TERMS STARTING WITH
the subject of a woodcut reproduced in Paul
The subject of the philosophy of religion is regarded in conservative circles not as a discipline given to free philosophical inquiry but as a particular religion's philosophy. In this form it is a more or less disguised apologetics or defense of an already accepted religious faith. While the data for this subject include the so-called classical religions, philosophy of religion, in the genuinely philosophical sense, takes for its material religious expressions of all types, whether classical or not, together with all the psychological material available on the nature of the human spirit and man's whole cultural development. -- V.F.
TERMS ANYWHERE
2. In psychology, the act or process of exercising the mind, the faculty of connecting judgments; the power and fact of using reason; the thought-processes of discussion, debate, argumentation or inference; the manifestation of the discursive property of the mind; the actual use of arguments with a view to convince or persuade; the art and method or proving or demonstrating; the orderly development of thought with a view to, or the attainment of a conclusion believed to be valid. -- The origin, nature and value of reasoning are debated questions, with their answers ranging from spiritualism (reasoning as the exercise of a faculty of the soul) to materialism (reasoning as an epiphenomenon depending on the brain), with all the modern schools of psychology ordering themselves between them. A few points of agreement might be mentioned here: reasoning follows judgment and apprehension, whichever of the last two thought-processes comes first in our psychological development; reasoning proceeds according to four main types, namely deductive, inductive, presumptive and deceptive; reasoning assumes a belief in its own validity undisturbed by doubt, and implies various logical habits and methods which may be organized into a logical doctrine; reasoning requires a reference to some ultimate principles to justify its progress 3. In logic, Reasoning is the process of inference, it is the process of passing from certain propositions already known or assumed to be true, to another truth distinct from them but following from them; it is a discourse or argument which infers one proposition from another, or from a group of others having some common elements between them. The inference is necessary in the case of deductive reasoning; and contingent, probable or wrong, in the case of inductive, presumptive or deceptive reasoning respectively. -- There are various types of reasoning, and proper methods for each type. The definition, discussion, development and evaluation of these types and methods form an important branch of logic and its subdivisions. The details of the application of reasoning to the various sciences, form the subject of methodology. All these types are reducible to one or the other of the two fundamental processes or reasoning, namely deduction and induction. It must be added that the logical study of reasoning is normative logic does not analyze it simply in its natural development, but with a view to guide it towards coherence, validity or truth. -- T.G.
3. A highly composite and diverse study which attempts to ascertain the limits of the special sciences, to disclose their interrelations one with another, and to examine their implications so fir as these contribute to a theory either of the universe as a whole or of some pervasive aspect of it. This aspect of the philosophy of science is the least precise and definite of the three, and employs the more speculative methods. One of the most characteristic of its problems is that of the classification of the sciences. This involves the attempt to construct a general table, or diagram, or map of the sciences which will properly integrate the sciences according to method, subject-matter, or some other principle of organization. Another characteristic problem is that of the implications of science for some general theory of the universe, e.g., idealism, materialism, positivism, mechanism, teleology, monism, or pluralism. In recent years a new type of problem has appeared which, if it is properly part of the philosophy of science at all, belongs to this aspect of the subject. This is the problem of the social relations of science. It examines such problems as the place of science in a given cultural scheme, e.g., its relations to government, business, art, religion and morality.
Abacus - 1. instrument of ancient origin used to perform arithmetic calculations by sliding counters along rods or in grooves. Or) 2. semi-annual accounting research journal (founded in 1965) published by the Sydney University Press, edited by the University of Sydney, Department of Accounting. The subject matter covers all areas of accounting including international accounting.
According to theosophic teachings physical matter is a condensation of light, as is being experimentally verified. It is evident that the subject of the emanation of innumerable forms of life energy on all the planes of the cosmos is a very wide one, and the words fohat, light, life, electricity, etc., are used in this connection. These radiations may be classified on a septenary, denary, or duodenary system, as when we speak of the seven, ten, or twelve rays of the solar logos. See also RAY
actionable ::: a. --> That may be the subject of an action or suit at law; as, to call a man a thief is actionable.
ACTIVATION AND OBJECTIVATION, METHODS OF Methods to activate higher, as yet inactive consciousness, and to make subjective (emotional and mental) consciousness objective. Those esoteric methods, which lead rapidly and without risks to causal objective consciousness, remain the property of the planetary hierarchy. K 6.8.6
Unlike the yogis&
adhidaiva ::: that which pertains to the Gods (non-material powers) ; the subjective phenomenon of being.
advayajNAna. (T. gnyis su med pa'i ye shes; C. bu'erzhi; J. funichi; K. puriji 不二智). In Sanskrit, "nondual knowledge"; referring to knowledge that has transcended the subject-object bifurcation that governs all conventional states of sensory consciousness, engendering a distinctive type of awareness that is able to remain conscious without any longer requiring an object of consciousness. See also WU'AIXING.
advaya. (T. gnyis su med pa; C. bu'er; J. funi; K. puri 不二). In Sanskrit, "nonduality"; one of the common synonyms for the highest teachings of Buddhism and one of the foundational principles of the MAHAYANA presentation of doctrine. Nonduality refers to the definitive awareness achieved through enlightenment, which transcends all of the conventional dichotomies into which compounded existence is divided (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.). Most specifically, nondual knowledge (ADVAYAJNANA) transcends the subject-object bifurcation that governs all conventional states of consciousness and engenders a distinctive type of awareness that no longer requires an object of consciousness. See also WU'AIXING.
advertise ::: v. t. --> To give notice to; to inform or apprise; to notify; to make known; hence, to warn; -- often followed by of before the subject of information; as, to advertise a man of his loss.
To give public notice of; to announce publicly, esp. by a printed notice; as, to advertise goods for sale, a lost article, the sailing day of a vessel, a political meeting.
Aesthetics is now achieving a more independent status as the subject (whether it is or can be a "science" is a disputed issue) which studies (a) works of art, (b) the processes of producing and experiencing art, and (c) certain aspects of nature and human production outside the field of art -- especially those which can be considered as beautiful or ugly in regard to form and sensory qualities. (E.g., sunsets, flowers, human beings, machines.)
ahaṅkara ::: the ego; the subjective principle by which the purus.a is induced to identify himself with prakr.ti and her activities; "the limited ‘I" in us", freedom from which is part of the mukti or liberation of the nature: the egoistic consciousness, including the "ego-sense in the life stuff" and the "ego-idea in the mind" which "maintain a constructed symbol of self, the separative ego, which does duty for the hidden real self, the spirit or true being" and whose nature "is a self-limitation of consciousness by a willed ignorance of the rest of its play and its exclusive absorption in one form, one combination of tendencies, one field of the movement of energies". aha ahankara-mukti-siddhi
Ahanta: (Skr. "I-ness") Selfhood, state of being an ego; the subject in knowledge. -- K.F.L.
a) In Epistemology: The subject of knowledge is the individual knower considered either as a pure ego (see Ego, Pure), a transcendental ego (see Ego, Transcendental) or an act of awareness. (See Awareness).
Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta. (1870-1949). Thai monk who revitalized the Thai forest-monk tradition (Thai PHRA PA), and the subject of a celebrated Thai hagiography by Ajahn MahA Boowa NAnasampanno (b. 1913). Born in 1870, in Ban Khambong village in the province of Ubon Ratchathani, Mun was ordained in 1893 at Wat Liab and began studying insight practice (VIPAsYANA) under the guidance of Ajahn Sao Kantasīla (1861-1941). Through developing the meditation on foulness (AsUBHABHAVANA), he eventually had an experience of calmness (sAMATHA), and in order to enhance his practice, he embarked on the life of asceticism (P. DHUTAnGA) as a forest dweller (P. ARANNAVASI) in northeast Thailand and southern Laos. After every rains' retreat (VARsA) was over, he would travel into the forests, staying just close enough to a few small villages in order to perform his alms round (PIndAPATA) each morning. According to the hagiography, after first experiencing the fruition of the state of the nonreturner (ANAGAMIN), he eventually achieved the stage of a worthy one (ARHAT) in Chiang Mai, an experience that he said shook the entire universe and brought a roar of accolades from the heavenly hosts. Ajahn Mun became a widely known and respected meditator and teacher, who was invited to dwell in monasteries throughout much of Thailand. The hagiography compiled by Ajahn MahA Boowa is filled with exuberantly told tales of his meditative visions, prophetic dreams, lectures and instructions, and encounters with other eminent monks, laypeople, and even with deceased arhats and divinities (DEVA) such as sAKRA with his 100,000 strong retinue. Ajahn Mun's many prominent disciples helped revive the Thai forest-monk tradition, especially in the northeast, and defined its austere practices (Thai, THUDONG; P. DHUTAnGA) in their contemporary context.
AkAsAnantyAyatana. (P. AkAsAnaNcAyatana; T. nam mkha' mtha' yas skye mched; C. kong wubian chu; J. kumuhenjo; K. kong mubyon ch'o 空無邊處). In Sanskrit, "sphere of infinite space"; the first and lowest (in ascending order) of the four levels of the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) and the first of the four immaterial absorptions (DHYANA). It is a realm of rebirth as well as a meditative state that is entirely immaterial (viz., there is no physical [RuPA] component to existence) in which the mind comes to an awareness of unlimited pervasive space (AKAsA) without the existence of material objects. Beings reborn in this realm are thought to live as long as forty thousand eons (KALPAS). However, as a state of being that is still subject to rebirth, even the realm of infinite space remains part of SAMSARA. Like the other levels of the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU) and the immaterial realm, one is reborn in this state by achieving the specific level of meditative absorption of that state in the previous lifetime. One of the most famous and influential expositions on the subject of these immaterial states comes from the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA, written in the fifth century. Although there are numerous accounts of Buddhist meditators achieving immaterial states of SAMADHI, they are also used polemically in Buddhist literature to describe the attainments of non-Buddhist yogins, who mistakenly identify these exalted states within saMsAra as states of permanent liberation from rebirth. See also DHYANASAMAPATTI; DHYANOPAPATTI.
Alagaddupamasutta. (C. Alizha jing; J. Aritakyo; K. Arit'a kyong 阿梨經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Simile of the Snake," the twenty-second sutta of the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a separate SarvAstivAda recension appears as the 200th sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA, and the similes of the snake and of the raft are the subjects of independent sutras in an unidentified recension in the EKOTTARAGAMA). The discourse was preached by the Buddha at SAvatthi (sRAVASTĪ), in response to the wrong view (MITHYADṚstI) of the monk Arittha. Arittha maintained that the Buddha taught that one could enjoy sensual pleasures without obstructing one's progress along the path to liberation, and remained recalcitrant even after the Buddha admonished him. The Buddha then spoke to the assembly of monks on the wrong way and the right way of learning the dharma. In his discourse, he uses several similes to enhance his audience's understanding, including the eponymous "simile of the snake": just as one could be bitten and die by grasping a poisonous snake by the tail instead of the head, so too will using the dharma merely for disputation or polemics lead to one's peril because of one's wrong grasp of the dharma. This sutta also contains the famous "simile of the raft," where the Buddha compares his dispensation or teaching (sASANA) to a makeshift raft that will help one get across a raging river to the opposite shore: after one has successfully crossed that river by paddling furiously and reached solid ground, it would be inappropriate to put the raft on one's head and carry it; similarly, once one has used the dharma to get across the "raging river" of birth and death (SAMSARA) to the "other shore" of NIRVAnA, the teachings have served their purpose and should not be clung to.
AlayavijNAna. (T. kun gzhi rnam par shes pa; C. alaiyeshi/zangshi; J. arayashiki/zoshiki; K. aroeyasik/changsik 阿賴耶識/藏識). In Sanskrit, "storehouse consciousness" or "foundational consciousness"; the eighth of the eight types of consciousness (VIJNANA) posited in the YOGACARA school. All forms of Buddhist thought must be able to uphold (1) the principle of the cause and effect of actions (KARMAN), the structure of SAMSARA, and the process of liberation (VIMOKsA) from it, while also upholding (2) the fundamental doctrines of impermanence (ANITYA) and the lack of a perduring self (ANATMAN). The most famous and comprehensive solution to the range of problems created by these apparently contradictory elements is the AlayavijNAna, often translated as the "storehouse consciousness." This doctrinal concept derives in India from the YOGACARA school, especially from ASAnGA and VASUBANDHU and their commentators. Whereas other schools of Buddhist thought posit six consciousnesses (vijNAna), in the YogAcAra system there are eight, adding the afflicted mind (KLIstAMANAS) and the AlayavijNAna. It appears that once the SarvAstivAda's school's eponymous doctrine of the existence of dharmas in the past, present, and future was rejected by most other schools of Buddhism, some doctrinal solution was required to provide continuity between past and future, including past and future lifetimes. The alAyavijNAna provides that solution as a foundational form of consciousness, itself ethically neutral, where all the seeds (BIJA) of all deeds done in the past reside, and from which they fructify in the form of experience. Thus, the AlayavijNAna is said to pervade the entire body during life, to withdraw from the body at the time of death (with the extremities becoming cold as it slowly exits), and to carry the complete karmic record to the next rebirth destiny. Among the many doctrinal problems that the presence of the AlayavijNAna is meant to solve, it appears that one of its earliest references is in the context not of rebirth but in that of the NIRODHASAMAPATTI, or "trance of cessation," where all conscious activity, that is, all CITTA and CAITTA, cease. Although the meditator may appear as if dead during that trance, consciousness is able to be reactivated because the AlayavijNAna remains present throughout, with the seeds of future experience lying dormant in it, available to bear fruit when the person arises from meditation. The AlayavijNAna thus provides continuity from moment to moment within a given lifetime and from lifetime to lifetime, all providing the link between an action performed in the past and its effect experienced in the present, despite protracted periods of latency between seed and fruition. In YogAcAra, where the existence of an external world is denied, when a seed bears fruit, it bifurcates into an observing subject and an observed object, with that object falsely imagined to exist separately from the consciousness that perceives it. The response by the subject to that object produces more seeds, either positive, negative, or neutral, which are deposited in the AlayavijNAna, remaining there until they in turn bear their fruit. Although said to be neutral and a kind of silent observer of experience, the AlayavijNAna is thus also the recipient of karmic seeds as they are produced, receiving impressions (VASANA) from them. In the context of Buddhist soteriological discussions, the AlayavijNAna explains why contaminants (ASRAVA) remain even when unwholesome states of mind are not actively present, and it provides the basis for the mistaken belief in self (Atman). Indeed, it is said that the klistamanas perceives the AlayavijNAna as a perduring self. The AlayavijNAna also explains how progress on the path can continue over several lifetimes and why some follow the path of the sRAVAKA and others the path of the BODHISATTVA; it is said that one's lineage (GOTRA) is in fact a seed that resides permanently in the AlayavijNAna. In India, the doctrine of the AlayavijNAna was controversial, with some members of the YogAcAra school rejecting its existence, arguing that the functions it is meant to serve can be accommodated within the standard six-consciousness system. The MADHYAMAKA, notably figures such as BHAVAVIVEKA and CANDRAKĪRTI, attacked the YogAcAra proponents of the AlayavijNAna, describing it as a form of self, which all Buddhists must reject. ¶ In East Asia, the AlayavijNAna was conceived as one possible solution to persistent questions in Buddhism about karmic continuity and about the origin of ignorance (MOHA). For the latter, some explanation was required as to how sentient beings, whom many strands of MAHAYANA claimed were inherently enlightened, began to presume themselves to be ignorant. Debates raged within different strands of the Chinese YogAcAra traditions as to whether the AlayavijNAna is intrinsically impure because of the presence of these seeds of past experience (the position of the Northern branch of the Chinese DI LUN ZONG and the Chinese FAXIANG tradition of XUANZANG and KUIJI), or whether the AlayavijNAna included both pure and impure elements because it involved also the functioning of thusness, or TATHATA (the Southern Di lun school's position). Since the sentient being has had a veritable interminable period of time in which to collect an infinity of seeds-which would essentially make it impossible to hope to counteract them one by one-the mainstream strands of YogAcAra viewed the mind as nevertheless tending inveterately toward impurity (dausthulya). This impurity could only be overcome through a "transformation of the basis" (AsRAYAPARAVṚTTI), which would completely eradicate the karmic seeds stored in the storehouse consciousness, liberating the bodhisattva from the effects of all past actions and freeing him to project compassion liberally throughout the world. In some later interpretations, this transformation would then convert the AlayavijNAna into a ninth "immaculate consciousness" (AMALAVIJNANA). See also DASHENG QIXIN LUN.
alternative hypothesis: The model considered to be the case if the null hypothesis in considered to be rejected (not hold). There is some debate as to whether an alternative hypothesis increases the subjectiveness of hypothesis testing, since the alternative hypothesis does not necessarily have to be the negation of the null hypothesis. The issue is whether it is appropriate to make presumptions of what the model in consideration cannot be (models not covered by the null or alternative hypothesis but not considered) in hypothesis testing. Setting the alternative hypothesis to be the negation of the null hypothesis amounts to not using alternative hypothesis as some statistician would advocate.
Ambhamsi (Sanskrit) Ambhāṃsi [from ambhas water, from the verbal root bhā to shine] Water; in the Vedas the celestial waters and also a synonym for gods, but in the Brahmanas and Puranas the four orders of beings that variously “shine” or flourish: deva-manushyah (gods and men), pitris (fathers or manes), and asuras (demons, not-gods). This is “because they are all the product of waters (mystically), of the Akasic Ocean . . . If the student of Esoteric philosophy thinks deeply over the subject he is sure to find out all the suggestiveness of the term Ambhamsi, in its manifold relations to the Virgin in Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the Alchemists, and even to the ‘Waters of Grace’ of the modern Baptist” (SD 1:458n).
Ampliative: (Lat. ampliare, to make wider; Ger. Erweiterungsurteil) Synthetic; serving to expand. In an ampliative judgment the predicate adds something not already contained in the meaning of the subject-term. Contrasted with analytic or explicative. -- O.F.K.
amplification ::: n. --> The act of amplifying or enlarging in dimensions; enlargement; extension.
The enlarging of a simple statement by particularity of description, the use of epithets, etc., for rhetorical effect; diffuse narrative or description, or a dilating upon all the particulars of a subject.
The matter by which a statement is amplified; as, the subject was presented without amplifications.
anaglyptography ::: n. --> The art of copying works in relief, or of engraving as to give the subject an embossed or raised appearance; -- used in representing coins, bas-reliefs, etc.
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.
IDEAS OF THE CAUSAL WORLD
The ideas of the world of ideas are objective forms as well as being subjective, and thus the ideas are faithful representations of enduring objective and subjective realities. Every intuition corresponds to a mental system of reality ideas. Lower worlds exist in the ideas of the world of ideas and thus the knowledge of these lower worlds is contained in the idea systems of the intuitions. &
MONAD, THE; THE SAME AS PRIMORDIAL ATOM is the smallest possible part of primordial matter and the smallest firm point for individual consciousness. K 1.4.5, 1.12.1
The monads are the sole content of the cosmos.
All forms of matter existing in the cosmos consist of monads at different stages of development. All these compositions of monads are being formed, changed, dissolved, and re-formed in innumerable variations, but the monads&
Anesthesia [from Greek anaisthesia no feeling] Want of feeling; a condition of total or partial insensibility, particularly to touch. The many classical references to anesthetics indicate that the ancients knew much about the subject that has not been rediscovered. Blavatsky refers to the sacred beverage used by the hierophants in ceremonies to free the astral soul from the bonds of matter, so that the inner man might rise to the level of spirit (IU 2:117, 1:540).
apperception ::: n. --> The mind&
argument ::: n. --> Proof; evidence.
A reason or reasons offered in proof, to induce belief, or convince the mind; reasoning expressed in words; as, an argument about, concerning, or regarding a proposition, for or in favor of it, or against it.
A process of reasoning, or a controversy made up of rational proofs; argumentation; discussion; disputation.
The subject matter of a discourse, writing, or artistic
Aristotle divides the sciences into the theoretical, the practical and the productive, the aim of the first being disinterested knowledge, of the second the guidance of conduct, and of the third the guidance of the arts. The science now called logic, by him known as "analytic", is a discipline preliminary to all the others, since its purpose is to set forth the conditions that must be observed by all thinking which has truth as its aim. Science, in the strict sense of the word, is demonstrated knowledge of the causes of things. Such demonstrated knowledge is obtained by syllogistic deduction from premises in themselves certain. Thus the procedure of science differs from dialectic, which employs probable premises, and from eristic, which aims not at truth but at victory in disputation. The center, therefore, of Aristotle's logic is the syllogism, or that form of reasoning whereby, given two propositions, a third follows necessarily from them. The basis of syllogistic inference is the presence of a term common to both premises (the middle term) so related as subj ect or predicate to each of the other two terms that a conclusion may be drawn regarding the relation of these two terms to one another. Aristotle was the first to formulate the theory of the syllogism, and his minute analysis of its various forms was definitive, so far as the subject-predicate relation is concerned; so that to this part of deductive logic but little has been added since his day. Alongside of deductive reasoning Aristotle recognizes the necessity of induction, or the process whereby premises, particularly first premises, are established. This involves passing from the particulars of sense experience (the things more knowable to us) to the universal and necessary principles involved in sense experience (the things more knowable in themselves). Aristotle attaches most importance, in this search for premises, to the consideration of prevailing beliefs (endoxa) and the examination of the difficulties (aporiai) that have been encountered in the solution of the problem in hand. At some stage in the survey of the field and the theories previously advanced the universal connection sought for is apprehended; and apprehended, Aristotle eventually says, by the intuitive reason, or nous. Thus knowledge ultimately rests upon an indubitable intellectual apprehension; yet for the proper employment of the intuitive reason a wide empirical acquaintance with the subject-matter is indispensable.
Asana(Sanskrit) ::: A word derived from the verbal root as, signifying "to sit quietly." Asana, therefore,technically signifies one of the peculiar postures adopted by Hindu ascetics, mostly of the hatha yogaschool. Five of these postures are usually enumerated, but nearly ninety have been noted by students ofthe subject. A great deal of quasi-magical and mystical literature may be found devoted to these variouspostures and collateral topics, and their supposed or actual psychological value when assumed bydevotees; but, as a matter of fact, a great deal of this writing is superficial and has very little indeed to dowith the actual occult and esoteric training of genuine occultists. One is instinctively reminded of otherquasi-mystical practices, as, for instance, certain genuflections or postures followed in the worship of theChristian Church, to which particular values are sometimes ascribed by fanatic devotees.Providing that the position of the body be comfortable so that the mind is least distracted, genuinemeditation and spiritual and actual introspection can be readily and successfully attained by any earneststudent without the slightest attention being paid to these various postures. A man sitting quietly in hisarmchair, or lying in his bed at night, or sitting or lying on the grass in a forest, can more readily enterthe inner worlds than by adopting and following any one or more of these various asanas, which at thebest are physiological aids of relatively small value. (See also Samadhi)
Asoka. (P. Asoka; T. Mya ngan med; C. Ayu wang; J. Aiku o; K. Ayuk wang 阿育王) (c. 300-232 BCE; r. c. 268-232 BCE). Indian Mauryan emperor and celebrated patron of Buddhism; also known as DharmAsoka. Son of BindusAra and grandson of Candragupta, Asoka was the third king of the Mauryan dynasty. Asoka left numerous inscriptions recording his edicts and proclamations to the subjects of his realm. In these inscriptions, Asoka is referred to as DEVANAM PRIYAḤ, "beloved of the gods." These inscriptions comprise one of the earliest bodies of writing as yet deciphered from the Indian subcontinent. His edicts have been found inscribed on boulders, on stone pillars, and in caves and are widely distributed from northern Pakistan in the west, across the Gangetic plain to Bengal in the east, to near Chennai in South India. The inscriptions are ethical and religious in content, with some describing how Asoka turned to the DHARMA after subjugating the territory of Kalinga (in the coastal region of modern Andhra Pradesh) in a bloody war. In his own words, Asoka states that the bloodshed of that campaign caused him remorse and taught him that rule by dharma, or righteousness, is superior to rule by mere force of arms. While the Buddha, dharma, and SAMGHA are extolled and Buddhist texts are mentioned in the edicts, the dharma that Asoka promulgated was neither sectarian nor even specifically Buddhist, but a general code of administrative, public, and private ethics suitable for a multireligious and multiethnic polity. It is clear that Asoka saw this code of ethics as a diplomatic tool as well, in that he dispatched embassies to neighboring states in an effort to establish dharma as the basis for international relations. The edicts were not translated until the nineteenth century, however, and therefore played little role in the Buddhist view of Asoka, which derives instead from a variety of legends told about the emperor. The legend of Asoka is recounted in the Sanskrit DIVYAVADANA, in the PAli chronicles of Sri Lanka, DĪPAVAMSA and MAHAVAMSA, and in the PAli commentaries, particularly the SAMANTAPASADIKA. Particularly in PAli materials, Asoka is portrayed as a staunch sectarian and exclusive patron of the PAli tradition. The inscriptional evidence, as noted above, does not support that claim. In the MahAvaMsa, for example, Asoka is said to have been converted to THERAVADA Buddhism by the novice NIGRODHA, after which he purifies the Buddhist SAMGHA by purging it of non-TheravAda heretics. He then sponsors the convention of the third Buddhist council (SAMGĪTĪ; see COUNCIL, THIRD) under the presidency of MOGGALIPUTTATISSA, an entirely TheravAda affair. Recalling perhaps the historical Asoka's diplomatic missions, the legend recounts how, after the council, Moggaliputtatissa dispatched TheravAda missions, comprised of monks, to nine adjacent lands for the purpose of propagating the religion, including Asoka's son (MAHINDA) and daughter (SAnGHAMITTA) to Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, where the legend appears to have originated, and in the TheravAda countries of Southeast Asia, the PAli account of King Asoka was adopted as one of the main paradigms of Buddhist kingship and models of ideal governance and proper saMgha-state relations. A different set of legends, which do not recount the conversion of Sri Lanka, appears in Sanskrit sources, most notably, the AsOKAVADANA.
assessor ::: v. --> One appointed or elected to assist a judge or magistrate with his special knowledge of the subject to be decided; as legal assessors, nautical assessors.
One who sits by another, as next in dignity, or as an assistant and adviser; an associate in office.
One appointed to assess persons or property for the purpose of taxation.
ASTROLOGY. ::: Many astrological predictions come true, quite a mass of them, if one takes all together. But it does not follow that the stars rule our destiny; the stars merely record a destiny that has been already formed, they are a hieroglyph, not a Force, - or if their action constitutes a force, it is a transmitting energy, not an originating Power. Someone is there who has determined or something is there which is Fate, let us say; the stars are only indications. The astrologers themselves say that there are two forces, daiva and puruṣakāra, fate and individual energy, and the individual energy can modify and even frustrate fate. Moreover, the stars often indicate several fatepossibilities; for example, that one may die in mid-age, but that if that determination can be overcome, one can live to a predictable old age. Finally, cases are seen in which the predictions of the horoscope fulfil themselves with great accuracy up to a certain age, then apply no more. This often happens when the subject turns away from the ordinary to the spiritual life. If the turn is very radical, the cessation of predictability may be immediate; otherwise certain results may still last on for a time ; but there is no longer the sure inevitability.
at Swarajya, self-rule or sul>jcctive empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
Attention: (Lat. ad + tendere, to stretch) The concentration of the mind upon selected portions of the field of consciousness thereby conferring upon the selected items, a peculiar vividness and clarity. The field of attention may be divided into two parts: the focus of attention, where the degree of concentration of attention is maximal and the fringe of attention, where the degree of attention gradually diminishes to zero at the periphery. Attention considered with respect to its genesis, is of two types: involuntary, passive or spontaneous attention, which is governed by external stimulus or internal association of ideas and voluntary, controlled or directed attention which is guided by the subject's purpose or intention.
