and fulfilmentwill remain open, become wider and smoother and safer; but if the victory is on the other side, the path will be closed perhaps for ever, at least for many ages and even then the travail will have to be undergone again under the most difficult conditions and circumstances. Not with a political shortsightedness, not out of -the considerations of convenience or diplomacy, of narrow parochial interests, but with the steady vision of the soul that encompasses the supreme welfare of humanity, we have to make our choice, we have to go over to the right side and oppose the wrong one with all the integrity of our life and being. The Allies, as they have been justly called, are really our allies, our friends and comrades, in spite of their thousand faults and defects; they have stood on the side of the Truth whose manifestation and triumph is our goal. Even though they did not know perhaps in, the beginning what they stood for, even though perhaps as yet they do not comprehend the full sense and solemnity of the issues, still they have chosen a side which is ours, and we have to stand by them whole-heartedly in an all-round comradeship if we want to be saved from a great perdition.
This war is a great menace; it is also a great opportunity. It can land humanity into a catastrophe; it can also raise it to levels which would not have been within its reach but for the occasion. The Forces of Darkness have precipitated themselves with all their might upon the world, but by their very downrush have called upon the higher Forces of Light also to descend. The true' use of the opportunity offered to man would be to bring about a change, better still, a reversal, in his consciousness, that is to say, it will be of highest utility if it forces upon him by the pressure of inexorable circumstancessince normally he is so unwilling and incapable to do it through a spontaneous inner awakening the inescapable decision that he must change and shall change; and the change is to be for or towards the birth of a spiritual consciousness in earthly life. Indeed the war might be viewed" as the birth-pangs of such a spiritual consciousness. Whether the labour would be sublimely fruitful here and how or end in barrenness is the question the Fates and the Gods are asking of man the mortal beingtoday.
***
02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Next is the domain of the Supermind with which the manifestation of the Divine starts. We have said it is the world of typal realities, of the first seed-realities, where the One and the Many are united and fused in each other, where the absolute unity of the Supreme maintains itself in undiminished magnitude and expresses and formulates itself perfectly in and through the original multiplicity. Here take birth the first personalities, absolute truth-forms of the Divine. Here are the highest gods, the direct formations of the Divine himself. Here are the Four Powers and Personalities of swara whom Sri Aurobindo has named after the Vaishnava terminology: (i) Mahavira, embodying the Brahmin quality of Knowledge and Light and wide Consciousness, (ii) Balarama, embodying the Kshatriya quality of Force and intense dynamism, (iii) Pradyumna, embodying the quality of love and beauty the Vaishya virtue of mutuality and harmony and solidarity, and (iv) Aniruddha, embodying the Sudra quality of competent service, of organisation and execution in detail. Corresponding with these Four there are the other Four Powers and Personalities of the Divine Mother war (i) Maheshwari, (ii) Mahakali, (iii) Mahalakshmi and (iv) Mahasaraswati. Next in the downward gradient comes the Overmind where the individualised powers and personalities of the Divine tend to become self-sufficient and self-regarding; their absolute unity is loosened and the lines of multiplicity begin to be more independent of each other, each aiming at a special fulfilment of its own. Still the veil that is being drawn over the unity is yet transparent which continues to be sufficiently dynamic. This is the abode of the Gods, the true and high gods: it is these that the Vedic Rishis appear to have envisaged and sought after. The all gods (vive dev) were indeed acknowledged to be but different names and forms of one supreme godhead (dev) it is the one god, says Rishi Dirghatamas, who is called multifariously whether as Agni or Yam a or Matariswan; it is the one god, again, who is described as having a thousand heads and a thousand feet. And yet they are separate entities, each has his own distinct and distinctive character and attribute, each demands a characteristic way of approach and worship. The tendency towards an exclusive stress is already at work on this level and it is the perception of this truth that lies behind the term henotheism used by European scholars to describe the Vedic Religion.
The next stage of devolution is the Mind proper. There or perhaps even before, on the lower reaches of the Overmind, the Gods have become all quite separate, self-centred, each bounded in his own particular sphere and horizon. The overmind gods the true godsare creators in a world of balanced or harmoniously held difference; they are powers that fashion each a special fulfilment, enhancing one another at the same time (parasparam bhvayantah). Between the Overmind and the Mind there is a class of lesser godsthey have been called formateurs; they do not create in the strict sense of the term, they give form to what the anterior gods have created and projected. These form-makers that consolidate the encasement, fix definitely the image, have most probably been envisaged in the Indian dhynamrtis. But in the Mind the Gods become still more fixed and rigid, stereotyped; the mental gods inspire exclusive systems, extreme and abstract generalisations, theories and principles and formulae that, even when they seek to force and englobe all in their cast-iron mould, can hardly understand or tolerate each other.
Mind is the birth-place of absolute division and exclusivismit is the own home of egoism. Egoism is that ignorant modea twist or knot of consciousness which cuts up the universal unity into disparate and antagonistic units: it creates isolated, mutually exclusive whorls in the harmonious rhythm and vast commonalty of the one consciousness or conscious existence. The Sankhya speaks of the principle of ego coming or appearing after the principle of vastness (mahat). The Vast is the region above the Mind, where the unitary consciousness is still intact; with the appearance of the Mind has also appeared an intolerant self-engrossed individualism that culminates, as its extreme and violent expression, in the asuraAsura, the mentalised vital being.
--
All the ancient legends about a principle and a personalityof Denial and Ignorance, of an Everlasting Nayrefer to this fact of a descending consciousness, a Fall. The Vedantic my, spoken of sometimes as the Dark Mother, seems to be the personification of the lower Overmind, Jehovah and Satan of the Hebrews, Olympians and Titans of the Greeks, Ahriman and Ahura Mazda of old Iran, the sons of Diti and Aditi the Indian Puranas speak of, are powers and personalities of consciousness when it has descended entirely into the mind and the vital where the division is complete. These lower reaches have completely lost the unitary consciousness; still there are beings even here that have succeeded in maintaining it as a memory or an aspiration, although in a general way the living reality of the oneness is absent. It is significant that the term asura which came to mean in classical and mythological ages a + sura, not-god, the Titan, had originally a different connotation and etymology, asu + ra, one having force or strength, and was used as a general attri bute of all the Gods. The degradation in the sense of the word is a pointer to the spiritual Fall: Satan was once Lucifer, the bringer or bearer of light. We may mention in this connection that these beings of which we are speaking, dwelling in unseen worlds, are of two broad categories(1) beings that are native to each plane and immutably confined and bound to that plane, and (2) those that extend their existence through many or all planes and assume on each plane the norm and form appropriate to that plane. But this is a problem of individual destiny with which we are not concerned at present.
We were speaking of the descent into the Vital, the domain of dynamism, desire and hunger. The Vital is also the field of some strong creative Powers who follow, or are in secret contact with the line of unitary consciousness, who are open to influences from a deeper or higher or subtler consciousness. Along with the demons there is also a line of daimona, guardian angels, in the hierarchy of vital beings. Much of what is known as aesthetic or artistic creation derives its spirit from this sphere. Many of the Gods of beauty and delight are denizens of this heaven. Gandharvas and Kinnaras are here, Dionysus and even Apollo perhaps (at least in their mythological aspectin their occult reality they properly belong to the Overmind which is the own home of the Gods), many of the angels, seraphs and cherubs dwell here. In fact, the mythological heaven for the most part can be located in this region.
All this is comprised within what we term the Higher or the Middle Vital. In the lower vital, we have said, consciousness has become still more circumscribed, dark, ignorantly obstinate, disparately disintegrated. It is the seed-bed of lust and cruelty, of all that is small and petty and low and mean, all that is dirt and filth. It is here that we place the picas, djinns, ghouls and ghosts, and vampires, beings who possess the possessed.
02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A word is perhaps necessary to complete the sense of the commentary. Agni has been called old and ancient (Palita), but why? Agni is the first among the Gods. He has come down upon earth, entered into matter with the very creation of the material existence. He is the secret energy hidden in the atom which is attracting, invoking all the other gods to manifest themselves. It is he who drives the material consciousness in its evolutionary re-course upward towards the radiant fullness in the solar Supra-Consciousness at the summit. He is however not only energy, he is also delight (vma). For he is the Soma, the nectarous flow, occult in the Earth's body. For Earth is the storehouse of the sap of Life, the source of the delightful growths of Life here below.
Sri Aurobindo says: "In the deep and mystic style of the Dirghatamas Auchathya as in the melodious lucidity of Medhatithi Kanwa, in the puissant and energetic hymns of Vishwamitra as in Vashishtha's even harmonies we have the same firm foundation of knowledge and the same scrupulous adherence to the sacred conventions of the Initiates."
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A labour to the Gods impossible.
A life living hardly in a field of death
02.03 - The Glory and the Fall of Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As on a fretted ceiling of the Gods,
An archipelago of laughter and fire,
--
A nebula of the splendours of the Gods
Made from the musings of eternity.
--
Assemblies, crowded senates of the Gods,
Life's puissances reigned on seats of marble will,
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A foundling of the Gods she wanders here
Like a child-soul left near the gates of Hell
02.05 - Robert Graves, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The small gods are small, but do not slight themthey are powerful. They are powerful because they are deities of the earth. In fact, like gods and goddesses in heaven, there are gods and goddesses on earth also. the Gods in heaven are high and far away, but these unobtrusive deities are near to our hearth and home. The Greeks referred to the Olympian gods, of high caste and rank as it were,like Jupiter and Apollo and to those others who dwelt on the lowly earth and embraced its water and land, its rivers and trees and fields the nymph, the satyr, and Pan and dryad and naiad. What are the powers and functions of these unearthly beings? They on their part are guarding the gate to heaven, questioning the pilgrim of their divine destination. Well, the sentinels have to be appeased first, satisfied and convinced. Surely the sands burn hotter than the sun!
We may ask in this connection which deity does our poet invoke here, to whom does he raise his offerings, to whomkasmai devya? One need not be startled at the answer: it is the toadstool. But the mushroom growth assumes a respectable figure in the guise of its Sanskrit name,chatraka. Kalidasa did one better. His magic touch gave the insignificant flora a luminousrobeilndhra, a charming name. The great poet tells us that the earth is not barren or sterilekartum yat camahmucchilndhrmabandhym. The next pertinent question is: why does the poet worship a toadstool? What is his purpose? Does a toadstool possess any special power? This leads us to a hidden world, to the 'mysteries' spoken of by the poet himself.
--
Our poet too is saying something in the same line. He is appealing to the toadstool god to give him the right vision, to take him to the other shore, to lead him to the presence of the Gods in heaven. Because he is the divine food, its self, the ambrosia. Not only that: by taking this ambrosia one enjoys, evenwhile in the physical body, existence in heaven,ihaiva tairjitam, as the Upanishad said.
That he may pass me through when my star falls
--
He begins by speaking of the birth of the Gods. Well, a small truth needs to be revealed at this point. We have spoken of he lesser and smaller gods. These small gods are shielded and supported, in fact, by the big gods. This Shilindhra or toadstool has behind him Dionysus, the delight and loveliness and enjoyment and youtha veritable symbol of ecstasy, of earthly ecstasy. That which is nectar in heaven is presented on earth in drugs and herbal juices. Shilindhra and ambrosia pertain to the same class.
The birth of Shilindhra resembles the birth of Dionysus. When King Zeus took the form of thunder and lightning and entered the womb of Semele, Dionysus was born. Similar is the story of the appearance of the toadstool, in the midst of rain and thunder and lightning and on the lap of mother earth. We have already said that there are two categories of gods or two types of themone belongs to heaven and the other to earth. The Vedic Rishis announced that heaven was our father and earth themotherdaurme pit mt pthvimahyam. The Vedantins usually and mainly worship the father, and Tantriks, the mother. Svarga, Dyaus, is the world of light, and earth or bhu is that of delight and enjoyment. We have already said that high above, up there, dwell Apollo and Zeus and Juno, and below here on earth, Dionysus and Bacchus and Semele and Aphrodite.
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Calm faces of the Gods on background vast
Bringing the marvel of the infinitudes,
--
Of course, in Sri Aurobindo we reach the inner and higher world through a luminous path, through worlds of light, ranging one upon another. It is a journey through pure air and clear light. Conversely the poet of the toadstool leads one by the passage of an acid drunkenness and a half-conscious drowse. If the goal here is a delight and a freedom they are arrived at after traversing a purgatory or undergoing a troubled purification. But this too leads verily to a world of the Gods.
This "little slender lad, whose flesh is bitter, lightning engendered, born from dungs of mares" is perhaps a symbol of our human receptacle. We have to carry this mortal frame with its clay feet and make the effort towards self-transcendence: the alchemy's other name is self-purification and self-perfection. This tender shoot is a mysterious chemical storehouse, its fermentation and purification and use awaken in us the sleeping divine will, give a clear vision, guide us through the secret worlds and ultimately to the home of Immortality. The Vedic Rishis sang to the Soma creeper or god Soma,Tatra mm. amtam kdhi, O Somadeva, carry us where thou flowest down and there make us immortal. For there abound all delight, all ecstasy, all enjoyment, all lure and the supreme Desire ofdesirenanda, moda, mud, pramud, kma4are these not the five fruits of heaven the poet of the West mentions?
02.05 - The Godheads of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He dreams sometimes of the revels of the Gods
And sees the Dionysian gesture pass, -
--
A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,
A game, a work ambiguously divine.
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Fills silence with the voices of the Gods,
But in the cry the single Voice is lost.
--
An error of the Gods has made the world.
Or indifferent the Eternal watches Time.
02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Turned from the brilliant nature of the Gods
To fallen angels and misleading suns,
--
Feeling themselves guests at a banquet of the Gods
And tasted corruption like a high-spiced food.
--
The reason meant for nearness to the Gods
And uplift to heavenly scale by the touch of mind
02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Wherever the Gods act, they intervene.
A yoke is laid upon the world's dim heart;
--
In scorn of the dwindling chances of the Gods
They claim creation as their conquered fief
--
For even the radiant children of the Gods
To darken their privilege is and dreadful right.
02.09 - The Paradise of the Life-Gods, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A favourite and intimate of the Gods
Obeying the divine comm and to joy,
--
And Pleasure had the stature of the Gods;
Dream walked along the highways of the stars;
--
The rapture that the Gods sustain he bore.
Immortal pleasure cleansed him in its waves
02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
69 - VOICES OF the Gods (2)
Section 66
--
Always ascends the zigzag of the Gods
And upward points the spirit's climbing Fire.
--
And heard afar the voices of the Gods.
69.3
02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And Will is a conscious chariot of the Gods,
And Life, a splendour stream of musing Force,
02.14 - Appendix, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul2
02.14 - The World-Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All objects were like bodies of the Gods,
A spirit symbol environing a soul,
--
Resume their place in the process of the Gods
Until their work in cosmic Time is done.
02.15 - The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
His actions framed the movements of the Gods,
His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And offered to the Gods the vacant place.
Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.
--
Immortal hushbefore the Gods are born;
A universal Force awaited, mute,
03.04 - The Body Human, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The story runs (Aitareya Upanishad) that once the Gods wished to come down and inhabit an earthly frame. Several animal forms (the cow, the horse) were presented to them one after another, but they were not satisfied, none was considered adequate for their habitation. At last the human frame (with its conscious personality) was offered to them and immediately they declared that that was indeed the perfect form they neededsuktam bateti and they entered into it.
The human frame is the abode of the Gods; it is a temple of God, as we all know. But the most significant thing about it is that the Gods alone do not dwell there: all being, all creatures crowd there, even the ungodly and the undivine. The Pashu (the animal), the Pishacha (the demon), the Asura (the Titan), and the Deva (the god), all find comfortable lodging in itthere are many chambers indeed in this mansion of the Lord. Man was made after the image of God and yet Lucifer had access into that tabernacle and all his entire host with him. This duality of the divine and the undivine, the characteristic mark of human nature as it is, presents a field and a labour through which man's progress has to be worked out. The soul, the divine flame, has, been placed in Ignorance, that is to say, what is apparent Ignorance, the frame of Matter, just because this Matter in Ignorance is to be smelted, purified, given its original and intrinsic substance, shape and character. The human person in its actual form is not obviously something absolutely perfect and divine. The type, the norm it represents is divine, but it has been overlaid with all obscure and base elementsit has to be washed and cleaned thoroughly, smelted and reconditioned. The dark ungodly elements mar and vitiate; they must be removed on the one hand, but on the other, they point out and test the salvaging work that has to be done and is being done. Man is always at the crossroads. This is his especial difficulty and this is also his unique opportunity. His consciousness has a double valency, in contradistinction to the animal's which is, it can be said, monovalent, in that it is amoral, has not the sense of divided loyalty and hence the merit of choice. The movements of the animal follow a fixed stereotyped pattern; it has not got to deviate from the beaten track of its instincts. But man with his sense of the moral, of the good, of the progressive is at every step of his life faced with a dilemma, has to pause at a parting of the ways, always looks before and after and is puzzled at a cas de conscience. That, we have said, has been made for him the condition of growth, of a conscious and willed change with an ever-increasing tempo towards perfect perfection. That furnishes the occasion and circumstance by which he rises to divinity itself, becomes the Divine. He becomes the Divine thus not merely in the own home of the Divine, but on all the levels of the manifestation: all the planes of consciousness with all the hierarchy of beingspowers and personalitiesfind a new play of harmony, a supreme and global fulfilment in the transfigured human vehicle. The frame itself that encases the human consciousness acts as a living condenser: the very contour in its definiteness seems to exert a pressure towards an ever larger and higher synthesis, it may be compared to a kind of field office (Einsteinian, for example) that controls, regulates, moves and configurates all elements within its range. The human frame even as a frame possesses a magic virtue.
Vaishnavism sees the Divine as a human person, the human person par excellence. Krishna's body is a radiant form of consciousness (cinmaya), no doubt, but it is as definite, determinate, and concrete as the physical body, it is the physical itself but in its true substance. And its exquisiteness consists in its being human in form. The Vedantin's Maya does not touch it, it is beyond the illusory consciousness. For they say Goloka stands above Brahmaloka.
03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The labourers in the quarries of the Gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
--
He shall take on him the burden of the Gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth's thoughts,
--
Moved by the passions of the Gods shall come.
All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;
--
Broad-based to bear the Gods on fiery wheels,
Flaming he swept through the spiritual gates.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There was no department of life or culture in which it could be said of India that she was not great, or even, in a way, supreme. From hard practical politics touching our earth, to the nebulous regions of abstract metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the power of her genius equally well. And yet none of these, neither severally nor collectively, constituted her specific genius; none showed the full height to which she could raise herself, none compassed the veritable amplitude of her innermost reality. It is when we come to the domain of the Spirit, of God-realisation that we find the real nature and stature and genius of the Indian people; it is here that India lives and moves as in her own home of Truth. The greatest and the most popular names in Indian history are not names of warriors or statesmen, nor of poets who were only poets, nor of mere intellectual philosophers, however great they might be, but of Rishis, who saw and lived the Truth and communed with the Gods, of Avataras who brought down and incarnated here below something of the supreme realities beyond.
The most significant fact in the history of India is the unbroken continuity of the line of her spiritual masters who never ceased to appear even in the midst of her most dark and distressing ages. Even in a decadent and fast disintegrating India, when the whole of her external life was a mass of ruins, when her political and economical and even her cultural life was brought to stagnation and very near to decomposition, this undying Fire in her secret heart was ever alight and called in the inevitable rebirth and rejuvenation. Ramakrishna, with Vivekananda as his emanation in life dynamic and material, symbolises this great secret of India's evolution. The promise that the Divine held out in the Gita to Bharata's descendant finds a ready fulfilment in India, in Bharata's land, more perhaps than anywhere else in the world; for in India has the. Divine taken birth over and over again to save the pure in heart, to destroy the evil-doer and to establish the Right Law of life.
03.07 - The Sunlit Path, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Like the individual, nations too have their sunlit path and the path of the doldrum as well. So long as a nation keeps to the truth of its inner being, follows its natural line of development, remains faithful to its secret godhead, it will have chosen that good part which will bring it divine blessings and fulfilment. But sometimes a nation has the stupidity to deny its self, to run after an ignis fatuus, a mymrga, then grief and sorrow and frustration lie ahead. We are afraid India did take such a wrong step when she refused to see the great purpose behind the present war and tried to avoid contri buting her mite to the evolutionary Force at work. On the other hand Britain in a moment of supreme crisis, that meant literally life or death, not only to herself or to other nations, but to humanity itself, had the good fortune to be led by the right Inspiration, the whole nation rose as one man and swore allegiance to the cause of humanity and the Gods. That was how she was saved and that was how she acquired a new merit and a fresh lease of life. Unlike Britain, France bowed down and accepted what should not have been accepted and cut herself adrift from her inner life and truth, the result was five years of hell. Fortunately, the hell in the end proved to be a purgatory, but what a purgatory! For there were souls who were willing to pay the price and did pay it to the full cash and nett. So France has been given the chance again to turn round and take up the thread of her life where it snapped.
Once more another crisis seems to be looming before the nations, once more the choice has to be made and acted upon. In our weakness it is natural and easy to invoke God, to feel the presence of a higher Guidance, to trust in a heavenly light; but it is in our strength that we must know whose strength it is, and in whose strength it is that we conquer.
03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Life is an expression of the Divine Presence, earth is the field of labour for the Godssuch was the original old-world Vedic view. It was the Buddhist dispensation that made life an inferior truth, a complex of unreality and decreed that the highest aim of man is to disappear from life after life's fitful fever to sleep well that seems to have been the motto given.
Buddhism saw and accepted a world of misery; therefore it knew how to touch the human heart, open up the doors in human consciousness to sympathy and compassion and love. Life it envisaged as an unreal persistence and therefore awakened and installed there the fiery urge towards withdrawal, ascension and transcendence. It was Buddhism that canonised the way of asceticism, laid out the path of the Everlasting Nayalthough called (somewhat euphemistically perhaps) the Middle Path being tempered by an attitude of sweet reasonableness in the inner heart.
03.10 - The Mission of Buddhism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Buddhism cried halt because of two omissions: it turned man's mind to two new directions. In our eagerness to reach the spiritual and the supra-sensual, we gave scant recognition to the mental and the rational; and yet mind and reason should be the very basis of the life spiritual. And in the pursuit of God and the Gods and the things divine, we became blind to human problems, things concerning man in the human way. The earlier vision gives us a happy picture of humanity. The world moves, it was said, from delight to delight, it was born in delight and it consummates in delight. One sang of immortality, of the solar light, of men being children of Heaven and Beatitude. That this material structure on which man leads his precarious existence is a texture of age and disease and death, that misery and undelight is of the very substance of human life was a hard fact that did not get due recognition. Perhaps it was an earlier, that is to say, a younger humanity
A simple Child,
03.12 - Communism: What does it Mean?, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Be that as it may, if one demands a fair share of the riches of the commonwealth, one must lend one's hand honestly and whole-heartedly to its production. That is the line of true communism. Above all, one must cultivate the civic sense, the very primary thing one must have for a harmoniously prosperous collective life, we have to learn again the first lesson of civilised living in these days when the brute and the vampire are seated in human hearts. We must not always clamour for selfish gains, gains for oneself, for one's class or community, or even for one's country. We must have a global view of the human society which is a complex and multifoliate organism. Many interests have to be served, many lines of growth have to be encouraged, liberty for contraries all in the framework of a wider harmony. The ancient Rishis invoked the aid of the Gods Mitra and Varuna for the establishment of that wide harmony, the builders of the new age too can do no better.
***
04.01 - The Birth and Childhood of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In this high signal moment of the Gods
Answering earth's yearning and her cry for bliss,
--
Thoughts natural and native to the Gods.
As needing nothing but its own rapt flight
--
Her spirit kept the stature of the Gods;
It stooped but was not lost in Matter's reign.
04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Human evolution took a decisive turn with the advent of the Hellenic culture and civilisation. All crises in evolution are a sudden revelation, an unexpected outburst, a saltum, a leap into the unknown. Now, what the Greeks brought in was the Mind, the luminous Reason, the logical faculty that is married to the senses, no doubt, but still suffused with an inner glow of consciousness. It is the faculty mediating between a more direct and immediate perception of things, Intuition and Instinct, on the one hand, and on the other, the perception given by the senses and a power of control over material things. Take Egypt or Israel or Chaldea, what one finds prominent there is the instinctive-intuitive man, spontaneousprime-sautierimaginative, mythopoeic, clairvoyant, clairaudient (although not very clear, in the modern and Greek sense), bringing into this world things of the other world and pushing this world as much as possible into the other, maintaining a kind of direct connection and communion between the two. The Greeks are of another mould. They are a rational people; they do not move and act simply or mainly by instinctive reactions, but even these are filtered in them through a light of the Mind of Intelligence, a logical pattern, a rational disposition of things; through Mind they seek to know Matter and to control it. It is the modern methodology, that of observation and experiment, in other words, the scientific procedure. The Greeks have had their gods, their mythology; but these are modelled somewhat differently: the Gods are made more human, too human, as has often been observed. Zeus and Juno (Hera) are infinitely more human than Isis and Osiris or Moloch and Baal or even the Jewish Jehovah. These vital gods have a sombre air about them, solemn and serious, grim and powerful, but they have not the sunshine, the radiance and smile of Apollo (Apollo Belvedere) or Hermes. The Greeks might have, they must have taken up their gods from a more ancient Pantheon, but they have, after the manner of their sculptor Phidias, remoulded them, shaped and polished them, made them more luminous and nearer and closer to earth and men. 1 Was it not said of Socrates that he brought down the Gods from heaven upon earth?
The intermediary faculty the Paraclete, which the Greeks brought to play is a corner-stone in the edifice of human progress. It is the formative power of the Mind which gives things their shape and disposition, their consistency and cogency as physical realities. There are deeper and higher sources in man, more direct, immediate and revealing, where things have their birth and origin; but this one is necessary for the embodiment, for the building up and maintenance of the subtler and profounder truths in an earthly structure, establish and fix them in the normal consciousness. The Socratic Dialogues are rightly placed at the start of the modern culture; they set the pattern of modern mentality. That rational turn of mind, that mental intelligence and understanding as elaborated, formulated, codified by the Aristotelian system was the light that shone through the Grco-Latin culture of the Roman days; that was behind the culture and civilisation of the Middle Ages. The changes and revolutions of later days, social or cultural, did not affect it, rather were based upon it and inspired by it. And even today our scientific culture maintains and continues the tradition.
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The Veda speaks of Indra who became later on the king of the Gods. And Zeus too occupies the same place in Greek Pantheon. Indra is, as has been pointed out by Sri Aurobindo, the Divine Mind, the leader of thought-gods (Maruts), the creator of perfect forms, in which to clo the our truth-realisations in life. The later traditional Indra in India and the Greek Zeus seem to be formulations on a lower level of the original archetypal Indra, where the consciousness was more mentalised, intellectualised, made more rational, sense-bound, external, pragmatic. The legend of Athena being born straight out of the head of Zeus is a pointer as to the nature and character of the Gods. The Roman name for Athena, Minerva, is significantly derived by scholars from Latin mens, which means, as we all know, mind.
The Greek Mind, as I said, is the bridge thrown across the gulf existing between the spiritual, the occult, the intuitive and the sensuous, the physical, the material. Since the arrival of the Hellenes a highway has been built up, a metalled macada-mised road connecting these two levels of human experience and there is possible now a free and open communication from the one to the other. We need not speak any more of God and the Gods and the divine principles indirectly through symbols and similes, but in mental terms which are closer to our normal understanding and we can also utilise the form of our intellection and reasoning to represent and capture something of what lies beyond intellect and reason.
In India we have an echo of the transition, rather perhaps, she held up the type of the transition required. For here the evolution seems to have been more gradual and the steps are more clearly visible leading one to the other. India maintained an unbroken continuity in the cyclic change of the human consciousness. She was coeval with Egypt and Chaldea, Sumeria and Babylon: she communed with them perhaps in similar and parallel terms. And yet she changed or evolved and knew to express herself in other terms in other times. She had talked in mystic terms with the mystics and later on she talked in rational terms with rationalists. And today we see signs of her parleying with the Scientists in scientific terms. That is how India still lives, while Egypt and Chaldea have gone the way of Atlantis and Gondwanaland. For something is enshrined there which is eternal, something living and dynamic which is pressing forward to manifest and embody itself, some supreme truth and reality of the future which she is fostering within her to deliver to nature and humanitya new humanity with a new nature.
04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nor yet the art and wisdom of the Gods.
--
Puissant, apart her soul as the Gods live.
--
Content in her little garden of the Gods
As blooms a flower in an unvisited place.
04.02 - To the Heights II, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A solar world made of the glories of the Gods!
October 1, 1932
04.03 - The Call to the Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But like a shining answer from the Gods
Approached through sun-bright spaces Savitri.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Viewed as a progressive growth of consciousness and transformation of nature, man's advance has been marked out in a few very definite stages. The first was the purely animal manPasuwhen man lived merely as a physical being, concerned solely about his body. Then came the Pisacha, the man of vital urges in their crudest form, the man of ignorant passions and dark instincts who has been imaged in the popular mind as the ghoul. At the next stage, with a further release of the consciousness, when the larger vital impulses come into play man becomes the Rakshasa, the demon. Egoistic hunger for possession, enjoyment, enlarged and increased appetite are his characteristics. Next came the Asura, the Titan, the egoistic mental man in his earlier avatar seeking to emerge out of the purely vital nature. Ambition and pride are his guiding spirit. Prometheus is his prototype. There are still two higher types which have been established in the human consciousness and in the world atmosphere as dynamic ideals, if not as common concrete facts of the material world. The first is the ethical man, who seeks to govern his life according to some principles of light and purity, such, for example, as unselfishness, altruism, chivalry, self-abnegation, rectitude, truthfulness etc. He is the Sattwic man, as known in India. There is also a still higher category, where consciousness endeavours to go beyond mind, enters into the consciousness of the Spirit; then we have the spiritual man, the saint and the sage. Beyond lie the supra-mental domains formed of the consciousness of the Gods.
Man, individually and collectively, has passed and is passing through these steps of evolution. The last one is his goal at the present stage. To be a saint, seer or sage is not enough for man. He must be a god. Indeed when he has succeeded to be a god then only would it be possible for him to become what a saint or a seer or sage has to be in order to fulfil himself totally and integrally. The human race as a whole is progressing along the same line towards the same consummation. That is the secret purpose and end of Nature, to evolve a growing developing material form housing, embodying higher and wider ranges of consciousness, integrating all elements into a more and more intimate and inviolable unity and harmony.
04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Assisting the slow entries of the Gods,
Sowing in young minds immortal thoughts they lived,
04.04 - To the Heights IV, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Gods descend along a path of luminous silence spread in
the farthest spaces of our inmost being.
04.05 - The Immortal Nation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The truth then is this: the stronger the inner life a nation builds up and organises, the longer it lives and the greater the power it acquires to revive when it falls for a time into decline. Naturally, a good deal depends upon the nature and quality of this inner life. There are certain types of inner life which mean the very source of life, there are others that are only secondary sources. Ancient Greece or even modern France has had a well-developed inner life, but this inner life was very strongly wedded to and welded into the outer life, it lay at least at one remove farther from the true source of life. Ancient Egypt less intellectual, less mentally cultivated, was in contact with the occult, the subliminal base of life, more potent and dynamic springs of consciousness. This was the cause of Egypt's greater longevity and some capacity of renewal. The older people generally lived in, or at least, were in living contact with principles of existence more fundamental and therefore more enduring. the Gods of the mind and of the inner vital enjoy a longer immortality than the deities that rule man's outer life and body.
Viewed from this standpoint India stands as a case sui generis. She did not stop short satisfied with the lesser gods. She aspired for the highest One, the supreme spiritual reality and it was her mission, her destiny, to foster it and keep guard over it for the sake of humanity. Whatever the outer vicissitudes, she maintained throughout the inner continuity of her spiritual life and realisation. That is where she drank of the nectar of immortality and that is how she could always revive and renew herself after a period of decline and almost disintegration, because she possessed the mystery of the self. Other peoples were busy about many other things important or unimportant in some measure, but here was a race that never forgot the one thing needful. India of today, we repeat, is fundamentally and essentially the India of the Vedas, even in a more literal sense than that China of Mao-tse- Tung (or Sun-yat-Sen) is the China of Lao-tse.
04.06 - To Be or Not to Be, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yes, there is one thing intrinsically evil and undivine and that has to be rejected and cast aside ruthlessly that is nothing else than the egoistic consciousness. It is this that has passions and prejudices, likes and dislikes, ideas and ideals, formations of its own, other deities installed in place of the Divine Truth and Reality. The ego goes, indeed, and with it also those rhythms and stresses, lines and shades germane to it that bar the free flow of the Supreme Breath. But the instrument remains and the arms and the weapons they are cleansed and sanctified: instead of the Asura wielding them, it is now the Gods, the Divine Himself who possess and use them.
Canto I 5
04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An Evolutionary Problem Man and the Gods
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The March of CivilisationValues Higher and Lower
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An Evolutionary Problem Man and the Gods
04.37 - To the Heights-XXXVII, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I t is the pure energy of the Gods,
The clear knowledge that fashions bodies of delight.
05.01 - Man and the Gods, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:05.01 - Man and the Gods
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The Quest and the GoalMan and the Gods
Man and the Gods
The Earth symbolises and epitomises material Nature. It is the body and substance, the very personification, of unconsciousness Ignorance carried to the last limit and concretised. It represents, figures the very opposite of the Reality at the summit. The supreme and original Reality is the quaternary:(1) Light, (2) Truth, (3) Love and (4) Life. They are the first and primal godheads with whom creation starts and who preside over the whole play of the manifestation. These gods that emanated out of the supreme consciousness of the Divine Mother as her fundamental aspects and personalities had automatically an absolute freedom of action and movement, otherwise they would not be divine personalities. And this freedom could be exercised and was in fact exercised in cutting the tie with the mother consciousness, in order to follow a line of independent and separate development instead of a merger life of solidarity with the Supreme. The result was immediate and drastic the precipitation of a physical life and an earthly existence which negated the very principles of the original nature of the godheads and brought forth exactly their contraries: instead of Light there brooded Darkness and Inconscience, Truth turned to Falsehood, Love and Delight gave place to Hatred and Suffering and finally, instead of Life and Immortality there appeared Death. That was how separation, "the disobedience" of the Bible, caused the distortion that turned the Gods into Asuras, that was how Lucifer became Satan.
And that was how Paradise was lost. But the story of Paradise Regained is yet more marvellous. When the Divine Mother, the creative infinite Consciousness found herself parcelled out and scattered (even like the body of Sati borne about by Shiva, in the well-known Indian legend) and lost in unconsciousness, something shot down from the Highest into the lowest, something in response to an appeal, a cry, as it were, from the depth of the utter hopelessness in the heart of Matter and the Inconscient. A dumb last-minute S O S from belowa De profundis clamaviwent forth and the Grace descended: the Supreme himself came down and entered into the scuttled dead particles of earth's dust as a secret core of light and flame, just a spark out of his own conscious substance. The Earth received the Grace and held it in her bosom. Thus she had her soul born in her the psychic being that is to grow and evolve and bring about her redemption, her transmutation into the divine substance.
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the Gods are especial powers and executive agents of the one Divine. They move and act in a special way with a special end in view. They are, we may say, highbrow entities: they carry things with a high hand. That is to say, what they have got to do, they seek to do without any consideration or computation of the means, without regard to the pauses and hindrances that naturally attend all terrestrial and human achievements. God said, let there be light, and there was light. That is also the way of the Gods. There is here an imperial majesty and grandeur, a sweeping mastery and sovereign indifference,
Remote from the Force that cries out in its pain, ||12.11||
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the Gods possess this high quality of crystal purity, of a concentrated seeing will in which vision and execution form one single simultaneous movement, of the taut yet perfectly serene rhythm of a hero-consciousness. Something of that grandiose sweep of godly march the Virgilian gradus diviis echoed in these Vedic lines hymned to Varuna:
Adabdhni varunasya vratni vicakaaccandram naktameti
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Such are the Gods, such is their nature:
The Spirit's free and absolute potencies
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Human nature, human movement, is, however, different. Man, the terrestrial creature, has developed as the result of a slow growth, through struggle and suffering, the sturm und drangof an arduous ascent. He knows of things which the Gods do not. He has an experience which even they, strange to say, covet. First of all, it must be borne in mind that the Gods represent only one mode of consciousness, a fixed and definite typea god is bound by his godhood; but man embodies all the modes of consciousness, he is an ever growing and changing type. Man is an epitome of creation, he is coterminous with Nature. If he is that within which is wholly divineconsciousness and bliss, truth and immortalityphenomenally he is also quite the oppositeearthly, unconsciousness, pain and suffering, ignorance and falsehood, incapacity and death. If heaven is his father, the earth is his motherdyaur me pit mt pthivriyam. And all the gradations in between he has in him and can become any.
Man possesses characters that mark him as an entity sui generis and give him the value that is his. First, toil and suffering and more failures than success have given him the quality of endurance and patience, of humility and quietness. That is the quality of earth-natureearth is always spoken of by the poets and seers as all-bearing and all-forgiving. She never protests under any load put upon her, never rises in revolt, never in a hurry or in worry, she goes on with her appointed labour silently, steadily, calmly, unflinchingly. Human consciousness can take infinite pains, go through the infinite details of execution, through countless repetitions and mazes: patience and perseverance are the very badge and blazon of the tribe. Ribhus, the artisans of immortalitychildren of Mahasaraswatiwere originally men, men who have laboured into godhood. Human nature knows to wait, wait infinitely, as it has all the eternity before it and can afford and is prepared to continue and persist life after life. I do not say that all men can do it and are of this nature; but there is this essential capacity in human nature. the Gods, who are usually described as the very embodiment of calmness and firmness, of a serene and concentrated will to achieve, nevertheless suffer ill any delay or hindrance to their work. Man has not perhaps the even tenor, the steadiness of their movement, even though intense and fast flowing; but what man possesses is persistence through ups and downshis path is rugged with rise and fall, as the poet says. The steadiness or the staying power of the Gods contains something of the nature of indifference, something hard in its grain, not unlike a crystal or a diamond. But human patience, when it has formed and taken shape, possesses a mellowness, an understanding, a sweet reasonableness and a resilience all its own. And because of its intimacy with the tears of things, because of its long travail and calvary, human consciousness is suffused with a quality that is peculiarly human and humane that of sympathy, compassion, comprehension, the psychic feeling of closeness and oneness. the Gods are, after all, egoistic; unless in their supreme supramental status where they are one and identical with the Divine himself; on the lower levels, in their own domains, they are separate, more or less immiscible entities, as it were; greater stress is laid here upon their individual functioning and fulfilment than upon their solidarity. Even if they have not the egoism of the Asuras that sets itself in revolt and antagonism to the Divine, still they have to the fullest extent the sense of a separate mission that each has to fulfil, which none else can fulfil and so each is bound rigidly to its own orbit of activity. There is no mixture in their workingsna me thate, as the Vedas say; the conflict of the later gods, the apple of discord that drove each to establish his hegemony over the rest, as narrated in the mythologies and popular legends, carry the difference to a degree natural to the human level and human modes and reactions. The egoism of the Gods may have the gait of aristocracy about it, it has the aloofness and indifference and calm nonchalance that go often with nobility: it has a family likeness to the egoism of an ascetic, of a saintit is sttwic; still it is egoism. It may prove even more difficult to break and dissolve than the violent and ebullient rjasicpride of a vital being. Human failings in this respect are generally more complex and contain all shades and rhythms. And yet that is not the whole or dominant mystery of man's nature. His egoism is thwarted at every stepfrom outside, by, the force of circumstances, the force of counter-egoisms, and from inside, for there is there the thin little voice that always cuts across egoism's play and takes away from it something of its elemental blind momentum. the Gods know not of this division in their nature, this schizophrenia, as the malady is termed nowadays, which is the source of the eternal strain of melancholy in human nature of which Matthew Arnold speaks, of the Shelleyan saddest thoughts: Nietzsche need not have gone elsewhere in his quest for the origin and birth of Tragedy. A Socrates discontented, the Christ as the Man of Sorrows, and Amitabha, the soul of pity and compassion are peculiarly human phenomena. They are not merely human weaknesses and failings that are to be brushed aside with a godlike disdain; but they contain and yield a deeper sap of life and out of them a richer fulfilment is being elaborated.
Human understanding, we know, is a tangled skein of light and shademore shade perhaps than lightof knowledge and ignorance, of ignorance straining towards knowledge. And yet this limited and earthly frame that mind is has something to give which even the overmind of the Gods does not possess and needs. It is indeed a frame, even though perhaps a steel frame, to hold and fix the pattern of knowledge, that arranges, classifies, consolidates effective ideas, as they are translated into facts and events. It has not the initiative, the creative power of the vision of a god, but it is an indispensable aid, a precious instrument for the canalisation and expression of that vision, for the intimate application of the divine inspiration to physical life and external conduct. If nothing else, it is a sort of blue print which an engineer of life cannot forego if he has to execute his work of building a new life accurately and beautifully and perfectly.
III
We have spoken of the stability, the fixity, the rigidity even, of the god type and we contrasted it with the variability, the many-sidedness, the multiple character of the human consciousness. In another view, however, the tables are turned and the opposite appears as the truth. Man, for example., has a physical body and nothing is more definite and fixed and rigid than this material sheath. the Gods have no body, but they have a form which is supple and changeful, not hard and crystallised like the human figure. Gods, we said, are cosmic forceslines (or vectors, if we wish to be scientifically precise) of universal forces; this does not mean that they have no shape or form. They too have a form and can be recognised by it even as a human being is recognisable by his body. In spite of variability the form retains its identity. The form changes, for a god has the capacity to act in different contexts at the same time; within his own universe a god is multi-dimensional. The Indian seer and artist often seeks to convey this character of the immortals by giving them a plurality of arms and heads. In modern times the inspiration behind the surrealist movement lies precisely in this attempt to express simultaneity of diverse gestures and activities, a synthetic close-up of succeeding moments and disparate objects or events. But in spite of all changes Proteus remains Proteus and can be recognised as such by the vigilant and careful eye. The human frame, we have said, is more fixed and rigid, being made of the material substance. It has not evidently the variability of the body of a god. And yet there is a deeper mystery: the human body is not or need not be so inflexible as it appears to be or as it usually is. It has considerable plastic capacities. We would say that the human body holds a marvellous juste milieu. By its solid concreteness it acts as a fortress for the inner consciousness to dwell in safe from easy attacks of the hostiles: it acts also as a firm weapon for the same inner consciousness to cut into the material world and indent and impress its pattern of truth upon an otherwise hard and refractory material made of ignorance and obscurity and falsehood. Furthermore, it is supple enough to receive and record into its grain the pattern and substance of the higher reality. The image of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ is symbolic of the alchemy of which the human body is capable when one knows how to treat it in occult knowledge and power. The human body can suffer a sea-change which is not within the reach of the radiant body of an immortal.
IV
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the Gods are glorious beings; they are aspects and personalities of the Divine, presiding and ruling over the cosmic laws, each with his own truth and norm and dominion, although, in the higher status, all work together and harmoniously. Even then they do not possess a soul, a psychic core of being. They are forms and powers of consciousness organised round a divine truth, a typal Idea; but they do not have this exquisite presence secretly seated in the heart, which is the privilege of the terrestrial creature.
And the exquisiteness, the special quality of this inner Heart is mostly if not wholly derived from a particular factor of terrestrial evolution. For the journey here is a sacrifice, a passage through pain and suffering, even through frustration and death. The tears that accompany the mortal being in his calvary of an earthly life serve precisely as a holy unction of purification, give a sweet intensity to all his urges in the progressive march to Resurrection. This is the Immanent Divine who has to be worshipped and realised as much as the Transcendent Divine, if man is to fulfil himself wholly and earth justify its existence.
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As the human aspiration is to reach out towards divinity, the Gods too at times are not satisfied with their closed divine status. They lean down to help humanity, to bring it up into their consciousness; but also they seek this contact and unification for their own sake, for a change and transformation in themselves; they may seek to rise further in a higher status of consciousness or they may wish to participate in the earthly travail, in the human endeavour. In either case the channel lies through the human consciousness. In the Vedas the Gods always look to men, almost depend upon them for their own fulfilment and enrichment. Men ask the Gods for wealth and plentymaterial as well as spiritual the Gods too ask from men the sacrifice, the sacrifice that pours out the substance of the human reality upon which they feed and grow. The Gita speaks of the same covenant the interchange of gifts between the two, each increasing the other and both attaining the highest good.
Our dark destinies move under vast laws that nothing diverts, nothing softens. Thou canst not have sudden clemencies that disturb the world, O God, Spirit tranquil!Victor Hugo, A Villequier.
05.01 - Of Love and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Sacrifice all-but into the radiant fire of Aspiration that flames up to the Gods.
The Heart is the blazing hearth of Aspiration, the divine door that opens into Immortality.
05.02 - Gods Labour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man and the Gods Bypaths of Souls Journey
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta The Quest and the GoalGods Labour
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Man and the Gods Bypaths of Souls Journey
05.02 - Satyavan, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
His look was a wide daybreak of the Gods,
His head was a youthful Rishi's touched with light,
05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Risen in a wide morning of the Gods
Thou drov'st thy horses from the Thunderer's worlds.
05.05 - Man the Prototype, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The conception of the Purusha at the origin of things, as the very source of things, so familiar to the Indian tradition, gives this high primacy to the human figure. We know also of the cosmic godhead cast in man's mouldalthough with multiple heads and feetvisioned and hymned by sages and seers. the Gods themselves seem to possess a human frame. The Upanishads say that once upon a time the Gods looked about for a proper body to dwell in, they were disappointed with all others; it is only when the human form was presented that they exclaimed, This is indeed a perfect form, a perfect form indeed. All that indicates the feeling and perception that there is something eternal and transcendent in the human body-frame.
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05.05 - Of Some Supreme Mysteries, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Gods are the glories of the Supreme Divine; they are the agents that effect this transmutation and the types that embody the transmuted reality.
the Gods are the individualised Name-Forms of the Supreme.
You are always an instrument, a mere tool, so long as you are in the unconsciousness.
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When you become conscious, you are an agent who can act for, and act with, and act as, the Gods.
To be conscious means to become aware of the truth of one's nature and to live with the light and the force of that truth.
05.32 - Yoga as Pragmatic Power, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The fundamental truth to be noted is that the Spirit is power, not merely consciousness: indeed the very definition of the spirit is that it is consciousness-energy. And it is this consciousness-energy that is at the source of all cosmic activities. Man's action too springs from this original source, although apparently it seems to be caused by other secondary and derivative energies. As a matter of fact what these energies that seem to be actually in play do is not the origination but rather the deviation and diversion, a diminution and adulteration of the supreme energy, a lowering of the quality, the tone and temper of the dynamism. In other words, as we have already said, a thought force, a vital force, a nervous or physical force, all these are only lower, even minima values, more or less distant and deformed echoes of a true and absolute Power behind and above them all. These forces become powerful in proportion as they are instruments and functions of that one mother energy. The truth is most beautifully illustrated in the story of Brahma a and the Gods in the Kena Upanishad. the Gods conquered and were proud of their conquest; each thought that it was due to his own personal prowess that he conquered. But they were utterly discomfited and shamed when the Divine Power appeared and proved to them that but for this Power they would not be able even to tackle a blade of grassFire would not burn it, Water would not drench it, Wind would not move it.
The Life Divine, by Sri Aurobindo
06.01 - The Word of Fate, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Tilted upon a table of the Gods,
Turning as if moved round by an unseen hand
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He saw the eternal labour of the Gods,
And looked upon the life of beasts and men.
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Spoke of the toils of men and what the Gods
Strive for on earth, and joy that throbs behind
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One carrying the sanction of the Gods
To her love and its luminous eternity,
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For such is thy spirit, a sister of the Gods,
Thy earthly body lovely to the eyes
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A stanza of the ardour of the Gods
Perfectly rhymed, a pillared ripple of gold!
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Along the dreadful causeway of the Gods,
Armoured with love and faith and sacred joy,
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Too hard the Gods are with man's fragile race;
In their large heavens they dwell exempt from Fate
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And trembles at the laughter of the Gods.
Or if crouches unseen a panther doom,
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Aspiring to the nature of the Gods,
A mind proof-armoured mailed in mighty thoughts,
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We are not as the Gods who know not grief
And look impassive on a suffering world,
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A treasure thus unique loaned by the Gods,
A being so rare, of so divine a make!
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In an eternal moment of the Gods.
My heart has sealed its troth to Satyavan:
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Only the Gods can speak what now thou speakst.
Thou who art human, think not like a god.
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Climbs to usurp the kingdom of the Gods
Or skirts the demon magnitudes of Hell;
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
By his own hand in the furrows of the Gods,
The vast increasing tragic harvest reaped
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Had left in its breadth the inscriptions of the Gods.
Bare in that light Time toiled, his unseen works
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Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,
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This earth is full of the anguish of the Gods;
Ever they travail driven by Time's goad,
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Obstructing the Gods' open ways he makes
His own estate of the earth's air and light;
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And the itinerary of the Gods,
A cyclic movement in eternal Time.
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In casual hours or moments of the Gods,
Yet your least stumblings are foreseen above.
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Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the Gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
06.05 - The Story of Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the graded descent, in the hierarchy of planes and levels, there appeared forces and beings also proper to each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the original Asuras the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in the Greek legend of Chronos and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and ranged-at the first line of division, on the one side of the descent of the Light the first godheads, the major powers and personalities of the Divine Consciousness. The battle of the Gods and Titans for the possession of the earth has been going on ever since. The end will come one day: it will mean the dissolution of the forces of Negation, at least within the earthly sphere, and the establishment there of the reign of ,Light.
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06.13 - Body, the Occult Agent, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A body, in this way, becomes the instrument, a lever for producing mighty changes and creations upon earth. This conception of the occult potency of the body is at the basis of the rite or institution of sacrifice that was a characteristic feature of the old-world society. Iphigenia was offered as a victim to avert the wrath of the Gods and bring victory to the Greeks. Sometimes an animal replaced the human victim and served the same purpose and in the same way. And in a higher senseindeed in the highest sensea body can sacrifice itself in such a waywholly and integrallyas to bring about a corresponding integral reversal or revaluation in the physical world. A human being that makes of himself a holocaustburns himself out at the altar of the Divinekeeping nothing for his own sake, living for the Divine alone, by calling down the divine will in himself, brings into the earthly life too a divine presence and transformation. A total physical sacrifice results inevitably into a total expression and embodiment of the Divine in the Physical world.
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06.16 - A Page of Occult History, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Into the heart of this Darkness and Falsehood and Pain and Death, a seed was sown, a grain that is to be the epitome and symbol of material creation and in and through which the Divine will claim back all the elements gone astray, the prodigal ones who will return to recognise and fulfil the Divine. That was Earth. And the earth, in her turn, in her labour towards the Divine Fulfilment, out of her bosom, threw up a being who would again symbolise and epitomise the earth and material creation. That is Man. For, man came with the soul in him, the Psychic Being, the Divine Flame, the spark of consciousness in the midst of universal unconsciousness, a miniature of the original Divine Light-Truth-Love-Life. In the meantime, to help the evolution, to join hands with the aspiring soul in the human being, there was created, on the defection of the First Lords the Asuric Quaternitya second hierarchy of luminous beingsDevas, gods. (Some-thing of this inner history of the world is reflected in the Greek legend of struggle between the Titans and the Olympians.) These gods, however, being a latter creation, perhaps because they were young and inexperienced, could not cope immediately with their strong Elders. It is why we see in the mythological legends the Gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras: Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance.
However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of the Divine, for the fulfilment of the Divine; that is to say, they agreed to conversion. Thus they took birth as or in human beings, so that they may be in contact with the human soulPsychewhich is the only door or passage to the Divine in this material world. But the matter was not easy; the process was not straight. For, even agreeing to be converted, even basking in the sunshine of the human psyche, these incorrigible Elders could not forget or wholly give up their old habit and nature. They now wanted to work for the Divine Fulfilment in order to magnify themselves thereby; they consented to serve the Divine in order to make the Divine serve them, utilise the Divine End for their own purposes. They wished to see the new creation after their own heart's desire.
06.21 - The Personal and the Impersonal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As you go up in your consciousness towards the origin of things you come finally at the end of things: you are beyond the names and forms that make up the universe, beyond even the subtle names and forms at the topmost. You arrive at something formless, impersonal,' unthinkable, unique, infinite and eternal. It is at best a vast force or a state of consciousness. When you come in contact with it, you lose your personal form, your separate individuality and become the featureless absolute. Many religions and philosophies consider this status to be the supreme, the highest and the origin of things. In reality, however, it is not the end of things nor the supreme status. You can rise further beyond. Your consciousness enters into the formless and impersonal and merges its separate existence there and then emerges again; it envisages a reality which is not formless but has a form, it is not impersonality but a Person, with which or with whom you can have a personal relation unlike the relation or lack of relation with the Impersonal. But this form beyond the formless is not like the forms of the inferior consciousness: it is the Form of forms. And it is not a person like a human being or even a divine being or god, but an essential Personality, the Person of persons. It has not the limitation or exclusiveness of ego-bounded individuality (even the Gods are ego-bounded); it has a kind of fluid boundedness or outline which is recognizable as that of a definite Person, but it has not the fixity or rigidity of lower forms.
And yet to arrive at this supreme Person, to come in contact with Him, it is necessary to pass through and have the experience of the formless impersonal infinity. For that breaks the inferior moulds, the narrow egoistic formations which are only aberrations or obscure images of the true Person.
06.24 - When Imperfection is Greater Than Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
the Gods are perfect; but it is said, they have to become men, come down upon earth and assume human proportions that is, imperfections,if they wish to progress further, attain still higher levels of consciousness. For, the Gods are perfect each in his own limited and well-defined and therefore unchangeable type; but man means an aspiring soul, that is to say, infinityhis very imperfection is a sign and symbol of ever greater possibility; the fluidity of his nature means an opportunity.
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07.01 - Realisation, Past and Future, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The whole material and physical world, the whole earth I mention earth, because we are concerned directly and much more with it than other regionshas been till now governed by forces of consciousness that come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. Even the thing man has named God is a force, a power in the Overmind. The entire universe has been, so to say, under the domination of this status of consciousness. Even then, you have to pass through many intermediary grades, or levels to arrive at the Overmind and when you reach there the first impression is that of a dazzling light that almost blinds you. But one can and has to press on and go beyond. Sri Aurobindo says, the rule of the Overmind is precisely coming to its end and the rule of the Supermind will replace it. All the past spiritual experiences were concerned with the Overmind: so it is a thing known to all who have found the Divine and are identified with Him. What Sri Aurobindo says is this that there is something more than the Overmind, something that lies a step higher and that it is now the turn of this higher status to come down and reign. We need not talk much of Overmind, because all the saints and seers, all religions and spiritual disciplines, scriptures and philosophies have spoken about it at length. All the Gods known and familiar to men are there in its Pantheon. What we want, what is needed at present is a new revelation, a manifestation in a new manner of which very few were conscious in the past. We are not here merely to repeat the past.
But it is so difficult. It is difficult for people to come out of experiences they have had, of what they have heard and read about always and everywhere. It is difficult for them not to think of the Supermind in terms of the Overmind, not to confuse the Supermind with the Overmind. They are unable to conceive of anything beyond or different. Sri Aurobindo used to say always that his Yoga Began where all the past Yogas ended: in order to realise his Yoga one must have already arrived at the extreme limit of what the ancients realised. In other words, one must have had already the perception of the Divine, the union and identification with the Divine. This divinity, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine of the Overmind which is itself something quite unthinkable for the human consciousness, and even to reach there one has to rise through many planes of consciousness and, as I said, one gets dazzled and dazed even at this level.
07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A tranquillity and a violence of the Gods
Indomitable and immutable.
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A sky-topped flower-hung palace of the Gods
And all its scenes a smile on rapture's lips
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Immortal it walked unslayable as the Gods:
Her spirit stretched measureless in strength divine,
07.02 - The Parable of the Search for the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A follower of the footprints of the Gods,
To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?
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Visits the Gods on Life's miraculous peaks,
Communicates with Heaven, tampers with Hell.
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Man's house of life holds not the Gods alone:
There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,
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Lines of the secret purpose of the Gods.
In strange directions runs the intricate plan;
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Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods
It marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,
07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its speed and lightning heaven-leap of the Gods.
A trenchant blade that shore the nets of doubt,
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To conquer the secret treasures of the Gods
Or win for a masked king some glorious world,
07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods.
I am woman, nurse and slave and beaten beast;
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I crush the opposition of the Gods,
Tread down a million goblin obstacles.
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And put on him the breastplate of the Gods.
I break the ignorant pride of human mind
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I bring meanwhile the Gods upon the earth;
I bring back hope to the despairing heart;
07.31 - Images of Gods and Goddesses, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have seen some of these forms in the vital world and also in the mental world; they are truly creations of man. There is a Power from beyond that manifests, but in this triple world of Ignorance man creates God Himself in his own image and beings that appear there are more or less the outcome of the creative human thought. So at times we do have things that are truly frightful. I have seen formations that are so obscure, so un-understandable, so inexpressive! There are some divine beings that are treated worse than the others. Take, for example, this poor Mahakali. What has man made of her, wildly terrible, a nightmare beyond imagination! Such creations however live in a very inferior world, in the lowest vital world; and if there is anything there of the original being, it is such a far off reflection that it is hardly recognisable. And yet it is that which is pulled by the human consciousness. When, for example, an image is made and installed and the priest calls down into it a form, an emanation of a god, through an inner invocation there is usually a whole ceremony in this connectionif the priest is someone having the power of evocation, then the thing succeeds (what Ramakrishna did in the Kali temple). But generally priests are people with the commonest ideas and the most traditional training and education; when they think of the Gods they give them attributes and appearances which are popular, which belong normally to entities of the vital world, at best to mental formations but which do not represent in any way the truth of the beings behind. All the idols in temples or the household gods worshipped by the many are inhabited by beings who know only how to lead you to unhappiness and disaster. They are so far away from the divinity that one means to worship. There are certain family Kalis that are real monsters. I have even advised some to throw such an image into the Ganges to get rid of the evil influence emanating from it. But of course it is always the fault of man and not of the divinity. For man wishes so much to make his gods in his own image.
***
08.03 - Death in the Forest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Griefless and strong she waited like the Gods.
But now his sweet familiar hue was changed
09.01 - Towards the Black Void, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A body of the music of the Gods.
Immortal yearnings without name leap down,
09.03 - The Psychic Being, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is a thing characteristic of earthly creatures. It is a speciality of the earth. But only in the human being does the psychic become more conscious, more formed and also more independent; it is there individualised. It is the presence of the psychic that makes of man an exceptional being, so much so that beings of other domains in the universe, those, for example, belonging to what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, the demi-gods and even the Gods are very eager to take a physical body upon earth so that they can have the experience of the psychic. These beings possess certainly many qualities which men have not, but they lack this direct Divine Presence which is quite exceptional, which is a fact of the earth and is found nowhere else. All these inhabitants of the higher worlds, of Higher Mind and Overmind and other regions do not possess a psychic being.
Naturally, the beings of the vital world do not have it either. They do not regret it, they do not want it. In their origin, of course, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was only in their origin and it is so long ago. Now they have no direct contact with the Divine within them, they do not have the psychic being. If they had converted themselves under these conditions nothing would have remained of them, because they are made wholly of the opposite movement. They are entirely made of self-assertion, despotic power, alienation from the origin and the utmost disdain for all that is pure and beautiful and noble. Those only, very rare, among them who wish to be converted do one thing immediately: take a physical body. But others do not want it; that ties them, restricts them to a rule which they defy.
10.01 - The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is a morning twilight of the Gods;
Miraculous from sleep their forms arise
--
Led by a low far chanting of the Gods.
A ripple of gleaming wings crossed the far sky;
10.02 - The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This treasure wasted by the Gods on man,
This happy closeness as of soul to soul,
--
Put off the dire disguises of the Gods,
Unveil from terror and disrobe from sin.
--
Drunk by it as the nectar of the Gods.
Earth's human wisdom is no great-browed power,
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Cast on some neutral background of the Gods:
The Artist's skill he admires who planned it all.
--
To whom the secrets of the Gods are plain?
For now at last I know beyond all doubt,
--
From which the altars of the Gods are lit.
All still compelled went gliding on unchanged,
10.04 - The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The laughter of men, the irony of the Gods?
Where leads the march, whither the pilgrimage?
--
Lo, how all shakes when the Gods tread too near!
All moves, is in peril, anguished, torn, upheaved.
--
And spend the labour that might earn the Gods
And battle and bear agony of wounds
--
Child, hast thou trodden the Gods beneath thy feet
Only to win poor shreds of earthly life
--
There it is greatness to create the Gods.
Is not the spirit immortal and absolved
--
Uttered in hidden conclaves of the Gods,
Thy heart's ephemeral passion cannot break
--
He meets the Gods in great and sudden hours,
He feels the universe as his larger self,
--
Closes in on the labour of the Gods
Fencing eternity from the toil of Time.
10.04 - Transfiguration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities of the One Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and Goddesses and give each one a name and a form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that they may enter into the worshipper and transmute him into something of His image. the Gods bring riches to man. But these riches are they themselves. Vasu is the richness of their substance, Ratna is the wealth of their delight.
Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna is the vastness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess of the Divine Word.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The climax of my life was what is known as the Cairo Working, described in the minutest detail in The Equinox of the Gods. At that time most of The Book of the Law was completely unintelligible to me, and a good deal of it especially the third chapter extremely antipa thetic. I fought against this book for years; but it proved irresistible.
I do not think I am boasting unfairly when I say that my personal researches have been of the greatest value and importance to the study of the subject of Magick and Mysticism in general, especially my integration of the various thought-systems of the world, notably the identification of the system of the Yi King with that of the Qabalah. But I do assure you that the whole of my life's work, were it multiplied a thousand fold, would not be worth one ti the of the value of a single verse of The Book of the Law.
I think you should have a copy of The Equinox of the Gods and make The Book of the Law your constant study. Such value as my own work may possess for you should amount to no more than an aid to the interpretation of this book.
2) It may be that later on you will want a copy of Eight Lectures on Yoga so I am putting a copy aside for you in case you should want it.
--
It would be better for you to get a copy of The Equinox of the Gods and study it. The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego or what not.
By "love under will" one refers to the fact that the method in every case is love, by which is meant the uniting of opposites as above stated, such as hydrogen and chlorine, sodium and oxygen, and so on. Any reaction what- ever, any phenomenon, is a phenomenon of "love", as you will understand when I come to explain to you the meaning of the word "point-event". But love has to be "under will," if it is to be properly directed. You must find your True Will, and make all your actions subservient to the one great purpose.
--
I think I am fair if I say that the first step on the Qabalah which may be called success, is when you make an actual discovery which throws light on some problem which has been troubling you. A quarter of a century ago I was in New Orleans, and was very puzzled about my immediate course of action; in fact I may say I was very much distressed. There seemed literally nothing that I could do, so I bethought myself that I had better invoke Mercury. As soon as I got into the appropriate frame of mind, it naturally occurred to me, with a sort of joy, "But I am Mercury." I put it into Latin Mercurius sum, and suddenly something struck me, a sort of nameless reaction which said: "That's not quite right." Like a flash it came to me to put it into Greek, which gave me "' " and adding that up rapidly, I got the number 418, with all the marvellous correspondences which had been so abundantly useful to me in the past (See Equinox of the Gods, p. 138). My troubles disappeared like a flash of lightning.
Now to answer your questions seriatum; it is quite all right to put questions to me about The Book of the Law; a very extended commentary has been written, but it is not yet published. I shall probably be able to answer any of your questions from the manuscript, but you cannot go on after that when it would become a discussion; as they say in the law-courts, "You must take the witness' answer."
--
3. Now then to your old Pons Asinorum about the names of the Gods! Stand in the corner for half an hour with your face to the wall! Stay in after school and write Malka be-Tharshishim v-Ruachoth b-Schehalim 999 times!
My dear, dear, dear sister, a name is a formula of power. How can you talk of "anachronism" when the Being is eternal? For the type of energy is eternal.
1.00g - Foreword, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"One genius, inspired of the Gods, suggested recently that the riddle might be solved somewhat on the old and well-tried lines of 'Dr. Brewer's Guide to Science'; i.e., by having aspirants write to the Master asking questions, the kind of problem that naturally comes into the mind of any sensible enquirer, and getting his answer in the form of a letter. 'What is it?' 'Why should I bother my head about it?' 'What are its principles?' 'What use is it?' 'How do I begin?', and the like.
"This plan has been put into action; the idea has been to cover the subjects from every possible angle. The style has been colloquial and fluent; technical terms have either been carefully avoided or most carefully explained; and the letter has not been admitted to the series until the querent has expressed satisfaction. Some seventy letters, up to the present have been written, but still there seem to be certain gaps in the demonstration, like those white patches on the map of the World, which looked so tempting fifty years ago.
1.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
psychology has done nothing but reinstate the demons in man; it is possible, as Andr Malraux believed, that the task of the next half century will be "to reinstate the Gods in man," or, rather, as Sri Aurobindo put it, to reinstate the Spirit in man and in matter, and to create "the life divine on earth": The heavens beyond are great and 1
Thoughts and Glimpses, 16:378
1.00 - PRELUDE AT THE THEATRE, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Who makes Olympus sure, the Gods uniting?
The might of Man, as in the Bard revealed.
1.01 - Adam Kadmon and the Evolution, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
things, the periphery of the Gods. ... We are reminded of the
Vedic thunderbolt, that electric Fire, of the Sun who is the
--
the Gods below and the Gods above, and worshipped them
4 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, p. 103.
--
and the animal masks of the Gods has surfaced around the
beginning of the Common Era in writings which are called
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
they really do mean. That the Gods die from time to time is due
to man's sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that
--
26 the Gods of Greece and Rome perished from the same dis-
ease as did our Christian symbols: people discovered then, as
--
the other hand, the Gods of the strangers still had unexhausted
mana. Their names were weird and incomprehensible and their
--
kind, and the Gods, as ever, show it the ways of fate. Today we
call the Gods "factors," which comes from facere, 'to make.' The
makers stand behind the wings of the world-theatre. It is so in
--
ment of symbolism could enable us to rediscover the Gods as
psychic factors, that is, as archetypes of the unconscious. No
1.01 - BOOK THE FIRST, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Nor were the Gods themselves more safe above;
Against beleaguer'd Heav'n the giants move.
--
Against the Gods immortal hatred nurst,
An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood;
--
Then call'd a general council of the Gods;
Who summon'd, issue from their blest abodes,
--
To whom the Father of the Gods reply'd,
Lay that unnecessary fear aside:
--
And then invoke the Gods, with pious prayers.
Thus, in devotion having eas'd their grief,
--
And doubts the Gods; yet both resolve to try.
Descending from the mount, they first unbind
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the Gods of Troy.
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.
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.
--
For it is a fact that the tradition of a secret meaning and a mystic wisdom couched in the Riks of the ancient Veda was as old as the Veda itself. The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher hidden planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge. In one of Vamadeva's hymns in the fourth Mandala (IV.3.16) the Rishi describes himself as one illumined expressing through his thought and speech words of guidance, "secret words" - nin.ya vacamsi - "seer-wisdoms that utter their inner meaning to the seer" - kavyani kavaye nivacana. The Rishi Dirghatamas speaks of the Riks, the Mantras of the Veda, as existing "in a supreme ether, imperishable and immutable in which all the Gods are seated", and he adds "one who knows not That what shall he do with the Rik?" (I.164.39) He further alludes to four planes from which the speech issues, three of them hidden in the secrecy while the fourth is human, and from there comes the ordinary word; but the word and thought of the Veda belongs to the higher planes (I.164.45).
Elsewhere in the Riks the Vedic Word is described (X.71) as that which is supreme and the topmost height of speech, the best and the most faultless. It is something that is hidden in secrecy and from there comes out and is manifested. It has entered into the truth-seers, the Rishis, and it is found by following the track of their speech. But all cannot enter into its secret meaning. Those who do not know the inner sense are as men who seeing see not, hearing hear not, only to one here and there the Word desiring him like a beautifully robed wife to a husb and lays open her body. Others unable to drink steadily of the milk of the Word, the Vedic cow, move with it as with one that gives no milk, to him the Word is a tree without flowers or fruits. This is quite clear and precise; it results from it beyond doubt that even then while the Rig Veda was being written the Riks were regarded as having a secret sense which was not open to all. There was an occult and spiritual knowledge in the sacred hymns and by this knowledge alone, it is said, one can know the truth and rise to a higher existence. This belief was not a later tradition but held, probably, by all and evidently by some of the greatest Rishis such as Dirghatamas and Vamadeva.
--
But where is this body of esoteric meaning in the Veda? It is only discoverable if we give a constant and straightforward meaning to the words and formulas employed by the Rishis, especially to the key-words which bear as keystones the whole structure of their doctrine. One such word is the great word, Ritam, Truth; Truth was the central object of the seeking of the mystics, a spiritual or inner Truth, a truth of ourselves, a truth of things, a truth of the world and of the Gods, a truth behind all we are and all that things are. In the ritualistic interpretation this master word of the Vedic knowledge has been interpreted in all kinds of senses according to the convenience or fancy of the interpreter, "truth", "sacrifice", "water", "one who has gone", even "food", not to speak of a number of other meanings; if we do that, there can be no certitude in our dealings with the Veda. But let us consistently give it the same master sense and a strange but clear result emerges. If we apply the same treatment to other standing terms of the Veda, if we give them their ordinary, natural and straightforward meaning and give it constantly and consistently, not monkeying about with their sense or turning them into purely ritualistic expressions, if we allow to certain important words, such as sravas, kratu, the psychological meaning of which they are capable and which they undoubtedly bear in certain passages as when the Veda describes Agni as kratur hr.di, then this result becomes all the more clear, extended, pervasive. If in addition we follow the indications which abound, sometimes the explicit statement of the Rishis about the inner sense of their symbols, interpret in the same sense the significant legends and figures on which they constantly return, the conquest over Vritra and the battle with the Vritras, his powers, the recovery of the Sun, the Waters, the Cows, from the Panis or other Dasyus, the whole Rig Veda reveals itself as a body of doctrine and practice, esoteric, occult, spiritual, such as might have been given by the mystics in any ancient country but which actually survives for us only in theVeda. It is there deliberately hidden by a veil, but the veil is not so thick as we first imagine; we have only to use our eyes and the veil vanishes; the body of the Word, the Truth stands out before us.
Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning. When the seer speaks of Agni as "the luminous guardian of the Truth shining out in his own home", or of Mitra and Varuna or other gods as "in touch with the Truth and making the Truth grow" or as "born in the Truth", these are words of a mystic poet, who is thinking of that inner Truth behind things of which the early sages were the seekers.
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
--
and manifest the Gods.2 But what is a ghee-pouring mind, and
how by pouring ghee can a priest manifest the Gods and the
triple heavens? But admit the mystical and esoteric meaning
--
certainly manifest by this process the Gods and the worlds and
all planes of the being. The Rishis, it must be remembered, were
--
- as an element of the wealth for which they pray to the Gods,
but here too an esoteric sense can be seen, for in certain passages
--
or the Sun-world - svar - by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis.
