TERMS STARTING WITH
The law of retardation means that certain individuals or groups are from time to time retarded in their forward development because the field of evolution immediately before them is already occupied by a superior aggregate group of evolving entities, which superior group exercises upon the inferior group an influence retarding the full expression of the evolving faculties of the individuals of the lower group. This can be illustrated by considering the evolution of the life-waves, or kingdoms, which run the rounds on our own planetary chain. The beasts are thus subject to a very definite law of retardation, because their immediate and future field of evolutionary unfolding is occupied by the evolving human kingdom, although it is equally true that the human kingdom exercises upon the beast kingdom beneath it a stimulating and elevating power. In the kingdoms of the planetary chain, if one such kingdom has not already reached a certain evolutionary standing on the ladder of life, it will have to wait in a more or less inactive or dormant evolutionary condition until room is made for its further progress by the passing ahead of the kingdom preceding it.
TERMS ANYWHERE
4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of any power in nature that could interfere: a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;
Aanroo, Aanre (Egyptian) Ȧanru, Ȧanre. More fully, Sekhet-Aanre (the fields of the reeds); more often called Aarru or Sekhet-Aarru; also Aanru, Aaru. The first region of the Afterworlds (Amenti) reached by the deceased in the afterdeath state, which he enters as a khu. “The second division of Amenti. The celestial field of Aanroo is encircled by an iron wall. The field is covered with wheat, and the ‘Defunct’ are represented gleaning it, for the ‘Master of Eternity’; some stalks being three, others five, and the highest seven cubits high. Those who reached the last two numbers entered the state of bliss (which is called in Theosophy Devachan); the disembodied spirits whose harvest was but three cubits high went into lower regions (Kamaloka). Wheat was with the Egyptians the symbol of the Law of Retribution or Karma. The cubits had reference to the seven, five and three human ‘principles’ ” (TG 1).
acidimetry ::: n. --> The measurement of the strength of acids, especially by a chemical process based on the law of chemical combinations, or the fact that, to produce a complete reaction, a certain definite weight of reagent is required.
A complete freedom from fatigue is possible, but that comes only when there is a complete transformation of the law of the body and by the full descent of a supramental Force into the earth-nature.
ACTIVATION, LAW OF The law of activation says that individual development is possible only through self-initiated consciousness activity. K
1.41.14
All development is the result of work and toil. P 3.23.2
Affirmation of the consequent: The fallacy of affirmation of the consequent is the fallacious inference from B and A ⊃ B to A. The law of affirmation of the consequent is the theorem of the propositional calculus, q ⊃ [p ⊃ q]. -- A. C.
Akarsha (Sanskrit) Ākarṣa [from ā near to, towards + kṛṣ to draw, pull, lead] Drawing towards oneself, attraction, fascination as by magnetism. The law of attraction, and its alter ego repulsion, is a fundamental and universal operation of nature and is active on all planes and in all spaces and times. It is, in another sense, one of the functions of that unceasing motion which is an inherent attribute of cosmic consciousness. “Motion is the eternal order of things and affinity or attraction its handmaid of all works” (ML 67).
Aliyah ::: (Heb. To go up) Aliyah refers to when one is called to the altar (bema) to read from the Torah. Also immigration to Israel. Starting in the 1880’s, moving to Palestine was known as “ingathering of the exile” or a “returning” to the promised land, thus bearing significant religious and Zionistic significance. The phases of immigration are also referred to each as an Aliyah and primarily consisted of Jews fleeing from persecution or dreaming of building Holy Land. The First Aliyah (1882-1903) were 20,000-30,000 Jews from Russia, Romania, and Galicia. The Second Aliyah (1904-1914) consisted of 35,000-40,000 pioneering youth from Russia after WWI, the Third Aliyah (1919-1923) of 35,000 youth from Russia, Poland, and Romania. The Fourth Aliyah (1924-1931) consisted of 88,000 Jews from Poland. The Fifth Aliyah (1932-1938) consisted of 215,000 Jews, during WWII about 82,000 Jews, and afterwards 57,000. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Law of Return has made Aliyah a state policy. Since 1948, there have also been waves of immigration, such as the Soviet Union Jewish immigration in the 1990’s.
All nature is suffused with a love of God and a desire to return to him, witnessed by the laws of motion governing inanimate bodies, the law of self-preservation in organic life, and by man's conscious search for the divine.
"All true law is the right motion and process of a reality, an energy or power of being in action fulfilling its own inherent movement self-implied in its own truth of existence. This law may be inconscient and its working appear to be mechanical, — that is the character or, at least, the appearance of law in material Nature: it may be a conscious energy, freely determined in its action by the consciousness in the being aware of its own imperative of truth, aware of its plastic possibilities of self-expression of that truth, aware, always in the whole and at each moment in the detail, of the actualities it has to realise; this is the figure of the law of the Spirit.” *The Life Divine
“All true law is the right motion and process of a reality, an energy or power of being in action fulfilling its own inherent movement self-implied in its own truth of existence. This law may be inconscient and its working appear to be mechanical,—that is the character or, at least, the appearance of law in material Nature: it may be a conscious energy, freely determined in its action by the consciousness in the being aware of its own imperative of truth, aware of its plastic possibilities of self-expression of that truth, aware, always in the whole and at each moment in the detail, of the actualities it has to realise; this is the figure of the law of the Spirit.” The Life Divine
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.
Analyticity: See Meaning, Kinds of; Truth, semantical; Valid. Analytic Judgment: (Ger. analytisches Urteil) In Kant: A judgment in which the predicate concept is included within the subject concept, as analysis should or does disclose. Such a judgment does not require verification by experience; its sole criterion is the law of contradiction. (See Kantianism.) -- O.F.K.
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".
anur hyesa dharmah ::: [for] subtle is the law of it. [cf. Katha 1.1.21]
apana ::: the last stage of utthapana, in which "one is not necessarily subject to the law of gravitation or other physical laws", making possible levitation "of the whole body raised from the earth". tes hugieies tēs
As to the problem of making a machine which will keep running of itself, or in addition will do useful work, scientists declare it impossible because it contravenes the law of conservation of energy. The equation of energies in seeming cases of perpetual motion, however, can always be made to balance by the introduction of outside factors, such as the earth’s rotation. If we regard thought and volition as forms of energy, the scope of the problem is greatly altered and enlarged; so that perpetual motion is possible or not according to the way in which we define it.
AUGOEIDES (Gr.) Pythagorean term of a certain category of devas who are
46- and 45-selves. They make up collective beings and have tasks closely connected with the evolution of our mankind. Among other tasks they administer the execution of the law of destiny in mankind and take care of men&
avratan ::: those who observe not the law of (thy) working. [Ved.]
being in us for a definite end ; thirdly, liberation, that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false . and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature. The enjoyment of our libera- ted being which brings us into um'ty or union with the Supreme, is the consummation ; it is ihat for which Yoga is done.
B. Generically "an absolute" or "the absolute" (pl. "absolutes") means the real (thing-in-itself) as opposed to appearance; substance, the substantival, reals (possessing aseity or self-existence) as opposed to relations; the perfect, non-comparative, complete of its kind; the primordial or uncaused; the independent or autonomous. Logic. Aristotelian logic involves such absolutes as the three laws of thought and changeless, objectively real classes or species, In Kantian logic the categories and principles of judgment are absolutes, i.e. a priori, while the Ideas of reason seek absolute totality and unity, In the organic or metaphysical logic of the Hegelian school, the Absolute is considered the ultimate terminus, referent, or subject of every judgment. Ethics and Axiology. Moral and axiological identified with the Real values, norms, principles, maxims, laws are considered absolutes when universally valid objects of acknowledgment, whether conditionally or unconditionally (e.g. the law of the best possible, the utilitarian greatest happiness principle, the Kantian categorical imperative).
bhagavata (Bhagavat, Bhagawata) ::: 1. the Bhagavata Purana [one of the eighteen Puranas], the law of the vaishnava dispensation of adoration and love. ::: 2. [a worshipper of Bhagavan].
Bhagavata-dharma: The law of Vaishnava dispensation of adoration and love. Also known as Satvata Dharma.
Blavatsky states that Sanskrit has never been known nor spoken in its true systematized form except by the initiated Brahmins. This form of Sanskrit was called — as well as by other names — Vach, the mystic speech, which resides in the sounds of the mantra. “The chanting of a Mantra is not a prayer, but rather a magical sentence in which the law of Occult causation connects itself with, and depends on, the will and acts of its singer. It is a succession of Sanskrit sounds, and when its strings of words and sentences is pronounced according to the magical formulae in the Atharva Veda, but understood by the few, some Mantras produce an instantaneous and very wonderful effect” (BCW 14:428n). This Vach, or the mystic self of Sanskrit, was the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahmins and was studied by initiates from all over the world.
Bruno, Giordano: (1548-1600) A Dominican monk, eventually burned at the stake because of his opinions, he was converted from Christianity to a naturalistic and mystical pantheism by the Renaissance and particularly by the new Copernican astronomy. For him God and the universe were two names for one and the same Reality considered now as the creative essence of all things, now as the manifold of realized possibilities in which that essence manifests itself. As God, natura naturans, the Real is the whole, the one transcendent and ineffable. As the Real is the infinity of worlds and objects and events into which the whole divides itself and in which the one displays the infinite potentialities latent within it. The world-process is an ever-lasting going forth from itself and return into itself of the divine nature. The culmination of the outgoing creative activity is reached in the human mind, whose rational, philosophic search for the one in the many, simplicity in variety, and the changeless and eternal in the changing and temporal, marks also the reverse movement of the divine nature re-entering itself and regaining its primordial unity, homogeneity, and changelessness. The human soul, being as it were a kind of boomerang partaking of the ingrowing as well as the outgrowing process, may hope at death, not to be dissolved with the body, which is borne wholly upon the outgoing stream, but to return to God whence it came and to be reabsorbed in him. Cf. Rand, Modern Classical Philosophers, selection from Bruno's On Cause, The Principle and the One. G. Bruno: De l'infinito, universo e mundo, 1584; Spaccio della bestia trionfante, 1584; La cena delta ceneri, 1584; Deglieroici furori, 1585; De Monade, 1591. Cf. R. Honigswald, Giordano Bruno; G. Gentile, Bruno nella storia della cultura, 1907. -- B.A.G.F. Brunschvicg, Leon: (1869-) Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Dismissed by the Nazis (1941). His philosophy is an idealistic synthesis of Spinoza, Kant and Schelling with special stress on the creative role of thought in cultural history as well as in sciences. Main works: Les etapes de la philosophie mathematique, 1913; L'experience humaine et la causalite physique, 1921; De la connaissance de soi, 1931. Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) have produced. They centre around the main doctrine of the catvari arya-satyani(q.v.), the four noble truths, the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. In the absence of contemporary records of Buddha and Buddhistic teachings, much value was formerly attached to the palm leaf manuscripts in Pali, a Sanskrit dialect; but recently a good deal of weight has been given also the Buddhist tradition in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. Buddhism split into Mahayanism and Hinayanism (q.v.), each of which, but particularly the former, blossomed into a variety of teachings and practices. The main philosophic schools are the Madhyamaka or Sunyavada, Yogacara, Sautrantika, and Vaibhasika (q.v.). The basic assumptions in philosophy are a causal nexus in nature and man, of which the law of karma (q.v.) is but a specific application; the impermanence of things, and the illusory notion of substance and soul. Man is viewed realistically as a conglomeration of bodily forms (rupa), sensations (vedana), ideas (sanjna), latent karma (sanskaras), and consciousness (vijnana). The basic assumptions in ethics are the universality of suffering and the belief in a remedy. There is no god; each one may become a Buddha, an enlightened one. Also in art and esthetics Buddhism has contributed much throughout the Far East. -- K.F.L.
Buddhi (.Discrimination) ::: Buddhi is a construction of conscious being which quite exceeds its beginnings in the basic chitta; it is the intelligence with its power of knowledge and will. Buddhi takes up and deals with all the rest of the action of the mind and life and body. It is in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity. We may distinguish three successive gradations of the action of this intelligence. There is first an inferior perceptive understanding which simply takes up, records, understands and responds to the communications of the sense-mind, memory, heart and sensational mentality. It creates by their means an elementary thinking mind which does not go beyond their data, but subjects itself to their mould and rings out their repetitions, runs round and round in the habitual circle of thought and will suggested by them or follows, with an obedient subservience of the reason to the suggestions of life, any fresh determinations which may be offered to its perception and conception. Beyond this elementary understanding, which we all use to an enormous extent, there is a power of arranging or selecting reason and will-force of the intelligence which has for its action and aim an attempt to arrive at a plausible, sufficient, settled ordering of knowledge and will for the use of an intellectual conception of life. In spite of its more purely intellectual character this secondary or intermediate reason is really pragmatic in its intention. It creates a certain kind of intellectual structure, frame, rule into which it tries to cast the inner and outer life so as to use it with a certain mastery and government for the purposes of some kind of rational will. It is this reason which gives to our normal intellectual being our set aesthetic and ethical standards, our structures of opinion and our established norms of idea and purpose. It is highly developed and takes the primacy in all men of an at all developed understanding. But beyond it there is a reason, a highest action of the buddhi which concerns itself disinterestedly with a pursuit of pure truth and right knowledge; it seeks to discover the real Truth behind life and things and our apparent selves and to subject its will to the law of Truth. Few, if any of us, can use this highest reason with any purity, but the attempt to do it is the topmost capacity of the inner instrument, the antahkarana.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 651-52
Buddhi is a construction of conscious being which quite exceeds its beginnings in the basic chitta; it is the intelligence with its power of knowledge and will. Buddhi takes up and deals with all the rest of the action of the mind and life and body. It is in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity. We may distinguish three successive gradations of the action of this intelligence. There is first an inferior perceptive understanding which simply takes up, records, understands and responds to the communications of the sense-mind, memory, heart and sensational mentality. It creates by their means an elementary thinking mind which does not go beyond their data, but subjects itself to their mould and rings out their repetitions, runs round and round in the habitual circle of thought and will suggested by them or follows, with an obedient subservience of the reason to the suggestions of life, any fresh determinations which may be offered to its perception and conception. Beyond this elementary understanding, which we all use to an enormous extent, there is a power of arranging or selecting reason and will-force of the intelligence which has for its action and aim an attempt to arrive at a plausible, sufficient, settled ordering of knowledge and will for the use of an intellectual conception of life. In spite of its more purely intellectual character this secondary or intermediate reason is really pragmatic in its intention It creates a certain kind of intellectual structure, frame, rule into which it tries to cast the inner and outer life so as to use it with a certain mastery and government for the purposes of some kind of rational will. It is this reason which gives to our normal intellectual being our set aesthetic and ethical standards, our structures of opinion and our established norms of idea and purpose. It is highly developed and takes the primacy in all men of an at all developed understanding. But beyond it there is a reason, a highest action of the buddhi which concerns itself disinterestedly with a pursuit of pure truth and right knowledge; it seeks to discover the real Truth behind life and things and our apparent selves and to subject its will to the law of Truth. Few, if any of us, can use this highest reason with any purity, but the attempt to do it is the topmost capacity of the inner instrument, the antahkarana.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 651-52
“But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different,—something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” Letters on Yoga
“Canst thou destroy divine compassion? . . . Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of laws — eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, and fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.
Caodaism: An esoteric religion and mystery cult founded in Indo-China in the 1920’s, claiming to have received its teaching from the Supreme Being (Cao Dai) through spiritualistic implements. It honors Christ, Buddha, Confucius and Lao-Tzu as saviors sent by the same deity. It teaches the existence of the soul, reincarnation and the law of Karma.
çarira -) ::: physical perfection, consisting of the siddhi of the sarira catus.t.aya: "a perfection of the body as the outer instrument of a complete divine living on earth . . . effected by bringing in the law of the gnostic Purusha, vijñanamaya purus.a, and of that into which it opens, the Anandamaya, into the physical consciousness", leading to "a divinising of the law of the body".
causationist ::: n. --> One who believes in the law of universal causation.
Ch'eng: Honesty; sincerity; absence of fault; actuality. Reverence; seriousness. Being one's true self; absolute true self; truth, in the sense of "fulfillment of the self," which "is the beginning and end of material existence," and "without which there is no material existence." "Being true to oneself (or sincerity) is the law of Heaven. To try to be true to oneself is the law of man." "Only those who are their absolute true selves in the world can fulfill their own nature," "the nature of others," "the nature of things," "help Nature in growing and sustaining," and "become equals of Heaven and Earth." (Early Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism.) Being true to the nature of being (of man and things), which is "the character of the sage," "the basis of the five cardinal moral principles and the source of the moral life." It is "the state of tranquillity without movement." (Chou Lien-hsi, 1017-1073.) "Sincerity (ch'eng) is the way of Heaven, whereas seriousness (ching) is the essence of human affairs. When there is seriousness, there is sincerity." "Sincerity means 'to have no depraved thought'." (Ch'eng I-ch'uan, 1033-1107 and Ch'eng Ming-tao, 1032-1086.) "It may also be expressed as the principle of reality." (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200.) -- W.T.C.
COLLECTIVE BEINGS In all natural kingdoms the monads form collective beings. In the three subhuman kingdoms, non-self-conscious monads form group-souls. In the human kingdom, the development of self-consciousness becomes the essential purpose, and so man&
Comparative advantage (theory of) - A country has a comparative advantage in producing a good over another if the opportunity cost of producing that good is lower. The law of comparative advantage. Provided opportunity costs of various goods differ in two countries/both of them can gain from mutual trade if they specialise in producing :(and exporting) those goods that have relatively low opportunity costs compared within the other country.
Composition is the form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from A ⊃ B and A ⊃ C to A ⊃ BC. The law of composition is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [p ⊃ q][p ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ qr].
constructive proof "mathematics" A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n " 0 and p " 0, there exists a real number 0 " k " 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 " k " 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the {excluded middle} (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes {proof by contradiction} invalid. See {intuitionistic logic}. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because {intuitionistic logic} turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science. (2014-08-24)
Contrariwise, when an individual, group, life-wave, or kingdom has been thus retarded because of karmic necessity, when the way is finally opened for them to progress forwards, and if they are ready to do so, there is an immediate acceleration, a quickening or vivifying of the entire life-stream, so that their progress from the beginning of such acceleration is quick and runs rapidly on. Such individuals are prepared, and unfold or develop rapidly when the time comes — the law of acceleration, just the contrary of the law of retardation.
cosine rule: In trigonometry,(also known as the cosine formula oe the law of cosines ) it is a statement about a general triangle that relates the lengths of its sides to the cosine of one of its angles.
Cosmic psychology: The science of diagnosis whereby the maladjustment of the individual to life can be treated by correctional thinking. It does not concern itself with prediction, fortune-telling, life readings, but deals with reactions developed in the individual by virtue of growth and development during his first day of life, through the law of adaptability to cosmic ray frequencies then present in the Earth’s magnetic field, and with experiences resulting from environmental stimulation of a preconditioned pattern of emotional reactions.
Cycles [from Greek kyklos circle, wheel] The law of cycles arises out of the ever-unceasing alternations of the Great Breath of spirit in the universe. Abstract absolute motion, as the worlds evolve, assumes an ever-growing tendency to circular movement. Hence arise the wheels and globes of cosmic evolution and the rounds of the evolutionary life-waves. Motion is repetitive, ever returning to similar, but not identical, points. The geometrical symbol is the helix, which combines the cyclic with the progressive motion; if the axis of the helix is itself a circle, a vortex results, and thus wheels within wheels as the process advances to further degrees of complexity.
Cycles or Law of Cycles ::: An exceedingly interesting branch of theosophical study, and one dealing with a fact which is soobviously manifest in the worlds surrounding us that its existence can hardly be denied, except by thewillfully blind, is what may be called the law of cycles, or nature's repetitive operations.We find nature repeating herself everywhere, although such repetition of course is not merely a runningin the same old ruts on each recurrence of the cyclic activity; for each recurrence is of course theexpression of a modification, more or less great, of what has preceded. Day succeeds night, wintersucceeds summer, the planets circulate around the suns in regular and periodical courses; and these arebut familiar examples of cyclical activity.Cycles in nature show the time periods of periodic recurrence along and in which any evolving entity orthing expresses the energies and powers which are itself, so that cycles and evolution are like the twosides of a coin: the one shows the time periods or cycles, and the other side manifests the energic orsubstantial qualities appearing in manifestation according to these cyclical time-periods; but back of thisapparently double but actually single process always lie profound karmic causes.
De Morgan's laws: Are the two dually related theorems of the propositional calculus, ∼[p ∨ q] ≡ [∼p ∼q], ∼[pq] ≡ [∼p v ∼q], or the two corresponding dually related theorems of the algebra of classes, −(a ∪ b) = −a ∩ −b, −(a ∩ b) = −a ∪ −b. In the propositional calculus these laws (together with the law of double negation) make it possible to define conjunction in terms of negation and (inclusive) disjunction, or, alternatively, disjunction in terms of negation and conjunction. Similarly in the algebra of classes logical product may be defined in terms of logical sum and complementation, or logical sum in terms of logical product and complementation.
Denial of the antecedent: The fallacy of denial of the antecedent is the fallacious inference from ∼A and A ⊃ B to ∼B. The law of denial of the antecedent is the theorem of the propositional calculus, ∼p ⊃ [p ⊃ q]. -- A. C.
DESTINY, LAW OF The law of destiny indicates what forces influence the individual in consideration of necessary experiences. K 1.41.12
DEVELOPMENT, LAW OF The law of development says that all monads develop their consciousness, that there are forces acting in different ways towards the final goal of life. K 1.41.10
dharma ::: law of being; "a fundamental law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities"; the law of religious and spiritual life; the religious or spiritual part of karma.
Dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 521
dharmarājan. (P. dhammarājā; T. chos kyi rgyal po; C. fawang; J. hoo; K. pobwang 法王). In Sanskrit, "king of dharma"; one of the epithets of the Buddha used generally across traditions. The term dharmarājan is also used to designate a monarch with faith in the BUDDHADHARMA, who rules in accordance with Buddhist, or simply broader religious, principles. Some monarchs have claimed the appellation for themselves, and many have been so designated posthumously, most notably AsOKA. In certain Mahāyāna contexts, dharmarājan is also a title for King YAMA, so named because he administers punishments to moral transgressors in the netherworld according to the law of karmic retribution. In Tibet, the term is used to refer to the three kings credited with the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet: SRONG BRTSAN SGAM PO, KHRI SRONG LDE BRTSAN, and RAL PA CAN. The term was also used as a reverential title that the Chinese imperial court bestowed on eminent Tibetan lamas (BLA MA), beginning in the Mongol period. In Sikkim, during the Rnam rgyal dynasty (1642-1975), the king was referred to as the chos rgyal, the Tibetan translation of dharmarājan.
Discipline ::: To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one’s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In Yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline. To live and act under control or according to a standard of what is right—not to allow the vital or the physical to do whatever they like and not to let the mind run about according to its fancy without truth or order. Also to obey those who ought to be obeyed.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 672
Dissociation: (Lat. dis + socius, a companion) The operation of mind by which the elements of a complex are discriminated. Dissociative discrimination is facilitated when elements which are commonly conjoined are found in new combinations. James calls this the law of "dissociation by varying concomitants." (Principles of Psychology, I, 506.) -- I.W.
Divine Will is something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the ‘Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty, and Ananda, for these arc the Divine Nature.
drum. (S. dundubhi, mṛdanga; P. dundubhi, mutinga; T. rnga bo che; C. gu; J. ku; K. ko 鼓). Drums and other percussion instruments are used in many Buddhist cultures to signal the events of the daily monastic schedule, to call the monks and nuns to assembly, and in Buddhist liturgical activities. Drums also appear frequently in Buddhist literature as a symbol of the power of the dharma to encourage good and frighten away evil. In Chinese monasteries, a drum is beaten at dawn and dusk to gather the monastic residents for services; a "cloud drum," viz., a drum ornamented with clouds, calls the monks to the midday meal; and a bathing drum is used to announce bath time in CHAN monasteries. The Chinese typically use four instruments to mark the schedule of events in a monastery: the dharma drum, temple bell, cloud-shaped gong, and wooden fish (C. muyu = K. MOKTAK). Especially interesting is the wooden fish, a wooden percussion instrument carved in the shape of a fish that is used for calling the monks to meals and to mark time during chanting. Because a fish's eyes are always open day and night, the wooden fish is a subtle admonition to monks and nuns to remain ever vigilant about their practice. Drums are often used together with other instruments during Buddhist liturgical activities. Small drums, bells, and gongs, for example, are used to mark time during Buddhist rituals and while chanting the Buddha's name (C. NIANFO). ¶ Drums often appear in conjunction with heavenly divinities (DEVA) in Buddhist literature. Dundubhisvara-rāja is the lord of the sound of celestial drums, viz., the thunder. Meghasvara-rāja, a son of MahābhijNābhibhu, is the ruler of the cloud drums in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. The heavenly drum in the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven spontaneously emits a sublime sound without being struck; it warns the divine inhabitants that even their lives are impermanent and subject to the law of causality. Drums are a common metaphor for the Buddha or dharma in Buddhist literature. "Great Drum of the Dharma" is one of the epithets of a Buddha, since he exhorts sentient beings to perform wholesome actions and frightens away baleful influences and demons. The YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA describes one of the characteristics of the divine voice of a Buddha as being like the thunderous sound of a heavenly drum. The drum of dharma is also likened to both a noxious drum that helps to repress unwholesome action and evil, as well as a heavenly drum that offers kind and gentle encouragement to sentient beings to perform wholesome deeds. The noxious drum is likened also to the buddha-nature (C. FOXING), which can help overcome all evil. There are many variant Sanskrit names for drums and percussion instruments, including bherī, ghattita, GHAntA, dundubha, and panava. See also MOKT'AK; dAMARU.
eighty-twenty rule "programming" The program-design version of the law of diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule says that roughly 80% of the problem can be solved with 20% of the effort that it would take to solve the whole problem. For example, parsing {e-mail addresses} in "From:" lines in e-mail messages is notoriously difficult if you follow the RFC 2822 specification. However, about 60% of actual "From:" lines are in the format "From: Their Name "user@host"", with a far more constrained idea of what can be in "user" or "host" than in RFC 2822. Another 25% just add double-quotes around "Their Name". Matching just those two patterns would thus cover 85% of "From:" lines, with a tiny portion of the code required to fully implement RFC2822. (Adding support for "From: user@host" and "From: user@host (Their Name) " brings coverage to almost 100%, leaving only really baroque things that RFC-2822 permits, like "From: Pete(A wonderful \) chap) "pete(his account)@silly.test(his host)" or the like.) It is an eternal question whether too much attention is paid to the 80/20 rule (leading to systems that are irrevocably broken for "unusual" cases), or too little (leading to systems that sacrifice usability in the typical case, just so that rare cases can work properly). Compare: {KISS Principle} (2003-11-17)
eighty-twenty rule ::: (programming) The program-design version of the law of diminishing returns. The 80/20 rule says that roughly 80% of the problem can be solved with 20% of the effort that it would take to solve the whole problem.For example, parsing e-mail addresses in From: lines in e-mail messages is notoriously difficult if you follow the RFC 2822 specification. However, about those two patterns would thus cover 85% of From: lines, with a tiny portion of the code required to fully implement RFC2822.(Adding support for From: and From: (Their Name) brings coverage to almost 100%, leaving only really baroque things that RFC-2822 permits, like From: Pete(A wonderful \) chap) pete(his account)@silly.test(his host) or the like.)It is an eternal question whether too much attention is paid to the 80/20 rule (leading to systems that are irrevocably broken for unusual cases), or too little (leading to systems that sacrifice usability in the typical case, just so that rare cases can work properly).Compare: KISS Principle(2003-11-17)
Eneidfaddeu (Welsh) [from enaid soul + maddeu to forgive] The Druidic doctrine that the soul was cleared of its sins by suffering, that suffering was both the result and the forgiveness of wrong thinking and doing; the law of karma.
equity ::: n. --> Equality of rights; natural justice or right; the giving, or desiring to give, to each man his due, according to reason, and the law of God to man; fairness in determination of conflicting claims; impartiality.
An equitable claim; an equity of redemption; as, an equity to a settlement, or wife&
er quan. (J. nisen; K. i chon 二詮). In Chinese, "two modes of explication": apophatic (negative) and kataphatic (positive) discourse. The former describes something by pointing to what the thing is not. For example, the Buddhist description of NIRVĀnA often employs "negative statement"-i.e., nirvāna is neither a kind of existence nor is it nonexistence; it can neither be characterized by any of the primary factors nor can it be localized. A "positive statement," by contrast, delineates and defines something by pointing to what the thing is. For example, the Buddhist idea of right understanding may be described by a positive statement-i.e., it is the intellectual and intuitive acceptance of the law of conditionality, the reality of KARMAN and rebirth, and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS.
ESOTERIC HISTORY AFTER 1875 The instrument the planetary hierarchy had chosen for the task of publicizing the knowledge which had been kept secret since Atlantis was H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891). Blavatsky was enjoined not to give out any esoteric facts without special permission in each individual case. She was not to mention anything about the planetary hierarchy.
The truth, or the knowledge of reality, is only to be given gradually, with sparing facts, to a mankind unprepared to receive it. It is necessary to find connections to established fictions of which people have heard enough for them to believe that they comprehend what it all is about. A new, revolutionary system of ideas would be rejected off hand as a mere fantastic invention. It could not be comprehended, let alone understood, without careful preparation.
The most important reason, which probably only esotericians are able to understand, is the fact of the dynamic energy of ideas.
Once the esoteric knowledge was permitted to be published there was no longer any need of initiation into the old knowledge orders, nobody having been initiated into anyone of them since 1875. Although those initiated in previous incarnations were not given the opportunity to revive all their old knowledge, enough was made known, and besides hinted at, for them to be able to discover the most essential by themselves.
The most important esoteric facts to be found in the works of Sinnett, Judge, and
Hartmann &
". . . ethics must eventually perceive that the law of good which it seeks is the law of God.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“… ethics must eventually perceive that the law of good which it seeks is the law of God.” The Synthesis of Yoga
EVOLUTION, HOW IT WORKS The great cosmic evolution does not work according to a predetermined plan. Only the final goal is laid down: all monads acquiring omniscience about the whole cosmos... The evolution itself creates the conditions and possibilities of its growth. These conditions, however, depend on the individual character of every being, from atoms to planets, solar systems, etc... The past thereby limits the possibilities of the future. A rigid plan would set aside the law of freedom, according to which every monad has the right to the freedom (depending on insight and ability) it has once acquired and continues to apply lawfully. Evolution feels its way forward along every conceivable path in order to find the one most purposeful for each and all. K 5.36.6
Exportation is the form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from AB ⊃ C to A⊃ [B ⊃ C]. The law of exportation is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [pq ⊃ r] ⊃ [p ⊃ [q ⊃ r]].
Fakir: The term, properly, designates a Moslem mendicant ascetic and miracle-worker of India. It is often, incorrectly, applied to Hindu ascetics, too. According to Yogi Ramacharaka (in The Philosophies and Religions of Indian), “the secret of the fakir’s power generally consists in his ability to produce a mental illusion, or Maya, whereby the senses of the bystanders are deluded and the people made to appear to witness things that have no basis in fact. Another class of effects is produced by the control of Prana (or Vital Force) by the concentrated Will of the performer, so that heavy objects are moved around in defiance of the law of gravitation, and even the human body at times being floated about in the air ...”
Fechner, Gustav Theodor: (1801-1887) Philosophizing during the ascendency of modern science and the wane of metaphysical speculation, Fechner though as physicist believing in induction, analogy, history and pragmatic procedure, expounded a pure, objective idealism of Berkeley's type. With Oken and Schelling as spiritual guides, he held that everything is in consciousness, there are no substances, no things-in-themselves, everything, including animals, plants, earth, and heavens, shares the life of the soul (alles ist beseelt). In a consequent psycho-physicalism he interpreted soul (which is no substance, but the simplifying power in contrast to the diversifying physical) as appearance to oneself, and matter as appearance to others, both representing the same reality differentiated only in point of view. He applied the law of threshold to consciousness, explaining thus its relative discontinuity on one level while postulating its continuity on another, either higher or lower level. In God, as the highest rung of existence, there is infinite consciousness without an objective world. Evil arises inexplicably from darker levels of consciousness. With poetic imagination Fechner defended the "day-view" of the world in which phenomena are the real content of consciousness, against the "night-view" of science which professes knowledge of the not-sensation-conditioned colorless, soundless world.
FORMS OF LIFE All life has a form, from atoms, molecules, aggregates, to planets, solar systems, and cosmic worlds. These forms are subject to the law of transformation, are continually being changed, dissolved, and re-formed. The monads
(primordial atoms) make up (as viewed from the physical) and ascending series of ever higher forms of life, in which lower ones enter into and make up envelopes for higher ones. The entire cosmos constitutes a series of increasingly more refined forms of life, serving gradually to furnish the monad consciousness with the &
“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
freedom ::: “Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: . . . .” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: …” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
FREEDOM, LAW OF The law of freedom says that every monad is its own freedom and its own law, that freedom is to be gained by law, that freedom is the right to individual character and activity within the limits of the equal right of all. K1.41.8
Unconscious and, to a still higher degree, conscious encroachment upon the monads' inalienable, inviolable divine freedom, limited by the equal right of all living beings, results in the struggle for existence and the cruelty of life. K 4.11.4
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.
GOOD, THE LAW OF According to the law of good, man always follows the highest that he really sees and understands (not merely believes or resolves), because he cannot do otherwise, because it is for him a need and a joy to do so. K 5.8.28,
(P 3.4.5)
gravitate ::: v. i. --> To obey the law of gravitation; to exert a force Or pressure, or tend to move, under the influence of gravitation; to tend in any direction or toward any object.
heteronomous ::: a. --> Subject to the law of another.
heteronomy ::: n. --> Subordination or subjection to the law of another; political subjection of a community or state; -- opposed to autonomy.
A term applied by Kant to those laws which are imposed on us from without, or the violence done to us by our passions, wants, or desires.
HOROSCOPE By horoscope is understood the sum total of ascertainable celestial relationships to exact time, exact longitude and latitude on our planet at the &
icchantika. (T. 'dod chen; C. yichanti; J. issendai; K. ilch'onje 一闡提). In Sanskrit, "incorrigibles"; a term used in the MAHĀYĀNA tradition to refer to a class of beings who have lost all potential to achieve enlightenment or buddhahood. The term seems to derive from the present participle icchant (desiring), and may be rendered loosely into English as something like "hedonist" or "dissipated" (denotations suggested in the Tibetan rendering 'dod chen (po), "subject to great desire"). (The Sinographs are simply a transcription of the Sanskrit.) The Mahāyāna MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA states that persons become icchantika when they refuse to accept such basic principles as the law of causality, have lost their moral compass, are no longer concerned about either present actions or their future consequences, do not associate with spiritual mentors, and generally do not follow the teachings of the Buddha. In the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA, an icchantika is defined as a being who is explicitly antagonistic to the "bodhisattva collection" (BODHISATTVAPItAKA) of the canon, viz., to Mahāyāna scriptures, and who falsely claims that those scriptures do not conform to the SuTRA and the VINAYA. As a consequence of their disdain for the dharma, icchantikas were commonly assumed to be condemned to an indefinite period (and, according to some texts, an eternity) in the hells (see NĀRAKA). Certain bodhisattvas, such as KsITIGARBHA, could, however, voluntarily choose to become icchantikas by renouncing all of their own wholesome faculties (KUsALAMuLA) in order to save even the denizens of the hells. In East Asia, there was a major debate about whether icchantikas were subject to eternal damnation or whether even they retained the innate capacity to attain enlightenment. The Chinese monk DAOSHENG (355-434) rejected the implication that Buddhism would condemn any class of being to hell forever. He went so far as to reject the accuracy of passages suggesting such a fate that appeared in the first Chinese rendering of the Mahāparinirvānasutra made by FAXIAN and BUDDHABHADRA in 418. DHARMAKsEMA's subsequent translation of the sutra in 421, however, affirmed Daosheng's view that the buddha-nature (C. FOXING; S. BUDDHADHĀTU) was inherent in all beings, even icchantikas. The FAXIANG school of YOGĀCĀRA Buddhism was the only school of East Asian Buddhism that posited the existence of icchantikas, which it viewed as beings who had destroyed the pure seeds (BĪJA) innate in the mind through their heinous actions and thus had lost all hope of becoming buddhas. Virtually all other schools of East Asian Buddhism, however, asserted the doctrine of the universality of the buddha-nature in all sentient beings (and, in some cases, even in inanimate objects), and thus rejected any implication that icchantikas were bereft of all prospect of achieving buddhahood. See also SAMUCCHINNAKUsALAMuLA; QINI[ZUI].
idea ::: Madhav: “Each form in Creation is governed by the Real-Idea which has impelled it into existence. Behind every object in manifestation, every formation that comes into being, there is a truth which demands fulfilment in and through it. It is a truth from the Being of the Divine that seeks expression. Each truth that so urges to manifest forms itself into a source-Idea, a concentration of the perception and the power to effectuate it. This Idea is always there in the depths of every manifestation ruling its forms and its movements according to its Will in execution. All formation and activities proceed according to the law of this indwelling Truth-Idea.” Readings in Savitri, Vol. I.
Identity, law of: Given by traditional logicians as "A is A." Because of the various possible meanings of the copula (q.v.) and the uncertainty as to the range of the variable A, this formulation is ambiguous. The traditional law is perhaps best identified with the theorem x = x, either of the functional calculus of first order with equality, or in the theory of types (with equality defined), or in the algebra of classes, etc. It has been, or may be, also identified with either of the theorems of the propositional calculus, p ⊃ p, p ≡ p, or with the theorem of the functional calculus of first order, F(x) ⊃x F(x). Many writers understand, however, by the law of identity a semantical principle -- that a word or other symbol may (or must) have a fixed referent in its various occurrences in a given context (so, e.g., Ledger Wood in his The Analysis of Knowledge). Some, it would seem, confuse such a semantical principle with a proposition of formal logic. -- A.C.
Implication: See Logic, formal, §§1, 3; Strict implication. Importation: The form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from A ⊃ [B ⊃ C] to AB ⊃ C. The law of importation is the theorem of the propositional calculus: [p ⊃ [q ⊃ r]] ⊃ [pq ⊃ r].
In a legal sense, any claim against others, recognized by law. Political rights, the capacity of exercizing certain functions in the formation and administration of government -- the right to vote, to be elected to public office, etc. Natural rights, as against positive rights, those claims or liberties which are not derived from positive law but from a "higher law", the law of nature. The right to live, the right to work, the "pursuit of happiness", the right to self-development are sometimes considered natural rights. -- W.E.
In the Law of Manu avyakta is used as an equivalent to paramatman (universal spirit).
indirect proof Also called a proof by contradiction or reductio ad absurdum. It works by demonstrating that the EXACT opposite to your point of view MUST lead to a contradiction, thereby yours must be the only valid viewpoint. This method dismisses para-consistency logic and assumes the Law of Excluded Middle.
In Hindu philosophy, the law of cause and effect (that one reaps what one has sown) is often called karma. From the root kri meaning to do, accomplish; create, make; bring to completion.
Instinct The vegetative, passive, or automatic side of intuition, which expresses itself all through natural existences. The atoms move and sing by instinct, and by the instinctual faculty the animal guides its life. In human beings are the divine instincts of love, forgiveness, and pity. “Instinct, as a divine spark, lurks in the unconscious nerve-centre of the ascidian mollusk, and manifests itself at the first stage of action of its nervous system as what the physiologist terms the reflex action. It exists in the lowest classes of the acephalous animals as well as in those that have distinct heads; it grows and develops according to the law of the double evolution, physically and spiritually; and entering upon its conscious stage of development and progress in the cephalous species already endowed with a sensorium and symmetrically-arranged ganglia, this reflex action, whether men of science term it automatic, as in the lowest species, or instinctive, as in the more complex organisms which act under the guidance of the sensorium and the stimulus originating in distinct sensation, is still one and the same thing. It is the divine instinct in its ceaseless progress of development. This instinct of the animals, which act from the moment of their birth each in the confines prescribed to them by nature, and which know how, save in accident proceeding from a higher instinct than their own, to take care of themselves unerringly — this instinct may, for the sake of exact definition, be termed automatic; but it must have either within the animal which possesses it or without, something’s or some one’s intelligence to guide it” (IU 1:425).
interpolate ::: v. t. --> To renew; to carry on with intermission.
To alter or corrupt by the insertion of new or foreign matter; especially, to change, as a book or text, by the insertion of matter that is new, or foreign to the purpose of the author.
To fill up intermediate terms of, as of a series, according to the law of the series; to introduce, as a number or quantity, in a partial series, according to the law of that part of the
interpolation ::: n. --> The act of introducing or inserting anything, especially that which is spurious or foreign.
That which is introduced or inserted, especially something foreign or spurious.
The method or operation of finding from a few given terms of a series, as of numbers or observations, other intermediate terms in conformity with the law of the series.
Intuitionism (mathematical): The name given to the school (of mathematics) founded by L. E. J. Brouwer (q. v.) and represented also by Hermann Weyl, Hans Freudenthal, Arend Heyting, and others. In some respects a historical forerunner of intuitionism is the mathematician Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891). Views related to intuitionism (but usually not including the rejection of the law of excluded middle) have been expressed by many recent or contemporary mathematicians, among whom are J. Richard, Th. Skolem, and the French semi-intuitionists -- as Heyting calls them -- E. Borel, H. Lebesgue, R. Baire, N. Lusin. (Lusin is Russian but has been closely associated with the French school.)
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.
judaizer ::: n. --> One who conforms to or inculcates Judaism; specifically, pl. (Ch. Hist.), those Jews who accepted Christianity but still adhered to the law of Moses and worshiped in the temple at Jerusalem.
Kalikr.s.n.a (Kalikrishna; Kali krishna) ::: (also called Kr.s.n.akali) the Kalikrsna union of Kali and Kr.s.n.a, whether seen in the perception (darsana) of the external world or experienced in oneself in a spiritual realisation which is the basis of karma and kama1, where Kali as prakr.ti "take[s] up the whole nature into the law of her higher divine truth and act[s] in that law offering up the universal enjoyment of her action and being to the Anandamaya Ishwara" (Kr.s.n.a), while the individual soul (jiva) is "the channel of this action and offering".
Karma: Action. It is of three kinds: Sanchita (all the accumulated actions of all previous births), Prarabdha (the particular portion of such Karma allotted for being worked out in Ilse present life), and Agami (current Karma being freshly performed by the individual). It is the Karma operating through the law of cause and effect binding the Jiva or the individual soul to the wheel of birth and death.
Karma: Sanskrit for action or deed. In Hinduism and occult philosophy, the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy in deeds, speech or thought which inevitably produces a good, evil or indifferent effect, according as the action is good, evil or indifferent, and the effect itself becomes the cause of further effects. Thus karma is the law of physical causation or cause and effect, the unmitigated law of retribution, working with equal precision in good and evil thoughts and deeds, thus determining the nature and circumstances of man’s future incarnation. Thus karma is (1) action-energy, past or present, latent or manifest, actual or potential; (2) a self-operating law of cause and effect and retribution; (3) the entity of the individual or of the universe carried along in the series of the Wheel of Life (samsara ).
Karma (Sanskrit) Karma [from the verbal root kṛ to do, make, denoting action] Action, the causes and consequences of action; that which produces change. One of the primary postulates of every comprehensive system of philosophy, described as a universal law, unceasingly active throughout universal nature and rooted in cosmic harmony, in its operations existing from eternity, inevitable, inherent in the very nature of things. It is action, absolute harmony, the adjuster; it preserves equilibrium by compensating and adjusting all actions, excessive or defective. Hence it is called the law of retribution, implying neither reward nor punishment, based on nature’s own urge of harmonious equilibrium. As such it has been personalized as Nemesis and by many other names, a practice which lends itself to popular imagining of avenging deities, such as God or Gods, Furies, Fates, Destiny, etc. As there are no such things as inanimate beings in the universe, it is not surprising to hear of karmic agents and of scribes or lipika who record karma. Karma must necessarily be transmitted by living beings of one grade or another, because there is no other means possible, and universal nature is but a vast, virtually frontierless being whose entire structure, laws, and operations are the innumerable hierarchies of beings in all-various grades, which thus not only condition nature, but are in fact universal nature itself. By our acts we create living beings which act upon other people and ultimately react upon ourselves. These beings, then, are agents of karma on one plane; on higher planes other orders of beings are such agents.
Karma (S) the law of the collective actions in someone’s (previous) life and its consequences in the current or future life
Karmic ::: “If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Karshipta, Karshift (Pahlavi) The holy bird of the Zoroastrians who brought the law of Mazda into the Vara (man). “Karshipta is the human mind-soul, and the deity thereof, symbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or man, than he understood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. . . . With the Kabalists it was a like symbol. ‘Bird’ was a Chaldean, and has become a Hebrew synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit, or Deva; and the ‘Bird’s Nest’ was with both Heaven, and is God’s bosom in the Zohar” (SD 2:292). The Egyptians also spoke of the spiritual swallow, the soul-bird — manas.
klesa. (P. kilesa; T. nyon mongs; C. fannao; J. bonno; K. ponnoe 煩腦). In Sanskrit, "afflictions," or "defilements"; mental factors that disturb the mind and incite unwholesome (AKUsALA) deeds of body, speech, and/or mind. In order to be liberated from rebirth, the klesa and the actions they incite must be controlled and finally eliminated. A typical standard list of klesa includes the so-called three poisons (TRIVIsA) of greed or sensuality (RĀGA or LOBHA), hatred or aversion (DVEsA), and delusion (MOHA). According to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school, there are six "fundamental afflictions" or "defiled factors of wide extent" (KLEsAMAHĀBHuMIKA) that are associated with all defiled thoughts: delusion (MOHA), heedlessness (PRAMĀDA), lassitude (KAUSĪDYA), lack of faith (ĀsRADDHYA), sloth (STYĀNA), and restlessness (AUDDHATYA). There are similarly ten "defiled factors of limited extent" (upaklesaparīttabhumika), which may be associated with defiled thoughts: anger (KRODHA), hypocrisy (MRAKsA), selfishness (MĀTSARYA), envy (ĪRsYĀ), agitation or competition (PRADĀSA), harmfulness (VIHIMSĀ), enmity (UPANĀHA), trickery or guile (sĀtHYA), and arrogance (MADA). In the YOGĀCĀRA school, there are typically enumerated six fundamental klesa-greed (rāga), aversion (PRATIGHA), stupidity (mudhi), pride (MĀNA), skeptical doubt (VICIKITSĀ), and the five wrong views (DṚstI), viz., (1) presuming that the five aggregates (SKANDHA) possess a self, (2) the two extreme views of eternalism and annihilationism, (3) rejection of the law of causality, (4) maintaining wrong views and presuming them superior to all other views, (5) misconceiving wrong types of conduct or morality to be conducive to enlightenment-and twenty derivative ones (UPAKLEsA).
krta (yuga) (Krita) ::: [the first of the four yugas], the Age when the law of the Truth is accomplished; [same as satya yuga].
lawless ::: a. --> Contrary to, or unauthorized by, law; illegal; as, a lawless claim.
Not subject to, or restrained by, the law of morality or of society; as, lawless men or behavior.
Not subject to the laws of nature; uncontrolled.
Law of Retribution: Karma (q.v.), the Law of Ethical Causation.
Law of Return ::: Passed by the Knesset on July 5, 1950, the Law of Return bestows unlimited right of Jews everywhere to immigrate to Israel.
legal ::: a. --> Created by, permitted by, in conformity with, or relating to, law; as, a legal obligation; a legal standard or test; a legal procedure; a legal claim; a legal trade; anything is legal which the laws do not forbid.
According to the law of works, as distinguished from free grace; or resting on works for salvation.
According to the old or Mosaic dispensation; in accordance with the law of Moses.
legalist ::: n. --> One who practices or advocates strict conformity to law; in theology, one who holds to the law of works. See Legal, 2 (a).
Legal Philosophy: Deals with the philosophic principles of law and justice. The origin is to be found in ancient philosophy. The Greek Sophists criticized existing laws and customs by questioning their validity: All human rules are artificial, created by enactment or convention, as opposed to natural law, based on nature. The theory of a law of nature was further developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. According to the Stoics the natural law is based upon the eternal law of the universe; this itself is an outgrowth of universal reason, as man's mind is an offshoot of the latter. The idea of a law of nature as being innate in man was particularly stressed and popularized by Cicero who identified it with "right reason" and already contrasted it with written law that might be unjust or even tyrannical. Through Saint Augustine these ideas were transmitted to medieval philosophy and by Thomas Aquinas built into his philosophical system. Thomas considers the eternal law the reason existing in the divine mind and controlling the universe. Natural law, innate in man participates in that eternal law. A new impetus was given to Legal Philosophy by the Renaissance. Natural Jurisprudence, properly so-called, originated in the XVII. century. Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Benedictus Spinoza, John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf were the most important representatives of that line of thought. Grotius, continuing the Scholastic tradition, particularly stressed the absoluteness of natural hw (it would exist even if God did not exist) and, following Jean Bodin, the sovereignty of the people. The idea of the social contract traced all political bodies back to a voluntary compact by which every individual gave up his right to self-government, or rather transferred it to the government, abandoning a state of nature which according to Hobbes must have been a state of perpetual war. The theory of the social compact more and more accepts the character of a "fiction" or of a regulative idea (Kant). In this sense the theory means that we ought to judge acts of government by their correspondence to the general will (Rousseau) and to the interests of the individuals who by transferring their rights to the commonwealth intended to establish their real liberty. Natural law by putting the emphasis on natural rights, takes on a revolutionary character. It played a part in shaping the bills of rights, the constitutions of the American colonies and of the Union, as well as of the French declaration of the rights of men and of citizens. Natural jurisprudence in the teachings of Christian Wolff and Thomasius undergoes a kind of petrification in the vain attempt to outline an elaborate system of natural law not only in the field of international or public law, but also in the detailed regulations of the law of property, of contract, etc. This sort of dogmatic approach towards the problems of law evoked the opposition of the Historic School (Gustav Hugo and Savigny) which stressed the natural growth of laws ind customs, originating from the mysterious "spirit of the people". On the other hand Immanuel Kant tried to overcome the old natural law by the idea of a "law of reason", meaning an a priori element in all existing or positive law. In his definition of law ("the ensemble of conditions according to which everyone's will may coexist with the will of every other in accordance with a general rule of liberty"), however, as in his legal philosophy in general, he still shares the attitude of the natural law doctrine, confusing positive law with the idea of just law. This is also true of Hegel whose panlogism seemed to lead in this very direction. Under the influence of epistemological positivism (Comte, Mill) in the later half of the nineteenth century, legal philosophy, especially in Germany, confined itself to a "general theory of law". Similarily John Austin in England considered philosophy of law concerned only with positive law, "as it necessarily is", not as it ought to be. Its main task was to analyze certain notions which pervade the science of law (Analytical Jurisprudence). In recent times the same tendency to reduce legal philosophy to logical or at least methodological tasks was further developed in attempting a pure science of law (Kelsen, Roguin). Owing to the influence of Darwinism and natural science in general the evolutionist and biological viewpoint was accepted in legal philosophy: comparative jurisprudence, sociology of law, the Freirecht movement in Germany, the study of the living law, "Realism" in American legal philosophy, all represent a tendency against rationalism. On the other hand there is a revival of older tendencies: Hegelianism, natural law -- especially in Catholic philosophy -- and Kantianism (beginning with Rudolf Stammler). From here other trends arose: the critical attitude leads to relativism (f.i. Gustav Radbruch); the antimetaphysical tendency towards positivism -- though different from epistemological positivism -- and to a pure theory of law. Different schools of recent philosophy have found their applications or repercussions in legal philosophy: Phenomenology, for example, tried to intuit the essences of legal institutions, thus coming back to a formalist position, not too far from the real meaning of analytical jurisprudence. Neo-positivism, though so far not yet explicitly applied to legal philosophy, seems to lead in the same direction. -- W.E.
lex ::: n. --> Law; as, lex talionis, the law of retaliation; lex terrae, the law of the land; lex fori, the law of the forum or court; lex loci, the law of the place; lex mercatoria, the law or custom of merchants.
Life-wave Each of the different classes or hosts of monads, whether considered as seven, ten, or twelve. Each class consists of monads in seven, ten, or twelve degrees of advancement. The ten classes or life-waves comprise three elemental, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, the human, and three dhyan-chohanic kingdoms. When the hosts of beings forming a life-wave — entities derived from a former, now-dead planet — feel the impulse arriving for them to enter on their further evolutionary course, they cycle from globe to globe in regular serial order along the entire planetary chain which has been prepared for them by the three classes or hosts of elementals, who may be regarded as the predecessors of the life-waves, or as forming part of them. Each life-wave passes seven times around the seven spheres of the planetary chain, at first during our round cycling down the shadowy arc until the evolutionary bottom of the movement is attained during the middle of the fourth round, and then rising along the luminous arc, such round therefore passing through all the seven elements of the cosmos; each entity, whether divine, spiritual, mental, psychic, astral, and even physical, continuously progressing through the seven cosmic elements towards the source from which the life-wave started. The life-waves follow one another in the order named from globe to globe of the chain; but during the course of the ascent up the luminous arc, and before the seventh globe is reached, the law of retardation operates on the lower kingdoms in such fashion that all the seven classes complete their round more or less at the same time on the last globe. This constitutes a chain-round, and is followed by a chain minor nirvana. The time period during which the life-wave completes its evolution through seven root-races on one globe of the chain is a globe-round.
Mahāmaudgalyāyana. (P. Mahāmoggallāna; T. Mo'u 'gal gyi bu chen po; C. Mohemujianlian/Mulian; J. Makamokkenren/Mokuren; K. Mahamokkollyon/Mongnyon 摩訶目犍連/目連). An eminent ARHAT and one of the two chief disciples of the Buddha, often depicted together with his friend sĀRIPUTRA flanking the Buddha. Mahāmaudgalyāyana was considered supreme among the Buddha's disciples in supranormal powers (ṚDDHI). According to Pāli accounts, where he is called Moggallāna, he was older than the Buddha and born on the same day as sāriputra (P. Sāriputta). Both he and sāriputra were sons of wealthy families and were friends from childhood. Once, when witnessing a play, the two friends were overcome with a sense of the impermanence and the vanity of all things and decided to renounce the world as mendicants. They first became disciples of the agnostic SaNjaya Belatthiputta (SANJAYA VAIRĀtĪPUTRA), although later they took their leave and wandered the length and breadth of India in search of a teacher. Finding no one who satisfied them, they parted company, promising one another that if one should succeed he would inform the other. Later sāriputra met the Buddha's disciple, Assaji (S. AsVAJIT), who recited for him a précis of the Buddha's teachings, the so-called YE DHARMĀ verse, which immediately prompted sāriputra to attain the path of a stream-enterer (SROTAĀPANNA). He repeated the stanza to Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who likewise immediately became a stream-enterer. The two friends thereupon resolved to take ordination as disciples of the Buddha and, together with five hundred disciples of their former teacher SaNjaya, proceeded to the Veluvana (S. VEnUVANAVIHĀRA) grove where the Buddha was residing. The Buddha ordained the entire group with the formula ehi bhikkhu pabbajjā ("Come forth, monks"; see EHIBHIKsUKĀ), whereupon all five hundred became arhats, except for sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana. Mahāmaudgalyāyana attained arhatship seven days after his ordination, while sāriputra reached the goal one week later. The Buddha declared sāriputra and Mahāmaudgalyāyana his chief disciples the day they were ordained, noting that they had both strenuously exerted themselves in countless previous lives for this distinction; they appear often as the bodhisattva's companions in the JĀTAKAs. sāriputra was chief among the Buddha's disciples in wisdom, while Mahāmaudgalyāyana was chief in mastery of supranormal powers. He could create doppelgängers of himself and transform himself into any shape he desired. He could perform intercelestial travel as easily as a person bends his arm, and the tradition is replete with the tales of his travels, such as flying to the Himālayas to find a medicinal plant to cure the ailing sāriputra. Mahāmaudgalyāyana said of himself that he could crush Mount SUMERU like a bean and roll up the world like a mat and twirl it like a potter's wheel. He is described as shaking the heavens of sAKRA and BRAHMĀ to dissuade them from their pride, and he often preached to the divinities in their abodes. Mahāmaudgalyāyana could see ghosts (PRETA) and other spirits without having to enter into meditative trance as did other meditation masters, and because of his exceptional powers the Buddha instructed him alone to subdue the dangerous NĀGA, Nandopananda, whose huge hood had darkened the world. Mahāmaudgalyāyana's powers were so immense that during a terrible famine, he offered to turn the earth's crust over to uncover the ambrosia beneath it; the Buddha wisely discouraged him, saying that such an act would confound creatures. Even so, Mahāmaudgalyāyana's supranormal powers, unsurpassed in the world, were insufficient to overcome the law of cause and effect and the power of his own former deeds, as the famous tale of his death demonstrates. A group of naked JAINA ascetics resented the fact that the people of the kingdom of MAGADHA had shifted their allegiance and patronage from them to the Buddha and his followers, and they blamed Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who had reported that, during his celestial and infernal travels, he had observed deceased followers of the Buddha in the heavens and the followers of other teachers in the hells. They hired a group of bandits to assassinate the monk. When he discerned that they were approaching, the eighty-four-year-old monk made his body very tiny and escaped through the keyhole. He eluded them in different ways for six days, hoping to spare them from committing a deed of immediate retribution (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN) by killing an arhat. On the seventh day, Mahāmaudgalyāyana temporarily lost his supranormal powers, the residual karmic effect of having beaten his blind parents to death in a distant previous lifetime, a crime for which he had previously been reborn in hell. The bandits ultimately beat him mercilessly, until his bones had been smashed to the size of grains of rice. Left for dead, Mahāmaudgalyāyana regained his powers and soared into the air and into the presence of the Buddha, where he paid his final respects and passed into NIRVĀnA at the Buddha's feet. ¶ Like many of the great arhats, Mahāmaudgalyāyana appears frequently in the MAHĀYĀNA sutras, sometimes merely listed as a member of the audience, sometimes playing a more significant role. In the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, he is one of the sRĀVAKA disciples who is reluctant to visit VIMALAKĪRTI. In the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, he is one of four arhats who understands the parable of the burning house and who rejoices in the teaching of the one vehicle (EKAYĀNA); later in the sutra, the Buddha prophesies his eventual attainment of buddhahood. Mahāmaudgalyāyana is additionally famous in East Asian Buddhism for his role in the apocryphal YULANBEN JING. The text describes his efforts to save his mother from the tortures of her rebirth as a ghost (preta). Mahāmaudgalyāyana (C. Mulian) is able to use his supranormal powers to visit his mother in the realm of ghosts, but the food that he offers her immediately bursts into flames. The Buddha explains that it is impossible for the living to make offerings directly to the dead; instead, one should make offerings to the SAMGHA in a bowl, and the power of their meditative practices will be able to save one's ancestors and loved ones from rebirths in the unfortunate realms (DURGATI).
Mahātanhāsankhayasutta. (C. Tudi jing; J. Dateikyo; K. Toje kyong 帝經). In Pāli, the "Great Discourse on the Destruction of Craving"; the thirty-eighth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the 201st sutra in the Chinese translations of the MADHYAMĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha at the JETAVANA grove in the town of Sāvatthi (S. sRĀVASTĪ) to the monk Sāti, who held the mistaken view that the Buddha taught that consciousness (P. viNNāna; S. VIJNĀNA) transmigrates from life to life. The Buddha reprimands Sāti, telling him he never taught such a view, but that consciousness arises only due to causes and conditions and never otherwise. He continues with a lengthy discourse on dependent origination (P. paticcasamuppāda; S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA) in which he describes how all worldly phenomena come into being and pass away according to the law of cause and effect.
Manava-dharmasastra ::: [name of the famous code of laws attributed to Manu]; the science of the law of conduct of the mental or human being.
MEDIUM A person who, in a state of trance, is able to lend his organism with its etheric envelope to discarnate (&
mukti ::: liberation, "the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature"; in pūrn.a yoga, "a liberation of the soul in nature perfect and self-existent whether in action or in inaction"; the second member of the siddhi catus.t.aya, integral freedom, including liberation of the spirit (essential mukti) and liberation of the nature (comprising ahaṅkara-mukti-siddhi, traigun.yasiddhi and mukti from dvandva), not only a "liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the spirit", but also a "farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world-experience" which "fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery".
Nativity: In astrology: (1) The birth moment; the instant when the native drew his first breath, thereby commencing a process of blood conditioning that up to that moment had been accomplished through the receptivities of another. During the first days of life, in accordance with the law of adaptability, there ensues a growth of channels of receptivity to cosmic energy which results in a life-pattern of cosmic stimulation. (2) A Figure, or horoscope, cast for a date, moment and place of birth, as distinguished from an Electional or Horary Figure.
Nirvana-dharma (Sanskrit) Nirvāṇa-dharma [from nirvāṇa blown out, superspiritual state + dharma law, duty, justice, conduct] The path of nirvana, or the law of nirvana.
Or the name may be applied to a proposition or sentence of logic corresponding to a certain form of valid inference. E.g., the law of exportation (q. v.) may be called the leading principle of the form of valid inference known as exportation. -- A.C.
O.T.O. ::: Ordo Templi Orientis. A contemporary esoteric organization ordered around Thelemic principles and the Law of Thelema.
palaetiology ::: n. --> The science which explains, by the law of causation, the past condition and changes of the earth.
pentateuch ::: n. --> The first five books of the Old Testament, collectively; -- called also the Law of Moses, Book of the Law of Moses, etc.
Perfection in the sense in which we use it in Yoga, means a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher divine nature. In terms of knowledge it is a putting on the being of the higher self and a casting away of the darker broken lower self or a transforming of our imperfect state into the rounded luminous fullness of our real and spiritual personality. In terms of devotion and adoration it is a growing into a likeness of the nature or the law of the being of the Divine, to be united with whom we aspire.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 698
perfection ::: “Perfection in the sense in which we use it in Yoga, means a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher divine nature. In terms of knowledge it is a putting on the being of the higher self and a casting away of the darker broken lower self or a transforming of our imperfect state into the rounded luminous fullness of our real and spiritual personality. In terms of devotion and adoration it is a growing into a likeness of the nature or the law of the being of the Divine, to be united with whom we aspire, …” The Synthesis of Yoga
perfection ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Perfection in the sense in which we use it in Yoga, means a growth out of a lower undivine into a higher divine nature. In terms of knowledge it is a putting on the being of the higher self and a casting away of the darker broken lower self or a transforming of our imperfect state into the rounded luminous fullness of our real and spiritual personality. In terms of devotion and adoration it is a growing into a likeness of the nature or the law of the being of the Divine, to be united with whom we aspire, . . . .” *The Synthesis of Yoga
pirate ::: n. --> A robber on the high seas; one who by open violence takes the property of another on the high seas; especially, one who makes it his business to cruise for robbery or plunder; a freebooter on the seas; also, one who steals in a harbor.
An armed ship or vessel which sails without a legal commission, for the purpose of plundering other vessels on the high seas.
One who infringes the law of copyright, or publishes the
PLANETARY GOVERNMENT Into the planetary government can enter individuals who have attained the second divine kingdom. The head of the planetary government belongs to the third kingdom.
Like all governments in still higher kingdoms, the planetary government is divided into three main departments dealing with the three fundamental functions concerning the aspects of matter, motion, and consciousness. They have the ultimate responsibility that all the pertaining processes of nature work with unfailing precision. They see to it that all receive what they need for their consciousness development and that implacable justice is done to all in accordance with the law of sowing and reaping. K 1.39.1f
Our planet received its own government about 21,7 million years ago. (K 3.1.4)
Principles of Man ::: The seven principles of man are a likeness or rather copy of the seven cosmic principles. They areactually the offspring or reflection of the seven cosmic principles, limited in their action in us by theworkings of the law of karma, but running in their origin back into THAT which is beyond: into THATwhich is the essence of the universe or the universal -- above, beyond, within, to the unmanifest, to theunmanifestable, to that first principle which H. P. Blavatsky enunciates as the leading thought of thewisdom-philosophy of The Secret Doctrine.These principles of man are reckoned as seven in the philosophy by which the human spiritual andpsychical economy has been publicly explained to us in the present age. In other ages these principles orparts of man were differently reckoned -- the Christian reckoned them as body, soul, and spirit,generalizing the seven under these three heads.Some of the Indian thinkers divided man into a basic fourfold entity, others into a fivefold. The Jewishphilosophy, as found in the Qabbalah which is the esoteric tradition of the Jews, teaches that man isdivided into four parts: neshamah, ruah, nefesh, and guf.Theosophists for convenience often employ in their current literature a manner of viewing man'scomposite constitution which is the dividing of his nature into a trichotomy, meaning a division intothree, being spirit, soul, and body, which in this respect is identical with the generalized Christianizedtheosophical division. Following this trichotomy, man's three parts, therefore, are: first and highest, thedivine spirit or the divine monad of him, which is rooted in the universe, which spirit is linked with theAll, being in a highly mystical sense a ray of the All; second, the intermediate part, or the spiritualmonad, which in its higher and lower aspects is the spiritual and human souls; then, third, the lowest partof man's composite constitution, the vital-astral-physical part of him, which is composed of material orquasi-material life-atoms. (See also Atman, Buddhi, Manas, Kama, Prana, Linga-sarira, Sthula-sarira)
PRINCIPLE—The ultimate essential element that enters into the composition of all being. The moving cause, power or force by which being manifests. The Universal truth expressing the law of this manifestation; that which determines the nature, character and essence of anything.
Prshu, Presha (Sanskrit) Preṣa [from preṣ to drive away, drive forth] Repulsion; “to lay down the scientific proposition that since akrshu (attraction) and Prshu (repulsion) are the law of nature, there can be no intercourse or relations between clean and unclean Souls — embodied or disembodied; and hence, ninety-nine hundredths of supposed spiritual communications, are, prima facie false” (ML 35).
Purana-Kāsyapa. (P. Purana-Kassapa; T. 'Od srung rdzogs byed; C. Fulanna Jiashe; J. Furannakasho; K. Puranna Kasop 富蘭那迦葉). One of the so-called "six heterodox teachers" (TĪRTHIKA) often mentioned in Buddhist sutras and criticized by the Buddha. (The other five are MASKARIN GOsĀLĪPUTRA, AJITA KEsAKAMBHALA, KAKUDA KĀTYĀYANA, SANJAYA VAIRĀtĪPUTRA, and NIRGRANTHA JNĀTĪPUTRA.) Purana-Kāsyapa is said to have propounded the view of akiriyavāda, literally "nonaction," a kind of antinomianism that denied the law of moral cause and effect (KARMAN). Purana claimed that, since there was no ultimate distinction between good and evil because actions did not have any effects, there was hence no harm in killing and stealing and no benefit in giving gifts and speaking truthfully. He also appears in accounts of the miracles the Buddha's performed at sRĀVASTĪ (i.e., the YAMAKAPRĀTIHĀRYA, or "dual miracle," and the MAHĀPRĀTIHĀRYA or "great miracle") as one of the heterodox teachers who challenges the Buddha to a miracle contest. After the Buddha defeats the tīrthikas, Purana-Kāsyapa withdraws in despair and is said to have drowned himself in Lake Anavatapta.
REAPING, THE LAW OF The law of reaping says that all the good and evil we have initiated in thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds are returned to us with the same effect. Every consciousness manifestation has an effect in manifold ways and entails either good or bad sowing which will ripen and be reaped some time. K 1.41.13
If man lives in accordance with the laws of life, his development will progress as rapidly as possibly, without friction, harmoniously, with the greatest possible degree of happiness. But every mistake as to the laws of life (known or unknown ones) entails consequences calculated eventually (the number of incarnations is up to him) to teach the individual to discover the laws and apply them correctly. If he has caused suffering to other beings, he is himself to experience the same measure of suffering. This is the law of uncompromising justice which no arbitrary grace can free him from.
It is part of man&
Rejected in particular by intuitionism are the use of impredicative definition (q. v.); the assumption that all things satisfying a given condition can be united into a set and this set then treated as an individual thing --or even the weakened form of this assumption which is found in Zermelo's Aussonderungsaxiom or axiom of subset formation (see logic, formal, § 9); the law of excluded middle as applied to propositions whose expression lequires a quantifier for which the variable involved has an infinite range. As an example of the rejection of the law of excluded middle, consider the proposition, "Either every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers or else not every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers." This proposition is intuitionistically unacceptable, because there are infinitely many even numbers greater than 2 and it is impossible to try them all one by one and decide of each whether or not it is the sum of two prime numbers. An intuitionist would accept the disjunction only after a proof had been given of one or other of the two disjoined propositions -- and in the present state of mathematical knowledge it is not certain that this can be done (it is not certain that the mathematical problem involved is solvable). If, however, we replace "greater than 2" by "greater than 2 and less than 1,000,000,000," the resulting disjunction becomes intuitionistically acceptable, since the number of numbers involved is then finite. The intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle is not to be understood as an assertion of the negation of the law of excluded middle; on the contrary, Brouwer asserts the negation of the negation of the law of excluded middle, i.e., ∼∼[p ∨ ∼p]. Still less is the intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle to be understood as the assertion of the existence of a third truth-value intermediate between truth and falsehood.
Relativism, Psychological: The psychologies principle that the character of any present conscious content is relative to and influenced by past and contemporaneous experiences of the orginism. The law of psychological relativity was prominent in the psychology of Wundt, and has recently been emphasized by Gestalt Psychology. -- L.W.
Renunciation Not a painful obligation, but the result of a free choice; nor the giving up of an object of desire in favor of another object of desire. The question of advantage or disadvantage does not enter into it; these are delusions of the personal ego. The one who truly renounces abandons the acquisitiveness and desire for personal advantage which are the law of the lower nature, and follows the law of the higher nature, which is the law of love and harmony. The question as to whether he gains or loses is then relatively meaningless for him, for he has forgotten himself, because he has found his greater self.
Right Reason: (Gr. orthos logos; L. recta ratio) The law or order exhibited in the constitution of the world, to which, according to the Stoics human law and human action should conform; the Law of Nature. -- G.R.M.
r.tadharma (ritadharma) ::: the law of the truth. rtadharma
Rudimentary or Vestigial Organs These include a number of different tissue-remnants or organs of primitive type, some of which are only transients in the developing fetus, while others persist in the bodies of animals or man, where they are dwarfed, atrophied, or functionless as far as is known. The vermiform appendix, the ear muscles, the gill clefts, pineal gland, rudimentary tail of the embryo, etc., are referred to as affording silent testimony to the reality of functions which were vitally active in primeval life, but which have long since atrophied in the course of animal and human progress (SD 2:119). The fact of such organs in the human body is adduced in support of the Darwinian theory, but it can equally well support the theory that the mammals came from man. Again, we know that, though man did not evolve from the apes, there was a time when his form somewhat resembled that which the apes now have. The possession of distinct traces in each sex of the reproductive apparatus of the other sex is biological evidence of ancient hermaphroditism. The undifferentiated sex of the embryo during its early growth also reviews the asexual character of the first root-races. The present routine process of maturation or reduction of chromosomes in the fertilized cell, and the death of the polar cells, appear to biologists as somehow unnaturally involved. This process, however, apparently in some degree, echoes distantly the change in the third root-race from an androgynous reproductive method to that of the separated sexes. The law of retardation which operates when a higher type has been evolved, now “preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower animals” (SD 2:172n). Thus, man is not the copy but the evolutionary prototype, for “the potentiality of every organ useful to animal life is locked up in Man — the microcosm of the Macrocosm” (SD 2:685). The human form is the repertory of all mammalian forms, and nature preserves organs and functions in vestigial condition against a future time when, if these organs and functions be latent and not merely in process of disappearance, they will become active again. This accounts for the occasional reversion to utterly unknown primeval types as noted in teratology. A general unity of type has been preserved throughout the ages all through the multitude of organisms which grew out of a few basic types. “The economy of Nature does not sanction the co-existence of several utterly opposed ‘ground plans’ of organic evolution on one planet” (SD 2:683).
sama (shama; çama) ::: quietude, peace, calm; rest, quiescence, passama sivity; the "divine peace and tranquil eternal repose" which replaces tamas in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, "a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, sakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity".
satyadharma ::: the Law of the Truth; the carrying out of jnana in bhava and action.
satyadharma ::: the law of the Truth; knowledge in action. satyadharm satyadharmaya aya dr drstaye
satyasya drstih srutih smrtih pratibodha iti jnanam; vrtte tu karmani ca satyadharma eva jnanam ::: [the seeing, hearing and remembering of truth, and realisation, these are jnana; and in conduct and action the Law of the Truth is jnana].
Scepticism, Fourteenth Century: At the beginning of the 14th century, Duns Scotus adopted a position which is not formally sceptical, though his critical attitude to earlier scholasticism may contain the germs of the scepticism of his century. Among Scotistic pre-sceptical tendencies may be mentioned the stress on self-knowledge rather than the knowledge of extra-mental reality, psychological voluntarism which eventuallj made the assent of judgment a matter of will rather than of intellect, and a theory of the reality of universal essences which led to a despair of the intellect's capacity to know such objects and thus spawned Ockhamism. Before 1317, Henry of Harclay noticed that, since the two terms of efficient causal connection are mutually distinct and absolute things, God, by his omnipotent will, can cause anything which naturally (naturaliter) is caused by a finite agent. He inferred from this that neither the present nor past existence of a finite external agent is necessarily involved in cognition (Pelstex p. 346). Later Petrus Aureoli and Ockham made the sime observation (Michalski, p. 94), and Ockham concluded that natural knowledge of substance and causal connection is possible only on the assumption that nature is pursuing a uniform, uninterrupted course at the moment of intuitive cognition. Without this assumption, observed sequences might well be the occasion of direct divine causal action rather than evidence of natural causation. It is possible that these sceptical views were suggested by reading the arguments of certain Moslem theologians (Al Gazali and the Mutakallimun), as well as by a consideration of miracles. The most influential sceptical author of the fourteenth century was Nicholas of Autrecourt (fl. 1340). Influenced perhaps by the Scotist conception of logical demonstration, Nicholas held that the law of noncontradiction is the ultimate and sole source of certainty. In logical inference, certainty is guaranteed because the consequent is identical with part or all of the antecedent. No logical connection can be established, therefore, between the existence or non-existence of one thing and the existence or non-existence of another and different thing. The inference from cause to effect or conversely is thus not a matter of certainty. The existence of substance, spiritual or physical, is neither known nor probable. We are unable to infer the existence of intellect or will from acts of intellection or volition, and sensible experience provides no evidence of external substances. The only certitudes properly so-called are those of immediate experience and those of principles known ex terminis together with conclusions immediately dependent on them. This thoroughgoing scepticism appears to have had considerable influence in its time, for we find many philosophers expressing, expounding, or criticizing it. John Buridan has a detailed criticism in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics (in 1 I, q. 4), Fitz-Ralph, Jacques d'Eltville, and Pierre d'Ailly maintain views similar to Nicholas', with some modifications, and there is at least one exposition of Nicholas' views in an anonymous commentary on the Sentences (British Museum, Ms. Harley 3243). These sceptical views were usually accompanied by a kind of probabilism. The condemnation of Nicholas in 1347 put a damper on the sceptical movement, and there is probably no continuity from these thinkers to the French sceptics of the 16th century. Despite this lack of direct influence, the sceptical arguments of 14th century thinkers bear marked resemblances to those employed by the French Occasionalists, Berkeley and Hume.
SELF OR SELF-REALIZATION, LAW OF The law of self says that every monad must itself acquire all the qualities and abilities requisite for omniscience and omnipotence, from the human kingdom and onwards: understanding of law and the responsibility following upon this. K 1.41.11
series ::: n. --> A number of things or events standing or succeeding in order, and connected by a like relation; sequence; order; course; a succession of things; as, a continuous series of calamitous events.
Any comprehensive group of animals or plants including several subordinate related groups.
An indefinite number of terms succeeding one another, each of which is derived from one or more of the preceding by a fixed law, called the law of the series; as, an arithmetical series; a geometrical
sin ::: adv., prep., & conj. --> Old form of Since. ::: n. --> Transgression of the law of God; disobedience of the divine command; any violation of God&
sine rule: Also known as the law of sines.
sinner ::: n. --> One who has sinned; especially, one who has sinned without repenting; hence, a persistent and incorrigible transgressor; one condemned by the law of God. ::: v. i. --> To act as a sinner.
solicitor ::: n. --> One who solicits.
An attorney or advocate; one who represents another in court; -- formerly, in English practice, the professional designation of a person admitted to practice in a court of chancery or equity. See the Note under Attorney.
The law officer of a city, town, department, or government; as, the city solicitor; the solicitor of the treasury.
"Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one"s own nature, dharma.” The Human Cycle
“Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one’s own nature, dharma.” The Human Cycle
Sri Aurobindo: "But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: . . . .” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the body, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that preceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect on its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one"s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” *Letters on Yoga
. s.t.aye (satyadharmaya drishtaye) ::: for the law of the Truth, for sight. [Īsa Upanis.ad 15]
Swadharma ::: ...our own real nature; that is our truth of being which is finding now only a constant partial expression in our various becoming in the world. The law of action determined by this Swabhava is our right law of self-shaping, function, working, our Swadharma.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 519 ::: .Swapna ::: The dream-state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 520
Tantric: Adjective to Tantra (q.v.) Tao: The Way, principle, cosmic order, nature. "The Tao that can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao." It is "vague and eluding," "deep and obscure," but "there is in it the form" and "the essence." "In it is reality." It "produced the One, the One produced the two, the two produced the three, and the three produced all things." Its "standard is the Natural." (Lao Tzu). "Tao has reality and evidence but no action nor form. It may be transmitted, but cannot be received. It may be attained, but cannot be seen. It is its own essence, and its own root." "Tao operates, and results follow." "Tao has no limit." "It is in the ant," "a tare," "a potsherd," "ordure." (Chuang Tzu, between 399 and 295 B.C.). The Confucian "Way;" the teachings of the sage; the moral order, the moral life, truth, the moral law; the moral principle. This means "the fulfillment of the law of our human nature." It is the path of man's moral life. "True manhood (jen) is that by which a man is to be a man. Generally speaking, it is the moral law" (Mencius, 371-289 B.C.). "To proceed according to benevolence and righteousness is called the Way." (Han Yu, 767-824). The Way, which means following the Reason of things, and also the Reason which is in everything and which everything obeys. (Neo-Confucianism). The Way or Moral Law in the cosmic sense, signifying "what is above the realm of corporeality," and the "successive movement of the active (yang) and the passive principles (yin)." In the latter sense as understood both in ancient Confucianism and in Neo-Confucianism, it is interchangeable with the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi). Shao K'ang-chieh (1011-1077) said that "The Moral Law is the Great Ultimate." Chang Heng-ch'u (1022-1077) identified it with the Grand Harmony (Ta Ho) and said that "from the operation of the vital force (ch'i) there is the Way." This means that the Way is the principle of being as well as the sum total of the substance and functions of things. To Ch'eng I-ch'uan (1033-1107) "There is no Way independent of the active (yang) principle and the passive (yin) principle. Yet it is precisely the Way that determines the active and passive principles. These principles are the constituents of the vital force (ch'i), which is corporeal. On the other hand, the Way transcends corporeality." To Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the Way is "the Reason why things are as they are." Tai Tung-yuan (1723-1777) understood it to mean "the incessant transformation of the universe," and "the operation of things in the world, involving the constant flow of the vital force (ch'i) and change, and unceasing production and reproduction."
That the child carries on or transmits many features from his parents cannot be denied, but it is of no greater significance than the fact that he also derives features from a variety of other sources, all which contribute materials and subordinate agents by which the karma of the individual is fulfilled. That karma is the innate character of the individual, as imbodied in the various spiritual, manasic, psychological, or astral vehicles which contribute to the composite human being. Without taking into account these acquired characteristics on the inner planes, what determines the extent or manner in which the character of the offspring will be modified by the modicum of new physical influence derived from the parents cannot be explained. For, “it is . . . unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of ‘Heredity,’ its servant” (SD 2:178).
"The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results — it is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces." Letters on Yoga
“The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results—it is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces.” Letters on Yoga
"The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
“The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers.” Letters on Yoga
The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the
The idea conveyed is the unity of all who accept the doctrine of the Lord, i.e., Buddhists. More mystically applied by Buddhist initiates to signify likewise the unity or universal brotherhood of all human beings at any time or place, who through knowledge or natural intuition follow the law of the Buddhas, the law of right and compassion.
The law of retardation means that certain individuals or groups are from time to time retarded in their forward development because the field of evolution immediately before them is already occupied by a superior aggregate group of evolving entities, which superior group exercises upon the inferior group an influence retarding the full expression of the evolving faculties of the individuals of the lower group. This can be illustrated by considering the evolution of the life-waves, or kingdoms, which run the rounds on our own planetary chain. The beasts are thus subject to a very definite law of retardation, because their immediate and future field of evolutionary unfolding is occupied by the evolving human kingdom, although it is equally true that the human kingdom exercises upon the beast kingdom beneath it a stimulating and elevating power. In the kingdoms of the planetary chain, if one such kingdom has not already reached a certain evolutionary standing on the ladder of life, it will have to wait in a more or less inactive or dormant evolutionary condition until room is made for its further progress by the passing ahead of the kingdom preceding it.
Thelema ::: A philosophical and spiritual paradigm developed in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley that emphasizes a central tenet to guide one's actions in the form of the Law of Thelema: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will." Traditionally incorporating Egyptian symbolism and its pantheon, modern Thelema as practiced by groups such as the A∴A∴ and O.T.O. tends to focus on initiations based on the Kabbalah and its Visions (e.g. K&C with the HGA, crossing the Abyss, etc.). The word "magick" with a "k" at the end comes from the Thelemic writings of Aleister Crowley.
The rejection of the law of excluded middle carries with it the rejection of various other laws of the classical propositional calculus and functional calculus of first order, including the law of double negation (and hence the method of indirect proof). In general the double negation of a proposition is weaker than the proposition itself; but the triple negation of a proposition is equivalent to its single negation. Noteworthy also is the rejection of ∼(x)F(x) ⊃ (Ex)∼F(x); but the reverse implication is valid. (The sign ⊃ here does not denote material implication, but is a distinct primitive symbol of implication.) -- A.C.
Thermodynamics That branch of the theory of heat which concerns the relations between heat and mechanical energy. The first law of thermodynamics states that when heat is converted into mechanical energy, or vice versa, the quantities of each are equivalent; it is a statement of the law of conservation of energy, so far as heat and mechanical energy are concerned. The second law states that heat cannot pass of itself from a cold body to a hotter body; or that it is impossible by means of inanimate material agencies to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest surrounding objects. This law has been supposed to lead to the conclusion that the material universe is running down, its energy passing into unavailable forms, like water power running down to a dead level, and that eventually there will be nothing left but a mass of cold matter, from which no further energy can be derived. However, this second law is not experimental but only a conjecture, subject to contradiction by any facts which may be discovered to the contrary. Further, these laws relate only to what is called a closed system, and are subject to modification by agencies from outside the system, as is shown by the qualifying clauses in the definitions.
::: "This is the omniscient who knows the law of our being and is sufficient to his works; let us build the song of his truth by our thought and make it as if a chariot on which he shall mount. When he dwells with us, then a happy wisdom becomes ours. With him for friend we cannot come to harm.” The Secret of the Veda
“This is the omniscient who knows the law of our being and is sufficient to his works; let us build the song of his truth by our thought and make it as if a chariot on which he shall mount. When he dwells with us, then a happy wisdom becomes ours. With him for friend we cannot come to harm.” The Secret of the Veda
This teaching is in all the religions of the world, expressing the law of our higher nature, which is love and harmony, as contrasted with the law of our lower nature, which makes for personal separateness and sets the individual at variance with his neighbor. Its realization in thought and conduct is an indispensable requisite to attainment on the path of wisdom and liberation. The following are selected from many similar teachings:
Though the supermind is suprarational to our intelligence and its workings occult to our apprehension, it is nothing irrationally mystic, but rather its existence and emergence is a logical necessity of the nature of existence, always provided we grant that not matter or mind alone but spirit is the fundamental reality and everywhere a universal presence. All things are a manifestation of the infinite spirit out of its own being, out of its own consciousness and by the self-realising, self-determining, self-fulfilling power of that consciousness. The Infinite, we may say, organises by the power of its self-knowledge the law of its own manifestation of being in the universe, not only the material universe present to our senses, but whatever lies behind it on whatever planes of existence. All is organised by it not under any inconscient compulsion, not according to a mental fantasy or caprice, but in its own infinite spiritual freedom according to the self-truth of its being, its infinite potentialities and its will of self-creation out of those potentialities, and the law of this self-truth is the necessity that compels created things to act and evolve each according to its own nature. The Intelligence— to give it an inadequate name—the Logos that thus organises its own manifestation is evidently something infinitely greater, more extended in knowledge, compelling in self-power, large both in the delight of its self-existence and the delight of its active being and works than the mental intelligence which is to us the highest realised degree and expression of consciousness. It is to this intelligence infinite in itself but freely organising and self-determiningly organic in its self-creation and its works that we may give for our present purpose the name of the divine supermind or gnosis.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 785-86
THOUGHT, LAW OF This is this of the law of identity is also the fundamental law of the correct perception of reality by thought: let this be this, such as sense perceives it, in each world separately. (P 1.32.10)
T'ien li: Heaven-endowed nature. The Reason of Heaven; the Divine Law; the moral principle of Heaven which is embodied in benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom (ssu tuan) (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200) the Law of Nature, which is the Reason (li) m all things and is impartial. (Tai Tung-yuan, 1723-1777). --W.T.C. T'ien ti: Heaven and Earth: as the universe; as the origin of life; as the consolation of the pure and impure vital forces (ch'i) respectively; as the active or male (yang) and the passive or female (yin) phases of the universe, respectively. --W.T.C. Timarchy: (Gr.) A type of government characterized by voluntary or acclamatory rule of worthv and competent men, not aristocrats. -- K.F.L.
“To act according to a standard of Truth or a rule or law of action (dharma) or in obedience to a superior authority or to the highest principles discovered by the reason and intelligent will and not according to one’s own fancy, vital impulses and desires. In yoga obedience to the Guru or to the Divine and the law of the Truth as declared by the Guru is the foundation of discipline.” Letters on Yoga
torah ::: Torah A Hebrew word meaning 'teaching', 'instruction', or 'law'. It is written in Hebrew (there are translations), the oldest Jewish language, and is the central and most important document of Judaism, revered by Jews through the ages. It is also known as the Law of Moses, primarily referring to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament attributed to Moses. It is accepted that when Moses received the written law on Mount Sinai he also received the oral law, so the Torah includes both the written and oral law, which encompasses the entire spectrum of authoritative Jewish religious teachings. See also Kabbalah.
TRANSFORMATION, LAW OF All material form (atoms, molecules, aggregates, worlds, planets, solar systems, aggregates of solar systems, etc.) are subject to the law of transformation. They are being formed, changed, dissolved, and re-formed. K 1.31.1
Transposition: The form of valid inference of the propositional calculus from A ⊃ B to ∼B ⊃ ∼A. The law of transposition is the theorem of the propositional calculus, [p ⊃ q] ⊃ [∼q ⊃ ∼q]. -- A.C.
Tridasa (Sanskrit) Tridaśa [from tri three + daśa ten] Thirty; as used in ancient India, it refers in round numbers to the general cycles of the Vedic deities, of which there were 33 ordinary ones: the 12 adityas, the 8 vasus, the 11 rudras, and 2 asvins. When the Hindu trimurti or triad is added to these, the number becomes 36, one of the archaic numbers of esoteric computation, not only in chronology but likewise in theology and theogony. Thirty-six is half of 72, which is 1/5 of 360, and 1/6 of the highly mystical key number 432, with ciphers added or not, according to the computation undertaken. Following the law of chronological analogy, thirty, which is 1/12 of 360, is the foundation number of esoteric computation, to which ciphers may be added according to the scheme held in mind. The 33 crores (330 million) deities usually enumerated in the Hindu pantheon are to be understood similarly, 33 being a round number for 36; for here too the 33 crores must be taken in connection with the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, themselves aggregates, giving the important figure 36.
UNITY, LAW OF The law of unity says that all monads make up a unity and that every monad for superindividual consciousness expansion must realize its unity with all life. K 1.41.9
unkind ::: a. --> Having no race or kindred; childless.
Not kind; contrary to nature, or the law of kind or kindred; unnatural.
Wanting in kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or the like; cruel; harsh; unjust; ungrateful.
Verite de fait (Verite de raison): There are two kinds of truth, according to Leibniz, truths of fact and truths of reason (or reasoning).These two classes of truths are exhaustive, and also, with the single exception of the existence of God, which has a logically anomalous position of being a necessary truth about existence, completely exclusive. Truths of reason are completely certain and necessary, for their denial involves a contradiction and is hence impossible. Truths of fact, on the other hand, are not completely certain and necessary. Their denial involves no contradiction, they rest upon experience and they have, hence, only a limited inductive certainty. The truth of inductive inferences which go beyond the evidence of immediate experience depends upon the Law of Sufficient Reason, which is the expression in logic of the choice of the best on the part of God. Since God conceivably could have chosen another world for realization, rathcr than this best of all possible worlds, these truths can never equal in certainty the truths of reason, which depend not on God's will, but on the Principle of Contradiction, which not even God himself can make to be false. -- F.L.W.
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
wickedly ::: adv. --> In a wicked manner; in a manner, or with motives and designs, contrary to the divine law or the law of morality; viciously; corruptly; immorally.
Will (Scholastic): Will is one of the two rational faculties of the human soul. Only man, as a rational animal, possesses will. Animals are prompted to action by the sensory appetites and in this obey the law of their nature, whereas human will is called free insofar as it determines itself towards the line of action it chooses. Though the objects of will are presented by the intellect, this faculty does not determine will which may still act against the intellect's judgment. The proper object of rational will is good in its universal aspect. Goodness is one of the original ("transcendental") aspects of being, envisioned under this aspect, it becomes a possible end of will. As such, it is apprehended by reason, arousing a simple volitive movement. Follow the approval of "synderesis" (v. there), striving, deliberation, consent, final approval by reason, choice of means and execution. Thus, there is a complicated interplay of intellectual and volitive performances which finally end with action. Action being necessarily about particulars and these being material, will, an "immaterial" faculty cannot get directly in touch with reality and needs, as does on its part intellect, an intermediary; the sensory appetites are the ultimate executors, while the vis cogitativa or practical reason supplies the link on the side of intellectual performance. True choice exists only in rational beings, animals appearing to deliberate are, in truth, only passively subjected to the interference of images and appetites, and their actions are automatically determined by the relative strength of these factors. While man's will is essentially free, it is restricted in the exercise of its fi eedom by imagination, emotion, habit. Whatever an end will aims at, it is always a good, be it one of a low degree. -- R.A.
Yama ::: 1. Controller, Ordainer, Lord of the Law; in the Rg-veda he seems to have been originally a form of the Sun, then one of the twin children of the wide-shining Lord of the Truth; he is the guardian of the dharma, the law of the Truth, which is a condition of immortality, and therefore himself the guardian of immortality; in the later ideas [post-Vedic] he is the God of Death. ::: 2. yama [in raja-yoga]: a rule of moral self-control.
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1:Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
2:Be yourself on stage. Nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered. ~ Bill Hicks, #KEYS
3:He who acts according to what he holds to be the law of life, ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
4:But his desire is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalms, 1:2, [T2],#KEYS
5:God is love and beauty as well as purity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #KEYS
6:The law of the supermind is unity fulfilled in diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
7:A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice, #KEYS
8:299. Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
9:The law of the body arises from the subconscient or inconscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #KEYS
10:Order is indeed the law of life, but not an artificial regulation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #KEYS
11:A diversity in oneness is the law of the manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #KEYS
12:We must always meditate on God's wisdom, keeping it in our hearts and on our lips. Your tongue must speak justice, the law of God must be in your heart. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
13:Reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #KEYS
14:n verity, there exists one law only, the law of our conscience; all truth is there controlled and verified. ~ Antoine the Healer, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
15:What is possible, must one day be, for that is the law of the omnipotent Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ladder of Self-Transcendence, #KEYS
16:The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
17:The law of God is more and more violated, and the gift of life is being daily attacked through the innumerable abortions which are being carried out." ~ Our Lady to Father Stefano Gobbi, #KEYS
18:Conscience is called the law of our understanding because it is a judgment of reason derived from the natural law ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 17.1ad1)., #KEYS
19:The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, #KEYS
20:Ethics must eventually perceive that the law of good which it seeks is the law of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #KEYS
21:The manifestation of the Lord in life and works is the law of our being and the object of our world-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #KEYS
22:The depths are linked to the heights and the Law of the one Truth creates and works everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #KEYS
23:A rigid standardisation, however necessary for the mind's arrangement of things, could not be the law of the spiritual life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #KEYS
24:The deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one's own nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #KEYS
25:Dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #KEYS
26:Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
27:The religious instinct in man is most of all the one instinct in him that cannot be killed, it only changes its form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #KEYS
28:Nothing would confess its own pretence
Even to itself in the ambiguous heart:
A vast deception was the law of things; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
29:He alone knows the law of life. Whoever does not seek out clearly what is the true good, cannot correct himself with sincerity and does not arrive at true perfection. ~ Confucius, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
30:It has joined its hunger to the hunger of earth,
It has given the law of craving to our lives, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.04#KEYS
31:No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
32:The law of the grand study or practical philosophy consists in developing and bringing into light the luminous principle of reason which we have received from heaven. ~ Confucius "Ta-hio" I, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
33:To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To fix the eternal's touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
34:Everything proceeding from the profound nature of things shows the influence of the law of number... From this are derived the four elements, the succession of the seasons, the movement of the stars, and the course of the heavens. ~ Boethius, De arithmeticae artis libri duo, #KEYS
35:It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #KEYS
36:That life which has passed thro spiritual regeneration will last for ever. It is of the spirit, & not subject to destruction or decay. The law of physical regeneration is the law of physical change, but the law of spiritual regeneration brings about thor change of human life ~ SWAMI TRIGUNATITANANDA, #KEYS
37:The seeker ought to avoid any preference of himself to another; he should efface pride and arrogance from his heart, arm himself with patience and endurance and follow the law of silence so that he may keep himself from vain words. ~ Baha-ul Iah: Kitab-el-ikon, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
38:he true law of life is so simple, clear and intelligible that men cannot excuse their bad living under the pretext of ignorance. If men live in contradiction to the law of their true living, they are repudiating reason. And that is in fact what they do. ~ Tolstoi, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
39:Aug 6 The Divine Mother is the power of all causation. She energizes every cause unmistakably to produce the effect. Her will is the only law, and as She cannot make a mistake, nature's laws--Her will--can never be changed. She is the life of the law of karma, or causation.~ Swami Vivekananda, #KEYS
40:The possession of Knowledge, unless accompanied by a manifestation and expression in Action, is like the hoarding of precious metals - a vain and foolish thing. Knowledge, like Wealth, is intended for Use. The Law of Use is Universal, and he who violates it suffers by reason of his conflict with natural forces. ~ The Kybalion, #KEYS
41:For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
42:The Isha Upanishad also speaks of the golden lid hiding the face of the Truth by removing which the Law of the Truth is seen and the highest knowledge in which the One Purusha is known (so'ham asmi) is described as the kalyan.atama form of the Sun. All this seems to refer to the supramental states of which the Sun is the symbol.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, Integral Yoga and Other Paths -IV,#KEYS
43:How many nights have you remained awake repeating science and poring over books, and have denied yourself sleep. I do not know what the purpose of it was. If it was attaining worldly ends and securing its vanities, and acquiring its dignities, and surpassing your contemporaries, and such like, woe to you and again woe; but if your purpose in it was the vitalizing of the Law of the Prophet, and the training of your character, and breaking the soul commanding to evil, then blessed are you and again blessed. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #KEYS
44:Has the subconscient accepted the Higher Consciousness?
If the subconscient were to accept the Consciousness, it would no longer be the subconscient, it would become consciousness. I think that you mean: has the subconscient submitted to the rule, to the law of the higher Consciousness? This is not done as a whole, for the subconscient is vast and complex; there is a mental subconscient, a vital subconscient, a physical subconscient, a bodily subconscient. We have to wrest the subconscient fragment by fragment from its ignorant and inert...
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
45:sacrifice, the redeeming principle :::
The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul, submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 106,#KEYS
46:But his most important capacity is that of developing the powers of the higher principles in himself, a greater power of life, a purer light of mind, the illumination of supermind, the infinite being, consciousness and delight of spirit. By an ascending movement he can develop his human imperfection towards that greater perfection. But whatever his aim, however exalted his aspiration, he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection. This present law of his being starts from the inconscience of the material universe, an involution of the soul in form and subjection to material nature; and
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology Of Perfection,#KEYS
47:Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability- and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually-let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don't try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,#KEYS
48:Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.
A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe. ~ Nikola Tesla,#KEYS
49:Abrahadabra is a word that first publicly appeared in The Book of the Law, the central sacred text of Thelema . Its author, Aleister Crowley, described it as the Word of the Aeon, which signifieth The Great Work accomplished. This is in reference to his belief that the writing of Liber Legis (another name for The Book of the Law) heralded a new Aeon for mankind that was ruled by the godRa-Hoor-Khuit (a form of Horus). Abrahadabra is, therefore, the magical formula of this new age. It is not to be confused with the Word of the Law of the Aeon, which is Thelema, meaning Will. ... Abrahadabra is also referred to as the Word of Double Power. More specifically, it represents the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm
represented by the pentagram and the hexagram, the rose and the cross, the circle and the square, the 5 and the 6 (etc.), as also called the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of ones Holy Guardian Angel. In Commentaries (1996), Crowley says that the word is a symbol of the establishment of the pillar or phallus of the Macrocosm...in the void of the Microcosm.
~ Wikipedia,#KEYS
50:For this is the other face of the psychic: not only is it joy and sweetness, but also quiet strength, as if it were forever above every possible tragedy - an invulnerable master. In this case, too, the details of a scene can be indelibly engraved. But what passes on to the next life is not so much the details as the essence of the scene: we will be struck by certain repetitive patterns of events or deadlocked situations that have an air of déjà vu and seem surrounded by an aura of fatality - for what has not been overcome in the past returns again and again, each time with a slightly different appearance, but basically always identical, until we confront the old knot and untie it. Such is the law of inner progress. Generally, however, the memory of actual physical circumstances does not remain, because, although our small surface consciousness makes much of them, they are, after all, of little significance. There is even a spontaneous mechanism that erases the profusion of useless past memories, just as those of the present life soon become eradicated. If we glance behind us, without thinking, what is actually left of our present life? A nebulous mass with perhaps two or three outstanding images; all the rest is blotted out. This is likewise the case for the soul and its past lives.
~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo Or The Adventure Of Consciousness,#KEYS
51:Adoration, before it turns into an element of the deeper Yoga of devotion, a petal of the flower of love, its homage and self-uplifting to its sun, must bring with it, if it is profound, an increasing consecration of the being to the Divine who is adored. And one element of this consecration must be a self-purifying so as to become fit for the divine contact, or for the entrance of the Divine into the temple of our inner being, or for his self-revelation in the shrine of the heart. This purifying may be ethical in its character, but it will not be merely the moralists seeking for the right and blameless action or even, when once we reach the stage of Yoga, an obedience to the law of God as revealed in formal religion; but it will be a throwing away, katharsis, of all that conflicts whether with the idea of the Divine in himself or of the Divine in ourselves. In the former case it becomes in habit of feeling and outer act an imitation of the Divine, in the latter a growing into his likeness in our nature. What inner adoration is to ceremonial worship, this growing into the divine likeness is to the outward ethical life. It culminates in a sort of liberation by likeness to the Divine, a liberation from our lower nature and a change into the divine nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion, 572,#KEYS
52:I have spoken of Sri Aurobindo's life as a series of radical turns that changed the movement, the mode of life, almost radically every time the turn came. The turn meant a break with the past and a moving into the future. We have a word for this phenomenon of radical and unforeseen change. You know the word, it is intervention. Intervention means, as the Mother has explained to us more than once, the entry of a higher, a greater force from another world into the already existent world. Into the familiar established mode of existence that runs on the routine of some definite rules and regulations, the Law of the present, there drops all on a sudden another mode of being and consciousness and force, a Higher Law which obliterates or changes out of recognition the familiar mode of living; it is thus that one rises from level to level, moves out into wider ranges of being, otherwise one stands still, remains for ever what he is, stagnant, like an unchanging clod or at the most a repetitive animal. The higher the destiny, the higher also the source of intervention, that is to say, more radical - more destructive yet more creative - destructive of the past, creative of the future.