Attribute: Commonly, what is proper to a thing (Latm, ad-tribuere, to assign, to ascribe, to bestow). Loosely assimilated to a quality, a property, a characteristic, a peculiarity, a circumstance, a state, a category, a mode or an accident, though there are differences among all these terms. For example, a quality is an inherent property (the qualities of matter), while an attribute refers to the actual properties of a thing only indirectly known (the attributes of God). Another difference between attribute and quality is that the former refers to the characteristics of an infinite being, while the latter is used for the characteristics of a finite being. In metaphysics, an attribute is what is indispensable to a spiritual or material substance; or that which expresses the nature of a thing; or that without which a thing is unthinkable. As such, it implies necessarily a relation to some substance of which it is an aspect or conception. But it cannot be a substance, as it does not exist by itself. The transcendental attributes are those which belong to a being because it is a being: there are three of them, the one, the true and the good, each adding something positive to the idea of being. The word attribute has been and still is used more readily, with various implications, by substantialist systems. In the 17th century, for example, it denoted the actual manifestations of substance. [Thus, Descartes regarded extension and thought as the two ultimate, simple and original attributes of reality, all else being modifications of them. With Spinoza, extension and thought became the only known attributes of Deity, each expressing in a definite manner, though not exclusively, the infinite essence of God as the only substance. The change in the meaning of substance after Hume and Kant is best illustrated by this quotation from Whitehead: "We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions and within actual occasions" (Process and Reality, p. 471).] The use of the notion of attribute, however, is still favoured by contemporary thinkers. Thus, John Boodin speaks of the five attributes of reality, namely: Energy (source of activity), Space (extension), Time (change), Consciousness (active awareness), and Form (organization, structure). In theodicy, the term attribute is used for the essential characteristics of God. The divine attributes are the various aspects under which God is viewed, each being treated as a separate perfection. As God is free from composition, we know him only in a mediate and synthetic way thrgugh his attributes. In logic, an attribute is that which is predicated or anything, that which Is affirmed or denied of the subject of a proposition. More specifically, an attribute may be either a category or a predicable; but it cannot be an individual materially. Attributes may be essential or accidental, necessary or contingent. In grammar, an attribute is an adjective, or an adjectival clause, or an equivalent adjunct expressing a characteristic referred to a subject through a verb. Because of this reference, an attribute may also be a substantive, as a class-name, but not a proper name as a rule. An attribute is never a verb, thus differing from a predicate which may consist of a verb often having some object or qualifying words. In natural history, what is permanent and essential in a species, an individual or in its parts. In psychology, it denotes the way (such as intensity, duration or quality) in which sensations, feelings or images can differ from one another. In art, an attribute is a material or a conventional symbol, distinction or decoration.
autobiography ::: n. --> A biography written by the subject of it; memoirs of one&
avadAna. (P. apadAna; T. rtogs par brjod pa; C. apotuona/piyu; J. ahadana or apadana/hiyu; K. ap'adana/piyu 阿波陀那/譬喩). In Sanskrit, "tales" or "narrative"; a term used to denote a type of story found in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature. The precise meaning of the word has been the subject of much discussion. In the Indian BrAhmanas and srauta literature, the term denotes either something that is sacrificed or a portion of a sacrifice. The term avadAna was originally thought to mean "something cut off; something selected" and was presumed to derive from the prefix ava- + the Sanskrit root √dA. Feer, who published a French translation of the AVADANAsATAKA in 1891, tentatively translated it as "légende, action héroïque," while noting that the Tibetans, the Chinese, and the Mongols all employed differing translations of the word as well. (The Chinese use a transcription, apotuona, as well as a translation, piyu, meaning "simile." The Tibetan rtogs brjod has been rendered as "judgment" or "moral legend"; literally, it means the presentation or expression of the realizations [of an adept]. The Mongolian equivalent is domok.) Feer's rendering of avadAna is closer to its meaning of "heroic action" in classical Indian works such as the RaghuvaMsa and the KumArasambhava. AvadAnas are listed as the tenth of the twelvefold (DVADAsAnGA) division of the traditional genres of Buddhist literature, as classified by compositional style and content. The total corpus of the genre is quite extensive, ranging from individual avadAnas embedded in VINAYA texts, or separate sutras in the SuTRAPItAKA, to avadAnas that circulated either individually or in avadAna collections. These stories typically illustrate the results of both good and bad KARMAN, i.e., past events that led to present circumstances; in certain cases, however, they also depict present events that lead to a prediction (VYAKARAnA) of high spiritual attainment in the future. AvadAnas are closely related to JATAKAs, or birth stories of the Buddha; indeed, some scholars have considered jAtakas to be a subset of the avadAna genre, and some jAtaka tales are also included in the AVADANAsATAKA, an early avadAna collection. AvadAnas typically exhibit a three-part narrative structure, with a story of the present, followed by a story of past action (karman), which is then connected by identifying the past actor as a prior incarnation of the main character in the narrative present. In contrast to the jAtakas, however, the main character in an avadAna is generally not the Buddha (an exception is Ksemendra's eleventh-century BodhisattvAvadAnakalpalatA) but rather someone who is or becomes his follower. Moreover, some avadAnas are related by narrators other than the Buddha, such as those of the AsOKAVADANA, which are narrated by UPAGUPTA. Although the avadAna genre was once dismissed as "edifying stories" for the masses, the frequent references to monks as listeners and the directives to monks on how to practice that are embedded in these tales make it clear that the primary audience was monastics. Some of the notations appended to the stories in sura's [alt. Aryasura; c. second century CE] JATAKAMALA suggest that such stories were also used secondarily for lay audiences. On the Indian mainland, both mainstream and MAHAYANA monks compiled avadAna collections. Some of the avadAnas from northwestern India have been traced from kernel stories in the MuLASARVASTIVADA VINAYA via other mainstream Buddhist versions. In his French translation of the AvadAnasataka, Feer documented a number of tales from earlier mainstream collections, such as the AvadAnasataka, which were reworked and expanded in later MahAyAna collections, such as the RatnAvadAnamAlA and the KalpadrumAvadAnamAlA, which attests to the durability and popularity of the genre. Generally speaking, the earlier mainstream avadAnas were prose works, while the later MahAyAna collections were composed largely in verse.
Avanti. (T. Srung byed; C. Abanti [guo]; J. Ahandai[koku]; K. Abanje [kuk] 阿般提[國]). In Sanskrit and PAli, an Indian kingdom in the southwest subcontinent, north of present-day Mumbai; its capital was Ujjayinī (P. Ujjenī); the dialect spoken there was related to, and perhaps the ancestor of, the language used in the PAli canon. Avanti was located along the major southern Indian trade route (the DaksinApatha) that passed through sRAVASTĪ in central India, one of the main centers of early Buddhism. Buddhist missionaries following this trade route began to proselytize in the southwest even during the Buddha's lifetime. KAtyAyana, also known as "KAtyAyana the Great" (MAHAKATYAYANA; P. MahAkaccAna), one of the Buddha's ten major disciples, hailed from the Avanti region and later returned to his native land to disseminate Buddhism. He is said to have requested that the Buddha allow for special dispensation to ordain new monks in outlying regions without the requisite number of ten monastic witnesses. PuRnA (P. Punna) was another important disciple from the coastal area of this region (SurpAraka), who returned there to proselytize as well. He is the subject of the PunnovAdasutta (no. 145 in the PAli MAJJHIMANIKAYA) and the PurnAvadAna, which describe his resolve to spread the teachings of Buddhism. Buddhism became firmly established in the Avanti region at least by the time of King AsOKA; Asoka's son, MAHINDA, who later transmitted Buddhism to the island kingdom of Sri Lanka (Ceylon), is said to have been a native of its capital, Ujjayinī. Avanti was a stronghold of the STHAVIRANIKAYA, and its monks led the opposition to ten disputed items in the monastic discipline that resulted in the schism with the MAHASAMGHIKA order.
Bad Thing ::: (jargon) (From the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody 1066 And All That) Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalised, as in Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing.Opposite: Good Thing.British correspondents confirm that Bad Thing and Good Thing (and probably therefore Right Thing and Wrong Thing) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond.[Jargon File]
Bad Thing "jargon" (From the 1930 Sellar & Yeatman parody "1066 And All That") Something that can't possibly result in improvement of the subject. This term is always capitalised, as in "Replacing all of the 9600-baud modems with bicycle couriers would be a Bad Thing". Opposite: {Good Thing}. British correspondents confirm that {Bad Thing} and {Good Thing} (and probably therefore {Right Thing} and {Wrong Thing}) come from the book referenced in the etymology, which discusses rulers who were Good Kings but Bad Things. This has apparently created a mainstream idiom on the British side of the pond. [{Jargon File}]
balladry ::: n. --> Ballad poems; the subject or style of ballads.
banter ::: v. t. --> To address playful good-natured ridicule to, -- the person addressed, or something pertaining to him, being the subject of the jesting; to rally; as, he bantered me about my credulity.
To jest about; to ridicule in speaking of, as some trait, habit, characteristic, and the like.
To delude or trick, -- esp. by way of jest.
To challenge or defy to a match.
Because the difference between phenomenological pure psychology and transcendental phenomenology depends on a difference in attitude towards "the same" subject matter, their contents are widely analogous. Husserl maintained, however, that genuine philosophy is possible only as transcendental phenomenology, because it alone is knowledge of that non-worldly nucleus of subjectivity in which everything intendable as immanent or as transcendent is constituted (produced, generated) as an essentially intentional object. As envisaged in the Ideen and later works, phenomenological analysis is chiefly "transcendental-constitutional" analysis of the subjective structures in which the concrete individual world is built up as an intersubjectively valid transcendent sense for transcendental subjectivity. In the course of such analysis, every legitimate philosophical problem must find its definitive solution. From the transcendental-phenomenological standpoint, however, one traditional problem, namely the relation between what are essentially objects of consciousness and "things-in-themselves" that are not essentially objects of consciousness, is seen to be spurious. On the one hand, it is evidently false that all directly presented objects of consciousness are immanent in the mind, on the other hand, the concept of an entity that is not an intentionally constituted object of transcendental consciousness is evidently self-contradictory. This is the central thesis of what Husserl called his "transcendental-phenomenological idealism."
Bentham, Jeremy: (1748-1832) Founder of the English Utilitarian School of Philosophy. In law, he is remembered for his criticism of Blackstone's views of the English constitution, for his examination of the legal fiction and for his treatment of the subject of evidence. In politics, he is most famous for his analysis of the principles of legislation and, in ethics, for his greatest happiness principle. See Hedonic Calculus; Utilitarianism. J. Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789; Outline of a New System of Logic, 1827; Deontology. -- L.E.D.
Besides the universal intelligible being of things, Aristotle was also primarily concerned with an investigation of the being of things from the standpoint of their generation and existence. But only individual things are generated and exist. Hence, for him, substance was primarily the individual: a "this" which, in contrast with the universal or secondary substance, is not communicable to many. The Aristotelian meaning of substance may be developed from four points of view: Grammar: The nature of substance as the ultimate subject of predication is expressed by common usage in its employment of the noun (or substantive) as the subject of a sentence to signify an individual thing which "is neither present in nor predicable of a subject." Thus substance is grammatically distinguished from its (adjectival) properties and modifications which "are present in and predicable of a subject." Secondary substance is expressed by the universal term, and by its definition which are "not present in a subject but predicable of it." See Categoriae,) ch. 5. Physics: Independence of being emerges as a fundamental characteristic of substance in the analysis of change. Thus we have: Substantial change: Socrates comes to be. (Change simply). Accidental change; in a certain respect only: Socrates comes to be 6 feet tall. (Quantitative). Socrates comes to be musical (Qualitative). Socrates comes to be in Corinth (Local). As substantial change is prior to the others and may occur independently of them, so the individual substance is prior in being to the accidents; i.e., the accidents cannot exist independently of their subject (Socrates), but can be only in him or in another primary substance, while the reverse is not necessarily the case. Logic: Out of this analysis of change there also emerges a division of being into the schema of categories, with the distinction between the category of substance and the several accidental categories, such as quantity, quality, place, relation, etc. In a corresponding manner, the category of substance is first; i.e., prior to the others in being, and independent of them. Metaphysics: The character of substance as that which is present in an individual as the cause of its being and unity is developed in Aristotle's metaphysical writings, see especiallv Bk. Z, ch. 17, 1041b. Primary substnnce is not the matter alone, nor the universal form common to many, but the individual unity of matter and form. For example, each thing is composed of parts or elements, as an organism is composed of cells, yet it is not merely its elements, but has a being and unity over and above the sum of its parts. This something more which causes the cells to be this organism rather than a malignant growth, is an example of what is meant by substance in its proper sense of first substance (substantia prima). Substance in its secondary sense (substantia secunda) is the universal form (idea or species) which is individuated in each thing.
bethink ::: v. t. --> To call to mind; to recall or bring to recollection, reflection, or consideration; to think; to consider; -- generally followed by a reflexive pronoun, often with of or that before the subject of thought. ::: v. i. --> To think; to recollect; to consider.
be ::: v. i. --> To exist actually, or in the world of fact; to have ex/stence.
To exist in a certain manner or relation, -- whether as a reality or as a product of thought; to exist as the subject of a certain predicate, that is, as having a certain attribute, or as belonging to a certain sort, or as identical with what is specified, -- a word or words for the predicate being annexed; as, to be happy; to be here; to be large, or strong; to be an animal; to be a hero; to be a
Bhallika. (T. Bzang pa; C. Boli; J. Hari; K. P'ari 波利). In Sanskrit and PAli, one of the two merchants (together with his brother TRAPUsA, P. Tapussa) who became the first lay Buddhists (UPASAKA). Following his enlightenment, the Buddha remained in the vicinity of the BODHI TREE. In the seventh week, he went to the RAjAyatana tree to continue his meditation. Two merchants, Bhallika and his older brother Trapusa, who were leading a large trading caravan with five hundred carts, saw him there and, realizing that he had not eaten for weeks (as many as eight weeks, in some accounts), offered the Buddha sweet rice cakes with butter and honey. In response to their act of charity (DANA), the Buddha spoke with them informally and gave them the Buddha and dharma refuges (sARAnA) (the SAMGHA had not yet been created), making them the first lay Buddhists. The Buddha is said to have given the two brothers eight strands of hair from his head, which they took back to their homeland and interred for worship as relics (sARĪRA) in a STuPA. According to Mon-Burmese legend, Tapussa and Bhallika were Mon natives, and their homeland of Ukkala was a place also called Dagon in the Mon homeland of RAmaNNa in lower Burma. The stupa they constructed at Ukkala/Dagon, which was the first shrine in the world to be erected over relics of the present buddha, was to be enlarged and embellished over the centuries to become, eventually, the golden SHWEDAGON PAGODA of Rangoon. Because of the preeminence of this shrine, some Burmese chroniclers date the first introduction of Buddhism among the Mon in RAmaNNa to Tapussa and Bhallika's time. Bhallika eventually ordained and became an ARHAT; Trapusa achieved the stage of stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA). The merchants were also the subject of a Chinese apocryphal text, the TIWEI [BOLI] JING, written c. 460-464, which praises the value of the lay practices of giving and of keeping the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA).
Bibliography. The various theories outlined in this article do not exhaust the possible definitions and problems concerning probability, but they give an idea of the trend of the discussions. The following works are selected from a considerable literature of the subject. Laplace, Essai sur les Probabilites. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability. Jeffreys, Theory of Probability. Uspensky, Introduction to Mathematical Probability. Borel, Traite de Calcul des Probabilites (especially the last volume dealing with its philosophical aspects). Mises, Probability, Statistics and Truth. Reichenbach, Les Fondements Logiques du Calcul dcs Probabilites. Frechet, Recherches sur le Calcul des Probabilites. Ville, Essai sur la Theorie des Collectifs. Kolmogoroff, Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinhchkeitsrechnung. Wald, Die Widerspruchsfreiheit des Kollektivbegriffes. Nagel, The Theory of Probability.
b) In Axiology: The doctrine that moral and aesthetic values represent the subjective feelings and reactions of individual minds and have no status independent of such reactions. Ethical subjectivism finds typical expression in Westermarck's doctrine that moral judgments have reference to our emotions of approval and disapproval. See The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas. Vol. 1, Ch. l. -- L.W.
(b) In epistemology: A variety of ''critical realism." The view which holds that in the knowledge-relation the subject or percipient is at one (monism) with the object or the thing objectively existent and perceived, and that the subject contributes qualities not inherent in the object (hence, critical) and the object contains qualities not perceived. -- V.F.
Biqiuni zhuan. (J. Bikuniden; K. Piguni chon 比丘尼傳). In Chinese, "Lives of the Nuns," the major Chinese collection of biographies of eminent BHIKsUnĪ, compiled c. 516 CE by Shi Baochang, a Buddhist monk whose own biography can be found in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Continued Lives of Eminent Monks"). The anthology consists of sixty-five nuns' biographies, arranged chronologically beginning in the Eastern Jin (317-420 CE) and continuing through the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-588 CE). The introduction lists several characteristics that Shi Baochang deems worthy of emulation and special mention. These include steadfast asceticism, skill in meditation and study, chastity, and teaching abilities. The hagiographies themselves emphasize the following activities: over half of the nuns included in the anthology excelled in either scriptural study or meditation and religious practice. Almost half taught scripture and established convents. One-third of the nuns are said to have practiced strict vegetarianism. The same number is also said to have excelled in chanting scriptures: the most frequently named scriptures as the object of this devotion include the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA, and the MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA. The majority of nuns are also said to have inspired numerous monastic and secular followers. Many of the lay followers came from the highest reaches of society: governors and lords are regularly mentioned as patrons who often were instrumental in the founding of a new convent by donating land, funding construction, or both. In addition, almost half of the nuns were praised for their pure faith in the Buddha. In the instances where age was mentioned, almost half of the nuns were said to have adopted their vocation when they were still quite young (preadolescent); in contrast, only one-third were said to have left secular life once they were adults. The legitimacy of the Chinese nuns' order was specifically addressed in at least three hagiographies, where it is asserted that the subjects' ordinations were performed by foreign monks and nuns and was therefore valid.
Bla ma Zhang. [full name, Zhang tshal pa Brtson 'grus grags pa] (Shangtsalpa Tsondrü Drakpa) (1123-1193). The founder of the TSHAL PA BKA' BRGYUD, one of the four major and eight minor subsects of the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism (BKA' BRGYUD CHE BZHI CHUNG BRGYAD). He was an important figure in twelfth-century Tibet in both the religious and political realms. Born into an aristocratic family near LHA SA, he is said to have studied black magic in his youth. When both of his parents soon died, he attributed their deaths to his negative deeds and decided to become a Buddhist monk, receiving BHIKsU ordination in 1148. In 1152, he met the nephew of SGAM PO PA, from whom he received instructions in MAHAMUDRA, the subject of his best known work, Phyag chen lam mchog mthar thug ("Supreme Path of MahAmudrA"). In 1175 he established his own community, Tshal gung thang, north of Lha sa, controlling the region with a law code of his own composition and his own militia, dismissing criticisms of his use of force with the claim that such acts were the skillful methods of the tantric master. However, he eventually agreed to renounce violence when he was requested to do so by the first KARMA PA, DUS GSUM MKHYEN PA.
Blind Study ::: As a way to avoid the placebo effect in research, this type of study is designed without the subject&
bodhicittotpAda. (T. byang chub kyi sems bskyed pa; C. fa puti xin; J. hotsubodaishin; K. pal pori sim 發菩提心). In Sanskrit, "generating the aspiration for enlightenment," "creating (utpAda) the thought (CITTA) of enlightenment (BODHI)"; a term used to describe both the process of developing BODHICITTA, the aspiration to achieve buddhahood, as well as the state achieved through such development. The MAHAYANA tradition treats this aspiration as having great significance in one's spiritual career, since it marks the entry into the MahAyAna and the beginning of the BODHISATTVA path. The process by which this "thought of enlightenment" (bodhicitta) is developed and sustained is bodhicittotpAda. Various types of techniques or conditional environments conducive to bodhicittotpAda are described in numerous MahAyAna texts and treatises. The BODHISATTVABHuMI says that there are four predominant conditions (ADHIPATIPRATYAYA) for generating bodhicitta: (1) witnessing an inconceivable miracle (ṛddhiprAtihArya) performed by a buddha or a bodhisattva, (2) listening to a teaching regarding enlightenment (BODHI) or to the doctrine directed at bodhisattvas (BODHISATTVAPItAKA), (3) recognizing the dharma's potential to be extinguished and seeking therefore to protect the true dharma (SADDHARMA), (4) seeing that sentient beings are troubled by afflictions (KLEsA) and empathizing with them. The Fa putixinjing lun introduces another set of four conditions for generating bodhicitta: (1) reflecting on the buddhas; (2) contemplating the dangers (ADĪNAVA) inherent in the body; (3) developing compassion (KARUnA) toward sentient beings; (4) seeking the supreme result (PHALA). The Chinese apocryphal treatise DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith According to the MahAyAna") refers to three types of bodhicittotpAda: that which derives from the accomplishment of faith, from understanding and practice, and from realization. JINGYING HUIYUAN (523-592) in his DASHENG YIZHANG ("Compendium on the Purport of MahAyAna") classifies bodhicittotpAda into three groups: (1) the generation of the mind based on characteristics, in which the bodhisattva, perceiving the characteristics of SAMSARA and NIRVAnA, abhors saMsAra and aspires to seek nirvAna; (2) the generation of the mind separate from characteristics, in which the bodhisattva, recognizing that the nature of saMsAra is not different from nirvAna, leaves behind any perception of their distinctive characteristics and generates an awareness of their equivalency; (3) the generation of the mind based on truth, in which the bodhisattva, recognizing that the original nature of bodhi is identical to his own mind, returns to his own original state of mind. The Korean scholiast WoNHYO (617-686), in his Muryangsugyong chongyo ("Doctrinal Essentials of the 'Sutra of Immeasurable Life'"), considers the four great vows of the bodhisattva (see C. SI HONGSHIYUAN) to be bodhicitta and divides its generation into two categories: viz., the aspiration that accords with phenomena (susa palsim) and the aspiration that conforms with principle (suri palsim). The topic of bodhicittotpAda is the subject of extensive discussion and exegesis in Tibetan Buddhism. For example, in his LAM RIM CHEN MO, TSONG KHA PA sets forth two techniques for developing this aspiration. The first, called the "seven cause and effect precepts" (rgyu 'bras man ngag bdun) is said to derive from ATIsA DIPAMKARAsRĪJNANA. The seven are (1) recognition of all sentient beings as having been one's mother in a past life, (2) recognition of their kindness, (3) the wish to repay their kindness, (4) love, (5) compassion, (6) the wish to liberate them from suffering, and (7) bodhicitta. The second, called the equalizing and exchange of self and other (bdag gzhan mnyam brje) is derived from the eighth chapter of sANTIDEVA's BODHICARYAVATARA. It begins with the recognition that oneself and others equally want happiness and do not want suffering. It goes on to recognize that by cherishing others more than oneself, one ensures the welfare of both oneself (by becoming a buddha) and others (by teaching them the dharma). MahAyAna sutra literature typically assumes that, after generating the bodhicitta, the bodhisattva will require not one, but three "incalculable eons" (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) of time in order to complete all the stages (BHuMI) of the bodhisattva path (MARGA) and achieve buddhahood. The Chinese HUAYAN ZONG noted, however, that the bodhisattva had no compunction about practicing for such an infinity of time, because he realized at the very inception of the path that he was already a fully enlightened buddha. They cite in support of this claim the statement in the "BrahmacaryA" chapter of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA that "at the time of the initial generation of the aspiration for enlightenment (bodhicittotpAda), complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) is already achieved."
Bodhidharma. (C. Putidamo; J. Bodaidaruma; K. Poridalma 菩提達磨) (c. late-fourth to early-fifth centuries). Indian monk who is the putative "founder" of the school of CHAN (K. SoN, J. ZEN, V. THIỀN). The story of a little-known Indian (or perhaps Central Asian) emigré monk grew over the centuries into an elaborate legend of Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of the Chan school. The earliest accounts of a person known as Bodhidharma appear in the Luoyang qielan ji and XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, but the more familiar and developed image of this figure can be found in such later sources as the BAOLIN ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, LIDAI FABAO JI, ZUTANG JI, JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, and other "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) histories. According to these sources, Bodhidharma was born as the third prince of a South Indian kingdom. Little is known about his youth, but he is believed to have arrived in China sometime during the late fourth or early fifth century, taking the southern maritime route according to some sources, the northern overland route according to others. In an episode appearing in the Lidai fabao ji and BIYAN LU, after arriving in southern China, Bodhidharma is said to have engaged in an enigmatic exchange with the devout Buddhist emperor Wu (464-549, r. 502-549) of the Liang dynasty (502-557) on the subject of the Buddha's teachings and merit-making. To the emperor's questions about what dharma Bodhidharma was transmitting and how much merit (PUnYA) he, Wudi, had made by his munificent donations to construct monasteries and ordain monks, Bodhidharma replied that the Buddha's teachings were empty (hence there was nothing to transmit) and that the emperor's generous donations had brought him no merit at all. The emperor seems not to have been impressed with these answers, and Bodhidharma, perhaps disgruntled by the emperor's failure to understand the profundity of his teachings, left for northern China, taking the Yangtze river crossing (riding a reed across the river, in a scene frequently depicted in East Asian painting). Bodhidharma's journey north eventually brought him to a cave at the monastery of SHAOLINSI on SONGSHAN, where he sat in meditation for nine years while facing a wall (MIANBI), in so-called "wall contemplation" (BIGUAN). During his stay on Songshan, the Chinese monk HUIKE is said to have become Bodhidharma's disciple, allegedly after cutting off his left arm to show his dedication. This legend of Bodhidharma's arrival in China is eventually condensed into the famous Chan case (GONG'AN), "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" (see XILAI YI). Bodhidharma's place within the lineage of Indian patriarchs vary according to text and tradition (some list him as the twenty-eighth patriarch), but he is considered the first patriarch of Chan in China. Bodhidharma's name therefore soon became synonymous with Chan and subsequently with Son, Zen, and Thièn. Bodhidharma, however, has often been confused with other figures such as BODHIRUCI, the translator of the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, and the Kashmiri monk DHARMATRATA, to whom the DHYANA manual DAMODUOLUO CHAN JING is attributed. The Lidai fabao ji, for instance, simply fused the names of Bodhidharma and DharmatrAta and spoke of a BodhidharmatrAta whose legend traveled with the Lidai fabao ji to Tibet. Bodhidharma was even identified as the apostle Saint Thomas by Jesuit missionaries to China, such as Matteo Ricci. Several texts, a number of which were uncovered in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache in Central Asia, have been attributed to Bodhidharma, but their authorship remains uncertain. The ERRU SIXING LUN seems to be the only of these texts that can be traced with some certainty back to Bodhidharma or his immediate disciples. The legend of Bodhidharma in the Lengqie shizi ji also associates him with the transmission of the LankAvatArasutra in China. In Japan, Bodhidharma is often depicted in the form of a round-shaped, slightly grotesque-looking doll, known as the "Daruma doll." Like much of the rest of the legends surrounding Bodhidharma, there is finally no credible evidence connecting Bodhidharma to the Chinese martial arts traditions (see SHAOLINSI).
Bodhi (enlightenment) is a particular state of samadhi, during which the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge. Samadhi is the highest state on earth that can be reached while in the body; its highest stage or degree is called turiya. To attain beyond this, the initiate must have become a nirmanakaya.
Bodhi (Sanskrit) Bodhi [from the verbal root budh to acquire understanding, awaken] Perfect wisdom or enlightenment; true divine wisdom. A state of consciousness in which one has so emptied the mind that it is filled only with the selfless selfhood of the eternal. In this state one realizes the ineffable visions of reality and of pure truth. Bodhi is a name for the enlightened intellect of buddha. “ ‘Bodhi’ is likewise the name of a particular state of trance condition, called Samadhi, during which the subject reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge” (SD 1:xix). The bodhi state is called a buddha, and the organ in and by which it is manifested is termed buddhi.
Borderline state: With respect to human consciousness and perception, that mental and psychological state in which the objective consciousness blends into the subjective. This state can be self-induced or produced under hypnosis. Many occult authorities maintain that this state is the first stage of man’s transition from the material plane of existence to the next one when the physical body dies.
broker ::: v. t. --> One who transacts business for another; an agent.
An agent employed to effect bargains and contracts, as a middleman or negotiator, between other persons, for a compensation commonly called brokerage. He takes no possession, as broker, of the subject matter of the negotiation. He generally contracts in the names of those who employ him, and not in his own.
A dealer in money, notes, bills of exchange, etc.
A dealer in secondhand goods.