The symbol of the Sun is constantly associated with the higher
--
5 Or it means, "I saw the greatest (best) of the bodies of the Gods."
6 Or, for the law of the Truth, for vision.
--
the way of the Gods. This is the second mystic doctrine. The
third is that our life is a battle between the powers of Light
and Truth, the Gods who are the Immortals and the powers of
Darkness. These are spoken of under various names as Vritra
--
have to call in the aid of the Gods to destroy the opposition
of these powers of Darkness who conceal the Light from us or
--
way the soul's ascent. We have to invoke the Gods by the inner
sacrifice, and by the Word call them into us, - that is the specific
--
journey, a pilgrimage and a battle, - a travel towards the Gods
and we also make that journey with Agni, the inner Flame, as
--
of the One, each God is himself all the Gods or carries them in
him: there is the one Truth, tat satyam,17 and one bliss to which
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
4. One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life5 establishes the Waters.6
5. That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.
1.01 - Maitreya inquires of his teacher (Parashara), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Maitreya said, Master! I have been instructed by you in the whole of the Vedas, and in the institutes of law and of sacred science: through your favour, other men, even though they be my foes, cannot accuse me of having been remiss in the acquirement of knowledge. I am now desirous, oh thou who art profound in piety! to hear from thee, how this world was, and how in future it will be? what is its substance, oh Brahman, and whence proceeded animate and inanimate things? into what has it been resolved, and into what will its dissolution again occur? how were the elements manifested? whence proceeded the Gods and other beings? what are the situation and extent of the oceans and the mountains, the earth, the sun, and the planets? what are the families of the Gods and others, the Menus, the periods called Manvantaras, those termed Kalpas, and their subdivisions, and the four ages: the events that happen at the close of a Kalpa, and the terminations of the several ages[11]: the histories, oh great Muni, of the Gods, the sages, and kings; and how the Vedas were divided into branches (or schools), after they had been arranged by Vyāsa: the duties of the Brahmans, and the other tribes, as well as of those who pass through the different orders of life? All these things I wish to hear from you, grandson of Vaśiṣṭha. Incline thy thoughts benevolently towards me, that I may, through thy favour, be informed of all I desire to know. Parāśara replied, Well inquired, pious Maitreya. You recall to my recollection that which was of old narrated by my father's father, Vaśiṣṭha. I had heard that my father had been devoured by a Rākṣas employed by Visvāmitra: violent anger seized me, and I commenced a sacrifice for the destruction of the Rākṣasas: hundreds of them were reduced to ashes by the rite, when, as they were about to be entirely extirpated, my grandfather Vaśiṣṭha thus spake to me: Enough, my child; let thy wrath be appeased: the Rākṣasas are not culpable: thy father's death was the work of destiny. Anger is the passion of fools; it becometh not a wise man. By whom, it may be asked, is any one killed? Every man reaps the consequences of his own acts. Anger, my son, is the destruction of all that man obtains by arduous exertions, of fame, and of devout austerities; and prevents the attainment of heaven or of emancipation. The chief sages always shun wrath: he not thou, my child, subject to its influence. Let no more of these unoffending spirits of darkness be consumed. Mercy is the might of the righteous[12].
Being thus admonished by my venerable grandsire, I immediately desisted from the rite, in obedience to his injunctions, and Vaśiṣṭha, the most excellent of sages, was content with me. Then arrived Pulastya, the son of Brahmā[13], who was received by my grandfather with the customary marks of respect. The illustrious brother of Pulaha said to me; Since, in the violence of animosity, you have listened to the words of your progenitor, and have exercised clemency, therefore you shall become learned in every science: since you have forborne, even though incensed, to destroy my posterity, I will bestow upon you another boon, and, you shall become the author of a summary of the Purāṇas[14]; you shall know the true nature of the deities, as it really is; and, whether engaged in religious rites, or abstaining from their performance[15], your understanding, through my favour, shall be perfect, and exempt from). doubts. Then my grandsire Vaśiṣṭha added; Whatever has been said to thee by Pulastya, shall assuredly come to pass.
--
[1]: An address of this kind, to one or other Hindu divinity, usually introduces Sanscrit compositions, especially those considered sacred. The first term of this mantra or brief prayer, Om or Omkāra, is well known as a combination of letters invested by Hindu mysticism with peculiar sanctity. In the Vedas it is said to comprehend all the Gods; and in the Purāṇas it is directed to be prefixed to all such formulæ as that of the text. Thus in the Uttara Khaṇḍa of the Pādma Purāṇa: 'The syllable Om, the mysterious name, or Brahma, is the leader of all prayers: let it therefore, O lovely-faced, (Śiva addresses Durgā,) be employed in the beginning of all prayers:' According to the same authority, one of the mystical imports of the term is the collective enunciation of Viṣṇu expressed by A, of Srī his bride intimated by U, and of their joint worshipper designated by M. A whole chapter of the Vāyu Purāṇa is devoted to this term. A text of the Vedas is there cited: 'Om, the monosyllable Brahma;' the latter meaning either the Supreme Being or the Vedas collectively, of which this monosyllable is the type. It is also said to typify the three spheres of the world, the three holy fires, the three steps of Viṣṇu, &c.-Frequent meditation upon it, and repetition of it, ensure release from worldly existence. See also Manu, II. 76. Vāsudeva, a name of Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa, is, according to its grammatical etymology, a patronymic derivative implying son of Vasudeva. The Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas, however, devise other explanations: see the next chapter, and again, b. VI. c. 5.
[2]: In this stanza occurs a series of the appellations of Viṣṇu: 1. Puṇḍarīkākṣa, having eyes like a lotus, or heart-pervading; or Puṇḍarīka is explained supreme glory, and Akṣa imperishable: the first is the most usual etymon. 2. Vīswabhāvana, the creator of the universe, or the cause of the existence of all things. 3. Hṛṣīkeśa, lord of the senses. 4. Mahā puruṣa, great or supreme spirit; puruṣa meaning that which abides or is quiescent in body (puri sété), 5. Pūrvaja, produced or appearing before creation; the Orphic πρωτογόνος. In the fifth book, c. 18, Viṣṇu is described by five appellations, which are considered analogous to these; or, 1. Bhūtātmā, one with created things, or Puṇḍarīkākṣa; 2. Pradhānātmā, one with crude nature, or Viśvabhāvana; 3. Indriyātmā, one with the senses, or Hṛṣikeśa; 4. Paramātmā, supreme spirit, or Mahāpuruṣa; and Ātmā, soul; living soul, animating nature and existing before it, or Pūrvaja.
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
who gave birth to the Sky and the Earth and the ancestress who brought forth all the Gods. The theme
of the primordial waters, imagined as a totality at once cosmic and divine, is quite frequent in archaic
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the Gita there is very little that is merely local or temporal and its spirit is so large, profound and universal that even this little can easily be universalised without the sense of the teaching suffering any diminution or violation; rather by giving an ampler scope to it than belonged to the country and epoch, the teaching gains in depth, truth and power. Often indeed the Gita itself suggests the wider scope that can in this way be given to an idea in itself local or limited. Thus it dwells on the ancient Indian system and idea of sacrifice as an interchange between gods and men, - a system and idea which have long been practically obsolete in India itself and are no longer real to the general human mind; but we find here a sense so entirely subtle, figurative and symbolic given to the word "sacrifice" and the conception of the Gods is so little local or mythological, so entirely cosmic and philosophical that we can easily accept both as expressive of a practical fact of psychology and general law of Nature and so apply them to the modern conceptions of interchange between life and life and of ethical sacrifice and self-giving as to widen and deepen these and cast over them a more spiritual aspect and the light of a profounder and more far-reaching Truth. Equally the idea of action according to the Shastra, the fourfold order of society, the allusion to the relative position of the four orders or the comparative spiritual disabilities of Shudras and women seem at first sight local and temporal, and, if they are too much pressed in their literal sense, narrow so much at least of the teaching, deprive it of its universality and spiritual depth and limit its validity for mankind at large. But if we look behind to the spirit and sense and not at the local name and temporal institution, we see that here too the sense is deep and true and the spirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. By Shastra we perceive that the Gita means the law imposed on itself by humanity as a substitute for the purely egoistic action of the natural unregenerate man and a control on his tendency to seek in the satisfaction of his desire the standard and aim of his life. We see too that the fourfold order of society is merely the concrete form of a spiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it rests on the conception of right works as a rightly ordered
Our Demand and Need from the Gita
--
There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the Gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking. The
Gita starts from this Vedantic synthesis and upon the basis of its essential ideas builds another harmony of the three great means and powers, Love, Knowledge and Works, through which the soul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the Eternal.
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
re-manifestation of the Gods and of those that become
merged in nature.
1.01 - the Call to Adventure, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
palace of the Gods, and proceeded toward the park.
" ' T h e time for the enlightenment of the prince Siddhartha
draweth nigh,' thought the Gods; 'we must show him a sign':
and they changed one of their number into a decrepit old man,
--
the park, he saw a diseased man whom the Gods had fashioned;
and having again made inquiry, he returned, agitated in heart,
--
to the park, he saw a dead man whom the Gods had fashioned;
and having again made inquiry, he returned, agitated in heart,
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Undoubtedly, wherever we can seize human society in what to us seems its primitive beginnings or early stages,no matter whether the race is comparatively cultured or savage or economically advanced or backward,we do find a strongly symbolic mentality that governs or at least pervades its thought, customs and institutions. Symbolic, but of what? We find that this social stage is always religious and actively imaginative in its religion; for symbolism and a widespread imaginative or intuitive religious feeling have a natural kinship and especially in earlier or primitive formations they have gone always together. When man begins to be predominantly intellectual, sceptical, ratiocinative he is already preparing for an individualist society and the age of symbols and the age of conventions have passed or are losing their virtue. The symbol then is of something which man feels to be present behind himself and his life and his activities,the Divine, the Gods, the vast and deep unnameable, a hidden, living and mysterious nature of things. All his religious and social institutions, all the moments and phases of his life are to him symbols in which he seeks to express what he knows or guesses of the mystic influences that are behind his life and shape and govern or at the least intervene in its movements.
If we look at the beginnings of Indian society, the far-off Vedic age which we no longer understand, for we have lost that mentality, we see that everything is symbolic. The religious institution of sacrifice governs the whole society and all its hours and moments, and the ritual of the sacrifice is at every turn and in every detail, as even a cursory study of the Brahmanas and Upanishads ought to show us, mystically symbolic. The theory that there was nothing in the sacrifice except a propitiation of Nature-gods for the gaining of worldly prosperity and of Paradise, is a misunderstanding by a later humanity which had already become profoundly affected by an intellectual and practical bent of mind, practical even in its religion and even in its own mysticism and symbolism, and therefore could no longer enter into the ancient spirit. Not only the actual religious worship but also the social institutions of the time were penetrated through and through with the symbolic spirit. Take the hymn of the Rig Veda which is supposed to be a marriage hymn for the union of a human couple and was certainly used as such in the later Vedic ages. Yet the whole sense of the hymn turns about the successive marriages of Sury, daughter of the Sun, with different gods and the human marriage is quite a subordinate matter overshadowed and governed entirely by the divine and mystic figure and is spoken of in the terms of that figure. Mark, however, that the divine marriage here is not, as it would be in later ancient poetry, a decorative image or poetical ornamentation used to set off and embellish the human union; on the contrary, the human is an inferior figure and image of the divine. The distinction marks off the entire contrast between that more ancient mentality and our modern regard upon things. This symbolism influenced for a long time Indian ideas of marriage and is even now conventionally remembered though no longer understood or effective.
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Attis is associated with the Mother of the Gods, and Erichthonius
with Minerva, and Adonis with Venus." What the nature of that
--
of the Gods. For Diana, like Artemis, was a goddess of fertility in
general, and of childbirth in particular. As such she, like her
1.01 - The Mental Fortress, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This impossible endeavour (for us) is not impossible for the Great Executrix who had led the evolutionary play to this crucial turning point. It is She who can. We just have to seize her secret springs, or rather, let Her seize hold of us and collaborate in our own evolution by having an intimate understanding of the Great Process. None of the spiritual virtues and athletics of the old closed system will be of any use. What is needed is a sort of radical leap, fully conscious and with eyes wide open, a very childlike surrender to the Gods of the future, an iron resolve to track the momentous Illusion down to the smallest recesses, a supreme opening to the supreme Possibility which will lift us up in Her arms and carry us upon Her sunlit road even before we are satisfied of having taken a quarter of a step toward Her. For indeed there are moments when the Spirit moves among men..., there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weaknesses of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny.3
We are just at that moment.
1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
It was the hour before the Gods awake
The calendar stood at November 1938, the month of the Darshan. A few weeks more and we would meet the Master after a long wait of three months. After every Darshan we start counting the days for the next one, for each occasion brings the Eternal and his Shakti closer to us and is therefore a significant landmark in our lives. As the date comes nearer, our days too take on a brighter hue and the day before the Darshan, all faces glow with sweet smiles. Friends meeting on the road greet each other with one word, "Tomorrow!" or with a silent look of happy expectation. The Dining Room hums with the same theme. Wherever you go, whomsoever you meet, no other talk except the Guru's Darshan for one or two minutes, an eternal moment.
--
As we had no work now except to keep a watch, I could not but contemplate upon what had happened. I remembered Sri Aurobindo writing to me that though he had acquired sufficient control over disease and death, accidents were possible. Still, living in entire seclusion, secure from all outward contingencies, and inwardly master of cosmic forces, and yet to meet with such an accident in so unexpected a way, was inconceivable. {Sri Aurobindo explained to us later on in the "Talks" the why and wherefore of the catastrophe.) The forces must have been very sly clever indeed to have chosen the time when the Mother had retired, the Gods were asleep. But the Powers of the Inconscience were awake to strike their infernal blow. It was really the hour of the unexpected!
In the clear morning light I could have a good view of Sri Aurobindo as he was lying on his bed, almost motionless and straight. I asked myself; "Is he enjoying a bit of sweet sleep since he had none the whole night? Or is he simply keeping quiet and bearing the severe pain with equanimity?" It was the latter, as he told us afterwards. Only the Mother's visit, to make some enquiries or to offer some drink, showed flickers of life in his otherwise trance-like mood. I could now observe him from close at hand and the room he had been living in for the last twelve years! Since then, it has undergone such a tremendous change that just a faint memory of its original state is all that remains today. The wooden bed (on which Sri Aurobindo was lying) was rather large, the upper part being slightly raised, and he filled almost the entire breadth the broad chest and the head large and round, the fine silken hair parted in the middle. As for the rest of the room, it was very plain, almost austerely furnished, except for the carpet, one small box-wood table at either end of the room, a semicircular table in the middle; notebooks, and odds and ends of papers lying scattered on one of the tables; a big almirah containing a small number of books: on the top shelf, the bound volumes of the Arya. On the next one, the Collected Works of Shakespeare and Shelley and books presented by writers such as Radhakrishnan, James Cousins, etc. There were two paintings, one Chinese and the other of Amitabha Buddha with the lotus in his hand; a few wood carvings; a couch for the Mother opposite Sri Aurobindo's bed. The only furniture of luxury was a long cane chair in the adjacent room, in which he could recline and have some repose.
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
As I said in my previous letter, I was disturbed to learn you have recently been indulging in your reprehensible habit of using strong and unfilial language to your elderly parents. This has caused them much pain. It is altogether abominable. Never forget that there is indeed such a thing as heavenly retri bution. The wrath of the Gods is very real.
Until this spring I was staying at a place called Shinoda in Izumi Province. In a village nearby named Tsukumi, there lived the son of a very wealthy man named Shinkichir. He was talented, handsome, had a clever mind, and was dearly loved by all the members of his family, who coddled and protected him as he grew up. Shinkichir turned eighteen last year, his father having passed away three or four years earlier. Arrangements for his marriage were begun this past winter. An agreement was reached with the bride's family, and the bride was being fitted out with a trousseau and so forth.
--
After I left the temple, word reached me that the Gods and Buddhas had protected him and that his life was no longer in danger. But his eyes had been destroyed, his hearing was gone, and he seemed to have lost his desire to live.
In ancient China, there was a gentleman named Shu-liang who lived at a place called Han-yin with his mother, wife, and son. He was extremely quick-tempered, and would often fly off the handle, venting his spleen on his wife and mother, causing them great distress. No matter how ferocious a tiger is, it does not devour its cubs; it cares for them lovingly, as though they were precious jewels.
--
The people in the half-dozen stories I related, having turned away from reasonable courses of action, convinced themselves that their transgressions were minor and that any retri bution would be minor as well, and because of that they ended up receiving the severe judgment of heaven, dying very unfortunate deaths, leaving behind them names blackened forever as unfilial sons or daughters, and falling into the interminable suffering and torment of the Burning Hells. That this happened because they did not fear the wrath of the Gods and were ignorant of heavenly retri bution is a matter each and every person should give the greatest care and consideration.
Last winter when I heard that story of Shinkichir of Tsukumi village, I immediately thought of you.
--
Obsession with these seductions is a serious disease, and it is one that neither the wise nor the foolish can escape. A wise person blinded by delusion is like a tiger that falls into a well and yet has sufficient strength to claw its way out without losing its skin. When a foolish man is similarly blinded, he is like a tired, skinny old fox that falls in but perishes miserably at the bottom of the well because he lacks the strength to clamber out. Even a person who is just tolerably clever will, once he has fallen victim to these seductions and begins behaving in an unfilial manner, heed the warnings of his elders and the advice of the good and virtuous, immediately change his ways and become a kind and considerate son to his parents. Receiving heaven's favor and the Gods' hidden assistance, he will be blessed with great happiness and long life. When he dies, he will leave a sterling reputation for wisdom and goodness behind him.
Not so a foolish man, for once he engages in unfilial behavior he neither fears the warnings of his elders nor heeds the advice of good, upright people. He defies the sun, he opposes the moon, and in the end he receives the punishment of heaven and the dire verdict of the Gods. In this state, self-redemption is no longer possible.
The difference between the two men does not exist from the start. It arises only because the former heeds to the warnings, and the latter does not.
1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
* 4. One unmoving that is swifter than Mind; That the Gods reach not, for It progresses
ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of
--
The laws of the relativity, upheld by the Gods, are Its temporary
creations. Their apparent eternity is only the duration, immeasurable to us, of the world which they govern. They are laws
--
the movement. the Gods, therefore, are described as continually
running in their course. But the Lord is free and unaffected by
--
THE RUNNING OF the Gods
Brahman representing Itself in the universe as the Stable, by Its
--
Everything in the universe, even the Gods, seems to itself to
be moving in the general movement towards a goal outside itself
--
illusory. For Brahman is Absolute and Infinite. the Gods, labouring to reach him, find, at every goal that they realise, Brahman
still moving forward in front to a farther realisation. Nothing
1.02.3.2 - Knowledge and Ignorance, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Titans or of the Gods, of Indra, of Prajapati. This is gained
in the path of self-enlargement by an ample acceptance of the
1.024 - Affiliation With Larger Wholes, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
One hundred times the happiness of the emperor of this world is the happiness of the pitris, another level which is superior to the physical world. One hundred times the happiness of the pitris is the happiness of the gandharvas, who are celestial musicians in a world which is still higher than that of the pitris. One hundred times the happiness of the gandharvas is the happiness of the celestials in heaven the devas, as we call them. One hundred times the happiness of these celestials is the happiness of Indra, the king of the Gods. One hundred times the happiness of the king of the Gods is the happiness of the preceptor, the Guru of the Gods Brihaspati. One hundred times the happiness of Brihaspati is the happiness of Prajapati, the Creator Brahma. One hundred times the happiness of Brahma the Creator is the happiness of Virat, the Supreme. Beyond that is Hiranyagarbha, and beyond that, Ishvara, and beyond Ishvara is the Absolute.
So where are we in this scheme? What is our happiness? It is the happiness of a cup of coffee, cup of tea, or a sweet which has no meaning compared to these calculations of astounding existences which are transcendent to human comprehension. When I say a hundred times, it is not merely a mathematical increase of the quantity of happiness; it is also a corresponding increase of the quality of happiness. As mentioned earlier, the quality of happiness in waking life is superior to the happiness in dream; it is not merely quantitative increase, but is also a qualitative increase. The joy of waking life is greater and more intense than the quality of joy in dream. So these calculations given in the Upanishad mean an increase of happiness one hundred times, both in quantity and in quality, so that when we go to the top, we are in an uncontrollable ecstasy of unbounded bliss.
10.24 - Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Ashwapati now passes into the higher luminous regions. He enters regions of larger breath and wider movement the higher vital and then into the yet more luminous region of the higher mind. He reaches the heavens where immortal sages and the divinities and the Gods themselves dwell. Even these Ashwapati finds to be only partial truths, various aspects, true but limited, of the One Reality beyond. Thus he leaves all behind and reaches into the single sole Reality, the transcendental Truth of things, the status vast and infinite and eternal, immutable existence and consciousness and bliss.
A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,
--
What is this banquet that she prepared for man and which man refused? It is nothing else than the Life Divine here below the life of the Gods enjoying immortality, full of the supreme light and power, love and delight. Man refused because for him it is something too high, too great. Being a creature earthbound and of small dimensions he can seize and appreciate only small things, little specks of a material world. He refused, first of all, because of his ignorance, he does not know, nor is he capable of conceiving that there are such things as immortal life, divinity, unobscured light, griefless love, or a radiant, tranquil, invisible energy. He does not know and yet he is arrogant, arrogant in his little knowledge, his petty power, in his blind self-sufficiency. Furthermore, besides ignorance and arrogance there is an element of revolt in him, for in his half wakefulness with his rudimentary consciousness, if ever he came in contact with something that is above and beyond him, if a shadow of another world happens to cross his threshold, he is not at peace, does not want to recognise but denies and even curses it.
The Divine Mother brings solace and salvation. For the Grace it is such a small and easy thing, it is a wonder how even such a simple, natural, inconspicuous thing could be refused by anybody.
1.02.9 - Conclusion and Summary, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
itself may be conceived as a Movement too rapid for the Gods,
that is to say, for our various functions of consciousness to follow
10.29 - Gods Debt, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parents not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the Gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the sacrifice (yajna). It is through his sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the givingof what one is and what one hasto the Gods the sacrifice mounts carrying the offering to the Gods. But the sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the sacrifice brings from the Gods gifts for the manmaterial prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the Gods also. The offering that man brings in his sacrificeall his possessionshis earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness all go to the Gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.
The sacrifice going up to the Gods as offered by man means the sadhana, the inner discipline that he follows by which he lifts up his being with its mental and vital and physical formulations to their higher and higher potencies upon earth. The dedication of the normal powers and faculties to the Gods means purification and release from the bondages of ignorance and egoism. This serves to make the Gods living to us, bring them near to our terrestrial life, to our normal consciousness. This is what is meant by increasing the Godsman's duty or debt to the Gods. In answer there is a corresponding gesture from the Gods, with their immortalising reality they dwell in us and fill our being with their godlike qualities, their light, their energy, their delight, their very immortality. Man increases the Gods and the Gods increase man and by their mutual increasing they attain the supreme increment, the Divine status, so says the Gita.
Now, we go beyond the Gods, to the very origin, God himself, the Supreme. What is the debt that God, the Supreme, the Divine, owes to us human beings? We owe to God everything, our life, our very existence, our soul and substance given to us by him, then how is he indebted to us? What kind of debt he has incurred which he has to pay to his creature, the human being? Primarily because he is the Divine Father, he has to take charge of his own creation, see to its growth and fruition and fulfilment. Indeed that is the role of the Divine in us (and above us and around us): that is his work, the Divine Work. Since he has put us out of his consciousness (for a special experience of growth and development), it is also his work (and duty) to bring us back to him: after a process of self-separation a process of self-integration. Man, so long as he is a separate consciousness has to dedicate, lift up and unify this separative conscious being to the whole being and consciousness. This is how he discharges his debt to the Divine, and the answering grace of the Divine is the clearing of the debt which He owes to His creatures.
What has been said of man is equally applicable to earth. The destiny of man is the destiny of earth as also the destiny of earth is the destiny of man. For man is an earthly creature, is born out of earth and he grows with the growth of the earth; equally the earth grows with the growth of man.
--
Earth moves forward through man who is its flowering and man moves forward through his representative, the higher man, who reveals and embodies still greater potentialities of God's creation, having the privilege of being so conscious as to contact the Gods and God Himselfhe is master of life-force (awapati); he climbs to the summits and brings down upon earth the heavenly riches and the Divine Grace, which fulfils, transmuting all debits into credits.
***
1.02 - BOOK THE SECOND, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
There is not one of all the Gods that dares
(However skill'd in other great affairs)
--
Seeks his last refuge in the Gods and pray'r.
What cou'd he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
--
And Tethys, both rever'd among the Gods.
They ask what brings her there: "Ne'er ask," says she,
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
It is true that man was created in order to serve the Gods, who, first of all, needed to be fed and
clothed.50
--
motivation (to please the Gods, so to speak). If the unexpected occurs say, the elevator is not operating
the mismatch temporarily stops me. I replace my current plan with an alternative behavioral strategy,
--
constitute the life of Brahma. But even this duration of the Gods life does not exhaust time, for the Gods
are not eternal and the cosmic creations and destructions succeed one another forever.195
--
who gave birth to the Sky and the Earth and the ancestress who brought forth all the Gods. The theme
of the primordial waters, imagined as a totality at once cosmic and divine, is quite frequent in archaic
--
was killed and his widow Tiamat, goddess of the bitter or salt waters, threatened the Gods with
destruction. Marduk, the champion of the Gods, killed her and split her in two, creating heaven out of
one half and earth out of the other. Similarly, the creation in Genesis begins with a firmament
--
were the Gods created with them.226 The precosmogonic egg inhabited by Tiamat and Apsu gave rise
to the initial world of gods. This process is portrayed schematically in Figure 19: The Birth of the World
--
grandfa ther, Anshar,229 without rival among the Gods his brothers.230
The elder gods, in totality, serve to reproduce and to noisily act. Their incessant racket and movement
--
Yahweh, Noah and the Flood. the Gods give birth to the cosmos, but ceaselessly attempt to destroy it.
Ea catches wind of his parents plot, however, however, and slays Apsu adding insult to injury by
--
the wise, the wisest of the Gods,232 filled with awe-inspiring majesty.233 When Ea saw his son:
He rejoiced, he beamed, his heart was filled with joy.
He distinguished him and conferred upon him double equality with the Gods,
So that he was highly exalted and surpassed them in everything.
--
He was exalted among the Gods, surpassing was his form;
His members were gigantic, he was surpassing in height.
--
Son of the sun-god, the sun-god of the Gods!234
Marduk is characterized by the metaphoric associates of consciousness. He has exaggerated sensory
--
She made ready to join battle with the Gods her offspring.
To avenge Apsu, Tiamat did this evil.
--
Lord of the Gods, destiny of the great gods,
If I am indeed to be your avenger,
--
Tiamat. When therefore the Gods, at the New Years festival [see discussion below], convened in the
Court of Assembly, they reverently waited on Marduk, the king of the Gods of heaven and earth, and
in that spirit they decided the destinies. the Gods, indeed, continue to determine destinies long after
Marduk has received the powers he here desires240; but the final decision rested with Marduk, so that in
--
This is an example of the hierarchical organization of the Gods, a concept frequently encapsulated in
mythology, and one we shall return to later. All the original children of Tiamat are potent and impersonal
--
Cause the Gods my fathers to be brought before me.
Let them bring all the Gods to me!
Let them converse and sit down to banquet.
--
All the Gods went over to her;
Even those who ye have created march at her side.
--
Of those among the Gods, her first-born, who formed her assembly,
She exalted Kingu; in their midst she made him great.
--
I have cast the spell for thee, I have made thee great in the assembly of the Gods.
The dominion over all the Gods I have given into thy hand.
Mayest thou be highly exalted, thou my unique spouse!
--
They decreed the destinies of the Gods, her sons, saying:
May the opening of our mouths quiet the fire-god!
--
Then Marduk, the wisest of the Gods, your son, came forward.
His heart prompted him to face Tiamat.
--
The hierarchical organization of the Gods is represented schematically in Figure 21: World of
Gods: Hierarchical Organization, which portrays Marduk as the superordinate personality or pattern
--
None among the Gods shall infringe upon thy prerogative.243
the Gods place the starry garment of the night sky244 in their midst. At the comm and of Marduks
--
When the Gods his fathers beheld the power of his word,
They were glad and did homage, saying: Marduk is king!
--
After the Gods his fathers had determined the destiny of [Marduk],
They set him on the road the way to success and attainment.246
--
As for the Gods of battle, they sharpen their weapons.
Tiamat and Marduk, the wisest of the Gods, advanced against one another;
They pressed on to single combat, they approached for battle.247
--
Kingu, the greatest and most guilty of Tiamats allies), so that upon him shall the services of the Gods be
imposed that they may be at rest250; then, he returns the Gods allied with him to their appropriate celestial
abodes. Grateful, they deliver him a present:
--
(unknowable) source of all things, the Gods who rule human life, and the subject or process who
constructs determinate experience, through voluntary encounter with the unknown. The full story
--
mother of all the Gods); as the thing that destroys all things; as the consort of a patriarchal spiritual
principle, upon who creation also depends (Apsu); and, finally, as the thing that is cut into pieces by the
--
Finally, he was delivered, and the Gods assembled (that is, their statues were brought together) to
determine the destinies. (This episode corresponds, in the Enuma elish, to Marduks advancement to the
--
[outside the domain of civilization, or order]. The procession represented the army of the Gods
advancing against Tiamat. According to an inscription of Sennacherib, we may suppose that the
--
people before the Gods, and it was he who expiated the sins of his subjects. Sometimes he had to suffer
death for his peoples crimes; this is why the Assyrians had a substitute for the king. The texts
proclaim that the king had lived in fellowship with the Gods in the fabulous garden that contains the Tree
of Life and the Water of Life.... The king is the envoy of the Gods, the shepherd of the people,
named by god to establish justice and peace on earth....
--
whom he personified. In any case, as mediator between the world of men and the world of the Gods, the
Mesopotamian king effected, in his own person, a ritual union between the two modalities of existence,
--
(with all the Gods organizing themselves voluntarily under Marduks dominion) and occurring in
Mesopotamian society, at the human and historical level. It might be said that the Mesopotamians came to
--
is Ptah who made the Gods exist....
107
--
monotheistic, integrated pattern, its external nature, as an attri bute of the Gods, recedes. It becomes more
clearly an attri bute of the human being, per se rather than a characteristic of the extra-individual world
and more like what we would conceive of as a psychological trait. the Gods subjective aspect his or her
intrapsychic quality becomes more evident, at least to the most sophisticated of intuitions, and the
--
(Marduk-Tiamat, for example) the Gods victory constitutes the preliminary condition for the
cosmogony. In other cases the stake is the inauguration of a new era or the establishment of a new
--
darkness. Now, Sky and Earth are the parents of the Gods (1.185.6); Indra is the youngest (3.38.1) and
also the last god to be born, because he put an end to the hierogamy [mystical union] of Sky and Earth:
--
already existed. For Sky and Earth were formed and had engendered the Gods. Indra only separated the
cosmic parents, and, by hurling the vajra at Vrtra, he put an end to the immobility, or even the
--
fashioner of the Gods, Tvastr, whose role is not clear in the Rig Veda, had built himself a house and
created Vrtra as a sort of roof, but also as walls, for his habitation. Inside this dwelling, encircled by
--
of the Gods or is in communication with the world of the Gods. The world (that is, our world) is a
universe within which the sacred has already manifested itself, in which, consequently, the breakthrough from plane to plane has become possible and repeatable. It is not difficult to see why the
--
and communication with the world of the Gods is ensured; the space of the altar becomes a sacred space.
But the meaning of the ritual is far more complex, and if we consider all of its ramifications, we shall
--
of the universe by the Gods. When the Scandinavian colonists took possession of Iceland (land-nama)
and cleared it, they regarded the enterprise neither as an original undertaking nor as human and profane
--
of the Gods who had organized chaos by giving it a structure, forms, and norms.
Whether it is a case of clearing uncultivated ground or of conquering and occupying a territory
--
appease the Gods is the embodiment in procedure of the idea that the benevolent aspect of the unknown
will return if the present schema of adaptation (the ruling king) is sufficiently altered (that is, destroyed
--
the lamb. Such peace emerges as a consequence of the hierarchical organization of the Gods of tradition
under the dominion of the hero. This means that the creative exploratory hero is also peace-maker, in his
--
myths, in ancient Phoenicia and elsewhere. In the Hittite theogony, the relative sovereignty of the Gods was
determined by war conducted between them:
--
Alalu was king, and Anu, the most important of the Gods, bowed before him and served him. But after
nine years Anu attacked and vanquished him. Then Alalu took refuge in the subterranean world, and
--
consequence of the battle of the Gods constitutes the tradition that structures the intrapsychic hierarchy of
values, regulates interpersonal interaction, and keeps individual emotion in check (as the consequences of
--
The social structure that emerges, over time, as a consequence of the battle of the Gods, might be most
accurately likened to a personality (to the personality adopted by all who share the same culture). It is in
--
constantly resisting incremental change. It is in this manner that the Gods become displeased with their
creation, man and his willful stupidity and wash away the world. The necessity for interchange of
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This opens to us the door to almost unlimited power. Suppose, for instance, a man understood the Prana perfectly, and could control it, what power on earth would not be his? He would be able to move the sun and stars out of their places, to control everything in the universe, from the atoms to the biggest suns, because he would control the Prana. This is the end and aim of Pranayama. When the Yogi becomes perfect, there will be nothing in nature not under his control. If he orders the Gods or the souls of the departed to come, they will come at his bidding. All the forces of nature will obey him as slaves. When the ignorant see these powers of the Yogi, they call them the miracles. One peculiarity of the Hindu mind is that it always inquires for the last possible generalisation, leaving the details to be worked out afterwards. The question is raised in the Vedas, "What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything?" Thus, all books, and all philosophies that have been written, have been only to prove that by knowing which everything is known. If a man wants to know this universe bit by bit he must know every individual grain of sand, which means infinite time; he cannot know all of them. Then how can knowledge be? How is it possible for a man to be all-knowing through particulars? The Yogis say that behind this particular manifestation there is a generalisation. Behind all particular ideas stands a generalised, an abstract principle; grasp it, and you have grasped everything. Just as this whole universe has been generalised in the Vedas into that One Absolute Existence, and he who has grasped that Existence has grasped the whole universe, so all forces have been generalised into this Prana, and he who has grasped the Prana has grasped all the forces of the universe, mental or physical. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his own mind, and all the minds that exist. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his body, and all the bodies that exist, because the Prana is the generalised manifestation of force.
How to control the Prana is the one idea of Pranayama. All the trainings and exercises in this regard are for that one end. Each man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him. This body is very near to us, nearer than anything in the external universe, and this mind is the nearest of all. The Prana which is working this mind and body is the nearest to us of all the Prana in this universe. This little wave of the Prana which represents our own energies, mental and physical, is the nearest to us of all the waves of the infinite ocean of Prana. If we can succeed in controlling that little wave, then alone we can hope to control the whole of Prana. The Yogi who has done this gains perfection; no longer is he under any power. He becomes almost almighty, almost all-knowing. We see sects in every country who have attempted this control of Prana. In this country there are Mind-healers, Faith-healers, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Hypnotists, etc., and if we examine these different bodies, we shall find at the back of each this control of the Prana, whether they know it or not. If you boil all their theories down, the residuum will be that. It is the one and the same force they are manipulating, only unknowingly. They have stumbled on the discovery of a force and are using it unconsciously without knowing its nature, but it is the same as the Yogi uses, and which comes from Prana.
1.02 - Pranayama, Mantrayoga, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Who makest the Gods and Death
To tremble before Thee: --
1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Then, ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with the properties of sound and the rest, existed as distinguishable according to their qualities, as soothing, terrific, or stupifying; but possessing various energies, and being unconnected, they could not, without combination, create living beings, not having blended with each other. Having combined, therefore, with one another, they assumed, through their mutual association, the character of one mass of entire unity; and from the direction of spirit, with the acquiescence of the indiscrete Principle[29], Intellect and the rest, to the gross elements inclusive, formed an egg[30], which gradually expanded like a bubble of water. This vast egg, O sage, compounded of the elements, and resting on the waters, was the excellent natural abode of Viṣṇu in the form of Brahmā; and there Viṣṇu, the lord of the universe, whose essence is inscrutable, assumed a perceptible form, and even he himself abided in it in the character of Brahmā[31]. Its womb, vast as the mountain Meru, was composed of the mountains; and the mighty oceans were the waters that filled its cavity. In that egg, O Brahman, were the continents and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of the universe, the Gods, the demons, and mankind. And this egg was externally invested by seven natural envelopes, or by water, air, fire, ether, and Aha
kāra the origin of the elements, each tenfold the extent of that which it invested; next came the principle of Intelligence; and, finally, the whole was surrounded by the indiscrete Principle: resembling thus the cocoa-nut, filled interiorly with pulp, and exteriorly covered by husk and rind.
1.02 - Priestly Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
weather and an abundant crop from the Gods; and if a god should
happen, as he sometimes believes, to become incarnate in his own
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
story that the king of the Gods, Indra, once became a pig,
wallowing in mire; he had a she pig, and a lot of baby pigs,
--
and came to him, and told him, You are the king of the Gods,
you have all the Gods command. Why are you here? But
Indra said, Let me be; I am all right here; I do not care for the
--
had; he, the king of the Gods, to have become a pig, and to
think that the pig-life was the only life! Not only so, but to
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
eral times to the evening circle of disciples about the Gods,
7 Sri Aurobindo: The Human Cycle, p. 23.
--
spoke about the world of the Gods because not to speak of
it would [now] be dangerous. I spoke of it so that the mind
--
tal world of the Gods into the physical? In the reminiscences
of disciples present around Sri Aurobindo in those days, we
--
direct participation of the Gods, some of them incarnated in
terrestrial bodies, a new religion would have been found-
1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the Dasyu is the natural enemy. These dividers, plunderers, harmful powers, these Danavas, sons of the Mother of division, are spoken of by the Rishis under many general appellations. There are Rakshasas; there are Eaters and Devourers, Wolves and Tearers; there are hurters and haters; there are dualisers; there are confiners or censurers. But we are given also many specific names. Vritra, the Serpent, is the grand Adversary; for he obstructs with his coils of darkness all possibility of divine existence and divine action. And even when Vritra is slain by the light, fiercer enemies arise out of him. Shushna afflicts us with his impure and ineffective force, Namuchi fights man by his weaknesses, and others too assail, each with his proper evil. Then there are Vala and the Panis, miser traffickers in the sense-life, stealers and concealers of the higher Light and its illuminations which they can only darken and misuse, - an impious host who are jealous of their store and will not offer sacrifice to the Gods. These and other personalities - they are much more than personifications - of our ignorance, evil, weakness and many limitations make constant war upon man; they encircle him from near or they shoot their arrows at him from afar or even dwell in his gated house in the place of the Gods and with their shapeless stammering mouths and their insufficient breath of force mar his self-expression. They must be expelled, overpowered, slain, thrust down into their nether darkness by the aid of the mighty and helpful deities.
1 This excerpt is reproduced from the 1946 edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire. The complete essay which appeared in the Arya is published in The Secret of the Veda with Selected Hymns, Part Three. - Ed.
The Vedic deities are names, powers, personalities of the universal Godhead and they represent each some essential puissance of the Divine Being. They manifest the cosmos and are manifest in it. Children of Light, Sons of the Infinite, they recognise in the soul of man their brother and ally and desire to help and increase him by themselves increasing in him so as to possess his world with their light, strength and beauty. the Gods call man to a divine companionship and alliance; they attract and uplift him to their luminous fraternity, invite his aid and offer theirs against the Sons of Darkness and Division. Man in return calls the Gods to his sacrifice, offers to them his swiftnesses and his strengths, his clarities and his sweetnesses, - milk and butter of the shining Cow, distilled juices of the Plant of Joy, the Horse of the Sacrifice, the cake and the wine, the grain for the GodMind's radiant coursers. He receives them into his being and their gifts into his life, increases them by the hymns and the wine and forms perfectly - as a smith forges iron, says the Veda - their great and luminous godheads.
All this Vedic imagery is easy to understand when once we have the key, but it must not be mistaken for mere imagery. the Gods are not simply poetical personifications of abstract ideas or of psychological and physical functions of Nature. To the Vedic seers they are living realities; the vicissitudes of the human soul represent a cosmic struggle not merely of principles and tendencies but of the cosmic Powers which support and embody them. These are the Gods and the Demons. On the world-stage and in the individual soul the same real drama with the same personages is enacted.
To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
--
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the Gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya.
--
Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the Gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being.
--
We create for ourselves by the sacrifice and by the word shining seers, heroes to fight for us, children of our works. The Rishis and the Gods find for us our luminous herds; the Ribhus fashion by the mind the chariots of the Gods and their horses and their shining weapons. Our life is a horse that neighing and galloping bears us onward and upward; its forces are swift-hoofed steeds, the liberated powers of the mind are wide-winging birds; this mental being or this soul is the upsoaring Swan or the Falcon that breaks out from a hundred iron walls and wrests from the jealous guardians of felicity the wine of the Soma. Every shining godward Thought that arises from the secret abysses of the heart is a priest and a creator and chants a divine hymn of luminous realisation and puissant fulfilment. We seek for the shining gold of the Truth; we lust after a heavenly treasure.
The soul of man is a world full of beings, a kingdom in which armies clash to help or hinder a supreme conquest, a house where the Gods are our guests and which the demons strive to possess; the fullness of its energies and wideness of its being make a seat of sacrifice spread, arranged and purified for a celestial session.
Such are some of the principal images of the Veda and a very brief and insufficient outline of the teaching of the Forefa thers. So understood the Rig Veda ceases to be an obscure, confused and barbarous hymnal; it becomes the high-aspiring Song of Humanity; its chants are episodes of the lyrical epic of the soul in its immortal ascension.
1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Now to go back to our Acharya Shankara: "Those", he says, "who by worshipping the qualified Brahman attain conjunction with the Supreme Ruler, preserving their own mind is their glory limited or unlimited? This doubt arising, we get as an argument: Their glory should be unlimited because of the scriptural texts, 'They attain their own kingdom', 'To him all the Gods offer worship',
'Their desires are fulfilled in all the worlds'. As an answer to this, Vyasa writes, 'Without the power of ruling the universe.' Barring the power of creation etc. of the universe, the other powers such as Anim etc. are acquired by the liberated. As to ruling the universe, that belongs to the eternally perfect Ishvara.
10.31 - The Mystery of The Five Senses, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed we say habitually, when speaking of spiritual realisation, that one sees the truth, one has to see the truth: to know the truth, to know the reality is taken to mean to see the truth, to see the reality, and what does this signify? It signifies what one sees is the light, the light that emanates from truth, the form that the Truth takes, the radiant substance that is the Truth. This then is the special character or gift of this organ, the organ of sight, the eye. One sees the physical light, of course, but one sees also the supraphysical light. It is, as the Upanishad says, the eye of the eye, the third eye in the language of the occultists. What we say about the eye may be equally said in respect of the other sense-organs. Take hearing, for example. By the ear we hear the noises of the world, its deafening cries and no doubt at times also some earthly music. But when the ear is turned inward, we listen to unearthly things Indeed we know how stone-deaf Beethoven heard some of those harmonies of supreme beauty that are now the cherished possessions of humanity. This inner ear is able to take you by a process of regression to the very source of all sound and utterance, from where springs the anhata vk, the undictated voice, the nda-brahman, the original sound-seed, the primary vibration. So the ear gives that hearing which reveals to you a special aspect of the Divine: the vibratory rhythm of the being, that matrix of all utterance, of all speech that mark the material expression of consciousness. Next we come to the third sense, that of smell, Well, the nose is not a despicable organ, in any way; it is as important as any other more aristocratic sense-organ, as the eye or the ear. It is the gate to the perfumed atmosphere of the reality. Even like a flower, as a lotus for example, the truth is colourful, beautiful, shapely, radiant to the eye; to the nostrils it is exhilarating perfume, it distils all around a divine scent that sanctifies, elevates the whole being. After the third sense we come to the fourth, the tongue. The mouth gives you the taste of the truth and you find that the Truth is sweetness, the delicious nectar of the Gods: for the truth is also soma, the surpreme rasa, amta, immortality itself. Here is Aswapathy's experience of the thing in Savitri:
In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,
--
Continuing farther, if we go beyond the five senses, we have still another sense, it is mind, the sixth sense; it is in and through the mind that the other five senses distil their perceptions allowing a coordinated picture of the sense-experiences. Now, to attain, to realise, to possess the Truth means, first of all, to know the Truth: for, knowing as we know, is the function of the mind. It is said, however, that the mind knows only the outward form of things, its knowledge is the knowledge of an outside world, elements of which are supplied by the senses. It is a Knowledge of or in Ignorance. The true knowledge is not attained by the mind or through the mind. For the true knowledge, it is declared, the mind is to be expunged altogether or silenced at least. One must get away, one must withdraw from that play of activity and be far from it. True knowledge comes through revelations. It descends from above, it does not enter by a level side-door and it comes only when the mind is not there. But this also, as in the other cases, as in respect of the other senses, is an extreme view. Like the other senses the mind too can be turned inward or upward, made a receptive organ or instrument. When turned round, when it is the Mind of the mind, then there begins to appear the true knowledge. Then even this physical mind remains no more ignorant or obscure, it becomes transparent and luminous: it is able to bring its own gift, it can serve with its own contri bution to the real knowledge; for it is the mind that gives a form and shape, a local habitation and a name to the higher truth, to the real light, to the true knowledge. It is the surpa (beautiful and perfect form) chanted by the Vedic Rishis that the purified mind models for the Gods to inhabitit is what the poets and prophets always aspire for in their creative consciousness.
But these separate senses with their separate qualities are not really separate. In the final account of things, the account held in the Supreme Consciousness, at the highest height, these diverse elements or movements are diverse but not exclusive of one another. When they find themselves in the supreme consciousness, they do not, like the rivers of which the Upanishads speak, move and merge into the sea giving up their separate individual name and function. These senses do maintain their identity, each its own, even when they together are all of them part and parcel of the Supreme Universal Consciousness. Only, they become supple and malleable, they intertwine, mix together, even one doing another's work. Also, as things exist at present, modern knowledge has found out that a blind man can see, literally see, through some part of his body; the sense of hearing is capable of bringing to you the vision of colours. And the olfactory organ can reveal to you the taste of things. Indeed it has been found that not only at the sight of good food, but in contemplating an extraordinarily beautiful scenery or while listening to an exquisite piece of music, the mouth waters. It is curious to note that Indra, the Lord of the Gods, the Vedic lord of the mind and the senses, is said to have transformed the pores of his skin into so many eyes, so that he could see all things around at once, globally: it is why he was called Sahasralochana or Sahasraksha, one with a thousand eyes. The truth is that all the different senses are only extensions of one unitary sensibility and the variation depends on a particular mode or stress on the generalised sensibility.
This is what the Rishis meant when they named and represented even the senses as gods. the Gods are many, each has his own attribute and function, but they form one indivisible unity.
The senses therefore are not merely externalisers but they are also internalisers. They are modes and movements that work separately and conjointly and present aspects of the Supreme Reality. These aspects are there in the very essence and the constitution of the One Truth, also they are projected outwards to manifest and embody those very elements in the material manifestation and incarnation of the Supreme Divine:
10.35 - The Moral and the Spiritual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The states of being or consciousness from the animal, or down from Matter itself up to the Supremebrahmastambaconstitute what is called a hierarchy. Hierarchy means a structure rising upward tier upon tier, step by step: it is a scale, as it were, of increasing values, only the values are not moral, they indicate only a measure, a neutral measure respecting position or a kind of mass content. As in a building where brick is laid upon brick, or stone upon stone, the one laid above is not superior to the one laid below; the terms inferior and superior indicate only the simple position of the objects. Even the system of the four social orders in ancient" India was originally such a hierarchy. The higher and lower orders did not carry any moral appreciation or depreciation. The four orders placed one above the other schematically denote only the respective social functions classified according to the nature of each, even as the human body represents such a hierarchy, rising from the feet at the bottom towards the head at the top. This is to say all objects and movements in nature are right when they are confined each to its own domain, following its own dharma of that domain. Thus one can be perfectly calm and at ease witnessing the catastrophes and cataclysms in nature, for one knows it is the dharma of material nature. Man terms them disasters for he judges them according to his own convenience. Even so, one should not be perturbed at the wild behaviourman calls it wildof wild animals. Likewise the Gods in their sovereign tranquillity smile at the crudeness and stupidities of human beings. One has to lift oneself up, withdraw and stand high above all that one wishes to surpass and look at it, with a benign godly smile.
The world is a gradation of developing consciousness, of growing states or status of being. There is a higher and lower level in point of the measure of consciousness but that involves no moral judgement: the moral judgement is man's; it is man's, one might almost say, idiosyncrasy, that is to say, a notion that is a prop to help him mount the ladder. Though it might be necessary at a certain stage, in certain circumstances, it is not a universal or ineluctable law, not even in his personal domain. The growing consciousness is like the growing tree rising upward first into a trunk, then spreading out into branches, into twigs and tendrils, then in flowers and finally, in fruits. These are mounting grades of growth, but the growth above is not superior to the growth below. It is a one unified whole and each portion has its own absolute value, beauty and utility.
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The reason is simple. In the practice of yoga the whole being is active and, therefore, it starts waking up every blessed thing in this world whatever may be sleeping anywhere. Even invisible forces, even distant elements may feel that some strange activity is going on in some part of the universe. We must have heard in the Epics and Puranas that even the Gods are distressed by the tapas of yogis. It means that the meditative activity of a sincere seeker can tell upon even very far and distant regions like the heavens, and not merely the corners of the earth. But our ordinary little work that is going on in a shop, a factory or an office may not be felt at all in such regions. The reason is that these ordinary activities are shallow; they are not deep enough. They do not touch the bottom of things, and therefore the reactions set up are also mild.
But in yoga, what actually moves is the very root of our being. Our soul itself is yearning in the aspiration for the Ultimate Reality. It is not a function of a part of the psychological organs like mentation, intellection, egoism, etc. It is every blessed thing that is in us that becomes active, and we may say there is a sort of conscription of every part of our personality in this warfare called the practice of yoga. Every individual is harnessed into the army. Everyone is a soldier when this war takes place. There is no civilian at all in the practice of yoga; everyone is active like an army man everyone, and no one is excluded. Every part of the personality becomes roused, and we can imagine what reactions this can set up. You may ask me why they should set up reactions. Can this noble activity called yoga not be carried on without any adverse reactions.
1.038 - Saad, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
5. “Did he turn all the Gods into one God? This is something strange.”
6. The notables among them announced: “Go on, and hold fast to your gods. This is something planned.
1.03 - APPRENTICESHIP AND ENCULTURATION - ADOPTION OF A SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of the Gods, being arose from nonbeing.
Initiatory death is indispensable for the beginning of spiritual life. Its function must be understood in
1.03 - BOOK THE THIRD, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And thanks the Gods, and turns about his eye
To see his new dominions round him lye;
--
Thus pray'd the Gods, provok'd by his disdain,
"Oh may he love like me, and love like me in vain!"
--
And now by all the Gods in Heav'n that hear
This solemn oath, by Bacchus' self, I swear,
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
pounded by Euhemeros, 18 who maintained that the Gods were
nothing but reflections of human character. It is indeed easy to
1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5. O Fire, thou art Twashtri and fashionest fullness of force for thy worshipper; thine, O friendly Light, are the goddess-Energies and all oneness of natural kind. Thou art the swift galloper and lavishest good power of the Horse; thou art the host of the Gods and great is the multitude of thy riches.
6. O Fire, thou art Rudra, the mighty one of the great Heaven and thou art the army of the Life-Gods and hast power over all that fills desire. Thou journeyest with dawn-red winds to bear thee and thine is the house of bliss; thou art Pushan and thou guardest with thyself thy worshippers.
--
13. O Fire, the sons of the indivisible Mother made thee their mouth, the pure Gods made thee their tongue; O Seer, they who are ever close to our giving are constant to thee in the rites of the Path; the Gods eat in thee the offering cast before them.
14. O Fire, all the Gods, the Immortals unhurtful to man, eat in thee and by thy mouth the offering cast before them; by thee mortal men taste of the libation. Pure art thou born, a child of the growths of the earth.
15. O Fire that hast come to perfect birth, thou art with the Gods and thou frontest them in thy might and thou exceedest them too, O God, when here the satisfying fullness of thee becomes all-pervading in its greatness along both the continents, Earth and Heaven.
16. When to those who chant thee, the luminous Wise Ones set free thy gift, O Fire, the wealth in whose front the Ray-Cow walks and its form is the Horse, thou leadest us on and leadest them to a world of greater riches. Strong with the strength of the heroes, may we voice the Vast in the coming of knowledge.
--
3. the Gods have sent into the foundation of the middle world this great worker and pilgrim of earth and of heaven, whom we must know, like our chariot of white-flaming light, Fire whom we must voice with our lauds like a friend in the peoples.
4 Or, who dwells in the Light,
--
6. O Fire, opulently kindling for our peace, let thy light arise in us and bring its gift of riches. Make Earth and Heaven ways for our happy journeying and the offerings of man a means for the coming of the Gods.
7. O Fire, give us the vast possessions, the thousandfold riches; open to inspiration like gates the plenitude; make Earth and Heaven turned to the Beyond by the Word. The Dawns have broken into splendour as if there shone the brilliant world of the Sun.
--
1. The Fire that was set inward in the earth is kindled and has arisen fronting all the worlds. He has arisen, the purifying Flame, the priest of the call, the wise of understanding, the Ancient of Days. Today let the Fire in the fullness of his powers, a god to the Gods do sacrifice.
2. Fire who voices the godhead, shines revealing the planes, each and each; high of ray he reveals, each and each, the triple heavens by his greatness. Let him flood the oblation with a mind that diffuses the light and manifest the Gods on the head of the sacrifice.
3. O Fire, aspired to by our mind, putting forth today thy power do sacrifice to the Gods, O thou who wast of old before aught that is human. Bring to us the unfallen host of the Life-Gods; and you, O Powers, sacrifice to Indra where he sits on the seat of our altar.
4. O Godhead, strewn is the seat on this altar, the hero-guardedseat that ever grows, the seat well-packed for the riches,8 anointed with the Light. O all Gods, sit on this altar-seat, sons of the indivisible Mother princes of the treasure, kings of sacrifice.
--
7. The two divine Priests of the call, the first, the full in wisdom and stature, offer by the illumining Word the straight things in us; sacrificing to the Gods in season, they reveal them in light in the navel of the Earth and on the three peaks of Heaven.
8. May Saraswati effecting our thought and goddess Ila and Bharati who carries all to their goal, the three goddesses, sit on our altar-seat and guard by the self-law of things our gapless house of refuge.
9. Soon there is born a Hero of golden-red form, an aspirant to the Godheads, a mighty bringer of riches and founder of our growth to wideness. Let the Maker of forms loosen the knot of the navel in us, let him set free the issue of our works; then let him walk on the way of the Gods.9
9 Or, let the way of the Gods come to us.
10. The Plant is with us streaming out the Wine. Fire speeds the oblation by our thoughts. Let the divine Achiever of works, understanding, lead the offering triply revealed10 in his light on its way to the Godheads.
11. I pour on him the running light; for the light is his native lair, he is lodged in the light, the light is his plane. According to thy self-nature, bring the Gods and fill them with rapture. O Male of the herd, carry to them our offering blessed with svaha.11
SUKTA 4
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.
10 Or, triply anointed
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12 Or, in all from men to the Gods.
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.
--
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
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6. O Fire, shine forth with this force29 of thine in us, one perfect in knowledge, one who worships the Gods and is strong for sacrifice. Be our indomitable guardian and our protector to take us to the other side; flame in us with thy light, flame in us with thy opulence.
29 Or, form
1.03 - Measure of time, Moments of Kashthas, etc., #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Oh best of sages, fifteen twinklings of the eye make a Kāṣṭhā; thirty Kāṣṭhās, one Kalā; and thirty Kalās, one Muhūrtta[3]. Thirty Muhūrttas constitute a day and night of mortals: thirty such days make a month, divided into two half-months: six months form an Ayana (the period of the sun's progress north or south of the ecliptic): and two Ayanas compose a year. The southern Ayana is a night, and the northern a day of the Gods. Twelve thousand divine years, each composed of (three hundred and sixty) such days, constitute the period of the four Yugas, or ages. They are thus distributed: the Krita age has four thousand divine years; the Tretā three thousand; the Dvāpara two thousand; and the Kali age one thousand: so those acquainted with antiquity have declared. The period that precedes a Yuga is called a Sandhyā, and it is of as many hundred years as there are thousands in the Yuga: and the period that follows a Yuga, termed the Sandhyānsa, is of similar duration. The interval between the Sandhyā and the Sandhyānsa is the Yuga, denominated Krita, Tretā, &c. The Krita, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali, constitute a great age, or aggregate of four ages: a thousand such aggregates are a day of Brahmā, and fourteen Menus reign within that term. Hear the division of time which they measure[4].
Seven Ṛṣis, certain (secondary) divinities, Indra, Manu, and the kings his sons, are created and perish at one period[5]; and the interval, called a Manvantara, is equal to seventy-one times the number of years contained in the four Yugas, with some additional years: this is the duration of the Manu, the (attendant) divinities, and the rest, which is equal to 852.000 divine years, or to 306.720.000 years of mortals, independent of the additional period[6]. Fourteen times this period constitutes a Brāhma day, that is, a day of Brahmā; the term (Brāhma) being the derivative form. At the end of this day a dissolution of the universe occurs, when all the three worlds, earth, and the regions of space, are consumed with fire. The dwellers of Maharloka (the region inhabited by the saints who survive the world), distressed by the heat, repair then to Janaloka (the region of holy men after their decease). When the-three worlds are but one mighty ocean, Brahmā, who is one with Nārāyaṇa, satiate with the demolition of the universe, sleeps upon his serpent-bed-contemplated, the lotus born, by the ascetic inhabitants of the Janaloka-for a night of equal duration with his day; at the close of which he creates anew. Of such days and nights is a year of Brahmā composed; and a hundred such years constitute his whole life[7]. One Parārddha[8], or half his existence, has expired, terminating with the Mahā Kalpa[9] called Pādma. The Kalpa (or day of Brahmā) termed Vārāha is the first of the second period of Brahmā's existence.
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ga P. In all essential points the computations accord, and the scheme, extravagant as it may appear, seems to admit of easy explanation. We have, in the first place, a computation of the years of the Gods in the four ages, or, p. 24
[5]: The details of these, as occurring in each Manvantara, are given in the third book, c. 1 and 2.
[6]: 'One and seventy enumerations of the four ages, with a surplus.' A similar reading occurs in several other Purāṇas, but none of them state of what the surplus or addition consists; but it is, in fact, the number of years required to reconcile two computations of the Kalpa. The most simple, and probably the original calculation of a Kalpa, is its being 1000 great ages, or ages of the Gods: ### Bhaviṣya P. Then 4.320.000 years, or a divine age, x 1000 = 4320.000.000 years, or a day or night of Brahmā,. But a day of Brahmā is also seventy-one times a great age multiplied by fourteen: 4.320.000 x 71 x 14= 4.294.080.000, or less than the preceding by 25.920.000; and it is to make up for this deficiency that a certain number of years must be added to the computation by Manvantaras. According to the Sūrya Siddhānta, as cited by Mr. Davis (A. R. 2. 231), this addition consists of a Sandhi to each Manvantara, equal to the Satya age, or 5.728.000 years; and one similar Sandhi at the commencement of the Kalpa: thus p. 25 4.320.000 x 71 = 306.720.000 + 1.728.000 = 308.448.000 x 14 = 4318.272.000 + 1.728.000 = 4320.000.000. The Pauranics, however, omit the Sandhi of the Kalpa, and add the whole compensation to the Manvantaras. The amount of this in whole numbers is 1.851.428 in each Manvantara, or 4.320.000 x 71= 306.720.000 + 1.851.428 = 308.571.428 x 14 = 4319.999.992; leaving a very small inferiority to the result of the calculation of a Kalpa by a thousand great ages. To provide for this deficiency, indeed, very minute subdivisions are admitted into the calculation; and the commentator on our text says, that the additional years, if of gods, are 5142 years, 10 months, 8 days, 4 watches, 2 Muhūrttas, 8 Kalās, 17 Kāṣṭhās, 2 Nimeṣas, and 1/7th; if of mortals, 1.851.428 years, 6 months, 24 days, 12 Nāris, 12 Kalās, 25 Kāṣṭhas, and 10 Nimeṣas. It will be observed, that in the Kalpa we have the regular descending series 4, 3, 2, with cyphers multiplied ad libitum.
[7]: The Brahma Vaivartta says 108 years, but this is unusual. Brahmā's life is but a Nimeṣa of Kṛṣṇa, according to that work; a Nimeṣa of Śiva, according to the Saiva Purāṇa.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: It would be a sight for the Gods!
Disciple: First of all, it would be a sight for you! (Laughter) Madness has certainly some attraction for sadhana. I counted eight madmen with X of Bengal.
1.03 - Preparing for the Miraculous, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
features of the Gods? The only way seems to be a series of
major miracles. But are the realizations of the soul and of
1.03 - The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1.03 - the Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces
class:chapter
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Even the Gods have to make their surrender to the Supreme if the Divine creation is to be realised upon earth.
What is the origin, significance and purpose of festivals such as Deepavali, Dasera, Rakhipurnima, etc. and also some of the western festivals? On these days do the Gods respond more to human aspirations? Thirdly, what is the connection between the inner truth and the external functions of these festivals? Lastly, what should be our attitude towards these festivals?
Men like festivals.
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Arjuna, casting down the divine bow and inexhaustible quiver given to him by the Gods for that tremendous hour, "it is more for my welfare that the sons of Dhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting. I will not fight."
The character of this inner crisis is therefore not the questioning of the thinker; it is not a recoil from the appearances of life and a turning of the eye inward in search of the truth of things, the real meaning of existence and a solution or an escape from the dark riddle of the world. It is the sensational, emotional and moral revolt of the man hitherto satisfied with action and its current standards who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves and there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma.1 That for the soul of action in the mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow. The revolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible; sensationally, the elemental feeling of horror, pity and disgust; vitally, the loss of attraction and faith in the recognised and familiar objects of action and aims of life; emotionally, the recoil of the ordinary feelings of social man, affection, reverence, desire of a common happiness and satisfaction, from a stern duty outraging them all; morally, the elementary sense of sin and
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
La Histoire de la Magie as follows : " The absolute hiero- glyphical science had for its basis an alphabet of which all the Gods were letters, all the letters ideas, all the ideas numbers, and all the numbers perfect signs. This hiero- glyphical alphabet, of which Moses made the great secret of his Cabalah, is the famous book of Thoth ".
The leaves of this "famous book " are also called the
--
The names of the Gods are important, for, according to magical doctrine, to know the name of an intelligence is at once to possess peculiar control of it. Prof. W. M. Flinders
Petrie, in his little work on The Religion of Ancient Egypt, states that " the knowledge of the name gave power over its owner".
--
and Amon-Ra (with whom Osiris became identified) king of the Gods and " lord of the thrones of the world ". Its
Greek equivalent is Zeus - identified in the Roman theogony as Jupiter - the greatest of the Olympian Gods, and is generally represented as the omnipotent father and king of Gods and Men. The Romans considered Jupiter as the Lord of Heaven, the highest and most powerful among the Gods, and called him the Best and Most High. In the
Indian systems, he is Brahma the creator, from whom sprang the seven Prajapati- our seven lowest Sephiros - who, at his behest, completed the creation of the world.
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Three is Binah, then, translated by Understanding, and to it is attri buted Saturn, the oldest of the Gods, and the
Greek Kronos, the God of Time. She is Frigg, the wife of
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the Norse Odin, and mother of all the Gods. Three, also, is bakti, the consort of the god Shiva, who is the Destroyer of
Life. Sakti is that universal electric vital power which unites and brings together all forms, the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things, the plan of the
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Astrologieally its planet is Venus $. It should follow in consequence from this that the Gods and qualities of Net- sach relate to Love, Victory, and to the harvest. Aphro- dite (Venus) is the Lady of Love and Beauty, with the power of bestowing her beauty and charms to others. The whole implication of this Sephirah is of love - albeit a love of a sexual nature. Hathor is the Egyptian equivalent and is a lesser aspect of the Mother Isis. She is depicted as a cow goddess, representing the generative forces of Nature, and she was the protectress of agriculture and the fruits of the earth. Bhavani is the Hindu goddess of Netsach.
Rose is the flower appurtenant, and Red Sandal is the perfume. It is common knowledge that in some diseases of a venereal ( $ ) origin oils of sandalwood are employed.
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According to Virgil, the Gods employed him to conduct the souls of the deceased from the upper to the lower worlds.
In this latter capacity, the Egyptian jackal-headed Anubis is similar, since he was the patron of the dead, and is depicted as leading the soul into the judgment of Osiris in Amennti. It will help the student not a little if he remembers that the sphere of Hod represents on a very much lower plane similar qualities to those obtaining in
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Buddha-nature, the nature of the Gods, the Bodhisattva-nature, the nature of sentient and nonsentient beings, the craving-ghost nature, the contentious spirit nature, the beast nature-they are all of them grasped in a single instant of thought. The great matter of their religious quest is completely and utterly resolved, and there is nothing left for them to do. They are freed from birth and death. What a thrilling moment it is!
"But a matter of particularly bowel-wrenching intensity still remains, and that is the very heart of the matter that has been personally transmitted from one Zen patriarch to another and carefully
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the beginning stages, for the purpose of novitiates absolutely unfamiliar with this subject, what is prescribed is a conceptual form of the ideal that one would regard as the highest possible, and this is the philosophy behind the worship of the Gods of religions. It is not the worship of many gods, but the worship of any aspect of the one God, which can be taken as the means to the realisation of that all-inclusive background of these various manifestations called 'gods'. Sometimes, especially in the field of pure psychic science and occultism, any object is taken for the purpose of concentration, provided the will is strong enough. The object of meditation or concentration need not necessarily be a deity in the sense of a divine being it can be anything. It can be even a candlestick, or even a fountain pen or a pencil; the only condition is that we should not think of anything else except that pencil in front of us.
But the nature of the mind is such, the mind is made in such a way, that it cannot go on thinking continuously of any absurd object. A leaf from a tree cannot become the object of attraction for the mind, because the mind cannot see any value or significance in a leaf, or a pen or a pencil, though a very scientific attitude would find significance in anything. Even a pencil is as important as a deity if we understand the background of it and the way in which it is constituted. But the ordinary mind cannot understand it. It requires the foisting of certain characteristics which are regarded as beautiful, magnificent and capable of fulfilling the wishes of the person concentrating. No one concentrates without a purpose.
1.04 - BOOK THE FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Then call'd the Gods to view the sportive pair:
the Gods throng'd in, and saw in open day,
--
Oh may the Gods thus keep us ever join'd!
Oh may we never, never part again!"
--
The stars, the Heav'ns, and all the Gods sustain'd.
Andromeda rescu'd from the Sea Monster
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The Greeks believed that hubris was always followed by nemesis, that if you went too far you would get a knock on the head to remind you that the Gods will not tolerate insolence on the part of mortal men. In the sphere of human relations, the modern mind understands the doctrine of hubris and regards it as mainly true. We wish pride to have a fall, and we see that very often it does fall.
To have too much power over ones fellows, to be too rich, too violent, too ambitiousall this invites punishment, and in the long run, we notice, punishment of one sort or another duly comes. But the Greeks did not stop there. Because they regarded Nature as in some way divine, they felt that it had to be respected and they were convinced that a hubristic lack of respect for Nature would be punished by avenging nemesis. In The Persians, Aeschylus gives the reasons the ultimate, metaphysical reasons for the barbarians defeat. Xerxes was punished for two offencesoverweening imperialism directed against the Athenians, and overweening imperialism directed against Nature. He tried to enslave his fellow men, and he tried to enslave the sea, by building a bridge across the Hellespont.
1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
to the Gods; the Gods are subject to the spells (_mantras_); the
spells to the Brahmans; therefore the Brahmans are our gods."
1.04 - Narayana appearance, in the beginning of the Kalpa, as the Varaha (boar), #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Prīthivī (Earth).-Hail to thee, who art all creatures; to thee, the holder of the mace and shell: elevate me now from this place, as thou hast upraised me in days of old. From thee have I proceeded; of thee do I consist; as do the skies, and all other existing things. Hail to thee, spirit of the supreme spirit; to thee, soul of soul; to thee, who art discrete and indiscrete matter; who art one with the elements and with time. Thou art the creator of all things, their preserver, and their destroyer, in the forms, oh lord, of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Rudra, at the seasons of creation, duration, and dissolution. When thou hast devoured all things, thou reposest on the ocean that sweeps over the world, meditated upon, oh Govinda, by the wise. No one knoweth thy true nature, and the Gods adore thee only in the forms it bath pleased thee to assume. They who are desirous of final liberation, worship thee as the supreme Brahmā; and who that adores not Vāsudeva, shall obtain emancipation? Whatever may be apprehended by the mind, whatever may be perceived by the senses, whatever may he discerned by the intellect, all is but a form of thee. I am of thee, upheld by thee; thou art my creator, and to thee I fly for refuge: hence, in this universe, Mādhavī (the bride of Mādhava or Viṣṇu) is my designation. Triumph to the essence of all wisdom, to the unchangeable, the imperishable: triumph to the eternal; to the indiscrete, to the essence of discrete things: to him who is both cause and effect; who is the universe; the sinless lord of sacrifice[4]; triumph. Thou art sacrifice; thou art the oblation; thou art the mystic Omkāra; thou art the sacrificial fires; thou art the Vedas, and their dependent sciences; thou art, Hari, the object of all worship[5]. The sun, the stars, the planets, the whole world; all that is formless, or that has form; all that is visible, or invisible; all, Puruṣottama, that I have said, or left unsaid; all this, Supreme, thou art. Hail to thee, again and again! hail! all hail!
Parāśara said:-
1.04 - The Aims of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
missionary who pronounces the Gods of the poor hea then to be mere
illusion. Unfortunately we still go blundering along in the same dogmatic
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
proper place; the Gods, pleased by the re-establishment of proper order, allow the rain once more to fall (or
stop it from falling in dangerous excess). In a story of this type, the creative aspect of the unknown (nature)
--
comfort avails any more; longing transcends a world after death, even the Gods; existence is negated
210
along with its glittering reflection in the Gods or in an immortal beyond. Conscious of the truth he has
once seen, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence; now he understands what
--
the place of the Gods. This place exists outside of time and space itself, on the same plane of pleromatic
reality as the prehistoric and post-apocalyptic Paradise. Entry into this domain is preceded by complete
--
earth to the domain of the Gods allows him to serve the role of psychopomp, intermediary between man
and god; to aid the members of his community in adjusting to what remains outside of conditional
--
prepared for him. the Gods, however, decided to disrupt these most carefully laid plans, and sent an aged
man to hobble, in full view, alongside the road. The princes fascinated gaze fell upon the ancient
--
anxiety lessened, his curiosity grew, and he ventured outside again. This time the Gods sent a sick man into
view.
--
were ashes in his mouth, and he ventured forth, a third time. the Gods, in their mercy, sent him a dead man,
in funeral procession.
--
bridge between the profane individual domain and the realm of the Gods:
The symbolism of the ascension into heaven by means of a tree is... clearly illustrated by the ceremony
--
comes out of the smoke-hole of the tent he gives a loud cry, invoking the help of the Gods: up there, he
finds himself in their presence.449
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promises the knowledge of the Gods is that trees first fruit. This makes the world-tree the source of
the revelation that destroys the source of the anomalous idea, for example, that disrupts the static past
--
with the knowledge of the Gods, without their compensatory power and immortality. His enlightenment
of man engenders an unparalleled catastrophe a catastrophe sufficiently complete to engender not only
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voluntary, though pre-arranged, in a sense, by the Gods, whose power remains outside human control.