I have spoken of the passing away of Sri Aurobindo as a phenomenon of intervention, a great decisive event in view of the work to be done. Even so we may say that his birth too was an act of intervention, a deliberate divine intervention. The world needed it, the time was ripe and the intervention happened and that was his birth as an embodied human being - to which we offer our salutation and obeisance today. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta,#KEYS
53:The whole history of mankind and especially the present condition of the world unite in showing that far from being merely hypothetical, the case supposed has always been actual and is actual to-day on a vaster scale than ever before. My contention is that while progress in some of the great matters of human concern has been long proceeding in accordance with the law of a rapidly increasing geometric progression, progress in the other matters of no less importance has advanced only at the rate of an arithmetical progression or at best at the rate of some geometric progression of relatively slow growth. To see it and to understand it we have to pay the small price of a little observation and a little meditation.
Some technological invention is made, like that of a steam engine or a printing press, for example; or some discovery of scientific method, like that of analytical geometry or the infinitesimal calculus; or some discovery of natural law, like that of falling bodies or the Newtonian law of gravitation. What happens? What is the effect upon the progress of knowledge and invention? The effect is stimulation. Each invention leads to new inventions and each discovery to new discoveries; invention breeds invention, science begets science, the children of knowledge produce their kind in larger and larger families; the process goes on from decade to decade, from generation to generation, and the spectacle we behold is that of advancement in scientific knowledge and technological power according to the law and rate of a rapidly increasing geometric progression or logarithmic function. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,#KEYS
54:Though the supermind is suprarational to our intelligence and its workings occult to our apprehension, it is nothing irrationally mystic, but rather its existence and emergence is a logical necessity of the nature of existence, always provided we grant that not matter or mind alone but spirit is the fundamental reality and everywhere a universal presence. All things are a manifestation of the infinite spirit out of its own being, out of its own consciousness and by the self-realising, self-determining, self-fulfilling power of that consciousness. The Infinite, we may say, organises by the power of its self-knowledge the law of its own manifestation of being in the universe, not only the material universe present to our senses, but whatever lies behind it on whatever planes of existence. All is organised by it not under any inconscient compulsion, not according to a mental fantasy or caprice, but in its own infinite spiritual freedom according to the self-truth of its being, its infinite potentialities and its will of self-creation out of those potentialities, and the law of this self-truth is the necessity that compels created things to act and evolve each according to its own nature. The Intelligence- to give it an inadequate name-the Logos that thus organises its own manifestation is evidently something infinitely greater, more extended in knowledge, compelling in self-power, large both in the delight of its self-existence and the delight of its active being and works than the mental intelligence which is to us the highest realised degree and expression of consciousness. It is to this intelligence infinite in itself but freely organising and self-determiningly organic in its self-creation and its works that we may give for our present purpose the name of the divine supermind or gnosis.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 785-86,#KEYS
55:Shastra is the knowledge and teaching laid down by intuition, experience and wisdom, the science and art and ethic of life, the best standards available to the race. The half-awakened man who leaves the observance of its rule to follow the guidance of his instincts and desires, can get pleasure but not happiness; for the inner happiness can only come by right living. He cannot move to perfection, cannot acquire the highest spiritual status. The law of instinct and desire seems to come first in the animal world, but the manhood of man grows by the pursuit of truth and religion and knowledge and a right life. The Shastra, the recognised Right that he has set up to govern his lower members by his reason and intelligent will, must therefore first be observed and made the authority for conduct and works and for what should or should not be done, till the instinctive desire nature is schooled and abated and put down by the habit of self-control and man is ready first for a freer intelligent self-guidance and then for the highest supreme law and supreme liberty of the spiritual nature.
For the Shastra in its ordinary aspect is not that spiritual law, although at its loftiest point, when it becomes a science and art of spiritual living, Adhyatma-shastra, - the Gita itself describes its own teaching as the highest and most secret Shastra, - it formulates a rule of the self-transcendence of the sattwic nature and develops the discipline which leads to spiritual transmutation. Yet all Shastra is built on a number of preparatory conditions, dharmas; it is a means, not an end. The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit when abandoning all dharmas the soul turns to God for its sole law of action, acts straight from the divine will and lives in the freedom of the divine nature, not in the Law, but in the Spirit. This is the development of the teaching which is prepared by the next question of Arjuna. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita,#KEYS
56:The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine Shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 138, #KEYS
57:the three stages of the ascent :::
There are three stages of the ascent, -at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance.In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process.In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will,#KEYS
58:Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient, unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads them according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet she has more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [39],#KEYS
59:Vijnana, true ideation, called ritam, truth or vedas, knowledge in the Vedas, acts in human mind by four separate functions; revelation, termed drishti, sight; inspiration termed sruti,hearing; and the two faculties of discernment, smriti, memory,which are intuition, termed ketu, and discrimination, termed daksha, division, or viveka, separation. By drishti we see ourselves the truth face to face, in its own form, nature or self-existence; by sruti we hear the name, sound or word by which the truth is expressed & immediately suggested to the knowledge; by ketu we distinguish a truth presented to us behind a veil whether of result or process, as Newton discovered the law of gravitation hidden behind the fall of the apple; by viveka we distinguish between various truths and are able to put them in their right place, order and relation to each other, or, if presented with mingled truth & error, separate the truth from the falsehood. Agni Jatavedas is termed in the Veda vivichi, he who has the viveka, who separates truth from falsehood; but this is only a special action of the fourth ideal faculty & in its wider scope, it is daksha, that which divides & rightly distributes truth in its multiform aspects. The ensemble of the four faculties is Vedas or divine knowledge. When man is rising out of the limited & error-besieged mental principle, the faculty most useful to him, most indispensable is daksha or viveka. Drishti of Vijnana transmuted into terms of mind has become observation, sruti appears as imagination, intuition as intelligent perception, viveka as reasoning & intellectual judgment and all of these are liable to the constant touch of error. Human buddhi, intellect, is a distorted shadow of the true ideative faculties. As we return from these shadows to their ideal substance viveka or daksha must be our constant companion; for viveka alone can get rid of the habit of mental error, prevent observation being replaced by false illumination, imagination by false inspiration, intelligence by false intuition, judgment & reason by false discernment. The first sign of human advance out of the anritam of mind to the ritam of the ideal faculty is the growing action of a luminous right discernment which fixes instantly on the truth, feels instantly the presence of error. The fullness, the manhana of this viveka is the foundation & safeguard of Ritam or Vedas. The first great movement of Agni Jatavedas is to transform by the divine will in mental activity his lower smoke-covered activity into the bright clearness & fullness of the ideal discernment. Agne adbhuta kratw a dakshasya manhana.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire, 717,#KEYS
60:All Yoga is a turning of the human mind and the human soul, not yet divine in realisation, but feeling the divine impulse and attraction in it, towards that by which it finds its greater being. Emotionally, the first form which this turning takes must be that of adoration. In ordinary religion this adoration wears the form of external worship and that again develops a most external form of ceremonial worship. This element is ordinarily necessary because the mass of men live in their physical minds, cannot realise anything except by the force of a physical symbol and cannot feel that they are living anything except by the force of a physical action. We might apply here the Tantric gradation of sadhana, which makes the way of the pasu, the herd, the animal or physical being, the lowest stage of its discipline, and say that the purely or predominantly ceremonial adoration is the first step of this lowest part of the way. It is evident that even real religion, - and Yoga is something more than religion, - only begins when this quite outward worship corresponds to something really felt within the mind, some genuine submission, awe or spiritual aspiration, to which it becomes an aid, an outward expression and also a sort of periodical or constant reminder helping to draw back the mind to it from the preoccupations of ordinary life. But so long as it is only an idea of the Godhead to which one renders reverence or homage, we have not yet got to the beginning of Yoga. The aim of Yoga being union, its beginning must always be a seeking after the Divine, a longing after some kind of touch, closeness or possession. When this comes on us, the adoration becomes always primarily an inner worship; we begin to make ourselves a temple of the Divine, our thoughts and feelings a constant prayer of aspiration and seeking, our whole life an external service and worship. It is as this change, this new soul-tendency grows, that the religion of the devotee becomes a Yoga, a growing contact and union. It does not follow that the outward worship will necessarily be dispensed with, but it will increasingly become only a physical expression or outflowing of the inner devotion and adoration, the wave of the soul throwing itself out in speech and symbolic act.
Adoration, before it turns into an element of the deeper Yoga of devotion, a petal of the flower of love, its homage and self-uplifting to its sun, must bring with it, if it is profound, an increasing consecration of the being to the Divine who is adored. And one element of this consecration must be a self-purifying so as to become fit for the divine contact, or for the entrance of the Divine into the temple of our inner being, or for his selfrevelation in the shrine of the heart. This purifying may be ethical in its character, but it will not be merely the moralist's seeking for the right and blameless action or even, when once we reach the stage of Yoga, an obedience to the law of God as revealed in formal religion; but it will be a throwing away, katharsis, of all that conflicts whether with the idea of the Divine in himself or of the Divine in ourselves. In the former case it becomes in habit of feeling and outer act an imitation of the Divine, in the latter a growing into his likeness in our nature. What inner adoration is to ceremonial worship, this growing into the divine likeness is to the outward ethical life. It culminates in a sort of liberation by likeness to the Divine,1 a liberation from our lower nature and a change into the divine nature.
Consecration becomes in its fullness a devoting of all our being to the Divine; therefore also of all our thoughts and our works. Here the Yoga takes into itself the essential elements of the Yoga of works and the Yoga of knowledge, but in its own manner and with its own peculiar spirit. It is a sacrifice of life and works to the Divine, but a sacrifice of love more than a tuning of the will to the divine Will. The bhakta offers up his life and all that he is and all that he has and all that he does to the Divine. This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Way of Devotion, 571 [T1],#KEYS
61:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.
This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it m an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Concentration,#KEYS
62:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:All is bound by the law of causation ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 2:The Law of Attraction is the Law of Love. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 3:The law of heaven and earth is life for life. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 4:& 5:Stucy carefully the law of cause and effect. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove 6:Study carefully the law of cause and effect. ~ vernon-howard, @wisdomtrove 7:The law of attraction says like attracts like. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 8:The law of Karma is the law of causation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 9:Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 10:It's the law of averages: put in more, come out with more. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 11:The law of evolution is that the strongest survives. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 12:The law of God cannot be fulfilled by external obedience. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 13:Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 14:Force is the law of animals, men are ruled by conviction. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 15:In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 16:In the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 17:Men were put into the world to teach women the law of compromise. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 18:Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 19:What I need is a lawyer who specializes in the law of the jungle. ~ ashleigh-brilliant, @wisdomtrove 20:It is the law of nature that woman should be held under the dominance of man. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 21:The law of "An eye for an eye" will eventually leave everyone blind. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 22:The Universe offers all things to all people through the law of attraction. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 23:Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, is the law of the highest universe. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 24:Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 25:Everything, both mental and physical, is rigidly bound by the law of causation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 26:History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 27:But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 28:If you step out of a tenth story window you do not break the law of gravity, you confirm it. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 29:The body is subject to the law of growth and decay, what grows must of necessity decay. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 30:The more people you contact, the higher your sales will be because of the law of probabilities. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 31:Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star. ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 32:You are the one who calls the law of attraction into action, and you do it through your thoughts. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 33:Well the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers. ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 34:Success attracts success and failure attracts failure because of the law of harmonious attraction. ~ napoleon-hill, @wisdomtrove 35:God works according to the law of gradual growth, so don't be discouraged if your progress seems slow. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 36:The Law of the Few... says that one critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 37:Start telling the story of your amazing life, and the law of attraction must make sure you receive it! ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 38:The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 39:Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 40:I know that I cannot take responsibility for other people. We are all under the law of our own consciousness. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 41:The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 42:To use the law of attraction to your advantage, make it a habitual way of being, not just a one-time event. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 43:It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 44:The law of attraction which holds good for the heavenly bodies also holds good for the smallest particles. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 45:Internal and external nature, mind and matter, are in time and space, and are bound by the law of causation. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 46:The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 47:In the school I went to, they asked a kid to prove the law of gravity and he threw the teacher out of the window. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 48:The law of attraction is the law of creation. Quantum physicists tell us that the entire Universe emerged from thought! ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 49:The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law. ~ reinhold-niebuhr, @wisdomtrove 50:You can use the law of attraction to create your whole life in advance, right down to the next thing you are doing today. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 51:Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 52:There is nothing in the law of God that will rob you of happiness; it only denies you that which would cost you sorrow. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 53:Evil can be helped to fade away more quickly if we remain in obedience to the Law of Love - evil must be overcome with good. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 54:With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 55:The Law of Attraction requires that we focus our attention on what we do want, rather than what we don't want, Focus on loving you. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 56:You are the ruler of a kingdom, and whatever you think and feel becomes the law of your kingdom - the law within your body. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 57:When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of The Law of Dharma. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 58:The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial and impersonal as the law of gravity is. It is precise and it is exact ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 59:As you think of yourself living in abundance, you are powerfully and consciously determining your life through the law of attraction. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 60:Where principles and heart stand in conflict with each other, let us make the law of the spirit free from the law of principles. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove 61:Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 62:The law of cause and effect: If you do what other successful people do, you will eventually get the results that other successful people get. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 63:Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is. ~ lao-tzu, @wisdomtrove 64:The Law of Concentration states that whatever you dwell upon, grows. The more you think about something, the more it becomes part of your reality. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 65:When you need money, it is a powerful feeling within you, and so of course through the law of attraction you will continue to attract needing money. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 66:I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don't think I'm big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 67:It is imperative to contest all factions for complete victory, so the army is not garrisoned and the profit can be total. This is the law of strategic siege. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 68:For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 69:The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction that says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 70:Your prayer causes you to focus, and the Law of Attraction causes everything in the Universe that's in vibrational harmony with your focus to come to you. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 71:There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 72:Is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If nonviolence is to be the law of our being, the future is with women. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 73:For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God. ~ miguel-de-cervantes, @wisdomtrove 74:And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 75:Whatever We Hold in Thought Comes True in Our Experience; Like Attracts Like; we experiment with the Law of Changing Appearances, to make our outer world reflect our inner. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 76:Your body is malleable; you can sculpt it over time with daily habits of diet and exercise. The law of accommodation reminds us that the body may change slowly, but it will change. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 77:A new education from birth onwards must be built up. Education must be reconstructed and based on the law of nature and not on the preconceived notions and prejudices of adult society. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 78:The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 79:We worship God, but have no faith in the workings of God's laws of love. The world awaits the living of the law of love, which will reach the divine within all human beings and transform them. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 80:An awareness of the Law of Attraction and an understanding of how it works is essential to living life on purpose. In fact, it is essential to living the life of joy that you came forth to live. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 81:Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition... these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 82:The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want... ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 83:Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove 84:The lesson of the way of love is that evil can only be overcome by good. We don't need to reach out and tear down the things that are evil because nothing which is contrary to the law of love can endure. ~ peace-pilgrim, @wisdomtrove 85:In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 86:Activity equals results. If you want to increase your success, increase your activity. Increase contact with customers. The more people you contact, the higher your sales will be because of the law of probabilities. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 87:Examples of principles include the law of the harvest (You reap whatever you sow in the long term), thrift, industry, trust, saving for future needs, self- reliance, reaching out and helping other people, etc. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 88:The person who discovered the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone to see all its workings. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 89:The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 90:The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 91:Anything you give your attention to will become your ‘truth.’ The Law of Attraction says it must. Your life, and everyone else’s, too, is but a reflection of the predominance of your thoughts. There is no exception to this. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 92:In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 93:If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 94:Reality is always true to itself. When you're in harmony with it, you experience bliss. As soon as you are not in harmony with it, you experience pain. This is the law of the universe; it is the way things are. Nobody gets out of this law. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 95:God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 96:If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher, the law of averages - not to mention the myth of Icarus - predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. ~ oprah-winfrey, @wisdomtrove 97:If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God. But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ. And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 98:Change is the law of life and of relations between nations. When two great peoples such as ours, energetic and optimistic, live side by side in all the diversity that freedom offers, change is rapid and brings in its wake problems, sometimes frictions. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 99:The beautiful thing about the law of attraction is that you can begin where you are, and you can begin to think, real thinking, and you can begin to generate within yourself a feeling tone of harmony and happiness. The law will begin to respond to that. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 100:Group Meditation is a castle that protects the new spiritual aspirants as well as the veteran meditators. Meditating together increases the degree of Self-realization of each member of the group by the law of invisible vibratory exchange of group magnetism. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 101:The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' & 102:Visualization is the process of creating pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying what you want. When you visualize, you generate powerful thoughts and feelings of having it now. The law of attraction then returns that reality to you, just as you saw it in your mind. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 103:The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 104:A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 105:The universe does not judge us; it only provides consequences and lessons and opportunities to balance and learn through the law of cause and effect. Compassion is the recognition that we are each doing the best we can within the limits of our current beliefs and capacities. ~ dan-millman, @wisdomtrove 106:The law of attraction says there are no limits and anything is possible. Your imagination has no limits, and anything is possible for you to imagine! Isn't it interesting that the law of attraction and your imagination say the same thing? Think about it. What's it telling you? ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 107:The law of correspondence says your outer world is a mirror of your inner world. Your outer world corresponds to your inner world. Your outer world of your relationships-especially with your children and spouse-simply corresponds to how you feel about yourself, how you're doing ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 108:For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 109:For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 110:The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 111:If the peasants are in open rebellion, then they are outside the law of God. Therefore let all who are able slash, strike down, and kill (those who rebel) openly and secretly, remembering that there can be nothing more venomous, harmful, or devilish than a rebel. It is exactly like killing a mad dog. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 112: M: Must one suffer only for one's own sins? Are we really separate? In this vast ocean of life, we suffer for the sins of others, and make others suffer for our sins. Of course, the law of balance rules Supreme and accounts are squared in the end. But while life lasts, we affect each other deeply. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 113:The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost- for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 114:The Law of Detachment says that in order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn’t mean that you give up the intention to create your desire. You don’t give up the intention, and you don’t give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 115:What will you do when the Law of God comes in terror; when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave; when the eyes of God shall burn their way into your guilty soul; when the great books shall be opened and all your sin and shame shall be punished... can you stand against an angry Law in that Day? ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 116:To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 117:All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 118:Be grateful for what you have now. As you begin to think about all the things in your life you are grateful for, you will be amazed at the never ending thoughts that come back to you of more things to be grateful for. You have to make a start, and then the law of attraction will receive those grateful thoughts and give you more just like them. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 119:According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 120:The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by & 121:When we do align with it, we thrive. And when we do not, we suffer. This is not "punishment." It is merely the Law of Cause and Effect. With each thought we think, we either align with universal love, or we disconnect ourselves from it. Whichever is our choice determines whether we then feel connected to, or disconnected, from our own true Selves. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 122:As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 123:Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key area. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesman are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic , your resources ought to be solely concentrated on these three groups. No one else matters. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 124:Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgets it, so it is with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 125:& 126:Practicing the Law of Giving is actually very simple; if you want joy, give joy to others; if you want love, learn to give love; if you want attention and appreciation, learn to give attention and appreciation; if you want material affluence, help others to become materially affluent. In fact, the easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 127:But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 128:These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 129:The frequency of anger attracts the frequency of anger, the frequency of greed attracts the frequency of greed, and so on. This is the law of attraction. Negativity attracts negativity, just as love attracts love. Therefore, the world of an angry person is filled with angry people, the world of a greedy person is filled with greedy people, and a loving person lives in a world of loving people. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 130:I see no good reason why the views given this volume [The Origin of Species] should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, & 131:He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form. "Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?" "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 132:Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30 ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 133:The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 134:It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and wellbeing, he may be enabled to labour, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfiling the law of Christ. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 135:The Law of Attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you feel. When you feel lonely, you attract more loneliness. When you feel poor, you attract more poverty. When you feel sick, you attract more sickness. When you feel unhappy, you attract more unhappiness. When you feel healthy and vital and alive and prosperous—you attract more of all of those things. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 136:You see, the Law of Attraction is responding to your vibration, not to the reality you are currently living - but if your vibration continues to be only about the reality you are living, nothing can change. You can easily change your vibrational point of attraction by visualizing the lifestyle you desire and holding your attention upon those images until you begin to feel relief, which will indicate that a true vibrational shift has occurred. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 137:According to the law of Dharma you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world - and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that creates affluence. Expressing your talents to fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 138:the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation. Equality, in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given us, but is the result of human organization insofar as it is guided by the principle of justice. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 139:I am ashamed of some christians because they have so much dependence on Parliment and the law of the land. Much good may Parliment ever do to true religion except by mistake! As to getting the law of the land to touch our religion, we earnestly cry, `Hands off! Leave us alone.' Your Sunday bills and all other forms of the act-of-Parliment religion seem to me to be all wrong. Give us a fair field and no favor, and our faith has no cause to fear. Christ wants no help from Caesar. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 140:I wanted to pray for an hour, but I keep thinking and thinking, and always sick thoughts, and my head aches - what is the use of praying? - it's only a sin! It is strange, too, that I am not sleepy: in great, too great sorrow, after the first outbursts one is always sleepy. Men condemned to death, they say, sleep very soundly on the last night. And so it must be, it si the law of nature, otherwise their strength would not hold out... I lay down on the sofa but I did not sleep... ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 141:While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 142:Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell? ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 143:Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell? ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 144:What are wanted ... are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes... but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth ... that for our life one law is valid - the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 145:To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 146:Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 147:Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 148:What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between humanity and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:The Law of One – You! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
2:Love is the law of life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
3:The law of heaven is love. ~ Hosea Ballou, #NFDB
4:Evolution is the Law of Life ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
5:Custom is the law of fools. ~ John Vanbrugh, #NFDB
6:The Law of Wonder rules my life at last, ~ Rumi, #NFDB
7:The Law of the Lord is a love story. ~ Russ Ramsey, #NFDB
8:The Secret is the law of attraction ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
9:You know the law of averages says: ~ Steve Goodman, #NFDB
10:The people's safety is the law of God. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
11:they have rejected the law of the LORD, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
12:Belief in the Law of Small Numbers. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
13:The law of life is the law of belief. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
14:"The Secret" is the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
15:All is bound by the law of causation ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
16:It's the law of the tiger here. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
17:The Law of Attraction is the Law of Love. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
18:life is the law of unintended consequences. ~ A J Stewart, #NFDB
19:It is the law of love that rules mankind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
20:The law of heaven and earth is life for life. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
21:The law of your mind is the law of belief. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
22:The law of attraction is the law of creation ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
23:Study carefully the law of cause and effect. ~ Vernon Howard, #NFDB
24:The law of attraction says like attracts like. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
25:The law of Karma is the law of causation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
26:Self-defense is a part of the law of nature; ~ William Barclay, #NFDB
27:Every man is where he is by the law of his being; ~ James Allen, #NFDB
28:Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
29:It’s up to you how the law of karma all works out. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
30:The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
31:Harmony and not strife is the law of yogic living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
32:The law of love knows no bounds of space or time. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
33:the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbour, and ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
34:Chaos is the law of nature, order is the dream of man... ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
35:Progress is The law of life: man is not Man as yet. ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
36:The law of the innermost form of the essay is heresy ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
37:Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
38:It's the law of averages: put in more, come out with more. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
39:The law of attraction will certainly and unerringly ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
40:Difference in unity is the law of higher manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
41:He who acts according to what he holds to be the law of life, ~ Tolstoi, #NFDB
42:The law of evolution is that the strongest survives. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
43:The law of the realm cannot be changed but by Parliament. ~ Edward Coke, #NFDB
44:Love is the exception to the law of diminishing returns. ~ Tommy Wallach, #NFDB
45:The law of the universe is the more you try, the more you get. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
46:The practice of the Court forms the law of the Court. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
47:Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
48:Don't leave it to the law of averages to make you break even. ~ Mike Caro, #NFDB
49:The law of God cannot be fulfilled by external obedience. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
50:Christianity is part of the law of England. ~ John Scott 1st Earl of Eldon, #NFDB
51:Difference in unity is the law of the higher manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
52:The law of self-preservation is higher than written law. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
53:The Law of Serendipity: Lady Luck favors the one who tries ~ Barbara Oakley, #NFDB
54:Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
55:Society's law was lax compared to the law of conscience ~ Patricia Highsmith, #NFDB
56:What I'm doing is obeying the law of diffusion of innovations. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
57:The law of the LORD is perfect, [3] p reviving the soul; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
58:The will of the people shall be the law of the land ~ Robert M La Follette Sr, #NFDB
59:Force is the law of animals, men are ruled by conviction. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
60:In the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
61:Men were put into the world to teach women the law of compromise. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
62:The law of process says — leaders develop daily, not in a day. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
63:In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
64:The law of diminishing returns is something I really believe in. ~ Thomas Keller, #NFDB
65:Custom, madam, is the law of fools, but it shall never govern me. ~ John Vanbrugh, #NFDB
66:Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
67:The popish religion is now unknown to the law of this country. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
68:RBI guidelines are just that, guidelines. Not the law of the land. ~ Debashis Basu, #NFDB
69:Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
70:Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
71:Very often the law of extremity demands an attention to irrelevance. ~ Janet Frame, #NFDB
72:What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
73:If non-violence is the Law of our being, the future is with Women. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
74:What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
75:ROTA TARO ORAT TORA ATOR The wheel of Tarot speaks the law of Hathor. ~ Mary K Greer, #NFDB
76:The law of sowing and reaping is the most trustworthy law of behavior. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
77:The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
78:Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
79:Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards. ~ Jules Verne, #NFDB
80:The law of mosaics: how to deal with parts in the absence of wholes. ~ Ronald Sukenick, #NFDB
81:Jesus broke the law of tradition when the love of persons demanded it. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
82:The law of attraction is giving you what you are thinking about – period! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
83:But the Law of Magnetism really is true: who you are is who you attract. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
84:But the law of magnetism really is true: who you are is who you attract. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
85:It is the law of nature that woman should be held under the dominance of man. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
86:The law of attraction or the law of love... they are one and the same. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
87:THE LAW OF THE CONTRACTION: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus. ~ Al Ries, #NFDB
88:Work is the law of the modern world, which has no place for lazy people. ~ Mihai Eminescu, #NFDB
89:That is the only relation in life that is not subject to the law of change. ~ Henrik Ibsen, #NFDB
90:the relation between IQ and success follows the law of diminishing returns. ~ Sean Patrick, #NFDB
91:The Universe offers all things to all people through the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
92:Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
93:Everything Dies. That is the law of life-the bitter unchangeable law ~ David Clement Davies, #NFDB
94:It’s the law of the jungle, my man, if you’re in the trees you got to swing ... ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
95:Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
96:Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours. ~ Maria Edgeworth, #NFDB
97:Self-sacrifice, not self-assertion, is the law of the highest universe. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
98:The law of attraction simply gives you whatever it is you are thinking about ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
99:Swadeshi is the only doctrine consistent with the law of humanity and love. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
100:The law of "An eye for an eye" will eventually leave everyone blind. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
101:The law of attraction simply gives you whatever it is you are thinking about. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
102:Everything is in the process of becoming something else. It’s the law of change. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
103:It's not like there's a law against flying." "Yes there is. The law of gravity. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
104:It’s not like there’s a law against flying.” “Yes there is. The law of gravity. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
105:The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
106:THE LAW OF THE CHAIN The Strength of the Team Is Impacted by Its Weakest Link ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
107:Gratitude is the law of increase, and complaint is the law of decrease. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB
108:In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
109:The greatest thing that science teaches you is the law of unintended consequences. ~ Ann Druyan, #NFDB
110:The Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider any culture is spread, the thinner it gets. ~ Alvin Toffler, #NFDB
111:2:6.8
The love of God saves the sinner; the law of God destroys the sin. ~ Urantia Foundation,#NFDB
112:Change is the law of God's mind and resistance to it is the source of all pain. ~ Craig Ferguson, #NFDB
113:the laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them. ~ Scott Hahn, #NFDB
114:Whatever belief I am practicing the Law of Attraction will validate with evidence. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
115:Work is the law of life, and to reject it as boredom is to submit to it as torment. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
116:Absolute calm is not the law of ocean. And it is the same with the ocean of life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
117:Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization ~ Peter Kropotkin, #NFDB
118:The severity of the law of God is the necessary sequence of his infinite love. ~ G Campbell Morgan, #NFDB
119:Catching the apple doesn't overturn the law of gravity or the formulation of a ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
120:Everything, both mental and physical, is rigidly bound by the law of causation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
121:No enactment of man can be considered law unless it conforms to the law of God ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
122:The highest service to which a man may obtain on earth is to preach the law of God. ~ John Wycliffe, #NFDB
123:The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
124:And if you give your heart to a goal, it will repay you. It's the law of the universe. ~ Bear Grylls, #NFDB
125:Difference in unity is the law of the higher manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo[Gems from Sri Aurobindo], #NFDB
126:I would absolutely never use the federal government to enforce the law of using marijuana ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
127:The law of life is to leave behind the ground one is standing on and then step forward. ~ Rama Swami, #NFDB
128:The law of love is a far greater science than any modern science. Consulting ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
129:There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience. ~ Stokely Carmichael, #NFDB
130:The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
131:If love wasn't the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
132:It's not like there's a law against flying."
"Yes there is. The law of gravity. ~ Laini Taylor,#NFDB
133:Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
134:The law of attraction is always working whether you believe it or understand it or not. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
135:THE LAW OF COUNTABILITY Teammates Must Be Able to Count on Each Other When It Counts ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
136:Unless the law of marriage were first made human, it could never become divine. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
137:Fidelity to the law of your own being is an act of high courage flung in the face of life. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
138:History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
139:One of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
140:Over events, we may have some control, but over the law of life's progress none. ~ John William Draper, #NFDB
141:The law of attraction is this: You don't attract what you want. You attract what you are. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
142:He who ignores the law of probabilities challenges an adversary that is seldom beaten. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
143:The law of flying was not discovered by the contemplation of things staying on the ground. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
144:The most desirable aspects of the Law of the Sea Treaty pertain to navigational rights. ~ Frank Gaffney, #NFDB
145:God is love and beauty as well as purity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #NFDB
146:He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
147:The harder you run after time, the faster time goes: this is the law of the consumable. ~ Raoul Vaneigem, #NFDB
148:The law of attraction is this: You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
149:The Law of Love, call it attraction, affinity, cohesion if you like, governs the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
150:The Law of the Generic: One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name. ~ Al Ries, #NFDB
151:The problem comes when someone interrupts the law of sowing and reaping in another’s life. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
152:This is where the Law of Serendipity comes to play: Lady Luck favors the one who tries. ~ Barbara Oakley, #NFDB
153:But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
154:Life on earth is hand-to-hand mortal combat . . . between the law of love and the law of hate. ~ Jos Mart, #NFDB
155:The law of England is the greatest grievance of the nation, very expensive and dilatory. ~ Gilbert Burnet, #NFDB
156:The Law of Probabilities: the more things you try, the more likely one of them will work. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
157:Islam understands its earthly mission to extend the law of Allah over the world by force. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
158:The law of life is that the mind should be at rest while the body engages in action. ~ Swami Parthasarathy, #NFDB
159:It is the law of wealth that such people only profit from the money that is taken from them. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
160:Sacrifice, which is the passion of great souls, has never been the law of societies. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
161:The body is subject to the law of growth and decay, what grows must of necessity decay. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
162:whether it is an engine or a human brain,—exercise or deteriorate is the law of life. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
163:A seeker after truth, a follower of the law of Love, cannot hold anything against tomorrow. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
164:Be yourself on stage. Nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered. ~ Bill Hicks, #NFDB
165:Holiness is the balance between my nature and the law of God as expressed in Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
166:is no breach of the law of meekness to show our displeasure at the wickedness of the wicked. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
167:We are your friends. It is the law of friendship that you tell us things you don’t want to tell us. ~ J Lynn, #NFDB
168:You've got to learn to accept the law of life, and face the fact that we disintegrate slowly. ~ Erik Erikson, #NFDB
169:Be yourself on stage. Nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered. ~ Bill Hicks, #NFDB
170:I have been luckier than the law of averages should allow. I could never be so lucky again. ~ Jimmy Doolittle, #NFDB
171:Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing. That is the Law of Consistency. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
172:I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind. Romans 7:23 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
173:Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star. ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
174:The heart has its own laws... and the truth is... the truth is that you are the law of mine. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay, #NFDB
175:THE LAW OF THE PRICE TAG The Team Fails to Reach Its Potential When It Fails to Pay the Price ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
176:The law of the supermind is unity fulfilled in diversity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #NFDB
177:you are all bound by the law of Karma, the Upanishads admit, but they declare the way out. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
178:18 Also day by day, from the first day until the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
179:A function to each organ, and each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
180:Daughters hate their mothers; I think it's the law of nature. But you know what? Then they come back. ~ Camille, #NFDB
181:If love or non-violence be not the law of our being, the whole of my argument falls to pieces. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
182:Live the law of love. We encourage obedience to the laws of life when we live the laws of love. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
183:The Law of Attraction is a theory. Cosmic Ordering is a practice putting that theory to work. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
184:The law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in mankind! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
185:You are the one who calls the law of attraction into action, and you do it through your thoughts. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
186:A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Lord of the Sacrifice, #NFDB
187:This is the law of God by which He makes His way known to man and is paramount to all human control. ~ Rufus King, #NFDB
188:Well the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers. ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
189:Everybody is talking about the Law of Attraction. Nobody is talking about the Law of Action. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
190:Success attracts success and failure attracts failure because of the law of harmonious attraction. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
191:The law of the harvest is inexorable (impossible to stop or prevent) . As we sow, so shall we reap. ~ Hugh B Brown, #NFDB
192:Unless you go on discovering new applications of the law of nonviolence, you do not profit by it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
193:299. Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
194:Natural Law is therefore nothing more than the law of man in the clever disguise of a transcendent law. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
195:The Law of the Few... says that one critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
196:The Spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. Romans 8:2 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
197:When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant. ~ Agnes Smedley, #NFDB
198:He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
199:If you look in The Science of Getting Rich, you see no reference whatsoever to the law of attraction. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
200:The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche. ~ John Burroughs, #NFDB
201:Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
202:If traditional marriage is not the law of the land, the institution of the family will cease to exist. ~ James Dobson, #NFDB
203:It is the combination of thought and love which forms the irresistible force of the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
204:Start telling the story of your amazing life, and the law of attraction must make sure you receive it! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
205:The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
206:The law of the body arises from the subconscient or inconscient. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Gnostic Being, #NFDB
207:The laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them. They are inexorable. ~ Scott Hahn, #NFDB
208:The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
209:To grieve or be angry about or fear what happens to you is to be a fugitive from the law of nature. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
210:Diogenes proved the law of motion using the phrase Solvitur ambulando, “It is solved by walking, ~ Scott Barry Kaufman, #NFDB
211:in the sentiment of Mahatma Gandhi, when we practice the law of an eye for an eye, we all end up blind. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
212:No one could make a choice without feeling afraid. That's was the law of life..and no one could escape. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
213:See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world? ~ Richard Hooker, #NFDB
214:The only law which is really lived up to whole-heartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
215:When you become content in life, you gain the power to bless others. This is the law of nature. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
216:Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved. ~ Thomas B Macaulay, #NFDB
217:Nonviolence is the law of the human race and is infinitely greater than, and superior to, brute force. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
218:Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
219:A man must support his own weight, no matter how much money or power he has; that is the law of gravity. ~ Walter Mosley, #NFDB
220:The child which overbalances itself in learning to walk is experimenting on the law of gravity. ~ William Stanley Jevons, #NFDB
221:The Law of Attraction attracts to you everything you need, according to the nature of your thought life. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
222:The law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
223:It is the combination of thought and love which forms the irresistible force of the law of attraction. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
224:The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
225:We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
226:Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
227:Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
228:I know that I cannot take responsibility for other people. We are all under the law of our own consciousness. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
229:Karma is a medicine which is given for our own good. Karma is the law of compensation, not of vengeance. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
230:Order is indeed the law of life, but not an artificial regulation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Diversity in Oneness, #NFDB
231:Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science. ~ Max Planck, #NFDB
232:The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
233:There on the stones, Joshua copied the law of Moses, which he had written in the presence of the Israelites. j ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
234:To use the law of attraction to your advantage, make it a habitual way of being, not just a one-time event. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
235:Climbing is not a battle with the elements, nor against the law of gravity. It's a battle against oneself. ~ Walter Bonatti, #NFDB
236:We ought not to please ourselves. For even Christ pleased not Himself." Self-denial is the law of his life. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
237:Every law of matter or the body, supposed to govern man,is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God. ~ Mary Baker Eddy, #NFDB
238:Every nation is destined, by the law of God and humanity, to form a free and equal community of brothers. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini, #NFDB
239:Human mind is subject to the law of cause and effect.
IF not, THEN you have no idea about IF-THEN algorithm. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
240:A diversity in oneness is the law of the manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #NFDB
241:The Law of Income: You will be paid in direct proportion to the value you deliver according to the marketplace. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
242:The law of Love is that you are Love, and that as you give Love to others you teach yourself what you are. ~ Gerald Jampolsky, #NFDB
243:But in every matter the consensus of opinion among all nations is to be regarded as the law of nature. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
244:Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
245:For science, God is simply the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
246:Shaikh, A. (1979—80), ‘Foreign trade and the law of value’, Science and Society, vol. 43, 281-302; vol. 44, 27-57. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
247:The law of attraction which holds good for the heavenly bodies also holds good for the smallest particles. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
248:Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
249:The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux. ~ James G Frazer, #NFDB
250:The rishis, who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence, were greater geniuses than Newton. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
251:But his desire is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
~ Anonymous, The Bible, Psalms 1:2, [T2],#NFDB
252:Fex urbis, lex orbis" (The dregs of the city, the law of the earth), from Les Miserables, attributed to St. Jerome ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
253:Internal and external nature, mind and matter, are in time and space, and are bound by the law of causation. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
254:Seeming failure is not of the law of satyagrahabut of incompetence of the satyagrahi by whatever cause induced. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
255:The law of simplicity and naïveté applies to all fine art, for it is compatible with what is most sublime. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
256:Under the law of the kingdom, for example, no one may hope for forgiveness who has not first forgiven. Mt 6:12,14,15 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
257:What I call the law of satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation of duties and rights flowing therefrom. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
258:In our evil we rebel against God. We take the law of God, written in his Word and on our hearts, and we disobey it. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
259:In verity, there exists one law only, the law of our conscience; all truth is there controlled and verified. ~ Antoine the Healer, #NFDB
260:Tell your mother the Law of Stolen Flight.'
'Only flame, and things with wings. All the rest suffer stings. ~ Jonathan Carroll,#NFDB
261:10 Hear the word of the LORD, You rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the law of our God, You people of Gomorrah: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
262:Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence. ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
263:It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of America. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
264:Fortunately, love is the law of our nature. People like Ida understand that love, too, is a tool to build character. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
265:Because, mon ami, it is the law of your country that a man once acquitted can never be tried again for the same offence. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
266:It is a great folly to be willing to violate the friendship of God, rather than the law of human friendship. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #NFDB
267:Marriage equality is the law of the land. Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law - end of story. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
268:The law of attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you FEEL. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
269:The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
270:If there is anything in the world which I do firmly believe in, it is the universal validity of the law of causation. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
271:It is the combination of thought and love which forms the irresistible force of the law of attraction.” Charles Haanel ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
272:According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
273:In the school I went to, they asked a kid to prove the law of gravity and he threw the teacher out of the window. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
274:Opulence is the law of the universe, an abundant supply for every need if nothing is put in the way of its coming. ~ Ralph Waldo Trine, #NFDB
275:The law of attraction is the law of creation. Quantum physicists tell us that the entire Universe emerged from thought! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
276:The Law of Diminishing Returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
277:This is the law of Karma, which is Sanskrit for "Comeback." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB
278:When nonviolence is accepted as the law of life, it must pervade the whole being and not be applied to isolated acts. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
279:Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. ~John F. Kennedy ~ K Langston, #NFDB
280:Life is a struggle, from the agonies of birth to the railing against death. Devour or be devoured. The law of the wild. ~ David Gemmell, #NFDB
281:The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
282:The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
283:There is no higher “law” to be obeyed than the law of love. That, at the end of the day, is what it means to follow Jesus. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
284:And the Law of Action says that it does not matter what we say we believe; our real beliefs are revealed by how we act. You ~ Rory Vaden, #NFDB
285:Imperfections have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment mercy. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
286:The law of attraction says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
287:The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr, #NFDB
288:You can use the law of attraction to create your whole life in advance, right down to the next thing you are doing today. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
289:If you keep the law of God, you are not described in Scripture as a pinched legalist, but rather as happy (Prov. 29:18). ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
290:Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
291:The law of your mind is the law of belief. This means to believe in the way your mind works, to believe in belief itself. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
292:thoughts.” Say it often, meditate on it, and as you hold to that intention, by the law of attraction you must become that. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
293:With the Law of Creation in play, you not only see the abundance and opportunity that surrounds you. You're able to TAKE it. ~ Joe Vitale, #NFDB
294:He was always running or bounding, never just walking. He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
295:Leaders who practice the Law of Victory believe that anything less than success is unacceptable. And they have no Plan B. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
296:Neither shall they learn, &c. The law of Christ is a law of peace; and all his true MICHEAS The glories of Christ's church ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
297:There is nothing in the law of God that will rob you of happiness; it only denies you that which would cost you sorrow. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
298:Difference in unity is the law of the higher manifestation. ~ Sri Aurobindo[Gems from Sri Aurobindo] #themother #srimaa #sriaurobindoashram, #NFDB
299:He came with death held in his paw Which no rat born could face Oh woe to those who break the law Of Sunflash and his mace! ~ Brian Jacques, #NFDB
300:I believe Islam is superior. And will not be surpassed. So I believe that the law of God is much superior to man-made law. ~ Anjem Choudary, #NFDB
301:The Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes to be needs a cause. ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
302:Through silence, through meditation, and through non-judgment, you will access the first law, the Law of Pure Potentiality. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
303:You are the ruler of a kingdom, and whatever you think and feel becomes the law of your kingdom -- the law within your body. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
304:If you are complaining, the law of attraction will powerfully bring into your life more situations for you to complain about. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
305:The Law of Attraction allows for infinite possibilities, infinite abundance & infinite joy. It knows no order of difficulty. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
306:We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
307:With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
308:For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. EZR7:11 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
309:For satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
310:In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
311:It seemed that the Law of the Fridge was universal across cultures and continents: things went there to die and be forgotten. ~ Neel Mukherjee, #NFDB
312:The law of sacrifice postulates that we need to give in order to receive ... Cosmic Ordering says, receive before you give. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
313:As we walk around we are like magnets pulling in experiences. The Law of Attraction is governed by the vibration we are in. ~ Christopher Dines, #NFDB
314:For the sake of democracy, vigorous, civilized debate must replace the law of silence that political correctness has imposed. ~ Anthony Daniels, #NFDB
315:He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
316:Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
317:Reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #NFDB
318:I admit it is better fun to punt than be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry. ~ Dorothy L Sayers, #NFDB
319:If people knew the working of the law of truth and nonviolence, then they would themselves regulate the matter of its shortage. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
320:In fact, it was specifically for discovering the law of the photoelectric effect that Einstein would win his only Nobel Prize. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
321:I pledge to respect and protect the constitution and the law of my country and to carry out my duties to the best of my ability. ~ Heinz Fischer, #NFDB
322:The Law of Attraction requires that we focus our attention on what we do want, rather than what we don't want, Focus on loving you. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
323:The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
324:three living men had seen horrors, and those who see horrors may do horrors just as bad, that is the law of life and war. Soon ~ Sebastian Barry, #NFDB
325:The law of the jungle which I learned at a young age, and have been trying to escape ever since, is that we what we must to survive. ~ Jim Fergus, #NFDB
326:When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of The Law of Dharma. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
327:Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman. ~ Thomas Malthus, #NFDB
328:A Government is not free to do as it pleases…. The law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. ~ David Boaz, #NFDB
329:Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. ~ K LangstonJohn F. Kennedy ~ K Langston, #NFDB
330:I can tell you for sure: people who are at their peak right now will not sustain that. You can't. It's against the law of nature. ~ Bryan Cranston, #NFDB
331:In mystical terms, the law of attraction specifies that you will attract to yourself those experiences that match your beliefs. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
332:I truly believe in the law of attraction and that we live in a multi-dimensional existence beyond the confines of ego-based thinking. ~ Lisa Bloom, #NFDB
333:The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial and impersonal as the law of gravity is. It is precise and it is exact ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
334:The point is, the "best" technology or idea doesn't always prevail. Sometimes chance and the law of unintended consequences win out. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
335:Think about death being inevitable, and unpredictable, exempt from the law of averages. Everyone has a turn, and no one knows when. ~ Pawan Mishra, #NFDB
336:woman, and one that feared the Lord. sus.1.3 Her parents also were righteous, and taught their daughter according to the Law of Moses. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
337:Christ does not make new laws; he rectifies the wrong interpretations of the scribes which had vitiated the purity of the law of God. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
338:I wonder much that a court of Law should be in doubt whether a Resolution of Congress can superceed the Law of a Sovereign State. ~ William Whipple, #NFDB
339:The secret of the law of abundance is this: In order to receive and appreciate the good things of life, you must first give. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
340:To this it must be added that a sincere love of the law of God is a sure sign of our adoption because it is a work of the Spirit. . . ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
341:As you think of yourself living in abundance, you are powerfully and consciously determining your life through the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
342:For we must share, if we would keep, that blessing from above; ceasing to give, we cease to have; such is the law of love. ~ Richard Chenevix Trench, #NFDB
343:Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
344:Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
345:The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial and impersonal as the law of gravity is. It is precise, and it is exact. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
346:Where principles and heart stand in conflict with each other, let us make the law of the spirit free from the law of principles. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
347:Euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
348:In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity" Ch.2, 8 ~ John Locke, #NFDB
349:Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man. ~ Mikhail Naimy, #NFDB
350:The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
351:The law of the past can't be eluded,
The law of the present and future cannot be eluded,
The law of the living cannot be eluded, ~ Walt Whitman,#NFDB
352:Karma, ahhh. We sow what we reap... We reap what we sow! We reap what we sow. The law of cause and effect. And we are all under this law. ~ Nina Hagen, #NFDB
353:Order is indeed the dream of man, but chaos, which is only another word for dumb, blind, witless chance, is still the law of nature. ~ Wallace Stegner, #NFDB
354:One should never do to another what one regards as injurious to oneself. This, in brief, is the law of dharma. —Mahabharata XVIII.113.8 ~ Gurcharan Das, #NFDB
355:People choose the paths that grant them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. That's the law of nature, and you defied it. ~ Hugh Laurie, #NFDB
356:The wits or wills of men, their inventions or their injunctions, cannot make that to be sin which the law of God has not made to be so. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
357:Everything is the result of the Law of Action and Consequence but with the possibility that a superior law transcends an inferior law. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
358:I see that mankind still survives after all its attempts to destroy itself and so I surmise that it is the law of love that rules mankind. ~ David Richo, #NFDB
359:Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk. ~ Edward Weston, #NFDB
360:According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
361:If Darwin had seen in life what Dostoevsky saw, he would not have talked of the law of the preservation of species, but of its destruction. ~ Lev Shestov, #NFDB
362:One who hooks his fortune to ahimsa, the law of love, daily lessens the circle of destruction and to that extent promotes life and love. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
363:The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth. ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
364:The simplest way for me to look at the law of attraction is if I think of myself as a magnet, and I know that a magnet will attract to it. ~ John Assaraf, #NFDB
365:The simplest way for me to look at the law of attraction is if I think of myself as a magnet, and I know that a magnet will attract to it. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
366:How could the Law of Retribution function properly when one party in a dispute was so wealthy and so powerful as to be virtually untouchable? ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
367:Love is the law of our condition, without which we can no more render justice than a man can keep a straight line, walking in the dark. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
368:Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
369:Wealth is a weak anchor, and glory cannot support a man; this is the law of God, that virtue only is firm, and cannot be shaken by a tempest. ~ Pythagoras, #NFDB
370:What is possible, must one day be, for that is the law of the omnipotent Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ladder of Self-Transcendence, #NFDB
371:And who's next, Mr. and Mrs. America, now that the Bill of Rights is no longer the law of the land and the racial haters are running the show ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
372:the true meaning of kingship—to do what animals cannot do: overpower the law of the jungle, and give the weak an opportunity to thrive. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
373:...all that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite.; ~ Tony Parsons, #NFDB
374:Association of ideas depends upon two principles known, respectively, as (1) the law of contiguity; and (2) the law of similarity. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
375:From the very beginning," he said, "you began with a lie; what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie; such is the law of nature. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
376:It has joined its hunger to the hunger of earth,
It has given the law of craving to our lives, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Little Life,#NFDB
377:Going one step beyond the Law of Attraction when using NAPS takes us back to the original way it was invoked, before the rehashed woo-woo! ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
378:If you can't influence people, then they will not follow you. And if people won't follow, you are not a leader. That's the Law of Influence. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
379:It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
380:Nature's great law, and the law of all men's minds? To its own impulse every creature stirs: Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers. ~ Matthew Arnold, #NFDB
381:Study men following the law of their higher nature, the law of love, so that when you grow to manhood, you will have improved your heritage. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
382:The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight. ~ Sri AurobindoIsha Upanishad, #NFDB
383:the Law of Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
384:Basically it’s none of our business how somebody manages to grow, if only he does grow, if only we’re on the trail of the law of our own growth. ~ Chaim Potok, #NFDB
385:For unquestionably nothing is more opposed to the law of God than sects, for in it is communicated the truth of God, which is the bond of unity. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
386:I am the master of my thoughts.” Say it often, meditate on it, and as you hold to that intention, by the law of attraction you must become that ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
387:Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes it law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
388:The law, notably tort law and the law of property based on the principle of exclusion, is historically prior to any proto-statal authority. ~ Anthony De Jasay, #NFDB
389:the law of cumulative growth,” which holds that a low annual growth rate over a very long period of time gives rise to considerable progress. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
390:“The urges of the flesh pass all bounds in the absence of controlling will. Flesh is the extravagence within us set up against the law of decency.” ~ Bataille, #NFDB
391:We are here because we wished to be - in obedience to the Law of Attraction, operating in accordance with our desires and aspiration ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
392:Because of the Law of Attraction, each of you is like a powerful magnet, attracting unto you more of the way that you feel at any point in time. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
393:Remember that the law of attraction doesn’t know if you are playing make-believe or if something is real, so when you are pretending you already ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
394:The Law of Forced Efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
395:For a work to be considered good it must not only conform outwardly to the law of God, but it must be motivated inwardly by a sincere love for God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
396:If you want to find greater happiness and fulfillment in your life, you must begin to understand and live in harmony with the law of attraction. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
397:The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, #NFDB
398:By the law of nature, there is no pleasure in suffering; but divine love, when it reigns in a heart, makes it take delight in its sufferings. ~ Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
399:Calvin would encourage magistrates to look to Scripture because the written law was given to "remove the obscurity of the law of nature" (II.viii.1). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
400:He who would live must fight. He who doesn't wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
401:Money never made any man rich, but his mind. He that can order himself to the law of nature, is not only without the sense, but the fear of poverty. ~ Ben Jonson, #NFDB
402:Such is the law of karma. Every action, howsoever innocent, has a reaction, that one has to experience if not in this life, then in the next, ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
403:Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended? ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
404:2Carry one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the requirements of the law of Christ [that is, the law of Christian love]. [John 13:34] ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
405:Ethics must eventually perceive that the law of good which it seeks is the law of God. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge, #NFDB
406:Jews were the first to believe that history itself has meaning and that progress, not repetition, is the law of life. ~ Barbara Ward Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, #NFDB
407:Mankind are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." It is well said: the law of God is the only secure basis for the rights of man. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
408:shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the Negro Race? If a white man mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty is death on the spot. ~ Hari Kunzru, #NFDB
409:The law of Forced Efficiency says that "There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
410:The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
411:The quantum hypothesis will eventually find its exact expression in certain equations which will be a more exact formulation of the law of causality. ~ Max Planck, #NFDB
412:Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
413:know the law of human nature: acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly-formed will is character. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
414:The law of England is much more severe upon offences against property than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion is money. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
415:When you need money, it is a powerful feeling within you, and so of course through the law of attraction you will continue to attract needing money. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
416:An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth a fact that is recognized by the law of libel . ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
417:An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth--a fact that is recognized by the law of libel. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
418:I am still doing my due diligence. A vote on a Supreme Court nominee is a lifetime appointment and when the court decides, it is the law of the land. ~ Bob Menendez, #NFDB
419:It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you arecruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back. ~ Cary Grant, #NFDB
420:By this law, the purpose of the earth and the universe is explained to be endless growth. The law of evolution is the great cementing law of science. ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
421:I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don't think I'm big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
422:It's actually kind of weird that we can comprehend the law of gravity, or that we can understand quantum mechanics, enough at least to make computers. ~ Edward Boyden, #NFDB
423:The best way to mitigate both the Peter Principle and the Law of Crappy People is with a properly constructed and highly disciplined promotion process. ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
424:We can deduce, often, from one part of physics like the law of gravitation, a principle which turns out to be much more valid than the derivation. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
425:We know the law of human nature: acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly-formed will is character. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
426:you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It is the Law of the Great Gull, the Law that Is. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
427:37Reflect on the law of the Most High, and let his commandments be your constant study. Then he will enlighten your mind, and make you wise as you desire.e ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
428:After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
429:By the law of nature, there is no pleasure in suffering; but divine love, when it reigns in a heart, makes it take delight in its sufferings. ~ Saint Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
430:God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
431:It is imperative to contest all factions for complete victory, so the army is not garrisoned and the profit can be total. This is the law of strategic siege. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
432:It is remarkable that Joseph Smith taught the law of evolution as an eternal truth, twenty or more years before Darwin published his views. [Sidenote: ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
433:Such is the law of karma. Every action, howsoever innocent, has a reaction, that one has to experience if not in this life, then in the next,’ said ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
434:The frequency of anger attracts the frequency of anger, the frequency of greed attracts the frequency of greed, and so on. This is the law of attraction. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
435:The manifestation of the Lord in life and works is the law of our being and the object of our world-existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Conclusion and Summary, #NFDB
436:This is the law of benefits between men; the one ought to forget at once what was given, and the other ought never to forget what he has received. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
437:Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
438:It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
439:Nature will not forgive those who fail to fulfill the law of their being. The law of human beings is wisdom and goodness, not unlimited acquisition. ~ Robert M Hutchins, #NFDB
440:There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. That act is giving. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
441:Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living. ~ Sri Aurobindo.ஒவ்வொன்றையும் இனிமையாக மாற்றுங்கள்; தெய்வீக வாழ்வின் சட்டம் இதுவே. pic.twitter.com/yEOOk0oaB, #NFDB
442:When you are unconditionally open and soft in your heart while your self empties and while your self fills, you live fulfilling the law of containment. ~ John de Ruiter, #NFDB
443:I am free when I am functioning here in time and space as the creative will. ... freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of one's nature. ~ Mary Parker Follett, #NFDB
444:Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
445:Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and the law of gravity at the same time is ideal. ~ Banksy, #NFDB
446:Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
447:The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction that says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
448:Do something useful and you will have everything you want. Doors are shut for those who are dull and lazy; life is secure for those who obey the law of work. ~ Jose Marti, #NFDB
449:Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
450:The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
451:A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
452:Monotony is the law of nature. Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises. The monotony of necessary occupation is exhilarating and life giving. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
453:Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
454:The Law of Attraction states that whatever you focus on, think about, read about, and talk about intensely, you’re going to attract more of into your life. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
455:A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
456:A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
457:All my working life I have remembered his brilliant analogy between the law of conservation of energy and the problem of trying to dry yourself with wet towels. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
458:First sons and daughters seduced to play and party 'til it was too late to realize they were being lead to the slaughter. They discounted the law of moderation. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
459:It's indispensable to fully understand the basis and modus operandi of the Law of Karma to orientate the ship of our life in a positive and exemplary way. ~ Samael Aun Weor, #NFDB
460:Sin as little as possible-that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly things are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
461:The depths are linked to the heights and the Law of the one Truth creates and works everywhere. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Supermind and Mind of Light, #NFDB
462:The law?" I asked curiously. "What law's that, Leo?"
"The law of service. He who wishes to live must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long. ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
463:They sprinkled their money around a lot of different companies and counted on the law of averages to take care of the rest. Clark took a different approach. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
464:Nothing would confess its own pretence
Even to itself in the ambiguous heart:
A vast deception was the law of things; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#NFDB
465:Sin as little as possible - that is the law of mankind. Not to sin at all is the dream of the angel. All earthly tings are subject to sin. Sin is like gravity. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
466:Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
467:The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction, as it is also called the law of creation. In other words, life is not happening to you, you are creating it. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
468:The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
469:A rigid standardisation, however necessary for the mind’s arrangement of things, could not be the law of the spiritual life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Life, #NFDB
470:Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
471:For the keynote of the law of Karma is equilibrium, and nature is always working to restore that equilibrium whenever through man's acts it is disturbed. ~ Christmas Humphreys, #NFDB
472:Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails upon me the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains that crime and justifies it. ~ Thomas Francis Meagher, #NFDB
473:The law of cause and effect is in constant operation, and we reap what we sow - not as a matter of punishment, but as the effect following the cause. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
474:The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
475:The thirst for vengeance did not wait for Islam to appear in the world, and the appeal to the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is universal. ~ Tzvetan Todorov, #NFDB
476:The ultimate social law, the law of respect. In some ways, a large offense done with respect was more easily overlooked than a small offense done with disrespect. ~ Sunil Yapa, #NFDB
477:We are moving into a new world and the old negativity will be left behind. Through the law of cause and effect, we can change the world, one person at a time. ~ Dolores Cannon, #NFDB
478:It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences. ~ Ian Tattersall, #NFDB
479:The deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one’s own nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #NFDB
480:Dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Perfection of the Body, #NFDB
481:In the strict formulation of the law of causality—if we know the present, we can calculate the future—it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise. ~ Werner Heisenberg, #NFDB
482:One has to reap the fruits of his karma. The law of karma is inevitable and is accepted by all the great philosophies of the world: 'As you sow, so shall you reap.' ~ Rama Swami, #NFDB
483:To give is to receive—this is the law of Love. Under this law, when we give our Love away to others we gain, and whatever we give we simultaneously receive. ~ Gerald G Jampolsky, #NFDB
484:He alone knows the law of life. Whoever does not seek out clearly what is the true good, cannot correct himself with sincerity and does not arrive at true perfection. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
485:Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #NFDB
486:If people do not revere the Law of Nature It will adversely affect them. If they accept It with knowledge and reverence, It will accommodate them with balance and harmony. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
487:Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
488:The law of Karma is inexorable and impossible of evasion. There is thus hardly any need for God to interfere. He laid down the law and, as it were, retired. After ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
489:When we’re willing to see the innocence in another person even when he or she has behaved without love toward us, we activate the Law of Divine Compensation. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
490:But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also the law of the human mind? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
491:The bottom line is that any time we experience feelings of guilt, we need to step back and ask ourselves as honestly as we possibly can, “Have I broken the law of God? ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
492:The law of nature instructs most animals to cherish and educate their infant progeny. The law of reason inculcates to the human species the returns of filial piety. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
493:There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
494:The religious instinct in man is most of all the one instinct in him that cannot be killed, it only changes its form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, Religion as the Law of Life, #NFDB
495:Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
496:When you really believe that using sword can kill people,
that's when you will be subject to the law of the sword,
"those who use the sword will die by the sword. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
497:As for the law of moral causation ('karma'): this is human justice dressed up as cosmic justice and then imputed to the impersonal workings of the natural world. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
498:As in the piling up of hypothetical alternatives, creative accidents follow the law of probabilities the more we fish, the more likely we are to get a strike. ~ Alex Faickney Osborn, #NFDB
499:The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
500:To withdraw ourselves from the law of the strong, we have found ourselves obliged to submit to justice. Justice or might, we must choose between these two masters. ~ Luc de Clapiers, #NFDB
501:As one justice explained, “The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. ~ Jeffrey Toobin, #NFDB
502:I live by the law of averages,” said Alois. “I prefer to think of the ongoing possibility of profit rather than of the intermittent perils that surround all activity. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
503:Is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If nonviolence is to be the law of our being, the future is with women. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
504:People are always trading their excess for somebody else's excess. One country has a lot of aluminum so they trade aluminum for sugar. It's the law of supply and demand. ~ Carl Andre, #NFDB
505:The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title. ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
506:The Law of Unconditional Loving is a tough taskmaster. Once we taste the fruits of unconditional loving, we cannot go backward, we cannot become "unaware" ever again. ~ Greg Anderson, #NFDB
507:For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God. ~ Miguel de Cervantes, #NFDB
508:I explain the law of compensation like this: ‘Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time’. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
509:If all the elements are arranged in the order of their atomic weights, a periodic repetition of properties is obtained. This is expressed by the law of periodicity. ~ Dmitri Mendeleev, #NFDB
510:Since they were visitors, they would have to share living space with those who lived there, and would be given the best accommodations. That was the law of hospitality. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
511:The law of the Conservation of Energy is already known — viz., that the sum of all the energies of the universe, actual and potential, is unchangeable. ~ William John Macquorn Rankine, #NFDB
512:We show deference to the civil authorities when they respect the divine origin of their power and when they serve the people with objective reference to the law of God. ~ Angelo Scola, #NFDB
513:You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, “What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?” Does that ever make you anxious? ~ Elaine May, #NFDB
514:And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
515:But the law of God came from heaven indeed. God wrote it with his finger, it is the fountain of all wisdom, and therefore shall it continue forever, and never have an end. ~ John Jewel, #NFDB
516:Humans alone of all living creatures can reject the law of the jungle and create a code of conduct based on empathy and directed at discovering the meaning of life. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
517:Occam’s razor or the law of parsimony, which states that when two theories compete to explain an unknown phenomenon we should err on the side of the simpler explanation. ~ Ted Kerasote, #NFDB
518:Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God. ~ Bayard Rustin, #NFDB
519:The law of silence: Speak little. Say only what you must. Speak only when necessary. Your oratory should be deeds, not words. You accomplish: let others talk. ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, #NFDB
520:The truth is this: There are no exceptions to the law of causality. It is impartial and impersonal, and it comes to us in a particular order—first sow, then reap. This ~ Tommy Newberry, #NFDB
521:When you’re kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back—the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy’s Law. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
522:Who ever said keeping the law of the Lord is peaceable work? The devil brings a sword and I bring a sword back to him. It is the will of the Lord and I am his servant. ~ Joe R Lansdale, #NFDB
523:And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
524:If one mistreats citizens of foreign countries, one infringes upon one's duty toward one's own subjects; for thus one exposes themto the law of retribution. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
525:The events in your life are the result of your past deeds, performed in this lifetime or the ones before. You alone are responsible for it. Such is the law of karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
526:The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property. ~ Salmon P Chase, #NFDB
527:According to the Law of Attraction, the physical reality that you experience at present is drawn towards the future probability you desired when it attains more power. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
528:Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste. ~ Friedrich Schiller, #NFDB
529:With your practiced attention to any subject, the Law of Attraction delivers circumstances, conditions, experiences, other people, and all manner of things that match your ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
530:Whatever We Hold in Thought Comes True in Our Experience; Like Attracts Like; we experiment with the Law of Changing Appearances, to make our outer world reflect our inner. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
531:I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
532:I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
533:The law of self-fulfilling prophecy says that you get what you expect. So why not create great expectations and the highest vision possible of yourself and your world? ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
534:All innocent mechanisms are muddied up with experience. Children become less and less translucent. Layers of guile and suspicion grow. It's the law of paternal disenchantments. ~ Sarah Hall, #NFDB
535:If we knew exactly what animal life was like before the fall into sin and knew what nature was like before the law of entropy invaded it, we would already be living in heaven. ~ Walter Lang, #NFDB
536:In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that any one else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
537:It’s the Law of Douche Bags. Douche bags walk away with enough holes in them to look like a colander, while good guys go down for the count with one random punch to the head. ~ Marcia Clark, #NFDB
538:The law of the grand study or practical philosophy consists in developing and bringing into light the luminous principle of reason which we have received from heaven. ~ Confucius “Ta-hio” I, #NFDB
539:The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
540:The law of your mind is this: You will get a reaction or response from your subconscious mind according to the nature of the thought or idea you hold in your conscious mind. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
541:Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
542:Capitalism is like the law of the jungle with a few rules. There isn't another system that works for our society but left unchecked, capitalism can have a dehumanising effect. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
543:In Hollywood everything is formatted, everything is compulsory, so therefore we have to follow the law of benefits and profit and money, let us say the law of Hollywood. ~ Jean Pierre Jeunet, #NFDB
544:Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores - more than abundantly - what it takes away. ~ Jim Elliot, #NFDB
545:Thus it was that in obedience to the law laid down by his mother, and in obedience to the law of that unknown and nameless thing, fear, he kept away from the mouth of the cave. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
546:I deem it established, then, that the Constitution does not recognize property in man, but leaves that question, as between the states, to the law of nature and of nations. ~ William H Seward, #NFDB
547:Karma is simply the law of cause and effect in action. All moments and occurrences are caused by other moments and occurrences that preceded them in an endless, causal chain. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
548:Like the wind that carries one ship east and another west, the law of autosuggestion will lift you up or pull you down according to the way that you set your sails of thought. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
549:Your eyes, brilliant as shop windows Or as blazing lamp-stands at public festivals, Insolently use a borrowed power Without ever knowing the law of their beauty. Blind, ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
550:The Law of Accelerating Returns: As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (that is, the time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes). ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
551:To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To fix the eternal’s touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#NFDB
552:If you play games with the law of non-contradiction, then every time you open your mouth and say anything, you're cheating. Every time you make a choice in life you're cheating. ~ Ronald H Nash, #NFDB
553:The law of centrifugal force seems to be as true for the human condition as it is for the Newtonian mechanics. The faster our lives spin, the more things tend to fly apart. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
554:The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average. ~ Charles A Murray, #NFDB
555:But the motion to keep the planet going in a straight line has no known reason. The reason why things coast for ever has never been found out. The law of inertia has no known origin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
556:Defend the weak, protect both young and old, never desert your friends. Give justice to all, be fearless in battle and always ready to defend the right." —The law of Badger Lords ~ Brian Jacques, #NFDB
557:In cricket, as in no other game, a great master may well go back to the pavilion scoreless.... In no other game does the law of averages get to work so potently, so mysteriously. ~ Neville Cardus, #NFDB
558:The law of your mind is this: The reaction or response you get from your subconscious mind will be determined by the nature of the thought or idea you hold in your conscious mind. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
559:Bombs know no ism but barbarism. The laws that successfully govern a peaceful and democratic society do not interfere with the only law bombs know, which is the law of gravity. ~ Clare Boothe Luce, #NFDB
560:Start to use the Law of Attraction as it was originally intended all of those thousands of years ago today by just using simple, positive words in your NAPS without the woo-woo! ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
561:In the last few decades, mankind has sinned terribly against the law of natural selection. We haven't just maintained life unworthy of life, we have even allowed it to multiply. ~ David Klinghoffer, #NFDB
562:The law of work does seem utterly unfair-but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, too. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
563:The naturalists of yore esteemed the ocean to be a treasury of wonders, and sought therein for monstrosities and organisms contrary to the law of nature, such as they interpreted it. ~ Edward Forbes, #NFDB
564:THE natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
565:The penal code deals with things like theft, false testimony, adultery, fornication, etc. and then there's the law of the state, the law of the individual and the law of the public. ~ Anjem Choudary, #NFDB
566:It’s the Law of Douche Bags. Douche bags walk away with enough holes in them to look like a colander, while good guys go down for the count with one random punch to the head. Sheri—one ~ Marcia Clark, #NFDB
567:The moment you place the law of Moses between you and God again, you are negating the finished work of Jesus, for if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died in vain ~ Joseph Prince, #NFDB
568:A hermit said, “Do not judge an adulterer if you are chaste or you will break the law of God just as much as he does. For he who said ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said ‘Do not judge. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
569:A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
570:It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
571:One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands. ~ Francis Galton, #NFDB
572:One of the rules for understanding the Bible is called “the law of first mention.” This means that if you want to know what God says about something, study the first time He brings it up. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
573:The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
574:Defend the weak, protect both young and old, never desert your friends. Give justice to all, be fearless in battle and always ready to defend the right."
—The law of Badger Lords ~ Brian Jacques,#NFDB
575:Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
576:Prior to the reign of the godly King Josiah, the law of God had been lost in the temple for many years. Has the same thing occurred among us? Has the evangel been lost among evangelicals? ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
577:The more you practice and begin to see the law of attraction bringing things to you, the greater the magnet you will become, because you will add the power of faith, belief, and knowing. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
578:We are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. 39 Everyone who believes in him is declared right with God—something the law of Moses could never do. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
579:We need more than just the Law of Attraction. We need to connect with its more successful twin, the Law of Generosity. And further entwine ourselves with their parent; the Law of Love. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
580:A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man... ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
581:A new education from birth onwards must be built up. Education must be reconstructed and based on the law of nature and not on the preconceived notions and prejudices of adult society. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
582:Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
583:Inevitably, the older a woman became, the less she attracted people’s eyes; now that she could go virtually unseen, it was her turn to observe others. This was the law of a woman’s life. ~ Minae Mizumura, #NFDB
584:The fundamental principle of human action, the law, that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion ~ Henry George, #NFDB
585:The law of honor: Go along only on the paths of honor. Fight, and never be a coward. Leave the path of infamy to others. Better to fall in an honorable fight than win by infamy. ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, #NFDB
586:What I remember is impossible. Against the law of God.’ ‘Why should you suppose that? You must permit God to grasp His own law rather better than fallible man, who has perhaps misunderstood. ~ Tanith Lee, #NFDB
587:Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not disturb me. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works whether we accept it or not. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
588:16 So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
589:When did it become the law of the land that the Supreme Court has the final say on anything? They cannot have the final say on anything. The American people have the final say on anything. ~ Rick Santorum, #NFDB
590:The road to freedom lies, not through mysteries or occult performances, but through the intelligent use of Nature's forces and laws. The Law of Mind is a natural law in the spiritual world. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
591:Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune — that is, highly conscious. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
592:I believe in the law of attraction...I believe you can speak things into existence. When you know where you're going and you know what you want, the universe has a way of stepping aside for you. ~ Jon Jones, #NFDB
593:What the gurus were now selling was rehashed woo-woo! Now with NAPS you can truly use the Law of Attraction to its full potential, making all of those self-help books and audios obsolete! ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
594:What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
595:Whether you can go back in time is held in the grip of the law of quantum gravity. We are several decades away from a definitive understanding, 20 or 30 years, but it could be sooner than that. ~ Kip Thorne, #NFDB
596:This is an eternal and fundamental principle, inherent in all things, in every system of philosophy, in every religion, and in every science. There is no getting away from the law of love. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
597:The fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity ~ David Hume, #NFDB
598:the fact that different cultures have different practices no more refutes [moral] objectivism than the fact that water flows in different directions in different places refutes the law of gravity ~ David Hume, #NFDB
599:The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. ~ John Adams, #NFDB
600:When your child wonders about what is right and what is wrong, don’t just threaten him with the law of God; woo him with the sweet music of the grace of God. When she is struggling with what ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
601:Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned. ~ Avicenna, #NFDB
602:Arin wondered if she would lift her eyes, but wasn’t worried he would be seen in the garden’s shadows.
He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark. ~ Marie Rutkoski,#NFDB
603:One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution. ~ Robert M Pirsig, #NFDB
604:The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
605:Then again, Paul had once told her that there was no such thing as coincidence. “The Law of Truly Large Numbers provides that given a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing can happen. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
606:When you understand the law of divine compensation, you realize that in the presence of spiritual consciousness, there is more than enough compensation for any diminishment in materiality. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
607:Whoever claims that economic competition represents survival of the fittest in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics. ~ George Reisman, #NFDB
608:All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
609:If patterns exist in our seemingly patternless lives — and they do — then the law of harmony insists that the most harmonious of all patterns, circles within circles, will most often assert itself. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
610:It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
611:The American principles of democracy expresses the deepest values of the Sharia both structurally and in the government... Sharia requires us Muslims anywhere to abide by the law of the land. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf, #NFDB
612:I mean, there’s like a natural law, like the law of gravity. But you don’t go to jail for violating gravity, right?” She snorted. “No, usually you go to the hospital for trying to violate gravity. ~ Ellen Kushner, #NFDB
613:It is never a question of belief ; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true . The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
614:The intention of this Book of The Law is perfectly simple. Whatever your sexual predilections may be, you are free, by the Law of Thelema, to the the star you are, to go your own way rejoicing. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
615:Everyone who has been truly set free by Jesus Christ expresses liberty in these three ways, first in self-control, next in loving service of our neighbor, and third in obedience to the law of God. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
616:No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #NFDB
617:Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition... these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
618:The difference between human cultures and the civilizations of Highly Evolved Beings is that HEBs actually apply the law of reciprocity in their lives, rather than just giving it lip service. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
619:the Law of Bronwyn had proven true again and again, so often that it was simply accepted. “Once a species is introduced to interstellar spaceflight, it will advance technologically but not socially ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
620:The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
621:The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so. ~ Thomas Troward, #NFDB
622:The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world. ~ Edgar Quinet, #NFDB
623:A positive affirmation can have a negative vibration. Most affirmations don’t work because the Law of Attraction doesn’t respond to words – it responds to how you feel about the words you use. On ~ Michael J Losier, #NFDB
624:It is an enduring truth, which can never be altered, that every infraction of the Law of nature must carry its punitive consequences with it. We can never get beyond that range of cause and effect. ~ Thomas Troward, #NFDB
625:The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want... ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
626:The best way to put the Law of Giving into operation — to start the whole process of circulation — is to make a decision that any time you come into contact with anyone, you will give them something. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
627:We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
628:The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all man are, white or black...It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
629:Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
[Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, June 26 1963] ~ John F Kennedy,#NFDB
630:It is not in our forming battlements or bristling seacoasts, or our Army and Navy that makes America great - but rather our reliance in the law of liberty and the religious law God has planted in us. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
631:Galileo had already made a significant beginning toward a knowledge of the law of motion. He discovered the law of inertia and the law of bodies falling freely in the gravitational field of the earth. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
632:He could not even take comfort in knowing that he had spent most of his adult life in dread of calamities had not materialized, because, by the law of averages, one of them was bound to come true one day. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
633:Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, #NFDB
634:The conviction grows in me that we shall discover laws of personality and behavior which are as significant for human progress or human understanding as the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. ~ Carl R Rogers, #NFDB
635:There are certain irregularities which are not the subject of criminal law. But when the criminal law happens to be auxiliary to the law of morality, I do not feel any inclination to explain it away. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
636:The Law of Man is inferior to the Law of God for the mere fact that man is held responsible if he were to unintentionally breach it even if he were not aware of the existence of such man-made statutes. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
637:become aware of your thoughts, you can also set the intention, "I am the master of my thoughts." Say it often, meditate on it, and as you hold to that intention, by the law of attraction you must become that. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
638:Quote of the Day
“You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, “What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?” Does that ever make you anxious? ~ Elaine May,#NFDB
639:The tonic of success is a marvelous producer as well as stimulant. By the law of mental magnetism one success attracts another, and after we begin to win it is comparatively easy to keep on winning. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
640:Time is in the mind, space is in the mind. The law of cause and effect is also a way of thinking. In reality all is here and now and all is one. Multiplicity and diversity are in the mind only. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, #NFDB
641:We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
642:The earth continues to go round, whether it's the man who kills the tiger or the tiger who eats the man. The stronger asserts his will, it's the law of nature. The world doesn't change; its laws are eternal. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
643:The Law of Reflection Learning to Pause Allows Growth to Catch Up with You “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” —PETER F. DRUCKER ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
644:The Law of Detachment: 1) Allow yourself and others the freedom to be who they are. 2) Do not force solutions - allow solutions to spontaneously emerge. 3) Uncertainty is essential, and you path to freedom. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
645:We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
646:For more interesting examples from the Law of the Sea negotiations, see James K. Sebenius, Negotiating the Law of the Sea: Lessons in the Art and Science of Reaching Agreement (Harvard University Press, 1984). ~ Roger Fisher, #NFDB
647:mostly suck—it’s the law of averages, I figure, especially when you’re on the job. Then you cross paths with people like that. Bad shit’s happened to them, seriously bad shit, but they still come out of it decent. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
648:Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not disturb me. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works whether we accept it or not. - Mahatma Gandhi P.g16 ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
649:I believe you make your own life. You decide what it is that you want, and then the universe gives it to you. It’s not that you don’t have to work for it, but the law of least effort applies more often than not. ~ Diane Capri, #NFDB
650:Names, religions, personalities pass away, but the Law of Love remains. To become possessed of a knowledge of this Law, to enter into conscious harmony with it, is to become immortal, invincible, indestructible. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
651:The best critical consideration of the inherent weakness of a federation of states in which the law of the federation has to be enforced on the states who are its members is contained in the Federalist Papers. ~ Kenneth Waltz, #NFDB
652:But they left their treasure, gold and more gold. Some of it is found- but the finders never tell, because you see they’d only get one-third then: that’s the law of treasure. They want it all, so never speak of it. ~ Jean Rhys, #NFDB
653:The production of wealth is the result of agreement between labor and capital, between employer and employed. Its distribution, therefore, will follow the law of its creation, or great injustice will be done. ~ Leland Stanford, #NFDB
654:he had eyes lifted up to Heaven, the best of books in his hand, the law of truth written upon his lips, the world behind his back. He stood as if pleading with men, and a crown of gold hung over his head."
Then ~ John Bunyan,#NFDB
655:In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs and other heads of states. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
656:The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of magic. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
657:At this point in our planetary history, if we are simply to survive, we need to follow the law of unity between humanity and nature. If we keep trying to break the laws of nature, they will eventually break us. ~ Gabriel Cousens, #NFDB
658:In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
659:The law of prayer is the law of harvest: sow sparingly in prayer, reap sparingly; sow bountifully in prayer, reap bountifully. The trouble is we are trying to get from our efforts what we never put into them. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
660:24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from g this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
661:Christianity is founded upon the law of forgiveness - Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Karmic law, and the Christ within each man is his Redeemer and Salvation from all inharmonious conditions. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn, #NFDB
662:It was hard to be human. Hell, it was hard to live at all. Life was definitely not for the meek.
Everytime something seemed to go right, at least 3 or 4 things had to go wrong. It was just the law of nature. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
663:Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
664:The customs of God's people and the institutions of our ancestors are to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
665:Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not disturb me. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works whether we accept it or not.” Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
666:For the person trying to do everything alone, the game really is over. If you want to do something big, you must link up with others. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. That's the Law of Significance. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
667:For the person trying to do everything alone, the game really is over. If you want to do something big, you must link up with others. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. That’s the Law of Significance. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
668:He’s a rich, powerful man. Rich, powerful men get away with things all the time. It’s the law of capitalism. It’s especially an issue when those rich, powerful men have ties to men who are richer and more powerful. ~ Laurelin Paige, #NFDB
669:In regard to the law of the state—that is, the accumulated power of society as monopolized by the state—there is no question of right or wrong, but only absolute obedience, the blind conformism of bourgeois society. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
670:Love is the law of life," broke in Leo; "without love there is no life. I seek love that I may live. I believe that all these things are ordained to an end which we do not know. Fate draws me on—I fulfil my fate—— ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
671:We've got some people who think Shariah law oughta be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there, the Second Amendment is there, to make sure all of the rest of the amendments are followed. ~ Louie Gohmert, #NFDB
672:Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity...If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior...If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
673:One would think that Jesus’s admonishment not to teach others to break the Law of Moses would have had some impact on Paul. But Paul seems totally unconcerned with anything “Jesus-in-the-flesh” may or may not have said. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
674:The person who discovered the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone to see all its workings. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
675:Ah, not to be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner -- what is it? if not the intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
676:Fact: Israel became the only nation in history to explicitly address the need for a liberal immigration policy in its founding documents: the Law of return guarantees that “every Jew has the right to come to this country. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
677:The improvement of life was only accomplished to the extent to which it was based on a change of consciousness, that is, to the extent to which the law of violence was replaced in men's consciousness by the law of love. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
678:According to Kant, the law of morals is just as absolute and just as universal as the law of causality. That cannot be proven by reason either, but it is nevertheless absolute and unalterable. Nobody would deny that. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
679:Everything that's alvie was born, and everything that was born has got to die. There's no getting around it. It's the law of the universe.
"The universe does not have laws. It has habits. And habits can be broken. ~ Tom Robbins,#NFDB
680:For any student of history, change is the law of life. Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road; the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
681:ROM7.24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ROM7.25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
682:Man must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator. This will of his Maker is called the Law of Nature. This Law of Nature is superior to any other. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
683:There are four big forces that have played a critical role in manipulating and feeding hyper-consumption: the power of persuasion; the buy now, pay later culture; the law of life cycles; and the “just one more” factor. ~ Rachel Botsman, #NFDB
684:Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; 2)But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
685:Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” 37Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’* 38This is the first and greatest commandment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
686:44And he said unto them, mThese are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
687:Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
688:The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
689:In fact you need do nothing to be connected with the Law of Attraction! Whether you like it or not, since the very beginning of time, it is an unyielding, never bending, unbreakable universal rule. You cannot escape it! ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
690:The third component of the Law of Least Effort is defenselessness, which means that your awareness is established in defenselessness, and you have relinquished the need to convince or persuade others of your point of view. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
691:The three rules of the Tipping Point—the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power of Context—offer a way of making sense of epidemics. They provide us with direction for how to go about reaching a Tipping Point. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
692:But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void, because it is repugnant to the law of nature and of nations. ~ William H Seward, #NFDB
693:More precisely, the Law of Demeter says that a method f of a class C should only call the methods of these: • C • An object created by f • An object passed as an argument to f • An object held in an instance variable of C ~ Robert C Martin, #NFDB
694:The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
695:Every minute, every instant of life ought to be a blessing to man . . . they ought to be, they certainly ought to be! It's the duty of man to make it so; that's the law of his nature, which always exists even if hidden. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
696:These new gurus even wrote text about what it was they were teaching, but the true meaning, power and role of the Law of Attraction was shrouded by the need for these new gurus to expunge payment for what they now offered. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
697:Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing. That's the Law of Consistency. It doesn't matter how talented you are. It doesn't matter how many opportunities you receive. If you want to grow, consistency is key. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
698:the law of et et and not aut aut. For some people, either because of the condition in which they find themselves or because of the human drama they are living, a small step, a small change, means a great deal in the eyes of God. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
699:You’ve heard of Occam’s Razor, haven’t you?” It was nice to know something for sure. “It’s a basic truism sometimes known as the law of parsimony. ‘All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
700:It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other. If one does not experience it, the fellowship he belongs to is not Christian. If any member refuses to bear that burden, he denies the law of Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
701:The Bible meets the needs of the human heart. No other book is like it. It is God’s testimony. Its name is the law of the Lord. The sun is to creation what the law is to God’s people, bringing light, warmth, life, and growth. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
702:The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God is one in essence and three in person, so He is one in one sense and three in another sense, and that does not violate the categories of rational thought or the law of non-contradiction. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
703:The law of increasing returns says that the more you focus on doing the few things that represent the most valuable use of your time, the better you become at those activities and the less time it takes you to accomplish each one. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
704:The shortest man, codenamed RIMSKY, said to me that freedom means understanding our place within the laws of history; we are more free when we acknowledge our submission to the law of gravity than when we foolishly deny it. ~ William T Vollmann, #NFDB
705:The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
706:any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune — that is, highly conscious. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
707:How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. 6. ~ Jean Jacques Rousseau, #NFDB
708:If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
709:A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest. ~ William Graham Sumner, #NFDB
710:Hebb place the Law of Effect at the synaptic level by proposing a correlation model of synaptic modification similar to that of Hayek (1952). This work was seminal in providing a basis for many subsequent theoretical studies . . ~ Gerald Edelman, #NFDB
711:Nor would the Athenian golden age have happened had the Persians not first sacked Athens, burning it to the ground, and clearing the way for Pericles’s ambitious rebuilding. It is the law of unintended consequences on a grand scale. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
712:Therefore it is the law of the mystics to see all things, to experience all things, either of heaven or earth, and yet to say little; for the souls incapable of understanding the possibility of their reach will ridicule them. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
713:Anything that you give your attention to will become your "truth"... The Law of attraction says that it must. Your life and everyone else's too is but a reflection of the predominance of your thoughts. There is no exception to this. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
714:If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
715:In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
716:My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
717:Anything that you give your attention to will become your "truth." The Law of Attraction says that it must. Your life, and everyone else's, too, is but a reflection of the predominance of your thoughts. There is no exception to this. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
718:Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature. No one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
719:The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
720:There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
721:But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other. ~ William H Seward, #NFDB
722:Forgetfulness is a property of all action. The man of action is also without knowledge: he forgets most things in order to do one, he is unjust to what is behind him, and only recognizes one law - the law of that which is to be. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
723:Isn't it great to know that you cannot control your world from the outside? To try and control things on the outside feels impossible because it would take so much work, and in fact it is impossible according to the law of attraction. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
724:It is the law of Spirit that we must be that which we would draw to us. If we would draw to us love, we must be love, be loving and kind; if we would have peace and harmony in our environment, we must establish it within ourselves. ~ Charles Fillmore, #NFDB
725:The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
726:ABRAHAM: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON [Aside to Gregory]: Is the law of our side, if I say ay?
GREGORY [Aside to Sampson]: No.
SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
727:Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
728:It’s the law of the fittest that counts.” “No, it’s not. A group is strongest if we all contribute. Someone who draws all power of the Force to himself will turn evil. And all who follow a leader like that will lose the light themselves. ~ Jen Minkman, #NFDB
729:Rom. viii. 7 where we read that “the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” So then in this passage we have all the distinctive marks of personality ascribed to the Holy Spirit. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
730:The law of war is harsh. If there's anything good at all in a war, it's that it brings the best and the worst out of people: some people try to use the lawlessness to hurt others, and some try to reduce the suffering to minimum. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi, #NFDB
731:The Nuremberg Trial of the German war criminals was tacitly based on the recognition of the principle: criminal actions cannot be excused if committed on government orders; conscience supersedes the authority of the law of the state. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
732:To be Christians under the law of grace does not mean to wander unbridled outside the law, but to be engrafted in Christ, by whose grace we are free from the curse of the law, and by whose Spirit we have the law engraved upon our hearts. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
733:GAL6.1 Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. GAL6.2 Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
734:If your life is Christ, then your death will be only more of Christ, forever. If your life is only Christlessness, then your death will be only more Christlessness, forever. That's not fundamentalism, that's the law of non-contradiction. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
735:Reality is always true to itself. When you're in harmony with it, you experience bliss. As soon as you are not in harmony with it, you experience pain. This is the law of the universe; it is the way things are. Nobody gets out of this law. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
736:8. Apply the Law of Three: Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90 percent of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
737:Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law was a direct manifestation and result of his initiation in the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was, in fact, the basis of the proclamation of the New Aeon of Horus and the Law of Thelema. ~ David Cherubim, #NFDB
738:By such deductions the law of gravitation is rendered probable, that every particle attracts every other particle with a force which varies inversely as the square of the distance. The law thus suggested is assumed to be universally true. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
739:Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva. ~ Ernest Hollings, #NFDB
740:Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
741:"The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization–absolute and unconditional–of its own particular law…To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being…he has failed to realize his own life’s meaning." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
742:Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?... the law of force itself, to those who could not plead any other, has always seemed the most natural of all grounds for the exercise of authority. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
743:Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title. ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
744:For half a century photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? to the finger on the button? to the law of averages? ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
745:he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening. ACT28.24 And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
746:The law of perceptual problem solving, or peekaboo, should now make more sense. It may have evolved to ensure that the search for visual solutions is inherently pleasurable rather than frustrating, so that you don’t give up too easily. ~ V S Ramachandran, #NFDB
747:Now if I do anything it is to tune souls instead of instruments. To harmonize people instead of notes. If there is anything in my philosophy, it is the law of harmony: that one must put oneself in harmony with oneself and with others. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
748:The law of war is harsh. If there's anything good at all in a war, it's that it brings the best and the worst out of people: some people try to use the lawlessness to hurt others, and some try to reduce the suffering to the minimum. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi, #NFDB
749:38Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; 39and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
750:A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
751:In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and make no allowances. Such a center is God. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
752:The eternal spiritual body, united with this eternal material body, then constituted a suitable home for eternal intelligence, whereby it might be able, under the law of evolution to attain the greatest conceivable knowledge and power. The ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
753:For some reason human beings did not see it that way. “People’s intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well,” Danny and Amos wrote. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
754:You can shift your thoughts to what you want, receive confirmation through your feelings that you changed your frequency, and the law of attraction will grab hold of that new frequency and send it back to you as the new pictures of your life. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
755:Among the heresies was the idea that nature follows laws, because this conflicts with God’s omnipotence. Interestingly, Pope John was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
756:Even on days when every cinder in our soul feels cold, if we crawl to the Word of God and cry out for ears to hear, the cold ashes will be lifted and the tiny spark of life will be fanned. For 'the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.' ~ John Piper, #NFDB
757:Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization. ~ Greg Bear, #NFDB
758:Premature wealth or position cannot be retained because it has not been earned; we get only what we give, and those who try to get without giving always find that the law of compensation is relentlessly bringing about an exact equilibrium. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
759:The death of Christ covers our sin, but the life of Christ provides the merit and the righteousness that we must have in order to enter into heaven. So, Jesus’s life is as important for us as His death. He lived to fulfill all of the law of God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
760:While some of them acknowledge the obligation of natural morality in their mode of conducting their cases, and preserve their individual character as gentlemen, there are others who acknowledge no law, human or divine, but the law of Scotland. ~ George Combe, #NFDB
761:God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
762:PSA1.1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. PSA1.2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
763:The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests. ~ Baron de Montesquieu, #NFDB
764:The seeker ought to avoid any preference of himself to another; he should efface pride and arrogance from his heart, arm himself with patience and endurance and follow the law of silence so that he may keep himself from vain words. ~ Baha-ulIah: Kitab-el-ikon, #NFDB
765:Under the law of evolution, man's organization will become more and more complex. That is, he will increase in his power of using intelligence until in time, he will develop so far that, in comparison with his present state, he will be a God. ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
766:The Law of Motivation says this: Freedom first, service second. If you serve to get free of your fear, you are doomed to failure. Let God work on the fears, resolve them, and create some healthy boundaries to guard the freedom you were called to. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
767:It will be seen that the formula - 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' has nothing to do with 'Do as you please.' It is much more difficult to comply with the Law of Thelema than to follow out slavishly a set of dead regulations. ~ Aleister Crowley, #NFDB
768:Order is the law of nature, the universal trend, the cosmic direction. If time is an arrow, that arrow points toward order. The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
769:Paul’s breezy dismissal of the very foundation of Judaism was as shocking to the leaders of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem as it would have been to Jesus himself. After all, Jesus claimed to have come to fulfill the Law of Moses, not to abolish it. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
770:The poor man, a term which means the man who doesn't know how to operate and release the riches of his mind, can at any time he wishes begin to practice the law of opulence and again' attract to himself wealth, success and riches of all kinds. The ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
771:It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world’s Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #NFDB
772:Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
773:One of the principles of leadership in any organization, particularly a local church, is the law of unintended consequences. It points out that any significant change in an organization will have reactions that extend well beyond the change itself. ~ Thom S Rainer, #NFDB
774:Self-control and deliberate thought apparently draw on the same limited budget of effort.... This is how the law of least effort comes to be a law. Even in the absence of time pressure, maintaining a coherent train of thought requires discipline. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
775:The true law of life is so simple, clear and intelligible that men cannot excuse their bad living under the pretext of ignorance. If men live in contradiction to the law of their true living, they are repudiating reason. And that is in fact what they do. ~ Tolstoi, #NFDB
776:Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all difference in the larger whole - such is the law of growth. The unifying of difference is the eternal process of life - the creative synthesis, the highest act of creation, the at-onement. ~ Mary Parker Follett, #NFDB
777:Lao-tzu, that master of the law of reversed effort, who declared that those who justify themselves do not convince, that to know truth one must get rid of knowledge, and that nothing is more powerful and creative than emptiness—from which men shrink. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
778:Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher laws - to the strength of the spirit. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
779:It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, rules us we would have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilised men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
780:If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God. But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ. And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
781:The United States, therefore, works to ensure that any actions we take are consistent with international laws and norms - including those reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention. It's worth remembering that our presence in the region is nothing new. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
782:All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
783:English orthography satisfies all the requirements of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition consumes much time and effort; failure to acquire it is easy of detection. ~ Thorstein Veblen, #NFDB
784:The problem is the total opening of borders and allowing the law of the jungle to prevail: The further a company goes today to find slaves, which it then treats like animals and pays a pittance, without regard for environmental laws, the more it earns. ~ Marine Le Pen, #NFDB
785:Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
786:Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx. ~ Joan Robinson, #NFDB
787:The harder you run after time, the faster time goes: this is the law of the consumable. Try to stop it, and it will wear you out and age you all the more easily. Time must be caught on the wing, in the present—but the present has yet to be constructed. ~ Raoul Vaneigem, #NFDB
788:The Law of Financial Viability When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control into your work life, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence, continue. If not, move on. When ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
789:The profession of the law of which he [a judge] is a part is charged with the articulation and final incidence of the successive efforts towards justice; it must feel the circulation of the communal blood or it will wither and drop off, a useless member. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
790:But I can't say that gratitude was my motive for infringing on the Law of Cultural Embargo. I was not paying my debt to him. Such debts remain owing. Estraven and I had simply arrived at the point where we shared whatever we had that was worth sharing. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
791:Death comes for us all; even at our birth-- even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. It is the law of nature, and the will of God. ~ Robert Bolt, #NFDB
792:Have you ever heard of the law of unintended consequences?” He shook his head. “It basically says that any intervention in a complex system may or may not have the intended result, but will inevitably create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes. ~ Michael R Hicks, #NFDB
793:The beautiful thing about the law of attraction is that you can begin where you are, and you can begin to think, real thinking, and you can begin to generate within yourself a feeling tone of harmony and happiness. The law will begin to respond to that. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
794:A third way to put the Law of Least Effort into action is to practice defenselessness. This means relinquishing the need to convince others of your point of view. By doing this, you gain access to enormous amounts of energy that have previously been wasted. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
795:The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar (1837), #NFDB
796:All that I do is right—for me. I make it so by doing it. Do you think that I am conquered by the laws that other women crouch and whine before, because they dare not break them, though they long to do so? I am my own law—and the law of some others. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
797:Change is the law of life and of relations between nations. When two great peoples such as ours, energetic and optimistic, live side by side in all the diversity that freedom offers, change is rapid and brings in its wake problems, sometimes frictions. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
798:The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical...There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
799:The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically cancelled “in the Sabbath year” (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released. ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
800:The Law of Remarkability For a mission-driven project to succeed, it should be remarkable in two different ways. First, it must compel people who encounter it to remark about it to others. Second, it must be launched in a venue that supports such remarking. Once ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
801:your presence on this earth are important, even though you may not believe it. Of course, such ideas could land you in a lot of trouble for breaking the Law of Jante, but don’t be intimidated. Continue to live without fear, and you will triumph in the end.’ The ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
802:For the highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one's personal pulls and one's private views to the law of which we are all guaradians - those impersonal convictions that made a society a civilized community, and not the victims of personal rule. ~ Felix Frankfurter, #NFDB
803:Remember, the Law of Attraction does not care whether you are remembering, pretending, celebrating, playing, creating, complaining or worrying. It simply responds to what’s in your Vibrational Bubble. So, find proof, rejoice and send out a positive vibration. ~ Michael J Losier, #NFDB
804:The law of karma states simply that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences of a similar kind, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
805:When, as the football coach Bill Walsh explained, "self-confidence becomes arrogance, assertiveness becomes obstinacy, and self-assurance becomes reckless abandon." This is the ego, as the writer Cyril Connolly warned, that "sucks us down like the law of gravity. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
806:The bill then says if the Senate does not act, then H.R. 1 (the House-passed bill that cuts $61 billion) will be the law of the land. In addition to that, it says that if all else fails, and the Senate brings about a shutdown, then members should not get their pay. ~ Eric Cantor, #NFDB
807:...the princes of the Earth had hardened their hearts against the Law of the Lord, and of their pride there was no end. And each of them thought within himself that it was better for all to be destroyed than for the will of other princes to prevail over his. ~ Walter M Miller Jr, #NFDB
808:The world of politics is basically of the instinctive level. It belongs to the law of the jungle: might is right. And the people who get interested in politics are the most mediocre. Politics needs no other qualifications except one—that is, a deep feeling of inferiority. ~ Osho, #NFDB
809:The law of God was more vindicated by the death of Christ than it would have been had all transgressors been sent to Hell. For the Son of God to suffer for sin was a more glorious establishment of the government of God, than for the whole race to suffer. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
810:The law of supply and demand affects money just as it affects pencils and everything else. If there is very little money the money is very valuable and it will buy a great deal. But if there is a lot of money it is not so valuable and it will buy very little . ~ Richard J Maybury, #NFDB
811:We come to understand the law of casuality - that is, we see that all beings are experiencing what they're experiencing based on their own actions and not by what we wish for them - and therefore we relax in a deep understanding and acceptance of the way things are. ~ Noah Levine, #NFDB
812:Group Meditation is a castle that protects the new spiritual aspirants as well as the veteran meditators. Meditating together increases the degree of Self-realization of each member of the group by the law of invisible vibratory exchange of group magnetism. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
813:If the will, which in the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness,--a horrid thought! ~ John Milton, #NFDB
814:We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
815:But we have never stopped it [war] and never shall, because war is not the law of one age or civilization, but of eternal nature itself, out of which every civilization proceedes, and into which it must sink again if it is not hard enough to withstand its iron ordeal. ~ Ernst J nger, #NFDB
816:Destruction is not the law of humans. Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. Every murder or other injury, no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another is a crime against humanity. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
817:He whose birth we commemorate this season is more than the symbol of a holiday. He is the Son of God, the Creator of the earth, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the fulfillment of the Law of Moses, the Redeemer of mankind, the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
818:If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily exisitance. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
819:in view of the law of natural selection it was agreed that a nation or world of people who will not use their intelligence are no better than animals who do not have intelligence. Such people are beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent. ~ Milton William Cooper, #NFDB
820:the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: “For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.” Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, ~ Lynne Truss, #NFDB
821:The law of karma states simply that every event is both a cause and an effect. Every act has consequences of a similar kind, which in turn have further consequences and so on; and every act, every karma, is also the consequence of some previous karma. This ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
822:For though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men, being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
823:this terror then and drakness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature; the warp whose design we shall begin with this first principle, nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power. ~ Lucretius, #NFDB
824:Visualization is the process of creating pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying what you want. When you visualize, you generate powerful thoughts and feelings of having it now. The law of attraction then returns that reality to you, just as you saw it in your mind. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
825:You wrong me. You wrong me, Mole. I loathe and despise this human trait of hounding smaller creatures to death, with large numbers opposed against one solitary animal. But, don't you see, it's the law of the wild. This poor fox is sacrificed today to the humans' cruelty. ~ Colin Dann, #NFDB
826:But we cannot blame anyone for our misfortunes, as all calamities are an outcome of our past deeds. We have to take responsibility for all the good that happens to us and all the bad. We are the cause, and we have to face the consequences. This is the law of karma. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
827:It’s like a pistol in a stage play: when someone waves a pistol during the first act, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will be shot with it before the curtain falls. That’s the law of drama. The law that says no pistol must appear if no one’s going to fire it. ~ Herman Koch, #NFDB
828:remember the Law of Power: You only have the power to change yourself. You can’t change another person. You must see yourself as the problem, not the other person. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
829:The law of violence is not a law, but a simple fact which can only be a law when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
830:X. Labour not as one to whom it is appointed to be wretched, nor as one that either would be pitied, or admired; but let this be thine only care and desire; so always and in all things to prosecute or to forbear, as the law of charity, or mutual society doth require. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
831:From the dim morning hours of history when the father was king and priest down to this modern time of history's high noon when nations stand forth full grown and self-governed, the law of coherence and continuity in political development has suffered no serious breach. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
832:It seems that’s there a ghastly Darwinian principle of economics known as the Law of Substitution which declares, more or less, that “the cheapest will survive”. This has all sorts of unpleasant consequences, one of which is that non-economic values tend to be eliminated. ~ J G Farrell, #NFDB
833:The law of God was more vindicated by the death of Christ than it would have been had all transgressors been sent to Hell. For the Son of God to suffer for sin was a more glorious establishment of the government of God, than for the whole race to suffer. Jesus ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
834:A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
835:For by illumination in general, as it denotes an effect wrought in the minds of men, I understand that supernatural knowledge that any man hath or may have of the mind and will of God, as revealed unto him by supernatural means, for the law of his faith, life, and obedience. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
836:I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
837:So, I'm not the only one who believes that there is such a thing as "the law of gravity," and if it's a law, it can be violated. If you hit the ground at 120 mph from 1,000 feet, you will suffer the consequences of violating what physics.about.com calls the law of gravity. ~ Ray Comfort, #NFDB
838:Progress in science is governed by the laws of repulsion, every step forward is made by refutation of prevalent errors and false theories. Forward steps in art are governed by the law of attraction, are the result of imitation of and admiration for beloved predecessors. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB
839:I adhere to the law of chastity because I don’t believe in pushing women. That’s what it means to be a man. I don’t hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don’t indulge in either. We don’t need to. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
840:The tragic capacity of the human race for going off course was a little balanced by the integrity of the animals who were always obedient to the law of their being. We were meant to love like that, thought Mary, simply because that's our law and we were told to obey it. ~ Elizabeth Goudge, #NFDB
841:Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin, #NFDB
842:Everything is in the process of becoming something else. It’s the law of change.” I briefly kissed Livvie’s eyelids before she could open them. “I’m in the process of becoming something else, Livvie. I hope it’s something good, something far removed from the monster you knew. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
843:On Harpy’s Drive we passed a row of trees, each one with its trunk unnaturally bloated and covered with black fuzz. I had no idea what the fuzz did, but we steered clear of it. The law of navigating post-Shift Atlanta was simple: if you don’t know what it is, don’t touch it. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
844:The idea of difficulty animates us all the time. We don’t want man to be an angel; we want him to be a hero. That is to say, a man like us, but who does extraordinary things. He jumps, yes, but in spite of the law of gravity. And everything he does is always ‘in spite of.’ ~ Etienne Decroux, #NFDB
845:To better understand the Law of Attraction, see yourself as a magnet attracting unto you the essence of that which you are thinking and feeling. And so, if you are feeling fat, you cannot attract thin. If you feel poor, you cannot attract prosperity, and so on. It defies Law. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
846:Dostoyevsky had come to believe that “to love man like oneself, according to the commandment of Christ, is impossible. The law of personality on Earth binds. The ego stands in the way.” It is only in the afterlife that the “the law of personality” could be decisively overcome. ~ Joseph Frank, #NFDB
847:For when the Law of Price declares that a good actually commands a particular price, and explains why it does so, it of course implies that the good is able to command this price, and explains why it is able to do so. The Law of Price comprehends the Law of Exchange-Value. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
848:[P]erfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he . . . introduces confusion and disorder into society . . . [thus] where licentiousness begins, liberty ends. ~ Samuel West, #NFDB
849:Sin is not only a series of actions, it is also an attitude that ignores the law of God. But it is even more than a rebellious attitude. Sin is a state of heart, a condition of our inmost being. It is a state of corruption, of vileness, yes, even of filthiness in God’s sight. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
850:The law of attraction says there are no limits and anything is possible. Your imagination has no limits, and anything is possible for you to imagine! Isn't it interesting that the law of attraction and your imagination say the same thing? Think about it. What's it telling you? ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
851:The law of correspondence says your outer world is a mirror of your inner world. Your outer world corresponds to your inner world. Your outer world of your relationships—especially with your children and spouse—simply corresponds to how you feel about yourself, how you’re doing ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
852:An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
853:As ages roll on there is doubtless a progression in human nature. The intellectual comes to rule the physical, and the moral claims to subordinate both. It is no longer strength of body that prevails, but strength of mind; while the law of God proclaims itself superior to both. ~ James McCosh, #NFDB
854:Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN. ~ Thomas Frank, #NFDB
855:The Secret is the law of attraction! Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
856:What could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent? This is precisely what we are dealing with here. Whether inflicted upon the mother or upon the child, it is against the precept of God and the law of nature: 'Thou shalt not kill.' ~ Pope Pius XI, #NFDB
857:An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth--a fact that is recognized by the law of libel. Among other common lies we have the silent lie – the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
858:I'm into the law of attraction and quantum physics. Like cosmic ordering. It's all about thinking lovely things that you would like in life, and feeling good about them before they manifest, so that by the time they do, you don't want them because you're on to your next desire. ~ Julia Sawalha, #NFDB
859:Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council—Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey—rose upon his hind quarters and grunted. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
860:[My brother] was older, and since the law of the west was fairly entrenched in our household, whoever was bigger got control of the television. I sat mesmerized, and horrified, through hundreds of gunfights and became emotionally involved with everyone in Bonanza and Gunsmoke. ~ Elizabeth Crook, #NFDB
861:This law (regarding the theoretical efficiency of heat engines by Mr. Joule), and the law of the maximum efficiency of heat engines, are particular cases of a general law which regulates all transformation of energy, and is the basis of the Science of Energetics. ~ William John Macquorn Rankine, #NFDB
862:When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, that you can do the job, that you will not have a flat tire, that you will get there on time, by talking up good results you invoke the law of positive effects and good results occur. Things do turn out well. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
863:21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For d I delight in the law of God, e in my inner being, 23but I see in my members f another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
864:Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because, if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him; this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
865:The State is also subject to the law of Malthus. It is continually living beyond its means, it increases in proportion to its means, and draws its support solely from the substance of the people. Woe to the people who are incapable of limiting the sphere of action of the State. ~ Fr d ric Bastiat, #NFDB
866:The struggle to exist, to not disappear in this moment, is the advancing root of the struggle to exist throughout the whole passage of time. We need to help each other in this struggle. You by asking, I by struggling to respond. This is the law of love, which rules the universe. ~ Jacob Needleman, #NFDB
867:Have patience, Margaret, and trouble not thyself. Death comes for us all; even at our birth—death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. It is the law of nature and the will of God. ~ Robert Bolt, #NFDB
868:...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
869:The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
870:The week with its failures and successes has taught me one new lesson. It is this: 'I must talk about God, or I cannot keep Him in my mind. I must give Him away in order to have Him.' That is the law of the spirit world. What one gives one has, what one keeps to oneself one loses. ~ Frank C Laubach, #NFDB
871:You claim the right to prosecute me in accordance with your laws, the laws of Dorp, about which I know nothing. I claim the right to defend myself by the only law I know, the law of reason. Reason demands an impartial judge, and that I be given the advice of someone who knows your law. ~ Gene Wolfe, #NFDB
872:The issue when it comes to meditation is what, not if. The mind observes the impulse to meditate the way the body observes the law of gravity. Scripture has a lot to say about meditating wisely. The psalmist talks about the fruitful person as one whose “delight is in the law of the ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
873:They knew only too well the intimate bond which unites faith with worship, 'the law of belief with the law of prayer,' and so, under the pretext of restoring it to its primitive form, they corrupted the order of the liturgy in many respects to adapt it to the errors of the Innovators. ~ Pope Leo XIII, #NFDB
874:I am the woman who lost herself but now is found, the lesbian, outside the law of the church and man, the one who has to love herself or die. If you are not as strong as I am, what will be make together? I am all muscle and wounded desire, and I need to know how strong we both can be. ~ Dorothy Allison, #NFDB
875:If the earthly husband still insists on doing all he can to beget such children he breaks the law of Borderland, and will be led deeper and deeper into the mire of sensuality, and at last, perhaps, be deceived by a subjective hallucination of devils whom he will be told are his children. ~ Ida Craddock, #NFDB
876:Nowhere is black magic more apparent than in the modern phases of religion. In both the new and old doctrines, instead of emphasizing the will of the Logos as the law of men, students have been taught to demand of the Infinite, and that He will obey. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
877:You can’t delight in the law of the Lord without understanding Jesus’ whole mission. Without him, the law is nothing but a curse, a condemnation, a witness against us (Gal 3:10–11). He obeyed the law fully for us (2 Cor 5:21), so now it is a delight to us, not an everlasting despair. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
878:It is only a matter of time before you will pay for your wrong-doings. To every action there is a reaction. When it comes back to you, the depth of your tragedy will be even greater than the wrongs you perpetuated. How do I know? It is the law of nature. It applies to every human being. ~ Sister Souljah, #NFDB
879:Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species – thus working on him through the irresistible power of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and action – is God. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
880:The Gong is a brotherhood of tones perfectly united and blended, a cosmic entity. In it the law of cohesion manifests fully. It is a mass of atoms and molecules; it is a host of tones, of cosmic lives. It is a concentric organic body. Through which the energy of sound flows uninterrupted. ~ Dane Rudhyar, #NFDB
881:The law of the [Cub Scout] pack guides the boys to move in the direction of being helpful, friendly, courteous, trustworthy and promote qualities which parents and the community are looking for. The whole purpose of scouting is to help the children grow up making good decisions in life. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
882:It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowshipm to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
883:It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
884:Just like we respect your legal system, you [europeans] should respect our legal system. You cannot impose your values on us, otherwise the world will become the law of the jungle. Every society decides what its laws are, and it's the people who make decisions with regards to these laws. ~ Adel al Jubeir, #NFDB
885:4 Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. 5 And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. 6 Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
886:the law of the subconscious mind works for good and bad ideas alike. This law, when applied in a negative way, is the cause of failure, frustration, and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success, and prosperity. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
887:All that anybody has in the way of a reputation anymore is an odor which, from birth to death, cannot be modified. People are who they are, and that is that. The Law of Natural Selection has made human beings absolutely honest in that regard. Everybody is exactly what he or she seems to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
888:For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
889:For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
890:How can you put the Law of Least Effort into action? There are three things you can do. The first thing is to accept people, situations, and events as they are, not as you wish they were, in this moment. This moment is as it should be, because it took the entire universe to make this moment. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
891:Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
892:It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother taught me, that which cost me the most to learn, and which was to my childish mind the most repulsive - Psalm 119 - has now become of all the most precious to me in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
893:The greatest defect of the Old Covenant was that it demanded obedience but did not provide the power for it. The new heart delights in the law of God; it is willing and able to obey it. A promise of God is a thing of faith. If you do not believe it, you cannot appropriate it or put it to use. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
894:For if phenomena are things by themselves, freedom cannot be saved. Nature in that case is the complete and sufficient cause determining every event, and its condition is always contained in that series of phenomena only which, together with their effect, are necessary under the law of nature. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
895:Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it.… As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.”25 ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
896:No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. ~ The Secret Barrister, #NFDB
897:The law of probability combined with the law of large numbers states that to beat the odds, sometimes you have to repeat an event an increasing number of times in order to get you to the outcome you desire. The more you do, the closer you get. Or… basically, sometimes you just have to keep going. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
898:Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
899:Reincarnation is not an exclusively Hindu or Buddhist concept, but it is part of the history of human origin. It is proof of the mindstream's capacity to retain knowledge of physical and mental activities. It is related to the theory of interdependent origination and to the law of cause and effect. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
900:The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
901:The use of force is easy to rationalize in terms of basic economics. 'We should make them PAY for what they've done!' It's just the law of demand: raise the price of crossing us, and fewer people will cross us. Make the price another Hiroshima, and perhaps the quantity demanded will fall to zero. ~ Bryan Caplan, #NFDB
902:It is necessary to give freely if we are to receive freely. The law of receiving includes giving. The knowledge that substance is omnipresent and that people cannot, therefore, impoverish themselves by giving (but rather will increase their supply) will enable us to give freely and cheerfully. ~ Charles Fillmore, #NFDB
903:It is never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
904:that she had deceived him completely, and her whole conduct turned out to have been so bad, that he felt himself obliged to carry out the law of the land, and order the grand-vizir to put her to death. The blow was so heavy that his mind almost gave way, and he declared that he was quite sure that at ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
905:The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University’s Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.) ~ Robert J Hutchinson, #NFDB
906:I set out on this ground which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living. . . . We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another. . . . The earth belongs always to the living generations. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
907:Robert trusted in the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus influence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination. ~ Patti Smith, #NFDB
908:We'll keep on being re-born because for the law of action and reaction: "What-so-ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;" you reap when you come back in your next birth, what you've sown in your previous incarnation, that's why I'm me and you're you and he's him and we are all whoever we are. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
909:On this piano the vibrations of each ‘whole tone’ and of each ‘half tone’ of any octave pass from one to another strictly according to the law of the sacred Heptaparaparshinokh and thus their vibrations, as occurs always and everywhere in the Universe, mutually help one another to evolve or involve. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
910:Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
911:If the peasants are in open rebellion, then they are outside the law of God. Therefore let all who are able slash, strike down, and kill (those who rebel) openly and secretly, remembering that there can be nothing more venomous, harmful, or devilish than a rebel. It is exactly like killing a mad dog. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
912:Taking into account these distinctions, in harmony with the Magisterium of my Predecessors[81] and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
913:The future in modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of man and true freedom and to keep the law of God, even if it means martyrdom or death. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
914:The future of modern society depends much more on the quiet heroism of the very few who are inspired by God. These few will greatly enjoy the divine inspiration and will be prepared to stand for the dignity of Man and true freedom and to keep the Law of God, even of it means martyrdom or death. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
915:Vegetarianism functioned as a purification. When you eat animals you are more under the law of necessity. You are heavy, you gravitate more towards the earth. When you are a vegetarian you are light and you are more under the law of grace, under the law of power, and you start gravitating towards the sky. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
916:When human beings failed in obedience to the law of God, God did not just annihilate them. He gave them a promise of future redemption, and He covered their nakedness, which foreshadowed the ultimate covering of our spiritual nakedness that is accomplished by the garments of the righteousness of Christ. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
917:Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
918:Similarly, if the American people and their representatives do not know and understand what is in our Constitution, others will take advantage of them. Only when we understand the law of our land can we effectively hold our representatives accountable. Knowledge is power, and we must refuse to be bullied. ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
919:The Bible is filled with verses on the importance of community. Hebrews 10:25 says, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another” (NIV 1984). Galatians 6:2 says, “By helping each other with your troubles, you truly obey the law of Christ” (NCV). ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
920:After having explained this division, I contend that no intelligent person can assume that any of the actions of God can be vain, purposeless, or unimportant. According to our view and the view of all that follow the Law of Moses, all actions of God are "exceedingly good." ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
921:We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
922:As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus. Discipleship, understood as being bound to the person of Jesus Christ, places the disciple under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
923:Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
924:On the television planet, where men make up the tribe, the law of the caveman rules. So, for a woman coming from another world, without experience or cunning, to succeed gradually in gaining control over what is to be taped, what goes out over the air, what is said without censorship, is an epic feat. ~ Cristina Saralegui, #NFDB
925:The fundamental precept of Buddhism is Interdependence or the Law of Cause and Effect. This simply states that everything an individual experiences is derived from action through motivation. Motivation is thus the root of both action and experience.