B. The Probability-Relation. Considering the general grounds of probability, it is pertinent to analyze the proper characteristics of this concept and the valid conditions of its use in inferential processes. Probability presents itself as a special relation between the premisses and the conclusion of an argument, namely when the premisses are true but not completely sufficient to condition the truth of the conclusion. A probable inference must however be logical, even though its result is not certain, for its premisses must be a true sign of its conclusion. The probability-relation may take three aspects: it is inductive, probable or presumptive. In strict induction, there is an essential connection between the facts expressed in the premisses and in the conclusion, which almost forces a factual result from the circumstances of the predication. This type of probability-relation is prominent in induction proper and in statistics. In strict probability, there is a logical connection between the premisses and the conclusion which does not entail a definite factual value for the latter. This type of probability-relation is prominent in mathematical probability and circumstantial evidence. In strict presumption, there is a similarity of characteristics between the fact expressed in the conclusion and the real event if it does or did exist. This type of probability-relation is prominent in analogy and testimony. A presumptive conclusion should be accepted provisionally, and it should have definite consequences capable of being tested. The results of an inductive inference and of a probable inference may often be brought closer together when covering the same field, as the relations involved are fundamental enough for the purpose. This may be done by a qualitative analysis of their implications, or by a quantitative comparison of their elements, as it is done for example in the methods of correlation. But a presumptive inference cannot be reduced to either of the other two forms without losing its identity, because the connection between its elements is of an indefinite character. It may be said that inductive and probable inferences have an intrinsic reasonableness, while presumptive inferences have an extrinsic reasonableness. The former involve determinism within certain limits, while the latter display indeterminacy more prominently. That is why very poor, misleading or wrong conclusions are obtained when mathematical methods are applied to moral acts, judiciary decisions or indirect testimony The activity of the human will has an intricate complexity and variability not easily subjected to calculation. Hence the degree of probability of a presumptive inference can be estimated only by the character and circumstances of its suggested explanation. In moral cases, the discussion and application of the probability-relation leads to the consideration of the doctrines of Probabilism and Probabiliorism which are qualitative. The probability-relation as such has the following general implications which are compatible with its three different aspects, and which may serve as general inferential principle: Any generalization must be probable upon propositions entailing its exemplification in particular cases; Any generalization or system of generalizations forming a theory, must be probable upon propositions following from it by implication; The probability of a given proposition on the basis of other propositions constituting its evidence, is the degree of logical conclusiveness of this evidence with respect to the given proposition; The empirical probability (p = S/E) of a statement S increases as verifications accrue to the evidence E, provided the evidence is taken as a whole; and Numerical probabilities may be assigned to facts or statements only when the evidence includes statistical data or other numerical information which can be treated by the methods of mathematical probability. C. Mathematical Probability. The mathematical theory of probability, which is also called the theory of chances or the theory of relative possibilities, is concerned with the application of mathematical methods to the determination of the likelihood of any event, when there are not sufficient data to determine with certainty its occurrence or failure. As Laplace remarked, it is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. But its range goes far beyond that of common sense for it has not only conditioned the growth of various branches of mathematics, such as the theory of errors, the calculus of variations and mathematical statistics, but it has also made possible the establishment of a number of theories in the natural and social sciences, by its actual applications to concrete problems. A distinction is usually made between direct and inverse probability. The determination of a direct or a priori probability involves an inference from given situations or sets of possibilities numerically characterized, to future events related with them. By definition, the direct probability of the occurrence of any particular form of an event, is the ratio of the number of ways in which that form might occur, to the whole number of ways in which the event may occur, all these forms being equiprobable or equally likely. The basic principles referring to a priori probabilities are derived from the analysis of the various logical alternatives involved in any hypothetical questions such as the following: (a) To determine whether a cause, whose exact nature is or is not known, will prove operative or not in certain circumstances; (b) To determine how often an event happens or fails. The comparison of the number of occurrences with that of the failures of an event, considered in simple or complex circumstances, affords a baisis for several cases of probable inference. Thus, theorems may be established to deal with the probability of success and the probability of failure of an event, with the probability of the joint occurrence of several events, with the probability of the alternative occurrence of several events, with the different conditions of frequency of occurrence of an event; with mathematical expectation, and with similar questions. The determination of an a posteriori or inverse probability involves an inference from given situations or events, to past conditions or causes which rnay have contributed to their occurrence. By definition, an inverse probability is the numerical value assigned to each one of a number of possible causes of an actual event that has already occurred; or more generally, it is the numerical value assigned to hypotheses which attempt to explain actual events or circumstances. If an event has occurred as a result of any one of n several causes, the probability that C was the actual cause is Pp/E (Pnpn), when P is the probability that the event could be produced by C if present, and p the probability that C was present before the occurrence of that event. Inverse probability is based on general and special assumptions which cannot always be properly stated, and as there are many different sets of such assumptions, there cannot be a coercive reason for making a definite choice. In particular, the condition of the equiprobability of causes is seldom if ever fulfilled. The distinction between the two kinds of probability, which has led to some confusion in interpreting their grounds and their relations, can be technically ignored now as a result of the adoption of a statistical basis for measuring probabilities. In particular, it is the statistical treatment of correlation which led to the study of probabilities of concurrent phenomena irrespective of their direction in time. This distinction may be retained, howe\er, for the purpose of a general exposition of the subject. Thus, a number of probability theorems are obtained by using various cases of direct and inverse probability involving permutations and combinations, the binomial theorem, the theory of series, and the methods of integration. In turn, these theurems can be applied to concrete cases of the various sciences.
burlesque ::: a. --> Tending to excite laughter or contempt by extravagant images, or by a contrast between the subject and the manner of treating it, as when a trifling subject is treated with mock gravity; jocular; ironical. ::: n. --> Ludicrous representation; exaggerated parody; grotesque
(c) A special school called "Critical Realists" arose as a reactionary movement against the alleged extravagant views of another school of realists called the "New Realists" (q.v.). According to the "Critical Realists" the objective world, existing independently of the subject, is separated in the knowledge-relation by media or vehicles or essences. These intermediaries are not objects but conveyances of knowledge. The mind knows the objective world not directly (epistemological monism) but by means of a vehicle through which we perceive and think (epistemological dualism). For some, this vehicle is an immediate mental essence referring to existences, for some a datum, for some a subsistent realm mediating knowledge, and for one there is not so much a vehicle as there is a peculiar transcendental giasping of objects in cognition. In 1920 Essays in Critical Realism was published as the manifesto, the platform of this school. Its collaborators were D. Drake, A. O. Lovejoy, J. B. Pratt, A. K. Rogers, G. Santayana, R. W. Sellars, and C A. Strong. -- V.F.
catastasis ::: n. --> That part of a speech, usually the exordium, in which the orator sets forth the subject matter to be discussed.
The state, or condition of anything; constitution; habit of body.
Change, Philosophy of: (a) Any philosophical doctrine dealing with the subject of change, e.g., Aristotle's philosophy of change, (b) any philosophy which makes change an essential or pervasive character of reality, e.g., the philosophies of Heraclitus and Bergson. -- W.K.F.
Charles Babbage "person" The British inventor known to some as the "Father of Computing" for his contributions to the basic design of the computer through his {Analytical Engine}. His previous {Difference Engine} was a special purpose device intended for the production of mathematical tables. Babbage was born on December 26, 1791 in Teignmouth, Devonshire UK. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1814 and graduated from Peterhouse. In 1817 he received an MA from Cambridge and in 1823 started work on the Difference Engine through funding from the British Government. In 1827 he published a table of {logarithms} from 1 to 108000. In 1828 he was appointed to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (though he never presented a lecture). In 1831 he founded the British Association for the Advancement of Science and in 1832 he published "Economy of Manufactures and Machinery". In 1833 he began work on the Analytical Engine. In 1834 he founded the Statistical Society of London. He died in 1871 in London. Babbage also invented the cowcatcher, the dynamometer, standard railroad gauge, uniform postal rates, occulting lights for lighthouses, Greenwich time signals, and the heliograph opthalmoscope. He also had an interest in cyphers and lock-picking. [Adapted from the text by J. A. N. Lee, Copyright September 1994]. Babbage, as (necessarily) the first person to work with machines that can attack problems at arbitrary levels of {abstraction}, fell into a trap familiar to {toolsmiths} since, as described here by the English ethicist, Lord Moulton: "One of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as vigorous as ever. He took me through his work-rooms. In the first room I saw parts of the original Calculating Machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before and had even been put to some use. I asked him about its present form. 'I have not finished it because in working at it I came on the idea of my {Analytical Machine}, which would do all that it was capable of doing and much more. Indeed, the idea was so much simpler that it would have taken more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.'" "After a few minutes' talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked if I could see it. 'I have never completed it,' he said, 'because I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method, and this rendered it useless to proceed on the old lines.' Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer, 'It is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.' I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart." "When he died a few years later, not only had he constructed no machine, but the verdict of a jury of kind and sympathetic scientific men who were deputed to pronounce upon what he had left behind him, either in papers or in mechanism, was that everything was too incomplete of be capable of being put to any useful purpose." [Lord Moulton, "The invention of algorithms, its genesis, and growth", in G. C. Knott, ed., "Napier tercentenary memorial volume" (London, 1915), p. 1-24; quoted in Charles Babbage "Passage from the Life of a Philosopher", Martin Campbell-Kelly, ed. (Rutgers U. Press and IEEE Press, 1994), p. 34]. Compare: {uninteresting}, {Ninety-Ninety Rule}. (1996-02-22)
Cheng weishi lun. (S. *VijNaptimAtratAsiddhi; J. Joyui-shikiron; K. Song yusik non 成唯識論). In Chinese, "Demonstration of Consciousness-Only"; a magnum opus of Sino-Indian YOGACARA Buddhism and the foundational text of the Chinese WEISHI, or FAXIANG, school. The text is often cited by its reconstructed Sanskrit title *VIJNAPTIMATRATASIDDHI, and its authorship attributed to DHARMAPALA (530-561), but the text as we have it in Chinese translation has no precise analogue in Sanskrit and was never used within the Indian or Tibetan traditions. Its Chinese translator XUANZANG (600/602-664), one of the most important figures in the history of Chinese Buddhist scholasticism, traveled to India in the seventh century, where he specialized in YogAcAra doctrine at NALANDA monastic university under one of DharmapAla's disciples, sĪLABHADRA (529-645). At NAlandA, Xuanzang studied VASUBANDHU's TRIMsIKA (TriMsikAvijNaptimAtratA[siddhi]kArikA), the famous "Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only," along with ten prose commentaries on the verses by the prominent YogAcAra scholiasts DharmapAla, STHIRAMATI, Nanda, CitrabhAnu, Gunamati, Jinamitra, JNAnamitra, JNAnacandra, Bandhusrī, suddhacandra, and Jinaputra. After his return to China in 645, Xuanzang set to work translating this massive amount of new material into Chinese. Rather than translate in their entirety all ten commentaries, however, on the advice of his translation team Xuanzang chose to focus on DharmapAla's exegesis, which he considered orthodox, rather than muddy the waters in China with the divergent interpretations of the other teachers. As a foil for DharmapAla's interpretation, Xuanzang uses the commentaries by Sthiramati, Nanda, and occasionally CitrabhAnu, but he typically concludes any discussion with DharmapAla's definitive view. This decision to rely heavily on DharmapAla's interpretation probably comes from the fact that Xuanzang's own Indian teacher, sīlabhadra, was himself a pupil of DharmapAla. ¶ The Cheng weishi lun is principally concerned with the origination and removal of ignorance (AVIDYA), by clarifying the processes by which erroneous perception arises and enlightened understanding is produced. Unlike the writings of STHIRAMATI, which understood the bifurcation of consciousness into subject and object to be wholly imaginary, the Cheng weishi lun proposed instead that consciousness in fact always appears in both subjective and objective aspects, viz., a "seeing part" (darsanabhAga) and a "seen part" (nimittabhAga). The apparent dichotomy between inner self and external images is a supposition of mentality (MANAS), which in turn leads to the various afflictions (KLEsA), as the mind clings to those images it likes and rejects those it dislikes; thus, suffering (DUḤKHA) is created and the cycle of rebirth (SAMSARA) sustained. Both the perceiving self and the perceived images are therefore both simply projections of the mind and thus mere-representation (VIJNAPTIMATRA) or, as Xuanzang translated the term, consciousness-only (WEISHI). This clarification of the perceptual process produces an enlightened understanding that catalyzes a transmutation of the basis (AsRAYAPARAVṚTTI), so that the root consciousness (MuLAVIJNANA), or ALAYAVIJNANA, no longer serves as the storehouse of either wholesome or unwholesome seeds (BĪJA), thus bringing an end to the subject-object bifurcation. In the course of its discussion, the Cheng weishi lun offers an extensive treatment of the YogAcAra theory of the eight consciousnesses (VIJNANA) and especially the storehouse consciousness (AlayavijNAna) that stores the seeds, or potentialities, of these representational images. The text also offers an overview of the three-nature (TRISVABHAVA) theory of vijNaptimAtra as imaginary (PARIKALPITA), dependent (PARATANTRA), and perfected (PARINIsPANNA). Finally, the Cheng weishi lun provides such exhaustive detail on the hundred dharmas (BAIFA) taxonomical system of the YogAcAra that it has been used within the tradition as a primer of YogAcAra dharma theory.
chinyong. (C. zhenying; J. shin'ei 眞影). In Korean, lit. "true image"; viz., a "monk's portrait." Although the term is known throughout the East Asian Buddhist traditions, it is especially associated with Korea; the related term DINGXIANG (J. chinzo, lit. "head's appearance") is more typically used within the Chinese and Japanese traditions. The employment of the term chinyong in Korea is a late Choson dynasty development; different terms were used in Korea before that era to refer to monk's portraits, including chinhyong ("true form"), sinyong ("divine image"), chinyong ("true appearance") and yongja ("small portrait image"). "Chin" ("true") in the compound refers to the inherent qualities of the subject, while "yong" ("image") alludes to his physical appearance; thus, a chinyong is a portrait that seeks to convey the true inner spirituality of the subject. Images of eminent masters who had been renowned patriarchs of schools, courageous monk soldiers, or successful fund-raisers were enshrined in a monastery's portrait hall. These portraits were painted posthumously-and, unlike Chinese dingxiang portraits, typically without the consent of the subjects-as one means of legitimizing the dharma-transmission lineage of their religious descendants; this usage of portraits is seen in both meditation (SoN) and doctrinal (KYO) monasteries. Korean monk portraits were not given out to individual disciples or lay adherents, as occurred in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, where dozens and even hundreds of portraits were produced by and for a variety of persons. In the context of the Korean Son school, the pictures additionally enhanced the Son Buddhist emphasis on the direct spiritual transmission (see YINKE) between master and disciple. The development of monk portraiture was closely tied to annual commemorative practices in Buddhist monasteries, which sought to maintain the religious bonds between the dharma ancestors and their descendants.
Chung: Being true to the principle of the self; being true to the originally good nature of the self; being one's true self; the Confucian "central thread or principle" (i kuan) with respect to the self, as reciprocity (shu) is that principle with respect to others. See i kuan. Exerting one's pure heart to the utmost, to the extent of "not a single thought not having been exhausted", honesty, sincerity; devotion of soul, conscientiousness. (Confucianism.) "Honesty (chung) is complete realization of one's nature" whereas truthfulness (hsin) is "complete realization of the nature of things." "Honesty (chung) is the subjective side of truthfulness (hsin) whereas truthfulness is the objective side of honesty." (Ch'eng Ming-tao, 1032-1086.) "Honesty is exerting one's heart to the utmost whereas truthfulness is the observance of the Reason of things." (Chu Hsi, 1230-1300.) Impartiality, especially in love and profit, Loyalty, especially to one's superiors, faithfulness.
Citta. A lay follower of the Buddha, mentioned in PAli sources as being foremost among laymen who preached the DHARMA; also known as Cittagahapati. Citta was treasurer for the township of MacchikAsanda in the kingdom of KAsī. When he was born, the sky rained flowers of many hues, hence his name which means variegated color. Citta was converted to Buddhism when he encountered the elder MahAnAma (S. MAHANAMAN) while the latter was sojourning in MacchikAsanda. Citta was greatly impressed by the monk's demeanor and built a monastery for him in his park named AmbAtakArAma. There, listening to MahAnAma preach on the subject of the six senses, he attained to state of a nonreturner (ANAGAMIN). On one occasion, Citta visited the Buddha in the company of two thousand laypeople, bringing with him five hundred cartloads of offerings. When he bowed at the Buddha's feet, flowers in a variety of colors rained down from the heavens. Like MahAnAma, the Buddha preached a sermon on the six senses to him. Citta distributed offerings for a fortnight, the gods continuously refilling the carts. Citta was endowed with a great intellect and was a gifted speaker. His conversations with members of the order are recorded in the "Citta SaMyutta" of the PAli SAMYUTTANIKAYA, and he is also described as having refuted the views of non-Buddhist teachers, such as Nigantha NAtaputta (S. NIRGRANTHA-JNATĪPUTRA, viz., MahAvīra), the eminent JAINA teacher, and Acela Kassapa. Although he was not an ARHAT, he possessed the analytical knowledge (P. patisambhidA; S. PRATISAMVID) of a learner (P. sekha). It was for these aptitudes that he earned preeminence. On his deathbed, divinities visited him and encouraged him to seek rebirth as a heavenly king, but he refused, stating that such an impermanent reward was not his goal. He then preached to them, and to all the kinfolk who had gathered around him, before passing away. Together with HATTHAKA AlAVAKA, Citta is upheld as an ideal layman worthy of emulation.
Cohen, Hermann: (1842-1918) and Paul Natorp (1854-1924) were the chief leaders of the "Marburg School" which formed a definite branch of the Neo-Kantian movement. Whereas the original founders of this movement, O. Liebmann and Fr. A. Lange, had reacted to scientific empiricism by again calling attention to the a priori elements of cognition, the Marburg school contended that all cognition was exclusively a priori. They definitely rejected not only the notion of "things-in-themselves" but even that of anything immediately "given" in experience. There is no other reality than one posited by thought and this holds good equally for the object, the subject and God. Nor is thought in its effort to "determine the object = x" limited by any empirical data but solely by the laws of thought. Since in Ethics Kant himself had already endeavored to eliminate all empirical elements, the Marburg school was perhaps closer to him in this field than in epistemology. The sole goal of conduct is fulfillment of duty, i.e., the achievement of a society organized according to moral principles and satisfying the postulates of personal dignity. The Marburg school was probably the most influential philosophic trend in Germany in the last 25 years before the First World War. The most outstanding present-day champion of their tradition is Ernst Cassirer (born 1874). Cohen and Natorp tried to re-interpret Plato as well as Kant. Following up a suggestion first made by Lotze they contended that the Ideas ought to be understood as laws or methods of thought and that the current view ascribing any kind of existence to them was based on a misunderstanding of Aristotle's. -- H.G.
coldreading ::: Cold Reading Cold reading is a technique used by interrogators, hypnotists, psychics, graphologists, palmists, astrologers etc., to convince another person that they know more about them than they actually do. The 'cold reader' will make several vague statements and observe the subject's reactions. He/she will then refine the original statements according to those reactions.
computability theory "mathematics" The area of theoretical computer science concerning what problems can be solved by any computer. A function is computable if an {algorithm} can be implemented which will give the correct output for any valid input. Since computer programs are {countable} but {real numbers} are not, it follows that there must exist real numbers that cannot be calculated by any program. Unfortunately, by definition, there isn't an easy way of describing any of them! In fact, there are many tasks (not just calculating real numbers) that computers cannot perform. The most well-known is the {halting problem}, the {busy beaver} problem is less famous but just as fascinating. ["Computability", N.J. Cutland. (A well written undergraduate-level introduction to the subject)]. ["The Turing Omnibus", A.K. Dewdeney]. (1995-01-13)
computability theory ::: (mathematics) The area of theoretical computer science concerning what problems can be solved by any computer.A function is computable if an algorithm can be implemented which will give the correct output for any valid input.Since computer programs are countable but real numbers are not, it follows that there must exist real numbers that cannot be calculated by any program. Unfortunately, by definition, there isn't an easy way of describing any of them!In fact, there are many tasks (not just calculating real numbers) that computers cannot perform. The most well-known is the halting problem, the busy beaver problem is less famous but just as fascinating.[Computability, N.J. Cutland. (A well written undergraduate-level introduction to the subject)].[The Turing Omnibus, A.K. Dewdeney]. (1995-01-13)
content-free "jargon" 1. (By analogy with "context-free") Used of a message that adds nothing to the recipient's knowledge. Though this adjective is sometimes applied to {flamage}, it more usually connotes derision for communication styles that exalt form over substance or are centred on concerns irrelevant to the subject ostensibly at hand. Perhaps most used with reference to speeches by company presidents and other professional manipulators. See also {four-colour glossies}. "education" 2. Within British schools the term refers to general-purpose {software} such as a {word processor}, a {spreadsheet} or a program that tests spelling of words supplied by the teacher. This is in contrast to software designed to teach a particular topic, e.g. a plant growth simulation, an interactive periodic table or a program that tests spelling of a predetermined list of words. Content-free software can be more cost-effective as it can be reused for many lessons throughout the syllabus. [{Jargon File}] (2014-10-30)
contention ::: n. --> A violent effort or struggle to obtain, or to resist, something; contest; strife.
Strife in words; controversy; altercation; quarrel; dispute; as, a bone of contention.
Vehemence of endeavor; eagerness; ardor; zeal.
A point maintained in an argument, or a line of argument taken in its support; the subject matter of discussion or strife; a position taken or contended for.
copula ::: n. --> The word which unites the subject and predicate.
The stop which connects the manuals, or the manuals with the pedals; -- called also coupler.
Copula: The traditional analysis of a proposition into subject and predicate involves a third part, the copula (is, are, is not, are not), binding the subject and predicate together into an assertion either of affirmation or of denial. It is now, however, commonly held that several wholly different meanings of the verb to be should be distinguished in this connection, including at least the following: predication of a monadic propositional function of its argument (the sun is hot, 7 is a prime number, mankind is numerous); formal implication (gold is heavy, a horse is a quadruped, mankind is sinful); identity (China is Cathay, that is the sun, I am the State); formal equivalence (lightning is an electric discharge between parts of a cloud and the earth). -- A.C.
Cosmogenesis [from Greek kosmos world + genesis birth] The genesis of worlds, as distinguished from anthropogensis or the genesis of mankind; as defined by Blavatsky: “At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahm manifests as Mulaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the ‘Unconscious Universal Mind,’ etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes the Basis of the subject-side of manifested Being, and is the source of all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mulaprakriti or Primordial Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the object-side of things — the basis of all objective evolution and Cosmogenesis” (SD 2:24). The word is not restricted to earth, but includes innumerable globes; nor is it confined to those worlds which happen to be visible to our eye, but includes worlds on all the various planes of manifested substance. It does not mean that the worlds were created ex nihilo by divine fiat, nor that they were merely the productions from dead, unconscious, albeit eternal and uncreate matter. Again, cosmogenesis is not a process which has occurred only once and for all, but a process which is repeated indefinitely during manvantaras and after great pralayas. Thus worlds are evolved from the state of latency or pralaya into which they passed at the close of the preceding manvantara, and both primordial matter and primordial spirit come from the same source — parabrahman — and are resolved again into it. The process is one of evolution or progressive manifestation on various planes of objectivity of the potentialities latent in the spiritual germ. World must be understood, not with regard to any standards of size, but as including a universe of stars on the one hand and an atomic speck on the other.
Cundī. (T. Skul byed ma; C. Zhunti; J. Juntei; K. Chunje 准提). In Sanskrit, the name Cundī (with many orthographic variations) probably connotes a prostitute or other woman of low caste but specifically denotes a prominent local ogress (YAKsInĪ), whose divinized form becomes the subject of an important Buddhist cult starting in the eighth century. Her worship began in the Bengal and Orissa regions of the Indian subcontinent, where she became the patron goddess of the PAla dynasty, and soon spread throughout India, and into Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and Tibet, eventually making its way to East Asia. Cundī was originally an independent focus of cultic worship, who only later (as in the Japanese SHINGONSHu) was incorporated into such broader cultic practices as those focused on the "womb MAndALA" (see TAIZoKAI). Several scriptures related to her cult were translated into Chinese starting in the early eighth century, and she lends her name to both a MUDRA as well as an influential DHARAnĪ: namaḥ saptAnAM samyaksaMbuddhakotīnAM tadyathA: oM cale cule cunde svAhA. The dhAranī attributed to Cundī is said to convey infinite power because it is in continuous recitation by myriads of buddhas; hence, an adept who participates in this ongoing recitation will accrue manifold benefits and purify himself from unwholesome actions. The efficacy of the dhAranī is said to be particularly pronounced when it is recited before an image of Cundī while the accompanying Cundī mudrA is also being performed. This dhAranī also gives Cundī her common epithet of "Goddess of the Seventy Million [Buddhas]," which is sometimes mistakenly interpreted (based on a misreading of the Chinese) as the "Mother of the Seventy Million Buddhas." The texts also provide elaborate directions on how to portray her and paint her image. In Cundī's most common depiction, she has eighteen arms (each holding specific implements) and is sitting atop a lotus flower (PADMA) while being worshipped by two ophidian deities.
Cut off rate - The predetermined maximum rate and/or minimum rate at which the subject is still acceptable, but where a rate above the proscribed higher or below the proscribed lower rate is no longer acceptable.
Daena (Avestan) [from da, day to look, see, know] The personification of the Zoroastrian law or religion, presiding over the 24th day of the month, and giving to that day her name. Together with Khista (religious knowledge, the knowledge of what leads to bliss) she forms the subject of the 16th Yasht, Din Yasht, Din being Pahlavi for Daena. Christi (knowledge) was used in Mithraic circles in the same sense as Daena in Zoroastrianism.
darsanamArga. (T. mthong lam; C. jiandao; J. kendo; K. kyondo 見道). In Sanskrit, "path of vision"; the third of the five paths (PANCAMARGA) to liberation and enlightenment, whether as an ARHAT or as a buddha. It follows the second path, the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMARGA) and precedes the fourth path, the path of meditation or cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). This path marks the adept's first direct perception of reality, without the intercession of concepts, and brings an end to the first three of the ten fetters (SAMYOJANA) that bind one to the cycle of rebirth: (1) belief in the existence of a self in relation to the body (SATKAYADṚstI), (2) belief in the efficacy of rites and rituals (sĪLAVRATAPARAMARsA) as a means of salvation, and (3) doubt about the efficacy of the path (VICIKITSA). Because this vision renders one a noble person (ARYA), the path of vision marks the inception of the "noble path" (AryamArga). According to the SarvAstivAda soteriological system, the darsanamArga occurs over the course of fifteen moments of realization of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, with the sixteenth moment marking the beginning of the BHAVANAMARGA. There are four moments of realization for each of the four truths. The first moment is that of doctrinal acquiescence (DHARMAKsANTI) with regard to the sensuous realm (KAMADHATU). In that moment, the afflictions (KLEsA) of the sensuous realm associated with the truth of suffering are abandoned. This is followed by a moment of doctrinal knowledge (DHARMAJNANA) of the truth of suffering with regard to the sensuous realm, which is the state of understanding that the afflictions of that level have been abandoned. Next comes a moment of realization called subsequent acquiescence (anvayaksAnti), in which the afflictions associated with the truth of suffering in the two upper realms, the realm of subtle materiality (RuPADHATU) and the immaterial realm (ARuPYADHATU) are abandoned; there is finally a moment of subsequent knowledge (anvayajNAna) of the truth of suffering with regard to the two upper realms. This sequence of four moments-doctrinal acquiescence and doctrinal knowledge (which are concerned with the sensuous realm) and subsequent acquiescence and subsequent knowledge (which are concerned with the two upper realms)-is repeated for the remaining truths of origin, cessation, and path. In each case, the moments of realization called acquiescence are the time when the afflictions are actually abandoned; they are called uninterrupted paths (ANANTARYAMARGA) because they cannot be interrupted or impeded in severing the hold of the afflictions. The eight moments of knowledge are the state of having realized that the afflictions of the particular level have been abandoned. They are called paths of liberation (VIMUKTIMARGA). An uninterrupted path, followed by a path of liberation, are likened to throwing out a thief and locking the door behind him. The sixteenth moment in the sequence-the subsequent knowledge of the truth of the path with regard to the upper realms-constitutes the first moment of the next path, the bhAvanAmArga. For a BODHISATTVA, the attainment of the path of vision coincides with the inception of the first BODHISATTVABHuMI (see also DAsABHuMI). The ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA explains that the bodhisattva's path of vision is also a direct perception of reality and is focused on the four noble truths; unlike the mainstream account, however, all three realms are considered simultaneously, and the sixteenth moment is not the first instant of the path of cultivation (bhAvanAmArga). The YOGACARA system is based on their doctrine of the falsehood of the subject/object bifurcation. The first eight instants describe the elimination of fetters based on false conceptualization (VIKALPA) of objects, and the last eight the elimination of fetters based on the false conceptualization of a subject; thus the actual path of vision is a direct realization of the emptiness (suNYATA) of all dharmas (sarvadharmasunyatA). This view of the darsanamArga as the first direct perception (PRATYAKsA) of emptiness is also found in the MADHYAMAKA school, according to which the bodhisattva begins to abandon the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) upon attaining the darsanamArga. See also DHARMAKsANTI; JIEWU; DUNWU JIANXIU.
Denomination: (Lat. denominatio) Literally: a naming of something from some other thing. In Scholastic logic, it is the operation of applying a term to a subject, when the term is derived from something to which the subject is related. Thus a substance may be denominated by deriving a name from its accidents. Extrinsic denomination is dependent upon wholly external relationship. See Denotation. -- V.J.B.