Lucifer, in the guise of the serpent, offers Eve the apple, with truly irresistible promise of expanded
1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
In the figures of the Gods that have come down from ancient Mesopotamia
(Sumer and Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria) the thunderbolt, in the same form
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
I come now to the last of her day's activities that I have witnessed as well as heard about from others. It was one of the strangest I could think of and could be taken up by her alone, for her inspiration comes from to quote Nishikanto's phrase a "God-white source" riot from human reason. I mean her evening meditation and Pranam. I have already made a reference to them. The meditation started in a very reasonable manner at about 8.00 p.m. She would go down and, standing in the middle of the lower part of the staircase, give a silent meditation to all sitting below for about half an hour; then she would come up, look in on Sri Aurobindo, and come back after a while with his supper. Once she said to him, "After a long time, the Gods have come to the meditation." This recalls Sri Aurobindo's verses:
Calm faces of the Gods on backgrounds vast,
Bringing the marvel of the infinitudes.
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Here is another small instance, gathered from the private diary of a young sadhika, to show how the Mother in the midst of her crammed activities found time to push individuals or groups on the path of their soul's aspiration. She used to see ten or twelve young girls in the evening at about 8 p.m. before she came down for meditation. But many a day they had to wait for hours, even up to 10 p.m. They would feel hungry or sleepy and had to go without their dinner, for the meditation followed immediately after their meeting. One day one of them lost patience and went away, leaving her flowers in a dish for the Mother. Just then, the Mother came. The girls were very much struck by this coincidence. What a test, they thought! As soon as one girl approached the Mother, the Mother asked, "Who has left this dish of flowers here? Oh, is it X? You really surprise me! You can't wait even a little while for me, you get so impatient? Do you know how the Gods and goddesses yearn to have my darshan, and the saints and sages consider themselves most blessed when they see me in their meditation even for a minute?"
"But, Mother," replied the girl, "we look upon you as our friend. When we stand under the shelter of a tree, do we think of it giving us a cool shade?" That sweet answer disarmed the Mother completely and she immediately took her into her arms.
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.04 - the Gods of the Veda
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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The beliefs and conclusions of today are, in these rapid and unsettled times, seldom the beliefs and conclusions of tomorrow. In religion, in thought, in science, in literature we march daily over the bodies of dead theories to enthrone fresh syntheses and worship new illuminations. The realms of scholarship are hardly more quiet and secure than these troubled kingdoms; and in that realm nowhere is the soil so boggy, nowhere does scholastic ingenuity disport itself with such light fantastic footsteps over such a quaking morass of hardy conjecture and hasty generalisation as in the Sanscrit scholarship of the last century. But the Vedic question at least seemed to have been settled. It was agreedfirmly enough, it seemed that the Vedas were the sacred chants of a rude, primitive race of agriculturists sacrificing to very material gods for very material benefits with an elaborate but wholly meaningless & arbitrary ritual; the Gods themselves were merely poetical personifications of cloud & rain & wind, lightning & dawn and the sky & fire to which the semi-savage Vedic mind attributed by crude personal analogy a personality and a presiding form, the Rishis were sacrificing priests of an invading Aryan race dwelling on the banks of the Panjab rivers, men without deep philosophical or exalted moral ideas, a race of frank cheerful Pagans seeking the good things of life, afraid of drought & night & various kinds of devils, sacrificing persistently & drinking vigorously, fighting the black Dravidians whom they called the Dasyus or robbers,crude prototypes these of Homeric Greek and Scandinavian Viking.All this with many details of the early civilisation were supposed to be supplied by a philological and therefore scientificexamination of the ancient text yielding as certain results as the interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyph and Persian inscription. If there are hymns of a high moral fervour, of a remarkable philosophical depth & elevation, these are later compositions of a more sophisticated age. In the earlier hymns, the vocabulary, archaic and almost unintelligible, allows an adroit & industrious scholarship waving in its hand the magic wand of philology to conjure into it whatever meaning may be most suitable to modern beliefs or preferable to the European temperament. As for Vedanta, it can be no clue to the meaning of the mantras, because the Upanishads represent a spiritual revolt against Vedic naturalism & ceremonialism and not, as has been vainly imagined for some thousands of years, the fulfilment of Vedic truth. Since then, some of these positions have been severely shaken. European Science has rudely scouted the claims of Comparative Philology to rank as a Science; European Ethnology has dismissed the Aryo-Dravidian theory of the philologist & tends to see in the Indian people a single homogeneous race; it has been trenchantly suggested and plausibly upheld that the Vedas themselves offer no evidence that the Indian races were ever outside India but even prove the contraryan advance from the south and not from the north. These theories have not only been suggested & widely approved but are gaining upon the general mind. Alone in all this overthrow the European account of Vedic religion & Vedic civilisation remains as yet intact & unchallenged by any serious questioning. Even in the minds of the Indian people, with their ancient reverence for Veda, the Europeans have effected an entire divorce between Veda & Vedanta. The consistent religious development of India has been theosophic, mystical, Vedantic. Its beginnings are now supposed to have been naturalistic, materialistic, Pagan, almost Graeco-Roman. No satisfactory explanation has been given of this strange transformation in the soul of a people, and it is not surprising that theories should have been started attri buting to Vedanta & Brahmavada a Dravidian origin. Brahmavada was, some have confidently asserted, part of the intellectual property taken over by the Aryan conquerors from the more civilised races they dispossessed. The next step in this scholars progress might well be some counterpart of Sergis Mediterranean theory,an original dark, pacific, philosophic & civilised race overwhelmed by a fairskinned & warlike horde of Aryan savages.
The object of this book is to suggest a prior possibility,that the whole European theory may be from beginning to end a prodigious error. The confident presumption that religion started in fairly recent times with the terrors of the savage, passed through stages of Animism & Nature worship & resulted variously in Paganism, monotheism or the Vedanta has stood in the way of any extension of scepticism to this province of Vedic enquiry. I dispute the presumption and deny the conclusions drawn from it. Before I admit it, I must be satisfied that a system of pure Nature worship ever existed. I cannot accept as evidence Sun & Star myth theories which, as a play of ingenious scholastic fancy, may attract the imagination, but are too haphazard, too easily self-contented, too ill-combined & inconsequent to satisfy the scientific reason. No other religion of which there is any undisputed record or sure observation, can be defined as a system of pure Nature worship. Even the savage-races have had the conception of gods & spirits who are other than personified natural phenomena. At the lowest they have Animism & the worship of spirits, ghosts & devils. Ancestor-worship & the cult of snake & four-footed animal seem to have been quite as old as any Nature-gods with whom research has made us acquainted. In all probability the Python was worshipped long before Apollo. It is therefore evident that even in the lowest religious strata the impulse to personify Nature-phenomena is not the ruling cult-idea of humanity. It is exceedingly unlikely that at any time this element should have so far prevailed as to cast out all the others so as to create a type of cult confined within a pure & rigid naturalism. Man has always seen in the universe the replica of himself. Unless therefore the Vedic Rishis had no thought of their subjective being, no perception of intellectual and moral forces within themselves, it is a psychological impossibility that they should have detected divine forces behind the objective world but none behind the subjective.
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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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(7) In his progress man is helped by the Gods, resisted by the Asuras & Rakshasas. For the worlds behind have their own inhabitants, who, the whole universe being inextricably one, affect & are affected by the activities of mankind. The Bhuvar is the great place of struggle in which forces work behind the visible movements we see here and determine all our actions & fortunes. Swar is mans resting place but not his final or highest habitation which is Vishnus highest footing, Vishnoh paramam padam, high in the supreme parardha.
(8) The 33 great gods belong to the higher worlds but rest in Swar & work at once in all the strata of consciousness, for the world is always one in its complexity. They are masters of the mental functions, masters also of the vital & material. Agni, for instance, governs the actions of the fiery elements in Nature & in man, but is also the vehicle of pure tapas, tu, tuvis or divine force. They are therefore mankinds greatest helpers.
(9) But in order that they may help, it is necessary to reinforce them in these lower worlds, which are not their own, by self-surrender, by sacrifice, by a share in all mans action, strength, being & bliss, and by this mutual help mans being physical, vital, mental, spiritual is kept in a state of perfect & ever increasing force, energy & joy favourable to the development of immortality. This is the process of Yajna, called often Yoga when applied exclusively to the subjective movements & adhwara when applied to the objective. The Vritras, Panis etc of the Bhuvarloka who are constantly preventing mans growth & throwing back his development, have to be attacked and slain by the Gods, for they are not entirely immortal. The sacrifice is largely a battle between evolutionary & reactionary powers.
(10) A symbolic system of external sacrifice in which every movement is carefully designed & coordinated to signify the subjective facts of the internal Yajna, aids the spiritual aspirant by moulding his material sheath into harmony with his internal life & by mastering his external surroundings so that there too the conditions & forces may be all favourable to his growth.
(11) The Yajna has two parts, mantra & tantrasubjective & objective; in the outer sacrifice the mantra is the Vedic hymn and the tantra the oblation; in the inner the mantra is the meditation or the sacred formula, the tantra the putting forth of the power generated by mantra to bring about some successful spiritual, intellectual, vital or mental activity of which the Gods have their share.
(12) The mantra consists of gayatra, brahma and arka, the formulation of thought into rhythmic speech to bring about a spiritual force or result, the filling of the soul (brahma) with the idea & name of the god of the mantra, the use of the mantra for effectuation of the external object or the activity desired.
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One of the greatest deities of the Vedic Pantheon is a woman, Gna,a feminine power whether of material or moral nature,whether her functions work in the subjective or the objective. The Hindu religion has always laid an overpowering stress on this idea of the woman in Nature. It is not only in the Purana that the Woman looms so large, not only in the Shakta cult that she becomes a supreme Name. In the Upanishads it is only when Indra, in his search for the mysterious and ill-understood Mastering Brahman, meets with the Woman in the heaven of thingstasminn evakashe striyam ajagama UmamHaimavatim, In that same sky he came to the Woman, Uma, daughter of Himavan,that he is able to learn the thing which he seeks. The Stri, the Aja or unborn Female Energy, is the executive Divinity of the universe, the womb, the mother, the bride, the mould & instrument of all joy & being. The Veda also speaks of the gnah, the Women,feminine powers without whom the masculine are not effective for work & formation; for when the Gods are to be satisfied who support the sacrifice & effect it, vahnayah, yajatrah, then Medhatithi of the Kanwas calls on Agni to yoke them with female mates, patnivatas kridhi, in their activity and enjoyment. In one of his greatest hymns, the twenty-second of the first Mandala, he speaks expressly of the patnir devanam, the brides of the Strong Ones, who are to be called to extend protection, to brea the a mighty peace, to have their share the joy of the Soma wine. Indrani, Varunani, Agnayi,we can recognise these goddesses and their mastering gods; but there are threein addition to Mother Earthwho seem to stand on a different level and are mentioned without the names of their mates if they have any and seem to enjoy an independent power and activity. They are Ila,Mahi&Saraswati, the three goddesses born of Love or born of Bliss, Tisro devir mayobhuvah.
Saraswati is known to us in the Purana,the Muse with her feet on the thousand leaved lotus of the mind, the goddess of thought, learning, poetry, of all that is high in mind and its knowledge. But, so far as we can understand from the Purana, she is the goddess of mind only, of intellect & imagination and their perceptions & inspirations. Things spiritual & the mightier supra-mental energies & illuminations belong not to her, but to other powers. Well, we meet Saraswati in the Vedas;and if she is the same goddess as our Puranic & modern protectress of learning & the arts, the Personality of the Intellect, then we have a starting pointwe know that the Vedic Rishis had other than naturalistic conceptions & could call to higher powers than the thunder-flash & the storm-wind. But there is a difficultySaraswati is the name of a river, of several rivers in India, for the very name means flowing, gliding or streaming, and the Europeans identify it with a river in the Punjab. We must be careful therefore, whenever we come across the name, to be sure which of these two is mentioned or invoked, the sweet-streaming Muse or the material river.
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But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manasei ther in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhipredominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,not unknown to the Vedaconstitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyaktalost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the Gods who deliver to the Gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.
We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the Gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihatSacchidananda objectivisedis the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feelas Wordsworth felt itwhen we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it Sukritam, What I have made, is good. Whoever enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smritisees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memoryjust as we say of a friend This is he and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselvesthough we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,is in all things true. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefa thers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.
We can now understand the intention of the Rishi in his last verse and the greatness of the climax to which he has been leading us. Saraswati is able to give impulsion to Truth and awaken to right thinking because she has access to the Maho Arnas, the great ocean. On that level of consciousness, we are usually it must be remembered asleep, sushupta. The chetana or waking consciousness has no access; it lies behind our active consciousness, is, as we might say, superconscious, for us, asleep. Saraswati brings it forward into active consciousness by means of the ketu or perceptive intelligence, that essential movement of mind which accepts & realises whatever is presented to it. To focus this ketu, this essential perception on the higher truth by drawing it away from the haphazard disorder of sensory data is the great aim of Yogic meditation. Saraswati by fixing essential perception on the satyam ritam brihat above makes ideal knowledge active and is able to inform it with all those plentiful movements of mind which she, dhiyavasu, vajebhir vajinivati, has prepared for the service of the Master of the sacrifice. She is able to govern all the movements of understanding without exception in their thousand diverse movements & give them the single impression of truth and right thinkingvisva dhiyo vi rajati. A governed & ordered activity of soul and mind, led by the Truth-illuminated intellect, is the aim of the sacrifice which Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra is offering to the Gods.
For we perceive at once that the yajna here can be no material sacrifice, no mere pouring out of the Soma-wine on the sacred flame to the Gods of rain & cloud, star & sunshine.
Saraswati is not even here the goddess of speech whose sole function is to inspire & guide the singer in his hymn. In other passages she may be merely Bharati,theMuse. But here there are greater depths of thought & soul-experience. She has to do things which mere speech cannot do. And even if we were to take her here as the divine Muse, still the functions asked of her are too great, there is too little need of all these high intellectual motions, for a mere invitation to Rain&Star Gods to share in a pouring of the Soma-wine. She could do that without all this high intellectual & spiritual labour. Even, therefore, if it be a material sacrifice whichMadhuchchhanda is offering, its material aspects can be no more than symbolical. Unless indeed the rest of the hymn contradicts the intellectual & spiritual purport which we have discovered in these closing verses, fullon the face of them & accepting the plainest & most ordinary meaning for each single word in themof deep psychological knowledge, moral & spiritual aspiration & a supreme poetical art.
I do not propose to study the earlier verses of the hymn with the same care as we have expended on the closing dedication to Saraswati,that would lead me beyond my immediate purpose. A rapid glance through them to see whether they confirm or contradict our first results will be sufficient. There are three passages, also of three verses each, consecrated successively to the Aswins, Indra & the Visve Devah. I shall give briefly my own view of these three passages and the Gods they invoke.
The master word of the address to the Aswins is the verb chanasyatam, take your delight. The Aswins, as I understand them, are the masters of strength, youth, joy, swiftness, pleasure, rapture, the pride and glory of existence, and may almost be described as the twin gods of youth and joy. All the epithets applied to them here support this view. They are dravatpani subhaspati, the swift-footed masters of weal, of happiness and good fortune; they are purubhuja, much enjoying; their office is to take and give delight, chanasyatam. So runs the first verse, Aswin yajwaririsho dravatpani subhaspati, Purubhuja chanasyatam. O Aswins, cries Madhuchchhanda, I am in the full rush, the full ecstasy of the sacrificial action, O swift-footed, much-enjoying masters of happiness, take in me your delight. Again they are purudansasa, wide-distributing, nara, strong. O strong wide-distributing Aswins, continues the singer, with your bright-flashing (or brilliantly-forceful) understanding take pleasure in the words (of the mantra) which are now firmly settled (in the mind). Aswina purudansasa nara shaviraya dhiya, Dhishnya vanatam girah. Again we have the stress on things subjective, intellectual and spiritual. The extreme importance of the mantra, the inspired & potent word in the old Vedic religion is known nor has it diminished in later Hinduism. The mantra in Yoga is only effective when it has settled into the mind, is asina, has taken its seat there and become spontaneous; it is then that divine power enters into, takes possession of it and the mantra itself becomes one with the god of the mantra and does his works in the soul and body. This, as every Yogin knows, is one of the fundamental ideas not only in the Rajayogic practice but in almost all paths of spiritual discipline. Here we have the very word that can most appropriately express this settling in of the mantra, dhishnya, combined with the word girah. And we know that the Gods in the Veda are called girvanah, those who delight in the mantra; Indra, the god of mental force, is girvahas, he who supports or bears the mantra. Why should Nature gods delight in speech or the god of thunder & rain be the supporter or bearer of any kind of speech? The hymns? But what is meant by bearing the hymns? We have to give unnatural meanings to vanas & vahas, if we wish to avoid this plain indication. In the next verse the epithets are dasra, bountiful, which, like wide-distributing is again an epithet appropriate to the givers of happiness, weal and youth, rudravartani, fierce & impetuous in all their ways, and Nasatya, a word of doubtful meaning which, for philological reasons, I take to mean gods of movement.As the movement indicated by this and kindred words n, (natare), especially meant a gliding, floating, swimming movement, the Aswins came to be especially the protectors of ships & sailors, and it is in this capacity that we find Castor & Polydeuces (Purudansas) acting, their Western counterparts, the brothers of Helen (Sarama), the swift riders of the Roman legend. O givers, O lords of free movement, runs the closing verse of this invocation, come to the outpourings of my nectar, be ye fierce in action;I feel full of youthful vigour, I have prepared the sacred grass,if that indeed be the true & early meaning of barhis. Dasra yuvakavah suta nasatya vriktabarhishah, Ayatam rudravartani. It is an intense rapture of the soul (rudravartani) which Madhuchchhandas asks first from the Gods.Therefore his first call is to the Aswins.
Next, it is to Indra that he turns. I have already said that in my view Indra is the master of mental force. Let us see whether there is anything here to contradict the hypothesis. Indra yahi chitrabhano suta ime tu ayavah, Anwibhis tana putasah. Indrayahi dhiyeshito viprajutah sutavatah Upa brahmani vaghatah. Indrayahi tutujana upa brahmani harivah Sute dadhishwa nas chanah. There are several important words here that are doubtful in their sense, anwi, tana, vaghatah, brahmani; but none of them are of importance for our present purpose except brahmani. For reasons I shall give in the proper place I do not accept Brahma in the Veda as meaning speech of any kind, but as either soul or a mantra of the kind afterwards called dhyana, the object of which was meditation and formation in the soul of the divine Power meditated on whether in an image or in his qualities. It is immaterial which sense we take here. Indra, sings the Rishi, arrive, O thou of rich and varied light, here are these life-streams poured forth, purified, with vital powers, with substance. Arrive, O Indra, controlled by the understanding, impelled forward in various directions to my soul faculties, I who am now full of strength and flourishing increase. Arrive, O Indra, with protection to my soul faculties, O dweller in the brilliance, confirm our delight in the nectar poured. It seems to me that the remarkable descriptions dhiyeshito viprajutah are absolutely conclusive, that they prove the presence of a subjective Nature Power, not a god of rain & tempest, & prove especially a mind-god. What is it but mental force which comes controlled by the understanding and is impelled forward by it in various directions? What else is it that at the same time protects by its might the growing & increasing soul faculties from impairing & corrupting attack and confirms, keeps safe & continuous the delight which the Aswins have brought with them? The epithets chitrabhano, harivas become at once intelligible and appropriate; the god of mental force has indeed a rich and varied light, is indeed a dweller in the brilliance. The progress of the thought is clear. Madhuchchhanda, as a result of Yogic practice, is in a state of spiritual & physical exaltation; he has poured out the nectar of vitality; he is full of strength & ecstasy This is the sacrifice he has prepared for the Gods. He wishes it to be prolonged, perhaps to be made, if it may now be, permanent. The Aswins are called to give & take the delight, Indra to supply & preserve that mental force which will sustain the delight otherwise in danger of being exhausted & sinking by its own fierceness rapidly consuming its material in the soul faculties. The state and the movement are one of which every Yogin knows.
But he is not content with the inner sacrifice. He wishes to pour out this strength & joy in action on the world, on his fellows, on the peoples, therefore he calls to the Visve Devah to come, A gata!all the Gods in general who help man and busy themselves in supporting his multitudinous & manifold action. They are kindly, omasas, they are charshanidhrito, holders or supporters of all our actions, especially actions that require effort, (it is in this sense that I take charshani, again on good philological grounds), they are to distribute this nectar to all or to divide it among themselves for the action,dasvanso may have either force,for Madhuchchhanda wishes not only to possess, but to give, to distribute, he is dashush. Omasas charshanidhrito visve devasa a gata, daswanso dashushah sutam. He goes on, Visve devaso apturah sutam a ganta turnayah Usra iva swasarani. Visve devaso asridha ehimayaso adruhah, Medham jushanta vahnayah. O you all-gods who are energetic in works, come to the nectar distilled, ye swift ones, (or, come swiftly), like calves to their own stalls,(so at least we must translate this last phrase, till we can get the real meaning, for I do not believe this is the real or, at any rate, the only meaning). O you all-gods unfaltering, with wide capacity of strength, ye who harm not, attach yourselves to the offering as its supporters. And then come the lines about Saraswati. For although Indra can sustain for a moment or for a time he is at present a mental, not an ideal force; it is Saraswati full of the vijnana, of mahas, guiding by it the understanding in all its ways who can give to all these gods the supporting knowledge, light and truth which will confirm and uphold the delight, the mental strength & supply inexhaustibly from the Ocean of Mahas the beneficent & joy-giving action,Saraswati, goddess of inspiration, the flowing goddess who is the intermediary & channel by which divine truth, divine joy, divine being descend through the door of knowledge into this human receptacle. In a word, she is our inspirer, our awakener, our lurer towards Immortality. It is immortality that Madhuchchhandas prepares for himself & the people who do sacrifice to Heaven, devayantah. The Soma-streams he speaks of are evidently no intoxicating vegetable juices; he calls them ayavah, life-forces; & elsewhere amritam, nectar of immortality; somasah, wine-draughts of bliss & internal well being. It is the clear Yogic idea of the amritam, the divine nectar which flows into the system at a certain stage of Yogic practice & gives pure health, pure strength & pure physical joy to the body as a basis for a pure mental & spiritual vigour and activity.
We have therefore as a result of a long and careful examination the clear conviction that certainly in this poem of Madhuchchhanda, probably in others of his hymns, perhaps in all we have an invocation to subjective Nature powers, a symbolic sacrifice, a spiritual, moral & subjective effort & purpose. And if many other suktas in this & other Mandalas confirm the evidence of this third hymn of the Rigveda, shall we not say that here we have the true Veda as the Rishis understood it and that this was the reason why all the ancient thinkers looked on the hymns with so deep-seated a reverence that even after they came to be used merely as ceremonial liturgies at a material sacrifice, even after the Buddha impatiently flung them aside, the writer of the Gita had to look beyond them & Shankara respectfully put them on the shelf of neglect as useless for spiritual purposes, even after they have ceased to be used and almost to be read, the most spiritual nation on the face of the earth still tenaciously, by a sort of divine instinct, clings to them as its supreme Scriptures & refers back all its spirituality and higher knowledge to the Vedas? Let us proceed and see whether this is not the truest as well as the noblest reading of the riddle the real root of Gods purpose in maintaining this our ancient faith and millennial tradition.
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Indra and Varuna are called to give victory, because both of them are samrat. The words samrat & swarat have in Veda an ascertained philosophical sense.One is swarat when, having self-mastery & self-knowledge, & being king over his whole system, physical, vital, mental & spiritual, free in his being, [one] is able to guide entirely the harmonious action of that being. Swarajya is spiritual Freedom. One is Samrat when one is master of the laws of being, ritam, rituh, vratani, and can therefore control all forces & creatures. Samrajya is divine Rule resembling the power of God over his world. Varuna especially is Samrat, master of the Law which he follows, governor of the heavens & all they contain, Raja Varuna, Varuna the King as he is often styled by Sunahshepa and other Rishis. He too, like Indra & Agni & the Visvadevas, is an upholder & supporter of mens actions, dharta charshaninam. Finally in the fifth sloka a distinction is drawn between Indra and Varuna of great importance for our purpose. The Rishi wishes, by their protection, to rise to the height of the inner Energies (yuvaku shachinam) and have the full vigour of right thoughts (yuvaku sumatinam) because they give then that fullness of inner plenty (vajadavnam) which is the first condition of enduring calm & perfection & then he says, Indrah sahasradavnam, Varunah shansyanam kratur bhavati ukthyah. Indra is the master-strength, desirable indeed, (ukthya, an object of prayer, of longing and aspiration) of one class of those boons (vara, varyani) for which the Rishis praise him, Varuna is the master-strength, equally desirable, of another class of these Vedic blessings. Those which Indra brings, give force, sahasram, the forceful being that is strong to endure & strong to overcome; those that attend the grace of Varuna are of a loftier & more ample description, they are shansya. The word shansa is frequently used; it is one of the fixed terms of Veda. Shall we translate it praise, the sense most suitable to the ritual explanation, the sense which the finally dominant ritualistic school gave to so many of the fixed terms of Veda? In that case Varuna must be urushansa, because he is widely praised, Agni narashansa because he is strongly praised or praised by men,ought not a wicked or cruel man to be nrishansa because he is praised by men?the Rishis call repeatedly on the Gods to protect their praise, & Varuna here must be master of things that are praiseworthy. But these renderings can only be accepted, if we consent to the theory of the Rishis as semi-savage poets, feeble of brain, vague in speech, pointless in their style, using language for barbaric ornament rather than to express ideas. Here for instance there is a very powerful indicated contrast, indicated by the grammatical structure, the order & the rhythm, by the singular kratur bhavati, by the separation of Indra & Varuna who have hitherto been coupled, by the assignment of each governing nominative to its governed genitive and a careful balanced order of words, first giving the master Indra then his province sahasradavnam, exactly balancing them in the second half of the first line the master Varuna & then his province shansyanam, and the contrast thus pointed, in the closing pada of the Gayatri all the words that in their application are common at once to all these four separated & contrasted words in the first line. Here is no careless writer, but a style careful, full of economy, reserve, point, force, and the thought must surely correspond. But what is the contrast forced on us with such a marshalling of the stylists resources? That Indras boons are force-giving, Varunas praiseworthy, excellent, auspicious, what you will? There is not only a pointless contrast, but no contrast at all. No, shansa & shansya must be important, definite, pregnant Vedic terms expressing some prominent idea of the Vedic system. I shall show elsewhere that shansa is in its essential meaning self-expression, the bringing out of our sat or being that which is latent in it and manifesting it in our nature, in speech, in our general impulse & action. It has the connotation of self-expression, aspiration, temperament, expression of our ideas in speech; then divulgation, publication, praiseor in another direction, cursing. Varuna is urushansa because he is the master of wide self-expression, wide aspirations, a wide, calm & spacious temperament, Agni narashansa because he is master of strong self-expression, strong aspirations, a prevailing, forceful & masterful temperament;nrishansa had originally the same sense, but was afterwards diverted to express the fault to which such a temper is prone,tyranny, wrath & cruelty; the Rishis call to the Gods to protect their shansa, that which by their yoga & yajna they have been able to bring out in themselves of being, faculty, power, joy,their self-expression. Similarly, shansya here means all that belongs to self-expression, all that is wide, noble, ample in the growth of a soul. It will follow from this rendering that Indra is a god of force, Varuna rather a god of being and as it appears from other epithets, of being when it is calm, noble, wide, self-knowing, self-mastering, moving freely in harmony with the Law of things because it is aware of that Law and accepts it. In that acceptance is his mighty strength; therefore is he even more than the Gods of force the king, the giver of internal & external victory, rule, empire, samrajya to his votaries. This is Varuna.
We see the results & the conditions of the action ofVaruna in the four remaining verses. By their protection we have safety from attack, sanema, safety for our shansa, our rayah, our radhas, by the force of Indra, by the protecting greatness of Varuna against which passion & disturbance cast themselves in vain, only to be destroyed. This safety & this settled ananda or delight, we use for deep meditation, ni dhimahi, we go deep into ourselves and the object we have in view in our meditation is prarechanam, the Greek katharsis, the cleansing of the system mental, bodily, vital, of all that is impure, defective, disturbing, inharmonious. Syad uta prarechanam! In this work of purification we are sure to be obstructed by the powers that oppose all healthful change; but Indra & Varuna are to give us victory, jigyushas kritam. The final result of the successful purification is described in the eighth sloka. The powers of the understanding, its various faculties & movements, dhiyah, delivered from self-will & rebellion, become obedient to Indra & Varuna; obedient to Varuna, they move according to the truth & law, the ritam; obedient to Indra they fulfil with that passivity in activity, which we seek by Yoga, all the works to which mental force can apply itself when it is in harmony with Varuna & the ritam. The result is sharma, peace. Nothing is more remarkable in the Veda than the exactness with which hymn after hymn describes with a marvellous simplicity & lucidity the physical & psychological processes through which Indian Yoga proceeds. The process, the progression, the successive movements of the soul here described are exactly what the Yogin experiences today so many thousands of years after the Veda was revealed. No wonder, it is regarded as eternal truth, not the expression of any particular mind, not paurusheya but impersonal, divine & revealed.
This hymn differs greatly, interestingly & instructively, from the hymn in which Varuna first appears. There the object is to ensure the ananda, the rayah & radhas spoken of in this hymn by the advent of the Gods of Vitality & Mind-Force, Indra & Vayu, to protect from the attack of disintegrating forces the Soma or Amrita, the juice of immortality expressed in the Yogins system. Varuna & Mitra are then called for a particular & restricted purpose to perfect the discernment & to uphold it in its works by the sustaining force of a calm, wide, comprehensive self-expression full of peace & love. The Rishi of that sukta is using the amrita to feed the activity of a sattwic state of mind for acquiring added knowledge. The present hymn belongs to a more advanced state of the Yoga. It is sadhastuti, a hymn of fulfilment or for fulfilment, in which peace & a calm, assured, untroubled activity of the soul are very near. Varuna here leads. He is here for Indras purposes, but his activity predominates; it is his spirit that pervades the action and purpose of the hymn.
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1.04 - The Origin and Development of Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions, and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former did hymns to the Gods and the praises of famous men. A poem of the satirical kind cannot indeed be put down to any author earlier than Homer; though many such writers probably there were. But from Homer onward, instances can be cited,--his own Margites, for example, and other similar compositions. The appropriate metre was also here introduced; hence the measure is still called the iambic or lampooning measure, being that in which people lampooned one another. Thus the older poets were distinguished as writers of heroic or of lampooning verse.
As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation, so he too first laid down the main lines of Comedy, by dramatising the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to Comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to Tragedy. But when Tragedy and Comedy came to light, the two classes of poets still followed their natural bent: the lampooners became writers of Comedy, and the Epic poets were succeeded by Tragedians, since the drama was a larger and higher form of art.
1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
an upraised wand. He points to the ground with his left hand, thus affirming the magical formula that " that which is above is like unto that which is below ". Above his head, as an aureole or nimbus, is , the mathematical sign of infinity. Since Mercury and Thoth are the Gods of Wisdom and Magick, it is plain that this card is a harmonious attri bution.
Mastic, Mace, and Storax are the perfumes of this twelfth Path ; the Agate is its jewel ; Vervain its sacred plant. The Ibis is its sacred bird, which ages ago was observed to have the curious habit of standing on one leg for long periods of time, and to the fertile imagination of the ancients this suggested the absorption in profound meditation. In Yoga practice there is a posture called the
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Its Gods are Athena, insofar as she protected the State from its enemies ; and Shiva and Mars. Minerva is also an attri bution, for she was believed to have guided men in war, where victory was to be gained by prudence, courage, and perseverance. The Egyptian Mentu is also a god of War, depicted with the head of a Hawk. The Scandinavian Tyr is an attri bution to this Path, for he is the most daring and intrepid of the Gods, and it is he who dispenses valour, courage, and honour in the Wars.
The Spear is the weapon appropriate ; the flower Ger- anium, and the jewel Ruby because of its colour.
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Ches (guttural Ch as in " loch ")- a Fence. In Astrology it is the sign of the Crab, s Cancer. It is Khephra, the beetle-headed God, representing the midnight Sun. In the ancient Egyptian astrological philosophy, <& Cancer was considered to be the Celestial House of the Soul. Mercury in his aspect of the messenger of the Gods, and Apollo in his role of the Charioteer, are other attri butions. The Norse
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correspondence is Hermod, the envoy of the Gods, the son of Odin, who gave him a helmet and corselet which Hermod wore when despatched on his dangerous missions. Un- fortunately, the Hindu gods are not sufficiently determinate to enable one to make an attri bution from their number with any degree of satisfaction, unless we decide upon
Krishna in his r6Ie of driving the chariot of Arjuna to the battle of Kurukshetra, as described in the
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The Greek God is Themis, who, in the Homeric poems, is the personification of abstract law, custom, and equity, whence she is described as reigning in the assemblies of men, and convening the assembly of the Gods on Mount
Olympus. Its Egyptian God bears out the idea of Justice for she is Maat, the Goddess of Truth, who in the Book of the Dead appears in the judgment scene of the weighing of the heart of the deceased. Nemesis, too, is a correspon- dence, as she measured out to mortals happiness and misery ; and here, too, is the Hindu concept of Yama, the personification of death and Hell where men had to expiate their evil deeds.
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Sun, the King of the Gods, and a purely elemental divinity.
Poseidon and Neptune are again attri buted as representing water and the seas.
1.04 - The Praise, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
In the form of the Gods' lake
Who totally dispels poison
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lNDRA: King of the Gods
AGNI: Fire god who reigns over the rishis
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the Gods' LAKE: another metaphor for the moon,
compared to a perfectly round lake, very beautiful,
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In this Duality too there is possible a separative experience. At one pole of it the seeker may be conscious only of the Master of Existence putting forth on him His energies of knowledge, power and bliss to liberate and divinise; the Shakti may appear to him only an impersonal Force expressive of these things or an attribute of the Ishwara. At the other pole he may encounter the World-Mother, creatrix of the universe, putting forth the Gods and the worlds and all things and existences out of her spirit-substance. Or even if he sees both aspects, it may be with an unequal separating vision, subordinating one to the other, regarding the Shakti only as a means for approaching the Ishwara. There results a one-sided tendency or a lack of balance, a power of effectuation not perfectly supported or a light of revelation not perfectly dynamic. It is when a complete union of the two sides of the Duality is effected and rules his consciousness that he begins to open to a fuller power that will draw him altogether out of the confused clash of Ideas and Forces here into a higher Truth and enable the descent of that Truth to illumine and deliver and act sovereignly upon this world of Ignorance. He has begun to lay his hand on the integral secret which in its fullness can be grasped only when he overpasses the double term that reigns here of Knowledge inextricably intertwined with an original Ignorance and crosses the border where spiritual mind disappears into supramental Gnosis. It is through this third and most dynamic dual aspect of the One that the seeker begins with the most integral completeness to enter into the deepest secret of the being of the Lord of the Sacrifice.
For it is behind the mystery of the presence of personality in an apparently impersonal universeas in that of consciousness manifesting out of the Inconscient, life out of the inanimate, soul out of brute Matter that is hidden the solution of the riddle of existence. Here again is another dynamic Duality more pervading than appears at first view and deeply necessary to the play of the slowly self-revealing Power. It is possible for the seeker in his spiritual experience, standing at one pole of the Duality, to follow Mind in seeing a fundamental Impersonality everywhere. The evolving soul in the material world begins from a vast impersonal Inconscience in which our inner sight yet perceives the presence of a veiled infinite Spirit; it proceeds with the emergence of a precarious consciousness and personality that even at their fullest have the look of an episode, but an episode that repeats itself in a constant series; it arises through experience of life out of mind into an infinite, impersonal and absolute Superconscience in which personality, mind-consciousness, life-consciousness seem all to disappear by a liberating annihilation, Nirvana. At a lower pitch he still experiences this fundamental impersonality as an immense liberating force everywhere. It releases his knowledge from the narrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his heart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty personal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm, equality, wideness, universality, infinity. A Yoga of works would seem to require Personality as its mainstay, almost its source, but here too the impersonal is found to be the most direct liberating force; it is through a wide egoless impersonality that one can become a free worker and a divine creator. It is not surprising that the overwhelming power of this experience from the impersonal pole of the Duality should have moved the sages to declare this to be the one way and an impersonal Superconscience to be the sole truth of the Eternal.
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It is an integral knowledge that is being sought, an integral force, a total amplitude of union with the All and Infinite behind existence. For the seeker of the integral Yoga no single experience, no one Divine Aspect,however overwhelming to the human mind, sufficient for its capacity, easily accepted as the sole or the ultimate reality,can figure as the exclusive truth of the Eternal. For him the experience of the Divine Oneness carried to its extreme is more deeply embraced and amply fathomed by following out to the full the experience of the Divine Multiplicity. All that is true behind polytheism as well as behind monotheism falls within the scope of his seeking; but he passes beyond their superficial sense to human mind to grasp their mystic truth in the Divine. He sees what is aimed at by the jarring sects and philosophies and accepts each facet of the Reality in its own place, but rejects their narrownesses and errors and proceeds farther till he discovers the One Truth that binds them together. The reproach of anthropomorphism and anthropolatry cannot deter him,for he sees them to be prejudices of the ignorant and arrogant reasoning intelligence, the abstracting mind turning on itself in its own cramped circle. If human relations as practised now by man are full of smallness and perversity and ignorance, yet are they disfigured shadows of something in the Divine and by turning them to the Divine he finds that of which they are a shadow and brings it down for manifestation in life. It is through the human exceeding itself and opening itself to a supreme plenitude that the Divine must manifest itself here, since that comes inevitably in the course and process of the spiritual evolution, and therefore he will not despise or blind himself to the Godhead because it is lodged in a human body, mnu tanum ritam. Beyond the limited human conception of God, he will pass to the one divine Eternal, but also he will meet him in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the Avatar. This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it. For that is the most palpable sign of the growing fulfilment, the promise of the great mystery of the progressive Descent into Matter which is the secret sense of the material creation and the justification of terrestrial existence.
Thus reveals himself to the seeker in the progress of the sacrifice the Lord of the sacrifice. At any point this revelation can begin; in any aspect the Master of the Work can take up the work in him and more and more press upon him and it for the unfolding of his presence. In time all the Aspects disclose themselves, separate, combine, fuse, are unified together. At the end there shines through it all the supreme integral Reality, unknowable to Mind which is part of the Ignorance, but knowable because self-aware in the light of a spiritual consciousness and a supramental knowledge.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
the flame of his energy ... The companies of the Gods enter
[that Being] ... It has enormous burning eyes; it has mouths
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For even the radiant children of the Gods
To darken their privilege is and dreadful right.
1.05 - BOOK THE FIFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
With grief appealing to the Gods above,
Who laws of hospitality approve,
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And to the Gods their fabled acts prefers.
She sings, from Earth's dark womb how Typhon rose,
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How the Gods fled to Egypt's slimy soil,
And hid their heads beneath the banks of Nile:
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King of the Gods, defend my blood and thine,
And use it not the worse for being mine.
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What fault of yours the Gods cou'd so offend,
With wings and claws your beauteous forms to spoil,
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
79 Just as we have to remember the Gods of antiquity in order
to appreciate the psychological value of the anima /animus
1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12. O Prince of Riches, fix always in us that in which are the Gods, settle here many herds for the begotten son. In us may there be the happy things of true inspiration and the multitude of the large impulsions from which evil is far.
13. O King, O Fire, let me enjoy by thee and thy princehood of the riches many riches in many ways; for, O Fire of many blessings, there are many treasures for thy worshipper in thee, the King.
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6. This friendly Light is like a singer of the word and clothes himself with the Rays, he rhapsodises with his flame. This is the shining One who journeys by night and by day to the Gods, the shining Immortal who journeys through the day to the Gods.
7. The cry of him is like the voice of ordaining Heaven;1 he is the shining Bull that bellows aloud in the growths of the forest. He goes with his light and his race and his running and fills Earth and Heaven with his riches; they are like wives happy in their spouse.
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1. O Son of Force, O priest of the call, even as always in man's forming of the godhead thou sacrificest with his sacrifices, sacrifice so for us to the Gods today, O Fire, an equal power to equal powers, one who desires to the Gods who desire.
2. He is wide in his light like a seer of the Day; he is the one we must know and founds an adorable joy. In him is universal life, he is the Immortal in mortals; he is the Waker in the Dawn, our Guest, the Godhead who knows all births that are.
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6. O Fire, thou art like the Sun with thy splendid illuminations and hast wide extended Earth and Heaven with thy light. Smeared with lustre,3 rich in brilliance he shepherds away the darknesses and like a son of the desire of the Gods rushes onward in his march.
2 Or, the Enjoyer.
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1. I call to you by my thoughts Fire, the youngest of the Gods in whose words is no bale, the Youth, the Son of Force. He is a mind of the knowledge free from all that hurts; his gifts are many and he journeys to the riches where all boons are.
2. O Priest of the call, priest with thy many flame-forces,4 in the night and in the light the Lords of sacrifice cast on thee their treasures. As in earth are founded all the worlds, they founded all happinesses in the purifying Fire.
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1. Head of heaven and traveller of the earth a universal Power was born to us in the Truth, a Guest of men, a seer and absolute King; the Gods brought to birth universal Fire and made him in the mouth a vessel of the oblation.
2. All they together came to him, a navel knot of sacrifice, a house of riches, a mighty point of call in the battle. Charioteer of the Works of the way, eye of intuition of the sacrifice, the Gods brought to birth the universal Godhead.
3. O Fire, from thee is born the Seer, the Horse and of thee are the Heroes whose might overcomes the adversary. O King, O universal Power, found in us the desirable treasures.
4. O Immortal, all the Gods come together to thee in thy birth as to a new-born child. O universal Power, they travelled to immortality by the works of thy will when thou leapedst alight from the Father and Mother
5. O Fire, universal Godhead, none could do violence to the laws of thy mighty workings because even in thy birth in the lap of the Father and the Mother thou hast discovered the light of intuition of the Days in manifested things.5
--
5. An immortal Light set inward for seeing, a swiftest mind within in men that walk on the way. All the Gods with a single mind, a common intuition, move aright in their divergent paths towards the one Will.
6. My ears range wide to hear and wide my eyes to see, wide this Light that is set in the heart; wide walks my mind and I set my thought afar; something there is that I shall speak; something that now I shall think.
7. All the Gods were in awe of thee when thou stoodest in the darkness and bowed down before thee, O Fire. May the Universal Godhead keep us that we may be safe, may the Immortal keep us that we may be safe.
SUKTA 10
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3. In thee the understanding is full of riches and it desires the Gods, the divine births, that the word may be spoken and the sacrifice done, when the singer, the sage, wisest of the Angirases chants his honey-rhythm in the rite.
4. He has leaped into radiance and is wise of heart and wide of light; O Fire, sacrifice to the largeness of Earth and Heaven. All the five peoples lavish the oblation with obeisance of surrender and anoint as the living being Fire the bringer of their satisfactions.
--
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.
SUKTA 12
--
either race; thou art the messenger of the Gods and rangest
both the worlds. Since we have accepted thy thinking and
--
16. O Fire with thy strong armies of flame, sit with the Gods,
first of them all, in the wool-flecked lair where the Nest is
--
the Gods, for our peace. Bring the Gods to us, the Immortals,
the builders of the growing Truth; give to our sacrifice touch
on the Gods.
19. O Fire, O man's master of the house, we have fed thee with
--
sacrifice, set by the Gods in the human being.
s no mdAEBr@vr
--
the Path to the Great Ones. Bring the Gods to us, do them
sacrifice.
--
in the sacrifice thou knowest the tracks of the Gods and their
highways.
--
the coming of the Gods; let him take his seat in his own
native home.
--
44. Come to us, bear towards us the Gods that they may eat
of 21 our pleasant offerings and drink our Soma wine.
--
48. the Gods kindle, most strong to slay the Python adversary,
the supreme Fire, the Horse of swiftness by whom the Riches
1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We find again the expression , increasers of Truth, in the fourteenth hymn of this Mandala, in a noteworthy passage. It is a hymn really to Agni,although in the text assigned to the Visvadevas.Medhatithi Kanwa, addressing the strong god Agni, speaks of the Gods who are his vahnayah, those who support or bear him up in his sacrificial activity
Ghritaprishth manoyujo ye tw vahanti vahnayah
--
Bring for the drinking of the Soma the Gods, who, bright of surface, yoked to the mind, as thy bearers, bear thee along; them in their sacrificial place do thou, O Agni, make to increase in truth and join to them their female powers; O sweet-tongued, make them to drink of the sweetness.
Who are these upbearing powers? They are apparently the visvadevas, the Gods taken generally & in their collective activity. They are described as ghritaprishth manoyujah, richly bright of surface and yoked to mind, which immediately recalls the dhiyam ghritchm sdhant of the second hymn. In both passages mental activity & a rich luminosity of mind are suggested as the preliminary necessity of the sacrifice; in both we find the progression from this idea to the expression ritvridho. This luminous mental activity perfected, it is to be used for the increase of Truth, of ritam, of the ideal self-revealing knowledge. There is in addition an idea to which we shall have to return, the idea of the male gods & their female powers whose joint godhead is necessary for the effective perfection of the sacrifice. At present we have to observe only the recurrence of the psychological note in the description of the sacrifice, this reiteration of the idea of bright & purified mental activity as its condition & increase of ideal Truth as a large & important part of its method or object.
In the next hymn the word ritam does not occur, but the continual refrain of its strophes is the cognate word ritunpibartun, Medhatithi cries to each of the Gods in turn,ritun yajnam sh the .. ritubhir ishyata, pibatam ritun yajnavhas, ritun yajnanr asi. Ritu is supposed to have here & elsewhere its classical & modern significance, a season of the year; the ritwik is the priest who sacrifices in the right season; the Gods are invited to drink the soma according to the season! It may be so, but the rendering seems to me to make all the phrases of this hymn strangely awkward & improbable. Medhatithi invites Indra to drink Soma by the season, Mitra & Varuna are to taste the sacrifice, this single sacrifice offered by this son of Kanwa, by the season; in the same single sacrifice the priests or the Gods are to be impelled by the seasons, by many seasons on a single sacrificial occasion! the Aswins are to drink the Soma by the sacrifice-supporting season! To Agni it is said, by the season thou art leader of the sacrifice. Are such expressions at all probable or even possible in the mouth of a poet using freely the natural language of his age? Are they not rather the clumsy constructions of the scholar drawn to misinterpret his text by the false clue of a later & inapplicable meaning of the central word ritu? But if we suppose the sacrifice to be symbolic &, as ritam means ideal truth in general, so ritu to mean that truth in its ordered application, the ideal law of thought, feeling or action, then this impossible awkwardness vanishes & gives place to a natural construction & a lucid & profound significance. Indra is to drink the wine of immortality according to or by the force of the ideal law, by that ideal law Varuna &Mitra are to enjoy the offering of Ananda of the human mind & the human activity, the Gods are to be impelled in their functioning ritubhih, by the ideal laws of the truth,the plural used, in the ordinary manner of the Veda, to express the particular actions of the law of truth, the singular its general action. It is the ideal law that supports the human offering of our activities to the divine life above us, ritun yajnavhas; by the force of the law of Truth Agni leads the sacrifice to its goal.
In this suggestive & significant hymn packed full of the details of the Vedic sacrificial symbolism we again come across Daksha in close connection with Mitra, Varuna & the Truth.
--
We find once more, so fixed are the terms & associations, so persistently coherent is the language of the Veda, ghritaprishtha in connection with mental activity, ghritaprishtham placed designedly before manshinah, just as we find elsewhere ghritaprishth manoyujah, just as we find in the passage from which we started dhiyam ghritchm sdhant. Have we not, then, a right considering this remarkable persistence & considering the rest of the context to suggest & even to infer that the sacrificial seat anointed with the shining ghee is in symbol the fullness of the mind clarified & purified, continuously bright & just in its activity, without flaw or crevice, richly bright of surface & therefore receiving without distortion the messages of the ideal faculty? It is in this clear, pure & rightly ordered state of his thinking & emotional mind that man gets the first taste of the immortal life to which he aspires, yatr mritasya chakshanam, through the joy of the self-fulfilling activity of Gods Truth in him. The condition of his entry into the kingdom of immortality, the kingdom of heaven is that he shall increase ideal truth in him and the condition again of increasing ideal truth is that he shall be unattached, rit vridho asaschatah. For so long as the mind is attached either by wish or predilection, passion or impulse, pre-judgment or impatience, so long as it clings to anything & limits its pure & all-comprehensive wideness of potential knowledge, the wideness of Varuna in it, it cannot attain to the self-effulgent nature of Truth, it can only grope after & grasp portions of Truth, not Truth in itself & in its nature. And so long as it clings to any one thing in wish & enjoyment, it must by the very act shut out others & cannot then embrace the divine vast & all-comprehending love & bliss of the immortal nature which it is, as I shall suggest, the function of Mitra to establish in the human temperament. But when these conditions are fulfilled, the bright-surfaced purified mind widely extended without flaw or crevice as the seat of the Gods in their sacrificial activity, the taste of the wine of immortality, the freedom from attachment, the increasing force of ideal Truth in the human being, then it is impossible for the great divine Powers to fling wide open for us the doors of the higher Heavens, the gates of Ananda, the portals of our immortal life. They start wide open on their hinges to receive before the throne of God the sacrifice & the sacrificer.
Truth & purity the Road, divine bliss the gate, the immortal nature the seat & kingdom, this is the formula of Vedic aspiration. Truth the roadPraskanwa the Knwa makes it clear enough in his hymn to the Aswins, the 46th of the MandalaMade was the road of Truth for our going to that other effectively fulfilling shore, seen was the wide-flowing stream of Heaven. It is the heaven of the pure mind of which he speaks; beyond, on its other shore, are the gates divine, the higher heaven, the realms of immortality.
--
We must consider first whether any valid objection can be offered to this translation; and, if not, what are the precise ideas conveyed by the words & expressions which they render. The word prachetas is one of the fixed recurrent terms of the Veda; & we have corresponding to it another term vichetas. Both terms are rendered by the commentators wise or intelligent. Is prachetas then merely an ornamental or otiose word in this verse? Is it only a partially dispensable & superfluous compliment to the Gods of the hymn? Our hypothesis is that the Vedic Rishis were masters of a perfectly well managed literary style founded upon a tradition of sound economy in language & coherence in thought; all of every word in Veda is in its place & is justified by its value in the significance. If so, prachetasah gives the reason why the protection of these gods is so perfectly efficacious. I suppose,as my hypothesis entitles me to suppose,that the Vedic ideas of prachetas & vichetas correspond to the Vedantic idea of prajnana & vijnana to which as words they are exactly equivalent in composition & sense. Prajnana is that knowledge which is aware of, knows & works upon the objects placed before it. Vijnana is the knowledge which comprehends & knows thoroughly in itself all objects of knowledge. The one is the highest faculty of mind, the other is in mind the door to and beyond it the nature of the direct supra-intellectual knowledge, the Ritam & Brihat of the Veda. It is because Varuna, Mitra & Aryama protect the human being with the perfect knowledge of that through which he has to pass, his path, his dangers, his foes, that their protg , however fiercely & by whatever powers assailed, cannot be crushed. At once, it begins to become clear that the protection in that case must, in all probability, be a spiritual protection against spiritual dangers & spiritual foes.
The second verse neither confirms as yet nor contradicts this initial suggestion. These three great gods, it says, are to the mortal as a multitude of arms which bring to him his desires & fill him with an abundant fullness and protect him from any who may will to do him hurt, rishah; fed with that fullness he grows until he is sarvah, complete in every part of his being(that is to say, if we admit the sense of a spiritual protection and a spiritual activity, in knowledge, in power, in joy, in mental, vital & bodily fullness)and by the efficacy of that protection he enjoys all this fullness & completeness unhurt. No part of it is maimed by the enemies of man, whose activities do him hurt, the Vritras, Atris, Vrikas, the Coverer on the heights, the devourer in the night, the tearer on the path.We may note in passing how important [it] is to render every Vedic word by its exact value; rish & dwish both mean enemy; but if we render them by one word, we lose the fine shade of meaning to which the poet himself calls our attention by the collocation pnti rishaharishta edhate. We see also the same care of style in the collocation sarva edhate, where, as it seems to me, it is clearly suggested that the completeness is the result of the prosperous growth, we have again the fine care & balance with which the causes pipratipnti are answered by the effects arishtahedhate. There is even a good literary reason of great subtlety & yet perfect force for the order of the words & the exact place of each word in the order. In this simple, easy & yet faultless balance & symmetry a great number of the Vedic hymns represent exactly in poetry the same spirit & style as the Greek temple or the Greek design in architecture & painting. Nor can anyone who neglects to notice it & give full value to it, catch rightly, fully & with precision the sense of the Vedic writings.
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So far the image has been a double image of a journey & a battle,the goal of the ritam, the journey of the sin-afflicted human being towards the Truth of the divine nature; the thorns, the pitfall, the enemy ambushed in the path; the great divine helpers whose divine knowledge, for they are prachetasah, becomes active in the human mind and conducts us unerringly & unfalteringly on that sublime journey. In the next rik the image of the path is preserved, but another image is associated with it, the universal Vedic image of the sacrifice. We get here our first clear & compelling indication of the truth which is the very foundation of our hypothesis that the Vedic sacrifice is only a material symbol of a great psychological or spiritual process. The divine children of Infinity lead1 the sacrifice on the straight path to the goal of the ritam; under their guidance it progresses to their goal & reaches the Gods in their home, pravah sa dhtaye nashat.What is sacrifice which is itself a traveller, which has a motion in a straight path, a goal in the highest seat of Truth, parasmin dhmann ritasya? If it is not the activities of the human being in us offered as a sacrifice to the higher & divine being so that human activities may be led up to the divine nature & be established in the divine consciousness, then there is either no meaning in human language or no sense or coherence in the Veda. The Vedic sacrificer is devayu,devakmah,one who desires the god or the godhead, the divine nature; or devayan, one who is in the process of divinising his human life & being; the sacrifice itself is essentially devavtih & devattih, manifestation of the divine & the extension of the divine in man. We see also the force of dhtaye. The havya or offering of human faculty, human having, human action, reaches its goal when it is taken up in the divine thought, the divine consciousness & there enjoyed by the Gods.
In return for his offering the Gods give to the sacrificer the results of the divine nature. The mortal favoured by them moves forward unstumbling & unoverthrown, accha gacchati astrita,towards or to what? Ratnam vasu visvam tokam uta tman. This is his goal; but we have seen too that the goal is the ritam. Therefore the expressions ratnam vasu, visvam tokam tman must describe either the nature of the ritam or the results of successful reaching & habitation in the ritam. Toka means son, says the ritualist. I fail to see how the birth of a son can be the supreme result of a mans perfecting his nature & reaching the divine Truth; I fail to see also what is meant by a man marching unoverthrown beyond sin & falsehood towards pleasant wealth & a son. In a great number of passages in the Veda, the sense of son for toka or of either son or grandson for tanaya is wholly inadmissible except by doing gross violence to sense, context & coherence & convicting the Vedic Rishis of an advanced stage of incoherent dementia. Toka, from the root tuch, to cut, form, create (cf tach & twach, in takta, tashta, twashta, Gr. tikto, etekon, tokos, a child) may mean anything produced or created. We shall see, hereafter, that praj, apatyam, even putra are used in the Veda as symbolic expressions for action & its results as children of the soul. This is undoubtedly the sense here. There are two results of life in the ritam, in the vijnana, in the principle of divine consciousness & its basis of divine truth; first ratnam vasu, a state of being the nature of which is delight, for vijnana or ritam is the basis of divine ananda; secondly, visvam tokam uta tman,this state of Ananda is not the actionless Brahmananda of the Sannyasin, but the free creative joy of the Divine Nature, universal creative action by the force of the self. The action of the liberated humanity is not to be like that of the mortal bound, struggling & stumbling through ignorance & sin towards purity & light, originating & bound by his action, but the activity spontaneously starting out of self-existence & creating its results without evil reactions or bondage.
To complete our idea of the hymn & its significance, I shall give my rendering of its last three slokas,the justification of that rendering or comment on it would lead me far from the confines of my present subject. How, O friends, cries Kanwa to his fellow-worshippers, may we perfect (or enrich) the establishment in ourselves (by the mantra of praise) of Mitra & Aryaman or how the wide form of Varuna? May I not resist with speech him of you who smites & rebukes me while he yet leads me to the godhead; through the things of peace alone may I establish you in all my being. Let a man fear the god even when he is giving him all the four states of being (Mahas, Swar, Bhuvah, Bhuh), until the perfect settling in the Truth: let him not yearn towards evil expression. In other words, perfect adoration & submission to the Gods who are leading us in the path, those who are yajnanh, leaders of the sacrifice, is the condition of the full wideness of Varunas being in us & the full indwelling ofMitra & Aryaman in the principles of the Ananda & the Ritam.
In this simple, noble & striking hymn we arrive at a number of certainties about the ideas of the Vedic Rishis & usual images of their poetry which are of the last importance to our inquiry. First we see that the ascension or the journey of the human soul to a state of divine Truth is among the chief objects of the prayers & sacrifices of the Veda. Secondly, we see that this Truth is not merely the simple primitive conception of truth-speaking, but a condition of consciousness consisting in delight & resulting in a perfect spontaneous & free activity in which there is no falsehood or error; it is a state of divine nature, the Vedantic amritam. Thirdly, we see that this activity of self-perfection, the sadhana of modern Yoga, is represented in the Veda under the image of a journey or of a battle or both in one image. It is a struggle to advance beset by pitfalls & difficult passages, assailed & beset by hostile spiritual forces, the enemies, hurters or destroyers. Whenever therefore we have the image of a battle or a journey, we have henceforth the right to enquire whether it is not in every case the symbol of this great spiritual & psychological process. Fourthly we see that the Vedic sacrifice is in some hymns & may be in all a symbol of the same purport. It is an activity offered to the Gods, led by them in this path, directed towards the attainment of the divine Truth-Consciousness & Truth-Life &, presumably, assailed by the same spiritual enemies. Fifthly, we find that words like vasu & tokam, representing the result of the sacrifice, & usually understood as material wealth & children, are used here, must presumably be used in passages & may, possibly, be used in all in a symbolic sense to express by a concrete figure psychological conceptions like Christs treasure laid up in heaven or the common image of the children of ones brain or of ones works. We have in fact, provided always our conclusions are confirmed by the evidence of other hymns, the decisive clue to the Secret of the Veda.
Sri Aurobindo wrote the following note at the top of a later page of the manuscript.It would seem to have been intended for insertion here: (nayath nara dity I shall take up the discussion of the proper sense of nara in another context, to avoid useless repetition I omit it here).
1.05 - Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the Gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.
Mourning untimely consumes the sad;
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
dictates of the Gods). Individual persons therefore unconsciously embody mythological themes. Such
embodiment becomes particularly evident in the case of great individuals, where the play of divine forces
--
illumination, enlightenment, momentary transfiguration into eternal representative of the Gods. Moses
transforms what had previously been custom, embedded in behavior, represented in myth, into an explicit
--
der Juden, Vol. II, Die Erzvater, XI) interprets as meaning that Abraham is to destory the Gods of his
father. The message of Jesus is only an extension of the same conflict, and it repeats itself in every
--
something more complex something that essentially recapitulated the union of the Gods (something
very like an initiation process; something very like Solzhenitsyns spiritual transformation in the Gulag).
--
This is precisely equivalent to an internal return to a state of polytheism, where the Gods who rule
humanity war without subjection to a higher-order power. The alchemists described this stage of their
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
inconvenience to which the Gods are thus subjected will induce them
to grant the wishes of their worshippers.
--
Sometimes an appeal is made to the pity of the Gods. When their corn
is being burnt up by the sun, the Zulus look out for a "heaven
--
and the Gods take pity and send rain. However, the foregoing
ceremonies are religious rather than magical, since they involve an
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is necessary, if we are not to deceive ourselves, to note that even in this field what Germany has done is to systematise certain strong actual tendencies and principles of international action to the exclusion of all that either professed to resist or did actually modify them. If a sacred egoism and the expression did not come from Teutonic lipsis to govern international relations, then it is difficult to deny the force of the German position. The theory of inferior and decadent races was loudly proclaimed by other than German thinkers and has governed, with whatever assuaging scruples, the general practice of military domination and commercial exploitation of the weak by the strong; all that Germany has done is to attempt to give it a wider extension and more rigorous execution and apply it to European as well as to Asiatic and African peoples. Even the severity or brutality of her military methods or of her ways of colonial or internal political repression, taken at their worst, for much once stated against her has been proved and admitted to be deliberate lies manufactured by her enemies, was only a crystallising of certain recent tendencies towards the revival of ancient and mediaeval hardheartedness in the race. The use and even the justification of massacre and atrocious cruelty in war on the ground of military exigency and in the course of commercial exploitation or in the repression of revolt and disorder has been quite recently witnessed in the other continents, to say nothing of certain outskirts of Europe.9 From one point of view, it is well that terrible examples of the utmost logic of these things should be prominently forced on the attention of mankind; for by showing the evil stripped of all veils the choice between good and evil instead of a halting between the two will be forced on the human conscience. Woe to the race if it blinds its conscience and buttresses up its animal egoism with the old justifications; for the Gods have shown that Karma is not a jest.
But the whole root of the German error lies in its mistaking life and the body for the self. It has been said that this gospel is simply a reversion to the ancient barbarism of the religion of Odin; but this is not the truth. It is a new and a modern gospel born of the application of a metaphysical logic to the conclusions of materialistic Science, of a philosophic subjectivism to the objective pragmatic positivism of recent thought. Just as Germany applied the individualistic position to the realisation of her communal subjective existence, so she applied the materialistic and vitalistic thought of recent times and equipped it with a subjective philosophy. Thus she arrived at a bastard creed, an objective subjectivism which is miles apart from the true goal of a subjective age. To show the error it is necessary to see wherein lies the true individuality of man and of the nation. It lies not in its physical, economic, even its cultural life which are only means and adjuncts, but in something deeper whose roots are not in the ego, but in a Self one in difference which relates the good of each, on a footing of equality and not of strife and domination, to the good of the rest of the world.
1.05 - Vishnu as Brahma creates the world, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Now unfold to me, Brahman, how this deity created the Gods, sages, progenitors, demons, men, animals, trees, and the rest, that abide on earth, in heaven, or in the waters: how Brahmā at creation made the world with the qualities, the characteristics, and the forms of things[1].
Parāśara said:-
I will explain to you, Maitreya, listen attentively, how this deity, the lord of all, created the Gods and other beings.
Whilst he (Brahmā) formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was. meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning with ignorance, and consisting of darkness. From that great being appeared fivefold Ignorance, consisting of obscurity, illusion, extreme illusion, gloom, utter darkness[2]. The creation of the creator thus plunged in abstraction, was the fivefold (immovable) world, without intellect or reflection, void of perception or sensation, incapable of feeling, and destitute of motion[3]. Since immovable things were first created, this is called the first creation. Brahmā, beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested, to the products of which the term Tiryaksrotas is applied, from their nutriment following a winding course[4]. These were called beasts, &c., and their characteristic was the quality of darkness, they being destitute of knowledge, uncontrolled in their conduct, and mistaking error for wisdom; being formed of egotism and self-esteem, labouring under the twenty-eight kinds of imperfection[5], manifesting inward sensations, and associating with each other (according to their kinds).
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MAITREYA. Thou hast briefly related to me, Muni, the creation of the Gods and other beings: I am desirous, chief of sages, to hear from thee a more ample account of their creation.
Parāśara said:-
Created beings, although they are destroyed (in their individual forms) at the periods of dissolution, yet, being affected by the good or evil acts of former existence, they are never exempted from their consequences; and when Brahmā creates the world anew, they are the progeny of his will, in the fourfold condition of gods, men, animals, or inanimate things. Brahmā then, being desirous of creating the four orders of beings, termed gods, demons, progenitors, and men, collected his mind into itself[14]. Whilst thus concentrated, the quality of darkness pervaded his body; and thence the demons (the Asuras) were first born, issuing from his thigh. Brahmā then abandoned that form which was, composed of the rudiment of darkness, and which, being deserted by him, became night. Continuing to create, but assuming a different. shape, he experienced pleasure; and thence from his mouth proceeded the Gods, endowed with the quality of goodness. The form abandoned by him, became day, in which the good quality predominates; and hence by day the Gods are most powerful, and by night the demons. He next adopted another person, in which the rudiment of goodness also prevailed; and thinking of himself, as the father of the world, the progenitors (the Pitris) were born from his side. The body, when he abandoned, it, became the Sandhyā (or evening twilight), the interval between day and night. Brahmā then assumed another person, pervaded by the quality of foulness; and from this, men, in whom foulness (or passion) predominates, were produced. Quickly abandoning that body, it became morning twilight, or the dawn. At the appearance of this light of day, men feel most vigour; while the progenitors are most powerful in the evening season. In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnā (dawn), Rātri (night), Ahar (day), and Sandhyā (evening), are the four bodies of Brahmā invested by the three qualities[15].
Next from Brahmā, in a form composed of the quality of foulness, was produced hunger, of whom anger was born: and the god put forth in darkness beings emaciate with hunger, of hideous aspects, and with long beards. Those beings hastened to the deity. Such of them as exclaimed, Oh preserve us! were thence called Rākṣasas[16]: others, who cried out, Let us eat, were denominated from that expression Yakṣas[17]. Beholding them so disgusting, the hairs of Brahmā were shrivelled up, and first falling from his head, were again renewed upon it: from their falling they became serpents, called Sarpa from their creeping, and Ahi because they had deserted the head[18]. The creator of the world, being incensed, then created fierce beings, who were denominated goblins, Bhūtas, malignant fiends and eaters of flesh. The Gandharvas were next born, imbibing melody: drinking of the goddess of speech, they were born, and thence their appellation[19]. The divine Brahmā, influenced by their material energies, having created these beings, made others of his own will. Birds he formed from his vital vigour; sheep from his breast; goats from his mouth; kine from his belly and sides; and horses, elephants, Sarabhas, Gayals, deer, camels, mules, antelopes, and other animals, from his feet: whilst from the hairs of his body sprang herbs, roots, and fruits.
--
In this manner all creatures, great or small, proceeded from his limbs. The great progenitor of the world having formed the Gods, demons, and Pitris, created, in the commencement of the Kalpa, the Yakṣas, Pisācas (goblins), Gandharvas and the troops of Apsarasas the nymphs of heaven, Naras (centaurs, or beings with the limbs of horses and human bodies) and Kinnaras (beings with the heads of horses), Rākṣasas, birds, beasts, deer, serpents, and all things permanent or transitory, movable or immovable. This did the divine Brahmā, the first creator and lord of all: and these things being created, discharged the same functions as they had fulfilled in a previous creation, whether malignant or benign, gentle or cruel, good or evil, true or false; and accordingly as they are actuated by such propensities will be their conduct.
And the creator displayed infinite variety in the objects of sense, in the properties of living things, and in the forms of bodies: he determined in the beginning, by the authority of the Vedas, the names and forms and functions of all creatures, and of the Gods; and the names and appropriate offices of the Ṛṣis, as they also are read in the Vedas. In like manner as the products of the seasons designate in periodical revolution the return of the same season, so do the same circumstances indicate the recurrence of the same Yuga, or age; and thus, in the beginning of each Kalpa, does Brahmā repeatedly create the world, possessing the power that is derived from the will to create, and assisted by the natural and essential faculty of the object to be created.
Footnotes and references:
--
ga, and Vāyu with more detail. The Bhāgavata, as usual, amplifies still more copiously, and mixes up much absurdity with the account. Thus the person of Sandhyā, 'evening twilight,' is thus described: "She appeared with eyes rolling with passion, whilst her lotus-like feet sounded with tinkling ornaments: a muslin vest depended from her waist, secured by a golden zone: her breasts were protuberant, and close together; her nose was elegant; her tongue beautiful; her face was bright with smiles, and she modestly concealed it with the skirts of her robe; whilst the dark curls clustered round her brow." The Asuras address her, and win her to become their bride. To the four forms of our text, the same work adds, Tandrī, 'sloth;' Jrimbhikā, 'yawning;' Nidrā, 'sleep;' Unmāda, 'insanity;' Antarddhāna, 'disappearance;' Pratibimba, 'reflexion;' which become the property of Pisācas, Kinnaras, Bhūtas, Gandherbas, Vidyādharas, Sādhyas, Pitris, and Menus. The notions of night, day, twilight, and moonlight being derived from Brahmā, seem to have originated with the Vedas. Thus the commentator on the Bhāgavata p. 41 observes, 'That which was his body, and was left, was darkness: this is the Śruti.' All the authorities place night before day, and the Asuras or Titans before the Gods, in the order of appearance; as did Hesiod and other ancient theogonists.
[16]: From Rakṣa, 'to preserve'
1.06 - Agni and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Dyaus, or Heaven, with its three shining realms, Rochana, I should have to examine similarly the hymns addressed to Indra and the passages in which there is a clear mention of the Vedic system of worlds. Nor could this be sufficient, so intertwined and interdependent are the notions of the Veda, without some scrutiny of the other Gods and of other important psychological terms connected with the idea of the Truth and of the mental illumination through which man arrives at it. I recognise the necessity of such a work of justification and hope to follow it out in other studies on the Vedic Truth, on the Gods of the
Veda and on Vedic symbols. But a labour of this scope would be beyond the range of the present work, which is confined merely to an illustration of my method and to a brief statement of the results of my theory.
--
In this passage we have a series of terms plainly bearing or obviously capable of a psychological sense and giving their colour to the whole context. Sayana, however, insists on a purely ritual interpretation and it is interesting to see how he arrives at it. In the first phrase we have the word kavi meaning a seer and, even if we take kratu to mean work of the sacrifice, we shall have as a result, "Agni, the priest whose work or rite is that of the seer", a turn which at once gives a symbolic character to the sacrifice and is in itself sufficient to serve as the seed of a deeper understanding of the Veda. Sayana feels that he has to turn the difficulty at any cost and therefore he gets rid of the sense of seer for kavi and gives it another and unusual significance. He then explains that Agni is satya, true, because he brings about the true fruit of the sacrifice. Sravas Sayana renders "fame", Agni has an exceedingly various renown. It would have been surely better to take the word in the sense of wealth so as to avoid the incoherency of this last rendering. We shall then have this result for the fifth verse, "Agni the priest, active in the ritual, who is true (in its fruit) - for his is the most varied wealth, - let him come, a god with the Gods."
The Secret of the Veda
--
"May Agni, priest of the offering whose will towards action is that of the seer, who is true, most rich in varied inspiration, come, a god with the Gods.
The Secret of the Veda
--
- it knows all manifestations or phenomena or it possesses all forms and activities of the divine wisdom. Moreover it is repeatedly said that the Gods have established Agni as the immortal in mortals, the divine power in man, the energy of fulfilment through which they do their work in him. It is this work which is symbolised by the sacrifice.
Psychologically, then, we may take Agni to be the divine will perfectly inspired by divine Wisdom, and indeed one with it,
--
"Let him come, a god with the Gods." The emphasis given to the idea of divinity by this repetition, devo devebhir, becomes intelligible when we recall the standing description of Agni as the god in human beings, the immortal in mortals, the divine guest. We may give the full psychological sense by translating,
"Let him come, a divine power with the divine powers." For in the external sense of the Veda the Gods are universal powers of physical Nature personified; in any inner sense they must be universal powers of Nature in her subjective activities, Will,
Mind, etc. But in the Veda there is always a distinction between the ordinary human or mental action of these puissances, manus.vat, and the divine. It is supposed that man by the right use of their mental action in the inner sacrifice to the Gods can convert them into their true or divine nature, the mortal can
Agni and the Truth
--
The state of immortality thus attained is conceived as a state of felicity or bliss founded on a perfect Truth and Right, satyam r.tam. We must, I think, understand in this sense the verse that follows. "The good (happiness) which thou wilt create for the giver, that is that truth of thee, O Agni." In other words, the essence of this truth, which is the nature of Agni, is the freedom from evil, the state of perfect good and happiness which the Ritam carries in itself and which is sure to be created in the mortal when he offers the sacrifice by the action of Agni as the divine priest. Bhadram means anything good, auspicious, happy and by itself need not carry any deep significance. But we find it in the Veda used, like r.tam, in a special sense. It is described in one of the hymns (V.82) as the opposite of the evil dream (duh.s.vapnyam), the false consciousness of that which is not the Ritam, and of duritam, false going, which means all evil and suffering. Bhadram is therefore equivalent to suvitam, right going, which means all good and felicity belonging to the state of the Truth, the Ritam. It is Mayas, the felicity, and the Gods who represent the Truthconsciousness are described as mayobhuvah., those who bring or carry in their being the felicity. Thus every part of the Veda, if properly understood, throws light upon every other part. It is only when we are misled by its veils that we find in it an incoherence.