FREEDOM IN EXILE: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE DALAI LAMA ~ Dalai Lama XIV,#NFDB
926:The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships and municipalities, took possession of the State: every class was enlisted in its cause; battles were fought, and victories obtained for it, until it became the law of laws. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
927:We are going to enforce the law of America and strengthen immigration and customs enforcement with more resources and personnel to be able to do that, and then Donald Trump has made it clear. Once we have done all of those things, then we are going to reform the immigration system that we have in this country. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
928:Without the consciousness of sin, the whole of the gospel will seem to be an idle tale. But how can the consciousness of sin be revived? Something no doubt, can be accomplished by the proclamation of the law of God, for the law reveals transgressions. The whole of the law, moreover, should be proclaimed. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
929:enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
930:If they are ignorant, they are despised, if learned, mocked. In love they are reduced to the status of courtesans. As wives they are treated more as servants than as companions. Men do not love them: they make use of them, they exploit them, and expect, in that way, to make them subject to the law of fidelity. ~ George Sand, #NFDB
931:Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it. ~ Czes aw Mi osz, #NFDB
932:If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind. Jefferson ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
933:Our job as humans is to hold on to the thoughts of what we want, make it absolutely clear in our minds what we want, and from that we start to invoke one of the greatest laws in the Universe, and that's the law of attraction. You become what you think about most, but you also attract what you think about most. ~ John Assaraf, #NFDB
934:The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is great; but the advantages of this law are also greater still than its cost- for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
935:ROM8.5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. ROM8.6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ROM8.7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
936:There is a reason Christianity is violently opposed in our world while other religions and philosophies are tolerated... Biblical Christianity evokes violent responses from some people, because only in Christianity is there an absolute right and wrong. People hate the Bible and Christianity because of the law of God. ~ Carman, #NFDB
937:I do not always pray, nor do I always meditate on the Law of the Lord and struggle continually with sin, death, and the devil; but I put on my clothes, I sleep, I play with the children, eat, drink, etc. If all these things are done in faith, they are approved by God’s judgment as having been done rightly. This ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
938:If Psalm 1 is to be believed, we must not allow our children to stand, sit or walk with those who deny biblical truth and morality. Instead, we must place them in situations that will aid them in meditating on the law of the Lord 'day and night.' Surely this involves how and where they are to be educated. ~ Voddie T Baucham Jr, #NFDB
939:The possession of Knowledge, unless accompanied by a manifestation and expression in Action, is like the hoarding of precious metals - a vain and foolish thing. Knowledge, like Wealth, is intended for Use. The Law of Use is Universal, and he who violates it suffers by reason of his conflict with natural forces. ~ The Kybalion, #NFDB
940:Every soul is immortal—for whatever is in perpetual motion is immortal. Every man’s soul has by the law of his birth been a spectator of eternal truth, or it would never have passed into this our mortal frame, yet still it is no easy matter for all to be reminded of their past by their present existence.” —Plato ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
941:He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, PEDE CLAUDO, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson, #NFDB
942:It’s the age-old concept of like attracts like, or the law of attraction. You get back what you put out, so you might as well think positively, focus on visualizing what you want instead of getting distracted by what you don’t want, and send the universe your good intentions so that it can send them right back. ~ Sophia Amoruso, #NFDB
943:The man who is not prepared for the conscious plunge into the assumption of the wish fulfilled in the faith that it is the only way to the realization of his dream is not yet ready to live consciously by the law of assumption, although there is no doubt that he does live by the law of assumption unconsciously. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
944:This is not to say that one should not be angered at an injustice or speak out against whatever violates one’s security. That is the first law, the law of self-preservation. But we must consider the motives behind the selection of an enemy. Perhaps nothing more is threatened beyond the threat of not having an enemy. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
945:Everyone enjoys being inspired. But here’s the truth when it comes to personal growth: Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing. That’s the Law of Consistency. It doesn’t matter how talented you are. It doesn’t matter how many opportunities you receive. If you want to grow, consistency is key. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
946:Hidden away in the inner nature of the real man is the law of his life, and someday he will discover it and consciously make use of it. He will heal himself, make himself happy and prosperous, and life in an entirely different world. For he will have discovered that life is from within and not from without. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
947:War, he stated, “is a biological necessity”; it is the carrying out among humankind of “the natural law, upon which all the laws of Nature rest, the law of the struggle for existence.” Nations, he said, must progress or decay; “there can be no standing still,” and Germany must choose “world power or downfall. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
948:Now this is the Law of the Jungle, as old and as true as the sky, And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
949:Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Remember that He who has united you as human beings in the same flesh and blood has bound you by the law of mutual love… not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilization….34 ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
950:Simply put, the Law of Attraction states that you will attract into your life whatever you focus on. Whatever you give your energy and attention to will come back to you. So, if you stay focused on the good and positive things in your life, you will automatically attract more good and positive things into your life. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
951:The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
952:If you are complaining, the law of attraction will powerfully bring into your life more situations for you to complain about. If you are listening to someone else complain and focusing on that, sympathizing with them, agreeing with them, in that moment, you are attracting more situations to yourself to complain about. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
953:We accept and welcome therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
954:The Law of the Few says that there are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. The lesson of stickiness is the same. There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
955:When precision reigns, human law reigns, God's law reigns, the law of the universe reigns---everything reigns that should. The timetable is greater than the Gospels, greater than Homer, greater than all of Kant. The timetable is the most perfect manifestation of the human intellect. Mrs. Helena, I'll pour myself another. ~ Karel apek, #NFDB
956:Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back -- For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
957:THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE Just to give you an idea of the immense variety of the Jungle Law, I have translated into verse (Baloo always recited them in a sort of sing-song) a few of the laws that apply to the wolves. There are, of course, hundreds and hundreds more, but these will do for specimens of the simpler rulings. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
958:To whatever extent your mind is aligned with love, you will receive divine compensation for any lack in your material existence. From spiritual substance will come material manifestation. This is not just a theory; it is a fact. It is a law by which the universe operates. I call it the Law of Divine Compensation. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
959:What will you do when the Law of God comes in terror; when the trumpet of the archangel shall tear you from your grave; when the eyes of God shall burn their way into your guilty soul; when the great books shall be opened and all your sin and shame shall be punished... can you stand against an angry Law in that Day? ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
960:[Hermogenes] despises God's law in his painting, maintains repeated marriages [almost certainly a reference to remarrying after divorce or perhaps even widowhood, which Tertullian, who became a Montanist, opposed], alleges the law of God in defense of lust [likely same reference], and yet despises it in respect of his art. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
961:I cannot favour laws such as that of Idaho, which allows sterilization of 'mental defectives, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sex perverts.' The last two categories here are very vague . . . The law of Idaho would have justified the sterilization of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, and St. Paul. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
962:the “law” of the struggle for existence that Darwin observed in the domain of biology will one day cede its place to the law of cooperation for existence which exists already in the cooperation of flowering plants and bees, in the cooperation of different cells in an organism, and in cooperation in the human social organism. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
963:There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculate or encourage polygamy... And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land. ~ Wilford Woodruff, #NFDB
964:All believers, by definition, must be agnostics. The moment you declare that you believe in God or the law of karma, you are acknowledging that you do not know whether they exist or not. For if you did know, you would have no need to believe. Only fools, fanatics, and omniscient beings would claim to know such things. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
965:John Assaraf Our job as humans is to hold on to the thoughts of what we want, make it absolutely clear in our minds what we want, and from that we start to invoke one of the greatest laws in the Universe, and that’s the law of attraction. You become what you think about most, but you also attract what you think about most. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
966:I believe that the sum total of the energy of mankind is not to bring us down but to lift us up, and that is the result of the definite, if unconscious, working of the law of love. The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
967:ACT25.7 And when he was come, the Jews which came down from Jerusalem stood round about, and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove. ACT25.8 While he answered for himself, Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended any thing at all. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
968:I believe in the supreme excellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteousness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that in the attempt to fulfil the law of righteousness, however imperfect it must remain, are to be found the inspiration, the consolation, and the sanctification of human existence. ~ Felix Adler, #NFDB
969:The first fundamental law of the universe is the law of three forces, of three principles, or , as it is often called, the law of three. According to this law every action, every phenomenon in all worlds without exception, is the result of a simultaneous action of three forces- the positive, the negative, and the neutralizing. ~ G I Gurdjieff, #NFDB
970:Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone. ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
971:Every British Subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great- Britain. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
972:I teach something called The Law of Probabilities, which says the more things you try, the more likely one of them will work. The more books you read, the more likely one of them will have an answer to a question that could solve the major problems of your life.. make you wealthier, solve a health problem, whatever it might be. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
973:Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. ~ Rudyard Kipling,#NFDB
974:To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
975:Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels. ~ Peter Kropotkin, #NFDB
976:That is the situation in the factory where I work. The union has never gone in and the workers are nothing but poor victims of blackmail, dependent on the law of the owner, that is: I pay you and so I possess you and I possess your life, your family, and everything that surrounds you, and if you don’t do as I say I’ll ruin you. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
977:The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
978:To cut short this question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence? ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
979:The lesson the Law of Replacement teaches is that you must constantly be pushing new opportunities into your pipeline so that you're replacing the opportunities that will naturally fall out. And, you must do so at a rate that matches or exceeds your closing ratio. This is where a fanatical prospecting mindset really begins to pay off. ~ Jeb Blount, #NFDB
980:When we give up the hopeless struggle of trying to overcome the law of sin and death, of trying to live right in our own strength, in the power of the flesh; and in utter helplessness surrender to the Holy Spirit to do all for us; when we live after Him and walk in His blessed power; then He sets us free from the law of sin and death. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
981:It does not require much thinking to know that, under the operation of the brute law of force, the modern world is pressed down with the weight of misery and affliction, in spite of the vast system of organized Government and mechanical contrivances to make man happy. There seems to be no relief, unless we revert to the law of Love ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
982:I think it is said that Gauss had ten different proofs for the law of quadratic reciprocity. Any good theorem should have several proofs, the more the better. For two reasons: usually, different proofs have different strengths and weaknesses, and they generalise in different directions - they are not just repetitions of each other. ~ Michael Atiyah, #NFDB
983:Trust the Law of Attraction to match you with the right people and events, and you will always be in your right place in the presence of love. Are you trying to bring the past into the present? Can you appreciate and release what was to make way for what is? I celebrate my past, I release it, and I open to enjoy the good in my life now. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
984:Emptiness does not imply non-existence; emptiness implies the emptiness of intrinsic existence, which necessarily implies dependent origination. Dependence and interdependence is the nature of all things; things and events come into being only as a result of causes and conditions. Emptiness makes the law of cause and effect possible. ~ Thupten Jinpa, #NFDB
985:If citizenship is a matter of shared beliefs, then I believe in the democracy of species. If citizenship means an oath of loyalty to a leader, then I choose the leader of the trees. If good citizens agree to uphold the laws of the nation, then I choose natural law, the law of reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, #NFDB
986:If laws were real they wouldn’t need to be enforced, because if they were real they couldn’t be broken. Try breaking the law of gravity. Now that’s a law. Laws made by man are rules reflecting the current status of his moral codes. As he alters and whittles away his morality, casting bits and pieces aside, his codes change to reflect it. ~ Boyd Rice, #NFDB
987:Our tendency is to try something a few times, and if it works, it gets reinforced, and we continue to do it; if it doesn’t work, we abandon it. In psychology this is called the law of effects—we tend to keep doing things we are rewarded for doing. The opposite, however, is also true: we tend to avoid what punishes us or gives us pain. ~ Andy Andrews, #NFDB
988:We closed our eyes and woke up to the world of the Troll King. And everyone—everyone—who has lived by the laws of humanity is in some sort of prison. It is a crime to say, ‘To thine own self be true.’ They have made truth a crime. Now we live the law of trolls. Like Hugel, ‘To thine own self be enough! To thine own self be everything! ~ Bodie Thoene, #NFDB
989:The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!” “Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical. You see, we have neither prey nor enemy, on Anarres. We have only one another. There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
990:The third component of the Law of Dharma is service to humanity--to serve your fellow human beings and to ask yourself the questions,"How can I help? How can I help all those that I come into contact with?" When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of the Law of Dharma. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
991:Christ has given us the most glorious interpretation of life's meaning that man has ever had. The fatherhood of God, the fellowship of the Spirit, the sovereignty of righteousness, the law of love, the glory of service, the coming of the Kingdom, the eternal hope- there was never an interpretation of life to compare with that. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick, #NFDB
992:Just like the law of gravity, the law of attraction never slips up. You don’t see pigs flying because the law of gravity made a mistake and forgot to apply gravity to pigs that day. Likewise, there are no exclusions to the law of attraction. If something came to you, you drew it, with prolonged thought. The law of attraction is precise. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
993:We have to wage peace. That's the law of the spirit is the waging of peace, because if we simply seek to manage the effects of hatred, which does need to be done, of course. But if all we do is manage the effects of hatred, then hatred will simply stalk us the next decade or the next generation. We need to dismantle hatred itself. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
994:Psycho? The woman's senile. We had to stop at about thirty gas stations on the way over here. Finally I got tired of getting out of the car and showing her which was the Men's and which was the Women's, so I let her pick them herself. I worked out a system. The law of averages. I laid money on her and she came out about fifty-fifty. ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
995:We stay like that for a long time, side by side, holding hands, until the crickets, obeying the same ancient law that pulls the sun from the sky and throws the moon up after it, that strips autumn down to winter and pushes spring up afterward, obeying the law of closure and new beginnings, send their voices up from the silence, and sing. ~ Lauren Oliver, #NFDB
996:Besides the sinfulness of the acts from their opposition to the law of God, anyone, be he a subject of this diocese or an extern, who, within the diocese of Cork, shall organise or take part in ambushes or kidnappings, or shall otherwise be guilty of murder or attempted murder, shall incur by the very fact the censure of excommunication. ~ Tim Pat Coogan, #NFDB
997:When I’m sixteen and reach the midpoint of my life, I’ll have my first child. Not ’cause I want to, or ’cause I made a silly decision with a strapping young boy after sneaking a few sips of my father’s fire juice, but ’cause I must. It’s the Law of my people, the Heaters; a Law that’s kept us alive and thriving for many years. A Law I fear. ~ David Estes, #NFDB
998:All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
999:Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for violation of what Government denominated the law of God. To prevent a similar train of evils in this country, the Constitution has wisely withheld from our Government the power of defining the divine law. ~ Richard Mentor Johnson, #NFDB
1000:The moment that the state came into conflict with the higher power, the moment that it set itself up as an end in itself, it became identified with Augustine's earthly city and lost all claims to a higher sanction than the law of force and self-interest. Without justice, what is a great kingdom but a great robbery, magnum latrocinium? ~ Christopher Dawson, #NFDB
1001:First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1002:Jo's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. Meg observed it, but did not troubled herself to make inquiries, for she had learned that the best way to manage Jo was by the law of contraries, so she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1003:[Slave] trade ... is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish ... liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman [peddler].... It is a clear truth, that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
1004:Another fundamental principle taught by the Law of Moses is this: Wrong cannot be ascribed to God in any way whatever; all evils and afflictions as well as all kinds of happiness of man, whether they concern one individual or a community, are distributed according to justice; they are the result of strict judgement that admits no wrong whatever. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
1005:Be grateful for what you have now. As you begin to think about all the things in your life you are grateful for, you will be amazed at the never ending thoughts that come back to you of more things to be grateful for. You have to make a start, and then the law of attraction will receive those grateful thoughts and give you more just like them. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1006:Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of idealogy [sic], that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art etc. ~ Friedrich Engels, #NFDB
1007:The law of Love is based on abundance; we are completely filled with Love all the time, and our supply is always full and running over. When we give our Love unconditionally to others with no expectations of return, the Love within us extends, expands, and joins. So by giving our Love away we increase the Love within us and everyone gains. ~ Gerald Jampolsky, #NFDB
1008:The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this, namely, that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever; and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament. ~ A V Dicey, #NFDB
1009:Would a treaty ratified by Congress trump state law? Could the judiciary override the legislature? And would America function as a true country or a loose federation of states? Hamilton left no doubt that states should bow to a central government: “It must be conceded that the legislature of one state cannot repeal the law of the United States. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1010:Progress in science is governed by the laws of repulsion, every step forward is made by refutation of prevalent errors and false theories. Faust was an artist thanks to the inspiring example of his teachers. Forward steps in art are governed by the law of attraction, are the result of the imitation of and admiration for beloved predecessors. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB
1011:The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.
Polonius ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
1012:The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1013:According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1014:A man will not roll in the snow for a stream of tendency by which all things fulfill the law of their being. He will not go without food in the name of something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. He will do things like this, or pretty nearly like this, under quite a different impulse. He will do these things when he is in love. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1015:The Law of attraction responds the same way your mind does: it hears what you don't want, when you hear yourself make a statement containing the words don't, not, or no, you are actually giving attention to what you don't want. Remember, you attract to your life whatever you give your attention, energy, and focus to whether wanted or unwanted. ~ Michael Losier, #NFDB
1016:The Law of Attraction states that you will attract to you those things that match your state of being. If you focus on having gratitude for what you do have, you will feel rich, and you will attract more abundance into your life. If you focus on what you don't have, you will send out a message of lack and you will attract more lack into your life. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
1017:There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1018:This fundamental discovery that all bodies owe their origin to arrangements of single initial corpuscular type is the beacon that lights the history of the universe to our eyes. In its own way, matter obeyed from the beginning that great law of biology to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of "complexification." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
1019:in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1020:International law now covers vast and complex areas of transnational concern, including traditional topics, such as the position of states,59 state succession,60 state responsibility,61 peace and security,62 the laws of war,63 the law of treaties,64 the law of the sea,65 the law of international water- courses,66 and the conduct of diplomatic relations, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1021:The recognition of the law of the cause and effect, also known as karma, is a fundamental key to understand how you've created your world, with actions of your body, speech and mind. When you truly understand karma, then you realize you are responsible for everything in your life. It is incredibly empowering to know that your future is in your hands. ~ Keanu Reeves, #NFDB
1022:Bonhoeffer was firmly and rightly convinced that it is not only a Christian right but a Christian duty towards God to oppose tyranny, that is, a government which is no longer based on natural law and the law of God. For Bonhoeffer this followed from the fact that the Church as a living force in this world entirely depends on her this-sidedness. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1023:I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the “backwards law.” When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. When you hold your breath, you lose it—which immediately calls to mind an ancient and much neglected saying, “Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1024:There are not many people who work according to the law of virtue, but this small minority is the pride of mankind and every human being. There are not many moments in our own life when we act according to the law of duty. However, the rare moments when we rise above ourselves by neglecting interests and benefits are the only essences of our life. ~ Alija Izetbegovi, #NFDB
1025:When will we learn, when will the people of the world get up and say, Enough is enough. God created us for fellowship. God created us so that we should form the human family, existing together because we were made for one another. We are not made for an exclusive self-sufficiency but for interdependence, and we break the law of our being at our peril. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
1026:As a leader, you don't earn any points for failing in a noble cause. You don't get credit for being "right" as you bring the organization to a halt. Your success is measured by your ability to actually take the people where they need to go. But you can do that only if the people first buy into you as a leader. That's the reality of the Law of Buy-In. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1027:the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: “For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.” Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall. ~ Lynne Truss, #NFDB
1028:...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant... ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1029:You want a black and white world where we can live by the laws? I’m here to tell you that you’re going to drown in the grey. This isn’t law and order and justice for all mankind. This is survival. This is the law of nature—a pack of wolves who are going to eat you in the dark of night, and you can either shoot them first or get devoured. Your choice. ~ Robert J Crane, #NFDB
1030:A Greek philosopher said, 'All men think it is only the other man who is mortal'. The way we scurry about accumulating things is testimony to our unspoken doctrine that we are exceptions to the law of death. The events of September 11, 2001, were a shocking reminder to millions of Americans of something we should have already understood - our mortality. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1031:And the law of God is written in every heart, and it is there that he manifests himself; And in infinite love, according to our necessities, states, conditions. And as we are all various and different from one another, more or less, so the law by the immediate operation of divine grace in the soul, is suited to every individual according to his condition. ~ Elias Hicks, #NFDB
1032:The gospel is neither religion nor irreligion - it is something else altogether. Religion makes law and moral obedience a means of salvation, while irreligion makes the individual a law to him - or herself. The gospel, however, is that Jesus takes the law of God so seriously that He paid the penalty of disobedience, so we can be saved by sheer grace. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1033:The longer I live-especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death-the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1034:The old has gone; the new has come … a different kind of creation. The Kainos Covenant – a different kind of covenant has come. We have moved from the shadowy external law to the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. It is written on human hearts and we have been melded together with God in love. We have come into something that is better than Eden. ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
1035:When we do align with it, we thrive. And when we do not, we suffer. This is not "punishment." It is merely the Law of Cause and Effect. With each thought we think, we either align with universal love, or we disconnect ourselves from it. Whichever is our choice determines whether we then feel connected to, or disconnected, from our own true Selves. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1036:Thus ordered thinking arises out of the ordered course of nature in which man finds himself, and this thinking is from the beginning nothing more than the subjective reproduction of the regularity according to the law of natural phenomena. On the other hand, this reproduction is only possible by means of the will that controls the concatenation of ideas. ~ Wilhelm Wundt, #NFDB
1037:Brothers and sisters, white people will come in to chastise us. But since we are no longer forsaken, and are the people of God, God will answer whatever they do of evil to us. I'm warning the government and I am warning General James Mattis, and all those who would kill us outside of the law of justice, that the God of justice will pay you back in full. ~ Louis Farrakhan, #NFDB
1038:TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1039:To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1040:As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1041:Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key area. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesman are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic , your resources ought to be solely concentrated on these three groups. No one else matters. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
1042:thinking you have no control over something, or when you find yourself hoping something will turn out well, remember that there’s no chance for the law of attraction – you will get what you’re thinking and feeling. Gratitude helps protect you from attracting what you don’t want – bad outcomes – and it ensures you get what you do want – Magnificent Outcomes! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1043:Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1044:St. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1045:The difference concerned only the logical--not even, perhaps, the temporal--order of three steps. Paul said that a man (1) first believes on Christ, (2) then is justified before God, (3) then immediately proceeds to keep God's law. The Judaizers said that a man (1) believes on Christ and (2) keeps the law of God the best he can, and then (3) is justified. ~ J Gresham Machen, #NFDB
1046:Two choices, as always: fight or flight. We were on 56th Street’s southern sidewalk. I could have run straight across the road and tried to get away. But Leonid and his pal were probably faster than me. The law of averages. Most humans are faster than me. The old lady in the summer dress was probably faster than me. Her old gray mutt was probably faster than me. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1047:We must resign ourselves to the fact that the only way in which we can find the clue to the mystery of the rays, systems, and hierarchies, lies in the study of the law of correspondences or analogy. It is the one thread by which we can find our way through the labyrinth, and the one ray of light that shines through the darkness of the surrounding ignorance. ~ Alice A Bailey, #NFDB
1048:When I’m sixteen and reach the midpoint of my life, I’ll have my first child. Not ’cause I want to, or ’cause I made a silly decision with a strapping young boy after sneaking a few sips of my father’s fire juice, but ’cause I must. It’s the Law of my people, the Heaters; a Law that’s kept us alive and thriving for many years. A Law I fear. I learned all about ~ David Estes, #NFDB
1049:Violating the eternal law is not like doing 40 in a 35-mile-per-hour zone when there is no traffic around; it is more like trying to violate the law of gravity. . . . An apple falling from a tree has no choice about whether to obey the law of gravity . . . [but] human beings can voluntarily wreck their lives by running afoul of the laws that govern their nature. ~ A J Swoboda, #NFDB
1050:And what is justice? The princess thought of that proud word 'justice'. All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do with justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1051:[A]s it must be admitted that the remedy under the Constitution lies where it has been marked out by the Constitution; and that no appeal can be consistently made from that remedy by those who were and still profess to be parties to it, but the appeal to the parties themselves having an authority above the Constitution or to the law of nature & of nature's God. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1052:The law of karma is like the wind—blowing on all. Whether you are good or evil, bright or dim, kind or unkind, there is no escaping the effects of your thoughts and the actions that arise from those thoughts. In fact, the only
difference between the wise and the ignorant is that an illuminated mind erects windmills while the ignorant mind builds weather vanes. ~ Darren Main,#NFDB
1053:14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1054:Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgets it, so it is with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1055:The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.. are found upon comparison to be really part of the original law of nature. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
1056:This science explains to us the meaning of terms, the nature of predication, and the law of consistency and contradiction; secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions; ~ Epicurus, #NFDB
1057:Use whatever excuse you can to vibrate in harmony with those things you've been saying you want. And when you do, those things that are a vibrational equivalent flow into your experience in abundance. Not because you deserve it, not because you've earned it, but because it's the natural consequence of the Law of Attraction. That which is like unto itself is drawn. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1058:All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1059:it is always best to choose a task that is slightly above you, one that might be considered ambitious on your part. This is a corollary of the Law of the Creative Dynamic—the higher the goal, the more energy you will call up from deep within. You will rise to the challenge because you have to, and will discover creative powers in yourself that you never suspected. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1060:No-one is destined to live a life of poverty, because each of us has the ability to change everything in this life. The law of attraction is the law of creation, and it allows each person to create the life they want. Every person has their own unique circumstances to overcome, but every single person has the opportunity to achieve anything - and change everything. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1061:Sect. 4. TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1062:Uncouth thoughts can come take possession of the sweetest mind. That happens to you, you got to keep yourself alone a long time to heal of it. Mostly so you don’t pass it on. Thoughts, you see, or things, or folks that touch, go right on rubbing on each other, long after the actual touching is done and gone. That’s the Law Of Contagion.”
-- Banjo Bartell ~ Penelope Kahler Swan,#NFDB
1063:Tragically, many Christians have lost the understanding of the new life of the Spirit. They do not preach or live the regeneration of believers. Rather than living out a joy-filled life flowing from their deepest desire to be like Jesus, they settle for being sinners saved by grace, obligated to do all they can to keep the law of God by duty rather than by delight. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1064:If we as a society want to cure unemployment, raise real wages, and in other ways improve our economy, we will base public policy on private property rights, the non-aggression principle and the law of free association. In the free and prosperous society, everyone may do precisely as he pleases, provided only that he does not initiate violence against non-aggressors. ~ Walter Block, #NFDB
1065:When a fruit salad, a lover, or a jazz trio is just too imperfect for our tastes, we stop eating, kissing, and listening. But the law of large numbers suggests that when a measurement is too imperfect for our tastes, we should not stop measuring. Quite the opposite - we should measure again and again until niggling imperfections yield to the onslaught of data. ~ Daniel Todd Gilbert, #NFDB
1066:Practicing the Law of Giving is actually very simple; if you want joy, give joy to others; if you want love, learn to give love; if you want attention and appreciation, learn to give attention and appreciation; if you want material affluence, help others to become materially affluent. In fact, the easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1067:The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now. Do a fair day's work, and then stop. Overwork is not productive in the long run. ~ Emmet Fox, #NFDB
1068:When you're feeling joyful, you are giving joy, and you'll receive back joyful experiences, joyful situations, and joyful people, wherever you go. From the smallest experience of your favorite song playing on the radio to bigger experiences of receiving a pay raise -- all of the circumstances you experiences are the law of attraction responding to your feeling of joy. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1069:Man's ignorance of the Law of Love in personal and world relationships will not serve as an excuse to save him from disaster. Wealth cannot be acquired from others by might, for wealth thus taken will impoverish him who takes anything which is not given. Nor can power be thus acquired, for the weakness of the despoiled will prevail against the might of the despoiler. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
1070:Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers: the law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasurably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law - like the laws of the conservation of energy and of the dissipation of energy (entropy). ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin, #NFDB
1071:Suppose a man to be a true believer, and yet finds in himself a powerful indwelling sin, leading him captive to the law of it, consuming his heart with trouble, perplexing his thoughts, weakening his soul as to duties of communion with God, disquieting him as to peace, and perhaps defiling his conscience, and exposing him to hardening through the deceitfulness of sin,—what ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1072:Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design. ~ Branch Rickey, #NFDB
1073:You cannot cheat with the law of conservation of violence: all violence is paid for, and for example, the structural violence exerted by the financial markets, in the form of layoffs, loss of security, etc., is matched sooner or later in the form of suicides, crime and delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, a whole host of minor and major everyday acts of violence. ~ Pierre Bourdieu, #NFDB
1074:And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to endure and love, and that she did. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1075:When you are focused upon something that you desire, then through the Law of Attraction, more and more thoughts about what you desire will be drawn, and you will feel greater positive emotion. You can speed the creation of something simply by giving it more attention—the Law of Attraction takes care of the rest and brings to you the essence of the subject of your thought. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1076:That it is Peter, the rock of the church, who incurs guilt here immediately after his own confession to Jesus Christ and after his appointment by Jesus, means that from its very inception the church itself has taken offense at the suffering Christ. It neither wants such a Lord nor does it, as the Church of Christ, want its Lord to force upon it the law of suffering. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1077:We have traced the development of the materialist conception of history from Marx’s earlier concern with human freedom and alienation, but we have not examined the details of this theory of history. Is it really, as Engels claimed, a scientific discovery of ‘the law of development of human history’, comparable to Darwin’s discovery of the law of development of organic nature? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1078:But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1079:The law of balance is a law of applied consciousness. You can never change it. You will get one thing, you lose the other, you get third thing, you lose the fourth. Always there will be a gap. The 'law of gap' is that there is no gap and how can that gap be filled? Be in gratitude. Make an attitude to be in gratitude, you will find the whole Universe will come to you. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1080:Truth is this: you deserve all good things life has to offer. You know that inherently, because you feel awful when you are experiencing the lack of good things. All good things are your birthright! You are the creator of you, and the law of attraction is your magnificent tool to create whatever you want in your life. Welcome to the magic of life, and the magnificence of You! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1081:Another fundamental principle taught by the Law of Moses is this: Wrong cannot be ascribed to God in any way whatever; all evils and afflictions as well as all kinds of happiness of man, whether they concern one individual or a community, are distributed according to justice; they are the result of strict judgement that admits no wrong whatever. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1082:One’s life, liberty and the products of one’s labor were not intended to be up for grabs by grubby, greedy majorities. Contra classical natural law theory, legal positivism equates justice with the law of the state. However, from the fact that most Americans want others to fund or subsidize their health care, it does not follow that they have such a right. A need is not a right. ~ Ilana Mercer, #NFDB
1083:If I were a super hero , social awkwardness would be my power. My entire life, I’ve struggled to get out of my head, constantly overanalyzing every little word or movement or shift of a gaze. I’ve learned it’s easier to sit back and shut up. I find I don’t make as much of a fool out of myself that way. Quietude has become the law of my land, with silence being my official language. ~ Minka Kent, #NFDB
1084:Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1085:Newton’s First Law, also known as the Law of Inertia: Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something stops their momentum. Put another way, couch potatoes tend to stay couch potatoes. Achievers—people who get into a successful rhythm—continue busting their butts and end up achieving more and more. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1086:Christ subjected himself to the law of the seed in the earth, to the law of rest and growth. He was "one of the children of the year," growing through rest, secret in his mothers womb, receiving the warmth of the sun through her, living the life of dependence, helplessness, littleness, darkness, and silence which, by a mystery of the Eternal Law, is the life of natural growth. ~ Caryll Houselander, #NFDB
1087:When did other people's happiness start feeling like assault? But the answer comes quickly, and brings a bad taste to my mouth. Always. I didn't ever stop feeling excluded. I just started to wear it and pretend it was my choice. Maybe that's why I was drawn to the law of poisoned things, and hurt people, and scabby chemical earth. Maybe toxic is the only thing I really understand. ~ Krysten Ritter, #NFDB
1088:It has happened that a species has tried to live in violation of the Law of Limited Competition. Or rather it has happened one time, in one human culture—ours. That’s what our agricultural revolution is all about. That’s the whole point of totalitarian agriculture: We hunt our competitors down, we destroy their food, and we deny them access to food. That’s what makes it totalitarian. ~ Daniel Quinn, #NFDB
1089:1How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! 2But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night. 3He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1090:even and especially as we are being confronted with the law of impermanence and the inevitability of change, conditions we are subject to as individuals regardless of how much we resist or protest or try to control outcomes. If we wish to make a quantum leap to greater awareness, there is no getting around the need for us to be willing to wake up, and to care deeply about waking up. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1091:Want to know the secret behind The Secret? The Law of Attraction will not bring you abundance and prosperity for just thinking pleasant, positive thoughts. It is no cosmic mistake that the word "attraction" has the word "action" in it. Abundance is, in fact, the result of creative thinking and a lot of action. Much action, much prosperity, in other words. What are you waiting for? ~ Ernie J Zelinski, #NFDB
1092:If you say to the universe, "Gimme, gimme, gimme," which is what a lot of the work around the law of attraction says because of a misinterpretation, then the universe gives you back what you offered out. You get more "gimme, gimme, gimme." "Gimme" means you don't have enough. You have a shortage. The universe just keeps giving you more shortage because of what you're thinking and saying. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
1093:You refer me to the natural order of things, to the law of cause and effect, but is there order or natural law in that I, a living, thinking creature, should stand by a ditch until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I could jump it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why should we wait? Wait, when we have no strength to live, and yet must live and are full of the desire to live! ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1094:A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
1095:I see myself in perfect health. I see myself in absolute prosperity. I see myself invigorated with life, appreciating, again, this physical life experience which I wanted so very much as I decided to be a physical Being. It is glorious to be here, a physical Being, making decisions with my physical brain but accessing the power of the Universe through the power of the Law of Attraction. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1096:Religion robs the soul of its independence; patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those who profit by it, while the laws of the land, in restraining natural desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable pursuit."[5] ~ Emma Goldman, #NFDB
1097:The Isha Upanishad also speaks of the golden lid hiding the face of the Truth by removing which the Law of the Truth is seen and the highest knowledge in which the One Purusha is known (so'ham asmi) is described as the kalyan.atama form of the Sun. All this seems to refer to the supramental states of which the Sun is the symbol.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, Integral Yoga and Other Paths -IV,#NFDB
1098:Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1099:Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. ROMANS 3:27–30 ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1100:Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect. ~ Hermann von Helmholtz, #NFDB
1101:I see no good reason why the views given this volume [The Origin of Species] should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.' ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1102:These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1103:The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead--he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him--should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living. That, he reasoned, is the law of life. And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so. The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera. ~ Philip K Dick, #NFDB
1104:Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle...The encounter with the truth of art happens in the estranging language and images which make perceptible, visible, and audible that which is no longer, or not yet, perceived, said, and heard in everyday life. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
1105:If to secure our redemption Christ only needed to make an atonement for us, he could have come down from heaven and gone directly to the cross. But he also had to fulfill all righteousness by submitting at every point to the law of God. By his sinless life he achieved positive merit, which merit is imputed to all who put their faith in him. Christ not only died for us but he lived for us as well. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1106:Scientific wealth tends to accumulate according to the law of compound interest. Every addition to knowledge of the properties of matter supplies the physical scientist with new instrumental means for discovering and interpreting phenomena of nature, which in their turn afford foundations of fresh generalisations, bringing gains of permanent value into the great storehouse of natural philosophy. ~ Lord Kelvin, #NFDB
1107:Struggling against the legalism of simple obedience, we end by setting up the most dangerous law of all, the law of the world and the law of grace. In our effort to combat legalism we land ourselves in the worst kind of legalism. The only way of overcoming this legalism is by real obedience to Christ when he calls us to follow him; for in Jesus the law is at once fulfilled and cancelled. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1108:The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The words of a poem, the formulas of trigonometry, the facts of history, the properties of material things, are all known to us as definite systems or groups of objects which cohere in an order fixed by innumerable iterations, and of which any one part reminds us of the others. ~ William James, #NFDB
1109:Man believes the future to be the natural development of the past. But the law of assumption clearly shows that this is not the case. Your assumption places you psychologically where you are not physically; then your senses pull you back from where you were psychologically to where you are physically. It is these psychological forward motions that produce your physical forward motions in time. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
1110:This is the first lesson of the Tipping Point. Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen are responsible for starting word of mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word of mouth epidemic, your resources ought to be solely concentrated on those three groups. No one else matters. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1111:Christian philosophy has, like the Hebrew, uniformly attributed moral and physical evil to the action of created free will. Man has himself brought about the evil from which he suffers by transgressing the law of God, on obedience to which his happiness depended. . . . The errors of mankind, mistaking the true conditions of its own well-being, have been the cause of moral and physical evil.28 ~ William A Dembski, #NFDB
1112:If you’re feeling good, then you’re creating a future that’s on track with your desires. If you’re feeling bad, you’re creating a future that’s off track with your desires. As you go about your day, the law of attraction is working in every second. Everything we think and feel is creating our future. If you’re worried or in fear, then you’re bringing more of that into your life throughout the day. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1113:I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race - the natural élite of mankind - to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'. ~ Savitri Devi, #NFDB
1114:I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'. ~ Savitri Devi, #NFDB
1115:You may blame yourself for not being strong enough to appreciate some unhappy people in spite of their negative emotional offerings toward you. Well, we would never suggest that you be able to look at something you do not want and feel good about it. Instead, look for things that cause you to feel appreciation when you find them-and then the Law Of Attraction will bring you more things like those. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1116:He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form. "Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?" "The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
1117:I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull; and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong. ~ James Weldon Johnson, #NFDB
1118:The duties God requires of us are not in proportion to the strength we possess in ourselves. Rather, they are proportional to the resources available to us in Christ. We do not have the ability in ourselves to accomplish the least of God's tasks. This is the law of grace. When we recognize it is impossible for us to perform a duty in our own strength, we will discover the secret of its accomplishment. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1119:Singlehood is a problem to be solved. Even the bishops in singles wards are impatient with us, frustrated with the amount of time they spend away from their families, dealing with violations of the law of chastity. There's an easy solution, we're often reminded. "Just choose one," said one bishop to a male friend of mine, and indicated, like a game show host, the array of available women before him. ~ Nicole Hardy, #NFDB
1120:They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They don’t only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell: John iii. 18, “He that believeth not is condemned already. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
1121:Was it possible that Napoleon should win the battle of Waterloo? We answer, No! Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No! Because of God! For Bonaparte to conquer at Waterloo was not the law of the nineteenth century. It was time that this vast man should fall. He had been impeached before the Infinite! He had vexed God! Waterloo was not a battle. It was the change of front of the Universe! ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1122:Jesus didn't come to earth to establish a new religion. He came to restore a broken relationship. He came to make the primary, primary again. The secondary activity of obedience to the law of God was always intended to serve the primary activity: to love God and enjoy Him forever. When that is primary, the secondary becomes a labor of love, a joyful, and "easy" burden to bear. (Matthew 11:28-30 ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1123:The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1124:The history of Israel is the record of its faithfulness or failure in the fulfillment of a divine mission. Israel stood alone among the peoples of the ancient East as the one witness to the Law of the one God. Every culture is a moral order, but the moral order of Israel was identical with the Law of Yahveh, as revealed to Moses and elaborated in the teachings of the priests and prophets. ~ Christopher Henry Dawson, #NFDB
1125:There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ROM8.2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. ROM8.3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1126:Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other mens actions, must, as well as their own and other mens actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1127:God mocks the greatness of man by forging them into the law of occasion, so a person in turn mocks by making the occasion in to everything and the next moment into foolishness, whereby God then becomes superfluous, the concept of wise Governance becomes a piece of folly, the occasion becomes a wag who pokes fun at God just as much as at man, so that all existence ends in a jest, a joke, a charade. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1128:Our task is to take suffering in stride, not as if it is a pleasure (it isn’t), but in the knowledge that God will not let it overwhelm us and that He will use it, by His own supernatural alchemy, to three good ends, at least. 1) Our suffering produces character; 2) Our suffering glorifies God; 3) Suffering fulfills the law of the harvest (John 12:24), Rediscovering Holiness by J.I. Packer, pgs. 232-239. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1129:It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and wellbeing, he may be enabled to labour, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, and busy for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfiling the law of Christ. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1130:The vermin explain their sin with sanctimonious language like, "We've prayed about it and sought counsel, and we feel it's the right thing to do." Don't let it down on them that to the Enemy what they feel is inconsequential. His moral laws don't give a rip about how any of them feel. The sludgebags have no more power to vote them in and out of existence than they have power to revoke the law of gravity. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1131:Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
1132:The Law of Least Effort
Put every effort into organizing your life, but remember that the ultimate organizer is Nature.
Don't try to steer the river.
When Nature is most productive and creative, it does not work... it plays.
The best work flows from us effortlessly.
Putting up resistance to life ultimately never succeeds.
Allow the gifts of spirit to come to you. ~ Deepak Chopra,#NFDB
1133:Donald Trump has said we're going to move immigrants out, people who've overstayed their visas. We're going to enforce the law of this country. We're going to strengthen Immigrations and Customs Enforcements with more resources and more personnel to be able to do that. And then Donald Trump has made it clear, once we've done all of those things, that we're going to reform the immigration system that we have. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
1134:I will now add what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1135:Keep ramping up your level of joy every day. There is no limit to the levels of joy you can reach. You will see change to the degree of joy that you can attain and maintain. The higher the joy you can create within you, the more spectacular the change, and the higher the joy, the faster the change. Your emanation of joy attracts more Joy. The law of attraction will continually send you more feelings of joy! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1136:Newton supposed that all matter attracted other matter inversely according to the square of the distance; and the hypothesis was found to account for the whole movements of the heavenly bodies; which all became verifications of what Newton supposed to be the law of the solar system. Adopt the hypothesis that Jesus was what He is represented, and the whole of the books and the history becomes a verification. ~ James McCosh, #NFDB
1137:A. The eight parts of this path are called angas. They are: 1. Right Belief (as to the law of Causation, or Karma); 2. Right Thought; 3. Right Speech; 4. Right Action; 5. Right Means of Livelihood; 6. Right Exertion; 7. Right Remembrance and Self-discipline; 8. Right Concentration of Thought. The man who keeps these angas in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation. ~ Henry Steel Olcott, #NFDB
1138:Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line with the laws of logical reasoning are no refutation of these but the sign of a muddled mind (or would one accept someone’s observational report that he had seen a bird that was red and non-red all over at the same time as a refutation of the law of contradiction rather than the pronouncement of an idiot?). ~ Hans Hermann Hoppe, #NFDB
1139:Spiritual practice is not a mindless repetition of ritual or prayer. It works through consciously realizing the law of cause and effect. Perhaps we can sense the potential of awakening in ourselves, but we must also see that it doesn’t happen by itself. How we act, how we relate to ourselves, to our bodies, to the people around us, to our work, creates the kind of world we live in, creates our very freedom. ~ Jack Kornfield, #NFDB
1140:The law of karma states unequivocally that though we cannot see the connections, we can be sure that everything that happens to us, good and bad, originated once in something we did or thought. We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
1141:Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions constitute the dominating influence of your mind. Here the law of HABIT will come to your aid. Form the habit of applying and using the positive emotions! Eventually, they will dominate your mind so completely, that the negatives cannot enter it. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
1142:We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
1143:1. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 3. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1144:But it’s one thing to adjust the sight on the bow or to reduce the distance to the target, and it’s another thing to ask God to adjust His character. Remember, the law of God flows out of the character of God, and His laws are righteous because He is righteous. He will not adjust the law that reflects His perfection to accommodate you and me. As long as He doesn’t adjust that law, we remain guilty before that law. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1145:But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: Though the man's even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1146:Survival rates for breast cancer are relatively good, but Krishnan has been around illness enough to know there is usually a cruel injustice about the way it strikes. Cranky patients defy the odds, while the kind ones, the ones who bake him cookies or bring him tomatoes from their garden, always seem to die early. Mortality rates utilize the law of averages without consideration for who is most deserving. ~ Shilpi Somaya Gowda, #NFDB
1147:But in the financial markets, without proper institutional rules, there's the law of the jungle - because there's greed! There's nothing wrong with greed, per se. It's not that people are more greedy now than they were 20 years ago. But greed has to be tempered, first, by fear of losses. So if you bail people out, there's less fear. And second, b prudential regulation and supervision to avoid certain excesses. ~ Nouriel Roubini, #NFDB
1148:He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?"
"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other. ~ Richard Bach,#NFDB
1149:In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
1150:Modern man has a need for simplification that tends to find its expression one way or another. And this artificial monotony which he takes pains to create, this monotony which is slowly taking over the world, this monotony is the sign of our greatness. It bears the mark of a certain will-power, the will to utility; it is the expression of utility, a law that governs all our modern activity: the Law of Utility. ~ Blaise Cendrars, #NFDB
1151:Remain true to your ideal. Know definitely and absolutely that whatever contributes to your peace, happiness, and fulfillment must of necessity bless all men who walk the earth. The harmony of the part is the harmony of the whole, for the whole is in the part, and the part is in the whole. All you owe the other, as Paul says, is love, and love is the fulfilling of the law of health, happiness, and peace of mind. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1152:would not have deliberately attracted if you had been doing it on purpose, but much of your attraction is not done by deliberate intent, but rather by default…. It is important to understand that you get what you think about, whether you want it or not. And chronic thoughts about unwanted things invite, or ask for, matching experiences. The Law of Attraction makes it so. Relationships, or co-creating with others, ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1153:Some seducers are preternaturally sensitive to the signals of those they try to seduce; others indiscriminately attempt to seduce, and, by the law of averages, often succeed (this latter group of men might now be regarded as harassers). That was Trump’s approach to women—pleased when he scored, unconcerned when he didn’t (and, often, despite the evidence, believing that he had). And so it was with Director Comey. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
1154:The way of presentation is different according to each religion. In theistic religions like Buddhism, Buddhist values are incorporated. In nontheistic religions, like some types of ancient Indian thought, the law of karma applies. If you do something good, you get a good result. Now, what we need is a way to educate nonbelievers. These nonbelievers may be critical of all religions, but they should be decent at heart. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1155:would not have deliberately attracted if you had been doing it on purpose, but much of your attraction is not done by deliberate intent, but rather by default…. It is important to understand that you get what you think about, whether you want it or not. And chronic thoughts about unwanted things invite, or ask for, matching experiences. The Law of Attraction makes it so. Relationships, or co-creating with others, is ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1156:God's righteousness and His unchangeable law make Christianity a stumbling block for many. Organizations and individuals carry a political and moral agenda that aims to remove all obstacles to their sin. Their goal is to 'break God's bands asunder and cast away His cords.' They counsel together to rid themselves of the law of God; anyone who preaches the gospel or stands for righteousness stands in the way of their agenda. ~ Carman, #NFDB
1157:Or “and scribes of the people.” The traditional rendering of γραμματεύς (grammateus) as “scribe” does not communicate much to the modern English reader, for whom the term might mean “professional copyist,” if it means anything at all. The people referred to here were recognized experts in the law of Moses and in traditional laws and regulations. Thus “expert in the law” comes closer to the meaning for the modern reader. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1158:The law of miracles is operable by any man who has realized that the essence of creation is light. A master is able to employ his divine knowledge of light phenomena to project instantly into perceptible manifestation the ubiquitous light atoms. The actual form of the projection (whatever it be: a tree, a medicine, a human body) is determined by the yogi’s wish and by his power of will and of visualisation. At ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1159:The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage? ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
1160:Here, then, is the genesis of two of the most important historical premises of Western science. The first is that there is a law of nature, an order of things and events awaiting our discovery, and that this order can be formulated in thought, that is, in words or in some type of notation. The second is that the law of nature is universal, a premise deriving from monotheism, from the idea of one God ruling the whole world. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1161:The law of demand and supply reaches into subtler realms than I had supposed.” Ananta spoke with a spiritual enthusiasm never before noticeable. “I understand for the first time your indifference to the vaults and vulgar accumulations of the world.” Late as it was, my brother insisted that he receive diksha into kriya yoga. The ‘guru’ Mukunda had to shoulder the responsibility of two unsought disciples in one day. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1162:they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. ROM8.6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. ROM8.7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. ROM8.8 So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. ROM8.9 But ye are not in the flesh, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1163:The reasoning throughout is straightforward, and is in full accord with what Bush calls “new thinking in the law of war,” which takes international law and treaties to be “private contractual rules” that the more powerful party “is free to apply or disregard as it sees fit”: sternly enforced to ensure a safer world for investors, but quaint and obsolete when they constrain Washington’s resort to aggression and other crimes. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1164:Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law -- for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life. ~ Clarice Lispector, #NFDB
1165:People who know what they want, the universe has a way for clearing a path for them. When you want something bad enough, it's going to happen for you. You can almost manifest your own destiny by always focusing on it. Almost like the law of attraction. If you really know what you want, the chances of you finding it are so much more strong. It's almost as if it will come fall right on your lap. I know that I want to be champion. ~ Jon Jones, #NFDB
1166:In fact, it's Douggie's growing conviction that the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth. Single biggest influence on what a body will or won't believe is what nearby bodies broadcast over the public band. Get three people in the room and they'll decide that the law of gravity is evil and should be rescinded because one of their uncles got shit-faced and fell off the roof. ~ Richard Powers, #NFDB
1167:Often when people first hear this part of the Secret they recall events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. By the law of attraction, they had to be on the same frequency as the event. . . .those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1168:The American people have entered upon the mightiest civic struggle known to their history. ... The Golden Rule is rejected by the heads of all the great departments of trade, and the law of Cain, which repudiates the obligations that we are mutually under to one another, is fostered and made the rule of action throughout the world. Corporate feudality has taken the place of chattel slavery and vaunts its power in every state. ~ James B Weaver, #NFDB
1169:fasting, with prayer as its companion, is designed to increase spirituality; to foster a spirit of devotion and love of God; to increase faith in the hearts of men, thus assuring divine favor; to encourage humility and contrition of soul; to aid in the acquirement of rightousness; to teach man his nothingness and dependence upon God; and to hasten those who properly comply with the law of fasting along the path to salvation. ~ Bruce R McConkie, #NFDB
1170:The main point to remember is once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. It is an interesting and subtle truth that the law of the subconscious mind works for good and bad ideas alike. This law, when applied in a negative way, is the cause of failure, frustration, and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success, and prosperity. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1171:Infinite intelligence leads and guides me in all my ways. Perfect health is mine, and the Law of Harmony operates in my mind and body. Beauty, love, peace, and abundance are mine. The principle of right action and divine order govern my entire life. I know my major premise is based on the eternal truths of life, and I know, feel, and believe that my subconscious mind responds according to the nature of my conscious mind thinking. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1172:Item one: the law of the will. We just talked about this: one should only do that which truly fills our hearts with enthusiasm. If we brush this aside, if we put off the moment to live that which we dream of, we lose the energy necessary for any important transformation in our lives. Someone once put this most succinctly: “I don’t know the secret of success - but the secret of failure is to always try to follow the will of others. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1173:Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure. Suffering ceases for him who is pure. There could be no object in burning gold after the dross had been removed, and a perfectly pure and enlightened being could not suffer. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
1174:That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants, and as the Church of Christ it does not like to have the law of suffering imposed upon it by its Lord. Peter’s protest displays his own unwillingness to suffer, and that means that Satan has gained entry into the Church, and is trying to tear it away from the cross of its Lord. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1175:the law of attraction as the law of love. And if you think about it, you will understand why. If you think unkind thoughts about someone else, you will experience those unkind thoughts manifested. You cannot harm another with your thoughts, you only harm You. If you think thoughts of love, guess who receives the benefits—you! So if your predominant state is love, the law of attraction or the law of love responds with the mightiest ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1176:The law of God is not to return evil for evil;
indeed, if you try in this way to stamp out wickedness
it will come upon you all the stronger. It is not difficult
for you to kill the man, but his blood will surely stain
your own soul. You may think you have killed a bad
man--that you have gotten rid of evil--but you will soon
find out that the seeds of still greater wickedness have
been planted within you. ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
1177:The law of non-interference with nature. — The law of non-interference with nature is a basic principle of Taoism [stating] that one should be in harmony with, not rebellion against, the fundamental laws of the universe. Preserve yourself by following the natural bends of things and don’t interfere. Remember never to assert your self against nature; never be in frontal opposition to any problems, but to control it by swinging with it. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
1178:There is no quicker way to earn respect as a leader than being slow to speak. It is called listening and it plays a big role in what I call “The Law of Connection.” How will you know what is important to people unless you ask and listen to the answers? If you prove to be a leader who solicits feedback and pays attention to what’s being said, then you will earn your connection and your followers will respect the guidance you give. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1179:Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political or civil society. [....] Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men [e.g., Hobbes] is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1180:Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream. God can never be realised by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1181:Religion is trust, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly, by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it. ~ F Max M ller, #NFDB
1182:The law of all modern states takes account of associations, whose members, in theory, pursue the common end with equal zeal. The experience of all associations proves, however, that this is not the case, and that a lively, constant and vigorous awareness of the end is found only in a minority of the associates; an association is really rather like a comet—a large tail of docile followers dragged along by a small dynamic head. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel, #NFDB
1183:10For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point k has become accountable for all of it. 11For he who said, l “Do not commit adultery,” also said, l “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under m the law of liberty. 13For n judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1184:But what turns out to be true is that the more we investigate, the more laws we find, and the deeper we penetrate nature, the more this disease persists. Every one of our laws is a purely mathematical statement in rather complex and abstruse mathematics. Newton’s statement of the law of gravitation is relatively simple mathematics. It gets more and more abstruse and more and more difficult as we go on. Why? I have not the slightest idea. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1185:I really feel like a walking testimony of like if you set your mind to things, how things can come true for you. I feel like I'm like, like the law of attraction. I feel like I'm living that life wholeheartedly. Everything that I've looked for out of life, it's come to be so far... I'm working hard, I'm not getting lucky, I'm earning things... I feel like a living testament to how you can just put your mind to anything and make it happen. ~ Jon Jones, #NFDB
1186:The Creating Power, in its aspect as the law of nature, now pronounces a curse upon the disobedient mortals. They are doomed to the cycle of birth and death. They are no longer supported and sustained by the inward light but must struggle to survive in a universe of doubts and fears. Ixion is bound to his wheel, and the cycle of necessity has gained dominion over the divine spark - the hosts of Adamic souls. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1187:Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, 2 but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. 3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1188:The law of karma says that no matter what context I find myself in, it is neither my parents, nor my science teacher, nor the mailman, but I alone who have brought myself into this state because of my past actions. Instead of trapping me in a fatalistic snare, this gives me freedom. Because I alone have brought myself into my present condition, I myself, by working hard and striving earnestly, can reach the supreme state which is nirvana. ~ Eknath Easwaran, #NFDB
1189:No physiologist who calmly considers the question in connection with the general truths of his science, can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization whatever: separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure: and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
1190:Whitman explicitly grounded this prescription in racism: “The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated; it is the law of the races, history.… A superior grade of rats come and then all the minor rats are cleared out.” The whole world would benefit from US expansion: “We pant to see our country and its rule far-reaching. What has miserable, inefficient Mexico … to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race? ~ Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, #NFDB
1191:It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble because if you’re constantly doing what we do, raising the bar. If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher the law of averages not to mention the Myth of Icarus predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1192:As the smallest drop of water detached from the ocean contains all the qualities of the ocean, so man, detached in consciousness from the Infinite, contains within him its likeness; and as the drop of water must, by the law of its nature, ultimately find its way back to the ocean and lose itself in its silent depths, so must man, by the unfailing law of his nature, at last return to his source, and lose himself in the great ocean of the Infinite. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
1193:marriage is not a covenant between a man and a woman... Marriage is a covenant between a man and woman on the one side and their community on the other. To marry according to the law of the community is to become a full citizen; to refuse marriage is to be a stranger, a child, an outlaw, a slave, or a traitor. The one constant in every society of human kind is that only those who obey the laws, tabus, and customs of marriage are true adults. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
1194:The Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night. ~ Herman Bavinck, #NFDB
1195:We come together only to go apart again. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle & misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
1196:A keen observation shows that the whole universe is a single mechanism working by the law of rhythm; the rise and fall of the waves, the ebb and flow of the tide, the waxing and waning of the moon, the sunrise and the sunset, the change of the seasons, the moving of the earth and of the planets, the whole cosmic system and the constitution of the entire universe are working under the law of rhythm. Cycles of rhythm, with major and minor cycles ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1197:No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
1198:When you focus your thoughts on something you want, and you hold that focus, you are in that moment summoning what you want with the mightiest power in the Universe. The law of attrac- tion doesn't compute "don't" or "not" or "no," or any other words of negation. As you speak words of negation, this is what the law of attraction is receiving: "I don't want to spill something on this outfit." "I want to spill something on this outfit and I want to spill ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1199:Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. This principle is also true, ultimately, in human behavior, in human relationships. They, too, are natural systems based on the law of the harvest ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1200:The law of nature gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked. And God's law itself gives a man the right to defend himself when he's attacked.so, peaceful suffering and passive resistance and all of that stuff is all right maybe in India somewhere, where the people in India outnumber the whites - about a million to one.But here in America, when you tell that's like an elephant sitting down on a - on a mouse in India with [Mahatma] Gandhi. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
1201:If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye? ~ Lisa See, #NFDB
1202:I really put the fear of God into my son, because children are such sponges. The earlier you teach them the law of the land, the easier they'll accept it as an adult. I think parents who shelter their children are making a huge mistake. Kids are really pretty amazing. They can handle a lot. It's just us parents. We think we need to protect them, and then when the real world comes in, they're shattered. So I think I did the right thing in my parenting. ~ Cherie Currie, #NFDB
1203:The law of conservation of energy, reborn as the law of conservation of mass/energy, has established itself as one of the few unshakable theoretical guideposts in the wilderness of the world of our sense experiences. In scope and generality it surpasses Newton's laws of motion, Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism, and even Einstein's potent little E=mc². It comes as close to an absolute truth as our uncertain age will permit. ~ Hans Christian Von Baeyer, #NFDB
1204:We come together only to go apart again. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle & misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it... ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
1205:The law of karma has made it so. According to classic Hinduism, if someone were to help those people by easing their suffering, they would be working against the law of karma. People suffer to work off their karmic debt, and if you helped them, then they would have to come back again and suffer even more to work off that debt. Plus, you would be doing something cruel by not letting them suffer, and you would increase your own karma problems. Helping ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
1206:Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women, others with none. It’s what’s known as ‘the law of the market’… In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1207:Relying on the maxim that Principle is not bound by Precedent we should not limit our expectations of the future; and if our speculations lead us to the conclusion that we have reached a point where we are not only able, but also required, by the law of our own being, to take a more active part in our personal evolution than heretofore, this discovery will afford us a new outlook upon life and widen our horizon with fresh interests and brightening hopes. ~ Thomas Troward, #NFDB
1208:These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. 2 SOME OBJECTIONS If they are the foundation, I had better stop to ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1209:Locke said that there is a circle of freedom surrounding each person and all people at birth. And within that circle is the absolute human right to live and live freely. This is a natural right born of natural law or the law of nature. It is divine and eternal, unalterable by mankind. Moreover, man also has the ability to reason. And it is through reason that he discovers and discerns natural law, his natural rights, and their application to all of humanity. ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
1210:The law of cumulative growth is essentially identical to the law of cumulative returns, which says that an annual rate of return of a few percent, compounded over several decades, automatically results in a very large increase of the initial capital, provided that the return is constantly reinvested, or at a minimum that only a small portion of it is consumed by the owner of the capital (small in comparison with the growth rate of the society in question). ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1211:using money as a “neutral indicator of value”—a way of determining whether or not you have enough career capital to succeed with a pursuit. I called this the law of financial viability, and concluded that it’s a critical tool for navigating your own acquisition of control. This holds whether you are pondering an entrepreneurial venture or a new role within an established company. Unless people are willing to pay you, it’s not an idea you’re ready to go after. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1212:The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: “Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1213:There are just four kinds of bets. There are good bets, bad bets, bets that you win, and bets that you lose. Winning a bad bet can be the most dangerous outcome of all, because a success of that kind can encourage you to take more bad bets in the future, when the odds will be running against you. You can also lose a good bet no matter how sound the underlying proposition, but if you keep placing good bets, over time, the law of averages will be working for you. ~ Larry Hite, #NFDB
1214:This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both. And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure and pass on to those the Enemy forbids. Thus ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1215:16 So the promise is received by faith. It is given as a free gift. And we are all certain to receive it, whether or not we live according to the law of Moses, if we have faith like Abraham’s. For Abraham is the father of all who believe. 17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.”[*] This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1216:And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1217:Locke said that there is a circle of freedom surrounding each person and all people at birth. And within that circle is the absolute human right to live and live freely. This is a natural right born of natural law or the law of nature. It is divine and eternal, unalterable by mankind. Moreover, man also has the ability to reason. And it is through reason that he discovers and discerns natural law, his natural rights, and their application to all of humanity. Let ~ Mark R Levin, #NFDB
1218:The spirit of Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of the race and the meaning of that strong word has not been left to guesswork, but made tremendously definite - the Christian must forgive his brother man all crimes he can imagine and commit, and all insults he can conceive and utter - forgive these injuries how many times? - seventy times seven - another way of saying there shall be no limit to this forgiveness. That is the spirit and the law of Christianity. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1219:The way you feel is your point of attraction, and so, the Law of Attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you feel. When you feel lonely, you attract more loneliness. When you feel poor, you attract more poverty. When you feel sick, you attract more sickness. When you feel unhappy, you attract more unhappiness. When you feel healthy and vital and alive and prosperous-you attract more of all of those things. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1220:Life is a place where it is necessary to move gently. Whether it be in thought, speech, or action, the rhythm must be controlled; the law of harmony must be observed in all that one does. If there is anything that will bring satisfaction it is diving deep into Love, and then we shall realize that there is nothing which is not just; we shall never again say that anything is unjust. This is the point the wise reach, and they call it the culmination of wisdom. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1221:Science probes; it does not prove. Imagine Newton's reaction to an objector of his law of gravity who argued that he could not establish a universal law because he had not observed every falling apple, much less proved the law of gravity - there might, after all, be an apple that levitates! Why should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? ~ Robert M Pirsig, #NFDB
1222:the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation. Equality, in contrast to all that is involved in mere existence, is not given us, but is the result of human organization insofar as it is guided by the principle of justice. We are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1223:Amos and I called our first joint article “Belief in the Law of Small Numbers.” We explained, tongue-in-cheek, that “intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well.” We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their “statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1224:As Israel made the wants of his national existence the law of the world, as under the dominance of these wants he deified even his political vindictiveness; so the Christian made the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of the world. [T]hat is, indeed, only of man considered as Christian; for Christianity, in contradiction with the genuine universal human heart, recognised man only under the condition, the limitation, of belief in Christ. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1225:By deliberately directing your thoughts—rather than merely observing what is happening around you—you will begin to change the vibrational patterns to which the Law of Attraction is responding. And in time, with far less effort than you may currently believe, you will no longer—by responding to what others perceive you to be—be creating a future that is so similar to your past and present. Instead, you will be the powerful deliberate creator of your own experience. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1226:In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
1227:The steam-engine in its manifold applications, the crime-decreasing gas-lamp, the lightning conductor, the electric telegraph, the law of storms and rules for the mariner's guidance in them, the power of rendering surgical operations painless, the measures for preserving public health, and for preventing or mitigating epidemics,-such are among the more important practical results of pure scientific research, with which mankind have been blessed and States enriched. ~ Richard Owen, #NFDB
1228:GULL (musing) : The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he has surprised himself) ... if six monkeys were .. .
ROS: Game?
GULL: Were they?
ROS: Are you?
GULL (understanding): Game. (Flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their ~ Tom Stoppard,#NFDB
1229:If a close examination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent upon lawyers who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error. ~ Simon Greenleaf, #NFDB
1230:As the innocent infant relies upon the mother for sustenance, so the innocent wanderer, following his native compassion and bliss, relies upon the natural intelligence of life to sustain him. There are various Ways. There is the Way of salvation by the law of Buddha, the Way of Confucius governing the Way of learning, the Way of healing as a doctor, as a poet teaching the Way of Waka, tea, archery, and many arts and skills. Each man practices as he feels inclined. ~ Miyamoto Musashi, #NFDB
1231:Justification is the means whereby we appropriate the saving act of God in the past, and sanctification the promise of God's activity in the present and future...Justification is primarily concerned with the relation between man and the law of God, sanctification with the Christian's separation from the world until the second coming of Christ...Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification is his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1232:Yet in another way, calculus is fundamentally naive, almost childish in its optimism. Experience teaches us that change can be sudden, discontinuous, and wrenching. Calculus draws its power by refusing to see that. It insists on a world without accidents, where one thing leads logically to another. Give me the initial conditions and the law of motion, and with calculus I can predict the future -- or better yet, reconstruct the past. I wish I could do that now.
~ Steven H Strogatz,#NFDB
1233:According to this law [the law of Dharma], you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world--and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that creates affluence. Expressing your talents to fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1234:if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they drive them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and use force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence. ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
1235:People who have drawn wealth into their lives used The Secret, whether consciously or unconsciously. They think thoughts of abundance and wealth, and they do not allow any contradictory thoughts to take root in their minds. Their predominant thoughts are of wealth. They only know wealth, and nothing else exists in their minds. Whether they are aware of it or not, their predominant thoughts of wealth are what brought wealth to them. It is the law of attraction in action. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1236:for every Christian feels the same, however vaguely he may do so. Socialism, Communism, Anarchism' Salvation Armies, the growth of crime, freedom from toil, the increasingly absurd luxury of the rich and increased misery of the poor, the fearfully rising number of suicides-are all indications of that inner contradiction which must and will be resolved. And, of course, resolved in such a manner that the law of love will be recognized and all reliance on force abandoned. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1237:Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be considered a gradualist. He is not decreeing Sharia as the law of the land tomorrow. He’s making gradual steps to desecularize the country so it’s not a shock to everyone, doesn’t cause all kinds of panic in the western world and the Europe world. And ISIS might be growing impatient. Even though they’ve been allied over oil and Syria, ISIS could be growing impatient. Then they see the deal with Israel, and they say, “To hell with this.” ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1238:Thus mankind cannot approach the waters of salvation but can only be prepared for them. For Prov. 16:1 says: “It is the part of man to prepare the soul.” But human nature was prepared in this way by the law of Moses, because the Law prepared but did not give, just as a boy is prepared by the tutor to be fit for his inheritance, but it is the father who gives it. Therefore Christ or the faithful people in the Law already seeks to enter into grace and the church of Christ. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1239:Usually it is not until there is evidence that the employee [who has changed jobs] has not lived up to his contract, expressed or implied, to maintain secrecy, that the former employer can take action. In the law of torts there is the maxim: Every dog has one free bite. A dog cannot be presumed to be vicious until he has proved that he is by biting someone. As with a dog, the former employer may have to wait for a former employee to commit some overt act before he can act. ~ John Brooks, #NFDB
1240:Where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputation bleaching behind them in the sun in this country. ~ John F Kerry, #NFDB
1241:Ignorance of the functions and powers of the mind is the cause of all marital trouble. Friction between husband and wife can be solved by each using the law of mind correctly. By praying together they stay together. The contemplation of divine ideals, the study of the laws of life, the mutual agreement on a common purpose and plan, and the enjoyment of personal freedom bring about that harmonious marriage, that wedded bliss, that sense of oneness where the two become one. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1242:The immortality of the human soul, and the innate ability of the spiritual, inner man to work out his own salvation under the Law of Rebirth, in response to the Law of Cause and Effect, are the underlying factors governing all human conduct and all human aspiration. They condition him at all times, until he has achieved the desired and the designed perfection, and can manifest on earth as a rightly functioning son of God. ~ Alice Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ, p. 146/147, (1947), #NFDB
1243:I find it expressed in various passages of Scripture that the fact that God knows things while in a state of possibility, when their existence belongs to the future, does not change the nature of the possible in any way; that nature remains unchanged; and the knowledge of the realisation of one of several possibilities does not yet effect that realisation. This is likewise one of the fundamental principles of the Law of Moses concerning which there is no doubt nor any dispute. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
1244:SPEAKING OF ATTENTION AND EFFORT “I won’t try to solve this while driving. This is a pupil-dilating task. It requires mental effort!” “The law of least effort is operating here. He will think as little as possible.” “She did not forget about the meeting. She was completely focused on something else when the meeting was set and she just didn’t hear you.” “What came quickly to my mind was an intuition from System 1. I’ll have to start over and search my memory deliberately. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1245:People won't change, nobody can reform them, and it's not worth the effort! Yes, that's right! It's the law of their being. . . . Their law, Sonia! That's right! I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong and self-confident in mind and spirit has power over them! Whoever is bold and dares has right on his side. Whoever can spit on the most people becomes their legislator, and whoever dares the most has the most right! So it has been in the past, and so it will always be! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1246:that men won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia,… that’s so!… And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1247:Within there is regard for the law of marriage; without there isn’t any. Within, Sita is Rama’s wife. Outside, she is a woman for the taking. Ravana knows that if he enters Rama’s hut and forces himself on Sita he will be judged by the rules of society. But when he forces himself on Sita outside the Lakshmana-rekha, he will be judged by the laws of the jungle. Within, he will be the villain who disregarded the laws of marriage. Outside, he will be hero, the great trickster. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1248:have found that life persists in the midst of destruction. Therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. If that is the law of life, we must work it out in daily existence. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1249:Obs were mediums and necromancers condemned by Torah, the Law of God. They were to be executed by the state for their spiritually heinous activity of consulting the dead and divining spirits. In Philistia, such activities were not outlawed as they were in Israel, but were rather encouraged. The Ob’s residence stood on the outskirts of the city near the foothills, because of the spiritual nature of mountains as cosmic connections between heaven and earth, and as gateways to Sheol. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1250:The Philippines made a lawful and peaceful effort to resolve their maritime claims with China using the tribunal established under the Law of the Sea Convention (Unclos). The tribunal's ruling delivered a clear and legally binding decision on maritime claims in the South China Sea as they relate to China and the Philippines - and that ruling should be respected. We believe this decision can and should serve as an opportunity to renew efforts to address maritime claims peacefully. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1251:I am ashamed of some christians because they have so much dependence on Parliment and the law of the land. Much good may Parliment ever do to true religion except by mistake! As to getting the law of the land to touch our religion, we earnestly cry, `Hands off! Leave us alone.' Your Sunday bills and all other forms of the act-of-Parliment religion seem to me to be all wrong. Give us a fair field and no favor, and our faith has no cause to fear. Christ wants no help from Caesar. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1252:However, the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, which is not a closed system. It takes place amid great chaos and indeed depends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options for diversity. And from these options, an evolutionary process continually prunes its choices to create ever greater order. Even a crisis, such as the periodic large asteroids that have crashed into the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up increasing—deepening—the ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
1253:Turn the anger of the Almighty against the godless Turks and Barbarians who despise Christ the Lord.....In the royal city of the east, they have slain the successor of Constantine and his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, defiled the noble church of Justinian with their Mohometan abominations. Each success, will only be a stepping stone until he has mastered all the Western Monarchs, overthrow the Christian Faith, and imposed the law of his false prophet on the whole world ~ Pope Pius II, #NFDB
1254:I wanted to pray for an hour, but I keep thinking and thinking, and always sick thoughts, and my head aches - what is the use of praying? - it's only a sin! It is strange, too, that I am not sleepy: in great, too great sorrow, after the first outbursts one is always sleepy. Men condemned to death, they say, sleep very soundly on the last night. And so it must be, it si the law of nature, otherwise their strength would not hold out... I lay down on the sofa but I did not sleep... ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, #NFDB
1255:The Universal mind is not only intelligence, but it is substance, and this substance is the attractive force which brings electrons together by the law of attraction so they form atoms; the atoms in turn are brought together by the same law and form molecules; molecules take objective forms and so we find that the law is the creative force behind every manifestation, not only of atoms, but of worlds, of the universe, of everything of which the imagination can form any conception. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
1256:I wanted to pray for an hour, but I keep thinking and thinking, and always sick thoughts, and my head aches - what is the use of praying? - it's only a sin! It is strange, too, that I am not sleepy: in great, too great sorrow, after the first outbursts one is always sleepy. Men condemned to death, they say, sleep very soundly on the last night. And so it must be, it si the law of nature, otherwise their strength would not hold out... I lay down on the sofa but I did not sleep... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1257:Meeks was telling him about the value of work. He said that it had been his personal experience that if you wanted to get ahead, you had to work. He said this was the law of life and it was no way to get around it because it was inscribed on the human heart like love thy neighbour. He said these two laws were the team that worked together to make the world go round and that any individual who wanted to be a success and win the pursuit of happiness, that was all he needed to know. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1258:That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man bath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty; nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty, except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers. ~ George Mason, #NFDB
1259:In addition to the social pressures from the scientific community there is also at work a very human trait of individual scientist. I call it the law of the instrument , and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled. ~ Abraham Kaplan, #NFDB
1260:In Beachcomber’s hilarious columns about the Apostropher Royal in The Express, a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: “For every apostrophe omitted from an it’s, there is an extra one put into an its.” Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall. ~ Lynne Truss, #NFDB
1261:You can speed the creation of something simply by giving it more attention—the Law of Attraction takes care of the rest and brings to you the essence of the subject of your thought. We would define the words want or desire as follows: To focus attention, or give thought toward a subject, while at the same time experiencing positive emotion. When you give your attention to a subject and you feel only positive emotion about it as you do so, it will come very quickly into your experience. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1262:Thus it is written that the messiah would suffer and rise again on the third day," Jesus instructs his disciples (Luke 24:44–46). Except that nowhere is any such thing written: not in the Law of Moses, not in the prophets, not in the Psalms. In the entire history of Jewish thought there is not a single line of scripture that says the messiah is to suffer, die, and rise again on the third day, which may explain why Jesus does not bother to cite any scripture to back up his incredible claim. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1263:It takes about ten years to make a mature dancer. The training is twofold. There is the study and practice of the craft in order to strengthen the muscular structure of the body. The body is shaped, disciplined, honored, and in time, trusted. The movement become clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life, the law which governs its outer aspects ~ Martha Graham, #NFDB
1264:While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
1265:Based on Tor, which is what they all use. Which was written by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, ironically. To provide a safe haven for political dissidents and whistleblowers, all around the world. Which is the law of unintended consequences, right there, biting the world in the ass. Tor stands for The Onion Router. Because that’s what we’re dealing with here. Layers upon layers upon layers, like the layers of an onion, in the Deep Web itself, and inside all of its separate sites. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
1266:International law now covers vast and complex areas of transnational concern, including traditional topics, such as the position of states,59 state succession,60 state responsibility,61 peace and security,62 the laws of war,63 the law of treaties,64 the law of the sea,65 the law of international water- courses,66 and the conduct of diplomatic relations,67 as well as new topics, such as international organizations,68 economy and development,69 nuclear energy,70 air law and outer space activities, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1267:the Kali yuga will dawn. A new age will dawn where nothing will be as it was. Only a quarter of the values instituted by Prithu at the dawn of civilization will survive. Man will live for pleasure, children will abandon responsibility, women will be like men, men like women. Humans will copulate like beasts. Power will be respected, justice abandoned, sacrifice forgotten and love ridiculed. The wise will argue for the law of the jungle. Every victim will, given a chance, turn victimizer. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1268:There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:1–4) ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1269:A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two thing being in the same location (place). The law of the 'proper' rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another, each situated in its own 'proper' and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability. ~ Michel de Certeau, #NFDB
1270:How odd that Americans, and not just their presidents, have come to think of their Constitution as something separable from the government it's supposed to constitute. In theory, it should be as binding on rulers as the laws of physics are on engineers who design bridges; in practice, its axioms have become mere options. Of course engineers don't have to take oaths to respect the law of gravity; reality gives them no choice. Politics, as we see, makes all human laws optional for politicians. ~ Joseph Sobran, #NFDB
1271:Nobody today is nearly smart enough to make the sorts of weapons even the poorest nations had a million years ago. Yes, and they were being used all the time. During my lifetime, there wasn’t a day when, somewhere on the planet, there weren’t at least three wars going on. And the Law of Natural Selection was powerless to respond to such new technologies. No female of any species, unless maybe she was a rhinoceros, could expect to give birth to a baby who was fireproof, bombproof, or bulletproo ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1272:Successful people are grateful people. This is where we see the Law of Attraction in action. When you’re grateful, you attract more to be grateful for. The adverse is true as well. When you complain, you attract more to complain about. How do you change a lousy, self-pity, complaining, discouraged attitude? With appreciation. “Say thank you in advance for what’s already yours. That’s how I live my life. That’s one of the reasons I am where I am today.” ~ Terri Savelle Foy Denzel Washington ~ Terri Savelle Foy, #NFDB
1273:THESE FOUR MIND-CHANGING REFLECTIONS—OUR PREcious human birth, impermanence, the law of karma, and the defects of samsaric conditioning—turn our lives toward the Dharma, toward discovering the nature of our minds. These reflections begin to break apart the clouds of confusion and help us see the truth of our lives more clearly, help us let go more completely. Without them we are carried along on the powerful current of habitual action; with them, we enter into a timeless stream of awareness. ~ Joseph Goldstein, #NFDB
1274:was caught up in a struggle for basic human rights that became known as the civil rights movement. Although the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal and the Constitution had been amended after the Civil War to extend the rights and protections of citizenship to African Americans, changing the law of the land did not always change the way people behaved. In the Northern, Eastern and Western states, African Americans often faced discrimination, but it was not ~ Christopher Paul Curtis, #NFDB
1275:Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell? ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1276:21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For d I delight in the law of God, e in my inner being, 23but I see in my members f another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from g this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1277:A time will come in human history when human beings will follow the Ten Commandments and so on as regularly as they fall to the ground when they step off a roof. They will then be more astonished that someone would lie or steal or covet than they now are when someone will not. The law of God will then be written in their hearts as the prophets foretold. (Jeremiah 31:33, Hebrews 10:16) This is an essential part of the future triumph of Christ and the deliverance of humankind in history and beyond. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1278:What are wanted ...are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes... but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth ...that for our life one law is valid - the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1279:You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
1280:Self-surrender is essential and by that is meant the confession of personal impotence. “I can of mine own self do nothing.” Since creation is finished it is impossible to force anything into being. The example of magnetism previously given is a good illustration. You cannot make magnetism, it can only be displayed. You cannot make the law of magnetism. If you want to build a magnet, you can do so only by conforming to the law of magnetism. In other words, you surrender yourself or yield to the law. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
1281:So it would be, were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a force in men and nations as in inanimate bodies. In men it takes the form of the psychological principle, so truly expressed in the words of the Gospel, " They have loved darkness better than light, because their deeds were evil." This principle shows itself in men not trying to recognise the truth, but to persuade themselves that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1282:The strong must hinder the weak from living —such was the law of Nature; but only in a newspaper article or in a school book was that intelligible and easily accepted. In the hotchpotch which was everyday life, in the tangle of trivialities out of which human relations were woven, it was no longer a law, but a logical absurdity, when the strong and the weak were both equally victims of their mutual relations, unwillingly submitting to some directing force, unknown, standing outside life, apart from man. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1283:What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows--it must grow smaller or larger, better or worse--it cannot stand still. In other words, we change--and must change, constantly, and keep on changing as long as we live. What, then, is the true Gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he's stuck in a rut. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1284:Though this motion for a new trial is an application to the discretion of the Court, it must be remembered that the discretion to be exercised on such an occasion is not a wild but a sound discretion, and to be confined within those limits within which an honest man, competent to discharge the duties of his office, ought to confine himself. And that discretion will be best exercised by not deviating from the rules laid down by our predecessors; for the practice of the Court forms the law of the Court. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1285:Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere. ~ Jacques Monod, #NFDB
1286:Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbor and not to throttle him?. They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others couldn't be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1287:Alterations in real prices occur slowly as a rule. But this stability of prices has its cause in the stability of the price-determinants, not in the Law of Price-determination itself. Prices change slowly because the subjective valuations of human beings change slowly. Human needs, and human opinions as to the suitability of goods for satisfying those needs, are no more liable to frequent and sudden changes than are the stocks of goods available for consumption, or the manner of their social distribution; ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1288:I find it expressed in various passages of Scripture that the fact that God knows things while in a state of possibility, when their existence belongs to the future, does not change the nature of the possible in any way; that nature remains unchanged; and the knowledge of the realisation of one of several possibilities does not yet effect that realisation. This is likewise one of the fundamental principles of the Law of Moses concerning which there is no doubt nor any dispute. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1289:Only now the words coming out of her mouth are news to me. “But in return for this unprecedented request, Soldier Everdeen has promised to devote herself to our cause. It follows that any deviance from her mission, in either motive or deed, will be viewed as a break in this agreement. The immunity would be terminated and the fate of the four victors determined by the law of District Thirteen. As would her own. Thank you.” In other words, I step out of line and we’re all dead. Another force to contend with. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
1290:The experimental investigation by which Ampere established the law of the mechanical action between electric currents is one of the most brilliant achievements in science. The whole, theory and experiment, seems as if it had leaped, full grown and full armed, from the brain of the 'Newton of Electricity'. It is perfect in form, and unassailable in accuracy, and it is summed up in a formula from which all the phenomena may be deduced, and which must always remain the cardinal formula of electro-dynamics. ~ James Clerk Maxwell, #NFDB
1291:There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1292:The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...] ~ Surya Das, #NFDB
1293:This is the law of prosperity: When apparent adversity comes, be not cast down by it, but make the best of it, and always look forward for better things, for conditions more prosperous. To hold yourself in this attitude of mind is to set into operation subtle, silent, and irresistible forces that sooner or later will actualize in material form that which is today merely an idea. But ideas have occult power, and ideas, when rightly planted and rightly tended, are the seeds that actualize material conditions. ~ Ralph Waldo Trine, #NFDB
1294:1Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. 4Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. 5Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1295:How many nights have you remained awake repeating science and poring over books, and have denied yourself sleep. I do not know what the purpose of it was. If it was attaining worldly ends and securing its vanities, and acquiring its dignities, and surpassing your contemporaries, and such like, woe to you and again woe; but if your purpose in it was the vitalizing of the Law of the Prophet, and the training of your character, and breaking the soul commanding to evil, then blessed are you and again blessed. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #NFDB
1296:Noah, who remained innocent and just, God decided to open a path of salvation. In this way he gave humanity the chance of a new beginning. All it takes is one good person to restore hope! The biblical tradition clearly shows that this renewal entails recovering and respecting the rhythms inscribed in nature by the hand of the Creator. We see this, for example, in the law of the Sabbath. On the seventh day, God rested from all his work. He commanded Israel to set aside each seventh day as a day of rest, a Sabbath, ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1297:Underlying this whole endeavor is a highly mechanistic conception of how the mind works. The idea is to finely sense the workings of the machine and use that understanding to rewire it, to subvert its programming, to radically alter its response to the causes, the conditions, impinging on it. Doing this doesn’t let you enter “the unconditioned” in the strict sense; it doesn’t let you literally escape the realm of cause and effect. Then again, airplanes don’t literally defy the law of gravity. But they still fly. ~ Robert Wright, #NFDB
1298:How many nights have you remained awake repeating science and poring over books, and have denied yourself sleep. I do not know what the purpose of it was. If it was attaining worldly ends and securing its vanities, and acquiring its dignities, and surpassing your contemporaries, and such like, woe to you and again woe; but if your purpose in it was the vitalizing of the Law of the Prophet, and the training of your character, and breaking the soul commanding to evil, then blessed are you and again blessed. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #NFDB
1299:J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, "Littlewood's Miscellany." He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day, and something happens to the average person about once a second. At this rate, you will experience 1 million events every thirty-five days. This means when you say the chances of something happening are one in a million, it also means about once a month. The monthly miracle is called Littlewood's Law. ~ David McRaney, #NFDB
1300:In societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five of six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market. ~ Michel Houellebecq, #NFDB
1301:Ironically, the law of diminishing returns suggests that, if you feel a strong emotional reaction to a story and want to help, you should probably resist this inclination because there are probably many others like you who are also donating. By all means, you should harness the emotion you feel when a natural disaster strikes, but remind yourself that a similar disaster is happening all the time—and then consider donating to wherever your money will help the most rather than what is getting the most attention. ~ William MacAskill, #NFDB
1302:The fourth principle in "Mormon" theology teaches that after baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost is conferred which enlightens the mind, clears the intelligence, and brings man nearer the presence of God. So also in science, to the man who obeys the law of nature, come greater power and intelligence, to him who winds the wire right, the electric current comes, with all its latent powers. Thus is the Holy Ghost conferred in science; and thus, also, in a more subtle and greater degree is it conferred in the Church. ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
1303:I looked around upon the world, and saw that it was shadowed by sorrow and scorched by the fierce fires of suffering. And I looked for the cause. I looked around, but I could not find it; I looked in books, but I could not find it; I looked within, and found there both the cause and the self-made nature of that cause. I looked again, and deeper, and found the remedy. I found one Law, the Law of love; one life, the life of adjustment to that Law; one Truth, the Truth of a conquered mind and a quiet and obedient heart. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
1304:The Law of Attraction ensures that you start attracting more of what you want into your life instead of what you don't want or instead of what always has been. The highest functioning people never even put their energy on what is if they don't like what is. That's an important difference, because most people who have a lot of "problems" in their life are constantly talking about them and focusing on them, so they just keep attracting more of those circumstances into their lives because that's where their thoughts are. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
1305:The more truthful I am with myself and others, the more my conscience is clear and tranquil. Thus, I can more thoroughly and unequivocally inhabit the present moment and accept everything that happens without fear, knowing that what goes around comes around (the law of karma). Ethical morality and self-discipline represent the good ground, or stable basis. Mindful awareness is the skillful and efficacious grow-path, or way. Wisdom and compassion constitute the fruit, or result. This is the essence of Buddhism [...] ~ Lama Surya Das, #NFDB
1306:The principle which gives the thought the dynamic power to correlate with its object, and therefore to master every adverse human experience, is the law of attraction, which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle inherent in all things, in every system of philosophy, in every Religion and in every Science. There is no getting away from the law of love. It is feeling that imparts vitality to thought. Feeling is desire and desire is love. Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1307:One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
1308:Simon could not forget the sermon Jesus had proclaimed on the mountain not many days ago. It haunted him. Roman law granted the right for a legionary to force any civilian to carry his supplies for him at least one mile. Rather than countering such an unjust law, Jesus said that they should carry the supplies an extra mile above and beyond their duty. He spoke of loving their enemies and praying for those who persecuted them. Local rabbis scoffed at him as he offended their interpretations of Torah, the Law of Yahweh. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1309:However, the law of accelerating returns pertains to evolution, which is not a closed system. It takes place amid great chaos and indeed depends on the disorder in its midst, from which it draws its options for diversity. And from these options, an evolutionary process continually prunes its choices to create ever greater order. Even a crisis, such as the periodic large asteroids that have crashed into the Earth, although increasing chaos temporarily, end up increasing—deepening—the order created by biological evolution. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
1310:because your hearts were hard. Ancient teachers of the law sometimes recognized that some of Moses’ laws were written as concessions to human weakness. Civil laws don’t necessarily represent God’s ideals; typically they merely place limits on human sin (see notes on Mt 5:22, 28). Thus, e.g., the Law of Moses forbade marrying a wife’s sister (Lev 18:18) but not polygamy per se; it limited the abuse of slaves (Ex 21:26–27) but did not outlaw slavery per se. Jesus appeals to a divine ethic more complete than Israel’s civil law. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1311:Achilles replies that there is no equality of right between the
weak and the strong, for men have never made pacts with lions nor
have lambs and wolves ever shared the same desires. This was the law of the heroic gentes, based on the belief that the strong were of a different and more noble nature than the weak. Hence arose that law of war through which, by force of arms, the victors deprive the defeated of all their rights of natural liberty, so that the Romans took them
as slaves in place of material things. ~ Giambattista Vico,#NFDB
1312:Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, 2 the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub, 3 the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meraioth, 4 the son of Zerahiah, the son of Uzzi, the son of Bukki, 5 the son of Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the chief priest— 6 this Ezra came up from Babylon; and he was a skilled scribe in the Law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1313:One would think that Jesus’s admonishment not to teach others to break the Law of Moses would have had some impact on Paul. But Paul seems totally unconcerned with anything “Jesus-in-the-flesh” may or may not have said. In fact, Paul shows no interest at all in the historical Jesus. There is almost no trace of Jesus of Nazareth in any of his letters. With the exception of the crucifixion and the Last Supper, which he transforms from a narrative into a liturgical formula, Paul does not narrate a single event from Jesus’s life. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1314:Hold fast, in your imagination, to all that is lovely and of good report, for the lovely and the good are essential in your life if it is to be worthwhile. Assume it. You do this by imagining that you already are what you want to be — and already have what you want to have. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” Be still and know that you are that which you desire to be, and you will never have to search for it. In spite of your appearance of freedom of action, you obey, as everything else does, the law of assumption. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
1315:To love there must be union with the beloved, but also separation. For love is a creative tension; it is like the string of a musical instrument---a single string yet pulled in opposite directions. If there is too little tension, or if there is too much so that the string breaks, it will give forth no sound. The perfection of love is like the perfect tuning of the string, for love attains fulfillment as there is the maximum of union between two beings who remain definitely separate. Unity in duality is the law of the finite. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1316:I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, act like a man, and observe what the LORD your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go and that the LORD may keep his promise to me: ‘If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1317:To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1318:In understanding the Scriptures: “Then [Jesus] said to [the disciples], ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:44–45) In transforming us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2–3) ~ Jen Wilkin, #NFDB
1319:One can only imagine how greatly the political and religious culture wars of our era could be eased by this simple courtesy of the Law of Three: (1) the enemy is never the problem but the opportunity; (2) the problem will never be solved through eliminating or silencing the opposition but only through creating a new field of possibility large enough to hold the tension of the opposites and launch them in a new direction. Imagine what a different world it would be if these two simple precepts were internalized and enacted. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault, #NFDB
1320:This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat."