Denotation: The subjects (i.e., those entities which possess attributes) of which a term may be predicated, e.g., the term "man" denotes Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. (J. S. Mill) "Denotation" in this sense should be distinguished from "extension" in the sense in which that signifies the subclasses of the class determined by the term. The former indicates the various individual instances in which a common nature is manifested; the latter signifies the variety of kinds over which the predication of a term may extend. (H. W. B. Joseph.) -- C.A.B.
Depersonalization: A personality disorder in which the subject's own words and action assume for him a character of strangeness or unreality; in its extreme form, the subject is obsessed with the fear of complete dissolution of personality. The English term is an appropriation of the French depersonnalization. -- L.W.
dephlegmation ::: n. --> The operation of separating water from spirits and acids, by evaporation or repeated distillation; -- called also concentration, especially when acids are the subject of it.
design recovery "process" A subtask of {reverse engineering} in which domain knowledge, external information, and deduction of fuzzy reasoning are added to the observations of the subject system to identify meaningful higher level abstractions beyond those obtained directly by examining the system itself. In other words, design recovery aims to work out what a system or component was designed to do rather than just examining its subcomponents and their interrelationships. (1996-12-08)
design recovery ::: (process) A subtask of reverse engineering in which domain knowledge, external information, and deduction of fuzzy reasoning are added to the observations of the subject system to identify meaningful higher level abstractions beyond those obtained directly by examining the system itself.In other words, design recovery aims to work out what a system or component was designed to do rather than just examining its subcomponents and their interrelationships. (1996-12-08)
desultory ::: a. --> Leaping or skipping about.
Jumping, or passing, from one thing or subject to another, without order or rational connection; without logical sequence; disconnected; immethodical; aimless; as, desultory minds.
Out of course; by the way; as a digression; not connected with the subject; as, a desultory remark.
devāvatāra. (T. lha yul nas babs pa; C. tianxialai/Tianxiachu; J. tengerai/Tengesho; K. ch'onharae/Ch'onhach'o 天下來/天下處). In Sanskrit, "descent from the realm of the divinities (DEVA)"; a term that describes the Buddha's return to earth after he spent the rain's-retreat season (VARsĀ) teaching the ABHIDHARMA to his mother in the heaven of the thirty-three (TRĀYASTRIMsA). Because the Buddha's mother, MAHĀMĀYĀ, had died seven days after his birth, she was not able to benefit from her son's teaching; she was reborn in the TUsITA heaven. Therefore, in the seventh year after his enlightenment, the Buddha magically ascended to the trāyastriMsa, to which his mother descended, where he taught the abhidharma to his mother and the assembled divinities. He would descend briefly each day to collect alms and at that time would repeat to sĀRIPTURA what he had taught to the gods. Pining for the Buddha during his long absence from the world, King PRASENAJIT had a sandalwood statue of the Buddha carved; this statue was claimed to have been the first buddha image. The Buddha is said to have descended from the summit of Mount SUMERU to the continent of JAMBUDVĪPA on a stairway of gems that was flanked by stairways of gold and silver. Devāvatāra (Tianxiachu) is also the name of the city or country of SĀnKĀsYA (P. Sankassa), where this descent from the trayastriMsa heaven occurred. This scene is commonly depicted in Buddhist iconography and is the subject of an eponymous SuTRA.
Dhātukathā. In Pāli, "Discourse on Elements"; traditionally listed as the third of the seven canonical books of the THERAVĀDA abhidhammapitaka, and probably deriving from the middle stratum of Pāli abhidhamma literature, after the earlier VIBHAnGA and PUGGALAPANNATTI, but before the later KATHĀVATTHU; the proposed dating varies widely, but the first century BCE is its terminus ad quem. The Dhātukathā presents a psychological analysis of noble states of mind, supplementing the subject matter of the DHAMMASAnGAnI. Its fourteen chapters are presented in catechetic style, describing the relationship that pertains between specific factors (dhamma; S. DHARMA) and the three broader categories of the aggregates (khandha; S. SKANDHA), elements (DHĀTU), and sense-fields (ĀYATANA). In its analysis of the relationships that pertain between these various factors and categories, rigorous definitions of each factor are provided. The analytical approach taken in the text-e.g., whether a specific factor is both included and not included in a particular category, etc.-anticipates the sophisticated logical analysis found later in the four antinomies (CATUsKOtI). The Dhātukathā is reminiscent in style and exegetical approach to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA DHĀTUKĀYA, and may derive from a common urtext, although there are few similarities in their respective contents.
Ding an sich: (Ger. thing in itself) A Kantian term referring to what lies beyond human experience and observation. "Things in themselves" are transcendent, not transcendental or applicable to any human experience. The "thing in itself" exists independent and apart from all knowledge. It has an independent reality apart from the subjectivity of human knowledge. -- H.H.
D. Interpretations of Probability. The methods and results of mathematical probability (and of probability in general) are the subject of much controversy as regards their interpretation and value. Among the various theories proposed, we shall consider the following Probability as a measure of belief, probability as the relative frequency of events, probability as the truth-frequency of types of argument, probability as a primitive notion, probability as an operational concept, probability as a limit of frequencies, and probability as a physical magnitude determined by axioms. I. Probability as a Measure of Belief: According to this theory, probability is the measure or relative degree of rational credence to be attached to facts or statements on the strength of valid motives. This type of probability is sometimes difficult to estimate, as it may be qualitative as well as quantitative. When considered in its mathematical aspects, the measure of probable inference depends on the preponderance or failure of operative causes or observed occurrences of the case under investigation. This conception involves axioms leading to the classic rule of Laplace, namely: The measure of probability of any one of mutually exclusive and apriori equiprobable possibilities, is the ratio of the number of favorable possibilities to the total number of possibilities. In probability operations, this rule is taken as the definition of direct probability for those cases where it is applicable. The main objections against this interpretation are: that probability is largely subjective, or at least independent of direct experience; that equiprobability is taken as an apriori notion, although the ways of asserting it are empirical; that the conditions of valid equiprobability are not stated definitely; that equiprobability is difficult to determine actually in all cases; that it is difficult to attach an adequate probability to a complex event from the mere knowledge of the probabilities of its component parts, and that the notion of probability is not general, as it does not cover such cases as the inductive derivation of probabilities from statistical data. II. Probability as a Relative Frequency. This interpretation is based on the nature of events, and not on any subjective considerations. It deals with the rate with which an event will occur in a class of events. Hence, it considers probability as the ratio of frequency of true results to true conditions, and it gives as its measure the relative frequency leading from true conditions to true results. What is meant when a set of calculations predict that an experiment will yield a result A with probability P, is that the relative frequency of A is expected to approximate the number P in a long series of such experiments. This conception seems to be more concerned with empirical probabilities, because the calculations assumed are mostly based on statistical data or material assumptions suggested by past experiments. It is valuable in so far as it satisfies the practical necessity of considering probability aggregates in such problems. The main objections against this interpretation are: that it does not seem capable of expressing satisfactorily what is meant by the probability of an event being true; that its conclusions are more or less probable, owing to the difficulty of defining a proper standard for comparing ratios; that neither its rational nor its statistical evidence is made clear; that the degree of relevance of that evidence is not properly determined, on account of the theoretical indefinite ness of both the true numerical value of the probability and of the evidence assumed, and that it is operational in form only, but not in fact, because it involves the infinite without proper limitations. III. Probability as Truth-Frequency of Types of Arguments: In this interpretation, which is due mainly to Peirce and Venn, probability is shifted from the events to the propositions about them; instead of considering types and classes of events, it considers types and classes of propositions. Probability is thus the ability to give an objective reading to the relative tiuth of propositions dealing with singular events. This ability can be used successfully in interpreting definite and indefinite numerical probabilities, by taking statistical evaluations and making appropriate verbal changes in their formulation. Once assessed, the relative truth of the propositions considered can be communicated to facts expressed by these propositions. But neither the propositions nor the facts as such have a probability in themselves. With these assumptions, a proposition has a degree of probability, only if it is considered as a member of a class of propositions; and that degree is expressed by the proportion of true propositions to the total number of propositions in the class. Hence, probability is the ratio of true propositions to all the propositions of the class examined, if the class is finite, or to all the propositions of the same type in the long run, if the class is infinite. In the first case, fair sampling may cover the restrictions of a finite class; in the second case, the use of infinite series offers a practical limitation for the evidence considered. But in both cases, probability varies with the class or type chosen, and probability-inferences are limited by convention to those cases where numerical values can be assigned to the ratios considered. It will be observed that this interpretation of probability is similar to the relative frequency theory. The difference between these two theories is more formal than material in both cases the probability refers ultimately to kinds of evidence based on objective matter of fact. Hence the Truth-Frequency theory is open to the sime objections as the Relative-Frequency theory, with proper adjustments. An additional difficulty of this theory is that the pragmatic interpretation of truth it involves, has yet to be proved, and the situation is anything but improved by assimilating truth with probability.
distance: Sometimes referred to as 'aesthetic distance', distance is a phrase used to suggest the detachment from the subject-matter with which either the writer or the reader views a piece of literature. This effect is created through use of tone,diction, and presentation.
Distribution (of terms): In the four traditional Aristotelian propositional forms, the subjects of universal propositions and the predicates of negative propositions are distributed, the other terms are undistributed. -- C.A.B.
Divination [from Latin divination a soothsayer from divus spiritual being, god] The art of obtaining hidden knowledge by the aid of spiritual or ethereal beings. It is divisible into two main kinds: the inducing of seership or clairvoyance, and the interpretation of signs. Under the former come the oracular responses of the Pythian priestess, of the Cumaean Sibyl, and many similar instances, including all cases where the diviner induces trance or clairvoyance, whether in himself by natural power or by incantations, drugs, or other preparations; or in a subject, as when ink is poured into the palm of a child, who sees visions in it, or by some kind of hypnotism. Under the second head come geomancy, augury, the reading of the marks on the liver of a slaughtered animal, reading cards, Chinese throwing-sticks, predictive astrology, palmistry, numerology, and a great variety of other forms. Between the two classes are ranged such practices as gazing into crystal or water, where external means and interior vision both play a part in the result. Often it is a means of utilizing one’s own inner faculties, whether by natural or induced clairvoyance, or by employing the agencies which regulate events apparently casual such as the fall of the cards, the marks in the sand, the drawing of lots; and this last is related to the subject of omens.
Divine, the subjection ot the mind and the vital to the control of the inner being, the soul. Always, when the soul is in front, one gets the right guidance from within as to what is to be done, what avoided, what is the wrong thing or true thing in thought, feeling, action. But this inner intimation emerges in proportion as the cooseiousoess gro\vs more and more pure.
Divyāvadāna. In Sanskrit, "Divine Exploits"; a collection of thirty-eight "heroic tales" or "narratives" (AVADĀNA). Avadānas are the tenth of the twelvefold (DVĀDAsĀnGA[PRAVACANA]) categorization of the traditional genres of Buddhist literature and relate the past and present deeds of a person, either lay or ordained, who in some specific fashion exemplifies Buddhist ethics and practice. The present characters in the stories in the Divyāvadāna are often identified as persons whom the Buddha encountered in a former life. Thus, its tales have a narrative structure similar to JĀTAKA stories, in which an event in the present offers an opportunity to recount a story from the past, which in turn illuminates details regarding present circumstances. Themes that run throughout the Divyāvadāna include the realization of positive or negative consequences of action (KARMAN), the importance of moral discipline, and the great merit (PUnYA) that can be accrued through service or reverence offered to the buddhas or to sites related to the buddhas, such as a STuPA. The Divyāvadāna includes thirty-six avadānas and two SuTRAs. Famous stories found in the Divyāvadāna collection include the Purnāvadāna, the story of the monk PuRnA, and the AsOKĀVADĀNA, which recounts the birth, life, and reign of King AsOKA, the monarch whom the Buddhist tradition considers the great protector of the religion. Although the style and language of the works vary tremendously, more than half of the tales also appear in the MuLASARVĀSTIVĀDA VINAYA. Given their debt to vinaya literature, it is not surprising that many of the tales in the Divyāvadāna often make reference to points of monastic discipline (VINAYA). This association with the Mulasarvāstivāda vinaya suggests that these stories could date as far back as the beginning of the Common Era. However, the oldest extant manuscript of the Divyāvadāna dates only to the seventeenth century, and there is no reference to a text by that title in a Buddhist source prior to that date. There also is no Tibetan or Chinese translation of the text, although many of its stories are found in the Tibetan and Chinese canons. (For example, twenty-one of the thirty-eight stories of the collection are found in the vinaya section of the Tibetan canon.) This has led some scholars to conclude that, although the stories themselves are quite old, the particular compilation as the Divyāvadāna may be rather late. A number of stories from the Divyāvadāna were translated by EUGÈNE BURNOUF in his 1844 Introduction à l'histoire du Buddhisme indien. The first Sanskrit edition of the entire text was undertaken in 1866 by Edward B. Cowell and Robert A. Neil. The Divyāvadāna legends had a significant influence on Buddhist art and were often the subject of Buddhist sculptures and paintings. For instance, in the "Sahasodgata" chapter of this collection, the Buddha describes the "wheel of existence" (BHAVACAKRA), which became a popular subject of painting in many of the Buddhist traditions.
Dnine, refiises to admit them. This is the subjective form of the universal resistance, but it may also take an objective form,
domain ::: 1. (mathematics) In the theory of functions, the set of argument values for which a function is defined.See domain theory.2. (networking) A group of computers whose hostnames share a common suffix, the domain name. The last component of this is the top-level domain.See administrative domain, Domain Name System, fully qualified domain name.3. Distributed Operating Multi Access Interactive Network.4. (programming) A specific phase of the software life cycle in which a developer works. Domains define developers' and users' areas of responsibility and the scope of possible relationships between products.5. The subject or market in which a piece of software is designed to work. (1997-12-26)
domain 1. "networking" A group of computers whose {fully qualified domain names} (FQDN) share a common suffix, the "domain name". The {Domain Name System} maps {hostnames} to {Internet address} using a hierarchical {namespace} where each level in the hierarchy contributes one component to the FQDN. For example, the computer foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk is in the doc.ic.ac.uk domain, which is in the ic.ac.uk domain, which is in the ac.uk domain, which is in the uk {top-level domain}. A domain name can contain up to 67 characters including the dots that separate components. These can be letters, numbers and hyphens. 2. An {administrative domain} is something to do with {routing}. 3. {Distributed Operating Multi Access Interactive Network}. 4. "mathematics" In the theory of functions, the set of argument values for which a {function} is defined. See {domain theory}. 5. "programming" A specific phase of the {software life cycle} in which a developer works. Domains define developers' and users' areas of responsibility and the scope of possible relationships between products. 6. The subject or market in which a piece of software is designed to work. (2007-10-01)
dombī Heruka. A tantric adept counted among the eighty-four MAHĀSIDDHAs, often depicted riding a tiger with his consort. As recorded in his hagiographies, he was originally king of the Indian region of MAGADHA and received teachings on the HEVAJRATANTRA from the SIDDHA VIRuPA. These he practiced for twelve years in secret while continuing to skillfully administer his kingdom. He then secretly took a low-caste musician, a dombī, as his consort and continued his practice of TANTRA with her. (The word heruka is rendered khrag thung, "blood drinker," in Tibetan.) When his subjects discovered their king's transgression of customary social and caste restrictions, dombī Heruka abdicated the throne and disappeared with his consort into the jungle, where they continued to practice tantric yoga for twelve years. Later, the kingdom was wrought with famine and the subjects searched for their former king to request his assistance. dombī Heruka then emerged from the jungle astride a tigress, brandishing a snake in one hand. Displaying miraculous signs of his mastery, he denied the subjects' request and departed for the celestial realms. dombī Heruka is an important member of the lineage of the Hevajratantra and, according to some accounts, was a disciple of NĀROPA as well as a teacher of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA. Seventeen texts attributed to him are preserved in the BSTAN 'GYUR section of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. He is also known as dombīpa.
double-blind design: a form of experimental control, whereby both the subject and experimenter are kept uninformed about the purpose of the experiment, to reduce any forms of bias (in particular, experimenter bias).
Double Blind Study ::: Research method in which both the subjects and the experimenter are unaware or &
Duality ::: Conscious experiences that characterize the lower three planes of the Four Worlds model are considered dualistic. In these stages of awareness there is a distinction between the subject observing and the object of observation: a quality at the root of all experience outside of the Causal Plane. Contrasted with Non-Duality. See also Phenomenal Reality.
Eckhart, Meister: (1260-1327) Was born in Hochheim (Gotha), may have studied with St. Albert in Cologne, received his doctorate at Paris in 1302. He taught theology at various times, devoted much time to preaching in the vernacular, and filled various administrative posts in the Dominican Order. Mystical, difficult in terminology, his thought appears to contain elements of Aristotelianism, Augustinism, Neoplatonism and Avicennism. Accused of Pantheism and other theological errors, he was the subject of a famous trial in 1326; he abjured publicly any possible religious errors which he may have made. Chief works Opus Tripartitum, Quaestiones Parisienses, Deutsche Predigten. (Pfeiffer, F., Deutsche Mystiker des 14 Jahrh., Bd. II, Leipzig, 1857; tr. Evans, London, 1924.) B. J. Muller-Thym, University of Being in M. Eckhart (N. Y., 1939). -- V.J.B.
Edgerton, Franklin. (1885-1963). American scholar of Sanskrit; born in Le Mars, Iowa, he received his undergraduate education at Cornell. He then studied at Munich and Jena before returning to the United States, where he studied Sanskrit and comparative philology at Johns Hopkins. Edgerton taught at the University of Pennsylvania, before moving to Yale in 1926 as Salisbury Professor of Sanskrit. He remained there for the remainder of his academic career, retiring in 1953. Edgerton's great contribution to Buddhist studies was the 1953 publication of his Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary and his Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader, the result of some three decades of work. Edgerton coined the term BUDDHIST HYBRID SANSKRIT to describe the language of PRAKRIT, mixed Sanskrit, and Sanskrit that occurs in many Buddhist Sanskrit texts, especially the MAHĀYĀNA SuTRA literature. Prior to Edgerton, this language was sometimes called the Gāthā dialect because it occurred frequently in the verses, or GĀTHĀ, in the Mahāyāna sutras. Edgerton divided Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit into three classes based on the degree of hybridization within a given text. Since its publication, Edgerton's work, and the entire category of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit itself, has been the subject of much scholarly debate, but Edgerton's dictionary remains widely used.
Eidetic Imagery: Expression used by the German psychologist E. R. Jaensch, (Ueber den Aufbau der Wahrnehmungswelt und ihre Struktur im Jugendalter, 1923) to designate images usually visual which are almost photographic in their fidelity. Eidetic imagery differs from hallucination in that the former are usually recognized by the subject to be "subjective." -- L.W.
elucidate ::: v. t. --> To make clear or manifest; to render more intelligible; to illustrate; as, an example will elucidate the subject.
elucidation ::: n. --> A making clear; the act of elucidating or that which elucidates, as an explanation, an exposition, an illustration; as, one example may serve for further elucidation of the subject.
Embryo In general, the vitalized germ of an organism in its earlier stages, and sometimes applied to it until it leaves the egg or womb covering. The fertilization of the germ-cell in plant or animal is an everyday working of the universal law by which spirit incubates matter for the purpose of differentiating on the objective planes, in order to manifest the subjective monadic life. Thus the reincarnating ego, in beginning to make a new body for itself, with the division of the fertilized microscopic egg cell, is analogous to the world-germ awakening in a laya-center to begin another galactic, solar, or planetary existence. “This desire for a sentient life shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence” (SD 1:44).
Empathy: (Gr. en + pathein, to suffer) The projection by the mind into an object of the subjective feeling of bodily posture and attitude which result from the tendency of the body to conform to the spatial organization of the object (e.g. the tendency to imitate the outstretched hands of a statue). The phenomenon is of particular significance for aesthetics. See H. S. Langfeld, The Aesthetic Attitude. The term was introduced to translate the German Einfühlung. See Lipps, Raumaesthetik und geometrisch-optische Täuschungen. See Eject. -- L.W.
Empathy: The projection by the mind into an object of the subjective feeling of bodily posture and attitude which result from the tendency of the body to conform to the spatial organization of the object (e.g., the tendency to imitate the outstretched hands of a statue).
engross ::: v. t. --> To make gross, thick, or large; to thicken; to increase in bulk or quantity.
To amass.
To copy or write in a large hand (en gross, i. e., in large); to write a fair copy of in distinct and legible characters; as, to engross a deed or like instrument on parchment.
To seize in the gross; to take the whole of; to occupy wholly; to absorb; as, the subject engrossed all his thoughts.
Enlightenment: When Kant, carried by the cultural enthusiasm of his time, explained "enlightenment" as man's coming of age from the state of infancy which rendered him incapable of using his reason without the aid of others, he gave only the subjective meaning of the term. Objectively, enlightenment is a cultural period distinguished by the fervent efforts of leading personalities to make reason the absolute ruler of human life, and to shed the light of knowledge upon the mind and conscience of any individual. Such attempts are not confined to a particular time, or nation, as history teaches; but the term is generally applied to the European enlightenment stretching from the early 17th to the beginning of the 19th century, especially fostered by English, Dutch, French, and German philosophers. It took its start in England from the empiricism of F. Bacon, Th. Hobbes, J. Locke, it found a religious version in the naturalism of Edw. H. Cherbury, J. Toland, M. Tindal, H. Bolingbroke, and the host of "freethinkers", while the Earl of Shaftesbury imparted to it a moral on the "light of reason". Not so constructive but radical in their sarcastic criticism of the past were the French enlighteners, showing that their philosophy got its momentum from the moral corruption at the royal court and abuse of kinglv power in France. Descartes' doctrine of the "clear and perspicuous ideas," Spinoza's critical attitude towards religion, and Leibniz-Wolff's "reasonable thinking" prepared the philosophy of P. Bayle, Ch. Montesquieu, F. M. Voltaire, and J. J. Rousseau. The French positive contribution to the subject was the "Encyclopedie ou Dictionaire raisonne des sciences, arts et metiers", 1751-72, in 28 volumes, edited by Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Holbach, J. L. Lagrane, etc. What, in England and France, remained on the stage of mere ideas and utopic dreams became reality in the new commonwealth of the U.S.A. The "fathers of the constitution" were enlightened, outstanding among them B. Franklin, Th. Jefferson, J. Adams, A. Hamilton, and Th. Paine their foremost literary propagandist.
En no Ozunu. (役小角) (b. 634). Also known as En no Gyoja (lit. "En the Ascetic"), a semi-legendary figure associated with SHUGENDo (lit. the "Way of Cultivating Supernatural Power") who is known for his shamanic abilities and mountain austerities. Practitioners of Shugendo, Japan's tradition of mountain asceticism, regard him as their founder and view him as the archetypal ascetic. The earliest accounts of En no Ozunu appear in the Shoku Nihongi (797) and the Nihon Ryoiki (810-824). He subsequently became the subject of numerous medieval texts, although many of the details of his life are sketchy. Allegedly born in Chihara in present-day Nara prefecture, he spent three decades of practice in KATSURAGISAN, where legend holds that he worked to convert malicious spirits. In 699, he was exiled to Izu (in present-day Shizuoka prefecture) by Emperor Monmu because of accusations made by his disciple, Karakuni no Muraji Hirotari that he was practicing sorcery. Shugendo considers En no Ozunu to be a manifestation of Hoki Bosatsu (DHARMODGATA), whose sphere of practice in the Katsuragi mountains includes KONGoSAN (see also KŬMGANGSAN), the traditional residence of this BODHISATTVA. In 1799, in conjunction with the alleged eleven hundredth anniversary of En no Ozunu's death, Emperor Kokaku bestowed on him the title Jinben Daibosatsu (Great Bodhisattva Mysterious Change).
(e) The problem of the A PRIORI, though the especial concern of the rationalist, confronts the empiricist also since few epistemologists are prepared to exclude the a priori entirely from their accounts of knowledge. The problem is that of isolating the a priori or non-empirical elements in knowledge and accounting for them in terms of the human reason. Three principal theories of the a priori have been advanced: the theory of the intrinsic A PRIORI which asserts that the basic principles of logic, mathematics, natural sciences and philosophy are self-evident truths recognizable by such intrinsic traits as clarity and distinctness of ideas. The intrinsic theory received its definitive modern expression in the theory of "innate ideas" (q.v.) of Herbert of Cherbury, Descartes, and 17th century rationalism. The presuppositional theory of the a priori which validates a priori truths by demonstrating that they are presupposed either by their attempted denial (Leibniz) or by the very possibility of experience (Kant). The postulational theory of the A PRIORI elaborated under the influence of recent postulational techniques in mathematics, interprets a priori principles as rules or postulates arbitrarily posited in the construction of formal deductive systems. See Postulate; Posit. (f) The problem of differentiating the principal kinds of knowledge is an essential task especially for an empirical epistemology. Perhaps the most elementary epistemological distinction is between non-inferential apprehension of objects by perception, memory, etc. (see Knowledge by Acquaintance), and inferential knowledge of things with which the knowing subject has no direct apprehension. See Knowledge by Description. Acquaintance in turn assumes two principal forms: perception or acquaintance with external objects (see Perception), and introspection or the subject's acquaintance with the "self" and its cognitive, volitional and affective states. See Introspection; Reflection. Inferential knowledge includes knowledge of other selves (this is not to deny that knowledge of other minds may at times be immediate and non-inferential), historical knowledge, including not only history in the narrower sense but also astronomical, biological, anthropological and archaeological and even cosmological reconstructions of the past and finally scientific knowledge in so far as it involves inference and construction from observational data.
everything ::: n. --> Whatever pertains to the subject under consideration; all things.
examine ::: v. t. --> To test by any appropriate method; to inspect carefully with a view to discover the real character or state of; to subject to inquiry or inspection of particulars for the purpose of obtaining a fuller insight into the subject of examination, as a material substance, a fact, a reason, a cause, the truth of a statement; to inquire or search into; to explore; as, to examine a mineral; to examine a ship to know whether she is seaworthy; to examine a proposition, theory, or question.
Explicative judgment: (Lat. explicatio, unfolding) A mental action which explains a subject by mentally dissecting it, (Kant) a judgment in which the predicate is obtained by analysis of the subject. See Analytic judgment. -- V.J.B.
fable ::: n. --> A Feigned story or tale, intended to instruct or amuse; a fictitious narration intended to enforce some useful truth or precept; an apologue. See the Note under Apologue.
The plot, story, or connected series of events, forming the subject of an epic or dramatic poem.
Any story told to excite wonder; common talk; the theme of talk.
Fiction; untruth; falsehood.
FAULT-FINDING. ::: The lower vital takes a mean and petty pleasure in picking out the faults of others and thereby one hampers both one’s own progress and that of the subject of the criticism.
Feeling: (Kant. Ger. Gefühl) A conscious, subjective impression which does not involve cognition or representation of an object. Feelings are of two kinds: pleasures and pains. These represent nothing actual in objects, but reveal the state or condition of the subject. Kant saw in pleasure and pain, respectively, life-promoting and life-destroying forces; pleasure results from the harmony of an object with the subjective conditions of life and consciousness, while pain is the awareness of disharmony. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.
Fetishism [from Latin facticius artificial] Applied by modern scholars to the practice of worshiping various objects, either natural, as a tooth or claw of some animal, or artificial, as a carved image (idolatry). It is a relic of ancient knowledge concerning the interrelationships of everything in the kosmos and the use of objects and symbols, corresponding to particular kosmic potencies, as a means of invoking those potencies. It is a relic of archaic magic, now in many cases become degraded to a superstition; though even among many so-called primitive peoples, sympathetic students have found that certain among them often still possess more knowledge than they are willing to disclose to the casual unsympathetic outsider. The subject verges upon that of ceremonial magic, talismans, and the like, where powers of nature many be influenced.