In the next verse there seems to be stated the condition of the effective sacrifice. It is the continual resort day by day, in the night and in the light, of the thought in the human being with submission, adoration, self-surrender, to the divine Will and Wisdom represented by Agni. Night and Day, Naktos.asa, are also symbolical, like all the other gods in the Veda, and the sense seems to be that in all states of consciousness, whether
--
"Sacrifice for us to Mitra and Varuna, sacrifice to the Gods, to the Truth, the Vast; O Agni, sacrifice to thy own home."
Here r.tam br.hat and svam damam seem to express the goal of the sacrifice and this is perfectly in consonance with the imagery of the Veda which frequently describes the sacrifice as travelling towards the Gods and man himself as a traveller moving towards the truth, the light or the felicity. It is evident, therefore, that the Truth, the Vast and Agni's own home are identical. Agni and other gods are frequently spoken of as being born in the truth, dwelling in the wide or vast. The sense, then, will be in our passage that Agni the divine will and power in man increases in the truth-consciousness, its proper sphere, where false limitations are broken down, urav anibadhe, in the wide and the limitless.
Thus in these four verses of the opening hymn of the Veda we get the first indications of the principal ideas of the Vedic
Rishis, - the conception of a Truth-consciousness supramental and divine, the invocation of the Gods as powers of the Truth to raise man out of the falsehoods of the mortal mind, the attainment in and by this Truth of an immortal state of perfect good and felicity and the inner sacrifice and offering of what
Agni and the Truth
1.06 - BOOK THE SIXTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Who claim'd the titles of the Gods above,
And vainly us'd the epithets of Jove.
--
Vainly above the Gods assum'd a state.
Her husband's fame, their family's descent,
--
That e'er the Gods admitted to their feast.
A sister of the Pleiads gave me birth;
--
Only, o Tereus, to the Gods, and you.
Now, ply'd with oar, and sail at his command,
--
And by the Gods adjure you to be just;
By truth, and ev'ry consanguineal tye,
--
But, if the Gods above have pow'r to know,
And judge those actions that are done below;
1.06 - Hymns of Parashara, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2. the Gods follow after him the law of the workings of Truth.
He stands encompassing all as heaven the earth. The Waters
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he upholds7 the Gods in his strength. Here men who hold in
themselves the Thought come to know him when they have
--
become the father of the Gods, thou who art the Son.
DA adPo aE`nEvjAn3$Dn gonA\ -vAwA Ept$nAm^ .
--
abode with the Gods,14 the Flame attains all godheads.
nEk etA v}tA EmnEt n--
work that yoked with the Gods, thy equals, thou hast smitten,16 that thou hast scattered the powers of evil.
uqo n jAro EvBAvo*, s\.At!pE
--
these worlds, and the birth of the Gods, and mortal men.
vDAy\ p$vF, "po Ev!pA, -TAt;
--
towards the Gods making the Birth to grow by delight.
mTFd^ ydF\ EvBto mAtEr
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19 Or, gain for us knowledge in the Gods.
20 Or, a host. It may mean the army of the life-gods, marutam sardhah.
--
our part in the Gods for inspired knowledge.
-t-y Eh D
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the inspired knowledge enjoyed by the Gods.32
32 Or, distributed by the Gods.
1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
to attain the same end indirectly by appealing to the Gods to do for
him what he no longer fancies he can do for himself. Hence the king,
1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:The universe comes to the individual as Life, - a dynamism the entire secret of which he has to master and a mass of colliding results, a whirl of potential energies out of which he has to disengage some supreme order and some yet unrealised harmony. This is after all the real sense of man's progress. It is not merely a restatement in slightly different terms of what physical Nature has already accomplished. Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Otherwise, any system or order which assured a tolerable well-being and a moderate mental satisfaction would have stayed our advance. The animal is satisfied with a modicum of necessity; the Gods are content with their splendours. But man cannot rest permanently until he reaches some highest good. He is the greatest of living beings because he is the most discontented, because he feels most the pressure of limitations. He alone, perhaps, is capable of being seized by the divine frenzy for a remote ideal.
11:To the Life-Spirit, therefore, the individual in whom its potentialities centre is pre-eminently Man, the Purusha. It is the Son of Man who is supremely capable of incarnating God. This Man is the Manu, the thinker, the Manomaya Purusha, mental person or soul in mind of the ancient sages. No mere superior mammal is he, but a conceptive soul basing itself on the animal body in Matter. He is conscious Name or Numen accepting and utilising form as a medium through which Person can deal with substance. The animal life emerging out of Matter is only the inferior term of his existence. The life of thought, feeling, will, conscious impulsion, that which we name in its totality Mind, that which strives to seize upon Matter and its vital energies and subject them to the law of its own progressive transformation, is the middle term in which he takes his effectual station. But there is equally a supreme term which Mind in man searches after so that having found he may affirm it in his mental and bodily existence. This practical affirmation of something essentially superior to his present self is the basis of the divine life in the human being.
1.06 - Origin of the four castes, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Formerly, oh best of Brahmans, when the truth-meditating Brahmā was desirous of creating the world, there sprang from his mouth beings especially endowed with the quality of goodness; others from his breast, pervaded by the quality of foulness; others from his thighs, in whom foulness and darkness prevailed; and others from his feet, in whom the quality of darkness predominated. These were, in succession, beings of the several castes, Brahmans, Kṣetriyas, Vaisyas, and Śūdras, produced from the mouth, the breast, the thighs, and the feet of Brahmā[2]. These he created for the performance of sacrifices, the four castes being the fit instruments of their celebration. By sacrifices, oh thou who knowest the truth, the Gods are nourished; and by the rain which they bestow, mankind are supported[3]: and thus sacrifices, the source of happiness, are performed by pious men, attached to their duties, attentive to prescribed obligations, and walking in the paths of virtue. Men acquire (by them) heavenly fruition, or final felicity: they go, after death, to whatever sphere they aspire to, as the consequence of their human nature. The beings who were created by Brahmā, of these four castes, were at first endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts were free from guile; they were pure, made free from soil, by observance of sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they were filled with perfect wisdom, by which they contemplated the glory of Viṣṇu[4]. After a while (after the Tretā age had continued for some period), that portion of Hari which has been described as one with Kāla (time) infused into created beings sin, as yet feeble though formidable, or passion and the like: the impediment of soul's liberation, the seed of iniquity, sprung from darkness and desire. The innate perfectness of human nature was then no more evolved: the eight kinds of perfection, Rasollāsā and the rest, were impaired[5]; and these being enfeebled, and sin gaining strength, mortals were afflicted with pain, arising from susceptibility to contrasts, as heat and cold, and the like. They therefore constructed places of refuge, protected by trees, by mountains, or by water; surrounded them by a ditch or a wall, and formed villages and cities; and in them erected appropriate dwellings, as defences against the sun and the cold[6]. Having thus provided security against the weather, men next began to employ themselves in manual labour, as a means of livelihood, (and cultivated) the seventeen kinds of useful grain-rice, barley, wheat, millet, sesamum, panic, and various sorts of lentils, beans, and pease[7]. These are the kinds cultivated for domestic use: but there are fourteen kinds which may be offered in sacrifice; they are, rice, barley, Māṣa, wheat, millet, and sesamum; Priya
gu is the seventh, and kulattha, pulse, the eighth: the others are, Syāmāka, a sort of panic; Nīvāra, uñcultivated rice; Jarttila, wild sesamum; Gavedukā (coix); Markata, wild panic; and (a plant called) the seed or barley of the Bambu (Venu-yava). These, cultivated or wild, are the fourteen grains that were produced for purposes of offering in sacrifice; and sacrifice (the cause of rain) is their origin also: they again, with sacrifice, are the great cause of the perpetuation of the human race, as those understand who can discriminate cause and effect. Thence sacrifices were offered daily; the performance of which, oh best of Munis, is of essential service to mankind, and expiates the offences of those by whom they are observed. Those, however, in whose hearts the dross of sin derived from Time (Kāla) was still more developed, assented not to sacrifices, but reviled both them and all that resulted from them, the Gods, and the followers of the Vedas. Those abusers of the Vedas, of evil disposition and conduct, and seceders from the path of enjoined duties, were plunged in wickedness[8]. The means of subsistence having been provided for the beings he had created, Brahmā prescribed laws suited to their station and faculties, the duties of the several castes and orders[9], and the regions of those of the different castes who were observant of their duties. The heaven of the Pitris is the region of devout Brahmans. The sphere of Indra, of Kṣetriyas who fly not from the field. The region of the winds is assigned to the Vaisyas who are diligent in their occupations and submissive. Śūdras are elevated to the sphere of the Gandharvas. Those Brahmans who lead religious lives go to the world of the eighty-eight thousand saints: and that of the seven Ṛṣis is the seat of pious anchorets and hermits. The world of ancestors is that of respectable householders: and the region of Brahmā is the asylum of religious mendicants[10]. The imperishable region of the Yogis is the highest seat of Viṣṇu, where they perpetually meditate upon the supreme being, with minds intent on him alone: the sphere where they reside, the Gods themselves cannot behold. The sun, the moon, the planets, shall repeatedly be, and cease to be; but those who internally repeat the mystic adoration of the divinity, shall never know decay. For those who neglect their duties, who revile the Vedas, and obstruct religious rites, the places assigned after death are the terrific regions of darkness, of deep gloom, of fear, and of great terror; the fearful hell of sharp swords, the hell of scourges and of a waveless sea[11].
Footnotes and references:
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is possible, as in a certain high exaggeration of the path of knowledge, to cut here also the knot of the problem, escape the difficulty of uniting the spirit of love with the crudities of the world-action by avoiding it; it is open to us, withdrawing from outward life and action altogether, to live alone with our adoration of the Divine in the heart's silence. It is possible too to admit only those acts that are either in themselves an expression of love for the Divine, prayer, praise, symbolic acts of worship or subordinate activities that may be attached to these things and partake of their spirit, and to leave aside all else; the soul turns away to satisfy its inner longing in the absorbed or the God-centred life of the saint and devotee. It is possible, again, to open the doors of life more largely and to spend one's love of the Divine in acts of service to those around us and to the race; one can do the works of philanthropy, benevolence and beneficence, charity and succour to man and beast and every creature, transfigure them by a kind of spiritual passion, at least bring into their merely ethical appearance the greater power of a spiritual motive. This is indeed the solution most commonly favoured by the religious mind of today and we see it confidently advanced on all sides as the proper field of action of the Godseeker or of the man whose life is founded on divine love and knowledge. But the integral Yoga pushed towards a complete union of the Divine with the earth-life cannot stop short in this narrow province or limit this union within the lesser dimensions of an ethical rule of philanthropy and beneficence. All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of knowledge, our acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and beauty and the soul's pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a sacrifice of the works of the soul's love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence.
It is possible so to turn life into an act of adoration to the Supreme by the spirit in one's works; for, says the Gita, "He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water, I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion"; and it is not only any dedicated external gift that can be so offered with love and devotion, but all our thoughts, all our feelings and sensations, all our outward activities and their forms and objects can be such gifts to the Eternal. It is true that the special act or form of action has its importance, even a great importance, but it is the spirit in the act that is the essential factor; the spirit of which it is the symbol or materialised expression gives it its whole value and justifying significance. Or it may be said that a complete act of divine love and worship has in it three parts that are the expressions of a single whole, - a practical worship of the Divine in the act, a symbol of worship in the form of the act expressing some vision and seeking or some relation with the Divine, an inner adoration and longing for oneness or feeling of oneness in the heart and soul and spirit. It is so that life can be changed into worship, - by putting behind it the spirit of a transcendent and universal love, the seeking of oneness, the sense of oneness; by making each act a symbol, an expression of Godward emotion or a relation with the Divine; by turning all we do into an act of worship, an act of the soul's communion, the mind's understanding, the life's obedience, the heart's surrender.
1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:The one original transcendent Shakti, the Mother stands above all the worlds and bears in her eternal consciousness the Supreme Divine. Alone, she harbours the absolute Power and the ineffable Presence; containing or calling the Truths that have to be manifested, she brings them down from the Mystery in which they were hidden into the light of her infinite consciousness and gives them a form of force in her omnipotent power and her boundless life and a body in the universe. The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchidananda, manifested through her in the worlds as the one and dual consciousness of Ishwara-Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme; all is her manifestation of the mysteries of the Eternal, the miracles of the Infinite. All is she, for all are parcel and portion of the divine Conscious-Force. Nothing can be here or elsewhere but what she decides and the Supreme sanctions; nothing can take shape except what she moved by the Supreme perceives and forms after casting it into seed in her creating Ananda.
4:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda. But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
5:The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put out in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds to intervene, to govern, to battle and conquer, to lead and turn their cycles, to direct the total and the individual lines of their forces. These Emanations are the many divine forms and personalities in which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhutis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhutis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence. All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor.
6:The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Naturebody and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother
1.06 - The Literal Qabalah, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The Hebrew words d'rtb.s nn Ruach Elohim may be translated " The Spirit of the Gods ", By Gematria, its numerical value is ascertained to be 300. The numerical value of the letter Shin was also said to be 300, and we see, therefore, that they are identical.
There is another method of applying the processes of
--
Shechinah from the Gods on high.
Another way is to take the last letters, viz. : nrr Heh, meaning a " window ", showing that the Qabalah is that window through which one may envisage the true meaning of existence.
--
Star doth radiate - his " light shining before him " ; and above his head burns the thousand and one petalled lotus of the Sahasrara Chakra upon which the Shechinah has descended, and wherein Adonai doth disport himself with the Gods.
The method of letter analysis, previously described, helps to clarify the general conception. 2 B is 9 Mercury, the Magician bearing in his hand the Wand representing his
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Mr. Viswas had been sitting in the room a long time; he now left. He had once been wealthy but had squandered everything in an immoral life. Finally he had become indifferent to his wife and children. Referring to Mr. Viswas, the Master said: "He is an unfortunate wretch. A householder has his duties to discharge, his debts to pay: his debt to the Gods, his debt to his ancestors, his debt to the rishis, and his debt to wife and children. If a wife is chaste, then her husb and should support her; he should also bring up their children until they are of age. Only a monk must not save; the bird and the monk do not provide for the morrow. But even a bird provides when it has young.
It brings food in its bill for its chicks."
1.06 - Yun Men's Every Day is a Good Day, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
cliffside cave, the Gods showered down flowers to praise him.
The venerable Subhuti said, "Flowers are showering down
--
Indra, king of the Gods." Venerable Subhuti asked, "Why are
THE BLUE CLIFF RECORD
1.07 - BOOK THE SEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
By all the Gods; what therefore can'st thou fear?
Medea haste, from danger set him free,
--
And when y' ave drawn them off, the Gods be prais'd,
Fresh legions can within our isle be rais'd:
--
The temples of the Gods his force obey,
And suppliants feel his stroke, while yet they pray.
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
timacies / Her spirit kept the stature of the Gods.
13 See Georges Van Vrekhem: The Mother The Story of Her Life, chap-
1.07 - Hymn of Paruchchhepa, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1 Or, high-uplifted lustre seeking for the Gods
2 Or, the priest of the call for men who see,
--
Immortals and make our offerings their food - in the Gods
they become their food.
--
most forceful for the forming of the Gods, as if a wealth for
the forming of the Gods; most forceful is thy rapture, most
luminous thy will. So they serve thee, O Ageless Fire, who
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
is, by magic, and looks more and more to the Gods as the sole
repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to
--
impious, on the domain of the Gods, and as such encounters the
steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and influence
--
his fellows. And as the Gods are commonly believed to exhibit
themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers, it is easy
--
"Of all the Gods the greatest and the dearest
To the city are come.
--
solicitude for the welfare of its subjects, forbids the Gods on the
register to be reborn anywhere but in Tibet. They fear lest the
--
cast that of the Gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a
high official declared that he had built many holy places in order
--
invoked "more than all the Gods." "It has never been doubted that
the king claimed actual divinity; he was the 'great god,' the'golden
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The next passage to which I shall turn is the eighth verse of the eighth hymn, also to Indra, in which occurs the expression , a passage which when taken in the plain and ordinary sense of the epithets sheds a great light on the nature of Mahi. Sunrita means really true and is opposed to anrita, false for in the early Aryan speech su and s would equally signify, well, good, very; and the euphonic n is of a very ancient type of sandhioriginally, it was probably no more than a strong anuswartraces of which can still be found in Tamil; in the case of su this n euphonic seems to have been dropped after the movement of the literary Aryan tongue towards the modern principle of Sandhi,a movement the imperfect progress of which we see in the Vedas; but by that time the form an, composed of privative a and the euphonic n, had become a recognised alternative form to a and the omission of the n would have left the meaning of words very ambiguous; therefore n was preserved in the negative form, omitted from the affirmative where its omission caused no inconvenience,for to write gni instead of anagni would be confusing, but to write svagni instead of sunagni would create no confusion. In the pair sunrita and anrita it is probable that the usage had become so confirmed, so much of an almost technical phraseology, that confirmed habit prevailed over new rule. The second meaning of the word is auspicious, derived from the idea good or beneficent in its regular action. The Vedic scholars give a third sense, quick, active; but this is probably due to confusion with an originally distinct word derived from the root , to move on rapidly, to be strong, swift, active from which we have to dance, & strong and a number of other derivatives, for although ri means to go, it does not appear that rita was used in the sense of motion or swiftness. In any case our choice (apart from unnecessary ingenuities) lies here between auspicious and true. If we take Mahi in the sense of earth, the first is its simplest & most natural significance.We shall have then to translate the earth auspicious (or might it mean true in the sense observing the law of the seasons), wide-watered, full of cows becomes like a ripe branch to the giver. This gives a clear connected sense, although gross and pedestrian and open to the objection that it has no natural and inevitable connection with the preceding verses. My objection is that sunrita and gomati seem to me to have in the Veda a different and deeper sense and that the whole passage becomes not only ennobled in sense, but clearer & more connected in sense if we give them that deeper significance. Gomatir ushasah in Kutsas hymn to the Dawn is certainly the luminous dawns; Saraswati in the third hymn who as chodayitri sunritanam chetanti sumatinam shines pervading all the actions of the understanding, certainly does so because she is the impeller to high truths, the awakener to right thoughts, clear perceptions and not because she is the impeller of things auspiciousa phrase which would have no sense or appropriateness to the context. Mahi is one of the three goddesses Ila, Saraswati and Mahi who are described as tisro devir mayobhuvah, the three goddesses born of delight or Ananda, and her companions being goddesses of knowledge, children of Mahas, she also must be a goddess of knowledge, not the earth; the word mahi also bears the sense of knowledge, intellect, and Mahas undoubtedly refers in many passages to the vijnana or supra-rational level of consciousness, the fourth Vyahriti of the Taittiriya Upanishad. What then prevents us from taking Mahi, here as there, in the sense of the goddess of suprarational knowledge or, if taken objectively, the world of Mahat? Nothing, except a tradition born in classical times when mahi was the earth and the new Nature-worship theory. In this sense I shall take it. I translate the line For thus Mahi the true, manifest in action, luminous becomes like a ripe branch to the giveror, again in better English, For thus Mahi the perfect in truth, manifesting herself in action, full of illumination, becomes as a ripe branch to the giver. For the Yogin again the sense is clear. All things are contained in the Mahat, derived from the Mahat, depend on theMahat, but we here in the movement of the alpam, have not our desire, are blinded & confined, enjoy an imperfect, erroneous & usually baffled & futile activity. It is only when we regain the movement of the Mahat, the large & uncontracted consciousness that comes from rising to the infinite,it is only then that we escape from this limitation. She is perfect in truth, full of illumination; error and ignorance disappear; she manifests herself virapshi in a wide & various activity; our activities are enlarged, our desires are fulfilled. The connection with the preceding stanzas becomes clear. The Vritras, the great obstructors & upholders of limitation, are slain by the help of Indra, by the result of the yajnartham karma, by alliance with the armed gods in mighty internal battle; Indra, the god within our mental force, manifests himself as supreme and full of the nature of ideal truth from which his greatness weaponed with the vajra, vidyut or electric principle, derives (mahitwam astu vajrine). The mind, instinct with amrita, is then full of equality, samata; it drinks in the flood of activity of all kinds as the sea takes in the rivers. For the condition then results in which the ideal consciousness Mahi is like a ripe branch to the giver, when all powers & expansions of being at once (without obstacle as the Vritras are slain) become active in consciousness as masterful and effective knowledge or awareness (chit). This is the process prayed for by the poet. The whole hymn becomes a consecutive & intelligible whole, a single thought worked out logically & coherently and relating with perfect accuracy of ensemble & detail to one of the commonest experiences of Yogic fulfilment. In both these passages the faithful adherence to the intimations of language, Vedantic idea & Yogic experience have shed a flood of light, illuminating the obscurity of the Vedas, bringing coherence into the incoherence of the naturalistic explanation, close & strict logic, great depth of meaning with great simplicity of expression, and, as I shall show when I take up the final interpretation of the separate hymns, a rational meaning & reason of existence in that particular place for each word & phrase and a faultless & inevitable connection with what goes before & with what goes after. It is worth noticing that by the naturalistic interpretation one can indeed generally make out a meaning, often a clear or fluent sense for the separate verses of the Veda, but the ensemble of the hymn has almost always about it an air bizarre, artificial, incoherent, almost purposeless, frequently illogical and self-contradictoryas in Max Mullers translation of the 39th hymn, Kanwas to the Maruts,never straightforward, self-assured & easy. One would expect in these primitive writers,if they are primitive,crudeness of belief perhaps, but still plainness of expression and a simple development of thought. One finds instead everything tortuous, rugged, gnarled, obscure, great emptiness with great pretentiousness of mind, a labour of diction & development which seems to be striving towards great things & effecting a nullity. The Vedic singers, in the modern version, have nothing to say and do not know how to say it. I sacrifice, you drink, you are fine fellows, dont hurt me or let others hurt me, hurt my enemies, make me safe & comfortablethis is practically all that the ten Mandalas have to say to the Gods & it is astonishing that they should be utterly at a loss how to say it intelligibly. A system which yields such results must have at its root some radical falsity, some cardinal error.
I pass now to a third passage, also instructive, also full of that depth and fine knowledge of the movements of the higher consciousness which every Yogin must find in the Veda. It is in the 9th hymn of the Mandala and forms the seventh verse of that hymn. Sam gomad Indra vajavad asme prithu sravo brihat, visvayur dhehi akshitam. The only crucial question in this verse is the signification of sravas.With our modern ideas the sentence seems to us to demand that sravas should be translated here fame. Sravas is undoubtedly the same word as the Greek xo (originally xFo); it means a thing heard, rumour, report, & thence fame. If we take it in that sense, we shall have to translate Arrange for us, O universal life, a luminous and solid, wide & great fame unimpaired. I dismiss at once the idea that go & vaja can here signify cattle and food or wealth. A herded & fooded or wealthy fame to express a fame for wealth of cattle & food is a forceful turn of expression we might expect to find in Aeschylus or in Shakespeare; but I should hesitate, except in case of clear necessity, to admit it in the Veda or in any Sanscrit style of composition; for such expressions have always been alien to the Indian intellect. Our stylistic vagaries have been of another kind. But is luminous & solid fame much better? I shall suggest another meaning for sravas which will give as usual a deeper sense to the whole passage without our needing to depart by a hairs breadth from the etymological significance of the words. Sruti in Sanscrit is a technical term, originally, for the means by which Vedic knowledge is acquired, inspiration in the suprarational mind; srutam is the knowledge of Veda. Similarly, we have in Vedic Sanscrit the forms srut and sravas. I take srut to mean inspired knowledge in the act of reception, sravas the thing acquired by the reception, inspired knowledge. Gomad immediately assumes its usual meaning illuminated, full of illumination. Vaja I take throughout the Veda as a technical Vedic expression for that substantiality of being-consciousness which is the basis of all special manifestation of being & power, all utayah & vibhutayahit means by etymology extended being in force, va or v to exist or move in extension and the vocable j which always gives the idea of force or brilliance or decisiveness in action or manifestation or contact. I shall accept no meaning which is inconsistent with this fundamental significance. Moreover the tendency of the old commentators to make all possible words, vaja, ritam etc mean sacrifice or food, must be rejected,although a justification in etymology might always be made out for the effort. Vaja means substance in being, substance, plenty, strength, solidity, steadfastness. Here it obviously means full of substance, just as gomad full of luminousness,not in the sense arthavat, but with another & psychological connotation. I translate then, O Indra, life of all, order for us an inspired knowledge full of illumination & substance, wide & great and unimpaired. Anyone acquainted with Yoga will at once be struck by the peculiar & exact appropriateness of all these epithets; they will admit him at once by sympathy into the very heart of Madhuchchhandas experience & unite him in soul with that ancient son of Visvamitra. When Mahas, the supra-rational principle, begins with some clearness to work in Yoga, not on its own level, not swe dame, but in the mind, it works at first through the principle of Srutinot Smriti or Drishti, but this Sruti is feeble & limited in its range, it is not prithu; broken & scattered in its working even when the range is wide, not unlimited in continuity, not brihat; not pouring in a flood of light, not gomat, but coming as a flash in the darkness, often with a pale glimmer like the first feebleness of dawn; not supported by a strong steady force & foundation of being, Sat, in manifestation, not vajavad, but working without foundation, in a void, like secondh and glimpses of Sat in nothingness, in vacuum, in Asat; and, therefore, easily impaired, easily lost hold of, easily stolen by the Panis or the Vritras. All these defects Madhuchchhanda has noticed in his own experience; his prayer is for an inspired knowledge which shall be full & free & perfect, not marred even in a small degree by these deficiencies.
--
There is only one other passage we have now left for examination but it is of considerable importance & interest. It is in the hymn ascribed to the son of Madhuchchhanda, though very probably it isMadhuchchhandas own, the eleventh hymn and the fifth verse. Twam Valasya gomato apavar adrivo bilam, Twam deva abibhyushas tujyamanasa avishuh. Thou, O dweller on the mountain, didst uncover the lair of Vala the luminous, Thee the Gods entered unfearing & protected. Indra, the dweller on the mountain of being, he who established in Swarga looks ever upward, has, to assist the strivings of man, uncovered the lair of Vala the luminous. Who is Vala the luminous? Does gomat mean the fellow who has the cows & is Vala a demon of cloud or darkness afflicted with the cow-stealing propensities, the Titanic bovi-kleptomania attributed by tradition to the Panis? He is, I suggest, one of the Titans who deny a higher ascent to man, a Titan who possesses but withholds & hides the luminous realms of ideal truth from man,interposing the hiranmayam patram of the Isha Upanishad, the golden cover or lid, by which the face of truth is concealed, satyasyapihitam mukham. Tat twam Pushan apavrinu, cries the Vedantic sage, using the same word apavri, but he calls to Surya, not to Indra, because he seeks the possession of the Vedanta, the sight of the rupam kalyanatamam which belongs to those who can meet Surya in his own home. The Vedic seer, at an earlier stage of the struggle, is satisfied with the minor conquests of Indra. He does not yet rise to those heights where Indra working in the mind is no longer a supreme helper, but may even be, as the Puranas tell us, an obstacle and an opponentbecause activity of mind even the highest, so long as it is not abandoned and overpassed, interferes with a yet higher attainment. It is only by rejecting Indra that we can dwell with Surya in his luminous halls, Tena tyaktena bhunjithah. Nevertheless the conquest over Bala is for humanity in its present stage a great conquest, and when & because it is accomplished the other gods can enter safely into the mental force & work in it, fearless because protected by Indras victorious might. For he is now Balabhid; he has pierced Bala & is no longer liable to that fear which overtook him when Vritra only had been overthrowna fear due to his perceiving the immensity of the task that still remained & the more formidable enemies beyond. We shall come again to Bala & the Titans & the meaning of these divine battles,viryani yani chakara prathamani vajri.
All the passages I have quoted proceed from the hymns of Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra, the opening eleven hymns of the Rigveda. This seer is one of the deepest & profoundest of the spirits chosen as vessels & channels of the divine knowledge of the Veda, one of those who least loses the thing symbolised in the material symbol, but who tends rather to let the symbol disappear in that which it symbolises. The comparison of the maker of beautiful images to the milch cow & Indra to the milker is an example of his constant tendency the word gavam is avoided with sudugham, so that the idea of milking or pressing forth may be suggested without insisting on the material image of the cow, & in goduhe, the symbol of the cow melts away into the thing symbolised, knowledge, light, illumination. A comparison with Medhatithi son of Kanwa brings out the difference. In Madhuchchhandas hymns the materialist rendering is often inapplicable & even when applicable yields a much poorer sense than the symbolic renderingbecause the seer is little concerned with the symbol except as the recognised means of suggesting things supramaterial. But Medhatithi is much concerned with the symbol & not indifferent to the outer life; in his hymns the materialist rendering gives us a good sense without excluding the symbolic, but often the symbolic has to be sought for & if we did not know the true Vedic tradition from Madhuchchhanda we could not gather it unaided from Medhatithi. The son of Viswamitra is deeply concerned with knowledge & with immortality & rapture as its attendant circumstances & conditions, the son of Kanwa, though not indifferent to knowledge, with the intoxication of the wine of immortality & its outpouring in mortal life & action. To use Vedic symbolism, one is a herder of kine, the other a herder of horses; Madhuchchhandas totem is the meditative cow, Medhatithis the rapid & bounding horse. There is a great calm, depth & nobility in the first eleven hymns, a great verve, joy, energy & vibrant force in the twelve that follow.
1.07 - Production of the mind-born sons of Brahma, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
From Brahmā, continuing to meditate, were born mind-engendered progeny, with forms and faculties derived from his corporeal nature; embodied spirits, produced from the person of that all-wise deity. All these beings, front the Gods to inanimate things, appeared as I have related to you[1], being the abode of the three qualities: but as they did not multiply themselves, Brahmā created other mind-born sons, like himself; namely, Bhrigu, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, A
giras, Marīci, Dakṣa, Atri, and Vaśiṣṭha: these are the nine Brahmas (or Brahma ṛṣis) celebrated in the Purāṇas[2]. Sanandana and the other sons of Brahmā were previously created by him, but they were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe, and undesirous of progeny. This when Brahmā perceived, he was filled with wrath capable of consuming the three worlds, the flame of which invested, like a garland, heaven, earth, and hell. Then from his forehead, darkened with angry frowns, sprang Rudra[3], radiant as the noon-tide sun, fierce, and of vast bulk, and of a figure which was half male, half female. Separate yourself, Brahmā said to him; and having so spoken, disappeared. Obedient to which command, Rudra became twofold, disjoining his male and female natures. His male being he again divided into eleven persons, of whom some were agreeable, some hideous, some fierce, some mild; and he multiplied his female nature manifold, of complexions black or white[4].
1.07 - Raja-Yoga in Brief, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
There was a great god-sage called Nrada. Just as there are sages among mankind, great Yogis, so there are great Yogis among the Gods. Narada was a good Yogi, and very great. He travelled everywhere. One day he was passing through a forest, and saw a man who had been meditating until the white ants had built a huge mound round his body so long had he been sitting in that position. He said to Narada, "Where are you going?" Narada replied, "I am going to heaven." "Then ask God when He will be merciful to me; when I shall attain freedom." Further on Narada saw another man. He was jumping about, singing, dancing, and said, "Oh, Narada, where are you going?" His voice and his gestures were wild. Narada said, "I am going to heaven." "Then, ask when I shall be free." Narada went on. In the course of time he came again by the same road, and there was the man who had been meditating with the ant-hill round him. He said, "Oh, Narada, did you ask the Lord about me?" "Oh, yes." "What did He say?" "The Lord told me that you would attain freedom in four more births." Then the man began to weep and wail, and said, "I have meditated until an ant-hill has grown around me, and I have four more births yet!" Narada went to the other man. "Did you ask my question?" "Oh, yes. Do you see this tamarind tree? I have to tell you that as many leaves as there are on that tree, so many times, you shall be born, and then you shall attain freedom." The man began to dance for joy, and said, "I shall have freedom after such a short time!" A voice came, "My child, you will have freedom this minute." That was the reward for his perseverance. He was ready to work through all those births, nothing discouraged him. But the first man felt that even four more births were too long. Only perseverance, like that of the man who was willing to wait aeons brings about the highest result.
1.07 - Savitri, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo made a good number of recasts before the final form was reached. The first form was begun and completed in Baroda. Other recasts were made in Pondicherry. One of the early ones is subtitled A Tale and a Vision. Later the subtitle was A Legend and a Symbol. It was after several recasts that the present opening line was struck upon: "It was the hour before the Gods awake."
The version before the very last one had practically the same scheme as the latter, but the Cantos were much shorter, and many themes which were treated at some length received briefer treatment. Particularly the Book now called The Traveller of the Worlds was greatly expanded. He began adding lines in considerable amount in 1938. Sri Aurobindo wrote in the 'Letters on Savitri' to Amal in 1931: "There is a previous draft, the result of many retouchings, of which somebody told you; but in that form it would not have been a magnum opus at all. Besides it would have been a legend, and not a symbol. I therefore started recasting the whole thing; only the best passages and lines of the old draft will remain, altered so as to fit into the new frame."
--
It was the hour before the Gods awake.
In the eighth version we have everything as in the seventh except that the spelling Aswapathy comes in. Book II is there entitled Love.
--
An error of the Gods has made the world.
Or indifferent the Eternal watches Time."
--
"...yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the Gods, of creation, of Nature....
"These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him; He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme....
1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Here the creative forces of the Gods seize upon the arche- typal ideas of things, expanding and vivifying and develop- ing the Tree on that particular plane. This is the mental plane proper, comparable in cosmical constitution to the conception of the Buach or the lower Manas of Theosophy in man. The lowest Sephirah in Atsilus thus becomes the
Keser in Briah, as the accompanying diagram shows, and the Malkus of Briah becomes the Keser of Yetsirah, and so on down the scale.
1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
46. Worship the Gods, the preceptor, the wise, sages, Yogis, Munis, saints and Sannyasins, learned Brahmins. Be straightforward. Be pure. Observe Brahmacharya. Practise Ahimsa. This is austerity of body.
47. Speak the truth. Speak that which generates love. Speak that which is beneficent. This is austerity of speech.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Forces with which he is vitally connected, and he realizes that the rhythm of the cosmos is something from which he cannot and must not escape, without bitterly impoverish- ing his existence. His aim is to unite himself to these spiritual potencies. The hierophant of old time - in the rituals- would say to the Neophyte 2 " There is no part of me that is not of the Gods ".
The early Christians endeavoured to kill this spirit, that of the old pagan celebration of spiritual ritual, and to some extent they succeeded. The Church frowned upon all things pagan or occult, and killed the worship of the planets and the zodiac, perhaps because astrology even then had become debased to mere fortune-telling. It was their intention to eliminate the astronomical festivals of the year, but only instituted others in their places. Then came the schism when division disrupted the former unity of the Church, and Protestantism dealt a death blow to this religious and
--
" Good the long hours of sun-drenched silence, wherein through the wide-flung doors of the spirit crept in the crystal light and the sea's low music, to dwell there long after the doors were shut again. Full length in the sand or diving under the water, Being was ecstasy. There was an intense consciousness of youth which one knows not in towns, lusty and happy youth which is made of the Sun's ardour and the sea's rhythm. . . . One's body there in the sand was a vessel to hold them all, a precious and God-given chalice tense with love and pity, that dared not move lest the magical wine be spilled and the spell be broken. ... I thought I had never been so happy, that I had drunk of the wine of the Gods rather than the common elements of earth, perceiving faintly that they might be one and the same.
... For hidden in them and yet revealed was that secret
1.08 - BOOK THE EIGHTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Wrath touches ev'n the Gods; the Queen of Night,
Fir'd with disdain, and jealous of her right,
--
Who laugh'd at all the Gods, believ'd in none:
He shook his impious head, and thus replies.
--
From lofty roofs the Gods repuls'd before,
Now stooping, enter'd through the little door:
--
Whom to the Gods for sacrifice they vow:
Her with malicious zeal the couple view'd;
1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
gadvāra, frequented by the Ṛṣis. the Gods, desirous of assisting at this solemn rite, came, with Indra at their head, to Mahādeva, and intimated their purpose; and having received his permission, departed in their splendid chariots to Ga
gadvāra, as tradition reports[2]. They found Dakṣa, the best of the devout, surrounded by the singers and nymphs of heaven, and by numerous sages, beneath the shade of clustering trees and climbing plants; and all of them, whether dwellers on earth, in air, or in the regions above the skies, approached the patriarch with outward gestures of respect. The Ādityas, Vasus, Rudras, Maruts, all entitled to partake of the oblations, together with Jiṣṇu, were present. The four classes of Pitris, Ushmapās, Somapās, Ājyapās, and Dhūmapās, or those who feed upon the flame, the acid juice, the butter, or the smoke of offerings, the Aswins and the progenitors, came along with Brahmā. Creatures of every class, born from the womb, the egg, from vapour, or vegetation, came upon their invocation; as did all the Gods, with their brides, who in their resplendent vehicles blazed like so many fires. Beholding them thus assembled, the sage Dadhīca was filled with indignation, and observed, 'The man who worships what ought not to be worshipped, or pays not reverence where veneration is due, is guilty, most assuredly, of heinous sin.' Then addressing Dakṣa, he said to him, 'Why do you not offer homage to the god who is the lord of life (Paśubhartri)?' Dakṣa spake; 'I have already many Rudras present, armed with tridents, wearing braided hair, and existing in eleven forms: I recognise no other Mahādeva.' Dadhīca spake; 'The invocation that is not addressed to Īśa, is, for all, but a solitary (and imperfect) summons. Inasmuch as I behold no other divinity who is superior to Śa
kara, this sacrifice of Dakṣa will not be completed.' Dakṣa spake; I offer, in a golden cup, this entire oblation, which has been consecrated by many prayers, as an offering ever due to the unequalled Viṣṇu, the sovereign lord of all[3].'
"In the meanwhile, the virtuous daughter of the mountain king, observing the departure of the divinities, addressed her lord, the god of living beings, and said-Umā spake-'Whither, oh lord, have the Gods, preceded by Indra, this day departed? Tell me truly, oh thou who knowest all truth, for a great doubt perplexes me.' Maheśvara spake; Illustrious goddess, the excellent patriarch Dakṣa celebrates the sacrifice of a horse, and thither the Gods repair.' Devī spake; Why then, most mighty god, dost thou also not proceed to this solemnity? by what hinderance is thy progress thither impeded?' Maheśvara spake; 'This is the contrivance, mighty queen, of all the Gods, that in all sacrifices no portion should be assigned to me. In consequence of an arrangement formerly devised, the Gods allow me, of right, no participation of sacrificial offerings.' Devī spake; 'The lord god lives in all bodily forms, and his might is eminent through his superior faculties; he is unsurpassable, he is unapproachable, in splendour and glory and power. That such as he should be excluded from his share of oblations, fills me with deep sorrow, and a trembling, oh sinless, seizes upon my frame. Shall I now practise bounty, restraint, or penance, so that my lord, who is inconceivable, may obtain a share, a half or a third portion, of the sacrifice[4]?'
"Then the mighty and incomprehensible deity, being pleased, said to his bride, thus agitated; and speaking; 'Slender-waisted queen of the Gods, thou knowest not the purport of what thou sayest; but I know it, oh thou with large eyes, for the holy declare all things by meditation. By thy perplexity this day are all the Gods, with Mahendra and all the three worlds, utterly confounded. In my sacrifice, those who worship me, repeat my praises, and chant the Rathantara song of the Sāma veda; my priests worship me in the sacrifice of true wisdom, where no officiating Brahman is needed; and in this they offer me my portion.' Devī spake; 'The lord is the root of all, and assuredly, in every assemblage of the female world, praises or hides himself at will.' Mahādeva spake; 'Queen of the Gods, I praise not myself: approach, and behold whom I shall create for the purpose of claiming my share of the rite.'
"Having thus spoken to his beloved spouse, the mighty Maheśvara created from his mouth a being like the fire of fate; a divine being, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet; wielding a thousand clubs, a thousand shafts; holding the shell, the discus, the mace, and bearing a blazing bow and battle-axe; fierce and terrific, shining with dreadful splendour, and decorated with the crescent moon; clothed in a tiger's skin, dripping with blood; having a capacious stomach, and a vast mouth, armed with formidable tusks: his ears were erect, his lips were pendulous, his tongue was lightning; his hand brandished the thunderbolt; flames streamed from his hair; a necklace of pearls wound round his neck; a garland of flame descended on his breast: radiant with lustre, he looked like the final fire that consumes the world. Four tremendous tusks projected from a mouth which extended from ear to ear: he was of vast bulk, vast strength, a mighty male and lord, the destroyer of the universe, and like a large fig-tree in circumference; shining like a hundred moons at once; fierce as the fire of love; having four heads, sharp white teeth, and of mighty fierceness, vigour, activity, and courage; glowing with the blaze of a thousand fiery suns at the end of the world; like a thousand undimmed moons: in bulk like Himādri, Kailāsa, or Meru, or Mandara, with all its gleaming herbs; bright as the sun of destruction at the end of ages; of irresistible prowess, and beautiful aspect; irascible, with lowering eyes, and a countenance burning like fire; clothed in the hide of the elephant and lion, and girt round with snakes; wearing a turban on his head, a moon on his brow; sometimes savage, sometimes mild; having a chaplet of many flowers on his head, anointed with various unguents, and adorned with different ornaments and many sorts of jewels; wearing a garland of heavenly Karnikāra flowers, and rolling his eyes with rage. Sometimes he danced; sometimes he laughed aloud; sometimes he stood wrapt in meditation; sometimes he trampled upon the earth; sometimes he sang; sometimes he wept repeatedly: and he was endowed with the faculties of wisdom, dispassion, power, penance, truth, endurance, fortitude, dominion, and self-knowledge.
"This being, then, knelt down upon the ground, and raising his hands respectfully to his head, said to Mahādeva, 'Sovereign of the Gods, command what it is that I must do for thee.' To which Maheśvara replied, Spoil the sacrifice of Dakṣa.' Then the mighty Vīrabhadra, having heard the pleasure of his lord, bowed down his head to the feet of Prajāpati; and starting like a lion loosed from bonds, despoiled the sacrifice of Dakṣa, knowing that the had been created by the displeasure of Devī. She too in her wrath, as the fearful goddess Rudrakālī, accompanied him, with all her train, to witness his deeds. Vīrabhadra the fierce, abiding in the region of ghosts, is the minister of the anger of Devī. And he then created, from the pores of his skin, powerful demigods, the mighty attendants upon Rudra, of equal valour and strength, who started by hundreds and thousands into existence. Then a loud and confused clamour filled all the expanse of ether, and inspired the denizens of heaven with dread. The mountains tottered, and earth shook; the winds roared, and the depths of the sea were disturbed; the fires lost their radiance, and the sun grew pale; the planets of the firmament shone not, neither did the stars give light; the Ṛṣis ceased their hymns, and gods and demons were mute; and thick darkness eclipsed the chariots of the skies[5].
"Then from the gloom emerged fearful and numerous forms, shouting the cry of battle; who instantly broke or overturned the sacrificial columns, trampled upon the altars, and danced amidst the oblations. Running wildly hither and thither, with the speed of wind, they tossed about the implements and vessels of sacrifice, which looked like stars precipitated from the heavens. The piles of food and beverage for the Gods, which had been heaped up like mountains; the rivers of milk; the banks of curds and butter; the sands of honey and butter-milk and sugar; the mounds of condiments and spices of every flavour; the undulating knolls of flesh and other viands; the celestial liquors, pastes, and confections, which had been prepared; these the spirits of wrath devoured or defiled or scattered abroad. Then falling upon the host of the Gods, these vast and resistless Rudras beat or terrified them, mocked and insulted the nymphs and goddesses, and quickly put an end to the rite, although defended by all the Gods; being the ministers of Rudra's wrath, and similar to himself[6]. Some then made a hideous clamour, whilst others fearfully shouted, when Yajña was decapitated. For the divine Yajña, the lord of sacrifice, then began to fly up to heaven, in the shape of a deer; and Vīrabhadra, of immeasurable spirit, apprehending his power, cut off his vast head, after he had mounted into the sky[7]. Dakṣa the patriarch, his sacrifice being destroyed, overcome with terror, and utterly broken in spirit, fell then upon the ground, where his head was spurned by the feet of the cruel Vīrabhadra[8]. The thirty scores of sacred divinities were all presently bound, with a band of fire, by their lion-like foe; and they all then addressed him, crying, 'Oh Rudra, have mercy upon thy servants: oh lord, dismiss thine anger.' Thus spake Brahmā and the other gods, and the patriarch Dakṣa; and raising their hands, they said, 'Declare, mighty being, who thou art.' Vīrabhadra said, 'I am not a god, nor an Āditya; nor am I come hither for enjoyment, nor curious to behold the chiefs of the divinities: know that I am come to destroy the sacrifice of Dakṣa, and that I am called Vīrabhadra, the issue of the wrath of Rudra. Bhadrakālī also, who has sprung from the anger of Devī, is sent here by the god of gods to destroy this rite. Take refuge, king of kings, with him who is the lord of Umā; for better is the anger of Rudra than the blessings of other gods.'
"Having heard the words of Vīrabhadra, the righteous Dakṣa propitiated the mighty god, the holder of the trident, Maheśvara. The hearth of sacrifice, deserted by the Brahmans, had been consumed; Yajña had been metamorphosed to an antelope; the fires of Rudra's wrath had been kindled; the attendants, wounded by the tridents of the servants of the god, were groaning with pain; the pieces of the uprooted sacrificial posts were scattered here and there; and the fragments of the meat-offerings were carried off by flights of hungry vultures, and herds of howling jackals. Suppressing his vital airs, and taking up a posture of meditation, the many-sighted victor of his foes, Dakṣa fixed his eyes every where upon his thoughts. Then the god of gods appeared from the altar, resplendent as a thousand suns, and smiled upon him, and said, 'Dakṣa, thy sacrifice has been destroyed through sacred knowledge: I am well pleased with thee:' and then he smiled again, and said, 'What shall I do for thee; declare, together with the preceptor of the Gods.'
"Then Dakṣa, frightened, alarmed, and agitated, his eyes suffused with tears, raised his hands reverentially to his brow, and said, 'If, lord, thou art pleased; if I have found favour in thy sight; if I am to be the object of thy benevolence; if thou wilt confer upon me a boon, this is the blessing I solicit, that all these provisions for the solemn sacrifice, which have been collected with much trouble and during a long time, and which have now been eaten, drunk, devoured, burnt, broken, scattered abroad, may not have been prepared in vain.' 'So let it be,' replied Hara, the subduer of Indra. And thereupon Dakṣa knelt down upon the earth, and praised gratefully the author of righteousness, the three-eyed god Mahādeva, repeating the eight thousand names of the deity whose emblem is a bull."
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[1]: The sacrifice of Dakṣa is a legend of some interest, from its historical and archeological relations. It is obviously intended to intimate a struggle between the worshippers of Śiva and of Viṣṇu, in which at first the latter, but finally the former, acquired the ascendancy. It is also a favourite subject of Hindu sculpture, at least with the Hindus of the Śaiva division, and makes a conspicuous figure both at Elephanta and Ellora. A representation of the dispersion and mutilation of the Gods and sages by Vīrabhadra, at the former, is published in the Archæologia, VII. 326, where it is described as the Judgment of Solomon! a figure of Vīrabhadra is given by Niebuhr, vol. II. tab. 10: and the entire group in the Bombay Transactions, vol. I. p. 220. It is described, p. 229; but Mr. Erskine has not verified the subject, although it cannot admit of doubt. The groupe described, p. 224, probably represents the introductory details given in our text. Of the Ellora sculptures, a striking one occurs in what Sir C. Malet calls the Doomar Leyna cave, where is "Veer Budder, with eight hands. In one is suspended the slain Rajah Dutz." A. R. VI. 396. And there is also a representation of 'Ehr Budr,' in one of the colonades of Kailas; being, in fact, the same figure as that at Elephanta. Bombay Tr. III. 287. The legend of Dakṣa therefore was popular when those cavern temples were excavated. The story is told in much more detail in several other Purāṇas, and with some variations, which will be noticed: but the above has been selected as a specimen of the style of the Vāyu Purāṇa, and as being a narration which, from its inartificial, obscure, tautological, and uncircumstantial construction, is probably of an ancient date. The same legend, in the same words, is given in the Brāhma P.
[2]: Or this may he understood to imply, that the original story is in the Vedas; the term being, as usual in such a reference, ###. Ga
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ga, Kūrma, and Bhāgavata Purāṇas. Indra is knocked down and trampled on; Yama has his staff broken; Sarasvatī and the Mātris have their noses cut off; Mitra or Bhaga has his eyes pulled out; Puṣā has his teeth knocked down his throat; Candra is pummelled; Vahni's hands are cut off; Bhrigu loses his beard; the Brahmans are pelted with stones; the Prajāpatis are beaten; and the Gods and demigods are run through with swords or stuck with arrows.
[7]: This is also mentioned in the Li
1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This change of vision is not spectacular or immediate; it is produced by small drops of a new outlook one hardly knows is a new outlook. One walks right past it, perhaps not unlike the caveman who walks past a gold nugget, glances at it because it glitters, and throws it away. Gold? What use is gold? We have to walk by the same futile point again and again, which does glitter a little and has a special something about it, before we understand that gold is gold we have to invent gold; we have to invent the whole world and find what is already there. The difficulty is not in discovering hidden secrets but in discovering the visible, and that unsuspected gold in the midst of banality actually, there is no banality; there is only unconsciousness. There is an age-old habit of looking at the world in relation to our needs and with respect to ourselves, like the logger in the forest who sees rosewood and only rosewood. Some measure of eccentricity is necessary to make the discovery. And in the end we realize that that eccentricity is the first step to a truer centricity and the key to a whole new set of relations. Our forest becomes stocked with a variety of unknown trees, and everything is a discovery. We have also been biased by what we could call the visionary's tradition. It has always seemed that the privileged among men were the ones who had visions, who could see our everyday grayness in pink and green and blue, see apparitions and supernatural phenomena a sort of supercinema one enjoys free of charge in the privacy of one's own room by pressing the psychic button. And that is all very well, there's nothing to say, but experience shows that this sort of vision changes absolutely nothing. Tomorrow millions of men could be given the power of vision by a stroke of grace, and they would turn on their little psychic television again and again; they would see gods laden with gold (and perhaps a few hells more in accord with their natural affinities), flowers more magnificent than any rose (and a scattering of awesome serpents), flying or haloed beings (but devils imitate halos very well, they are more showy than the Gods, they like tinsel), landscapes of dream, sumptuous fruits, crystal dwellings but in the end, after the hundredth time, they would be as bored as before and leap avidly at the six-o'clock news. Something is sorely wanting in all that supernatural fireworks. And, to tell the truth, that something is everything. If our natural does not become truer, no amount of supernatural will remedy it; if our inner dwelling is ugly, no miraculous crystal will ever brighten our day, no fruit will ever quench our thirst. Unless Paradise is established on earth, it will never be anywhere. For we take ourselves everywhere we go, even into death, and so long as this stupid second is not filled with heaven, no eternity will ever be lit with any star. The transmutation must take place in the body and in everyday life; otherwise no gold will ever glitter, here or anywhere else, for ages of ages. What matters is not to see in pink or green or gold, but to see the truth of the world, which is so much more marvelous than any paradise, artificial or not, because the earth, this very small earth among millions of planets, is the experimental site where the supreme Truth of all the worlds has chosen to incarnate in what seems to be its very contradiction, and, by virtue of this very contradiction, to become all-light in darkness, all-breadth in narrowness, immortality in death, and living plenitude in each atom at each instant.
But we have to collaborate.
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But at least we have progressed in one direction, which is not the one we think. We have completed the cycle of the ape; we have pushed to its ultimate consequence the simple little gesture that tied a vine to a branch to make a bow; we have inflated and overinflated the mental balloon to its breaking point. And Nature's design is accomplished, which was not just to take stock of the world, but to lead the whole species to the zero point, to that supreme juncture where there is not a single jungle left to explore, not one sea to plumb, not one Himalaya, when soon not even an acre of ground will be left for our concrete and steel structures, when even the Gods have been squeezed dry of all their juices and collect dust on the shelves of our libraries, when life collapses under its own weight and leaves us again, like ancient man under the stars, alone, face to face with the mystery of the earth, to find the name of things, their power of being, the true vibration that dwells in us and links us to the world: the naked mystery of this unsullied moment, the original music of things, which is perhaps their ultimate truth and ultimate power, an original vision that is a new birth of the world, and perhaps the promise of its transformation. This is the end of the mental world. We are before naked matter. We are at the time of the great Invention.
And we are almost ridiculously inadequate for such a fabulous adventure. What do we have? A little fire inside, whose goal we do not even know, but which burns with us, accompanies our steps, our thousands of steps in the great vain machine; a little clearing that sometimes seems so lovely and light, and so fragile in the midst of the huge empty chaos that's all we have. It is childlike and transparent and almost ridiculous amid the strides of the caparisoned colossi of the mind. And what do we discover? A breath, a nothing, a speck of gold glittering for a moment and then vanishing. There is nothing sensational. It is the opposite of sensational; it is unassuming minuteness; it is perhaps nothing, and it is everything. It is as fluid as the man bending for the first time over the first river in the world and looking at a blade of grass pass by, and then another (come from where, carried away where?), a fugitive reflection of the sky, and that other little cascade in his heart. But it all makes a single whole, and for a fraction of a second, a sort of look opens up and pervades that drop of water and the blade of grass with infinity, and the over there it comes from and the other there it goes to, as if everything had already happened, as if nothing ever happened, nothing ever passed: an eternal meeting between that pink in the sky, this heartbeat and this frail blade of grass. And other blades of grass may come, other pinks or blues or blacks go by, but it is always the same thing meeting itself, at the same point, with other faces and other names. So, something begins to take root in this meeting point of the worlds, as if one and the same look were looking at one and the same story. And everything is tranquil, identical and clear; there is no need to strain toward tomorrow, to grasp at that pink or blue, this blade of grass or that one; there are no other points out there, or else it is the same one and the same things meeting each other; there is only one point at each instant, and the whole world passes through it, along with Sagittarius and Betelgeuse and that twig. All is contained there, for ages upon ages. We just have to listen to the music of that point to hear all other music, we just have to be there to be with all other beings, past, present and future there is but one story in the world and one moment and one being. It is right there; we are in it. There will be nothing more, nothing else, in three thousand years or a hundred thousand.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.08 - the Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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The indications from external sources are few and inconclusive, but they are by no means favourable to the theory of a materialistic worship of Nature-Powers. The Europeans start with their knowledge of the old Pagan worship, their idea of the crudity of early Greek & German myth & practice and their minds naturally expect to find & even insist on finding an even greater crudity in the Vedas. But it must not be forgotten that in no written record of Greek or Scandinavian do the old religions appear as mere materialistic ideas or the old gods as mere Nature forces; they have also a moral significance, and show a substratum of moral and an admixture even of psychological & philosophical ideas. If in their origin, they were material and barbarous, they had already been moralised & intellectualised. Already even in Homer Pallas Athene is not the Dawn or any natural phenomenon, but a great preterhuman power of wisdom, force & intelligence; Apollo is not the Sunwho is represented by another deity, Helios but a moral or moralised deity. In the Veda, even in the European rendering, Varuna has a similar moral character and represents ethical & religious ideas far in advance of any that we find in the Homeric cult & ethics. We cannot rule out of court the possibility that others of the Gods shared this Vedic distinction or that, even perhaps in their oldest hymns, the Indians had gone at least as far as the Greeks in the moralising of their religion.
Moreover, even their moralised gods were only the superficial & exterior aspect of the Greek religion. Its deeper life fed itself on the mystic rites of Orpheus, Bacchus, the Eleusinian mysteries which were deeply symbolic and remind us in some of their ideas & circumstances of certain aspects of Indian Yoga. The mysticism & symbolism were not an entirely modern development. Orpheus, Bacchus & Demeter are the centre of an antique and prehistoric, even preliterary mind-movement. The element may have been native to Greek religious sentiment; it may have been imported from the East through the Aryan races or cultures of Asia Minor; but it may also have been common to the ancient systems of Greece & India. An original community or a general diffusion is at least possible. The double aspect of exoteric practice and esoteric symbolism may have already been a fundamental characteristic of the Vedic religion. Is it entirely without significance that to the Vedic mind men were essentially manu, thinkers, the original father of the race was the first Thinker, and the Vedic poets in the idea of their contemporaries not merely priests or sacred singers or wise bards but much more characteristically manishis & rishis, thinkers & sages?We can conceive with difficulty such ideas as belonging to that undeveloped psychological condition of the semi-savage to which sacrifices of propitiation & Nature-Gods helpful only for material life, safety & comfort were all-sufficient. Certainly, also, the earliest Indian writings subsequent to Vedic times bear out these indications. To the writers of the Brahmanas the sacrificial ritual enshrined an elaborate symbolism. The seers of the Upanishad worshipped Surya & Agni as great spiritual & moral forces and believed the Vedic hymns to be effective only because they contained a deep knowledge & a potent spirituality. They may have been in errormay have been misled by a later tradition or themselves have read mystic refinements into a naturalistic text. But also & equally, they may have had access to an unbroken line of knowledge or they may have been in direct touch or in closer touch than the moderns with the mentality of the Vedic singers.
The decision of these questions will determine our whole view of Vedic religions and decide the claim of the Veda to be a living Scripture of Hinduism. It is of primary importance to know what in their nature and functions were the Gods of the Veda. I have therefore made this fundamental question form the sole subject matter of the present volume. I make no attempt here to present a complete or even a sufficient justification of the conclusions which I have been led to. Nor do I present my readers with a complete enquiry into the nature & functions of the Vedic pantheon. Such a justification, such an enquiry can only be effected by a careful philological analysis & rendering of the Vedic hymns and an exhaustive study of the origins of the Sanscrit language. That is a labour of very serious proportions & burdened with numerous difficulties which I have begun and hope one day to complete myself or to leave to others ready for completion. But in the present volume I can only attempt to establish a prima facie [case] for a reconsideration of the whole question. I offer the suggestion that the Vedic creed & thought were not a simple, but a complex, not a barbarous but a subtle & advanced, not a naturalistic but a mystic & Vedantic system.
It is necessary, in order that the reader may follow my arguments with a better understanding, to sketch briefly the important lines of that system as it reveals itself in the ten mandalas of the Rigveda. Its fundamental conception was the unity in complexity of the apparent universe. The Vedic mind, looking out on the great movement of material forces around it, aware of their regularity, law, universality, saw in them symbols and expressions of a diviner life behind. Everywhere they felt the presence of intelligence, of life, of a soul. But they did not make the common distinction between soul and matter. Matter was to them itself a term and expression of the life and soul they had discovered. It was this peculiarity of thought which constituted the essential characteristic of the Vedic outlook and has stood at the root and basis of all Indian thought and religion then & subsequently.
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But why, it might be asked, should each subjective order or stratum of consciousness necessarily involve the co-existence of a corresponding order of beings & objective world-stratum? For the modern mind, speculative & introspective like the Vedic, is yet speculative within the limits of sensational experience and therefore unable to believe in, even if it can conceive of existence, least of all of an objective existence under conditions different from those [with] which we are familiar and of which our senses assure us. We may therefore admit the profundity & subtlety of the subjective distinction, but we shall be apt to regard the belief in objective worlds & beings unseen by our senses as either an early poetic fancy or a crude superstition of savages. But the Vedic mentality, although perfectly rational, stood at the opposite pole of ideas from the modern and its subjective consciousness admitted a class of experiences which we reject and cut short the moment they begin to present themselves by condemning them as hallucinations. The idea of modern men that the ancients evolved their gods by a process of poetic imagination, is an error due to inability to understand an alien mentality & unwillingness to investigate from within those survivals of it which still subsist though with difficulty under modern conditions. Encouraging this order of phenomena, fostering & developing carefully the states of mind in which they were possible and the movements of mind & sense by which they were effected, the Vedic Rishis saw and communed with the Gods and threw themselves into the worlds of which they had the conception. They believed in them for the same reason that Joan of Arc believed in her saints & her voices, Socrates in his daemon or Swedenborg in his spirits, because they had constant experience of them and of the validity both of the experiences and of the instruments of mind & sense by which they were maintained in operation. They would have answered a modern objector that they had as good a proof of them as the scientist has of the worlds & the different orders of life revealed to his optical nerve by microscope & telescope. Some of them might even question whether these scientific discoveries were not optical illusions due to the excitation of the nerve by the instruments utilised! We may, similarly, get rid of the Vedic experiences, disbelieve and discount them, saying that they missed one essential instrument of truth, the sceptical distrust of their instruments,but we cannot argue from them in the minds that received them a childish irrationality or a savage superstition. They trusted, like us, their experience, believed their mind & senses and argued logically from their premisses.
It is true that apart from these experiences the existence of various worlds & different orders of beings was a logical necessity of the Vedic conception of existence. Existence being a life, a soul expressing itself in forms, every distinct order of consciousness, every stratum or sea of conscious-being (samudra, sindhu, apah as the Vedic thinkers preferred to call them) demanded its own order of objective experiences (lokas, worlds), tended inevitably to throw itself into forms of individualised being (vishah, ganah, prajah). Moreover, in a world so conceived, nothing could happen in this world without relation to some force or being in the worlds behind; nor could there be any material, vital or mental movement except as the expression of a life & a soul behind it. Everything here must be supported from the worlds of mind or it could not maintain its existence. From this idea to the peopling of the world with innumerable mental & vital existences,existences essentially vital like the Naiads, Dryads, Nereids, Genii, Lares & Penates of the Greeks and Romans, the wood-gods, river-gods, house-gods, tree-deities, snake-deities of the Indians, or mental like the intermediate gods of our old Pantheon, would be a natural and inevitable step. This Animism is a remarkably universal feature in the religious culture of the ancient world. I cannot accept the modern view that its survival in a crude form among the savages, those waifs & strays of human progress, is a proof of their low & savage originany more than the peculiarly crude ideas of Christianity that exist in uneducated negro minds [and] would survive in a still more degraded form if they were long isolated from civilised life, would be a proof to future research that Christianity originated from a cannibal tribe on the African continent. The idea is essentially a civilised conception proceeding from keen susceptibility & only possible after a meditative dwelling upon Naturenot different indeed in rank & order from Wordsworths experience of Nature which no one, I suppose, would consider an atavistic recrudescence of old savage mentality, and impossible to the animal man. The dog & crow who reason from their senses, do not stand in awe of inanimate objects, or of dawn & rain & shine or expect from them favours.
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The word vja, usually rendered by Sayana, food or ghee,a sense which he is swift to foist upon any word which will at all admit that construction, as well as on some which will not admit it,has in other passages another sense assigned to it, strength, bala. It is the latter significance or its basis of substance & solidity which I propose to attach to vja in every line of the Rigveda where it occursand it occurs with an abundant frequency. There are a number of words in the Veda which have to be rendered by the English strength,bala, taras, vja, sahas, avas, to mention only the most common expressions. Can it be supposed that all these vocables rejoice in one identical connotation as commentators and lexicographers would lead us to conclude, and are used in the Veda promiscuously & indifferently to express the same idea of strength? The psychology of human language is more rich and delicate. In English the words strength, force, vigour, robustness differ in their mental values; force can be used in offices of expression to which strength and vigour are ineligible. In Vedic Sanscrit, as in every living tongue, the same law holds and a literary and thoughtful appreciation of its documents, whatever may be the way of the schools, must take account of these distinctions. In the brief list I have given, bala answers to the English strength, taras gives a shade of speed and impetuosity, sahas of violence or force, avas of flame and brilliance, vja of substance and solidity. In the philological appendix to this work there will be found detailed reasons for concluding that strength is in the history of the word vja only a secondary sense, like its other meanings, wealth and food; the basic idea is a strong sufficiency of substance or substantial energy. Vja is one of the great standing terms of the Vedic psychology. All states of being, whether matter, mind or life and all material, mental & vital activities depend upon an original flowing mass of Energy which is in the vivid phraseology of the Vedas called a flood or sea, samudra, sindhu or arnas. Our power or activity in any direction depends first on the amount & substantiality of this stream as it flows into, through or within our own limits of consciousness, secondly, on our largeness of being constituted by the wideness of those limits, thirdly, on our power of holding the divine flow and fourthly on the force and delight which enter into the use of our available Energy. The result is the self-expression, ansa or vyakti, which is the objective of Vedic Yoga. In the language of the Rishis whatever we can make permanently ours is called our holding or wealth, dhanam or in the plural dhanni; the powers which assist us in the getting, keeping or increasing of our dhanni, the yoga, s ti & vriddhi, are the Gods; the powers which oppose & labour to rob us of this wealth are our enemies & plunderers, dasyus, and appear under various names, Vritras, Panis, Daityas, Rakshasas, Yatudhanas. The wealth itself may be the substance of mental light and knowledge or of vital health, delight & longevity or of material strength & beauty or it may be external possessions, cattle, progeny, empire, women. A close, symbolic and to modern ideas mystic parallelism stood established in the Vedic mind between the external & the internal wealth, as between the outer sacrifice which earned from the Gods the external wealth & the inner sacrifice which brought by the aid of the Gods the internal riches. In this system the word vja represents that amount & substantial energy of the stuff of force in the dhanam brought to the service of the sacrificer for the great Jivayaja, our daily & continual life-sacrifice. It is a substantial wealth, vjavad dhanam that the Gods are asked to bring with them. We see then in what sense Saraswati, a goddess purely mental in her functions of speech and knowledge, can be vjebhir vjinvat. Vjin is that which is composed of vja, substantial energy; the plural vj h or vj ni the particular substantialities of various composed. For the rest, to no other purpose can a deity of speech & knowledge be vjebhir vjinvat. In what appropriateness or coherent conceivable sense can the goddess of knowledge be possessed of material wealth or full-stored with material food, ghee & butter, beef & mutton? If it be suggested that Speech of the mantras was believed by these old superstitious barbarians to bring them their ghee & butter, beef & mutton, the answer is that this is not what the language of the hymns expresses. Saraswati herself is said to be vjinvat, possessed of substance of food; she is not spoken of as being the cause of fullness of food or wealth to others.
This explanation of vjebhir vjinvat leads at once to the figurative sense of maho arnas. Arnas or samudra is the image of the sea, flood or stream in which the Vedic seers saw the substance of being and its different states. Sometimes one great sea, sometimes seven streams of being are spoken of by the Rishis; they are the origin of the seven seas of the Purana. It cannot be doubted that the minds of the old thinkers were possessed with this image of ocean or water as the very type & nature of the flux of existence, for it occurs with a constant insistence in the Upanishads. The sole doubt is whether the image was already present to the minds of the primitive Vedic Rishis. The Europeans hold that these were the workings of a later imagination transfiguring the straightforward material expressions & physical ideas of the Veda; they admit no real parentage of Vedantic ideas in the preexistent Vedic notions, but only a fictitious derivation. I hold, on the contrary, that Vedantic ideas have a direct & true origin & even a previous existence in the religion & psychology of the Vedas. If, indeed, there were no stuff of high thinking or moral sensibility in the hymns of the Vedic sages, then I should have no foundation to stand upon and no right to see this figure in the Vedic arnas or samudra. But when these early minds,early to us, but not perhaps really so primitive in human history as we imagine,were capable of such high thoughts & perceptions as these three Riks bear on their surface, it would be ridiculous to deny them the capacity of conceiving these great philosophical images & symbols. A rich poetic imagery expressing a clear, direct & virgin perception of the facts of mind and being, is not by any means impossible, but rather natural in these bright-eyed sons of the morning not yet dominated in their vision by the dry light of the intellect or in their speech & thought by the abstractions & formalities of metaphysical thinking. Water was to them, let us hold in our hypothesis, the symbol of unformed substance of being, earth of the formed substance. They even saw a mystic identity between the thing symbolised & the symbol.
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Shall we suppose that a sacrifice with such a governance, such circumstances & such a crowning experience is the material offering of the Soma wine into a material fire on a material altar? Every expression in the text cries out against such an impossibility. This sacrifice must be a mental, moral subjective activity of which the Soma-offering is only a material symbol. We see at once that the Gita was not reading a later gloss into the Vedic idea in its description of the many kinds of Yajna in its [fourth] chapter. The modern Yoga and the ancient Yajna are one idea; there is only this difference that the Vedic Rishis regarded all the material & internal riches that came by Yoga as the gift of the Gods to be offered to them again so that they may again increase them & supremely enrich our lives with all the boons that they, our friends, helpers, masters of world-evolution are so eager to shower upon us, the vessels & instruments of that evolution. The whole Vedic theory is succinctly stated in two slokas of the Gita. (III.10, 11)
Sahayajnh prajh srishtw purovcha Prajpatih,
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The Father created of old these peoples with sacrifice as their companion birth; By this he said, ye shall bring forth; let this be your milker of all chosen desires. Nourish the Gods in their being with this; let the Gods nourish you in your being. Thus nourishing each other ye shall gain the highest good. We see, nat the same time, the Vedic origin of the central idea in the Gita, the offering of our lives & actions in a perfect sacrifice to God.
Greatly has this short passage helped us. It has shown us the true physiognomy of Saraswati as the goddess of inspiration & inspired knowledge & the true nature of the Vedic Yajna; it has fixed the great Vedic terms, vja, dh & ketu; but above all it has given us a firm foundation for a religious & spiritual interpretation of Veda, a brilliant starting point for an inquiry into its truth & its ancient secret. We can now hope to be delivered from the obscuration of Veda by the ritualists & its modern degradation into the document of a primitive & barbarous religion. Its higher & truer sense shows itself in this brief passage like the dim line of land seen on the far horizon.
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If we are right, as we must now assume, in our interpretation of these three riks, then the conclusion is irresistible that the whole of this third Sukta in the Veda, & not only its closing verses, relates to an activity of moral & mental sacrifice and the other gods invoked by Madhuchchhandas are equally with Saraswati Powers of subjectiveNature, Indra not the god of rain, but a mental deity, the Aswins not twin stars, or, if stars, then lights of a sublimer heaven, the Visvadevas, gods not of general physical Nature, but supraphysical and in charge of our general subjective or subjective-objective activity. The supposition is inadmissible that the hymn is purely ritual in its body and only in-grafted with a spiritual tail. The physical functions of the Gods in the Veda need not be denied; but they must be alien to the thought of Madhuchchhandas in this Sukta,unless as in some hymns of the Veda, there is the slesha or double application to subjective & objective activities. But this is improbable; for in the lines of which Saraswati is the goddess, we have found no reference either open or covert to any material form or function. She is purely the Muse and not at all the material river.
We must examine, then, the rest of the hymn and by an impartial scrutiny discover whether it yields naturally, without forcing or straining, a subjective significance. If we find that no such subjective significance exists & it is the Gods of rain & of stars & of material activities who are invoked, a serious if not a fatal doubt will be cast on the validity of the first step we have gained in our second chapter. Here, too, we must follow the clue by which we arrived at the subjective physiognomy of Saraswati. We must see what is the evidence of the epithets & activities assigned to the several deities of the Sukta.