"It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated. ~ Daniel Quinn,#NFDB
1321:Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1322:The chief object of the Law, as has been shown by us, is the teaching of truths; to which the truth of the creatio ex nihilo belongs. It is known that the object of the law of Sabbath is to confirm and to establish this principle, as we have shown in this treatise (Part II. chap. xxxi.) In addition to the teaching of truths the Law aims at the removal of injustice from mankind. We have thus proved that the first laws do not refer to burnt-offering and sacrifice, which are of secondary importance. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1323:The megalomania of the genes does not mean that benevolence and cooperation cannot evolve, any more than the law of gravity proves that flight cannot evolve. It means only that benevolence, like flight, is a special state of affairs in need of an explanation, not something that just happens. It can evolve only in particular circumstances and has to be supported by a suite of cognitive and emotional faculties. Thus benevolence (and other social motives) must be dragged into the spotlight rather than treated as part of the furniture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1324:Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1325:I do not understand what I do....It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me...For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing...I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me...I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin...I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1326:The principle which gives the thought the dynamic power to correlate with its object, and therefore to master every adverse human experience, is the law of attraction, which is another name for love. This is an eternal and fundamental principle, inherent in all things, in every system of Philosophy, in every Religion, and in every Science. There is no getting away from the law of love. It is feeling that imparts vitality to thought. Feeling is desire, and desire is love. Thought impregnated with love becomes invincible. 19. ~ Charles F Haanel, #NFDB
1327:Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
1328:It would certainly appear that, even if our perceptions are still irrevocably enclosed within certain limits of greatness and smallness, we can at least flatter ourselves that we have discovered and established experimentally the law of recurrence that governs the structure of the cosmos. The analysis of matter is making us see it as a limitless aggregation of centres taking over and mastering one another in such a way as to build up, by their combinations, more and more complex centres of a higher order. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Cosmic Life, #NFDB
1329:It is our duty to endeavor always to promote the general good; to do to all as we would be willing to be done by were we in their circumstances; to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God. These are some of the laws of nature which every man in the world is bound to observe, and which whoever violates exposes himself to the resentment of mankind, the lashes of his own conscience, and the judgment of Heaven. This plainly shows that the highest state of liberty subjects us to the law of nature and the government of God. ~ Samuel West, #NFDB
1330:If we want to survive on this planet, we are going to have to understand that we need to respect the laws of ecology:
Law No. 1: The strength of any ecosystem is based on biodiversity. The decreased level of biodiversity on the planet today is our most serious problem, even more serious than global warming.
Because…
Law No. 2 is interdependence: all species are interdependent; they need each other.
Law No. 3 is the law of finite resources: growth has a limit and there is a limit to the earth's carrying capacity. (p. 54) ~ Paul Watson,#NFDB
1331:The law of love and compassion for all living creatures is again a doctrine to which we are all too ready to pay slip service. However, if it is to become a reality, it requires a process of education, a veritable mental renaissance. Once it has become a reality, national as well as international problems will fall into perspectives and become easier to solve. Wars and conflicts, too, will then become a thing of the past, because wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace. ~ U Thant, #NFDB
1332:From that moment was established for once and for all the law of forgiveness, mercy and love, which goes far beyond the bounds of justice. After Calvary, peace was no longer to operate on the thin blade of truth or in the court of law, but in the torn heart of a God who had become human for us in Jesus Christ. The era of victimization had ended and with Jesus the reign of the victim was to begin. The true victim, silent and lamb-like, the victim who accepts to be a victim and destroys the thorns of injustice in the fire of his love. ~ Carlo Carretto, #NFDB
1333:I don't believe, for instance, that evolutionary biology or any scientific endeavor has much to say about love. I'm sure a lot can be learned about the importance of hormones and their effects on our feelings. But do the bleak implications of evolution have any impact on the love I feel for my family? Do they make me more likely to break the law of flaunt society's expectations of me? No. I simply does not follow that human relationships are meaningless just because we live in a godless universe subject to the natural laws of biology. ~ Greg Graffin, #NFDB
1334:It's not in the mainstream media yet, but the biggest jump in skin cancer has occurred since the advent of sunscreens. That kind of thing makes me happy. The fact that people, in pursuit of a superficial look of health, give themselves a fatal disease. I love it when 'reasoning' human beings think they have figured out how to beat something and it comes right back and kicks them in the nuts. God bless the law of unintended consequences. And the irony is impressive: Healthy people, trying to look healthier, make themselves sick. Good! ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
1335:8Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? 10Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. 11If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? 12If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1336:ROMA 8.1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ROMA 8.2. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. ROMA 8.3. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: ROMA 8.4. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1337:The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government by king, lords and commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason. Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other countries, but the will of the king is as much the law of the land in Britain as in France, with this difference, that instead of proceeding directly from his mouth, it is handed to the people under the more formidable shape of an act of parliament. For the fate of Charles the first, hath only made kings more subtle—not more just. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1338:Imagine your bills are checks you're receiving. Or use gratitude and give thanks to the company who sent you the bill, by thinking about how you've benefited from their service - for electricity or being able to live in a home. You can write across the front of a bill when you pay it, "Thank you - paid." If you don't have the money to pay the bill right away, write across the front of it, "Thank you for the money." The law of attraction doesn't question whether what you imagine and feel is real or not. It responds to what you give, period! ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1339:What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. ROM9:31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. ROM9:32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; ROM9:33 As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1340:There are times when you cannot even control the sugar level in your body. Remember that when you put sugar in your metabolism, you are upsetting your metabolism in a very direct way. X amount of sugar is understandable, but the amount of sugar you put in, only God can save you. And whenever you put x amount of sugar, you must follow the law of depression. When you get that kind of depression, you lose a lot of friends. Therefore, it is very fair to channel your energy. One of the best ways to channel the energy is to do the pranayama. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
1341:When I was at Notre Dame studying under Joe Evans, Frank O'Malley, and others, there was a very lively debate about the distinction between natural law and revealed truth. Most of the philosophers of church and state expected that what was going to be advocated as the law of the land would be related to natural law. If you attempted to draw lines about certain general moral truths that were derivative of logic and reason, they would prove to be widely shared, and therefore suitable to be enacted into law on both the civic and religious sides. ~ Bruce Babbitt, #NFDB
1342:The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever recurring song of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: "Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1343:People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness. ~ S I Hayakawa, #NFDB
1344:That’s a terrific metaphor for life, isn’t it? We’re all trying to keep our plates spinning in the air, and once you get them up there you can’t take your eyes off them and you have to keep chugging along without rest. Except that in life, somebody keeps adding more plates, hiding the rods, and changing the law of gravity when you’re not looking. And so every time you think you have all your plates spinning nicely, suddenly you hear a hideous clattering crash behind you and a whole row of plates you didn’t even know you had begins to hit the ground. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1345:God does not deal our karma to us as a punishment. Karma is a manifestation of an impersonal law as well as a personal one. The purpose of our bearing our karma is that karma is our teacher. We must learn the lessons of how and why we misused the energy of life. Until that day comes when we recognize the Law of God as a Law of Love, we will probably encounter difficulties. But if we will only hasten that day's coming into our own life, we will recognize that karma is actually grace and beauty and joy. [and love and awareness and hope! -EM] ~ Elizabeth Clare Prophet, #NFDB
1346:He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1347:Narrative should flow as flows the brook down through the hills and the leafy woodlands...a brook that never goes straight for a minute, but goes and goes briskly, sometimes ungrammatically, and sometimes fetching a horseshoe of ¾ of a mile around and at the end of the circuit flowing within a yard of the path that it traversed an hour before; but always going and always following at least one law, always loyal to that law, the law of narrative, which has no law. Nothing to do but make the trip; the how of it is not important, so that the trip is made. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1348:If there is one thought with regard to the Church of Christ, which at times comes to me with overwhelming sorrow; if there is one thought in regard to my own life of which I am ashamed; if there is one thought of which I feel that the Church of Christ has not accepted it and not grasped it; if there is one thought which makes me pray to God: “Oh, teach us by Thy grace, new things”—it is the wonderful power that prayer is meant to have in the kingdom. [. . .] And that is the law of the kingdom—the King upon the throne, the servants upon the footstool. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1349:But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions. ~ Charles Evans Hughes, #NFDB
1350:Faced with the thoughts, the actions of a woman whom we love, we are as completely at a loss as the world's first natural philosophers must have been, face to face with the phenomena of nature, before their science had been elaborated and had cast a ray of light over the unknown. Or, worse still, we are like a person in whose mind the law of causality barely exists, a person who would be incapable, therefore, of establishing a connexion between one phenomenon and another and to whose eyes the spectacle of the world would appear as unstable as a dream. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1351:The atmosphere of man’s soul is composed of the union of heaven and earth; what an unnatural child man is; the law of spiritual nature is broken… It seems to me that the world has taken on a negative meaning, and that from roof hi, refined spirituality there has emerged satire.”
Dostoyevsky was beginning to think of human life as an eternal struggle between the material in the spiritual in man’s nature; and he would always continue to regard the world as a Purgatory, who's trials and triangulations serve the supreme purpose of more purification. ~ Joseph Frank,#NFDB
1352:A familiar example cited by ulama is the law of talion, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, which was obligatory in the religious law of Moses (upon whom be peace), subsequently forbidden by the religious law of Jesus (upon whom be peace) in which “turning the other cheek” was obligatory; and finally both were superseded by the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), which permits victims to take retaliation (qisas) for purely intentional physical injuries, but in which it is religiously superior not to retaliate but forgive. ~ Nuh Ha Mim Keller, #NFDB
1353:There are only two possible forms of control: one internal and the other external; religious control and political control. They are of such a nature that when the religious barometer rises, the barometer of [external, i.e., political control] falls and likewise, when the religious barometer falls, the political barometer, that is political control and tyranny, rises. That is the law of humanity, a law of history. If civilized man falls into disbelief and immorality, the way is prepared for some gigantic and colossal tyrant, universal and immense. ~ Juan Donoso Cortes, #NFDB
1354:The first spiritual law of success is the Law of Pure Potentiality. This law is based on the fact that we are, in our essential state, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is pure potentiality; it is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity. Pure consciousness is our spiritual essence. Being infinite and unbounded, it is also pure joy. Other attributes of consciousness are pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity, and bliss. This is our essential nature. Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1355:The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the LORD are sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is clear, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1356:What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between [humanity] and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity. ~ Albert Schweitzer, #NFDB
1357:We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hungers on us, and now we hunger for justice. ~ Cesar Chavez, #NFDB
1358:In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and make no allowances. Such a center is God. When God would make His Name known to mankind He could find no better word than "I AM." When He speaks in the first person He says, "I AM"; when we speak of Him we say, "He is"; when we speak to Him we say, "Thou art." Everyone and everything else measures from that fixed point. "I am that I am," says God, "I change not. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1359:Father God, thank You for having no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, You did by sending Your own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. (Rom. 8:1–3) Help me to understand that the loving chastisement that might come to me after I have rebelled against You is only in the purest Father’s love and is never to be confused with condemnation. (Heb. 12:6) ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1360:In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details. But in history the matter is far otherwise. Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1361:Angels are those beings who have been on an earth like this, and have passed through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. They have kept their first estate far enough to preserve themselves in the Priesthood. They did not so violate the law of the Priesthood and condemn themselves to the sin against the Holy Ghost as to be finally lost. They are not crowned with the celestial ones. They are persons who have lived upon an earth, but did not magnify the Priesthood in that high degree that many others have done who have become Gods, even the sons of God. ~ Brigham Young, #NFDB
1362:I understood that the law of the world was strife; an inexorable, murderous law, which was not content with arming nation against nation but which hurled against one another the children of the same race, the same family, the same womb. I found none of the lofty abstractions of honor, justice, charity, patriotism of which our standard books are so full, on which we are brought up, with which we are lulled to sleep, through which they hypnotize us in order the better to deceive the kind little folk, to enslave them the more easily, to butcher them the more foully. ~ Octave Mirbeau, #NFDB
1363:Like the Israelites, you and I have been promised spiritual ground for great and abiding victory on a turf where our enemy stands in defiance. If you’re not presently occupying your Promised Land, rest assured the devil is. Are you going to stand by and let him get away with that? God has given you land, Beloved, but He’s calling you to go forth and take it. Your enemy is standing on your God-given ground, just daring you to take possession of it. Are you going to let him have it? Or are you going to claim your inheritance? Possession is the law of the Promised Land. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1364:Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, O. A.8 55, “a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.” But freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man; as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1365:Aspirations,dreams were some of the most powerful components that also held life from falling apart. They propelled life towards the fulfilment of a destiny. All those hard tests required to pass in the boot camp and outside in the Dravi community on this journey to the safe haven were worthy trade-offs thereof. The presence of the paradoxical absence of the ONE, and His selective random process as to who won and who didn't was one of those many unresolved puzzles. However, His existence was as immutable as the law of gravity to the faithful." - Moiae, Mehreen Ahmed ~ Mehreen Ahmed, #NFDB
1366:Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression. ~ Oscar Romero, #NFDB
1367:Wieser expressly refers to the incomplete nature of the previous treatment. In his criticism of the Quantity Theory he argues that the Law of Supply and Demand in its older form, the application of which to the problem of money constitutes the Quantity Theory, has a very inadequate content, since it gives no explanation at all of the way in which value is really determined or of its level at any given time, but confines itself without any further explanation merely to stating the direction in which value will move in consequence of variations in supply or demand; ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1368:It can be set down as a broad, general principle that we cannot indulge in idleness and abundance during both the first and second half of our life. Study, application, industry, enthusiasm while we are young usually enable us to enjoy life when we grow older. But unless we toil and strive and earn all we can in the first half, the second half of our life is liable to bring disappointment, discomfort, distress. The time to put forth effort is when we are most able to do it, namely, in the years of our greatest strength. The law of compensation hasn't ceased to function. ~ B C Forbes, #NFDB
1369:In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God's sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil's gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die... Woman, you are the gate to hell. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
1370:From what cause the rite of baptism first proceeded is not expressed formally in the scripture, but it may be probably thought to be an imitation of the law of Moses concerning leprosy, wherein the leprous man was commanded to be kept out of the camp of Israel for a certain time, after which time being judged by the priest to be clean, he was admitted into the camp after a solemn washing. And this may therefore be a type of the washing in baptism, wherein such men as are cleansed of the leprosy of Sin by Faith, are received into the church with the solemnity of baptism. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1371:Has the subconscient accepted the Higher Consciousness?
If the subconscient were to accept the Consciousness, it would no longer be the subconscient, it would become consciousness. I think that you mean: has the subconscient submitted to the rule, to the law of the higher Consciousness? This is not done as a whole, for the subconscient is vast and complex; there is a mental subconscient, a vital subconscient, a physical subconscient, a bodily subconscient. We have to wrest the subconscient fragment by fragment from its ignorant and inert...
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
1372:If you are complaining, the law of attraction will powerfully bring into your life more situations for you to complain about. If you are
listening to someone else complain and focusing on that, sympathizing
with them, agreeing with them, in that moment, you are attracting more situations to yourself to complain about.
The law is simply reflecting and giving back to you exactly what you are focusing on with your thoughts. With this powerful knowledge,
you can completely change every circumstance and event in your entire life, by changing the way you think. ~ Rhonda Byrne,#NFDB
1373:And then Roarke came to my door, and that gave me what I needed after all those years. I thank God for that, and him. But I’m telling you, and hope you already know, what you do, beyond the law of it, is needed.” “Sinead.” Roarke stepped up, pressed a handkerchief in her hand. “Ah well.” Sighing now, she dabbed at tears. “The world can be so dark. It’s foolish to deny it, and the Irish know the dark better than some in any case. It reminds us to hold on to the light, every minute we can, and to prize it. You’re a light to me.” She kissed Roarke’s cheeks. “Don’t ever forget it. ~ J D Robb, #NFDB
1374:Even today, regardless of the quarrels women may pick in the cause of emancipation, the reality is that, in the present world order, it's the men who eventually grant emancipation, not we women. ... it's the masters who freed the slave of the world, people belonging to the masterclass who fought for the cause. The slaves didn't earn their freedom by wrangling or arguing. That's the way things are. It's the law of the world: the strong emancipate the weak from the bondage of the strong. So also, men alone can liberate women. The responsibility lies with them. ~ Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, #NFDB
1375:in our perceived source of life. It is recognizing that our self-protective means to avoiding hurt have not ushered us into real living (the reckless abandon to God that ultimately leads to a deep sense of wholeness and joy) or to purposeful, powerful relating. Repentance is the process of deeply acknowledging the supreme call to love, which is violated at every moment, in every relationship—a law that applies even to those who have been heinously victimized. The law of love removes excuses. The pain of past abuse does not justify unloving self-protection in the present. ~ Dan B Allender, #NFDB
1376:North, I knew down deep, was where I belonged, north being as much a philosophy as a direction or destination. You knew when you were there, or you didn’t. Those who couldn’t feel it and embrace it generally only tried it once. You fit or you didn’t. The basic law of nature was the law of the unexpected. In the woods, or on a fast river, you were attuned to this; at home, in a job, in relationships, you were not, yet nature pertained in all settings to all species in one way or another. North was the home of the unexpected. North spawned chilled chaos, yet warmed my heart. ~ Joseph Heywood, #NFDB
1377:a variation in the objective exchange-value of money can arise only when a force is exerted in one direction that is not cancelled by a counteracting force in the opposite direction. If the causes that alter the ratio between the stock of money and the demand for it from the point of view of an individual consist merely in accidental and personal factors that concern that particular individual only, then, according to the law of large numbers, it is likely that the forces arising from this cause, and acting in both directions in the market, will counterbalance each other. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1378:[If] you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. (Rom. 8:2–4 NLT) ~ Renee Swope, #NFDB
1379:THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW INTRODUCTION TO MATTHEW ■ Matthew’s author used a number of literary devices that indicate a Jewish audience. His writing captures a strong sense of messianic expectation and fulfillment. Matthew made much of fulfilled prophecy in his narrative. Quoting heavily from the Old Testament, Matthew claimed that fifteen Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry. He showed great interest in Jesus’ teaching on the Law of Moses. Jesus’ statement that He came to fulfill the law rather than abolish it is found exclusively in Matthew (5:17–20). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1380:Chapulier's Rule (the law of least resistance). If the machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does whatever you tell it to do. But a smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it.
...
The Great Mendacitor, for example, for nine years in charge of the Saturn meliorization project, did absolutely nothing on that planet, sending out piles of fake progress reports, invoices, requisition forms, and either bribed his supervisors or kept them in a state of electronic shock. ~ Stanis aw Lem,#NFDB
1381:Lips' language to lips' ears.
Two drinking each other's heart, it seems.
Two roving loves who have left home,
pilgrims to the confluence of lips.
Two waves rise by the law of love
to break and die on two sets of lips.
Two wild desires craving each other
meet at last at the body's limits.
Love's writing a song in dainty letters,
layers of kiss-calligraphy on lips.
Plucking flowers from two sets of lips
perhaps to thread them into a chain later.
This sweet union of lips
is the red marriage-bed of a pair of smiles.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Kiss
,#NFDB
1382:Life is a flux, nothing abides. Still we are such fools, we go on clinging. If change is the nature of life, then clinging is stupidity, because your clinging is not going to change the law of life. Your clinging is only going to make you miserable. Things are bound to change; whether you cling or not does not matter. If you cling you become miserable: you cling and they change, you feel frustrated. If you don`t cling they still change, but then there is no frustration because you were perfectly aware that they are bound to change. This is how things are, this is the suchness of life. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1383:How strange and unnatural destiny is. I married a man eight years younger than myself, and according to the law of nature I should have been the first to die, with Him at my side. Instead, it was my destiny to witness His death.'
In speaking of Giuseppe, she always wrote Him, with a capital letter. Her style was prolix, repetitive, but with a certain academic nobility; and her handwriting was elongated, fine, even elegant. (However, in her final decline, her letters grew shorter and her written words, all shaky and twisted, groped across the page, uncertain of their direction.) ~ Elsa Morante,#NFDB
1384:No other white man shall cross the mountains, even if any man live to come so far. I will see no traders with their guns and gin. My people shall fight with the spear, and drink water, like their forefathers before them. I will have no praying-men to put a fear of death into men's hearts, to stir them up against the law of the king, and make a path for the white folk who follow to run on. If a white man comes to my gates I will send him back; if a hundred come I will push them back; if armies come, I will make war on them with all my strength, and they shall not prevail against me. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1385:As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence—as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1386:There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1387:Mary did not care a straw for the world besides. She was too much occupied with obedience to trouble her head about opinion, either her own or other people's. Not until a question comes puzzling and troubling us so as to paralyze the energy of our obedience is there any necessity for its solution, or any probability of finding a real one. A thousand foolish doctrines may lie unquestioned in the mind, and never interfere with the growth or bliss of him who lives in active subordination of his life to the law of life: obedience will in time exorcise them, like many another worse devil. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1388:Islam and democracy are opposites and can never meet. How can water meet with fire, or light with darkness? Democracy means people ruling themselves by themselves. Islam knows only God’s rule. They want to submit God’s Law to the People’s Assembly so that the honorable representatives may decide whether God’s Law is worthy of application or not! A monstrous word it is, issuing from their mouths; they say nothing but a lie. The Law of the Truth, Glorious and Sublime, is not to be discussed or scrutinized; it is to be obeyed and implemented immediately, by force, unhappy as that may make some ~ Alaa Al Aswany, #NFDB
1389:It was bad enough that Judah rebelled against God by trusting Egypt instead of trusting Jehovah, and depending on money instead of on God’s power, but they even went so far as to completely reject the Word of God (vv. 8–11). God told Isaiah to make a placard that said, “This is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD” (v. 9). He carried this sign as he walked around Jerusalem, and no doubt most of the people laughed at him. The leaders did not want to hear God’s truth; they wanted “pleasant words” from the false prophets, sermons that would not ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
1390:I believe that we are subject to the law of habit in consequence of the fact that we have bodies. The plasticity of the living matter of our nervous system, in short, is the reason why we do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all. Our nervous systems have (in Dr. Carpenter's words) grown to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds. ~ William James, #NFDB
1391:Now listen carefully, Arjuna, this is the king of secrets, the crown jewel, the law of life at the spiritual level. If you think of Me only and constantly revere and worship Me with your mind and heart undistracted, I will personally carry the burden of your welfare; I will provide for your needs and safeguard what has already been provided.
Just as the baby in the womb gets protection and nourishment due to its connection with the mother, humans also get refuge when connected with Me. But this is even greater than the baby-mother relationship because this shelter is for eternity! ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
1392:I thought the Pandavas did what they did for dharma,’ said Janamejaya, suddenly unsure. ‘If that had been true, then Vijaya over the Kauravas would also have been accompanied by Jaya over self. Following Krishna’s directive, they did defeat the Kauravas and ensured the overthrow of forces who pursued the law of the jungle. This was good for the world, but had no impact on the Pandavas themselves. There was remorse but no wisdom. External victory was not accompanied by internal victory. In the absence of spiritual insight, the Pandavas gloated over the Kaurava defeat which is why they went to Naraka. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1393:I may wish to return to my home in England, and I stand in New York, but ever since I was born I have been bound to this earth by a law that I have never been able to break--the law of gravity. I am told, however, that there is another law, a higher law, the law of aero-dynamics, and if only I will be willing to commit myself in total trust to this new law, then this new law will set me free from the old law. By faith I step into the plane, I sit back in the rest of faith, and as those mighty engines roar into life, I discover that the new law of aero-dynamics sets me free from the law of gravity. ~ W Ian Thomas, #NFDB
1394:We cannot always tell why souls come into the world rich or poor, some to grow strong and survive, others to become weak and succumb; but this we do know, that the law of karma directs these things, placing each life where it will best learn the lesson needed for its growth. Some must learn in sickness and pain; others in laughter and joy. Some must learn to be exalted; others to humble themselves. But all are here to save their souls by the sweat of their brows; to knead the bread of their own existence, even though they must mix it with their own life-blood. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
1395:Now listen carefully, Arjuna, this is the king of secrets, the crown jewel, the law of life at the
spiritual level. If you think of Me only and constantly revere and worship Me with your mind and heart undistracted, I will personally carry the burden of your welfare; I will provide for your needs and safeguard what has already been provided.
Just as the baby in the womb gets protection and nourishment due to its connection with the mother, humans also get refuge when connected with Me. But this is even greater than the baby-mother relationship because this shelter is for eternity! ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,#NFDB
1396:To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"
[To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)] ~ Mahatma Gandhi,#NFDB
1397:The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe. The real reason for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
1398:It is often said that Europeans learned religious intolerance from the Old Testament. Then how did we happen to skip over the parts where the laws protect and provide for the poor, and where oppression of them is most fiercely forbidden? It is surely dishonest to suggest we learned anything at all from the Torah, if we have not learned anything good from it. Better to say our vices are our own than to try to exculpate ourselves by implying that our attention strayed during the humane and visionary passages. The law of Moses puts liberation theology to shame in its passionate loyalty to the poor. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1399:This pursuit of Theo was not borne out of hatred for him as a man or a Jew. All of that was just an excuse - an excuse for lawless men to take what belonged to others. It seemed strange that those who served the Hitlers and the Himmlers and the Gorings believed constant lies. "The Jew is a misfortune." It was those little men in the service of greed who were the most violent, the most dedicated to the brutality of the racial policies. They murdered and terrorized for one reason only: because they could. They were the law of the lawlessness; the power of evil was their creed and their joy and their god! ~ Bodie Thoene, #NFDB
1400:If I try to gauge my work, I must consider, first of all, that I've contributed, in a world that had forgotten the notion, to the triumph of the idea of the primacy of race. Secondly, I've given German supremacy a solid cultural foundation. In fact, the power we to-day enjoy cannot be justified, in my eyes, except by the establishment and expasion of a mighty culture. To achieve this must be the law of our existence. The means I shall set in operation to this end will far surpass those that were necessary for the conduct of this war. I wish to be a builder. A war-leader is what I am against my own will. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1401:The ongoing acceleration of technology is the implication and inevitable result of what I call the law of accelerating returns, which describes the acceleration of the pace of and the exponential growth of the products of an evolutionary process. These products include, in particular, information-bearing technologies such as computation, and their acceleration
extends substantially beyond the predictions made by what has become known as Moore’s Law. The Singularity is the inexorable result of the law of accelerating returns, so it is important that we examine the nature of this evolutionary process. ~ Ray Kurzweil,#NFDB
1402:The law of Dante’s Hell is the law of symbolic retribution. As they sinned so are they punished. They took no sides, therefore they are given no place. As they pursued the ever-shifting illusion of their own advantage, changing their courses with every changing wind, so they pursue eternally an elusive, ever-shifting banner. As their sin was a darkness, so they move in darkness. As their own guilty conscience pursued them, so they are pursued by swarms of wasps and hornets. And as their actions were a moral filth, so they run eternally through the filth of worms and maggots which they themselves feed. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
1403:The name of Solomon may be divided into three syllables. Sol-Om-On. Each of these syllables is the name of a Sun God, or a Divine Principle. Sol means Sun; Om is the sacred syllable of the Vedas, the most magical of all intonations among the Hindus; and On is the name of a Supreme Being in Persia. The building of the Temple was supervised by three men. Solomon of the Sun, the source of all life and power; Hiram of Tyre, the earth, who supplied the materials; and a cunning workman, Hiram Abiff, the energies of space, the ethers, the dancing power of Fohat, the law of the atoms. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1404:When the United States of America, which was meant to be a Utopia for all, was less than a century old, Noah Rosewater and a few men like him demonstrated the folly of the Founding Fathers in one respect: those sadly recent ancestors had not made it the law of the Utopia that the wealth of each citizen should be limited. This oversight was engendered by a weak-kneed sympathy for those who loved expensive things, and by the feeling that the continent was so vast and valuable, and the population so thin and enterprising, that no thief, no matter how fast he stole, could more than mildly inconvenience anyone. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1405:Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title. The rationale behind the law is that the other employees in the company with lower titles will naturally benchmark themselves against the crappiest person at the next level. For example, if Jasper is the worst vice president in the company, then all of the directors will benchmark themselves against Jasper and demand promotions as soon as they reach his low level of competency ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
1406:Our Blessed Lord used an illustration of this mystery, “You cannot understand the blowing of the wind, but you obey its laws and thus harness its force; so also with the Spirit. Obey the law of the wind, and it will fill your sails and carry you onward. Obey the law of the Spirit and you will know the new birth. Do not postpone relationship with this law simply because you cannot fathom its mystery intellectually.” The wind breathes where it will And thou canst hear the sound of it, But knowest nothing of the way it came Or the way it goes; So it is, when a man is born By the breath of the Spirit. JOHN 3:8 The ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1407:Every conquest in our work, in our lives, adds to our strength, gives us new power, because it gives additional self-confidence. It stimulates us to do the next hardest thing which without the tonic of preceding conquests seemed impossible. The tonic of advancement is not only a stimulant, but also a marvelous producer. By the law of mental magnetism one success attracts another, and after we begin to win it is comparatively easy to keep on winning. The consciousness of progress, of getting on in the world stimulates the whole nature, turns drudgery into delight and makes the faculties give out their best. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
1408:I don’t believe in the Law of Attraction. There were things I wanted in my life that no amount of positive thinking was going to make it a reality for me. However, I have learned to believe in the Law of Tough Love. Life has thrown a dozen tragedies at me. I did what any Christian would do--prayed for the outcome I wanted, but God was tough and only gave me what I needed. I now realize that life is not about fulfilling a wish list; rather a need list. Good and bad experiences are on the horizon. How else does a person change, grow and evolve? And just like any warrior woman, I won’t simply survive-- but thrive! ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
1409:Noögenesis rises upwards in us and through us unceasingly. We have pointed to the principal characteristics of that movement: the closer association of the grains of thought; the synthesis of individuals and of nations or races; the need of an autonomous and supreme personal focus to bind elementary personalities together, without deforming them, in an atmosphere of active sympathy. And, once again: all this results from the combined action of two curvatures—the roundness of the earth and the cosmic convergence of mind—in conformity with the law of complexity and consciousness. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, #NFDB
1410:You, by your conscious assumptions, determine the nature of the world in which you live. Ignore the present state and assume the wish fulfilled. Claim it; it will respond. The law of assumption is the means by which the fulfillment of your desires may be realized. Every moment of your life, consciously or unconsciously, you are assuming a feeling. You can no more avoid assuming a feeling than you can avoid eating and drinking. All you can do is control the nature of your assumptions. Thus it is clearly seen that the control of your assumption is the key you now hold to an ever expanding, happier, more noble life. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
1411:sacrifice, the redeeming principle :::
The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul, submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 106,#NFDB
1412:This brings us back to the questions we asked earlier: If people eat less on carbohydrate-restricted diets, why aren’t they hungry. And if they don’t eat less, why do they lose weight? If the restriction of carbohydrates works to ameliorate this defect in fat metabolism, as Pennington speculated, then weight will be lost, hunger will be absent, and calorie consumption may decrease, while energy expenditure will increase. This is no more than the consequences of the law of energy conservation applied to a biological system that works to conserve body composition and maintain a healthy flow of fuel to the cells and tissues. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1413:Liberty may be granted but freedom cannot be conferred. Freedom is from within. Notwithstanding all the abuses to which freedom is now subject--marking man down as a commercial item and cutting him off from his birthright by senseless
excess and the demoralization of the profit-system--yet man may still be in love with life and find life less and less abundant for this very reason. Truth is of freedom, always safe and affirmative, therefore conservative. Truth proclaims rejection of dated minor traditions, doomed by the great Tradition of The Law of Change is truth's great "eternal." Freedom is this "great becoming. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright,#NFDB
1414:In accordance with the law of accelerating returns, paradigm shift (also called innovation) turns the S-curve of any specific paradigm into a continuing exponential. A new paradigm, such as three-dimensional circuits, takes over when the old paradigm approaches its natural limit, which has already happened at least four times in the history of computation. In such nonhuman species as apes, the mastery of a toolmaking or -using skill by each animal is characterized by an S-shaped learning curve that ends abruptly; human-created technology, in contrast, has followed an exponential pattern of growth and acceleration since its inception. ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
1415:The law of the LORD is perfect, [3] reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules [4] of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. 11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1416:1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power[*] of the life-giving Spirit has freed you[*] from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature.[*] So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. 4 He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1417:This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1418:What is clear is that he was self-aware and prepared to live with unresolved contradictions, approaching the crises of life with a sense of hope tempered by a recognition that he, at least, was not fated to live to see the end of heartbreak, failure, disappointment, and death. “We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy,” he had written—as the Heart, not the Head. “It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce.” Jefferson believed that the future could be better than the past. He knew, though, that life was best lived among friends in the pursuit of large causes, understanding that pain was the price for anything worth having. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1419:There is another human defect which the Law of Natural Selection has yet to remedy: When people of today have full bellies, they are exactly like their ancestors of a million years ago: very slow to acknowledge any awful troubles they may be in. Then is when they forget to keep a sharp lookout for sharks and whales. This was a particularly tragic flaw a million years ago, since the people who were best informed about the state of the planet, like *Andrew MacIntosh, for example, and rich and powerful enough to slow down all the waste and destruction going on, were by definition well fed. So everything was always just fine as far as they were concerned. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1420:19For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1421:Hamilton articulated fundamental concepts that he later expanded upon in The Federalist Papers, concepts central to the future of American jurisprudence. In renting the property to Waddington, he declared, the British had abided by the law of nations, which allowed for the wartime use of property in occupied territory. New York’s Trespass Act violated both the law of nations and the 1783 peace treaty with England, which had been ratified by Congress. In urging the court to invalidate the Trespass Act, Hamilton expounded the all-important doctrine of judicial review—the notion that high courts had a right to scrutinize laws and if necessary declare them void. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1422:Playing off a short story by H. G. Wells, Simone Weil drew an analogy to a land of blind people in which scientists could devise a complete system of physics leaving out the concept of light. Weightless, pressureless, undetectable by the senses — why believe in light? To the blind, it need not exist. Occasionally, however, questions might arise among the blind. What makes plants grow upwards, defying the law of gravity? What ripens fruits and seeds? What warms the night into day? Light in a country of the blind, says Weil, parallels the role of God on earth. Some of us sense traces of the supernatural, yet how do we prove it to people who can’t detect it? ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1423:The macromolecules of organic life embody information in an intricate structure. A single hemoglobin molecule comprises four chains of polypeptides, two with 141 amino acids and two with 146, in strict linear sequence, bonded and folded together. Atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and iron could mingle randomly for the lifetime of the universe and be no more likely to form hemoglobin than the proverbial chimpanzees to type the works of Shakespeare. Their genesis requires energy; they are built up from simpler, less patterned parts, and the law of entropy applies. For earthly life, the energy comes as photons from the sun. The information comes via evolution. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
1424:Give no one in all the world the power to deflect you from your goal, your aim in life, which is to express your hidden talents to the world, to serve humanity, and to reveal more and more of God’s wisdom, truth, and beauty to all people in the world. Remain true to your ideal. Know definitely and absolutely that whatever contributes to your peace, happiness, and fulfillment must of necessity bless all men who walk the earth. The harmony of the part is the harmony of the whole, for the whole is in the part, and the part is in the whole. All you owe the other, as Paul says, is love, and love is the fulfilling of the law of health, happiness, and peace of mind. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1425:After Portia has trapped Shylock through his own insistence upon the letter of the law of Contract, she produces another law by which any alien who conspires against the life of a Venetian citizen forfeits his goods and places his life at the Doge’s mercy. […] Shakespeare, it seems to me, was willing to introduce what is an absurd implausibility for the sake of an effect which he could not secure without it: at the last moment when, through his conduct, Shylock has destroyed any sympathy we may have felt for him earlier, we are reminded that, irrespective of his personal character, his status is one of inferiority. A Jew is not regarded, even in law, as a brother. ~ W H Auden, #NFDB
1426:Maybe it is not the destructiveness of the volcano that pleases most, though everyone loves a conflagration, but its defiance of the law of gravity to which every inorganic mass is subject. What pleases first at the sight of the plant world is its vertical upward direction. That is why we love trees. Perhaps we attend to a volcano for its elevation, like ballet. How high the molten rocks soar, how far above the mushrooming cloud. The thrill is that the mountain blows itself up, even if it must then like the dancer return to earth; even if it does not simply descend—it falls, falls on us. But first it goes up, it flies. Whereas everything pulls, drags down. Down. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
1427:was emotionally true because I had already grown to feel that there existed men against whom I was powerless, men who could violate my life at will. I resolved that I would emulate the black woman if I were ever faced with a white mob; I would conceal a weapon, pretend that I had been crushed by the wrong done to one of my loved ones; then, just when they thought I had accepted their cruelty as the law of my life, I would let go with my gun and kill as many of them as possible before they killed me. The story of the woman’s deception gave form and meaning to confused defensive feelings that had long been sleeping in me. My imaginings, of course, had no objective ~ Richard Wright, #NFDB
1428:But if this is the sun, if this is absolutely the same as our sun,” I cried out, “then where is the earth?” And my companion pointed to the little star that shone in the darkness with an emerald brilliance. We were rushing straight toward her. “And are such replicas really possible in the universe, is that really the law of nature?… And if that is the earth there, is it really the same as our earth… absolutely the same, unfortunate, poor, but dear and eternally beloved, giving birth to the same tormenting love for herself even in her most ungrateful children?…” I cried out, shaking with irrepressible, rapturous love for that former native earth I had abandoned. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1429:If you propound to these theorists the eternal question WHY? — why is the world in existence? why is there a universe? why do we live? why do we think and plan? why do we perish at the last? — their grandiose reply is, “Because of the Law of Universal Necessity.” They cannot explain this mysterious Law to themselves, nor can they probe deep enough to find the answer to a still more tremendous WHY — namely, WHY, is there a Law of Universal Necessity? — but they are satisfied with the result of their reasonings, if not wholly, yet in part, and seldom try to search beyond that great vague vast Necessity, lest their finite brains should reel into madness worse than death. ~ Marie Corelli, #NFDB
1430:EZEKIEL 25—32 PRESERVES Ezekiel’s oracles against the nations. If Yahweh is the God of the whole earth, it is not surprising if he has things to say to individual nations other than Israel, quite apart from what he says to all nations without distinction. Certainly there is ample evidence that God holds all nations responsible for the sins they commit on the grand scale—he may not hold them responsible for the details of the Law of Moses, but he is certainly ready to impose judgment where there is arrogance, cruelty, aggression, covenant breaking, and rapacity. Always that proverb is true: “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Prov. 14:34). ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1431:But if this is the sun, if this is absolutely the same as our sun,” I cried out, “then where is the earth?” And my companion pointed to the little star that shone in the darkness with an emerald brilliance. We were rushing straight toward her. “And are such replicas really possible in the universe, is that really the law of nature?… And if that is the earth there, is it really the same as our earth… absolutely the same, unfortunate, poor, but dear and eternally beloved, giving birth to the same tormenting love for herself even in her most ungrateful children?…” I cried out, shaking with irrepressible, rapturous love for that former native earth I had abandoned. The ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1432:I returned from the village. The house seemed unbearably dull. But I bore it. "There is no escape from loneliness and separation...." I told myself often. "Wife, child, brothers, parents, friends.... We come together only to go apart again. It is one continuous movement. They move away from us as we move away from them. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle and misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
1433:There were so many who wished to speak. For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not follow her crooked course was washed on to the bank, for such was her law. The motives of the individual did not matter to her. His conscience did not matter to her, neither did she care what went on in his head and his heart. The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death. Death was no mystery in the movement: there was nothing exalted about it: it was the logical solution to political divergences. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1434:At the level of second attention, however, this cycle is irrelevant. One doesn’t need to repeal the law of karma at all. Despite all the activity on the surface of life, a speck of awareness inside is not touched. The instant they wake up in the morning, a saint and a sinner are in the same place. They both feel themselves to be alive and aware. This place stands outside reward and punishment. It knows no duality; therefore in stage four your challenge is to find this place, hold on to it, and live there. When you have accomplished this task, duality is gone. You are free from all bondage of good or bad actions. In Christian terms, your soul is redeemed and returned to innocence. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1435:Owing its ratification to the law of a State, it has been contended that the same authority might repeal the law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy it may be to maintain that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a question of this nature, proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our National Government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the People. The streams of National power ought to flow immediately from that pure original fountain of all legitimate authority. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
1436:The present moment is all important, for it is only in the present moment that our assumptions can be controlled. The future must become the present in your mind if you would wisely operate the law of assumption. The future becomes the present when you imagine that you already are what you will be when your assumption is fulfilled. Be still (least action) and know that you are that which you desire to be. The end of longing should be Being. Translate your dream into Being. Perpetual construction of future states without the consciousness of already being them, that is, picturing your desire without actually assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, is the fallacy and mirage of ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
1437:Kit Zai’s a cop, now a victim of the newly established anticorruption agency, ICAC. Unlike its numerous predecessors which would go away after getting paid, the ICAC seems to mean business, and has caused a financial crisis in the force. Many, especially plainclothes detectives like Kit, have started bouncing at nightclubs and gambling dens and whatever to sustain a lifestyle they had long taken for granted. The same mix of cops and thugs are now hanging out at the same dumps under a different symbiotic arrangement. A comedian once suggested solving the triad problem by recruiting more police: The law of conservation tells us that having one more cop means one less thug on the street. ~ Jason Y Ng, #NFDB
1438:23for f all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 g and are justified h by his grace as a gift, i through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God j put forward as k a propitiation l by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in m his divine forbearance he had passed over n former sins. 26It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. 27 o Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that one is justified by faith p apart from works of the law. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1439:Nature loves efficiency, which is very odd for something supposedly working at random. When you drop a ball, it falls straight down without taking any unexpected detours. When two molecules with the potential for bonding meet, they always bond- there is no room for indecision. This expenditure of least energy, also called the law of least effort, covers human beings, too. Certainly our bodies cannot escape the efficiency of the chemical processes goings on in each cell, so it is probable that our whole being is wrapped up in the same principle. This argument also applies to personal growth- the idea that everyone is doing the best he or she can from his or her own level of consciousness ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1440:Love embraces the totality of the other person. It is impossible to completely and effectively love someone without being included in that other person’s history. Our history has made us who we are. The images, scars, and victories that we live with have shaped us into the people we have become. We will never know who a person is until we understand where they have been. The secret of being transformed from a vulnerable victim to a victorious, loving person is found in the ability to open your past to someone responsible enough to share your weaknesses and pains. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). You don’t have to keep reliving it. You can release it. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
1441:26 Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. 27 There is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies. 28 For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us. 30 For we know the one who said, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1442:In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,—some of them,—and are eager to give us a sign and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,—not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets, all alike. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1443:For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course. Her course had many twists and windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not follow her crooked course was washed on to the bank, for such was her law. The motives of the individual did not matter to her. His conscience did not matter to her, neither did she care what went on in his head and his heart. The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death. Death was no mystery in the movement; there was nothing exalted about it: it was the logical solution to political divergences ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1444:Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as "her luck has run out" and "He is due." That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store. ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
1445:Fifth Theory.—This is our theory, or that of our Law. ...The theory of man's perfectly free will is one of the fundamental principles of the Law of our teacher Moses, and of those who follow the Law. According to this principle man does what is in his power to do, by his nature, his choice, and his will; and his action is not due to any faculty created for the purpose. All species of irrational animals likewise move by their own free will. This is the Will of God; that is to say, it is due to the eternal divine will that all living beings should move freely, and that man should have the power to act according to his will or choice within the limits of his capacity. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1446:Why Some Men Do Not Get a Raise in Pay If you are working in a large organization and you are silently thinking of and resenting the fact you are underpaid, that you are not appreciated, and that you deserve more money and greater recognition, you are subconsciously severing your ties with that organization. You are setting a law in motion, and the superintendent or manager will say to you, “We have to let you go.” Actually, you dismissed yourself. The manager was simply the instrument through which your own negative mental state was confirmed. It was an example of the law of action and reaction. The action was your thought, and the reaction was the response of your subconscious mind. Obstacles ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1447:Coins have no memory. So the next coin you flip has a 50-50 chance of coming up heads, the same as any other. The way the overall proportion settles down to 50% isn’t that fate favors tails to compensate for the heads that have already landed; it’s that those first ten flips become less and less important the more flips we make. If I flip the coin a thousand more times, and get about half heads, then the proportion of heads in the first 1,010 flips is also going to be close to 50%. That’s how the Law of Large Numbers works: not by balancing out what’s already happened, but by diluting what’s already happened with new data, until the past is so proportionally negligible that it can safely be forgotten. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1448:In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself and having a deleterious effect on government service. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1449:organizations. The book introduces the unrelated business rules (including a history of and rationale for these rules), analyzes the meaning of the term trade or business and the factors taken into account in determining whether a business is related or unrelated, explores the many modifications and exceptions that enrich this part of exempt organizations law, and summarizes the unrelated debt-financed income rules and the doctrine of commerciality.
This book delves much deeper than I could in the The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations (Eight Edition) , digging into topics such as the special rules for social clubs, the advertising rules, the corporate sponsorship rules, and the application of this aspect of ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
1450:Well-established law, going back to Roman law, to the Justinian Code in fact, turned out to be weirdly clear on the status of the intertidal. It’s crazy to read, like Roman futurology: The things which are naturally everybody’s are: air, flowing water, the sea, and the sea-shore. So nobody can be stopped from going on to the sea-shore. The sea-shore extends as far as the highest winter tide. The law of all peoples gives the public a right to use the sea-shore, and the sea itself. Anyone is free to put up a hut there to shelter himself. The right view is that ownership of these shores is vested in no one at all. Their legal position is the same as that of the sea and the land or sand under the sea. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
1451:Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. "Migratory cancer cells" are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion.
Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political.
It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!! ~ Wilhelm Reich,#NFDB
1452:The law of our being is Love of Life, and its interests and adornments; love of the world in which our lot is cast, engrossment with the interests and affections of earth. Not a low or sensual love; not love of wealth, of fame, of ease, of power, of splendor. Not low worldliness; but the love of Earth as the garden on which the Creator has lavished such miracles of beauty; as the habitation of humanity, the arena of its conflicts, the scene of its illimitable progress, the dwelling-place of the wise, the good, the active, the loving, and the dear; the place of opportunity for the development by means of sin and suffering and sorrow, of the noblest passions, the loftiest virtues, and the tenderest sympathies. ~ Albert Pike, #NFDB
1453:The Collectorship of Madna is the seventh post that he has held in eight years. He is quite philosophic about the law that governs the transfer of civil servants; he sees it as a sort of corollary to the law of karma, namely, that the whole of life passes through innumerable and fundamentally mystifying changes, and these changes are sought to be determined by our conduct, our deeds (otherwise, we would quite simply lose our marbles); only thus can we even pretend to satisfactorily explain the mystery of suffering, which is a subject that has troubled thoughtful souls all over the world since time immemorial. It is also a hypothesis that justifies the manifest social inequalities of the Hindu community. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee, #NFDB
1454:She mentioned this once to Phinehas while he was instructing her in the history of the Hebrews. He listened as she haltingly explained her problem and finally ended by saying, “I want nothing to do with anything like that. I was forced into prostitution to save my family. They would have been sold into slavery if I hadn’t.” “I did not know that.” “I’ve not told anyone. My family knows it. No one else.” “Didn’t you tell Ardon?” “No. He didn’t seem interested.” Phinehas knew his friend well. “He’s a very straight-edged sort of man. He studies the law of Moses all the time. I think that’s good, but he’s too strict. He has a tender side, but it’s as if he’s afraid to show it to anyone.” “He hasn’t shown it to me. ~ Gilbert Morris, #NFDB
1455:Supporting this theory is the Law of Energy Conservation, which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed in a closed system. According to this law, all energy in the universe has already been made and our physical bodies are merely containers for our own personal energy. If the body is a container of energy, then when it dies its energy is released back into the universe the same way air is released back into the atmosphere when a balloon pops. But does it remain intact with all of its knowledge, experiences, emotions, and identity or does it simply dissipate back into the environment and lose everything that it was? This is a critical question for our field and one of the keys we all seek to unlock. ~ Zak Bagans, #NFDB
1456:Around the same time Democritus (ca 460 BC–ca. 370 BC), from an Ionian colony in northern Greece, pondered what happened when you break or cut an object into pieces. He argued that you ought not to be able to continue the process indefinitely. Instead he postulated that everything, including all living beings, is made of fundamental particles that cannot be cut or broken into parts. He named these ultimate particles atoms, from the Greek adjective meaning “uncuttable.” Democritus believed that every material phenomenon is a product of the collision of atoms. In his view, dubbed atomism, all atoms move around in space, and, unless disturbed, move forward indefinitely. Today that idea is called the law of inertia. ~ Stephen Hawking, #NFDB
1457:According to the law of karma, every action has a result. If you stay in bed all day with the covers over your head, if you overeat for the millionth time in your life, if you get drunk, if you get stoned, you know that’s going to depress you and make you more discouraged, if it’s just this habitual thing that you think is going to make you feel better. The older you get, the more you know how it just makes you feel more wretched. The law of karma says, “Well, how do you want to feel tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now, ten years from now?” It’s up to you how to use your life. It doesn’t mean that you have to be the best one at cheering up, or that your habitual tendencies never get the better of you. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1458:Proverbs 6:20-26 20 My son, keep your father’s command, And do not forsake the law of your mother. 21 Bind them continually upon your heart; Tie them around your neck. 22 When you roam, they* will lead you; When you sleep, they will keep you; And when you awake, they will speak with you. 23 For the commandment is a lamp, And the law a light; Reproofs of instruction are the way of life, 24 To keep you from the evil woman, From the flattering tongue of a seductress. 25 Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, Nor let her allure you with her eyelids. 26 For by means of a harlot A man is reduced to a crust of bread; And an adulteress* will prey upon his precious life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1459:To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's freedom to the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1460:Intellectual 'work' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him - why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair - but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1461:The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1462:The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in woman's construction is this: There shall be no limit put upon your intercourse with the other sex sexually, at any time of life. The law of God, as quite plainly expressed in man's construction is this: During your entire life you shall be under inflexible limits and restrictions, sexually. During twenty-three days in every month (in absence of pregnancy) from the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. As competent as the candlestick is to receive the candle. Competent every day, competent every night. Also she wants that candle - yearns for it, longs for it, hankers after it, as commanded by the law of God in her heart. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1463:Silver Nails
A man was crucified. He came to the city a stranger,
was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging.
Laughed at the crowd. "The nails are iron," he
said, "You are cheap. In my country when we crucify
we use silver nails. . ." So he went jeering. They
did not understand him at first. Later they talked about
him in changed voices in the saloons, bowling alleys, and
churches. It came over them every man is crucified
only once in his life and the law of humanity dictates
silver nails be used for the job. A statue was erected
to him in a public square. Not having gathered his
name when he was among them, they wrote him as John
Silvernail on the statue.
~ Carl Sandburg,#NFDB
1464:Every time terror returned to haunt us we tried to seek cover behind that terrible cliché called ‘resilience’. Or in Mumbai’s case, its fabled stoicism. When people turned up at work the morning after a terror strike, we pretended that our collective spirit had stared down the barrel of a gun and had not blinked. But truthfully, life carried on because of a strange combination of compulsion and fatalism. For most, their economic condition mandated what they needed to do; others counted on the law of probability and hoped that it was something that happened to other people. Many of us had grown to be strangely fatalistic about terrorism, a consequence of living in a country that was extraordinarily vulnerable to terror attacks. ~ Barkha Dutt, #NFDB
1465:Now if Newton had been a very plain, very dull, very matter-of-fact man, all that would be easily explicable. But I must make you see that he was not. He was really a most extraordinary, wild character. He practised alchemy. In secret, he wrote immense tomes about the Book of Revelation. He was convinced that the law of inverse squares was really already to be found in Pythagoras. And for such a man, who in private was full of these wild metaphysical and mystical speculations, to hold this public face and say, ‘I make no hypotheses’ – that is an extraordinary expression of his secret character. William Wordsworth in The Prelude has a vivid phrase, Newton, with his prism and silent face, which sees and says it exactly. Well, ~ Jacob Bronowski, #NFDB
1466:The scientific revolution proved that there are objective, discernible laws of physical phenomena. Take gravity, for instance. You don't exactly have faith in the law of gravity so much as you just know that the law is the law. Now we are learning that there are objective, discernible laws of non-physical phenomena. These two sets of laws are parallel. Externally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean produce oxygen, which we need in order to breathe. Internally the universe also supports our survival. Emotionally and psychologically the internal equivalent to oxygen, what we need in order to survive, is love. And human relationships exist to produce love. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1467:The Law of Attraction says that you are a “living magnet” and that you invariably attract into your life the people, ideas, opportunities, and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts. When you think positive, optimistic, loving, and successful thoughts, you create a force field of magnetism that attracts, like iron filings to a magnet, the very things you are thinking about. This law explains why it is that you don’t have to be concerned where your good is going to come from. If you can keep your mind clearly focused on what you want, and refrain from thinking about what you don’t want, you will attract everything you need to achieve your goals, exactly when you are ready. Change your thinking and you change your life. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
1468:This woman discovered that the treasure house was within her. Her prayer was felt as true in her heart, and her affirmation sank down by osmosis into her subconscious mind, which is the creative medium. The moment she succeeded in bringing about a subjective embodiment, her subconscious mind brought about the answer through the law of attraction. Her deeper mind, full of wisdom and intelligence, brought both of them together in divine order. Be sure that you think on whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. PHIL. 4:8. ~ Joseph Murphy, #NFDB
1469:A concrete embodiment of the jubilee commandment was evidenced in a rural church in Iowa during the "farm crisis." The banker in the town held mortgages on many farms. The banker and the farmers belonged to the same church. The banker could have foreclosed. He did not because, he said, "These are my neighbors and I want to live here a long time." He extended the loans and did not collect the interest that was rightly his. The pastor concluded, "He was practicing the law of the Jubilee year, and he did not even know it." The pastor might also have noted that the reason the banker could take such action is that his bank was a rare exception. It was locally and independently owned, not controlled by a larger Chicago banking system. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
1470:Paul said that God gave pastors, teachers, and elders to the church so that they could teach the rest of us to minister. A pastor’s job is not to do all of the ministry in a church, but to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12). So the question becomes: Whom should you be ministering to and how? Don’t be overwhelmed by the task of ministering to others. It is just about faithfully serving the people God has placed in your life. Paul explained: Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal. 6:1–2) ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1471:All action immediately sets into motion the law of reaction, which the ancients have called the law of karma, which is the factor employed by nature for the creation of the soul. The rejecting or ignoring of opportunity, falling under the law of indifference and inertia, fails to result in a reaction. This, in turn, results in the starving of the soul. Those who have ignored experience are called the "soulless creations," and are in the same position as those kingdoms which, like the angels, have not been given individual intelligence. [...] As one pole or the other slowly grows within the being, the atoms of the opposing substances are slowly crowded or forced out, or sloughed off, for lack of cohesion. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
1472:At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1473:Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person h be quick to hear, i slow to speak, j slow to anger; 20for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21Therefore k put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with l meekness the implanted word, m which is able to save your souls. 22But be n doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25But the one who looks into the perfect law, o the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, p he will be blessed in ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1474:But his most important capacity is that of developing the powers of the higher principles in himself, a greater power of life, a purer light of mind, the illumination of supermind, the infinite being, consciousness and delight of spirit. By an ascending movement he can develop his human imperfection towards that greater perfection. But whatever his aim, however exalted his aspiration, he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection. This present law of his being starts from the inconscience of the material universe, an involution of the soul in form and subjection to material nature; and
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Psychology Of Perfection,#NFDB
1475:Change is the law of life,' she said quietly.
'On the other hand,' I protested, 'some things don't change fast enough!'
'Like what?' Mother asked.
'Like fat, funny-looking me!'
Mother snorted. 'You're extremely good-looking. All my children are.' I expected her to add, 'I wouldn't have it any other way,' but she said, instead, 'If you think you're too heavy, lose some weight.'
'Easier said than done,' I muttered.
'If there's one thing I can't bear,' Mother scolded, 'it's self-pity, particularly from one who has no reason to pity herself. Are you crippled? Are you stupid? Are you hungry, or ill-clothed? If you were then you'd have something to gripe about. You're fatherless, it's true, but then I'm husbandless. Somehow, we manage. ~ Barbara Cohen,#NFDB
1476:Rincewind agreed moodily. He tried to explain that magic had indeed once been wild and lawless, but had been tamed back in the mists of time by the Olden Ones, who had bound it to obey among other things the Law of Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. In practical terms this meant that, say, creating the illusion of a glass of wine was relatively easy, since it involved merely the subtle shifting of light patterns. On the other hand, lifting a genuine wineglass a few feet in the air by sheer mental energy required several hours of systematic preparation if the wizard wished to prevent the simple principle of leverage flicking his brain out through his ears. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
1477:Suppose the word mountain meant metaphor, and dog, and Bible, and the United States. Clearly, if a word meant everything, it would mean nothing. If, now, the law of contradiction is an arbitrary convention, and if our linguistic theorists choose some other convention, I challenge them to write a book in conformity with their principles. As a matter of fact it will not be hard for them to do so. Nothing more is necessary than to write the word metaphor sixty thousand times: Metaphor metaphor metaphor metaphor…. This means the dog ran up the mountain, for the word metaphor means dog, ran, and mountain. Unfortunately, the sentence “metaphor metaphor metaphor” also means, Next Christmas is Thanksgiving, for the word metaphor has these meanings as well. ~ Gordon H Clark, #NFDB
1478:Yet now that we inhabit Mackinder’s “closed political system,” which, as Bracken notes, has closed much further in the course of the twentieth century, the map is also subject to the law of entropy, meaning a state of equilibrium will eventually set in, with each human habitation on the relief map—not just the megacities—looking increasingly like one another, and be subject to similar passions. The result, according to Ohio State University political science professor Randall L. Schweller, is that “a sort of global ennui” will result, the consequence of overstimulation, “mixed with a disturbingly large dose of individual extremism and dogmatic posturing by states.”17 In other words, the world will be both duller and more dangerous than ever before. ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
1479:Before it was usual to acquire goods in the market, not for personal consumption, but simply in order to exchange them again for the goods that were really wanted, each individual commodity was only accredited with that value given by the subjective valuations based on its direct utility. It was not until it became customary to acquire certain goods merely in order to use them as media of exchange that people began to esteem them more highly than before, on account of this possibility of using them in indirect exchange. The individual valued them in the first place because they were useful in the ordinary sense, and then additionally because they could be used as media of exchange. Both sorts of valuation are subject to the law of marginal utility. ~ Ludwig von Mises, #NFDB
1480:Competition is an example of separation. First, when you have
thoughts of competition, it is coming from a lack mentality, as
you are saying there is a limited supply. You are saying there is not enough for everybody, so we have to compete and fight to get
things. When you compete you can never win, even if you think
you won. By the law of attraction, as you compete you will attract
many people and circumstances to compete against You in every
single aspect of your life, and in the end you will lose. We are all
One, and so when you compete, you compete against You. You
have to get competition out of your mind, and become a creative
mind. Focus only on your dreams, your visions, and take all competition
out of the equation. ~ Rhonda Byrne,#NFDB
1481:I’m so sorry. She’s just like that, mean about the mouth. Please don’t feel bad.’
‘Why should I? Women like her are a gift: they hold in their hands the keys to heaven. Although at first glance it may seem they are our enemies, in reality, they have undertaken to provide us with valuable opportunities to be gentle and patient. To act with love. They do this at great cost to themselves – all the tears I cry she will wipe from her own eyes. It is the law of the universe that as you stretch your hand to give to another, you give to yourself. If today she happens to look askance at me, tomorrow, the day after, the following year, or a decade later, when even she has forgotten she once did the same, she will endure an equally disparaging sideways glance. ~ Rani Manicka,#NFDB
1482:If you have been living your life saying to yourself, “I will be happy when I have a better house,” “I will be happy when I get a job or promotion,” “I will be happy when the kids are through college,” “I will be happy when we have more money,” “I will be happy when I can travel,” or “I will be happy when my business is a success,” you will never have those things because your thoughts are defying the way love works. They’re defying the law of attraction. You have to be happy first, and give happiness, to receive happy things! It can’t happen any other way, because whatever you want to receive in life, you must give first! You are in command of your feelings, you are in command of your love, and the force of love will give back to you whatever you give out. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1483:Moses spent so much time face to face with Yahweh, that his own face began to transfigure and shine like the sun. He had to pull a cloak over himself because the Israelites could not stand before the brightness of holiness. The direct presence of Yahweh changes one’s very being from human to divine.” “Moses was made into a god?” “Like a Son of God. Bene ha Elohim. But it was only a foretaste, because it would fade with time.” Mary was putting it together. “So, Sons of God are the holy ones who surround Yahweh Elohim’s throne chariot, and they are myriad.” “Ten thousands upon ten thousands. They are the divine ones who administered the Law of Yahweh at Sinai. They are direct creations of Yahweh, and because they are in his presence, they shine with holiness. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1484:The result of the scientific work we have been considering was that the outlook of educated men was completely transformed. At the beginning of the century, Sir Thomas Browne took part in trials for witchcraft; at the end, such a thing would have been impossible. In Shakespeare's time, comets were still portents; after the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687, it was known that he and Halley had calculated the orbits of certain comets, and that they were as obedient as the planets to the law of gravitation. The reign of law had established its hold on men's imaginations, making such things as magic and sorcery incredible. In 1700 the mental outlook of educated men was completely modern; in 1600, except among a very few, it was still largely medieval. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1485:The course of history was changed by the fasting of God’s people. The stories of God’s mighty grace through fasting are many. We could tell the story of Moses on Mount Sinai fasting forty days as he received the Law of God that would not only guide Israel for more than 3,000 years, but would become the foundation of Western culture as we know it (Exodus 24:18; 34:28). Or we could tell the story of how the Jews fasted for Esther as she risked her life before King Ahasuerus and turned the plot against Israel back on Haman’s head (Esther 4:16). Or we could tell the story of Nehemiah’s fasting for the sake of his people and the city of God in ruins, so that King Artaxerxes granted him all the help he needed to return and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1:4). ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1486:26 ‡ If we deliberately keep on sinning† after we have received the knowledge of the truth,† no sacrifice for sins is left, 27 ‡ but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire† that will consume the enemies of God. 28 ‡ Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.† 29 ‡ How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God† underfoot,† who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant† that sanctified them,† and who has insulted the Spirit† of grace?† 30For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”[48]† and again, “The Lord will judge his people.”[49]† 31 ‡ It is a dreadful thing† to fall into the hands† of the living God.† ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1487:There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the angels"—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an intellectual and moral being—needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1488:The key to understanding the situation is the most elementary principle of economics: the law of demand—the higher the price of anything, the less of it people will be willing to buy. Make labor of any kind more expensive and the number of jobs of that kind will be fewer. Make carpenters more expensive, and fewer houses than otherwise will be built, and those houses that are built will tend to use materials and methods requiring less carpentry. Raise the wage of airline pilots, and air travel will become more expensive. Fewer people will fly, and there will be fewer jobs for airline pilots. Alternatively, reduce the number of carpenters or pilots, and they will command higher wages. Keep down the number of physicians, and they will be able to charge higher fees. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
1489:The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.22 But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.… Do not be too severe upon [the people’s] errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1490:What you will find is the Law of Love, and that law, that One Law speaks in such a manner as to say: Love yourself, your Source, and others equally, not loving self more and others less, not loving others more and loving yourself less, not loving God more, and loving yourself and others less. But if you have loved yourself enough that you cannot be offended when others do not agree, then you will learn to see that those who are unkind are those who are in pain, and you will not be available to be hurt by insults or by such actions as are meant to hurt and such. You will simply know yourself to be alright. You will not be a victim. You will be alright, and in that alrightness you will have the strength to give healing to those who do not feel alright about themselves. ~ Paul Solomon, #NFDB
1491:Ferrol’s Law was created for ordinary Fhrey, not the Miralyith,” Gryndal said. “The Art has elevated us, and we cannot be bound by the law of a god when we have become gods ourselves.”
Arion saw Mawyndulë nodding, a look of wonder and admiration in his eyes. He would be the next fane, and it was her responsibility to make sure he was a good ruler. She stepped forward.
“How wonderful! I wasn’t aware we had achieved divinity. When exactly did that happen?”
Her tone caught them all by surprise.
“And now that we have,” she continued, “please tell me when we’ll be having tea with brother Ferrol? My mother would love his recipe for vegetable soup. As for myself, I’d like some advice on how to create my own race of people, for that ability has eluded me. ~ Michael J Sullivan,#NFDB
1492:people who are excluded by culture, excluded by respectable society, and even excluded by the law of God can be brought in to Jesus’ family. It doesn’t matter your pedigree, it doesn’t matter what you have done, it doesn’t matter whether you have killed people. If you repent and believe in him, the grace of Jesus Christ can cover your sin and unite you with him. In ancient times there was a concept of “ceremonial uncleanness.” If you wanted to stay holy, or respectable, or good, you had to avoid contact with the unholy. The unholiness was considered to be “contagious,” as it were, and so you had to stay separate. But Jesus turns that around. His holiness and goodness cannot be contaminated by contact with us. Rather his holiness infects us by our contact with him. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1493:Secret Summaries • The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction. • The law of attraction says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. • Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source—you. • You are like a human transmission tower, transmitting a frequency with your thoughts. If you want to change anything in your life, change the frequency by changing your thoughts. • Your current thoughts are creating your future life. What you think about the most or focus on the most will appear as your life. • Your thoughts become things. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1494:rulers claim that they are applying the Law of Islam and assert at the same time that they are governing us by democracy God knows they are liars in both. Islamic law is ignored in our unhappy country and we are governed according to French secular law, which permits drunkenness, fornication, and perversion so long as it is by mutual consent. The state itself in fact benefits from gambling and the sale of alcohol, then spews out its ill-gotten gains in the form of salaries for the Muslims, who as a result are cursed with the curse of what is forbidden and God expunges His blessings from their life. The supposedly democratic state is based on the rigging of elections and the detention and torture of innocent people so that the ruling clique can remain on their thrones ~ Alaa Al Aswany, #NFDB
1495:When the Scripture relates redemption to the law of God, the terms it uses are to be carefully marked. It does not say we are redeemed from the law. That would not be an accurate description and the Scripture refrains from such an expression. We are not redeemed from the obligation to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and our neighbour as ourselves.
The law is comprehended in these two commandments (Matt. 22:40) and love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:10)... It would contradict the very nature of God to think that any person can ever be relieved of the necessity to love God with the whole heart and to obey his commandments.
When Scripture relates redemption to the law of God it uses terms that are more specific. ~ John Murray,#NFDB
1496:Epicurus. Frag. 477 and 200 Usener] "Poverty brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth." Do you know what limits that law of nature ordains for us? Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold. In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary for you to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud, or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates; nor is it necessary for you to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature's needs are easily provided and ready to hand. 11. It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores. That which is enough is ready to our hands. He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1497:Planck understood that Clausius was not simply stating the obvious, but something of deep significance. Heat, the transfer of energy from A to B due to a temperature difference, explained such everyday occurrences as a hot cup of coffee getting cold and an ice cube in a glass of water melting. But left undisturbed, the reverse never happened. Why not? The law of conservation of energy did not forbid a cup of coffee from getting hotter and the surrounding air colder, or the glass of water becoming warmer and the ice cooler. It did not outlaw heat flowing from a cold to a hot body spontaneously. Yet something was preventing this from happening. Clausius discovered that something and called it entropy. It lay at the heart of why some processes occur in nature and others do not. ~ Manjit Kumar, #NFDB
1498:daughters, our rulers claim that they are applying the Law of Islam and assert at the same time that they are governing us by democracy God knows they are liars in both. Islamic law is ignored in our unhappy country and we are governed according to French secular law, which permits drunkenness, fornication, and perversion so long as it is by mutual consent. The state itself in fact benefits from gambling and the sale of alcohol, then spews out its ill-gotten gains in the form of salaries for the Muslims, who as a result are cursed with the curse of what is forbidden and God expunges His blessings from their life. The supposedly democratic state is based on the rigging of elections and the detention and torture of innocent people so that the ruling clique can remain on their ~ Alaa Al Aswany, #NFDB
1499:Before the birth of all things, there existed an undifferentiated whole. A solitary void: unchanging, yet operating everywhere, without exhaustion. It is therefore considered the source of everything. I do not know its true name, although some call it Tao. If compelled to characterize it, I would simply call it great. For to be great implies that it is far-reaching, to be far-reaching implies distance, and to be distant implies returning to the source. Thus the Tao is great, Heaven is great, Earth is great, the wise person is also great. In the universe there are four great ones, and the wise person is one of them. The wise person follows the laws of Earth, Earth follows the laws of Heaven, and Heaven follows the law of Tao. The Tao, with nothing to follow, is natural unto itself. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
1500:The scribes and Pharisees were highly educated and deeply dedicated to understanding and keeping the law. This serves as a warning for us. The Bible is clear enough for any Christian to understand its basic meaning; nevertheless, the Word of God in every generation becomes distorted and misunderstood. These distortions happen not because there is something wrong with the clarity of the Word of God but because there is something wrong with us. We come to the Bible with our minds clouded by sin. We must resist the temptation to read into the Bible something that is not there or to try to use the Bible, as Luther said, as a wax nose that we can twist to support our own biases and prejudices. Here our Lord undertakes an important warning about how we are to understand the law of God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
185 Integral Yoga
45 Christianity
43 Occultism
27 Philosophy
24 Poetry
11 Yoga
7 Theosophy
7 Psychology
6 Science
6 Integral Theory
3 Fiction
3 Baha i Faith
2 Sufism
2 Philsophy
2 Hinduism
2 Education
2 Cybernetics
1 Thelema
1 Mysticism
1 Buddhism
1 Alchemy
237 Sri Aurobindo
50 The Mother
45 Nolini Kanta Gupta
26 Satprem
26 Aleister Crowley
16 Saint Augustine of Hippo
14 A B Purani
10 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
8 Aldous Huxley
7 Anonymous
6 Swami Krishnananda
6 Plotinus
6 Carl Jung
5 Plato
5 Franz Bardon
4 Rudolf Steiner
4 Paul Richard
4 James George Frazer
4 Friedrich Nietzsche
4 Baha u llah
4 Alice Bailey
3 Walt Whitman
3 Swami Vivekananda
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Percy Bysshe Shelley
3 George Van Vrekhem
2 William Wordsworth
2 Sri Ramakrishna
2 R Buckminster Fuller
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Jordan Peterson
2 Genpo Roshi
2 Aristotle
2 Al-Ghazali
50 The Synthesis Of Yoga
30 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
26 The Life Divine
17 Essays On The Gita
14 The Human Cycle
14 Magick Without Tears
14 Liber ABA
14 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
13 The Bible
13 Record of Yoga
11 City of God
10 Letters On Yoga II
8 The Perennial Philosophy
8 Isha Upanishad
8 Essays Divine And Human
7 Savitri
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
6 The Study and Practice of Yoga
6 Letters On Yoga IV
5 Vedic and Philological Studies
5 The Secret Doctrine
5 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
5 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
5 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
5 On the Way to Supermanhood
5 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
5 Collected Poems
4 The Problems of Philosophy
4 The Phenomenon of Man
4 The Golden Bough
4 Some Answers From The Mother
4 Questions And Answers 1956
4 Letters On Yoga I
4 Let Me Explain
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
4 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
3 Words Of The Mother II
3 Words Of Long Ago
3 Whitman - Poems
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 The Secret Of The Veda
3 The Practice of Magical Evocation
3 Theosophy
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 Shelley - Poems
3 Questions And Answers 1955
3 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Prayers And Meditations
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Mysterium Coniunctionis
3 Kena and Other Upanishads
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
3 Agenda Vol 08
2 Wordsworth - Poems
2 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
2 The Future of Man
2 The Book of Certitude
2 The Alchemy of Happiness
2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Poetics
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
2 On Education
2 Maps of Meaning
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 Emerson - Poems
2 Cybernetics
2 Agenda Vol 10
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Agenda Vol 04
2 Agenda Vol 03
2 Agenda Vol 01
2 5.1.01 - Ilion
000 - Humans in Universe, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
structural system. That is the Law of gravity. Symmetrical, noncontacting,
concentric interpositioning of already-symmetrical arrays of atoms produces
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The universe is insane, the Law of cause and effect
is an illusion, or so it appears in the Abyss, which is
--
in the Law of Lingam-Yoni.
The penultimate paragraph shows the redemption of
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
whether a thing is right and good, unless one can see the Law of
Truth behind things.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
with the Law of the truth of things, and not arbitrarily through
a mental decision.
01.03 - Yoga and the Ordinary Life, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God and to put the whole being into harmony with the truth of the highest self or the Law of the divine nature, to find one's own divine capacities great or small and fulfil them in life as a sacrifice to the highest or as a true instrument of the divine
Sakti.
--
Morality is a question of man's mind and vital, it belongs to a lower plane of consciousness. A spiritual life therefore cannot be founded on a moral basis, it must be founded on a spiritual basis. This does not mean that the spiritual man must be immoral - as if there were no other law of conduct than the moral. the Law of action of the spiritual consciousness is higher, not lower than the moral - it is founded on union with the Divine and living in the Divine Consciousness and its action is founded on obedience to the Divine Will.
01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What then is required is a complete spiritual regeneration in man, a new structure of his soul and substancenot merely the realisation of the highest and supreme Truth in mental and emotional consciousness, but the translation and application of the Law of that truth in the power of the vital. It is here that failed all the great spiritual or rather religious movements of the past. They were content with evoking the divine in the mental being, but left the vital becoming to be governed by the habitual un-divine or at the most to be just illumined by a distant and faint glow which served, however, more to distort than express the Divine.
The Divine Nature only can permanently reform the vital nature that is ours. Neither laws and institutions, which are the results of that vital nature, nor ideas and ideals which are often a mere revolt from and more often an auxiliary to it, can comm and the power to regenerate society. If it is thought improbable for any group of men to attain to that God Nature, then there is hardly any hope for mankind. But improbable or probable, that is the only way which man has to try and test, and there is none other.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the higher level takes up the Law of the lower and evolves out of it a characteristic function, even so the Law of the higher level with its characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the Law of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be asserted positively that because man's special virtue is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account. We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity, show more and more evident signs of something which is very much akin to, if not identical with the human characteristic of self-consciousness.
So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the Law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
So far so good. For it is not far enough. The being or becoming that is demanded in fulfilment of the divine advent in humanity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, for example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the higher light, our author seems to consider that the senses will remain more or less as they are, only they will be controlled, guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher Order. This, according to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total transformation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different. The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the Lowest must give up altogether its own norms and lift itself into the substance and form too of the Highest.
Viewed in this light, Blake's memorable mantra attains a deeper and more momentous significance. For it is not merely Earth the senses and life and Matter that are to be uplifted and affianced to Heaven, but all that remains hidden within the bowels of the Earth, the subterranean regions of man's consciousness, the slimy viscous undergrowths, the darkest horrors and monstrosities that man and nature hide in their subconscient and inconscient dungeons of material existence, all these have to be laid bare to the solar gaze of Heaven, burnt or transmuted as demanded by the Law of that Supreme Will. That is the Hell that has to be recognised, not rejected and thrown away, but taken up purified and transubstantiated into the body of Heaven itself. The hand of the Highest Heaven must extend and touch the Lowest of the lowest elements, transmute it and set it in its rightful place of honour. A mortal body reconstituted into an immemorial fossil, a lump of coal revivified into a flashing carat of diamond-that shows something of the process underlying the nuptials of which we are speaking.
The Life Divine
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Each one acts according to his nature and if he (or she) courageously and sincerely follows the Law of that nature, he or she
acts according to truth. Thus, it is impossible to judge and decide
--
the Law of love and oneness? Teachers of the Law of love and
oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate
01.12 - Three Degrees of Social Organisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indian wisdom has found this other, a fairer terma tertium quid,the mystic factor, sought for by so many philosophers on so many counts. That is the very well- known, the very familiar termDharma. What is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the Law of the Self; it is the rhythm and movement of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous working out of our truth-conscious nature.
We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Consciousness at Its origin and in its primitive formulation is dominated by the principle of inertia (tamas); in that state things have mostly an undifferentiated collective existence, they helplessly move about acted upon by forces outside them. A rise in growth and evolution brings about differentiation, specialisation, organisation. And this means consciousness of oneself of the distinct and separate existence of each and everyone, in other words, self-assertion, the claim, the right of each individual unit to be itself, to become itself first and foremost. It is a necessary development; for it signifies the growth of self consciousness in the units out of a mass unconsciousness or semi-consciousness. It is the expression of rajas, the mode of dynamism, of strife and struggle, it is the corrective of tamas.
--
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
who own money than any change in the Law of property.
Undoubtedly.
0 1956-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The difficulties of the past weeks have taught me that as soon as one strays from the true consciousness, in however trifling a way, anything may happen, any excess, any aberration, any imbalance and I have felt very dangerous things prowling about me. Mother, you told me in regard to Patrick1 that the Law of the manifestation was a law of freedom, even the freedom to choose wrongly. This evening, it has been my very deep perception that this freedom is virtually always a freedom to choose wrongly. I harbor a great fear of losing the true consciousness once again. I have become aware of how fragile everything in me is and that very little would be enough to carry me away.
Therefore, Sweet Mother, I come to ask a great grace of you, from the depths of my heart: take my freedom into your hands. Prevent me from falling back, far away from you. I place this freedom in your hands. Keep me safe, Mother, protect me. Grant me the grace of watching over me and of taking me in your hands completely, like a child whose steps are unsure. I no longer want this Freedom. It is you I want, the Truth of my being. Mother, as a grace, I implore you to free me from my freedom to choose wrongly.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Then and this becomes rather amusing like lifes play Depending upon each ones nature and position and bias, and because human beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a realized soul. Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others dont have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for themas a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they arent perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to the Law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades.
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He asked me about it and my explanation was that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the bellboy indicates an intelligent, conscious intermediaryit doesnt seem to come from the mans subconscient.1 Or else he had seen it in the subtle physical and his subconscient knew but then why did it present him with such an image? I dont know. Perhaps something in his subconscient knew, because the accident already existed in the subtle physical. Before it occurred here, the accident the Law of the accidentexisted.
Of course, in every case there is invariably a time-lag, sometimes a few hours (thats the maximum), sometimes a few seconds. Quite frequently things announce their presence, but to come in contact with your consciousness, it may take them a couple of minutes or just seconds. I am constantly, constantly aware of whats going to happenutterly uninteresting things, as a matter of fact; knowing them in advance changes nothing. But they exist all around us, and with a wide enough consciousness we can know it all. For example, I know that so and so is going to bring me a parcel, that someone is about to come, and so forth. And its like this every day. Because my consciousness is spread far and wideit comes into contact with things.
0 1962-12-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is but one law, the Law of Charity, and it is one with Justice.
There is but one disequilibrium: the violation of this law.
0 1963-03-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I looked, wondering, And what was Christs path? Basically, he always said, Love thy neighbor, in other words brotherhood (but thats a modern translation). For him, the idea was compassion, charity (the Christians say its the Law of Love, but were not yet there that will come much later). So I wrote:
Jesus preached Compassion.
0 1963-12-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A vast deception was the Law of things;
Only by that deception they could live.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mothers eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the Law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha6 and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
Ganapati, or Ganesh: the son of the supreme Mother, god of material knowledge and wealth. He is represented with an elephant's head.
0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We could also say (but they would take it as an impertinence), Because it was to be. But the true answer is, Because such was the Law of my being. I came on earth to meet him or to meet what he represents, and naturally, since I came for that, it took hold of me I took hold of it, it took hold of me, and thats that. We can make lots of sentences!
But they understand only when it becomes mental chatter.
0 1965-08-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the Law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the Law of love and oneness? Teachers of the Law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet.
(Essays on the Gita, XIII.372)
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to the Law of men, the guilty must be punished. But there is a more imperative law than the human law: it is the Law of the Divine, the Law of compassion and mercy. It is thanks to this law that the world can last and progress
The vision was so clear. It was such a clear vision. If you follow this law of the guilty who must be punished, then little by little, with the unfolding of things, everything should be punished! (Mother laughs) Nothing would remain! So Sri Aurobindo said:
0 1967-03-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was yesterday evening. I was asked questions on levitation (questions a modern little child might ask), I was asked, How is it that one who escapes from this law doesnt just go up into the atmosphere? I replied from my experience that thats not the way levitation works, its not because one escapes from the Law of gravity: its because physical bodies are supported by materialized vital forces (slightly materialized). So then, it put me back in contact with those forces and beings, and last night they said that to me; they told me, Why arent you using us any longer? We were quite happy! I said, Come along and do some work! And there you are (the grapes).
When you sleep (that is, when the body is in a state of trance), you can eat. You sense the taste when you have gone outside the body. And its very nourishing, it gives strength. I have eaten I dont know how many times like that, mostly grapesand what grapes!
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is from the universal and spiritual point of view that, not exactly good as people understand it, but the True, the Truth, will have the final word, that is well known. In other words, the Divine will eventually be victorious. That is what has been said, what all those who have lived a spiritual life have said and it is an absolute fact. When people transpose it, they say, I am a good boy, I live according to what I think to be true, consequently life should be a bed of roses for me! (Mother laughs) To begin with, self-appreciation is always dubious, and then, in the world as it now is, everything is mixed and what openly manifests to the half-blind human consciousnesses is not the Law of pure Truththey wouldnt even understand it. To put it more precisely, what is constantly realized is the supreme vision, but its realization in this mixed material world isnt seen by the ignorant human vision as the triumph of good (of what men call good and true). Butto put it humorouslyits not the Lords fault, its mens fault! That is, the Lord knows what he is doing, but men dont understand it.
In a true world, everything would perhaps be the same as now, but it would be seen differently.
0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
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?
I meet almost everyone there. I told you that you are there quite regularly, and we work. As for you, you dont remember. There are others who remember, but their memory is (Mother twists her finger slightly) just slightly off, that is, not identically what I saw. And when they tell me, my impression is, yes, its because of the transcription in their brain. The objective reality of the material world stems from the fact that if you see the same object ten times over, ten times it looks like itself, with differences that are logical, or that may be, for instance, differences of wear and tear but there too its like that! If you study carefully, even in the physical world no two people see things in exactly the same way. There, it may be more pronounced, but it seems to be a similar phenomenon.
0 1969-09-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He thought, But I have nothing left, neither a pendulum nor my hands nor anything. And all of a sudden he had a revelation: You have nothing left because you no longer need anything! Then he began, and he noticed that when his thought met with someones thought or call, it was done in a split second. For instance, one day a woman sent him a wire in Paris: she had given birth and had a torn perineum. He got the wire, thought, and said, Shes cured. The next morning he went and saw her: the perineum had healed. Another extraordinary case: a woman was dying in the fifth month of her pregnancy, dying of meningeal tuberculosis. The hospital was helpless, they brought her home. In reality, she didnt want her child. He went and saw her several times, and one day, she had terrible convulsions and died in his arms. Then, he says, I had a sort of prayer at the bottom of my heart, I said, But this woman hasnt followed the Law of love, its right that she should die, but why should this child in her die? He had a sort of prayer. And five minutes later, the woman came back to life in his arms. She opened her eyes and said, I am cured. She was indeed cured, but unable to move anymore. Two weeks later, she gave birth to a child, who was not only normal but viable and full-grown, which means that in those fifteen days, the gestation had accelerated and the child was just as full-grown as a nine-month-old child.
Five months old
--
He is conscious of this Power, but he says one needs to have the TOTAL vision, the vision of TOTAL Harmony. Because, he says, its all an equilibrium, a wonderful harmony, and we mustnt cause any disequilibrium, we must obey the Law, follow the Law of Harmony, but its a TOTAL Law, of course, and we mustnt make any mistake. I need the total vision, he says. Take the Ashram: its a center of light where there is total harmony; then theres a circle around it, Pondicherry, which is already darker
Very dark!
and less receptive; so you cant bring the Ashrams law into that obscurity without causing a disequilibrium; you can only bring part of it, or something that can be adapted to that darkness. Then there is a third, still darker circle, to which its still harder to apply the Law of total Harmonyso how to find out what one has to do depending on the particular point? How to know the right law, the total law? He says, I dont want to cause any disequilibrium, I want to obey the Law..
A. told me you asked to come with him on Saturday?
0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A.R.) India needs water. What is necessary is to obtain harmonious waterfalls, according to the Law of harmony, which will bring a sufficient amount of water for vegetation, but without causing damage. I think it is feasible. If it is not feasible, nothing is. But should one do it? Should one, for instance, divert a storm? All one has to do is ask. So should one ask the Divine Force to act one way rather than another?6
In any case, the Divine Force will only do what it wills, and it is the Divine Force Itself which, in him, aspires to divert the storm.
0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The conception of the Divine as an external omnipotent Power who has created the world and governs it like an absolute and arbitrary monarch the Christian or Semitic conceptionhas never been mine; it contradicts too much my seeing and experience during thirty years of sadhana. It is against this conception that the atheistic objection is aimed,for atheism in Europe has been a shallow and rather childish reaction against a shallow and childish exoteric religionism and its popular inadequate and crudely dogmatic notions. But when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different,something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the Law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature. The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they are and the facts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be denied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there can be. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.
Letters on Yoga, 22.174
02.02 - The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is the Law of all perfection here.
A fragment here is caught of heaven's design;
--
And love and sweetness are the Law of life.
A finer substance in a subtler mould
02.04 - The Kingdoms of the Little Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It has given the Law of craving to our lives,
It has made our spirit's need a fathomless gulf.
02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
An element of the human tragedy the very central core perhapsis the calvary of the individual. Pasternak's third article of faith is human freedom, the freedom of the individual. Indeed if evolution is to mean progress and growth it must base itself upon that one needful thing. And here is the gist of the problem that faces Pasternak (as Zhivago) in his own inner consciousness and in his outer social life. The problemMan versus Society, the individual and the collective-the private and the public sector in modern jargonis not of today. It is as old as Sophocles, as old as Valmiki. Antigone upheld the honour of the individual against the Law of the State and sacrificed herself for that ideal. Sri Rama on the contrary sacrificed his personal individual claims to the demand of his people, the collective godhead.
Pasternak's tragedy runs on the same line. Progress and welfare of the group, of humanity at large is an imperative necessity and the collective personality does move in that direction. But it moves over the sufferings, over the corpses of individuals composing the collectivity. The individuals, in one sense, are indeed the foci, the conscious centres that direct and impel the onward march, but they have something in them which is over and above the dynamism of physical revolution. There is an inner aspiration and preoccupation whose object is other than outer or general progress and welfare. There is a more intimate quest. The conflict is there. The human individual, in one part of his being, is independent and separate from the society in which he lives and in another he is in solidarity with the rest.
02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A world that clung to the Law of a slain Light
Cherished the putrid corpses of dead truths,
--
A vast deception was the Law of things;
Only by that deception they could live.
02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
With the Law of storms and wrecks.
Prisoners of a mirage,
02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This was the Law of things none dreamed to change:
A hard sombre heart, a harsh unsmiling mind
--
Annulled were the tables of the Law of Pain,
And in their place grew luminous characters.
02.12 - The Ideals of Human Unity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Anarchisma certain school of philosophical or spiritual anarchismpresages, however, an agglutinative type of humanity. That is to say, there will be no hierarchy of groupings, in fact there will be no aggregates at all, the individual will be the sole, the first and the last unit. The individual, it is said, will have so developed and perfected its self-nature that by following the Law of that nature, it will automatically and spontaneously live and move harmoniously with all the rest; each will be a self-contained unit and there will be a kind of pre-established harmony among all. Even if it be so, however, a hierarchical form of groupings in human organisation need not necessarily be barred out.
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03.04 - The Vision and the Boon, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Unalterable the Law of Chance and Death;
On his long way through Time and Circumstance
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have to rise above rajas and sattwa to enter a domain where one meets the source of inevitable harmony, where the units without losing their true self and nature and returning to the undifferentiated primordial mass, fulfil themselves and are yet held together in a rich and faultless symphony. This is Dharma, that which holds together. Dharma means the Law of one's soul. And when each soul follows its own law and line of life, there cannot be any conflict; for the essence and substance of the soul is made of unity and harmony. The souls move like the planetary bodies, each in its own orbit, and, because they do not collide or clash, all together creating the silent music of the spheres.
This then is the basis upon which the new society and humanity have to be built up, if we want to have a life on earth really worth living. Individuals have to find out their real being and nature and embody that in life. Individuals will associate and combine and form groups in response to the urge and impetus of a group harmony that seeks expression and embodiment.
03.07 - Some Thoughts on the Unthinkable, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A day will come when it is the Divine that will reign upon earth, the Divine in his transcendent Delight and Knowledge and Power and Purity, and human life shall embody the Law of the Truth.
The thing may not happen today or within a short period, according to the human standard. Man's smallness, in its impatience, once could not contemplate a span of more than a few thousand years. But we have been forced to learn to calculate earth's life and evolution in astronomical figures, and the human stage is being found to have extended farther and farther into a dim and immemorial past. Millenniums are nothing in the march of the cosmic play. Things are done here in the measures of eternity; it is only the narrowness of the human consciousness that wants to cut up what is eternal and infinite into convenient bits and parcels.
03.12 - TagorePoet and Seer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tagore is modern, as modern as reasonably and sensibly one can be; he is a modern, but not a modernist. One is modern when one is inspired and moved by the spirit of the Time, one is modernist when one is bound to the letter, to the external formulas of the Law of the Zeit-Geist. You remain modern if the new consciousness enters and dwells in your nature and character, you become modernist as soon as it degenerates into a tic and a mannerism.
The passage of mediaevalism to modernism can be defined as the passage from the local and parochial to the general and universal. The mediaeval consciousness is a segmented or linear consciousness: it is the view, at a time, from one particular angle of vision. The modern consciousness, on the other hand, is or tends to be a global view-point, a circular consciousness. The unilateral mentality proper to mediaevalism may be deep and penetrating and far-reaching, extending to the hidden and high realities, even to the highest and the most secretto God and Soul and Immortality; it would still be a one-sided vision and achievement. It is the characteristic function of-the modern consciousness to survey things not from a single point of view, but from all points of view, even the most disparate and incommensurable. The relativity of all experiencesnot necessarily their illusorinessis the great modern discovery; it is the parent of modern (scientific) scepticism and agnosticism; it is also the basis of a large, a global synthesis, which was never possible till now and which is the promise of to-morrow.
03.14 - Mater Dolorosa, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Doubters ask, however, if sinners alone suffered, one would not perhaps mind; but along with sinners why should innocents, nay even the virtuous, pass under the axe? What sins indeed babes commit? Are the sins of the fathers truly visited upon coming generations? A queer arrangement, to say the least, if there is a wise and just and benevolent God! Yes, how many honest people, people who strive to live piously, honestly and honourably, according to the Law of righteousness, fail to escape! All equally undergo the same heavy punishment. Is it not then nearer the truth to say that a most mechanical Nature, a mere gamble of chance, a statistical equation, as mathematicians say, moves the destiny of creatures and things in the universe, that there is nowhere a heart or consciousness in the whole business?
Some believers in God or in the Spirit admit that it is so. The world is the creation of another being, a not-God, a not-Spiritwhe ther Maya or Ahriman or the Great Evil. One has simply to forget the world, abandon earthly existence altogether as a nightmare. Peace, felicity one can possess and enjoy but not here in this vale of tears, anityam asukham lokam imam, but elsewhere beyond.
--
And yet the solution need not be a total rejection and transcendence of Nature. For what is ignored in this view is Nature's dual reality. In one form, the inferior (apar), Nature means the Law of Ignoranceof pain and misery and death; but in another form, the superior (par), Nature's is the Law of Knowledge, that is to say, of happiness, immunity and immortality, not elsewhere in another world and in a transcendent consciousness, but here below on the physical earth in a physical body.
The whole question then is thishow far has this Higher Nature been a reality with us, to what extent do we live and move and have our being in it. It is when the normal existence, our body, our life and our mentality have all adopted and absorbed the substance of the Higher Prakriti and become it, when all the modes of Inferior Prakriti have been discarded and annihilated, or rather, have been purified and made to grow into the modes of the Higher Prakriti, that our terrestrial life can become a thing of absolute beauty and perfect perfection.
03.16 - The Tragic Spirit in Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There runs a pessimistic vein in Nature's movement. Due to the original Inconscience out of which she is built and also because of a habit formed through millenniums it is not possible for her to expect or envisage anything else than decay, death and frustration in the end or on the whole. To every rise there must be a fall, a crest must end in a trough. Nature has not the courage nor the faculty to look for any kind of perfection upon earth. Not that within her realm one cannot or should not try for the good; the noble, even the perfect, but one must be ready to pay the price. Good there is and may be, but it is suffered only on payment of its Danegeld to Evil. That is the Law of sacrifice that seems to be fundamental to Nature's governance.
The Evil, we have said, is nothing else than the basis of unconsciousness or Inconscience in Nature. It is this which pulls the beingwhatever structure of consciousness can be reared upon itdown to decay and frustration. It is the force of gravitation or inertia. Matter is unconsciousness; the body, formed basically of matter, is unconsciousness too. The natural tendency of Matter is towards disintegration and dissolution; the body, therefore, is mortalbhasmntamidam arram. The scope and range of mortality is measured by the scope and range of unconsciousness. Matter is the most concrete and solid form of unconsciousness; but it casts its shadow upon the higher levels toolife and mind always lie in the penumbra of this original evil.
04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This view finds its justification because of a particular outlook on spirituality and non-spirituality. If the Spirit and things spiritual are taken to mean something transcending and rejecting the world and the things of the world, something exclusive of life and its fulfilment here on earth, if on the other hand, the world and its life are given only their face value emptying them of their deeper and transcendent contentsin the manner of the great Laplace who could find no place for God in his map of the world which seemed to be quite complete in itself, if this trenchant division is made in the very definition of the terms, in our primary axioms and postulates, then, of course, we cannot avoid a scission and an eternal struggle. If you consider the Spirit as only pure spirit, an absolute without any relation, as, an ever-fixed and static entity and if we view Matter as purely material and the Law of mechanics as supreme and inviolable, then there cannot be a reconciliation or even a meeting between the two. There are some who have a great goodwill, who wish to avoid clash and quarrel and are for concord and harmony. They have tried the reconciliation, but failed. The two positions being fundamentally exclusive of each other can, at best, be juxtaposed, but not unified or fused together.
And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an all comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would go round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the midst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for something stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for some core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman, Summum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought necessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be found elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration in man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical and the other horizontal, one leading up and beyondtotally beyond, in its extreme urge the other probing into the mystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform or recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether it was a power of mind or of matter.
04.04 - A Global Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yet an imperious necessity of the idea, almost as an inevitable ingredient of human consciousness, always exists and constantly makes its presence felt. If recurrence is the Law of creation, this idea with its will to fruition is also a recurrent phenomenon. A modern form of it has been given a very dynamic drive in the Marxian gospel. A socio-economic progress, however, is and can be only a part, in fact, a result of a wider and deeper progress.
We say then that the fraternity and unity of mankind has been a constant dream and aspiration, a settled ideal. And in the circumstances of today it is becoming more and mace evident that the idea is a secret fact of existence and that there is an overwhelming urge in Nature to bring it out and establish it as a manifest and concrete reality. If we review the history of mankind once again, not measuring it by its centuries but by its millenniums, not by its apparent habits and outward forms but by inner forces and attitudes, we shall discover that it is the story of the unfoldment of a collective fulfilment, of an ascension in grades of consciousness towards an ever higher and vaster truth and reality.
04.06 - To Be or Not to Be, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"A moral problem, un cas de conscience (a case of conscience), as they say in French. To defend yourself against your attacker and kill him who comes to kill you or stand disarmed and let yourself be killedwhich is better, which has the greater moral value? To fight your enemy is normal, is human. To preserve yourself, that is to say, your body, is the very first injunction of Nature. That is Nature's primary and fundamental demand. And to preserve one's life one has to take others' life. That is also Nature. But then, it is said, man is meant to rise above Nature, live (even if it means to die) according to a higher lawnot the biological law, the Law of tooth and claw. The higher law is for the preservation of life indeed, but others' life, not one's own, if it comes to that; it is not self-centred, but wholly other-regarding, it is for harmony, for peace and amity, not violence and battle. If one demurs and points out that it requires two to be friends and at peace, the answer is that one side must begin, and the merit goes to him who begins. One need not worry about the other side, which may be left to follow its own law of life, which, however, can be gained over only in this way and not by compulsion or coercion or violence. Na hi vairea vairai smyantha kadcana. Never by enmity is enmity appeased, says the Dhammapada.1
This is a way of cutting the Gordian knot. But the problem is not so simple as the moralist would have it. Resist not evil: if it is made an absolute rule, would not the whole world be filled with evil? Evil grows much faster than good. By not resisting evil one risks to perpetuate the very thing that one fears; it deprives the good of its chance to approach or get a foothold. That is why the Divine Teacher declares in the Gita that God comes down upon earth, assuming a human body,2to protect the good and slay the wicked,3 slay not metaphorically but actually and materially, as he did on the field of the Kurus.
05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are thus chains linking the typal beings in the world above with their human embodiments in the physical world; an archetype in the series of emanations branches out, as it were, into its commensurables and cognates in human bodies. Hence it is quite natural that many persons, human embodiments, may have so to say one common ancestor in the typal being (that gives their spiritual gotra); they all belong to the same geneological tree. Souls aspiring and ascending to the higher and fuller consciousness, because of their affinity, because together they have to fulfil a special role, serve a particular purpose in the cosmic plan, because of their spiritual consanguinity, call on the same godhead as their Master-soul or Over-soul, the Soul of their souls. Their growth and development are along similar or parallel lines, they are moulded and shaped in the pattern set by the original being. This must not be understood to mean that a soul is bound exclusively to its own family and cannot step out of its geneological system. As I have said in the beginning, souls are not material particles hard and rigid and shut out from each other, they are not obliged to obey the Law of impenetrability that two bodies cannot occupy the same place at the same time. They meet, touch, interchange, interpenetrate, even coalesce, although they may not belong to the same family but follow different lines of, evolution. Apart from the fact that in the ultimate reality each is in all and all is in each, not only so, each is all and all is eachthus beings on no account can be kept in water-tight compartmentsapart from this spiritual truth, there is also a more normal and apparent give and take between souls. The phenomenon known as "possession", for example, is a case in point. "Possession", however, need not be always a ghostly possession in the modern sense of the possession by evil spirits, it may be also in a good sense, the sense that the word carried among mediaeval mystics, viz.,spiritual.