Figure (syllogistic): The moods of the categorical syllogism (see Logic, formal, § 5) are divided into four figures, according as the middle term is subject in the major premiss and predicate in the minor premiss (first figure), or predicate in both premisses (second figure), or subject in both premisses (third figure), or predicate in the major premiss and subject in the minor premiss (fourth figure). Aristotle recognized only three figures, including the moods of the fourth figure among those of the first. The separation of the fourth figure from the first (ascribed to Galen) is accompanied by a redefinition of "major" and "minor" -- so that the major premiss is that involving the predicate of the conclusion, and the minor premiss is that involving the subject of the conclusion. -- A.C.
four noble truths. (S. catvāry āryasatyāni; P. cattāri ariyasaccāni; T. 'phags pa'i bden pa bzhi; C. si shengdi; J. shishodai; K. sa songje 四聖諦). Although the term "four noble truths" is well established in English-language works on Buddhism, it is a misleading translation of the original Sanskrit and Pāli terms. The term translated as "noble" (ĀRYA) refers not to the truths themselves, but to those who understand them; thus, the compound may more accurately, if less euphoniously, be rendered as "four truths [known by the spiritually] noble"; they are four facts known to be true by those "noble ones" with insight into the nature of reality, but not known by ordinary beings (PṚTHAGJANA). The four truths are: suffering (DUḤKHA), origination (SAMUDAYA), cessation (NIRODHA), and path (MĀRGA). The four noble truths are the subject of extensive exegesis in the tradition, but the four terms and the relationships among them may be summarized as follows. Existence in the realms that are subject to rebirth, called SAMSĀRA, is qualified by suffering (duḥkha), the first truth (the Sanskrit term may also be rendered as "sorrow," "pain," or more generally "unsatisfactoriness"). The types of sufferings that beings undergo in the various destinations of rebirth are enumerated at great length in Buddhist texts. In his first sermon delivered after his enlightenment (see DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA), the Buddha identifies the following as forms of suffering: birth, aging, sickness, death, encountering what is unpleasant, separation from what is pleasant, not gaining what one desires, and the five SKANDHAs. The second truth is the origination (samudaya), or cause, of suffering. In his first sermon, the Buddha identifies the cause of suffering as craving (TṚsnĀ) or attachment; in his second sermon, the ANATTALAKKHAnASUTTA, said to have been delivered five days later, he suggests that the belief is self (ĀTMAN) is the cause of suffering. In other works, he lists two causes of suffering: unwholesome or unsalutary (AKUsALA) actions (KARMAN) such as killing, stealing, and lying, and the unwholesome mental states (see CAITTA) that motivate unwholesome actions. These unwholesome mental states include greed (LOBHA), hatred (DVEsA), and ignorance (MOHA), with ignorance referring here to an active misperception of the nature of the person and the world or, more technically, to an unsystematic attention (AYONIsOMANASKĀRA) to the true nature of things, leading to the following "inverted views" (VIPARYĀSA): seeing pleasure where there is actually pain, purity where there is impurity, permanence where there is impermanence, and self where there is no self. The third truth is the cessation (nirodha) of suffering, which refers to NIRLĀnA, the "deathless" (AMṚTA) state that transcends all suffering. The fourth and final truth is that of the path (mārga) to the cessation of suffering. The path is delineated in exhaustive detail in Buddhist texts; in his first sermon, the Buddha describes an eightfold path (ĀRLĀstĀnGAMĀRGA). The four truths therefore posit the unsatisfactory nature of existence, identify its causes, hold out the prospect of a state in which suffering and its causes are absent, and set forth a path to that state. Suffering is to be identified, its origin destroyed, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation followed. The four truths demonstrate the importance of causality (see HETUPRATYAYA) in Buddhist thought and practice. Suffering is the effect of the cause, or origin, viz., "craving." Cessation is the absence of suffering, which results from the destruction of suffering's origin, craving. The path is the means by which one attains that cessation. The Buddha states in his first sermon that when he gained absolute and intuitive knowledge of the four truths, he achieved complete enlightenment and freedom from future rebirth. The four truths are also often described in terms of their sixteen aspects (sodasākāra), which counteract four inverted views (viparyāsa) for each truth. For the truth of suffering, the four aspects are knowledge that the aggregates (SKANDHA) are impermanent, suffering, empty, and selfless; these counteract seeing permanence, pleasure, mine (MAMAKĀRA), and I (AHAMKĀRA), respectively. For the truth of origination, the four aspects are knowledge that KLEsA(affliction) and action (karman) are cause (HETU), origination (samudaya), producer (saMbhava), and condition (PRATYAYA); they counteract the view that there is no cause, that there is a single cause, that the cause is transformation of a fundamental nature, and that the cause is a prior act of divine will, respectively. For the truth of cessation, the four aspects are knowledge that nirvāna is cessation (NIRODHA), peace (sānta), sublime (pranīta), and a definite escape (niryāna); these counteract the view that there is no liberation, that liberation is suffering, that the pleasure of meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) is unmitigated, and that NIRLĀnA is not firmly irreversible. And for the truth of the path, the four aspects are knowledge that the eightfold noble path is a path (mārga), correct method (UPĀYA), practice (PRATIPATTI), and brings a definite escape (nairyānika); these counteract the view that there is no path, that this eightfold noble path is vile, that something else is also a path, and that this path is reversible. Some Mahāyāna sutras say that those who are attached to (ABHINIVEsA) the four noble truths as being essentially true do not understand the purport of the Buddha's doctrine; only the teaching of the third noble truth, NIRLĀnA, is definitive (NĪTĀRTHA), the statements about the other truths require interpretation (NEYĀRTHA). See also DARsANAMĀRGA.
Freedom, Sense of: The subjective feeling of an agent either at the moment of decision or in retrospect that his decision is free and that he might, if he had chosen, have decided differently. This feeling is adduced by Free-Willists as empirical evidence for their position but is interpreted by their opponents as a subjective illusion. See Free-Will. -- L.W.
gate gate pāragate pārasaMgate bodhi svāhā. (T. ga te ga te pā ra ga te pā ra saM ga te bo dhi svā hā; C. jiedi jiedi boluojiedi boluosengjiedi puti sapohe; J. gyatei gyatei haragyatei harasogyatei boji sowaka; K. aje aje paraaje parasŭngaje moji sabaha 帝帝波羅帝波羅僧帝菩提薩婆訶). A Sanskrit MANTRA contained in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). At the conclusion of the SuTRA, the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA says to sĀRIPUTRA, "Therefore, the mantra of the perfection of wisdom is the mantra of great wisdom, the unsurpassed mantra, the unequalled mantra, the mantra that completely pacifies all suffering. Because it is not false, it should be known to be true. The mantra of the perfection of wisdom is stated thus: gate gate pāragate pārasaMgate bodhi svāhā." Although most mantras are not translatable, this one can be roughly rendered into English as "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, enlightenment, svāhā" (svāhā is an interjection, meaning "hail," commonly placed at the end of a mantra). "Gate" in the mantra is most probably a vocative of gatā addressed to the goddess PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ (the iconographic representation of perfect wisdom); hence, the mantra may be addressed to PrajNāpāramitā and mean, "You who have gone, gone, gone beyond," etc. Given the ubiquity of the PrajNāpāramitāhṛdayasutra in MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism and its frequent ritual chanting by monks in both East Asia and Tibet, the mantra has been the subject of extensive commentary. Thus, some commentators correlate the first five words with the five paths (PANCAMĀRGA) to buddhahood: the first "gate" indicates the path of accumulation (SAMBHĀRAMĀRGA); the second "gate," the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA); "pāragate," the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA); "pārasaMgate," the path of cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA); and BODHI, the adept path (AsAIKsAMĀRGA). Such an interpretation is in keeping with the Indian scholastic view of the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ sutras, where it is said that the sutras have two teachings, one explicit and one implicit. The explicit teaching is emptiness (suNYATĀ) and the implicit teaching is the various realizations (ABHISAMAYA) of the bodhisattva along the path to buddhahood. From this perspective, everything in the sutra up to the mantra provides the explicit teaching and the mantra provides the implicit teaching. Other commentators state that the first part of the sutra (up to the mantra) is intended for bodhisattvas of dull faculties and that the mantra is intended for bodhisattvas of sharp faculties (TĪKsnENDRIYA). Some of the commentators include "it is thus" (tadyathā) in the mantra and add oM at the beginning. Although the presence of DHĀRAnĪ is relatively common in Mahāyāna sutras, something that is explicitly called a mantra is not, leading some commentators to consider whether the PrajNāpāramitāhṛdayasutra should be classified as a sutra or a TANTRA.
Geniture: An astrological term, approximately synonymous with Nativity, as referring to the subject whose birth horoscope is under consideration. (A reasonable discrimination would be to use the term Nativity in reference to the person, and the term Geniture in reference to the configurations which show in his birth map.)
Geometry: Originally abstracted from the measurement of, and the study of relations of position among, material objects, geometry received in Euclid's Elements (c. 300 B.C.) a treatment which (despite, of course, certain defects by modern standards) became the historical model for the abstract deductive development of a mathematical discipline. The general nature of the subject of geometry may be illustrated by reference to the synthetic geometry of Euclid, and the analytic geometry which resulted from the introduction of coordinates into Euclidean geometry by Descartes (1637) (q.v.). In the mathematical usage of today the name geometry is given to any abstract mathematical discipline of a certain general type, as thus illustrated, without any requirement of applicability to spatial relations among physical objects or the like.
GNU Free Documentation License "legal" (GFDL) The {Free Software Foundation}'s license designed to ensure the same freedoms for {documentation} that the {GPL} gives to {software}. This dictionary is distributed under the GFDL, see the copyright notice in the {Free On-line Dictionary of Computing} section (at the start of the source file). The full text follows. Version 1.1, March 2000 Copyright 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 0. PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. 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TERMINATION You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See {here (http://gnu.org/copyleft/)}. Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. End of full text of GFDL. (2002-03-09)
GNU Free Documentation License ::: (legal) (GFDL) The Free Software Foundation's license designed to ensure the same freedoms for documentation that the GPL gives to software.This dictionary is distributed under the GFDL, see the copyright notice in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing section (at the start of the source file). The full text follows.Version 1.1, March 2000Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USAEveryone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.0. PREAMBLEThe purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONSThis License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The Document, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as you.A Modified Version of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.The Cover Texts are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.A Transparent copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not Transparent is called Opaque.Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only.The Title Page means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License title page as such, Title Page means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.2. VERBATIM COPYINGYou may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.3. COPYING IN QUANTITYIf you publish printed copies of the Document numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.4. MODIFICATIONSYou may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.I. Preserve the section entitled History, and its title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.K. In any section entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications, preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.M. Delete any section entitled Endorsements. Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.N. Do not retitle any existing section as Endorsements or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section. If the Modified Version includes new front-matter Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.You may add a section entitled Endorsements, provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.5. COMBINING DOCUMENTSYou may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice.The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.In the combination, you must combine any sections entitled History in the various original documents, forming one section entitled History; likewise combine any sections entitled Acknowledgements, and any sections entitled Dedications. You must delete all sections entitled Endorsements.6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTSYou may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKSA compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution being thus compiled, if they are not themselves derivative works of the Document.If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one quarter of the entire aggregate, Document within the aggregate. Otherwise they must appear on covers around the whole aggregate.8. TRANSLATIONTranslation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant the original English version of this License, the original English version will prevail.9. TERMINATIONYou may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSEThe Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See .Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.End of full text of GFDL.(2002-03-09)
GOOD AND EVIL All good and evil that befalls the individual is his own work, the result of his own application of his limited conception of right and wrong. All reap what they have sown in previous lives and often in the same life. Nothing can happen to the individual which he has not deserved by defying the Law.
K 1.41.19f (K 4.11.3)
Good is all that promotes, evil all that counteracts, consciousness development, individually as well as collectively. To the greatest and the most fatal mistakes that can be made belongs spreading ignorance's emotional illusions and mental fictions, resulting in idiotization. K 3.4.20
For the individual, good is the steps above his level, and particularly the immediately higher step. Evil is the lower, that which is below his level and, usually, in particular degree just the one he has recently left. In this is the subjectivity of the conception of right but not any relativity, which nullifies the necessary opposition between good and evil. P 3.16.10
gouzi wu foxing. (J. kushi mubussho; K. kuja mu pulsong 狗子無佛性). In Chinese, "a dog has no buddha-nature"; a CHAN expression that becomes a famous meditative topic (HUATOU) and is used as the subject of a Chan "questioning meditation" (see KANHUA CHAN). This phrase refers to a GONG'AN exchange attributed to the Tang-dynasty monk ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN (778-897): Once when Zhaochou was asked, "Does a dog have buddha-nature (FOXING), or not?" Zhaochou answered, "No" (lit. "It does not have it."). This gong'an exchange is the famous "no" (WU) huatou, the first case of the WUMEN GUAN ("Gateless Checkpoint"), which is often the initial meditation topic given to neophyte Chan monks in the LINJI ZONG and Linji-oriented traditions in China, Korea, and Japan.
gsang ba'i rnam thar. (sang we nam tar). In Tibetan, "secret autobiography," one of the three types of RNAM THAR (sacred biography or autobiography), focusing on a subject's religious experiences, visions, and past-life experiences, with the author often writing from the perspective of an omniscient subject. They are called secret not because they are hidden away from general readership, but because of the esoteric tantric practices that form part of the subject matter. A well-known example of secret autobiography is 'JIGS MED GLING PA's Gsang ba chen po nyams snang gi rtogs brjod chu zla'i gar mkhan (translated as "Dancing Moon"), at least one purpose of which was demonstrating the authenticity of the KLONG CHEN SNYING THIG, a GTER MA (treasure text) that he revealed.
(g) The problem of the structure of the knowledge-situation is to determine with respect to each of the major kinds of knowledge just enumerated -- but particularly with respect to perception -- the constituents of the knowledge-situation in their relation to one another. The structural problem stated in general but rather vague terms is: What is the relation between the subjective and objective components of the knowledge-situation? In contemporary epistemology, the structural problem has assumed a position of such preeminence as frequently to eclipse other issues of epistemology. The problem has even been incorporated by some into the definition of philosophy. (See A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la Philosophie, art. Theorie de la Connaissance. I. and G.D. Hicks, Encycl. Brit. 5th ed. art. Theory of Knowledge.) The principal cleavage in epistemology, according to this formulation of its problem, is between a subjectivism which telescopes the object of knowledge into the knowing subject (see Subjectivism; Idealism, Epistemological) and pan-objectivism which ascribes to the object all qualities perceived or otherwise cognized. See Pan-obiectivism. A compromise between the extrernes of subjectivism and objectivism is achieved by the theory of representative perception, which, distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities, considers the former objective, the latter subjective. See Representative Perception, Theory of; Primary Qualities; Secondary Qualities.
Guhyagarbhatantra. (T. Gsang ba'i snying po'i rgyud). In Sanskrit, the "Secret Essence Tantra," a central text of the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism and the RDZOGS CHEN tradition. The tantra is regarded as an expression of the enlightened intention of the primordial DHARMAKĀYA, the buddha SAMANTABHADRA. It is a work of Indic origin, appearing around mid-eighth century, probably after the GUHYASAMĀJATANTRA. It is unclear whether the text was called Guhyagarbha at the time of its composition or whether that title was added later. In DUNHUANG documents, it is usually referred to as the Māyājālatantra. By the time of a late tenth-century manuscript, it is called the Guhyagarbhatantra. The later Tibetan tradition identifies the Guhyagarbha as the root tantra of the MAHĀYOGA class, as well as the main tantra of the MĀYĀJĀLA cycle of tantras, a group of eighteen mahāyoga tantras. The Guhyagarbha was particularly influential in late eighth- and early ninth-century Tibet, when it was a principal inspiration for the early rdzogs chen movement. Its Māyājāla MAndALA of one hundred deities (forty-two peaceful and fifty-eight wrathful) was widely employed. In the PHYI DAR period, the tantra was condemned by a number of GSAR MA figures (especially the eleventh-century translator 'Gos khug pa lhas btsas) as an apocryphal Tibetan creation, probably because of its importance in the Rnying ma sect and in the still-developing rdzogs chen tradition. However, a Sanskrit copy of the tantra was discovered at BSAM YAS and verified by sĀKYAsRĪBHADRA. In the thirteenth century, Lcom ldan rig ral ordered a new translation on the basis of the manuscript. Major commentators include Rong zom chos bzang (eleventh century) and KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS, and eventually, two schools of interpretations formed, the Rong klong lugs and the Zur lugs. The tantra exists in three distinct versions: in twenty-two, forty-six, and eighty-two chapters. The shorter version is considered the root tantra and is the subject of most commentary.
hack on ::: To hack; implies that the subject is some pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to something one might hack up.[Jargon File]
hack on To {hack}; implies that the subject is some pre-existing hunk of code that one is evolving, as opposed to something one might {hack up}. [{Jargon File}]
Hedonism [from Greek hedone, pleasure] In ethics, the doctrine that the gratification of natural inclinations is the chief good, and that the moral law is thereby fulfilled. The value of this doctrine depends entirely on what we are to understand by pleasure or inclination. In the best sense, which was that of Epicurus and his followers, these words may be considered as one way of trying to express the summum bonum, the goal of human endeavor; and this school pointedly taught that neither happiness nor peace are ever attainable by the subjection of human thought, mind, and conscience to the instincts or inclinations of the body. Some aspects of modern utilitarianism may be considered as a form of hedonism. But the doctrine as stated is easily degraded, and in its worst form becomes the pursuit of sensual gratification. In fact, hedonism as a word, and as understood now and by many even in ancient times, is the exact opposite of what these early philosophers believed and taught. See also EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY
heroine ::: n. --> A woman of an heroic spirit.
The principal female person who figures in a remarkable action, or as the subject of a poem or story.
Hilbert and Ackermann, Grundzuge der theoretischen Logik, 2nd edn., Berlin, 1938. Logic, traditional: the name given to those parts and that method of treatment of formal logic which have come down substantially unchanged from classical and medieval times. Traditional logic emphasizes the analysis of propositions into subject and predicate and the associated classification into the four forms, A, E, I, O; and it is concerned chiefly with topics immediately related to these, including opposition, immediate inference, and the syllogism (see logic, formal). Associated with traditional logic are also the three so-called laws of thought -- the laws of identity (q. v.), contradiction (q. v.) -- and excluded middle (q. v.) -- and the doctrine that these laws are in a special sense fundamental presuppositions of reasoning, or even (by some) that all other principles of logic can be derived from them or are mere elaborations of them. Induction (q. v.) has been added in comparatively modern times (dating from Bacon's Novum Organum) to the subject matter of traditional logic. -- A. C.
Holy Grail: A vessel of utmost sacredness, the quest for which is the subject of many tales, legends and myths. The Holy Grail and the tales built around it indubitably have a mystic, symbolical significance.
Huyin Daoji. (J. Koin Dosai; K. Hoŭn Toje 湖隱道濟) (1150-1209). Chinese monk and thaumaturge who is associated with the YANGQI PAI of the LINJI ZONG of CHAN school; he is most commonly known in Chinese as JIGONG (Sire Ji) and sometimes as Jidian (Crazy Ji). A popular subject in vernacular Chinese fiction and plays, it has become difficult to separate the historical Jigong from the legend. Jigong is said to have been a native of Linhai in present-day Zhejiang province. He later visited the Chan master Xiatang Huiyuan (1103-1176), received the full monastic precepts at his monastery of Lingyinsi (present-day Jiangsu province), and became his disciple. After he left Xiatang's side, Jigong is said to have led the life of an itinerant holy man. During this period, Jigong's antinomian behavior, most notably his drinking and meat eating, along with his accomplishments as a trickster and wonderworker, became the subject of popular folklore. His unconventional behavior seems to have led to his ostracism from the SAMGHA. Jigong later moved to the monastery of Jingcisi, where he died in 1209. His teachings are recorded in the Jidian chanshi yulu (first printed in 1569).
hymnographer ::: n. --> One who writes on the subject of hymns.
A writer or composed of hymns.
Hypnotism: “A peculiar state of consciousness, artificially induced, which liberates subconscious powers in the subject, puts him en rapport with the hypnotizer, makes him accept and meticulously execute any of his [the hypnotizer’s] suggestions, whether hypnotic or post-hypnotic, which do not conflict with deeper instincts of self-preservation and morality, and produces strange psychological effects as anaesthesia and the remarkable control over organic processes of the body. In hypnotic sleep the waking stimuli are strongly resisted, the sleeper hears and answers.” (N. Fodor.) Occultists and believers in mysticism consider hypnotism a form of black magic (q.v.) unless it is used for expressly beneficial ends.
Hypnotism ::: Derived from a Greek word hypnos, which means "sleep," and strictly speaking the word hypnotismshould be used only for those psychological-physiological phenomena in which the subject manifestingthem is in a condition closely resembling sleep. The trouble is that in any attempt to study these variouspsychological powers of the human constitution it is found that they are many and of divers kinds; butthe public, and even the technical experimenters, usually group all these psychologicalphenomena under the one word hypnotism, and therefore it is a misnomer. One of such powers, forinstance, which is well known, is called fascination. Another shows a more or less complete suspensionof the individual will and of the individual activities of him who is the sufferer from such psychologicalpower, although in other respects he may show no signs of physical sleep. Another again -- and thisperhaps is the most important of all so far as actual dangers lie -- passes under the name of suggestion, anexceedingly good name, because it describes the field of action of perhaps the most subtle and dangerousside-branch of the exercise of the general power or force emanating from the mind of the operator.The whole foundation upon which this power rests lies in the human psychological constitution; and itcan be easily and neatly expressed in a few words. It is the power emanating from one mind, which canaffect another mind and direct or misdirect the latter's course of action. This is in nine hundred andninety-nine times out of a thousand a wrong thing to do; and this fact would readily be understood byeverybody did men know, as they should, the difference between the higher and the lower nature of man,the difference between his incorruptible, death-defying individuality, his spiritual nature, on the onehand; and, on the other hand, the brain-mind and all its train of weak and fugitive thoughts.Anyone who has seen men and women in the state of hypnosis must realize not only how dangerous,how baleful and wrong it is, but also that it exemplifies the trance state perfectly. The reason is that theintermediate nature, or the psychomental apparatus, of the human being in this state has been displacedfrom its seat, in other words, is disjoined or dislocated; and there remains but the vitalized human body,with its more or less imperfect functioning of the brain cells and nervous apparatus. H. P. Blavatsky inher Theosophical Glossary writes: "It is the most dangerous of practices, morally and physically, as itinterferes with the nerve-fluid and the nerves controlling the circulation in the capillary blood-vessels."(See also Mesmerism)
hypnotism ::: Hypnosis / Hypnotism Hypnotism is used to induce an altered state of consciousness in a person (the subject), during which suggestions can be made directly to that person's unconscious mind. It can involve a combination of relaxation, visualisation and repetition exercises, besides a number of other techniques. There is an increasing acceptance that the various magical states of consciousness (such as astral projection) can be achieved by self-hypnosis.
HYSTERIA. ::: It is due to a pressure from the vital world and there may be momentary possessions also.
In cases of hysteria usually nothing is gained by humouring or indulgence ; firmness generally pays better, because most often there is something there that wants ito be interesting and get sympathy and have a fuss made over the person. As for the cure, the subjective cause has to be got rid of.
"Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation*
“Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation
identical ::: a. --> The same; the selfsame; the very same; not different; as, the identical person or thing.
Uttering sameness or the same truth; expressing in the predicate what is given, or obviously implied, in the subject; tautological.
Identity-philosophy: In general the term has been applied to any theory which failed to distinguish between spirit and matter, subject and object, regarding them as an undifferentiated unity; hence such a philosophy is a species of monism. In the history of philosophy it usually signifies the system which has been called Identitätsphilosophie by Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling who held that spirit and nature are fundamentally the same, namely, the Absolute. Neither the ego nor the non-ego are the ultimate principles of being; they are both relative concepts which are contained in something absolute. This is the supreme principle of Absolute Identity of the ideal and the real. Reasoning does not lead us to the Absolute which can only be attained by immediate intellectual intuition. In it we find the eternal concepts of things and from it we can derive everything else. We are obliged to conceive the Absolute Identity as the indifference of the ideal and the real. Of course, this is God in Whom all opposites are united. He is the unity of thought and being, the subjective and the objective, form and essence, the general and infinite, and the particular and finite. This teaching is similar to that of Spinoza. -- J.J.R.
"If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.” The Life Divine
“If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self passing from its superconscient state, where there is no subject or object, into a luminous trance in which superconscience becomes a massed consciousness out of which the subjective status of being and the objective come into emergence, then we get according to our view of things either a possible process of illusionary creation or a process of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge.” The Life Divine
Iliados Used by Paracelsus as synonymous with Ideos, primordial matter in the subjective state.
Illicit process of the minor: In the categorical syllogism (logic, formal, § 5), the conclusion cannot be a proposition A or E unless the minor term appears in its premiss as distributed -- i.e., as the subject of a proposition A or E, or the predicate of a proposition E or O. Violation of this rule is the fallacy of illicit process of the minor. -- A.C.
immanent ::: a. --> Remaining within; inherent; indwelling; abiding; intrinsic; internal or subjective; hence, limited in activity, agency, or effect, to the subject or associated acts; -- opposed to emanant, transitory, transitive, or objective.
impertinent ::: a. --> Not pertinent; not pertaining to the matter in hand; having no bearing on the subject; not to the point; irrelevant; inapplicable.
Contrary to, or offending against, the rules of propriety or good breeding; guilty of, or prone to, rude, unbecoming, or uncivil words or actions; as, an impertient coxcomb; an impertient remark.
Trifing; inattentive; frivolous.
Important names in the history of the subject are those of Boole (q.v.), De Morgan (q.v.), W. S. Jevons, Peirce (q.v.), Robert Grassmann, John Venn, Hugh MacColl, Schröder (q.v.), P. S. Poretsky -- A.C.
In Aristotelian logic, whatever term can be predicated of, without being essential or peculiar to the subject (q.v.). Logical or predicable (q.v.) -- opposed to property (q.v.) -- is that quality which adheres to a subject in such a manner that it neither constitutes its essence nor necessarily flows from its essence; as, a man is white or learned.
indent style ::: (programming) The rules one uses to indent code in a readable fashion. There are four major C indent styles, described below; all have the aim of respect to the statement(s) they enclose and to the guard or controlling statement (if, else, for, while, or do) on the block, if any.K&R style - Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the examples in K&R are formatted this way. Also called kernel style because the Unix kernel is partisans. The basic indent shown here is eight spaces (or one tab) per level; four spaces are occasionally seen, but are much less common. if (cond) {body> here is eight spaces, but four spaces are just as common (especially in C++ code). if (cond){ indent per level shown here is eight spaces, but four spaces are occasionally seen. if (cond){ always four spaces per level, with { and } halfway between the outer and inner indent levels. if (cond){ screen at once. Doubtless these issues will continue to be the subject of holy wars.[Jargon File] (1995-07-24)
Information and Communication Technology "education" (ICT) The study of the technology used to handle information and aid communication. The phrase was coined by [?] Stevenson in his 1997 report to the UK government and promoted by the new National Curriculum documents for the UK in 2000. In addition to the subjects included in {Information Technology} (IT), ICT emcompasses areas such as {telephony}, {broadcast media} and all types of {audio} and {video} processing and transmission. {(http://rubble.ultralab.anglia.ac.uk/stevenson/ICTUKIndex.html)}. (2008-09-19)
in it. (The matter has been made the subject of an
In relation to men, the lotus is the symbol of the self-producing soul which, during manifestation immersed in material life as the lotus seed is embedded in the mud of lake or pond, is wakened by the warm rays of the spiritual sun, and grows upward through the world of illusion (symbolized by water) to blossom in the free air and sunlight of truth. Cosmically the lotus symbolizes the emanation of the objective from the subjective, the manifested effect or production of the eternal plan on which the invisible worlds are built by the formative logoi. This lies buried, until the time for its svabhava or production comes, in the bosom of eternal ideation — as the lotus plant of visible nature exists in miniature in the seed.
interest ::: n. --> To engage the attention of; to awaken interest in; to excite emotion or passion in, in behalf of a person or thing; as, the subject did not interest him; to interest one in charitable work.
To be concerned with or engaged in; to affect; to concern; to excite; -- often used impersonally.
To cause or permit to share.
Excitement of feeling, whether pleasant or painful, accompanying special attention to some object; concern.
Internal Validity ::: A measure of the trustworthiness of a sample of data. Internal validity looks at the subject, testing, and environment in which the data collection took place.