The first three riks are devoted to the Aswins & run in this strain:
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Now a brilliant or luminous food, jyotishmat ish, is an absurdity which we certainly shall not accept; nor is there any reason for taking jyotih in any other than its ordinary sense of radiance, lustre. We must, therefore, seek some other significance for ish. It is the nature of the root ish, as of its leng thened form, sh, and the family to which it belongs, to suggest intensity of motion or impulsion physical or subjective and the state or results of such intensity. It means impulse, wish, impulsion; sending, casting, (as in ishu, an arrow or missile), strength, force, mastery; in the verb, it signifies also striving, entreating, favour, assent, liking; in the noun, increase, affluence, or, as applied by the ritualists in the Veda, drink or food. We see, then, that impellent force or strength is the fundamental significance, the idea [of] food only a distant, isolated & late step in the sense-evolution. If we apply this fundamental sense in the rik we have quoted from Praskanwas hymn to the Aswins, we get at once the following clear, straightforward & lucid meaning, The luminous force (force of the Mahas, or vijnana, the true light, ritam jyotih of [I.23.5]) which has carried us, O Aswins, through the darkness to its other shore, in that in us take delight or else that force give to us. Apply the same key-meaning to this first rik of Madhuchchhandas lines to the same deities, we get a result equally clear, straightforward&lucid, O Aswins, swift-footed, much-enjoying lords of bliss, take your pleasure in the forces of the sacrifice. We have in Praskanwa & Madhuchchhandas the same idea, the same deities, the same prayer, the same subjective function of the Gods & subjective purport of the words. We feel firm soil under our feet; a flood of light illumines our steps in these dim fields of Vedic interpretation.
What is this subjective function of the Aswins? We get it, I think, in the key words chanasyatam, rsthm. Whatever else may be the character of the Aswins, we get from the consonance of the two Rishis this strong suggestion that they are essentially gods of delight. Is there any other confirmation of the suggestion? Every epithet in this first rik testifies strongly to its correctness. The Aswins are purubhuj, much-enjoying; they are ubhaspat, lords of weal or bliss, or else of beauty for ubh may have any of these senses as well as the sense of light; they are dravatpn, their hands dropping gifts, says Sayana, and that agrees well with the nature of gods of delight who pour from full hands the roses of rapture upon mortals, manibus lilia plenis. But dravat usually means in the Veda, swift, running, and pni, although confined to the hands in classical Sanscrit, meant, as I shall suggest, in the old Aryan tongue any organ of action, hand, foot or, as in the Latin penis, the sexual organ. Even so, we have the nature of the Aswins as gods of delight, fully established; but we get in addition a fresh characteristic, the quality of impetuous speed, which is reinforced by their other epithets. For the Aswins are nar, the Strong ones; rudravartan,they put a fierce energy into all their activities; they accept the mantras of the hymn avray dhiy, with a bright-flaming strength of intelligence in the understanding. The idea of bounteous giving, suggested by Sayana in dravatpn and certainly present in that word if we accept pni in its ordinary sense, appears in the dasra of the third rik, O you bounteous ones. Sayana indeed takes dasr in the sense of destroyers; he gives the root das in this word the same force as in dasyu, an enemy or robber; but das can also mean to give, dasma is sometimes interpreted by the scholiasts sacrificer and this sense of bounteous giving seems to be fixed on the kindred word dasra also, at least when it is applied to the Aswins, by the seventeenth rik of the thirtieth Sukta, unahepas hymn to Indra & the Aswins,
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The Aswins, then, are the Gods of youthful delight & youthful strength, yuvn pitar, always young yet fathers of men, (purudansas, abundantly creating), as they are described in another sukta. They have a brilliant strength mental & physical, nar, a bright, strong & eager understanding, avray dhiy, full hands of bounty and strong fertility of creation, dasr, purudansas; an insatiable enjoyment, purubhuj; a swift speed and fiery energy in action, dravatpn rudravartan; they are the lords of bliss who give physical, vital & mental well-being to men and that inferior ease, pleasure and delight they lift into the high regions of the original & luminous Ananda supported on the ritam jyotih of Mahas of which all these things are but pallid & broken rays penetrating into this lower play of subjective light & shade which is called the triple world. Because of this double aspect of delight and the force for action & knowledge which is given by delight, of force and the delight in action & enjoyment which is sustained by force, they are twin gods and not one; it may be that Castor is more essentially the lord of delight, Polydeuces of force, but they are too like each other not to share in each others qualities. Eternal youth is the essence of their character & the bestowal, maintenance, & increase in men of the gifts which attend youth, is their function. This, if I do not err, was the subjective aspect of the great Twin Brethren to the sages of the Veda.
For what functions are they called to the Sacrifice by Madhuchchhanda? First, they have to take delight in the spiritual forces generated in him by the action of the internal Yajna. These they have to accept, to enter into them and use them for delight, their delight and the sacrificers, yajwarr isho .. chanasyatam; a wide enjoyment, a mastery of joy & all pleasant things, a swiftness in action like theirs is what their advent should bring & therefore these epithets are attached to this action. Then they are to accept the words of the mantra, vanatam girah. In fact, vanatam means more than acceptance, it is a pleased, joyous almost loving acceptance; for vanas is the Latin venus, which means charm, beauty, gratification, and the Sanscrit vanit means woman or wife, she who charms, in whom one takes delight or for whom one has desire. Therefore vanatam takes up the idea of chanasyatam, enlarges it & applies it to a particular part of the Yajna, the mantras, the hymn or sacred words of the stoma. The immense effectiveness assigned to rhythmic Speech & the meaning & function of the mantra in the Veda & in later Yoga is a question of great interest & importance which must be separately considered; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to specify its two chief functions, the first, to settle, fix, establish the god & his qualities & activities in the Sacrificer,this is the true meaning of the word stoma, and, secondly, to effectualise them in action & creation subjective or objective,this is the true meaning of the words rik and arka. The later senses, praise and hymn were the creation of actual ceremonial practice, and not the root intention of these terms of Veda. Therefore the Aswins, the lords of force & joy, are asked to take up the forces of the sacrifice, yajwarr isho, fill them with their joy & activity and carry that joy & activity into the understanding so that it becomes avra, full of a bright and rapid strength.With that strong, impetuously rapid working they are to take up the words of the mantra into the understanding and by their joy & activity make them effective for action or creation. For this reason the epithet purudansas is attached to this action, abundantly active or, rather, abundantly creative of forms into which the action of the yajwarr ishah is to be thrown. But this can only be done as the Sacrificer wishes if they are in the acceptance of the mantra dhishny, firm and steady.Sayana suggests wise or intelligent as the sense of dhishnya, but although dhishan, like dh, can mean the understanding & dhishnya therefore intelligent, yet the fundamental sense is firm or steadily holding & the understanding is dh or dhishan because it takes up perceptions, thoughts & feelings & holds them firmly in their places.Vehemence & rapidity may be the causes of disorder & confusion, therefore even in their utmost rapidity & rapture of action & formation the Aswins are to be dhishnya, firm & steady. This discipline of a mighty, inalienable calm supporting & embracing the greatest fierceness of action & intensity of joy, the combination of dhishny & rudravartan , is one of the grandest secrets of the old Vedic discipline. For by this secret men can enjoy the world as God enjoys it, with unstinted joy, with unbridled power, with undarkened knowledge.
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We have reached a subjective sense for yuvku. But what of vriktabarhishah? Does not barhih always mean in the Veda the sacred grass strewn as a seat for the Gods? In the Brahmanas is it not so understood and have [we] not continually the expression barhishi sdata? I have no objection; barhis is certainly the seat of the Gods in the sacrifice, stritam nushak, strewn without a break. But barhis cannot originally have meant Kusha grass; for in that case the singular could only be used to indicate a single grass and for the seat of the Gods the plural barhnshi would have to be used,barhihshu sdata and not barhishi sdata.We have the right to go behind the Brahmanas and enquire what was the original sense of barhis and how it came to mean kusha grass. The root barh is a modified formation from the root brih, to grow, increase or expand, which we have in brihat. From the sense of spreading we may get the original sense of seat, and because the material spread was usually the Kusha grass, the word by a secondary application came to bear also that significance. Is this the only possible sense of barhis? No, for we find it interpreted also as sacrifice, as fire, as light or splendour, as water, as ether. We find barhana & barhas in the sense of strength or power and barhah or barham used for a leaf or for a peacocks tail. The base meaning is evidently fullness, greatness, expansion, power, splendour or anything having these attri butes, an outspread seat, spreading foliage, the outspread or splendid peacocks tail, the shining flame, the wide expanse of ether, the wide flow of water. If there were no other current sense of barhis, we should be bound to the ritualistic explanation. Even as it is, in other passages the ritualistic explanation may be found to stand or be binding; but is it obligatory here? I do not think it is even admissible. For observe the awkwardness of the expression, sut vriktabarhishah, wine of which the grass is stripped of its roots. Anything, indeed, is possible in the more artificial styles of poetry, but the rest of this hymn, though subtle & deep in thought, is sufficiently lucid and straightforward in expression. In such a style this strained & awkward expression is an alien intruder. Moreover, since every other expression in these lines is subjective, only dire necessity can compel us to admit so material a rendering of this single epithet. There is no such necessity. Barhis means fundamentally fullness, splendour, expansion or strength & power, & this sense suits well with the meaning we have found for yuvkavah. The sense of vrikta is very doubtful. Purified (cleared, separated) is a very remote sense of vrij or vrich & improbable. They can both mean divided, distributed, strewn, outspread, but although it is possible that vriktabarhishah means their fullness outspread through the system or distributed in the outpouring, this sense too is not convincing. Again vrijana in the Veda means strong, or as a noun, strength, energy, even a battle or fight. Vrikta may therefore [mean] brought to its highest strength. We will accept this sense as a provisional conjecture, to be confirmed or corrected by farther enquiry, and render the line The Soma distillings are replete with energy and brought to their highest fullness.
But to what kind of distillings can such terms be applied? The meaning of Soma & the Vedic ideas about this symbolic wine must be examined by themselves & with a greater amplitude. All we need ask here [is], is there any indication in this hymn itself, that the Soma like everything else in the Sukta is subjective & symbolic? For, if so, our rendering, which at present is clouded with doubt & built on a wide but imperfectly solid foundation, will become firm & established. We have the clear suggestion in the next rik, the first of the three addressed to Indra. Sut ime tw yavah. Our question is answered. What has been distilled? Ime yavah. These life-forces, these vitalities. We shall find throughout the Veda this insistence on the life, vitality,yu or jva; we shall find that the Soma was regarded as a life-giving juice, a sort of elixir of life, or nectar of immortality, something at least that gave increased vitality, established health, prolonged youth. Of such an elixir it may well be said that it is yuvku, full of the force of youth in which the Aswins must specially delight, vriktabarhish, raised to its highest strength & fullness so that the Gods who drink of it, become in the man in whom they enter and are seated, increased, vriddha, to the full height of their function and activity,the Aswins to their utmost richness of bounty, their intensest fiery activity. Nectarjuices, they are called, indavah, pourings of delight, yavah, life forces, amritsah, elixirs of immortality.
Thus we see that when we take words in their first & plain sense, the meaning of the riks builds itself up before our eyes, everything agrees, a coherent sense is obtained, idea links itself to idea, every noun, epithet & verb falls into its right place & has a clear & perfect appropriateness. May we not then say at every step, Is not this the right sense of the Veda, this rather than the forced ritualistic interpretation with its strainings, violences, incoherences, inconsistencies, or the difficult, laboured and artificial naturalistic interpretation of the European scholars with its result of garish image, tawdry ornament, emptiness of idea & ill-related sense? At least the possibility has been established; we have a beginning & a foundation.
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The modern naturalistic account of Indra is that he is the god of rain, the wielder of lightning, the master of the thunderbolt. It is as the lightning, we presume, that he is addressed as harivas and chitrabhno, brilliant and of a richly varied effulgence. He comes to the brahmni, the hymnal utterances of the Rishis, in the sense of being called by the prayer to the sacrifice, and he comes for the sole purpose of drinking the physical Soma wine, by which he is immediately increased,sadyo vriddho ajyathh, says another Sukta,that is, as soon as the Soma offering is poured out, the rains of the monsoon suddenly increase in force. So at least we must understand, if these hymns are to have any precise naturalistic sense. Otherwise we should have to assume that the Rishis sang without attaching any meaning to their words. If, however, we suppose the hymns to Indra to be sung at monsoon offerings, in the rainy months of the year only, we get ideas, imbecile enough, but still making some attempt at sense. On another hypothesis, we may suppose Indra to be one of the Gods of light or day slaying Vritra the lord of night & darkness, and also a god of lightning slaying Vritra the lord of the drought. Stated generally, these hypotheses seem plausible enough; systematically stated & supported by Comparative Mythology and some Puranic details their easy acceptance & great vogue is readily intelligible. It is only when we look carefully at the actual expressions used by the Rishis, that they no longer seem to fit in perfectly and great gulfs of no-sense have to be perfunctorily bridged by empirical guesses. A perfect system of naturalistic Veda fails to evolve.
When we look carefully at the passage before us, we find an expression which strikes one as a very extraordinary phrase in reference to a god of lightning and rain. Indryhi, says Madhuchchhanda, dhiyeshito viprajtah. On any ordinary acceptance of the meaning of words, we have to render this line, Come, O Indra, impelled by the understanding, driven by the Wise One. Sayana thinks that vipra means Brahmin and the idea is that Indra is moved to come by the intelligent sacrificing priests and he explains dhiyeshito, moved to come by our understanding, that is to say, by our devotion. But understanding does not mean devotion and the artificiality of the interpretation is apparent.We will, as usual, put aside the ritualistic & naturalistic traditions and see to what the natural sense of the words themselves leads us. I question the traditional acceptance of viprajta as a compound of vipra & jta; it seems tome clearly to be vi prajtah, driven forward variously or in various directions. I am content to accept the primary sense of impelled for ishita, although, whether we read dhiy ishito with the Padapatha, or dhiy shito, it may equally well mean, controlled by the understanding; but of themselves the expressions impelled & driven forward in various paths imply a perfect control.We have then, Come, O Indra, impelled (or controlled, governed) by the understanding and driven forward in various paths. What is so driven forward? Obviously not the storm, not the lightning, not any force of material Nature, but a subjective force, and, as one can see at a glance, a force of mind. Now Indra is the king of Swar and Swar in the symbolical interpretation of the Vedic terms current in after times is the mental heaven corresponding to the principle of Manas, mind. His name means the Strong. In the Puranas he is that which the Rishis have to conquer in order to attain their goal, that which sends the Apsaras, the lower delights & temptations of the senses to bewilder the sage and the hero; and, as is well known, in the Indian system of Yoga it is the Mind with its snares, sensuous temptations & intellectual delusions which is the enemy that has to be overcome & the strong kingdom that has to be conquered. In this passage Indra is not thought of in his human form, but as embodied in the principle of light or tejas; he is harivas, substance of brightness; he is chitrabhnu, of a rich & various effulgence, epithets not easily applicable to a face or figure, but precisely applicable to the principle of mind which has always been supposed in India to be in its material element made of tejas or pure light.We may conclude, therefore, that in Indra, master of Swarga, we have the divine lord of mental force & power. It is as this mental power that he comes sutvatah upa brahmni vghatah, to the soul-movements of the chanter of the sacred song, of the holder of the nectar-wine. He is asked to come, impelled or controlled by the understanding and driven forward by it in the various paths of sumati & snrit, right thinking & truth. We remember the image in the Kathopanishad in which the mind & senses are compared to reins & horses and the understanding to the driver. We look back & see at once the connection with the function demanded of the Aswins in the preceding verses; we look forward & see easily the connection with the activity of Saraswati in the closing riks. The thought of the whole Sukta begins to outline itself, a strong, coherent and luminous progression of psychological images begins to emerge.
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Brahmni therefore may mean either the soul-activities, as dhiyas means the mental activities, or it may mean the words of the mantra which express the soul. If we take it in the latter sense, we must refer it to the girah of the second rik, the mantras taken up by the Aswins into the understanding in order to prepare for action & creation. Indra is to come to these mantras and support them by the brilliant substance of a mental force richly varied in its effulgent manifestation, controlled by the understanding and driven forward to its task in various ways. But it seems to me that the rendering is not quite satisfactory. The main point in this hymn is not the mantras, but the Soma wine and the power that it generates. It is in the forces of the Soma that the Aswins are to rejoice, in that strength they are to take up the girah, in that strength they are to rise to their fiercest intensity of strength & delight. Indra, as mental power, arrives in his richly varied lustre; yhi chitrabhno. Here says the Rishi are these life-forces in the nectar-wine; they are purified in their minute parts & in their whole extent, for so I understand anwbhis tan ptsah; that is to say the distillings of Ananda or divine delight whether in the body as nectar, [or] in the subjective system as streams of life-giving delight are purified of all that impairs & weakens the life forces, purified both in their little several movements & in the whole extent of their stream. These are phenomena that can easily be experienced & understood in Yoga, and the whole hymn like many in the Veda reads to those who have experience like a practical account of a great Yogic internal movement accurate in its every detail. Streng thened, like the Aswins, by the nectar, Indra is to prepare the many-sided activity supported by the Visve devah; therefore he has to come not only controlled by the understanding, dhishnya, like the Aswins, but driven forward in various paths. For an energetic & many-sided activity is the object & for this there must be an energetic and many-sided but well-ordered action of the mental power. He has to come, thus manifold, thus controlled, to the spiritual activities generated by the Soma & the Aswins in the increasing soul (vghatah) full of the life-giving nectar, the immortalising Ananda, sutvatah. He has to come to those soul-activities, in this substance of mental brilliancy, yhi upa brahmni harivas. He has to come, ttujna, with a protective force, or else with a rapidly striving force & uphold by mind the joy of the Sacrificer in the nectar-offering, the offering of this Ananda to the Gods of life & action & thought, sute dadhishwa na chanah. Protecting is, here, the best sense for ttujna. For Indra is not only to support swift & energetic action; that has already been provided for; he has also to uphold or bear in mind and by the power of mind the great & rapid delight which the Sacrificer is about to pour out into life & action, jvayja. The divine delight must not fail us in our activity; hostile shocks must not be allowed to disturb our established pleasure in the great offering. Therefore Indra must be there in his light & power to uphold and to protect.
We have gained, therefore, another great step in the understanding of the Veda. The figure of the mighty Indra, in his most essential quality & function, begins to appear to us as in a half-luminous silhouette full of suggestions. We have much yet to learn about him, especially his war with Vritra, his thunderbolt & his dealings with the seven rivers. But the central or root idea is fixed. The rest is the outgrowth, foliage & branchings.
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We are accustomed to speak of the Visvadevas as if they were a separate class of deities, like the Adityas, Maruts or Rudras; but the Veda uses the expression Vive devsah, which in the absence of any other meaning for viva, we must render simply All gods. We shall suppose for the present that when the expression is used, the Gods generally and in the mass, whether apart from the great Thirty-three or including them, are invoked, the Gods in their general character as supporters and agents of all internal & external activity, charshanidhritah, without distinction of names or special faculty. A rich and many-sided activity is contemplated; the mass of the divine forces that support the world action in man are summoned to their functions.
The precise meaning of the words has first to be settled. Charshani is taken in the Veda to be, like krishti, a word equivalent to manushya, men. The entire correctness of the rendering may well be doubted. the Gods, no doubt, can be described as upholders of men, but there are passages & uses in which the application of this significance becomes difficult. For Indra, like Agni, is called vivacharshani. Can this expression mean the Universal Man? Is Indra, like Agni, Vaivnara, in the sense of being present in all human beings? If so, the subjective capacity of Indra is indeed proved by a single epithet. But Vaivnara really means the Universal Existence or Force, from a sense of the root an which we have in anila, anala, Latin anima or else, if the combination be viv-nara, then from the Vedic sense of nara, strong, swift or bright. And what canwemake of such an expression as charshanipr?We must therefore follow our usual course & ask how charshani came to mean a human being. The root charsh or chrish is formed from the primary root char or chri (a lost form whose original presence is, however, necessary in the history of Sanscrit speech), as krish from kri. Now kri means to do, char means to do, work, practise or perform. The form krish was evidently used in the sense of action which required a prolonged or laborious effort; in the same way as the root Ar it came to mean to plough; it came to mean also to overcome or to drag or pull. From this sense of action or labour alone can krishti have been extended in significance to the idea, man; originally it must have been used like kru or keru to mean a doer, worker, and, from its form, have been capable also of meaning action. I suggest that charshani had really the same meaning & something of the same development. The other sense given to the word, swift, moving, cannot easily have led to the idea of man; strength, doing, thinking are the characteristics behind the human idea in the older languages. Charshani-dhrit applied to the Visvadevas or dhartr charshannm to Mitra & Varuna will mean the upholders of actions or activities; vivacharshani, applied to Indra or Agni, will mean the lord of all actions; charshanipr will mean filling the actions. That Indra in this sense is vivacharshani can be at once determined from two passages occurring early in the Veda,I.9.2 in Madhuchchhandas hymn to Indra, mandim Indrya mandine chakrim vivni chakraye, delight-giving for Indra the enjoyer, effective of action for the doer of all actions, where vivni chakri is a perfect equivalent to vivacharshani, and I.11.4 in another hymn to Indra, Indro vivasya karmano dhart, Indra the upholder of every action, where we have the exact idea of charshandhrit, vivacharshani & dhartr charshannm. The Visvadevas are the upholders of all our activities.
In the eighth rik, usr iva swasarni offers us an almost insoluble difficulty. Usr means, ordinarily, either rays or cows or mornings; swasaram is a Vedic word of unfixed significance. Sayana renders, hastening like sunbeams to the days, a rendering which has neither sense nor appropriateness; emending it slightly we get hastening like dawns or mornings to the days, a beautiful & picturesque, though difficult image but one, unhappily, which has no appropriateness to the context. If we can suppose the lost root swas to have meant, to lie, sleep, rest, like the simpler form sas (cf sanj to cling & swanj to embrace), we may translate, hastening like kine to their stalls; but this also is not appropriate to the Visvadevas hastening to the Soma offering not for rest, but for enjoyment & action. I believe the real meaning to be, hastening like lovers to their paramours; but the philological reasoning by which I arrive at these meanings for usra & swasaram is so remote & conjectural, that I cannot lay any stress on the suggestion. Aptur is a less difficult word. If it is a compound, ap+tur, it must mean swift or forceful in effecting or producing; but it may also be formed by the addition of a suffix tur in an adjectival sense to the root ap, to do, bring about, effect, produce or obtain.
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We have gathered much from this brief hymn, one of the deepest in thought in the Veda. If our construction is correct, then this at least appears that the Veda is no loose, empty & tawdry collection of vague images & shallow superstitions, but there are some portions of it at least which present a clear, well-knit writing full of meaning & stored with ideas. We have the work of sages & thinkers, rishayah, kavayah, manshinah, subtle practical psychologists & great Yogins, not the work of savage medicine-men evolving out of primitive barbarism the first glimpses of an embryonic culture in the half-coherent fumble, the meaningless ritual of a worship of personified rain, wind, fire, sun & constellations. the Gods of the Veda have a clear & fixed personality & functions & its conceptions are founded on a fairly advanced knowledge & theory at least of our subjective nature. Nor when we look at the clearness, fixity & frequently psychological nature of the functions of the Greek gods, Apollo, Hermes, Pallas, Aphrodite, [have we] the right to expect anything less from the ancestors of the far more subtle-minded, philosophical & spiritual Indian nation.
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1.08 - The Historical Significance of the Fish, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
offering these to the images of the Gods; and, when the revelries of
the night are over, after cock-crow, they go down with torches into
1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Looking at Kedr, the Master said: "He is very nice. He accepts both the Absolute and the Relative. He believes in Brahman, but he also accepts the Gods and Divine Incarnations in human form."
In Kedr's opinion Sri Ramakrishna was such an Incarnation.
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Now and then he went into samdhi, standing still as a statue. While he was in one of these states of divine unconsciousness, the devotees put thick garlands of jasmine around his neck. The enchanting form of the Master reminded the devotees of Chaitanya, another Incarnation of God. The Master passed alternately through three moods of divine consciousness: the inmost, when he completely lost all knowledge of the outer world; the semi-conscious, when he danced with the devotees in an ecstasy of love; and the conscious, when he joined them in loud singing. It was indeed a sight for the Gods, to see the Master standing motionless in samdhi, with fragrant garlands hanging from his neck, his countenance beaming with love, and the devotees singing and dancing around him.
When it was time for his noon meal, Sri Ramakrishna put on a new yellow cloth and sat on the small couch. His golden complexion, blending with his yellow cloth, enchanted the eyes of the devotees.
1.09 - BOOK THE NINTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And utters to the Gods his holy vows;
And on the marble altar's polish'd frame
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What mortal now shall seek the Gods with pray'r?
The Transformation of Lychas into a Rock
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O, may the Gods protect thee, in that hour,
When, 'midst thy throws, thou call'st th' Ilithyan Pow'r!
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Implor'd the Gods, and call'd Lucina's aid.
She came, but prejudic'd, to give my Fate
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At length the Gods Alcmena's womb have blest.
Swift from her seat the startled Goddess springs,
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The Debate of the Gods
When Themis thus with prescient voice had spoke,
Among the Gods a various murmur broke;
Dissention rose in each immortal breast,
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Nor fear to save whate'er the Gods will send.
Delude with art thy husband's dire decree:
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But Nature, stronger than the Gods above,
Refuses her assistance to my love;
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
19. (This Samadhi when not followed by extreme non-attachment) becomes the cause of the re-manifestation of the Gods and of those that become merged in nature.
the Gods in the Indian systems of philosophy represent certain high offices which are filled successively by various souls. But none of them is perfect.
1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:This equality cannot come except by a protracted ordeal and patient self-discipline; so long as desire is strong, equality cannot come at all except in periods of quiescence and the fatigue of desire, and it is then more likely to be an inert indifference or desire's recoil from itself than the true calm and the positive spiritual oneness. Moreover, this discipline or this growth into equality of spirit has its necessary epochs and stages. Ordinarily we have to begin with a period of endurance; for we must learn to confront, to suffer and to assimilate all contacts. Each fibre in us must be taught not to wince away from that which pains and repels and not to run eagerly towards that which pleases and attracts, but rather to accept, to face, to bear and to conquer. All touches we must be strong to bear, not only those that are proper and personal to us but those born of our sympathy or our conflict with the worlds around, above or below us and with their peoples. We shall endure tranquilly the action and impact on us of men and things and forces, the pressure of the Gods and the assaults of Titans; we shall face and engulf in the unstirred seas of our spirit all that can possibly come to us down the ways of the soul's infinite experience. This is the stoical period of the preparation of equality, its most elementary and yet its heroic age. But this steadfast endurance of the flesh and heart and mind must be reinforced by a sustained sense of spiritual submission to a divine Will: this living clay must yield not only with a stern or courageous acquiescence, but with knowledge or with resignation, even in suffering, to the touch of the divine Hand that is preparing its perfection. A sage, a devout or even a tender stoicism of the God-lover is possible, and these are better than the merely pagan self-reliant endurance which may lend itself to a too great hardening of the vessel of God: for this kind prepares the strength that is capable of wisdom and of love; its tranquillity is a deeply moved calm that passes easily into bliss. The gain of this period of resignation and endurance is the soul's strength equal to all shocks and contacts.
9:There is next a period of high-seated impartiality and indifference in which the soul becomes free from exultation and depression and escapes from the snare of the eagerness of joy as from the dark net of the pangs of grief and suffering. All things and persons and forces, all thoughts and feelings and sensations and actions, one's own no less than those of others, are regarded from above by a spirit that remains intact and immutable and is not disturbed by these things. This is the philosophic period of the preparation of equality, a wide and august movement. But indifference must not settle into an inert turning away from action and experience; it must not be an aversion born of weariness, disgust and distaste, a recoil of disappointed or satiated desire, the sullenness of a baffled and dissatisfied egoism forced back from its passionate aims. These recoils come inevitably in the unripe soul and may in some way help the progress by a discouragement of the eager desire-driven vital nature, but they are not the perfection towards which we labour. The indifference or the impartiality that we must seek after is a calm superiority of the high-seated soul above the contacts of things;1 it regards and accepts or rejects them but is not moved in the rejection and is not subjected by the acceptance. It begins to feel itself near, kin to, one with a silent Self and Spirit self-existent and separate from the workings of Nature which it supports and makes possible, part of or merged in the motionless calm Reality that transcends the motion and action of the universe. The gain of this period of high transcendence is the soul's peace unrocked and unshaken by the pleasant ripplings or by the tempestuous waves and billows of the world's movement.
1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Legend of Lakṣmī. Durvāsas gives a garland to Indra: he treats it disrespectfully, and is cursed by the Muni. The power of the Gods impaired: they are oppressed by the Dānavas, and have recourse to Viṣṇu. The churning of the ocean. Praises of Śrī.
Parāśara said:-
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kara (Śiva)[1], was wandering over the earth; when be beheld, in the hands of a nymph of air[2], a garland of flowers culled from the trees of heaven, the fragrant odour of which spread throughout the forest, and enraptured all who dwelt beneath its shade. The sage, who was then possessed by religious phrensy[3], when he beheld that garland, demanded it of the graceful and full-eyed nymph, who, bowing to him reverentially, immediately presented it to him. He, as one frantic, placed the chaplet upon his brow, and thus decorated resumed his path; when he beheld (Indra) the husband of Śacī, the ruler of the three worlds, approach, seated on his infuriated elephant Airāvata, and attended by the Gods. The phrensied sage, taking from his head the garland of flowers, amidst which the bees collected ambrosia, threw it to the king of the Gods, who caught it, and suspended it on the brow of Airāvata, where it shone like the river Jāhnavī, glittering on the dark summit of the mountain Kailāsa. The elephant, whose eyes were dim with inebriety, and attracted by the smell, took hold of the garland with his trunk, and cast it on the earth. That chief of sages, Durvāsas, was highly incensed at this disrespectful treatment of his gift, and thus angrily addressed the sovereign of the immortals: "Inflated with the intoxication of power, Vāsava, vile of spirit, thou art an idiot not to respect the garland I presented to thee, which was the dwelling of Fortune (Śrī). Thou hast not acknowledged it as a largess; thou hast not bowed thyself before me; thou hast not placed the wreath upon thy head, with thy countenance expanding with delight. Now, fool, for that thou hast not infinitely prized the garland that I gave thee, thy sovereignty over the three worlds shall be subverted. Thou confoundest me, Śakra, with other Brahmans, and hence I have suffered disrespect from thy arrogance: but in like manner as thou hast cast the garland I gave thee down on the ground, so shall thy dominion over the universe be whelmed in ruin. Thou hast offended one whose wrath is dreaded by all created things, king of the Gods, even me, by thine excessive pride."
Descending hastily from his elephant, Mahendra endeavoured to appease the sinless Durvāsas: but to the excuses and prostrations of the thousand-eyed, the Muni answered, "I am not of a compassionate heart, nor is forgiveness congenial to my nature. Other Munis may relent; but know me, Śakra, to be Durvāsas. Thou hast in vain been rendered insolent by Gautama and others; for know me, Indra, to be Durvāsas, whose nature is a stranger to remorse. Thou hast been flattered by Vaśiṣṭha and other tender-hearted saints, whose loud praises (lave made thee so arrogant, that thou hast insulted me. But who is there in the universe that can behold my countenance, dark with frowns, and surrounded by my blazing hair, and not tremble? What need of words? I will not forgive, whatever semblance of humility thou mayest assume."
Having thus spoken, the Brahman went his way; and the king of the Gods, remounting his elephant, returned to his capital Amarāvati. Thenceforward, Maitreya, the three worlds and Śakra lost their vigour, and all vegetable products, plants, and herbs were withered and died; sacrifices were no longer offered; devout exercises no longer practised; men were no more addicted to charity, or any moral or religious obligation; all beings became devoid of steadiness[4]; all the faculties of sense were obstructed by cupidity; and men's desires were excited by frivolous objects. Where there is energy, there is prosperity; and upon prosperity energy depends. How can those abandoned by prosperity be possessed of energy; and without energy, where is excellence? Without excellence there can be no vigour nor heroism amongst men: he who has neither courage nor strength, will be spurned by all: and he who is universally treated with disgrace, must suffer abasement of his intellectual faculties.
The three regions being thus wholly divested of prosperity, and deprived of energy, the Dānavas and sons of Diti, the enemies of the Gods, who were incapable of steadiness, and agitated by ambition, put forth their strength against the Gods. They engaged in war with the feeble and unfortunate divinities; and Indra and the rest, being overcome in fight, fled for refuge to Brahmā, preceded by the god of flame (Hutāśana). When the great father of the universe had heard all that had come to pass, he said to the deities, "Repair for protection to the god of high and low; the tamer of the demons; the causeless cause of creation, preservation, and destruction; the progenitor of the progenitors; the immortal, unconquerable Viṣṇu; the cause of matter and spirit, of his unengendered products; the remover of the grief of all who humble themselves before him: he will give you aid." Having thus spoken to the deities, Brahmā proceeded along with them to the northern shore of the sea of milk; and with reverential words thus prayed to the supreme Hari:-
"We glorify him who is all things; the lord supreme over all; unborn, imperishable; the protector of the mighty ones of creation; the unperceived, indivisible Nārāyaṇa; the smallest of the smallest, the largest of the largest, of the elements; in whom are all things, from whom are all things; who was before existence; the god who is all beings; who is the end of ultimate objects; who is beyond final spirit, and is one with supreme soul; who is contemplated as the cause of final liberation by sages anxious to be free; in whom are not the qualities of goodness, foulness, or darkness, that belong to undeveloped nature. May that purest of all pure spirits this day be propitious to us. May that Hari be propitious to us, whose inherent might is not an object of the progressive chain of moments or of days, that make up time. May he who is called the supreme god, who is not in need of assistance, Hari, the soul of all embodied substance, be favourable unto us. May that Hari, who is both cause and effect; who is the cause of cause, the effect of effect; he who is the effect of successive effect; who is the effect of the effect of the effect himself; the product of the effect of the effect of the effect, or elemental substance; to him I bow[5]. The cause of the cause; the cause of the cause of the cause; the cause of them all; to him I bow. To him who is the enjoyer and thing to be enjoyed; the creator and thing to be created; who is the agent and the effect; to that supreme being I bow. The infinite nature of Viṣṇu is pure, intelligent, perpetual, unborn, undecayable, inexhaustible, inscrutable, immutable; it is neither gross nor subtile, nor capable of being defined: to that ever holy nature of Viṣṇu I bow. To him whose faculty to create the universe abides in but a part of but the ten-millionth part of him; to him who is one with the inexhaustible supreme spirit, I bow: and to the glorious nature of the supreme Viṣṇu, which nor gods, nor sages, nor I, nor Śa
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the Gods, having heard this prayer uttered by Brahmā, bowed down, and cried, "Be favourable to us; be present to our sight: we bow down to that glorious nature which the mighty Brahmā does not know; that which is thy nature, oh imperishable, in whom the universe abides." Then the Gods having ended, Vrihaspati and the divine Ṛṣis thus prayed: "We bow down to the being entitled to adoration; who is the first object of sacrifice; who was before the first of things; the creator of the creator of the world; the undefinable: oh lord of all that has been or is to be; imperishable type of sacrifice; have pity upon thy worshippers; appear to them, prostrate before thee. Here is Brahmā; here is Trilocana (the three-eyed Śiva), with the Rudras; Puṣā, (the sun), with the Ādityas; and Fire, with all the mighty luminaries: here are the sons of Asvinī (the two Asvinī Kumāras), the Vasus and all the winds, the Sādhyas, the Viśvadevas, and Indra the king of the Gods: all of whom bow lowly before thee: all the tribes of the immortals, vanquished by the demon host, have fled to thee for succour."
Thus prayed to, the supreme deity, the mighty holder of the conch and discus, shewed himself to them: and beholding the lord of gods, bearing a shell, a discus, and a mace, the assemblage of primeval form, and radiant with embodied light, Pitāmahā and the other deities, their eyes moistened with rapture, first paid him homage, and then thus addressed him: "Repeated salutation to thee, who art indefinable: thou art Brahmā; thou art the wielder of the Pināka bow (Śiva); thou art Indra; thou art fire, air, the god of waters, the sun, the king of death (Yama), the Vasus, the Māruts (the winds), the Sādhyas, and Viśvadevas. This assembly of divinities, that now has come before thee, thou art; for, the creator of the world, thou art every where. Thou art the sacrifice, the prayer of oblation, the mystic syllable Om, the sovereign of all creatures: thou art all that is to be known, or to be unknown: oh universal soul, the whole world consists of thee. We, discomfited by the Daityas, have fled to thee, oh Viṣṇu, for refuge. Spirit of all, have compassion upon us; defend us with thy mighty power. There will be affliction, desire, trouble, and grief, until thy protection is obtained: but thou art the remover of all sins. Do thou then, oh pure of spirit, shew favour unto us, who have fled to thee: oh lord of all, protect us with thy great power, in union with the goddess who is thy strength[6]." Hari, the creator of the universe, being thus prayed to by the prostrate divinities, smiled, and thus spake: "With renovated energy, oh gods, I will restore your strength. Do you act as I enjoin. Let all the Gods, associated with the Asuras, cast all sorts of medicinal herbs into the sea of milk; and then taking the mountain Mandara for the churning-stick, the serpent Vāsuki for the rope, churn the ocean together for ambrosia; depending upon my aid. To secure the assistance of the Daityas, you must be at peace with them, and engage to give them an equal portion of the fruit of your associated toil; promising them, that by drinking the Amrita that shall be produced from the agitated ocean, they shall become mighty and immortal. I will take care that the enemies of the Gods shall not partake of the precious draught; that they shall share in the labour alone."
Being thus instructed by the god of gods, the divinities entered into alliance with the demons, and they jointly undertook the acquirement of the beverage of immortality. They collected various kinds of medicinal herbs, and cast them into the sea of milk, the waters of which were radiant as the thin and shining clouds of autumn. They then took the mountain Mandara for the staff; the serpent Vāsuki for the cord; and commenced to churn the ocean for the Amrita. The assembled gods were stationed by Kṛṣṇa at the tail of the serpent; the Daityas and Dānavas at its head and neck. Scorched by the flames emitted from his inflated hood, the demons were shorn of their glory; whilst the clouds driven towards his tail by the breath of his mouth, refreshed the Gods with revivifying showers. In the midst of the milky sea, Hari himself, in the form of a tortoise, served as a pivot for the mountain, as it was whirled around. The holder of the mace and discus was present in other forms amongst the Gods and demons, and assisted to drag the monarch of the serpent race: and in another vast body he sat upon the summit of the mountain. With one portion of his energy, unseen by gods or demons, he sustained the serpent king; and with another, infused vigour into the Gods.
From the ocean, thus churned by the Gods and Dānavas, first uprose the cow Surabhi, the fountain of milk and curds, worshipped by the divinities, and beheld by them and their associates with minds disturbed, and eyes glistening with delight. Then, as the holy Siddhas in the sky wondered what this could be, appeared the goddess Vārunī (the deity of wine), her eyes rolling with intoxication. Next, from the whirlpool of the deep, sprang the celestial Pārijāta tree, the delight of the nymphs of heaven, perfuming the world with its blossoms. The troop of Āpsarasas, the nymphs of heaven, were then produced, of surprising loveliness, endowed with beauty and with taste. The cool-rayed moon next rose, and was seized by Mahādeva: and then poison was engendered from the sea, of which the snake gods (Nāgas) took possession. Dhanwantari, robed in white, and bearing in his hand the cup of Amrita, next came forth: beholding which, the sons of Diti and of Danu, as well as the Munis, were filled with satisfaction and delight. Then, seated on a full-blown lotus, and holding a water-lily in her hand, the goddess Śrī, radiant with beauty, rose from the waves. The great sages, enraptured, hymned her with the song dedicated to her praise[7]. Viśvavasu and other heavenly quiristers sang, and Ghritācī and other celestial nymphs danced before her. Ga
gā and other holy streams attended for her ablutions; and the elephants of the skies, taking up their pure waters in vases of gold, poured them over the goddess, the queen of the universal world. The sea of milk in person presented her with a wreath of never-fading flowers; and the artist of the Gods (Viswakermā) decorated her person with heavenly ornaments. Thus bathed, attired, and adorned, the goddess, in the view of the celestials, cast herself upon the breast of Hari; and there reclining, turned her eyes upon the deities, who were inspired with rapture by her gaze. Not so the Daityas, who, with Viprachitti at their head, were filled with indignation, as Viṣṇu turned away from them, and they were abandoned by the goddess of prosperity (Lakṣmī.)
The powerful and indignant Daityas then forcibly seized the Amrita-cup, that was in the hand of Dhanwantari: but Viṣṇu, assuming a female form, fascinated and deluded them; and recovering the Amrita from them, delivered it to the Gods. Śakra and the other deities quaffed the ambrosia. The incensed demons, grasping their weapons, fell upon them; but the Gods, into whom the ambrosial draught had infused new vigour, defeated and put their host to flight, and they fled through the regions of space, and plunged into the subterraneous realms of Pātāla. the Gods thereat greatly rejoiced, did homage to the holder of the discus and mace, and resumed their reign in heaven. The sun shone with renovated splendour, and again discharged his appointed task; and the celestial luminaries again circled, oh best of Munis, in their respective orbits. Fire once more blazed aloft, beautiful in splendour; and the minds of all beings were animated by devotion. The three worlds again were rendered happy by prosperity; and Indra, the chief of the Gods, was restored to power[8]. Seated upon his throne, and once more in heaven, exercising sovereignty over the Gods, Śakra thus eulogized the goddess who bears a lotus in her hand:-
"I bow down to Śrī, the mother of all beings, seated on her lotus throne, with eyes like full-blown lotuses, reclining on the breast of Viṣṇu. Thou art Siddhi (superhuman power): thou art Swadhā and Svāhā: thou art ambrosia (Sudhā), the purifier of the universe: thou art evening, night, and dawn: thou art power, faith, intellect: thou art the goddess of letters (Sarasvatī). Thou, beautiful goddess, art knowledge of devotion, great knowledge, mystic knowledge, and spiritual knowledge[9]; which confers eternal liberation. Thou art the science of reasoning, the three Vedas, the arts and sciences[10]: thou art moral and political science. The world is peopled by thee with pleasing or displeasing forms. Who else than thou, oh goddess, is seated on that person of the god of gods, the wielder of the mace, which is made up of sacrifice, and contemplated by holy ascetics? Abandoned by thee, the three worlds were on the brink of ruin; but they have been reanimated by thee. From thy propitious gaze, oh mighty goddess, men obtain wives, children, dwellings, friends, harvests, wealth. Health and strength, power, victory, happiness, are easy of attainment to those upon whom thou smilest. Thou art the mother of all beings, as the god of gods, Hari, is their father; and this world, whether animate or inanimate, is pervaded by thee and Viṣṇu. Oh thou who purifiest all things, forsake not our treasures, our granaries, our dwellings, our dependants, our persons, our wives: abandon not our children, our friends, our lineage, our jewels, oh thou who abidest on the bosom of the god of gods. They whom thou desertest are forsaken by truth, by purity, and goodness, by every amiable and excellent quality; whilst the base and worthless upon whom thou lookest favourably become immediately endowed with all excellent qualifications, with families, and with power. He on whom thy countenance is turned is honourable, amiable, prosperous, wise, and of exalted birth; a hero of irresistible prowess: but all his merits and his advantages are converted into worthlessness from whom, beloved of Viṣṇu, mother of the world, thou avertest thy face. The tongues of Brahmā, are unequal to celebrate thy excellence. Be propitious to me, oh goddess, lotus-eyed, and never forsake me more." Being thus praised, the gratified Śrī, abiding in all creatures, and heard by all beings, replied to the god of a hundred rites (Śatakratu); "I am pleased, monarch of the Gods, by thine adoration. Demand from me what thou desirest: I have come to fulfil thy wishes." "If, goddess," replied Indra, "thou wilt grant my prayers; if I am worthy of thy bounty; be this my first request, that the three worlds may never again be deprived of thy presence. My second supplication, daughter of ocean, is, that thou wilt not forsake him who shall celebrate thy praises in the words I have addressed to thee." "I will not abandon," the goddess answered, "the three worlds again: this thy first boon is granted; for I am gratified by thy praises: and further, I will never turn my face away from that mortal who morning and evening shall repeat the hymn with which thou hast addressed me."
Parāśara proceeded:-
Thus, Maitreya, in former times the goddess Śrī conferred these boons upon the king of the Gods, being pleased by his adorations; but her first birth was as the daughter of Bhrigu by Khyāti: it was at a subsequent period that she was produced from the sea, at the churning of the ocean by the demons and the Gods, to obtain ambrosia[11]. For in like manner as the lord of the world, the god of gods, Janārddana, descends amongst mankind (in various shapes), so does his coadjutrix Śrī. Thus when Hari was born as a dwarf, the son of Aditī, Lakṣmī appeared from a lotus (as Padmā, or Kamalā); when he was born as Rāma, of the race of Bhrigu (or Paraśurāma), she was Dharaṇī; when he was Rāghava (Rāmacandra), she was Sītā; and when he was Kṛṣṇa, she became Rukminī. In the other descents of Viṣṇu, she is his associate. If he takes a celestial form, she appears as divine; if a mortal, she becomes a mortal too, transforming her own person agreeably to whatever character it pleases Viṣṇu to put on. Whosoever hears this account of the birth of Lakṣmī, whosoever reads it, shall never lose the goddess Fortune from his dwelling for three generations; and misfortune, the fountain of strife, shall never enter into those houses in which the hymns to Śrī are repeated.
Thus, Brahman, have I narrated to thee, in answer to thy question, how Lakṣmī, formerly the daughter of Bhrigu, sprang from the sea of milk; and misfortune shall never visit those amongst mankind who daily recite the praises of Lakṣmī uttered by Indra, which are the origin and cause of all prosperity.
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ga, and Kūrma Purāṇas. The Vāyu and Padma have much the same narrative as that of our text; and so have the Agni and Bhāgavata, except that they refer only briefly to the anger of Durvāsas, without narrating the circumstances; indicating their being posterior, therefore, to the original tale. The part, however, assigned to Durvāsas appears to be an embellishment added to the original, for no mention of him occurs in the Matsya P. nor even in the Hari Vaṃśa, neither does it occur in what may be considered the oldest extant versions of the story, those of the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata: both these ascribe the occurrence to the desire of the Gods and Daityas to become immortal. The Matsya assigns a similar motive to the Gods, instigated by observing that the Daityas slain by them in battle were restored to life by Śukra with the Sañjīvinī, or herb of immortality, which he had discovered. The account in the Hari Vaṃśa is brief and obscure, and is explained by the commentator as an allegory, in which the churning of the ocean typifies ascetic penance, and the ambrosia is final liberation: but this is mere mystification. The legend of the Rāmāyana is translated, vol. I. p. 410. of the Serampore edition; and that of the Mahābhārata by Sir C. Wilkins, in the notes to his translation of the Bhāgavata Gītā. See also the original text, Cal. ed. p. 40. It has been presented to general readers in a more attractive form by my friend H. M. Parker, in his Draught of Immortality, printed with other poems, Lond. 1827. The Matsya P. has many of the stanzas of the Mahābhārata interspersed with others. There is some variety in the order and number of articles produced from the ocean. As I have observed elsewhere (Hindu Theatre, I. 59. Lond. ed.), the popular enumeration is fourteen; but the Rāmāyana specifies but nine; the Mahābhārata, nine; the Bhāgavata, ten; the Padma, nine; the Vāyu, twelve; the p. 78 Matsya, perhaps, gives the whole number. Those in which most agree, are, 1. the Hālāhala or Kālakūta poison, swallowed by Śiva: 2. Vārunī or Surā, the goddess of wine, who being taken by the Gods, and rejected by the Daityas, the former were termed Suras, and the latter Asuras: 3. the horse Uccaiśśravas, taken by Indra: 4. Kaustubha, the jewel worn by Viṣṇu: 5. the moon: 6. Dhanwantari, with the Amrita in his Kamaṇḍalu, or vase; and these two articles are in the Vāyu considered as distinct products: 7. the goddess Padmā or Śrī: 8. the Apsarasas, or nymphs of heaven: 9. Surabhi, or the cow of plenty: 10. the Pārijāta tree, or tree of heaven: 11. Airāvata, the elephant taken by Indra. The Matsya adds, 12. the umbrella taken by Varuna: 13. the earrings taken by Indra, and given to Aditī: and apparently another horse, the white horse of the sun: or the number may be completed by counting the Amrita separately from Dhanwantari. The number is made up in the popular lists by adding the bow and the conch of Viṣṇu; but there does not seem to be any good authority for this, and the addition is a sectarial one: so is that of the Tulaśī tree, a plant sacred to Kṛṣṇa, which is one of the twelve specified by the Vāyu P. The Uttara Khanda of the Padma P. has a peculiar enumeration, or, Poison; Jyeṣṭhā or Alakṣmī, the goddess of misfortune, the elder born to fortune; the goddess of wine; Nidrā, or sloth; the Apsarasas; the elephant of Indra; Lakṣmī; the moon; and the Tulaśī plant. The reference to Mohinī, the female form assumed by Viṣṇu, is very brief in our text; and no notice is taken of the story told in the Mahābhārata and some of the Purāṇas, of the Daitya Rāhu's insinuating himself amongst the Gods, and obtaining a portion of the Amrita: being beheaded for this by Viṣṇu, the head became immortal, in consequence of the Amrita having reached the throat, and was transferred as a constellation to the skies; and as the sun and moon detected his presence amongst the Gods, Rāhu pursues them with implacable hatred, and his efforts to seize them are the causes of eclipses; Rāhu typifying the ascending and descending nodes. This seems to be the simplest and oldest form of the legend. The equal immortality of the body, under the name Ketu, and his being the cause of meteorical phenomena, seems to have been an after-thought. In the Padma and Bhāgavata, Rāhu and Ketu are the sons of Sinhikā, the wife of the Dānava Viprachitti.
[9]: The four Vidyās, or branches of knowledge, are said to be, Yajña vidyā, knowledge or performance of religious rites; Mahā vidyā, great knowledge, the worship of the female principle, or Tāntrika worship; Guhya vidyā, knowledge of mantras, mystical prayers, and incantations; and Ātma vidyā, knowledge of soul, true wisdom.
1.09 - Saraswati and Her Consorts, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
spiritual, from a purely naturalistic to an increasingly ethical and psychological view of Nature and the world and the Gods - and this, though by no means certain, is for the present the accepted view,1 - we must suppose that the Vedic poets were at least already advancing from the physical and naturalistic conception of the Gods to the ethical and the spiritual. But Saraswati is not only the goddess of Inspiration, she is at one and the same time one of the seven rivers of the early Aryan world. The question at once arises, whence came this extraordinary identification? And how does the connection of the two ideas present itself in the
Vedic hymns? And there is more; for Saraswati is important not only in herself but by her connections. Before proceeding farther let us cast a rapid and cursory glance at them to see what they can teach us.
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Saraswati are associated together in a constant formula in those hymns of invocation in which the Gods are called by Agni to the
Sacrifice.
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It seems to me impossible to see in these expressions anything else than the indication of a state of illumined consciousness the nature of which is that it is wide or large, br.hat, full of the truth of being, satyam, and of the truth of knowledge and action, r.tam. the Gods have this consciousness. Agni, for instance, is termed r.tacit, he who has the truth-consciousness.
The Secret of the Veda
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Such, then, is the character of Saraswati as a psychological principle, her peculiar function and her relation to her most immediate connections among the Gods. How far do these shed any light on her relations as the Vedic river to her six sister streams?
The number seven plays an exceedingly important part in the
Vedic system, as in most very ancient schools of thought. We find it recurring constantly, - the seven delights, sapta ratnani; the seven flames, tongues or rays of Agni, sapta arcis.ah., sapta jvalah.; the seven forms of the Thought-principle, sapta dhtayah.; the seven Rays or Cows, forms of the Cow unslayable, Aditi, mother of the Gods, sapta gavah.; the seven rivers, the seven mothers or fostering cows, sapta matarah., sapta dhenavah., a term applied indifferently to the Rays and to the Rivers. All these sets of seven depend, it seems to me, upon the Vedic classification of the fundamental principles, the tattvas, of existence.
The enquiry into the number of these tattvas greatly interested the speculative mind of the ancients and in Indian philosophy we find various answers ranging from the One upward and running into the twenties. In Vedic thought the basis chosen was the number of the psychological principles, because all existence was conceived by the Rishis as a movement of conscious being.
1.09 - Sri Aurobindo and the Big Bang, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
improving or worsening the lot of the creatures of the Gods,
and sometimes of the Gods themselves. With one excep
tion: the Hebrews. Their holy book told about an absolute
1.09 - Talks, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Yet they came so unexpectedly, for Sri Aurobindo, as we had come to know and see him during the Darshan, had succeeded in building in our minds a picture of him high-poised as his Life Divine, far-moving as his Synthesis of Yoga, unapproachable, except perhaps by the Gods, not at all close and intimate like his Essays on the Gita or accessible to our mortal longings. Of course, few of us had the extraordinary good fortune of knowing his human side through his inestimable correspondence, on the strength of which I wrote to him, "You thrashed me for calling you grave and austere at the Darshan time. But see, when we go to the Mother, how seraphically she smiles, while your noble Self being near, appears still far away at some Olympian height. It is difficult to discern the gravity or the jollity of a face at such a height. I suppose our conception of the Gods was formed from the vision of such a figure." He replied, "Neither gravity nor jollity, but a large, easy, quiet, amiable condition. the Gods can't be amiable?" And it was this amiable aspect that came to the forefront in our talks. We came to know much later that Sri Aurobindo used to hold "table-talks" in the pre-Ashram days, with his few young followers. But I believe ours were an advance on those talks by the ease, the informality, the natural diversity and intimacy of communication due to the exceptional circumstances in which they were held. Sri Aurobindo had no need of vocal self-expression, either in our time or before. It is my conviction that the interchange with us was an act of compassion to entertain us in return for the medical attendance we had been called upon to render him. I may add here that any personal service offered to the Divine, however small, brings an ample reward.
When after the first few days of discomfort and submission to medical rigours, he had adjusted himself to the new mode of life, the talks started. At first they were in the form of medical enquiries. Dr. Manilal would come up in the morning (for he was living outside the Ashram compound) and stand with folded hands before Sri Aurobindo who lay in bed. After pranam he would ask, smiling, "How are you, Sir? Did you sleep well?" to which Sri Aurobindo's answers were genially brief.
1.09 - The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
like sheep shall pasture the Gods all together." 28
*9 At the northern point of the ecliptic is the region of fire
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
festival of all the Gods and goddesses. Different from this true and
fruitful marriage of the palm are the false and barren marriages of
1.09 - To the Students, Young and Old, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Certain beings who, I might say, are in the secret of the Gods, are aware of the importance of this moment in the life of the world, and they have taken birth on earth to play their part in whatever way they can. A great luminous consciousness broods over the earth, creating a kind of stir in its atmosphere. All who are open receive a ripple from this eddy, a ray of this light and seek to give form to it, each according to his capacity.
We have here the unique privilege of being at the very centre of this radiating light, at the fount of this force of transformation.
11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Strains trembling with the secrets of the Gods.
A spirit wandered happily in the wind,
--
Have found the narrow bridges of the Gods.
Wait patient of the brittle bars of form
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The great and easy dances of the Gods.
O fragrant are the lanes thy children walk
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There where the Gods and demons battle in night
Or wrestle on the borders of the Sun,
--
Hers are but careless visits of the Gods.
They are a Light that fails, a Word soon hushed
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It pushes back the curtain of the Gods;
It climbs towards its own eternity."
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As if a little lower than the Gods.
For knowledge shall pour down in radiant streams
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All still was in a silence of the Gods.
The prophet moment covered limitless Space
--
But where the silence of the Gods had passed,
A greater harmony from the stillness born
11.01 - The Opening Scene of Savitri, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"It was the hour before the Gods awake". Only when the Gods awake, does the light begin to appear on earth. Otherwise it is all night here, black, impenetrable and unfathomable. Indeed the very creation begins with the awakening of the Gods. When the Gods are asleep, it is the non-existencetamast tamas ghamagre'in the beginning darkness was engulfed in darkness'. This is the asat, non-being, this is the acit, the inconscience, this is the blackest night. The Bible also speaks of a similar darknessJob's terrible vision: "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order and where the light is as darkness."1 The lamp of consciousness is not yet lit. The dark vacancy stretches across the path of creation yet to be, the light that is to come. This shadow is the negation of the light behind, it is the original of the creation. It is presented as the mere material universe apparently dead and dry, the utter inconscience with no sign of consciousness anywhere. And earth seems to be there part of it, a shadow within the shadow, a dark spot wheeling in a dark mass.
It is the pre-creation, one might say, the creation before the creation the shadow creation. We know coming events cast their shadow before, as a kind of forewarning, foreboding: that is the dark messenger, the bright messenger will follow. For after all, it is His shadow"And into the midnight his shadow is thrown."
The original inconscience is a non-existence, a nihil in which all existence is rolled up and dissolved, an infinite non-entity or zero. This is the zero here below, on the reverse side of the reality. But there is another zero up above and beyond, beyond the superconsciousness, the Sunya, beyond Sachchidananda. In between is the world of night, the world of gestation where the Gods are asleep. When the Divine, the One indivisible existence felt the first stirring and was moved to create, he divided himself and cast himself as it were out of himself. And the Light and Consciousness of his Being forthwith leaped into darkness and inconscience. That is the involution of the Supreme into material existence.
This original darkness is the womb of creation, it is something akin to Hiranyagarbha of Indian tradition. The fiat has gone from the Supreme to resurrect this darknesshis alter-egoand he sends down the messenger-light. So the Gods are about to wake, there is a stir in their slumber. The creation as manifestation begins when the first ray of light strikes the darkness. That is when the Gods open their eyes. But the spell of darkness returns and swallows up the light.
The earth too, one with the surrounding mass of darkness and inconscience is asleep and insentient. She has to wake up and start on her journey moving forward, unveiling her secret mysteries towards the supreme revelation, the Divine incarnation in matter. the Gods are awake, in order to awaken the earth. A first ray is sent down and it touches as it were the sleeping Mother. The Divine Ray is just- like a finger of a child touching her mother trying, as it were, to persuade her to open her eyes and look at her child. The first ray, however, comes not as a caress to the inert being of darkness, it is a sharp prick, even a hard blow. Such is the first impact of light upon dead matter; and the light is thrown back, as an unwelcome intruder, into what it came from; and the darkness grovels in its old groove. The second stage comes when the impact is not felt as a pain or something totally foreign and strange; its touch is felt as something soothing, something that heals an eternal sore. But this too was not suffered long and the light has to go back again.
These are the successive dawns of which the Vedic Rishis speak, through which the light and consciousness in the dark inconscience gradually grows, increases in volume and strength. The continued descent of the light into earth brings about the change upon earth, that is called evolution, that is to say, the transformation of the dark inconscience here below into the original Super-Light of which it was the shadow cast out because of the original separation from the Source.
1.1.03 - Man, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that man is full of divine possibilities - he is not merely a term in physical evolution, but himself the field of a spiritual evolution which with him began and in him will end. It was only when man was made, that the Gods were satisfied - they who had rejected
v, "Man indeed is well and the animal forms, - and cried s,ktm wonderfully made; the higher evolution can now begin." He is like God, the sum of all other types and creatures from the animal to the god, infinitely variable where they are fixed, dynamic where they, even the highest, are static, and, therefore, although in the present and in his attainment a little lower than the angels, yet in the eventuality and in his culmination considerably higher than the Gods. The other or fixed types, animals, gods, giants,
Titans, demigods, can rise to a higher development than their own, but they must use the human body and the terrestrial birth to effect the transition.
1.1.04 - Philosophy, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He treads down his emotions, because emotion distorts reason and replaces it by passions, desires, preferences, prejudices, prejudgments. He avoids life, because life awakes all his sensational being and puts his reason at the mercy of egoism, of sensational reactions of anger, fear, hope, hunger, ambition, instead of allowing it to act justly and do disinterested work. It becomes merely the paid pleader of a party, a cause, a creed, a dogma, an intellectual faction. Passion and eagerness, even intellectual eagerness, so disfigure the greatest minds that even Shankara becomes a sophist and a word-twister, and even Buddha argues in a circle. The philosopher wishes above all to preserve his intellectual righteousness; he is or should be as careful of his mental rectitude as the saint of his moral stainlessness. Therefore he avoids, as far as the world will let him, the conditions which disturb. But in this way he cuts himself off from experience and only the Gods can know without experience. Sieyes said that politics was a subject of which he had made a science.
He had, but the pity was that though he knew the science of politics perfectly, he did not know politics itself in the least and when he did enter political life, he had formed too rigidly the logical habit to replace it in any degree by the practical. If he had reversed the order or at least coordinated experiment with his theories before they were formed, he might have succeeded better. His readymade Constitutions are monuments of logical perfection and practical ineffectiveness. They have the weakness
11.06 - The Mounting Fire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Ladder of Unconsciousness The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part Eleven The Mounting Fire
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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.
Thus, the head, the brain, must be built wholly of fire particles. The cranium will hold, as it were, a golden ball, rounded and fully formed, the golden egg, hirayagarbha, out of which the new physical creation will emerge something in the manner of the legendary Greek goddess Minerva, whole and entire, complete in arms and panoply, out of the head of Father Jupiter.
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The Ladder of Unconsciousness The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications
11.07 - The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:11.07 - The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part Eleven The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications
The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications
Now days we hear much of brain-washing. The other day, instead of brain-washing, I spoke of brain-ignition. That is to say, for a total reconstitution of the brain, for a new building of the physique of the new man, one has to transform the cells of grey matter into particles of fire, packets of burning energy. I said, the cranium being the control-room of physical existence and the brain being the controlling agent the brain extending its range down the spinal column to its end at the last vertebrathis is the element that has to be treated and reorganised first and foremost if a physical reorganisation of human nature and behaviour is to be achieved. I explainedtried to explain that this being the physical or material field, the first of the elementskiti or earth or matter the God presiding over it, Fire, has to be invoked and its especial working carried out here.
11.08 - Body-Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications Towards the Immortal Body
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part ElevenBody-Energy
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The Labours of the Gods: The five Purifications Towards the Immortal Body
1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
A place among the Gods, had Fate been kind:
Yet this he gave; as oft as wintry rains
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Of Cybele, great mother of the Gods,
Rais'd by Echion in a lonely wood,
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The experienced, that is nature, is composed of elements and organs the elements, gross and fine, which compose the whole of nature, and the organs of the senses, mind, etc. and is of the nature of illumination (Sattva), action (Rajas), and inertia (Tamas). What is the purpose of the whole of nature? That the Purusha may gain experience. The Purusha has, as it were, forgotten its mighty, godly nature. There is a story that the king of the Gods, Indra, once became a pig, wallowing in mire; he had a she-pig and a lot of baby pigs, and was very happy. Then some gods saw his plight, and came to him, and told him, "You are the king of the Gods, you have all the Gods under your command. Why are you here?" But Indra said, "Never mind; I am all right here; I do not care for heaven, while I have this sow and these little pigs." The poor gods were at their wits' end. After a time they decided to slay all the pigs one after another. When all were dead, Indra began to weep and mourn. Then the Gods ripped his pig-body open and he came out of it, and began to laugh, when he realised what a hideous dream he had had he, the king of the Gods, to have become a pig, and to think that that pig-life was the only life! Not only so, but to have wanted the whole universe to come into the pig-life! The Purusha, when it identifies itself with nature, forgets that it is pure and infinite. The Purusha does not love, it is love itself. It does not exist, it is existence itself. The Soul does not know, It is knowledge itself. It is a mistake to say the Soul loves, exists, or knows. Love, existence, and knowledge are not the qualities of the Purusha, but its essence. When they get reflected upon something, you may call them the qualities of that something. They are not the qualities but the essence of the Purusha, the great Atman, the Infinite Being, without birth or death, established in its own glory. It appears to have become so degenerate that if you approach to tell it, "You are not a pig," it begins to squeal and bite.
Thus is it with us all in this My, this dream world, where it is all misery, weeping and crying, where a few golden balls are rolled, and the world scrambles after them. You were never bound by laws, nature never had a bond for you. That is what the Yogi tells you. Have patience to learn it. And the Yogi shows how, by junction with nature, and identifying itself with the mind and the world, the Purusha thinks itself miserable. Then the Yogi goes on to show you that the way out is through experience. You have to get all this experience, but finish it quickly. We have placed ourselves in this net, and will have to get out. We have got ourselves caught in the trap, and we will have to work out our freedom. So get this experience of husbands, and wives, and friends, and little loves; you will get through them safely if you never forget what you really are. Never forget this is only a momentary state, and that we have to pass through it. Experience is the one great teacher experience of pleasure and pain but know it is only experience. It leads, step by step, to that state where all things become small, and the Purusha so great that the whole universe seems as a drop in the ocean and falls off by its own nothingness. We have to go through different experiences, but let us never forget the ideal.
1.10 - Laughter Of The Gods, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
object:1.10 - Laughter Of the Gods
author class:Nirodbaran
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Laughter Of the Gods
The old ide fixe that Sri Aurobindo was an anchorite who did not know how to smile or laugh is by now dead. A new fixed notion may swing to the other extreme that he smiled or laughed too much for a yogi. But a sensible estimate, after a reading of his letters, talks and creative works, will confirm the view that his Yoga instead of drying up the fountain of laughter made it flow like the Ganges. For his consciousness grew as vast as the universe; it sounded the uttermost depths and heights of existence. He read the "wonder-book of Common things" as well as the supernal mysteries of God and found the very rasa which is at the root of things. His love and compassion flowed towards all men and creatures like a life-giving ocean. He said in one of his letters: "It is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine. The Gallio-like 'Je m'en fiche'-ism (I do not care) would not carry me one step; it would certainly not be divine. It is quite another thing that enables me to walk unweeping and unlamenting towards the goal." In his own Ashram which is composed, on the one hand, of unlettered villagers and, on the other, of the intellectual lite, with what patience and forbearance, love and sympathy he, like a grand patriarch, guided and led us all towards the goal! Humour that springs from a heart of sympathy made him smile at our follies and foibles and the numerous eccentricities of our human nature. The readers of Talks with Sri Aurobindo must have observed how Sri Aurobindo threw aside his mantle of gravity and enjoyed with us pure fun and frolic, as if we had been his close playmates. In the preceding chapter we have already touched upon one instance. In the period after the accident to his right leg, when he failed to carry out Dr. Manilal's instructions about hanging the leg, he would exclaim as if out of fear, "Oh, Manilal is coming, I must hang my leg." And one of us, piqued by his fear, would remark, "Sir, you seem to be afraid of Dr. Manilal." When Manilal arrived and enquired about the leg, he replied, "The leg is still hanging."
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.
1.10 - The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
"the great river", as Sayana seems to understand, the physical river in the Punjab, we get an incoherence of thought and expression which is impossible except in a nightmare or a lunatic asylum. But it is possible to suppose that it means the great flood of inspiration and that there is no reference to the great ocean of the Truth-Consciousness. Elsewhere, however, there is repeated reference to the Gods working by the vast power of the great flood (mahna mahato arn.avasya) where there is no reference to Saraswati and it is improbable that she should be meant. It is true that in the Vedic writings Saraswati is spoken of as the secret self of Indra, - an expression, we may observe, that is void of sense if Saraswati is only a northern river and
Indra the god of the sky, but has a very profound and striking significance if Indra be the illumined Mind and Saraswati the inspiration that proceeds from the hidden plane of the supra-
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"by the greatness of Saraswati". the Gods act, it is continually stated, by the power of the Truth, r.tena, but Saraswati is only one of the deities of the Truth and not even the most important or universal of them. The sense I have given is, therefore, the only rendering consistent with the general thought of the Veda and with the use of the phrase in other passages.
Let us then start from this decisive fact put beyond doubt by this passage - whether we take the great stream to be Saraswati itself or the Truth-ocean - that the Vedic Rishis used the image of water, a river or an ocean, in a figurative sense and as a psychological symbol, and let us see how far it takes us. We notice first that existence itself is constantly spoken of in the
Hindu writings, in Veda, Purana and even philosophical reasoning and illustration as an ocean. The Veda speaks of two oceans, the upper and the lower waters. These are the ocean of the subconscient, dark and inexpressive, and the ocean of the superconscient, luminous and eternal expression but beyond the human mind. Vamadeva in the last hymn of the fourth Mandala speaks of these two oceans. He says that a honeyed wave climbs up from the ocean and by means of this mounting wave which is the Soma (amsu) one attains entirely to immortality; that wave or that Soma is the secret name of the clarity (ghr.tasya, the symbol of the clarified butter); it is the tongue of the Gods; it is the nodus (nabhi) of immortality.
Samudrad urmir madhuman udarad, upamsuna sam amr.tatvam anat.;
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Therefore Ananda is the tongue of the Gods with which they taste the delight of existence; it is the nodus in which all the activities of the immortal state or divine existence are bound together. Vamadeva goes on to say, "Let us give expression to this secret name of the clarity, - that is to say, let us bring out this Soma wine, this hidden delight of existence; let us hold it in this world-sacrifice by our surrenderings or submissions to
Agni, the divine Will or Conscious-Power which is the Master of being. He is the four-horned Bull of the worlds and when he listens to the soul-thought of man in its self-expression, he ejects this secret name of delight from its hiding-place."
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The sea of the superconscient is the goal of the rivers of clarity, of the honeyed wave, as the sea of the subconscient in the heart within is their place of rising. This upper sea is spoken of as the Sindhu, a word which may mean either river or ocean; but in this hymn it clearly means ocean. Let us observe the remarkable language in which Vamadeva speaks of these rivers of the clarity. He says first that the Gods sought and found the clarity, the ghr.tam, triply placed and hidden by the Panis in the cow, gavi. It is beyond doubt that go is used in the Veda in the double sense of Cow and Light; the Cow is the outer symbol, the inner meaning is the Light. The figure of the cows stolen and hidden by the Panis is constant in the Veda. Here it is evident that as the sea is a psychological symbol - the heart-ocean, samudre hr.di, - and the Soma is a psychological symbol and the clarified butter is a psychological symbol, the cow in which the Gods find the clarified butter hidden by the Panis must also symbolise an inner illumination and not physical light. The cow is really
Aditi, the infinite consciousness hidden in the subconscient, and the triple ghr.tam is the triple clarity of the liberated sensation finding its secret of delight, of the thought-mind attaining to light and intuition and of the truth itself, the ultimate supra-mental vision. This is clear from the second half of the verse in which it is said, "One Indra produced, one Surya, one the Gods fashioned by natural development out of Vena"; for Indra is the Master of the thought-mind, Surya of the supra-mental light, Vena is Soma, the master of mental delight of existence, creator of the sense-mind.
The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers
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the One arises in the heart first as desire; he moves there in the heart-ocean as an unexpressed desire of the delight of existence and this desire is the first seed of what afterwards appears as the sense-mind. the Gods thus find out a means of building up the existent, the conscious being, out of the subconscient darkness; they find it in the heart and bring it out by the growth of thought and purposeful impulsion, prats.ya, by which is meant mental desire as distinguished from the first vague desire that arises out of the subconscient in the merely vital movements of nature. The conscious existence which they thus create is stretched out as it were horizontally between two other extensions; below is the dark sleep of the subconscient, above is the luminous secrecy of the superconscient. These are the upper and the lower ocean.