We say commonly souls are immortal. But in an occult sense souls are or may be mortal too. When the Vedantin speaks of laya or the Buddhist of nya, what else is it? It is nothing but the annihilation of the soul, even if it is in the Brahman or some Absolute. But we are not referring to that here. There is a merger of souls, and a dissolution of souls in a somewhat different manner, not on the highest metaphysical heights, but even here below among the growing developing souls embodied upon earth. That is to say, one soul may unite with another and both form one single entity and embodiment.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, let us proceed a little further. Admitted the universeis a physical substance (although essentially of the nature of lightadmitted light is a physical substance, obeying the Law of gravitation, as Einstein has demonstrated). Does it then mean that the physical universe is after all a dead inert insentient thing, that whatever the vagaries of the ultimate particles composing the universe, their structure, their disposition is more or less strictly geometrical (that is to say, mechanical) and their erratic movement is only the errantry of a throw of dicea play of possibilities? There is nothing even remotely conscious or purposive in this field.
Let us leave the domain, the domain of inorganic matter for a while and turn to another set of facts, those of organic matter, of life and its manifestation. The biological domain is a freak in the midst of what apears to be a rigidly mechanistic material universe. The laws of life are not the laws of matter, very often one contravenes the other. The two converging lenses of the two eyes do not make the image twice brighter than the one produced by a single lens. What is this alchemy that forms the equation 1=1 (we might as well put it as 1+1=1)? Again, a living wholea cellfissured and divided tends to live and grow whollyin each fragment. In life we have thus another strange equation: part=whole (although in the mathematics of infinity such an equation is a normal phenomenon). The body (of a warm-blooded animal) maintaining a constant temperature whether it is at the Pole or at the Equator is a standing miracle which baffles mere physics and chemistry. Thirdly, life is immortal the Law of entropy (of irrevocably diminishing energy) that governs the fate of matter does not seem to hold good here. The original life-cells are carried over physically from generation to generation and there is no end to the continuity of the series, if allowed to run its normal course. Material energy also, it is said, is indestructible; it is never destroyed, but changes form only. But the scientific conception of material energy puts a limit to its course, it proceeds, if we are to believe thermodynamics, towards a dead equilibrium there is no such thing as "perpetual movement" in the field of matter.
Again the very characteristic of life is its diversity, its infinite variety of norms and forms and movements. The content and movement of material nature is calculable to a great extent. A few mathematical equations or formulae can after all be made to cover all or most facts concerning it. But the laws of life refuse systematisation. A few laws purporting to govern the physical bases of life claim recognition, but they stand on precarious grounds. The laws of natural selection, of heredity or genetics are applicable within a very restricted frame of facts. The variety of material substances revolves upon the gamut of 92 elements based upon 4 or 5 ultimate types of electric unitand that is sufficient to make us wonder. But the variety in life-play is simply incalculablefrom the amoeba or virus cell to man, what a bewildering kaleidoscope and each individual in each group is unique in its way! The few chromosomes that seem to be the basis of all diversity do not explain the mystery the mystery becomes doubly mysterious: how does a tiny seed contain the thing that is to become a banyan tree, how does a speck of plasma bring forth from within an object of Hamletian dimensions! What then is this energy or substance of life welling out irrepressively into multitudinous forms and modes? The chemical elements composing an organic body do not wholly exhaust its composition; there is something else besides. At least in one field, the life element has received recognition and been given an independent name and existence. I am obviously referring to the life element in food-stuff which has been called vitamin.
05.05 - Man the Prototype, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Not only so. Our limited mind and senses are accustomed to view and recognise individuals alone as persons. But there are group personalities too. Thus each species has a generic personality, a consciousness and an ideal or intrinsic form also: the individuals on the physical plane are its various incarnations, projections and formations. Old Plato was not so naive, as we of today are apt to believe, when he spoke of the real reality of general ideas. The attributes, qualities and functions of the generic personality are the source and pattern of what the individuals that form the group actually are. The group person is the king, he is also the body of the Dharma ruling the domain. Any change in the Law of being of the group person is necessarily translated in a similar change in the nature and activity of the individuals of the species. What evolutionists describe as sudden variation or mutation and whose cause or genesis they are at a loss to trace, is precisely due to an occult change in the consciousness and will of the group soul.
Man too as a species has a generic personality, his prototype. Only, in opposition to the scientific view, that is an earlier phenomenon belonging to the very origin of things. Man in his essential form and reality is found at the source and beginning of creation. When the unmanifest Transcendent steps forward to manifest, when there is the first expression of typal variations in the infinite as the basis of physical creation, then and there appears Man in his essential and eternal divine form. He is there almost as a sentinel, guarding the passage from the formless to form. Indeed, he is the first original form of the formless. A certain poet says that man is the archetype of all living forms. A bird is a flying man, a fish a swimming man, a worm a crawling man, even a plant is but a rooted man. His form belongs to a region beyond even the first principles of creation. The first principles that bring out and shape and uphold the manifested universe are the trinity: Life, Light and Delightin other terms, Sachchidananda. The whole complex of the manifest universe is resolvable into that unity of triple status. But behind even this supernal, further on towards the final disappearance into the absolute Unmanifestsumming up, as it were, in him the whole manifestationstands this original primordial form, this first person, this archetypal Man.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well, the old-world spirit has had its revenge complete and absolute in a strange manner. We are coming to that presently. Now, the constants or absolutes of which we spoke, which were the bed-rock of Modern Science, were gradually found to be rather shakyvery inconstant and relative. Take, for example, the principle of conservation of matter. The principle posited that in a given system the quantity of matter is constant in and through all transformations. Modern Science has found out that this law holds good only in respect of gross matter belonging to man-size Nature. But as soon as we enter into the domain 'of the ultimate constituents of matter, the units of electric charges, the infinitesimals, we find that matter is destroyed and is or can be recreated: material particles are dematerialised into light waves or quanta, and light quanta are precipitated back again into electric particles of matter. Similarly, the Law of conservation of energy that energy= mv (m being mass, v velocity)does not hold good in respect of particles that move with the speed of light: mass is not a constant as in Newtonian mechanics, but varies with velocity. Again, in classical mechanics, position and velocity are two absolute determinates for all scientific measurement, and Science after all is nothing if not a system of measurements. Now, in the normal size world, the two are easily determined; but in the sub-atomic world things are quite different; only one can be determined accurately; the more accurate the one, the less so the other; and if both are to be determined, it can be only approximatively, the closer the approximation, the hazier the measure, and the farther the approximation, the more definite the measure. That is to say, here we find not the exact measures of things, but only the probable measures. Indeed, not fixity and accuracy, but probability has become the central theme of modern physical calculation.
The principle of indeterminacy carries two revolutionary implications. First, that it is not possible to determine the movement of the ultimate particles of matter individually and severally, it is not possible even theoretically to follow up the chain of modulations of an electron from its birth to its dissolution (if such is the curve of its destiny), as Laplace considered it quite possible for his super-mathematician. One cannot trace the complete evolution of each and every or even one particular particle, not because of a limitation in the human capacity, but because of an inherent impossibility in the nature of things. In radioactive substances, for example, there is no ground or data from which one can determine which particle will go off or not, whether it will go off the chance that seems to reign here. In radiation too, there is no formula, and no formula can be framed for determining the course of a photon in relation to a half-reflecting surface, whether it will pass through or be reflected. In this field of infinitesimals what we know is the total behaviour of an assemblage of particles, and the laws of nature are only laws of average computation. Statistics has ousted the more exact and rigid arithmetics. And statistics, we know, is a precarious science: the knowledge it gives is contingent, contingent upon the particular way of arranging and classifying the data. However, the certainty of classical mechanistic knowledge is gone, gone too the principle of uniformity of nature.
05.14 - The Sanctity of the Individual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If we do not keep in view this vertical transcendence and confuse it with immanence, we are likely to arrive at queer conclusions, as for example, one Existentialist says: polarity being an essential truth of the reality, the Law of day and night is an eternal and immutable law and therefore, God cannot subsist as pure love; there must be also anger in him. In fact, God too is a becoming God as the human being. The limitation of such a view, characteristically Germanic and intellectual, is evident.
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05.20 - The Urge for Progression, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the process of the expression and embodiment of this innermost truth, the first necessary condition is, as we have said, sincerity, that is to say, a constant reference to the demand of that truth, putting everything and judging everything in the light of that truth, a vigilant wakefulness to it. The second condition is progression. It is the Law of the Truth that it is expressing itself, seeking to express itself continually and continuously in the march of life; it is always unfolding new norms and forms of its light and power, ever new degrees of realisation. The individual human consciousness has to recognise that progressive flux and march along with it. Human consciousness, the complex of external mind and life and body consciousness, has the habit of halting, clinging to the forms, experiences and gains of the past, storing them in memory, agreeing to a minimum change only just to be able to pour the new into the old. But this conservatism, which is another name for tamasis fatal to the living truth within. Even like the lan vitalso gloriously hymned by Bergson, the inmost consciousness, the central truth of being, the soul lanhas always a forward-looking reference. And it is precisely because the normal instrument of the body and life and mind has always a backward reference, because it slings ,back and cannot keep pace with the march of the soul-consciousness that these members stagnate, wear away, decay and death ends it all. The past has its utility: it marks the stages of progress. It means assimilation, but must not mean stagnation. It may supply the present basis but must always open out to what is coming or may come. If one arrives at a striking realisation, a light is revealed, a Voice, a mantra heard, a norm disclosed, it is simply to be noted, taken in the stuff of the being, made part and parcel of the consciousness; you leave it at that and pass and press on. You must not linger at wayside illuminations however beautiful or even useful some may be. The ideal of the paryataka the wanderermay be taken as a concrete symbol of this principle. The Brahmanas described it graphically in the famous phrase, caraivete, "move on". The Vedic Rishi sang of it in the memorable hymn to Dawn, the goddess who comes today the last of a succession of countless dawns in the immemorial past and the first of a never-ending series of the future. The soul is strung with a golden chain to the Great Fulfilment that moves ahead: even when fulfilled the soul does not rest or come to the end of its mission, it continues to be an ever new expression or instrumentation of the Infinite.
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05.31 - Divine Intervention, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What we have named Intervention is also known popularly as Providence. It is the element of the incalculable and the unforeseen in Nature. Nature, in one respect, seems to be a closed circle: it is a rigid mechanism and its movements are very definite and absolutely fixed admitting of no change or variation whatsoever. That was the idea which governed our earlier scientists when they spoke or the Law of Nature. Law of Nature was to them, in the great Sophoclean phrase, something indelible and inviolable, immemorially the same which no man or god dare alter or disobey. Laplace, one of the pioneers of the scientific outlook, said, in fact, that he could very well imagine a mathematician recording and calculating all the forces that act and react in the world and from the present position of things foretell the time and place of each and every event in the cosmic field. The idea of Karma, or Kismet, is a parallel conception in the domain of human nature and character. The chain reaction of cause and effect" is rigorous and absolute, follows a single line of movement and possesses a rigidly predetermined disposition. The principle is equally applicable either to a phenomenon of the physical world or to that of man's inner consciousness.
But we have arrived today at a stage when this old-world view has perforce to be discarded. We can no longer take Laplace seriously: for scientists themselves have established as a fact in physical Nature the indeterminacy of her movements, the impossibility of foretelling a laLaplace, not because of any deficiency in the human instrument but because of the very nature of things. Science is of course at a loss to explain the why or even the how of this indeterminacy. We say, however, that it is nothing but the intrusion of another, a different kind of force in the field of the forces actually at play. That force comes from a higher, a subtler level. Things and forces move in their ordinary round, according to the normal laws, bound ,within their present frame: but always there drops in from elsewhere an unknown element, a force or energy or impulse of another quality, which causes a shift of emphasis in the actual, brings about a change unaccountable and unforeseen. This is what is called miracle: the imposition of a higher law, a generic law governing subtler forms and forces upon an inferior and grosser sphere. And the higher or subtler the plane from which the new force descends the plane can be anything between the one nearest to the material, the subtle physical or ethereal, and the one nearest to the other extreme, the spiritual the greater will be the change in nature, quality and extent in the lower order. Such miracles, interventions, providential happenings are not rare. They are always occurring, only they do not attract attention. For it is these phenomena that are the real causes of all progresscosmic as well as individual. Evolution is based upon this truth of Nature.
06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Creator bears the Law of pain and death;
A retri bution smites the incarnate God.
--
Then shall be ended here the Law of Pain.
Earth shall be made a home of Heaven's light,
07.32 - The Yogic Centres, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But the story does not end here. Man can, if he chooses, alter the situation, turn the tables. He has in him the source of freedomwhat he vaguely feels in his outer consciousness; there is a centre from where he is capable of reacting and reasserting. It is the centre where lies his dharma, the Law of his being. It is his soul. If he once comes in contact with that, makes that the base of his life, from that moment he is free. He holds his head erect. He is no longer bent down. The burden of inexorable circumstances weighs no more on him. He has transcended the circumstances, he stands over them, looks over them. He is now the master and they obey him, he has not to obey them.
This consummation is supremely effected when there is the double breaking of the barrier I was speaking about. The first is the piercing of the veil above, when the consciousness rises into the superconscient, takes the human being into the divine being; the second is the rending of the lower veil and the descent of the divine consciousness into the most material, the subconscient and the inconscient, realising the divine life on earth.
07.34 - And this Agile Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Reason is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible contortions with equal ease and skill. It does not seek the truth, although it may pretend to do so; for it cannot find the truth. the Law of uncertainty or indeterminacy seems also to be the last word of modern Science. What Reason does and can do is to justify, find arguments for whatever position it is put in or called upon to support. Its business is to supply proofs: it can do so as the spider brings out of itself the whole warp and woof of the cobweb. There is no truth, that is to say, no conclusion which it cannot demonstrate and all with equal cogency. That was indeed the great discovery of the great Kant who described it as the antinomies of Reason. Reason finds it infinitely exhilarating to pirouette ad infinitum, i.e., beating about the bush without caring to look for the fact or reality hidden in the bush.
Is it then to say that this faculty is a falsehood and that it can lead you only to falsehood? Not necessarily. It becomes a falsehood when you try to live according to it, according to an idea or ideas it has taken a fancy to; for then it is bound to land you in contradictions. Otherwise, if it is not a question of practical application, if it is merely a play or playfulness in the mental world, it is harmless acrobatics; and even in its own way it can be of some use in making your brain sharp, alert, strong and supple.
07.36 - The Body and the Psychic, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Psychic is like the wire between the generator and the lamp. What is the generator and what is the lamp, or rather, who is the generator and who the lamp? The Divine is the generator and the body, the visible being, is the lamp. The function then of the Psychic is to connect the two. In other words, if there were no Psychic in Matter, Matter could not come in direct contact with the Divine. All human beings, including yourself, all carry the Divine within you, you have only to enter within you to find Him. It is a unique speciality of the human being, rather of all embodied beings living upon earth. In the human being, the psychic becomes more conscious and formed; more conscious and therefore also more free, it is individualised. You should note that it is a speciality of the earth alone. It is the direct infusion of a purifying and redeeming agent into the most obscure and unconscious Matter to awaken it by degrees towards the divine consciousness, the divine presence, to the Divine Himself. It is the psychic presence that makes of man an exceptional being. Perhaps it is not good to tell it to him too often, for as it is he is already puffed up and thinks very highly of himself and there is no need to encourage him in that direction. Still it is a fact: so much so that beings from other worlds, worlds of what are known as demigods or even gods, beings from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, are eager to take a physical body upon earth so that they may experience the Psychic, as they do not possess it. These beings have very many qualities which men have not, but they lack this divine presence which is quite an exceptional thing belonging to the earth alone. All the inhabitants of the higher worlds the Higher Mind, the Overmind and other domainsdo not have the psychic being. Naturally, the beings of the vital worlds have not got it either. But these vital beings do not regret, for they do not want to have it. There are, however, a few exceptional beings on this level who wish to be converted and therefore desire a physical body; but the rest do not want, they are bound to the Law of their being and cannot repudiate it.
So I say and we are bound to admit that it is an exceptional virtue in the human being to bear the psychic in him. But to tell the truth, he does not seem to have profited much by it. He does not look like considering his virtue as something very desirable, from the manner he has been treating this presence. He prefers to it his mental ideals, he prefers to it his vital demands and he prefers to it his physical habits. I do not know how many of you have read the Bible. But there is a story that I used to like always. There were two brothers, Esau and Jacob. Esau had gone out hunting and felt tired and hungry. He came back home and found his brother preparing a dish. He asked Jacob to feed him. Jacob said he would give him food if he, Esau, sold his birthright to him. Esau said, of what use is the birthright to me now, and sold it to his brother. You understand the significance? You can of course take it quite in the superficial way. But I took it differently. The birthright is the right to be the son of God. And Esau was quite ready to give up his divine right for a mess of pottage. It is an old story, but it is eternally true.
08.05 - Will and Desire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are more than one method. First of all, it is to be known whether one may not altogether stop the child from expressing freely what he thinks and feels. People do this usually and constantly. They scold, they punish and the child takes the habit of hiding his desires. That does not cure. If you always tell the child, "No, you won't have it", you simply instal this idea in him: "Yes, when I am a child, I am not given anything, I must wait till I grow up; well, when I am a man I shall have all that I want". So I say it is not a cure; it is not an easy task to bring up a child. There is however the other way of which I spoke, to give him what he wants. But the difficulty is that the next moment he will ask for another thing and go on doing without end. For it is a law, the Law of desire, that it is never satisfied. So you can change your method and tell the child, supposing it is intelligent enough: "You see, you wanted so much to have the thing and now that you have it you don't care, you ask for something different. You will do the same with that also." But if it is a shrewd child he would reply: "Well, the best way to Cure me of my desires is to give what I ask for."
Many hold this last idea all their life. When they are told to overcome their desires, they answer, "The best way of overcoming them is to satisfy them." But what is needed is not merely to change the object of desire, but change the impulse, the movement itself. For that purpose, a good deal of knowledge and understanding and experience are required. That you cannot expect of young children. First of all, they do not possess the capacity for reasoning and you cannot explain the matter to them, they will not understand, your reasons. It is why the parents have normally no other way except to cut them short, saying: "Stop, you bother us". That is how they get out of the difficulty.
09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
They lay the Law of Mind on Matter's works
And win the soul's wish from earth's inconscient Force.
100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
this occurred when the Greeks developed the Law of the triangle: the sum of the
angles is always 180 degrees, and there are six parts (three edges and three
--
what they called the Law of Conservation of Energy, which said that no energy
could be created and no energy could be lost. Energy is finite. Physical Universe
--
and relative magnitude of reproducibility, which might be called the Law of
regenerative design: the relative physical time magnitude of reproducibility is
10.06 - Beyond the Dualities, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What the mind forgets or ignores is that the Law of self-contradiction belongs exclusively to the finite. It does not hold good in infinity. The Infinite is infinite because it has transcended the laws and categories of the finite, even as Eternity has transcended the temporal. In the transcendental consciousness the reality is single and multiple at the same time, simultaneously (although the conception of time is not there at all); also God is both with form and without form at the same time. The mind may not be able to conceive it but the fact is that, for one can rise above the mind and see and experience the reality.
There are other dualities that are confusing to the mind. It is said two objects cannot occupy together the same spot or position. One object must drive out another to occupy its position. Obviously this is a truth belonging to the material world for it is said matter is impenetrable. But this law, however valid in the material plane, becomes less and less applicable in regions subtler and less and less material. Two movements or two vibrations of consciousness, may exist together without annihilating each other's identity, being a total identity.
And there is a law, a law of scientific rational inquiry which they have posited and called the Law of Parsimony which means that a simpler solution to a problem is always to be preferred to a complex solution. But if it means that a simpler truth is more true than a complex one then we would be on a doubtful and even dangerous ground. To find a simple truth one may be tempted to slice off truth, that is to say, reject or ignore or shut one's eyes to some forms or aspects of the truth, even those that belong to its very essence. In fact the real world is not a very simple thing, it is complex to its core. Contraries and even contradictories co-exist in the universe and they have to be equally accepted in an inevitably complex solution. Modern science is in such a delicate situation. How can the same thing be a particle and a wave at the same time? How can a point be also a line at the same time? How to reconcile, assimilate, synthetise electric energy and gravitational force which seem to be two distinct and incommensurable entities governing, between them, the universe in its ultimate analysis? In other fields also, social and political, there are ideologies, forces that run contrary to each other but claim equal allegiance of mankind.
There are no unitary solutions to these problems; the unitary solutions are constructions of the mind that lead nowhere except in a merry-go-round. We have to rise out of the mind and go beyond and realise that unity in plurality or plurality in unity is a self-evident fact, somewhere else than in the mind.
1.008 - The Principle of Self-Affirmation, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The determinate perceptions or the directly involved factors in our life are: love and hatred, self-assertion, and fear of death, including of course, or equivalent to, love of life. We are terribly fond of our own personal life, and we dread death. The physical individuality is to be protected at any cost by hook or by crook, by the struggle for existence, or as our biologists say, by the application of the Law of the survival of the fittest. By struggle, by competition, by any method, we wish to survive. If it is a question of one's survival, one would not mind even the destruction of others, because it is a question of 'my life'.
This is the argument of the central principle of individuality called the ego, or the asmita or ahamkara. The protection of this ego is the main function of our psychophysical individuality. Its existence and its operation have two sides or aspects of emphasis a like for certain things, and a dislike for certain other things. We may be wondering why it is that we like certain things and dislike certain things. Is there any reason behind it? The reason is not easily available, though it is available if we go a little deeper. A like, a want, a love or an affection is that pattern of the movement of our consciousness towards an external object, whose characteristics are observed by the mind for the time being to be the counterpart, the correlative of the present condition of one's individuality so much so that when the condition of our personality changes, our like or love will also change. We cannot go on loving the same thing for eternity, nor can we hate a thing for eternity.
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Second. In the study of the etheric body and prana lies the revelation of the effects of those rays of the sun which (for lack of better expression), we will call "solar pranic emanations." These solar pranic emanations are the produced effect of the central heat of the sun approaching other bodies within the solar system by one of the three main channels of contact, and producing on the bodies then contacted certain effects differing somewhat from those produced by the other emanations. These effects might be considered as definitely stimulating and constructive, and (through their essential quality) as producing conditions that further the growth of cellular matter, and concern its adjustment to environing conditions; they concern likewise the internal health (demonstrating as the heat of the atom and its consequent activity) and the uniform evolution of the form of which that particular atom of matter forms a constituent part. Emanative prana does little in connection with [79] form building; that is not its province, but it conserves the form through the preservation of the health of its component parts. Other rays of the sun act differently, upon the forms and upon their substance. Some perform the work of the Destroyer of forms, and others carry on the work of cohering and of attracting; the work of the Destroyer and of the Preserver is carried on under the Law of Attraction and Repulsion. Some rays definitely produce accelerated motion, others produce retardation. The ones we are dealing with herepranic solar emanationswork within the four ethers, that matter which (though physical) is not as yet objectively visible to the eye of man. They are the basis of all physical plane life considered solely in connection with the life of the physical plane atoms of matter, their inherent heat and their rotary motion. These emanations are the basis of that "fire by friction" which demonstrates in the activity of matter.
Finally, in the study of the etheric body and prana comes comprehension of the method of logoic manifestation, and therefore much of interest to the metaphysician, and all abstract thinkers. The etheric body of man holds hid the secret of his objectivity. It has its correspondence on the archetypal plane,the plane we call that of the divine manifestation, the first plane of our solar system, the plane Adi. The matter of that highest plane is called often the "sea of fire" and it is the root of the akasha, the term applied to the substance of the second plane of manifestation. Let us trace the analogy a little more in detail, for in its just apprehension will be found much of illumination and much that will serve to elucidate problems both macrocosmic and microcosmic. We will begin with man and his etheric body.
The etheric body has been described as a network, permeated with fire, or as a web, animated with golden light. It is spoken of in the Bible as the "golden bowl." [80] It is a composition of that matter of the physical plane which we call etheric, and its shape is brought about by the fine interlacing strands of this matter being built by the action of the lesser Builders into the form or mould upon which later the dense physical body can be moulded. Under the Law of Attraction, the denser matter of the physical plane is made to cohere to this vitalised form, and is gradually built up around it, and within it, until the interpenetration is so complete that the two forms make but one unit; the pranic emanations of the etheric body itself play upon the dense physical body in the same manner as the pranic emanations of the sun play upon the etheric body. It is all one vast system of transmission and of interdependence within the system. All receive in order to give, and to pass on to that which is lesser or not so evolved. Upon every plane this process can be seen.
Thus the etheric body forms the archetypal plane in relation to the dense physical body. The thinker on his own plane stands, in relation to the physical, as the Logos to His system. In the synthesis of thought it might be expressed thus: The thinker on the astral plane, the plane of desire and of necessity, stands to the physical body as the Logos on the cosmic astral plane stands to His system.
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The solar Logos likewise does the same during stated cycles, which are not the cycles succeeding those which we term solar pralaya, but lesser cycles succeeding the 'days of Brahma' or periods of lesser activity, periodically viewed. All these are governed by karma, and just as the true Man himself applies the Law of karma to his vehicles, and in his tiny system is the correspondence to that fourth group of karmic entities whom we call the Lipika Lords; He applies the law to his threefold lower nature. The fourth group of extra-cosmic Entities Who have Their place subsidiary to the three cosmic Logoi Who are the threefold sumtotal of the logoic nature, can pass the bounds of the solar ring-pass-not in Their stated cycles. This is a profound mystery and its complexity is increased by the recollection that the fourth Creative Hierarchy of human Monads, and the Lipika Lords in Their three groups (the first [112] group, the second, and the four Maharajahs, making the totality of the threefold karmic rulers who stand between the solar Logos and the seven planetary Logoi), are more closely allied than the other Hierarchies, and their destinies are intimately interwoven.
A further link in this chain which is offered for consideration lies in the fact that the four rays of mind (which concern the karma of the four planetary Logoi) in their totality hold in their keeping the present evolutionary process for Man, viewing him as the Thinker. These four, with the karmic four, work in the closest co-operation. Therefore, we have the following groups interacting:
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
this is the Law of nature, so it is with thought; it will dissolve
and come back to its origin; whether we will it or not we shall
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The Third Logos. The third Logos, or Brahma, is characterised by active intelligence; His mode of action is that which we call rotary, or that measured revolution of the matter of the system, first as a grand totality, setting in movement the material circumscribed by the entire ring-pass-not, and secondly differentiating it, according to seven vibratory rates or measures into the seven planes. On each of these planes the process is pursued, and the matter of any plane within the plane ring-pass-not shows first as a totality and then as a sevenfold differentiation. This differentiation of matter is brought about by rotary motion, and is controlled by the Law of Economy (one of the cosmic laws) with which we will deal later, only pausing here to say that this Law of Economy might be considered as the controlling factor in the life of the third Logos. Therefore:
a. His goal is the perfect blending of Spirit and matter.
--
All these three concepts are governed by the Law of Economy, which is the Law of Adaptation in time and space, or the line of least resistance. This line of least resistance is that which is sought for and followed on the matter side of existence. Incidentally, Brahma manifests Will, because He is purpose, and Love because in this solar system Love is the line of least resistance. While this is an occult statement worthy of consideration, yet it must be remembered that He is primarily activity and intelligence with the aim of adaptability, and that this is His main characteristic.
The Second Logos. The second Logos, Vishnu, the divine Wisdom Ray, the great principle of Buddhi seeking to blend with the principle of Intelligence, is characterised by Love. His motion is that which we might term spiral cyclic. Availing Himself of the rotary motion of all atoms, He adds to that His own form of motion or of spiralling periodical movement, and by circulation along an orbit or spheroidal path (which circles around a central focal point in an ever ascending spiral) two results are brought about:
--
The activity of the second Logos is carried on under the cosmic Law of Attraction. the Law of Economy has for one of its branches a subsidiary Law of marked development called the Law of Repulsion. The cosmic Laws of Attraction and Economy are therefore the raison d'tre (viewed from one angle) of the eternal repulsion that goes on as Spirit seeks ever to liberate itself from form. The matter aspect always follows the line of least resistance, and repulses all tendency to group formation, while Spirit, governed by the Law of Attraction, seeks ever to separate itself from matter by the method of attracting an ever more adequate type of matter in the process of distinguishing the real from the unreal, and passing from one illusion to another until the resources of matter are fully utilised.
[145]
Eventually the Indweller of the form feels the urge, or attractive pull, of its Own Self. The reincarnating jiva, for instance, lost in the maze of illusion, begins in course of time to recognise (under the Law of Attraction) the vibration of its own Ego, which stands to it as the Logos of its own system, its deity in the three worlds of experience. Later, when the body egoic itself is seen as illusion, the vibration of the Monad is felt, and the jiva, working under the same law, works its way back through the matter of the two planes of superhuman evolution, till it is merged in its own essence.
Therefore:
--
These three concepts are governed by the Law of Attraction, or the law governing the interplay or the action and reaction.
a. Between the Sun and its six brothers.
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The Mahadeva aspect or the first Logos (who embodies cosmic will) is controlled by the Law of Synthesis, the cosmic law governing the tendency to unification; only in this case, it is not the unification of matter and Spirit, but the unification of the seven into the three, and into the one. These three figures primarily stand for Spirit, [148] for quality, for principle, and not so primarily for matter, although matter, being inspired by spirit, conforms. the Law of Synthesis has a direct connection with One Who is still higher than our Logos, and is the Law of control exercised by Him upon the Logos of our system. This is a spiritual relationship that tends to abstraction or to that synthesis of the spiritual elements that will result in their conscious return (the whole point lying in that word "conscious") to their cosmic point of synthesis, or of unification with their source. Their source is the ONE ABOUT WHOM NAUGHT MAY BE SAID, as we have earlier seen.
Therefore, in connection with the first Logos, we can sum up as we did with the other Logoi:
--
Second, Increased the vibration of matter itself by means of its own energy, so that matter at the moment of pralaya and obscuration will have two main characteristics,activity, the result of the Law of Economy, and a dual magnetism which will be the result of the Law of Attraction.
All of these three concepts are governed by the Law of Synthesis, which is the Law of a coherent will-to-be, persisting [150] not only in time and space, but within a still vaster cycle.
These preliminary statements have been laid down in an endeavour to show the synthesis of the whole. In the use of words comes limitation, and a clouding of the idea; words literally veil or hide thoughts, detract from their clarity, and confuse them by expression. The work of the second and third Logoi (being the production of the objectivity of the essential Spirit) is more easy to grasp in broad outline than the more esoteric work of the first Logos, which is that of the animating will.
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2. Momentum, resulting therefore in repulsion, was produced by the rotary movement. We have referred to the Law of Repulsion as one of the subsidiary branches of the great Law of Economy, which governs matter. Repulsion is brought about by rotary action, and is the basis of that separation which prevents the contact of any atom with any other atom, which keeps the planets at fixed points in space and separated stably from each other; which keeps them at a certain distance from their systemic centre, and which likewise keeps the planes and subplanes from losing their material identity. Here we can see the beginning of that age-long duel between Spirit and matter, which is characteristic of manifestation, one aspect working under the Law of Attraction, and the other governed by the Law of Repulsion. From aeon to aeon the conflict goes on, with matter becoming less potent. Gradually (so gradually as to seem negated when viewed from the physical plane) the attractive power of Spirit is weakening the resistance of matter till, at the close of the greater solar cycles, destruction (as it is called) will ensue, and the Law of Repulsion be overcome by the Law of Attraction. It is a destruction of form and not of matter itself, for matter is indestructible. This can be seen even now in the microcosmic life, and is the cause of the disintegration of form, which holds itself as a separated unit by the very method of repulsing all other forms. It can be seen working out gradually and inappreciably in connection with the Moon, which no longer is repulsive to the earth, and is giving of her very substance to this planet. H. P. B. hints at this in The Secret Doctrine, and I have here suggested the law under which this is so. [lxxii]70, [lxxiii]71
[155]
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But all that is grasped by the dormant consciousness (by means of this one sense of hearing) is the fact of something extraneous to itself, and of the direction in which that something lies. This apprehension, in course of time, calls into being another sense, that of touch. the Law of Attraction works, the consciousness moves slowly outwards towards that which is heard; and when contact is made with the not-self it is called touch. This touch conveys other ideas to the groping consciousness, ideas of size, of external texture, and of surface differences; the concept of the Thinker is thus slowly enlarged. He can hear and feel, but as yet knows not enough to correlate nor name. When he succeeds in naming, he has made a big stride forward. We might note here, therefore, that the earliest cosmic symbols are applicable to the senses as well as elsewhere:
The point in the centreconsciousness and the not-self at a stage where sound alone is descriptive.
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TouchThe recognition of the sevenfold Form Builder, the gathering together of forms, their approximation and interrelation, the second Logos. the Law of Attraction between the Self and the not-self begins to work.
SightThe recognition of totality, the synthesis of all, the realisation of the One in Many, the first Logos. the Law of Synthesis, operating between all forms which the self occupies, and the recognition of the essential unity of all manifestation by the means of sight.
As regards taste and smell, we might call them minor senses, for they are closely allied to the important sense of touch. They are practically subsidiary to that sense. This second sense, and its connection with this second solar system, should be carefully pondered over. It is predominantly the sense most closely connected with the second Logos. This conveys a hint of much value if duly considered. It is of value to study the extensions of physical plane touch on other planes and to see whither we are led. It is the faculty which enables us to arrive [197] at the essence by due recognition of the veiling sheath. It enables the Thinker who fully utilises it to put himself en rapport with the essence of all selves at all stages, and thereby to aid in the due evolution of the sheath and actively to serve. A Lord of Compassion is one who (by means of touch) feels with, fully comprehends, and realises the manner in which to heal and correct the inadequacies of the not-self and thus actively to serve the plan of evolution. We should study likewise in this connection the value of touch as demonstrated by the healers of the race (those on the Bodhisattva line) [lxxxv]83 and the effect of the Law of Attraction and Repulsion as thus manipulated by them. Students of etymology will have noted that the origin of the word touch is somewhat obscure, but probably means to 'draw with quick motion.' Herein lies the whole secret of this objective solar system, and herein will be demonstrated the quickening of vibration by means of touch. Inertia, mobility, rhythm, are the qualities manifested by the not-self. Rhythm, balance, and stable vibration are achieved by means of this very faculty of touch or feeling. Let me illustrate briefly so as to make the problem somewhat clearer. What results in meditation? By dint of strenuous effort and due attention to rules laid down, the aspirant succeeds in touching matter of a quality rarer than is his usual custom. He contacts his causal body, in time he contacts the matter of the buddhic plane. By means of this touch his own vibration is temporarily and briefly quickened. Fundamentally we are brought back to the subject that we deal with in this treatise. The latent fire of matter attracts to itself that fire, latent in other forms. They touch, and recognition and awareness ensues. The fire of manas burns continuously and is fed by that which is attracted and repulsed. When the two [198] blend, the stimulation is greatly increased and the ability to touch intensified. the Law of Attraction persists in its work until another fire is attracted and touched, and the threefold merging is completed. Forget not in this connection the mystery of the Rod of Initiation. [lxxxvi]84 Later when we consider the subject of the centres and Initiation it must be remembered that we are definitely studying one aspect of this mysterious faculty of touch, the faculty of the second Logos, wielding the Law of Attraction.
Let us now finish what may be imparted on the remaining three sensessight, taste, smell and then briefly sum up their relationship to the centres, and their mutual action and interaction. That will then leave two more points to be dealt with in this first division of the Treatise on Cosmic Fire, and a summing up. We shall then be in a position to take up that portion of the treatise that deals with the fire of manas and with the development of the manasaputras, [lxxxvii]85 both in their totality and likewise individually. This topic is of the most imperative importance as it deals entirely with man, the Ego, the thinker, and shows the cosmic blending of the fires of matter and of mind, and their utilisation by the indwelling Flame.
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Under the Law of Economy man hears. Sound permeates matter and is the basis of its subsequent heterogeneity.
Under the Law of Attraction, man touches and makes contact with that which is brought to his attention [199] through sound waves of activity. This leads to a condition of mutual repulsion and attraction between the one who apprehends and that which is apprehended.
Having apprehended and then contacted his eyes are opened and he recognises his place in the whole order under the Law of Synthesis.
Hearing..................
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Involution. The separation of matter, or the one becoming the many. The senses are developed, and the apparatus is perfected by the Self for the utilisation of matter. This is under the Law of Economy.
Evolution up to the time of the Probationary Path. The merging of Spirit and matter, and the utilisation of the senses in a progressing identification of the Self with all forms from the lowest to those relatively refined. This is under the Law of Attraction.
Evolution on the Path. Again the separation of spirit from matter, its identification with the One, and the ultimate rejection of form. The senses then are synthesised into acquired faculty, and the Self has no [200] further use for the not-self. It blends with the All-Self. This is under the Law of Synthesis.
If this is borne in mind it leads to a realisation that the separation of the Spirit from the material vehicle involves two aspects of the One great All; herein is seen the work of the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer.
--
Fourth. A gradual grasp of the Law of Vibration as an aspect of the basic law of building; the initiate learns consciously to build, to manipulate thought matter for the perfecting of the plans of the Logos, to work in mental essence, and to apply the Law of mental levels and thereby affect the physical plane. Motion originates cosmically on cosmic mental levels, and in the microcosm the same order will be seen. There is an occult hint here that will reveal much if pondered upon. At initiation, at the moment of the application of the Rod, the initiate consciously realises the meaning of the Law of Attraction in form building, and in the synthesis of the three fires. Upon his ability to retain that realisation and himself to apply the law, will depend his power and progress.
e. By the application of the Rod, the fire of kundalini is aroused, and its upward progress directed. The fire at the base of the spine, and the fire of mind are [210] directed along certain routes, or triangles, by the action of the Rod as it moves in a specified manner. There is a definite occult reason, under the Laws of Electricity, behind the known fact that every initiate, presented to the Initiator, is accompanied by two of the Masters, who stand one on either side of him. The three of them together form a triangle which makes the work possible.
1.00f - DIVISION F - THE LAW OF ECONOMY, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
object:1.00f - DIVISION F - the Law of ECONOMY
subject class:Occultism
--
DIVISION F - the Law of ECONOMY
I. Its effect in matter.
--
1. the Law of vibration.
2. the Law of adaptation.
3. the Law of repulsion.
4. the Law of friction.
I. ITS EFFECT IN MATTER
--
The third Aspect or Brahma aspect of the activities of those Entities who are His expression, is characterised by that method in the distribution of matter which we call the Law of Economy. It is the law governing the scattering of the atoms of matter and their dissociation from one another, wide distribution, vibratory rhythm, [215] heterogeneity and quality and their inherent rotary action. This Law of Economy causes matter always to follow the line of least resistance, and is the basis of the separative action of atomic matter. It governs matter, the opposite pole of spirit.
The second Aspect, the building, or Vishnu aspect, is governed by the Law of Attraction; the activities of the entities who embody this aspect are directed to the attracting of matter to Spirit, and the gradual approximation of the two poles. It results in cohesion, in the production of congeries of atoms in various formations, and this attraction is brought about by the attractive power of Spirit itself. It shows itself in:
1. Association,
--
The first Aspect, or the will to exist, is governed by the Law of Synthesis, and the activities of the cosmic entities who are its embodiments are governed by the Law of enforced unity, and of essential homogeneity. It is the law that eventually comes into play after spirit and matter are blending, and adapting themselves each to each; it governs the eventual synthesis of Self with Self, and finally with the All-Self, and also of essence with essence in contra-distinction to the synthesis of matter and Spirit. It demonstrates as:
[216]
--
Thus can be seen the wonderful synthesis brought about by the evolutionary working of these three cosmic laws,each of them embodying the mode of work of certain cosmic Entities or Existences. The final two will be taken up in their right place. Now we will touch but briefly upon the Law of matter, that of Economy.
This is the law that lies back of what has been mistakenly called "The Fall" by religious writers, by which is defined in reality the involutionary process, cosmically considered. It led to a sevenfold differentiation in the matter of the system. Just as the Law of Attraction led to the sevenfold psychic differentiation of the Sons of Mind, and the Law of Synthesis results in the sevenfold perfection of the same Manasaputras, so we have an interesting connection between
The seven planes, or the seven grades of matter.
--
The great WORD that peals through one hundred years of Brahma or persists in reverberation throughout a solar system, is the sacred sound of A U M. In differentiation and as heard in time and space, each of those three mystic letters stands for the first letter of a subsidiary phrase, consisting of various sounds. One letter, with a sequence of four sounds, makes up the vibration or note of Brahma, which is the intelligence aspect dominant in matter. Hence the mystery hidden in [218] the pentagon, in the fifth principle of mind, and in the five planes of human evolution. These five letters when sounded forth on the right note, give the key to the true inwardness of matter and also to its control,this control being based on the right interpretation of the Law of Economy.
Another phrase, this time of seven letters, or a letter for each of the seven Heavenly Men, embodies the sound or note of the Vishnu aspect, the second aspect logoic, the form-building aspect. By its correct or partial sounding, by its complete or incomplete reverberation, are the forms built and adapted. the Law of Attraction finds expression in the manipulation of matter and its welding into form for the use of Spirit.
Then a third Word or phrase is added to the other two, completing the entire Word logoic and producing consummation. It is a Word of nine letters, making therefore the twenty-one sounds (5 + 7 + 9) of this solar system. The final nine sounds produce spiritual synthesis, and the dissociation of the spirit from the form. We have a correspondence in the nine Initiations, each initiation marking a more perfect union of the Self with the All-Self, and a further liberation from the trammels of matter.
When the sense of hearing on all planes is perfected (which is brought about by the Law of Economy rightly understood) these three great Words or phrases will be known. The Knower will utter them in his own true key, thus blending his own sound with the entire volume of vibration, and thereby achieving sudden realisation of his essential identity with Those Who utter the words. As the sound of matter or of Brahma peals forth in his ears on all the planes, he will see all forms as illusion and will be freed, knowing himself as omnipresent. As the sound of Vishnu reverberates within himself, he knows himself as perfected wisdom, and distinguishes [219] the note of his being (or that of the Heavenly Man in whose Body he finds place) from the group notes, and knows himself as omniscient. As the note of the first or Mahadeva aspect, follows upon the other two, he realises himself as pure Spirit and on the consummation of the chord is merged in the Self, or the source from which he came. Mind is not, matter is not, and nought is left but the Self merged in the ocean of the Self. At each stage of relative attainment, one of the laws comes into sway,first the Law of matter, then the Law of groups, to be succeeded by the Law of Spirit and of liberation.
II. THE SUBSIDIARY LAWS
The subsidiary laws under the Law of Economy are four in number, dealing with the lower quaternary:
1. the Law of Vibration, dealing with the key note or measure of the matter of each plane. By knowledge of this law the material of any plane in its seven divisions can be controlled.
2. the Law of Adaptation, is the law governing the rotary movement of any atom on every plane and subplane.
3. the Law of Repulsion, governs that relationship between atoms, which results in their non-attachment and in their complete freedom from each other; it also keeps them rotating at fixed points from the globe or sphere of opposite polarity.
4. the Law of Friction, governs the heat aspect of any atom, the radiation of an atom, and the effect of that radiation on any other atom.
Every atom of matter can be studied in four aspects, and is governed by one or other, or all of the four above mentioned laws.
--
The tiny atom of the physical plane, a plane itself, a planet, and a solar system all evolve under these rules, and all are governed by the Law of Economy in one of its four aspects.
It might be added in closing, that this law is one that initiates have to master before They can achieve liberation. They have to learn to manipulate matter, and to work with energy or force in matter under this law; they have to utilise matter and energy in order to achieve the liberation of Spirit, and to bring to fruition the purposes of the Logos in the evolutionary process.
1.00 - INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
The Ray of intelligent love. This is the ray which embodies the highest vibration of which our solar Logos or Deity is capable in this present solar system. It is not yet vibrating adequately nor has it yet attained the peak of its activity. It is the basis of the cyclic spiral movement of the body logoic, and just as the Law of Economy is the law governing the internal fires of the system so the cosmic Law of Attraction and Repulsion is the basic law of this divine Ray.
The Ray of intelligent will. Little as yet can be said about this ray. It is the ray of cosmic mind and in its evolution parallels that of cosmic love, but as yet its vibration is slower and its development more retarded. This is definitely and deliberately so, and is due to the underlying purpose and choice of the solar Logos, Who seeks on His high level (just as do His reflections, the sons of men) to achieve a more rounded out development, [41] and He therefore concentrates on the development of cosmic love in this greater cycle.
This ray is governed by the Law of Synthesis, and is the basis of the systemic movement which may be best described as that of driving forward through space, or forward progression. Little can be predicated anent this ray and its expression. It controls the movements of the entire ring-pass-not in connection with its cosmic centre. [vii]7
The tabulation on page 42 may make the above ideas somewhat clearer.
--
This fire is the basic vibration of the little system in which the monad or human spirit is the logos, and it [46] holds the personality or lower material man in objective manifestation thus permitting the spiritual unit to contact the plane of densest matter. It has its correspondence in the ray of intelligent activity and is controlled by the Law of Economy in one of its subdivisions, the Law of Adaptation in Time.
2. There is next the Fire or Spark of Mind which is the correspondence in man to solar fire. This constitutes the thinking self-conscious unit or the soul. This fire of mind is governed by the Law of Attraction as is its greater correspondence. Later we can enlarge on this. It is this spark of mind in man, manifesting as spiral cyclic activity, which leads to expansion and to his eventual return to the centre of his system, the Monad the origin and goal for the reincarnating Jiva or human being. As in the macrocosm this fire also manifests in a twofold manner.
It shows as that intelligent will which links the Monad or spirit with its lowest point of contact, the personality, functioning through a physical vehicle.
--
3. Finally there is the Monadic Flame Divine. This embodies the highest vibration of which the Monad is capable, is governed by the Law of Synthesis, and is the cause of the forward progressive movement of the evolving Jiva.
We now come, in due course, to the point of merging or to the end of manifestation, and to the consummation (viewing it monadically) of the great cycle or manvantara. What shall we therefore find? Just as in the macrocosm the blending of the three essential fires of the cosmos marked the point of logoic attainment, so, in the blending of the essential fires of the microcosm, do we arrive at the apotheosis of human attainment for this cycle.
--
c. The development of matter by the means of friction, under the Law of Economy. H. P. B. touches on this in the Secret Doctrine. [xiv]14
The second fire, that from the cosmic mental plane, deals with:
--
d. The operation of this fire under the Law of Attraction.
e. The subsequent result in the spiral-cyclic movement which we call, within the system, solar evolution, but which (from the standpoint of a cosmos) is the approximation of our system to its central point. This must be considered from the standpoint of time. [xvi]16
--
b. The working of the flame divine under the Law of Synthesisa generic term which will be seen eventually to include the other two laws as subdivisions.
c. The subsequent result of forward progressive motiona motion which is rotary, cyclic and progressive.
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Now this woman, though handicapped by a brain that was a mass of putrid pulp, and a complete lack of social status, education, and moral character, did more in the religious world than any other person had done for generations. She, and she alone, made Theosophy possible, and without Theosophy the world-wide interest in similar matters could never have been aroused. This interest is to the Law of Thelema what the preaching of John the Baptist was to Christianity.
We are now in a position to say what happened to Mohammed. Somehow or another this phenomenon happened in his mind. More ignorant than Anna Kingsford, though, fortunately, more moral, he connected it with the story of the Annunciation, which he had undoubtedly heard in his boyhood, and said Gabriel appeared to me. But in spite of his ignorance, his total misconception of the truth, the power of the vision was such that he was enabled to persist through the usual persecution, and founded a religion to which even to-day one man in every eight belongs.
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
As long as we see a meaning in a thing, there is no doubt about it, and nobody else can influence us. No law, no order will work against a meaning that is seen by a person with open eyes. If I tell you that it is midnight, you will not believe it. "Why are you saying it is midnight? You can see it is daylight." We have faith that it is daytime on account of our clear perception of daylight. We are seeing it directly, and why is someone saying it is something else? So when consciousness sees a peculiar and definite meaning or significance in an object in front of it which it regards as valuable, worthwhile and necessary for its happiness, then no law or order will operate against it. It breaks all laws, be they social, personal, or moral any law, whatever it is because it is the Law of reality, and the Law of reality is more powerful than any other law that is made by man. Why is it called the Law of reality? It is called the Law of reality because it is seen physically as an indubitable something about which there is no doubt in the mind, and we cannot frame a law contrary to what we see physically and palpably as something real.
We now come to a very crucial point. All of this amounts to saying that we cannot easily practise self-control. It is not so cheap an affair; it is a terrible job. It is terrible, no doubt, but there is a way out. The way out is to reshuffle the ways in which we think under given conditions. Emotions rise up under certain conditions, and under certain other conditions they may not be so forceful. The meaning that the emotion reads into its object is to be transformed. Are we correct in reading this meaning in the object? This is a philosophical question that we have to ask ourselves. Is it correct that because we see a meaning in something we can regard it as real? This is a simple question, for which there is a simple answer. But, another question can be raised are we sure that our perception is correct?.
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the vision of the Law of the Truth.6 O Pushan (fosterer), sole seer,
O Yama, O Sun, O Child of the Father of beings, marshal and
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6 Or, for the Law of the Truth, for vision.
18
1.01 - Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
15. The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer,10 for the Law of the Truth, for sight.
16. O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I.
--
13 Sin, in the conception of the Veda, from which this verse is taken bodily, is that which excites and hurries the faculties into deviation from the good path. There is a straight road or road of naturally increasing light and truth, r.juh. panthah., r.tasya panthah., leading over infinite levels and towards infinite vistas, vtani pr.s.t.hani, by which the Law of our nature should normally take us towards our fulfilment. Sin compels it instead to travel with stumblings amid uneven and limited tracts and along crooked windings
(duritani, vr.jinani).
1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
The departure of the Law of gravity from the inverse square law
is most minute. The positions, velocities, and masses of the bod-
--
of high frequency-as shown by the Law of Planck-than any
existing mechanization of radiation theory had allowed. Planck
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
To whomsoever this revelation has been vouchsafed, if it directs him to reform the world, to invite the nations to turn to God, and to a peculiar way of life, that person is called a prophet, and his way of life is called a law; and that influence which proceeds from him, which transcends what is ordinary, is called a miracle. If he has not been appointed to invite the nations, but worships in accordance with the Law of another, he is called a saint, and that which [27] proceeds from him, which transcends what is ordinary, is called a manifestation of grace. The miracle performed by a saint is accounted a miracle of that prophet whose law he follows. He who has received, by whatever meaus, a revelation of the invisible world, is capable of being ordained to the office of a prophet. And if he is not appointed by God, the reason will be either, that at the time the existing law had been newly revealed, and that there was no occasion for a prophet, or else that there may be a peculiarity in prophets which is not found in the saints. It follows that it is our duty not to deny either the saintship or the miracles of the saints, but to acknowledge them as real.
You should be aware, however, that this alchemy of happiness, that is, the knowledge of God, which is the occasion of the revelation of truth, cannot be acquired without spiritual self-denial and effort. Unless a man has reached perfection and the rank of Superior, nothing will be revealed to him, except in cases of special divine grace and merciful providence, and this occurs very rarely. Nor, except by divine condescension, is revelation obtained even by all who by effort reach the rank of Superior. And whosoever would attain holiness can only reach it by the path of difficulty.
1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
The irreligious man is a mortal being with a rational nature, who of his own free will turns his back on life and thinks of his own Maker, the ever-existent, as non-existent. The lawless man is one who holds the Law of God after his own depraved fashion,4 and thinks to combine faith in God with heresy that is directly opposed to Him. The Christian is one who imitates Christ in thought, word and deed, as far as is possible for human beings, believing rightly and blamelessly in the Holy Trinity. The lover of God is he who lives in communion with all that is natural and sinless, and as far as he is able neglects nothing good. The continent man is he who in the midst of temptations, snares and turmoil, strives with all his might to imitate the ways of Him who is free from such. The monk is he who within his earthly and soiled body toils towards the rank and state of the incorporeal beings.5 A monk is he who strictly controls his nature and unceasingly watches over his senses. A monk is he who keeps his body
1 Lit. head, Gk. kephale, commonly used as a term of endearment.
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Though One, Brahman is the cause of the many. There is no other cause. And yet Brahman is independent of the Law of causation. Such is Brahman, and thou art That. Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness.
The truth of Brahman may be understood intellectually. But (even in those who so understand) the desire for personal separateness is deep-rooted and powerful, for it exists from beginningless time. It creates the notion, I am the actor, I am he who experiences. This notion is the cause of bondage to conditional existence, birth and death. It can be removed only by the earnest effort to live constantly in union with Brahman. By the sages, the eradication of this notion and the craving for personal separateness is called Liberation.
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Indian names of the golden age are Satya, the Age of the Truth, and Krita, the Age when the Law of the Truth is accomplished.
***
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the Law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engendering fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long history, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would predict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world.
This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our
--
Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the Law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.
Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity - this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, "The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind
--
We say to the nation, "It is God's will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the Law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves.
We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the Law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, 'This is our dharma.' We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians.
And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours."
1.01 - THE STUFF OF THE UNIVERSE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
1 Which we shall call later on ' the Law of Consciousness and Complexity '.
45
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(Illustration: The Banker should discover the real meaning of his existence, the real motive which led him to choose that profession. He should understand banking as a necessary factor in the economic existence of mankind, instead of as merely a business whose objects are independent of the general welfare. He should learn to distinguish false values from real, and to act not on accidental fluctuations but on considerations of essential importance. Such a banker will prove himself superior to others; because he will not be an individual limited by transitory things, but a force of Nature, as impersonal, impartial and eternal as gravitation, as patient and irresistible as the tides. His system will not be subject to panic, any more than the Law of Inverse Squares is disturbed by Elections. He will not be anxious about his affairs because they will not be his; and for that reason he will be able to direct them with the calm, clear-headed confidence of an onlooker, with intelligence unclouded by self-interest and power unimpaired by passion.)
28. Every man has a right to fulfill his own will without being afraid that it may interfere with that of others; for if he is in his proper path, it is the fault of others if they interfere with him.
1.02.2.1 - Brahman - Oneness of God and the World, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Many in the One is therefore the Law of the eternally recurrent
cosmic Cycles.
10.22 - Short Notes - 5- Consciousness and Dimensions of View, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we rise we find that the dimensions increase in number. Our consciousness, our being becomes more and more multiple. In the physical and material, our perception is limited to the four dimensions because of two factorsone, things are spaced out that is to say, they are separate and discrete from one another. We know the Law of material space that two things cannot occupy the same space. Secondly, things or events are separated in time, that is to say, there is the Law of succession. But in the higher regions, higher or subtler regions, this separation due to time and space loses much of its exclusive force. Things tend to coalesce, even to get identified with each other. The obstructions that time and space offer to intercommunication are minimised more and more as our consciousness or being soars up or dives down into deeper and deeper and higher and higher regions. The dimensions increase in number; that means we begin to apprehend things from many angles and sides at the same time, we have more and more a simultaneous view of the total or global reality of an object. So instead of a four-fold view of things we may have a fivefold, sixfold, tenfold, hundredfold view of things depending on our status of consciousness. In the highest status,we call it Sachchidananda, the infinite and eternal consciousness things attain infinite dimensions, all merged in the Ultimate's unitary consciousness.
***
1.02.3.1 - The Lord, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
It follows that every object holds in itself the Law of its own
being eternally, sasvatbhyah. samabhyah., from years sempiternal, in perpetual Time. All relations in the totality of objects are
--
against a background of boundless possibilities, is the Law of
their inevitable evolution in the objective Fact.
1.02.4.1 - The Worlds - Surya, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Fosterer, for the Law of the Truth, for sight.
16. O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father
--
of the right law of action in us, the Law of the Truth. For Surya
is Yama, the Ordainer or Controller who assures the law, the
1.02.4.2 - Action and the Divine Will, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Energy, Knowledge and Force are one. It knows all manifestations, all things that take birth in the worlds. It is Jatavedas, that which has right knowledge of all births. It knows them in the Law of their being, in their relation to other births, in their aim and method, in their process and goal, in their unity with all and their difference from all. It is this divine Will that conducts the universe; it is one with all the things that it combines and its being, its knowledge, its action are inseparable from each other. What it is, it knows; what it knows, that it does and becomes.
But as soon as egoistic consciousness emerges and interferes, there is a disturbance, a division, a false action. Will becomes an impulsion ignorant of its secret motive and aim, knowledge becomes a dubious and partial ray not in possession of the will, the act and the result, but only striving to possess and inform them. This is because we are not in possession of our self,3 our true being, but only of the ego. What we are, we know not; what we know, we cannot effect. For knowledge is real and action in harmony with true knowledge only when they proceed naturally out of the conscious, illumined and self-possessing soul, in which being, knowledge and action are one movement.
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The practice of yoga is nothing but a conscious participation in the universal working of nature itself and, therefore, it is the most natural thing that we can do, and the most natural thing that we can conceive. There can be nothing more natural than to participate consciously in the evolutionary work of the universe, which is the attempt of the cosmos to become Self-conscious in the Absolute. Evolution is nothing but a movement of the whole universe towards Self-awareness this is called God-realisation. Our every activity from the cup of tea that we take, to the breath that we breathe, from even the sneeze that we jet forth, to the least action that we perform, from even a single thought which occurs in the mind everything is a part of this cosmic operation which is the evolution of the universe towards Self-realisation. Therefore, the practice of yoga is the most natural thing that we can think of and the most necessary duty of a human being. Nothing can be more obligatory on our part than this duty. It is from this point of view, perhaps, that Lord Krishna proclaims, towards the end of the Bhagavadgita, sarvadharmnparityajya mmeka araa vraja (B.G. XVIII.66): Renounce every other duty and come to Me for rescue which means to say, take resort in the Law of the Absolute. This is the practice of yoga, and every other dharma is subsumed under it and included within it, as every drop and every river is in the ocean. In this supreme duty, every other duty is included. There is no need to think of every individual, discrete and isolated duty, because all duties are included in this one duty, which is the mother of all duties.
This peculiar feature of spiritual practice, sadhana, being so difficult to understand intellectually, cannot be regarded as merely an individual's affair. Sadhana is God's affair, ultimately. Spiritual sadhana is God's grace working. Though it appears that is individual effort, it only seems to be so, but really it is something else. Not even the greatest of philosophical thinkers, such as Shankara, could logically answer the question, "How does knowledge arise in the jiva?" How can it be said that individual effort produces knowledge of God? Knowledge of God cannot rise by individual effort, because individual effort is so puny, so inadequate to the purpose, to the task, that we cannot expect such an infinite result to follow from the finite cause. The concept of God is an inscrutable event that takes place in the human mind. Can we imagine an ass thinking about God? However much it may put forth effort and go on trying its best throughout its life, the concept of God will never arise in an ass's mind or in a buffalo's mind. How it arises is a mystery. Suddenly, it comes.
1.02.9 - Conclusion and Summary, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
in life and works is the Law of our being and the object of our
world-existence.
1.02 - Groups and Statistical Mechanics, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
and the gas. Now, the Law of the increase of entropy applies to a
completely isolated system but does not apply to a non-isolated
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism secondh and this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga as a method of spiritual communion are dangerous things which lead men away from action to abstraction. We leave aside those who regard all such beliefs as mysticism, self-delusion or imposture; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the Law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable finds its one perfect basis and justification in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Gita. The characteristic doctrines of the Gita are nothing if they are not a law of life, a dharma, and even the most transcendental aspirations of the
Vedanta presuppose a preparation in life, for it is only through life that one can reach to immortality. The opposite opinion is due to certain tendencies which have bulked large in the history and temperament of our race. The ultimate goal of our religion is emancipation from the bondage of material Nature and freedom from individual rebirth, and certain souls, among the highest we have known, have been drawn by the attraction of the final hush and purity to dissociate themselves from life and bodily action in order more swiftly and easily to reach the goal. Standing like
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
because they have rejected the Law of the LORD, and have not kept his statutes, but their lies have led
them astray, after which their fathers walked.
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Still the miserable naturalist, who ascribes effects to the influences of nature, speaks correctly. For, if natural causes had no operation, the art of medicine would have been useless, and the holy law would not have allowed to have recourse to medical treatment. The mistake which the naturalist makes, is that he contracts his sphere of vision, and is like the lame ass, that left his load at the first stopping place. He does not know that nature also is subjected to the hand of the power of God, and is a kind of humble servant, such as a shoe is to the ass. The astrologer also says, that the sun is a star, which causes heat and light upon the earth. If there had been no sun, the distinction between day and night would not have existed, and vegetables and grain could not have been produced. The moon also is a star, and if there bad been no moon, how many things connected with the requirements of the Law of the Koran, would have been impracticable, such as fasting, alms and pilgrimage, since there would have been no distinction of weeks, months and years. The colors and perfumes of herbs and fruits exist also from its influence. The sun is warm and dry; the moon is cold and moist. Saturn [52] is cold and dry, Venus is warm and moist. And the school of astrologers is to be credited in these representations; but when they ascribe all events to influences proceeding from the heavenly bodies, they are liars. They do not perceive that they all alike are subject to the almighty power of God as God says in his word: "And the sun, moon and stars are subject to his command." 1 There is also an influence exercised by the stars, which resembles the control, exercised by the nerve that comes from the brain over the finger in writing; while the force of nature is like the control exerted upon the pen by the finger....
When the health of a person undergoes a change, and he becomes the prey of melancholy and suspicion, and the pleasures of the world become distasteful, so that from disgust with it, he withdraws from all society, his physician says, "this person is diseased with melancholy; he must take an infusion of dodder, of thyme and bark of endive as a medicine." The naturalist says: "As this person's malady is of a dry nature, it arises from a predominance of dryness, which has settled on the brain. The occasion of his having a dry temperament is the season of winter. Until spring comes, and dry weather predominates, there is no possibility of a cure." The astrologer says, "this person being under the influence of melancholy, which arises from a hurtful conjunction between Mars and Jupiter, there will be no favorable change in his health until the conjunction of Jupiter with Venus shall have reached the Trine." Now know, beloved, that the language of all these persons is correct, for they all speak and believe according to the degree and reach of their reason and understanding. However, the real and essential cause of the malady may be stated thus. When fortune is favorable to any person, and the Deity desires to guide him into the [53] possession of it, he deputes two powerful ministers to that effect, Jupiter and Mars. These in turn, control the light footed ministers, the elements, and command dryness, for example, to fasten its bridle to the neck of the person, and cause dryness to attack his head and brain. He is thus made to become weary of the world by means of the scourge of melancholy and suspicion, and so with the bridle of the will may be impelled towards the Deity. These circumstances can never be understood in this sense, either by medicine, or by nature, or by the stars. One may, however, learn to understand them by knowledge and the prophetic power combined. For they embrace the whole kingdom of the universe with its deputies and servants, and possess the knowledge of the end for which everything was created: they know to whose command all things are subjected, to what men are invited and what they are forbidden to do.
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Finally we come to such occurrences as faith healing and levitationoccurrences supernormally strange, but nevertheless attested by masses of evidence which it is hard to discount completely. Precisely how faith cures diseases (whether at Lourdes or in the hypnotists consulting room), or how St. Joseph of Cupertino was able to ignore the laws of gravitation, we do not know. (But let us remember that we are no less ignorant of the way in which minds and bodies are related in the most ordinary of everyday activities.) In the same way we are unable to form any idea of the modus operandi of what Professor Rhine has called the PK effect. Nevertheless the fact that the fall of dice can be influenced by the mental states of certain individuals seems now to have been established beyond the possibility of doubt. And if the PK effect can be demonstrated in the laboratory and measured by statistical methods, then, obviously, the intrinsic credibility of the scattered anecdotal evidence for the direct influence of mind upon matter, not merely within the body, but outside in the external world, is thereby notably increased. The same is true of extra-sensory perception. Apparent examples of it are constantly turning up in ordinary life. But science is almost impotent to cope with the particular case, the isolated instance. Promoting their methodological ineptitude to the rank of a criterion of truth, dogmatic scientists have often branded everything beyond the pale of their limited competence as unreal and even impossible. But when tests for ESP can be repeated under standardized conditions, the subject comes under the jurisdiction of the Law of probabilities and achieves (in the teeth of what passionate opposition!) a measure of scientific respectability.
Such, very baldly and briefly, are the most important things we know about mind in regard to its capacity to influence matter. From this modest knowledge about ourselves, what are we entitled to conclude in regard to the divine object of our nearly total ignorance?
1.02 - The Necessity of Magick for All, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
We who accept the Law of Thelema, even should we concur in this doctrine theoretically, cannot admit that in practice the plan would work out; our aim is that our Nothing, ideally perfect as it is in itself, should enjoy itself through realizing itself in the fulfillment of all possibilities. All such phenomena or "point-events" are equally "illusion"; Nothing is always Nothing; but the projection of Nothing on this screen of the phenomenal does not only explain, but constitutes, the Universe. It is the only system which reconciles all the contradictions inherent in Thought, and in Experience; for in it "Reality" is "Illusion", "Free-will" is "Destiny", the "Self" is the "Not-Self"; and so for every puzzle of Philosophy.
Not too bad an analogy is an endless piece of string. Like a driving band, you cannot tie a knot in it; all the complexities you can contrive are "Tom Fool" knots, and unravel at the proper touch. Always either Naught or Two! But every new re-arrangement throws further light on the possible tangles, that is, on the Nature of the String itself. It is always "Nothing" when you pull it out; but becomes "Everything" as you play about with it,*[AC7] since there is no limit to the combinations that you can form from it, save only in your imagination (where the whole thing belongs!) and that grows mightily with Experience. It is accordingly well worth while to fulfill oneself in every conceivable manner.
1.02 - THE QUATERNIO AND THE MEDIATING ROLE OF MERCURIUS, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the Law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. [RSV]50
[11] In elucidating the alchemical parallel we should note that the author of the scholia to the Tractatus aureus Hermetis prefaces his account of the union of opposites with the following remark:
1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
21:Yet even if we had full knowledge and control of the worlds immediately above Matter, there would still be a limitation and still a beyond. The last knot of our bondage is at that point where the external draws into oneness with the internal, the machinery of ego itself becomes subtilised to the vanishing-point and the Law of our action is at last unity embracing and possessing multiplicity and no longer, as now, multiplicity struggling towards some figure of unity. There is the central throne of cosmic Knowledge looking out on her widest dominion; there the empire of oneself with the empire of one's world;10 there the life11 in the eternally consummate Being and the realisation of His divine nature12 in our human existence.
1.02 - THE WITHIN OF THINGS, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
diction with the Law of conservation of energy. It must be noted,
however, that this increase of the tangential of the second kind
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Spiritual aspiration is a non-ethical movement of consciousness where it becomes superior to all conditions either of morality, or ethics, or law, because it has a law of its own. the Law of divine love is different from the Law of the world. It cannot be appreciated by ordinary minds, nor can it be understood, because every desire, every wish, every effort, every longing, every love in this world has an ulterior purpose. Whenever we love something in this world, it is with an ulterior motive. We want to achieve something out of it, so the love is not an end in itself. It is the means to the achievement of something else and, therefore, we cannot understand the nature of that love, which is a law unto itself. We are acquainted only with that love which is conditioned by other laws. What are those laws? They are the laws of achievement of an ulterior object, for which purpose love is used as a means or an instrument. So, we are not really unselfish lovers in this world.
Unselfish love is unknown, because love is used as an instrument for the achievement of something else. How then can we call it unselfish? But here, love is a law unto itself in the sense that it has no object outside it it is itself the object. We may ask how it is possible. Here the divine aspiration, or the love of the Supreme Reality, is not an emotion. It is not merely a psychological function. It is not the mind thinking of something, or feeling in respect of an external object. It is a rising up of the soul towards a higher condition of itself. This is a great differentiating factor between ordinary objects which are sought in the world, and the spiritual object which is the goal of yoga or spiritual life.
10.33 - On Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The heart of discipline then is the effort to surmount oneself. Instead of a lower self following the Law of an inferior consciousness one is to rise to a higher level of consciousness and a greater law of being. Discipline thus is only another term for tapasy, replacing the lower law gradually by a higher and higher law.
Mother speaks of three lines of this higher law. First of all, the individual law which at its lowest and its most common form is the Law of selfishness. It is the most elementary and superficial degree of consciousness when the being is confined to its own little person, confined mostly to its hungers and desires, to its sense of possession and appropriation. The human being starts with- this addiction to selfishness but he moves towards a gradual enlargement and rearrangement of this sense of personal value and importance. Therefore he is given a family, a nation, a grouping more or less large in which he can find other selves to meet and learn to live with harmoniously. A collective life whether in a nation or in the family or in any other group formation demands a control over the selfish impulses and egoistic urges. That is the discipline, that is to say, the necessity of submitting the Law of one's ego-self to the Law of collective selves, needed for the realisation of a collective ideal. When you playa game you have to obey the rule of the game and you have to dovetail your movements into the movements of your comrades, you cannot move as you please but must integrate your gestures with those of others. Even so as a member of a particular family or as a citizen of a particular country you have to rearrange your personal habits and movements in accordance with a more general and wider plan of living. The extent of this obedience depends upon the ideal that a particular collectivity pursues and the value of the obedience depends on the ideal thus pursued. And the largest collectivity is of course the human race, the humanity as a whole. The submission of the personal law to the Law of humanity in general is also a discipline demanded of man but there too the value of the submission depends upon the exact nature of the humanity to which one is asked to submit. For as I have said, there are degrees of consciousness and levels of being mounting higher and higher in an increasing value in respect of width and intensity and essential character. For along with the widening of the consciousness there must be a heightening of it, a horizontal movement of the being must be supported or accentuated by a vertical movement. Even the widest consciousness, a consciousness one with the universe, as wide as creation itself, can still have a core of ego-sense left behind, however attenuated it may be; the ego-sense can be abolished only by a transcendence even of the universal consciousness and rise into the supra-conscious. And this brings us to the other line of discipline, the supreme discipline which means obedience not merely, not even to the cosmic law but to the transcendent Divine Law. Here the individual is absolutely, utterly, free from his little self, the minor self-law, he is totally merged in the Divine, his being and living becomes the Divine's own law of existence.
Discipline then is the obedience of a learner to an ever-expanding and ever-ascending law of consciousness and being, until the Law of the supreme status is realised which is the Law of divine living: it is the utter submission or total obedience to the Divine Himself, when one is identified with the Divine in being and nature, where Law and Person are one and the same.
***
1.03 - A Sapphire Tale, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All were content, for they knew no bitter rivalries and could each devote themselves to the occupation or the study that pleased him. Since they were happy they had no need for many laws, and their Code was only this: a very simple counsel to all, "Be yourself", and for all a single law to be strictly observed, the Law of Charity, whose highest part is Justice, the charity which will permit no wastage and which will hinder no one in his free evolution. In this way, very naturally, everyone works at once for himself and for the collectivity.
This orderly and harmonious country was ruled by a king who was king simply because he was the most intelligent and wise, because he alone was capable of fulfilling the needs of all, he alone was both enlightened enough to follow and even to guide the philosophers in their loftiest speculations, and practical enough to watch over the organisation and well-being of his people, whose needs were well known to him.
1.03 - Hymns of Gritsamada, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4. O Fire, thou art Varuna the king who holds in his hands the Law of all workings and thou art Mitra the potent and desirable Godhead. Thou art Aryaman, master of beings, with whom is complete enjoying; O Godhead, thou art Ansha who gives us our portion in the winning of the knowledge.
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.
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3. He is voiced in his glory and beauty at dusk and dawn in our homes. Never impaired is the Law of his working.
4. He shines rich with diverse lustres like the heavens of the Sun27 in his illumining splendour, shines wide with his ray, putting forth on us a revealing light with his ageless fires.
1.03 - Invocation of Tara, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
Question: It is said that the Law of karma is infallible, that
we must necessarily experience the result of our acts.
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When we say that the Law of karma is infallible, it
means that a cause will necessarily produce its effect
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: In Europe they have always tried for democracy. Real democracy has always failed, and failed because it is against human nature. There are certain men who are bound to govern. One must be prepared to face facts. Even in the democracies those men manage to rule, and one knows only too well the villagers do not. Only, those people govern in their name, and it sometimes makes them more free and reckless. In Russia one does not know the exact situation the attempt was for creating real rule of the people, i.e. of the village. You see in what it has ended? It has established again an oligarchy of the Lenin-party. One may even ask: What has Russia created? It has tried to destroy capital and thus tried to destroy and perhaps succeeded in destroying city life. It is trying mechanically to equalise men. But it is not a success. The Western social life rests on interests and rights. It depends upon the vitalistic existence of man which is largely governed by his rational mind helped by scientific inventions. Reason gives man the rigid methods of classification and mental construction and theory to justify his interests and rights, and science gives him the required efficiency, force and power. Thus he is sure of his goal. But one may say that, though organised and effective, European life is not organic. The view that it takes of man is a very imperfect view, and the ideal it sets before man an incomplete ideal. That is why you find there class-war and struggle for rights governed by the rational intellect. European life is very powerful because it can put the whole force of its life at once in operation by a coordination of all its members. In old times the ideal was different. They the ancients based their society on the structure of religion. I do not mean narrow religion but the highest law of our being. The whole social fabric was built up to fulfil that purpose. There was no talk in those days of individual liberty in the present sense of the term. But there was absolute communal liberty. Every community was completely free to develop its own Dharma, the Law of its being. Even the selection of the line was a matter of free choice for the individual.
I do not believe that because a man is governed by another man, or one class by another class, there is always oppression; for instance, the Brahmins never ruled but they were never oppressed by others, rather they oppressed other people. The government becomes useless and bad when one class or one nation keeps another down and governs it for its own benefit and does not allow the class or nation to follow its own Dharma.
1.03 - On exile or pilgrimage, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
It is impossible to hide the fact that our mind, which is the organ of knowledge, is extremely imperfect and full of all kinds of ignorance. The palate distinguishes different foods, the hearing discerns thoughts, the sun reveals the weakness of the eyes, and words betray a souls ignorance. But the Law of love is an incentive to attempt things that are beyond our capacity. And so I think (but I do not dogmatize) that after a chapter on exile, or rather in this very chapter, something should be inserted about dreams, so that we may not be in the dark concerning this trickery of our wily foes.
A dream is a movement of the mind while the body is at rest. A phantasy is an illusion of the eyes when the intellect is asleep. A phantasy is an ecstasy of the mind when the body is awake. A phantasy is the appearance of something which does not exist in reality.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
When a man lacks discrimination, his will wanders in all directions, after innumerable aims. Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture; but they are really denying its inner truth. They are full of worldly desires and hungry for the rewards of heaven. They use beautiful figures of speech; they teach elaborate rituals, which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who practice them. But, actually, they understand nothing except the Law of Karma that chains men to rebirth.
Those whose discrimination is stolen away by such talk grow deeply attached to pleasure and power. And so they are unable to develop that one-pointed concentration of the will, which leads a man to absorption in God.
1.03 - Physical Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the subject of physical education, it must be mentioned that the physical is our base, and even the highest spiritual values are to be expressed through the life that is embodied here. Sariram adyam khalu dharmasadhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, -- the body is the means of fulfillment of dharma, while dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the Law of its working out and its action.
Of all the domains of education, physical is the one most completely governed by method, order, discipline and procedure. All education of the body must be rigorous, detailed and methodical.
1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
ANSWER: All are charged with obedience to the Kitab-i-Aqdas; whatsoever is revealed therein is the Law of God amid His servants. The injunction on pilgrims to the sacred House to shave the head hath been lifted.
11. QUESTION: If intercourse take place between a couple during their year of patience, and they become estranged again thereafter, must they recommence their year of patience, or may the days preceding the intercourse be included in the reckoning of the year? And once divorce hath taken place, is it necessary that a further period of waiting be observed?
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ANSWER: Such people are excused from fasting; however, in order to show respect to the Law of God and for the exalted station of the Fast, it is most commendable and fitting to eat with frugality and in private.
77. QUESTION: Do ablutions performed for the Obligatory Prayer suffice for the ninety-five repetitions of the Greatest Name?
1.03 - Sympathetic Magic, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or
Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of
Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he
--
part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may
be called Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law
--
Here the taboo is obviously an application of the Law of similarity,
which is the basis of homoeopathic magic: as the child's fingers are
--
it. Here again the taboo is clearly derived from the Law of
similarity. So, too, in most parts of ancient Italy women were
--
prohibitions many are demonstrably derived from the Law of
similarity and are accordingly examples of negative magic. Just as
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The individualistic age is, then, a radical attempt of mankind to discover the truth and law both of the individual being and of the world to which the individual belongs. It may begin, as it began in Europe, with the endeavour to get back, more especially in the sphere of religion, to the original truth which convention has overlaid, defaced or distorted; but from that first step it must proceed to others and in the end to a general questioning of the foundations of thought and practice in all the spheres of human life and action. A revolutionary reconstruction of religion, philosophy, science, art and society is the last inevitable outcome. It proceeds at first by the light of the individual mind and reason, by its demand on life and its experience of life; but it must go from the individual to the universal. For the effort of the individual soon shows him that he cannot securely discover the truth and law of his own being without discovering some universal law and truth to which he can relate it. Of the universe he is a part; in all but his deepest spirit he is its subject, a small cell in that tremendous organic mass: his substance is drawn from its substance and by the Law of its life the Law of his life is determined and governed. From a new view and knowledge of the world must proceed his new view and knowledge of him self, of his power and capacity and limitations, of his claim on existence and the high road and the distant or immediate goal of his individual and social destiny.
In Europe and in modern times this has taken the form of a clear and potent physical Science: it has proceeded by the discovery of the laws of the physical universe and the economic and sociological conditions of human life as determined by the physical being of man, his environment, his evolutionary history, his physical and vital, his individual and collective need. But after a time it must become apparent that the knowledge of the physical world is not the whole of knowledge; it must appear that man is a mental as well as a physical and vital being and even much more essentially mental than physical or vital. Even though his psychology is strongly affected and limited by his physical being and environment, it is not at its roots determined by them, but constantly reacts, subtly determines their action, effects even their new-shaping by the force of his psychological demand on life. His economic state and social institutions are themselves governed by his psychological demand on the possibilities, circumstances, tendencies created by the relation between the mind and soul of humanity and its life and body. Therefore to find the truth of things and the Law of his being in relation to that truth he must go deeper and fathom the subjective secret of himself and things as well as their objective forms and surroundings.
This he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely self-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light and power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal begins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and a deeper self awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in the inner and outer life of humanity.
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The art, music and literature of the world, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening sub jectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no longer commands the mind of the new age. The first tendency was, as in thought so in literature, an increasing psychological vitalism which sought to represent penetratingly the most subtle psychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to the surface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and activities. Composed with great skill and subtlety but without any real insight into the Law of mans being, these creations seldom got behind the reverse side of our surface emotions, sensations and actions which they minutely analysed in their details but without any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were perhaps more immediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as art to the old literature which at least seized firmly and with a large and powerful mastery on its province. Often they described the malady of Life rather than its health and power, or the riot and revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore impotent and unsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly psychological art, music and literature, mental, intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its predecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement aimed like the new philo sophic Intuitionalism at a real rending of the veil, the seizure by the human mind of that which does not overtly express itself, the touch and penetration into the hidden soul of things. Much of it was still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in its forms, but it initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old moorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted on a momentous voyage of discovery, the discovery of a new world within which must eventually bring about the creation of a new world without in life and society. Art and literature seem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search into what may be called the hidden inside of things and away from the rational and objective canon or motive.
Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the Law of the nation? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high traditions, ethical degradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these are the only practical results possible of this monstrous civil strife. "Therefore," cries
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."
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The rest of Arjuna's questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character. When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no apparent change in the action, he must act always by the Law of his nature, even if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives men as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His practical intelligence is baffled by Krishna's assertion that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and renunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this "mingled" word. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud?
When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How
1.03 - The Phenomenon of Man, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
IV. a law of recurrence: the Law of
COMPLEXITY-CONSCIOUSNESS
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1 The reference is to the Law of recurrence examined above.
45
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all experience, forces itself on our attention. It is the Law of
complexity-consciousness, by which, within life, the stuff
1.03 - The Sunlit Path, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Then the question sinks a little deeper. In fact, it is not that it sinks or intensifies; it is as if a first breath of air enabled us to appreciate better the daily suffocation we live in and revealed deeper layers to our eyes, other, subtler coverings. We are indeed Bill Smith, a legal and national artifice, a little mechanized cog that would like to get out of the machine. But what is behind Bill Smith? There is a man walking a boulevard, going up and down the great mental roller coaster, humming with a thousand thoughts, of which none truly matters, none remedies his sorrow or desire; there is what the latest book thinks, what that billboard or those headlines scream, what the professor or schoolmaster or friend or colleague or neighbor said a thousand passersby milling in the inner street but where is the one who does not pass, the lodger of the dwelling? There is yesterday's experience, which ties in with the accident of the day before, which ties in with... a gigantic telephone network, with switches, relays and instant communications, but which really communicates nothing, except the same rehashed and self-contained story, which keeps swelling up and swelling up and curling back onto itself and unrolling a sum of past that never makes a true present, or a future that is but the sum of a million acts adding up to zero where is the act, where? Where is the self of that addition, the minute of being that is not the result of the past, the pure touch of sunlight that escapes that machinery, even more merciless than the other one? There is what our fathers and mothers have put into us, and books, priests, partisans, grandfa ther's cancer, great-uncle's lust, the good of this one, the less good of that one; there are the Tables of the Law of iron, the thou-cannots, thou-should-nots, Newton and the churches, Mendel and the Law of gestation of germ cells but what germinates in all that? Where is the Germ, the pure unexpected seed suddenly bursting open, the Thou-Can like a stroke of grace in this implacable round conditioned by the fathers of our fathers inside the mental fortress? There is this little man walking along a boulevard, going up and down the same avenue a thousand times; inside, outside, it's all the same, like nothing walking in nothing, anybody inside anything, John or Peter with only different neckties: between this lamppost and that one nothing has happened. There was nothing, not a single second of being!
But, suddenly, on this boulevard, there is a sort of second-degree suffocation. We stop and stare. What do we stare at? We don't know, but we stare. All of a sudden we are no longer in the machine; we are no longer in it, we never were! We are no longer Bill Smith or American or New Yorker, the son of our father or the father of our son, our thought, or heart or feelings, or yesterday or tomorrow, or male or female or anything of the kind we are something else altogether. We don't know what, but it stares. We are like a window opening.
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
flaming up under their very noses. Some, relying on insignificant bits of knowledge they pick up, shamelessly try to deny the Law of cause and effect, though woefully lacking any grasp of its working.
Some find ways to attract large numbers of people to their temples, believing to the end of their days that this is proof of a successful teaching career. Now it is true that compared to fellows of that stamp, students who reach satori thanks to teachings they hear, or arrive at cessation thanks to advice they receive from a teacher, are indeed wonderful occurrences-as rare as lotus flowers blossoming amid a raging fire. They owe the attainment they achieve to the large store of karmic merit they accumulated in previous existences. Attainment such as theirs is not easy to achieve, it is not insignificant, and it must be valued and deeply respected.
1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rule principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely dependent on the thought and conscience. The Gita does not teach us to subordinate the higher plane to the lower, it does not ask the awakened moral consciousness to slay itself on the altar of duty as a sacrifice and victim to the Law of the social status. It calls us higher and not lower; from the conflict of the two planes it bids us ascend to a supreme poise above the mainly practical, above the purely ethical, to the Brahmic consciousness. It replaces the conception of social duty by a divine obligation. The subjection to external law gives place to a certain principle of inner self-determination of action proceeding by the soul's freedom from the tangled law of works. And this, as we shall see, - the Brahmic consciousness, the soul's freedom from works and the determination of works in the nature by the Lord within and above us, - is the kernel of the Gita's teaching with regard to action.
The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of the kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the modern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji who first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyam karma, the work that is to be done, which they render by duty, and on the phrase "Thou hast a right to action, but none to the fruits of action" which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahavakya, of the
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(5) In each of the seven strata of consciousness all the other six work under the Law of the stratum which houses them. This means seven sub-strata in each; in the three vyahritis there are therefore thrice seven, trih saptani.
(6) Man, although living here in Bhu, belongs to Swar & Bhuvar. He is manu, the Thinker,the soul in him is the manomayah pranasarira neta of the Upanishad, the mental captain & guide of life & body. He has to become vijnanamaya (mahan) and anandamaya, to become in a word immortal, divine in all his laws of being (vrata & dharman). By rising to Mahas in himself he enters into direct touch with ideal Truth, gets truth of knowledge by drishti, sruti & smriti, the three grand ideal processes, and by that knowledge truth of being, truth of action (satyadharma), truth of bliss (satyaradhas) constituting amritam, swarajyam & samrajyam, immortality, self-rule & mastery of the world. It is this evolution which the Vedic hymns are intended to assist.
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There are here a number of words whose exact meaning is exceedingly important for any fruitful enquiry into the religious significance of the Vedas. The most important, the decisive & capital word in the passage is Ritam. Whatever it may be held to mean, it will decide for us the essential character of Varuna & his constant comradeMitra. I have already suggested in my first chapter the sense in which I understand Ritam. It is its ordinary sense in Sanscrit. Ritam is Truth, Law, that which is straight, upright, direct, rectum; it is that which gives everything its place & its motion (ritu), that which constitutes reason (ratio) in mind and rectitude in morals,it is the rightness or righteousness which makes the stars move in their orbits, the seasons occur in their order, thought & speech move towards truth, trees grow according to their seed, animals act according to their species & nature, & man walk in the paths which God has prescribed for him. It is that in the Akasha the Akasha where Varuna is lordwhich develops arrangement & order, it is the element of law in Nature. But not only in material Nature, not only in the moral akasha even,the akasha of the heart of which the Rishis spoke, but on higher levels also. I have pointed out that Ritam is the Law of the Truth, of vijnana. It is this ideal Truth, the Truth of being, by which everything animate or inanimate knows in its fibres of being & serves in action & feeling the truth of itself, in which Law is born. This Law which belongs to Satyam, to the Mahas, is Ritam. Neither of the English words,Law & Truth, gives the idea; they have to be combined in order to be equivalent to ritam. Well, then Varuna is represented to us as increasing in his nature by this Truth & Law, attaining to it or possessing it; Law & Truth are the source of his strength, the means by which he has arrived at his present force & mightiness.
But he is more than that; he is tuvijata, urukshaya. Uru, we shall find in other hymns, the Vast, is a word used as equivalent to Brihat to describe the ideal level of consciousness, the kingdom of ideal knowledge, in its aspect of joyous comprehensive wideness and capacity. It is clearly told us that men by overcoming & passing beyond the two firmaments of Mind-invitality, Bhuvar, & mind in intellectuality, Swar, arrive in the Vast, Uru, and make it their dwelling place. Therefore Uru must be taken as equivalent to Brihat; it must mean Mahas. Our Vedic Varuna, then, is a dweller in Mahas, in the vastness of ideal knowledge. But he is not born there; he is born or appears first in tuvi, that is, in strength or force. Since Uru definitely means the Vast, means Mahas, means a particular plane of consciousness, is, in short, a fixed term of Vedic psychology, it is inevitable that tuvi thus coupled with it and yet differentiated, must be another fixed term of Vedic psychology & must mean another plane of consciousness. We have found the meaning of Mahas by consulting Purana & Vedanta as well as the Veda itself. Have we any similar light on the significance of Tuvi? Yes. The Puranas describe to us three worlds above Maharloka,called, respectively, in the Puranic system, Jana, Tapas and Satya. By a comparison with Vedantic psychology we know that Jana must be the world of Ananda of which the Mahajana Atma is the sustaining Brahman as the Mahan Atma is the sustaining Brahman of the vijnana, and we get this light on the subject that, just as Bhur, Bhuvah, Swar are the lower or human half of existence, the aparardha of the Brahmanda, (the Brahma-circle or universe of manifest consciousness), and answer objectively to the subjective field covered by Annam, Prana & Manas, just as Mahas is the intermediate world, link between the divine & human hemispheres, and corresponds to the subjective region of Vijnana, so Jana, Tapas & Satya are the divine half of existence, & answer to the Ananda with its two companion principles Sat andChit, the three constituting the Trinity of those psychological states which are, to & in our consciousness, Sacchidananda,God sustaining from above His worlds. But why is the world of Chit called Tapoloka? According to our conceptions this universe has been created by & in divine Awareness by Force, Shakti, or Power which [is] inherent in Awareness, Force of Awareness or Chit Shakti that moves, forms & realises whatever it wills in Being. This force, this Chit-shakti in its application to its work, is termed in the ancient phraseology Tapas. Therefore, it is told us that when Brahma the Creator lay uncreative on the great Ocean, he listened & heard a voice crying over the waters OM Tapas! OM Tapas! and he became full of the energy of the mantra & arose & began creation. Tapas & Tu or Tuvi are equivalent terms. We can see at once the meaning. Varuna, existing no doubt in Sat, appears or is born to us in Tapas, in the sea of force put out in itself by the divine Awareness, & descending through divine delight which world is in Jana, in production or birth by Tapas, through Ananda, that is to say, into the manifest world, dwells in ideal knowledge & Truth and makes there Ritam or the Law of the Truth of Being his peculiar province. It is the very process of all creation, according to our Vedic&Vedantic Rishis. Descending into the actual universe we find Varuna master of the Akash or ether, matrix and continent of created things, in the Akash watching over the development of the created world & its peoples according to the line already fixed by ideal knowledge as suitable to their nature and purposeya thatathyato vihitam shashwatibhyah samabhyah and guiding the motion of things & souls in the line of theritam. It is in his act of guidance and bringing to perfection of the imperfect that he increases by the law and the truth, desires it and naturally attains to it, has the spriha & the sparsha of the ritam. It is from his fidelity to ideal Truth that he acquires the mighty power by which he maintains the heavens and orders its worlds in their appointed motion.
Such is his general nature and power. But there are also certain particular subjective functions to which he is called. He is rishadasa, he harries and slays the enemies of the soul, and with Mitra of pure discernment he works at the understanding till he brings it to a gracious pureness and brightness. He is like Agni, a kavih, one of those who has access to and commands ideal knowledge and with Mitra he supports and upholds Daksha when he is at his works; for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek . We may also compare the Greek , meaning judgment, opinion etc & , I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, discerns; he is the intellectual faculty or in his person the master of the intellectual faculty which discerns and distinguishes. Therefore was Mitra able to help in making the understanding bright & pure,by virtue of his purified discernment.
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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.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the Law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. For with sacrifice as their companion, says the Gita, the All-Father created these peoples. The acceptance of the Law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service. Indeed, sacrifice is imposed and, where need be, compelled by the universal World-Force; it takes it even from those who do not consciously recognise the law,inevitably, because this is the intrinsic nature of things. Our ignorance or our false egoistic view of life can make no difference to this eternal bedrock truth of Nature. For this is the truth in Nature, that this ego which thinks itself a separate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be independent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but rather all are linked together by a secret Oneness. Each existence is continually giving out perforce from its stock; out of its mental receipts from Nature or its vital and physical assets and acquisitions and belongings a stream goes to all that is around it. And always again it receives something from its environment gratis or in return for its voluntary or involuntary tri bute. For it is only by this giving and receiving that it can effect its own growth while at the same time it helps the sum of things. At length, though at first slowly and partially, we learn to make the conscious sacrifice; even, in the end, we take joy to give ourselves and what we envisage as belonging to us in a spirit of love and devotion to That which appears for the moment other than ourselves and is certainly other than our limited personalities. The sacrifice and the divine return for our sacrifice then become a gladly accepted means towards our last perfection; for it is recognised now as the road to the fulfilment in us of the eternal purpose.
But, most often, the sacrifice is done unconsciously, egoistically and without knowledge or acceptance of the true meaning of the great world-rite. It is so that the vast majority of earth-creatures do it; and, when it is so done, the individual derives only a mechanical minimum of natural inevitable profit, achieves by it only a slow painful progress limited and tortured by the smallness and suffering of the ego. Only when the heart, the will and the mind of knowledge associate themselves with the law and gladly follow it, can there come the deep joy and the happy fruitfulness of divine sacrifice. The minds knowledge of the law and the hearts gladness in it culminate in the perception that it is to our own Self and Spirit and the one Self and Spirit of all that we give. And this is true even when our self-offering is still to our fellow-creatures or to lesser Powers and Principles and not yet to the Supreme. Not for the sake of the wife, says Yajnavalkya in the Upanishad, but for the sake of the Self is the wife dear to us. This in the lower sense of the individual self is the hard fact behind the coloured and passionate professions of egoistic love; but in a higher sense it is the inner significance of that love too which is not egoistic but divine. All true love and all sacrifice are in their essence Natures contradiction of the primary egoism and its separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary first fragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity between creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that from which we have separated, a discovery of ones self in others.
But it is only a divine love and unity that can possess in the light what the human forms of these things seek for in the darkness. For the true unity is not merely an association and agglomeration like that of physical cells joined by a life of common interests; it is not even an emotional understanding, sympathy, solidarity or close drawing together. Only then are we really unified with those separated from us by the divisions of Nature, when we annul the division and find ourselves in that which seemed to us not ourselves. Association is a vital and physical unity; its sacrifice is that of mutual aid and concessions. Nearness, sympathy, solidarity create a mental, moral and emotional unity; theirs is a sacrifice of mutual support and mutual gratifications. But the true unity is spiritual; its sacrifice is a mutual self-giving, an interfusion of our inner substance. the Law of sacrifice travels in Nature towards its culmination in this complete and unreserved self-giving; it awakens the consciousness of one common self in the giver and the object of the sacrifice. This culmination of sacrifice is the height even of human love and devotion when it tries to become divine; for there too the highest peak of love points into a heaven of complete mutual self-giving, its summit is the rapturous fusing of two souls into one.
This profounder idea of the world-wide law is at the heart of the teaching about works given in the Gita; a spiritual union with the Highest by sacrifice, an unreserved self-giving to the Eternal is the core of its doctrine. The vulgar conception of sacrifice is an act of painful self-immolation, austere self-mortification, difficult self-effacement; this kind of sacrifice may go even as far as self-mutilation and self-torture. These things may be temporarily necessary in mans hard endeavour to exceed his natural self; if the egoism in his nature is violent and obstinate, it has to be met sometimes by an answering strong internal repression and counterbalancing violence. But the Gita discourages any excess of violence done to oneself; for the self within is really the Godhead evolving, it is Krishna, it is the Divine; it has not to be troubled and tortured as the Titans of the world trouble and torture it, but to be increased, fostered, cherished, luminously opened to a divine light and strength and joy and wideness. It is not ones self, but the band of the spirits inner enemies that we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the altar of the growth of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of the souls errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our selfs real and diviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may throw by reflection on the consciousness of the seeker.
1.04 - What Arjuna Saw - the Dark Side of the Force, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
Kurukshetra; we must submit to the Law of life by Death
before we can find our way to the life immortal; we must
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main clean and our souls unstained for the Law of strife
24 Sri Aurobindo: On Himself, p. 188.
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clean and our souls unstained for the Law of strife and de-
struction to die out of the world; that which is its root must
1.04 - Yoga and Human Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The whole burden of our human progress has been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory, the human being began as the animal, developed through the savage and consummated in the modern civilised man. The Indian theory is different. God created the world by developing the many out of the One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning, the objects which compose the physical world were arranged by Him in their causes, developed under the Law of their being in the subtle or psychical world and then manifested in the gross or material world. From kraa to skma, from skma to sthla, and back again, that is the formula. Once manifested in matter the world proceeds by laws which do not change, from age to age, by a regular succession, until it is all withdrawn back again into the source from which it came. The material goes back into the psychical and the psychical is involved in its cause or seed. It is again put out when the period of expansion recurs and runs its course on similar lines but with different details till the period of contraction is due. Hinduism regards the world as a recurrent series of phenomena of which the terms vary but the general formula abides the same. The theory is only acceptable if we recognise the truth of the conception formulated in the Vishnu Purana of the world as vijna-vijmbhitni, developments of ideas in the Universal Intelligence which lies at the root of all material phenomena and by its indwelling force shapes the growth of the tree and the evolution of the clod as well as the development of living creatures and the progress of mankind. Whichever theory we take, the laws of the material world are not affected. From aeon to aeon, from kalpa to kalpa Narayan manifests himself in an ever-evolving humanity which grows in experience by a series of expansions and contractions towards its destined self-realisation in God. That evolution is not denied by the Hindu theory of yugas. Each age in the Hindu system has its own line of moral and spiritual evolution and the decline of the dharma or established law of conduct from the Satya to the Kaliyuga is not in reality a deterioration but a detrition of the outward forms and props of spirituality in order to prepare a deeper spiritual intensity within the heart. In each Kaliyuga mankind gains something in essential spirituality. Whether we take the modern scientific or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of humanity is a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.
The animal is distinguished from man by its enslavement to the body and the vital impulses. Aany mtyu, Hunger who is Death, evolved the material world from of old, and it is the physical hunger and desire and the vital sensations and primary emotions connected with the pra that seek to feed upon the world in the beast and in the savage man who approximates to the condition of the beast. Out of this animal state, according to European Science, man rises working out the tiger and the ape by intellectual and moral development in the social condition. If the beast has to be worked out, it is obvious that the body and the pra must be conquered, and as that conquest is more or less complete, the man is more or less evolved. The progress of mankind has been placed by many predominatingly in the development of the human intellect, and intellectual development is no doubt essential to self-conquest. The animal and the savage are bound by the body because the ideas of the animal or the ideas of the savage are mostly limited to those sensations and associations which are connected with the body. The development of intellect enables a man to find the deeper self within and partially replace what our philosophy calls the dehtmaka-buddhi, the sum of ideas and sensations which make us think of the body as ourself, by another set of ideas which reach beyond the body, and, existing for their own delight and substituting intellectual and moral satisfaction as the chief objects of life, master, if they cannot entirely silence, the clamour of the lower sensual desires. That animal ignorance which is engrossed with the cares and the pleasures of the body and the vital impulses, emotions and sensations is tamasic, the result of the predominance of the third principle of nature which leads to ignorance and inertia. That is the state of the animal and the lower forms of humanity which are called in the Purana the first or tamasic creation. This animal ignorance the development of the intellect tends to dispel and it assumes therefore an all-important place in human evolution.
1.05 - MORALITY AS THE ENEMY OF NATURE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
that economy in the Law of life which draws its own advantage even out
of the repulsive race of bigots, the priests and the virtuous,--what
1.05 - Ritam, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
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Daksha we have supposed to be the viveka, the intuitive discriminating reason which once active is hard to overcome by the powers of ignorance & error; it is again his activity which here also constitutes the essence or the essential condition of the successful sacrifice; for it is evidently meant that by enjoying or stimulating the activity of Daksha, Daksham ddabham, daksham apasam, Mitra & Varuna are enabled to enjoy the effective activities of men under the Law of truth, ritena kratum brihantam, ritun yajnam shthe, activities of right knowledge, right action, right emotion, free from crookedness & ignorance & sin. For it is viveka that helps us to distinguish truth from error, right-doing from wrong-doing, just feeling from false & selfish emotions. Once again it is Mitra & Varuna who preside over & take the enjoyment of Dakshas functioning. The same psychological intention perseveres, the same simple & profound ideas & expressions recur in the same natural association, with the same harmony & fixed relation founded on the eternal truth of human nature & a fine & subtle observation of its psychological faculties & functionings.
The next reference to Ritam meets us in the twenty-third hymn of the Mandala, the last hymn of the series assigned to Medhatithi Kanwa, and once again it occurs in connection with the great twin powers, Mitra & Varuna.
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
direct knowledge of his higher self. He learns how his higher self is connected with exalted spiritual beings and forms with them a united whole. He sees how the lower self originates in a higher world, and it is revealed to him how his higher nature outlasts his lower. He can now distinguish the imperishable in himself from the perishable; that is, he learns through personal insight to understand the doctrine of the incarnation of the higher self in the lower. It will become plain to him that he is part of a great spiritual complex and that his qualities and destiny are due to this connection. He learns to recognize the Law of his life, his karma. He realizes that his lower self, constituting his present existence, is only one of the forms which his higher being can adopt. He discerns the possibility of working down from his higher self in his lower self, so that he may perfect himself ever more and more. Now, too, he can comprehend the great differences between human beings in regard to their level of perfection. He becomes aware that there are others above him who have already traversed the stages which still lie before him, and he realizes that the teachings and deeds of such men
p. 187
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These, then, are the gifts which the student owes to his development at this stage: insight into his higher self; insight into the doctrine of the incarnation of this higher being in a lower; insight into the laws by which life in the physical world is regulated according to its spiritual connections, that is, the Law of karma; and finally, insight into the existence of the great initiates.
Thus it is said of a student who has reached this stage, that all doubt has vanished from him. His former faith, based on reason and sound thoughts, is now replaced by knowledge and insight which nothing can undermine. The various religions have presented, in their ceremonies, sacraments, and rites, externally
1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
fact exist, the Law of evolutionary recurrence cannot hold
good to the very end.