Internet Explorer "web" (IE, MSIE) {Microsoft}'s free {World-Wide Web} {browser} for {Microsoft Windows}, {Windows 95}, {Windows NT}, and {Macintosh}. Internet Explorer is the main rival to {Netscape Navigator} (which runs on many more {platforms}). Both support the same core features and offer incompatible extensions. Microsoft combined later versions of IE with their {file system} browser, "Explorer" and bundled it with {Windows 95} in an attempt to use their dominance of the {desktop} {operating system} market to force users to abandon Netscape's browser, which they perceived as a potential threat. This, and other dubious business moves, became the subject of a US Department of Justice antitrust trial in late 1998/early 1999. {(http://microsoft.com/ie/)}. (1999-01-31)
Internet Explorer ::: (World-Wide Web) (IE, MSIE) Microsoft's free World-Wide Web browser for Microsoft Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT, and Macintosh. Internet Explorer is the main rival to Netscape Navigator (which runs on many more platforms). Both support the same core features and offer incompatible extensions.Microsoft combined later versions of IE with their file system browser, Explorer and bundled it with Windows 95 in an attempt to use their dominance business moves, became the subject of a US Department of Justice antitrust trial in late 1998/early 1999. . (1999-01-31)
In the first edition of the Logische Untersuchungen phenomenology was defined (much as it had been by Hamilton and Lazarus) as descriptive analysis of subjective processes Erlebnisse. Thus its theme was unqualifiedly identified with what was commonly taken to be the central theme of psychology; the two disciplines were said to differ only in that psychology sets up causal or genetic laws to explain what phenomenology merely describes. Phenomenology was called "pure" so far as the phenomenologist distinguishes the subjective from the objective and refrains from looking into either the genesis of subjective phenomena or their relations to somatic and environmental circumstances. Husserl's "Prolegomena zur reinen Logik" published as the first part of the Logische Untersuchungen, had elaborated the concept of pure logic, a theoretical science independent of empirical knowledge and having a distinctive theme: the universal categorial forms exemplified in possible truths, possible facts, and their respective components. The fundamental concepts and laws of this science, Husserl maintained, are genuine only if they can be established by observing the matters to which they apply. Accordingly, to test the genuineness of logical theory, "wir wollen auf die 'Sachen selbst' zurückgehen": we will go, from our habitual empty understanding of this alleged science, back to a seeing of the logical forms themselves. But it is then the task of pure phenomenology to test the genuineness and range of this "seeing," to distinguish it from other ways of being conscious of the same or other matters. Thus, although pure phenomenology and pure logic are mutually independent disciplines with separate themes, phenomenological analysis is indispensible to the critical justification of logic. In like manner, Husserl maintained, it is necessary to the criticism of other alleged knowledge; while, in another way, its descriptions are prerequisite to explanatory psychology. However, when Husserl wrote the Logische Untersuchungen, he did not yet conceive phenomenological analysis as a method for dealing with metaphysical problems.
In theosophy, devachan is the interlude between earth-lives during which the strictly higher human part of the human composite constitution, the reincarnating ego or higher manas, rests in perfect bliss. Recurring time periods of manifestation and quiescence are fundamental in nature, and devachan is the subjective part of the cyclic rhythm of human evolution on this globe. It corresponds, post-mortem, to the sleeping state of the imbodied, but the devachanic “dreams” are far more vivid and real than ordinary dreams; as a matter of fact, earth life is more truly a dream — to many oftentimes a nightmare.
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
intuition ::: “Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the
Invisible fellowship: “The interconnections established among men through common motives and ultimate goals as in contrast with their ties through the structures of a surface society; the subjective side of occult functioning; shared immortality.” (Marc Edmund Jones.) See: Great White Brotherhood.
involution ::: n. --> The act of involving or infolding.
The state of being entangled or involved; complication; entanglement.
That in which anything is involved, folded, or wrapped; envelope.
The insertion of one or more clauses between the subject and the verb, in a way that involves or complicates the construction.
Jhumur: “The field of expression, of manifestation, is time and space, the forefront of our existence, and life moves through the field of time and space. Perhaps Circumstance is when we are unconscious and don’t know where we are moving. We call it circumstance, unconscious life. If we were conscious we wouldn’t call it Circumstance. Time, Place and Circumstance define the proper outline of the subject. We are surrounded by certain conditioning factors which dictate their will. We are slaves of Circumstance and have no freedom until we become masters.”
J. L. Coolidge, A History of Geometrical Methods, New York, 1940. Mathesis universalis: Universal mathematics. One major part of Leibniz's program for logic was the development of a universal mathematics or universal calculus for manipulating, i.e. performing deductions in, the universal language (characteristica universalis). This universal language, he thought, could be constructed on the basis of a relatively few simple terms and, when constructed, would be of immense value to scientists and philosophers in reasoning as well as in communication. Leibniz's studies on the subject of a universal mathematics are the starting point in modern philosophy of the development of symbolic, mathematical logic. -- F.L.W.
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Judgment of Taste: The assertion that an object is beautiful, or aesthetically pleasing. Such propositions are traditionally classified as judgments of value, as distinguished from judgments of fact, and are regarded as making assertions about the subjective reaction and interest that the object has aroused, and not about any intrinsic property of the object. Hence, generally interpreted as having no claim to universality. Kant, and others, have sought to establish their universality on the ground that they assert a necessary subjective reaction. -- I.J.
keyword 1. One of a fixed set of symbols built into the syntax of a language. Typical keywords would be if, then, else, print, goto, while, switch. There are usually restrictions about reusing keywords as names for user-defined objects such as variables or procedures. Languages vary as to what is provided as a keyword and what is a library routine, for example some languages provide keywords for input/output operations whereas in others these are library routines. 2. A small set of words designed to convey the subject of a technical article. Some publications specify a fixed set of keywords from which those for a particular article should be chosen.
keyword ::: 1. One of a fixed set of symbols built into the syntax of a language. Typical keywords would be if, then, else, print, goto, while, switch. There are usually what is a library routine, for example some languages provide keywords for input/output operations whereas in others these are library routines.2. A small set of words designed to convey the subject of a technical article. Some publications specify a fixed set of keywords from which those for a particular article should be chosen.
Knower, The: The subject of knowledge, conceived either as a mental act, an empirical self or a pure ego. See Subject. The knower in contrast to the object known. See Epistemological object. -- L.W.
Knowledge by Identity ::: When the subject draws a little back from itself as object, then certain tertiary powers of spiritual knowledge, of knowledge by identity, take their first origin, which are the sources of our own normal modes of knowledge. There is a spiritual intimate vision, a spiritual pervasive entry and penetration, a spiritual feeling in which one sees all as oneself, feels all as oneself, contacts all as oneself. There is a power of spiritual perception of the object and all that it contains or is, perceived in an enveloping and pervading identity, the identity itself constituting the perception.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 566
Korn's philosophy represents an attack against naive and dogmatic positivism, but admits and even assimilates an element of Positivism which Korn calls Native Argentinian Positivism. Alejandro Korn may be called The Philosopher of Freedom. In fact, freedom is the keynote of his thought. He speaks of Human liberty as the indissoluble union of economic and ethical liberties. The free soul's knowledge of the world of science operates mainly on the basis of intuition. In fact, intuition is the basis of all knowledge. "Necessity of the objective world order", "Freedom of the spirit in the subjective realm", "Identity", 'Purpose", "Unity of Consciousness", and other similar concepts, are "expressions of immediate evidence and not conclusions of logical dialectics". The experience of freedom, according to Korn, leads to the problem of evaluation, which he defines as "the human response to a fact", whether the fact be an object or an event. Valuation is an experience which grows out of the struggle for liberty. Values, therefore, are relative to the fields of experience in which valuation takes place. The denial of an absolute value or values, does not signify the exclusion of personal faith. On the contrary, personal, faith is the common ground and point of departure of knowledge and action. See Latin-American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.
Kyoto school. An influential school of modern and contemporary Japanese philosophy that is closely associated with philosophers from Kyoto University; it combines East Asian and especially MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist thought, such as ZEN and JoDO SHINSHu, with modern Western and especially German philosophy and Christian thought. NISHIDA KITARo (1870-1945), Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), and NISHITANI KEIJI (1900-1991) are usually considered to be the school's three leading figures. The name "Kyoto school" was coined in 1932 by Tosaka Jun (1900-1945), a student of Nishida and Tanabe, who used it pejoratively to denounce Nishida and Tanabe's "Japanese bourgeois philosophy." Starting in the late 1970s, Western scholars began to research the philosophical insights of the Kyoto school, and especially the cross-cultural influences with Western philosophy. During the 1990s, the political dimensions of the school have also begun to receive scholarly attention. ¶ Although the school's philosophical perspectives have developed through mutual criticism between its leading figures, the foundational philosophical stance of the Kyoto school is considered to be based on a shared notion of "absolute nothingness." "Absolute nothingness" was coined by Nishida Kitaro and derives from a putatively Zen and PURE LAND emphasis on the doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ), which Kyoto school philosophers advocated was indicative of a distinctive Eastern approach to philosophical inquiry. This Eastern emphasis on nothingness stood in contrast to the fundamental focus in Western philosophy on the ontological notion of "being." Nishida Kitaro posits absolute nothingness topologically as the "site" or "locale" (basho) of nonduality, which overcomes the polarities of subject and object, or noetic and noematic. Another major concept in Nishida's philosophy is "self-awareness" (jikaku), a state of mind that transcends the subject-object bifurcation, which was initially adopted from William James' (1842-1910) notion of "pure experience" (J. junsui keiken); this intuition reveals a limitless, absolute reality that has been described in the West as God or in the East as emptiness. Tanabe Hajime subsequently criticized Nishida's "site of absolute nothingness" for two reasons: first, it was a suprarational religious intuition that transgresses against philosophical reasoning; and second, despite its claims to the contrary, it ultimately fell into a metaphysics of being. Despite his criticism of what he considered to be Nishida's pseudoreligious speculations, however, Tanabe's Shin Buddhist inclinations later led him to focus not on Nishida's Zen Buddhist-oriented "intuition," but instead on the religious aspect of "faith" as the operative force behind other-power (TARIKI). Inspired by both Nishida and such Western thinkers as Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) (with whom he studied), Nishitani Keiji developed the existential and phenomenological aspects of Nishida's philosophy of absolute nothingness. Concerned with how to reach the place of absolute nothingness, given the dilemma of, on the one hand, the incessant reification and objectification by a subjective ego and, on the other hand, the nullification of reality, he argued for the necessity of overcoming "nihilism." The Kyoto school thinkers also played a central role in the development of a Japanese political ideology around the time of the Pacific War, which elevated the Japanese race mentally and spiritually above other races and justified Japanese colonial expansion. Their writings helped lay the foundation for what came to be called Nihonjinron, a nationalist discourse that advocated the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese race; at the same time, however, Nishida also resisted tendencies toward fascism and totalitarianism in Japanese politics. Since the 1990s, Kyoto school writings have come under critical scrutiny in light of their ties to Japanese exceptionalism and pre-war Japanese nationalism. These political dimensions of Kyoto school thought are now considered as important for scholarly examination as are its contributions to cross-cultural, comparative philosophy.
lampoon ::: n. --> A personal satire in writing; usually, malicious and abusive censure written only to reproach and distress. ::: v. t. --> To subject to abusive ridicule expressed in writing; to make the subject of a lampoon.
liar paradox "philosophy" A sentence which asserts its own falsity, e.g. "This sentence is false" or "I am lying". These paradoxical assertions are meaningless in the sense that there is nothing in the world which could serve to either support or refute them. Philosophers, of course, have a great deal more to say on the subject. ["The Liar: an Essay on Truth and Circularity", Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, Oxford University Press (1987). ISBN 0-19-505944-1 (PBK), Library of Congress BC199.P2B37]. (1995-02-22)
liar paradox ::: (philosophy) A sentence which asserts its own falsity, e.g. This sentence is false or I am lying. These paradoxical assertions are meaningless support or refute them. Philosophers, of course, have a great deal more to say on the subject.[The Liar: an Essay on Truth and Circularity, Jon Barwise and John Etchemendy, Oxford University Press (1987). ISBN 0-19-505944-1 (PBK), Library of Congress BC199.P2B37]. (1995-02-22)
Listserv "messaging" An automatic {mailing list} server, initially written to run under {IBM}'s {VM} {operating system} by Eric Thomas. Listserv is a {user name} on some computers on {BITNET}/{EARN} which processes {electronic mail} requests for addition to or deletion from mailing lists. Examples are listserv@ucsd.edu, listserver@nysernet.org. Some listservs provide other facilities such as retrieving files from {archives} and {database} search. Full details of available services can usually be obtained by sending a message with the word HELP in the subject and body to the listserv address. Eric Thomas, has recently formed an international corporation, L-Soft, and has ported Listserv to a number of other {platforms} including {Unix}. Listserv has simultaneously been enhanced to use both the {Internet} and {BITNET}. Two other major {mailing list} processors, both of which run under {Unix}, are {Majordomo}, a {freeware} system, and {Listproc}, currently owned and developed by {BITNET}. (1995-02-22)
Listserv ::: (messaging) An automatic mailing list server, initially written to run under IBM's VM operating system by Eric Thomas.Listserv is a user name on some computers on BITNET/EARN which processes electronic mail requests for addition to or deletion from mailing lists. Examples are , Some listservs provide other facilities such as retrieving files from archives and database search. Full details of available services can usually be obtained by sending a message with the word HELP in the subject and body to the listserv address.Eric Thomas, has recently formed an international corporation, L-Soft, and has ported Listserv to a number of other platforms including Unix. Listserv has simultaneously been enhanced to use both the Internet and BITNET.Two other major mailing list processors, both of which run under Unix, are Majordomo, a freeware system, and Listproc, currently owned and developed by BITNET. (1995-02-22)
litigate ::: v. t. --> To make the subject of a lawsuit; to contest in law; to prosecute or defend by pleadings, exhibition of evidence, and judicial debate in a court; as, to litigate a cause. ::: v. i. --> To carry on a suit by judicial process.
lobha. (T. chags pa; C. tan; J. ton; K. t'am 貪). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "craving," or "greed," a synonym of RĀGA ("sensuality" or "desire") and the opposite of "absence of craving" or "absence of greed" (ALOBHA). Lobha is one of the most ubiquitous of the defilements (KLEsA) and is listed among six fundamental afflictions (KLEsAMAHĀBHuMIKA), ten fetters (SAMYOJANA), ten proclivities (ANUsAYA), five hindrances (ĀVARAnA), three poisons (TRIVIsA), and three unwholesome faculties (AKUsALAMuLA). Lobha is also one of the forty-six mental factors (see CAITTA) according to the VAIBHĀsIKA school of SARVĀSTIVĀDA abhidharma, one of the fifty-one according to the YOGACĀRA school, and one of the fifty-two in the Pāli abhidhamma. When sensory contact with objects is made "without proper comprehension" or "without introspection" (ASAMPRAJANYA), craving (lobha), aversion (DVEsA), and delusion (MOHA) arise. In the case of craving-which is a psychological reaction associated with the pursuing, possessing, or yearning for a pleasing stimulus and discontent with unpleasant stimuli-this greed could target a host of possible objects. Scriptural accounts list these objects of craving as sensual pleasures, material belongings, loved ones, fame, the five aggregates (SKANDHA), speculative views (DṚstI), the meditative absorptions (DHYĀNA) of the "subtle-materiality" and "immaterial" realms (see TRILOKADHĀTU), the future "becoming" (BHAVA) of the "self" (S. bhavarāga), and the future "annihilation" of the "self" (S. abhavarāga), among other things. According to the ĀGAMAs and the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, craving is the self-imposed "yoking together" of the subject and its object, whereby the mind is "mired," "bonded," and "burdened" by desire. As one of the three unwholesome faculties (AKUsALAMuLA), craving is said to be the common ground or source of a variety of unwholesome mental states, such as possessiveness (MĀTSARYA) and pride (MADA).
Lotus 1-2-3 ::: (tool, product) A spreadsheet for MS-DOS from Lotus Development Corporation. It can be programmed using macros and comes with a separate commands, making it fast to operate. Lotus 1-2-3 supported EGA and later VGA graphics. Early versions used the filename extension WK1.Version: 4.Lotus 1-2-3 has been the subject of several user interface copyright court cases in the US. .1-2-3's successor, Symphony, had simultaneous update of spreadsheet, graph and word processor windows. (1995-11-28)
Lotus 1-2-3 "tool, product" A {spreadsheet} for {MS-DOS} from {Lotus Development Corporation}. It can be programmed using "{macros}" and comes with a separate program to produce graphs and charts but this cannot be run at the same time as the spreadsheet. It has keyboard-driven {pop-up menus} as well as one-key commands, making it fast to operate. Lotus 1-2-3 supported {EGA} and later {VGA} graphics. Early versions used the {filename extension} "WK1". Version: 4. Lotus 1-2-3 has been the subject of several {user interface copyright} court cases in the US. {(http://nyweb.com/lotus/123.html)}. 1-2-3's successor, {Symphony}, had simultaneous update of spreadsheet, graph and {word processor} windows. (1995-11-28)
macdink /mak'dink/ To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better off without them. The {Macintosh} is said to encourage such behaviour. See also {fritterware}, {window shopping}. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-22)
macdink ::: /mak'dink/ To make many incremental and unnecessary cosmetic changes to a program or file. Often the subject of the macdinking would be better off without them. The Macintosh is said to encourage such behaviour.See also fritterware, window shopping.[Jargon File] (1994-11-22)
Madhyamikas (Sanskrit) Mādhyamika-s Belonging to the middle way; a sect mentioned in the Vishnu-Purana, probably at first a sect of Hindu atheists. A school of the same name was founded later in Tibet and China, and as it adopted some of the esoteric principles taught by Nagarjuna, one of the great founders of the esoteric Mahayana system, it had certain elements of esoteric truth. But because of its tendency by means of thesis and antithesis to reduce everything into contrary categories, and then to deny both, it may be called a school of Nihilists for whom everything is an illusion and an error in the world of thought, in the subjective as well as in the objective universe. This school is a good example of the danger of wandering too far in mere intellectual disquisition from the fundamental bases of the esoteric philosophy, for such merely brain-mind activity will infallibly lead to a philosophy of barren negation.
Mahasi, Sayadaw. (1904-1982). In Burmese, "Senior Monk from Mahasi," also known as Sobhana Mahāthera; honorific title of U Thobana (P. Sobhana), a prominent Burmese (Myanmar) scholar-monk and influential promoter of insight meditation (VIPASSANĀ). He was born in Seikkhun village near Shwebo in Upper Burma to a prosperous peasant family. At the age of twelve, he was ordained as a novice (P. sāmanera; S. sRĀMAnERA) at Pyinmana monastery in Saikkhun and in 1923 he took higher ordination (UPASAMPADĀ) as a monk (P. BHIKKHU; S. BHIKsU). Trained in Pāli and Buddhist scriptures at both Saikkhun and a number of monastic colleges in Mandalay, U Thobana alternated his own studies with teaching duties in Moulmien, Lower Burma, where he also encountered and trained under the meditation master Mingun Jetavan Sayadaw in the neighboring town of Thaton. U Thobana received his Dhammācāriya degree in 1941, just prior to the outbreak of World War II and the Japanese occupation of Burma. During the war, he returned to his native village in Upper Burma and settled in a monastery named Mahasi, whence his toponym. There he devoted himself to the practice and teaching of vipassanā meditation and wrote the Manual of Vipassanā Meditation, the first of his many treatises on the subject. In 1949, the Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu, invited Mahasi Sayadaw to head the newly founded Thathana Yeiktha (meditation hermitage) in Rangoon (Yangon). Since that time, affiliate branches of the Thathana Yeiktha headed by teachers trained in the Mahasi method of vipassanā have been established throughout the country and internationally, particularly in Thailand and Sri Lanka. Mahasi Sayadaw was an erudite scholar and the author of sixty-seven works on Buddhism in Burmese and Pāli. The Burmese government awarded him the title Aggamahāpandita for his scholarship in 1952. In 1954, he was appointed to the dual position of pucchaka (questioner) and osana (editor) in the sixth Buddhist Council (See COUNCIL, SIXTH) convened in Rangoon in 1954-56. Among other duties during the council, he oversaw the preparation of a new Burmese edition of the Pāli tipitaka (S. TRIPItAKA), its commentaries, and sub-commentaries for publication. Mahasi Sayadaw headed numerous Buddhist missions to countries in Asia, Europe, and America, and included among his disciples are many contemporary meditation teachers in Myanmar and internationally.
Mahāvastu. In Sanskrit, the "Great Chapter." Also known as the Mahāvastu AVADĀNA, this lengthy work is regarded as the earliest Sanskrit biography of the Buddha. The work describes itself as a book "of the VINAYAPItAKA according to the LOKOTTARAVĀDA, which is affiliated with the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA." The work thus provides important insights into how the Buddha was understood by the Lokottaravāda, or "Proponents of the Supramundane," a branch of the MahāsaMghika, or "Great Community," which some scholars regard as a possible antecedent of the Mahāyāna. The placement of the work in the vinayapitaka suggests that the genre of biographies of the Buddha began as introductions to the monastic code, before becoming independent works. Indeed, it corresponds roughly to the MAHĀVAGGA portion of the KHANDHAKA in the Pāli vinayapitaka. The Mahāvastu is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the previous lives of the being who would become the buddha sĀKYAMUNI, recounting the virtuous deeds he performed and the BODHISATTVA vow he made to the buddha DĪPAMKARA and other buddhas of the past. The second part begins in TUsITA, when the bodhisattva decides where to take his final birth. It goes on to recount his birth, childhood and youth; departure from the palace; and search for enlightenment. It concludes with his defeat of MĀRA. The third section describes the first conversions and the foundation of the SAMGHA. Like other early "biographies" of the Buddha, the narrative ends long before the Buddha's passage into PARINIRVĀnA. Also like these other works, the Mahāvastu does not provide a simple chronology, but is interrupted with numerous teachings, avadānas, and JĀTAKAs, some of which do not have analogues in the Pāli. There are also interpolations: for example, there are two versions of the BODHISATTVA's departure, the first rather simple and the second more elaborate, containing the famous story of the chariot rides during which the prince encounters aging, sickness, and death for the first time (cf. CATURNIMITTA). The so-called proto-Mahāyāna elements of the Mahāvastu have been the subject of much debate. For example, the text includes a lengthy description of the ten bodhisattva BHuMIs, often regarded as a standard Mahāyāna tenet, but their description differs in significant ways from that found in the Mahāyāna sutras. Although clearly a work with many interpolations, linguistic elements suggest that portions of the text may date to as early as the second century BCE.
Mahāyāna. (T. theg pa chen po; C. dasheng; J. daijo; K. taesŭng 大乘). In Sanskrit, "great vehicle"; a term, originally of self-appellation, which is used historically to refer to a movement that began some four centuries after the Buddha's death, marked by the composition of texts that purported to be his words (BUDDHAVACANA). Although ranging widely in content, these texts generally set forth the bodhisattva path to buddhahood as the ideal to which all should aspire and described BODHISATTVAs and buddhas as objects of devotion. The key doctrines of the Mahāyāna include the perfection of wisdom (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ), the skillful methods (UPĀYAKAUsALYA) of a buddha, the three bodies (TRIKĀYA) of a buddha, the inherency of buddha-nature (BUDDHADHĀTU; TATHĀGATAGARBHA), and PURE LANDs or buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). The term Mahāyāna is also appended to two of the leading schools of Indian Buddhism, the YOGĀCĀRA and the MADHYAMAKA, because they accepted the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha. However, the tenets of these schools were not restricted to expositions of the philosophy and practice of the bodhisattva but sought to set forth the nature of wisdom and the constituents of the path for the ARHAT as well. The term Mahāyāna often appears in contrast to HĪNAYĀNA, the "lesser vehicle," a pejorative term used to refer to those who do not accept the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha. Mahāyāna became the dominant form of Buddhism in China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and Mongolia, and therefore is sometimes referred to as "Northern Buddhism," especially in nineteenth-century sources. Because of the predominance of the Mahāyāna in East Asia and Tibet, it is sometimes assumed that the Mahāyāna displaced earlier forms of Buddhism (sometimes referred to by scholars as "Nikāya Buddhism" or "MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS") in India, but the testimony of Chinese pilgrims, such as XUANZANG and YIJING, suggests that the Mahāyāna remained a minority movement in India. These pilgrims report that Mahāyāna and "hīnayāna" monks lived together in the same monasteries and followed the same VINAYA. The supremacy of the Mahāyāna is also sometimes assumed because of the large corpus of Mahāyāna literature in India. However, scholars have begun to speculate that the size of this corpus may not be a sign of the Mahāyāna's dominance but rather of its secondary status, with more and more works composed but few gaining adherents. Scholars find it significant that the first mention of the term "Mahāyāna" in a stone inscription does not appear in India until some five centuries after the first Mahāyāna sutras were presumably composed, perhaps reflecting its minority, or even marginal, status on the Indian subcontinent. The origins of the Mahāyāna remain the subject of scholarly debate. Earlier theories that saw the Mahāyāna as largely a lay movement against entrenched conservative monastics have given way to views of the Mahāyāna as beginning as disconnected cults (of monastic and sometimes lay members) centered around an individual sutra, in some instances proclaimed by charismatic teachers called DHARMABHĀnAKA. The teachings contained in these sutras varied widely, with some extolling a particular buddha or bodhisattva above all others, some saying that the text itself functioned as a STuPA. Each of these sutras sought to represent itself as the authentic word of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha, which was more or less independent from other sutras; hence, the trope in so many Mahāyāna sutras in which the Buddha proclaims the supremacy of that particular text and describes the benefits that will accrue to those who recite, copy, and worship it. The late appearance of these texts had to be accounted for, and various arguments were set forth, most making some appeal to UPĀYA, the Buddha's skillful methods whereby he teaches what is most appropriate for a given person or audience. Thus, in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the Buddha famously proclaims that the three vehicles (TRIYĀNA) that he had previously set forth were in fact expedient stratagems to reach different audiences and that there is in fact only one vehicle (EKAYĀNA), revealed in the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the BUDDHAYĀNA, which had been taught many times in the past by previous buddhas. These early Mahāyāna sutras seem to have been deemed complete unto themselves, each representing its own world. This relatively disconnected assemblage of various cults of the book would eventually become a self-conscious scholastic entity that thought of itself as the Mahāyāna; this exegetical endeavor devoted a good deal of energy to surveying what was by then a large corpus of such books and then attempting to craft the myriad doctrines contained therein into coherent philosophical and religious systems, such as Yogācāra and Madhyamaka. The authority of the Mahāyāna sutras as the word of the Buddha seems to have remained a sensitive issue throughout the history of the Mahāyāna in India, since many of the most important authors, from the second to the twelfth century, often offered a defense of these sutras' authenticity. Another influential strand of early Mahāyāna was that associated with the RĀstRAPĀLAPARIPṚCCHĀ, KĀsYAPAPARIVARTA, and UGRAPARIPṚCCHĀ, which viewed the large urban monasteries as being ill-suited to serious spiritual cultivation and instead advocated forest dwelling (see ARANNAVĀSI) away from the cities, following a rigorous asceticism (S. dhutaguna; P. DHUTAnGA) that was thought to characterize the early SAMGHA. This conscious estrangement from the monks of the city, where the great majority of monks would have resided, again suggests the Mahāyāna's minority status in India. Although one often reads in Western sources of the three vehicles of Buddhism-the hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and VAJRAYĀNA-the distinction of the Mahāyāna from the vajrayāna is less clear, at least polemically speaking, than the distinction between the Mahāyāna and the hīnayāna, with followers of the vajrayāna considering themselves as following the path to buddhahood set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, although via a shorter route. Thus, in some expositions, the Mahāyāna is said to subsume two vehicles, the PĀRAMITĀYĀNA, that is, the path to buddhahood by following the six perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) as set forth in the Mahāyāna sutras, and the MANTRAYĀNA or vajrayāna, that is, the path to buddhahood set forth in the tantras.
mala. (T. dri ma; C. gou; J. ku; K. ku 垢). In Sanskrit, "taint," "stain," "maculation"; often used as a synonym for afflictions (KLEsA). Much of the discourse on the Buddhist path (MĀRGA) is expressed in terms of purity and pollution, with the path to liberation sometimes described as the gradual purification of the mind, in which various stains or taints are removed. What remains at the end of the process of purification is the subject of considerable discussion among the various Buddhist schools. For example, DHARMAKĪRTI declared in his PRAMĀnAVĀRTTIKA, "The nature of the mind is clear light; its stains are adventitious." See also AMALAVIJNĀNA.
Mangalasutta. In Pāli, "Discourse on the Auspicious"; one of the best-loved and most frequently recited texts in the Southeast Asian Buddhist world. The Mangalasutta appears in an early scriptural anthology, the SUTTANIPĀTA; a later collection, the KHUDDAKAPĀtHA; and in a postcanonical anthology of "protection texts," the PARITTA. The text itself is a mere twelve verses in length and is accompanied by a brief preface inquiring about what is true auspiciousness. The Buddha's response provides a straightforward recital of auspicious things, beginning with various social virtues and ending with the achievement of nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA). The Mangalasutta's great renown derives from its inclusion in the Paritta, a late anthology of texts that are chanted as part of the protective rituals performed by Buddhist monks to ward off misfortunes; indeed, it is this apotropaic quality of the scripture that accounts for its enduring popularity. Paritta suttas refer to specific discourses delivered by the Buddha that are believed to offer protection to those who either recite the sutta or listen to its recitation. Other such auspicious apotropaic suttas are the RATANASUTTA ("Discourse on the Precious") and the METTĀSUTTA ("Discourse on Loving-Kindness"). These paritta texts are commonly believed in Southeast Asia to bring happiness and good fortune when chanted by the SAMGHA. The Mangalasutta has been the subject of many Pāli commentaries, one of the largest of which, the Mangalatthadīpanī, composed in northern Thailand in the sixteenth century, is over five hundred pages in length and continues to serve as the core of the monastic curriculum in contemporary Thailand. The Mangalasutta's twelve verses are: "Many divinities and humans, desiring well-being, have thought about auspiciousness; tell us what is the highest auspiciousness./ Not to associate with fools, to associate with the wise, to worship those worthy of worship-that is the highest auspiciousness./ To live in a suitable place and to have done good deeds before, having a proper goal for oneself-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Learning, craftsmanship, and being well-trained in discipline, being well-spoken-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Care for mother and father, supporting wife and children, and types of work that bring no conflict-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Generosity, morality, helping relatives and performing actions that are blameless-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Ceasing and refraining from evil, abstaining from intoxicants, diligence in morality-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Respect, humility, contentment, gratitude, listening to the dhamma at the proper time-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Patience, obedience, seeing ascetics and timely discussions of the dhamma-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Ascetic practice, the religious life, seeing the four noble truths, and the realization of nibbāna-that is the highest auspiciousness./ If someone's mind is sorrowless, stainless, secure, and does not shake when touched by the things of the world-that is the highest auspiciousness./ Having acted in this wise, unconquered everywhere they go to well-being everywhere-for them, this is the highest auspiciousness."