This Vedic imagery throws a clear light on the similar symbolic images of the Puranas, especially on the famous symbol of Vishnu sleeping after the pralaya on the folds of the snake
1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Vishnu incarnated Himself as a sow in order to kill the demon Hiranyaksha. After killing the demon, the sow remained quite happy with her young ones. Forgetting her real nature, she was suckling them very contentedly. the Gods in heaven could not persuade Vishnu to relinquish His sow's body and return to the celestial regions. He was absorbed in the happiness of His beast form. After consulting among themselves, the Gods sent iva to the sow. iva asked the sow, 'Why have you forgotten yourself?' Vishnu replied through the sow's body, 'Why, I am quite happy here.' Thereupon with a stroke of his trident iva destroyed the sow's body, and Vishnu went back to heaven."
Ramchandra Dutta
1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortals heart ...
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is therefore a Vedantic or even what would nowadays be termed a theosophic interpretation of the Veda which in this book I propose to establish. My suggestion is that the Gods of the Rigveda were indeed, as the European scholars have seen, masters of the Nature-Powers, but not, as they erroneously theorise, either exclusively or even mainly masters of the visible & physical Nature-Powers. They presided over and in their nature & movement were also & more predominantly mental Nature-Powers, vital Nature-Powers, even supra-mental Nature-Powers. The religion of the Vedic Rishis I suppose on this hypothesis to have been a sort of practical & concrete Brahmavada founded on the three principles of complex existence, isotheism of the Gods and parallelism of their functions on all the planes of that complex existence; the secret of their ideas, language & ritual I suppose to rest in an elaborate habit of symbolism & double meaning which tends to phrase & typify all mental phenomena in physical and concrete figures. While the European scholars suppose the Rishis to have been simple-minded barbarians capable only of a gross & obvious personification of forces, only of a confused, barbarous and primitive system of astronomical allegories and animistic metaphors, I suppose them to have been men of daring and observant minds, using a bold and vigorous if sometimes fanciful system of images to express an elaborate practical psychology and self-observation in which what we moderns regard as abstract experiences & ideas were rather perceived with the vividness of physical experiences & images & so expressed in the picturesque terms of a great primitive philosophy. Their outward sacrifice & ritual I suppose to have been partly the symbols & partly the means of material expression for certain psychological processes, the first foundations of our Hindu system of Yoga, by which they believed themselves able to attain inward & outward mastery, knowledge, joy and extended life & being.
This theory, although it starts really from a return to the point of view of the early Vedantic writers, appears at the present day doubly revolutionary, because it denies the two established systems of interpretation which have conquered and still hold the modern mind and determine for it the sense of the Veda. Sayana is for the orthodox Indian the decisive and infallible authority; for the heterodox or educated the opinions and apparent discoveries of European philologists are the one infallible and irrefutable pramna. Is it then really true that either from the point of view of orthodox Hindu faith or on the basis of a rational interpretation based on sound philology and criticism the door is closed to any radically new interpretation and the true sense of Veda has, in the main, been settled for us & to all future generations? If so, if Sayanas authority is unquestionable, or if the system of the Europeans is sound and unimprovable in its essential features, then there is no room for the new theory of which I have briefly indicated the nature. The Veda then remains nothing more than a system of sacrificial ritual & mythology of the most primitive crudeness. I hope to show briefly that there is no such finality; the door is wide open, the field is still free for a better understanding and a deeper knowledge.
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But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the Gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
In what light did these ancient thinkers understand the Vedic gods? As material Nature Powers called only to give worldly wealth to their worshippers? Certainly, the Vedic gods are in the Vedanta also accredited with material functions. In the Kena Upanishad Agnis power & glory is to burn, Vayus to seize & bear away. But these are not their only functions. In the same Upanishad, in the same apologue, told as a Vedantic parable, Indra, Agni & Vayu, especially Indra, are declared to be the greatest of the Gods because they came nearest into contact with the Brahman. Indra, although unable to recognise the Brahman directly, learned of his identity from Uma daughter of the snowy mountains. Certainly, the sense of the parable is not that Dawn told the Sky who Brahman was or that material Sky, Fire & Wind are best able to come into contact with the Supreme Existence. It is clear & it is recognised by all the commentators, that in the Upanishads the Gods are masters not only of material functions in the outer physical world but also of mental, vital and physical functions in the intelligent living creature. This will be directly evident from the passage describing the creation of the Gods by the One & Supreme Being in the Aitareya Upanishad & the subsequent movement by which they enter in the body of man and take up the control of his activities. In the same Upanishad it is even hinted that Indra is in his secret being the Eternal Lord himself, for Idandra is his secret name; nor should we forget that this piece of mysticism is founded on the hymns of the Veda itself which speak of the secret names of the Gods. Shankaracharya recognised this truth so perfectly that he uses the Gods and the senses as equivalent terms in his great commentary. Finally in the Isha Upanishad,itself a part of the White Yajur Veda and a work, as I have shown elsewhere, full of the most lofty & deep Vedantic truth, in which the eternal problems of human existence are briefly proposed and masterfully solved,we find Surya and Agni prayed to & invoked with as much solemnity & reverence as in the Rigveda and indeed in language borrowed from the Rigveda, not as the material Sun and material Fire, but as the master of divine God-revealing knowledge & the master of divine purifying force of knowledge, and not to drive away the terrors of night from a trembling savage nor to burn the offered cake & the dripping ghee in a barbarian ritual, but to reveal the ultimate truth to the eyes of the Seer and to raise the immortal part in us that lives before & after the body is ashes to the supreme felicity of the perfected & sinless soul. Even subsequently we have seen that the Gita speaks of the Vedas as having the supreme for their subject of knowledge, and if later thinkers put it aside as karmakanda, yet they too, though drawing chiefly on the Upanishads, appealed occasionally to the texts of the hymns as authorities for the Brahmavidya. This could not have been if they were merely a ritual hymnology. We see therefore that the real Hindu tradition contains nothing excluding the interpretation which I put upon the Rigveda. On one side the current notion, caused by the immense overgrowth of ritualism in the millennium previous to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny or at least belittle it. True orthodoxy therefore demands not that we should regard the Veda as a ritualist hymn book, but that we should seek in it for the substance or at least the foundation of that sublime Brahmavidya which is formally placed before us in the Upanishads, regarding it as the revelation of the deepest truth of the world & man revealed to illuminated Seers by the Eternal Ruler of the Universe.
Modern thought & scholarship stands on a different foundation. It proceeds by inference, imagination and conjecture to novel theories of old subjects and regards itself as rational, not traditional. It professes to rebuild lost worlds out of their disjected fragments. By reason, then, and without regard to ancient authority the modern account of the Veda should be judged. The European scholars suppose that the mysticism of the Upanishads was neither founded upon nor, in the main, developed from the substance of the Vedas, but came into being as part of a great movement away from the naturalistic materialism of the early half-savage hymns. Unable to accept a barbarous mummery of ritual and incantation as the highest truth & highest good, yet compelled by religious tradition to regard the ancient hymns as sacred, the early thinkers, it is thought, began to seek an escape from this impasse by reading mystic & esoteric meanings into the simple text of the sacrificial bards; so by speculations sometimes entirely sublime, sometimes grievously silly & childish, they developed Vedanta. This theory, simple, trenchant and attractive, supported to the European mind by parallels from the history of Western religions, is neither so convincing nor, on a broad survey of the facts, so conclusive as it at first appears. It is certainly inconsistent with what the old Vedantic thinkers themselves knew and thought about the tradition of the Veda. From the Brahmanas as well as from the Upanishads it is evident that the Veda came down to the men of those days in a double aspect, as the heart of a great body of effective ritual, but also as the repository of a deep and sacred knowledge, Veda and not merely worship. This idea of a philosophic or theosophic purport in the hymns was not created by the early Hindu mystics, it was inherited by them. Their attitude to the ritual even when it was performed mechanically without the possession of this knowledge was far from hostile; but as ritual, they held it to be inferior in force and value, avaram karma, a lower kind of works and not the highest good; only when performed with possession of the knowledge could it lead to its ultimate results, to Vedanta. By that, says the Chhandogya Upanishad, both perform karma, both he who knows this so and he who knows not. Yet the Ignorance and the Knowledge are different things and only what one does with the knowledge,with faith, with the Upanishad,that has the greater potency. And in the closing section of its second chapter, a passage which sounds merely like ritualistic jargon when one has not the secret of Vedic symbolism but when that secret has once been revealed to us becomes full of meaning and interest, the Upanishad starts by saying The Brahmavadins say, The morning offering to the Vasus, the afternoon offering to the Rudras and the evening offering to the Adityas and all the Gods,where then is the world of the Yajamana? (that is to say, what is the spiritual efficacy beyond this material life of the three different sacrifices & why, to what purpose, is the first offered to the Vasus, the second to the Rudras, the third to the Adityas?) He who knows this not, how should he perform (effectively) ,therefore knowing let him perform. There was at any rate the tradition that these things, the sacrifice, the god of the sacrifice, the world or future state of the sacrificer had a deep significance and were not mere ritual arranged superstitiously for material ends. But this deeper significance, this inner Vedic knowledge was difficult and esoteric, not known easily in its profundity and subtlety even by the majority of the Brahmavadins themselves; hence the searching, the mutual questionings, the record of famous discussions that occupy so much space in the Upanishadsdiscussions which, we shall see, are not intellectual debates but comparisons of illuminated knowledge & spiritual experience.
If this traditionlet us call it mystic or esoteric for want of a less abused wordwas already formed at the time of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, when and how did it originally arise? Two possibilities present themselves. The tradition may have grown up gradually in the period between the Vedic hymns and the exegetical writings or else the esoteric sense may have already existed in the Veda itself and descended in a stream of tradition to the later mystics, developing, modifying itself, substituting new terms for oldas is the way of traditions. The former is, practically, the European theory.We are told that this spiritual revolution, this movement away from ritual Nature-worship to Brahmavada, begun in the seed in the later Vedic hymns, is found in a more developed state in the Upanishads & culminated in Buddha. In these writings and in the Brahmanas some record can be found of the speculations by which the development was managed. If it prove to be so, if these ancient writings are really the result of progressive intellectual speculation departing from crude & imperfect beginnings of philosophic thought, the European theory justifies itself to the reason and can no longer easily be disputed. But is this the true character of the Upanishads? It seems to me that in most of their dealings with our religions and our philosophical literature European scholars have erred by imposing their own familiar ideas and the limits of their own mentality on the history of an alien mentality and an alien development. Nowhere has this error been more evident than in the failure to realise the true nature of the Upanishads. In India we have never developed, but only affirmed thought by philosophical speculation, because we have never attached to the mere intellectual idea the amazingly exaggerated value which Europe has attached to it, but regarded it only as a test of the logical value to be attached to particular intellectual statements of truth. That is not truth to us which is merely well & justly thought out & can be justified by ratiocinative argument; only that is truth which has been lived & seen in the inner experience. We meditate not to get ideas, but in order to experience, to realise. When we speak of the Jnani, the knower, we do not mean a competent and logical thinker full of wise or of brilliant ideas, but a soul which has seen and lived & spoken in himself with the living truth. Ratiocination is freely used by the later philosophers, but only for the justification against opponents of the ideas already formed by their own meditation or the meditation of others, Rishis, gurus, ancient Vedantins; it is not itself a sufficient means towards the discovery of truth, but at best a help. The ideas of our great thinkers are not mere intellectual statements or even happy or great intuitions; they are based upon spiritual experiences formalised by the intellect into a philosophy. Shankaras passionate advocacy of the idea of Maya as an explanation of life was not merely the ardour of a great metaphysician enamoured of a beautiful idea or a perfect theory of life, but the passion of a man with a deep & vast spiritual experience which he believed to be the sole means of human salvation. Therefore philosophy in India, instead of tending as in Europe to ignore or combat religion, has always been itself deeply religious. In Europe Buddha and Shankara would have become the heads of metaphysical schools & ranked with Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche1 as strong intellectual influences; in India they became, inevitably, the founders of great religious sects, immense moral & spiritual forces;inevitably because Europe has made thought its highest & noblest aim, while India seeks not after thought but soul-vision and inner experience and even in the realm of ideas believes that they can & ought to be seen & lived inwardly rather than merely thought and allowed indirectly to influence outward action. This has been the mentality of our race for ages.Was the mentality of our Vedic forefa thers entirely different from our own? Was it, as Western scholars seem to insist, a European mentality, the mentality of incursive Western savages, (it is Sergis estimate of the Aryans), changed afterwards by the contact with the cultured & reflective Dravidians into something new and strange, rationality changing to mysticism, materialism to a metaphysical spirituality? If so, the change had already been effected when the Upanishads were written. We speak of the discussions in the Upanishads; but in all truth the twelve Upanishads contain not a single genuine discussion. Only once in that not inconsiderable mass of literature, is there something of the nature of logical argument brought to the support of a philosophical truth. The nature of debate or logical reasoning is absent from the mentality of the Upanishadic thinkers. The grand question they always asked each other was not What hast thou thought out in this matter? or What are thy reasonings & conclusions? but What dost thou know? What hast thou seen in thyself? The Vedantic like the Vedic Rishi is a drashta & srota, not a manota, a kavi, not a manishi. There is question, there is answer; but solely for the comparison of inner knowledge & experience; never for ratiocinative argument, for disputation, for the battles of the logician. Always, knowledge, spiritual vision, experience are what is demanded; and often a questioner is turned back because he is not yet prepared in soul to realise the knowledge of the master. For all knowledge is within us and needs only to be awakened by the fit touch which opens the eyes of the soul or by the powerful revealing word.We find throughout the Vedic era always the same method, always the same theory of knowledge; they persist indeed in India to the present day and later habits of metaphysical debate unknown to the Vedic Brahmavadins have never been able to dethrone them from their primaeval supremacy. Let a man present never so finely reasoned a system of metaphysical philosophy, few will turn to hear, none leave his labour to receive, but let a man say as in the old Vedantic times I have experienced, my soul has seen, & hundreds in India will yet leave all to share in this new light of the eternal Truth.
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The real basis of both the Aryan theory of Vedic civilisation and the astronomical theory of Aryan myth is the new interpretation given to a host of Vedic vocables by the comparative philologists. The Aryan theory rests on the ingenious assumption that anarya, dasyu or dasa in the Veda refer to the unfortunate indigenous races who by a familiar modern device were dubbed robbers & dacoits because they were guilty of defending their country against the invaders & Arya is a national term for the invaders who called themselves, according to Max Muller, the Ploughmen, and according to others, the Noble Race. The elaborate picture of an early culture & history that accompanies and supports this theory rests equally on new interpretations of Vedic words and riks in which with the progress of scholarship the authority of Sayana and Yaska has been more & more set at nought and discredited. My contention is that anarya, dasa and dasyu do not for a moment refer to the Dravidian races,I am, indeed, disposed to doubt whether there was ever any such entity in India as a separate Aryan or a separate Dravidian race,but always to Vritra, Vala & the Panis and other, primarily non-human, opponents of the Gods and their worshippers. The new interpretations given to Vedic words & riks seem to me sometimes right & well grounded, often arbitrary & unfounded, but always conjectural. The whole European theory & European interpretation of the Vedas may be [not] unjustly described as a huge conjectural & uncertain generalisation built on an inadequate & shifting mass of conjectural particulars.
Nor does the philological reasoning on which the astronomical interpretation of Vedic hymns is supported, inspire, when examined, or deserve any more certain confidence. To identify the Aswins with the two sons of the Greek Dyaus, Kastor and Polydeuces, and again these two pairs conjecturally with two stars of the constellation Gemini is easy & carries with it a great air of likelihood; but an air of likelihood is not proof. We need more for anything like rational conviction or certainty. In the Veda there are a certain number of hymns to the Aswins & a fair number also of passages in which they are described and invoked; if indeed the purport of their worship is astronomical and the sense of their personality in the Veda merely a fiction about the stars and if they really bore that aspect to the Vedic Rishis, all these passages, & all their epithets, actions, functions & the prayers offered to them ought to be entirely explicable on that theory; or if other ideas have crept in, we must be shown what are these ideas, how they have crept in, in what way these are in the minds of the ancient Rishis superimposed on the original astronomical conception and reconciled with it. Then only can we accept it as a proved probability, if not a proved certainty, that the Aswins are the constellation Gemini and, in that known character, worshipped in the sacred chants. For we must remember that the Aswins might easily have been the constellation Gemini in an original creed & yet be worshipped in a quite different character at the time of the Vedic Rishis. In the Vedic hymns as they are at present rendered whether by Sayana or by Roth, there is no clear statement of this character of the Aswins; the whole theory rests on metaphor and parable, and it is easy to see how dangerous, how open to the flights of mere ingenuity is the system of interpretation by metaphor. There ought to be at least a kernel of direct statement in the loose & uncertain mass of metaphor. We are told that the Aswins are lords of light, ubhaspat, and certainly the starry Twins are luminous; they are rudravartan, which interpreted of the red path, may very well apply to stars moving through heaven; they are somewhere described as vrisharath, bull-charioted, & Gemini is next in order & vicinity to Taurus, the constellation of the bull; Sry, daughter of the Sun, mounts on their chariot & Sry is very possibly such & such a star whose motion may be described by this figurative ascension; the Aswins get honey from the bees and there is a constellation near Gemini called by the Greeks the Bees whose light falls on the Twins. All this is brilliant, attractive, captivating; it does immense credit to the ingenuity of the human intellect. But if we examine sceptically the proofs that are offered us, we find ourselves face to face with amass of ingenious & hazardous guesses; it is not explained why the Aswins particularly more than other gods, should have this distinctive epithet of ubhaspat, as peculiar to them in the Veda as is sahasaspati to Agni; rudra in the sense of red is a novel & conjectural significance; vrisharatha interpreted consistently as bull-charioted in connection with Taurus, would make hopeless ravages in the sense of other passages of the Veda; the identification of Sry, daughter of the Sun is unproved, it is an airy conjecture depending on the proof of the identity of the Aswins not itself proving it; madhu in the passage about the Bees need not mean honey and much more probably means the honeyed wine of Soma, the rendering bees is one of the novel, conjectural & highly doubtful suggestions of European scholarship. All the other proofs that are heaped on us are of a like nature & brilliantly flimsy ingenuity, & we end our sceptical scrutiny admiring, but still sceptical. We feel after all that an accumulation of conjectures does not constitute proof and that a single clear & direct substantial statement in one sense or the other would outweigh all these ingenious inferences, these brilliant imaginings. To begin with a hypothesis is always permissible,it is the usual mode of scientific discovery; but a hypothesis must be supported by facts. To support it by a mass of other hypotheses is to abuse & exceed the permissibility of conjecture in scientific research.
I have thus dwelt on the fragility of the European theory in this introduction because I wish to avoid in the body of the volume the burden of adverse discussion with other theories & rival interpretations. I propose to myself an entirely positive method,the development of a constructive rival hypothesis, not the disproof of those which hold the field. But, since they do hold the field, I am bound to specify before starting those general deficiencies in them which disqualify them at least from prohibiting fresh discussion and shutting out an entirely new point of departure. Possibly Sayana is right and the Vedas are only the hymn-book of a barbarous & meaningless mythological ritual. Possibly, the European theory is more correct and the Vedic religion & myth was of the character of a materialistic Nature worship & the metaphorical, poetical & wholly fanciful personification of heavenly bodies & forces of physical Nature. But neither of these theories is so demonstrably right, that other hypotheses are debarred from appearing and demanding examination. Such a new hypothesis I wish to advance in the present volume. the Gods of the Veda are in my view Nature Powers, but Powers at once of moral & of physical Nature, not of physical Nature only; moreover their moral aspect is the substantial part of their physiognomy, the physical though held to be perfectly real & effective, is put forward mainly as a veil, dress or physical type of their psychological being. The ritual of the Veda is a symbolic ritual supposed by those who used it to be by virtue of its symbolism practically effective of both inner & outer results in life & the world. The hymnology of the Veda rests on the ancient theory that speech is in itself both morally & physically creative & effective, the secret executive agent of the divine powers in manifesting & compelling mental & material phenomena. The substance of the Vedic hymns is the record of certain psychological experiences which are the natural results, still attainable & repeatable in our own experience, of an ancient type of Yoga practised certainly in India, practised probably in ancient Greece, Asia Minor & Egypt in prehistoric times. Finally, the language of the Vedas is an ambiguous tongue, with an ambiguity possible only to the looser fluidity belonging to the youth of human speech & deliberately used to veil the deeper psychological meaning of the Riks. I hold that it was the traditional knowledge of this deep religious & psychological character of the Vedas which justified in the eyes of the ancient Indians the high sanctity attached to them & the fixed idea that these were the repositories of an august, divine & hardly attainable truth.
If this hypothesis were wholly at variance with the facts known to the students of Comparative Religion or the interpretation [on] which it is based not clearly justifiable by sound principles of Philology, it would be an act of gross presumption in the present state of our knowledge to advance it without a preliminary examination of the present results held as proved by modern Philology & by the Study of Comparative Religion. But my hypothesis is entirely consistent with the facts of religious history in this & other countries, entirely reconcilable with a sound method of Comparative Religion, entirely baseable on a strict and rational use of Philology. I have criticised & characterised these branches of research as pseudo-Sciences. But I do not for a moment intend to suggest that their results are to be entirely scouted or that they have not done a great work for the advancement of knowledge. Comparative Philology, for instance, has got rid of a great mass of preexistent rubbish and unsoundness and suggested partly the true scientific method of Philological research, though it seems to me that overingenuity, haste & impatience in following up exclusively certain insufficient clues have prevented an excellent beginning from being rightly & fruitfully pursued. If I cannot attach any real value to the Science of Comparative Mythology, yet the study,not the Science, for we have not yet either the materials or the equipment for a true Science,the comparative Study of Religions & of religious myths & ancient traditions as a subordinate part of that study is of the utmost use & importance.
1.1.1.01 - Three Elements of Poetic Creation, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Poetry, or at any rate a truly poetic poetry, comes always from some subtle plane through the creative vital and uses the outer mind and other external instruments for transmission only. There are three elements in the production of poetry; there is the original source of inspiration, there is the vital force of creative beauty which contri butes its own substance and impetus and often determines the form, except when that also comes ready made from the original sources; there is, finally, the transmitting outer consciousness of the poet. The most genuine and perfect poetry is written when the original source is able to throw its inspiration pure and undiminished into the vital and there takes its true native form and power of speech exactly reproducing the inspiration, while the outer consciousness is entirely passive and transmits without alteration what it receives from the godheads of the inner or the superior spaces. When the vital mind and emotion are too active and give too much of their own initiation or a translation into more or less turbid vital stuff, the poetry remains powerful but is inferior in quality and less au thentic. Finally, if the outer consciousness is too lethargic and blocks the transmission or too active and makes its own version, then you have the poetry that fails or is at best a creditable mental manufacture. It is the interference of these two parts either by obstruction or by too great an activity of their own or by both together that causes the difficulty and labour of writing. There would be no difficulty if the inspiration came through without obstruction or interference in a pure transcript that is what happens in a poets highest or freest moments when he writes not at all out of his own external human mind, but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods.
The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature that give at least some appearance or reflection of it. When the source of inspiration is in the heart or the psychic there is more easily a good will in the vital channel, the flow is spontaneous; the inspiration takes at once its true form and speech and is transmitted without any interference or only a minimum of interference by the brain-mind, that great spoiler of the higher or deeper splendours. It is the character of the lyrical inspiration, to flow in a jet out of the beingwhe ther it comes from the vital or the psychic, it is usually spontaneous, for these are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature; it always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come. The poet labours in anguish to get the one true word, the au thentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind; but it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say, then there is something fine or adequate, though it may not be great unless there is an intervention from the higher levels. But when the outer brain is at work trying to fashion out of itself or to give its own version of what the higher sources are trying to pour down, then there results a manufacture or something quite inadequate or faulty or, at the best, good on the whole, but not the thing that ought to have come.
1.11 - BOOK THE ELEVENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
This wretch with pray'rs and vows the Gods implores,
And ev'n the skies he cannot see, adores.
1.1.1 - Text, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
1.: If thou thinkest that thou knowest It well, little indeed dost thou know the form of the Brahman. That of It which is thou, that of It which is in the Gods, this thou hast to think out. I think It known.
2.: I think not that I know It well and yet I know that It is not unknown to me. He of us who knows It, knows That; he knows that It is not unknown to him.
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1.: The Eternal conquered for the Gods and in the victory of the Eternal the Gods grew to greatness. They saw, "Ours the victory, ours the greatness."
2.: The Eternal knew their thought and appeared before them; and they knew not what was this mighty Daemon.
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4.: Now this is the indication of That, - as is this flash of the lightning upon us or as is this falling of the eyelid, so in that which is of the Gods.
5.: Then in that which is of the Self, - as the motion of this mind seems to attain to That and by it afterwards the will in the thought continually remembers It.
1.11 - The Change of Power, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
There is but one Harmony, as there is one Consciousness and one earthly body, which are those of the greater Self, but this Harmony and Consciousness are unveiled a little at a time, as we grow and the scales fall from our eyes, and their effects are different, depending at what level we grasp them. Harmony chants high above, and it is grand and sublime, but it has chanted for millennia and ages without changing much in the world and the hearts of men. And evolution has rolled its cycles, descending, it seems, into an altogether material grossness, density and ignorance, a darkness adorned with all the artifices of the Gods to make us believe that we were the masters, while we were really the servants of a machinery, the slaves of a small loose bolt which was enough to blow up the beautiful machine and expose the old untouched savage underneath. Indeed that evolution has descended; it has cast us down from our fragile heights and golden ages, which were perhaps not so golden as it is said, to force us to find here, too, that Light and Harmony and Consciousness, in this low place, which is low only for us. In fact, there is no descent, no fall, no move backward; there is a never-ending precipitation of truth and harmony, which touches deeper and deeper layers to reveal to them the light and joy they always were had we not fallen, the light would never have penetrated our hovel, matter would never have gotten out of its night. Each descent is an opening of light, each fall, a new degree of blossoming. Through our evil the substance is transmuted. And our evil is perhaps quite simply the unknown territory we wrest from its nonexistence, the way Columbus's sailors wrested the perilous Indies from their night.
But the passage is perilous.
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For there is an even greater Secret. We face this enormous universe bristling with difficulties and problems and negations and obstacles everything is a sort of constant impossibility to be overcome by dint of intelligence, willpower, material or spiritual muscles. But, by so doing, we are on equal terms with the caterpillar, on equal terms with the fear-stricken gnome in its death hole. And, because we believe in difficulty, we are compelled to believe in our muscles of steel or not which always collapse. And we believe in death, we believe in evil, we believe in suffering, as the mole believes in the virtues of its tunnels. But by our morbid belief, our age-old belief, our gray elf-look, we have hardened the difficulty, armed it with a host of instruments and remedies that inflated it even more, planted it more firmly in its implacable groove. The world is enveloped in a formidable elfin illusion. It is in the grip a of formidable Death, which is but our fear of immortality. It is being torn apart by a formidable suffering, which is our refusal of joy and sunshine. Yet everything is here, every possible miracle, in the great open sunlight, every dreamed and undreamed possibility, every simple, spontaneous and natural mastery, every simple power of the Great Harmony. It asks only to pour over the world, flow through our channels and our bodies. All it asks is that we open the passageway. If we let that lightness, that divine ease, that solar smile, flood for a second our little aggregate of flesh, everything melts, obstacles dissolve, illnesses vanish, circumstances are straightened out as if by miracle, the darkness is illumined, the wall collapses as though they never existed. And once again, it is not even a miracle; it is simplicity reestablished, reality restored. It is the point of harmony here contacting Harmony everywhere and spontaneously, automatically, instantly bringing (or restoring) harmony there, in that gesture, that circumstance, that word, that particular conjunction of events and everything is a marvel of conjunction because everything flows from the Law. The walls never were; the obstacles never were; evil, suffering and death never were. But we had that look of evil, that look of suffering and death, that look of the imprisoned elf. The world is as we see it, as we want it. There is another Look within us which can transfigure everything. My children, said She who continued Sri Aurobindo's work, you all live in an enormous sea of vibrations and you don't even realize it! Because you are not receptive. There is such a resistance in you that if something manages to penetrate, three quarters of what enters is violently thrown out because of an incapacity to contain it.... Take simply the example of the consciousness of Forces, such as the force of love, the force of comprehension, the force of creation (it is the same for all of them: the force of protection, the force of growth, the force of progress, all of them), just take Consciousness, the consciousness that covers everything, permeates everything, that is everywhere and in everything it is almost felt as something trying to impose itself violently on the being, which balks!... Whereas if you were open and simply breathed that's all, just breathed you would brea the in Consciousness, Light, Comprehension, Force, Love and all the rest.29 Everything is there under our eyes, the total marvel of the world, just waiting for our consent, our look of faith in beauty, in freedom, in the supreme possibility that is knocking at our doors, pounding on the walls of our intelligence, suffering and pettiness. This is the supreme change of power, which is knocking at the world's doors and hammering away at nations, churches and Sorbonnes, hammering at human consciousness and all our geometric and well-thought-out certainties. And if once, only once, man's consciousness opens up to one ray of that living miracle, if the consciousness of a single nation among all our blind nations opens up to one spark of that Grace, then this implacable civilization walled up in its science and laws, in an elf of terror and suffering this enormous structure in which we have been born and which seems so inescapable, so indestructible and triumphant in its heavy miracles of steel and uranium, this clever prison in which we go in circles will crumble as rust. Then we will be man at last, or superman rather. We will have joy, natural oneness, freedom without walls and power without tricks. Then we will realize that all this suffering, these walls and difficulties which besiege our life were only the spur of the Sun of Truth, an original restriction to increase our strength, our need for space and our power of truth, a veil of illusion to protect our eyes from too strong a light, a dark passage from the instinctive spontaneity of the animal to the conscious spontaneity of the superman and that in the end everything is simple, unbelievably simple, like Truth itself, and unbelievably easy, like the very Joy that conceived these worlds. For, in truth, the path of the Gods is a sunlit path on which difficulties lose all reality.30
1.11 - The Seven Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE VEDA speaks constantly of the waters or the rivers, especially of the divine waters, apo devh. or apo divyah., and occasionally of the waters which carry in them the light of the luminous solar world or the light of the Sun, svarvatr apah.. The passage of the waters effected by the Gods or by man with the aid of the Gods is a constant symbol. The three great conquests to which the human being aspires, which the Gods are in constant battle with the Vritras and Panis to give to man are the herds, the waters and the Sun or the solar world, ga apah. svah.. The question is whether these references are to the rains of heaven, the rivers of Northern India possessed or assailed by the Dravidians - the Vritras being sometimes the Dravidians and sometimes their gods, the herds possessed or robbed from the Aryan settlers by the indigenous "robbers" - the Panis who hold or steal the herds being again sometimes the Dravidians and sometimes their gods; or is there a deeper, a spiritual meaning?
Is the winning of Swar simply the recovery of the sun from its shadowing by the storm-cloud or its seizure by eclipse or its concealment by the darkness of Night? For here at least there can be no withholding of the sun from the Aryans by human
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Varuna moves looking down on the truth and the falsehood of creatures, they that stream honey and are pure and purifying, - may those divine waters foster me. In whom Varuna the king, in whom Soma, in whom all the Gods have the intoxication of the energy, into whom Agni Vaishwanara has entered, may those divine waters foster me."
It is evident that Vasishtha is speaking here of the same waters, the same streams that Vamadeva hymns, the waters that rise from the ocean and flow into the ocean, the honeyed wave that rises upward from the sea, from the flood that is the heart of things, streams of the clarity, ghr.tasya dharah.. They are the floods of the supreme and universal conscious existence in which Varuna moves looking down on the truth and the falsehood of mortals, - a phrase that can apply neither to the descending rains nor to the physical ocean. Varuna in the Veda is not an Indian Neptune, neither is he precisely, as the European scholars at first imagined, the Greek Ouranos, the sky. He is the master of an ethereal wideness, an upper ocean, of the vastness of being, of its purity; in that vastness, it is elsewhere said, he has made paths in the pathless infinite along which Surya, the
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madhuscutah. and speaks of the Gods enjoying in them the intoxication of the energy, urjam madanti; from this we can gather that the honey or sweetness is the madhu, the Soma, the wine of the Ananda, of which the Gods have the ecstasy. But in the forty-seventh hymn he makes his meaning unmistakably clear.
"O Waters, that supreme wave of yours, the drink of Indra, which the seekers of the Godhead have made for themselves, that pure, inviolate, clarity-streaming, honeyed (ghr.taprus.am madhumantam) wave of you may we today enjoy. O Waters, may the son of the waters (Agni), he of the swift rushings, foster that most honeyed wave of you; that wave of yours in which
Indra with the Vasus is intoxicated with ecstasy, may we who seek the Godhead taste today. Strained through the hundred purifiers, ecstatic by their self-nature, they are divine and move to the goal of the movement of the Gods (the supreme ocean); they limit not the workings of Indra: offer to the rivers a food of oblation full of the clarity (ghr.tavat). May the rivers which the sun has formed by his rays, from whom Indra clove out a moving wave, establish for us the supreme good. And do ye, O gods, protect us ever by states of felicity."
Here we have Vamadeva's madhuman urmih., the sweet intoxicating wave, and it is plainly said that this honey, this sweetness is the Soma, the drink of Indra. That is farther made clear by the epithet satapavitrah. which can only refer in the
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What can these rivers be whose wave is full of Soma wine, full of the ghr.ta, full of urj, the energy? What are these waters that flow to the goal of the Gods' movement, that establish for man the supreme good? Not the rivers of the Punjab; no wildest assumption of barbarous confusion or insane incoherence in the mentality of the Vedic Rishis can induce us to put such a
The Seven Rivers
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(or, perfect builder) from his birth of Heaven and of Earth, he establishes the Bliss; the Gods discovered Agni visible in the
Waters, in the working of the sisters. (3)
"The seven Mighty Ones increased him who utterly enjoys felicity, white in his birth, ruddy when he has grown. They moved and laboured about him, the Mares around the newborn child; the Gods gave body to Agni in his birth. (4)
"With his pure bright limbs he extended and formed the middle world purifying the will-to-action by the help of the pure lords of wisdom; wearing light as a robe about all the life of the Waters he formed in himself glories vast and without any deficiency. (5)
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Earth the goddess of Delight now gave birth in many forms, she of the utter felicity. the Gods united in him by the mind and they set him to his working who was born full of strength and mighty for the labour. (13)
"Those vast shinings clove to Agni straight in his lustre and were like bright lightnings; from him increasing in the secret places of existence in his own seat within the shoreless Vast they milked out Immortality." (14)
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Punjab. The waters in which the Gods discovered the visible
Agni cannot be terrestrial and material streams; this Agni who
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This divine Power is found by the Gods visible in the Waters, in the working of the Sisters. These are the sevenfold waters of the Truth, the divine waters brought down from the heights of our being by Indra. First it is secret in the earth's growths, os.adhh., the things that hold her heats, and has to be brought out by a sort of force, by a pressure of the two aran.is, earth and heaven. Therefore it is called the child of the earth's growths and the child of the earth and heaven; this immortal Force is produced by man with pain and difficulty from the workings of the pure mind upon the physical being. But in the divine waters
Agni is found visible and easily born in all his strength and in all his knowledge and in all his enjoyment, entirely white and pure, growing ruddy with his action as he increases (v. 3). From his very birth the Gods give him force and splendour and body; the seven mighty Rivers increase him in his joy; they move about this great newborn child and labour over him as the Mares, asvah.
(v. 4).
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This also is his own new and last birth. He who was born as the Son of Force from the growths of earth, he who was born as the child of the Waters, is now born in many forms to the goddess of bliss, she who has the entire felicity, that is to say to the divine conscious beatitude, in the shoreless infinite. the Gods or divine powers in man using the mind as an instrument reach him there, unite around him, set him to the great work of the world in this new, mighty and effective birth. They, the outshinings of that vast consciousness, cleave to this divine Force as its bright lightnings and from him in the super-conscient, the shoreless vast, his own home, they draw for man the Immortality.
Such then, profound, coherent, luminous behind the veil of figures is the sense of the Vedic symbol of the seven rivers, of the Waters, of the five worlds, of the birth and ascent of
Agni which is also the upward journey of man and the Gods whose image man forms in himself from level to level of the great hill of being (sanoh. sanum). Once we apply it and seize the true sense of the symbol of the Cow and the symbol of the
Soma with a just conception of the psychological functions of the Gods, all the apparent incoherences and obscurities and farfetched chaotic confusion of these ancient hymns disappears in a
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1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism works, karma, are restricted to Vedic works and sometimes even to Vedic sacrifice and ritualised works, all else being excluded as not useful to salvation. Vedism of the Mimansakas insisted on them as the means, Vedantism taking its stand on the Upanishads looked on them as only a preliminary belonging to the state of ignorance and in the end to be overpassed and rejected, an obstacle to the seeker of liberation. Vedism worshipped the Devas, the Gods, with sacrifice and held them to be the powers who assist our salvation. Vedantism was inclined to regard them as powers of the mental and material world opposed to our salvation (men, says the Upanishad, are the cattle of the Gods, who do not desire man to know and be free); it saw the Divine as the immutable
Brahman who has to be attained not by works of sacrifice and worship but by knowledge. Works only lead to material results and to an inferior Paradise; therefore they have to be renounced.
1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
And to the Gods the grateful odour flew.
Heav'n had its part in sacrifice: the rest
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And bright with flaming fires; the Gods, he cry'd,
Have with their holy trade our hands supply'd:
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the world; the energies of the Gods in the mortal consciousness
are its energies; when they conquer and grow great, it is because
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characteristic action of the Gods.
The Upanishad is not concerned with the elemental, the
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that draw the chariots of the Gods. The Vedic image is recalled
Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One
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and controls the action of the Gods on the different planes of
our being. Since it constitutes them, all our workings can be no
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is, although their victory, the victory of the Gods, is always the
Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One
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and the Gods.
the Gods of the Upanishad have been supposed to be a
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meaning. the Gods seek to lead these to good and light; the
Titans, sons of darkness, seek to pierce them with ignorance
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and evil.3 Behind the Gods is the Master-Consciousness of which
they are the positive cosmic self-representations.
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positively like the Gods, "I am" and not only "I seem". We have
then to scrutinise these two entities and see what they are in
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of the Self; and the Gods are a representation in the cosmos -
a real representation since without them the cosmos could not
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Godhead in the Gods.
The Self and the Lord are one Brahman, whom we can
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as the Gods govern, supported by our self, the cosmos of our
individual being, the action of our mind, senses and life, so the
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and movement and found our self and the Gods, so we have to
go behind our self and the Gods and find the one supreme Self
and the one supreme Godhead. Then we can say, "I think that I
--
The Parable of the Gods
ROM its assertion of the relative knowableness of the
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Mind is one of the Gods; the Light behind it is indeed the greatest
of the Gods, Indra. Then, an awakening of all the Gods through
their greatest to the essence of that which they are, the one
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is Brahman that has stood behind the Gods and conquered for
them; the Master of all who guides all has thrown His deciding
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the kind, the Gods in man grow luminous, strong, happy; they
feel they have conquered the world and they proceed to divide
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or in the creature. The greatness of the Gods is His own victory
and greatness, but it is only given in order that man may grow
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as the Unknown; the Gods knew not what was this Daemon.
Therefore Agni first arises at their bidding to discover its
nature, limits, identity. the Gods of the Upanishad differ in one
all-important respect from the Gods of the Rig Veda; for the
latter are not only powers of the One, but conscious of their
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the Brahman idea has grown and cast down the Gods from this
high preeminence so that they appear only in their lesser human
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is the Brahman by whom alone the Gods of mind and life and
body conquer and affirm themselves, and in whom alone they
--
the greatest of the Gods, the first coming to know the existence
of the Brahman, the others approaching and feeling the touch
--
known by the Gods in us and possessed. The conscious force
that supports our embodied life must become simply and purely
--
and the Gods
HE MEANS of the knowledge of Brahman are, we have
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is essential is twofold, the Gods in Nature and the self in the
individual, - and then to get behind these to the Beyond which
they represent. The practical relation of the Gods to Brahman in
this process of divine knowledge has been already determined.
The cosmic functionings through which the Gods act, mind, life,
speech, senses, body, must become aware of something beyond
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openly in the Gods. His light takes possession of the thinking
mind, His power and joy of the life, His light and rapture of
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This will be the transfiguration of the Gods, but what of the
self? For we have seen that there are two fundamental entities,
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Therefore not only must the Gods find their one Godhead and
resolve themselves into it; that is to say, not only must the cosmic
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necessity the self in us which supports the action of the Gods
must find and enter into the one Self of all individual existences,
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being, will do through the mind. In the Gods the transfiguration
is effected by the Superconscient itself visiting their substance
--
What then happens to the Gods and the cosmos and all that
the Lord develops in His being? Does it not all disappear? Is
not the transfiguration of the Gods even a mere secondary state
Kena Upanishad: Commentary - XIV
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drops away from us as soon as we reach it? And with the disappearance of the Gods and the cosmos does not the Lord too,
the Master-Consciousness, disappear so that nothing is left but
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of ourselves and the Gods, by the Unknowable who is yet not
utterly unknowable to us, by the transcendence of the mortal
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Besides the Gods, there is our self, the spirit within who
supports all this action of the Gods. Our spirit too must turn
from its absorption in its figure of itself as it sees it involved in
--
Still although the victory of the Gods, that is to say, the
progressive perfection of the mind, life, body in the positive
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excluded. To assist in the lesser victories of the Gods which must
prepare the supreme victory of the Brahman may well be and
1.12 - Dhruva commences a course of religious austerities, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
THE prince, having received these instructions, respectfully saluted the sages, and departed from the forest, fully confiding in the accomplishment of his purposes. He repaired to the holy place, on the banks of the Yamunā, called Madhu or Madhuvana, the grove of Madhu, after the demon of that name, who formerly abided there. Śatrughna (the younger brother of Rāma) having slain the Rākṣas Lavaṇa, the son of Madhu, founded a city on the spot, which was named Mathurā. At this holy shrine, the purifier from all sin, which enjoyed the presence of the sanctifying god of gods, Dhruva performed penance, as enjoined by Marīci and the sages: he contemplated Viṣṇu, the sovereign of all the Gods, seated in himself. Whilst his mind was wholly absorbed in meditation, the mighty Hari, identical with all beings and with all natures, (took possession of his heart.) Viṣṇu being thus present in his mind, the earth, the supporter of elemental life, could not sustain the weight of the ascetic. As he stood upon his left foot, one hemisphere bent beneath him; and when he stood upon his right, the other half of the earth sank down. When he touched the earth with his toes, it shook with all its mountains, and the rivers and the seas were troubled, and the Gods partook of the universal agitation.
The celestials called Yāmas, being excessively alarmed, then took counsel with Indra how they should interrupt the devout exercises of Dhruva; and the divine beings termed Kushmāṇḍas, in company with their king, commenced anxious efforts to distract his meditations. One, assuming the semblance of his mother Sunīti, stood weeping before him, and calling in tender accents, "My son, my son, desist from destroying thy strength by this fearful penance. I have gained thee, my son, after much anxious hope: thou canst not have the cruelty to quit me, helpless, alone, and unprotected, on account of the unkindness of my rival. Thou art my only refuge; I have no hope but thou. What hast thou, a child but five years old, to do with rigorous penance? Desist from such fearful practices, that yield no beneficial fruit. First comes the season of youthful pastime; and when that is over, it is the time for study: then succeeds the period of worldly enjoyment; and lastly, that of austere devotion. This is thy season of pastime, my child. Hast thou engaged in these practices to put an end to thine existence? Thy chief duty is love for me: duties are according to time of life. Lose not thyself in bewildering error: desist from such unrighteous actions. If not, if thou wilt not desist from these austerities, I will terminate my life before thee."
--
All their delusive stratagems being thus foiled, the Gods were more perplexed than ever. Alarmed at their discomfiture, and afflicted by the devotions of the boy, they assembled and repaired for succour to Hari, the origin of the world, who is without beginning or end; and thus addressed him: "God of gods, sovereign of the world, god supreme, and infinite spirit, distressed by the austerities of Dhruva, we have come to thee for protection. As the moon increases in his orb day by day, so this youth advances incessantly towards superhuman power by his devotions. Terrified by the ascetic practices of the son of Uttānapāda, we have come to thee for succour. Do thou allay the fervour of his meditations. We know not to what station he aspires: to the throne of Indra, the regency of the solar or lunar sphere, or to the sovereignty of riches or of the deep. Have compassion on us, lord; remove this affliction from Our breasts; divert the son of Uttānapāda from persevering in his penance." Viṣṇu replied to the Gods; "The lad desireth neither the rank of Indra, nor the solar orb, nor the sovereignty of wealth or of the ocean: all that he solicits, I will grant. Return therefore, deities, to your mansions as ye list, and be no more alarmed: I will put an end to the penance of the boy, whose mind is immersed in deep contemplation."
the Gods, being thus pacified by the supreme, saluted him respectfully and retired, and, preceded by Indra, returned to their habitations: but Hari, who is all things, assuming a shape with four arms, proceeded to Dhruva, being pleased with his identity of nature, and thus addressed him: "Son of Uttānapāda, be prosperous. Contented with thy devotions, I, the giver of boons, am present. Demand what boon thou desirest. In that thou hast wholly disregarded external objects, and fixed thy thoughts on me, I am well pleased with thee. Ask, therefore, a suitable reward." The boy, hearing these words of the god of gods, opened his eyes, and beholding that Hari whom he had before seen in his meditations actually in his presence, bearing in his hands the shell, the discus, the mace, the bow, and scimetar, and crowned with a diadem, the bowed his head down to earth; the hair stood erect on his brow, and his heart was depressed with awe. He reflected how best he should offer thanks to the god of gods; what he could say in his adoration; what words were capable of expressing his praise: and being overwhelmed with perplexity, he had recourse for consolation to the deity. "If," he exclaimed, "the lord is contented with my devotions, let this be my reward, that I may know how to praise him as I wish. How can I, a child, pronounce his praises, whose abode is unknown to Brahmā and to others learned in the Vedas? My heart is overflowing with devotion to thee: oh lord, grant me the faculty worthily to lay mine adorations at thy feet."
--
Thus the sage Dhruva, having received a boon from Janārddana, the god of gods, and lord of the world, resides in an exalted station. Beholding his glory, Uśanas, the preceptor of the Gods and demons, repeated these verses: "Wonderful is the efficacy of this penance, marvellous is its reward, that the seven Ṛṣis should be preceded by Dhruva. This too is the pious Sunīti, his parent, who is called Sūnritā[10]." Who can celebrate her greatness, who, having given birth to Dhruva, has become the asylum of the three worlds, enjoying to all future time an elevated station, a station eminent above all? He who shall worthily describe the ascent into the sky of Dhruva, for ever shall be freed from all sin, and enjoy the heaven of Indra. Whatever be his dignity, whether upon earth or in heaven, he shall never fall from it, but shall long enjoy life, possessed of every blessing[11].
Footnotes and references:
1.12 - God Departs, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Immersed in silent, incommunicable grief we sat by his immobile body. From that stupor, Sanyal woke me up and said, "A lot of things to do; get up." Yes, the body had to be prepared for public view. News had already gone abroad. The Ashram photographers who had no chance to take photos of the Living would now take them of the Maha Samadhi. "In the morning twilight of the Gods," the sadhaks came one by one and saw the Marvel and the Mystery, the body of the Golden Purusha in eternal sleep. And with tears of joy and grief they offered their prayer to the One who had sacrificed all for them.
I also saw, to my utter wonder and delight, that the entire body was suffused with a golden crimson hue, so fresh, so magnificent. It seemed to have lifted my pall of gloom and I felt light and happy without knowing why. When the Mother came, I asked naively, "Mother, won't he come back?" "No!" she replied, "If he wanted to come back, he would not have left the body." Pointing to the Light she said, "If this Supramental Light remains we shall keep the body in a glass case." Alas, it did not remain and on the fifth day, on the 9th of December in the evening, the body was laid in a vault.
1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
or be even as the Gods, though that enjoyment too will be ours,
but because this liberation and perfection are the divine Will in
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Dishevelled Her hair is flying behind as She rushes about, Undaunted in this war between the Gods and the demons.
Laughing Her terrible laugh, She slays the fleeing asuras, And with Her dazzling flashes She bares the horror of war.
--
It was dusk. The evening service began in the temples. Sri Ramakrishna was chanting the names of the Gods and goddesses. He was seated on the small couch, with folded hands, and became absorbed in contemplation of the Divine Mother. The world outside was flooded with moonlight, and the devotees inside the Master's room sat in silence and looked at his serene face.
In the mean time Govinda of Belgharia and some of his friends had entered the room.
1.12 - The Herds of the Dawn, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Gu (gavah.) and go (gavah.) bear throughout the Vedic hymns this double sense of cows and radiances. In the ancient Indian system of thought being and consciousness were aspects of each other, and Aditi, infinite existence from whom the Gods are born, described as the Mother with her seven names and seven seats
(dhamani), is also conceived as the infinite consciousness, the
--
(VII.75) she is described as sharing in the action of the Gods by which the strong places where the herds are concealed are broken open and they are given to men; "True with the Gods who are true, great with the Gods who are great, she breaks open the strong places and gives of the shining herds; the cows low towards the dawn," - rujad dr.d.hani dadad usriyan.am, prati
It cannot of course be disputed that go means light in the Veda e.g. when it is said that Vritra is slain gava, by light, there is no question of the cow; the question is of the use of the double sense and of the cow as a symbol.
--
(vital force) and of many enjoyments. The herds which Usha gives are therefore the shining troops of the Light recovered by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis from the strong places of Vala and the Panis and the wealth of cows (and horses) for which the
Rishis constantly pray can be no other than a wealth of this same
--
Night. Yet they speak of the undeviating rule of the action of the Gods, and of Dawn following always the path of the eternal
Law or Truth! We have to suppose that when the Rishi gives vent to the joyous cry "We have crossed over to the other shore of this darkness!", it was only the normal awakening to the daily sunrise that he thus eagerly hymned. We have to suppose that the Vedic peoples sat down to the sacrifice at dawn and prayed for the light when it had already come. And if we accept all these improbabilities, we are met by the clear statement that it was only after they had sat for nine or for ten months that the lost light and the lost sun were recovered by the Angiras
--
Truths are won out of the Nights. This is the rising of the Sun which was lost in the obscurity - the familiar figure of the lost sun recovered by the Gods and the Angiras Rishis - the sun of Truth, and it now shoots out its tongue of fire towards the golden Light: - for hiran.ya, gold is the concrete symbol of the higher light, the gold of the Truth, and it is this treasure not golden coin for which the Vedic Rishis pray to the Gods. This great change from the inner obscuration to the illumination is effected by the Ashwins, lords of the joyous upward action of the mind and the vital powers, through the immortal wine of the Ananda poured into mind and body and there drunk by them. They mentalise the expressive Word, they lead us into the heaven of pure mind beyond this darkness and there by the
Thought they set the powers of the Delight to work. But even over the heavenly waters they cross, for the power of the Soma helps them to dissolve all mental constructions, and they cast aside even this veil; they go beyond Mind and the last attaining is described as the crossing of the rivers, the passage through the heaven of the pure mind, the journey by the path of the Truth to the other side. Not till we reach the highest supreme, parama paravat, do we rest at last from the great human journey.
1.12 - The Sacred Marriage, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
2. The Marriage of the Gods
AT BABYLON the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
By this shall you bring forth (fruits or offspring), let this be your milker of desires. Foster by this the Gods and let the Gods foster you; fostering each other, you shall attain to the supreme good.
Fostered by sacrifice the Gods shall give you desired enjoyments; who enjoys their given enjoyments and has not given to them, he is a thief. The good who eat what is left from the sacrifice, are released from all sin; but evil are they and enjoy sin who cook (the food) for their own sake. From food creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of food, from sacrifice comes into being the rain, sacrifice is born of work; work know to be born of Brahman, Brahman is born of the Immutable; therefore is the all-pervading Brahman established in the sacrifice. He who follows not here the wheel thus set in movement, evil is his being, sensual is his delight, in vain, O Partha, that man lives." Having thus stated the necessity of sacrifice, - we shall see hereafter in what sense we may understand a passage which seems at first sight to convey only a traditional theory of ritualism and the necessity of the ceremonial offering, - Krishna proceeds to state the superiority of the spiritual man to works. "But the man whose delight is in the Self and who is satisfied with the enjoyment of the Self and in the Self he is content, for him there exists no work that needs to be done. He has no object here to be gained by action done and none to be gained by action undone;
The Significance of Sacrifice
--
letter of the Veda, then all the positions of the Vedist dogma are conceded and there is nothing more. Ceremonial sacrifice is the right means of gaining children, wealth, enjoyment; by ceremonial sacrifice rain is brought down from heaven and the prosperity and continuity of the race assured; life is a continual transaction between the Gods and men in which man offers ceremonial gifts to the Gods from the gifts they have bestowed on him and in return is enriched, protected, fostered. Therefore all human works have to be accompanied and turned into a sacrament by ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic worship; work not so dedicated is accursed, enjoyment without previous ceremonial sacrifice and ritual consecration is a sin. Even salvation, even the highest good is to be gained by ceremonial sacrifice. It must never be abandoned. Even the seeker of liberation has to continue to do ceremonial sacrifice, although without attachment; it is by ceremonial sacrifice and ritualistic works done without attachment that men of the type of Janaka attained to spiritual perfection and liberation.
Obviously, this cannot be the meaning of the Gita, for it would be in contradiction with all the rest of the book. Even in the passage itself, without the illumining interpretation afterwards given to it in the fourth chapter, we have already an indication of a wider sense where it is said that sacrifice is born from work, work from brahman, brahman from the Akshara, and therefore the all-pervading Brahman, sarvagatam brahma, is established in the sacrifice. The connecting logic of the "therefore" and the repetition of the word brahma are significant; for it shows clearly that the brahman from which all work is born has to be understood with an eye not so much to the current Vedic teaching in which it means the Veda as to a symbolical sense in which the creative Word is identical with the all-pervading Brahman, the Eternal, the one Self present in all existences, sarvabhutes.u, and present in all the workings of existence. The Veda is the knowledge of the Divine, the Eternal, - "I am He who is to be known in all the books of the Knowledge," vedais ca vedyah.,
--
But he may be known in an inferior action through the devas, the Gods, the powers of the divine Soul in Nature and in the eternal interaction of these powers and the soul of man, mutually giving and receiving, mutually helping, increasing, raising each other's workings and satisfaction, a commerce in which man rises towards a growing fitness for the supreme good. He recognises that his life is a part of this divine action in Nature and not a thing separate and to be held and pursued for its own sake. He regards his enjoyments and the satisfaction of his desires as the fruit of sacrifice and the gift of the Gods in their divine universal workings and he ceases to pursue them in the false and evil spirit of sinful egoistic selfishness as if they were a good to be seized from life by his own unaided strength without return and without thankfulness. As this spirit increases in him, he subordinates his desires, becomes satisfied with sacrifice as the law of life and works and is content with whatever remains over from the sacrifice, giving up all the rest freely as an offering in the great and beneficent interchange between his life and the worldlife. Whoever goes contrary to this law of action and pursues works and enjoyment for his own isolated personal self-interest, lives in vain; he misses the true meaning and aim and utility of living and the upward growth of the soul; he is not on the path which leads to the highest good. But the highest only comes when the sacrifice is no longer to the Gods, but to the one allpervading Divine established in the sacrifice, of whom the Gods are inferior forms and powers, and when he puts away the lower self that desires and enjoys and gives up his personal sense of being the worker to the true executrix of all works, Prakriti, and his personal sense of being the enjoyer to the Divine Purusha, the higher and universal Self who is the real enjoyer of the works of Prakriti. In that Self and not in any personal enjoyment he finds now his sole satisfaction, complete content, pure delight; he has nothing to gain by action or inaction, depends neither on gods nor men for anything, seeks no profit from any, for the self-delight is all-sufficient to him, but does works for the sake of the Divine only, as a pure sacrifice, without attachment or desire. Thus he gains equality and becomes free from the
The Significance of Sacrifice
--
Soma-wine was the physical symbol of the amr.ta, the immortalising delight of the divine ecstasy won by the sacrifice, offered to the Gods and drunk by men. The offering itself is whatever working of his energy, physical or psychological, is consecrated by him in action of body or action of mind to the Gods or God, to the Self or to the universal powers, to one's own higher Self or to the Self in mankind and in all existences.
This elaborate explanation of the Yajna sets out with a vast and comprehensive definition in which it is declared that the act and energy and materials of the sacrifice, the giver and receiver of the sacrifice, the goal and object of the sacrifice are all the one Brahman. "Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire,
--
But all even of the Yogins have not attained to this knowledge. "Some Yogins follow after the sacrifice which is of the Gods; others offer the sacrifice by the sacrifice itself into the
Brahman-fire." The former conceive of the Divine in various forms and powers and seek him by various means, ordinances, dharmas, laws or, as we might say, settled rites of action, selfdiscipline, consecrated works; for the latter, those who already know, the simple fact of sacrifice, of offering whatever work to the Divine itself, of casting all their activities into the unified divine consciousness and energy, is their one means, their one dharma. The means of sacrifice are various; the offerings are of many kinds. There is the psychological sacrifice of self-control and self-discipline which leads to the higher self-possession and self-knowledge. "Some offer their senses into the fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the fires of sense, and others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge." There is, that is to say, the discipline which receives the objects of sense-perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities, the senses themselves becoming pure fires of sacrifice; there is the discipline which stills the senses so that the soul in its purity may appear from behind the veil of mind-action, calm and still; there is the discipline by which, when the self is known, all the actions of the senseperceptions and all the action of the vital being are received into that one still and tranquil soul. The offering of the striver after perfection may be material and physical, dravya-yajna, like that consecrated in worship by the devotee to his deity, or it may be the austerity of his self-discipline and energy of his soul directed to some high aim, tapo-yajna, or it may be some form of Yoga like the Pranayama of the Rajayogins and Hathayogins, or any other yoga-yajna. All these tend to the purification of the being; all sacrifice is a way towards the attainment of the highest.
1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
We are born in a lead casing. It surrounds us completely. It is airtight and invisible, but it is there all the same, covering our least gestures and reactions. We are born ready-made, as it were, but the making is not of our own, neither in the best nor in the worst. There are millions of sensations, which are not yet thoughts, but like seeds of desire or repulsion, odors of fear, odors of anguish, like a subtle fungus lining our caves: layers upon layers of prohibitions and taboos, and a few rare permissions thrown in like an escape of the same dark onrush in our tunnels. And, in the middle of all that, a bewildered and lost little look who will soon be taught life, good and evil, geometry and the Tables of the Law. A little look getting more and more veiled, and definitely lost after he has been made to understand everything. For the obvious and natural assumption is that a child understands nothing and has to be taught how to live. But it could be that a child understands very well, even if that does not agree with our constructs, and that we merely teach him to bury his knowledge and replace it with a ready-made science, which buries him for good. Then we spend thirty years of our life undoing what they have done, unless we are a particularly successful subject, that is, definitively immured, satisfied, polite and holding degrees. Hence, a great part of the work involves not doing but undoing that spell. We will be told that this struggle is fruitful, enriching, that it develops our muscles and personality that is wrong. It hardens us, develops fighting muscles in us and may well drive us into an against as noxious as the for. Moreover, it does not develop a personality, but a mask, for the true person is there, totally there, artless and wide open, in the eyes of a newborn child we only add the misery of struggle. We believe utterly, intensely and blindly in the power of suffering; it has been the subconscious mark of our entire Western civilization for the last two thousand years. Perhaps it was necessary, given the denseness of our substance. But the law of suffering is a law of Falsehood what is true smiles, that's all. Suffering is a sign of falsehood, the product of falsehood; they go hand and hand. To believe that suffering is enriching is to believe that cancer is a boon from the Gods, although cancer, too, can help us break the shell of falsehood. Like all virtues, this negative virtue leaves a permanent shadow on us; and even the unobscured sun is still blemished by it. The blows, truly and necessarily, leave their mark; they produce liberated beings with scorched hearts who remember having suffered. That memory is yet another veil over the artless look. The law of the Gods is a sunlit one. And perhaps the whole work of Sri Aurobindo and Mother is to have brought the world the possibility of a sunlit path on which suffering, pain and disaster are no longer necessary in order to progress.
The apprentice superman does not believe in suffering. He believes in enrichment through joy; he believes in Harmony. He does not believe in education; he believes in the power of truth in the heart of all things and all beings he only helps that truth to grow with as little interference as possible. He trusts in the powers of that truth. He knows that man always moves toward his goal, inexorably, despite everything he is told or taught he only tries to suppress that despite. He simply waters that little sapling of truth and then again, with some caution, for some saplings prefer a sandy and rocky soil. But, at least, in that City or rather, laboratory of the future the child will be born in less stifling conditions. He will not be brainwashed, met at every street corner by screaming posters, corrupted by television or poisoned by vulgar movies, not burdened by all the vibrations of anxiety, fear or desire that his mother may have conscientiously accumulated in her womb through entertaining reading, debilitating films or a torn home life for everything is recorded, the slightest vibration, the least shock; everything enters the embryo freely, remains and accumulates there. The Greeks knew this well, and the Egyptians and the Indians, who used to surround the mother with special conditions of beauty and harmony so that the breath of the Gods could pervade each day and each breath of the child, so that everything could be an inspiration of truth. And when the mother and father decided to have a child, they did it as a prayer, a sacrifice for incarnating the Gods of the future. It takes only a spark of aspiration, a flame of entreaty, a luminous breath in the mother's heart for the same light to answer and come down, the identical flame, the kindred intensity of life if we are gray and dull, we will summon only the grayness and nothingness of millions of lifeless men.
The child of that City will be born with a flame, consciously, voluntarily, without having to undo millennia of animality or abysses of prejudice. He will not be told incessantly that he has to earn a living, for nobody will earn a living in the City of the Future, nobody will have money. Living will be devoted to serving the Truth, each according to his capacity or talent, and the only earnings will be joy. He will not be deluged with musts and must-nots; he will only be shown the immediate sadness of not listening to the right little note. He will not be tormented with the idea of finding a job, being a success, outranking others, passing or failing grades, for nobody succeeds or fails in the City of the Future, nobody has a job, nobody takes precedence over anybody; one does the one job of pursuing a clear little note that lights up everything, does everything for one, takes care of everything for one, unites everything in its tranquil harmony, and whose only success is to be in accord with itself and with the whole. He will not learn to depend on a teacher, a book or a machine, but to rely on that little flame inside, that sprightly little flowing that guides his steps, prompts a discovery, leads by chance to an experience and brings out knowledge effortlessly. And he will learn to cultivate the powers of his body the way others today cultivate the powers of push buttons. His faculties will not be confined in ready-made forms of vision and comprehension; in him will be fostered a vision that has nothing to do with the eyes, a comprehension that is not from books, dreams of other worlds that prepare tomorrow's, direct communications and instant intuitions and subtle senses. And if machines are still used in the City of the Future, he will be told that they are temporary crutches until we find in our own heart the source of the pure Power which will one day transmute matter as we now transmute a blank sheet of paper into a green prairie with the stroke of a pencil. He will be taught the Look, the true and potent look, the look that creates, that changes everything he will be taught to use his own powers and to believe in his power of truth, and that the purer and clearer he is, in harmony with the Law, the more matter responds to Truth. And, instead of entering a prison, the child will grow up in an atmosphere of natural oneness, free of you, me, yours or mine, where he will not have been taught constantly to put up screens and mental barriers, but to be consciously what he unconsciously has been since the beginning of time: to extend himself into all that is and lives, to feel in all that feels, to comprehend through an identical more profound breathing, through a silence that carries everything, to recognize the same little flame everywhere, to love the same clear little flowing everywhere, and to be the self everywhere, behind a thousand different faces and in a thousand musics that are a single music.
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
It is a cosmic consciousness, but with no loss of the individual. Instead of rejecting everything to soar to celestial heights, the seeker has patiently ascended each step of his being, so that the bottom remains linked to the top without any break. The overmind is the world of the Gods, the source of inspiration of the great founders of religions. This is where all the religions we know were born; they all derive from an overmental experience in one of its countless aspects. For a religion or revelation, a spiritual experience, belongs to a certain plane; it does not come from God's thunders or from nowhere; those who incarnate the particular revelation have not conceived it from nothing: the overmind is their source. It is also the source of the higher artistic creations. But we must remember that, although it is the summit, it is still a mental plane.
When consciousness rises to that plane, it no longer sees "point by point," but calmly in great masses.198 There is no longer the diffused light of the illumined mind or the isolated flashes of the intuitive mind, but, to quote the wonderful Vedic phrase, "an ocean of stable lightnings." The consciousness is no longer limited to the brief present moment or the narrow range of its visual field; it is unsealed, seeing in a single glance large extensions of space and time.199 The essential difference with other planes lies in the evenness, the almost complete uniformity of the light. In a particularly receptive illumined mind one would see, for example, a bluish background with sudden jets of light, intuitive flashes, or moving luminous eruptions, sometimes even great overmental downpours, but it would be a fluctuating play of light, nothing stable. This is the usual condition of the greatest poets we know; they attain a certain level of rhythm, a particular poetic luminousness, and from time to time they touch upon higher regions and return with those rare dazzling lines (or musical phrases) that are repeated generation after generation like an open sesame. The illumined mind is generally the base (an already very high base), and the overmind a divine kingdom one gains access to in moments of grace.
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Similarly, poetry and music, which are but unconscious processes of handling these secret vibrations, can be a powerful means of opening up the consciousness. If we could compose conscious poetry or music through the conscious manipulation of higher vibrations, we would create masterpieces endowed with initiatory powers. Instead of a poetry that is a fantasy of the intellect and a nautch-girl of the mind,202 as Sri Aurobindo put it, we would create a mantric music or poetry to bring the Gods into our life. 203 For true poetry is action; it opens little inlets in the consciousness we are so walled in, so barricaded! through which the Real can enter. It is a mantra of the Real,204 an initiation. This is what the Vedic rishis and the seers of the Upanishads did with their mantras, which have the power of communicating illumination to one who is ready. 205 This is what Sri Aurobindo has explained in his Future Poetry and what he has accomplished himself in Savitri.
Mantras, great poetry, great music, or the sacred Word, all come from the overmind plane. It is the source of all creative or spiritual activity (the two cannot be separated: the categorical divisions of the intellect vanish in this clear space where everything is sacred, even the profane). We might now attempt to describe the particular vibration or rhythm of the overmind. First, as anyone knows who has the capacity to enter more or less consciously in contact with the higher planes a poet, a writer, or an artist it is no longer ideas one perceives and tries to translate when one goes beyond a certain level of consciousness: one hears. Vibrations, or waves, or rhythms, literally impose themselves and take possession of the seeker, and subsequently garb themselves with words and ideas, or music, or colors, during the descent. But the word or idea, the music or color is merely a result, a byproduct: it only gives a body to that first, highly compelling vibration. If the poet, the true one, next corrects and recorrects his draft, it is not to improve the form, as it were, or to find a more adequate expression, but to capture the vibrating life behind more accurately; if the true vibration is absent, all the magic disintegrates, as a Vedic priest mispronouncing the mantra of the sacrifice. When the consciousness is transparent, the sound can be heard distinctly, and it is a seeing sound, as it were, a sound-image or a sound-idea, which inseparably links hearing to vision and thought within the same luminous essence. All is there, self-contained, within a single vibration. On all the intermediate planes higher mind, illumined or intuitive mind the vibrations are generally broken up as flashes, pulsations, or eruptions, while in the overmind they are great notes.
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If we are religious-minded, perhaps we will see the Gods who inhabit this world. Beings, forces, sounds, lights, and rhythms are just so many true forms of the same indefinable, but not unknowable, Essence we call "God"; we have spoken of God, and made temples, laws or poems to try to capture the one little pulsation filling us with sunshine, but it is free as the wind on foam-flecked shores. We may also enter the world of music, which in fact is not different from the others but a special extension of this same, great inexpressible Vibration. If once, only once, even for a few moments in a lifetime, we can hear that Music, that Joy singing above, we will know what Beethoven and Bach heard; we will know what God is because we will have heard God. We will probably not say anything grandiose; we will just know that That exists, whereupon all the suffering in the world will seem redeemed.
At the extreme summit of the overmind, there only remain great waves of multi-hued light, says the Mother, the play of spiritual forces, which later translate sometimes much later into new ideas, social changes, or earthly events, after crossing one by one all the layers of consciousness and suffering a considerable distortion and loss of light in the process. There are some rare and silent sages on this earth who can wield and combine these forces and draw them down onto the earth, the way others combine sounds to write a poem. Perhaps they are the true poets. Their existence is a living mantra precipitating the Real upon earth. This concludes the description of the ascent Sri Aurobindo underwent alone in his cell at Alipore. We have only presented a few human reflections of these higher regions; we have said nothing about their essence, nothing about these worlds as they exist in their glory, independently of our pale translations: one must hear and see that for oneself!
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the modern world the Gods to whom human sacrifice is offered are personifications, not of Nature, but of mans own, home-made political ideals. These, of course, all refer to events in timeactual events in the past or the present, fancied events in the future. And here it should be noted that the philosophy which affirms the existence and the immediate realizableness of eternity is related to one kind of political theory and practice; the philosophy which affirms that what goes on in time is the only reality, results in a different kind of theory and justifies quite another kind of political practice. This has been clearly recognized by Marxist writers,* who point out that when Christianity is mainly preoccupied with events in time, it is a revolutionary religion, and that when, under mystical influences, it stresses the Eternal Gospel, of which the historical or pseudo-historical facts recorded in Scripture are but symbols, it becomes politically static and reactionary.
This Marxian account of the matter is somewhat oversimplified. It is not quite true to say that all theologies and philosophies whose primary concern is with time, rather than eternity, are necessarily revolutionary. The aim of all revolutions is to make the future radically different from and better than the past. But some time-obsessed philosophies are primarily concerned with the past, not the future, and their politics are entirely a matter of preserving or restoring the status quo and getting back to the good old days. But the retrospective time-worshippers have one thing in common with the revolutionary devotees of the bigger and better future; they are prepared to use unlimited violence to achieve their ends. It is here that we discover the essential difference between the politics of eternity-philosophers and the politics of time-philosophers. For the latter, the ultimate good is to be found in the temporal worldin a future, where everyone will be happy because all are doing and thinking something either entirely new and unprecedented or, alternatively, something old, traditional and hallowed. And because the ultimate good lies in time, they feel justified in making use of any temporal means for achieving it. The Inquisition burns and tortures in order to perpetuate a creed, a ritual and an ecclesiastico-politico-financial organization regarded as necessary to mens eternal salvation. Bible-worshipping Protestants fight long and savage wars, in order to make the world safe for what they fondly imagine to be the genuinely antique Christianity of apostolic times. Jacobins and Bolsheviks are ready to sacrifice millions of human lives for the sake of a political and economic future gorgeously unlike the present. And now all Europe and most of Asia has had to be sacrificed to a crystal-gazers vision of perpetual Co-Prosperity and the Thousand-Year Reich. From the records of history it seems to be abundantly clear that most of the religions and philosophies which take time too seriously are correlated with political theories that inculcate and justify the use of large-scale violence. The only exceptions are those simple Epicurean faiths, in which the reaction to an all too real time is Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This is not a very noble, nor even a very realistic kind of morality. But it seems to make a good deal more sense than the revolutionary ethic: Die (and kill), for tomorrow someone else will eat, drink and be merry. In practice, of course, the prospect even of somebody elses future merriment is extremely precarious. For the process of wholesale dying and killing creates material, social and psychological conditions that practically guarantee the revolution against the achievement of its beneficent ends.
1.13 - And Then?, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Yet hinted every rapture that the Gods can bear.39
It is up to us to unravel this knot, this mortal mixture, up to us to find the key and dare the supreme adventure.