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and comm and and dynamic presence of the Divine shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the Law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.
In accordance with the triple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.
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A wider formula has been provided by the secular mind of mall of which the basis is the ethical sense; for it distinguishes between the emotions sanctioned by the ethical sense and those that are egoistic and selfishly common and mundane. It is the works of altruism, philanthropy, compassion, benevolence, humanitarianism, service, labour for the well-being of man and all creatures that are to be our Ideal; to shuffle off the coil of egoism and grow into a soul of self-abnegation that lives only or mainly for others or for humanity as a whole is the way of man's inner evolution according to this doctrine. Or if this is too secular and mental to satisfy the whole of our being, since there is a deeper religious and spiritual note there that is left out of account by the humanitarian formula, a religio-ethical foundation can be provided for it -and such was indeed its original basis. To the inner worship of the Divine or the Supreme by the devotion of the heart or to the pursuit of the Ineffable by the seeking of a highest knowledge can be added a worship through altruistic works or a preparation through acts of love, of benevolence, of service to mankind or to those around us. It is indeed by the religio-ethical sense that the Law of universal goodwill or universal compassion or of love and service to the neighbour, the Vedantic, the Buddhistic, the Christian ideal, was created; only by a sort of secular refrigeration extinguishing the fervour of the religious element in it could the humanitarian ideal disengage itself and become the highest plane of a secular system of mental and moral ethics. For in the religious system this law of works is a means that ceases when its object is accomplished or a side issue; it is a part of the cult by which one adores and seeks the Divinity or it is a penultimate step of the excision of self in the passage to Nirvana. In the secular ideal it is promoted into an object in itself; it becomes a sign of the moral perfection of the human being, or else it is a condition for a happier state of man upon earth, a better society, a more united life of the race. But none of these things satisfy the demand of the soul that is placed before us by the integral Yoga.
Altruism, philanthropy, humanitarianism, service are flowers of the mental consciousness and are at best the mind's cold and pale imitation of the spiritual flame of universal Divine Love. Not truly liberative from ego-sense, they widen it at most and give it higher and larger satisfaction; impotent in practice to change mall's vital life and nature, they only modify and palliate its action and daub over its unchanged egoistic essence. Or if they are intensely followed with an entire sincerity of the will, it is by an exaggerated amplification of one side of our nature; in that exaggeration there can be no clue for the full and perfect divine evolution of the many sides of our individualised being towards the universal and transcendent Eternal. Nor can the religio-ethical ideal be a sufficient guide, -- for this is a compromise or compact of mutual concessions for mutual support between a religious urge which seeks to get a closer hold on earth by taking into itself the higher turns of ordinary human nature and an ethical urge which hopes to elevate itself out of its own mental hardness and dryness by some touch of a religious fervour. In making this compact religion lowers itself to the mental level and inherits the inherent imperfections of mind and its inability to convert and transform life. The mind is the sphere of the dualities and, just as it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute Truth but only truths relative or mixed with error, so it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute good; for moral good exists as a counterpart and corrective to evil and has evil always for its shadow, complement, almost its reason for existence. But the spiritual consciousness belongs to a higher than the mental plane and there the dualities cease; for there falsehood confronted with the truth by which it profited through a usurping falsification of it and evil faced by the good of which it was a perversion or a lurid substitute, are obliged to perish for want of sustenance and to cease. The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.
1.05 - The Creative Principle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The philosophical theories are therefore right, both those which place in the universe itself its immanent cause and those which seek its cause outside it in some transcendent beyond. And when their respective affirmations oppose and exclude each other, in that very opposition, unknown to them, lies the secret for which they seek. For if the wherefore of things is founded on the decree of the Eternity which includes them all, it resides also in the Law of mutual exclusion which they impose on themselves. Participating in the infinite possibilities of the Being, they draw from its essence their power of becoming and from its pure liberty the bond of their future determinisms. Being, they make themselves. Children of the Uncreated, they create themselves, give birth to themselves, bring themselves into the world. From the play of the Absolute they pass into that which every relativity plays for itself. And their initial principle becomes by their own initiative that which affirms and manifests itself in every being, which becomes conscious in every ego as the desire to exist for oneself.
A thing in itself and a desire to exist for oneself, a cause without cause, eternal and incognizable, mother of beings and things, and the spontaneity of an effort evolving things towards being, is not this the double origin absolute and relative, the double reason for existence of all that is, the creative principle of the worlds?
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
commentary on the Decalogue) on a mountaintop. Frye notes that the Law of Moses is based upon
prohibition, description of what is forbidden: Thou shalt not. By contrast, Christs message is more in the
1.05 - The New Consciousness, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But it is a curious sort of mastery it does not obey us at all! On the contrary, the minute we try to use it, it eludes us completely, slips through our fingers, pokes fun at us and leaves us looking foolish, like an apprentice sculptor trying to imitate the stroke of the Master: our stroke misses. We even hit our fingers. And we learn. Perhaps we learn not to want anything. But it is a little more complicated than that complicated from our standpoint, of course, because everything is complicated on this side; it is complexity itself. In fact, it is simple. We are learning the Law of rhythm. Because Truth is a rhythm.
It has swift flowings, precipitous cascades, slack stretches that go deep into themselves like a sea into a deeper sea, like a great bird into the infinite blue. It has sudden urgings, minute diamond points that probe and pierce, expansive white silences like a steppe in the eternity of ages, like a fathomless gaze spanning lives upon lives, oceans of sorrow and toil, continents of struggle, road upon road of prayer and fervor. It has abrupt bursts, miraculous instantaneous outcomes, a long, untiring patience that follows each step, each quiver of being like a murmur of eternity upholding the minute. And behind that instant or swordlike flash, that vast slowness unfolding its trail of infinity, that burning point bursting out, that commanding word or compelling pressure, there always lies a kind of tranquil clarity, a crystalline distance, a little snow-white note that seems to have traveled and traveled across expanses of calm light, filtered down from an infinity of clear-sighted softness, trickled from a vast sun-washed prairie where no one suffers, acts or becomes a sweeping expanse upholding the little note, the gesture, the word, and the abruptness of an act springing from a fathomless peace where the noise of time and the press of men and the swirl of sorrows are cloaked in their mantle of eternity, already healed, already past, already wept over. For Truth enfolds the world as in a great robe of softness, in an infinite sky where our black birds and birds of paradise, sorrows from here and there, gray wings and pink ones melt away. All becomes one, adjusts to that note, and is in tune; all is simple and stainless, without trace, imprint or doubt, because all flows from that music, and this minute immediate gesture harmonizes with a great swell that will still roll in long after we have left.
1.05 - The Ways of Working of the Lord, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to the Law of man the guilty ought to be punished.
But there is a law more imperative than the human law. It is the
Divine law, the Law of compassion and mercy.
It is because of this law that the world is able to endure and progress towards Truth and Love.
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A psychic self-knowledge tells us that there are in our being many formal, frontal, apparent or representative selves and only one that is entirely secret and real; to rest in the apparent and to mistake it for the real is the one general error, root of all others and cause of all our stumbling and suffering, to which man is exposed by the nature of his mentality. We may apply this truth to the attempt of man to live by the Law of his subjective being whether as an individual or as a social unit one in its corporate mind and body.
For this is the sense of the characteristic turn which modern civilisation is taking. Everywhere we are beginning, though still sparsely and in a groping tentative fashion, to approach things from the subjective standpoint. In education our object is to know the psychology of the child as he grows into man and to found our systems of teaching and training upon that basis. The new aim is to help the child to develop his intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his communal life and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities,a very different object from that of the old education which was simply to pack so much stereotyped knowledge into his resisting brain and impose a stereotyped rule of conduct on his struggling and dominated impulses.1 In dealing with the criminal the most advanced societies are no longer altogether satisfied with regarding him as a law-breaker to be punished, imprisoned, terrified, hanged or else tortured physically and morally, whether as a revenge for his revolt or as an example to others; there is a growing attempt to understand him, to make allowance for his heredity, environment and inner deficiencies and to change him from within rather than crush him from without. In the general view of society itself, we begin to regard the community, the nation or any other fixed grouping of men as a living organism with a subjective being of its own and a corresponding growth and natural development which it is its business to bring to perfection and fruition. So far, good; the greater knowledge, the truer depth, the wiser humanity of this new view of things are obvious. But so also are the limitations of our knowledge and experience on this new path and the possibility of serious errors and stumblings.
If we look at the new attempt of nations, whether subject or imperial, to fulfil themselves consciously and especially at the momentous experiment of the subjective German nationality, we shall see the starting-point of these possible errors. The first danger arises from the historical fact of the evolution of the subjective age out of the individualistic; and the first enormous stumble has accordingly been to transform the error of individualistic egoism into the more momentous error of a great communal egoism. The individual seeking for the Law of his being can only find it safely if he regards clearly two great psychological truths and lives in that clear vision. First, the ego is not the self; there is one self of all and the soul is a portion of that universal Divinity. The fulfilment of the individual is not the utmost development of his egoistic intellect, vital force, physical well-being and the utmost satisfaction of his mental, emotional, physical cravings, but the flowering of the divine in him to its utmost capacity of wisdom, power, love and universality and through this flowering his utmost realisation of all the possible beauty and delight of existence.
The will to be, the will to power, the will to know are perfectly legitimate, their satisfaction the true law of our existence and to discourage and repress them improperly is to mutilate our being and dry up or diminish the sources of life and growth. But their satisfaction must not be egoistic,not for any other reason moral or religious, but simply because they cannot so be satisfied. The attempt always leads to an eternal struggle with other egoisms, a mutual wounding and hampering, even a mutual destruction in which if we are conquerors today, we are the conquered or the slain tomorrow; for we exhaust ourselves and corrupt ourselves in the dangerous attempt to live by the destruction and exploitation of others. Only that which lives in its own self-existence can endure. And generally, to devour others is to register oneself also as a subject and predestined victim of Death.
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The second psychic truth the individual has to grasp is this, that he is not only himself, but is in solidarity with all of his kind,let us leave aside for the moment that which seems to be not of his kind. That which we are has expressed itself through the individual, but also through the universality, and though each has to fulfil itself in its own way, neither can succeed independently of the other. The society has no right to crush or efface the individual for its own better development or self-satisfaction; the individual, so long at least as he chooses to live in the world, has no right to disregard for the sake of his own solitary satisfaction and development his fellow-beings and to live at war with them or seek a selfishly isolated good. And when we say, no right, it is from no social, moral or religious standpoint, but from the most positive and simply with a view to the Law of existence itself. For neither the society nor the individual can so develop to their fulfilment. Every time the society crushes or effaces the individual, it is inflicting a wound on itself and depriving its own life of priceless sources of stimulation and growth. The individual too cannot flourish by himself; for the universal, the unity and collectivity of his fellow-beings, is his present source and stock; it is the thing whose possibilities he individually expresses, even when he transcends its immediate level, and of which in his phenomenal being he is one result. Its depression strikes eventually at his own sources of life, by its increasing he also increases. This is what a true subjectivism teaches us,first, that we are a higher self than our ego or our members, secondly, that we are in our life and being not only ourselves but all others; for there is a secret solidarity which our egoism may kick at and strive against, but from which we cannot escape. It is the old Indian discovery that our real Iis a Supreme Being which is our true self and which it is our business to discover and consciously become and, secondly, that that Being is one in all, expressed in the individual and in the collectivity,2 and only by admitting and realising our unity with others can we entirely fulfil our true self-being.3
Of these two truths mankind has had some vague vision in the principle with regard to the individual, though it has made only a very poor and fragmentary attempt to regard them in practice and in nine-tenths of its life has been busy departing from themeven where it outwardly professed something of the law. But they apply not only to the individual but to the nation. Here was the first error of the German subjectivism. Reasoning of the Absolute and the individual and the universal, it looked into itself and saw that in fact, as a matter of life, That seemed to express itself as the ego and, reasoning from the conclusions of modern Science, it saw the individual merely as a cell of the collective ego. This collective ego was, then, the greatest actual organised expression of life and to that all ought to be subservient, for so could Nature and its evolution best be assisted and affirmed. The greater human collectivity exists, but it is an inchoate and unorganised existence, and its growth can best be developed by the better development of the most efficient organised collective life already existing; practically, then, by the growth, perfection and domination of the most advanced nations, or possibly of the one most advanced nation, the collective ego which has best realised the purpose of Nature and whose victory and rule is therefore the will of God. For all organised lives, all self-conscious egos are in a state of war, sometimes overt, sometimes covert, sometimes complete, sometimes partial, and by the survival of the best is secured the highest advance of the race. And where was the best, which was the most advanced, self-realising, efficient, highest-cultured nation, if not, by common admission as well as in Germanys own self-vision, Germany itself? To fulfil then the collective German ego and secure its growth and domination was at once the right law of reason, the supreme good of humanity and the mission of the great and supreme Teutonic race.4
1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The difference between Yoga and hypnotism is that what hypnotism does for a man through the agency of another and in the sleeping state, Yoga does for him by his own agency and in the waking state. The hypnotic sleep is necessary in order to prevent the activity of the subjects mind full of old ideas and associations from interfering with the operator. In the waking state he would naturally refuse to experience sweetness in vinegar or sourness in sugar or to believe that he can change from disease to health, cowardice to heroism by a mere act of faith; his established associations would rebel violently and successfully against such contradictions of universal experience. The force which transcends matter would be hampered by the obstruction of ignorance and attachment to universal error. The hypnotic sleep does not make the mind a tabula rasa but it renders it passive to everything but the touch of the operator. Yoga similarly teaches passivity of the mind so that the will may act unhampered by the saskras or old associations. It is these saskras, the habits formed by experience in the body, heart or mind, that form the laws of our psychology. The associations of the mind are the stuff of which our life is made. They are more persistent in the body than in the mind and therefore harder to alter. They are more persistent in the race than in the individual; the conquest of the body and mind by the individual is comparatively easy and can be done in the space of a single life, but the same conquest by the race involves the development of ages. It is conceivable, however, that the practice of Yoga by a great number of men and persistence in the practice by their descendants might bring about profound changes in human psychology and, by stamping these changes into body and brain through heredity, evolve a superior race which would endure and by the Law of the survival of the fittest eliminate the weaker kinds of humanity. Just as the rudimentary mind of the animal has been evolved into the fine instrument of the human being so the rudiments of higher force and faculty in the present race might evolve into the perfect buddhi of the Yogin.
Yo yacchraddha sa eva sa. According as is a mans fixed and complete belief, that he is,not immediately always but sooner or later, by the law that makes the psychical tend inevitably to express itself in the material. The will is the agent by which all these changes are made and old saskras replaced by new, and the will cannot act without faith. The question then arises whether mind is the ultimate force or there is another which communicates with the outside world through the mind. Is the mind the agent or simply the instrument? If the mind be all, then it is only animals that can have the power to evolve; but this does not accord with the laws of the world as we know them. The tree evolves, the clod evolves, everything evolves Even in animals it is evident that mind is not all in the sense of being the ultimate expression of existence or the ultimate force in Nature. It seems to be all only because that which is all expresses itself in the mind and passes everything through it for the sake of manifestation. That which we call mind is a medium which pervades the world. Otherwise we could not have that instantaneous and electrical action of mind upon mind of which human experience is full and of which the new phenomena of hypnotism, telepathy etc. are only fresh proofs. There must be contact, there must be interpenetration if we are to account for these phenomena on any reasonable theory. Mind therefore is held by the Hindus to be a species of subtle matter in which ideas are waves or ripples, and it is not limited by the physical body which it uses as an instrument. There is an ulterior force which works through this subtle medium called mind. An animal species develops, according to the modern theory, under the subtle influence of the environment. The environment supplies a need and those who satisfy the need develop a new species which survives because it is more fit. This is not the result of any intellectual perception of the need nor of a resolve to develop the necessary changes, but of a desire, often though not always a mute, inarticulate and unthought desire. That desire attracts a force which satisfies it What is that force? The tendency of the psychical desire to manifest in the material change is one term in the equation; the force which develops the change in response to the desire is another. We have a will beyond mind which dictates the change, we have a force beyond mind which effects it. According to Hindu philosophy the will is the Jiva, the Purusha, the self in the nandakoa acting through vijna, universal or transcendental mind; this is what we call spirit. The force is Prakriti or Shakti, the female principle in Nature which is at the root of all action. Behind both is the single Self of the universe which contains both Jiva and Prakriti, spirit and material energy. Yoga puts these ultimate existences within us in touch with each other and by stilling the activity of the saskras or associations in mind and body enables them to act swiftly, victoriously, and as the world calls it, miraculously. In reality there is no such thing as a miracle; there are only laws and processes which are not yet understood.
1.06 - A Summary of my Phenomenological View of the World, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
If this law of recurrence (I call it the Law of 'complexity-
consciousness') is applied to the history of the World, we see
1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
law of thermodynamics is the Law of conservation of energy.
Its second law is the Law of increase of entropy or molecular
disorder, which states that, over time, closed systems tend
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
1.06 - LIFE AND THE PLANETS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
by the Law of celestial mechanics, being directly proportionate to
the lightness of the matter of which they were originally com-
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We have to take into account what is required by the Law of
complexity if Mankind is to achieve spiritual growth through col-
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mony with the Law of complexity, 3 an acceptable way of envisag-
ing "the end of the world."
1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
12:Awakened to a profounder self-knowledge than his first mental idea of himself, Man begins to conceive some formula and to perceive some appearance of the thing that he has to affirm. But it appears to him as if poised between two negations of itself. If, beyond his present attainment, he perceives or is touched by the power, light, bliss of a self-conscious infinite existence and translates his thought or his experience of it into terms convenient for his mentality, - Infinity, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Immortality, Freedom, Love, Beatitude, God, - yet does this sun of his seeing appear to shine between a double Night, - a darkness below, a mightier darkness beyond. For when he strives to know it utterly, it seems to pass into something which neither any one of these terms nor the sum of them can at all represent. His mind at last negates God for a Beyond, or at least it seems to find God transcending Himself, denying Himself to the conception. Here also, in the world, in himself, and around himself, he is met always by the opposites of his affirmation. Death is ever with him, limitation invests his being and his experience, error, inconscience, weakness, inertia, grief, pain, evil are constant oppressors of his effort. Here also he is driven to deny God, or at least the Divine seems to negate or to hide itself in some appearance or outcome which is other than its true and eternal reality.
1.06 - On Induction, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
The problem we have to discuss is whether there is any reason for believing in what is called 'the uniformity of nature'. The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions. The crude expectations which we have been considering are all subject to exceptions, and therefore liable to disappoint those who entertain them. But science habitually assumes, at least as a working hypothesis, that general rules which have exceptions can be replaced by general rules which have no exceptions. 'Unsupported bodies in air fall' is a general rule to which balloons and aeroplanes are exceptions. But the laws of motion and the Law of gravitation, which account for the fact that most bodies fall, also account for the fact that balloons and aeroplanes can rise; thus the laws of motion and the Law of gravitation are not subject to these exceptions.
The belief that the sun will rise to-morrow might be falsified if the earth came suddenly into contact with a large body which destroyed its rotation; but the laws of motion and the Law of gravitation would not be infringed by such an event. The business of science is to find uniformities, such as the laws of motion and the Law of gravitation, to which, so far as our experience extends, there are no exceptions.
In this search science has been remarkably successful, and it may be conceded that such uniformities have held hitherto. This brings us back to the question: Have we any reason, assuming that they have always held in the past, to suppose that they will hold in the future?
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Spirit. Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the Law of the sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite.
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
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incapacity of the will of the Inconscient to receive it. These things, to the Mind an imagination or a mystery, become evident and capable of experience as the consciousness rises out of limited embodied Matter-mind to the freedom and fullness of the higher and higher ranges of the super-intelligence; but they can become entirely true and normal only when the supramental becomes the Law of the nature.
It is therefore on the accomplishment of this ascent and on the possibility of a full dynamism from these highest levels descending into earth-consciousness that is dependent the justification of Life, its salvation, its transformation into a Divine
1.06 - The Desire to be, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
There can be no issue to such a question if we cannot conceive that it is part of the very essence of certain possibilities to translate themselves spontaneously into concrete realisations, the spontaneity of the fact realised being inherent in their nature itself and indistinguishable in them from the Law of necessity.
And which among these possibilities could better than the desire to be bear in itself its own effectivity?
1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother s eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the Law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
9:MAHAKALI is of another nature. Not wideness but height, not wisdom but force and strength are her peculiar power. There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker. If her anger is dreadful to the hostile and the vehemence of her pressure painful to the weak and timid, she is loved and worshipped by the great, the strong and the noble; for they feel that her blows beat what is rebellious in their material into strength and perfect truth, hammer straight what is wry and perverse and expel what is impure or defective. But for her what is done in a day might have taken centuries; without her Ananda might be wide and grave or soft and sweet and beautiful but would lose the flaming joy of its most absolute intensities. To knowledge she gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Therefore with her is the victorious force of the Divine and it is by grace of her fire and passion and speed if the great achievement can be done now rather than hereafter.
1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The principle of subjectivism entering into human thought and action, while necessarily it must make a great difference in the view-point, the motive-power and the character of our living, does not at first appear to make any difference in its factors. Subjectivism and objectivism start from the same data, the individual and the collectivity, the complex nature of each with its various powers of the mind, life and body and the search for the Law of their self-fulfilment and harmony. But objectivism proceeding by the analytical reason takes an external and mechanical view of the whole problem. It looks at the world as a thing, an object, a process to be studied by an observing reason which places itself abstractly outside the elements and the sum of what it has to consider and observes it thus from outside as one would an intricate mechanism. The laws of this process are considered as so many mechanical rules or settled forces acting upon the individual or the group which, when they have been observed and distinguished by the reason, have by ones will or by some will to be organised and applied fully much as Science applies the laws it discovers. These laws or rules have to be imposed on the individual by his own abstract reason and will isolated as a ruling authority from his other parts or by the reason and will of other individuals or of the group, and they have to be imposed on the group itself either by its own collective reason and will embodied in some machinery of control which the mind considers as something apart from the life of the group or by the reason and will of some other group external to it or of which it is in some way a part. So the State is viewed in modern political thought as an entity in itself, as if it were something apart from the community and its individuals, something which has the right to impose itself on them and control them in the fulfilment of some idea of right, good or interest which is inflicted on them by a restraining and fashioning power rather than developed in them and by them as a thing towards which their self and nature are impelled to grow. Life is to be managed, harmonised, perfected by an adjustment, a manipulation, a machinery through which it is passed and by which it is shaped. A law outside oneself,outside even when it is discovered or determined by the individual reason and accepted or enforced by the individual will,this is the governing idea of objectivism; a mechanical process of management, ordering, perfection, this is its conception of practice.
Subjectivism proceeds from within and regards everything from the point of view of a containing and developing self-consciousness. The law here is within ourselves; life is a self-creating process, a growth and development at first subconscious, then half-conscious and at last more and more fully conscious of that which we are potentially and hold within ourselves; the principle of its progress is an increasing self-recognition, self-realisation and a resultant self-shaping. Reason and will are only effective movements of the self, reason a process in self-recognition, will a force for self-affirmation and self-shaping. Moreover, reason and intellectual will are only a part of the means by which we recognise and realise ourselves. Subjectivism tends to take a large and complex view of our nature and being and to recognise many powers of knowledge, many forces of effectuation. Even, we see it in its first movement away from the external and objective method discount and belittle the importance of the work of the reason and assert the supremacy of the life-impulse or the essential Will-to-be in opposition to the claims of the intellect or else affirm some deeper power of knowledge, called nowadays the intuition, which sees things in the whole, in their truth, in their profundities and harmonies while intellectual reason breaks up, falsifies, affirms superficial appearances and harmonises only by a mechanical adjustment. But substantially we can see that what is meant by this intuition is the self-consciousness feeling, perceiving, grasping in its substance and aspects rather than analysing in its mechanism its own truth and nature and powers. The whole impulse of subjectivism is to get at the self, to live in the self, to see by the self, to live out the truth of the self internally and externally, but always from an internal initiation and centre.
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
thousand years assigned for the observance of the Law of Buddha were
now elapsed, and that he himself was the god who was destined to
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.
1.07 - Standards of Conduct and Spiritual Freedom, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:Man starts on the long career of his evolution with only the first two of these four to enlighten and lead him; for they constitute the Law of his animal and vital existence and it is as the vital and physical animal man that he begins his progress. The true business of man upon earth is to express in the type of humanity a growing image of the Divine; whether knowingly or unknowingly, it is to this end that Nature is working in him under the thick veil of her inner and outer processes. But the material or animal man is ignorant of the inner aim of life; he knows only its needs and its desires and he has necessarily no other guide to what is required of him than his own perception of need and his own stirrings and pointings of desire. To satisfy his physical and vital demands and necessities before all things else and, in the next rank, whatever emotional or mental cravings or imaginations or dynamic notions rise in him must be the first natural rule of his conduct. The sole balancing or overpowering law that can modify or contradict this pressing natural claim is the demand put on him by the ideas, needs and desires of his family, community or tribe, the herd, the pack of which he is a member.
10:If man could live to himself, - and this he could only do if the development of the individual were the sole object of the Divine in the world, - this second law would not at all need to come into operation. But all existence proceeds by the mutual action and reaction of the whole and the parts, the need for each other of the constituents and the thing constituted, the interdependence of the group and the individuals of the group. In the language of Indian philosophy the Divine manifests himself always in the double form of the separative and the collective being, vyas.t.i, samas.t.i. Man, pressing after the growth of his separate individuality and its fullness and freedom, is unable to satisfy even his own personal needs and desires except in conjunction with other men; he is a whole in himself and yet incomplete without others. This obligation englobes his personal law of conduct in a group-law which arises from the formation of a lasting group-entity with a collective mind and life of its own to which his own embodied mind and life are subordinated as a transitory unit. And yet is there something in him immortal and free, not bound to this group-body which outlasts his own embodied existence but cannot outlast or claim to chain by its law his eternal spirit.
11:In itself this seemingly larger and overriding law is no more than an extension of the vital and animal principle that governs the individual elementary man; it is the Law of the pack or herd. The individual identifies partially his life with the life of a certain number of other individuals with whom he is associated by birth, choice or circumstance. And since the existence of the group is necessary for his own existence and satisfaction, in time, if not from the first, its preservation, the fulfilment of its needs and the satisfaction of its collective notions, desires, habits of living, without which it would not hold together, must come to take a primary place. The satisfaction of personal idea and feeling, need and desire, propensity and habit has to be constantly subordinated, by the necessity of the situation and not from any moral or altruistic motive, to the satisfaction of the ideas and feelings, needs and desires, propensities and habits, not of this or that other individual or number of individuals, but of the society as a whole. This social need is the obscure matrix of morality and of man's ethical impulse.
12:It is not actually known that in any primitive times man lived to himself or with only his mate as do some of the animals. All record of him shows him to us as a social animal, not an isolated body and spirit. the Law of the pack has always overridden his individual law of self-development; he seems always to have been born, to have lived, to have been formed as a unit in a mass. But logically and naturally from the psychological viewpoint the Law of personal need and desire is primary, the social law comes in as a secondary and usurping power. Man has in him two distinct master impulses, the individualistic and the communal, a personal life and a social life, a personal motive of conduct and a social motive of conduct. The possibility of their opposition and the attempt to find their equation lie at the very roots of human civilisation and persist in other figures when he has passed beyond the vital animal into a highly individualised mental and spiritual progress.
13:The existence of a social law external to the individual is at different times a considerable advantage and a heavy disadvantage to the development of the divine in man. It is an advantage at first when man is crude and incapable of selfcontrol and self-finding, because it erects a power other than that of his personal egoism through which that egoism may be induced or compelled to moderate its savage demands, to discipline its irrational and often violent movements and even to lose itself sometimes in a larger and less personal egoism. It is a disadvantage to the adult spirit ready to transcend the human formula because it is an external standard which seeks to impose itself on him from outside, and the condition of his perfection is that he shall grow from within and in an increasing freedom, not by the suppression but by the transcendence of his perfected individuality, not any longer by a law imposed on him that trains and disciplines his members but by the soul from within breaking through all previous forms to possess with its light and transmute his members.
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19:But even this success that he has gained is rather a thing in potentiality than in actual accomplishment. There is always a disharmony and a discord between the moral law in the individual and the Law of his needs and desires, between the moral law proposed to society and the physical and vital needs, desires, customs, prejudices, interests and passions of the caste, the clan, the religious community, the society, the nation. The moralist erects in vain his absolute ethical standard and calls upon all to be faithful to it without regard to consequences. To him the needs and desires of the individual are invalid if they are in conflict with the moral law, and the social law has no claims upon him if it is opposed to his sense of right and denied by his conscience. This is his absolute solution for the individual that he shall cherish no desires and claims that are not consistent with love, truth and justice. He demands from the community or nation that it shall hold all things cheap, even its safety and its most pressing interests, in comparison with truth, justice, humanity and the highest good of the peoples.
20:No individual rises to these heights except in intense moments, no society yet created satisfies this ideal. And in the present state of morality and of human development none perhaps can or ought to satisfy it. Nature will not allow it, Nature knows that it should not be. The first reason is that our moral ideals are themselves for the most part ill-evolved, ignorant and arbitrary, mental constructions rather than transcriptions of the eternal truths of the spirit. Authoritative and dogmatic, they assert certain absolute standards in theory, but in practice every existing system of ethics proves either in application unworkable or is in fact a constant coming short of the absolute standard to which the ideal pretends. If our ethical system is a compromise or a makeshift, it gives at once a principle of justification to the further sterilising compromises which society and the individual hasten to make with it. And if it insists on absolute love, justice, right with an uncompromising insistence, it soars above the head of human possibility and is professed with lip homage but ignored in practice. Even it is found that it ignores other elements in humanity which equally insist on survival but refuse to come within the moral formula. For just as the individual law of desire contains within it invaluable elements of the infinite whole which have to be protected against the tyranny of the absorbing social idea, the innate impulses too both of individual and of collective man contain in them invaluable elements which escape the limits of any ethical formula yet discovered and are yet necessary to the fullness and harmony of an eventual divine perfection.
1.07 - The Ego and the Dualities, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:Such a disorder and incapacity may be accepted personally and are accepted by many great souls as a temporary passage or as the price to be paid for the entry into a wider existence. But the right goal of human progress must be always an effective and synthetic reinterpretation by which the Law of that wider existence may be represented in a new order of truths and in a more just and puissant working of the faculties on the lifematerial of the universe. For the senses the sun goes round the earth; that was for them the centre of existence and the motions of life are arranged on the basis of a misconception. The truth is the very opposite, but its discovery would have been of little use if there were not a science that makes the new conception the centre of a reasoned and ordered knowledge putting their right values on the perceptions of the senses. So also for the mental consciousness God moves round the personal ego and all His works and ways are brought to the judgment of our egoistic sensations, emotions and conceptions and are there given values and interpretations which, though a perversion and inversion of the truth of things, are yet useful and practically sufficient in a certain development of human life and progress. They are a rough practical systematisation of our experience of things valid so long as we dwell in a certain order of ideas and activities. But they do not represent the last and highest state of human life and knowledge. "Truth is the path and not the falsehood." The truth is not that God moves round the ego as the centre of existence and can be judged by the ego and its view of the dualities, but that the Divine is itself the centre and that the experience of the individual only finds its own true truth when it is known in the terms of the universal and the transcendent. Nevertheless, to substitute this conception for the egoistic without an adequate base of knowledge may lead to the substitution of new but still false and arbitrary ideas for the old and bring about a violent instead of a settled disorder of right values. Such a disorder often marks the inception of new philosophies and religions and initiates useful revolutions. But the true goal is only reached when we can group round the right central conception a reasoned and effective knowledge in which the egoistic life shall rediscover all its values transformed and corrected. Then we shall possess that new order of truths which will make it possible for us to substitute a more divine life for the existence which we now lead and to effectualise a more divine and puissant use of our faculties on the life-material of the universe.
6:That new life and power of the human integer must necessarily repose on a realisation of the great verities which translate into our mode of conceiving things the nature of the divine existence. It must proceed through a renunciation by the ego of its false standpoint and false certainties, through its entry into a right relation and harmony with the totalities of which it forms a part and with the transcendences from which it is a descent, and through its perfect self-opening to a truth and a law that exceed its own conventions, - a truth that shall be its fulfilment and a law that shall be its deliverance. Its goal must be the abolition of those values which are the creations of the egoistic view of things; its crown must be the transcendence of limitation, ignorance, death, suffering and evil.
1.07 - THE GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED - THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
been aware of the Law of compensation whereby, in every circum-
stance of nature, the most highly spiritualized souls are associated
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with the Law of Complexity) with what we have called the plane-
tization of Mankind?
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
True, his life and growth are for the sake of the world, but he can help the world by his life and growth only in proportion as he can be more and more freely and widely his own real self. True, he has to use the ideals, disciplines, systems of cooperation which he finds upon his path; but he can only use them well, in their right way and to their right purpose if they are to his life means towards something beyond them and not burdens to be borne by him for their own sake or despotic controls to be obeyed by him as their slave or subject; for though laws and disciplines strive to be the tyrants of the human soul, their only purpose is to be its instruments and servants and when their use is over they have to be rejected and broken. True it is, too, that he has to gather in his material from the minds and lives of his fellow-men around him and to make the most of the experience of humanitys past ages and not confine himself in a narrow mentality; but this he can only do successfully by making all this his own through assimilation of it to the principle of his own nature and through its subservience to the forward call of his enlarging future. The liberty claimed by the struggling human mind for the individual is no mere egoistic challenge and revolt, however egoistically or with one-sided exaggeration and misapplication it may sometimes be advanced; it is the divine instinct within him, the Law of the Self, its claim to have room and the one primary condition for its natural self-unfolding.
Individual man belongs not only to humanity in general, his nature is not only a variation of human nature in general, but he belongs also to his race-type, his class-type, his mental, vital, physical, spiritual type in which he resembles some, differs from others. According to these affinities he tends to group himself in Churches, sects, communities, classes, coteries, associations whose life he helps, and by them he enriches the life of the large economic, social and political group or society to which he belongs. In modern times this society is the nation. By his enrichment of the national life, though not in that way only, he helps the total life of humanity. But it must be noted that he is not limited and cannot be limited by any of these groupings; he is not merely the noble, merchant, warrior, priest, scholar, artist, cultivator or artisan, not merely the religionist or the worldling or the politician. Nor can he be limited by his nationality; he is not merely the Englishman or the Frenchman, the Japanese or the Indian; if by a part of himself he belongs to the nation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity. And even there is a part of him, the greatest, which is not limited by humanity; he belongs by it to God and to the world of all beings and to the godheads of the future. He has indeed the tendency of self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group, but he has also the equally necessary tendency of expansion and transcendence of environment and groupings. The individual animal is dominated entirely by his type, subordinated to his group when he does group himself; individual man has already begun to share something of the infinity, complexity, free variation of the Self we see manifested in the world. Or at least he has it in possibility even if there be as yet no sign of it in his organised surface nature. There is here no principle of a mere shapeless fluidity; it is the tendency to enrich himself with the largest possible material constantly brought in, constantly assimilated and changed by the Law of his individual nature into stuff of his growth and divine expansion.
Thus the community stands as a mid-term and intermediary value between the individual and humanity and it exists not merely for itself, but for the one and the other and to help them to fulfil each other. The individual has to live in humanity as well as humanity in the individual; but mankind is or has been too large an aggregate to make this mutuality a thing intimate and powerfully felt in the ordinary mind of the race, and even if humanity becomes a manageable unit of life, intermediate groups and aggregates must still exist for the purpose of mass-differentiation and the concentration and combination of varying tendencies in the total human aggregate. Therefore the community has to stand for a time to the individual for humanity even at the cost of standing between him and it and limiting the reach of his universality and the wideness of his sympathies. Still the absolute claim of the community, the society or the nation to make its growth, perfection, greatness the sole object of human life or to exist for itself alone as against the individual and the rest of humanity, to take arbitrary possession of the one and make the hostile assertion of itself against the other, whether defensive or offensive, the Law of its action in the world and not, as it unfortunately is, a temporary necessity,this attitude of societies, races, religions, communities, nations, empires is evidently an aberration of the human reason, quite as much as the claim of the individual to live for himself egoistically is an aberration and the deformation of a truth.
The truth deformed into this error is the same with the community as with the individual. The nation or community is an aggregate life that expresses the Self according to the general law of human nature and aids and partially fulfils the development and the destiny of mankind by its own development and the pursuit of its own destiny according to the Law of its being and the nature of its corporate individuality. It has like the individual the right to be itself, and its just claim, as against any attempt at domination by other nations or of attack upon its separate development by any excessive tendency of human uniformity and regimentation, is to defend its existence, to insist on being itself, to persist in developing according to the secret Idea within it or, as we say, according to the Law of its own nature. This right it must assert not only or even principally for its own sake, but in the interests of humanity. For the only things that we can really call our rights are those conditions which are necessary to our free and sound development, and that again is our right because it is necessary to the development of the world and the fulfilment of the destiny of mankind.
Nor does this right to be oneself mean with the nation or community any more than with the individual that it should roll itself up like a hedgehog, shut itself up in its dogmas, prejudices, limitations, imperfections, in the form and mould of its past or its present achievement and refuse mental or physical commerce and interchange or spiritual or actual commingling with the rest of the world. For so it cannot grow or perfect itself. As the individual lives by the life of other individuals, so does the nation by the life of other nations, by accepting from them material for its own mental, economic and physical life; but it has to assimilate this material, subject it to the Law of its own nature, change it into stuff of itself, work upon it by its own free will and consciousness, if it would live securely and grow soundly. To have the principle or rule of another nature imposed upon it by force or a de-individualising pressure is a menace to its existence, a wound to its being, a fetter upon its march. As the free development of individuals from within is the best condition for the growth and perfection of the community, so the free development of the community or nation from within is the best condition for the growth and perfection of mankind.
Thus the law for the individual is to perfect his individuality by free development from within, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development in others. His law is to harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate and to pour himself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for the community or nation is equally to perfect its corporate existence by a free development from within, aiding and taking full advantage of that of the individual, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development of other communities and nations. Its law is to harmonise its life with that of the human aggregate and to pour itself out as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is to pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine in the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains of all individuals and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day when mankind may be really and not only ideally one divine family, but even then, when it has succeeded in unifying itself, to respect, aid and be aided by the free growth and activity of its individuals and constituent aggregates.
Naturally, this is an ideal law which the imperfect human race has never yet really attained and it may be very long before it can attain to it. Man, not possessing, but only seeking to find himself, not knowing consciously, obeying only in the rough subconsciously or half-consciously the urge of the Law of his own nature with stumblings and hesitations and deviations and a series of violences done to himself and others, has had to advance by a tangle of truth and error, right and wrong, compulsion and revolt and clumsy adjustments, and he has as yet neither the wideness of knowledge nor the flexibility of mind nor the purity of temperament which would enable him to follow the Law of liberty and harmony rather than the Law of discord and regimentation, compulsion and adjustment and strife. Still it is the very business of a subjective age when knowledge is increasing and diffusing itself with an unprecedented rapidity, when capacity is generalising itself, when men and nations are drawn close together and partially united though in an inextricable, confused entanglement of chaotic unity, when they are being compelled to know each other and impelled to know more profoundly themselves, mankind, God and the world and when the idea of self-realisation for men and nations is coming consciously to the surface,it is the natural work and should be the conscious hope of man in such an age to know himself truly, to find the ideal law of his being and his development and, if he cannot even then follow it ideally owing to the difficulties of his egoistic nature, still to hold it before him and find out gradually the way by which it can become more and more the moulding principle of his individual and social existence.
It may be said that since man is a mental being limited by the mind, life and body, this development and organisation of a power beyond mind, a supramental power, would be the creation of a new superhuman race and that the use of the words human and humanly would no longer be in place. This is no doubt true, but the possibility for the race still remains, if not for all in the same degree or at the same time, yet in an eventual fulfilment.
1.07 - The Magic Wand, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
By means of the electromagnetic fluid, which radiates as a brilliant light from the rod, any realization on the physical world will be possible. Initiates usually apply this wand for influencing sick people and for all magnetic phenomena. This magic electromagnetic wand is, by the Law of the Universe, an excellent condenser with the same kind of oscillation as the universe, but in a most subtle way. The person meditating on this will be able to find other methods easily due to the universal laws. The magician will, for instance, be able to either pull the fluid out of the universe like an antenna and store it in his body, or to transfer it by force of imagination to other people, near him or far away.
The wand will soon be an indispensible implement for the magician, for the positive and negative powers concentrated in it will help him to create the necessary oscillation in his electromagnetic fluid.
1.07 - The Plot must be a Whole., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and sensuous presentment, is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would have been regulated by the water-clock,--as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the Law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.
author class:Aristotle
1.07 - The Primary Data of Being, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
If the tendency to division which belongs to the relative and derives from the desire to be, determines an always increasing fragmentation of substances and progressive multiplication of elements, the Law of unity, on the contrary, which belongs to the Absolute, is rendered everywhere in the relative by the tendency to synthesis and integration.
The same principle of individualisation which enables the being to detach itself from the Impersonal, determines in it a progressive differentiation of all the hitherto indistinguishable elements which constitute its existence. Each of these elements becomes as it were, a little world in the great and in its turn divisible.
1.07 - The Process of Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The law is the same for the mass as for the individual. The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant in humanity, they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly replaced, partly put under control. As is the Law of such things, they have always reverted again with greater or less virulence and sought with more or less success to re-establish themselves. Finally in the nineteenth century it seemed for a time as if some of these forces had, for a time at least, exhausted themselves and the hour for sayama and gradual dismissal from the evolution had really arrived. Such hopes always recur and in the end they are likely to bring about their own fulfilment, but before that happens another recoil is inevitable. We see plenty of signs of it in the reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe and America behind the fair outside of Science, progress, civilisation and humanitarianism, and we are likely to see more signs of it in the era that is coming upon us. A similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in the watchwords of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. But the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of unfraternal strife and passionate self-regarding competition are always struggling to reseat themselves on the thrones of the earth. A determined movement of reaction is evident in many parts of the world and nowhere perhaps more than in England which was once one of the self-styled champions of progress and liberty. The attempt to go back to the old spirit is one of those necessary returns without which it cannot be so utterly exhausted as to be blotted out from the evolution. It rises only to be defeated and crushed again. On the other hand the force of the democratic tendency is not a force which is spent but one which has not yet arrived, not a force which has had the greater part of its enjoyment but one which is still vigorous, unsatisfied and eager for fulfilment. Every attempt to coerce it in the past reacted eventually on the coercing force and brought back the democratic spirit fierce, hungry and unsatisfied, joining to its fair motto of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the terrible addition or Death. It is not likely that the immediate future of the democratic tendency will satisfy the utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level, or of the lover of fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonisation of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. On the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have been once more overthrown, a process of gradual sayama will be performed by which what has remained of them will be regarded as the disappearing vestiges of a dead reality and without any further violent coercion be transformed slowly and steadily out of existence.
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1.07 - The Prophecies of Nostradamus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
are utterly contrary and inimical to the Law of Christ; for, being
human, we can have no certainty with regard to the time and the
1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
the only moments when a real "I" has broken through to the surface in thousands of hours of nonexistence. In tragic circumstances, also, the psychic can emerge, when the whole being is gathered up in such a poignant intensity that something in us is suddenly rent asunder; then we sense something like a presence behind, which makes us do things we would normally be incapable of doing. For this is the other face of the psychic: not only is it joy and sweetness, but also quiet strength, as if it were forever above every possible tragedy an invulnerable master. In this case, too, the details of a scene can be indelibly engraved. But what passes on to the next life is not so much the details as the essence of the scene: we will be struck by certain repetitive patterns of events or deadlocked situations that have an air of dj vu and seem surrounded by an aura of fatality for what has not been overcome in the past returns again and again, each time with a slightly different appearance, but basically always identical, until we confront the old knot and untie it. Such is the Law of inner progress.
Generally, however, the memory of actual physical circumstances 90
1.08 - Introduction to Patanjalis Yoga Aphorisms, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
On other and practical grounds we see that the theory of eternal progression is untenable, for destruction is the goal of everything earthly. All our struggles and hopes and fears and joys, what will they lead to? We shall all end in death. Nothing is so certain as this. Where, then, is this motion in a straight line this infinite progression? It is only going out to a distance, and coming back to the centre from which it started. See how, from nebulae, the sun, moon, and stars are produced; then they dissolve and go back to nebulae. The same is being done everywhere. The plant takes material from the earth, dissolves, and gives it back. Every form in this world is taken out of surrounding atoms and goes back to these atoms. It cannot be that the same law acts differently in different places. Law is uniform. Nothing is more certain than that. If this is the Law of nature, it also applies to thought. Thought will dissolve and go back to its origin. Whether we will it or not, we shall have to return to our origin which is called God or Absolute. We all came from God, and we are all bound to go back to God. Call that by any name you like, God, Absolute, or Nature, the fact remains the same. "From whom all this universe comes out, in whom all that is born lives, and to whom all returns." This is one fact that is certain. Nature works on the same plan; what is being worked out in one sphere is repeated in millions of spheres. What you see with the planets, the same will it be with this earth, with men, and with all. The huge wave is a mighty compound of small waves, it may be of millions; the life of the whole world is a compound of millions of little lives, and the death of the whole world is the compound of the deaths of these millions of little beings.
Now the question arises: Is going back to God the higher state, or not? The philosophers of the Yoga school emphatically answer that it is. They say that man's present state is a degeneration. There is not one religion on the face of the earth which says that man is an improvement. The idea is that his beginning is perfect and pure, that he degenerates until he cannot degenerate further, and that there must come a time when he shoots upward again to complete the circle. The circle must be described. However low he may go, he must ultimately take the upward bend and go back to the original source, which is God. Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God. This is the method of putting it in the dualistic form. The monistic form is that man is God, and goes back to Him again. If our present state is the higher one, then why is there so much horror and misery, and why is there an end to it? If this is the higher state, why does it end? That which corrupts and degenerates cannot be the highest state. Why should it be so diabolical, so unsatisfying? It is only excusable, inasmuch as through it we are taking a higher groove; we have to pass through it in order to become regenerate again. Put a seed into the ground and it disintegrates, dissolves after a time, and out of that dissolution comes the splendid tree. Every soul must disintegrate to become God. So it follows that the sooner we get out of this state we call "man" the better for us. Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state? Not at all. That will be making it worse. Torturing ourselves, or condemning the world, is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond, and the sooner we are through, the better. It must always be remembered that man-state is not the highest state.
1.08 - Karma, the Law of Cause and Effect, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
object:1.08 - Karma, the Law of Cause and Effect
class:chapter
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An immutable law, which has its aspect just in the akasa principle, is the Law of cause and effect. Each cause sets free a corresponding effect. This law works everywhere as the most sublime rule. Consequently every deed proceeds from a cause or is followed by any result. Therefore we should not only accept Karma as a rule for our good actions, as the oriental philosophy puts it, but its signification reaches farther and is a very deep one. Instinctively all men have the feeling that something good can bring good results only and again all the evil must end up with evil or, in the words of a proverb, Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap. Everybody is bound to know this law and to respect it. This law of cause and effect governs the elemental principles, too. I have no intention to enter into details of this law, which could be expressed in a few words, as they are quite clear so that every reasonable man will understand them. Subject to this law of cause and effect is also the Law of evolution or development. Thus development is an aspect of the karma law.
1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The Sanskrit dharmaone of the key words in Indian formulations of the Perennial Philosophyhas two principal meanings. The dharma of an individual is, first of all, his essential nature, the intrinsic law of his being and development. But dharma also signifies the Law of righteousness and piety. The implications of this double meaning are clear: a mans duty, how he ought to live, what he ought to believe and what he ought to do about his beliefs these things are conditioned by his essential nature, his constitution and temperament. Going a good deal further than do the Catholics, with their doctrine of vocations, the Indians admit the right of individuals with different dharmas to worship different aspects or conceptions of the divine. Hence the almost total absence, among Hindus and Buddhists, of bloody persecutions, religious wars and proselytizing imperialism.
It should, however, be remarked that, within its own ecclesiastical fold, Catholicism has been almost as tolerant as Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism. Nominally one, each of these religions consists, in fact, of a number of very different religions, covering the whole gamut of thought and behaviour from fetishism, through polytheism, through legalistic monotheism, through devotion to the sacred humanity of the Avatar, to the profession of the Perennial Philosophy and the practice of a purely spiritual religion that seeks the unitive knowledge of the Absolute Godhead. These tolerated religions-within-a-religion are not, of course, regarded as equally valuable or equally true. To worship polytheistically may be ones dharma; nevertheless the fact remains that mans final end is the unitive knowledge of the Godhead, and all the historical formulations of the Perennial Philosophy are agreed that every human being ought, and perhaps in some way or other actually will, achieve that end. All souls, writes Father Garrigou-Lagrange, receive a general remote call to the mystical life; and if all were faithful in avoiding, as they should, not merely mortal but venial sin, if they were, each according to his condition, docile to the Holy Ghost, and if they lived long enough, a day would come when they would receive the proximate and efficacious vocation to a high perfection and to the mystical life properly so called. With this statement Hindu and Buddhist theologians would probably agree; but they would add that every soul will in fact eventually attain this high perfection. All are called, but in any given generation few are chosen, because few choose themselves. But the series of conscious existences, corporeal or incorporeal, is indefinitely long; there is therefore time and opportunity for everyone to learn the necessary lessons. Moreover, there will always be helpers. For periodically there are descents of the Godhead into physical form; and at all times there are future Buddhas ready, on the threshold of reunion with the Intelligible Light, to renounce the bliss of immediate liberation in order to return as saviours and teachers again and again into the world of suffering and time and evil, until at last every sentient being shall have been delivered into eternity.
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Nevertheless, even the Divine, when incarnate on earth, is subject to the same law of progress. His instrument of manifestation the physical being he has assumed, should be in a constant state of progress, and the Law of his personal self-expression is in a way linked to the general law of earthly progress. Thus even the embodied god cannot be perfect on earth until men are ready to understand and accept perfection. That day will come when everything that is now done out of a sense of duty towards the Divine will be done out of love for Him. Progress will be a joy instead of being an effort and often even a struggle. Or, more exactly, progress will be made in joy, with the full adherence of the whole being, instead of by coercing the resistance of the ego, which entails great effort and sometimes even great suffering.
In conclusion, I would say this: if you want your speech to express the truth and thus acquire the power of the Word, never think out beforeh and what you want to say, do not decide what is a good or bad thing to say, do not calculate the effect of what you are going to say. Be silent in mind and remain unwavering in the true attitude of constant aspiration towards the All-Wisdom, the All-Knowledge, the All-Consciousness. Then, if your aspiration is sincere, if it is not a veil for your ambition to do well and to succeed, if it is pure, spontaneous and integral, you will then be able to speak very simply, to say the words that ought to be said, neither more nor less, and they will have a creative power.
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Finally, crowning all the others, comes the physical liberation or liberation from the Law of material cause and effect. By a total self-mastery, one is no longer a slave of Natures laws which make men act according to subconscious or semi-conscious impulses and maintain them in the rut of ordinary life. With this liberation one can decide in full knowledge the path to be taken, choose the action to be accomplished and free oneself from all blind determinism, so that nothing is allowed to intervene in the course of ones life but the highest will, the truest knowledge, the supramental consciousness.
Bulletin, August 1953
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:There are three stages of the ascent, - at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are halflights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the Law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
3:Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts. For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, - always provided the rejection is sincere, - egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravr.tti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura.
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5:For, even after he is free, the sadhaka will be in the world and to be in the world is to remain in works. But to remain in works without desire is to act for the good of the world in general or for the kind or the race or for some new creation to be evolved on the earth or some work imposed by the Divine Will within him. And this must be done either in the framework provided by the environment or the grouping in which he is born or placed or else in one which is chosen or created for him by a divine direction. Therefore in our perfection there must be nothing left in the mental being which conflicts with or prevents our sympathy and free self-identification with the kind, the group or whatever collective expression of the Divine he is meant to lead, help or serve. But in the end it must become a free selfidentification through identity with the Divine and not a mental bond or moral tie of union or a vital association dominated by any kind of personal, social, national, communal or credal egoism. If any social law is obeyed, it will not be from physical necessity or from the sense of personal or general interest or for expediency or because of the pressure of the environment or from any sense of duty, but solely for the sake of the Lord of works and because it is felt or known to be the Divine Will that the social law or rule or relation as it stands can still be kept as a figure of the inner life and the minds of men must not be disturbed by its infringement. If, on the other hand, the social law, rule or relation is disregarded, that too will not be for the indulgence of desire, personal will or personal opinion, but because a greater rule is felt that expresses the Law of the Spirit or because it is known that there must be in the march of the divine All-Will a movement towards the changing, exceeding or abolition of existing laws and forms for the sake of a freer larger life necessary to the world's progress.
6:There is still left the moral law or the ideal and these, even to many who think themselves free, appear for ever sacred and intangible. But the sadhaka, his gaze turned always to the heights, will abandon them to Him whom all ideals seek imperfectly and fragmentarily to express; all moral qualities are only a poor and rigid travesty of his spontaneous and illimitable perfection. The bondage to sin and evil passes away with the passing of nervous desire; for it belongs to the quality of vital passion, impulsion or drive of propensity in us (rajogun.a) and is extinguished with the transformation of that mode of Nature. But neither must the aspirant remain subject to the gilded or golden chain of a conventional or a habitual or a mentally ordered or even a high or clear sattwic virtue. That will be replaced by something profounder and more essential than the minor inadequate thing that men call virtue. The original sense of the word was manhood and this is a much larger and deeper thing than the moral mind and its structures. The culmination of Karmayoga is a yet higher and deeper state that may perhaps be called "soulhood", - for the soul is greater than the man; a free soulhood spontaneously welling out in works of a supreme Truth and Love will replace human virtue. But this supreme Truth cannot be forced to inhabit the petty edifices of the practical reason or even confined in the more dignified constructions of the larger ideative reason that imposes its representations as if they were pure truth on the limited human intelligence. This supreme Love will not necessarily be consistent, much less will it be synonymous, with the partial and feeble, ignorant and emotion-ridden movements of human attraction, sympathy and pity. The petty law cannot bind the vaster movement; the mind's partial attainment cannot dictate its terms to the soul's supreme fulfilment.
1.08 - The Three Schools of Magick 3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This law is called the Law of Thelema. It is summarized in the four words, "Do what thou wilt."
It should not be necessary to explain that a full appreciation of this message is not to be obtained by a hasty examination. It is essential to study it from every point of view, to analyse it with the keenest philosophical acumen, and finally to apply it as a key for every problem, internal and external, that exists. This key, applied with skill, will open every lock.
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What is true for every School is equally true for every individual. Success in life, on the basis of the Law of Thelema, implies severe self-discipline. Each being must progress, as biology teaches, by strict adaptation to the conditions of the organism. If, as the Black School continually asserts, the cause of sorrow is desire, we can still escape the conclusion by the Law of Thelema. What is necessary is not to seek after some fantastic ideal, utterly unsuited to our real needs, but to discover the true nature of those needs, to fulfill them, and rejoice therein.
This process is what is really meant by initiation; that is to say, the going into oneself, and making one's peace, so to speak, with all the forces that one finds there.
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It has been said by some that the Law of Thelema appeals only to the lite of humanity. No doubt here is this much in that assertion, that only the highest can take full advantage of the extraordinary opportuni- ties which it offers. At the same time, "the Law is for all." Each in his degree, every man may learn to realise the nature of his own being, and to develop it in freedom. It is by this means that the White School of Magick can justify its past, redeem its present, and assure its future, by guaranteeing to every human being a life of Liberty and of Love.
Such, then, are the words of Grard Aumont. I should not like to endorse every phrase; but the whole exposition is so masterly in its terse, tense vigour, and so unrivalled by any other document at my disposal, that I thought it best to let you have it in its own original form, with only those few alterations which lapse of time has made necessary.
1.094 - Understanding the Structure of Things, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The ignorance present in the mind is due to the very old matter about which we were speaking asmita, egoism. The mind and the egoism are united; they cannot be separated. The ego principle, which is the cohesive force that keeps the mind in a restricted position, prevents its connection with anything else other than that with which the ego is connected, so the mind is completely cut off from the world of objects outside. Inasmuch as the personal notions of the mind, as determined by the principle of the ego, cannot always correspond to the Law of things in general, there is disharmony between the subject and the object. This disharmony between the subject and the object is the reason behind the subject having no knowledge of the object. Consequently, there is no control over anything. There is a total helplessness on the part of the subject and a compulsion which the subject feels in respect of everything, because the Law of the world presses upon the subject so forcefully to yield to its dictates, in spite of whatever the mind may be thinking according to its whims and fancies. Thus, the reason for the bondage of the jiva, or the subject, is the vehemence of the ego, or the asmita tattva, which will not sacrifice even a whit of its notions and opinions about things.
The yoga process here, in this great endeavour known as samyama, attempts to cut at the root of this problem by a direct focusing of the attention of the mind on the very same thing with which it cannot reconcile itself namely, the object. The name object is given to that with which we cannot reconcile ourselves; otherwise, it will not be an object. It will be like us only it will be a subject. It is something different from us and, therefore, we call it an object. It stands outside us because we cannot cope with its ways of working and the manner of its relationship with other things of a similar nature.
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We have been told much about it in earlier sutras. But essentially, the Law of prakriti is such that it has no internal distinction within itself. To create internal distinctions or differences of bodies, personalities, individualities, etc., would be a result of disharmony of some kind or the other. In the totality of nature, internal differences are unknown, just as the body, our individual bodily organism, has no feeling of internal differences. There is a principle which brings all these forces together and creates in us a sense of oneness. Likewise in nature, there is a principle which brings all the forces together. The more we approach this centre of unification of nature, the more are we natural, and the more we depart from it, the more are we unnatural. This is the meaning of this particular sutra, nimmita aprayojaka praktn varaabheda tu tata ketrikavat (IV.3): The instrumental cause, which is the practice of yoga, is not actually the creator of the powers or siddhis, but only an agent which allows the operation of natural forces, in the same way as the farmer operates as an instrumental cause in the movements of waters in the fields. This is the literal meaning of this sutra.
To sum up the teaching of these two sutras cited just now, the present state of existence of a human individual is unnatural, and we should not make the mistake of thinking that we are living a normal life. Our present way of life is abnormal in the sense that it does not harmonise with what eternally exists. The temporal features that we are manifesting in our personal lives are the opposites of the eternal features of prakriti. Hence, yoga is an instrumental agent in bringing about conditions by which there is a spontaneity of entry of eternal laws into our personality. And in this process of the entry of the eternal characters of prakriti into us, we develop various powers. Thus, the powers, or siddhis, are nothing but experiences which are incumbent upon our gradual proximity to the ultimate nature of prakriti. This is what the sutra tells us.
1.09 - (Plot continued.) Dramatic Unity., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
It is, moreover, evident from what has been said, that it is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen,--what is possible according to the Law of probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with metre no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal, I mean how a person of a certain type will on occasion speak or act, according to the Law of probability or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The particular is--for example--what
Alcibiades did or suffered. In Comedy this is already apparent: for here the poet first constructs the plot on the lines of probability, and then inserts characteristic names;--unlike the lampooners who write about particular individuals. But tragedians still keep to real names, the reason being that what is possible is credible: what has not happened we do not at once feel sure to be possible: but what has happened is manifestly possible: otherwise it would not have happened. Still there are even some tragedies in which there are only one or two well known names, the rest being fictitious. In others, none are well known, as in
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It clearly follows that the poet or 'maker' should be the maker of plots rather than of verses; since he is a poet because he imitates, and what he imitates are actions. And even if he chances to take an historical subject, he is none the less a poet; for there is no reason why some events that have actually happened should not conform to the Law of the probable and possible, and in virtue of that quality in them he is their poet or maker.
Of all plots and actions the epeisodic are the worst. I call a plot
1.09 - Talks, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
In the beginning, as I said, Dr. Manilal was the spearhead of the attack. What we did not dare to ask because of our youth, our shyness or even our sophistication, he, our elderly doctor, babbled away like a simple child, bluntly and sweetly, and we were greatly rewarded. We were so much charmed by the novelty of the talks that none of us thought of keeping any record. I would make some mental notes and when I visited Dilip's place for tea pour them out and make everybody roar with laughter. He would regale me with a sumptuous breakfast, in return for the divine ambrosia. After about a fortnight of squandering the precious talks which, had they been noted and published, would have made another volume, I realised my mistake and thought, "Why not keep a record?" But I would debate, "What's the use since they will never be published?" Thus in two minds, I started noting them down in the middle of the night after the work was over or at other odd hours. Quite often my colleagues would help me in rescuing some of the points I had lost, or correcting and adding others. Still almost one third of the talks were not recorded for want of time or sheer laziness. Meanwhile the news had gone abroad that Sri Aurobindo was having talks with us. So people began to waylay or hunt us out for some nectar and our stock went up. Groups were formed, according to the Law of sympathy and attraction for hearing the "Divine news". Some approached Dr. Manilal, some Purani some Satyendra and others came to me. Many advised us to keep a diary and others must have suspected that we were doing so already. Sri Aurobindo did not know, at least physically, about it and there was even a fear that if he did, he might stop talking altogether. Now I feel that some Hand must have pushed me over my reluctance and turned out a fairly good record, after all.
With Sri Aurobindo's gradual recovery the time of the talks also changed. They were held mostly during his sponging and later during his bath. As the years passed, the original stream of abundance began to get thinner and thinner till in the last years there was practically a silent attendance on a silent Presence. Either we had exhausted all topics and a satiation had followed and dried up all our inspiration or Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn his inner gesture of approval. Only when Dr. Manilal arrived from Baroda, the still atmosphere quickened with life for a while but he too would soon lapse into a quiescent mood.
1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
of conduct. We will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even defensive employment of physical violence? Good, though until soul-force is effective, the Asuric force in men and nations tramples down, breaks, slaughters, burns, pollutes, as we see it doing today, but then at its ease and unhindered, and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by your abstinence as others by resort to violence. . . . It is not enough that our own hands should remain clean and our souls unstained for the Law of strife and destruction to die out of the world; that which is its root must first disappear out of humanity [our emphasis]. Much less will mere immobility and inertia unwilling to use or incapable of using any kind of resistance to evil, abrogate the law; inertia, tamas, indeed, injures much more than can the [dynamic] rajasic principle of strife which at least creates more than it destroys. Therefore, so far as the problem of the individual's action goes, his abstention from strife and its inevitable concomitant destruction in their more gross and physical form may help his own moral being, but it leaves the Slayer of creatures unabolished.108
The whole evolution of Sri Aurobindo's thought and of his practical attitude toward war, from his underground activity in Bengal to his retreat in Pondicherry in 1910, revolves around the question of methods: how to strike most effectively at this "Slayer of creatures,"
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We ought at least to free our minds of one misconception which has a very strong hold of the average Indian mind and blocks up the way for free investigation & the formation of a strong & original school of Indian scholars better circumstanced than the Europeans for determining the truth about our past and divining its difficult secrets. The triumphant & rapid march of the physical sciences in Europe has so mastered our intellects and dazzled our eyes, that we are apt to extend the unquestioned finality which we are accustomed to attach to the discoveries & theories of modern Science, to all the results of European research & intellectual activity. Even in Europe itself, we should remember, there is no such implicit acceptance. The theories of today are there continually being combated and overthrown by the theories of tomorrow. Outside the range of the physical sciences & even in some portions of that splendid domain the whole of European knowledge is felt more & more to be a mass of uncertain results ephemeral in their superstructure, shifting in their very foundations. For the Europeans have that valuable gift of intellectual restlessness which, while it often stands in the way of mans holding on to abiding truth, helps him to emerge swiftly out of momentarily triumphant error. In India on the other hand we have fallen during the last few centuries into a fixed habit of unquestioning deference to authority. We used to hold it, & some still hold it almost an impiety to question Shankaras interpretation of the Upanishads, or Sayanas interpretation of the Veda, and now that we are being torn out of this bondage, we fall into yet more absurd error by according, if not an equal reverence, yet an almost equal sense of finality to the opinions of Roth & Max Muller. We are ready to accept all European theories, the theory of an Aryan colonisation of a Dravidian India, the theory of the Nature-worship and henotheism of the Vedic Rishis, the theory of the Upanishads as a speculative revolt against Vedic materialism & ritualism, as if these hazardous speculations were on a par in authority & certainty with the Law of gravitation and the theory of evolution. We are most of us unaware that in Europe it is disputed and very reasonably disputed whether, for instance, any such entity as an Aryan race ever existed. The travail of dispute & uncertainty in which the questions of Vedic scholarship & ethnology are enveloped is hidden from us; only the over-confident statement of doubtful discoveries and ephemeral theories reaches our knowledge.
We should realise that these so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology on which the European interpretation of Veda is founded are not true Sciences at all. They are, rather, if Sciences at all, then pseudo-Sciences. All the European mental sciences, not excluding Psychology, though that is now proceeding within certain narrow limits by a sounder method, belong to a doubtful class of branches of research which have absorbed the outward method of Science, without its inward spirit. The true scientists in Germany, the home of both Science & Philology, accustomed to sound methods, certain results, patient inquiry, slow generalisations, have nothing but contempt for the methods of Philology, its patchiness, its haste, its guesswork, and profess no confidence in its results; the word Philologe is even, in their mouths, a slighting & discourteous expression. This contempt, itself no doubt excessive, is practically admitted to be just by the great French thinker, Renan, who spent the best part of his life in philological & kindred researches, when he described apologetically his favourite pursuits as petty conjectural sciences. Now, a Science that is conjectural, a Science that proceeds not by fixed laws and certain methods, but by ingenious inference & conjecture, & this is in truth the nature of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology,is no science at all; it is a branch of research, a field of inquiry & conjecture in which useful discoveries may be made; it may even contain in itself the germs of a future science, but it is not yet itself worthy of that name & its results have no right to cloak themselves falsely in the robe of authority which belongs only to the results of the true Sciences. So long as a science is conjectural, its results are also conjectural, can at any moment be challenged and ought at all times even in its most brilliant & confident results to be carefully and sceptically scrutinised.
1.11 - On Intuitive Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
It should be observed that, in all cases of general principles, particular instances, dealing with familiar things, are more evident than the general principle. For example, the Law of contradiction states that nothing can both have a certain property and not have it. This is evident as soon as it is understood, but it is not so evident as that a particular rose which we see cannot be both red and not red. (It is of course possible that parts of the rose may be red and parts not red, or that the rose may be of a shade of pink which we hardly know whether to call red or not; but in the former case it is plain that the rose as a whole is not red, while in the latter case the answer is theoretically definite as soon as we have decided on a precise definition of 'red'.)
It is usually through particular instances that we come to be able to see the general principle. Only those who are practised in dealing with abstractions can readily grasp a general principle without the help of instances.
1.11 - The Change of Power, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
If we can catch that painful elf for it is pain itself just before it buries itself completely, it exhibits a whole daily, material and imperceptible mechanism. This is the great resistance to the change of power, the molehill trying to stay the Law of Harmony. Therefore it is where the battle is taking place at this moment, in the microcosm and the macrocosm. It is like a caricature (or the more exact face) of all the polished and civilized activities of the brilliant elf of the higher levels: doubt, fear, avidity, self-centeredness, all the contractions, prehensions and apprehensions of the mental pseudopod. It is a minuscule and ridiculous functioning, and, if by chance we notice it, we shrug it off or attach no importance to it. But we are wrong. We look at everything from atop our mental arrogance, as if those trifles were inconsequential. But they have staggering consequences. We do not see it because we live in our logical and symmetrical clouds. But life grates; there is an immense, universal grating whose source lies in those ridiculous little grains of sand. At the level of matter, there are no little things, because everything is made of little things, and that absurd reaction of doubt or fear is the incalculable equivalent of the mental misjudgment that makes us shut the door on a brilliant opportunity. We are constantly shutting the door on Harmony, turning our backs on the miracle, locking out possibilities, and making ourselves sick into the bargain. For, at the material level, this Harmony does not flow in majestic symphonies through the great arteries of the spirit; it uses what it has. It percolates through minuscule channels, fragile filaments quivering within our material consciousness; it enters in droplets, spurts, discrete quanta that look like nothing a passing breath, a flicker of a smile, a wave of ease without reason which change everything. We do not notice the change because we live in our normal chaos, our usual suffocation, but the seeker, who has become a little clearer, begins to notice, to sense those minute changes of density, those sudden obstructions, those minuscule expansions, those air pockets in his material substance. He sees the almost instant effect of a tiny little emanation of doubt, an absurd fear or tensing up without apparent cause, a ridiculous and morbid imagination crossing his atmosphere. He discovers a thousand sly little pulsations, deceitful palpitations, dark impulses in the great material pond. He puts his finger on fear, the great, voracious and retractile Fear which covers the world like the protoplasm inside its gelatine membrane the slightest touch, the least breath of air, the tiniest ray of sun, and it contracts, shuts the door and rolls up into a ball in its membrane. The immediate reaction to everything is NO; then, sometimes, a yes blurted out, as if impelled by the same fear of missing something. He discovers the fantastic morbid and defeatist imagination of matter, as if, for matter, life represented a kind of dreadful invasion from which it had never quite recovered, a fall perhaps from the original bliss of the stone, an irruption of death into its peaceful routine. Everything is liable to bring catastrophe the great catastrophe of Life expectation of the worst, anticipation of the worst, almost a wish and call for the worst, so this tragedy of life may be stopped at last and everything return to the peace and beatific immobility of dust. He discovers how diseases break out, matter decays, substance ages the great difficulty of living, the contraction onto self, the suffocation inside, the hardening of all the little arteries through which a drop of all-curing harmony might have seeped in. He hears his fill of petty whining, small grudges, matter's wounded negations, and above all above all its despairing leitmotif: This is impossible, that is impossible.... For matter, everything is impossible, because the only sure possibility is the inviolable immobility of the stone. Because all movement of life and hope is still a stirring of death. And it shuts the door, turns off the light, refuses the miracle we all refuse the miracle. We are firmly seated atop our cancer, the doubters of the great immortal Harmony, the dwarves of the earth who believe in pain, believe in disease, believe in suffering, believe in death: This is impossible, impossible, impossible....
So the seeker learns of Harmony. He learns it step by step, by trial and error, tiny little errors that sow disease and confusion. At this stage, the experience no longer takes place in the intellect or heart; it takes place in the body. There is a minute play of sensations, as fleeting as must have been the first quiver of the radiolarian under the temperature changes in the Gulf Stream, and as laden with physical consequences as a storm over the lovely wheat fields of the mind or a typhoon over the murky seas of the vital. We are so dense and blind on our higher levels that we need to be hit over the head to understand that the man in front of us is angry and that murder is lurking in those eyes so transparent. But matter is refined; the more we experience it, the more we discover its incredible receptivity, working in both directions, alas. A hundred times or a thousand times, the seeker is confronted with those microtyphoons, those minute whirlwinds that abruptly overturn the whole equilibrium of the being, becloud everything, give a taste of ashes and despair to the slightest gesture, decompose the air he breathes and decompose everything an instantaneous general decomposition for one second, ten seconds. A hardening of everything. The seeker is suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue; he sees illness coming and it is indeed coming straight at him. Which illness? The Illness. And just behind, lying in wait, death. In one second, ten seconds, one goes straight to the point; one touches the thing. It is right there, irrefutable: the whole mechanism out in the open, like a sudden call of death. Yet, outside, everything is the same. The circumstances are the same, the gestures the same; the sun still shines and the body comes and goes as usual. But everything is changed. It is a flash-death, an instantaneous cholera. Then it vanishes, dissipates like a cloud, one hardly knows why. But if one gives in, one truly falls ill, breaks a leg or has a real accident. And the seeker starts learning the reason for those minuscule reversals of equilibrium. He tracks down a minuscule hell, which is perhaps the first seed of the great million-faced Evil, the first hardening of death's great blissful petrification. Everything is contained there, in a black spark. But the day we catch hold of that tiny poisonous vibration, we will have the secret of immortality, or at least that of the prolongation of life at will. We die because we give in, and we give in in thousands of little instances. The choice between death and immortality must be made again at every instant.
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
The Creator bears the Law of pain and death ... 35
3. Sri Aurobindo: Avatar
1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The intellectual reason is not mans only means of knowledge. All action, all perception, all aesthesis and sensation, all impulse and will, all imagination and creation imply a universal, many-sided force of knowledge at work and each form or power of this knowledge has its own distinct nature and law, its own principle of order and arrangement, its logic proper to itself, and need not follow, still less be identical with the Law of nature, order and arrangement which the intellectual reason would assign to it or itself follow if it had control of all these movements. But the intellect has this advantage over the others that it can disengage itself from the work, stand back from it to study and understand it disinterestedly, analyse its processes, disengage its principles. None of the other powers and faculties of the living being can do this: for each exists for its own action, is confined by the work it is doing, is unable to see beyond it, around it, into it as the reason can; the principle of knowledge inherent within each force is involved and carried along in the action of the force, helps to shape it, but is also itself limited by its own formulations. It exists for the fulfilment of the action, not for knowledge, or for knowledge only as part of the action. Moreover, it is concerned only with the particular action or working of the moment and does not look back reflectively or forward intelligently or at other actions and forces with a power of clear coordination. No doubt, the other evolved powers of the living being, as for instance the instinct whether animal or human,the latter inferior precisely because it is disturbed by the questionings and seekings of reason,carry in themselves their own force of past experience, of instinctive self-adaptation, all of which is really accumulated knowledge, and they hold sometimes this store so firmly that they are transmitted as a sure inheritance from generation to generation. But all this, just because it is instinctive, not turned upon itself reflectively, is of great use indeed to life for the conduct of its operations, but of noneso long as it is not taken up by the reason for the particular purpose man has in view, a new order of the dealings of the soul in Nature, a free, rational, intelligently coordinating, intelligently self-observing, intelligently experimenting mastery of the workings of force by the conscious spirit.
Reason, on the other hand, exists for the sake of knowledge, can prevent itself from being carried away by the action, can stand back from it, intelligently study, accept, refuse, modify, alter, improve, combine and recombine the workings and capacities of the forces in operation, can repress here, indulge there, strive towards an intelligent, intelligible, willed and organised perfection. Reason is science, it is conscious art, it is invention. It is observation and can seize and arrange truth of facts; it is speculation and can extricate and forecast truth of potentiality. It is the idea and its fulfilment, the ideal and its bringing to fruition. It can look through the immediate appearance and unveil the hidden truths behind it. It is the servant and yet the master of all utilities; and it can, putting away all utilities, seek disinterestedly Truth for its own sake and by finding it reveal a whole world of new possible utilities. Therefore it is the sovereign power by which man has become possessed of himself, student and master of his own forces, the godhead on which the other godheads in him have leaned for help in their ascent; it has been the Prometheus of the mythical parable, the helper, instructor, elevating friend, civiliser of mankind.
1.11 - The Second Genesis, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Nothing, then, can break the bond of unity which attaches the possibilities of the manifested world in spite of their desire of exclusion to all unmanifested possibilities. And it is precisely because each ego, although indissolubly bound to all other egos, yet wishes to be isolated and thinks itself distinct, that the Law of struggle becomes the Law of existence; for in this world of desire their very tie of interdependence creates the causes of their hostility. In their attempt at exclusive affirmation inseparable forms become antagonistic, common and mutual needs become rivals and that which is called love takes the form of strife.
How could this love which in its primary forms is only a more passionate egoistic desire and in its origin appears no other than the need of a prey, change one day into the supreme gift, into self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness, if the desire to be had alone formed the being and alone reigned over his becoming?
1.11 - The Three Purushas, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Development is determined by the kara purua, but not conducted by him. It is Prakriti, the Universal Energy, that conducts development under the Law of cause and effect, and is the true agent. The soul is not the agent, but the lord who enjoys the results of the action of his agent, Prakriti or Nature; only by his attachment to Prakriti he forgets himself and identifies himself with her so as to have the illusion of agency and, by thus forgetting himself, ceases to be lord of himself, becomes subject to Causality, imprisoned in Time and Space, bound by the work which he sanctions. He himself, being a part of God, is made in His image, of one nature with Him. Therefore what God is, he also is, only with limitation, subject to Time, Space and Causality, because he has, of his own will, accepted that bondage. He is the witness, and if he ceased to watch, the drama would stop. He is the source of sanction, and what he declares null and void, drops away from the development. He is the enjoyer, and if he became indifferent, that individual development would be arrested. He is the upholder, and if he ceased to sustain the dhra, the vehicle, it would fall and cease. He is the lord, and it is for his pleasure that Nature acts. He is the spirit, and matter is only his vehicle, his robe, his means of self-expression. But all his sanctions, refusals, behests act not at once, not there and then, not by imperative absolute compulsion, but subject to lapse of time, change of place, working of cause to effect. The lapse may be brief or long, a moment or centuries; the change small or great, here or in another world; the working direct or indirect, with the rapid concentration of processes which men call a miracle or with the careful and laboured evolution in which every step is visibly ordered and deliberate; but so long as the Jiva is bound, his lordship is limited and constitutional, not despotic and absolute. His sanction and signature are necessary, but it is the Lords spiritual and temporal of his mind and body, the Commons in his external environment who do the work of the State, execute, administer, legislate.
The first step in self-liberation is to get rid of the illusion of agency, to realise that Nature acts, not the soul. The second is to remove the siege of phenomenal associations by surrendering lordship to God, leaving Him alone to uphold and sanction by the abdication of ones own independent use of these powers, offering up the privilege of the enjoyer to Him. All that is then left is the attitude of the akara purua, the free, blissful self existence, watching the action of Prakriti, but outside it. The kara withdraws into the akara. When the sk or witness withdraws into God Himself, that is the utter liberation.
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
TANTRIK: "But the Law of karma exists, doesn't it?"
MASTER: "That also is true. Good produces good, and bad produces bad. Don't you get the hot taste if you eat chillies? But these are all God's lila, His play."
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"Assume the tamasic aspect of bhakti. Say with force: 'What? I have uttered the names of Rma and Kali. How can I be in bondage any more? How can I be affected by the Law of karma?' "
The Master sang:
1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
At first, however, the Gita takes up the Vedic statement of the idea of sacrifice and phrases the Law of sacrifice in its current terms. This it does with a definite object. We have seen that the quarrel between renunciation and works has two forms, the opposition of Sankhya and Yoga which is already in principle reconciled and the opposition of Vedism and Vedantism which the Teacher has yet to reconcile. The first is a larger statement of
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1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
still be part of the Law of being.
Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VIII
1.12 - Independence, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The water for irrigation of fields is already in the canal, only shut in by gates. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the Law of gravitation. So all progress and power are already in every man; perfection is man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature. Then the man attains the powers which are his already. Those we call wicked become saints, as soon as the bar is broken and nature rushes in. It is nature that is driving us towards perfection, and eventually she will bring everyone there. All these practices and struggles to become religious are only negative work, to take off the bars, and open the doors to that perfection which is our birthright, our nature.
Today the evolution theory of the ancient Yogis will be better understood in the light of modern research. And yet the theory of the Yogis is a better explanation. The two causes of evolution advanced by the moderns, viz sexual selection and survival of the fittest, are inadequate. Suppose human knowledge to have advanced so much as to eliminate competition, both from the function of acquiring physical sustenance and of acquiring a mate. Then, according to the moderns, human progress will stop and the race will die. The result of this theory is to furnish every oppressor with an argument to calm the qualms of conscience. Men are not lacking, who, posing as philosophers, want to kill out all wicked and incompetent persons (they are, of course, the only judges of competency) and thus preserve the human race! But the great ancient evolutionist, Patanjali, declares that the true secret of evolution is the manifestation of the perfection which is already in every being; that this perfection has been barred and the infinite tide behind is struggling to express itself. These struggles and competitions are but the results of our ignorance, because we do not know the proper way to unlock the gate and let the water in. This infinite tide behind must express itself; it is the cause of all manifestation. Competitions for life or sex-gratification are only momentary, unnecessary, extraneous effects, caused by ignorance. Even when all competition has ceased, this perfect nature behind will make us go forward until everyone has become perfect. Therefore there is no reason to believe that competition is necessary to progress. In the animal the man was suppressed, but as soon as the door was opened, out rushed man. So in man there is the potential god, kept in by the locks and bars of ignorance. When knowledge breaks these bars, the god becomes manifest.
1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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
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"They who enjoy the nectar of immortality left over from the sacrifice attain to the eternal Brahman." Sacrifice is the Law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all; "this world is not for him who doeth not sacrifice, how then any other world?" Therefore all these and many other forms of sacrifice have been "extended in the mouth of the Brahman," the mouth of that Fire which receives all offerings; they are all means and forms of the one great Existence in activity, means by which the action of the human being can be offered up to That of which his outward existence is a part and with which his inmost self is one. They are "all born of work"; all proceed from and are ordained by the one vast energy of the Divine which manifests itself in the universal karma and makes all the cosmic activity a progressive offering to the one
Self and Lord and of which the last stage for the human being is self-knowledge and the possession of the divine or Brahmic consciousness. "So knowing thou shalt become free."
1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But the very conditions of the uprooting of the old order may for a long time falsify the quest for the new order. And at first, this new order does not exist; it has to be made. A whole world has to be invented. And the aspiring superman or let us simply say the aspirant to something else must confront a primary reality: the Law of freedom is a very demanding one, infinitely more demanding than all the laws imposed by the Machine. It is not a coasting into just anything, but a methodical uprooting from thousands of little slaveries; it does not mean abandoning everything, but, on the contrary, taking charge of everything, since we no longer want to depend on anybody or anything. It is a supreme apprenticeship of responsibility that of being oneself, which in the end is being all. It is not an escape, but a conquest; not a vacation from the Machine, but a great Adventure into man's unknown. And anything that may hamper this supreme freedom, at whatever level or under whatever appearance, must be fought as fiercely as the police or lawmakers of the old world. We are not leaving the slavery of the old order to fall into the worse slavery of ourselves the slavery of drugs, of a party, of one religion or another, one sect or another, a golden bubble or a white one. We want the one freedom of smiling at everything and being light everywhere, identical in destitution and pomp, in prison and palace, in emptiness and fullness and everything is full because we burn with the one little flame that possesses everything forever.
What will they do, these wanderers, these transhumans of a new country that does not yet exist? In the first place, they will perhaps not move at all. They will perhaps have understood that the change has to be wrought inside and that, if nothing changes inside, nothing will ever change outside for centuries and centuries. They will perhaps stay right where they are, in this little street, this gray country, in a humble disguise, an old routine, but it will no longer be a routine because they will do everything with another look, in another way, with another attitude an inner way that changes all ways. And if they persevere, they will notice that this one little drop of true light they carry within themselves has the power to change everything about them surreptitiously. In their unpretentious little circle, they will have worked for the new world and precipitated a little more truth upon earth. But no circle is little when it has that center, since it is the center of everything. Or else, one day, perhaps they will feel impelled to join with their peers of the new world and with them build some living testimony of their common aspiration, as others built pyramids or cathedrals perhaps a city of the new world. And this is the beginning of a great enterprise, and a great danger.
We have been so thoroughly mechanized, exteriorized, projected outside ourselves by our habit of depending on one mechanical device or another that our very first reflex is always to look for the external means, that is, an artifice, for all external means are artificial, part of the old falsehood. We will therefore be tempted to spread the idea, the Enterprise, through all the existing publicity channels, in short, to attract as many supporters of the new hope as possible which will quickly become a new religion. Here it may be appropriate to quote Sri Aurobindo and to drive home positively and forcefully his categorical statement: I don't believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their chest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy or silence. It is what has happened to the religions and is the reason of their failure.31 True, ultimately all men, the entire earth belong to supermanhood, but the ABC's of the new consciousness, its governing principle, is diversity in Unity and to try to confine the superman in advance to a ready-made setting, a privileged environment, an allegedly unique and more enlightened location is to fall back into the old farce and once again inflate the old human ego. To be sure, the Law of Harmony will work in thousands of ways and in thousands of disguises, ultimately gathering the myriad notes of its great indivisible flow into a vaster space without boundaries. The Enterprise will be born everywhere at once it is already born, whispering here and there, blindly banging against walls and will gradually unveil its true face only when men are no longer able to trap it in a system, logic or shrine when everything here below is a shrine, in every heart and every country. And men shall not even know how they were prepared for such a Marvel.
Those who know a little, who feel, who have begun to perceive the great Wave of Truth, will therefore not fall into the trap of superman recruiting. The earth is unequally prepared; men are spiritually unequal despite all our democratic protests to the contrary though they are essentially equal and vast in the great Self, and only one body with millions of faces they have not all become the greatness that they are. They are on the way, and some dawdle while others seem to travel more swiftly, but the detours of the former are also part of the great geography of our indivisible domain, their delay or the brake they seem to apply to our motion is part of the fullness of perfection that we seek and which compels us to a greater meticulousness of truth. They too are going there, by their own way and what is outside the way, in the end, since everything is the Way? He who knows a little, who feels, knows first and foremost, from having experienced it in his own flesh, that men are never truly brought together by artifices and when they persist in their artifice, everything finally collapses and the meeting is brief; the beautiful school, the lovely sect, the little iridescent bubble of a moment's enthusiasm or faith is short-lived they are brought together through a finer and more discreet law, a tiny little searchlight across time and space, and touches a similar ray here and there, a twin frequency, a light source with the same intensity and he goes. He goes haphazardly, takes a train, a plane, travels to this country and that one, believes he is searching for this or that, that he is in quest of adventure, the exotic, drugs or philosophy he believes. He believes a lot of things. He thinks he has to have this power or that solution, this panacea or that revolution, this slogan or that one. He thinks he set out because of that thirst or revolt, that unhappy love affair or need for action, this hope or that old insoluble discord in his heart. But then, there is none of that! One day he stops, without knowing why, without planning to be there, without having looked for that place or that face, that insignificant village under the stars of one hemisphere or the other and there it is. He has arrived. He has opened his one door, found his kindred fire, that look forever known; and he is exactly at the right place, at the right time, to do the right work. The world is a fabulous clockwork, if only we knew the secret of those little fires glowing in another space, dancing on a great inner sea where our skiffs sail as if guided by an invisible beacon.
There are ten or twenty, perhaps fifty, here or there, in one latitude or another, who yearn to till a truer plot of land, a small patch of man to grow a truer being within themselves, perhaps create together a laboratory of the superman, lay the first stone of the City of Truth on earth. They do not know, they do not know anything, except that they need something else and that there exists a Law of Harmony, a marvelous something of the Future seeking to be incarnated. They want to find the conditions of that incarnation, to lend themselves to the trial, to offer their substance for that living experiment. They know nothing except that everything must be different: in hearts, in gestures, in matter and the handling of matter. They are not seeking to create a new civilization, but another man; not a supercity among the millions of buildings of the world, but a listening post for the forces of the future, a supreme yantra of Truth, a conduit, a channel to try to capture and inscribe in matter a first note of the great Harmony, a first tangible sign of the new world. They do not pose as the champions of anything; they do not defend any liberty or attack any ism. They simply try together. They are the champions of their own pure little note, which is unlike the next person's and yet is everyone's note. They are no longer from a country, a family, a religion or a party; they belong to their own party, which is no one else's and yet is the party of the world, because what becomes true at one point becomes true for the whole world and brings the whole world together. They are from a family to be invented, from a country yet to be born. They do not try to correct others or anybody, to pour self-glorifying charities over the world, to cure the poor and the lepers; they try to cure the great poverty of smallness in themselves, the gray elf of the inner misery, to reclaim one single parcel of truth from themselves, one single ray of harmony. For if that Disease is cured in our own heart or a few hearts, the world will be that much lighter, and, through our clarity, the Law of Truth will better penetrate matter and radiate all around spontaneously. What liberation, what relief can a man who suffers in his own heart bring to the world? They do not work for themselves, though they are the primary ground of the experience, but as an offering, pure and simple, to that which they do not really know, but which shimmers at the edge of the world like the dawn of a new age. They are the prospectors of the new cycle. They have given themselves to the future, body and soul, the way one jumps into the fire, without a look back. They are the servants of the infinite in the finite, of the totality in the infinitesimal, of eternity in each second and each gesture. They create their heaven with each step and carve the new world out of the banality of the day. And they are not afraid of failure, for they have left behind the failures and success of the prison they live in the sole infallibility of a right little note.
But these builders of the new world will have to be careful not to erect a new prison, be it an ideal and enlightened one. In fact, they will understand, and quickly that this City of Truth will not and cannot see the light of day until they themselves live totally in the Truth, and that that building site is first and foremost the site of their own transmutation. One does not deceive Truth.
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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.
1.12 - Truth and Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
The other objection to this definition of truth is that it assumes the meaning of 'coherence' known, whereas, in fact, 'coherence' presupposes the truth of the laws of logic. Two propositions are coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least must be false. Now in order to know whether two propositions can both be true, we must know such truths as the Law of contradiction. For example, the two propositions, 'this tree is a beech' and 'this tree is not a beech', are not coherent, because of the Law of contradiction. But if the Law of contradiction itself were subjected to the test of coherence, we should find that, if we choose to suppose it false, nothing will any longer be incoherent with anything else. Thus the laws of logic supply the skeleton or framework within which the test of coherence applies, and they themselves cannot be established by this test.
For the above two reasons, coherence cannot be accepted as giving the
1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A different division of the typal society is quite possible. But whatever the arrangement or division, the typal principle cannot be the foundation of an ideal human society. Even according to the Indian theory it does not belong either to the periods of mans highest attainment or to the eras of his lowest possibility; it is neither the principle of his ideal age, his age of the perfected Truth, Satyayuga, Kritayuga, in which he lives according to some high and profound realisation of his divine possibility, nor of his iron age, the Kaliyuga, in which he collapses towards the life of the instincts, impulses and desires with the reason degraded into a servant of this nether life of man. This too precise order is rather the appropriate principle of the intermediate ages of his cycle in which he attempts to maintain some imperfect form of his true law, his dharma, by will-power and force of character in the Treta, by law, arrangement and fixed convention in the Dwapara.1 The type is not the integral man, it is the fixing and emphasising of the generally prominent part of his active nature. But each man contains in himself the whole divine potentiality and therefore the Shudra cannot be rigidly confined within his Shudrahood, nor the Brahmin in his Brahminhood, but each contains within himself the potentialities and the need of perfection of his other elements of a divine manhood. In the Kali age these potentialities may act in a state of crude disorder, the anarchy of our being which covers our confused attempt at a new order. In the intermediate ages the principle of order may take refuge in a limited perfection, suppressing some elements to perfect others. But the Law of the Satya age is the large development of the whole truth of our being in the realisation of a spontaneous and self-supported spiritual harmony. That can only be realised by the evolution, in the measure of which our human capacity in its enlarging cycles becomes capable of it, of the spiritual ranges of our being and the unmasking of their inherent light and power, their knowledge and their divine capacities.
We shall better understand what may be this higher being and those higher faculties, if we look again at the dealings of the reason with the trend towards the absolute in our other faculties, in the divergent principles of our complex existence. Let us study especially its dealings with the suprarational in them and the infrarational, the two extremes between which our intelligence is some sort of mediator. The spiritual or suprarational is always turned at its heights towards the Absolute; in its extension, living in the luminous infinite, its special power is to realise the infinite in the finite, the eternal unity in all divisions and differences. Our spiritual evolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the finite to the infinite, through all divisions to oneness. Man in his spiritual realisation begins to find and seize hold on the satisfying intensities of the absolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all divisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as in his inner life and formulation must be to effect a great reconciliation between the secret and eternal reality and the finite appearances of a world which seeks to express and in expressing seems to deny it. Our highest faculties then will be those which make this possible because they have in them the intimate light and power and joy by which these things can be grasped in direct knowledge and experience, realised and made normally and permanently effective in will, communicated to our whole nature. The infrarational, on the other hand, has its origin and basis in the obscure infinite of the Inconscient; it wells up in instincts and impulses, which are really the crude and more or less haphazard intuitions of a subconscient physical, vital, emotional and sensational mind and will in us. Its struggle is towards definition, towards self-creation, towards finding some finite order of its obscure knowledge and tendencies. But it has also the instinct and force of the infinite from which it proceeds; it contains obscure, limited and violent velleities that move it to grasp at the intensities of the absolute and pull them down or some touch of them into its finite action: but because it proceeds by ignorance and not by knowledge, it cannot truly succeed in this more vehement endeavour. The life of the reason and intelligent will stands between that upper and this nether power. On one side it takes up and enlightens the life of the instincts and impulses and helps it to find on a higher plane the finite order for which it gropes. On the other side it looks up towards the absolute, looks out towards the infinite, looks in towards the One, but without being able to grasp and hold their realities; for it is able only to consider them with a sort of derivative and remote understanding, because it moves in the relative and, itself limited and definite, it can act only by definition, division and limitation. These three powers of being, the suprarational, rational and infrarational are present, but with an infinitely varying prominence in all our activities.
1.13 - The Lord of the Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
existence is one and its divisions must found themselves on some law of mutual dependence, each growing by each and living by all. Where sacrifice is not willingly given, Nature exacts it by force, she satisfies the Law of her living. A mutual giving and receiving is the Law of Life without which it cannot for one moment endure, and this fact is the stamp of the divine creative
Will on the world it has manifested in its being, the proof that with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Lord of creatures has created all these existences. The universal law of sacrifice is the sign that the world is of God and belongs to God and that life is his dominion and house of worship and not a field for the self-satisfaction of the independent ego; not the fulfilment of the ego, - that is only our crude and obscure beginning, - but the discovery of God, the worship and seeking of the Divine and the
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But the individual being begins with ignorance and persists long in ignorance. Acutely conscious of himself he sees the ego as the cause and whole meaning of life and not the Divine. He sees himself as the doer of works and does not see that all the workings of existence including his own internal and external activities are the workings of one universal Nature and nothing else. He sees himself as the enjoyer of works and imagines that for him all exists and him Nature ought to satisfy and obey his personal will; he does not see that she is not at all concerned with satisfying him or at all careful of his will, but obeys a higher universal will and seeks to satisfy a Godhead who transcends her and her works and creations; his finite being, his will and his satisfactions are hers and not his, and she offers them at every moment as a sacrifice to the Divine of whose purpose in her she makes all this the covert instrumentation. Because of this ignorance whose seal is egoism, the creature ignores the Law of sacrifice and seeks to take all he can for himself and gives only what Nature by her internal and external compulsion forces him to give. He can really take nothing except what she allows him to receive as his portion, what the divine Powers within her yield
The Lord of the Sacrifice
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But this is only a long intermediate stage. It is still subject to the Law of desire, to the centrality of all things in the conceptions and needs of his ego and to the control of his being as well as his works by Nature, though it is a regulated and governed desire, a clarified ego and a Nature more and more subtilised and enlightened by the sattwic, the highest natural principle. All this is still within the domain, though the very much enlarged domain, of the mutable, finite and personal. The real self-knowledge and consequently the right way of works
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1.13 - The Spirit, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
All the other qualities of the spirit are based upon these four original principles. The typical part of the fifth, say the etheric principle (akasa) manifests itself, in the highest aspect, in the faith and, in the lowest form, in the instinct of self-preservation. Each of these mentioned four elemental principles has many other aspects corresponding to the Law of analogy of the polarity or the positive and negative elements. All of them together form the ego or the spirit. For this reason, we can make the fiery principle responsible for strength, power and passion; memory, power of discrimination and judgment are ascribed to the air principle, conscience and intuition to the principle of water, egotism and the instincts of self-preservation and propagation to the earthy part of the spirit.
It would be too long to quote all the properties of the spirit with regard to the elements. The incipient adept can enlarge these qualities by serious studies and deep meditation, with respect to the analogous laws of the four-pole magnet. This happens to be a very meritorious work which never ought to be neglected, because it will lead to great success and secure results.
1.13 - Under the Auspices of the Gods, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
islands of light216 amid a less evolved humanity, which would naturally tend to overrun, obscure, or even extinguish the privileged light. We all know the fate of ancient Greece and Rome in the midst of a barbarian world. It appears that the world moves according to a wiser evolutionary law, whereby nothing can be saved unless everything is saved. Excommunications and hells are the infantile products of Ignorance, our brainchildren on the earth or above; there can be no paradise so long as a single man is in hell! Because there is only one Man. In addition, assuming that one of these islands of light could, through the Power of its center, prevent incursions from outside, nothing guarantees that this protection would outlast that Power. The history of all the religious, occult, initiatory, or chivalrous movements throughout the world testifies to the fact that, after the death of the Master and his immediate disciples, everything becomes scattered, vulgarized, degraded, distorted, or simply dies. Until now the Law of the "downward pull" has seemed insurmountable. If evolution is to triumph, then life must be transformed in its entirety
not just a fragment of life, not just a privileged beam or a blessed island. For this, another type of Power is required, a Power capable of resisting the downward pull, another undivided or global principle of consciousness capable of containing the innumerable diversity of life without mutilating it.
1.14 - IMMORTALITY AND SURVIVAL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IMMORTALITY is participation in the eternal now of the divine Ground; survival is persistence in one of the forms of time. Immortality is the result of total deliverance. Survival is the lot of those who are partially delivered into some heaven, or who are not delivered at all, but find themselves, by the Law of their own untranscended nature, compelled to choose some purgatorial or embodied servitude even more painful than the one they have just left.
Goodness and virtue make men know and love, believe and delight in their immortality. When the soul is purged and enlightened by true sanctity, it is more capable of those divine irradiations, whereby it feels itself in conjunction with God. It knows that almighty Love, by which it lives, is stronger than death. It knows that God will never forsake His own life, which He has quickened in the soul. Those breathings and gaspings after an eternal participation of Him are but the energy of His own breath within us.
1.14 - The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
What has happened in the case of space and time has happened, to some extent, in other directions as well. The attempt to prescribe to the universe by means of _a priori_ principles has broken down; logic, instead of being, as formerly, the bar to possibilities, has become the great liberator of the imagination, presenting innumerable alternatives which are closed to unreflective common sense, and leaving to experience the task of deciding, where decision is possible, between the many worlds which logic offers for our choice. Thus knowledge as to what exists becomes limited to what we can learn from experience--not to what we can actually experience, for, as we have seen, there is much knowledge by description concerning things of which we have no direct experience. But in all cases of knowledge by description, we need some connexion of universals, enabling us, from such and such a datum, to infer an object of a certain sort as implied by our datum. Thus in regard to physical objects, for example, the principle that sense-data are signs of physical objects is itself a connexion of universals; and it is only in virtue of this principle that experience enables us to acquire knowledge concerning physical objects. The same applies to the Law of causality, or, to descend to what is less general, to such principles as the Law of gravitation.
Principles such as the Law of gravitation are proved, or rather are rendered highly probable, by a combination of experience with some wholly _a priori_ principle, such as the principle of induction. Thus our intuitive knowledge, which is the source of all our other knowledge of truths, is of two sorts: pure empirical knowledge, which tells us of the existence and some of the properties of particular things with which we are acquainted, and pure _a priori_ knowledge, which gives us connexions between universals, and enables us to draw inferences from the particular facts given in empirical knowledge. Our derivative knowledge always depends upon some pure _a priori_ knowledge and usually also depends upon some pure empirical knowledge.
Philosophical knowledge, if what has been said above is true, does not differ essentially from scientific knowledge; there is no special source of wisdom which is open to philosophy but not to science, and the results obtained by philosophy are not radically different from those obtained from science. The essential characteristic of philosophy, which makes it a study distinct from science, is criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it only accepts them when, as the result of a critical inquiry, no reason for rejecting them has appeared. If, as many philosophers have believed, the principles underlying the sciences were capable, when disengaged from irrelevant detail, of giving us knowledge concerning the universe as a whole, such knowledge would have the same claim on our belief as scientific knowledge has; but our inquiry has not revealed any such knowledge, and therefore, as regards the special doctrines of the bolder metaphysicians, has had a mainly negative result. But as regards what would be commonly accepted as knowledge, our result is in the main positive: we have seldom found reason to reject such knowledge as the result of our criticism, and we have seen no reason to suppose man incapable of the kind of knowledge which he is generally believed to possess.
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Something radically different is needed another type of consciousness. All the poets and creative geniuses have known these swings of consciousness. Even as he experienced his Illuminations, Rimbaud visited strange realms that struck him with "terror"; he, too, went through the Law of dark inversion. But instead of being unconsciously tossed from one extreme to another, of ascending without knowing how and descending against his will, the integral seeker works methodically, consciously, without ever losing his balance, and, above all, with a growing confidence in the Consciousness-Force, which never initiates more resistance than he can meet, and never unveils more light than he can bear. After living long enough from one crisis to the next, we will ultimately discern a pattern in the action of the Force, and will notice that each time we seem to leave the ascending curve or even lose something we had achieved, we ultimately retrieve the same realization, but on a higher, more expanded level, made richer by the part that our "fall" has added; had we not "fallen," this lower part would never have become integrated into our higher ones. Perhaps it was the same collective process that brought about Athens' fall, so that some old barbarians, too, might be exposed to Plato. The integral yoga does not follow a straight line rising higher and higher out of sight, toward a smaller and smaller point, but, according to Sri Aurobindo, a spiral that slowly and methodically annexes all the parts of our being in an ever vaster opening based upon an ever deeper foundation. Not only will we observe a pattern behind this Force, or rather this Consciousness-Force, but also regular cycles and a rhythm as certain as that of the tides and the moons. The more we progress, the wider the cycles, and the closer their relationship with the cosmic movement itself until the day when we can perceive in our own descents the periodical descents of consciousness on earth, and in our own difficulties all the turmoil, resistance and revolt of the earth. Eventually, everything will become so intimately interconnected that we will be able to read in the tiniest things, the most insignificant events of daily life or the objects nearby, the signs of vaster depressions that will sweep over all men and compel their ascent or descent within the same evolutionary wave.