MATERIALISM The view that matter is the fundamental reality. A more restricted variety of materialism is physicalism.
Materialism is the only one of the different metaphysical views that it has been possible to confirm scientifically. The atomic theory can no longer be included in
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Meaning the same as essentially, so that the predicate which is said to belong the subject formally, enters into the essence and definition of the subject. Thus man is formally animal. Formally, so understood has various correlatives, according to the various aspects under which the essence of a thing can be considered:
Media ::: Specific environments-air, water, soil-which are the subject of regulatory concern and activities.
Megalithic monuments, more or less similar to Stonehenge, are found widely scattered over the globe, even in the wild Triobrand Islands near New Guinea. To know why such buildings were erected we should need far more knowledge than we have of the actual builders, their ideas and aims, and innumerable other conditions. The subject is connected with what is said about a lost science which could avail itself of the normal latent magical properties of stones.
Mesmerism ::: An ill-understood branch of human knowledge, developed within fairly recent times, connected with theexistence of the psychomagnetic fluid in man which can be employed by the will for purposes eithergood or evil. It has been called animal magnetism, but more often in former times than at present. Thefirst European who rediscovered and openly proclaimed the existence of this subtle psychomagnetic fluidin man was Dr. Friedrich Anton Mesmer, born in Germany in 1733, who died in 1815. His honesty andhis theories have been more or less vindicated in modern times by later students of the subject.There are distinct differences as among mesmerism, hypnotism, psychologization, and suggestion, etc.(See also Hypnotism)
metallographist ::: n. --> One who writes on the subject of metals.
metrology ::: n. --> The science of, or a system of, weights and measures; also, a treatise on the subject.
Mi la ras pa. (Milarepa) (1028/40-1111/23). The most famous and beloved of Tibetan YOGINs. Although he is associated most closely with the BKA' BRGYUD sect of Tibetan Buddhism, he is revered throughout the Tibetan cultural domain for his perseverance through hardship, his ultimate attainment of buddhahood in one lifetime, and for his beautiful songs. The most famous account of his life (the MI LA RAS PA'I RNAM THAR, or "The Life of Milarepa") and collection of spiritual songs (MI LA'I MGUR 'BUM, or "The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa") are extremely popular throughout the Tibetan world. The themes associated with his life story-purification of past misdeeds, faith and devotion to the GURU, ardor in meditation and yogic practice, and the possibility of attaining buddhahood despite the sins of his youth-have inspired developments in Buddhist teaching and practice in Tibet. Mi la was his clan name; ras pa is derived from the single cotton robe (ras) worn by Tibetan anchorites, an attire Milarepa retained for most of his life. The name is therefore an appellation, "The Cotton-clad Mi la." Although his dates are the subject of debate, biographies agree that Mi la ras pa was born to a wealthy family in the Gung thang region of southwestern Tibet. He was given the name Thos pa dga', literally "Delightful to Hear." At an early age, after the death of his father, the family estate and inheritance were taken away by Mi la ras pa's paternal aunt and uncle, leaving Mi la ras pa, his mother, and his sister to suffer poverty and disgrace. At the urging of his mother, Mi las ras pa studied sorcery and black magic in order to seek revenge. He was successful in his studies, causing a roof to collapse during a wedding party hosted by his relatives, with many killed. Eventually feeling remorse and recognizing the karmic consequences of his deeds, he sought salvation through the practice of Buddhism. After brief studies with several masters, he met MAR PA CHOS KYI BLO GROS, who would become his root guru. Mar pa was esteemed for having traveled to India, where he received valuable tantric instructions. However, Mar pa initially refused to teach Mi la ras pa, subjecting him to all forms of verbal and physical abuse. He made him undergo various ordeals, including constructing single-handedly several immense stone towers (including the final tower built for Mar pa's son called SRAS MKHAR DGU THOG, or the "nine-storied son's tower"). When Mi la ras pa was at the point of despair and about to abandon all hope of receiving the teachings, Mar pa then revealed that the trials were a means of purifying the negative KARMAN of his black magic that would have prevented him from successfully practicing the instructions. Mar pa bestowed numerous tantric initiations and instructions, especially those of MAHĀMUDRĀ and the practice of GTUM MO, or "inner heat," together with the command to persevere against all hardship while meditating in solitary caves and mountain retreats. He was given the initiation name Bzhad pa rdo rje (Shepa Dorje). Mi la ras pa spent the rest of his life practicing meditation in seclusion and teaching small groups of yogin disciples through poetry and songs of realization. He had little interest in philosophical discourse and no tolerance for intellectual pretension; indeed, several of his songs are rather sarcastically directed against the conceits of monastic scholars and logicians. He was active across southern Tibet, and dozens of locations associated with the saint have become important pilgrimage sites and retreat centers; their number increased in the centuries following his death. Foremost among these are the hermitages at LA PHYI, BRAG DKAR RTA SO, CHU DBAR, BRIN, and KAILĀSA. Bhutanese tradition asserts that he traveled as far as the STAG TSHANG sanctuary in western Bhutan. Foremost among Milarepa's disciples were SGAM PO PA BSOD NAMS RIN CHEN and RAS CHUNG PA RDO RJE GRAGS. According to his biography, Mi la ras pa was poisoned by a jealous monk. Although he had already achieved buddhahood and was unharmed by the poison, he allowed himself to die. His life story ends with his final instructions to his disciples, the account of his miraculous cremation, and of how he left no relics despite the pleas of his followers.
minnesinger ::: n. --> A love-singer; specifically, one of a class of German poets and musicians who flourished from about the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the fourteenth century. They were chiefly of noble birth, and made love and beauty the subjects of their verses.
miracle play: Drama from medieval times the subject of which is religion, such as the lives and actions of saints.
monological ::: A descriptor of any approach where an individual conducts a “monologue” with an object and apprehends their immediate experience of that object, usually without acknowledging or recognizing cultural embeddedness and intersubjectivity. Monological approaches, in themselves, are sometimes referred to as subscribing to the “myth of the given,” “the philosophy of the subject,” “the philosophy of consciousness,” or what Integral Theory would describe as the belief that the contents of the Upper-Left quadrant are given without being intertwined in the remaining three quadrants. Monological approaches are typically associated with phenomenology, empiricism, meditation, all experiential exercises and therapies, etc.
MORALS The terms morals (from Latin) and ethics (from Greek) through ignorance&
Moreover, the hypnotizer endangers himself by such intimate linking with the lower mind and feeling of his subject — whose spiritual nature is always beyond another’s control. From the operator’s entrance into, and operation of, the subject’s physico-astral body, there results a mutual infection with each other’s faulty human nature. Whoever thus changes the forces and trend of another’s life, obligates himself to share karmically in those changes to the end.
Mudra(Sanskrit) ::: A general name for certain intertwinings or positions of the fingers of the two hands, usedalone or together, in devotional yoga or exoteric religious worship, and these mudras or digital positionsare held by many Oriental mystics to have particular esoteric significance. They are found both in theBuddhist statues of northern Asia, especially those belonging to the Yogachara school, and also in Indiawhere they are perhaps particularly affected by the Hindu tantrikas. There is doubtless a good deal of hidefficacy in holding the fingers in proper position during meditation, but to the genuine occult student thesymbolic meaning of such mudras or digital positions is by far more useful and interesting. The subject istoo intricate, and of importance too small, to call for much detail of explanation here, or even to attempt afull exposition of the subject.
Mulamadhyamakakārikā. (T. Dbu ma rtsa ba'i tshig le'u byas pa; C. Zhong lun; J. Churon; K. Chung non 中論). In Sanskrit, "Root Verses on the Middle Way"; the magnum opus of the second-century Indian master NĀGĀRJUNA; also known as the PrajNānāmamulamadhyamakakārikā and the Madhyamakasāstra. (The Chinese analogue of this text is the Zhong lun, which renders the title as MADHYAMAKAsĀSTRA. This Chinese version was edited and translated by KUMĀRAJĪVA. Kumārajīva's edition, however, includes not only Nāgārjuna's verses but also Pingala's commentary to the verses.) The most widely cited and commented upon of Nāgārjuna's works in India, the Mulamadhyamakakārikā, was the subject of detailed commentaries by such figures as BUDDHAPĀLITA, BHĀVAVIVEKA, and CANDRAKĪRTI (with Candrakīrti's critique of Bhāvaviveka's criticism of a passage in Buddhapālita's commentary providing the locus classicus for the later Tibetan division of MADHYAMAKA into *SVĀTANTRIKA and *PRĀSAnGIKA). In East Asia, it was one of the three basic texts of the "Three Treatises" school (C. SAN LUN ZONG), and was central to TIANTAI philosophy. Although lost in the original Sanskrit as an independent work, the entire work is preserved within the Sanskrit text of Candrakīrti's commentary, the PRASANNAPADĀ (serving as one reason for the influence of Candrakīrti's commentary in the European reception of the Mulamadhyamakakārikā). The work is composed of 448 verses in twenty-seven chapters. The topics of the chapters (as provided by Candrakīrti) are the analysis of: (1) conditions (PRATYAYA), (2) motion, (3) the eye and the other sense faculties (INDRIYA), (4) aggregates (SKANDHA), (5) elements (DHĀTU), (6) passion and the passionate, (7) the conditioned (in the sense of production, abiding, disintegration), (8) action and agent, (9) prior existence, (10) fire and fuel, (11) the past and future limits of SAMSĀRA, (12) suffering, (13) the conditioned (SAMSKĀRA), (14) contact (saMsarga), (15) intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA), (16) bondage and liberation, (17) action and effect, (18) self, (19) time, (20) assemblage (sāmagrī), (21) arising and dissolving, (22) the TATHĀGATA, (23) error, (24) the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, (25) NIRVĀnA, (26), the twelve links of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), and (27) views. The tone of the work is set in its famous homage to the Buddha, which opens the work, "I bow down to the perfect Buddha, the best of teachers, who taught that what is dependently arisen is without cessation, without production, without annihilation, without permanence, without coming, without going, without difference, without sameness, pacified of elaboration, at peace." The Mulamadhyamakakārikā offers a relentless examination of many of the most important categories of Buddhist thought, subjecting them to an analysis that reveals the absurd consequences that follow from imagining any of them to be real in the sense of possessing an independent and intrinsic nature (SVABHĀVA). Nāgārjuna demonstrates repeatedly that these various categories only exist relationally and only function heuristically in a worldly and transactional sense; they do not exist ultimately. Thus, in the first chapter, Nāgārjuna examines production via causes and conditions, one of the hallmarks of Buddhist thought, and declares that a thing is not produced from itself, from something other than itself, from something that is both itself and other, or from something that is neither itself nor the other. He examines the four kinds of conditions, declaring each to lack an intrinsic nature, such that they do not exist because they do not produce anything. In the second chapter, Nāgārjuna examines motion, seeking to determine precisely where motion occurs: on the path already traversed, the path being traversed, or on the path not yet traversed. He concludes that motion is not to be found on any of these three. In the twenty-fifth chapter, he subjects nirvāna to a similar analysis, finding it to be neither existent, nonexistent, both existent and nonexistent, nor neither existent nor nonexistent. (These are the famous CATUsKOtI, the "four alternatives," or tetralemma.) Therefore, nirvāna, like saMsāra and all worldly phenomena, is empty of intrinsic nature, leading Nāgārjuna to declare (at XXV.19), in one of his most famous and widely misinterpreted statements, that there is not the slightest difference between saMsāra and nirvāna. The thoroughgoing negative critique or apophasis in which Nāgārjuna engages leads to charges of nihilism, charges that he faces directly in the text, especially in the twenty-fourth chapter on the four noble truths where he introduces the topic of the two truths (SATYADVAYA)-ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and conventional truth (SAMVṚTISATYA)-declaring the importance of both in understanding correctly the doctrine of the Buddha. Also in this chapter, he discusses the danger of misunderstanding emptiness (suNYATĀ), and the relation between emptiness and dependent origination ("That which is dependent origination we explain as emptiness. This is a dependent designation; just this is the middle path"). To those who would object that emptiness renders causation and change impossible, he counters that if things existed independently and intrinsically, there could be no transformation; "for whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible." There has been considerable scholarly discussion of Nāgārjuna's target audience for this work, with the consensus being that it is intended for Buddhist monks well versed in ABHIDHARMA literature, especially that associated with the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school; many of the categories to which Nāgārjuna subjects his critique are derived from this school. In the Sarvāstivāda abhidharma, these categories and factors (DHARMA) are posited to be endowed with a certain reality, a reality that Nāgārjuna sees as implying permanence, independence, and autonomy. He seeks to reveal the absurd consequences and hence the impossibility of the substantial existence of these categories and factors. Through his critique, he seeks a new understanding of these fundamental tenets of Buddhist philosophy in light of the doctrine of emptiness as set forth in the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ SuTRAs. He does not cite these sutras directly, however, nor does he mention the MAHĀYĀNA, which he extols regularly in other of his works. Instead, he seeks to demonstrate how the central Buddhist doctrine of causation, expressed as dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), necessarily entails emptiness (sunyatā). The understanding of emptiness is essential in order to abandon false views (MITHYĀDṚstI). Nāgārjuna therefore sees his purpose not to reject the standard categories of Buddhist thought but to reinterpret them in such a way that they become conduits for, rather than impediments to, liberation from suffering, in keeping with the Buddha's intent.
mumblage /muhm'bl*j/ The topic of one's mumbling (see {mumble}). "All that mumblage" is used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear how the subject of discussion works, or like "all that crap" when "mumble" is being used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives. [{Jargon File}]
mumblage ::: /muhm'bl*j/ The topic of one's mumbling (see mumble). All that mumblage is used like all that stuff when it is not quite clear how the subject of discussion works, or like all that crap when mumble is being used as an implicit replacement for pejoratives.[Jargon File]
Murphy's Law "humour" (Or "Sod's Law") The correct, *original* Murphy's Law reads: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for {lusers}. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it "THIS WAY UP"; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under {magic smoke}). Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the US Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later. Within months "Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. Most of these are variants on "Anything that can go wrong, will"; this is sometimes referred to as {Finagle's Law}. The memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself! [{Jargon File}] (1998-02-14)
My Favourite Toy Language "jargon, language" (MFTL) Describes a talk on a {programming language} design that is heavy on {syntax} (with lots of {BNF}), sometimes even talks about {semantics} (e.g. {type systems}), but rarely, if ever, has any content (see {content-free}). More broadly applied to talks - even when the topic is not a programming language --- in which the subject matter is gone into in unnecessary and meticulous detail at the sacrifice of any conceptual content. "Well, it was a typical MFTL talk". 2. A language about which the developers are passionate (often to the point of prosyletic zeal) but no one else cares about. Applied to the language by those outside the originating group. "He cornered me about type resolution in his MFTL." The first great goal in the mind of the designer of an MFTL is usually to write a compiler for it, then bootstrap the design away from contamination by lesser languages by writing a compiler for it in itself. Thus, the standard put-down question at an MFTL talk is "Has it been used for anything besides its own compiler?". On the other hand, a language that *cannot* be used to write its own compiler is beneath contempt. {Doug McIlroy} once proposed a test of the generality and utility of a language and the {operating system} under which it is compiled: "Is the output of a {Fortran} program acceptable as input to the Fortran compiler?" In other words, can you write programs that write programs? Alarming numbers of (language, OS) pairs fail this test, particularly when the language is Fortran. Aficionados are quick to point out that {Unix} (even using Fortran) passes it handily. That the test could ever be failed is only surprising to those who have had the good fortune to have worked only under modern systems which lack OS-supported and -imposed "file types". See {break-even point}, {toolsmith}. (1995-03-07)
Myoshinji. (妙心寺). In Japanese, "Sublime Mind Monastery"; an influential ZEN monastery in Kyoto that is currently the headquarters (HONZAN) of the Myoshinji branch of the RINZAISHu. After the eminent Zen master Daito's (see SoHo MYoCHo) death in 1337, Emperor Hanazono (r. 1308-1318) converted his country villa into a monastery, which he named Myoshinji, and installed Daito's disciple KANZAN EGEN as its founding abbot (J. kaisan; C. KAISHAN). During the Muromachi period, Myoshinji was excluded from the powerful GOZAN ranking system and became the subject of harsh persecution during Ashikaga's rule. In the early half of the fifteenth century, the monk Nippo Soshun (1358-1448) oversaw the restoration of Myoshinji, but the monastery was consumed in a conflagration during the onin war (1467-1469). In 1477, with the support of Emperor Gotsuchimikado (r. 1464-1500) the monastery was restored once more under the supervision of its abbot Sekko Soshin (1408-1486). At the decree of Emperor Gokashiwabara (r. 1500-1526), Myoshinji was included in the gozan system and enjoyed the financial support of a high-ranking official monastery. Largely through its tight fiscal management and active proselytizing efforts, Myoshinji expanded quickly to control over fifty branch temples and became one of the most influential monasteries of the Rinzai Zen tradition. During the Edo period, a renowned Zen master of the Myoshinji lineage named HAKUIN EKAKU played an important role in the revitalization of the koan (C. GONG'AN) training system.
Mystes (Greek) [from muo to close the mouth] Plural mystai. An initiate to the first degrees of the Mysteries; the next higher rank being that of the epoptes (seer); and the highest function being that of the hierophantes (teacher or communicator). With the Pythagoreans the neophyte or mystes guarded silence as to what he had learned, and was authorized and empowered to speak or teach only when his mouth had been opened because of attaining the rank of epoptes. This custom has been borrowed by Roman Catholic Cardinals along with the term Mystes: “A word or two may be said of the singular practice of closing and subsequently opening the mouth of a newly created cardinal. Like almost everything else connected with the subject, this form had once a real significance, but has become a mere meaningless formality. Some reasonable time was originally allowed to elapse before the pontiff in one consistory formally pronounced the mouth to be opened which he had declared to be closed in a previous consistory. Now the form of opening is pronounced within a few minutes of the form of closing” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., “Cardinal”).
Mysticism The doctrine that the nature of reality can be known by direct apprehension, by faculties above the senses, by intuition. “Mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire — a union in which the consciousness of self has disappeared, and in which therefore subject and object are one” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. “Mysticism”). It overlaps in meaning such terms as the Neoplatonic ecstasis, and the theosophy of Iamblichus.
Nāgārjuna. (T. Klu sgrub; C. Longshu; J. Ryuju; K. Yongsu 龍樹). Indian Buddhist philosopher traditionally regarded as the founder of the MADHYAMAKA [alt. Mādhyamika] school of MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist philosophy. Very little can be said concerning his life; scholars generally place him in South India during the second century CE. Traditional accounts state that he lived four hundred years after the Buddha's PARINIRVĀnA. Some traditional biographies also state that he lived for six hundred years, apparently attempting to identify him with a later Nāgārjuna known for his tantric writings. Two of the works attributed to Nāgārjuna, the RATNĀVALĪ and the SUHṚLLEKHA, are verses of advice to a king, suggesting that he may have achieved some fame during his lifetime. His birth is "prophesied" in a number of works, including the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA. Other sources indicate that he also served as abbot of a monastery. He appears to have been the teacher of ĀRYADEVA, and his works served as the subject of numerous commentaries in India, East Asia, and Tibet. Although Nāgārjuna is best known in the West for his writings on emptiness (suNYATĀ), especially as set forth in his most famous work, the "Verses on the Middle Way" (MuLAMADHYAMAKAKĀRIKĀ, also known as the MADHYAMAKAsĀSTRA), Nāgārjuna was the author of a number of works (even when questions of attribution are taken into account) on a range of topics, and it is through a broad assessment of these works that an understanding of his thought is best gained. He wrote as a Buddhist monk and as a proponent of the Mahāyāna; in several of his works he defends the Mahāyāna sutras as being BUDDHAVACANA. He compiled an anthology of passages from sixty-eight sutras entitled the "Compendium of Sutras" (SuTRASAMUCCAYA), the majority of which are Mahāyāna sutras; this work provides a useful index for scholars in determining which sutras were extant during his lifetime. Among the Mahāyāna sutras, Nāgārjuna is particularly associated with the "perfection of wisdom" (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ) corpus. According to legend, Nāgārjuna retrieved from the Dragon King's palace at the bottom of the sea the "Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred Thousand Lines" (sATASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA), which the Buddha had entrusted to the undersea king of the NĀGAs for safekeeping. He also composed hymns of praise to the Buddha, such as the CATUḤSTAVA, and expositions of Buddhist ethical practice, such as the Ratnāvalī. (Later exegetes classify his works into a YUKTIKĀYA, or "logical corpus," and a STAVAKĀYA, or "devotional corpus.") Nāgārjuna's works are addressed to a variety of audiences. His philosophical texts are sometimes directed against logicians of non-Buddhist schools, but most often offer a critique of the doctrines and assumptions of Buddhist ABHIDHARMA schools, especially the SARVĀSTIVĀDA. Other works are more general expositions of Buddhist practice, directed sometimes to monastic audiences, sometimes to lay audiences. An overriding theme in his works is the bodhisattva's path to buddhahood, and the merit (PUnYA) and wisdom (PRAJNĀ) that the bodhisattva must accumulate over the course of that path in order to achieve enlightenment. By wisdom here, he means the perfection of wisdom (prajNāpāramitā), declared in the sutras to be the knowledge of emptiness (suNYATĀ). Nāgārjuna is credited with rendering the poetic and sometimes paradoxical declarations concerning emptiness that appear in these and other Mahāyāna sutras into a coherent philosophical system. In his first sermon, the DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA, the Buddha had prescribed a "middle way" between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. Nāgārjuna, citing an early sutra, spoke of a middle way between the extremes of existence and nonexistence, sometimes also referred to as the middle way between the extremes of permanence (sĀsVATĀNTA) and annihilation (UCCHEDĀNTA). For Nāgārjuna, the ignorance (AVIDYĀ) that is the source of all suffering is the belief in SVABHĀVA, a term that literally means "own being" and has been variously rendered as "intrinsic existence" and "self-nature." This belief is the mistaken view that things exist autonomously, independently, and permanently; to hold this belief is to fall into the extreme of permanence. It is equally mistaken, however, to hold that nothing exists; this is the extreme of annihilation. Emptiness, which for Nāgārjuna is the true nature of reality, is not the absence of existence, but the absence of self-existence, viz., the absence of svabhāva. Nāgārjuna devotes his Mulamadhyamakakārikā to a thoroughgoing analysis of a wide range of topics (in twenty-seven chapters and 448 verses), including the Buddha, the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, and NIRVĀnA, to demonstrate that each lacks the autonomy and independence that are mistakenly ascribed to it. His approach generally is to consider the various ways in which a given entity could exist, and then demonstrate that none of these is tenable because of the absurdities that would be entailed thereby, a form of reasoning often described in Western writings as reductio ad absurdum. In the case of something that is regarded to be the effect of a cause, he shows that the effect cannot be produced from itself (because an effect is the product of a cause), from something other than itself (because there must be a link between cause and effect), from something that is both the same as and different from itself (because the former two options are not possible), or from something that is neither the same as nor different from itself (because no such thing exists). This, in his view, is what is meant in the perfection of wisdom sutras when they state that all phenomena are "unproduced" (ANUTPĀDA). The purpose of such an analysis is to destroy misconceptions (VIKALPA) and encourage the abandonment of all views (DṚstI). Nāgārjuna defined emptiness in terms of the doctrine of PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA, or "dependent origination," understood in its more generic sense as the fact that things are not self-arisen, but are produced in dependence on causes and conditions. This definition allows Nāgārjuna to avoid the claim of nihilism, which he addresses directly in his writings and which his followers would confront over the centuries. Nāgārjuna employs the doctrine of the two truths (SATYADVAYA) of ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and conventional truth (SAMVṚTISATYA), explaining that everything that exists is ultimately empty of any intrinsic nature but does exist conventionally. The conventional is the necessary means for understanding the ultimate, and the ultimate makes the conventional possible. As Nāgārjuna wrote, "For whom emptiness is possible, everything is possible."
naivasaMjNānāsaMjNāyatana. (P. nevasaNNānāsaNNāyatana; T. 'du shes med 'du shes med min skye mched; C. feixiang feifeixiang chu; J. hisohihisojo; K. pisang pibisang ch'o 非想非非想處). In Sanskrit, "sphere of neither perception nor nonperception," the fourth and highest of the four levels of the immaterial realm (ĀRuPYADHĀTU) and the fourth of the four immaterial absorptions (ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA). It surpasses the first three levels of the immaterial realm, viz., infinite space (AKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA), infinite consciousness (VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA), and nothingness (ĀKINCANYĀYATANA), respectively. It is a realm of rebirth and a meditative state that is entirely immaterial (viz., there is no physical or material [RuPA] component to existence) in which perception of all mundane things vanishes entirely, but perception itself does not. Beings reborn in this realm are thought to live as long as eighty thousand eons (KALPA). However, as a state of being that is still subject to rebirth, even the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception remains part of SAMSĀRA. Like the other levels of both the subtle-materiality realm (RuPADHĀTU) and the immaterial realm, one is reborn in this state by achieving the specific level of meditative absorption associated with that state in the previous lifetime. One of the most famous and influential expositions on the subject of these immaterial states comes from the VISUDDHIMAGGA of BUDDHAGHOSA, written in the fifth century. Although there are numerous accounts of Buddhist meditators achieving immaterial states of SAMĀDHI, they are also used polemically in Buddhist literature to describe the attainments of non-Buddhist YOGINs, who mistakenly identify these exalted, but still impermanent, states of existence as the permanent liberation from rebirth. See also DHYĀNASAMĀPATTI; DHYĀNOPAPATTI.
narration ::: n. --> The act of telling or relating the particulars of an event; rehearsal; recital.
That which is related; the relation in words or writing of the particulars of any transaction or event, or of any series of transactions or events; story; history.
That part of a discourse which recites the time, manner, or consequences of an action, or simply states the facts connected with the subject.
Native: In astrological terminology, the subject of a celestial figure. (Cf. Figure.)
Naturalistic Observation ::: A research method where the subject(s) is(are) observed without interruption under normal or natural circumstances.
Nature: A highly ambiguous term, of which the following meanings are distinguished by A. O. Lovejoy: The objective as opposed to the subjective. An objective standard for values as opposed to custom, law, convention. The general cosmic order, usually conceived as divinely ordained, in contrast to human deviations from this. That which exists apart from and uninfluenced by man, in contrast with art. The instinctive or spontaneous behavior of man as opposed to the intellective. Various normative meanings are read into these, with the result that the "natural" is held to be better than the "artificial", the "unnatural", the "conventional" or customary, the intellectual or deliberate, the subjective. -- G.B.