1.13 - BOOK THE THIRTEENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Hector came on, and brought the Gods along;
Fear seiz'd alike the feeble, and the strong:
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By both my parents to the Gods ally'd.
But not because that on the female part
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As angry with the Gods, as they with him.
No subject cou'd sustain their sov'reign's look,
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Which to the Gods, and men such pleasure brings.
Yet I nor honours seek, nor rites divine,
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O sov'reign of the Gods accept my pray'r,
Grant my request, and sooth a mother's care;
1.13 - Dawn and the Truth, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Day, the splendour and clarity of the inner illumination. But we see in the Veda that Aditi, the Mother of the Gods, is described both as the Cow and as the general Mother; she is the Supreme
Light and all radiances proceed from her. Psychologically, Aditi is the supreme or infinite Consciousness, mother of the Gods, in opposition to Danu or Diti,1 the divided consciousness, mother of Vritra and the other Danavas - enemies of the Gods and of man in his progress. In a more general aspect she is the source of all the cosmic forms of consciousness from the physical upwards; the seven cows, sapta gavah., are her forms and there are, we are told, seven names and seven seats of the Mother. Usha as the mother of the cows can only be a form or power of this supreme
Light, of this supreme Consciousness, of Aditi. And in fact, we do find her so described in I.113.19, mata devanam aditer ankam, "Mother of the Gods, form (or, power) of Aditi."
But the illumining dawn of the higher or undivided Consciousness is always the dawn of the Truth; if Usha is that illumining dawn, then we are bound to find her advent frequently associated in the verses of the Rig Veda with the idea of the
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dev devebhir (VII.75.7), "Dawn true in her being with the Gods who are true, vast with the Gods who are vast." This "truth" of the Dawn is much insisted upon by Vamadeva in one of his hymns, IV.51; for there not only does he speak of the Dawns
"encompassing the worlds immediately with horses yoked by the Truth," r.tayugbhir asvaih. (cf. VI.65.2) but he speaks of them as bhadra r.tajatasatyah., "happy, and true because born from the Truth"; and in another verse he describes them as "the goddesses who awake from the seat of the Truth."
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"Happy, bringing the Gods' eye of vision, leading the white
Horse that has perfect sight, Dawn is seen expressed entirely by the rays, full of her varied riches, manifesting her birth in all things." It is clear enough that the white horse (a phrase applied to the god Agni who is the Seer-Will, kavikratu, the
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
fruitful earth to visit Ocean, the forbear of the Gods, and Mother Tethys . . .
even Ocean Stream himself, who is the forbear of them all." (Rieu trans., pp. 262I)
1.13 - Posterity of Dhruva, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
There then fell from the sky the primitive bow (of Mahādeva) named Ajagava, and celestial arrows, and panoply from heaven. At the birth of Prithu all living creatures rejoiced; and Veṇa, delivered by his being born from the hell named Put, ascended to the realms above. The seas and rivers, bringing jewels from their depths, and water to perform the ablutions of his installation, appeared. The great parent of all, Brahmā, with the Gods and the descendants of A
giras (the fires), and with all things animate or inanimate, assembled and performed the ceremony of consecrating the son of Veṇa. Beholding in his right hand the (mark of the) discus of Viṣṇu, Brahmā recognised a portion of that divinity in Prithu, and was much pleased; for the mark of Viṣṇu's discus is visible in the hand of one who is born to be a universal emperor[5], one whose power is invincible even by the Gods.
The mighty Prithu, the son of Veda, being thus invested with universal dominion by those who were skilled in the rite, soon removed the grievances of the people whom his father had oppressed, and from winning their affections he derived the title of Rāja, or king[6]. The waters became solid, when he traversed the ocean: the mountains opened him a path: his banner passed unbroken (through the forests): the earth needed not cultivation; and at a thought food was prepared: all kine were like the cow of plenty: honey was stored in every flower. At the sacrifice of the birth of Prithu, which was performed by Brahmā, the intelligent Sūta (herald or bard) was produced, in the juice of the moon-plant, on the very birth-day[7]: at that great sacrifice also was produced the accomplished Māgadha: and the holy sages said to these two persons, "Praise ye the king Prithu, the illustrious son of Veṇa; for this is your especial function, and here is a fit subject for your praise." But they respectfully replied to the Brahmans, "We know not the acts of the new-born king of the earth; his merits are not understood by us; his fame is not spread abroad: inform us upon what subject we may dilate in his praise." "Praise the king," said the Ṛṣis, "for the acts this heroic monarch will perform; praise him for the virtues he will display." The king, hearing these words, was much pleased, and reflected that persons acquire commendation by virtuous actions, and that consequently his virtuous conduct would be the theme of the eulogium which the bards were about to pronounce: whatever merits, then, they should panegyrize in their encomium, he determined that he would endeavour to acquire; and if they should point out what faults ought to be avoided, he would try to shun them. He therefore listened attentively, as the sweet-voiced encomiasts celebrated the future virtues of Prithu, the enlightened son of Veṇa.
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Prithu accordingly uprooted the mountains, by hundreds and thousands, for myriads of leagues, and they were thenceforth piled upon one another. Before his time there were no defined boundaries of villages or towns, upon the irregular surface of the earth; there was no cultivation, no pasture, no agriculture, no highway for merchants: all these things (or all civilization) originated in the reign of Prithu. Where the ground was made level, the king induced his subjects to take up their abode. Before his time, also, the fruits and roots which constituted the food of the people were procured with great difficulty, all vegetables having been destroyed; and he therefore, having made Svāyambhuva Manu the calf[8], milked the Earth, and received the milk into his own hand, for the benefit of mankind. Thence proceeded all kinds of corn and vegetables upon which people subsist now and perpetually. By granting life to the Earth, Prithu was as her father, and she thence derived the patronymic appellation Prithivī (the daughter of Prithu). Then the Gods, the sages, the demons, the Rākṣasas, the Gandharbhas, Yakṣas, Pitris, serpents, mountains, and trees, took a milking vessel suited to their kind, and milked the earth of appropriate milk, and the milker and the calf were both peculiar to their own species[9].
This Earth, the mother, the nurse, the receptacle, and nourisher of all existent things, was produced from the sole of the foot of Viṣṇu. And thus was born the mighty Prithu, the heroic son of Veṇa, who was the lord of the earth, and who, from conciliating the affections of the people, was the first ruler to whom the title of Rāja was ascribed. Whoever shall recite this story of the birth of Prithu, the son of Veṇa, shall never suffer any retribution for the evil he may have committed: and such is the virtue of the tale of Prithu's birth, that those who hear it repeated shall be relieved from affliction[10].
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[3]: That is, the land will be fertile in proportion as the Gods are propitiated, and the king will benefit accordingly, as a sixth part of the merit and of the produce will be his. So the commentator explains the word 'portion.'
[4]: The Matsya says there were born outcast or barbarous races, Mleccas, as black as collyrium. The Bhāgavata describes an individual of dwarfish p. 101 stature, with short arms and legs, of a complexion as black as a crow, with projecting chin, broad flat nose, red eyes, and tawny hair; whose descendants were mountaineers and foresters: The Padma (Bhu. Kh.) has a similar description, adding to the dwarfish stature and black complexion, a wide mouth, large ears, and a protuberant belly. It also particularizes his posterity as Niṣādas, Kirātas, Bhillas, Bahanakas, Bhramaras, Pulindas, and other barbarians, or Mleccas, living in woods and on mountains. These passages intend, and do not much exaggerate, the uncouth appearance of the Goands, Koles, Bhils, and other uncivilized tribes, scattered along the forests and mountains of central India, from Behar to Kandesh, and who are not improbably the predecessors of the present occupants of the cultivated portions of the country. They are always very black, ill-shapen, and dwarfish, and have countenances of a very African character.
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[9]: The Matsya, Brāhma, Bhāgavata, and Padma enter into a greater detail of this milking, specifying typically the calf, the milker, the milk, and the vessel. Thus, according to the Matsya, the Ṛṣis milked the earth through Vrihaspati; their calf p. 105 was Soma; the Vedas were the vessel; and the milk was devotion. When the Gods milked the earth, the milker was Mitra (the sun); Indra was the calf; superhuman power was the produce. the Gods had a gold, the Pitris a silver vessel: and for the latter, the milker was Antaka (death); Yama was the calf; the milk was Swadhā, or oblation. The Nāga, or snake-gods, had a gourd for their pail; their calf was Takṣaka; Dhritarāṣṭra (the serpent) was their milker; and their milk was poison. For the Asuras, Māyā was the milk; Virocana, the son of Prahlāda, was the calf; the milker was Dwimurddhā; and the vessel was of iron. The Yakṣas made Vaisravaṇa their calf; their vessel was of unbaked earth; the milk was the power of disappearing. The Rākṣasas and others employed Raupyanābha as the milker; their calf was Sumāli; and their milk was blood. Citraratha was the calf, Vasuruci the milker, of the Gandharvas and nymphs, who milked fragrant odours into a cup of lotus leaves. On behalf of the mountains, Meru was the milker; Himavat the calf; the pail was of crystal; and the milk was of herbs and gems. The trees extracted sap in a vessel of the Palāśa, the Sāl being the milker, and the Plakṣa the calf. The descriptions that occur in the Bhāgavata, Padma, and Brāhma Purāṇas are occasionally slightly varied, but they are for the most part in the same words as that of the Matsya. These mystifications are all probably subsequent modifications of the original simple allegory, which typified the earth as a cow, who yielded to every class of beings the milk they desired, or the object of their wishes.
[10]: Another reading is, 'It counteracts evil dreams.' The legend of Prithu is briefly given in the Mahābhārata, Rāja Dherma, and occurs in most of the Purāṇas, but in greatest detail in our text, in the Bhāgavata, and especially in the Padma, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, s. 29, 30. All the versions, however, are essentially the same.
1.13 - The Lord of the Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
infinite diversities and various relations and it appears to us behind these as the soul and force of the action of the Gods,
- that is to say, the cosmic powers and qualities of the Divine which preside over the workings of the life of the universe and constitute to our perception different universal forms of the one
1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
object:1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods
class:chapter
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Unfortunately, however, two facts shatter this hope: the first has to do with the very nature of the overmind itself. To be sure, the overmind seems formidably powerful compared to our mind, but this is a superiority in degree within the same type; it is not a transcendence of the mental principle, but only an epitomization of it. The overmind can broaden the human scope, not change it. It can divinize man, but it also colossalises213 him, as Sri Aurobindo puts it; for if man attaches this new power to his ego instead of to his soul, he will become a Nietzschean superman, not a god. We do not need a superconsciousness; what we need is another consciousness. Even if man accepted to obey his soul and not his ego, the overmind would still not transform life, for the very reasons that prevented Christ and all the great prophets from transforming life: because the overmind is not a new principle of consciousness, but the very one that has presided over our evolution since the appearance of man; from the overmind have come all the higher ideas and creative forces, and we have lived under the auspices of the Gods for thousands of years
sometimes through the voices of our prophets and religions,
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The Secret, what Sri Aurobindo called the Supramental, is not a further gradation above the overmind, not a super-mind or a superascent, but a new Auspice, unconnected to the Gods and the religions,
on which the very future of our evolution depends.
1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Budge, E. A. Wallis. the Gods of the Egyptians. London, 1904.
2 vols.
1.14 - Descendants of Prithu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"We bow to him whose glory is the perpetual theme of every speech; him first, him last; the supreme lord of the boundless world; who is primeval light; who is without his like; indivisible and infinite; the origin of all existent things, movable or stationary. To that supreme being who is one with time, whose first forms, though he be without form, are day and evening and night, be adoration. Glory to him, the life of all living things, who is the same with the moon, the receptacle of ambrosia, drunk daily by the Gods and progenitors: to him who is one with the sun, the cause of heat and cold and rain, who dissipates the gloom, and illuminates the sky with his radiance: to him who is one with earth, all-pervading, and the asylum of smell and other objects of sense, supporting the whole world by its solidity. We adore that form of the deity Hari which is water, the womb of the world, the seed of all living beings. Glory to the mouth of the Gods, the eater of the Havya; to the eater of the Kavya, the mouth of the progenitors; to Viṣṇu, who is identical with fire; to him who is one with air, the origin of ether, existing as the five vital airs in the body, causing constant vital action; to him who is identical with the atmosphere, pure, illimitable, shapeless, separating all creatures. Glory to Kṛṣṇa, who is Brahmā in the form of sensible objects, who is ever the direction of the faculties of sense. We offer salutation to that supreme Hari who is one with the senses, both subtle and substantial, the recipient of all impressions, the root of all knowledge: to the universal soul, who, as internal intellect, delivers the impressions received by the senses to soul: to him who has the properties of Prakriti; in whom, without end, rest all things; from whom all things proceed; and who is that into which all things resolve. We worship that Puruṣottoma, the god who is pure spirit, and who, without qualities, is ignorantly considered as endowed with qualities. We adore that supreme Brahma, the ultimate condition of Viṣṇu, unproductive, unborn, pure, void of qualities, and free from accidents; who is neither high nor low, neither bulky nor minute, has neither shape, nor colour, nor shadow, nor substance, nor affection, nor body; who is neither etherial nor susceptible of contact, smell, or taste; who has neither eyes, nor ears, nor motion, nor speech, nor breath, nor mind, nor name, nor race, nor enjoyment, nor splendour; who is without cause, without fear, without error, without fault, undecaying, immortal, free from passion, without sound, imperceptible, inactive, independent of place or time, detached from all investing properties; but (illusively) exercising irresistible might, and identified with all beings, dependent upon none. Glory to that nature of Viṣṇu which tongue can not tell, nor has eye beheld."
Thus glorifying Viṣṇu, and intent in meditation on him, the Pracetasas passed ten thousand years of austerity in the vast ocean; on which Hari, being pleased with them, appeared to them amidst the waters, of the complexion of the full-blown lotus leaf. Beholding him mounted on the king of birds, Garuḍa, the Pracetasas bowed down their heads in devout homage; when Viṣṇu said to them, "Receive the boon you have desired; for I, the giver of good, am content with you, and am present." The Pracetasas replied to him with reverence, and told him that the cause of their devotions was the command of their father to effect the multiplication of mankind. The god, having accordingly granted to them the object of their prayers, disappeared, and they came up from the water.
--
[3]: The text is, ###. Kuśa or varhis is properly 'sacrificial grass' (Poa); and Prācināgra, literally, 'having its tips towards the east;' the direction in which it should be placed upon the ground, as a seat for the Gods on occasion of offerings made to them. The name therefore intimates, either that the practice originated with him, or, as the commentator explains it, that he was exceedingly devout, offering sacrifices or invoking p. 107 the Gods every where. The Hari Vaṃśa adds a verse to that of our text, reading, ###, which Mons. Langlois has rendered, 'Quand il marchoit sur la terre les pointes de cousa etoient courbées vers l'Orient;' which he supposes to mean, 'Que ce prince avait tourné ses pensées et porté sa domination vers l'Orient:' a supposition that might have been obviated by a little further consideration of the verse of Manu to which he refers. "If he have sitten on culms of grass with their points towards the east," &c. The commentary explains the passage as above, referring ### to ### not to ### as, ###. 'He was called Prācinavarhis, because his sacred grass, pointing east, was going upon the very earth, or was spread over the whole earth.' The text of the Bhāgavata also explains clearly what is meant: 'By whose sacred grass, pointing to the east, as he performed sacrifice after sacrifice, the whole earth, his sacrificial ground, was overspread.'
1.14 - FOREST AND CAVERN, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
Which brings me near and nearer to the Gods,
Thou gav'st the comrade, whom I now no more
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Shadow and Light, Good and Evil have all prepared a divine birth in Matter: "Day and Night both suckle the divine Child." 253 Nothing is accursed, nothing is in vain. Night and Day are "two sisters, immortal, with a common Lover (the Sun) . . . common they, though different their forms." (I.113.2.3) At the end of the "pilgrimage" of ascent and descent, the seeker is "a son of the two Mothers (III.55.7): the son of Aditi, the white Mother254 of the superconscious infinite, and the son of Diti, the earthly Mother of "the dark infinite." He possesses "the two births," human and divine, "eternal and in one nest . . . as the Enjoyer of his two wives" (I.62.7): "The contents of the pregnant hill255 (came forth) for the supreme birth . . . a god opened the human doors." (V.45) "Then indeed, they awoke and saw all behind and wide around them, then, indeed, they held the ecstasy that is enjoyed in heaven. In all gated houses256 were all the Gods." (Rig Veda IV.1.18)
Man's hope is fulfilled as well as the rishi's prayer: "May Heaven and Earth be equal and one."257 The great Balance is at last restored.
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
chthonic one, like the triadic nature of the Gods of the under-
world-the "lower triad." Psychologically, however, three- if the
1.14 - The Supermind as Creator, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:It is the cryptic verses of the Veda that help us here; for they contain, though concealed, the gospel of the divine and immortal Supermind and through the veil some illumining flashes come to us. We can see through these utterances the conception of this Supermind as a vastness beyond the ordinary firmaments of our consciousness in which truth of being is luminously one with all that expresses it and assures inevitably truth of vision, formulation, arrangement, word, act and movement and therefore truth also of result of movement, result of action and expression, infallible ordinance or law. Vast all-comprehensiveness; luminous truth and harmony of being in that vastness and not a vague chaos or self-lost obscurity; truth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth of being: these seem to be the essential terms of the Vedic description. the Gods, who in their highest secret entity are powers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in their proper home, are in their knowledge "truth-conscious" and in their action possessed of the "seerwill". Their conscious-force turned towards works and creation is possessed and guided by a perfect and direct knowledge of the thing to be done and its essence and its law, - a knowledge which determines a wholly effective will-power that does not deviate or falter in its process or in its result, but expresses and fulfils spontaneously and inevitably in the act that which has been seen in the vision. Light is here one with Force, the vibrations of knowledge with the rhythm of the will and both are one, perfectly and without seeking, groping or effort, with the assured result. The divine Nature has a double power, a spontaneous self-formulation and self-arrangement which wells naturally out of the essence of the thing manifested and expresses its original truth, and a self-force of light inherent in the thing itself and the source of its spontaneous and inevitable self-arrangement.
6:There are subordinate, but important details. The Vedic seers seem to speak of two primary faculties of the "truthconscious" soul; they are Sight and Hearing, by which is intended direct operations of an inherent Knowledge describable as truth-vision and truth-audition and reflected from far-off in our human mentality by the faculties of revelation and inspiration. Besides, a distinction seems to be made in the operations of the Supermind between knowledge by a comprehending and pervading consciousness which is very near to subjective knowledge by identity and knowledge by a projecting, confronting, apprehending consciousness which is the beginning of objective cognition. These are the Vedic clues. And we may accept from this ancient experience the subsidiary term "truthconsciousness" to delimit the connotation of the more elastic phrase, Supermind.
1.15 - The element of Character in Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Iliad. The 'Deus ex Machina' should be employed only for events external to the drama,--for antecedent or subsequent events, which lie beyond the range of human knowledge, and which require to be reported or foretold; for to the Gods we ascribe the power of seeing all things. Within the action there must be nothing irrational. If the irrational cannot be excluded, it should be outside the scope of the tragedy. Such is the irrational element in the Oedipus of Sophocles.
Again, since Tragedy is an imitation of persons who are above the common level, the example of good portrait-painters should be followed. They, while reproducing the distinctive form of the original, make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful. So too the poet, in representing men who are irascible or indolent, or have other defects of character, should preserve the type and yet ennoble it. In this way
1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But most men, the Gita goes on to say, desiring the fulfilment of their works, sacrifice to the Gods, to various forms and personalities of the one Godhead, because the fulfilment
(siddhi) that is born of works, - of works without knowledge,
--- Grep of noun the_gods
lap of the gods
scourge of the gods
tree of the gods
twilight of the gods
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/957211.Evil_and_the_God_of_Love
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95844.Talking_Dirty_to_the_Gods
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9681214-the-goddess-test
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9681214.The_Goddess_Test__Goddess_Test__1_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9760653-the-gods-of-greenwich
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9777.The_God_of_Small_Things
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/977907.The_God_Who_Comes
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/978814.The_God_Chasers
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98876.Disneyland_of_the_Gods
http://es.godofhighschool.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_The_God_Of_High_School
http://godofhighschool.wikia.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki
https://greekmythology.wikia.org/wiki/File:Athena_fighting_Enkelados,_one_of_the_Gigante_(giants),_children_of_Giaia,_in_their_war_against_the_gods;_flanked_by_two_Gigante;_two_lions_on_shoulder.jpg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Artemis#Wooing_the_goddess
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Bishop_Absalon_topples_the_god_Svantevit_at_Arkona.PNG
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_the_goddess_of_Issa,_Vis_Museum,_Croatia.JPG
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Hades#The_god_Hades
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Kamiumi#Birth_of_the_gods
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Magic_and_religion#The_names_of_the_Gods
Kheper - The_Savior_and_the_Godhead -- 46
Integral World - Beware of the God, The Pitbull of Gurus, Jim Chamberlain
Integral World - The God Behind the Curtain, A Critical Look at Michael Behe's Mind Centered Theory of Evolution, David Lane
The Goddess Returns: Deity Mysticism for the 21st Century
https://esotericotherworlds.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-god-helmet.html
wiki.auroville - Loretta_reads_Savitri:Two.V_"The_Godheads_of_the_Little_Life"_part_1
wiki.auroville - Loretta_reads_Savitri:Two.V_"The_Godheads_of_the_Little_Life"_part_2
wiki.auroville - Loretta_reads_Savitri:Two.V_"The_Godheads_of_the_Little_Life"_part_3
wiki.auroville - Loretta_reads_Savitri:Two.V_"The_Godheads_of_the_Little_Life"_part_4
Dharmapedia - File:AUM_symbol,_the_primary_(highest)_name_of_the_God_as_per_the_Vedas.svg
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/LeatherGoddessesOfPhobos
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Kardos_The_God-fearing_Job.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:The_Godfather_movie_logo.png
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Food_of_the_Gods_and_How_It_Came_to_Earth
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Godfather
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Godfather_Part_II
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Godfather:_Part_II
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Godfather_Part_III
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Godfather:_Part_III
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Treatise_on_the_Gods
The Secret Of Isis (1975 - 1976) - Egyptian Queen Hatchupset Was Given An Amulet With This Amulet Empowered Her With The Powers Of The Goddess Isis To Command The Elements Of Sky And Earth, Andera Thomas Found Her Lost Amulet While On An Archaeological Dig, She Found Out That She Was The Heir To The ''Secrets Of Isis'', By Wearing Th...
The Godzilla Power Hour (1978 - 1981) - The Godzilla Power Hour was a 60-minute Saturday morning animated series co-produced between Hanna-Barbera Productions and Toho in 1978 and aired on NBC in the US and TV Tokyo in Japan.
Unico (1981 - 1985) - Unico the Unicorn has the amazing power to make anyone he meets happy. Whether it`s because of his personality or the powers of his horn, no one knows. However, the gods become jealous of Unico, thinking that only gods should be able to decide or let people be happy or not. Unico is banished to the...
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995 - 1999) - Hercules was the son of the God Zeus and a mortal woman. Zeus's wife Hera, upset over Zeus'
Young Hercules (1998 - 1999) - This show follows a teenage Hercules on his quest through the academy where he is being trained in defense. Along the way he makes new friends and comes to face the challenges from the Gods.
Oh My Goddess! (1993 - 1994) - Oh My Goddess is a fantasy/comedy/romance OVA series based on the popular manga by Kosuke Fujishima. While at his dorm alone, college student Keiichi Morisato tries to order some take out food but mistakenly calls the Goddess Relief Office. Suddenly a goddess named Belldandy shows up to grant Kosuke...
Ah! My Goddess (2005 - 2006) - In a world where humans can have their wish granted via the Goddess Help Hotline, a human, Keiichi Morisato, summons the Goddess Belldandy by accident and jokes that she should stay with him forever. Unfortunately for him, his "wish" is granted.
Saint Seiya Omega (2012 - 2014) - The god of war and guardian of his namesake planet, Mars, was once sealed away by Seiya, but time has passed and his revival is at hand. Meanwhile, Saori Kido (Athena) is raising the boy Kga, whose life Seiya saved, and he's been training every day to become a Saint in order to prepare for the comi...
Kyran Kazoku Nikki (2008 - Current) - The Diary of a Crazed Family) is a light novel series by Akira (), with illustrations by x6suke. A 26-episode anime adaptation was broadcast in 2008.A thousand years ago, Enka (), the god of destruction, died saying that its "child" would destroy the world. In order to prevent this, the Great J...
Puzzle & Dragons X (2016 - 2018) - a spinoff of the mobile game Puzzle & Dragons for the Nintendo 3DS by GungHo Online Entertainment. It was released in two versions simultaneously on July 28, 2016, named the Gods Chapter () and the Dragons Chapter (). An anime adaptation by the studio Pierrot began airing on July 4, 2016.The s...
Hercules(1997) - Hercules, son of the Greek god Zeus (Rip Torn), is born with incredible strength. Hades (James Woods), Lord of the Underworld, sees him as the one thing standing in his way of taking over Mt. Olympus, home of the gods. He sends his two bumbling demons, Pain and Panic to kidnap young Herc, give hiim...
Godzilla vs. Megalon(1973) - Possibly one of the most humorous of the Godzilla films, Godzilla vs. Megalon stars everyone's favorite giant lizard who fights the beetle-like Megalon and the chicken alien Gigan with the assistance of the freaky looking robot, Je
The Godfather(1972) - Generally acknowledged as a bona fide classic, this Francis Ford Coppola film is one of those rare experiences that feels perfectly right from beginning to end--almost as if everyone involved had been born to participate in it. Based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel about a Mafia dynasty, Coppola's...
The Godfather: Part II(1974) - Francis Ford Coppola took some of the deep background from the life of Mafia chief Vito Corleone--the patriarch of Mario Puzo's bestselling novel The Godfather--and built around it a stunning sequel to his Oscar-winning, 1972 hit film. Robert De Niro plays Vito as a young Sicilian immigrant in turn-...
The Gods Must Be Crazy(1981) - Set in the beautiful Kalahari Desert of Botswana Africa,A native named XI,A group of inept terrorist ,A clumsy biologist named Andrew,and A beautiful news reporter,turned teacher,named Kate,share A hilarious Adventure.The movie begins with Xi,finds A coke bottle,believing it to be A gift from the go...
Saint Seiya: Legend of Crimson Youth(1988) - Saint Seiya: The Legend of Crimson Youth (Saint Seiya: Shinku no Shnen Densetsu) is the third movie based on the Manga & later Anime series, Saint Seiya. Due to the success of the first two movies Saint Seiya: The Movie and The Heated Battle of the Gods, this film saw the light as it premiered in J...
Mafia!(1998) - Satirist Jim Arahams returned with this comedy spoofing the Godfather trilogy, and other films and TV, including Jurassic Park, Lord of the Dance, and Barney. The opening emulates a Saul Bass sequence with Anthony Cortino (Jay Mohr) in a flight amid flames much like Robert De Niro in the Casino cred...
The Food of the Gods(1976) - Morgan and his friends are on a hunting trip on a remote Canadian island when they are attacked by a swarm of giant wasps. Looking for help, Morgan stumbles across a barn inhabited by an enormous killer chicken. After doing some exploring, they discover the entire island is crawling with animals tha...
The Godfather Part 3(1990) - In the midst of trying to legitimize his business dealings in 1979 New York and Italy, aging mafia don Michael Corleone seeks to vow for his sins while taking a young protege under his wing.The last film from the Godfather trilogy ends the story of the mafia boss Michael Corleone sixteen years after...
The Gods Must Be Crazy II(1989) - N!xua,Lena Farugia,and Hans Strydom,star in this sequel to the 1980 box office smash.Like first film,the movie is split into several different plots,which eventually come together.The first plot involves XiXo(N!xua) trying to find his children,who have stowed away on a truck.The second plot involves...
Pokmon: Arceus & the Jewel of Life(2009) - The twelfth Pokemon movie. This film is the third and final part of a trilogy along with the previous two films. After Dialga & Palkia disturbed the space-time continuum Giratina had to come out and calm them. Now the action shifts to Michina Town, a small town who idolize the Godly Pokemon Arceus....
As the Gods Will(2014) - Shun Takahata is an ordinary high school student leading a boring life until one day he and his classmates are forced to play a game of death. With no knowledge of who's behind the games, his only option is to continue winning to stay alive.
The Godfather: A Novel For Television(1977) - The first two Godfather films were re-edited together in chronological order with additional footage added.
The Ark Of The Sun God(1984) - A safecracker takes a job where he must go to Istanbul and steal a scepter that once belonged to the god Gilgamesh but is now in the temple of a secret cult.
The Godson(1971) - This is a low-budget mobster movie with a lot of sex and violence.
Alakazam The Great(1960) - A monkey king who learns the secrets of magic goes on a spree and causes no end of aggravation for the gods, who finally imprison him. In order to make up for all the trouble he's caused, he is sent on a mission to accompany a prince who is the son of the gods on a journey through a land filled with...
Blood Diner(1987) - Brothers, Michael Tutman and George Tutman are put in charge to resurrect the goddess Sheetar by their Uncle (having also been brought back as a brain in a car). They continue to contribute to the cannibalistic cult by running a health food restaurant in hopes of using the bodies of various women to...
Hot Stuff (1971)(1971) - In the prehistoric era, man is freezing when the gods take pity and give him warmth (fire). But there's a condition: don't be careless. He passes it down through the ages and gains more control over it but it is still dangerous. We see a modern domestic scene: the cigarette falls, the iron is left o...
Food Of The Gods II(1989) - A growth hormone experiment gets out of hand, when the the resulting giant man-eating rats escape, reaking havoc on the unsuspecting campus. Much blood-letting follows.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/41353/The_God_of_High_School -- Action, Sci-Fi, Adventure, Comedy, Supernatural, Martial Arts, Fantasy
https://myanimelist.net/anime/42893/The_God_of_Highschool -- Action, Sci-Fi, Supernatural, Martial Arts, Fantasy
https://myanimelist.net/manga/111996/The_God_of_High_School
Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious ::: Shinch ysha ~ kono ysha ga ore TUEEE kuse ni shinch sugiru ~ (original tit ::: TV-14 | 23min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (2019- ) Episode Guide 12 episodes Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious Poster The goddess Rista summons a hero to help her hard mode video game-like world. The hero, Seiya, is exceptional in every way, but he is incredibly cautious. He does things like buy three sets... S Stars:
Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (2013) ::: 7.2/10 -- Dragon Ball Z: Doragon bru Z - Kami to Kami (original title) -- Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods Poster -- The Z-Fighters must contend with Lord Beerus, the God of Destruction, but only a God can fight a God, and none of them are Gods. However with the creation of the Super Saiyan God, will the Z-Fighters be able to defeat Lord Beerus? Director: Masahiro Hosoda
Knights of the Zodiac ::: Seinto Seiya (original tit ::: TV-PG | 24min | Animation, Action, Adventure | TV Series (1986-1989) Episode Guide 114 episodes Knights of the Zodiac Poster -- A group a young warriors known as 'Saints', each in possession of a 'cloth' guarded by a different constellation, must protect the reincarnation of the goddess Athena as she attempts to keep the Earth from being destroyed by evil forces.
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003) ::: 6.7/10 -- PG | 1h 26min | Animation, Adventure, Family | 2 July 2003 (USA) -- The sailor of legend is framed by the goddess Eris for the theft of the Book of Peace, and must travel to her realm at the end of the world to retrieve it and save the life of his childhood friend Prince Proteus. Directors: Patrick Gilmore, Tim Johnson Writer:
Stargate (1994) ::: 7.1/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 56min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | 28 October 1994 (USA) -- An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra. Director: Roland Emmerich Writers: Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich Stars:
The Godfather (1972) ::: 9.2/10 -- R | 2h 55min | Crime, Drama | 24 March 1972 (USA) -- An organized crime dynasty's aging patriarch transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son. Director: Francis Ford Coppola Writers: Mario Puzo (screenplay by), Francis Ford Coppola (screenplay by) | 1
The Godfather: Part II (1974) ::: 9.0/10 -- R | 3h 22min | Crime, Drama | 18 December 1974 (USA) -- The early life and career of Vito Corleone in 1920s New York City is portrayed, while his son, Michael, expands and tightens his grip on the family crime syndicate. Director: Francis Ford Coppola Writers:
The Godfather: Part III (1990) ::: 7.6/10 -- R | 2h 42min | Crime, Drama | 25 December 1990 (USA) -- Follows Michael Corleone, now in his 60s, as he seeks to free his family from crime and find a suitable successor to his empire. Director: Francis Ford Coppola Writers: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) ::: 7.3/10 -- PG | 1h 49min | Adventure, Comedy | 26 October 1984 (USA) -- A comic allegory about a traveling Bushman who encounters modern civilization and its stranger aspects, including a clumsy scientist and a band of revolutionaries. Director: Jamie Uys Writer: Jamie Uys Stars:
The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989) ::: 6.9/10 -- PG | 1h 38min | Comedy | 13 April 1990 (USA) -- 6 people comically meet in the Kalahari desert: a female NYC lawyer flying with a local zoologist/pilot in a mini-plane, a Cuban and an African soldier taking each other POW, a Boer elephant poacher and a bushman looking for his 2 children. Director: Jamie Uys Writer:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mythology/images/e/ec/The_Gods_Assembled_by_Ville.fandom.com/
https://allods.fandom.com/wiki/Quest:Gift_of_the_Gods
https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Hammer_of_the_gods
https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/Because_I'm_the_Goddess
https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/By_the_Grace_of_the_Gods
https://animanga.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_of_High_School
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Portal:Rise_of_the_Godslayer
https://aoc.fandom.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Godslayer
https://arrow.fandom.com/wiki/Beebo_the_God_of_War
https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/Asterix:_The_Land_of_the_Gods
https://casshan.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_of_Death_Dune
https://characters.fandom.com/wiki/The_goddess_of_deliveries_of_babies
https://codesah.fandom.com/wiki/Fate_of_the_Gods_(quest)
https://courage.fandom.com/wiki/The_Gods_Must_Be_Goosey
https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Wrath_of_the_Gods
https://dcextendeduniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Shazam!_Fury_of_the_Gods
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/DC's_Legends_of_Tomorrow_(TV_Series)_Episode:_Beebo_the_God_of_War
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Diana_of_Themyscira_(Dark_Multiverse:_War_of_the_Gods)
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/JLA:_Pain_of_the_Gods
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Lucifer_(TV_Series)_Episode:_Sympathy_for_the_Goddess
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Sphere_of_the_Gods
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_from_the_Dark_Multiverse:_Wonder_Woman:_War_of_the_Gods_Vol_1_1
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Wally_the_God_Boy
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/War_of_the_Gods
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman:_Challenge_of_the_Gods
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman:_The_Game_of_the_Gods
https://dcmovies.fandom.com/wiki/Shazam!_Fury_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Breath_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Champion_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Despised_of_the_gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Emissary_of_the_gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Favor_of_the_gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Hammer_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Shield_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Visage_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon_of_the_Gods
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Word_of_the_gods
https://duelmasters.fandom.com/wiki/DMD-33_Masters_Chronicle_Deck_2016:_The_World's_End_by_the_God_of_Devils
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Ark'ay_The_God
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Mournhold_Plaza_of_the_Gods
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Plaza_of_the_Gods
https://elgoonishshive.fandom.com/wiki/Grace_the_Goddess
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Arena_of_the_Gods
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/A_Weapon_to_Slay_the_Gods_Themselves
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Confronting_the_Godslayer
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Council_of_the_Gods
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Deific_Teachings:_Portal_to_the_Arena_of_the_Gods
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_to_the_Arena_of_the_Gods
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Reign_of_Shadows:_Whispers_of_the_Gods
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/Return_of_the_Gods_Timeline
https://eq2.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shadow_Odyssey,_Chapter_2:_The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Heiress_Of_The_White_Moon_Kingdom_&_The_God_Of_Time-_Sailor_Moon_Infinity_Galaxy_Star_X-Storm:_A_New_Age_Of_Peace_&_Freedom,_Rising_Of_The_Millennium_Palace_&_Dawn_Of_A_New_Kingdom_In_The_Universe
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Evolution:_Grand_Saviors_Of_The_Gods,_Legacy_of_The_Ancients_&_Deities
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts_XP_Infinity_Galaxy_Storm,_Digimon_Fusion_Kai_Masters,_&_Sailor_Moon_Primordial_Dragon_X-Storm:_The_Legacy_Of_The_Ancients,_The_Return_Of_The_Gods-Coming_Of_A_New_Age_Of_The_Ultimate_Millennium-_The_Legendary_Civil_War_Of_Light_&_Darkness
https://fanfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Primordial_Roar_Of_The_Ancient_Beast_Deities-_Bestial_Champions_Of_The_Heavenly_Storms,_War_Of_The_Holy_Light_Vs._The_Demonic_Darkness-_Will_Of_The_Gods,_The_Dragon_God,_&_The_True_Dragon,_Galactic_Star_Protectors_Of_The_Universal_Dimensions
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Awakening_of_the_Gods
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Hall_of_the_Gods
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Gate_of_the_Gods
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hall_of_the_Gods
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Wings_of_the_Goddess
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Wings_of_the_Goddess_Missions
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Gift_of_the_goddess
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/The_Goddess's_Rite_of_Rebirth
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Where_the_Goddess_Dwells
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Arrows_of_the_Gods
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_the_Gods
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Boon_of_the_god
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Bounty_of_the_Goddess_(Voonlar)
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Galley_of_the_Gods
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Gathering_of_the_Gods
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sword_of_the_Gods:_Spinner_of_Lies
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Temple_of_the_gods
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godborn
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Thergod
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Vigilant_Eyes_of_the_God
https://ftb.fandom.com/wiki/Essence_of_the_Gods
https://fzero-facts.fandom.com/wiki/F-Zero:_And_Then,_To_the_Gods_of_Speed
https://glee.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Squad
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_(franchise)
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_(novel)
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_Wiki
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_Wiki:Community_Portal
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_Wiki:FAQ
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_Wiki:Manual_of_Style
https://godfather.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather_Wiki:Welcome,_newcomers
https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_of_High_School_(anime)
https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_of_High_School_(Webtoon)
https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki
https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki:Administrators
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https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki:Image_Policies
https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki:Official_Discord_Server
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https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki:Reference_Guide
https://godofhighschool.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Of_High_School_Wiki:Requests_for_adminship
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Gods
https://hanna-barbera.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godzilla_Power_Hour
https://hemlockgrove.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfrey_Institute
https://horizon-chase.fandom.com/wiki/Wrath_of_the_Gods
https://kaminomi.fandom.com/wiki/God_only_knows_-_Secrets_of_the_Goddess
https://kingdom-netflix.fandom.com/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_the_Gods
https://malazan.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_is_Not_Willing
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Shield_of_the_Gods
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godhead
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Gods_Have_Come!
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_God_Thing
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Shield_of_the_Gods
https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Gods_Have_Come!
https://movies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Born_of_the_Gods
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Born_of_the_Gods/Event_deck
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Born_of_the_Gods/Intro_packs
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Clash_of_the_Gods
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Clash_of_the_Gods_(TV_series)
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/King_of_the_Gods
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Magnus_Chase_and_the_Gods_of_Asgard
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Queen_of_the_Gods
https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/Thor:_Hammer_of_the_Gods_(2009_film)
https://nanatsu-no-taizai.fandom.com/wiki/The_Seven_Deadly_Sins:_Wrath_of_the_Gods
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Glory_of_Heracles_III:_Silence_of_the_Gods
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Glory_of_Heracles_IV:_Gift_from_the_Gods
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Godfather:_Blackhand_Edition
https://non-aliencreatures.fandom.com/wiki/Chimera_(The_Godzilla_Power_Hour)
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Aa! Megami-sama! -- -- AIC -- 5 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Romance Seinen Supernatural -- Aa! Megami-sama! Aa! Megami-sama! -- When college student Keiichi Morisato dials the wrong number while ordering for some food at his dormitory, he accidentally gets connected to the Goddess Hotline and a beautiful goddess named Belldandy appears out of a mirror in front of him. After getting kicked out of the dorm, Keiichi and Belldandy move to an old shrine and soon afterwards, Belldandy's sisters Urd and Skuld move in. -- -- Licensor: -- AnimEigo -- OVA - Feb 21, 1993 -- 47,017 7.32
Aa! Megami-sama! -- -- AIC -- 5 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Romance Seinen Supernatural -- Aa! Megami-sama! Aa! Megami-sama! -- When college student Keiichi Morisato dials the wrong number while ordering for some food at his dormitory, he accidentally gets connected to the Goddess Hotline and a beautiful goddess named Belldandy appears out of a mirror in front of him. After getting kicked out of the dorm, Keiichi and Belldandy move to an old shrine and soon afterwards, Belldandy's sisters Urd and Skuld move in. -- OVA - Feb 21, 1993 -- 47,017 7.32
Aa! Megami-sama!: Chichaitte Koto wa Benri da ne -- -- OLM -- 48 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Comedy Magic Supernatural -- Aa! Megami-sama!: Chichaitte Koto wa Benri da ne Aa! Megami-sama!: Chichaitte Koto wa Benri da ne -- A large collection consisting of the adventures of the Goddesses featured in the anime and manga series Ah My Goddess. Parodies of other works, and a large number of jokes pervade this series of shorts in which the Goddesses torture and hang out with their friend Gan the rat. -- 20,210 6.91
Aa! Megami-sama! Movie -- -- AIC -- 1 ep -- Original -- Comedy Magic Romance Seinen Supernatural -- Aa! Megami-sama! Movie Aa! Megami-sama! Movie -- For centuries, a god named Celestin has been imprisoned on the moon for betraying the kingdom of Yggdrasil. Released by the fairy Morgan Le Fey, Celestin travels to Earth to reunite with his former pupil, the goddess Belldandy. Things go awry as Celestin erases Belldandy's memories of her boyfriend Keiichi and uses her as a catalyst to wreak havoc on Earth and Yggdrasil. -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA -- Movie - Oct 21, 2000 -- 38,393 7.57
Aa! Megami-sama! Movie -- -- AIC -- 1 ep -- Original -- Comedy Magic Romance Seinen Supernatural -- Aa! Megami-sama! Movie Aa! Megami-sama! Movie -- For centuries, a god named Celestin has been imprisoned on the moon for betraying the kingdom of Yggdrasil. Released by the fairy Morgan Le Fey, Celestin travels to Earth to reunite with his former pupil, the goddess Belldandy. Things go awry as Celestin erases Belldandy's memories of her boyfriend Keiichi and uses her as a catalyst to wreak havoc on Earth and Yggdrasil. -- Movie - Oct 21, 2000 -- 38,393 7.57
Aa! Megami-sama!: Tatakau Tsubasa -- -- AIC -- 2 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Romance Seinen Supernatural -- Aa! Megami-sama!: Tatakau Tsubasa Aa! Megami-sama!: Tatakau Tsubasa -- An Angel Eater has been freed in Heaven. Since Goddesses and Angels share body and soul, losing your angel results in going into shock for the Goddess. Lind goes to Earth to protect Belldandy and the others unknowing that it is a trap. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Special - Dec 9, 2007 -- 24,399 7.59
Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) -- -- AIC -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Supernatural Magic Romance Seinen -- Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) -- In a world where humans can have their wish granted via the Goddess Help Hotline, a human, Keiichi Morisato, summons the Goddess Belldandy by accident and jokes that she should stay with him forever. Unfortunately for him, his "wish" is granted. -- -- Suddenly, Keiichi is now living with this gorgeous woman all alone, causing him to be kicked out of the all-male dormitory he was staying in. But soon, after they find lodging in a Buddhist temple, Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship begins to blossom. Although they are both awkward and rather uncomfortable with one another at first, what awaits these two strangers could turn out to be an unexpected romance. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters, NYAV Post -- TV - Jan 7, 2005 -- 137,829 7.35
Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) -- -- AIC -- 24 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Supernatural Magic Romance Seinen -- Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) -- In a world where humans can have their wish granted via the Goddess Help Hotline, a human, Keiichi Morisato, summons the Goddess Belldandy by accident and jokes that she should stay with him forever. Unfortunately for him, his "wish" is granted. -- -- Suddenly, Keiichi is now living with this gorgeous woman all alone, causing him to be kicked out of the all-male dormitory he was staying in. But soon, after they find lodging in a Buddhist temple, Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship begins to blossom. Although they are both awkward and rather uncomfortable with one another at first, what awaits these two strangers could turn out to be an unexpected romance. -- -- TV - Jan 7, 2005 -- 137,829 7.35
Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Specials -- -- - -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Magic Comedy Romance Supernatural Seinen -- Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Specials Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Specials -- Due to the recent events that happened on the last episodes of the season, the Goddess have some stability problems with their body systems. The always adult looking Urd becomes a little girl and has a fateful encounter with a boy, whereas little Skuld becomes an adult and wants to experiment adulthood together with Keiichi. -- -- Licensor: -- Media Blasters, NYAV Post -- Special - Apr 1, 2005 -- 24,663 7.53
Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Specials -- -- - -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Magic Comedy Romance Supernatural Seinen -- Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Specials Aa! Megami-sama! (TV) Specials -- Due to the recent events that happened on the last episodes of the season, the Goddess have some stability problems with their body systems. The always adult looking Urd becomes a little girl and has a fateful encounter with a boy, whereas little Skuld becomes an adult and wants to experiment adulthood together with Keiichi. -- Special - Apr 1, 2005 -- 24,663 7.53
Ankoku Shinwa -- -- Ajia-Do -- 2 eps -- Manga -- Demons Fantasy Horror Mystery Psychological Supernatural -- Ankoku Shinwa Ankoku Shinwa -- Long ago there were fierce gods of legends who shook the earth to its foundation with their power. There are now prehistoric rivals from the primitive times in Japan, that fought to protect their secrets in the present day. The God of Darkness Susanoah-oh is now sleeping in the shadows of the underworld waiting for his rebirth. However his coming hasn't gone unoticed. There are agents from the Kikuchi Clan (descendants of Japans first inhabitants) who have seen the warning signs of the spreading of darkness's bringing. These investigators are armed with ancient knowledge and artifacts who are willingly prepared to face the God of Darkness. Now they must fight the assembled spirits of hell to find the one young boy who is chosen by fate to grasp the chaotic might of the deadly Gods. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Manga Entertainment -- OVA - Jan 26, 1990 -- 2,338 4.18
Arata Kangatari -- -- Satelight -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- Arata Kangatari Arata Kangatari -- As a young boy from a noble family in Amawakuni, Arata has always expected to make life his own—until word of the princess growing weak reaches his city. Unbeknown to him, his grandmother had claimed him to be female at birth, and now, with no other girls to succeed the princess from the matriarchal Hime clan, he is next in line for the throne! Disguised as a woman awaiting a replacement to be found, Arata witnesses an assassination attempt on the princess by none other than her own guard, the 12 Shinsho. The crime is pinned on his head, forcing Arata to escape to the Kando forest, where it is said that no one comes out the same. -- -- Meanwhile, in modern-day Japan, Arata Hinohara longs for escape from the cruelty of his classmates. Hearing his name called from an alley, he wanders from his path and unwittingly switches universes with Arata from Amawakuni. With his own power as a newly awakened "Sho"—a warrior able to wield Hayagami, weapons with the power of the gods—and the help of his companions he meets along his journey, Hinohara sets out to restore order to this new world. -- -- 61,920 6.49
Big Wars: Kami Utsu Akaki Kouya ni -- -- Magic Bus -- 1 ep -- Novel -- Action Military Sci-Fi Space -- Big Wars: Kami Utsu Akaki Kouya ni Big Wars: Kami Utsu Akaki Kouya ni -- It is the dawn of the 21st century. Mankind has terraformed and colonized Mars. But we are not alone in the universe. An ancient race of alien beings, known only as "The Gods," has been watching mankind's progress ...and waiting. Now, these mysterious aliens have returned to halt mankind's expansion into space ...by force. -- -- Now, the planet named after the God of War will become our final battlefield, as mankind fights a desperate battle with the latest in high-tech, military hardware: hyper-advanced aircraft, orbital fighters, and gigantic, desert battleships brimming with the most advanced weaponry. -- -- But will it be enough? The aliens have awesome, incredibly destructive weapons at their disposal—including "Hell"—an unstoppable stealth carrier. But the alien's primary weapon is insidiously quiet and invisible—a mind control plaque. Incurable. Inevitable. Contagious. Humans are powerless to resist its effects, which transforms even the most loyal soldiers into dangerous subversives. -- -- Our last hope lies with Captain Akuh and the crew of the Battleship Aoba. If his top-secret mission is successful, mankind will deal a decisive blow to the alien armada. But Akuh's girlfriend is showing signs of nymphomania—the first symptom of alien subversion! -- -- (Source: AnimeNfo) -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media -- OVA - Sep 25, 1993 -- 2,482 5.45
Binbougami ga! -- -- Sunrise -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Parody Shounen Supernatural -- Binbougami ga! Binbougami ga! -- Ichiko Sakura lives life on easy mode. Blessed with good fortune, she has everything she has ever wanted, including beauty, intelligence, and wealth. Momiji Binboda is a goddess of poverty. In stark contrast to Ichiko, she is cursed with misfortune, such as a perpetual cast on her arm, a flat chest, and a box under a bridge for a home. -- -- Their lives collide when Momiji lives up to her title and delivers some unfortunate news to Ichiko: her large amount of luck is due to her subconsciously draining the luck from those around her! Momiji has been tasked with stealing back Ichiko's fortune before she leaves everyone without enough luck to even survive. But Ichiko, with the help of the wandering monk Bobby Statice, manages to fight off the poverty goddess. This defeat forces the goddess to enlist reinforcements in the form of Kumagai, her teddy bear familiar, and the masochistic dog god, Momoo Inugami. -- -- Insanity ensues as Ichiko's quiet life is replaced with daily battles for her fortune. To survive the chaos, Ichiko will need all the luck she can get in Binbougami ga!! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Jul 5, 2012 -- 199,037 7.72
Binbougami ga! -- -- Sunrise -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Parody Shounen Supernatural -- Binbougami ga! Binbougami ga! -- Ichiko Sakura lives life on easy mode. Blessed with good fortune, she has everything she has ever wanted, including beauty, intelligence, and wealth. Momiji Binboda is a goddess of poverty. In stark contrast to Ichiko, she is cursed with misfortune, such as a perpetual cast on her arm, a flat chest, and a box under a bridge for a home. -- -- Their lives collide when Momiji lives up to her title and delivers some unfortunate news to Ichiko: her large amount of luck is due to her subconsciously draining the luck from those around her! Momiji has been tasked with stealing back Ichiko's fortune before she leaves everyone without enough luck to even survive. But Ichiko, with the help of the wandering monk Bobby Statice, manages to fight off the poverty goddess. This defeat forces the goddess to enlist reinforcements in the form of Kumagai, her teddy bear familiar, and the masochistic dog god, Momoo Inugami. -- -- Insanity ensues as Ichiko's quiet life is replaced with daily battles for her fortune. To survive the chaos, Ichiko will need all the luck she can get in Binbougami ga!! -- -- TV - Jul 5, 2012 -- 199,037 7.72
Boku no Tonari ni Ankoku Hakaishin ga Imasu. -- -- EMT Squared -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School Josei -- Boku no Tonari ni Ankoku Hakaishin ga Imasu. Boku no Tonari ni Ankoku Hakaishin ga Imasu. -- In the distant past, Miguel, the God of Destruction, was sealed inside the knight who ruled over light and darkness, Sturmhurt. Alongside the knight was Gestöber, who accompanied him through countless battles. In the present day, destiny causes them to reincarnate as Kabuto Hanadori and Seri Koyuki, two classmates. -- -- Their reunion should be a joyous moment, if not for the fact that these fantasied heroes are just products of Kabuto's delusions. As the fictional "Gestöber," Seri finds himself in various embarrassing situations due to Kabuto's antics that sometimes grow out of his control. Moreover, his classmate Utsugi Tsukimiya joins the fray with his absurdly accurate mind-reading abilities, slowly destroying Seri's social life. -- -- Seri tries hard to stay away from them, refusing to acknowledge their shenanigans, however with Kabuto's chuunibyou and Utsugi's unpredictability, he is only bound to be swept by the craziness coming his way. -- -- 40,259 6.65
Brave Story -- -- Gonzo -- 1 ep -- Novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy Kids Magic Supernatural -- Brave Story Brave Story -- When 11-year-old Wataru's father leaves home and his mother is taken ill to the hospital, he decides to change his fate by traveling through the door shown to him by his friend Mitsuru. In a land of magic and monsters, Wataru must summon all his courage and embark on a journey with several comrades to meet the Goddess of Destiny and change this "mistaken fate." -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Jul 8, 2006 -- 37,734 7.45
Bungou Stray Dogs 3rd Season -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Mystery Seinen Super Power Supernatural -- Bungou Stray Dogs 3rd Season Bungou Stray Dogs 3rd Season -- Following the conclusion of the three-way organizational war, government bureaucrat Ango Sakaguchi recalls an event that transpired years ago, after the death of the former Port Mafia boss. Osamu Dazai, still a new recruit at the time, was tasked with investigating rumors related to a mysterious explosion that decimated part of the city years ago—and its connection to the alleged reappearance of the former boss. -- -- Due to circumstances out of his control, he is partnered with Chuuya Nakahara, the gifted yet impulsive leader of a rival clan known as the ''Sheep,'' to uncover the truth behind the case and shine a light on the myth of Arahabaki—the god of fire who might just lead Dazai to the case's solution. -- -- Meanwhile, in the present day, it is business as usual once again for the Armed Detective Agency. Their peaceful break will not last for long, however, as enemies old and new gather their strength and prepare for another face-off. -- -- 337,692 8.18
Campione!: Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou -- -- Diomedéa -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Ecchi Fantasy Harem Magic Romance -- Campione!: Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou Campione!: Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou -- Some people suddenly find religion, but for 16-year-old Kusanagi Godou, it's that REALLY old time religion that's found him! As the result of defeating the God of War in mortal combat, Godou's stuck with the unwanted position of Campione!, or God Slayer, whose duty is to fight Heretical Gods whenever they try to muscle in on the local turf. Not only is this likely to make Godou roadkill on the Highway to Heaven, it's also a job that comes with a lot of other problems. Like how to deal with the fact that his "enhanced status" is attracting a bevy of overly-worshippy female followers. After all, they're just there to aid him in his demi-godly duties, right? So why is it that their leader, the demonically manipulative sword-mistress Erica Blandelli, seems to have such a devilish interest in encouraging some VERY unorthodox activities? Get ready for immortal affairs, heavenly harems and lots of dueling deities taking pious in the face as the ultimate smash, bash and thrash of the Titans rocks both Heaven and Earth. -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Jul 6, 2012 -- 314,959 7.02
Campione!: Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou -- -- Diomedéa -- 13 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Ecchi Fantasy Harem Magic Romance -- Campione!: Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou Campione!: Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou -- Some people suddenly find religion, but for 16-year-old Kusanagi Godou, it's that REALLY old time religion that's found him! As the result of defeating the God of War in mortal combat, Godou's stuck with the unwanted position of Campione!, or God Slayer, whose duty is to fight Heretical Gods whenever they try to muscle in on the local turf. Not only is this likely to make Godou roadkill on the Highway to Heaven, it's also a job that comes with a lot of other problems. Like how to deal with the fact that his "enhanced status" is attracting a bevy of overly-worshippy female followers. After all, they're just there to aid him in his demi-godly duties, right? So why is it that their leader, the demonically manipulative sword-mistress Erica Blandelli, seems to have such a devilish interest in encouraging some VERY unorthodox activities? Get ready for immortal affairs, heavenly harems and lots of dueling deities taking pious in the face as the ultimate smash, bash and thrash of the Titans rocks both Heaven and Earth. -- -- (Source: Sentai Filmworks) -- TV - Jul 6, 2012 -- 314,959 7.02
Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation -- -- David Production -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Comedy Fantasy Parody Sci-Fi Supernatural -- Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation -- After years of fruitless war between the four realms of Gamindustri (Planeptune, Lastation, Lowee and Leanbox) over Share energy, the source of their strength based on how much their people have faith in their goddesses, the four CPUs that rule over them have finally signed a friendship treaty. The treaty bans any attempt at claiming Share energy through military force, in hopes of bringing peace and prosperity to their worlds. Yet, a month after the treaty, Neptune, the CPU Goddess of Planeptune, spends her time goofing off and playing games rather than doing her job, leaving her land's Shares plummeting. -- -- Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation follows Neptune and her friends' attempts at raising Shares, while dealing with an external threat that could spell the end of both the Goddesses and Gamindustri itself... -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- TV - Jul 12, 2013 -- 134,162 6.97
Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation -- -- David Production -- 12 eps -- Game -- Action Comedy Fantasy Parody Sci-Fi Supernatural -- Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation -- After years of fruitless war between the four realms of Gamindustri (Planeptune, Lastation, Lowee and Leanbox) over Share energy, the source of their strength based on how much their people have faith in their goddesses, the four CPUs that rule over them have finally signed a friendship treaty. The treaty bans any attempt at claiming Share energy through military force, in hopes of bringing peace and prosperity to their worlds. Yet, a month after the treaty, Neptune, the CPU Goddess of Planeptune, spends her time goofing off and playing games rather than doing her job, leaving her land's Shares plummeting. -- -- Choujigen Game Neptune The Animation follows Neptune and her friends' attempts at raising Shares, while dealing with an external threat that could spell the end of both the Goddesses and Gamindustri itself... -- TV - Jul 12, 2013 -- 134,162 6.97
Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Kami to Kami -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Super Power Martial Arts Fantasy Shounen -- Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Kami to Kami Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Kami to Kami -- Following the defeat of a great adversary, Gokuu Son and his friends live peaceful lives on Earth. Meanwhile, in space, Beerus the God of Destruction awakens from his long slumber, having dreamed of an entity known as a Super Saiyan God. With the help of his assistant, Whis, Beerus looks for this powerful being, as he wishes to fight a worthy opponent. After discovering that the Saiyan home planet was destroyed, he tracks down the remaining Saiyans on Earth, looking for Gokuu specifically. -- -- Having only heard of the Super Saiyan God in legends, Gokuu and his comrades summon Shen Long the Eternal Dragon, who they find out is afraid of Beerus. After learning the secret of the Super Saiyan God, an intense battle between Gokuu and Beerus commences, the immense power of which puts the Earth in terrible danger. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- Movie - Mar 30, 2013 -- 161,588 7.40
Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Kami to Kami -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Super Power Martial Arts Fantasy Shounen -- Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Kami to Kami Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Kami to Kami -- Following the defeat of a great adversary, Gokuu Son and his friends live peaceful lives on Earth. Meanwhile, in space, Beerus the God of Destruction awakens from his long slumber, having dreamed of an entity known as a Super Saiyan God. With the help of his assistant, Whis, Beerus looks for this powerful being, as he wishes to fight a worthy opponent. After discovering that the Saiyan home planet was destroyed, he tracks down the remaining Saiyans on Earth, looking for Gokuu specifically. -- -- Having only heard of the Super Saiyan God in legends, Gokuu and his comrades summon Shen Long the Eternal Dragon, who they find out is afraid of Beerus. After learning the secret of the Super Saiyan God, an intense battle between Gokuu and Beerus commences, the immense power of which puts the Earth in terrible danger. -- -- Movie - Mar 30, 2013 -- 161,588 7.40
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy -- Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria -- After having descended upon this world, the gods have created guilds where adventurers can test their mettle. These guilds, known as "familia," grant adventurers the chance to explore, gather, hunt, or simply enjoy themselves. -- -- Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria begins in Orario, the lively city of adventures. The Sword Princess, Ais Wallenstein, and the novice mage, Lefiya Viridis, are members of the Loki Familia, who are experts at monster hunting. With the rest of their group, they journey to the tower of Babel in hopes of exploring the dungeon underneath. Home to powerful monsters, the dungeon will fulfill Ais's desire to master her sword skills, while bringing Lefiya closer to her dream of succeeding Riveria Ljos Alf, vice-captain of the Loki Familia, as the most powerful mage in the land. -- -- 331,637 7.05
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy -- Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria -- After having descended upon this world, the gods have created guilds where adventurers can test their mettle. These guilds, known as "familia," grant adventurers the chance to explore, gather, hunt, or simply enjoy themselves. -- -- Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria begins in Orario, the lively city of adventures. The Sword Princess, Ais Wallenstein, and the novice mage, Lefiya Viridis, are members of the Loki Familia, who are experts at monster hunting. With the rest of their group, they journey to the tower of Babel in hopes of exploring the dungeon underneath. Home to powerful monsters, the dungeon will fulfill Ais's desire to master her sword skills, while bringing Lefiya closer to her dream of succeeding Riveria Ljos Alf, vice-captain of the Loki Familia, as the most powerful mage in the land. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 331,637 7.05
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Movie: Orion no Ya -- -- J.C.Staff -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Fantasy Romance -- Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Movie: Orion no Ya Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Movie: Orion no Ya -- Continuing his adventure to get stronger in order to traverse deeper into the "Dungeon," Bell Cranel wanders the Orario city streets with his friends and the goddess Hestia. That evening, the city is filled with stalls and games as it celebrates the Holy Moon Festival. -- -- Hermes, a god, hosts one such activity where participants are asked to pull a spear embedded in a crystal boulder; those who succeed will receive a special gift: a trip around the world and a divine blessing from the gods! Bell and his merry group challenge one another to claim the prize. But behind the facade of an innocent party game lies a preface for a daring quest ahead. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- Movie - Feb 15, 2019 -- 147,084 7.43
Five Star Stories -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Drama Fantasy Mecha Sci-Fi -- Five Star Stories Five Star Stories -- Amaterasu is the god of light, the future emperor of the Joker Star System. Under the guise of young mecha conceptor Ladios Sopp, he is compelled by an old friend, Dr Ballanche, to save his two latest Fatimas Lachesis and Clotho. And so began the stories of the Joker System, as well as Amaterasu's love for Lachesis. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- Movie - Mar 11, 1989 -- 10,299 6.60
Fushigi Yuugi -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 52 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Magic Martial Arts Comedy Romance Historical Drama Shoujo -- Fushigi Yuugi Fushigi Yuugi -- While visiting the National Library, junior-high students Miaka Yuuki and Yui Hongo are transported into the world of a mysterious book set in ancient China, "The Universe of The Four Gods." Miaka suddenly finds herself with the responsibility of being the priestess of Suzaku, and must find all of her celestial warriors for the purpose of summoning Suzaku for three wishes; however, the enemy nation of the god Seiryuu has manipulated Yui into becoming the priestess of Seiryuu. As enemies, the former best friends begin their long struggle to summon their respective gods and obtain their wishes... -- -- 99,049 7.64
Fushigi Yuugi -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 52 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Magic Martial Arts Comedy Romance Historical Drama Shoujo -- Fushigi Yuugi Fushigi Yuugi -- While visiting the National Library, junior-high students Miaka Yuuki and Yui Hongo are transported into the world of a mysterious book set in ancient China, "The Universe of The Four Gods." Miaka suddenly finds herself with the responsibility of being the priestess of Suzaku, and must find all of her celestial warriors for the purpose of summoning Suzaku for three wishes; however, the enemy nation of the god Seiryuu has manipulated Yui into becoming the priestess of Seiryuu. As enemies, the former best friends begin their long struggle to summon their respective gods and obtain their wishes... -- -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA, Media Blasters -- 99,049 7.64
Fushigi Yuugi: Dai Ni Bu -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 6 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Drama Fantasy Historical Martial Arts Romance Shoujo -- Fushigi Yuugi: Dai Ni Bu Fushigi Yuugi: Dai Ni Bu -- Miaka and Taka (Tamahome's reborn out-of-the-book self) return to the Universe of the Four Gods to try and restore Tamahome's memories to Taka. This is not as easy as it sounds, however, when the evil Tenkou shows up to rain on their parade. He manages to thwart most of their attempts at getting Taka's memories back, and uses his newfound power to summon the Gods outside the book. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA, Media Blasters -- OVA - May 25, 1997 -- 18,117 7.27
Gingitsune -- -- Diomedéa -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Seinen Slice of Life Supernatural -- Gingitsune Gingitsune -- Gintarou is a fox spirit that has been protecting the small Inari temple since the Edo era. Saeki Makoto's family possesses the power to see the gods' agent, but the ability is limited to one living relative at a time. When Makoto's mother passed away while she was still young, Makoto inherited the ability as the sole remaining family member. With the help of fox spirit's power, Makoto and Gintarou help the people of their community, in spite of their many differences. -- -- (Source: MangaHelpers, edited) -- 50,191 7.17
Gingitsune -- -- Diomedéa -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Seinen Slice of Life Supernatural -- Gingitsune Gingitsune -- Gintarou is a fox spirit that has been protecting the small Inari temple since the Edo era. Saeki Makoto's family possesses the power to see the gods' agent, but the ability is limited to one living relative at a time. When Makoto's mother passed away while she was still young, Makoto inherited the ability as the sole remaining family member. With the help of fox spirit's power, Makoto and Gintarou help the people of their community, in spite of their many differences. -- -- (Source: MangaHelpers, edited) -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 50,191 7.17
Girls & Panzer: Saishuushou Part 6 -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Military School -- Girls & Panzer: Saishuushou Part 6 Girls & Panzer: Saishuushou Part 6 -- The sixth and final film in the six-part Girls & Panzer: Saishuushou film series. -- Movie - ??? ??, ???? -- 4,362 N/A -- -- Megami Kouhosei Special Curriculum -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Mecha Military Sci-Fi Space -- Megami Kouhosei Special Curriculum Megami Kouhosei Special Curriculum -- A retelling of the TV series from the point of view of one of the Goddess Pilots. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- OVA - May 25, 2002 -- 4,339 6.29
God Eater -- -- ufotable -- 13 eps -- Game -- Action Fantasy Military Sci-Fi -- God Eater God Eater -- The year is 2071. Humanity has been pushed to the brink of extinction following the emergence of man-eating monsters called "Aragami" that boast an immunity to conventional weaponry. They ravaged the land, consuming almost everything in their path and leaving nothing in their wake. To combat them, an organization named Fenrir was formed as a last-ditch effort to save humanity through the use of "God Eaters"—special humans infused with Oracle cells, allowing them to wield the God Arc, the only known weapon capable of killing an Aragami. One such God Eater is Lenka Utsugi, a New-Type whose God Arc takes the form of both blade and gun. -- -- Now, as one of Fenrir's greatest weapons, Lenka must master his God Arc if he is to fulfill his desire of wiping out the Aragami once and for all. The monsters continue to be born en masse while the remnants of humanity struggle to survive the night. Only God Eaters stand between the Aragami and complete and total annihilation of the human race. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 443,037 7.27
Godzilla 1: Kaijuu Wakusei -- -- Polygon Pictures -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Adventure Sci-Fi -- Godzilla 1: Kaijuu Wakusei Godzilla 1: Kaijuu Wakusei -- Twenty thousand years after the fall of humanity, Earth succumbed to legions of ravenous creatures who now freely roam the planet. Far away in the depths of space, the last surviving members of humanity float aimlessly in the same ship they escaped Earth with so many years ago. With the spacecraft running dangerously low on resources, the survivors’ leading council must decide on their path forward: should they continue to gamble on finding another Earth-like planet to inhabit, or take to heart an anonymous essay theorizing what may be the only weakness of the"Godzilla," who forced the last remnants of humanity off their home world? -- -- The author of the controversial essay is Haruo, a man who witnessed the death of his parents to Godzilla at a young age, which has led him to harbor an obsessive hatred for the monster. Now, he spearheads the operation aimed at reclaiming humanity's birthright from the King of monsters and slay him once and for all. But, alongside humanity, Earth has undergone drastic change since their departure; Godzilla and its numerous spawns may pale in comparison to the darkness lurking within the hearts of this close-knit community of survivors. -- -- Movie - Nov 17, 2017 -- 49,615 6.50
Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi -- -- MAPPA -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Demons Fantasy Seinen -- Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi -- It has been 800 years since the battle gods "Idaten", who boast overwhelming speed and strength, contained the "demons" who led the world to ruin after a fierce battle. "That battle" is now just an old tale in a distant myth. While the "peaceful generation of the gods," who have never fought since they were born, are out of peace, someone has revived the demons from a long sleep! Bring armed forces, wisdom, politics, conspiracy, whatever you can use! No-rule & no-limit three-way battle royale is about to begin!!! -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- 17,814 N/A -- -- Mai-Otome Zwei -- -- Sunrise -- 4 eps -- Original -- Action Magic -- Mai-Otome Zwei Mai-Otome Zwei -- My-Otome Zwei takes place one year after the events of My-Otome. Arika is now a full-fledged Otome (though still under the tutelage of Miss Maria) and Nagi is incarcerated in a prison somewhere in Aries. The various nations are at peace with one another and plan to hold S.O.L.T. (Strategic Otome Limitation Talks) to discuss limiting the numbers of Otome. -- -- A mission to destroy a meteor threatening to collide with Earl sets into motion a chain of events which result in a mysterious shadowy figure attacking Garderobe and several Otome as well as a new, more powerful version of Slave appearing across the planet. To make matters worse, Queen Mashiro disappears following an argument with Arika. The series follows Arika's search for Mashiro as well as Garderobe's attempts to uncover the truth behind the shadowy figure. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- OVA - Nov 24, 2006 -- 17,772 7.27
Kamigami no Asobi -- -- Brain's Base -- 12 eps -- Visual novel -- Harem Supernatural Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Kamigami no Asobi Kamigami no Asobi -- After discovering a mysterious sword in the storehouse of her home, third-year high school student Yui Kusanagi finds herself suddenly transported to a different world. While exploring her new surroundings, she meets five strange yet handsome men before coming face to face with Zeus: the king of the gods. -- -- In order to restore the deteriorating relationship between the gods and humans, Zeus has created the Academy of the gods and has chosen Yui to be its one and only instructor. She has one year to educate the young and reluctant deities—including the five strangers she met earlier—on what it means to be human while learning about the gods herself; otherwise, they will all be trapped in Zeus' realm forever. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Apr 6, 2014 -- 121,056 7.07
Kamigami no Asobi -- -- Brain's Base -- 12 eps -- Visual novel -- Harem Supernatural Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Kamigami no Asobi Kamigami no Asobi -- After discovering a mysterious sword in the storehouse of her home, third-year high school student Yui Kusanagi finds herself suddenly transported to a different world. While exploring her new surroundings, she meets five strange yet handsome men before coming face to face with Zeus: the king of the gods. -- -- In order to restore the deteriorating relationship between the gods and humans, Zeus has created the Academy of the gods and has chosen Yui to be its one and only instructor. She has one year to educate the young and reluctant deities—including the five strangers she met earlier—on what it means to be human while learning about the gods herself; otherwise, they will all be trapped in Zeus' realm forever. -- -- TV - Apr 6, 2014 -- 121,056 7.07
Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai II -- -- Manglobe -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Harem Romance Shounen Supernatural -- Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai II Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai II -- Keima Katsuragi, the "God of Conquest," returns to his quest of expelling runaway spirits that have possessed the hearts of women. Still stuck in his contract with the demon Elsie, he must continue to utilize the knowledge he has gained from mastering multitudes of dating simulators and chase out the phantoms that reside within by capturing the hearts of that which he hates most: three-dimensional girls. -- -- However, the God of Conquest has his work cut out for him. From exorcising karate practitioners and student teachers to the arrival of Elsie's best friend from Hell, he is up against a wide array of girls that will test his wit and may even take him by surprise. Though he would much rather stick to the world of 2D, he is trapped in lousy reality, and so Keima must trudge forward in his conquest of love. -- -- 332,746 7.93
Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai II -- -- Manglobe -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Harem Romance Shounen Supernatural -- Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai II Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai II -- Keima Katsuragi, the "God of Conquest," returns to his quest of expelling runaway spirits that have possessed the hearts of women. Still stuck in his contract with the demon Elsie, he must continue to utilize the knowledge he has gained from mastering multitudes of dating simulators and chase out the phantoms that reside within by capturing the hearts of that which he hates most: three-dimensional girls. -- -- However, the God of Conquest has his work cut out for him. From exorcising karate practitioners and student teachers to the arrival of Elsie's best friend from Hell, he is up against a wide array of girls that will test his wit and may even take him by surprise. Though he would much rather stick to the world of 2D, he is trapped in lousy reality, and so Keima must trudge forward in his conquest of love. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 332,746 7.93
Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen -- -- Manglobe -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Harem Comedy Supernatural Romance Shounen -- Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen -- Having freed a myriad of women from the runaway spirits possessing their hearts, the "God of Conquest" Keima Katsuragi is confronted with a new task: find the Jupiter Sisters, the goddesses that sealed Old Hell in the past. Diana, the goddess that resides inside his childhood friend Tenri Ayukawa, explains that they have taken shelter in the hearts of the girls he had assisted previously. Moreover, once Diana and her sisters are reunited, their power can seal the runaway spirits away for good and relieve Keima of his exorcising duties. Though he is initially reluctant to get involved in yet another chore, everything changes when tragedy befalls one of the hosts. -- -- Discovering that the goddesses are being targeted by a mysterious organization known as Vintage, Keima is caught in a race against time to reunite the sisters and rescue the girl who has already fallen prey. With deeper resolve than ever before, Keima works together with demons Elsie and Haqua to recapture the hearts of the girls he had charmed in the past. However, the road ahead is a difficult one, as he is soon met with the consequences of his previous conquests. -- -- 281,799 8.07
Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen -- -- Manglobe -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Harem Comedy Supernatural Romance Shounen -- Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen -- Having freed a myriad of women from the runaway spirits possessing their hearts, the "God of Conquest" Keima Katsuragi is confronted with a new task: find the Jupiter Sisters, the goddesses that sealed Old Hell in the past. Diana, the goddess that resides inside his childhood friend Tenri Ayukawa, explains that they have taken shelter in the hearts of the girls he had assisted previously. Moreover, once Diana and her sisters are reunited, their power can seal the runaway spirits away for good and relieve Keima of his exorcising duties. Though he is initially reluctant to get involved in yet another chore, everything changes when tragedy befalls one of the hosts. -- -- Discovering that the goddesses are being targeted by a mysterious organization known as Vintage, Keima is caught in a race against time to reunite the sisters and rescue the girl who has already fallen prey. With deeper resolve than ever before, Keima works together with demons Elsie and Haqua to recapture the hearts of the girls he had charmed in the past. However, the road ahead is a difficult one, as he is soon met with the consequences of his previous conquests. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 281,799 8.07
Kamisama Hajimemashita◎ -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Demons Supernatural Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Kamisama Hajimemashita◎ Kamisama Hajimemashita◎ -- Nanami Momozono and her familiars Tomoe and Mizuki have survived quite a few challenges since Nanami took up the mantle of Mikage Shrine's patron god. Naturally, the wind god Otohiko comes to invite Nanami to the Divine Assembly in Izumo, the home of the gods, and Nanami chooses to take Mizuki with her, leaving Tomoe to pose as her at school. However, she has an ulterior motive for attending the Divine Assembly: to discover the whereabouts of the missing Lord Mikage, the former god of the shrine. -- -- After her adventures in Izumo, Nanami meets Botanmaru, a tengu child looking for someone she knows all too well—tengu turned goth idol Shinjirou Kurama. Botanmaru needs Shinjirou, their prince, to return home to Mount Kurama and stop the tyranny of Jirou, who has taken over the rule of their hometown. However, Nanami soon discovers a force much darker than Jirou is at work on the mountain. -- -- As a fledgling god becoming more accustomed to divinity, Nanami finds herself dealing with a tengu rebellion, her blooming feelings for Tomoe, and a strange man with ties to both Tomoe's past and Nanami's future. -- -- 265,172 8.16
Kamisama Hajimemashita◎ -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Demons Supernatural Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Kamisama Hajimemashita◎ Kamisama Hajimemashita◎ -- Nanami Momozono and her familiars Tomoe and Mizuki have survived quite a few challenges since Nanami took up the mantle of Mikage Shrine's patron god. Naturally, the wind god Otohiko comes to invite Nanami to the Divine Assembly in Izumo, the home of the gods, and Nanami chooses to take Mizuki with her, leaving Tomoe to pose as her at school. However, she has an ulterior motive for attending the Divine Assembly: to discover the whereabouts of the missing Lord Mikage, the former god of the shrine. -- -- After her adventures in Izumo, Nanami meets Botanmaru, a tengu child looking for someone she knows all too well—tengu turned goth idol Shinjirou Kurama. Botanmaru needs Shinjirou, their prince, to return home to Mount Kurama and stop the tyranny of Jirou, who has taken over the rule of their hometown. However, Nanami soon discovers a force much darker than Jirou is at work on the mountain. -- -- As a fledgling god becoming more accustomed to divinity, Nanami finds herself dealing with a tengu rebellion, her blooming feelings for Tomoe, and a strange man with ties to both Tomoe's past and Nanami's future. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 265,172 8.16
Kamisama Hajimemashita: Kako-hen -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 4 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Demons Supernatural Romance Fantasy Shoujo -- Kamisama Hajimemashita: Kako-hen Kamisama Hajimemashita: Kako-hen -- While playing in the snow one day at her shrine, the land god Nanami Momozono witnesses her familiar—the fox youkai Tomoe—collapse, with dark markings appearing on his body. Tomoe's former master, Lord Mikage, appears after his long absence and places Tomoe into a magical pocket mirror in order to stave off his ailment. -- -- Mikage explains that long ago, before he and Tomoe had met, the fox youkai was in love with a human woman. Seeking to live as a human with his beloved, he made a deal with a fallen god, but he only ended up cursed and dying. When Mikage discovered Tomoe, the god made the youkai forget his human love as a quick solution. However, something has changed recently to reactivate the curse; Tomoe has fallen in love with his new human master, Nanami. Since there is no way to stop the curse, Nanami wants to stop Tomoe from getting cursed in the first place by traveling back through time, even if it means they may never meet. As Nanami travels back hundreds of years to save her precious familiar, she discovers that she is far more closely bonded to Tomoe than she previously thought. -- -- OVA - Aug 20, 2015 -- 121,684 8.37
Kanamewo -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Original -- Romance Supernatural Drama Shoujo Ai -- Kanamewo Kanamewo -- A young, unnamed woman, while biking home from the bank she works at, happens upon a weakened tree goddess whose native shrine is being demolished for construction work. She rescues her and brings the goddess home with her. The two form a relationship, but what will happen to the goddess as the construction progresses? -- ONA - Nov 4, 2015 -- 13,169 6.66
Kekkai Sensen & Beyond -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Fantasy Shounen Super Power Supernatural Vampire -- Kekkai Sensen & Beyond Kekkai Sensen & Beyond -- Three years ago, a gateway between Earth and the Beyond opened in New York City, trapping extradimensional creatures and humans alike in an impermeable bubble. After the city's restoration, monsters, magic, and madness are common findings in the area now known as Hellsalem's Lot. Leonardo Watch, a young photographer who unwillingly obtained the "All-seeing Eyes of the Gods" in exchange for his sister's eyesight, came to this paranormal city to find answers to the mysterious power that he possesses. He later finds his life drastically changed when he joins Libra, a secret organization of people with supernatural abilities dedicated to maintaining order in the everyday chaos of Hellsalem's Lot. -- -- However, this is only the beginning of Leonardo's unexpected journey ahead. Regardless of the constant threat of otherworldly enemies, he is determined to uncover the secrets of his power and find a way to restore his sister's eyesight. Kekkai Sensen & Beyond follows Leonardo as he sets off on more crazy adventures with his comrades, fighting to ensure peace and order. -- -- 314,725 7.86
Kekkai Sensen & Beyond -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Fantasy Shounen Super Power Supernatural Vampire -- Kekkai Sensen & Beyond Kekkai Sensen & Beyond -- Three years ago, a gateway between Earth and the Beyond opened in New York City, trapping extradimensional creatures and humans alike in an impermeable bubble. After the city's restoration, monsters, magic, and madness are common findings in the area now known as Hellsalem's Lot. Leonardo Watch, a young photographer who unwillingly obtained the "All-seeing Eyes of the Gods" in exchange for his sister's eyesight, came to this paranormal city to find answers to the mysterious power that he possesses. He later finds his life drastically changed when he joins Libra, a secret organization of people with supernatural abilities dedicated to maintaining order in the everyday chaos of Hellsalem's Lot. -- -- However, this is only the beginning of Leonardo's unexpected journey ahead. Regardless of the constant threat of otherworldly enemies, he is determined to uncover the secrets of his power and find a way to restore his sister's eyesight. Kekkai Sensen & Beyond follows Leonardo as he sets off on more crazy adventures with his comrades, fighting to ensure peace and order. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 314,725 7.86
Kekkai Sensen -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Super Power Supernatural Vampire Fantasy Shounen -- Kekkai Sensen Kekkai Sensen -- Supersonic monkeys, vampires, talking fishmen, and all sorts of different supernatural monsters living alongside humans—this has been part of daily life in Hellsalem's Lot, formerly known as New York City, for some time now. When a gateway between Earth and the Beyond opened three years ago, New Yorkers and creatures from the other dimension alike were trapped in an impenetrable bubble and were forced to live together. Libra is a secret organization composed of eccentrics and superhumans, tasked with keeping order in the city and making sure that chaos doesn't spread to the rest of the world. -- -- Pursuing photography as a hobby, Leonardo Watch is living a normal life with his parents and sister. But when he obtains the "All-seeing Eyes of the Gods" at the expense of his sister's eyesight, he goes to Hellsalem's Lot in order to help her by finding answers about the mysterious powers he received. He soon runs into Libra, and when Leo unexpectedly joins their ranks, he gets more than what he bargained for. Kekkai Sensen follows Leo's misadventures in the strangest place on Earth with his equally strange comrades—as the ordinary boy unwittingly sees his life take a turn for the extraordinary. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 652,112 7.64
Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya -- -- Toei Animation -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya -- Zeus had a daughter named Athena, the goddess of war. A group of youths flocked to Athena fighting to protect her amidst heroic battles as her "Saints". Their proof of being a Saint laid with the battle protector known as Sacred Cloth. -- -- After a virtual eternity, a new struggle is about to unfold now again over the Cloth. A boy named Seiya has crossed way over to Greece to undergo the training to become a Saint and obtained the Cloth, Bronze cloth, the lowest position among Saints. Every Saint takes a constellation as their tutelary god. And Seiya's guardian star is Pegasus. Now, the saints gather together from all over the world to participate in the "Galatic War" - championship of Saints, aiming at the Gold Cloth, the symbol of ruler of the Saints. The curtain for Galatic War has been cut open. During the death battle between the Saints, Phoenix, the Black Saint, suddenly appeared on the scene and runs off with Gold Cloth in front of a full house in his ambition to become ruler of the world. Seiya and his fellow bronze cloth warriors go after Phoenix and his "Shadow Army" to retrieve the lost Gold Cloth... -- -- The battles waged among the saints, the strongest young men on earth, begin now! -- -- (Source: Toei Animation) -- ONA - Jul 19, 2019 -- 13,627 5.11
Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2 -- -- Studio Deen -- 10 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Comedy Parody Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2 Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2 -- When Kazuma Satou died, he was given two choices: pass on to heaven or be revived in a fantasy world. After choosing the new world, the goddess Aqua tasked him with defeating the Demon King, and let him choose any weapon to aid him. Unfortunately, Kazuma chose to bring Aqua herself and has regretted the decision ever since then. -- -- Not only is he stuck with a useless deity turned party archpriest, the pair also has to make enough money for living expenses. To add to their problems, their group continued to grow as more problematic adventurers joined their ranks. Their token spellcaster, Megumin, is an explosion magic specialist who can only cast one spell once per day and refuses to learn anything else. There is also their stalwart crusader, Lalatina "Darkness" Dustiness Ford, a helpless masochist who makes Kazuma look pure in comparison. -- -- Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 2 continues to follow Kazuma and the rest of his party through countless more adventures as they struggle to earn money and have to deal with one another's problematic personalities. However, things rarely go as planned, and they are often sidetracked by their own idiotic tendencies. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- 1,062,426 8.30
Kuroinu: Kedakaki Seijo wa Hakudaku ni Somaru -- -- Majin -- 6 eps -- Visual novel -- Action Hentai Fantasy -- Kuroinu: Kedakaki Seijo wa Hakudaku ni Somaru Kuroinu: Kedakaki Seijo wa Hakudaku ni Somaru -- In the land of Eostia, humans and dark elves have fought for supremacy for over a century. The dark elves rule over a race of monsters that has raided human lands for generations, capturing and defiling their women. Aided by powerful bands of mercenaries, the human kingdoms have gradually pushed back their old rivals. -- -- But the mercenaries would not settle for these victories. Led by the cruel general Volt, the sellswords declare independence. With the support of the savage orcs, their new nation attacks human and dark elf alike, carving out a kingdom where men reign supreme and women are little more than slaves. Even the dark elves' castle is conquered and their queen taken prisoner. -- -- The sole hope for peace in these lands rests with a fellowship of seven princess knights, handpicked by the goddess of the high elves. But is their power enough to cleanse the evil from their world? -- OVA - Jan 27, 2012 -- 28,428 7.39
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki -- -- Nomad -- 26 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Sci-Fi -- Kyouran Kazoku Nikki Kyouran Kazoku Nikki -- Midarezaki Ouka is used to having strange things happen to him -after all, he is the head of the Great Japanese Empire Paranormal Phenomena Bureau of Measures. But when he catches a small cat girl in the shopping district stealing apples, his whole life rearranges to fit a new operation... -- -- OPERATION COZY FAMILY. -- -- Thousands of years ago, Enka the God of Destruction, was killed. However, with a dying breath it claimed that its child would appear and destroy humanity. Now in futuristic Japan, all of the potential children of Enka have been found and placed into a haphazard family. -- -- Teika the lion, Gekka the jellyfish, Yuuka the oni, Ginka the cross-dressing mafia son, and Hyouka the bioweapon--along with their parents Ouka and Kyouka (the ruler of a demon underworld)--all live under one roof in a family frenzy. -- TV - Apr 12, 2008 -- 26,755 7.27
Lodoss-tou Senki -- -- Madhouse -- 13 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Shounen Supernatural -- Lodoss-tou Senki Lodoss-tou Senki -- Created from the aftermath of the last great battle of the gods, Lodoss and its kingdoms have been plagued by war for thousands of years. As a quiet peace and unity finally become foreseeable over the land, an unknown evil begins to stir. An ancient witch has awakened, bent on preserving the island of Lodoss by creating political unbalance throughout the many kingdoms and keeping any one from maintaining central control. Only a mixed-race party of six young champions, led by the young warrior Parn, stand between this new threat and Lodoss' descent back into the darkness of war and destruction. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media, Funimation -- OVA - Jun 30, 1990 -- 52,477 7.39
Lodoss-tou Senki -- -- Madhouse -- 13 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Shounen Supernatural -- Lodoss-tou Senki Lodoss-tou Senki -- Created from the aftermath of the last great battle of the gods, Lodoss and its kingdoms have been plagued by war for thousands of years. As a quiet peace and unity finally become foreseeable over the land, an unknown evil begins to stir. An ancient witch has awakened, bent on preserving the island of Lodoss by creating political unbalance throughout the many kingdoms and keeping any one from maintaining central control. Only a mixed-race party of six young champions, led by the young warrior Parn, stand between this new threat and Lodoss' descent back into the darkness of war and destruction. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- OVA - Jun 30, 1990 -- 52,477 7.39
Lodoss-tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den -- -- AIC -- 27 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Drama Magic Romance Fantasy -- Lodoss-tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den Lodoss-tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den -- Five years after the death of the Emperor of Marmo in the War of Heroes, Parn is now the Free Knight of Lodoss, he and his old allies now famous through the land. However, the Emperor's right-hand man, Ashram, seeks the scepter of domination to re-unify Lodoss under his former leader's banner. Meanwhile, beyond his attempts at conquest lies a more sinister force beginning to set the stage for the resurrection of the goddess of death and destruction... -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 25,887 7.15
Lodoss-tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den -- -- AIC -- 27 eps -- Novel -- Action Adventure Drama Magic Romance Fantasy -- Lodoss-tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den Lodoss-tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den -- Five years after the death of the Emperor of Marmo in the War of Heroes, Parn is now the Free Knight of Lodoss, he and his old allies now famous through the land. However, the Emperor's right-hand man, Ashram, seeks the scepter of domination to re-unify Lodoss under his former leader's banner. Meanwhile, beyond his attempts at conquest lies a more sinister force beginning to set the stage for the resurrection of the goddess of death and destruction... -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media, Funimation -- 25,887 7.15
Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei -- -- Connect -- ? eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Magic Fantasy -- Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei -- A century has passed since magic—true magic, the stuff of legends—has returned to the world. It is spring, the season of new beginnings, and a new class of students is about to begin their studies at the First National Magic University Affiliated High School, nickname: First High. -- -- A manga spin-off of the immensely popular light novel series Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (The Irregular at Magic High School), Mahouka Koukou no Yuutousei (The Honor Student at Magic High School) follows the events of the original series as seen through the eyes of Miyuki Shiba, Tatsuya's sister. The life of an honor student comes with a lot of expectations...and unexpected hidden feelings?! -- -- (Source: Yen Press, edited) -- TV - Jul ??, 2021 -- 34,380 N/A -- -- Matantei Loki Ragnarok -- -- Studio Deen -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Mystery Shounen Supernatural -- Matantei Loki Ragnarok Matantei Loki Ragnarok -- Loki, the Norse god of mischief, has been exiled to the human world for what was apparently a bad joke. Along with being exiled, he's forced to take the form of a child. He's told the only way he can get back to the world of the gods is if he can collect auras of evil that take over human hearts, and so to do this he runs a detective agency. Loki is soon joined by a human girl named Mayura who is a maniac for mysteries, and she soon helps out in her own way. However, soon other Norse gods begin to appear, and most have the intent to assassinate Loki for reasons unclear. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Apr 5, 2003 -- 34,376 7.28
Mahoutsukai no Yome: Nishi no Shounen to Seiran no Kishi -- -- Studio Kafka -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Mahoutsukai no Yome: Nishi no Shounen to Seiran no Kishi Mahoutsukai no Yome: Nishi no Shounen to Seiran no Kishi -- The story takes place shortly before Cartaphilus took a nap and Chise became an auditor at the academy. -- -- Elias and his friends help Chise prepare for the academy, where in the middle of everyday life, Spriggan visits the mansion on a spooky horse with the words, "The appearance of the ghost hunting association is unusual this time." -- -- Gabriel, an ordinary boy who just moved from London, was bored of his environment of parting with friends, being in an unfamiliar location, and everything else. Sitting by the window and glancing beyond, he spotted a purple smoke and decided to chase after it, looking to escape his boredom. Though it should not, the world of the boy begins to converge with the wizards, who live on the other side behind a thick veil. -- -- (Source: MAL News) -- OVA - Sep 10, 2021 -- 18,799 N/A -- -- Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach -- -- OLM -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Magic Comedy Romance Shoujo -- Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach -- There are three known worlds—the human world, the angel world, and the devil world. The evil queen Raindevilla yearns to destroy the angel world with help or her many devil minions. The goddess Aphrodite sends an angel to the human world, Limone, to summon three love angels in the form of three school girls, Momoko Hanasaki, Yuri Tanima, and Hinagiku Tamano, who together become Angel Lilly, Angel Daisy, and Wedding Peach. The three girls must fight to overcome the evils of the devils, as well as their own lives, and restore peace to the angel world by gathering all pieces of the Sacred Four Somethings (or Saint Something Four) and defeat the evil queen once and for all. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- 18,769 6.68
Matantei Loki Ragnarok -- -- Studio Deen -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Magic Mystery Shounen Supernatural -- Matantei Loki Ragnarok Matantei Loki Ragnarok -- Loki, the Norse god of mischief, has been exiled to the human world for what was apparently a bad joke. Along with being exiled, he's forced to take the form of a child. He's told the only way he can get back to the world of the gods is if he can collect auras of evil that take over human hearts, and so to do this he runs a detective agency. Loki is soon joined by a human girl named Mayura who is a maniac for mysteries, and she soon helps out in her own way. However, soon other Norse gods begin to appear, and most have the intent to assassinate Loki for reasons unclear. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Apr 5, 2003 -- 34,376 7.28
Megami Kouhosei -- -- Xebec -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Mecha Military Sci-Fi Space -- Megami Kouhosei Megami Kouhosei -- In the future humankind has expanded and colonized other planets. Then an alien species, Victim, attacks the human colonies leaving only one planet, Zion. In an effort to stop Victim from destroying the last planet a training school, GOA, is set up to gather boys from the Zion colonies and train them to become pilots of the Ingrids AKA The Goddesses, five fighting robots that protect Zion. The boys must possess a rare blood type, EO, as well as a special ability, or EX. Zero (Candidate 88) has just arrived in GOA when he falls into the cockpit of the Ingrid Eeva-Leena. Since the synch between pilot and Ingrid are very sensitive everyone believes the Goddess will kill Zero in an attempt to synch. Just before Zero passes out he makes a full synch with the Goddess. Before he can find out more about the incident, his pilot training begins. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Discotek Media -- 19,526 6.39
Megami Kouhosei Special Curriculum -- -- - -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Mecha Military Sci-Fi Space -- Megami Kouhosei Special Curriculum Megami Kouhosei Special Curriculum -- A retelling of the TV series from the point of view of one of the Goddess Pilots. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- OVA - May 25, 2002 -- 4,339 6.29
Mind Game -- -- Studio 4°C -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Adventure Comedy Dementia Psychological Romance -- Mind Game Mind Game -- After seeing her jump onto a subway at the last second and getting her ankle crushed between the doors, Nishi reconnects with his high school sweetheart, Myon. Nishi is still very much in love with Myon, but is shocked to learn that she is engaged to another man. Nishi agrees to meet Myon's fiancé at her family's Yakitori restaurant, but members of the Yakuza storm the joint and murder Nishi when he tries to stop them from raping Myon. -- -- Nishi, now dead, wakes up and meets a constantly shapeshifting god, who mocks him for dying. The god tells Nishi to walk into a portal and disappear from existence, which Nishi rejects, choosing instead to sprint past the god and reanimate. With a new outlook on life and knowledge of how the Yakuza are going to attack him, Nishi kills one of the Yakuza with his own gun, fleeing in a stolen car with Myon and her sister. -- -- Acclaimed director Masaaki Yuasa's debut film, Mind Game's constantly shifting visuals tell a story about living one's life without regrets that is unlike any other. -- -- -- Licensor: -- GKIDS -- Movie - Aug 7, 2004 -- 62,336 7.79
Mirai Nikki (TV) -- -- Asread -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Action Mystery Psychological Supernatural Thriller Shounen -- Mirai Nikki (TV) Mirai Nikki (TV) -- Lonely high school student, Yukiteru Amano, spends his days writing a diary on his cellphone, while conversing with his two seemingly imaginary friends Deus Ex Machina, who is the god of time and space, and Murmur, the god's servant. Revealing himself to be an actual entity, Deus grants Yukiteru a "Random Diary," which shows highly descriptive entries based on the future and forces him into a bloody battle royale with 11 other holders of similarly powerful future diaries. -- -- With the last person standing designated as the new god of time and space, Yukiteru must find and kill the other 11 in order to survive. He reluctantly teams up with his obsessive stalker Yuno Gasai (who also possesses such a diary), and she takes it upon herself to ensure his safety. But there's more to the girl than meets the eye, as she might have other plans for her unrequited love... -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 1,594,291 7.52
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans - Urðr Hunt -- -- Sunrise Beyond -- ? eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi Space Drama Mecha -- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans - Urðr Hunt Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans - Urðr Hunt -- Year P.D. 323. Gjallarhorn's political intervention into the Arbrau central parliament escalated into an armed conflict using mobile suits. The incident was brought to an end by Tekkadan, a group of boys who came from Mars. -- -- News of Tekkadan's exploits has also reached the ears of Wistario Afam, a youth born and raised at the Radonitsa Colony near Venus. Venus, which lost to Mars in the contest for development, is a remote frontier planet in which the four great economic blocs show little interest. It is now used only as a penal colony for criminals, whose inhabitants don't even have IDs. -- -- Then Wistario, who hopes to change the status quo of this homeland, encounters a girl who claims to be the guide to the Urdr-Hunt. -- -- (Source: Gundam Global Portal) -- -- ONA - ??? ??, ???? -- 7,528 N/AFinal Fantasy XV: Episode Ardyn - Prologue -- -- Satelight -- 1 ep -- Game -- Action -- Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ardyn - Prologue Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ardyn - Prologue -- In an age when gods walk alongside mankind, the world of Eos finds itself falling into darkness. Calamity befalls the human race when malevolent creatures known as "daemons" scourge the land and obliterate armies with seemingly unstoppable brute force. In these dire times, nobles of House Caelum rise to prominence. Owing to their god-given healing powers, which allow them to purge the plague spread by the monsters, they earn the people's trust and allegiance. -- -- With no leader to rule the first human kingdom and guide the masses, the gods fervently seek to fill this vacancy—a man of the Caelum bloodline seems to be a desirable choice. The ambitious and charismatic pragmatist, Somnus Lucis Caelum, is pit against his humble and altruistic brother, Ardyn Lucis Caelum, in competition for the throne. As tensions rise between the rivals and anticipations surge, the fate of the world rests upon one of the two's decisive victory. -- -- ONA - Feb 17, 2019 -- 7,489 6.60
No Game No Life -- -- Madhouse -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Game Adventure Comedy Supernatural Ecchi Fantasy -- No Game No Life No Game No Life -- No Game No Life is a surreal comedy that follows Sora and Shiro, shut-in NEET siblings and the online gamer duo behind the legendary username "Blank." They view the real world as just another lousy game; however, a strange e-mail challenging them to a chess match changes everything—the brother and sister are plunged into an otherworldly realm where they meet Tet, the God of Games. -- -- The mysterious god welcomes Sora and Shiro to Disboard, a world where all forms of conflict—from petty squabbles to the fate of whole countries—are settled not through war, but by way of high-stake games. This system works thanks to a fundamental rule wherein each party must wager something they deem to be of equal value to the other party's wager. In this strange land where the very idea of humanity is reduced to child's play, the indifferent genius gamer duo of Sora and Shiro have finally found a real reason to keep playing games: to unite the sixteen races of Disboard, defeat Tet, and become the gods of this new, gaming-is-everything world. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 1,835,953 8.17
Noragami Aragoto -- -- Bones -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Supernatural Shounen -- Noragami Aragoto Noragami Aragoto -- Yato and Yukine have finally mended their relationship as god and Regalia, and everyone has returned to their daily life. Yato remains a minor and unknown deity who continues taking odd jobs for five yen apiece in the hopes of one day having millions of worshippers and his own grand shrine. Hiyori Iki has yet to have her loose soul fixed by Yato, but she enjoys life and prepares to attend high school nonetheless. -- -- Taking place immediately after the first season, Noragami Aragoto delves into the complicated past between Yato and the god of war Bishamon. The female god holds a mysterious grudge against Yato, which often results in violent clashes between them. It doesn't help that Bishamon's most trusted and beloved Regalia, Kazuma, appears to be indebted to Yato. When lives are on the line, unraveling these mysteries and others may be the only way to correct past mistakes. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 1,100,062 8.20
Noragami -- -- Bones -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Supernatural Shounen -- Noragami Noragami -- In times of need, if you look in the right place, you just may see a strange telephone number scrawled in red. If you call this number, you will hear a young man introduce himself as the Yato God. -- -- Yato is a minor deity and a self-proclaimed "Delivery God," who dreams of having millions of worshippers. Without a single shrine dedicated to his name, however, his goals are far from being realized. He spends his days doing odd jobs for five yen apiece, until his weapon partner becomes fed up with her useless master and deserts him. -- -- Just as things seem to be looking grim for the god, his fortune changes when a middle school girl, Hiyori Iki, supposedly saves Yato from a car accident, taking the hit for him. Remarkably, she survives, but the event has caused her soul to become loose and hence able to leave her body. Hiyori demands that Yato return her to normal, but upon learning that he needs a new partner to do so, reluctantly agrees to help him find one. And with Hiyori's help, Yato's luck may finally be turning around. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 1,621,251 8.00
Nurse Witch Komugi-chan Magikarte -- -- Kyoto Animation, Tatsunoko Production -- 5 eps -- Original -- Comedy Magic Parody -- Nurse Witch Komugi-chan Magikarte Nurse Witch Komugi-chan Magikarte -- Ungrar, the King of Viruses, has escaped from his prison cell in Vaccine World. Maya, the Goddess of Vaccine World sends Mugimaru down to Earth to find a human to accept the powers of Vaccine World and become the Magical Nurse. He finds the best (and the only willing) person for the job when he meets Komugi Nakahara. Komugi is a playful, lazy, and easily distracted (typical) teenager whose dream is to become a cosplay idol. Balancing her career with the Kiri-Pro Promotion Company and her new job battling Ungrar's loyal henchman, the Magical Maid Koyori, Komugi delights audiences in this parody anime series. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- OVA - Aug 23, 2002 -- 14,236 6.62
Ookami to Koushinryou II -- -- Brain's Base, Marvy Jack -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Adventure Historical Romance Fantasy -- Ookami to Koushinryou II Ookami to Koushinryou II -- Traveling merchant Kraft Lawrence continues his northward journey with wolf goddess Holo, in search of her lost home of Yoitsu. Lawrence and his sharp-witted partner continue to make some small profits along the way, while slowly uncovering more information about Holo's hometown. However, the road to Yoitsu is a bumpy one filled with many troubles—Lawrence runs into a charming young fellow merchant who has his eyes set on the female wolf companion, and he begins to doubt if Holo will remain by his side; he and the goddess will also have to consider precarious and risky business deals as Lawrence strives to achieve his dream of becoming a shopowner. All the while, with his determination tested at every turn during his journey, Lawrence must question his relationship with Holo, take on business ventures, and ask himself whether it is time for him and Holo to go their separate ways. -- -- TV - Jul 9, 2009 -- 405,242 8.36
Rokka no Yuusha -- -- Passione -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Mystery -- Rokka no Yuusha Rokka no Yuusha -- An ancient legend states that with the revival of the Demon God, six heroes—the Braves of the Six Flowers—will be chosen by the Goddess of Fate, granting them power to rise up against the fiends attempting to turn the world into a living hell. Adlet Mayer, self-proclaimed "Strongest Man in the World," has arrived at the continent of Piena in hopes of becoming a Brave. Although it doesn't go as smoothly as he had planned, Adlet is ultimately chosen as one of the six heroes shortly after being greeted by Nashetania Loei Piena Augustra, crown princess and fellow Brave. -- -- Rokka no Yuusha follows the two as they embark upon their destined journey to fight the Demon God, intending to meet up with their fellow heroes at a small temple outside of the Land of the Howling Demons, the fiends' domain. However, when they finally unite, seven heroes are present, and soon the others begin to suspect Adlet to be a fraud. Now on the run, Adlet must utilize his unique skill set and wit in a fight for his life to identify which member of the group is the true impostor before it's too late! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Ponycan USA -- 501,210 7.34
Romeo no Aoi Sora -- -- Nippon Animation -- 33 eps -- Novel -- Adventure Drama Historical Slice of Life -- Romeo no Aoi Sora Romeo no Aoi Sora -- Romeo is a kindhearted and courageous boy living with his family in a small village in Switzerland. Unfortunately, Romeo becomes the interest of a man named Luini, known as "The God of Death," who is infamous for buying children and selling them as chimney sweeps in Milan. While visiting the village, Luini burns down Romeo's family cornfield in an attempt to have Romeo as his own. With the cornfield gone and his father sustaining a head injury trying to put out the fire, Romeo bravely sells himself to the God of Death in order to help his family afford a doctor. -- -- On his way to Milan, Romeo meets a boy named Alfredo Martini and they quickly become friends. Just as Alfredo is sold to a different master, the two boys swear eternal friendship and vow to meet again. As a chimney sweep, Romeo faces many hardships and abuse, especially from his master's family and a gang known as the Wolf Pack. But after reuniting with Alfredo, the two form a fraternity of chimney sweeps called "The Black Brothers," who will learn to fight against the Wolf Pack and help each other in times of need. -- -- 38,391 8.35
Saint Beast: Seijuu Kourin-hen -- -- - -- 6 eps -- - -- Action Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Saint Beast: Seijuu Kourin-hen Saint Beast: Seijuu Kourin-hen -- The seal which was imprisoning the fallen angels, Kirin no Yuda and Houou no Ruka, is broken and the two decide to get revenge on the God who had cast them to Hell by getting rid of the Heavens that had once been their home. Soon the guardian angels on Earth begin disappearing, and no one in Heaven can explain the happenings. But there is a sense of a vengeful animal spirit at work, and so the four Saint Beasts are called upon to investigate. -- -- The 4 Gods of Beasts attempt to rescue the guardian angels, as well as to find out what this evil animal spirit is... -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- TV - May 8, 2003 -- 8,086 6.00
Saint Seiya -- -- Toei Animation -- 114 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya Saint Seiya -- In ancient times, a group of young men devoted their lives to protecting Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War. These men were capable of fighting without weapons—a swing of their fist alone was powerful enough to rip the very sky apart and shatter the earth beneath them. These brave heroes became known as Saints, as they could summon up the power of the Cosmos from within themselves. -- -- Now, in present day, a new generation of Saints is about to come forth. The young and spirited Seiya is fighting a tough battle for the Sacred Armor of Pegasus, and he isn't about to let anyone get in the way of him and his prize. Six years of hard work and training pay off with his victory and new title as one of Athena's Saints. -- -- But Seiya's endeavor doesn't end there. In fact, plenty of perils and dangerous enemies face him and the rest of the Saints throughout the series. What new quests await the heroes of the epic Saint Seiya saga? -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films, DiC Entertainment, Flatiron Film Company -- TV - Oct 11, 1986 -- 149,298 7.76
Saint Seiya -- -- Toei Animation -- 114 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya Saint Seiya -- In ancient times, a group of young men devoted their lives to protecting Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War. These men were capable of fighting without weapons—a swing of their fist alone was powerful enough to rip the very sky apart and shatter the earth beneath them. These brave heroes became known as Saints, as they could summon up the power of the Cosmos from within themselves. -- -- Now, in present day, a new generation of Saints is about to come forth. The young and spirited Seiya is fighting a tough battle for the Sacred Armor of Pegasus, and he isn't about to let anyone get in the way of him and his prize. Six years of hard work and training pay off with his victory and new title as one of Athena's Saints. -- -- But Seiya's endeavor doesn't end there. In fact, plenty of perils and dangerous enemies face him and the rest of the Saints throughout the series. What new quests await the heroes of the epic Saint Seiya saga? -- TV - Oct 11, 1986 -- 149,298 7.76
Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- In northern Europe, the reincarnation of Odin, Dolbar, rules supreme. One day, Hyoga rescues a man in Siberia so warns him about trouble in the Asgard. Athena goes out to investigate and sends Hyoga in advance but when she and the others arrive at the Asgard, Hyoga is nowhere to be found. When Dolbar captures Athena to take control of the sanctuary, the bronze saints try to help her but are attacked by the God Warriors. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Mar 12, 1988 -- 14,442 6.90
Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai Saint Seiya: Kamigami no Atsuki Tatakai -- In northern Europe, the reincarnation of Odin, Dolbar, rules supreme. One day, Hyoga rescues a man in Siberia so warns him about trouble in the Asgard. Athena goes out to investigate and sends Hyoga in advance but when she and the others arrive at the Asgard, Hyoga is nowhere to be found. When Dolbar captures Athena to take control of the sanctuary, the bronze saints try to help her but are attacked by the God Warriors. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Mar 12, 1988 -- 14,442 6.90
Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary -- From the dawn of time, there have been warriors who protected the Goddess Athena. Once forces of evil appear, these warriors, called the Saints will present themselves. -- -- A young woman, Saori Kido, learns about this force known as "Cosmos" and that she is the reincarnation of Athena, protector of love and peace on Earth. However, the Pope of the Sanctuary, who is in the charge of all the Saints, does not take kindly to Saori, and targets her for usurping the identity of Athena. An assassin is sent out to kill her. Fortunately, one of the Bronze Saints, Seiya, manages to protect her. But will Seiya be able to protect Saori through to the end in the gripping saga of Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary? -- Movie - Jun 21, 2014 -- 22,689 6.24
Saint Seiya Omega -- -- Toei Animation -- 97 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Fantasy Shounen -- Saint Seiya Omega Saint Seiya Omega -- The god of war and guardian of his namesake planet, Mars, was once sealed away by Seiya, but time has passed and his revival is at hand. Meanwhile, Saori Kido (Athena) is raising the boy Kouga, whose life Seiya saved, and he's been training every day to become a Saint in order to prepare for the coming crisis... -- -- Unaware of his destiny, when Kouga awakens to the power of his Cosmo hidden inside him, the curtain will rise upon the legend of a new Saint. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- 40,811 6.27
Saint Seiya: Saishuu Seisen no Senshi-tachi -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Saishuu Seisen no Senshi-tachi Saint Seiya: Saishuu Seisen no Senshi-tachi -- Lucifer has been awoken from his eternal slumber by the spirits of Eris, Abel and Poseidon. He has come to kill Athena and fulfill his heart's burning desire: becoming the strongest of all the gods. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Mar 18, 1989 -- 13,497 6.80
Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Martial Arts Shounen Super Power Supernatural -- Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa -- A Holy War, from ancient mythology, where the Goddess Athena and Hades have fought against each other while defending the earth repeatedly over the span of 200 years. The story takes place in 18th century Europe, 243 years prior to the original "Saint Seiya" Three small children, Tenma, Alone, and Sasha have all shared a very happy childhood together. Tenma who is quite aggressive but upstanding has moved to Sanctuary to become a saint. It is there that he is reunited with Sasha who is the sister of Alone and learns that she is the reincarnation of Goddess Athena. Alone, who is kind, gentle and loves painting was chosen for the body of enemy King Hades. Tenma eventually becomes a saint of Pegasus and engages in a fierce battle with his best friend Alone, the King of Hades. Pegasus Tenma, King Hades, and the Goddess Athena and through the twist of their 3 fates merge together which unfolds a prologue to the original Saint Seiya. -- -- (Source: TMS Entertaiment) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- OVA - Jun 24, 2009 -- 86,701 7.99
Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 13 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Martial Arts Shounen Super Power Supernatural -- Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas - Meiou Shinwa -- A Holy War, from ancient mythology, where the Goddess Athena and Hades have fought against each other while defending the earth repeatedly over the span of 200 years. The story takes place in 18th century Europe, 243 years prior to the original "Saint Seiya" Three small children, Tenma, Alone, and Sasha have all shared a very happy childhood together. Tenma who is quite aggressive but upstanding has moved to Sanctuary to become a saint. It is there that he is reunited with Sasha who is the sister of Alone and learns that she is the reincarnation of Goddess Athena. Alone, who is kind, gentle and loves painting was chosen for the body of enemy King Hades. Tenma eventually becomes a saint of Pegasus and engages in a fierce battle with his best friend Alone, the King of Hades. Pegasus Tenma, King Hades, and the Goddess Athena and through the twist of their 3 fates merge together which unfolds a prologue to the original Saint Seiya. -- -- (Source: TMS Entertaiment) -- OVA - Jun 24, 2009 -- 86,701 7.99
Scrapped Princess -- -- Bones -- 24 eps -- Light novel -- Sci-Fi Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Mecha Shounen -- Scrapped Princess Scrapped Princess -- Born to the royal family, Pacifica Casull has earned the nickname "Scrapped Princess" after an apocalyptic prophecy foretells her destroying the world on her 16th birthday. Rescued from certain death by a kindly family, she takes shelter with her adoptive older brother and sister, Shannon and Raquel Casull. When news of her survival reaches the ears of the God Mauser's worshippers, they issue her death at all costs, forcing Pacifica to flee for her life. -- -- Plagued by threats from the church, the nobility and even the common people, the three siblings attempt to outrun the fate Pacifica is destined to bring, all the while questioning if one girl's life is worth the world's demise. The true nature of the Scrapped Princess, along with the harrowing revelations of the world itself, becomes more and more apparent as the princess' 16th birthday fast approaches. -- -- 83,016 7.41
Scrapped Princess -- -- Bones -- 24 eps -- Light novel -- Sci-Fi Adventure Comedy Drama Fantasy Mecha Shounen -- Scrapped Princess Scrapped Princess -- Born to the royal family, Pacifica Casull has earned the nickname "Scrapped Princess" after an apocalyptic prophecy foretells her destroying the world on her 16th birthday. Rescued from certain death by a kindly family, she takes shelter with her adoptive older brother and sister, Shannon and Raquel Casull. When news of her survival reaches the ears of the God Mauser's worshippers, they issue her death at all costs, forcing Pacifica to flee for her life. -- -- Plagued by threats from the church, the nobility and even the common people, the three siblings attempt to outrun the fate Pacifica is destined to bring, all the while questioning if one girl's life is worth the world's demise. The true nature of the Scrapped Princess, along with the harrowing revelations of the world itself, becomes more and more apparent as the princess' 16th birthday fast approaches. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Funimation -- 83,016 7.41
Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru -- -- White Fox -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Fantasy -- Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru -- There is a popular saying: "you can never be too careful." It is very important to prepare for every situation you may face, even if it seems like an unnecessary waste of time. Also, in games like RPGs, it is good to exceed the level of your enemies to achieve total victory. -- -- These words describe Seiya Ryuuguuin a little too perfectly. After being summoned by the goddess Ristarte to save the world of Gaeabrande from destruction, the hero prepares himself for his noble journey. While this might be normal, he spends a very long time training himself, despite having overpowered stats. He fights weak enemies using his strongest skills and buys excessive amounts of supplies and potions—all to stay safe. -- -- While his attitude may be a bit annoying, it might just be the saving grace of Gaeabrande, especially considering that it is a world where the forces of evil dominate each and every expectation. -- -- 383,578 7.53
Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru -- -- White Fox -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Comedy Fantasy -- Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru Shinchou Yuusha: Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru -- There is a popular saying: "you can never be too careful." It is very important to prepare for every situation you may face, even if it seems like an unnecessary waste of time. Also, in games like RPGs, it is good to exceed the level of your enemies to achieve total victory. -- -- These words describe Seiya Ryuuguuin a little too perfectly. After being summoned by the goddess Ristarte to save the world of Gaeabrande from destruction, the hero prepares himself for his noble journey. While this might be normal, he spends a very long time training himself, despite having overpowered stats. He fights weak enemies using his strongest skills and buys excessive amounts of supplies and potions—all to stay safe. -- -- While his attitude may be a bit annoying, it might just be the saving grace of Gaeabrande, especially considering that it is a world where the forces of evil dominate each and every expectation. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 383,578 7.53
Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul -- -- MAPPA -- 24 eps -- Card game -- Action Adventure Demons Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul -- A decade ago, humans, gods, and demons joined forces to stand against the threat of the colossal dragon, Bahamut. -- -- Now, in the present, humans living in the capital city of Anatae have been enjoying lavish and prosperous lives. Their progress is largely due to the administration of the newly appointed king, Charioce XVII, who has stolen a power from the gods and allowed for the abuse and slavery of the demon race in the capital. As humans continue to immorally exploit demons, a sense of hostility against humans begins to build up within demon communities, threatening a revolt. Meanwhile, an atmosphere of uneasiness is spreading among the gods, as they scramble to regain their lost power. -- -- Amidst it all, Nina Drango, a cheerful young bounty hunter, has arrived at the Royal Capital with hopes of settling down and earning a living. However, her peaceful life in the capital is quickly thrown into chaos when she crosses paths with the ominous Rag Demon who is determined to seek revenge against humans, and Kaisar Lidfard, a noble knight battling an internal moral conflict. -- -- Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul continues the tale of the social and moral conflict between humans, gods, and demons, and their struggle for survival and dominance. -- -- 194,817 7.46
Shuffle! -- -- Asread -- 24 eps -- Visual novel -- Harem Comedy Drama Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy School Seinen -- Shuffle! Shuffle! -- In present times, Gods and Demons coexist together with Humans after the door between each of these worlds had opened. Tsuchimi Rin is a normal young high school student attending Verbena Academy, spending his days living peacefully with his childhood friend Kaede. Unexpectedly, one day the King of Gods, the King of Demons and their families move into be Rin's next door neighbors. Apparently the daughter of the Gods, Sia, and the daughter of the demons, Nerine, are both deeply in love with Rin after having met him in the past. Along with his playful friendship with upperclassmen Asa and his encounter with the silent but cute Primula, Rin has much on his hands dealing with the affections of each of these girls. Based on the eroge by Navel. -- 244,675 7.08
Shuffle! -- -- Asread -- 24 eps -- Visual novel -- Harem Comedy Drama Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy School Seinen -- Shuffle! Shuffle! -- In present times, Gods and Demons coexist together with Humans after the door between each of these worlds had opened. Tsuchimi Rin is a normal young high school student attending Verbena Academy, spending his days living peacefully with his childhood friend Kaede. Unexpectedly, one day the King of Gods, the King of Demons and their families move into be Rin's next door neighbors. Apparently the daughter of the Gods, Sia, and the daughter of the demons, Nerine, are both deeply in love with Rin after having met him in the past. Along with his playful friendship with upperclassmen Asa and his encounter with the silent but cute Primula, Rin has much on his hands dealing with the affections of each of these girls. Based on the eroge by Navel. -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 244,675 7.08
Shuumatsu no Walküre -- -- Graphinica -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Super Power Supernatural Drama Seinen -- Shuumatsu no Walküre Shuumatsu no Walküre -- High above the realm of man, the gods of the world have convened to decide on a single matter: the continued existence of mankind. Under the head of Zeus, the deities of Ancient Greece, Norse mythology, and Hinduism, among others, call assembly every one thousand years to decide the fate of humanity. Because of their unrelenting abuse toward each other and the planet, this time the gods vote unanimously in favor of ending the human race. -- -- But before the mandate passes, Brunhild, one of the 13 demigod Valkyries, puts forth an alternate proposal: rather than anticlimactically annihilating mankind, why not give them a fighting chance and enact Ragnarök, a one-on-one showdown between man and god? Spurred on by the audacity of the challenge, the divine council quickly accepts, fully confident that this contest will display the utter might of the gods. To stand a chance against the mighty heavens, Brunhild will need to assemble history's greatest individuals, otherwise the death knell will surely be sounded for mankind. -- -- ONA - Jun ??, 2021 -- 29,841 N/A -- -- Gintama: Dai Hanseikai -- -- Sunrise -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Comedy Parody Samurai -- Gintama: Dai Hanseikai Gintama: Dai Hanseikai -- Some of the characters get together and talk about "regrets" they have after 4 years of anime Gintama. Soon they fight over who gets more screen time. Special animation shown at the Gintama Haru Matsuri 2010 live event. -- Special - Mar 25, 2010 -- 29,677 8.07
Shuumatsu no Walküre -- -- Graphinica -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Super Power Supernatural Drama Seinen -- Shuumatsu no Walküre Shuumatsu no Walküre -- High above the realm of man, the gods of the world have convened to decide on a single matter: the continued existence of mankind. Under the head of Zeus, the deities of Ancient Greece, Norse mythology, and Hinduism, among others, call assembly every one thousand years to decide the fate of humanity. Because of their unrelenting abuse toward each other and the planet, this time the gods vote unanimously in favor of ending the human race. -- -- But before the mandate passes, Brunhild, one of the 13 demigod Valkyries, puts forth an alternate proposal: rather than anticlimactically annihilating mankind, why not give them a fighting chance and enact Ragnarök, a one-on-one showdown between man and god? Spurred on by the audacity of the challenge, the divine council quickly accepts, fully confident that this contest will display the utter might of the gods. To stand a chance against the mighty heavens, Brunhild will need to assemble history's greatest individuals, otherwise the death knell will surely be sounded for mankind. -- -- ONA - Jun ??, 2021 -- 29,841 N/A -- -- Hyakujitsu no Bara -- -- PrimeTime -- 2 eps -- Manga -- Drama Yaoi -- Hyakujitsu no Bara Hyakujitsu no Bara -- Two soldiers from warring countries are bound by a pledge as master and servant. Taki Reizen is a Commander of sublime beauty, shouldering the fate of his nation. Called "Mad Dog" because of his rough temperament, Klaus has sworn his loyalty to him as a knight. Despite this, those around them are cold and disapproving, full of various misgivings. For all their genuine feelings, what will come of love made cruel by the violence of war? -- OVA - May 29, 2009 -- 29,624 6.61
Shuumatsu no Walküre -- -- Graphinica -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Super Power Supernatural Drama Seinen -- Shuumatsu no Walküre Shuumatsu no Walküre -- High above the realm of man, the gods of the world have convened to decide on a single matter: the continued existence of mankind. Under the head of Zeus, the deities of Ancient Greece, Norse mythology, and Hinduism, among others, call assembly every one thousand years to decide the fate of humanity. Because of their unrelenting abuse toward each other and the planet, this time the gods vote unanimously in favor of ending the human race. -- -- But before the mandate passes, Brunhild, one of the 13 demigod Valkyries, puts forth an alternate proposal: rather than anticlimactically annihilating mankind, why not give them a fighting chance and enact Ragnarök, a one-on-one showdown between man and god? Spurred on by the audacity of the challenge, the divine council quickly accepts, fully confident that this contest will display the utter might of the gods. To stand a chance against the mighty heavens, Brunhild will need to assemble history's greatest individuals, otherwise the death knell will surely be sounded for mankind. -- -- ONA - Jun ??, 2021 -- 29,841 N/A -- -- Kannagi: Moshimo Kannagi ga Attara... -- -- A-1 Pictures, Ordet -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy School Shounen Supernatural -- Kannagi: Moshimo Kannagi ga Attara... Kannagi: Moshimo Kannagi ga Attara... -- Unaired episode included in DVD Vol.7. -- -- In this episode they attempt to make a movie with some money they found lying on the ground. -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment -- Special - May 27, 2009 -- 29,660 7.08
Starry Tales: Seiza wa Toki wo Koete -- -- KAGAYA Studio -- 1 ep -- Original -- Fantasy Space -- Starry Tales: Seiza wa Toki wo Koete Starry Tales: Seiza wa Toki wo Koete -- Constellations were created thousands years ago and they have been handed down generation after generation up to now. This show focuses on this great fact. In the show, you will see instruction on constellations and movement of the sun, moon and planets against constellations. An associated story from Greek myths is provided with beautiful CG including the tale of Astraea, the goddess of justice, who is closely related to the constellation Libra. -- Movie - Mar 19, 2011 -- 881 5.51
Sword Gai The Animation -- -- DLE, Production I.G -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Supernatural Seinen -- Sword Gai The Animation Sword Gai The Animation -- When the gods would not answer in humanity's desperate hour of need, it turned to a demon instead. The supposed savior came wielding the sword Zsoltgewinn, but its uncontrollable lust for blood led it to kill those who summoned it too. Although the sword was sealed away long ago, it has been uncovered by the Shoshidai, an organization that collects such cursed artifacts. However, Zsoltgewinn proves to be too strong to be tamed by humans when its corruptive power influences the administrator, Takuma Miura, to flee with it in his grasp. -- -- At the same time, Gai Ogata's family is torn apart due to the possession of another demonic sword, Shiryu, leading his father to be murdered and his mother to hang herself shortly after giving birth to him. Abandoned in the forest clutching the blade, he is discovered by the blacksmith Amon. Unnaturally transfixed by the sword, Gai works tirelessly for years to hone his smithing skills. However, when an accident costs him his arm, he gains a new one—in the form of a reforged Shiryu. -- -- Now having a cursed sword for an arm, Gai must learn to control its violent urges. All the while, Zsoltgewinn continues its rampage, leaving a path of blood in its wake. -- -- ONA - Mar 23, 2018 -- 52,145 5.81
The Chocolate Panic Picture Show -- -- Gainax -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Dementia Psychological -- The Chocolate Panic Picture Show The Chocolate Panic Picture Show -- Gainax's first professional production, The Chocolate Panic Picture Show is a wacky musical OVA based on a manga by Fujiwara Kamui, serialised in Monthly Super Action and partly inspired by Jamie Uys's The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980). -- -- Follow Manbo, Chinbo and Chonbo as they are flung into a strange, psychedelic world of madness they don't understand. See them cause chaos through their zany, unpredictable antics in this comical take on cultural imperialism. -- OVA - Sep 21, 1985 -- 2,700 4.45
The God of Highschool -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Web manga -- Action Sci-Fi Supernatural Martial Arts Fantasy -- The God of Highschool The God of Highschool -- It all began as a fighting tournament to seek out for the best fighter among all high school students in Korea. Mori Jin, a Taekwondo specialist and a high school student, soon learns that there is something much greater beneath the stage of the tournament. -- -- (Source: Webtoon YouTube Channel) -- ONA - May 24, 2016 -- 16,662 6.97
The God of High School -- -- MAPPA -- 13 eps -- Web manga -- Action Sci-Fi Adventure Comedy Supernatural Martial Arts Fantasy -- The God of High School The God of High School -- The "God of High School" tournament has begun, seeking out the greatest fighter among Korean high school students! All martial arts styles, weapons, means, and methods of attaining victory are permitted. The prize? One wish for anything desired by the winner. -- -- Taekwondo expert Jin Mo-Ri is invited to participate in the competition. There he befriends karate specialist Han Dae-Wi and swordswoman Yu Mi-Ra, who both have entered for their own personal reasons. Mo-Ri knows that no opponent will be the same and that the matches will be the most ruthless he has ever fought in his life. But instead of being worried, this prospect excites him beyond belief. -- -- A secret lies beneath the facade of a transparent test of combat prowess the tournament claims to be—one that has Korean political candidate Park Mu-Jin watching every fight with expectant, hungry eyes. Mo-Ri, Dae-Wi, and Mi-Ra are about to discover what it really means to become the God of High School. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll -- 536,956 7.05
Tsugu Tsugumomo -- -- Zero-G -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Supernatural Ecchi School Seinen -- Tsugu Tsugumomo Tsugu Tsugumomo -- When "ordinary boy" Kagami Kazuya meets the beautiful tsukumogami Kiriha, his life gets turned upside-down. As a "Taboo Child" who draws the supernatural towards him, he receives orders from the God of the Land, Kukuri, to become an exorcist and defeat these evil forces. And so, he and Kiriha do battle. -- -- To find out information on these supernatural beings, Kazuya and his friends set up a counselor's club at school. But behind the typical-seeming troubles he hears about, he uncovers a major plot to target Kukuri... -- -- In addition to the sadistic-yet-beautiful tsukumogami Kiriha, the situation draws other girls to Kazuya to join the fray! -- -- (Source: Crunchyroll) -- 63,366 7.49
Tsugu Tsugumomo -- -- Zero-G -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Supernatural Ecchi School Seinen -- Tsugu Tsugumomo Tsugu Tsugumomo -- When "ordinary boy" Kagami Kazuya meets the beautiful tsukumogami Kiriha, his life gets turned upside-down. As a "Taboo Child" who draws the supernatural towards him, he receives orders from the God of the Land, Kukuri, to become an exorcist and defeat these evil forces. And so, he and Kiriha do battle. -- -- To find out information on these supernatural beings, Kazuya and his friends set up a counselor's club at school. But behind the typical-seeming troubles he hears about, he uncovers a major plot to target Kukuri... -- -- In addition to the sadistic-yet-beautiful tsukumogami Kiriha, the situation draws other girls to Kazuya to join the fray! -- -- (Source: Crunchyroll) -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll -- 63,366 7.49
Uchuu no Hou: Reimei-hen -- -- HS Pictures Studio -- 1 ep -- Original -- Sci-Fi Space -- Uchuu no Hou: Reimei-hen Uchuu no Hou: Reimei-hen -- University students, Ray, Anna, Tyler, Halle, and Eisuke are enjoying college life and pursuing their dreams, but in reality, They have a secret mission, to fight against invading Reptilians from outer space. One day, Ray travels back in time to 330 million years ago on Earth, to find his missing friend Tyler who has fallen into a trap set by the evil alien, Dahar. During that time, Alpha, the God of the Earth, was planning to create a new civilization on Earth and invited Queen Zamza and her fellow Reptilian from the planet Zeta, to Earth. -- -- What is the intention of Dahar? What will happen to Ray and Tyler? -- -- And what is “the plan of the God of the Earth"? -- -- (Source: Eleven Arts) -- Movie - Oct 12, 2018 -- 1,370 5.42
Ueki no Housoku -- -- Studio Deen -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Supernatural Drama Shounen -- Ueki no Housoku Ueki no Housoku -- Unbeknownst to most humans, a bizarre tournament is held to decide the next ruler of the Heavenly World. In this tournament, 100 Heavenly Beings known as the "God Candidates" are required to search among the middle school students on Earth, and transfer their powers to a student of their choice. The chosen ones will then battle each other, representing their God Candidates. The victor of this tournament will be awarded the "Blank Talent"—allowing them to choose any one unique ability they so desire—while the God Candidate they represent will obtain the position of "God" and become the king of the Heavenly World. -- -- Participating in this grand tournament is Kousuke Ueki, a middle school student who is given the power to turn trash into trees by his homeroom teacher, Kobayashi. Despite the concerns of his classmate, Ai Mori, Ueki embarks on a journey to pursue his own sense of justice after witnessing the people around him misusing their powers for selfish purposes. But as he encounters talented power users such as Seiichirou Sano, Rinko Jerrard, Robert Haydn, and Hideyoshi Soya, he realizes that achieving his goal might be harder than it seems. -- -- 99,429 7.76
Ueki no Housoku -- -- Studio Deen -- 51 eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Supernatural Drama Shounen -- Ueki no Housoku Ueki no Housoku -- Unbeknownst to most humans, a bizarre tournament is held to decide the next ruler of the Heavenly World. In this tournament, 100 Heavenly Beings known as the "God Candidates" are required to search among the middle school students on Earth, and transfer their powers to a student of their choice. The chosen ones will then battle each other, representing their God Candidates. The victor of this tournament will be awarded the "Blank Talent"—allowing them to choose any one unique ability they so desire—while the God Candidate they represent will obtain the position of "God" and become the king of the Heavenly World. -- -- Participating in this grand tournament is Kousuke Ueki, a middle school student who is given the power to turn trash into trees by his homeroom teacher, Kobayashi. Despite the concerns of his classmate, Ai Mori, Ueki embarks on a journey to pursue his own sense of justice after witnessing the people around him misusing their powers for selfish purposes. But as he encounters talented power users such as Seiichirou Sano, Rinko Jerrard, Robert Haydn, and Hideyoshi Soya, he realizes that achieving his goal might be harder than it seems. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media, Geneon Entertainment USA -- 99,429 7.76
Urara Meirochou -- -- J.C.Staff -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Fantasy Seinen -- Urara Meirochou Urara Meirochou -- Labyrinth Town is a legendary city composed of ten districts, home to witches and diviners alike. In the outermost district of this maze, many young girls begin training to join the ranks of the "Urara," a group of women known far and wide for their ability to divine the answers to the world's most difficult questions. Chiya, a wild girl raised amongst the animals in the mountains, is invited to take her rightful place as a first rank urara. By joining them, she hopes to divine the location of her long-lost mother. -- -- Chiya quickly makes three friends: studious Kon Tatsumi, aspiring witch Koume Yukimi, and reticent Nono Natsume. Armed with only their own ingenuity and a vague connection to the gods, they begin their journey in the way of the urara. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 108,856 7.13
Vanitas no Carte -- -- Bones -- ? eps -- Manga -- Historical Supernatural Vampire Fantasy Shounen -- Vanitas no Carte Vanitas no Carte -- There once lived a vampire known as Vanitas, hated by his own kind for being born under a blue full moon, as most arise on the night of a crimson one. Afraid and alone, he created the "Book of Vanitas," a cursed grimoire that would one day take his vengeance on all vampires; this is how the story goes at least. -- -- Vanitas no Carte follows Noé, a young man travelling aboard an airship in 19th century Paris with one goal in mind: to find the Book of Vanitas. A sudden vampire attack leads him to meet the enigmatic Vanitas, a doctor who specializes in vampires and, much to Noé's surprise, a completely ordinary human. The mysterious doctor has inherited both the name and the infamous text from the Vanitas of legend, using the grimoire to heal his patients. But behind his kind demeanor lies something a bit more sinister... -- -- TV - Jul ??, 2021 -- 8,091 N/A -- -- Saint Beast: Seijuu Kourin-hen -- -- - -- 6 eps -- - -- Action Supernatural Magic Fantasy -- Saint Beast: Seijuu Kourin-hen Saint Beast: Seijuu Kourin-hen -- The seal which was imprisoning the fallen angels, Kirin no Yuda and Houou no Ruka, is broken and the two decide to get revenge on the God who had cast them to Hell by getting rid of the Heavens that had once been their home. Soon the guardian angels on Earth begin disappearing, and no one in Heaven can explain the happenings. But there is a sense of a vengeful animal spirit at work, and so the four Saint Beasts are called upon to investigate. -- -- The 4 Gods of Beasts attempt to rescue the guardian angels, as well as to find out what this evil animal spirit is... -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- TV - May 8, 2003 -- 8,086 6.00
World Trigger 3rd Season -- -- - -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Supernatural School Shounen -- World Trigger 3rd Season World Trigger 3rd Season -- Third season of World Trigger. -- -- TV - Oct ??, 2021 -- 16,156 N/ASaint Seiya: Jashin Eris -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Jashin Eris Saint Seiya: Jashin Eris -- Eris is the goddess of chaos and uses the body of Elien, who is a friend of Hyoga, to revive herself. She obtains the golden apple to drain Athena's life energy to make her ressurection complete and to be able to turn the world in a place filled with chaos. But to be able to attack Eris, Seiya and his friends will first have to defeat the Ghost Knights. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Jul 18, 1987 -- 16,133 6.82
World Trigger 3rd Season -- -- - -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Sci-Fi Supernatural School Shounen -- World Trigger 3rd Season World Trigger 3rd Season -- Third season of World Trigger. -- -- TV - Oct ??, 2021 -- 16,156 N/ASaint Seiya: Jashin Eris -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- - -- Adventure Sci-Fi Shounen -- Saint Seiya: Jashin Eris Saint Seiya: Jashin Eris -- Eris is the goddess of chaos and uses the body of Elien, who is a friend of Hyoga, to revive herself. She obtains the golden apple to drain Athena's life energy to make her ressurection complete and to be able to turn the world in a place filled with chaos. But to be able to attack Eris, Seiya and his friends will first have to defeat the Ghost Knights. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Movie - Jul 18, 1987 -- 16,133 6.82
Xiong Bing Lian -- -- - -- 33 eps -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Mystery Space Supernatural Mecha -- Xiong Bing Lian Xiong Bing Lian -- Sun Goddess of the Solari, Leona came to Earth in 2014. The genetics of God hidden on Earth has started to awaken. The first few awakenings include the Power of the Galaxy and God of War. An invasion by the alien Tao Tie, just to entertain Death God Karthus, are on the way to Earth. -- -- The Angels, the Devils and God seminary groups that have been monitoring the genetics of God on Earth make their moves. The God Seminary assembled the scattered warriors across Earth who carry the genetics of God to form the Black Troops. Radiant Dawn, Leona, lead the team and train them combat techniques to fight against the invasion. -- -- Morgana, the Fallen Angel came to Earth to sow the seed of darkness and plot to destroy the Holy Kayle. Angel Yan was send to Earth, informing the invasion of Styx galaxy by Tao Tie. -- -- Earth has just become the battlefield for the war of different civilizations. As the disasters continue, the Black Troops will realize they are fighting more than what they are asked for. -- -- (Source: HaxTalks) -- ONA - Jun 1, 2017 -- 887 6.09
Yamato Takeru -- -- Nippon Animation -- 37 eps -- Original -- Action Adventure Fantasy Magic Mecha Sci-Fi Shounen Space -- Yamato Takeru Yamato Takeru -- In the 25th century, a spaceship carrying 300 people leaves the earth in search of a new world in the solar system, but an unexpected accident occurs. They crash into a black hole which is connected to another universe. The people on the ship are cast adrift in an emergency capsule to a planet called Ismo. The story begins 12 years after they have reached Ismo. -- -- Ismo is a star of the Onam System, which corresponds to the Solar System in our universe. It is the only planet left in the Onam System. The Death Star called Yomi is a comet which regularly approaches the Onam System. -- -- There were once 8 planets in the Onam System. Many years ago, in the time of the gods, there was a war against the evil monster Yamatano Orochi (an 8-headed snake-like creature). The gods won the battle. Yamatano Orochi was locked into 8 stones, one of which is buried deep in the center of each planet. Nobody was supposed to have access to the core of the planets. However Tsukuyomi, an evil god who rules Yomi, succeeded in reaching the stones one after another, destroying 7 of the planets using his powerful robots, the Sky Warriors. However, when he tried to acquire the last stone from the planet Ismo, the most powerful Sky Warrior, Susanoo, got out of control and was blown away. -- -- A million years later, the Death Star Yomi is approaching the Onam System once again. Tsukuyomi, the master of Yomi, plans to take this opportunity to realize his dream of ruling the entire universe. He is desperate for the last stone containing Yamatano Orochi. If Tsukuyomi can get hold of this stone, Yamatano Orochi will return to life and its power will become his. Tsukuyomi needs Sky Warrior Susanoo to capture the stone, and sends 8 Sky Soldiers to get Susanoo back. But it is too late. Susanoo no longer belongs to Tsukuyomi. It belongs to Takeru, a 13-year-old boy from Earth, who happened to discover the buried robot Susanoo and woke it from its million-year-long sleep. Takeru becomes involved in the battle against the Sky Soldiers and their evil master, Tsukuyomi. Susanoo stands up to protect his friends and their planet. -- -- (Source: AnimeNfo) -- 1,830 6.75
Yaoguai Mingdan -- -- Haoliners Animation League -- 18 eps -- Web manga -- Action Comedy Fantasy Romance -- Yaoguai Mingdan Yaoguai Mingdan -- A foxy temptress. A strange misty tree demon. A girl with the power of the goddess Xianjia! Being caught between these women is a feat in it of itself, but our hero Feng Xi must fight in order to protect the peace and save the world! -- -- (Source: EIH Scans) -- -- Licensor: -- bilibili -- ONA - Dec 13, 2014 -- 21,765 6.92
Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second -- -- Gallop -- 73 eps -- Manga -- Action Game Fantasy Shounen -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second -- After defeating a mysterious enemy, Yuuma Tsukumo, along with the help of Kaito Tenjou and Ryouga "Shark" Kamishiro, has thwarted the Barians' plans. However, Yuuma is still on a quest to retrieve the Number Cards to restore Astral's memories. The Seven Barian Emperors catch wind of Yuuma and Astral's endeavors and begin to collect the cards themselves to achieve their ultimate goal: destroying Astral's world in exchange for saving their own. -- -- Though only five of the emperors are present, they unanimously decide on annihilating Astral and Yuuma once and for all. Elsewhere, with their newfound powers of ZEXAL, Astral and Yuuma work to eliminate the enemy force that threatens Earth and the rest of the universe. -- -- Yu☆Gi☆Oh! Zexal Second unveils the mysteries and unpleasant surprises that lie in the wake of Yuuma's adversities. As Astral struggles to accept his past and the consequences it may have brought, will the gods continue to shower their fortune upon Yuuma on yet another perilous adventure? -- -- TV - Oct 7, 2012 -- 29,166 6.84
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3 Supermen Against the Godfather
A Daughter of the Gods
Age of the Gods
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Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days
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Amalfi: Rewards of the Goddess
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Ankh: Battle of the Gods
Asterix and the Power of the Gods
Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods
As the Gods Will
Awaking the Gods: Live in Mexico
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Blood of the Gods
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By the Gods
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Chinese names for the God of Abrahamic religions
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Clash of the Gods (album)
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Danzig III: How the Gods Kill
Darling of the Gods
Deadly Things: A Collection of Mysterious Tales / The Judgment of the Gods and Other Verdicts of History
Death or departure of the gods
Deceiver of the Gods
Democracy: The God That Failed
Deng Zhong (Investiture of the Gods)
Draft:Francis and the Godfather
Dusk of the Gods
Escape from the Dungeons of the Gods
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Feeding the Gods
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Fire from the Gods
Food for the Gods
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Food of the Gods II
Forest of the Gods
For Those Who Would Walk with the Gods
Game of the Gods
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History of the Goddard Space Flight Center
Icarus: Sanctuary of the Gods
Indiana Jones and the Tomb of the Gods
In the Lap of the Gods
Investiture of the Gods
Investiture of the Gods (2019 TV series)
King of the gods
Krondor: Tear of the Gods
Land of the Gods
Li Gen (Investiture of the Gods)
List of fictional locations in the Godzilla films
List of The Godfather characters
Liu Qian (Investiture of the Gods)
Live at the Gods
Live at the Gods 2002
Live at the Gods (Bob Catley album)
Live at the Gods Festival 2002
Living with the Gods
Long Arm of the Godfather
Love Theme from "The Godfather" (album)
Luggage of the Gods!
Magicians of the Gods
Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard
Messenger of the Gods
Messenger of the Gods: The Singles
Mills of the Gods
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Mother of the Gods
Ode to the Gods
Poetry and the Gods
Portrait of the Goddess
Praey for the Gods
Profound Desires of the Gods
Promise Me You'll Remember (Love Theme from The Godfather Part III)
Secrets of the Gods
Shen Jie (Investiture of the Gods)
Sweetheart of the Gods
Tatar Union of the Godless
The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
The Council of the Gods
The Equinox of the Gods
The Feast of the Gods
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
The Funny Face of the Godfather
The Genius and the Goddess
The God & Devil Show
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The God Delusion
The Goddess (1934 film)
The Goddess: A Demon
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The God Machine
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The God Particle
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The God Rhythm
The Gods and Demons of Zu Mountain
The Gods Are Athirst
The Gods Are Not to Blame
The Gods Must Be Crazy
The Gods Must Be Crazy (film series)
The Gods Must Be Crazy II
The Gods of Atlantis (novel)
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The Godson (film)
The God Species
The God Squad (Telecare)
The God Stealer
The gods (theatrical)
The Gods Themselves
The Gods Were Angry with Me
The God that Failed
The Godwhale
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The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues
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The Godwulf Manuscript
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The Investiture of the Gods (2014 TV series)
The king and the god
The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses
The Loves of the Gods
The Universe, the Gods, and Men
The Whispering of the Gods
The Wrath of the Gods
Time and the Gods
To Hell with the Goddamn Spring
To the Goddess Electricity
Tournament of the Gods
Treatise on the Gods
Tribute to the Gods
Twilight of the Gods
Twilight of the Gods (Bulis novel)
Twilight of the Gods (Clapham and Miller novel)
Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
Under the God
Vicky and the Treasure of the Gods
War of the Gods
War of the Gods (album)
War of the Gods (comics)
Way of the Gods according to the Confucian Tradition
Weapons of the Gods
Weapons of the Gods (comics)
Weapons of the Gods (role-playing game)
Wen Zhong (Investiture of the Gods)
When the Gods Fall Asleep
Whom the Gods Love (1936 film)
Whom the Gods Love (1942 film)
Whom the gods would destroy
Whom the Gods Would Destroy (disambiguation)
Wife of the Gods
Windmills of the Gods (miniseries)
Women and Spirituality: The Goddess Trilogy
Word Processor of the Gods
Worship of the Gods
Zhao Qi (Investiture of the Gods)
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