Then we will understand that we are unfailingly being guided toward a Goal, that everything has a meaning, even the slightest thing nothing moves without moving everything and that we are on our way to a far greater adventure than we had ever imagined. Soon, a second paradox will strike us, which is perhaps the very same one.
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As we progress, the superconscious line recedes upward and the subconscious line downward. Everything widens, everything is illuminated, but everything also closes in and converges around a sharp point of darkness, increasingly acute, crucial and pressing, as if we had turned for years and years for lifetimes around the same Problem without ever having truly touched it. Then, suddenly, it is right there, at the bottom of the hole, wriggling beneath the Light all the evil of the world within one point. The time of the Secret is drawing near. For the Law of descent is not a law of oppression, sin, or fall, any more than it is a law of repentance or heavenward escape, but truly a Golden Law, an unfathomable Premeditation that draws us simultaneously upward and downward into the depths of the subconscient and inconscient, to that central point,241 that knot of life and death, shadow and light, where the Secret awaits us. The nearer we draw to the Summit, the more we touch the Depths.
The Great Passage
1.14 - The Victory Over Death, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
It is indeed a resistance. Death is a resistance to the Law of Truth, to the ever-renewed flow of Harmony. Deep down, we are founded on the rock of the Inconscient45 the Vedic Rishis spoke of, the rock that is perhaps the first moment when the great Energy solidified, turned into matter, plunged into a dark contraction of itself, sank into an inert stillness of its triumphant flow, lost itself in a black, motionless ecstasy that was like the inversion of its solar ecstasy on the summits. Those who have had the experience of descending into the material Inconscient know that the image of the Vedic Rishis is not just an image but a rather formidable reality to go through. It is truly a rock immense and seemingly bottomless a sheer drop into a basalt chasm, which cannot even be termed black because there is not one spark of blackness there, not one glimmer that would permit one to call it black it is the Blackness, absolute, without one breath, without one vibration of anything whatever: an instantaneous suffocation, a mortal stifling, a world utterly still, utterly closed, as if strangled on itself, without a sound, without a movement, without an echo of anything whatsoever. An utter void, and yet like a black, asphyxiating existence, something that is in spite of everything but is like a density of absolute negation, a tremendous refusal which raises its walls of basalt and plunges, plunges like an abyss into an abyss, like a death into a death. To descend there is in fact like dying. It is death. It is the Inconscient. One cannot be there; one must not be there. It is like a supreme repudiation of everything that moves and breathes, everything that bears a particle of light making it possible to live. It does not move. It does not breathe. It is a NO. A tremendous NO to everything and of everything, which swallows you or expels you or forces you to summon a light greater than that Darkness.
And there is only one light greater than that thick, stifling Blackness: the supreme Light, the Great Sun of Truth.
1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Just the same as our physical world exists in three different states: solid, fluid and gaseous, so exist, following the laws of analogy, certain states of aggregation in a more subtle form, which are not accessible to our normal senses, but which are, however, connected with our physical world. These states of aggregation are called, from the hermetic point of view, planes and spheres. In these more subtle spheres the same things happen as in our physical world, and there, too, the Law of the Hermes diagram is valid: that which is above is as that which is below.
The same powers are in action there, just the same as on our planet. Here as well as there the same kind of influences work.
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Naturally, this is not so in the astral world. The idea of beauty in the astral world, too, is quite different from the idea of beauty in this physical world. Since a deceased person is no longer subject to time and space when entering the astral sphere and thus in that world loses the means to measure its degree of perfection, it longs to return to the earth. The human being not only longs to return because he must equalize, by force of the Law of Karma of cause and effect, the errors he made during his lifetime but he also longs to come back to have another chance of development in the physical world and to gather further experiences, in his spirit, for the higher spheres of the astral world.
Every human being, after having died, will realise yet another fact in the astral world: having only a low degree of development, he will not be able to communicate with beings who, during their lifetime, have reached a higher degree of development, because these beings will stay in a higher, more subtle sphere of the astral world, and he himself will not be able to travel to their sphere of light. Even if he were able to move to those higher spheres he would not be able to stand the elevated vibration there and would drop back, that is he would soon find himself transferred to that astral sphere in which he belongs on account of his degree of development. A person with a high degree of perfection, however, is able to place himself into a lower sphere by accomodating the vibration of that sphere in his spirit.
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If a being of another zone wishes to enter the earth-zone or our physical world because Divine Providence has ordered it to do so or because it is its personal desire, no matter whether in a mental, astral or physical way, then such a being or head, irrelevant of its rank, must take on the shape appropriate to the qualities of the sphere from which it comes. An angel, for instance, who has love as its main quality, will appear as a perfect beauty; a being whose qualities are severity and strictness will have to appear in the shape appropriate to these qualities. It is exactly the same with beings of negative qualities: depending on the negative qualities they represent, they will have to take on, when appearing in the earthzone or on our physical earth, the shapes which symbolize these qualities. The appearing shapes of these beings, no matter whether good or evil or from whatever zone they come, will enable the magician who is well acquainted with symbolism to tell their qualities. The qualities of a being, its appearance and symbolic representation, is fully appropriate to its name, and according to the Law of Analogy, so that even a being of the highest rank is not able to give itself a name unsuitable to its qualities.
The magician, especially if acquainted with quabbalah, is capable of thoroughly checking the analogies according to the Law of analogy and of determining whether the assertion of a being is true or not. No being, not even the worst and most deceitful type, will ever dare to tell the genuine magician a name which it does not really possess, and it will never dare to appear in a shape other than the one corresponding to its qualities. The genuine magician, however, is naturally free to order the being who has appeared in its true shape to change its shape into one desired by him. He will always be obeyed by the being concerned, for the genuine magician, as repeatedly stated before, is a perfect authority, is a God-man.
Each being, whether good or evil, whether angel or archangel, demon or archdemon, from whatever zone it may come, has certain restrictions in its qualities, caused and controlled by Divine
1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Do not be ignorant of yourself, young man. I have seen men pray with all their soul for their loved ones, who in reality were moved by the spirit of fornication, while believing that they were fulfilling the Law of love.
Touch alone is sufficient for bodily defilement, for nothing is so dangerous as this sense. Remember him who wrapped his hand in his cassock when about to carry his sick mother, and deaden your hand to natural or unnatural things, whether your own or anothers body.
1.15 - ON THE THOUSAND AND ONE GOALS, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
may also guess the Law of their overcomings, and why
they climb to their hope on this ladder.
1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in other spheres of life, in the spheres of what by an irony of our ignorance we call especially practical life,although, if the Divine be our true object of search and realisation, our normal conduct in them and our current idea of them is the very opposite of practical,we are less ready to recognise the universal truth. We take a long time to admit it even partially in theory, we are seldom ready at all to follow it in practice. And we find this difficulty because there especially, in all our practical life, we are content to be the slaves of an outward Necessity and think ourselves always excused when we admit as the Law of our thought, will and action the yoke of immediate and temporary utilities. Yet even there we must arrive eventually at the highest truth. We shall find out in the end that our daily life and our social existence are not things apart, are not another field of existence with another law than the inner and ideal. On the contrary, we shall never find out their true meaning or resolve their harsh and often agonising problems until we learn to see in them a means towards the discovery and the individual and collective expression of our highest and, because our highest, therefore our truest and fullest self, our largest most imperative principle and power of existence. All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity given us to discover, realise, express the Divine.
It is in our ethical being that this truest truth of practical life, its real and highest practicality becomes most readily apparent. It is true that the rational man has tried to reduce the ethical life like all the rest to a matter of reason, to determine its nature, its law, its practical action by some principle of reason, by some law of reason. He has never really succeeded and he never can really succeed; his appearances of success are mere pretences of the intellect building elegant and empty constructions with words and ideas, mere conventions of logic and vamped-up syntheses, in sum, pretentious failures which break down at the first strenuous touch of reality. Such was that extraordinary system of utilitarian ethics discovered in the nineteenth century the great century of science and reason and utilityby one of its most positive and systematic minds and now deservedly discredited. Happily, we need now only smile at its shallow pretentious errors, its substitution of a practical, outward and occasional test for the inner, subjective and absolute motive of ethics, its reduction of ethical action to an impossibly scientific and quite impracticable jugglery of moral mathematics, attractive enough to the reasoning and logical mind, quite false and alien to the whole instinct and intuition of the ethical being. Equally false and impracticable are other attempts of the reason to account for and regulate its principle and phenomena,the hedonistic theory which refers all virtue to the pleasure and satisfaction of the mind in good or the sociological which supposes ethics to be no more than a system of formulas of conduct generated from the social sense and a ruled direction of the social impulses and would regulate its action by that insufficient standard. The ethical being escapes from all these formulas: it is a law to itself and finds its principle in its own eternal nature which is not in its essential character a growth of evolving mind, even though it may seem to be that in its earthly history, but a light from the ideal, a reflection in man of the Divine.
Not that all these errors have not each of them a truth behind their false constructions; for all errors of the human reason are false representations, a wrong building, effective misconstructions of the truth or of a side or a part of the truth. Utility is a fundamental principle of existence and all fundamental principles of existence are in the end one; therefore it is true that the highest good is also the highest utility. It is true also that, not any balance of the greatest good of the greatest number, but simply the good of others and most widely the good of all is one ideal aim of our outgoing ethical practice; it is that which the ethical man would like to effect, if he could only find the way and be always sure what is the real good of all. But this does not help to regulate our ethical practice, nor does it supply us with its inner principle whether of being or of action, but only produces one of the many considerations by which we can feel our way along the road which is so difficult to travel. Good, not utility, must be the principle and standard of good; otherwise we fall into the hands of that dangerous pretender expediency, whose whole method is alien to the ethical. Moreover, the standard of utility, the judgment of utility, its spirit, its form, its application must vary with the individual nature, the habit of mind, the outlook on the world. Here there can be no reliable general law to which all can subscribe, no set of large governing principles such as it is sought to supply to our conduct by a true ethics. Nor can ethics at all or ever be a matter of calculation. There is only one safe rule for the ethical man, to stick to his principle of good, his instinct for good, his vision of good, his intuition of good and to govern by that his conduct. He may err, but he will be on his right road in spite of all stumblings, because he will be faithful to the Law of his nature. The saying of the Gita is always true; better is the Law of ones own nature though ill-performed, dangerous is an alien law however speciously superior it may seem to our reason. But the Law of nature of the ethical being is the pursuit of good; it can never be the pursuit of utility.
Neither is its law the pursuit of pleasure high or base, nor self-satisfaction of any kind, however subtle or even spiritual. It is true, here too, that the highest good is both in its nature and inner effect the highest bliss. Ananda, delight of being, is the spring of all existence and that to which it tends and for which it seeks openly or covertly in all its activities. It is true too that in virtue growing, in good accomplished there is great pleasure and that the seeking for it may well be always there as a subconscient motive to the pursuit of virtue. But for practical purposes this is a side aspect of the matter; it does not constitute pleasure into a test or standard of virtue. On the contrary, virtue comes to the natural man by a struggle with his pleasure-seeking nature and is often a deliberate embracing of pain, an edification of strength by suffering. We do not embrace that pain and struggle for the pleasure of the pain and the pleasure of the struggle; for that higher strenuous delight, though it is felt by the secret spirit in us, is not usually or not at first conscious in the conscient normal part of our being which is the field of the struggle. The action of the ethical man is not motived by even an inner pleasure, but by a call of his being, the necessity of an ideal, the figure of an absolute standard, a law of the Divine.
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In fact ethics is not in its essence a calculation of good and evil in the action or a laboured effort to be blameless according to the standards of the world,those are only crude appearances,it is an attempt to grow into the divine nature. Its parts of purity are an aspiration towards the inalienable purity of Gods being; its parts of truth and right are a seeking after conscious unity with the Law of the divine knowledge and will; its parts of sympathy and charity are a movement towards the infinity and universality of the divine love; its parts of strength and manhood are an edification of the divine strength and power. That is the heart of its meaning. Its high fulfilment comes when the being of the man undergoes this transfiguration; then it is not his actions that standardise his nature but his nature that gives value to his actions; then he is no longer laboriously virtuous, artificially moral, but naturally divine. Actively, too, he is fulfilled and consummated when he is not led or moved either by the infrarational impulses or the rational intelligence and will, but inspired and piloted by the divine knowledge and will made conscious in his nature. And that can only be done, first by communication of the truth of these things through the intuitive mind as it purifies itself progressively from the invasion of egoism, self-interest, desire, passion and all kinds of self-will, finally through the suprarational light and power, no longer communicated but present and in possession of his being. Such was the supreme aim of the ancient sages who had the wisdom which rational man and rational society have rejected because it was too high a truth for the comprehension of the reason and for the powers of the normal limited human will too bold and immense, too infinite an effort.
Therefore it is with the cult of Good, as with the cult of Beauty and the cult of the spiritual. Even in its first instincts it is already an obscure seeking after the divine and absolute; it aims at an absolute satisfaction, it finds its highest light and means in something beyond the reason, it is fulfilled only when it finds God, when it creates in man some image of the divine Reality. Rising from its infrarational beginnings through its intermediate dependence on the reason to a suprarational consummation, the ethical is like the aesthetic and the religious being of man a seeking after the Eternal.
1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Up to a certain point this recoil has its uses and may easily even, by tapasy, by the Law of energy increasing through compression, develop for a time a new vigour in the life of the society, as happened in India in the early Buddhist centuries. But beyond a certain point it tends, not really to kill, for that is impossible, but to discourage along with the vital instincts the indispensable life-energy of which they are the play and renders them in the end inert, feeble, narrow, unelastic, incapable of energetic reaction to force and circumstance. That was the final result in India of the agelong pressure of Buddhism and its supplanter and successor, Illusionism. No society wholly or too persistently and pervadingly dominated by this denial of the life dynamism can flourish and put forth its possibilities of growth and perfection. For from dynamic it becomes static and from the static position it proceeds to stagnation and degeneration. Even the higher being of man, which finds its account in a vigorous life dynamism, both as a fund of force to be transmuted into its own loftier energies and as a potent channel of connection with the outer life, suffers in the end by this failure and contraction. The ancient Indian ideal recognised this truth and divided life into four essential and indispensable divisions, artha, kma, dharma, moka, vital interests, satisfaction of desires of all kinds, ethics and religion, and liberation or spirituality, and it insisted on the practice and development of all. Still it tended not only to put the last forward as the goal of all the rest, which it is, but to put it at the end of life and its habitat in another world of our being, rather than here in life as a supreme status and formative power on the physical plane. But this rules out the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, the perfectibility of society and of man in society, the evolution of a new and diviner race, and without one or other of these no universal ideal can be complete. It provides a temporary and occasional, but not an inherent justification for life; it holds out no illumining fulfilment either for its individual or its collective impulse.
Let us then look at this vital instinct and life dynamism in its own being and not merely as an occasion for ethical or religious development and see whether it is really rebellious in its very nature to the Divine. We can see at once that what we have described is the first stage of the vital being, the infrarational, the instinctive; this is the crude character of its first native development and persists even when it is trained by the growing application to it of the enlightening reason. Evidently it is in this natural form a thing of the earth, gross, earthy, full even of hideous uglinesses and brute blunders and jarring discords; but so also is the infrarational stage in ethics, in aesthetics, in religion. It is true too that it presents a much more enormous difficulty than these others, more fundamentally and obstinately resists elevation, because it is the very province of the infrarational, a first formulation of consciousness out of the Inconscient, nearest to it in the scale of being. But still it has too, properly looked at, its rich elements of power, beauty, nobility, good, sacrifice, worship, divinity; here too are highreaching gods, masked but still resplendent. Until recently, and even now, reason, in the garb no longer of philosophy, but of science, has increasingly proposed to take up all this physical and vital life and perfect it by the sole power of rationalism, by a knowledge of the laws of Nature, of sociology and physiology and biology and health, by collectivism, by State education, by a new psychological education and a number of other kindred means. All this is well in its own way and in its limits, but it is not enough and can never come to a truly satisfying success. The ancient attempt of reason in the form of a high idealistic, rational, aesthetic, ethical and religious culture achieved only an imperfect discipline of the vital man and his instincts, sometimes only a polishing, a gloss, a clothing and mannerising of the original uncouth savage. The modern attempt of reason in the form of a broad and thorough rational, utilitarian and efficient instruction and organisation of man and his life is not succeeding any better for all its insistent but always illusory promise of more perfect results in the future. These endeavours cannot indeed be truly successful if our theory of life is right and if this great mass of vital energism contains in itself the imprisoned suprarational, if it has, as it then must have, the instinctive reaching out for something divine, absolute and infinite which is concealed in its blind strivings. Here too reason must be overpassed or surpass itself and become a passage to the Divine.
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But the Inconscient, if a mask, is an effective mask of the Spirit; it imposes on the evolving life and soul the Law of a difficult emergence. Life and consciousness, no less than Matter, obey in their first appearance the Law of fragmentation. Life organises itself physically round the plasm, the cell, psychologically round the small separative fragmentary ego. Consciousness itself has to concentrate its small beginnings in a poor surface formation and hide behind the veil of this limited surface existence the depths and infinities of its own being. It has to grow slowly in an external formulation till it is ready to break the crust between this petty outer figure of ourselves, which we think to be the whole, and the concealed self within us. Even the spiritual being seems to obey this law of fragmentation and manifest as a unit in the whole a spark of itself that evolves into an individual psyche. It is this little ego, this fragmented consciousness, this concealed soul-spark on which is imposed the task of meeting and striving with the forces of the universe, entering into contact with all that seems to it not itself, increasing under the pressure of inner and outer Nature till it can become one with all existence. It has to grow into self-knowledge and world-knowledge, to get within itself and discover that it is a spiritual being, to get outside of itself and discover its larger truth as the cosmic Individual, to get beyond itself and know and live in some supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. For this immense task it is equipped only with the instruments of its original Ignorance. Its limited being is the cause of all the difficulty, discord, struggle, division that mars life. The limitation of its consciousness, unable to dominate or assimilate the contacts of the universal Energy, is the cause of all its suffering, pain and sorrow. Its limited power of consciousness formulated in an ignorant will unable to grasp or follow the right law of its life and action is the cause of all its error, wrongdoing and evil. There is no other true cause; for all apparent causes are themselves circumstance and result of this original sin of the being. Only when it rises and widens out of this limited separative consciousness into the oneness of the liberated Spirit, can it escape from these results of its growth out of the Inconscience.
If we see this as the truth behind Life, we can understand at once why it has had to follow its present curve of ignorant self-formulation. But also we see what through it all it is obscurely seeking, trying to grasp and form, feeling out for in its own higher impulses and deepest motives, and why these are in ituseless, perturbing and chimerical if it were only an animal product of inconscient Nature,these urgings towards self-discovery, mastery, unity, freedom from its lower self, spiritual release. Evolving out of its first involved condition in Matter and in plant life, effecting a first imperfect organised consciousness in the animal it arrives in man, the mental being, at the possibility of a new, a conscious evolution which will bring it to its goal and at a certain stage of his development it wakes in him the overmastering impulse to pass on from mental to spiritual being. Life cannot arrive at its secret ultimates by following its first infrarational motive forces of instinct and desire; for all here is a groping and seeking without finding, a field of brief satisfactions stamped with the Inconscients seal of insufficiency and impermanence. But neither can human reason give it what it searches after; for reason can only establish half-lights and a provisional order. Therefore with man as he is the upward urge in life cannot rest satisfied always; its evolutionary impulse cannot stop short at this transitional term, this half-achievement. It has to aim at a higher scale of consciousness, deliver out of life and mind something that is still latent and inchoate.
1.17 - Astral Journey Example, How to do it, How to Verify your Experience, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The unusual word "unassuaged" is very interesting. People generally suppose that "will" is the slave of purpose, that you cannot will a thing properly unless you are aiming at a definite goal. But this is not the case. Thinking of the goal actually serves to distract the mind. In these few words is included the whole method without all the bombastic piety of the servile doctrine of mysticism about the surrender of the Will. Nor is this idea of surrender actually correct; the will must be identified with the Divine Will, so-called. One wants to become like a mighty flowing river, which is not consciously aiming at the sea, and is certainly not yielding to any external influence. It is acting in conformity with the Law of its own nature, with the Tao. One can describe it, if necessary, as "passive love"; but it is love (in effect) raised to its highest potential. We come back to the same thing: when passion is purged of any "lust of result" it is irresistible; it has become "Law." I can never understand why it is that mystics fail to see that their smarmy doctrine of surrender actually insists upon the duality which they have set out to abolish!
I certainly have no intention of "holding you down" to "a narrow path of work" or any path. All I can do is to help you to understand clearly the laws of your own nature, so that you may go ahead without extraneous influence. It does not follow that a plan that I have found successful in my own case will be any use to you. That is another cardinal mistake of most teachers. One must have become a Master of the Temple to annihilate one's ego. Most teachers, consciously or unconsciously, try to get others to follow in their steps. I might as well dress you up in my castoff clothing! (In the steps of the Master. At the feet of the Master. Steward!)
1.17 - Religion as the Law of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.17 - Religion as the Law of Life
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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The Western recoil from religion, that minimising of its claim and insistence by which Europe progressed from the mediaeval religious attitude through the Renascence and the Reformation to the modern rationalistic attitude, that making of the ordinary earthly life our one preoccupation, that labour to fulfil ourselves by the Law of the lower members, divorced from all spiritual seeking, was an opposite error, the contrary ignorant extreme, the blind swing of the pendulum from a wrong affirmation to a wrong negation. It is an error because perfection cannot be found in such a limitation and restriction; for it denies the complete law of human existence, its deepest urge, its most secret impulse. Only by the light and power of the highest can the lower be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished. The lower life of man is in form undivine, though in it there is the secret of the divine, and it can only be divinised by finding the higher law and the spiritual illumination. On the other hand, the impatience which condemns or despairs of life or discourages its growth because it is at present undivine and is not in harmony with the spiritual life, is an equal ignorance, andha tama. The world-shunning monk, the mere ascetic may indeed well find by this turn his own individual and peculiar salvation, the spiritual recompense of his renunciation and Tapasya, as the materialist may find by his own exclusive method the appropriate rewards of his energy and concentrated seeking; but neither can be the true guide of mankind and its law-giver. The monastic attitude implies a fear, an aversion, a distrust of life and its aspirations, and one cannot wisely guide that with which one is entirely out of sympathy, that which one wishes to minimise and discourage. The sheer ascetic spirit, if it directed life and human society, could only prepare it to be a means for denying itself and getting away from its own motives. An ascetic guidance might tolerate the lower activities, but only with a view to persuade them in the end to minimise and finally cease from their own action. But a spirituality which draws back from life to envelop it without being dominated by it does not labour under this disability. The spiritual man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in the ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived fully the life of man and found the word of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth. He has risen above these lower limitations and can view all things from above, but also he is in sympathy with their effort and can view them from within; he has the complete inner knowledge and the higher surpassing knowledge. Therefore he can guide the world humanly as God guides it divinely, because like the Divine he is in the life of the world and yet above it.
In spirituality, then, understood in this sense, we must seek for the directing light and the harmonising law, and in religion only in proportion as it identifies itself with this spirituality. So long as it falls short of this, it is one human activity and power among others, and, even if it be considered the most important and the most powerful, it cannot wholly guide the others. If it seeks always to fix them into the limits of a creed, an unchangeable law, a particular system, it must be prepared to see them revolting from its control; for although they may accept this impress for a time and greatly profit by it, in the end they must move by the Law of their being towards a freer activity and an untrammelled movement. Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the Law of ones own nature, dharma. This liberty it will give to all the fundamental parts of our being. It will give that freedom to philosophy and science which ancient Indian religion gave,freedom even to deny the spirit, if they will,as a result of which philosophy and science never felt in ancient India any necessity of divorcing themselves from religion, but grew rather into it and under its light. It will give the same freedom to mans seeking for political and social perfection and to all his other powers and aspirations. Only it will be vigilant to illuminate them so that they may grow into the light and law of the spirit, not by suppression and restriction, but by a self-searching, self-controlled expansion and a many-sided finding of their greatest, highest and deepest potentialities. For all these are potentialities of the spirit.
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1.17 - SUFFERING, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It will be as well to illustrate these generalizations by a few examples. Let us consider first the suffering inflicted by living organisms on themselves and on other living organisms in the mere process of keeping alive. The cause of such suffering is the craving for individual existence, expressing itself specifically in the form of hunger. Hunger is entirely naturala part of every creatures dharma. The suffering it causes alike to the hungry and to those who satisfy their hunger is inseparable from the existence of sentient creatures. The existence of sentient creatures has a goal and purpose which is ultimately the supreme good of every one of them. But meanwhile the suffering of creatures remains a fact and is a necessary part of creatureliness. In so far as this is the case, creation is the beginning of the Fall. The consummation of the Fall takes place when creatures seek to intensify their separateness beyond the limits prescribed by the Law of their being. On the biological level the Fall would seem to have been consummated very frequently during the course of evolutionary history.
Every species, except the human, chose immediate, short-range success by means of specialization. But specialization always leads into blind alleys. It is only by remaining precariously generalized that an organism can advance towards that rational intelligence which is its compensation for not having a body and instincts perfectly adapted to one particular kind of life in one particular kind of environment. Rational intelligence makes possible unparalleled worldly success on the one hand and, on the other, a further advance towards spirituality and a return, through unitive knowledge, to the divine Ground.
1.17 - The Divine Birth and Divine Works, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Dharma is a word which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the Law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more outward and practical significance social and political justice, or even simply the observation of the social law. If used in this sense we shall have to understand that when unrighteousness, injustice and oppression prevail, the
Avatar descends to deliver the good and destroy the wicked, to break down injustice and oppression and restore the ethical balance of mankind.
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principle working itself out in forms and laws of action, forms of the inner and the outer life, orderings of relations of every kind in the world. Dharma1 is both that which we hold to and that which holds together our inner and outer activities. In its primary sense it means a fundamental law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities, and in this sense each being, type, species, individual, group has its own dharma. Secondly, there is the divine nature which has to develop and manifest in us, and in this sense dharma is the Law of the inner workings by which that grows in our being. Thirdly, there is the law by which we govern our outgoing thought and action and our relations with each other so as to help best both our own growth and that of the human race towards the divine ideal.
Dharma is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging, and so it is in the fundamental principle, in the ideal, but in its forms it is continually changing and evolving, because man does not already possess the ideal or live in it, but aspires more or less perfectly towards it, is growing towards its knowledge and practice. And in this growth dharma is all that helps us to grow into the divine purity, largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands its shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its law, all that has not yielded up and does not will to yield up its secret of divine values, but presents a front of perversion and contradiction, of impurity, narrowness, bondage, darkness, weakness, vileness, discord and suffering and division, and the hideous and the crude, all that man has to leave behind in his progress. This is the adharma, notdharma, which strives with and seeks to overcome the dharma, to draw backward and downward, the reactionary force which makes for evil, ignorance and darkness. Between the two there is perpetual battle and struggle, oscillation of victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the downward forces prevail. This has been typified in the Vedic image of the struggle between the divine and the Titanic powers, the sons
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It is these things that condition and determine the work of the Avatar. In the Buddhistic formula the disciple takes refuge from all that opposes his liberation in three powers, the dharma, the sangha, the Buddha. So in Christianity we have the Law of Christian living, the Church and the Christ.
These three are always the necessary elements of the work of the Avatar. He gives a dharma, a law of self-discipline by which to grow out of the lower into the higher life and which necessarily includes a rule of action and of relations with our fellowmen and other beings, endeavour in the eightfold path or the Law of faith, love and purity or any other such revelation of the nature of the divine in life. Then because every tendency in man has its collective as well as its individual aspect, because those who follow one way are naturally drawn together into spiritual companionship and unity, he establishes the sangha, the fellowship and union of those whom his personality and his teaching unite. In Vaishnavism there is the same trio, bhagavata, bhakta, bhagavan, - the bhagavata, which is the Law of the Vaishnava dispensation of adoration and love, the bhakta representing the fellowship of those in whom that law is manifest, bhagavan, the divine Lover and
Beloved in whose being and nature the divine law of love is founded and fulfils itself. The Avatar represents this third element, the divine personality, nature and being who is the soul of the dharma and the sangha, informs them with himself, keeps them living and draws men towards the felicity and the liberation.
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is therefore the taking up of all human relations into a higher divine meaning; starting from the established ethical, social and religious rule which binds together the whole community in which the God-seeker lives, it lifts it up by informing it with the Brahmic consciousness; the law it gives is the Law of oneness, of equality, of liberated, desireless, God-governed action, of
God-knowledge and self-knowledge enlightening and drawing to itself all the nature and all the action, drawing it towards divine being and divine consciousness, and of God-love as the supreme power and crown of the knowledge and the action.
1.17 - The Spiritus Familiaris or Serving Spirits, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The attitude a genuine magician takes towards getting into contact with a head, i. e. a higher being, a higher intelligence, is quite different to that of a sorcerer or black-magician. The latter wants to get beings under his power without any special effort and without the appropriate preparatory operations and magical development, in order to make these being serve him and help him to realize all his desires. Unfortunately, a sorcerer is likely to forget that by doing so he is debiting his Karma and that he is doing this at the costs of his evolution, and above all, to the costs of his magical development. Beings serving a sorcerer never work without reward. From the material point of view such services may only be regarded as loans. Actually, the sorcerer becomes the slave of the relevant being, for after their contract has expired, the sorcerer must, as already pointed 'out before, pay back everything. The beings are fully aware of this fact, and their devotion towards the magician, which is to ensure him that they are always willing to serve him and to fulfill any of his desires, often delude a sorcerer to the erroneous opinion that he has become master over the beings. His desires, his claims towards these beings increase during the course of the alliance, and the sorcerer eventually develops into a glutton. Only shortly before the expiration date of the contract, the sorcerer realizes what he has done and what Karmic responsibilities he has taken upon his shoulders. But at that point it is usually too late, and all advice and instructions to shake off the bondages of such a contract are, from the hermetic point of view, useless and impracticable, andin the eyes of a true magician sheer ridiculous. Negative effects that have once been set at work, no matter in which way, must, due to the Law of cause and effect, have their due clear off and adjustment.
One might oppose that Divine Providence, in its aspects of love and charity, could, in some cases, make an exception. However, the genuine magician knows that causes are always followed up by the relevant effects, otherwise the Law of Karma, the Law of retaliation, the rule of law of the whole universe, would be untrue, that is illusory. That this is not so, but that, on the contrary, everything takes place due to the most genuine laws with a most admirable precision need not be stressed here. Divine love and charity with all their other aspects such as benevolence etc. work up to the point where man realizes that he himself is the cause of the sorrows that have overcome him, and this knowledge enables him to carry his burden more easily. From the correct universal point of view Providence, in its aspects of love, benevolence etc., cannot further intervene. Every experienced magician, knowing the universal laws, finds this in order. Every genuine magician should therefore take heed not to conclude a contract which would entirely halt his personal magical development and evolution. A true initiate will not even be tempted to conclude contacts with high and good heads, no matter how great the advantages might be. To bind oneself to spirit beings and their spheres means losing the freedom of one's own thoughts and doings.
Why then, one might ask, is it necessary to deal with the magic of evocation; is it not better to work for one's personal development and to leave the beings where they are? The answer to this
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
change each organ into a center of conscious energy that will replace the symbolic functioning by the true one. For example, behind the symbolic movement of the lungs, there is a true movement that gives the capacity of lightness, and you escape the Law of gravity. 346 And likewise for each organ. There is a true movement behind every symbolic one. This doesn't mean that there will no longer be any recognizable form; form will be made up of qualities rather than solid particles. It will be a practical or pragmatic form, so to speak
supple, mobile and light at will, in contrast to the present fixity of the gross material form. Thus Matter will become a divine expression; the supramental Will will be able to translate the whole gamut of its inner life into corresponding changes in its own substance, much as our faces now change (although so little and so imperfectly) according to our emotions: the body will be made of concentrated energy obeying the will. Instead of being, in the powerful words of Epictetus, "a little soul carrying a corpse,"347 we will become a living soul in a living body.
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have no intention of giving my sanction to a new edition of the old fiasco, wrote Sri Aurobindo, a partial and transient spiritual opening within with no true and radical change in the Law of the external nature.363 Levitation, the conquest of sleep, hunger and even illness barely touch the surface of the problem. These are negative efforts directed against a prevalent order, which still implies a recognition (in negative terms) of the old laws, while it is the order itself that must change. All such "miracles" are but the reverse side of our impotence.
What we need is not a better world, but a new world, not a "highly concentrated" atmosphere, but a "lowly" concentrated one, as it were.
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to be sure, but crucifixions, especially when worshipped, only perpetuate the Law of death. It is not a crucified body that will save the world, insists the Mother, but a glorified body.
No, it is not spectacular work, but decidedly a "microscopic work,"
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It is in life that the transformation must be achieved; it is on the earth that one progresses, on the earth that one realizes. It is in the body that the Victory is won. Then the Law of evolution will no longer be a law of opposites exhorting us through endless dualisms in order to uproot us from our human childhood. It will be a law of light and unending progress, a new evolution in the joy of Truth. The Victory must be won only once. One glorious body. One body must break the iron law for all bodies. And all human beings must collaborate in that one Victory. The strategic difficulty of the transformation is fully before us. If earth calls and the Supreme answers, the hour can be even now.398
397
12.02 - The Stress of the Spirit, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There seems to be an entity lying at the other end away from Matter, it is the Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism, Spirit is Freedom, Liberty, Self-choice. That is the well-known dualityPurusha and Prakriti, that divide existence between themselves. Purusha is the conscient Being, and Prakriti the inconscient becoming. These dual realities are however not irrevocably distinct and separate incommensurables. They are not unbridgeable units foreign to each other. The conscient being infuses itself into the inconscient becoming and initiates a conscious movement in the unconscious field. Thus where there was the absolute determinism of matter, sparks from the free consciousness intervene and modify the settled balance. That is the inner sense of the aberrations that one observes in the play even of physical laws. It is just the beginning of the stress of consciousness in unconscious matter. That stress increases in the march of time, in the process of evolution; and the natural freedom of the subject impinges on the rigid law of the object making it more and more pliable and plastic, more and more malleable and even reversible. In man a balance is struck between freedom and bondage although apparently bondage overweighs freedom. In the higher evolved status of being man arrives and can arrive at yet greater degrees of freedom and in the end eliminate altogether the element of bondage and transmute it into the self-expressed rhythm of the higher consciousness. The supreme Divine Consciousness or Being is that where Nature's determinism is dissolved in the self-law of the All Spirit, the Divine Will becoming the Law of the being.
The whole process of creation, the final goal of the Divine Lila is the liberation of Nature, Prakriti. Prakriti is born in Bondage as inconscient Energy. Prakriti itself is a prison-house made of, wholly made of unconsciousness. The conscious Being is there involved, imprisoned and suffers and is miserable. For the gloom of unconsciousness covers it and almost swallows it up. That is the immanent Godhead in creation and is in man his soul, an emanation and representative of the Godhead. As it is commonly understood, liberation means the release of the Godhead out of the prison escaping into the Transcendent. The riddle of this creation is therefore to be solved by this process of escape of the Conscious Principle from out of the unconscious covering beyond into the pure Consciousness laya for the human being and pralaya for the creation. Actually the Upanishad gives graphically the direction to the human soul to pull himself out, out of the containing form: even as one draws the inner stem of a blade of grass out of its covering, for that which is Pure, Stainless is not here but out there.
1.2.05 - Aspiration, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Him, feel the Light, the Presence, the Love, the Ananda is what matters. So it is always for the spiritual aspiration - it is the Law of the spiritual life.
Don't waste time any longer in these ideas of the mind or in any starts of the vital - blow these clouds away. Keep fixed on the one thing indispensable.
1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the other hand, there are some people who start with a genuine and dynamic will for a total surrender. It is those who are governed by the psychic or are governed by a clear and enlightened mental will which having once accepted surrender as the Law of the sadhana will stand no nonsense about it and insists on the other parts of the being following its direction. Here there is still effort, but it is so ready and spontaneous and has so much the sense of a greater Force behind it that the sadhak hardly feels that he is making an effort at all. In the contrary case of a will in mind or vital to retain self-will, a reluctance to give up your independent movement, there must be struggle and endeavour until the wall between the instrument in front and the Divinity behind or above is broken. No rule can be laid down which applies without distinction to everybody - the variations in human nature are too great to be covered by a single trenchant rule.
It is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort at once - and not always desirable; for personal effort is better than tamasic inertia.
1.2.08 - Faith, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Cosmic Will is not, to our ordinary consciousness, something that acts as an independent power doing whatever it chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the Law of these forces and their results.
It is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces.
1.20 - Death, Desire and Incapacity, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:But, apart from all these necessities, there is the one fundamental necessity of the nature and object of embodied life itself, which is to seek infinite experience on a finite basis; and since the form, the basis by its very organisation limits the possibility of experience, this can only be done by dissolving it and seeking new forms. For the soul, having once limited itself by concentrating on the moment and the field, is driven to seek its infinity again by the principle of succession, by adding moment to moment and thus storing up a Time-experience which it calls its past; in that Time it moves through successive fields, successive experiences or lives, successive accumulations of knowledge, capacity, enjoyment, and all this it holds in subconscious or superconscious memory as its fund of past acquisition in Time. To this process change of form is essential, and for the soul involved in individual body change of form means dissolution of the body in subjection to the law and compulsion of the Alllife in the material universe, to its law of supply of the material of form and demand on the material, to its principle of constant intershock and the struggle of the embodied life to exist in a world of mutual devouring. And this is the Law of Death.
9:This then is the necessity and justification of Death, not as a denial of Life, but as a process of Life; death is necessary because eternal change of form is the sole immortality to which the finite living substance can aspire and eternal change of experience the sole infinity to which the finite mind involved in living body can attain. This change of form cannot be allowed to remain merely a constant renewal of the same form-type such as constitutes our bodily life between birth and death; for unless the formtype is changed and the experiencing mind is thrown into new forms in new circumstances of time, place and environment, the necessary variation of experience which the very nature of existence in Time and Space demands, cannot be effectuated. And it is only the process of Death by dissolution and by the devouring of life by Life, it is only the absence of freedom, the compulsion, the struggle, the pain, the subjection to something that appears to be Not-Self which makes this necessary and salutary change appear terrible and undesirable to our mortal mentality. It is the sense of being devoured, broken up, destroyed or forced away which is the sting of Death and which even the belief in personal survival of death cannot wholly abrogate.
10:But this process is a necessity of that mutual devouring which we see to be the initial law of Life in Matter. Life, says the Upanishad, is Hunger which is Death, and by this Hunger which is Death, asanaya mr.tyuh., the material world has been created. For Life here assumes as its mould material substance, and material substance is Being infinitely divided and seeking infinitely to aggregate itself; between these two impulses of infinite division and infinite aggregation the material existence of the universe is constituted. The attempt of the individual, the living atom, to maintain and aggrandise itself is the whole sense of Desire; a physical, vital, moral, mental increase by a more and more all-embracing experience, a more and more all-embracing possession, absorption, assimilation, enjoyment is the inevitable, fundamental, ineradicable impulse of Existence, once divided and individualised, yet ever secretly conscious of its all-embracing, all-possessing infinity. The impulse to realise that secret consciousness is the spur of the cosmic Divine, the lust of the embodied Self within every individual creature; and it is inevitable, just, salutary that it should seek to realise it first in the terms of life by an increasing growth and expansion. In the physical world this can only be done by feeding on the environment, by aggrandising oneself through the absorption of others or of what is possessed by others; and this necessity is the universal justification of Hunger in all its forms. Still what devours must also be devoured; for the Law of interchange, of action and reaction, of limited capacity and therefore of a final exhaustion and succumbing governs all life in the physical world.
11:In the conscious mind that which was still only a vital hunger in subconscious life, transforms itself into higher forms; hunger in the vital parts becomes craving of Desire in the mentalised life, straining of Will in the intellectual or thinking life. This movement of desire must and ought to continue until the individual has grown sufficiently so that he can now at last become master of himself and by increasing union with the Infinite possessor of his universe. Desire is the lever by which the divine Life-principle effects its end of self-affirmation in the universe and the attempt to extinguish it in the interests of inertia is a denial of the divine Life-principle, a Will-not-to-be which is necessarily ignorance; for one cannot cease to be individually except by being infinitely. Desire too can only cease rightly by becoming the desire of the infinite and satisfying itself with a supernal fulfilment and an infinite satisfaction in the all-possessing bliss of the Infinite. Meanwhile it has to progress from the type of a mutually devouring hunger to the type of a mutual giving, of an increasingly joyous sacrifice of interchange; - the individual gives himself to other individuals and receives them back in exchange; the lower gives itself to the higher and the higher to the lower so that they may be fulfilled in each other; the human gives itself to the Divine and the Divine to the human; the All in the individual gives itself to the All in the universe and receives its realised universality as a divine recompense. Thus the Law of Hunger must give place progressively to the Law of Love, the Law of Division to the Law of Unity, the Law of Death to the Law of Immortality. Such is the necessity, such the justification, such the culmination and self-fulfilment of the Desire that is at work in the universe.
12:As this mask of Death which Life assumes results from the movement of the finite seeking to affirm its immortality, so Desire is the impulse of the Force of Being individualised in Life to affirm progressively in the terms of succession in Time and of self-extension in Space, in the framework of the finite, its infinite Bliss, the Ananda of Sachchidananda. The mask of Desire which that impulse assumes comes directly from the third phenomenon of Life, its law of incapacity. Life is an infinite Force working in the terms of the finite; inevitably, throughout its overt individualised action in the finite its omnipotence must appear and act as a limited capacity and a partial impotence, although behind every act of the individual, however weak, however futile, however stumbling, there must be the whole superconscious and subconscious presence of infinite omnipotent Force; without that presence behind it no least single movement in the cosmos can happen; into its sum of universal action each single act and movement falls by the fiat of the omnipotent omniscience which works as the Supermind inherent in things. But the individualised life-force is to its own consciousness limited and full of incapacity; for it has to work not only against the mass of other environing individualised life-forces, but also subject to control and denial by the infinite Life itself with whose total will and trend its own will and trend may not immediately agree. Therefore limitation of force, phenomenon of incapacity is the third of the three characteristics of individualised and divided Life. On the other hand, the impulse of self-enlargement and allpossession remains and it does not and is not meant to measure or limit itself by the limit of its present force or capacity. Hence from the gulf between the impulse to possess and the force of possession desire arises; for if there were no such discrepancy, if the force could always take possession of its object, always attain securely its end, desire would not come into existence but only a calm and self-possessed Will without craving such as is the Will of the Divine.
1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Oneness with God, oneness with all beings, the realisation of the eternal divine unity everywhere and the drawing onwards of men towards that oneness are the Law of life which arises from the teachings of the Gita. There can be none greater, wider, more profound. Liberated oneself, to live in this oneness, to help mankind on the path that leads towards it and meanwhile to do all works for God and help man also to do with joy and acceptance all the works to which he is called, kr.tsna-karma-kr.t, sarvakarman.i jos.ayan, no greater or more liberal rule of divine works can be given. This freedom and this oneness are the secret goal of our human nature and the ultimate will in the existence of the race. It is that to which it must turn for the happiness all
Equality and Knowledge
1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Choosing Luther and Calvin instead of the spiritual reformers who were their contemporaries, Protestant Europe got the kind of theology it liked. But it also got, along with other unanticipated by-products, the Thirty Years War, capitalism and the first rudiments of modern Germany. If we wish, Dean Inge has recently written, to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought upon the world I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther It (Lutheranism) worships a God who is neither just nor merciful the Law of Nature, which ought to be the court of appeal against unjust authority, is identified (by Luther) with the existing order of society, to which absolute obe thence is due. And so on. Right belief is the first branch of the Eightfold Path leading to deliverance; the root and primal cause of bondage is wrong belief, or ignorancean ignorance, let us remember, which is never completely invincible, but always, in the last analysis, a matter of will. If we dont know, it is because we find it more convenient not to know. Original ignorance is the same thing as original sin.
next chapter: 1.21 - IDOLATRY
1.20 - The End of the Curve of Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the realm of thought that does not matter; for as there the reason does not drive at practice, it is able with impunity to allow the most opposite view-points and systems to exist side by side, to compare them, seek for reconciliations, synthetise in the most various ways, change constantly, enlarge, elevate; it is free to act without thinking at every point of immediate practical consequences. But when the reason seeks to govern life, it is obliged to fix its view-point, to crystallise its system; every change becomes or at least seems a thing doubtful, difficult and perilous, all the consequences of which cannot be foreseen, while the conflict of view-points, principles, systems leads to strife and revolution and not to a basis of harmonious development. The reason mechanises in order to arrive at fixity of conduct and practice amid the fluidity of things; but while mechanism is a sufficient principle in dealing with physical forces, because it is in harmony with the law or dharma of physical Nature, it can never truly succeed in dealing with conscious life, because there it is contrary to the Law of life, its highest dharma. While, then, the attempt at a rational ordering of society is an advance upon the comparative immobility and slow subconscient or half-conscient evolution of infrarational societies and the confusedly mixed movement of semi-rational societies, it can never arrive at perfection by its own methods, because reason is neither the first principle of life, nor can be its last, supreme and sufficient principle.
The question remains whether anarchistic thought supervening upon the collectivistic can any more successfully find a satisfying social principle. For if it gets rid of mechanism, the one practical means of a rationalising organisation of life, on what will it build and with what can it create? It may be contended as against the anarchistic objection that the collectivist period is, if not the last and best, at least a necessary stage in social progress. For the vice of individualism is that in insisting upon the free development and self-expression of the life and the mind or the life-soul in the individual, it tends to exaggerate the egoism of the mental and vital being and prevent the recognition of unity with others on which alone a complete self-development and a harmless freedom can be founded. Collectivism at least insists upon that unity by entirely subordinating the life of the isolated ego to the life of the greater group-ego, and its office may be thus to stamp upon the mentality and life-habits of the individual the necessity of unifying his life with the life of others. Afterwards, when again the individual asserts his freedom, as some day he must, he may have learned to do it on the basis of this unity and not on the basis of his separate egoistic life. This may well be the intention of Nature in human society in its movement towards a collectivist principle of social living. Collectivism may itself in the end realise this aim if it can modify its own dominant principle far enough to allow for a free individual development on the basis of unity and a closely harmonised common existence. But to do that it must first spiritualise itself and transform the very soul of its inspiring principle: it cannot do it on the basis of the logical reason and a mechanically scientific ordering of life.
1.20 - The Hound of Heaven, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
"funeral" hymn X.14, and it is worth while noting the real character of Yama and his two dogs in the Rig Veda. In the later ideas Yama is the god of Death and has his own special world; but in the Rig Veda he seems to have been originally a form of the Sun, - even as late as the Isha Upanishad we find the name used as an appellation of the Sun, - and then one of the twin children of the wide-shining Lord of Truth. He is the guardian of the dharma, the Law of the Truth, satyadharma, which is a condition of immortality, and therefore himself the guardian of immortality. His world is Swar, the world of immortality, amr.te loke aks.ite, where, as we are told in IX.113, is the indestructible Light, where Swar is established, yatra jyotir ajasram, yasmin loke svar hitam. The hymn X.14 is indeed not a hymn of Death so much as a hymn of Life and Immortality.
Yama and the ancient Fathers have discovered the path to that world which is a pasture of the Cows whence the enemy cannot bear away the radiant herds, yamo no gatum prathamo viveda, nais.a gavyutir apabhartava u, yatra nah. purve pitarah. pareyuh..
1.2.10 - Opening, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the Law of the sadhana to open to the influences of the higher worlds.
It is true that through whatever is strongest in him a sadhak can most easily open to the Divine.
1.21 - The Ascent of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:But as the scientific mind sought to extend to Life the mechanical principle proper to the existence and concealed mechanical consciousness in Matter, not seeing that a new principle has entered whose very reason of being is to subject to itself the mechanical, so the Darwinian formula was used to extend too largely the aggressive principle of Life, the vital selfishness of the individual, the instinct and process of self-preservation, selfassertion and aggressive living. For these two first states of Life contain in themselves the seeds of a new principle and another state which must increase in proportion as Mind evolves out of matter through the vital formula into its own law. And still more must all things change when as Life evolves upward towards Mind, so Mind evolves upward towards Supermind and Spirit. Precisely because the struggle for survival, the impulse towards permanence is contradicted by the Law of death, the individual life is compelled, and used, to secure permanence rather for its species than for itself; but this it cannot do without the co-operation of others; and the principle of co-operation and mutual help, the desire of others, the desire of the wife, the child, the friend and helper, the associated group, the practice of association, of conscious joining and interchange are the seeds out of which flowers the principle of love. Let us grant that at first love may only be an extended selfishness and that this aspect of extended selfishness may persist and dominate, as it does still persist and dominate, in higher stages of the evolution: still as mind evolves and more and more finds itself, it comes by the experience of life and love and mutual help to perceive that the natural individual is a minor term of being and exists by the universal. Once this is discovered, as it is inevitably discovered by man the mental being, his destiny is determined; for he has reached the point at which Mind can begin to open to the truth that there is something beyond itself; from that moment his evolution, however obscure and slow, towards that superior something, towards Spirit, towards supermind, towards supermanhood is inevitably predetermined.
3:Therefore Life is predestined by its own nature to a third status, a third set of terms of its self-expression. If we examine this ascent of Life we shall see that the last terms of its actual evolution, the terms of that which we have called its third status, must necessarily be in appearance the very contradiction and opposite but in fact the very fulfilment and transfiguration of its first conditions. Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms of Matter, and of this rigid division the atom, which is the basis of all material form, is the very type. The atom stands apart from all others even in its union with them, rejects death and dissolution under any ordinary force and is the physical type of the separate ego defining its existence against the principle of fusion in Nature. But unity is as strong a principle in Nature as division; it is indeed the master principle of which division is only a subordinate term, and to the principle of unity every divided form must therefore subordinate itself in one fashion or another by mechanical necessity, by compulsion, by assent or inducement. Therefore, if Nature for her own ends, in order principally to have a firm basis for her combinations and a fixed seed of forms, allows the atom ordinarily to resist the process of fusion by dissolution, she compels it to subserve the process of fusion by aggregation; the atom, as it is the first aggregate, is also the first basis of aggregate unities.
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7:Association with love as its secret principle and its emergent summit is the type, the power of this new relation and therefore the governing principle of the development into the third status of life. The conscious preservation of individuality along with the consciously accepted necessity and desire of interchange, self-giving and fusion with other individuals, is necessary for the working of the principle of love; for if either is abolished, the working of love ceases, whatever may take its place. Fulfilment of love by entire self-immolation, even with an illusion of selfannihilation, is indeed an idea and an impulse in the mental being, but it points to a development beyond this third status of Life. This third status is a condition in which we rise progressively beyond the struggle for life by mutual devouring and the survival of the fittest by that struggle; for there is more and more a survival by mutual help and a self-perfectioning by mutual adaptation, interchange and fusion. Life is a self-affirmation of being, even a development and survival of ego, but of a being that has need of other beings, an ego that seeks to meet and include other egos and to be included in their life. The individuals and the aggregates who develop most the Law of association and the Law of love, of common help, kindliness, affection, comradeship, unity, who harmonise most successfully survival and mutual selfgiving, the aggregate increasing the individual and the individual the aggregate, as well as individual increasing individual and aggregate aggregate by mutual interchange, will be the fittest for survival in this tertiary status of the evolution.
8:This development is significant of the increasing predominance of Mind5 which progressively imposes its own law more and more upon the material existence. For Mind by its greater subtlety does not need to devour in order to assimilate, possess and grow; rather the more it gives, the more it receives and grows; and the more it fuses itself into others, the more it fuses others into itself and increases the scope of its being. Physical life exhausts itself by too much giving and ruins itself by too much devouring; but though Mind in proportion as it leans on the Law of Matter suffers the same limitation, yet, on the other hand, in proportion as it grows into its own law it tends to overcome this limitation, and in proportion as it overcomes the material limitation giving and receiving become one. For in its upward ascent it grows towards the rule of conscious unity in differentiation which is the divine law of the manifest Sachchidananda.
9:The second term of the original status of life is subconscious will which in the secondary status becomes hunger and conscious desire, - hunger and desire, the first seed of conscious mind. The growth into the third status of life by the principle of association, the growth of love, does not abolish the Law of desire, but rather transforms and fulfils it. Love is in its nature the desire to give oneself to others and to receive others in exchange; it is a commerce between being and being. Physical life does not desire to give itself, it desires only to receive. It is true that it is compelled to give itself, for the life which only receives and does not give must become barren, wither and perish, - if indeed such life in its entirety is possible at all here or in any world; but it is compelled, not willing, it obeys the subconscious impulse of Nature rather than consciously shares in it. Even when love intervenes, the self-giving at first still preserves to a large extent the mechanical character of the subconscious will in the atom. Love itself at first obeys the Law of hunger and enjoys the receiving and the exacting from others rather than the giving and surrendering to others which it admits chiefly as a necessary price for the thing that it desires. But here it has not yet attained to its true nature; its true law is to establish an equal commerce in which the joy of giving is equal to the joy of receiving and tends in the end to become even greater; but that is when it is shooting beyond itself under the pressure of the psychic flame to attain to the fulfilment of utter unity and has therefore to realise that which seemed to it not-self as an even greater and dearer self than its own individuality. In its life-origin, the Law of love is the impulse to realise and fulfil oneself in others and by others, to be enriched by enriching, to possess and be possessed because without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly.
10:The inert incapacity of atomic existence to possess itself, the subjection of the material individual to the not-self, belongs to the first status of life. The consciousness of limitation and the struggle to possess, to master both self and the not-self is the type of the secondary status. Here, too, the development to the third status brings a transformation of the original terms into a fulfilment and a harmony which repeat the terms while seeming to contradict them. There comes about through association and through love a recognition of the not-self as a greater self and therefore a consciously accepted submission to its law and need which fulfils the increasing impulse of aggregate life to absorb the individual; and there is a possession again by the individual of the life of others as his own and of all that it has to give him as his own which fulfils the opposite impulse of individual possession. Nor can this relation of mutuality between the individual and the world he lives in be expressed or complete or secure unless the same relation is established between individual and individual and between aggregate and aggregate. All the difficult effort of man towards the harmonisation of self-affirmation and freedom, by which he possesses himself, with association and love, fraternity, comradeship, in which he gives himself to others, his ideals of harmonious equilibrium, justice, mutuality, equality by which he creates a balance of the two opposites, are really an attempt inevitably predetermined in its lines to solve the original problem of Nature, the very problem of Life itself, by the resolution of the conflict between the two opposites which present themselves in the very foundations of Life in Matter. The resolution is attempted by the higher principle of Mind which alone can find the road towards the harmony intended, even though the harmony itself can only be found in a Power still beyond us.
11:For, if the data with which we have started are correct, the end of the road, the goal itself can only be reached by Mind passing beyond itself into that which is beyond Mind, since of That the Mind is only an inferior term and an instrument first for descent into form and individuality and secondly for reascension into that reality which the form embodies and the individuality represents. Therefore the perfect solution of the problem of Life is not likely to be realised by association, interchange and accommodations of love alone or through the Law of the mind and the heart alone. It must come by a fourth status of life in which the eternal unity of the many is realised through the spirit and the conscious foundation of all the operations of life is laid no longer in the divisions of body, nor in the passions and hungers of the vitality, nor in the groupings and the imperfect harmonies of the mind, nor in a combination of all these, but in the unity and freedom of the Spirit.
1.21 - The Spiritual Aim and Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It will be said that this is an old discovery and that it governed the old societies under the name of religion. But that was only an appearance. The discovery was there, but it was made for the life of the individual only, and even for him it looked beyond the earth for its fulfilment and at earth only as the place of his preparation for a solitary salvation or release from the burden of life. Human society itself never seized on the discovery of the soul as a means for the discovery of the Law of its own being or on a knowledge of the souls true nature and need and its fulfilment as the right way of terrestrial perfection. If we look at the old religions in their social as apart from their individual aspect, we see that the use society made of them was only of their most unspiritual or at any rate of their less spiritual parts. It made use of them to give an august, awful and would-be eternal sanction to its mass of customs and institutions; it made of them a veil of mystery against human questioning and a shield of darkness against the innovator. So far as it saw in religion a means of human salvation and perfection, it laid hands upon it at once to mechanise it, to catch the human soul and bind it on the wheels of a socio-religious machinery, to impose on it in the place of spiritual freedom an imperious yoke and an iron prison. It saddled upon the religious life of man a Church, a priesthood and a mass of ceremonies and set over it a pack of watchdogs under the name of creeds and dogmas, dogmas which one had to accept and obey under pain of condemnation to eternal hell by an eternal judge beyond, just as one had to accept and to obey the laws of society on pain of condemnation to temporal imprisonment or death by a mortal judge below. This false socialisation of religion has been always the chief cause of its failure to regenerate mankind.
For nothing can be more fatal to religion than for its spiritual element to be crushed or formalised out of existence by its outward aids and forms and machinery. The falsehood of the old social use of religion is shown by its effects. History has exhibited more than once the coincidence of the greatest religious fervour and piety with darkest ignorance, with an obscure squalor and long vegetative stagnancy of the mass of human life, with the unquestioned reign of cruelty, injustice and oppression, or with an organisation of the most ordinary, unaspiring and unraised existence hardly relieved by some touches of intellectual or halfspiritual light on the surface,the end of all this a widespread revolt that turned first of all against the established religion as the key-stone of a regnant falsehood, evil and ignorance. It is another sign when the too scrupulously exact observation of a socio-religious system and its rites and forms, which by the very fact of this misplaced importance begin to lose their sense and true religious value, becomes the law and most prominent aim of religion rather than any spiritual growth of the individual and the race. And a great sign too of this failure is when the individual is obliged to flee from society in order to find room for his spiritual growth; when, finding human life given over to the unregenerated mind, life and body and the place of spiritual freedom occupied by the bonds of form, by Church and Shastra, by some law of the Ignorance, he is obliged to break away from all these to seek for growth into the spirit in the monastery, on the mountain-top, in the cavern, in the desert and the forest. When there is that division between life and the spirit, sentence of condemnation is passed upon human life. Either it is left to circle in its routine or it is decried as worthless and unreal, a vanity of vanities, and loses that confidence in itself and inner faith in the value of its terrestrial aims, raddh, without which it cannot come to anything. For the spirit of man must strain towards the heights; when it loses its tension of endeavour, the race must become immobile and stagnant or even sink towards darkness and the dust. Even where life rejects the spirit or the spirit rejects life, there may be a self-affirmation of the inner being; there may even be a glorious crop of saints and hermits in a forcing-soil of spirituality, but unless the race, the society, the nation is moved towards the spiritualisation of life or moves forward led by the light of an ideal, the end must be littleness, weakness and stagnation. Or the race has to turn to the intellect for rescue, for some hope or new ideal, and arrive by a circle through an age of rationalism at a fresh effort towards the restatement of spiritual truth and a new attempt to spiritualise human life.
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But it will not seek to enforce even this one uplifting dogma by any external compulsion upon the lower members of mans natural being; for that is nigraha, a repressive contraction of the nature which may lead to an apparent suppression of the evil, but not to a real and healthy growth of the good; it will rather hold up this creed and ideal as a light and inspiration to all his members to grow into the godhead from within themselves, to become freely divine. Neither in the individual nor in the society will it seek to imprison, wall in, repress, impoverish, but to let in the widest air and the highest light. A large liberty will be the Law of a spiritual society and the increase of freedom a sign of the growth of human society towards the possibility of true spiritualisation. To spiritualise in this sense a society of slaves, slaves of power, slaves of authority, slaves of custom, slaves of dogma, slaves of all sorts of imposed laws which they live under rather than live by them, slaves internally of their own weakness, ignorance and passions from whose worst effect they seek or need to be protected by another and external slavery, can never be a successful endeavour. They must shake off their fetters first in order to be fit for a higher freedom. Not that man has not to wear many a yoke in his progress upward; but only the yoke which he accepts because it represents, the more perfectly the better, the highest inner law of his nature and its aspiration, will be entirely helpful to him. The rest buy their good results at a heavy cost and may retard as much as or even more than they accelerate his progress.
The spiritual aim will recognise that man as he grows in his being must have as much free space as possible for all its members to grow in their own strength, to find out themselves and their potentialities. In their freedom they will err, because experience comes through many errors, but each has in itself a divine principle and they will find it out, disengage its presence, significance and law as their experience of themselves deepens and increases. Thus true spirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to square their conclusions with any statement of dogmatic religious or even of assured spiritual truth, as some of the old religions attempted, vainly, ignorantly, with an unspiritual obstinacy and arrogance. Each part of mans being has its own dharma which it must follow and will follow in the end, put on it what fetters you please. The dharma of science, thought and philosophy is to seek for truth by the intellect dispassionately, without prepossession and prejudgment, with no other first propositions than the Law of thought and observation itself imposes. Science and philosophy are not bound to square their observations and conclusions with any current ideas of religious dogma or ethical rule or aesthetic prejudice. In the end, if left free in their action, they will find the unity of Truth with Good and Beauty and God and give these a greater meaning than any dogmatic religion or any formal ethics or any narrower aesthetic idea can give us. But meanwhile they must be left free even to deny God and good and beauty if they will, if their sincere observation of things so points them. For all these rejections must come round in the end of their circling and return to a larger truth of the things they refuse. Often we find atheism both in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of all earnest scepticism and denial.
The same law holds good in Art; the aesthetic being of man rises similarly on its own curve towards its diviner possibilities. The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired use of significant and interpretative form unseals the doors of the spirit. But in order that it may come to do this greatest thing largely and sincerely, it must first endeavour to see and depict man and Nature and life for their own sake, in their own characteristic truth and beauty; for behind these first characters lies always the beauty of the Divine in life and man and Nature and it is through their just transformation that what was at first veiled by them has to be revealed. The dogma that Art must be religious or not be at all, is a false dogma, just as is the claim that it must be subservient to ethics or utility or scientific truth or philosophic ideas. Art may make use of these things as elements, but it has its own svadharma, essential law, and it will rise to the widest spirituality by following out its own natural lines with no other yoke than the intimate law of its own being.
1.22 - The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What precisely is the defect from which all his imperfection springs? We have already indicated it,that has indeed been the general aim of the preceding chapters,but it is necessary to state it now more succinctly and precisely. We see that at first sight man seems to be a double nature, an animal nature of the vital and physical being which lives according to its instincts, impulses, desires, its automatic orientation and method, and with that a half-divine nature of the self-conscious intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, intelligently emotional, intelligently dynamic being who is capable of finding and understanding the Law of his own action and consciously using and bettering it, a reflecting mind that understands Nature, a will that uses, elevates, perfects Nature, a sense that intelligently enjoys Nature. The aim of the animal part of us is to increase vital possession and enjoyment; the aim of the semi-divine part of us is also to grow, possess and enjoy, but first to possess and enjoy intelligently, aesthetically, ethically, by the powers of the mind much more than by the powers of the life and body, and, secondly, to possess and enjoy, not so much the vital and physical except in so far as that is necessary as a foundation and starting-point, a preliminary necessity or condition, a standing-ground and basis, but things intellectual, ethical and aesthetic, and to grow not so much in the outward life, except in so far as that is necessary to the security, ease and dignity of our human existence, but in the true, the good and the beautiful. This is the manhood of man, his unique distinction and abnormality in the norm of this inconscient material Nature.
This means that man has developed a new power of being,let us call it a new soul-power, with the premiss that we regard the life and the body also as a soul-power, and the being who has done that is under an inherent obligation not only to look at the world and revalue all in it from this new elevation, but to compel his whole nature to obey this power and in a way reshape itself in its mould, and even to reshape, so far as he can, his environmental life into some image of this greater truth and law. In doing this lies his svadharma, his true rule and way of being, the way of his perfection and his real happiness. Failing in this, he fails in the aim of his nature and his being, and has to begin again until he finds the right path and arrives at a successful turning-point, a decisive crisis of transformation. Now this is precisely what man has failed to do. He has effected something, he has passed a certain stage of his journey. He has laid some yoke of the intellectual, ethical, aesthetic rule on his vital and physical parts and made it impossible for himself to be content with or really to be the mere human animal. But more he has not been able to do successfully. The transformation of his life into the image of the true, the good and the beautiful seems as far off as ever; if ever he comes near to some imperfect form of it,and even then it is only done by a class or by a number of individuals with some reflex action on the life of the mass,he slides back from it in a general decay of his life, or else stumbles on from it into some bewildering upheaval out of which he comes with new gains indeed but also with serious losses. He has never arrived at any great turning-point, any decisive crisis of transformation.
1.22 - The Problem of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:All life depends for its nature on the fundamental poise of its own constituting consciousness; for as the Consciousness is, so will the Force be. Where the Consciousness is infinite, one, transcendent of its acts and forms even while embracing and informing, organising and executing them, as is the consciousness of Sachchidananda, so will be the Force, infinite in its scope, one in its works, transcendent in its power and selfknowledge. Where the Consciousness is like that of material Nature, submerged, self-oblivious, driving along in the drift of its own Force without seeming to know it, even though by the very nature of the eternal relation between the two terms it really determines the drift which drives it, so will be the Force: it will be a monstrous movement of the Inert and Inconscient, unaware of what it contains, seeming mechanically to fulfil itself by a sort of inexorable accident, an inevitably happy chance, even while all the while it really obeys faultlessly the Law of the Right and Truth fixed for it by the will of the supernal ConsciousBeing concealed within its movement. Where the Consciousness is divided in itself, as in Mind, limiting itself in various centres, setting each to fulfil itself without knowledge of what is in other centres and of its relation to others, aware of things and forces in their apparent division and opposition to each other but not in their real unity, such will be the Force: it will be a life like that we are and see around us; it will be a clash and intertwining of individual lives seeking each its own fulfilment without knowing its relation to others, a conflict and difficult accommodation of divided and opposing or differing forces and, in the mentality, a mixing, a shock and wrestle and insecure combination of divided and opposing or divergent ideas which cannot arrive at the knowledge of their necessity to each other or grasp their place as elements of that Unity behind which is expressing itself through them and in which their discords must cease. But where the Consciousness is in possession of both the diversity and the unity and the latter contains and governs the former, where it is aware at once of the Law, Truth and Right of the All and the Law, Truth and Right of the individual and the two become consciously harmonised in a mutual unity, where the whole nature of the consciousness is the One knowing itself as the Many and the Many knowing themselves as the One, there the Force also will be of the same nature: it will be a Life that consciously obeys the Law of Unity and yet fulfils each thing in the diversity according to its proper rule and function; it will be a life in which all the individuals live at once in themselves and in each other as one conscious Being in many souls, one power of Consciousness in many minds, one joy of Force working in many lives, one reality of Delight fulfilling itself in many hearts and bodies.
6:The first of these four positions, the source of all this progressive relation between Consciousness and Force, is their poise in the being of Sachchidananda where they are one; for there the Force is consciousness of being working itself out without ever ceasing to be consciousness and the Consciousness is similarly luminous Force of being eternally aware of itself and of its own Delight and never ceasing to be this power of utter light and self-possession. The second relation is that of material Nature; it is the poise of being in the material universe which is the great denial of Sachchidananda by Himself: for here there is the utter apparent separation of Force from Consciousness, the specious miracle of the all-governing and infallible Inconscient which is only the mask but which modern knowledge has mistaken for the real face of the cosmic Deity. The third relation is the poise of being in Mind and in the Life which we see emerging out of this denial, bewildered by it, struggling - without any possibility of cessation by submission, but also without any clear knowledge or instinct of a victorious solution - against the thousand and one problems involved in this perplexing apparition of man the half-potent conscient being out of the omnipotent Inconscience of the material universe. The fourth relation is the poise of being in Supermind: it is the fulfilled existence which will eventually solve all this complex problem created by the partial affirmation emerging out of the total denial; and it must needs solve it in the only possible way, by the complete affirmation fulfilling all that was secretly there contained in potentiality and intended in fact of evolution behind the mask of the great denial. That is the real life of the real Man towards which this partial life and partial unfulfilled manhood is striving forward with a perfect knowledge and guidance in the so-called Inconscient within us, but in our conscient parts with only a dim and struggling prevision, with fragments of realisation, with glimpses of the ideal, with flashes of revelation and inspiration in the poet and the prophet, the seer and the transcendentalist, the mystic and the thinker, the great intellects and the great souls of humanity.
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13:Equally, man, as he develops, becomes acutely aware of the discord and ignorance that governs his relations with the world, acutely intolerant of it, more and more set upon finding a principle of harmony, peace, joy and unity. This too can only come to him from above. For only by developing a mind which shall have knowledge of the mind of others as of itself, free from our mutual ignorance and misunderstanding, a will that feels and makes itself one with the will of others, an emotional heart that contains the emotions of others as its own, a life-force that senses the energies of others and accepts them for its own and seeks to fulfil them as its own, and a body that is not a wall of imprisonment and defence against the world, - but all this under the Law of a Light and Truth that shall transcend the aberrations and errors, the much sin and falsehood of our and others' minds, wills, emotions, life-energies, - only so can the life of man spiritually and practically become one with that of his fellow-beings and the individual recover his own universal self. The subconscient has this life of the All and the superconscient has it, but under conditions which necessitate our motion upwards. For not towards the Godhead concealed in the "inconscient ocean where darkness is wrapped within darkness",4 but towards the Godhead seated in the sea of eternal light,5 in the highest ether of our being, is the original impetus which has carried upward the evolving soul to the type of our humanity.
14:Unless therefore the race is to fall by the wayside and leave the victory to other and new creations of the eager travailing Mother it must aspire to this ascent, conducted indeed through love, mental illumination and the vital urge to possession and self-giving, but leading beyond to the supramental unity which transcends and fulfils them; in the founding of human life upon the supramental realisation of conscious unity with the One and with all in our being and in all its members humanity must seek its final good and salvation. And this is what we have described as the fourth status of Life in its ascent towards the Godhead.
1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For it is into the Divine within them that men and mankind have to grow; it is not an external idea or rule that has to be imposed on them from without. Therefore the Law of a growing inner freedom is that which will be most honoured in the spiritual age of mankind. True it is that so long as man has not come within measurable distance of self-knowledge and has not set his face towards it, he cannot escape from the Law of external compulsion and all his efforts to do so must be vain. He is and always must be, so long as that lasts, the slave of others, the slave of his family, his caste, his clan, his Church, his society, his nation; and he cannot but be that and they too cannot help throwing their crude and mechanical compulsion on him, because he and they are the slaves of their own ego, of their own lower nature. We must feel and obey the compulsion of the Spirit if we would establish our inner right to escape other compulsion: we must make our lower nature the willing slave, the conscious and illumined instrument or the ennobled but still self-subjected portion, consort or partner of the divine Being within us, for it is that subjection which is the condition of our freedom, since spiritual freedom is not the egoistic assertion of our separate mind and life but obedience to the Divine Truth in ourself and our members and in all around us. But we have, even so, to remark that God respects the freedom of the natural members of our being and that he gives them room to grow in their own nature so that by natural growth and not by self-extinction they may find the Divine in themselves. The subjection which they finally accept, complete and absolute, must be a willing subjection of recognition and aspiration to their own source of light and power and their highest being. Therefore even in the unregenerated state we find that the healthiest, the truest, the most living growth and action is that which arises in the largest possible freedom and that all excess of compulsion is either the Law of a gradual atrophy or a tyranny varied or cured by outbreaks of rabid disorder. And as soon as man comes to know his spiritual self, he does by that discovery, often even by the very seeking for it, as ancient thought and religion saw, escape from the outer law and enter into the Law of freedom.
A spiritual age of mankind will perceive this truth. It will not try to make man perfect by machinery or keep him straight by tying up all his limbs. It will not present to the member of the society his higher self in the person of the policeman, the official and the corporal, nor, let us say, in the form of a socialistic bureaucracy or a Labour Soviet. Its aim will be to diminish as soon and as far as possible the need of the element of external compulsion in human life by awakening the inner divine compulsion of the spirit within and all the preliminary means it will use will have that for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not solely the spiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can exercise on those around him, and how much more should a spiritual society be able to do it,that which awakens within us in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial the compulsion of the Light, the desire and the power to grow through ones own nature into the Divine. For the perfectly spiritualised society will be one in which, as is dreamed by the spiritual anarchist, all men will be deeply free, and it will be so because the preliminary condition will have been satisfied. In that state each man will be not a law to himself, but the law, the divine Law, because he will be a soul living in the Divine Reality and not an ego living mainly if not entirely for its own interest and purpose. His life will be led by the Law of his own divine nature liberated from the ego.
Nor will that mean a breaking up of all human society into the isolated action of individuals; for the third word of the Spirit is unity. The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into the Divine Reality within himself through his own individual being, therefore is a certain growing measure of freedom a necessity of the being as it develops and perfect freedom the sign and the condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus sees in himself, he sees equally in all others and as the same Spirit in all. Therefore too is a growing inner unity with others a necessity of his being and perfect unity the sign and condition of the perfect life. Not only to see and find the Divine in oneself, but to see and find the Divine in all, not only to seek ones own individual liberation or perfection, but to seek the liberation and perfection of others is the complete law of the spiritual being. If the divinity sought were a separate godhead within oneself and not the one Divine, or if one sought God for oneself alone, then indeed the result might be a grandiose egoism, the Olympian egoism of a Goe the or the Titanic egoism imagined by Nietzsche, or it might be the isolated self-knowledge or asceticism of the ivory tower or the Stylites pillar. But he who sees God in all, will serve freely God in all with the service of love. He will, that is to say, seek not only his own freedom, but the freedom of all, not only his own perfection, but the perfection of all. He will not feel his individuality perfect except in the largest universality, nor his own life to be full life except as it is one with the universal life. He will not live either for himself or for the State and society, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much greater, for God in himself and for the Divine in the universe.
1.23 - Improvising a Temple, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In a word, you seem to have strolled into a world where well, it might be going too far to say that the Law of Cause and Effect is suspended; but at least the Law of Probability seems to be playing practical jokes on you.
This means that your manoeuvres have somehow attracted the notice of the Astral Plane: your new neighbours (May I call them?) are taking an interest in the latest Tenderfoot, some to welcome, to do all they can to help you to settle down, others indignant or apprehensive at this disturbance of routine. This is where your Banishings and Invocations come to the rescue. Of course, I am not here referring to the approach to Sanctuaries which of necessity are closely guarded, but merely to the recognition of a new-comer to that part of the world in general.
1.23 - The Double Soul in Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
11:But it might seem then that by bringing this psychic entity, this true soul in us, into the front and giving it there the lead and rule we shall gain all the fulfilment of our natural being that we can seek for and open also the gates of the kingdom of the Spirit. And it might well be reasoned that there is no need for any intervention of a superior Truth-Consciousness or principle of Supermind to help us to attain to the divine status or the divine perfection. Yet, although the psychic transformation is one necessary condition of the total transformation of our existence, it is not all that is needed for the largest spiritual change. In the first place, since this is the individual soul in Nature, it can open to the hidden diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our self in its universality and transcendence. By itself the psychic being at a certain stage might be content to create a formation of truth, good and beauty and make that its station; at a farther stage it might become passively subject to the worldself, a mirror of the universal existence, consciousness, power, delight, but not their full participant or possessor. Although more nearly and thrillingly united to the cosmic consciousness in knowledge, emotion and even appreciation through the senses, it might become purely recipient and passive, remote from mastery and action in the world; or, one with the static self behind the cosmos, but separate inwardly from the world-movement, losing its individuality in its Source, it might return to that Source and have neither the will nor the power any further for that which was its ultimate mission here, to lead the nature also towards its divine realisation. For the psychic being came into Nature from the Self, the Divine, and it can turn back from Nature to the silent Divine through the silence of the Self and a supreme spiritual immobility. Again, an eternal portion of the Divine,8 this part is by the Law of the Infinite inseparable from its Divine Whole, this part is indeed itself that Whole, except in its frontal appearance, its frontal separative self-experience; it may awaken to that reality and plunge into it to the apparent extinction or at least the merging of the individual existence. A small nucleus here in the mass of our ignorant Nature, so that it is described in the Upanishad as no bigger than a man's thumb, it can by the spiritual influx enlarge itself and embrace the whole world with the heart and mind in an intimate communion or oneness. Or it may become aware of its eternal Companion and elect to live for ever in His presence, in an imperishable union and oneness as the eternal lover with the eternal Beloved, which of all spiritual experiences is the most intense in beauty and rapture. All these are great and splendid achievements of our spiritual self-finding, but they are not necessarily the last end and entire consummation; more is possible.
12:For these are achievements of the spiritual mind in man; they are movements of that mind passing beyond itself, but on its own plane, into the splendours of the Spirit. Mind, even at its highest stages far beyond our present mentality, acts yet in its nature by division; it takes the aspects of the Eternal and treats each aspect as if it were the whole truth of the Eternal Being and can find in each its own perfect fulfilment. Even it erects them into opposites and creates a whole range of these opposites, the Silence of the Divine and the divine Dynamis, the immobile Brahman aloof from existence, without qualities, and the active Brahman with qualities, Lord of existence, Being and Becoming, the Divine Person and an impersonal pure Existence; it can then cut itself away from the one and plunge itself into the other as the sole abiding Truth of existence. It can regard the Person as the sole Reality or the Impersonal as alone true; it can regard the Lover as only a means of expression of eternal Love or love as only the self-expression of the Lover; it can see beings as only personal powers of an impersonal Existence or impersonal existence as only a state of the one Being, the Infinite Person. Its spiritual achievement, its road of passage towards the supreme aim will follow these dividing lines. But beyond this movement of spiritual Mind is the higher experience of the supermind Truth-Consciousness; there these opposites disappear and these partialities are relinquished in the rich totality of a supreme and integral realisation of eternal Being. It is this that is the aim we have conceived, the consummation of our existence here by an ascent to the supramental Truth-Consciousness and its descent into our nature. The psychic transformation after rising into the spiritual change has then to be completed, integralised, exceeded and uplifted by a supramental transformation which lifts it to the summit of the ascending endeavour.
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
But for all their inadequacy and their radical unlikeness to the facts to which they refer, words remain the most reliable and accurate of our symbols. Whenever we want to have a precise report of facts or ideas, we must resort to words. A ceremony, a carved or painted image, may convey more meanings and overtones of meaning in a smaller compass and with greater vividness than can a verbal formula; but it is liable to convey them in a form that is much more vague and indefinite. One often meets, in modern literature, with the notion that mediaeval churches were the architectural, sculptural and pictorial equivalents of a theological summa, and that mediaeval worshippers who admired the works of art around them were thereby enlightened on the subject of doctrine. This view was evidently not shared by the more earnest churchmen of the Middle Ages. Coulton cites the utterances of preachers who complained that congregations were getting entirely false ideas of Catholicism by looking at the pictures in the churches instead of listening to sermons. (Similarly, in our own day the Catholic Indians of Central America have evolved the wildest heresies by brooding on the carved and painted symbols with which the Conquistadors filled their churches.) St. Bernards objection to the richness of Cluniac architecture, sculpture and ceremonial was motivated by intellectual as well as strictly moral considerations. So great and marvellous a variety of divers forms meets the eye that one is tempted to read in the marbles rather than in the books, to pass the whole day looking at these carvings one after another rather than in meditating on the Law of God. It is in imageless contemplation that the soul comes to the unitive knowledge of Reality; consequently, for those who, like St. Bernard and his Cistercians, are really concerned to achieve mans final end, the fewer distracting symbols the better.
Most men worship the gods because they want success in their worldly undertakings. This kind of material success can be gained very quickly (by such worship), here on earth.
1.25 - The Knot of Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:For this is the monstrous thing, the terrible and pitiless miracle of the material universe that out of this no-Mind a mind or, at least, minds emerge and find themselves struggling feebly for light, helpless individually, only less helpless when in self-defence they associate their individual feeblenesses in the midst of the giant Ignorance which is the Law of the universe. Out of this heartless Inconscience and within its rigorous jurisdiction hearts have been born and aspire and are tortured and bleed under the weight of the blind and insentient cruelty of this iron existence, a cruelty which lays its law upon them and becomes sentient in their sentience, brutal, ferocious, horrible. But what after all, behind appearances, is this seeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself returning again to itself, emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a Life that is would-be sentient, half-sentient, dimly sentient, wholly sentient and finally struggles to be more than sentient, to be again divinely self-conscious, free, infinite, immortal. But it works towards this under a law that is the opposite of all these things, under the conditions of Matter, that is to say, against the grasp of the Ignorance. The movements it has to follow, the instruments it has to use are set and made for it by this brute and divided Matter and impose on it at every step ignorance and limitation.
7:For the second fundamental opposition that Matter offers to Spirit, is this that it is the culmination of bondage to mechanic Law and opposes to all that seeks to liberate itself a colossal Inertia. Not that Matter itself is inert; it is rather an infinite motion, an inconceivable force, a limitless action, whose grandiose movements are a subject for our constant admiration. But while Spirit is free, master of itself and its works, not bound by them, creator of law and not its subject, this giant Matter is rigidly chained by a fixed and mechanical Law which is imposed on it, which it does not understand nor has ever conceived but works out inconsciently as a machine works and knows not who created it, by what process or to what end. And when Life awakes and seeks to impose itself on physical form and material force and to use all things at its own will and for its own need, when Mind awakes and seeks to know the who, the why, the how of itself and all things and above all to use its knowledge for the imposition of its own freer law and self-guiding action upon things, material Nature seems to yield, even to approve and aid, though after a struggle, reluctantly and only up to a certain point. But beyond that point it presents an obstinate inertia, obstruction, negation and even persuades Life and Mind that they cannot go farther, cannot pursue to the end their partial victory. Life strives to enlarge and prolong itself and succeeds; but when it seeks utter wideness and immortality, it meets the iron obstruction of Matter and finds itself bound to narrowness and death. Mind seeks to aid life and to fulfil its own impulse to embrace all knowledge, to become all light, to possess truth and be truth, to enforce love and joy and be love and joy; but always there is the deviation and error and grossness of the material life-instincts and the denial and obstruction of the material sense and the physical instruments. Error ever pursues its knowledge, darkness is inseparably the companion and background of its light; truth is successfully sought and yet, when grasped, it ceases to be truth and the quest has to continue; love is there but it cannot satisfy itself, joy is there but it cannot justify itself, and each of them drags as if its chain or casts as if its shadow its own opposites, anger and hatred and indifference, satiety and grief and pain. The inertia with which Matter responds to the demands of the Mind and Life, prevents the conquest of the Ignorance and of the brute Force that is the power of the Ignorance.
8:And when we seek to know why this is so, we see that the success of this inertia and obstruction is due to a third power of Matter; for the third fundamental opposition which Matter offers to Spirit is this that it is the culmination of the principle of division and struggle. Indivisible indeed in reality, divisibility is its whole basis of action from which it seems forbidden ever to depart; for its only two methods of union are either the aggregation of units or an assimilation which involves the destruction of one unit by another; and both of these methods of union are a confession of eternal division, since even the first associates rather than unifies and by its very principle admits the constant possibility and therefore the ultimate necessity of dissociation, of dissolution. Both methods repose on death, one as a means, the other as a condition of life. And both presuppose as the condition of world-existence a constant struggle of the divided units with each other, each striving to maintain itself, to maintain its associations, to compel or destroy what resists it, to gather in and devour others as its food, but itself moved to revolt against and flee from compulsion, destruction and assimilation by devouring. When the vital principle manifests its activities in Matter, it finds there this basis only for all its activities and is compelled to bow itself to the yoke; it has to accept the Law of death, desire and limitation and that constant struggle to devour, possess, dominate which we have seen to be the first aspect of Life. And when the mental principle manifests in Matter, it has to accept from the mould and material in which it works the same principle of limitation, of seeking without secure finding, the same constant association and dissociation of its gains and of the constituents of its works, so that the knowledge gained by man, the mental being, seems never to be final or free from doubt and denial and all his labour seems condemned to move in a rhythm of action and reaction and of making and unmaking, in cycles of creation and brief preservation and long destruction with no certain and assured progress.
9:Especially and most fatally, the ignorance, inertia and division of Matter impose on the vital and mental existence emerging in it the Law of pain and suffering and the unrest of dissatisfaction with its status of division, inertia and ignorance. Ignorance would indeed bring no pain of dissatisfaction if the mental consciousness were entirely ignorant, if it could halt satisfied in some shell of custom, unaware of its own ignorance or of the infinite ocean of consciousness and knowledge by which it lives surrounded; but precisely it is to this that the emerging consciousness in Matter awakes, first, to its ignorance of the world in which it lives and which it has to know and master in order to be happy, secondly, to the ultimate barrenness and limitation of this knowledge, to the meagreness and insecurity of the power and happiness it brings and to the awareness of an infinite consciousness, knowledge, true being in which alone is to be found a victorious and infinite happiness. Nor would the obstruction of inertia bring with it unrest and dissatisfaction if the vital sentience emerging in Matter were entirely inert, if it were kept satisfied with its own half-conscient limited existence, unaware of the infinite power and immortal existence in which it lives as part of and yet separated from it, or if it had nothing within driving it towards the effort really to participate in that infinity and immortality. But this is precisely what all life is driven to feel and seek from the first, its insecurity and the need and struggle for persistence, for self-preservation; it awakes in the end to the limitation of its existence and begins to feel the impulsion towards largeness and persistence, towards the infinite and the eternal.
10:And when in man life becomes wholly self-conscious, this unavoidable struggle and effort and aspiration reach their acme and the pain and discord of the world become finally too keenly sensible to be borne with contentment. Man may for a long time quiet himself by seeking to be satisfied with his limitations or by confining his struggle to such mastery as he can gain over this material world he inhabits, some mental and physical triumph of his progressive knowledge over its inconscient fixities, of his small, concentrated conscious will and power over its inertlydriven monstrous forces. But here, too, he finds the limitation, the poor inconclusiveness of the greatest results he can achieve and is obliged to look beyond. The finite cannot remain permanently satisfied so long as it is conscious either of a finite greater than itself or of an infinite beyond itself to which it can yet aspire. And if the finite could be so satisfied, yet the apparently finite being who feels himself to be really an infinite or feels merely the presence or the impulse and stirring of an infinite within, can never be satisfied till these two are reconciled, till That is possessed by him and he is possessed by it in whatever degree or manner. Man is such a finite-seeming infinity and cannot fail to arrive at a seeking after the Infinite. He is the first son of earth who becomes vaguely aware of God within him, of his immortality or of his need of immortality, and the knowledge is a whip that drives and a cross of crucifixion until he is able to turn it into a source of infinite light and joy and power.
11:This progressive development, this growing manifestation of the divine Consciousness and Force, Knowledge and Will that had lost itself in the ignorance and inertia of Matter, might well be a happy efflorescence proceeding from joy to greater and at last to infinite joy if it were not for the principle of rigid division from which Matter has started. The shutting up of the individual in his own personal consciousness of separate and limited mind, life and body prevents what would otherwise be the natural law of our development. It brings into the body the Law of attraction and repulsion, of defence and attack, of discord and pain. For each body being a limited conscious-force feels itself exposed to the attack, impact, forceful contact of other such limited conscious-forces or of universal forces and, where it feels itself broken in upon or unable to harmonise the contacting and the recipient consciousness, it suffers discomfort and pain, is attracted or repelled, has to defend itself or to assail; it is constantly called upon to undergo what it is unwilling or unable to suffer. Into the emotional and the sense-mind the Law of division brings the same reactions with the higher values of grief and joy, love and hatred, oppression and depression, all cast into terms of desire, and by desire into straining and effort, and by the straining into excess and defect of force, incapacity, the rhythm of attainment and disappointment, possession and recoil, a constant strife and trouble and unease. Into the mind as a whole, instead of a divine law of narrower truth flowing into greater truth, lesser light taken up into wider light, lower will surrendered to higher transforming will, pettier satisfaction progressing towards nobler and more complete satisfaction, it brings similar dualities of truth pursued by error, light by darkness, power by incapacity, pleasure of pursuit and attainment by pain of repulse and of dissatisfaction with what is attained; mind takes up its own affliction along with the affliction of life and body and becomes aware of the triple defect and insufficiency of our natural being. All this means the denial of Ananda, the negation of the trinity of Sachchidananda and therefore, if the negation be insuperable, the futility of existence; for existence in throwing itself out in the play of consciousness and force must seek that movement not merely for itself, but for satisfaction in the play, and if in the play no real satisfaction can be found, it must obviously be abandoned in the end as a vain attempt, a colossal mistake, a delirium of the self-embodying spirit.
12:This is the whole basis of the pessimist theory of the world, - optimist, it may be, as to worlds and states beyond, but pessimist as to the earthly life and the destiny of the mental being in his dealings with the material universe. For it affirms that since the very nature of material existence is division and the very seed of embodied mind is self-limitation, ignorance and egoism, to seek satisfaction of the spirit upon earth or to seek an issue and divine purpose and culmination for the world-play is a vanity and delusion; only in a heaven of the Spirit and not in the world, or only in the Spirit's true quietude and not in its phenomenal activities can we reunite existence and consciousness with the divine self-delight. The Infinite can only recover itself by rejecting as an error and a false step its attempt to find itself in the finite. Nor can the emergence of mental consciousness in the material universe bring with it any promise of a divine fulfilment. For the principle of division is not proper to Matter, but to Mind; Matter is only an illusion of Mind into which Mind brings its own rule of division and ignorance. Therefore within this illusion Mind can only find itself; it can only travel between the three terms of the divided existence it has created: it cannot find there the unity of the Spirit or the truth of the spiritual existence.
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14:Such a supramental being would, as we have seen, liberate the mind from the knot of its divided existence and use the individualisation of mind as merely a useful subordinate action of the all-embracing Supermind; and he would liberate the life also from the knot of its divided existence and use the individualisation of life as merely a useful subordinate action of the one Conscious-Force fulfilling its being and joy in a diversified unity. Is there any reason why he should not also liberate the bodily existence from the present law of death, division and mutual devouring and use individualisation of body as merely a useful subordinate term of the one divine Conscious-Existence made serviceable for the joy of the Infinite in the finite? or why this spirit should not be free in a sovereign occupation of form, consciously immortal even in the changing of his robe of Matter, possessed of his self-delight in a world subjected to the Law of unity and love and beauty? And if man be the inhabitant of terrestrial existence through whom that transformation of the mental into the supramental can at last be operated, is it not possible that he may develop, as well as a divine mind and a divine life, also a divine body? or, if the phrase seem to be too startling to our present limited conceptions of human potentiality, may he not in his development of his true being and its light and joy and power arrive at a divine use of mind and life and body by which the descent of Spirit into form shall be at once humanly and divinely justified?
15:The one thing that can stand in the way of that ultimate terrestrial possibility is if our present view of Matter and its laws represent the only possible relation between sense and substance, between the Divine as knower and the Divine as object, or if, other relations being possible, they are yet not in any way possible here, but must be sought on higher planes of existence. In that case, it is in heavens beyond that we must seek our entire divine fulfilment, as the religions assert, and their other assertion of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the perfect upon earth must be put aside as a delusion. Here we can only pursue or attain an internal preparation or victory and, having liberated the mind and life and soul within, must turn from the unconquered and unconquerable material principle, from an unregenerated and intractable earth to find elsewhere our divine substance. There is, however, no reason why we should accept this limiting conclusion. There are, quite certainly, other states even of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it is always there latent and potential in its own secrecies.
1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:These considerations become of great importance when we consider the possible relation between the divine life and the divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in which we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed relation between sense and substance from which the material universe has started. But as this relation is not the only possible relation, so that formula is not the only possible formula. Life and mind may manifest themselves in another relation to substance and work out different physical laws, other and larger habits, even a different substance of body with a freer action of the sense, a freer action of the life, a freer action of the mind. Death, division, mutual resistance and exclusion between embodied masses of the same conscious life-force are the formula of our physical existence; the narrow limitation of the play of the senses, the determination within a small circle of the field, duration and power of the life-workings, the obscuration, lame movement, broken and bounded functioning of the mind are the yoke which that formula expressed in the animal body has imposed upon the higher principles. But these things are not the sole possible rhythm of cosmic Nature. There are superior states, there are higher worlds, and if the Law of these can by any progress of man and by any liberation of our substance from its present imperfections be imposed on this sensible form and instrument of our being, then there may be even here a physical working of divine mind and sense, a physical working of divine life in the human frame and even the evolution upon earth of something that we may call a divinely human body. The body of man also may some day come by its transfiguration; the Earth-Mother too may reveal in us her godhead.
4:Even within the formula of the physical cosmos there is an ascending series in the scale of Matter which leads us from the more to the less dense, from the less to the more subtle. Where we reach the highest term of that series, the most supra-ethereal subtlety of material substance or formulation of Force, what lies beyond? Not a Nihil, not a void; for there is no such thing as absolute void or real nullity and what we call by that name is simply something beyond the grasp of our sense, our mind or our most subtle consciousness. Nor is it true that there is nothing beyond, or that some ethereal substance of Matter is the eternal beginning; for we know that Matter and material Force are only a last result of a pure Substance and pure Force in which consciousness is luminously self-aware and self-possessing and not as in Matter lost to itself in an inconscient sleep and an inert motion. What then is there between this material substance and that pure substance? For we do not leap from the one to the other, we do not pass at once from the inconscient to absolute consciousness. There must be and there are grades between inconscient substance and utterly self-conscious self-extension, as between the principle of Matter and the principle of Spirit.
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8:So too with the higher gradations. The next in the series must be governed by the dominating and determining factor of Mind. Substance there must be subtle and flexible enough to assume the shapes directly imposed upon it by Mind, to obey its operations, to subordinate itself to its demand for self-expression and self-fulfilment. The relations of sense and substance too must have a corresponding subtlety and flexibility and must be determined, not by the relations of physical organ with physical object, but of Mind with the subtler substance upon which it works. The life of such a world would be the servant of Mind in a sense of which our weak mental operations and our limited, coarse and rebellious vital faculties can have no adequate conception. There Mind dominates as the original formula, its purpose prevails, its demand overrides all others in the Law of the divine manifestation. At a yet higher reach Supermind - or, intermediately, principles touched by it - or, still higher, a pure Bliss, a pure Conscious Power or pure Being replace Mind as the dominant principle, and we enter into those ranges of cosmic existence which to the old Vedic seers were the worlds of illuminated divine existence and the foundation of what they termed Immortality and which later Indian religions imaged in figures like the Brahmaloka or Goloka, some supreme self-expression of the Being as Spirit in which the soul liberated into its highest perfection possesses the infinity and beatitude of the eternal Godhead.
9:The principle which underlies this continually ascending experience and vision uplifted beyond the material formulation of things is that all cosmic existence is a complex harmony and does not finish with the limited range of consciousness in which the ordinary human mind and life are content to be imprisoned. Being, consciousness, force, substance descend and ascend a many-runged ladder on each step of which being has a vaster self-extension, consciousness a wider sense of its own range and largeness and joy, force a greater intensity and a more rapid and blissful capacity, substance gives a more subtle, plastic, buoyant and flexible rendering of its primal reality. For the more subtle is also the more powerful, - one might say, the more truly concrete; it is less bound than the gross, it has a greater permanence in its being along with a greater potentiality, plasticity and range in its becoming. Each plateau of the hill of being gives to our widening experience a higher plane of our consciousness and a richer world for our existence.
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14:So it should rationally be; for the uninterrupted series of the principles of our being and their close mutual connection is too evident for it to be possible that one of them should be condemned and cut off while the others are capable of a divine liberation. The ascent of man from the physical to the supramental must open out the possibility of a corresponding ascent in the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower principles by supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and a divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance. And this means the evolution not only of an untrammelled consciousness, a mind and sense not shut up in the walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor basis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense, but a lifepower liberated more and more from its mortal limitations, a physical life fit for a divine inhabitant and, - in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the Law of the physical body, - the conquest of death, an earthly immortality. For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The face of Truth is hidden by a golden lid; that remove, O Fostering Sun, for the Law of the Truth, for sight. O Sun, O sole Seer, marshal thy rays, gather them together, - let me see of thee thy happiest form of all; that Conscious Being everywhere, He am I. Isha Upanishad.2
The Truth, the Right, the Vast. Atharva Veda.3
1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
of knowledge, since very subtle is the Law of it. Another
boon choose, O Nachiketas; importune me not, nor urge
13.02 - A Review of Sri Aurobindos Life, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have spoken of Sri Aurobindo's life as a series of radical turns that changed the movement, the mode of life, almost radically every time the turn came. The turn meant a break with the past and a moving into the future. We have a word for this phenomenon of radical and unforeseen change. You know the word, it is intervention. Intervention means, as the Mother has explained to us more than once, the entry of a higher, a greater force from another world into the already existent world. Into the familiar established mode of existence that runs on the routine of some definite rules and regulations, the Law of the present, there drops all on a sudden another mode of being and consciousness and force, a Higher Law which obliterates or changes out of recognition the familiar mode of living; it is thus that one rises from level to level, moves out into wider ranges of being, otherwise one stands still, remains for ever what he is, stagnant, like an unchanging clod or at the most a repetitive animal.
The higher the destiny, the higher also the source of intervention, that is to say, more radicalmore destructive yet more creativedestructive of the past, creative of the future.
1.31 - Is Thelema a New Religion?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Religion, he says, Latin: religio, piety. Collection or paying attention to: religens as opposed to negligens, neglecting; the attitude of Gallio. But it also implies a binding together i.e. of ideas; in fact, a "body of doctrine." Not a bad expression. A religion then, is a more or less coherent and consistent set of beliefs, with precepts and prohibitions therefrom deducible. But then there is the sense in which Frazer (and I) often use the word: as in opposition to "Science" or "Magic." Here the point is that religious people attribute phenomena to the will of some postulated Being or Beings, placable and moveable by virtue of sacrifice, devotion, or appeal. Against such, the scientific or magical mind believes in the Laws of Nature, asserts "If A, then B" if you do so-and-so, the result will be so-and-so, aloof from arbitrary interference. Joshua, it is alleged, made the sun stand still by supplication, and Hezekiah in the same way cause it to "go back upon the dial of Ahaz;" Willett did it by putting the clock back, and getting an Act of Parliament to confirm his lunacy. Petruchio, too "It shall be what o'clock I say it is!" The two last came close to the magical method; at least, to that branch of it which consists of "fooling all the people all the time." But such an operation, if true Magick were employed, would be beyond the power of any magician of my acquaintance; for it would mess up the solar system completely. (You remember how this happened, and what came of it, in a rather clever short story by H.G. Wells.) For true Magick means "to employ one set of natural forces at a mechanical advantage as against another set" I quote, as closely as memory serves, Thomas Henry Huxley, when he explains that when he lifts his water-jug or his elbow he does not "defy the Law of Gravitation." On the contrary, he uses that Law; its equations form part of the system by which he lifts the jug without spilling the water.
To sum up, our system is a religion just so far as a religion means an enthusiastic putting-together of a series of doctrines, no one of which must in any way clash with Science or Magick.
1.3.5.01 - The Law of the Way, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.3.5.01 - the Law of the Way
author class:Sri Aurobindo
1.39 - Prophecy, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
One last word on this subject. There is a Magical Operation of maximum importance: the Initiation of a New Aeon. When it becomes necessary to utter a Word, the whole Planet must be bathed in blood. Before man is ready to accept the Law of Thelema, the Great War must be fought. This Bloody Sacrifice is the critical point of the World-Ceremony of the Proclamation of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child, as Lord of the Aeon.*[AC39]
The whole matter is prophesied in The Book of the Law itself; let the student take note, and enter the ranks of the Host of the Sun.
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Crowley make a short speech; as "the Priest of the Princes" proclaimed the Law of Thelema; handed copies of book to white, red, brown, black, yellow representatives.
Representative of the "black" race was a dancing-girl. Indian was a non-English speaking Bengali Muslim, who seemed rather puzzled by the whole business.
1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If you would know what is the Divine Grace, it is necessary first to realise that it is something which contradicts the Law of the world, for it is outside its normal rule and not of its nature. There is here something which does not seem to govern at all the cosmic action, but only to intervene, and yet it is always there; an element without which this universe would be either a tremendous machine or a fortuitously and yet inexorably ordered chance. For to our observation all here is a process, a mechanism of Ignorance and Inconscience manifesting a precarious consciousness distressed by a nostalgia of Truth that exists somewhere and yet seems to be unseizable and unrealisable, - a mechanism of Law that controls a frightening whirl of Forces, a mechanism of implacable justice measuring things by a mysterious and to us unintelligible balance, a mechanism of evolution with matter and inconscience as its starting point, a precarious and groping life and consciousness as its highest realised term and as its final uncertain poise some possibility of the Divine.
Our senses can discover no visible presence of the Divine, our intellect can do without any idea of its intervention - but it is another experience than that of the intellect and the senses which once it is there will no longer let us escape from the Presence or refuse to see the intervening Will or Grace.
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mistaken when not perverted, we stumble at every step and pay the price of experience in pain and grief and sorrow. It would seem as if nothing could save us but thought and knowledge translated into right will and action and it is that for which man by his intellect is seeking and yet by his intellect he has never found it and it looks as if by his intellect he would never find it. Then there is probably something else beyond the intellect which alone can give him the Light - something beyond his mind and greater than himself - a Grace that intervenes, the Law of a supernormal Light and Will, a help, an opening from above.
I should like to say something about the Divine Grace - for you seem to think it should be something like a Divine Reason acting upon lines not very different from those of human intelligence.
1.4.02 - The Divine Force, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is only if the supramental Power came fully down, not merely sent its influences through the Overmind, that things could be very radically altered in this respect - and that is why my main effort is directed towards that object - for then the sanction would not be rare! For the Law of the Truth would be at work not constantly balanced by the Law of the Ignorance.
Still the Yoga-force is always tangible and concrete in the way I have described and has tangible results. But it is invisible
1.46 - Selfishness, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the Law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. ..."
That sets up a standard, with a vengeance!
1.47 - Reincarnation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
As to (2) it seems to me fairly obvious. The doctrine of Karma is plain common sense; and although a terrestrial set of causes might conceivably have their effects in other spheres of action, as of course they do, it seems less trouble for them to remain in their original ambit. As I pointed out long ago, the Law of Karma is the Law of Inertia.
Nor is it necessary to assert that it always works out in this way; "sometimes" is quite good enough. Besides, to say "sometimes" explains (or rather, avoids) most of the evident objections to the theory. I grant you cheerfully that Reincarnation is a comparatively rare occurrence; and it throws upon the objector the onus of proving an A or an E proposition.[90]
1.48 - Morals of AL - Hard to Accept, and Why nevertheless we Must Concur, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Now here I must tell you a story which may throw a good deal of light on much that is obscure in the political situation of '25 to date. The venerable lady (S.H. Soror I.W.E. 8 = 3[92]) who, on the death of S.H. Frater 8 = 3 Otto Gebhardi, succeeded him as my representative in Germany (note that all this pertains to the AA; the O.T.O. is not directly concerned) attained the Grade of Hermit (AL I, 40). Watching the situation in Europe, she became constantly more convinced that Adolf Hitler was her "Magical child;" and she conceived it to be her duty to devote her life (for the Hermit "gives only of his Light unto men") to his Magical Education. Knowing that the hegemony of the world would fall to the nation that first accepted the Law of Thelema, she made haste to put the Book of the Law in the hands of her "child." Upon him it most undoubtedly made the deepest impression, especially as she swore him most solemnly to secrecy as to the source of his power. (Obviously, he would not wish to share it with other.). From time to time, when circumstances suggested it, she wrote to him, enclosing pertinent sections of my commentary, of which I had given her a copy at the time of the "Zeugnis."[AC43]
Had Hitler been a less abnormal character, no great "Mischief," or at least a very different kind of "mischief," might have come of it. I think you have read Hitler speaks if not, do so his private conversation abounds in what sound almost like actual quotations from the Book of the Law. But he public man's private conversation can be repeated on the platform only at the risk of his political life; and he served up to the people only such concoctions as would tickle their gross palates. Worse still, he was the slave of his prophetic frenzy; he had not undertaken the balancing regimen of the Curriculum of AA; and, worst of all, he was very far indeed from being a full initiate, even in the loosest sense of the term. His Weltanschauung was accordingly a mass of personal and political prejudice; he had no true cosmic comprehension, no true appreciation of First Principles; and he was tossed about in every direction by the varied conflicting forces that naturally concentrated their energies ever more strenuously upon him as his personal position became more and more the dominating factor, first in domestic and then in European politics. I warned our S.H. Soror repeatedly that she ought to correct these tendencies; but she already saw the success of her plans within her grasp, and refused to believe that this success itself would alarm the world into combining to destroy him. "But we have the Book," she confidently retorted, failing to see that the other powers in extremity would be compelled to adopt those identical principles. Of course, as you know, it has happened as I foresaw; only a remnant of piety-purefied Prelates and sloppy sentimentalists still hold out against the Book of the Law, sabotage the victory, and will turn the Peace into a shambles of surrender if we are fools enough to give ear to their caterwauling as in the story of the highly-esteemed tomcat, when at last one of his fans obtained an interview; "all he could do was to talk about his operation."
1.49 - Thelemic Morality, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But suppose that it were not the matter of gulling a moribund half-wit; suppose that the price was a straightforward honest-to-God Bank Robbery under arms on the highway, should I hesitate then? Here I should risk my head, and the dice are loaded against me; nor does the deed imply "moral turpitude." Stalin's associates regarded him as a martyred hero when the Law of the country, less cogent that Thelema, sat heavily on his devoted head.
It would really be a little difficult; my rough-and-tumble life was the best possible training for such desperate adventures, so that Nephesch could not enter a protest. As to Neschamah, we nearly all of us (Thank God!) have a secret sympathy, with the nobler type of criminal, whence the universal appeal of Arsne Lupin, Black Star, Raffles and Stingaree. When they can make some show of justice-on-their-side, it is easier still: Scarlet Pimpernel and his tribe. We are now almost within the marches of those heroes of romance that enchanted our adolescence: Hereward the Wake, Robin Hood, Bonnie Prince Charlie. And there are, on the other hand, few of us who do not secretly gloat over the discomfiture of "Money- Bags."
My retort, however, is convincing and final. Robbery in any shape is a breach of the Law of Thelema. It is interference with the right of another to dispose of his property as he will; and if I did so myself, no matter with what tactical justification, I could hardly ask others to respect my own similar right.
(The basis of our criminal law is simple, by virtue of Thelema: to violate the right of another is to forfeit one's claim to protection in the matter involved.)
1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
to have violated the Law of the first-fruit offering and that of
marriage during the year were summoned by a crier to enter the holy
1.51 - How to Recognise Masters, Angels, etc., and how they Work, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Instantly my burden fell from my back. The long crucifixion of home life came to a crisis, immediately on my return to London. At the same time every other inhibition was automatically removed. For the first time since the spring of 1904 I felt myself free to do my Will. That, of course, was because I had at last understood what my Will was. My aspiration to be the means of emancipating humanity was perfectly fulfilled. I had merely to establish in the world the Law which had been given me to proclaim: "...thou hast no right but to do thy will." Had I bent my energies from the first to proclaiming the Law of Thelema I should doubtless have found no obstacle in my path. Those which naturally arise in the course of any work soever, would have been quietly removed by the Secret Chiefs. But I had chosen to fight against myself for five years, and "If Satan shall be divided against Satan, how shall his kingdom stand?" The more I strove, the more I encouraged an internal conflict, and stultified myself. I had been permitted to complete my initiation, for the reason that by doing so I was fitting myself for the fight; but all my other efforts had met with a derisory disaster. More, one does not wipe out a lustre of lunacy by a moment of sanity. I am suffering to this day from the effects of having wasted some of the best years of my life in the stupid and stubborn struggle to set up my conscious self against its silent sovereign, my true Soul. 'Had Zimri peace who slew his master?'
[The following is from Vol. 4 of The Confessions, pp. 590 - 598.[103]]
1.53 - The Propitation of Wild Animals By Hunters, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
them in obedience to the Law of blood feud, that is, as a
retaliation for the slaughter of men by crocodiles. For example, the
1.54 - On Meanness, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Very good: to begin, Economy does not mean thrift or cheeseparing. It means: the Law of the house. In practice, one may say "management." Finances are only one branch of the science, just as truckling, blackmail, graft, treachery and double-dealing are only components of modern statesmanship.
All the same, I propose to talk in terms of money, because everyone has thought a good deal about it. Examples are abundant, ideas easy to express, and one can be concise and clear without danger of misunderstanding.
--
What is money? A medium of exchange devised to facilitate the transac- tion of business. Oil in the engine. Very good, then; if instead of letting it flow as freely and smoothly as possible, you baulk its very nature; you prevent it from doing its True Will. So every restriction (that word again!) on the exchange of wealth is a direct violation of the Law of Thelema.
How stupid is this tightening of the purse-strings! Parable No. Three, "The fairy Bank Note."
17.02 - Hymn to the Sun, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Three are the Shining Ones who see widely in accordance with the Law of the Truth: of them one plants the seed throughout the year, another labours upon the world with his effulgences, of still another the mighty rushing is seen, not the form. [44]
Four-fold is the Word as measured into steps: they are known to the poet-seers and to the great minds.
1.70 - Morality 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
So we have the Law of supply and demand at work as uncomplainingly as usual: the Holy Man prays for the threatened Dynasty, blesses the Barren Queen; and they all live happy ever after. This is not an Arabian Night's Tale of Antiquity; it is the same today: there are very few Englishmen who have spent any time in India who have not been approached with proposals of this character.
Similar conditions, curiously enough, existed in France; the "fils papa" was usually a hopeless rotter, and his wife often resorted to a famous monastery on the Riviera, where was an exceptionally holy Image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, prayers unto whom removed sterility. But when M. Combes turned out the monks, the Image somehow lost it virtue.
--
Perhaps we have now relaxed enough; we see that the "Holy man" is not such a fool as he looks; and we may get on with our excursions into the "Morality" of the Law of the New Aeon, which is the Aeon of Horus, crowned and conquering child: and "The word of the Law is ."
3. So much of The Book of the Law deals directly or indirectly with morals that to quote relevant passages would be merely bewildering. Not that this state of mind fails to result from the first, second, third and ninety-third perusals!
19.13 - Of the World, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Arise. Do not be unmindful. Follow the Law of wise conduct. One who follows the Law knows felicity in this world as well as in the other.
[3]
Follow the Law of wise conduct, not that of wrong conduct. He who follows the Law knows Felicity in this world as well as in the other.
[4]
1914 02 05p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What could be said that is not always the very same aspiration: the Law of divine love, the purest expression of what we can conceive of Thee, must be realised more and more upon earth and triumph over all ignorant egoism; we must become more and more perfectly the faithful servitors of that power of love and light, we must live in it, by it; that alone must live and act in us.
O Lord, become the sovereign Master of our lives and dispel all the obscurities which can still prevent us from seeing Thee and constantly communing with Thee.
1915 05 24p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the other hand, by a perfect surrender to the Supreme Principle, to become aware of the Truth and the eternal Will that manifests it. Through this identification having become the faithful servant and sure intermediary of the divine Will, and uniting this conscious identification with the Principle to the conscious identification with its becoming, to mould and model consciously the love, mind and life of the becoming in accordance with the Law of Truth of the Principle.
This is how the individual being can be the conscious mediator between the absolute Truth and the manifested universe and intervene in the slow, uncertain march of the Yoga of Nature in order to give it the swiftness, intensity and sureness of the divine Yoga.
1916 12 20p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As thou art contemplating me, I shall speak to thee this evening. I see in thy heart a diamond surrounded by a golden light. It is at once pure and warm, something which may manifest impersonal love; but why dost thou keep this treasure enclosed in that dark casket lined with deep purple? The outermost covering is of a deep lustreless blue, a real mantle of darkness. It would seem that thou art afraid of showing thy splendour. Learn to radiate and do not fear the storm: the wind carries us far from the shore but shows us over the world. Wouldst thou be thrifty of thy tenderness? But the source of love is infinite. Dost thou fear to be misunderstood? But where hast thou seen man capable of understanding the Divine? And if the eternal truth finds in thee a means of manifesting itself, what dost thou care for all the rest? Thou art like a pilgrim coming out of the sanctuary; standing on the threshold in front of the crowd, he hesitates before revealing his precious secret, that of his supreme discovery. Listen, I too hesitated for days, for I could foresee both my preaching and its results: the imperfection of expression and the still greater imperfection of understanding. And yet I turned to the earth and men and brought them my message. Turn to the earth and menisnt this the comm and thou always hearest in thy heart?in thy heart, for it is that which carries a blessed message for those who are athirst for compassion. Henceforth nothing can attack the diamond. It is unassailable in its perfect constitution and the soft radiance that flashes from it can change many things in the hearts of men. Thou doubtest thy power and fearest thy ignorance? It is precisely this that wraps up thy strength in that dark mantle of starless night. Thou hesitatest and tremblest as on the threshold of a mystery, for now the mystery of the manifestation seems to thee more terrible and unfathomable than that of the Eternal Cause. But thou must take courage again and obey the injunction from the depths. It is I who am telling thee this, for I know thee and love thee as thou didst know and love me once. I have appeared clearly before thy sight so that thou mayst in no way doubt my word. And also to thy eyes I have shown thy heart so that thou canst thus see what the supreme Truth has willed for it, so that thou mayst discover in it the Law of thy being. The thing still seems to thee quite difficult: a day will come when thou wilt wonder how for so long it could have been otherwise.
Skyamuni
1929-06-16 - Illness and Yoga - Subtle body (nervous envelope) - Fear and illness, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the ordinary life of man a progressive dislocation is the rule. The mental and the vital beings of man follow as best they can the movement of the universal forces, and the stream of the worlds inner transformation and evolution carries them a certain way; but the body bound to the Law of the most material nature, moves very slowly. After some years, seventy or eighty, a hundred or two hundred, and that is perhaps the maximum, thedislocation is so serious that the outer being falls to pieces. The divergence between the demand and the answer, the increasing inability and irresponsiveness of the body, brings about the phenomenon of death. By Yoga the inner transformation that is in slow constant process in the creation is rendered more intense and rapid, but the pace of the outer transformation remains almost the same as in ordinary life. As a result, the disharmony between the inner and the outer being in one who is doing Yoga tends to be all the greater, unless precautions are taken and a protection secured that will help the body to follow the inner march as closely as possible. Even then it is the very nature of the body to hold you back. It is for this reason that to many we are obliged to say, Do not pull, do not hurry; you must give your body time to follow. Some have to be kept back even for years and not allowed to do much or progress far. Sometimes, to avoid the disequilibrium becomes impossible; and then you have a disturbance which varies according to the nature of the resistance and the measure of the care you have taken or your negligence. This too is the reason why each time that there is a strong movement of progress, it is almost invariably followed by a period of immobility, which seems to those who are not warned a spell of dullness and stagnation and discouragement in which all progress is stopped, and they think anxiously, What is the matter? Am I losing time? Nothing is being done. But the truth is that it is the time needed for assimilation; a pause is made for the body to open itself more and become receptive and approach nearer to the level attained by the inner consciousness. The parents have been walking too far ahead; they must halt so that the child left behind may run up and catch them by the hand; only then can they start again on the journey together.
Each spot of the body is symbolical of an inner movement; there is there a world of subtle correspondences. But this is a long and complex subject and we cannot enter into its details just now. The particular place in the body affected by an illness is an index to the nature of the inner disharmony that has taken place. It points to the origin, it is a sign of the cause of the ailment. It reveals too the nature of the resistance that prevents the whole being from advancing at the same high speed. It indicates the treatment and the cure. If one could perfectly understand where the mistake is, find out what has been unreceptive, open that part and put the force and the light there, it would be possible to re-establish in a moment the harmony that has been disturbed and the illness would immediately go.
1951-02-08 - Unifying the being - ideas of good and bad - Miracles - determinism - Supreme Will - Distinguishing the voice of the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is a temptation that every teacher meets at each step, for the very simple reason that ordinary humanity, in a general way, not being in personal contact with the divine powers, understands nothing of what an illumined consciousness may be and asks for material proofs. It is on this demand that most religions are established and, for reasons which I may very frankly call political, they have put at the origin of their religion a more or less considerable number of miracles as having been performed by the founders, and they have thus more or less crudely encouraged among ignorant people the taste, the necessity for seeing what they call miracles in order to believe in the divine power of a person. This is an extraordinary ignorance, because it is not at all necessary to have a divine power or consciousness to perform miracles. It is infinitely more easy to perform miracles with the help of small entities of the vital world who are material enough to be in touch with the physical world and act upon it, than to live in the consciousness of the higher regions and to work upon Nature only through the intermediary of all the other domains. It has been repeated over and over again to all human intellects that the proof of a beings divinity is that he can raise the dead, cure maladies, and do many other things of the same kind (except making a fool wise).1 Well, I guarantee that this is not a proof; it proves only one thing, that these Masters are in contact with the powers of the vital world and that with the help of those beings they can perform these miracles, thats all. If one relies upon that to recognise the superiority of a man, one would make a glaring mistake. Naturally, there are other religions which are established on revelations made to their founders. These revelations are more or less happy mental transcriptions of the knowledge they received. This is already of a higher order but it is not yet a proof. And I would finally say, the human demand for proofs is not at all favourable to ones development. Because the true divine power has organised the world according to a certain plan and in this plan there was no question of things happening in an illogical way; otherwise from the very beginning the world would have been illogical and it is not so. Men imagine for the most part one of two things, either that there is a material world to which they belong, that all comes from there, all returns there and all ends therethese are the unbelieversor, the believers, most of them, that there is something which they call God and then the physical world, and that this physical world is the creation of that God who knows what he is doing or does what he wants; and the confusion lies in saying that everything happens by a kind of arbitrariness, natural or supernatural. There are very few people who know that there exists in the universe an infinite number of gradations and that each one of these gradations has its own reality, its own life, its own law, its own determinism, and that the creation did not come about like that, by an arbitrary will, in an arbitrary way but is a deploying of consciousness and each thing has evolved as a logical result of the preceding one. I am telling you all this as simply as I can, you see, it is a very incomplete expression, but if I wanted to tell you the story exactly as it is, it would be a little difficult to make you understand. Only I would like you to know my conclusion (I have already spoken about it several times, more or less in detail), it is this: each one of these numberless regions has its own very logical determinismeverything proceeds from cause to effect; but these worlds, although differentiated, are not separate from each other and, by numerous processes which we may study, the inner or higher worlds are in constant contact with the lower or external worlds and act upon these, so that the determinism of one changes the determinism of the other. If you take the purely material domain, for instance, and if you notice that the material laws, the purely material laws are altered by something all of a sudden, you ought to say that it was a miracle, because there is a rupture of the determinism of one plane through the intervention of another, but usually we do not call this a miracle. For example, when the human will intervenes and changes something, that seems to you quite natural, because you have been accustomed to it from your childhood; you remember, dont you, the example I gave you the other day: a stone falls according to the Law of its own determinism, but you wish to interrupt its fall and you stretch out your hand and catch it; well you ought to call this a miracle, but you dont because you are used to it (but a rat or a dog would perhaps call it a miracle if they could speak). And note that it is the same for what people call a miracle; they speak of a miracle because they are absolutely ignorant, unaware of the gradations between the will which wants to express itself and the plane on which it expresses itself. When they have a mental or a vital will, the thing seems quite natural to them, but when it is a question of the will of a higher world the world of the gods or of a higher entitywhich all of a sudden upsets all your little organisation, that seems to you a miracle. But it is a miracle simply because you are unable to follow the gradations by which the phenomenon took place. Therefore, the Supreme Will, that which comes from the very highest region, if you saw it in its logical action, if you were aware of it continually, it would seem to you altogether natural. You can express this in two ways: either say, It is quite natural, it is like this that things must happen, it is only an expression of the divine Will, or, each time you see on the material plane an intervention coming from another plane, you ought to say, It is miraculous! So I may say with certainty that people who want to see miracles are people who cherish their ignorance! You understand my logic, dont you? These people love their ignorance, they insist upon seeing miracles and being astounded! And that is why people who have done yoga seriously consider it altogether fatal to encourage this tendency; hence it is forbidden.
There is a miracle because you do not give people time to see the procedure by which you do things, you do not show them the stages. Thus, some men have reached higher mental regions and do not need to follow step by step all the gradations of thought; they can jump from one idea to a far distant inference without the intermediary links; this is usually called intuition (it is not altogether an intuition; it is that the idea, to begin with, is at a great height and from there these people can see while descending the whole totality of things and consequences without passing through all the gradations as ordinary human thought is obliged to do). It is an experience I have had; when I used to speak with Sri Aurobindo, we never had the need to go through intermediary ideas; he said one thing and I saw the far off result; we used to talk always like that, and if a person had happened to be present at our conversations he would have said, What are they talking about! But for us, you know, it was as clear as a continuous sentence. You could call that a mental miracleit was not a miracle, it was simply that Sri Aurobindo had the vision of the totality of mental phenomena and hence we had no need to waste a good deal of time in going through all the gradations. For any person capable of following the line, the thing would have been quite natural and logical; for ignorant people it was a miracle.
1951-03-03 - Hostile forces - difficulties - Individuality and form - creation, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And that is the great mystery of creation, for it is the same consciousness, the Consciousness is one. But the very moment this Consciousness manifests itself, exteriorises itself, deploys itself, it divides itself into innumerable fragments for the need of expansion, and each one of these fragmentations has been the beginning, the origin of an individual being. The origin of every individual form is the Law of this form or the truth of this form. If there were no law, no truth of each form, there would be no possibility of individualisation. It would be something extending indefinitely; there would be perhaps points of concentration, assemblages, but no individual consciousness. Each form then represents one element in the changing of the One into the many. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of laws, elements of consciousness, truths which spread out into the universe and finally become separate individualities. So the individual being seems constantly to go farther and farther away from its origin by the very necessity of individualisation. But once this individualisation, that is, this awareness of the inner truth is complete, it becomes possible, by an inner identification, to re-establish in the multiplicity the original unity; that is the raison dtre of the universe as we perceive it. The universe has been made so that this phenomenon may take place. The Supreme has manifested Himself to Himself so as to become aware of Himself.
In any case, that is the rationale of this creation. Let us be satisfied with our universe, let us make the best use possible of our life upon earth and the rest will come in its time.
1951-03-05 - Disasters- the forces of Nature - Story of the charity Bazar - Liberation and law - Dealing with the mind and vital- methods, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This reminds me of what happened in Paris when I was seventeen or eighteen. There was a charity bazaar. This charity bazaar was a place where men from all over the world came to buy and sell all kinds of things, and the proceeds of the sale went to works of charity (it was meant more for amusement than for doing good, but still, charitable works profited by it). All the elegance, all the refinement of high society was gathered there. Now, the bazaar was very beautiful but not solidly built, because it was to last only for three or four days. The roof was of painted tarpaulin which had been suspended. Everything was lighted by electricity; the work was more or less decently done, but naturally with the idea that it was only for a few days. There was a short-circuit, everything began to blaze up; the roof caught fire and suddenly collapsed upon the people. As I said, all the lite of society were there for them, from the human point of view, it was a frightful catastrophe. There were people near the entrance who tried to escape; others, all ablaze, also tried to reach the door and run away. It was a veritable scuffle! All these elegant, refined people, who usually were so well-mannered, began to fight like street rowdies. There was even a Count of something or other, a very well-known man, a poet, a man of perfect elegance, who carried a silver-knobbed stick, and he was surprised in the act of hitting women on the head with his stick, and trying to push forward! Indeed, it was a fine sight, something most elegant! Afterwards, lamentations in society, big funerals and many stories. Now, a Dominican, a well-known orator, was asked to give a speech over the tombs of the unfortunate who had perished in the fire. He said something to this effect: It serves you right. You did not live according to the Law of God and He has punished you by burning you.
And every time there was a disaster this story was repeated. Naturally many people protested and said, Heres a God whom we wont have! But these ideas are quite typical of ordinary humanity.
--
It is not only a freedom from all attachment, but a liberation from all bondage to the Law of consequences. In the material field there is a determinism which comes from the Law of consequences, from the Law of cause and effect; hence inner liberation does not free you only from all attachment but from all consequences. As I have told you many a time, by your inner liberation your consciousness rises to a level far above the level which governs the material world and, from this high level, the Force can descend and cancel all the material consequences.
If one realises a certain truth in the higher consciousness but the mind resists, should the mind be forced to accept this new truth?
1951-04-12 - Japan, its art, landscapes, life, etc - Fairy-lore of Japan - Culture- its spiral movement - Indian and European- the spiritual life - Art and Truth, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And in the cities, a city like Tokyo, for example, which is the biggest city in the world, bigger than London, and which extends far, far (now the houses are modernised, the whole centre of the city is very unpleasant, but when I was there, it was still good), in the outlying parts of the city, those which are not business quarters, every house has at the most two storeys and a garden there is always a garden, there are always one or two trees which are quite lovely. And then, if you go for a walkit is very difficult to find your way in Tokyo; there are no straight streets with houses on either side according to the number, and you lose your way easily. Then you go wandering aroundalways one wanders at random in that countryyou go wandering and all of a sudden you turn the corner of a street and come to a kind of paradise: there are magnificent trees, a temple as beautiful as everything else, you see nothing of the city any longer, no more traffic, no tramways; a corner, a corner of trees with magnificent colours, and it is beautiful, beautiful like everything else. You do not know how you have reached there, you seem to have come by luck. And then you turn, you seek your way, you wander off again and go elsewhere. And some days later you want to come back to this very place, but it is impossible, it is as though it had disappeared. And this is so frequent, this is so true that such stories are often told in Japan. Their literature is full of fairy-lore. They tell you a story in which the hero comes suddenly to an enchanted place: he sees fairies, he sees marvellous beings, he spends exquisite hours among flowers, music; all is splendid. The next day he is obliged to leave; it is the Law of the place, he goes away. He tries to come back, but never does. He can no longer find the place: it was there, it has disappeared! And everything in this city, in this country, from beginning to end, gives you the impression of impermanence, of the unexpected, the exceptional. You always come to things you did not expect; you want to find them again and they are lostthey have made something else which is equally charming. From the artistic point of view, the point of view of beauty, I dont think there is a country as beautiful as that.
Now, I ought to say, to complete my picture, that the four years I was there I found a dearth of spirituality as entire as could be. These people have a wonderful morality, live according to quite strict moral rules, they have a mental construction even in the least detail of life: one must eat in a certain way and not another, one must bow in a certain way and not another, one must say certain words but not all; when addressing certain people one must express oneself in a certain way; when speaking with others, one must express oneself in another. If you go to buy something in a shop, you must say a particular sentence; if you dont say it, you are not served: they look at you quizzically and do not move! But if you say the word, they wait upon you with full attention and bring, if necessary, a cushion for you to sit upon and a cup of tea to drink. And everything is like that. However, not once do you have the feeling that you are in contact with something other than a marvellously organised mental-physical domain. And what energy they have! Their whole vital being is turned into energy. They have an extraordinary endurance but no direct aspiration: one must obey the rule, one is obliged. If one does not submit oneself to rules there, one may live as Europeans do, who are considered barbarians and looked upon altogether as intruders, but if you want to live a Japanese life among the Japanese you must do as they do, otherwise you make them so unhappy that you cant even have any relation with them. In their house you must live in a particular way, when you meet them you must greet them in a particular way. I think I have already told you the story of that Japanese who was an intimate friend of ours, and whom I helped to come into contact with his soul and who ran away. He was in the countryside with us and I had put him in touch with his psychic being; he had the experience, a revelation, the contact, the dazzling inner contact. And the next morning, he was no longer there, he had taken flight! Later, when I saw him again in town after the holidays, I asked him, But what happened to you, why did you go away?Oh! You understand, I discovered my soul and saw that my soul was more powerful than my faith in the country and the Mikado; I would have had to obey my soul and I would no longer have been a faithful subject of my emperor. I had to go away. There you are! All this is au thentically true.
1951-04-17 - Unity, diversity - Protective envelope - desires - consciousness, true defence - Perfection of physical - cinema - Choice, constant and conscious - law of ones being - the One, the Multiplicity - Civilization- preparing an instrument, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Law of each being is different, yes, otherwise how would a distinction be made?From top to bottom, the nature, appearance, actions, all would be the same. If there were only one law, there would be only one law and every one would repeat the same thing. There would be no need at all to manifest a universe because it would be one single law. The very characteristic of the universe is an infinite multiplicity of laws which altogether, in their totality, reproduce the One. And it is this which is particularly marvellous in the physical world (in man and in the physical world, for it is proper to the terrestrial being), that it can be one of the innumerable elements which in their totality reproduce the One, and yet at the same time have a personal relation with the One that is to say, contain in itself the consciousness of the One and the relation with the One, and at the same time be an element of the whole. But if the fact of becoming conscious of the One and identifying oneself with it stopped one from being particular, one would cease existing as a personality. This is precisely what the Buddhists and the disciples of Shankara try to realise; they wish to abolish totally their personality, their individuality, abolish the truth of their being, the special law of their being. This is what they consider to be a fusion with the Divine. But this is the negation of this creation. And as I was saying, the miracle of this creation, as far as the terrestrial individuality goes, is that we may achieve this union, this complete identification with the Supreme, the One, and at the same time keep the consciousness of our diversity, of the particular law we have to express. It is more difficult but infinitely more complete, and it is the very truth of this universe. The universe has not been made for anything else but that, to unite these two poles, the two extremes of consciousness. And when they are united, one understands that these two extremes are exactly the same thinga whole, at once one and innumerable.
But one feels very different from others!
1953-11-18, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Without the ceaseless intervention of Your Grace, who would not oftentimes have come under the merciless blade of the Law of Universal Justice?
Each one here represents an impossibility to be resolved, but as for Your Divine Grace all things are possible. Your work will be, in the detail as in the ensemble, the accomplishment of all the impossibilities transformed into divine realisations.
--
You know the Law of determinism, dont you? You have not studied philosophy at all? (Turning to a professor) Pavitra, explain what determinism is to them. Try to be brief and clear.
Pavitra: I think determinism is this: when something happens, it always has the same effect.
1954-02-17 - Experience expressed in different ways - Origin of the psychic being - Progress in sports -Everything is not for the best, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is a little philosophical You know the difference between what is subjective and what is objective? You know it! Well, imagine precisely this Reality we were speaking about, which is at the origin of all things, passing from the subjective to the objective state. That is, what was within becomes as though projected outside. It is the it same thing: it is the state that changes. And so, within it there are all the possibilities of objective existence; within they are unexpressed, unmanifested; outside they are projected, as a picture is projected on the cinema-screen: we see it before us. And every element that was a possibility within, a law, becomes the Law of a realisation. And every one of these possibilities becomes the reality of a being, of an individuality if you like, of something existing objectively. And it is that law which is the origin of the centre of the psychic being: it is the truth of the being or the Law of the being. The Buddha called it the law, he spoke of the Dharma. It is the truth of the being. It is that which binds it again indestructibly to its origin. And that is the starting-point of the psychic being. And so, even as this develops, like the picture on the screen, it takes a more and more complex and precise form in the manifestation. But the reality of that form is one, it is bound to the One. And all the units are linked together and reproduce the One.
Is it not easier? (Looking at the child) It is still more difficult! But indeed, thats what I have said here.
1954-11-24 - Aspiration mixed with desire - Willing and desiring - Children and desires - Supermind and the higher ranges of mind - Stages in the supramental manifestation, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are many ways. But first of all you must know whether you will not just stop him from freely expressing what he thinks and feels. Because this is what people usually do. They scold, even sometimes punish him; and so the child forms the habit of concealing his desires. But he is not cured of them. And you see, if he is always told, "No, you won't have that", then, simply, this state of mind gets settled in him: "Ah, when you are small, people don't give you anything! You must wait till you are big. When I am big I shall have all that I want." That's how it is. But this does not cure them. It is very difficult to bring up a child. There is a way which consists in giving him all he wants; and naturally, the next minute he will want something else, because that's the law, the Law of desire: never to be satisfied. And so, if he is intelligent, one can tell him, "But you see, you insisted so much on having this and now you no longer care for it. You want something else." Yet if he was very clever he would answer, "Well, the best way of curing me is to give me what I ask for."
Some people cherish this idea all their life. When they are told that they should overcome their desires, they say, "The easiest way is to satisfy them." This kind of logic seems impeccable. But the fact is that it is not the object desired that has to be changed, it is the impulse of desire, the movement of desire. And for this a great deal of knowledge is needed, and this is difficult for a very young child.
1955-05-25 - Religion and reason - true role and field - an obstacle to or minister of the Spirit - developing and meaning - Learning how to live, the elite - Reason controls and organises life - Nature is infrarational, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do the laws of Nature follow the Law of human reason?
Oh, no!
--
Nature is infrarational. The laws of Nature are infrarational laws. So when men come along and tell you, But what do you want, it is the Law of Nature, as for me, it makes me laugh. It is not worth being a man, it would be better for you to be a monkey or an elephant or a lion. The laws of Nature are infrarational.
This is the only superiority that man has, his having a reason, and when he doesnt make use of it he becomes absolutely an animal.
Thats the last excuse to give: What do you want, its the Law of Nature!
It is late, otherwise I would tell you a few stories.
1955-06-01 - The aesthetic conscience - Beauty and form - The roots of our life - The sense of beauty - Educating the aesthetic sense, taste - Mental constructions based on a revelation - Changing the world and humanity, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, he had found, according to himself (I dont remember his name now), he had found the means of being happy, that everyone may be satisfied and men may love one another. So naturally people who did not agree with him, said to him, But how does it happen that when the Law of Nature alone reignsas for example, without even going as far as the animal, in vegetable lifehow does it happen that there are constant massacres between plants and the perpetual struggle for life? Is this what you call harmony? Then the other man did not understand anything.
In fact, people who are interested in general questions, those who come out of their little daily preoccupations of being born, living and dying, living as well as possible there are people not satisfied with this, who try to have general ideas and look at world problems these people make an inner effort or a mental effort, and in one way or another enter into contact with the great currents of forces, at first currents of mental force, of the higher light and sometimes of spiritual force. Then they receive a kind of drop of that within their consciousness, and this produces in them the illumination of a revelation, and they feel that they have grasped the truth. They have a revelation and so naturally are very happy and immediately think, My happiness I am going to pass on to others; for they are very fine people, they have very good intentions. Then, to pass on their happiness to others they begin by making a construction around their revelation; they must make it into a system; otherwise how to preach to others? So they make a system, like this gentleman. I have met hundreds like this in the world. Now, each one had had a revelation and had constructed something which seemed to him to be the solution to all problems. They wanted to apply it to everything. So they gathered people around them; according to the strength of their influence, their power, they gathered more people or less, from three or four to some hundreds; sometimes they had groups and they said, Here we are, if everyone does what we do, well, the world will be transformed. Unfortunately it was only a spark of light, and their construction was purely mental and not free from the ordinary laws of life. And so the people in the groups who were to have preached to the world harmony, beauty, happiness, joy and peace, etc., quarrelled among themselves. This took away all power from their teaching. It is like this, and in fact it is true.
1956-02-29 - Sacrifice, self-giving - Divine Presence in the heart of Matter - Divine Oneness - Divine Consciousness - All is One - Divine in the inconscient aspires for the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. For with sacrifice as their companion, says the Gita, the All-Father created these peoples. The acceptance of the Law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service.
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 98
1956-03-28 - The starting-point of spiritual experience - The boundless finite - The Timeless and Time - Mental explanation not enough - Changing knowledge into experience - Sat-Chit-Tapas-Ananda, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is as if you asked me, Why is the earth round and why are the sun and the planets there? It is like that, the Law of the universe is like that.
Most of these things are simply statements of fact; but there are no explanations, for one cant give mental explanations. One can give some, but each thing one wants to explain is explained by another, which has to be explained by another, which has to be explained by anotherindefinitely. And you can go right round the universe, and with one thing explaining another, it explains nothing at all.
1956-06-20 - Hearts mystic light, intuition - Psychic being, contact - Secular ethics - True role of mind - Realise the Divine by love - Depression, pleasure, joy - Heart mixture - To follow the soul - Physical process - remember the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He writes: It is indeed by the religio-ethical sense that the Law of universal goodwill or universal compassion or of love and service to the neighbour, the Vedantic, the Buddhistic, the Christian ideal, was created; only by a sort of secular refrigeration extinguishing the fervour of the religious element in it could the humanitarian ideal disengage itself and become the highest plane of a secular system of mental and moral ethics.
The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 142
1956-08-22 - The heaven of the liberated mind - Trance or samadhi - Occult discipline for leaving consecutive bodies - To be greater than ones experience - Total self-giving to the Grace - The truth of the being - Unique relation with the Supreme, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is what is called here in India the truth of the being or the Law of the being, the dharma of the being: the centre and the cause of the individuality.
Everyone carries his truth within himself, a truth which is unique, which is altogether his own and which he must express in his life. Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked:
1957-03-06 - Freedom, servitude and love, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Pavitra reads) What does this paragraph mean?: Freedom is the Law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: servitude is the Law of love in the being voluntarily giving itself to serve the play of its other selves in the multiplicity.
Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 386
1957-04-17 - Transformation of the body, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. arram khalu dharmasdhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage,the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the Law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.
The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 5
1958-02-05 - The great voyage of the Supreme - Freedom and determinism, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Surely only a consciousness identified with the supreme Consciousness can have this feeling of absolute freedom. So long as you are not one with the supreme Consciousness, you necessarily have the impression or the feeling or idea that you are subject to the Law of a higher Will, but the moment you are identified with this Will you are perfectly free.
This amounts to saying what Sri Aurobindo has always said: in union with the Supreme true freedom is realised.
1958-03-19 - General tension in humanity - Peace and progress - Perversion and vision of transformation, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Next, it may be conceded that each type or pattern of consciousness and being in the body, once established, has to be faithful to the Law of being of that type, to its own design and rule of nature. But it may also very well be that part of the Law of the human type is its impulse towards self-exceeding, that the means for a conscious transition has been provided for among the spiritual powers of man; the possession of such a capacity may be a part of the plan on which the creative Energy has built him. It may be conceded that what man has up till now principally done is to act within the circle of his nature, on a spiral of nature-movement, sometimes descending, sometimes ascending,there has been no straight line of progress, no indisputable, fundamental or radical exceeding of his past nature: what he has done is to sharpen, subtilise, make a more and more complex and plastic use of his capacities. It cannot truly be said that there has been no such thing as human progress since mans appearance or even in his recent ascertainable history; for however great the ancients, however supreme some of their achievements and creations, however impressive their powers of spirituality, of intellect or of character, there has been in later developments an increasing subtlety, complexity, manifold development of knowledge and possibility in mans achievements, in his politics, society, life, science, metaphysics, knowledge of all kinds, art, literature; even in his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been falls from a high type of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into a barbaric natural materialism; but these are temporary phenomena, at worst a downward curve of the spiral of progress. This progress has not indeed carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being. But that was not to be expected; for the action of evolutionary Nature in a type of being and consciousness is first to develop the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and increasing complexity till it is ready for her bursting of the shell, the ripened decisive emergence, reversal, turning over of consciousness on itself that constitutes a new stage in the evolution. If it be supposed that her next step is the spiritual and supramental being, the stress of spirituality in the race may be taken as a sign that that is Natures intention, the sign too of the capacity of man to operate in himself or aid her to operate the transition. If the appearance in animal being of a type similar in some respects to the ape-kind but already from the beginning endowed with the elements of humanity was the method of the human evolution, the appearance in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual and supramental being.
The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 841-42
1958-11-05 - Knowing how to be silent, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the evolution of the spiritual man there must necessarily be many stages and in each stage a great variety of individual formations of the being, the consciousness, the life, the temperament, the ideas, the character. The nature of instrumental mind and the necessity of dealing with the life must of itself create an infinite variety according to the stage of development and the individuality of the seeker. But, apart from that, even the domain of pure spiritual self-realisation and self-expression need not be a single white monotone, here can be a great diversity in the fundamental unity; the supreme Self is one, but the souls of the Self are many and, as is the souls formation of nature, so will be its spiritual self-expression. A diversity in oneness is the Law of the manifestation; the supramental unification and integration must harmonise these diversities, but to abolish them is not the intention of the Spirit in Nature.
The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 886-88
1962 02 27, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My explanation is that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the page-boy seems to indicate that an intelligence, a consciousness had intervened; it does not seem to have been his own subconscient. Or it might be that his subconscient was aware and had seen in the subtle physical that this was going to happen. But why did his subconscient give him an image like that? I do not know. Perhaps something in the subconscient knew, because it was already there, it was already in the subtle physical. The accident already existed before it happened the Law of the accident.
Obviously, there is always, in every case, some difference, sometimes a few hours but that is the maximum sometimes a few seconds. And very often, things tell you that they are there, and it takes them sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds to come into contact with your consciousness. Constantly, constantly I know what is going to happen, and for things that are of absolutely no interest there is no advantage in knowing it beforehand, it changes nothing; but it exists, it is all around you. If your consciousness is wide enough, you know all that, for example, that a certain person is going to bring you a parcel, things like that. And it is like that every day. Or that a certain person is about to arrive. It is because the consciousness is extended, so it contacts things.
1969 09 31? - 165, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
165To observe the law we have imposed on ourselves rather than the Law of others is what is meant by liberty in our unregenerate condition. Only in God and by the supremacy of the spirit can we enjoy a perfect freedom.
True liberty is to be in constant union with the Divine and to do only what the Divine wants us to do.
But until then, it is better to impose on ourselves a higher law of action and conduct and to observe it scrupulously rather than to obey the Law of other men or of moral and social conventions.
1 October 1969
1969 10 01? - 166, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
166The double law of sin and virtue is imposed on us because we have not that ideal life and knowledge within which guides the soul spontaneously and infallibly to its self-fulfilment. the Law of sin and virtue ceases for us when the sun of God shines upon the soul in truth and love with its unveiled splendour. Moses is replaced by Christ, the Shastra by the Veda.1
Do you think this idea of sin and virtue has done humanity any good?
As Sri Aurobindo says, the Law of sin and virtue was certainly necessary for the progress of humanity when it was given several thousand years ago. But today it no longer has any meaning or usefulness and should no longer be heeded.
It belongs to a past which should no longer have any authority.
1970 01 24, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
300Turn all things to honey; this is the Law of divine living.
301Private dispute should always be avoided; but shrink not from the public battle; yet even there appropriate1 the strength of thy adversary.
1970 02 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
344This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfecting their environment by the machinery of government and society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art within, that outside thee thou shalt enjoy; no machinery can rescue thee from the Law of thy being.
345Be always vigilant against thy human proneness to persecute or ignore the reality even while thou art worshipping its semblance or token. Not human wickedness but human fallibility is the opportunity of Evil.
1.fs - The Eleusinian Festival, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
To revere the Law of time,
And the moon's melodious song
--
While the Law of Nature tames
Each wild lust that lingers there.
1.pbs - Prometheus Unbound, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Note from Mrs. Shelley: 'On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. .....Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the Law of the world. ....And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in their decay, or gaed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, ''My Prometheus Unbound is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my former attempts.'''
1.pbs - Rosalind and Helen - a Modern Eclogue, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Note by Mrs. Shelley: 'Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside -- till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed, on that passion. When he spoke of it as the Law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts; and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.
Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the baths of Lucca.'
1.pbs - The Revolt Of Islam - Canto I-XII, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
Her sex the Law of truth and freedom hear,
And with these quiet words"For thine own sake
1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
But even of treatises on the really limited, although always assumed as the un limited, Universe of stars, I know none in which a survey, even of this limited Universe, is so taken as to warrant deductions from its individuality. The nearest approach to such a work is made in the "Cosmos" of Alexander Von Humboldt. He presents the subject, however, not in its individuality but in its generality. His theme, in its last result, is the Law of each portion of the merely physical Universe, as this law is related to the laws of every other portion of this merely physical Universe. His design is simply synoeretical. In a word, he discusses the universality of material relation, and discloses to the eye of Philosophy whatever inferences have hitherto lain hidden behind this universality. But however admirable be the succinctness with which he has treated each particular point of his topic, the mere multiplicity of these points occasions, necessarily, an amount of detail, and thus an involution of idea, which preclude all individuality of impression.
It seems to me that, in aiming at this latter effect, and, through it, at the consequences -the conclusions -the suggestions -the speculations -or, if nothing better offer itself, the mere guesses which may result from it -we require something like a mental gyration on the heel. We need so rapid a revolution of all things about the central point of sight that, while the minutiae vanish altogether, even the more conspicuous objects become blended into one. Among the vanishing minutiae, in a survey of this kind, would be all exclusively terrestrial matters. The Earth would be considered in its planetary relations alone. A man, in this view, becomes mankind; mankind a member of the cosmical family of Intelligences.
--
I quoted Dr. Nichol's remark, however, not so much to question its philosophy, as by way of calling attention to the fact that, while all men have admitted some principle as existing behind the Law of Gravity, no attempt has been yet made to point out what this principle in particular is: -if we except, perhaps, occasional fantastic efforts at referring it to Magnetism, or Mesmerism, or Swedenborgianism, or Transcendentalism, or some other equally delicious ism of the same species, and invariably patronized by one and the same species of people. The great mind of Newton, while boldly grasping the Law itself, shrank from the principle of the Law. The more fluent and comprehensive at least, if not the more patient and profound, sagacity of Laplace, had not the courage to attack it. But hesitation on the part of these two astronomers it is, perhaps, not so very difficult to understand. They, as well as all the first class of mathematicians, were mathematicians solely: their intellect, at least, had a firmly-pronounced mathematico-physical tone. What lay not distinctly within the domain of Physics, or of Mathematics, seemed to them either Non-Entity or Shadow. Nevertheless, we may well wonder that Leibnitz, who was a marked exception to the general rule in these respects, and whose mental temperament was a singular admixture of the mathematical with the physico-metaphysical, did not at once investigate and establish the point at issue. Either Newton or Laplace, seeking a principle and discovering none physical, would have rested contentedly in the conclusion that there was absolutely none; but it is almost impossible to fancy, of Leibnitz, that, having exhausted in his search the physical dominions, he would not have stepped at once, boldly and hopefully, amid his old familiar haunts in the kingdom of Metaphysics. Here, indeed, it is clear that he must have adventured in search of the treasure: -that he did not find it after all, was, perhaps, because his fairy guide, Imagination, was not sufficiently well-grown, or well-educated, to direct him aright.
I observed, just now, that, in fact, there had been certain vague attempts at referring Gravity to some very uncertain isms. These attempts, however, although considered bold and justly so considered, looked no farther than to the generality -the merest generality -of the Newtonian Law. Its modus operandi has never, to my knowledge, been approached in the way of an effort at explanation. It is, therefore, with no unwarranted fear of being taken for a madman at the outset, and before I can bring my propositions fairly to the eye of those who alone are competent to decide upon them, that I here declare the modus operandi of the Law of Gravity to be an exceedingly simple and perfectly explicable thing -that is to say, when we make our advances towards it in just gradations and in the true direction -when we regard it from the proper point of view.
Whether we reach the idea of absolute Unity as the source of All Things, from a consideration of Simplicity as the most probable characteristic of the original action of God; -whether we arrive at it from an inspection of the universality of relation in the gravitating phaenomena; -or whether we attain it as a result of the mutual corroboration afforded by both processes; -still, the idea itself, if entertained at all, is entertained in inseparable connection with another idea -that of the condition of the Universe of stars as we now perceive it -that is to say, a condition of immeasurable diffusion through space. Now a connection between these two ideas -unity and diffusion -cannot be established unless through the entertainment of a third idea -that of irradiation. Absolute Unity being taken as a centre, then the existing Universe of stars is the result of irradiation from that centre.
--
Now, Reaction, as far as we know any thing of it, is Action conversed. The general principle of Gravity being, in the first place, understood as the reaction of an act -as the expression of a desire on the part of Matter, while existing in a state of diffusion, to return into the Unity whence it was diffused; and, in the second place, the mind being called upon to determine the character of the desire -the manner in which it would, naturally, be manifested; in other words, being called upon to conceive a probable law, or modus operandi, for the return; could not well help arriving at the conclusion that this law of return would be precisely the converse of the Law of departure. That such would be the case, any one, at least, would be abundantly justified in taking for granted, until such time as some person should suggest something like a plausible reason why it should not be the case -until such a period as a law of return shall be imagined which the intellect can consider as preferable.
Matter, then, irradiated into space with a force varying as the squares of the distances, might, a priori, be supposed to return towards its centre of irradiation with a force varying inversely as the squares of the distances: and I have already shown that any principle which will explain why the atoms should tend, according to any law, to the general centre, must be admitted as satisfactorily explaining, at the same time, why, according to the same law, they should tend each to each. For, in fact, the tendency to the general centre is not to a centre as such, but because of its being a point in tending towards which each atom tends most directly to its real and essential centre, Unity -the absolute and final Union of all.
--
Thus from his original bulk -or, to speak more accurately, from the condition in which we first considered him -from a partially spherified nebular mass, certainly much more than 5,600 millions of miles in diameter -the great central orb and origin of our solar-planetary-lunar system, has gradually descended, by condensation, in obedience to the Law of Gravity, to a globe only 882,000 miles in diameter; but it by no means follows, either that its condensation is yet complete, or that it may not still possess the capacity of whirling from itself another planet.
I have here given -in outline of course, but still with all the detail necessary for distinctness -a view of the Nebular Theory as its author himself conceived it. From whatever point we regard it, we shall find it beautifully true. It is by far too beautiful, indeed, not to possess Truth as its essentiality -and here I am very profoundly serious in what I say. In the revolution of the satellites of Uranus, there does appear something seemingly inconsistent with the assumptions of Laplace; but that one inconsistency can invalidate a theory constructed from a million of intricate consistencies, is a fancy fit only for the fantastic. In prophecying, confidently, that the apparent anomaly to which I refer, will, sooner or later, be found one of the strongest possible corroborations of the general hypothesis, I pretend to no especial spirit of divination. It is a matter which the only difficulty seems not to foresee.
--
In this view, it will be seen that, dismissing as frivolous, and even impious, the fancy of the tangential force having been imparted to the planets immediately, by "the finger of God," I consider this force as originating in the rotation of the stars: -this rotation as brought about by the in-rushing of the primary atoms, towards their respective centres of aggregation: -this in-rushing as the consequence of the Law of Gravity: -this law as but the mode in which is necessarily manifested the tendency of the atoms to return into imparticularity: -this tendency to return as but the inevitable reaction of the first and most sublime of Acts -that act by which a God, self-existing and alone existing, became all things at once, through dint of his volition, while all things were thus constituted a portion of God.
The radical assumptions of this Discourse suggest to me, and in fact imply, certain important modifications of the Nebular Theory as given by Laplace. The efforts of the repulsive power I have considered as made for the purpose of preventing contact among the atoms, and thus as made in the ratio of the approach to contact -that is to say, in the ratio of condensation. In other words, Electricity, with its involute phaenomena, heat, light and magnetism, is to be understood as proceeding as condensation proceeds, and, of course, inversely as density proceeds, or the cessation to condense. Thus the Sun, in the process of its aggregation, must soon, in developing repulsion, have become excessively heated -perhaps incandescent: and we can perceive how the operation of discarding its rings must have been materially assisted by the slight incrustation of its surface consequent on cooling. Any common experiment shows us how readily a crust of the character suggested, is separated, through heterogeneity, from the interior mass. But, on every successive rejection of the crust, the new surface would appear incandescent as before; and the period at which it would again become so far encrusted as to be readily loosened and discharged, may well be imagined as exactly coincident with that at which a new effort would be needed, by the whole mass, to restore the equilibrium of its two forces, disarranged through condensation. In other words: -by the time the electric influence (Repulsion) has prepared the surface for rejection, we are to understand that the gravitating influence (Attraction) is precisely ready to reject it. Here, then, as everywhere, the Body and the Soul walk hand in hand.
--
"Views of the Architecture of the Heavens." A letter, purporting to be from Dr. Nichol to a friend in America, went the rounds of our newspapers, about two years ago, I think, admitting "the necessity" to which I refer. In a subsequent Lecture, however, Dr. N. appears in some manner to have gotten the better of the necessity, and does not quite renounce the theory, although he seems to wish that he could sneer at it as "a purely hypothetical one." What else was the Law of Gravity before the Maskelyne experiments? and who questioned the Law of Gravity, even then?
Many of my readers will no doubt be inclined to say that the result of these new investigations has at least a strong tendency to overthrow the hypothesis; while some of them, more thoughtful, will suggest that, although the theory is by no means disproved through the segregation of the particular "nebulae" alluded to, still a failure to segregate them, with such telescopes, might well have been understood as a triumphant Corroboration of the theory: -and this latter class will be surprised, perhaps, to hear me say that even with them I disagree. If the propositions of this Discourse have been comprehended, it will be seen that, in my view, a failure to segregate the "nebulae" would have tended to the refutation, rather than to the confirmation, of the Nebular Hypothesis.
--
The mean distance of the Earth from the Moon -that is to say, from the heavenly body in our closest vicinity -is 237,000 miles. Mercury, the planet nearest the Sun, is distant from him 37 millions of miles. Venus, the next, revolves at a distance of 68 millions: -the Earth, which comes next, at a distance of 95 millions: -Mars, then, at a distance of 144 millions. Now come the eight Asteroids (Ceres, Juno, Vesta, Pallas, Astraea, Flora, Iris, and Hebe) at an average distance of about 250 millions. Then we have Jupiter, distant 490 millions; then Saturn, 900 millions; then Uranus, 19 hundred millions; finally Neptune, lately discovered, and revolving at a distance, say of 28 hundred millions. Leaving Neptune out of the account -of which as yet we know little accurately and which is, possibly, one of a system of Asteroids -it will be seen that, within certain limits, there exists an order of interval among the planets. Speaking loosely, we may say that each outer planet is twice as far from the Sun as is the next inner one. May not the order here mentioned -may not the Law of Bode -be deduced from consideration of the analogy suggested by me as having place between the solar discharge of rings and the mode of the atomic irradiation?
The numbers hurriedly mentioned in this summary of distance, it is folly to attempt comprehending, unless in the light of abstract arithmetical facts. They are not practically tangible ones. They convey no precise ideas. I have stated that Neptune, the planet farthest from the Sun, revolves about him at a distance of 28 hundred millions of miles. So far good: -I have stated a mathematical fact; and, without comprehending it in the least, we may put it to use -mathematically. But in mentioning, even, that the Moon revolves about the Earth at the comparatively trifling distance of 237,000 miles, I entertained no expectation of giving any one to understand -to know -to feel -how far from the Earth the Moon actually is. 237,000 miles! There are, perhaps, few of my readers who have not crossed the Atlantic ocean; yet how many of them have a distinct idea of even the 3,000 miles intervening between shore and shore? I doubt, indeed, whether the man lives who can force into his brain the most remote conception of the interval between one milestone and its next neighbor upon the turnpike. We are in some measure aided, however, in our consideration of distance, by combining this consideration with the kindred one of velocity. Sound passes through 1100 feet of space in a second of time. Now were it possible for an inhabitant of the Earth to see the flash of a cannon discharged in the Moon, and to hear the report, he would have to wait, after perceiving the former, more than 13 entire days and nights before getting any intimation of the latter.
--
But are we here to pause? Not so. On the Universal agglomeration and dissolution, we can readily conceive that a new and perhaps totally different series of conditions may ensue -another creation and irradiation, returning into itself -another action and reaction of the Divine Will. Guiding our imaginations by that omniprevalent law of laws, the Law of periodicity, are we not, indeed, more than justified in entertaining a belief -let us say, rather, in indulging a hope -that the processes we have here ventured to contemplate will be renewed forever, and forever, and forever; a novel Universe swelling into existence, and then subsiding into nothingness, at every throb of the Heart Divine?
And now -this Heart Divine -what is it? It is our own.
1.rb - An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
the Law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
1.rt - The Kiss, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
Two waves rise by the Law of love
to break and die on two sets of lips.
1.rwe - May-Day, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
Knows the Law of Night and Day,
And the heart of girl and boy,
1.rwe - Monadnoc, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
'Tis the Law of bush and stone
Each can only take his own.
1.whitman - Race Of Veterans, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Race henceforth owning no law but the Law of itself;
Race of passion and the storm.
1.whitman - The Indications, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the Law of reason, health,
rudeness of body, withdrawnness,
1.whitman - To Think Of Time, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
the Law of the past cannot be eluded,
the Law of the present and future cannot be eluded,
the Law of the living cannot be eludedit is eternal,
the Law of promotion and transformation cannot be eluded,
the Law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
the Law of drunkards, informers, mean personsnot one iota thereof
can be eluded.
--
I have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the Law of
us changed,
1.ww - 7- The White Doe Of Rylstone, Or, The Fate Of The Nortons, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Raised far above the Law of kind;
Haunting the spots with lonely cheer
1.ww - The Prioresss Tale [from Chaucer], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Said this young Child, 'and by the Law of kind
I should have died, yea many hours ago;
2.01 - Mandala One, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(1) O Indra, drink according to the Law of truth the Soma wine; let the nectar-sweetnesses enter into thee, rapturous, that have there their home.
(2) O Maruts, drink according to the truth, purify the yajna by the process of purification for ye are steadfast and very bold.
--
(1) Whatsoever thy peoples, whatever their nature, thou,OGod Varuna, measurest out to them accordingly in sky and sky the Law of their nature.
(2) Let not thy delight in us be for the mortal piercing of him who is heedless nor for wrath against him who is exultant.
--
(4) They shine out with rich and varied lustres to make themselves a body. On their breasts they have cast golden ornaments for the delight of beauty. Burning lances are on their shoulders. Together by the Law of their nature are born the strong ones of heaven.
(5) Vehemently rushing they come, makers of men into lords and kings, destroyers of all who would injure, make by their strengths winds and lightnings, press the teats of heaven, stream violently its torrents and speeding everywhere feed the earth with milk.
--
(1) Rightly in the intoxicating Soma-wine the Priest of the word has made thy increase. O most puissant Thunderer, by thy might thou hast expelled from the earth the Serpent, singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(2) That intoxicating Soma which was pressed, which was brought by the Falcon, had made thee drunk with rapture, by which thou smotest the Coverer out from the waters, O Thunderer, by thy might, singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(3) Advance, approach, be violent; thy thunderbolt cannot be controlled. O Indra, for thy puissance is a god-might, slay the Coverer, conquer the waters, singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(4) [Not translated.]
(5) Indra offended assails the height of Vritra where he lashes his body, and smites him with the thunderbolt, urging the waters to their flow, singing the word of illumination in the Law of his self-empire.
(6) On the height he smites him with his hundred-jointed thunderbolt; Indra, intoxicated with the Soma food, desires a path of travel for his comrades, singing the word of illumination in the Law of his self-empire.
(7) O Indra, master of the thunder-stone, thunderer, for thee an energy that cannot be moved, when thou slewest by thy wisdom that cunning one, the Beast, singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(8) Thy thunderbolts set themselves abroad along the ninety rivers; great is thy energy; strength is established in thy two arms,singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(9) The Thousand sang the word of illumination, the Twenty affirmed him, the Hundred moved in his wake, to Indra the Word was lifted up,singing the word of illumination in the Law of his self-empire.
(10) Indra smote out of him his energy, he slew force with force; great is his virile strength; when he had slain Vritra, he released the waters, singing the song of illumination in the Law of his self-empire.
(11) Lo, these two great goddesses tremble with fear to thy wrath, when, O Indra, O Thunderer, by thy might, having the Maruts in thee, thou hast smitten the Coverer, singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(12) Vritra terrified thee not by his shaking, nor by his thundering; the adamant thousand-lustred thunderbolt sped against himsinging the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(13) When thou warredst with thy thunderbolt against Vritra and his bolt, when, O Indra, thou wouldst slay the Python, thy puissance became a fixed mass in heaven. Singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(14) When, O master of the Stone, all that moves and all that is stable trembles with thy shouting, Twashtri even is shaken with fear before thy passion. Singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(15) We cannot hold him by our thought; who is above Indra in energy? The Gods have set in him god-might and will and puissances. Singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
(16) The thought to which Atharvan and our father Manu and Dadhichi gave shape,in him the Words and the Utterances meet together as of old in Indra. Singing the word of illumination in the Law of thy self-empire.
***
--
, in the Law of thy self-empire, in the last hymn. Indra is great by will or action, , and in verse 7 he is described as , straight in will or action. His nature like that of the other gods is the nature of the Truth, ; the Law of its action is the Law of the truth, , often figured in Vedic language by the idea of straightness.
S. the air-world, Antariksha, belonging to the earth. For a discussion of the see Appendix A.
--
(3) Heaven and earth are his vast force; Varuna and the Sun act in the way of his working; the Rivers cleave to the Law of Indra.
Call we Indra with his retinue of Maruts to be our comrade and friend.
2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: There is a new standpoint reached by Einstein's theory that the laws of the physical universe are related to the Law of numbers and as this law seems absolute to our mind, the laws of the physical world are also absolute. They cannot be otherwise. If the Law of numbers is different in another universe, or on another plane, then the laws of that world would be different.
It was thought once that laws are restrictions placed by Nature upon infinite possibilities; e.g. a stone has to fall down in a straight line only; it could not take any other course. But now it is seen that this idea of restriction is an imposition from our mind. There is no such thing.
--
Now with regard to the Law of numbers, it merely states the organisation of the physical part of the universe and even there it gives knowledge of only a part. But, there is not merely the quantitative law of formation, but also a qualitative law which is more important than the quantitative. These laws of Nature you call absolute. But suppose I bring the yogic force into play and am able to overcome the Law of gravitation, that is, bring about levitation, then is it not breaking the absolute law?
Disciple: But then another force, quite different from the purely physical, enters into play. If the laws of the physical are not dependable then what is the use of this mental knowledge?
--
Disciple: They have come to admit that the Law of causality which had no exception is, now, not without exception. In certain cases the cause cannot be determined because in trying to determine the cause one would be obliged to meddle with the process. This is called indeterminism.
Sri Aurobindo: They can also say that Gods thoughts are indeterminable!
2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Prakriti, but the Ananda of its own play and self-fulfilling; it is the desire of the divine Delight of existence unrolling its own conscious force of action in accordance with the Law of the swabhava.
But what again is meant by saying that the Divine is not in the becomings, the forms and affections of the lower nature, even the sattwic, though they all are in his being? In a sense he must evidently be in them, otherwise they could not exist. But
--
what is meant is that the true and supreme spiritual nature of the Divine is not imprisoned there; they are only phenomena in his being created out of it by the action of the ego and the ignorance. The ignorance presents everything to us in an inverted vision and at least a partially falsified experience. We imagine that the soul is in the body, almost a result and derivation from the body; even we so feel it: but it is the body that is in the soul and a result and derivation from the soul. We think of the spirit as a small part of us - the Purusha who is no bigger than the thumb - in this great mass of material and mental phenomena: in reality, the latter for all its imposing appearance is a very small thing in the infinity of the being of the spirit. So it is here; in much the same sense these things are in the Divine rather than the Divine in these things. This lower nature of the three gunas which creates so false a view of things and imparts to them an inferior character is a Maya, a power of illusion, by which it is not meant that it is all non-existent or deals with unrealities, but that it bewilders our knowledge, creates false values, envelops us in ego, mentality, sense, physicality, limited intelligence and there conceals from us the supreme truth of our existence. This illusive Maya hides from us the Divine that we are, the infinite and imperishable spirit. "By these three kinds of becoming which are of the nature of the gunas, this whole world is bewildered and does not recognise Me supreme beyond them and imperishable." If we could see that that Divine is the real truth of our existence, all else also would change to our vision, assume its true character and our life and action acquire the divine values and move in the Law of the divine nature.
But why then, since the Divine is there after all and the divine nature at the root even of these bewildering derivations, since we are the Jiva and the Jiva is that, is this Maya so hard to overcome, maya duratyaya? Because it is still the Maya of the
2.01 - The Yoga and Its Objects, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Shastra is that it sets up a standard outside ourselves, different from our personal desires, reasonings, passions and prejudices, outside our selfishness and self-will, by living up to which in the right spirit we can not only acquire self-control but by reducing even the sattwic ahankara to a minimum prepare ourselves for liberation. In the old days the Shastra was the Vedic Dharma based upon a profound knowledge of man's psychology and the laws of the world, revealing man to himself and showing him how to live according to his nature; afterwards it was the Law of the Smritis which tried to do the same thing more roughly by classifying men according to the general classes of which the
Vedas speak, the caturvarn.ya; today it is little more than blind mechanical custom and habitual social observance, a thing not sattwic but tamasic, not a preparatory discipline for liberation, but a mere bondage.
2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But, in fact, the cause of this impression must necessarily be sought not in anything illusory or fantastic in the Supreme or the universal Self-existence, but in our own inability to seize the supreme clue to its manifold existence or discover the secret plan and pattern of its action. The Self-existent is the Infinite and its way of being and of action must be the way of the Infinite, but our consciousness is limited, our reason built upon things finite: it is irrational to suppose that a finite consciousness and reason can be a measure of the Infinite; this smallness cannot judge that Immensity; this poverty bound to a limited use of its scanty means cannot conceive the opulent management of those riches; an ignorant half-knowledge cannot follow the motions of an All-Knowledge. Our reasoning is based upon our experience of the finite operations of physical Nature, on an incomplete observation and uncertain understanding of something that acts within limits; it has organised on that basis certain conceptions which it seeks to make general and universal, and whatever contradicts or departs from these conceptions it regards as irrational, false or inexplicable. But there are different orders of the reality and the conceptions, measures, standards suitable to one need not be applicable to another order. Our physical being is built first upon an aggregate of infinitesimals, electrons, atoms, molecules, cells; but the Law of action of these infinitesimals does not explain all the physical workings even of the human body, much less can they cover all the law and process of action of man's supraphysical parts, his life movements and mind movements and soul movements. In the body finites have been formed with their own habits, properties, characteristic ways of action; the body itself is a finite which is not a mere aggregate of these smaller finites which it uses as parts, organs, constituent instruments of its operations; it has developed a being and has a general law which surpasses its dependence upon these elements or constituents. The life and mind again are supraphysical finites with a different and more subtle mode of operation of their own, and no dependence on the physical parts for instrumentation can annul their intrinsic character; there is something more and other in our vital and mental being and vital and mental forces than the functioning of a physical body. But, again, each finite is in its reality or has behind it an Infinite which has built and supports and directs the finite it has made as its self-figure; so that even the being and law and process of the finite cannot be totally understood without a knowledge of that which is occult within or behind it: our finite knowledge, conceptions, standards may be valid within their limits, but they are incomplete and relative. A law founded upon an observation of what is divided in Space and Time cannot be confidently applied to the being and action of the Indivisible; not only it cannot be applied to the spaceless and timeless Infinite, but it cannot be applied even to a Time Infinite or a Space Infinite. A law and process binding for our superficial being need not be binding on what is occult within us. Again our intellect, founding itself on reason, finds it difficult to deal with what is infrarational; life is infrarational and we find that our intellectual reason applying itself to life is constantly forcing upon it a control, a measure, an artificial procrustean rule that either succeeds in killing or petrifying life or constrains it into rigid forms and conventions that lame and imprison its capacity or ends by a bungle, a revolt of life, a decay or disruption of the systems and superstructures built upon it by our intelligence.
An instinct, an intuition is needed which the intellect has not at its comm and and does not always listen to when it comes in of itself to help the mental working. But still more difficult must it be for our reason to understand and deal with the suprarational; the suprarational is the realm of the spirit, and in the largeness, subtlety, profundity, complexity of its movement the reason is lost; here intuition and inner experience alone are the guide, or, if there is any other, it is that of which intuition is only a sharp edge, an intense projected ray, - the final enlightenment must come from the suprarational Truth-consciousness, from a supramental vision and knowledge.
--
Each self-determination of the self-being must have its own awareness of its self-truth and its self-nature; or, if we prefer so to put it, the Being in that determination must be so selfaware. Spiritual individuality means that each individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and all-vision; the circumference - the boundless circumference, as we may say, - of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be different, - not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but a psychological centre related with others through a coexistence of the diversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to its own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the Infinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic determinations; its vision by the Law of unity in variety will no doubt be fundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own differentiation, - as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of the same cosmic things, yet always with an individual difference. This self-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a common universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own centre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis and not with any blindness to other-self and other-nature. It would be consciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of ignorance. But apart from this individualising self-limitation, there must also be in the consciousness of the Infinite a power of cosmic limitation; it must be able to limit its action so as to base a given world or universe and to keep it in its own order, harmony, self-building: for the creation of a universe necessitates a special determination of the Infinite Consciousness to preside over that world and a holding back of all that is not needed for that movement. In the same way the putting forth of an independent action of some power like Mind, Life or Matter must have as its support a similar principle of self-limitation. It cannot be said that such a movement must be impossible for the Infinite, because it is illimitable; on the contrary, this must be one of its many powers; for its powers too are illimitable: but this also, like other self-determinations, other finite buildings, would not be a separation or a real division, for all the Infinite Consciousness would be around and behind it and supporting it and the special movement itself would be intrinsically aware not only of itself, but, in essence, of all that was behind it. This would be so, inevitably, in the integral consciousness of the Infinite: but we can suppose also that an intrinsic though not an active awareness of this kind, demarcating itself, yet indivisible, might be there too in the total self-consciousness of the movement of the Finite. This much cosmic or individual conscious selflimitation would evidently be possible to the Infinite and can be accepted by a larger reason as one of its spiritual possibilities; but so far, on this basis, any division or ignorant separation or binding and blinding limitation such as is apparent in our own consciousness would be unaccountable.
But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted, its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, - although most of what we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient, something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited level of awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no longer luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the being of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems to us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic consciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy of the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of self-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite. If we take a step further and admit that a special or a restricted and partial action of selfabsorption is possible to the Infinite, an action not always of its infinity concentrated limitlessly in itself, but confined to a special status or to an individual or cosmic self-determination, we have then the explanation of the concentrated condition or status by which it becomes aware separately of one aspect of its being.
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
But solid work is quite different. In Russia the workers settled in villages, some as doctors, some as teachers doing their work and trying to raise the life there, bringing new light and new awakening. It is to be done slowly. The idea that somehow it will get done in a year or two like "Swaraj in one year" is all egoistic ignorance. Solid work is to be done under the Law of the physical plane. The Russians waited patiently for years together and then their organisation got slowly recognised by the Government and then after a long wait came the Revolution.
How do you expect villagers to trust every young irresponsible man who claims to do good to them? If you go on working for years then you may get into their confidence and may be able to achieve something. All these ideas of theatrical success and lightning flash-like work are most impracticable. You have to stick on to your work through all difficulties. It requires patience.
2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Again!" No sooner had Hazra got out of "hell" than he fell into it again. All burst into laughter. Ltu, at the first throw of the dice, went to "heaven" from "earth". He began to cut capers of joy. "See Ltu's joy!" said the Master. "He would have been terribly sad if he hadn't achieved this. (Aside to the devotees) This too has a meaning. Hazra is so vain that he thinks he will triumph over all even in this game. This is the Law of God, that He never humiliates a righteous person. Such a man is victorious everywhere."
Sri Ramakrishna was sitting on the small couch in his room. Narendra, Baburam, Bhavanath, and M. were sitting on the floor. Narendra referred to various religious sects-the Ghoshpara, Panchanami, and others. Sri Ramakrishna described their views and condemned their immoral practices. He said that they could not follow the right course of spiritual discipline, but enjoyed sensuous pleasures in the name of religion.
2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
for centuries. The reason of this is the Law of death; death is a
moment of great concentration when the departing spirit gathers
--
and the Law of Invariable Causality, which is implied in our
theories of Kal & Karma. These receive & hold fast to, - for
--
level under the Law of the material self, it is trying to walk upon
water, to float upon air; it is doing something essentially unscientific. Still more is this the case when it deals with the higher
--
built out of the Law of Causation a new and more inexorable
fate than Greek or Hindu or Arab ever imagined. Engrossed
--
The Will is eternal, omnipotent, it has created the Law of causation and governs it; it has made the laws of matter and it can
override them; it is itself all the forces which seem to govern
--
be. The forms of objects, it is true, vary in Time, but the Law of
their nature is of eternal origin. In the act you do today, you are
2.02 - The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Prakriti, the sattwic, which is seeking always for a harmonious light of knowledge and for a right rule of action. The Purusha, the soul within us which assents in Nature to the varying impulse of the gunas, has to give its sanction to that sattwic impulse and that sattwic will and temperament in our being which seeks after such a rule. The sattwic will in our nature has to govern us and not the rajasic and tamasic will. This is the meaning of all high reason in action as of all true ethical culture; it is the Law of
Nature in us striving to evolve from her lower and disorderly to her higher and orderly action, to act not in passion and ignorance with the result of grief and unquiet, but in knowledge and enlightened will with the result of inner happiness, poise and peace. We cannot get beyond the three gunas, if we do not first develop within ourselves the rule of the highest guna, sattwa.
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
[Book I ] Chapter I. the Law of Renunciation.
[Chapter] I. God All and God Everywhere
--
dharma or the Law of his being. If the Brahmin predominates in
him, he will be drawn into Jnana; if the Kshatriya, into works; if
--
to maintain the Law of the world unimpaired, the Jivanmukta
remains amid works like a prisoner on parole, not bound by the
--
This is the Law of death; death is a moment of intense concentration when the departing spirit gathers up the impressions of
its mortal life as a host gathers provender for its journey, and
--
make selflessness the Law of his life and action. Seeing God in
others, he will naturally love them and seek to serve them. By
--
duties the Law of their daily life; origination and organization
the main characteristics of their intellectual activity. The permanence and unconquerable vitality of their civilization is due to
--
in relation was the Law of the Eternal Self, that man's nature
must seek its fulfilment in that which is permanent & eternal
--
it from others of its kind, develops under the Law of its nature;
that is its swadharma, its own law & religion of being, and
--
or animal or man or community or nation must follow & develop itself under the Law of its nature and act according to its
own dharma. It cannot follow a nature or accept a dharma alien
--
of the Law of creation that the old Hindu thought interested
itself. Modern Science has made it its business to investigate and
--
anatomy to each other, and the Law of his thought and action as
a spiritual being having one side of itself turned to phenomena
--
out the Law of those motions before ever they began to stir; and
He now abides concealed in them, not acting but simply by His
--
without any process and to experience under the Law of Time
the immediately complete Universe It has perfected without any
2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Of course, there is a law. But in the beginning God respects the Law of each plane even though He transcends it. When the human being is raised completely above the mind then he finds the new law. Then all constructions of the mind break down.
Theoretically, there is no reason why Supermind should not come down soon and why one should not get it in a series of flashes in six months. But in that way the object is not attained. The object is to see the world-forces, to meet them on their own plane and defeat them there. Practically, it means a fight with the world-forces.
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Sri Aurobindo: Of course not. the Law of the psychic is to give without making any demand.
21 DECEMBER 1938
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the Law of Karma is not mathematical or mechanical: Certain energies are put forward and certain results tend to be produced. Karma is not the fundamental law of consciousness. The basic law is spiritual. Karma is a secondary machinery to help the consciousness to grow by experience. The laws of being are primarily spiritual. It is quite possible to eliminate the Karmic force it is not absolute. It is the mind that formulates these laws; and the mind always tries to put them as absolute.
Disciple: Can one say that the accident has done 'good'?
2.03 - The Altar, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
5:He should endeavour to make geometrical constructions to symbolize cosmic measurements. For example, he may take the two diagonals as (say) the diameter of the sun. Then the side of the alter will be found to have a length equal to some other cosmic measure, a vesica drawn on the side some other, a "rood cross" within the vesica yet another. Each Magician should work out his own system of symbolism-and he need not confine himself to cosmic measurements. He might, for example, find some relation to express the Law of inverse squares.
6:The top of the altar shall be covered with gold, and on this gold should be engraved some such figure as the Holy Oblation, or the New Jerusalem, or, if he have the skill, the Microcosm of Vitruvius, of which we give illustrations.
2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The cosmic being can only know and possess the transcendent unity by ceasing to be cosmic; the individual can only know and possess the cosmic or the transcendental unity by ceasing from all individuality and individualisation. Or if unity is the one eternal fact, then cosmos and individual are non-existent; they are illusions imposed on itself by the Eternal. That may well involve a contradiction or an unreconciled paradox; but I am willing to admit a contradiction in the Eternal which I am not compelled to think out, rather than a contradiction here of my primary conceptions which I am compelled to think out logically and to practical ends. I am on this supposition able either to take the world as practically real and think and act in it or to reject it as an unreality and cease to think and act; I am not compelled to reconcile contradictions, not called on to be conscious of and conscious in something beyond myself and world and yet deal from that basis, as God does, with a world of contradictions. The attempt to be as God while I am still an individual or to be three things at a time seems to me to involve a logical confusion and a practical impossibility." Such might well be the attitude of the normal reason, and it is clear, lucid, positive in its distinctions; it involves no extraordinary gymnastics of the reason trying to exceed itself and losing itself in shadows and half-lights or any kind of mysticism, or at least there is only one original and comparatively simple mysticism free from all other difficult complexities. Therefore it is the reasoning which is the most satisfactory to the simply rational mind. Yet is there here a triple error, the error of making an unbridgeable gulf between the Absolute and the relative, the error of making too simple and rigid and extending too far the Law of contradictions and the error of conceiving in terms of Time the genesis of things which have their origin and first habitat in the Eternal.
We mean by the Absolute something greater than ourselves, greater than the cosmos which we live in, the supreme reality of that transcendent Being which we call God, something without which all that we see or are conscious of as existing, could not have been, could not for a moment remain in existence. Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute because it is a self-existent which is absolved of all bondage to relativities. For all relatives can only exist by something which is the truth of them all and the source and continent of their powers and properties and yet exceeds them all; it is something of which not only each relativity itself, but also any sum we can make of all relatives that we know, can only be - in all that we know of them - a partial, inferior or practical expression.
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In our practical dealings with life we have to arrive at the same truth. For certain practical ends we have to say that a thing is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, just or unjust and act upon that statement; but if we limit ourselves by it, we do not get at real knowledge. the Law of contradictions here is only valid in so far as two different and opposite statements cannot be true of the same thing at the same time, in the same field, in the same respect, from the same point of view and for the same practical purpose.
A great war, destruction or violent all-upheaving revolution, for example, may present itself to us as an evil, a virulent and catastrophic disorder, and it is so in certain respects, results, ways of looking at it; but from others, it may be a great good, since it rapidly clears the field for a new good or a more satisfying order.
2.03 - The Supreme Divine, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature as a sacrifice and awaits the conscious self-giving of the human soul: but always even in the human creature's ignorance and egoism he is the Lord of his swabhava and the Master of all his works, who presides over the Law of Prakriti and Karma.
From him the soul came forth into the play of Nature's mutations; to him the soul returns through immutable self-existence to the highest status of the Divine, param dhama.
2.04 - Agni, the Illumined Will, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Therefore is he the priest of the offering, strongest or most apt for sacrifice, he who, all-powerful, follows always the Law of the Truth. We must remember that the oblation (havya) signifies always action (karma) and each action of mind or body is regarded as a giving of our plenty into the cosmic being and the cosmic intention. Agni, the divine Will, is that which stands behind the human will in its works. In the conscient offering, he comes in front; he is the priest set in front (puro-hita), guides the oblation and determines its effectiveness.
By this self-guided Truth, by this knowledge that works out as an unerring Will in the Cosmos, he fashions the gods in mortals. Agni manifests divine potentialities in a death-besieged body; Agni brings them to effective actuality and perfection. He creates in us the luminous forms of the Immortals.
2.04 - Concentration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will310 using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the Law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If we simply leave these two dissonant facts of existence standing in each other's presence, we are driven to conclude that there is no reconciliation possible; all we can do is to cling as much as we can to a deepening sense of the joy of the pure and essential Presence and do the best we may with the discordant externality, until we can impose in its place the Law of its divine contrary. Or else we have to seek for an escape rather than a
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standard. We may say that not only is the Spirit in things absolutely perfect and divine, but each thing also is relatively perfect and divine in itself, in its expression of what it has to express of the possibilities of existence, in its assumption of its proper place in the complete manifestation. Each thing is divine in itself because each is a fact and idea of the divine being, knowledge and will fulfilling itself infallibly in accordance with the Law of that particular manifestation. Each being is possessed of the knowledge, the force, the measure and kind of delight of existence precisely proper to its own nature; each works in the gradations of experience decreed by a secret inherent will, a native law, an intrinsic power of the self, an occult significance.
It is thus perfect in the relation of its phenomena to the Law of its being; for all are in harmony with that, spring out of it, adapt themselves to its purpose according to the infallibility of the divine Will and Knowledge at work within the creature. It is perfect and divine also in relation to the whole, in its proper place in the whole; to that totality it is necessary and in it it fulfils a part by which the perfection actual and progressive of the universal harmony, the adaptation of all in it to its whole purpose and its whole sense is helped and completed. If to us things appear undivine, if we hasten to condemn this or that phenomenon as inconsistent with the nature of a divine being, it is because we are ignorant of the sense and purpose of the
Divine in the world in its entirety. Because we see only parts and fragments, we judge of each by itself as if it were the whole, judge also the external phenomena without knowing their secret sense; but by doing so we vitiate our valuation of things, put on it the stamp of an initial and fundamental error. Perfection cannot reside in the thing in its separateness, for that separateness is an illusion; perfection is the perfection of the total divine harmony.
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Totality. To it we could apply the Greek saying, Theos ouk estin alla gignetai, the Divine is not yet in being, but is becoming. The true Divine would then be secret within us and perhaps supreme above us; to find the Divine within us and above us would be the real solution, to become perfect as That is perfect, to attain liberation by likeness to it or by attaining to the Law of its nature, sadr.sya, sadharmya.
If the human consciousness were bound to the sense of imperfection and the acceptance of it as the Law of our life and the very character of our existence, - a reasoned acceptance that could answer in our human nature to the blind animal acceptance of the animal nature, - then we might say that what we are marks the limit of the divine self-expression in us; we might believe too that our imperfections and sufferings worked for the general harmony and perfection of things and console ourselves with this philosophic balm offered for our wounds, satisfied to move among the pitfalls of life with as much rational
The Divine and the Undivine
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There is, no doubt, a key in the divine reason that would justify things as they are by revealing their right significance and true secret as other, subtler, deeper than their outward meaning and phenomenal appearance which is all that can normally be caught by our present intelligence: but we cannot be content with that belief, to search for and find the spiritual key of things is the Law of our being. The sign of the finding is not a philosophic intellectual recognition and a resigned or sage acceptance of things as they are because of some divine sense and purpose in them which is beyond us; the real sign is an elevation towards the spiritual knowledge and power which will transform the law
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Immanence. It may be conceded that forces set in motion are allowed to work themselves out according to the Law of their movement; but what divine Omniscience and Omnipotence has allowed to arise and act in Its omnipresence, Its all-existence, we must consider It to have originated and decreed, since without the fiat of the Being they could not have been, could not remain in existence. If the Divine is at all concerned with the world He has manifested, there is no other Lord than He and from that necessity of His original and universal being there can eventually be no escape or departure. It is on the foundation of this selfevident consequence of our first premiss, without any evasion of its implications, that we have to consider the problem of imperfection, suffering and evil.
And first we must realise that the existence of ignorance,
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discovery of truth; every weakness and failure is a first sounding of gulfs of power and potentiality; all division is intended to enrich by an experience of various sweetness of unification the joy of realised unity. All this imperfection is to us evil, but all evil is in travail of the eternal good; for all is an imperfection which is the first condition - in the Law of life evolving out of
Inconscience - of a greater perfection in the manifesting of the hidden divinity. But at the same time our present feeling of this evil and imperfection, the revolt of our consciousness against them is also a necessary valuation; for if we have first to face and endure them, the ultimate comm and on us is to reject, to overcome, to transform the life and the nature. It is for that end that their insistence is not allowed to slacken; the soul must learn the results of the Ignorance, must begin to feel their reactions as a spur to its endeavour of mastery and conquest and finally to a greater endeavour of transformation and transcendence. It is possible, when we live inwardly in the depths, to arrive at a state of vast inner equality and peace which is untouched by the reactions of the outer nature, and that is a great but incomplete liberation, - for the outer nature too has a right to deliverance.
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This then is the Law of the manifestation, the reason of the imperfection here. True, it is a law of manifestation only and, even, a law special to this movement in which we live, and we may say that it need not have been - if there were no movement of manifestation or not this movement; but, the manifestation and the movement being given, the law is necessary. It is not enough simply to say that the law and all its circumstances are an unreality created by the mental consciousness, non-existent in God, and to be indifferent to these dualities or to get out of the manifestation into God's pure being is the only wisdom. It is true they are creations of mind Consciousness, but Mind is only secondarily responsible; in a deeper reality they are, as we have
The Divine and the Undivine
2.05 - On Poetry, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Literature exists for its own sake; it has an independent value. Its purpose is governed by the Law of Ananda. If you bring in, or make it serve, some other purpose say, morality or philosophy then it does not serve its highest purpose.
Disciple: But literature, art, poetry all have to give us truth, have they not?
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the Law of Ananda governs these activities. Some parts of literature have their own laws: for instance, fiction. Its law is to represent life.
If the writer has spirituality in himself, it is bound to express itself in his poetry or art.
2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
of a reason which fathoms and understands the Law of things sensed and can observe scrupulously the sense-transcript and correct its errors. Therefore we may conclude that we experience a real universe through our imaged sense-transcript by the aid of the intuition and the reason, - an intuition which gives us the touch of things and a reason which investigates their truth by its conceptive knowledge. But we must note also that even if our image view of the universe, our sense-transcript, is a system of symbol images and not an exact reproduction or transcription, a literal translation, still a symbol is a notation of something that is, a transcript of realities. Even if our images are incorrect, what they endeavour to image are realities, not illusions; when we see a tree or a stone or an animal, it is not a non-existent figure, a hallucination that we are seeing; we may not be sure that the image is exact, we may concede that other-sense might very well see it otherwise, but still there is something there that justifies the image, something with which it has more or less correspondence. But in the theory of Illusion the only reality is an indeterminable featureless pure Existence, Brahman, and there is no possibility of its being translated or mistranslated into a system of symbol-figures, for that could only be if this Existence had some determinate contents or some unmanifested truths of its being which could be transcribed into the forms or names given to them by our consciousness: a pure Indeterminable cannot be rendered by a transcript, a multitude of representative differentiae, a crowd of symbols or images; for there is in it only a pure Identity, there is nothing to transcribe, nothing to symbolise, nothing to image. Therefore the dream analogy fails us altogether and is better put out of the way; it can always be used as a vivid metaphor of a certain attitude our mind can take towards its experiences, but it has no value for a metaphysical inquiry into the reality and fundamental significances or the origin of existence.
If we take up the analogy of hallucination, we find it hardly more helpful for a true understanding of the theory of cosmic
2.05 - The Divine Truth and Way, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature. He is himself then Nature, so to speak, but with a spirit within her workings which foresees and forewills, understands and enforces, compels the action, overrules in the result. As the one silent self of all he is the non-doer, and Nature alone is the doer. He leaves all these works to be done by her according to the Law of our being, svabhavas tu pravartate, and yet he is still the lord, prabhu vibhu, because he views and upholds our action and enables Nature to work by his silent sanction. He by his immobility transmits the power of the supreme Godhead through the compulsion of his pervading motionless Presence and supports its workings by the equal regard of his witness Self in all things. As the supreme supracosmic Godhead he originates all, but is above all; he compels all to manifest, but does not lose himself in what he creates or attach himself to the works of his
Nature. His is the free presiding Will of being that is antecedent to all the necessities of the natural action. In the individual he is during the ignorance the secret Godhead in us who compels all to revolve on the machine of Nature on which the ego is carried round as part of the machinery, at once a clog and a convenience.
2.06 - Works Devotion and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
once reshapes and assimilates everything in us to the Law of the divine existence by a rapid transformation of the lower into the spiritual nature. The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the
Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the
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and while he accepts the law they impose on him for the Law of his life, a world of struggle, suffering and sorrow. The way to liberation is to turn from the outward to the inward, from the appearance created by the material life which lays its burden on the mind and imprisons it in the grooves of the life and the body to the divine Reality which waits to manifest itself through the freedom of the spirit. Love of the world, the mask, must change into the love of God, the Truth. Once this secret and inner
Godhead is known and is embraced, the whole being and the whole life will undergo a sovereign uplifting and a marvellous transmutation. In place of the ignorance of the lower Nature absorbed in its outward works and appearances the eye will open to the vision of God everywhere, to the unity and universality of the spirit. The world's sorrow and pain will disappear in the bliss of the All-blissful; our weakness and error and sin will be changed into the all-embracing and all-transforming strength, truth and purity of the Eternal. To make the mind one with the divine consciousness, to make the whole of our emotional nature one love of God everywhere, to make all our works one sacrifice to the Lord of the worlds and all our worship and aspiration one adoration of him and self-surrender, to direct the whole self Godwards in an entire union is the way to rise out of a mundane into a divine existence. This is the Gita's teaching of divine love and devotion, in which knowledge, works and the heart's longing become one in a supreme unification, a merging of all their divergences, an intertwining of all their threads, a high fusion, a wide identifying movement.11
2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: He has written a long paragraph on the Mahabharata. He finds it a great poem, and he is especially charmed by the poet's consistently working out the Law of Karma. The mighty Krishna dies like an ordinary man; the great Arjuna is robbed by the Kabas his Gandiva, the famous bow, notwithstanding; and even Dharmaraja is made to feel the unpleasant odour of hell for having lowered the ideal of Truth.
Sri Aurobindo: What is there the cause and what is the effect? One man strikes the blow and the other dies, so one is the cause and the other is the effect!
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Disciple: The word Dharma has come to mean religion, though the original sense is not that. It is the Law of being social or moral which sustains the being. Is the old classification of men in four orders, according to the peculiar Dharma of each, tenable now? Can each human being have the characteristics of the four orders?
Sri Aurobindo: There is infinite possibility. So the potentiality of all the four castes is in every man, but that does not exist as a fact. No classification can be perfect so long as man is living in the mental consciousness. It is not possible to classify all natures into those four orders. So we have come to the present confusion because it is regulated by birth. Of course, there are tradition, training, culture and atmosphere too which tend to give their stamp to ones nature.
2.07 - The Release from Subjection to the Body, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
At the same time it must be added that the power is enough; the abstention from all physical action is not indispensable, the aversion to action mental or corporeal is not desirable. The seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. Especially must any tendency to mere inertia of mind or vitality or body be surmounted, and if that habit is found growing on the nature, the will of the Purusha must be used to dismiss it. Eventually, a state arrives when the life and the body perform as mere instruments the will of the Purusha in the mind without any strain or attachment, without their putting themselves into the action with that inferior, eager and often feverish energy which is the nature of their ordinary working; they come to work as forces of Nature work without the fret and toil and reaction characteristic of life in, the body when it is not yet master of the physical. When we attain to this perfection, then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise in the Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in the Yoga and till then the Law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us; too much mental or physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty. Still, periods of absolute calm, solitude and cessation from works are highly desirable and should be secured as often as possible for that recession of the soul into itself which is indispensable to knowledge.
While dealing thus with the body we have necessarily to deal also with the Prana or life-energy. For practical purposes we have to make a distinction between the life-energy as it acts in the body, the physical Prana, and the life-energy as it acts in support of the mental activities, the psychical Prana. For we lead always a double life, mental and physical, and the same life-energy acts differently and assumes a different aspect according as it lends itself to one or the other. In the body it produces those reactions of hunger, thirst, fatigue, health, disease, physical vigour, etc, which are the vital experiences of the physical frame. For the gross body of man is not like the stone or the earth; it is a combination of two sheaths, the vital and the "food" sheath and its life is a constant interaction of these two. Still the life-energy and the physical frame are two different things and in the withdrawal of the mind from the absorbing sense of the body we become increasingly sensible of the Prana and its action in the corporeal instrument and can observe and more and more control its operations. Practically, in drawing back from the body we draw back from the physical life-energy also, even while we distinguish the two and feel the latter nearer to us than the mere physical instrument. The entire conquest of the body comes in fact by the conquest of the physical life-energy.
2.08 - The Release from the Heart and the Mind, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But the ascending soul has to separate itself not only from the life in the body but from the action of the life-energy in the mind; it has to make the mind say as the representative of the Purusha "I am not the Life; the Life is not the self of the Purusha, it is only a working and only one working of prakriti." The characteristics of Life are action and movement, a reaching out to absorb and assimilate what is external to the individual and a principle of satisfaction or dissatisfaction In what it seizes upon or what comes to it, which is associated with the all-pervading phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. These three things are everywhere in Nature because Life is everywhere in Nature. But in us mental beings they are all given a mental value according to the mind which perceives and accepts them. They take the form of action, of desire and of liking and disliking, pleasure and pain. The Prana is everywhere in us supporting not only the action of our body, but of our sense-mind, our emotional mind, our thought-mind; and bringing its own law or Dharma into all these, it confuses, it limits, it throws into discord their right action and creates that impurity of misplacement and that tangled confusion which is the whole evil of our psychological existence. In that confusion one law seems to reign, the Law of desire. As the universal Divine Being, all-embracing and all-possessing, acts, moves, enjoys purely for the satisfaction of divine Delight, so the individual life acts, moves, enjoys and suffers predominantly for the satisfaction of desire. Therefore the psychic life-energy presents itself to our experience as a sort of desire-mind, which we have to conquer if we mean to get back to our true self.
Desire is at once the motive of our actions, our lever of accomplishment and the bane of our existence. If our sense-mind, emotional mind, thought-mind could act free from the intrusions and importations of the life-energy, if that energy could be made to obey their right action instead of imposing its own yoke on our existence, all human problems would move harmoniously to their right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is to do what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and enjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to desire at all. The proper function of the sense-mind is to lie open passively, luminously to the contacts of Life and transmit their sensations and the rasa or right taste and principle of delight in them to the higher function; but interfered with by the attractions and repulsions, the acceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and dissatisfactions, the capacities and incapacities of the life-energy in the body it is, to begin with, limited in its scope and, secondly, forced in these limits to associate itself with all these discords of the life in Matter. It becomes an instrument for pleasure and pain instead of for delight of existence.
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What takes their place ? It may be, if we will, an entire calm, silence and indifference. But although this is a stage through which the soul has usually to pass, it is not the final aim we have placed before us. Therefore the Purusha becomes also the master who wills and whose will it is to replace wrong by right enjoyment of the psychic existence. What he wills. Nature executes. What was fabric-stuff of desire and passion, is turned into reality of pure, equal and calmly intense love and joy and oneness. The real soul emerges and takes the place left vacant by the desire-mind. The cleansed and emptied cup is filled with the wine of divine love and delight and no longer with the sweet and bitter poison of passion. The passions, even the passion for good, misrepresent the divine nature. The passion of pity with its impure elements of physical repulsion and emotional inability to bear the suffering of others has to be rejected and replaced by the higher divine compassion which sees, understands, accepts the burden of others and is strong to help and heal, not with self-will and revolt against the suffering in the world and with ignorant accusation of the Law of things and their source, but with light and knowledge and as an instrument of the Divine in its emergence. So too the love that desires and grasps and is troubled with joy and shaken with grief must be rejected for the equal, all-embracing love that is free from these things and has no dependence upon circumstances and is not modified by response or absence of response. So we shall deal with all the movements of the soul; but of these things we shall speak farther when we consider the Yoga of self-perfection.
As with action and inaction, so it is with this dual possibility of indifference and calm on the one side and active joy and love on the other. Equality, not indifference is the basis. Equal endurance, impartial indifference, calm submission to the causes of joy and grief without any reaction of either grief or joy are the preparation and negative basis of equality; but equality is not fulfilled till it takes its positive form of love and delight. The sense-mind must find the equal rasa of the All-Beautiful, the heart the equal love and Ananda for all, the psychic Prana the enjoyment of this rasa, love and Ananda. This, however, is the positive perfection that comes by liberation; our first object on the path of knowledge is rather the liberation that comes by detachment from the desire-mind and by the renunciation of its passions.
2.09 - The Pantacle, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
52:Karma is the Law of Cause and Effect. There is no proportion in its operations. Once an accident occurs it is impossible to say what may happen; and the Universe is a stupendous accident.
53:We go out to tea a thousand times without mishap, and the thousandand-first time we meet some one who changes radically the course of our lives for ever.
2.0 - Reincarnation and Karma, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
bringing over the fruits of the former lives into the following ones. The soul lives in the present. But this life in the present is not independent of the previous lives. For the incarnating spirit brings its destiny with it from its previous incarnations, and this destiny decides the kind of life. Whatever impressions the soul will be able to have, with what wishes it will be able to be gratified, what sorrows and joys spring forth for it, depend on the nature of the actions in the past incarnations of the spirit. The life of the soul is therefore the result of the self-created destiny of the human spirit. The course of man's life between birth and death is therefore determined in a threefold way. And he is by these means dependent in a threefold way on factors which lie on the other side of birth and death. The body is subject to the laws of heredity; the soul is subject to the self-created fate. One calls this fate created by the man himself his karma. The spirit is under the Law of rembodiment or reincarnation. One can accordingly express the relationship between spirit, soul, and body in the following way as well. The spirit is eternal; birth and death have dominion
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Thinking which takes up an unprejudiced attitude toward the phenomena of life, not afraid to follow the thoughts resulting to their final consequences, can, by pure logic, arrive at the conviction of the Law of karma and reincarnation. Just as it is true that for the seer with the opened "spiritual eye," past lives, like an opened book, face him as experience, so is it true that the truth of it all becomes obvious to the unprejudiced reason.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
law of development which is the Law of selection. It preserves that
which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and
2.1.01 - God The One Reality, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Space and Time, in Form and Quality and Circumstance. This is the fundamental Reality which is hidden from our knowledge, the one Truth on which all other truths depend, those that affirm it as well as those that seem to contradict it. To be conscious of this Reality and its right relations with the other truths or appearances of existence, to live in it and govern by its Truth all our being, consciousness, nature, will, action would then be the Law of a perfect life. If human life is imperfect, it is because its consciousness moves seeking, groping, experimenting in a fundamental ignorance of the real truth of its own being and is therefore unable to know or to effectuate the true law of its life. It is only if man can overcome this ignorance and inability that he can hope to perfect his life and nature. If there is no means of doing that, then he can never hope to escape from his
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Alpha and X and Omega of things or if not absolutely It at any rate its status and its dynamis, the Law of its being and the Law of its nature quite as deeply and more deeply than Science can show us the law and process of the physical universe.
For the moment let us affirm only this result that this spiritual search and knowledge leads us beyond the phenomenon which apparently contradicts it to that which beyond the phenomenon brings us to the Divine Eternal and Infinite.
Wikipedia - Assumption of risk -- A defence in the law of torts which reduces a plaintiff's rights to recovery for negligence
Wikipedia - Book of the Law of the Lord -- Scripture used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
Wikipedia - Breira (Talmudic doctrine) -- Doctrine in Talmudic law, development of the law of joint property
Wikipedia - Changes to the Mosaic Law throughout history -- Changes made to the Law of Moses by Jews
Wikipedia - Duty to warn -- Concept in the law of torts indicating liability in the case of failure to warn about a known hazard
Wikipedia - Glynn v Margetson -- English case on the law of carriage of goods by sea
Wikipedia - History of English land law -- Development in England of the law of real property
Wikipedia - Innocent passage -- Concept in the Law of the Sea
Wikipedia - Juror misconduct -- Situation in which the law of the court is violated by a member of the jury while a court case is in progression or after it has reached a verdict
Wikipedia - Landmark Cases in the Law of Restitution -- Book edited by Charles Mitchell and Paul Mitchell
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Wikipedia - Legal death -- Recognition under the law of a particular jurisdiction that a person is no longer alive
Wikipedia - Lese-majestM-CM-) in Thailand -- Aspect of the law of Thailand
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Wikipedia - The Law of Life (film) -- 1940 film by Aleksandr Stolper
Wikipedia - The Law of Lombardy -- 1779 tragedy written by Robert Jephson
Wikipedia - The Law of Men -- 1919 film
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Wikipedia - The Law of Success -- 1925 book by Napoleon Hill
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Wikipedia - The Law of the North (1917 film) -- 1917 silent film
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Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- -- Bones -- 64 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Adventure Comedy Drama Magic Fantasy Shounen -- Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood -- "In order for something to be obtained, something of equal value must be lost." -- -- Alchemy is bound by this Law of Equivalent Exchange—something the young brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric only realize after attempting human transmutation: the one forbidden act of alchemy. They pay a terrible price for their transgression—Edward loses his left leg, Alphonse his physical body. It is only by the desperate sacrifice of Edward's right arm that he is able to affix Alphonse's soul to a suit of armor. Devastated and alone, it is the hope that they would both eventually return to their original bodies that gives Edward the inspiration to obtain metal limbs called "automail" and become a state alchemist, the Fullmetal Alchemist. -- -- Three years of searching later, the brothers seek the Philosopher's Stone, a mythical relic that allows an alchemist to overcome the Law of Equivalent Exchange. Even with military allies Colonel Roy Mustang, Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, and Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes on their side, the brothers find themselves caught up in a nationwide conspiracy that leads them not only to the true nature of the elusive Philosopher's Stone, but their country's murky history as well. In between finding a serial killer and racing against time, Edward and Alphonse must ask themselves if what they are doing will make them human again... or take away their humanity. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America, Funimation -- 2,372,958 9.18
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