New Realism: A school of thought which dates from the beginning of the twentieth century. It began as a movement of reaction against the wide influence of idealistic metaphysics. Whereas the idealists reduce everything to mind, this school reduced mind to everything. For the New Realists Nature is basic and mind is part and parcel of it. How nature was conceived (whether materialistic, neutralistic, etc.) was not the important factor. New Realists differed here among themselves. Their theory of knowledge was strictly monistic, the subject and object are one since there is no fundamental dualism. Two schools of New Realists are recognized:
Nicht-Ich: (Ger. non-ego) Anything which is not the subjective self. Fichte accounted for the not-self in terms of the ontologically posited subjective self. The not-self is the external, outer world opposed to the ego. -- H.H.
nirvāna. (P. nibbāna; T. mya ngan las 'das pa; C. niepan; J. nehan; K. yolban 涅槃). In Sanskrit, "extinction"; the earliest and most common term describing the soteriological goal of the Buddhist path (MĀRGA). Its etymology and meaning have been widely discussed by both traditional exegetes and modern scholars. Nirvāna is commonly interpreted as meaning "blowing out" (from the Sanskrit root √vā, "to blow," plus the prefix nir-, "out"), as "when a flame is blown out by the wind," to use the famous metaphor from the AttHAKAVAGGA, and is thus sometimes glossed as the extinction of the flame of desire (RĀGA) or, more broadly, to the extinction of the "three poisons" (TRIVIsA) or primary afflictions (KLEsA) of greed/sensuality (RĀGA or LOBHA), hatred/aversion (DVEsA), and delusion/ignorance (MOHA). In a more technical sense, nirvāna is interpreted as the cessation of the afflictions (klesa), of the actions (KARMAN) produced by these afflictions, and eventually of the mind and body (NĀMARuPA; SKANDHA) produced by karman, such that rebirth (SAMSĀRA) ceases for the person who has completed the path. In the first sermon after his enlightenment, "Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma" (P. DHAMMACAKKAPPAVATTANASUTTA; S. DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANASuTRA), the Buddha outlines the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS (catvāry āryasatyāni), the third of which was the "truth of cessation" (NIRODHASATYA). This state of the cessation of suffering (DUḤKHA) and its causes (SAMUDAYA) is glossed as nirvāna. In one famous description of nirvāna, the Buddha explained, "There is that plane (ĀYATANA) where there is neither earth, water, fire, nor air [viz., the four MAHĀBHuTA], neither the sphere of infinite space [ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA] ... nor the sphere of neither perception nor nonperception [NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJNĀYATANA], neither this world nor another nor both together, neither the sun nor the moon. Here, O monks, I say that there is no coming or going, no staying, no passing away or arising. It is not something fixed, it moves not on, it is not based on anything. This is indeed the end of suffering." Even though this is a thoroughly negative description of nirvāna, it is important to note that the passage opens with the certitude that "there is that plane...." Whether this state of cessation represents a form of "annihilation" is a question that preoccupied early scholarship on Buddhism. The Buddha described human existence as qualified by various forms of suffering, sought a state that would transcend such suffering, and determined that, in order to put an end to suffering, one must destroy its causes: unwholesome (AKUsALA) actions (karman) and the negative afflictions (klesa) that motivate them. If these causes could be destroyed, they would no longer have any effect, resulting in the cessation of suffering and thus nirvāna. Nirvāna, therefore, was not regarded as a place or state of existence, since by definition that would mean it was part of saMsāra and thus subject to impermanence and suffering. Nirvāna is instead an absence, and it is often described in rigidly apophatic terms, as in the passage above, as if by describing what nirvāna was not, at least some sense of what it is could be conveyed. When the tradition attempts more positive descriptions, nirvāna is sometimes described as deathless (AMṚTA), imperishable (acyuta), uncreated (abhuta), peace (upasama), bliss (SUKHA), etc. The concept of nirvāna may be somewhat more accessible if it is approached soteriologically, as the culmination of the Buddhist path of practice (mārga). At the upper reaches of the path, the adept must pass through three "gates to liberation" (VIMOKsAMUKHA), which mark the transition from the compounded (SAMSKṚTA) realm of saMsāra to the uncompounded (ASAMSKṚTA) realm of nirvāna. In approaching nirvāna, the adept first passes through the gate of emptiness (suNYATĀ), which reveals that nirvāna is empty of anything associated with a sense of self. Next comes the gate of signlessness (ĀNIMITTA), which reveals that nirvāna has nothing by which it may be perceived. Finally comes the gate of wishlessness (APRAnIHITA), meaning that nirvāna can be achieved only when one no longer has any desire for, or attachment to, nirvāna. Exactly what persisted in the state of nirvāna was the subject of considerable discussion over the history of the tradition. The Buddha is said to have realized nirvāna when he achieved enlightenment at the age of thirty-five, thus eradicating the causes of future rebirth. After this experience, however, he continued to live for another forty-five years, and, upon his death, he entered nirvāna, never to be reborn again. Because of this gap between his initial experience of nirvāna and his final PARINIRVĀnA, the scholastic tradition therefore distinguished between two types of nirvāna. The first type is the "nirvāna with remainder" (SOPADHIsEsANIRVĀnA), sometimes interpreted as the "nirvāna associated with the klesas." This is the state of nirvāna achieved prior to death, where the "remainder" refers to the mind and body of this final existence. This is the nirvāna achieved by the Buddha under the BODHI TREE. However, the inertia of the karman that had led to this present life was still operating and would continue to do so until his death. Thus, his mind and body during the remainder of his final lifetime were what was left over after he realized nirvāna. The second type is referred to as the "nirvāna without remainder" (ANUPADHIsEsANIRVĀnA or NIRUPADHIsEsANIRVĀnA), sometimes interpreted as the "nirvāna of the skandhas." This is the nirvāna achieved at death, in which the causes of all future existence have been extinguished, bringing the chain of causation of both the physical form and consciousness to an end and leaving nothing remaining to be reborn. This is also called "final nirvāna" (parinirvāna), and it is what the Buddha achieved at the time of his demise at KUsINAGARĪ. These states were accessible to all adepts who followed the Buddhist path to its conclusion. In the case of the Buddha, some traditions also refer to the third type of nirvāna, the "final nirvāna of the relics" (sarīraparinirvāna), viz., the dissolution of the relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha at a point in the distant future. According to Buddhist eschatology, there will come a time in the far distant future when the teachings of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha will disappear from the world, and his relics will no longer be honored. At that point, the relics that have been enshrined in reliquaries (STuPA) around the world will be released from their shrines and be magically transported to BODHGAYĀ, where they will reassemble into the resplendent body of the Buddha, who will be seated in the lotus posture under the Bodhi tree, emitting rays of light that illuminate ten thousand world systems. The relics will be worshipped by the divinities (DEVA) one last time and then will burst into flames and disappear into the sky. Until that time, the relics of the Buddha are to be regarded as his living presence, infused with all of his marvelous qualities. With the rise of MAHĀYĀNA, the "nirvāna without remainder" came to be disparaged in some texts as excessively quietistic, and the Buddha's passage into parinirvāna was described as simply a display; the Buddha is instead said to be eternal, inhabiting a place that is neither in saMsāra nor nirvāna and that is referred to as the "unlocated nirvāna" (APRATIstHITANIRVĀnA). The MADHYAMAKA philosopher NĀGĀRJUNA declared that there was not the slightest difference between saMsāra and nirvāna, a statement taken to mean that both are equally empty of any intrinsic nature (NIḤSVABHĀVA). Madhyamaka texts also refer to a nirvāna that is "intrinsically extinguished" (PRAKṚTIPARINIRVṚTA); this quiescence that is inherent in all phenomena is a synonym of emptiness (suNYATĀ).
nominative ::: a. --> Giving a name; naming; designating; -- said of that case or form of a noun which stands as the subject of a finite verb. ::: n. --> The nominative case.
Non-ego In European metaphysics, that which is external to or other than the ego; the object as opposed to the subject. Non-ego means both that which has risen above all lower egoities and become universal in its consciousness — in other words a jivanmukta, a monad which has attained mukti or moksha; and that which is beneath the state of egoity in its evolutionary development, in which this egoity has not yet been emanated or brought forth, such as the minerals, plants, and nearly all of the animal. Non-ego, therefore, in another sense corresponds to the term Absolute, that which is freed or above the circumscribing limitations of even egoity, which nevertheless is the abstract self or individual; or paradoxically enough the monad or ego in its jivanmukta form, where the ego becomes one with the surrounding cosmic spirit, while retaining its own individuality.
Objective idealism: A name for that philosophy which is based on the theory that both the subject and the object of knowledge are equally real and equally manifestations of the absolute or ideal. Earlier employed to describe Schelling's philosophy. Used independently by Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) and A. N. Whitehead (1861-) to describe their varieties of realism. Subjective idealism supposes the world to consist of exemplifications of universals which have their being in the mind. Objective idealism supposes the world to consist of exemplifications of universals which have their being independent of the mind. -- J.K.F.
OBJECTIVIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS &
of Annunciation is the subject of innumerable
Of the archaic history of medicine — as of the race — little is to be found. However, echoes of the primitive wisdom have survived, and every country having a literature of its ancient periods has some account of the healing art. The Hindu sacred scriptures — the oldest literature extant — have treatises upon medicine and surgery, showing a profound and intimate knowledge of the subject. This high standard was not maintained when the Vedic writings became misunderstood and mutilated by later commentators. The exclusive Brahmins’ assumption of the right to all knowledge also prevented original thought and research. What writings are available today are of little practical value without the lost key. Even our typically matter-of-fact interpretation of legendary and classical beliefs and customs, and of archaeological findings, overlooks that what is known of ancient medical practice is largely exoteric, symbolic of a deeper teaching than we possess.
of the Jews V, 305.] The subject is illustrated by
Omen [from Latin os mouth, as the voice of a god] As in augury and divination, the laws of correspondences and of the interrelation of all parts of the cosmos imply that it is possible to interpret the invisible and to forecast the future by observing visible signs. The right interpretation of omens demands knowledge and skill, and the subject affords a fertile field for self-deception and quackery. As with astrology, an undue concern with influences tends to subject a person to them; it is advisable to discriminate between what might happen and what must happen.
On the ambiguities of the term, as well as an analysis of one of its meanings as the characteristics of thought shared by some German thinkers from about 1790 to 1830, cf. A. O. Lovejoy, "Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas," Jour. Hist. Ideas (Jan. 1941), which refers also to Lovejoy's now famous articles on the subject. -- I.J.
or three angels. That there may well be seven named angels in Scripture is the subject of a paper
owe ::: v. --> To possess; to have, as the rightful owner; to own.
To have or possess, as something derived or bestowed; to be obliged to ascribe (something to some source); to be indebted or obliged for; as, he owed his wealth to his father; he owed his victory to his lieutenants.
Hence: To have or be under an obigation to restore, pay, or render (something) in return or compensation for something received; to be indebted in the sum of; as, the subject owes allegiance; the
Padma gling pa. (Pema Lingpa) (1450-1521). An esteemed Bhutanese treasure revealer (GTER STON), famous for unearthing treasure in public and responsible for promulgating numerous important religious traditions, including forms of ritual monastic dance ('CHAM). He is counted as the fourth of the so-called five kingly treasure revealers (GTER STON RGYAL PO LNGA) and the last of the five pure incarnations of the royal princess PADMA GSAL. He is also regarded as the mind incarnation of the translator VAIROCANA and an incarnation of KLONG CHEN RAB 'BYAMS. Padma gling pa was born into a humble family of blacksmiths in the Bum thang region of Bhutan and studied the craft from the age of nine. Many examples of Padma gling pa's craftsmanship, in the form of swords and chain mail, still exist. Padma gling pa's life is somewhat unusual in that he did not undertake a traditional course of study with a spiritual master; it is recorded that he once declared, "I have no master and I am not a disciple." Rather, his religious training was achieved almost entirely through visionary revelation. At the age of twenty-six, he had a vision of PADMASAMBHAVA, who bestowed on him a roster of 108 treasure texts that he would unearth in the future. The next year, amid a large public gathering, he made his first treasure discovery at ME 'BAR MTSHO, a wide pool of water in a nearby river. Surrounded by a multitude of people gathered along the riverside, Padma gling pa dove in the waters holding a burning butter lamp in his hand. When he reemerged, he held a great treasure chest under his arm, and, to the crowd's amazement, the lamp in his hand was unextinguished; from that point on the pool was called "Burning Flame Lake." This feat marked the beginning of Padma gling pa's prolific career as treasure revealer and teacher. Between the years 1501 and 1505, he founded his seat at GTAM ZHING monastery in Bum thang. Padma gling pa composed a lengthy autobiography recording many of his activities in great detail. He was a controversial figure in his time (some of the treasure texts he discovered contain condemnations of those who doubted their authenticity), and the historicity of his deeds has been the subject of scholarly critique. However, Padma gling pa remains an important figure in the religious and cultural life of Bhutan, where he is considered both a saint and a national hero. He never received monastic ordination and fathered several sons who continued to transmit Padma gling pa's spiritual lineage, especially at SGANG STENG monastery in central Bhutan. Several incarnation lineages of Padma gling pa were also recognized, such as the gsung sprul ("speech incarnation") based at LHA LUNG Monastery in southern Tibet. Both the sixth DALAI LAMA TSHANGS DBYANGS RGYA MTSHO and the Bhutanese royal family are said to be descendants of Padma gling pa's familial lineage.
Paekp'a Kŭngson. (白坡亘璇) (1767-1852). Korean SoN master of the Choson dynasty, also known as Kusan. Paekp'a was a native of Mujang in present-day North Cholla province. In 1778, he was ordained by a certain Sihon (d.u.) at the nearby monastery of Sonŭnsa. In 1790, he moved from his original residence at the hermitage of Yongmunam on Mt. Ch'o to the Yongwonam on Mt. Pangchang, where he studied under the renowned Hwaom chong (C. HUAYAN ZONG) master, Solp'a Sangon (1707-1791). A year before Sangon passed away, Kŭngson received the full monastic precepts from him. Paekp'a established himself at the famous hermitage of Unmunam and attracted many students. He studied the teachings of the renowned CHAN master XUEFENG YICUN at Mt. Yonggu and acquired the name Paekp'a. In order to practice Son meditation, he returned to Yongmunam and revived POJO CHINUL's Samādhi and PrajNā Society (CHoNGHYE KYoLSA). He subsequently returned to Unmunam to compile his influential treatise Sonmun sugyong ("Hand Mirror of the Son School"), which was later the subject of a famous critique by the Son master CH'OŬI ŬISUN (1786-1866) in his Sonmun sabyon mano ("Prolix Words on Four Distinctive Types in the Son School"). Paekp'a was a staunch promoter of Son, who sought to resolve what he perceived to be a fundamental internal tension within the Son tradition: the radical subitism of the Imje chong (LINJI ZONG), which advocated the simultaneity of sudden awakening (DUNWU) and cultivation (K. tono tonsu; C. dunwu dunxiu), and the more moderate subitism of the Heze zong and POJO CHINUL (1158-1210), which advocated sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation (K. tono chomsu; C. DUNWU JIANXIU). Paekp'a's goal was to demonstrate how the subitist "questioning meditation" (K. kanhwa Son; C. KANHUA CHAN) that became emblematic of both the Linji zong and the Korean Son tradition after Chinul could be reconciled with Korean Buddhism's preferred soteriological schema of moderate subitism. By contrast, Ch'oŭi was more concerned with exploring deeper levels of accommodation between Son practice and Buddhist doctrinal teachings (KYO), by demonstrating the fundamental unity of these two major strands of the religion. Their respective positions set the stage for subsequent debates during the late Choson dynasty over whether Korean Buddhism was an exclusively Son, or a broader ecumenical, tradition, an identity debate that continues into the present day. Kŭngson's many writings also include the Suson kyolsamun, T'aegoamga kwasok, Sikchisol, Ojong kangyo sagi, Sonyo ki, and Chakpop kwigam.
paksadharma. (T. phyogs chos; C. zongfa; J. shuho/shubo; K. chongpop 宗法). In Sanskrit, lit. "property of the position," a term in Buddhist logic that designates one of the qualities of a correct syllogism (PRAYOGA). A syllogism is composed of three parts, the subject (dharmin), the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), and the reason (HETU or LInGA). In the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced," the subject is sound, the property being proved is impermanence, and the reason is "being produced." In order for the syllogism to be correct, three relations must exist among the three components of the syllogism: (1) the reason must be a property (DHARMA) of the subject, also called the "position" (PAKsA); (2) there must be a relationship of pervasion (VYĀPTI) between the reason and the property being proved, such that whatever is the reason is necessarily the property being proved; and (3) there must be a relationship of reverse pervasion between the property and the reason such that whatever is not the property is necessarily not the reason. In the example, the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced" is correct because the reason (being produced) is a quality of the subject (sound), there is pervasion in the sense that whatever is produced is necessarily impermanent, and there is reverse pervasion because whatever is permanent is necessarily not produced. In Tibetan oral debate, the defender of a position is traditionally allowed only three answers to a position stated by the opponent; the position is typically stated in the form of a consequence (PRASAnGA) rather than a syllogism (prayoga), but the mechanics of the statement are the same. The defender may say, "I accept" ('dod), meaning that he agrees that the property being proved is a property of the subject. The defender may say, "There is no pervasion" (ma khyab), meaning that whatever is the reason is not necessarily the property being proved. Or he may say, "The reason is not established" (rtags ma sgrub), meaning that the reason is not in fact a property of the position.
pentacrostic ::: n. --> A set of verses so disposed that the name forming the subject of the acrostic occurs five times -- the whole set of verses being divided into five different parts from top to bottom.
pertinency ::: n. --> The quality or state of being pertinent; justness of relation to the subject or matter in hand; fitness; appositeness; relevancy; suitableness.
pertinent ::: a. --> Belonging or related to the subject or matter in hand; fit or appropriate in any way; adapted to the end proposed; apposite; material; relevant; as, pertinent illustrations or arguments; pertinent evidence.
Regarding; concerning; belonging; pertaining.
Philosophers have in the past been concerned with two questions covered by our definition, though attempts to organize the subject as an autonomous department of philosophy are of recent date. Enquiries into the origin of language (e.g. in Plato's Kratylos) once a favorite subject for speculation, are now out of fashion, both with philosophers and linguists. Enquiries as to the nature of language (as in Descartes, Leibniz, and many others) are, however, still central to all philosophical interest in language. Such questions as "What are the most general characters of symbolism?", "How is 'Language' to be defined?", "What is the essence of language?", "How is communication possible?", "What would be the nature of a perfect language?", are indicative of the varying modulations which this theme receives in the works of contemporaries. Current studies in the philosophy of language can be classified under five hends: Questions of method, relation to other disciplines, etc. Much discussion turns here upon the proposal to establish a science and art of symbolism, variously styled semiotic, semantics or logical syntax, The analysis of meaning. Problems arising here involve attention to those under the next heading. The formulation of general descriptive schemata. Topics of importance here include the identification and analysis of different ways in which language is used, and the definition of men crucial notions as "symbol'', "grammar", "form", "convention", "metaphor", etc. The study of fully formalized language systems or "calculi". An increasingly important and highly technical division which seeks to extend and adapt to all languages the methods first developed in "metamathematics" for the study of mathematical symbolism. Applications to problems in general philosophy. Notably the attempt made to show that necessary propositions are really verbal; or again, the study of the nature of the religious symbol. Advance here awaits more generally acceptable doctrine in the other divisions. References:
PHILOSOPHY Philosophy is limited to physical reality and therefore, physically, all philosophy remains physicalism and, superphysically, subjectivism: speculations without reality content. In order to speak about the superphysical one must have factual knowledge of the superphysical worlds. K 5.38.2
The philosophers have not yet managed to solve the basic problem of existence: trinity; the three equal, inseparable aspects of existence. Ever since the Greek sophists, the whole history of philosophy has been dominated by the subjectivist way of looking at things. K 5.43.21
Placebo Effect ::: The phenomenon in research where the subject’s beliefs about the outcome can significantly effect the outcome without any other intervention.
polygraph ::: n. --> An instrument for multiplying copies of a writing; a manifold writer; a copying machine.
In bibliography, a collection of different works, either by one or several authors.
An instrument for detecting deceptive statements by a subject, by measuring several physiological states of the subject, such as pulse, heartbeat, and sweating. The instrument records these parameters on a strip of paper while the subject is asked questions
Potalaka. (T. Po ta la; C. Butuoluoshan; J. Fudarakusen; K. Pot'araksan 補陀落山). According to the GAndAVYuHASuTRA, a mountain that is the abode of the bodhisattva of compassion, AVALOKITEsVARA. The precise location of the mountain is the subject of considerable speculation. According to XUANZANG, it is located in southern India to the east of the Malaya Mountains. He describes it as a perilous mountain with a lake and a heavenly stone palace at the summit. A river flows from the summit, encircling the mountain twenty times before flowing into the South Sea. Those who seek to meet the bodhisattva scale the mountain, but few succeed. Xuanzang says that the bodhisattva appears to his devotees at the base the mountain in the form of Mahesvara (siva) or an ascetic sadhu covered in ashes. Modern scholarship has speculated that Xuanzang was describing the mountain called Potikai or Potiyil in Tamil Nadu. Other sources place the mountain on an island in the Indian Ocean. In East Asian Buddhism, it is called PUTUOSHAN and is identified as a mountainous island in the Zhoushan Archipelago, about sixty-two miles off the eastern coast of Zhejiang province. When the fifth DALAI LAMA constructed his palace in LHA SA, he named it PO TA LA, after this mountain identified with Avalokitesvara, of whom he is considered the human incarnation.
Practical Theology: A special department of conventional theological study, called "practical" to distinguish it from general theology, Biblical, historical and systematic studies. As the term denotes, subjects which deal with the application of the theoretical phases of the subject come under this division: church policy (ccclesiology), the work of the minister in worship (lituigics and hymnology), in preaching (homiletics), in teaching (catechetics), in pastoral service (poimenics), and in missionary effort (evangelistics). For further discussion see Theological Propaedeutic (9th ed., 1912), Philip Schaff. -- V.F.
praemnire ::: v. t. --> The subject to the penalties of praemunire.
Pramānavārttika. (T. Tshad ma rnam 'grel). In Sanskrit, "Commentary on Valid Knowledge," the most famous work of the great Buddhist logician DHARMAKĪRTI. The "Pramāna" in the title of text is a reference to DIGNĀGA's PRAMĀnASAMUCCAYA; Dharmakīrti's work is ostensibly a commentary on Dignāga's text, although in fact Dharmakīrti's work makes significant refinements in, and occasional departures from, Dignāga's views. The Pramānavārttika is written in verse, with a prose commentary by the author, in four chapters, dealing with inference for oneself (SVĀRTHĀNUMĀNA), the proof of valid knowledge (pramānasiddhi), direct perception (PRATYAKsA), and inference for others (PARĀRTHĀNUMĀNA). The work was the subject of numerous commentaries in India, and later in Tibet, where it was studied by all sects and became one of the "five books" (zhung lnga) that provided the foundation for the DGE LUGS monastic curriculum.
prapaNca. (P. papaNca; T. spros pa; C. xilun; J. keron; K. hŭiron 戲論). In Sanskrit, lit. "diffusion," "expansion"; viz. "conceptualization" or "conceptual proliferation"; the tendency of the process of cognition to proliferate the perspective of the self (ĀTMAN) throughout all of one's sensory experience via the medium of concepts. The locus classicus for describing how sensory perception culminates in conceptual proliferation appears in the Pāli MADHUPIndIKASUTTA. As that scripture explains, any living being will be subject to an impersonal causal process of perception in which consciousness (P. viNNāna; S. VIJNĀNA) occurs conditioned by an internal sense base (INDRIYA) and an external sense object (ĀYATANA); the contact among these three brings about sensory impingement or contact (P. phassa; S. SPARsA), which in turn leads to the sensation (VEDANĀ) of that contact as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. At that point, however, the sense of ego intrudes and this process then becomes an intentional one, whereby what one feels, one perceives (P. saNNā; S. SAMJNĀ); what one perceives, one thinks about (P. vitakka; S. VITARKA); and what one thinks about, one conceptualizes (P. papaNca; S. prapaNca). By allowing oneself to experience sensory objects not as things-in-themselves but as concepts invariably tied to one's own perspective, the perceiving subject then becomes the hapless object of an inexorable process of conceptual subjugation: viz., what one conceptualizes becomes proliferated conceptually (P. papaNcasaNNāsankhā; a term apparently unattested in Sanskrit) throughout all of one's sensory experience. Everything that can be experienced in this world in the past, present, and future is now bound together into a labyrinthine network of concepts, all tied to oneself and projected into the external world as craving (TṚsnĀ), conceit (MĀNA), and wrong views (DṚstI), thus creating bondage to SAMSĀRA. By systematic attention (YONIsOMANASKĀRA) to the impersonal character of sensory experience and through sensory restraint (INDRIYASAMVARA), this tendency to project ego throughout the entirety of the perceptual process is brought to an end. In this state of "conceptual nonproliferation" (P. nippapaNca; S. NIḤPRAPANCA), perception is freed from concepts tinged by this proliferating tendency, allowing one to see the things of this world as impersonal causal products that are inevitably impermanent (ANITYA), suffering (DUḤKHA), and nonself (ANĀTMAN). ¶ The preceding interpretation reflects the specific denotation of the term as explicated in Pāli scriptural materials. In a Mahāyāna context, prapaNca may also connote "elaboration" or "superimposition," especially in the sense of a fanciful, imagined, or superfluous quality that is mistakenly projected on to an object, resulting in its being misperceived. Such projections are described as manifestations of ignorance (AVIDYĀ); reality and the mind that perceives reality are described as being free from prapaNca (NIsPRAPANCA), and the purpose of Buddhist practice in one sense can be described as the recognition and elimination of prapaNca in order to see reality clearly and directly. In the MADHYAMAKA school, the most dangerous type of prapaNca is the presumption of intrinsic existence (SVABHĀVA). In YOGĀCĀRA, prapaNca is synonymous with the "seeds" (BĪJA) that provide the basis for perception and the potentiality for future action. In this school, prapaNca is closely associated with false discrimination (VIKALPA), specifically the bifurcation of perceiving subject and perceived object (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). The goal of practice is said to be a state of mind that is beyond all thought constructions and verbal elaboration. ¶ The precise denotation of prapaNca has been the subject of much perplexity and debate within the Buddhist tradition, which is reflected in the varying translations for the term in Buddhist canonical languages. The standard Chinese rendering xilun means "frivolous debate," which reflects the tendency of prapaNca to complicate meaningful discussion about the true character of sensory cognition. The Tibetan spros ba means something like "extension, elaboration" and reflects the tendency of prapaNca to proliferate a fanciful conception of reality onto the objects of perception.
prasanga. (T. thal 'gyur). In Sanskrit, "consequence"; in Buddhist logic, a statement made to an opponent that uses the opponent's assertions to demonstrate contradictions in the opponent's position. It is not necessary that the person who states the consequence accept the subject, predicate, and reason of the consequence. There is a difference of opinion as to whether the statement of the consequence is sufficient to bring about correct understanding in the opponent or whether an autonomous syllogism (SVATANTRAPRAYOGA) stating the correct position (that is, the position of the person who states the consequence) is also required. This was one of the points of disagreement that led to the designation of the *PRĀSAnGIKA and *SVĀTANTRIKA branches of the MADHYAMAKA school.
pratijNā. (T. dam bca'; C. lizong; J. risshu; K. ipchong 立宗). In Sanskrit, lit., "promise," but used in Buddhist logic (HETUVIDYĀ) to mean "thesis" or "proposition," that is, the position that one is seeking to prove to an opponent. In this sense, it used synonymously with PAKsA and SĀDHYA ("what is to be established"). A thesis is composed of a subject and a predicate; for example, "the mountain is on fire," or "sound is impermanent," with mountain and sound being the subject. There is considerable discussion in Buddhist logic on what constitutes a valid thesis. According to DIGNĀGA, a thesis is a proposition intended by its proponent as something to be stated alone (i.e., without reasons or examples) and whose subject is not contradicted by direct perception (PRATYAKsA), inference (ANUMĀNA), valid authorities (PRAMĀnA), or what is commonly accepted as true. In the works of Dignāga and DHARMAKĪRTI (and their commentators), there is also considerable discussion of whether, in debating with an opponent, one's own thesis needs to be explicitly stated, or whether it can be implied. The term pratijNā is also important in the MADHYAMAKA school, deriving from NĀGĀRJUNA's famous declaration in his VIGRAHAVYĀVARTANĪ that he has no thesis, which became in Tibet one of the most commented upon statements in Madhyamaka literature.
prayoga. (T. sbyor ba; C. jiaxing; J. kegyo; K. kahaeng 加行). In Sanskrit, "application," "preparation," "joining together," "exertion." The term is widely used in soteriological, tantric, and astrological literature. It also functions as a technical term in logic, where it is often translated as "syllogism" and refers to a statement that contains a subject, a predicate, and a reason. A correct syllogism is composed of three parts, the subject (dharmin), the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), and the reason (HETU or LInGA). For example, in the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced," the subject is sound, the property being proved is impermanence, and the reason is being produced. In order for the syllogism to be correct, three relations must exist among the three components of the syllogism: (1) the reason must be a property (DHARMA) of the subject, also called the "position" (PAKsA), (2) there must be a relationship of pervasion (VYĀPTI) between the reason and the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), such that whatever is the reason is necessarily the property being proved, and (3) there must be a relationship of "exclusion" or reverse pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti) between the property being proved and the reason, such that whatever is not the property being proved is necessarily not the reason. ¶ In the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ exegetical tradition based on the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA, prayoga is the word used for the fourth to seventh of the eight ABHISAMAYAs ("clear realizations"). According to Ārya VIMUKTISENA's commentary (Vṛtti), the first three chapters set forth the three knowledges (JNĀNA) as topics to be studied and reflected upon (see sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNĀ, CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ); the next four chapters set forth the practice of those knowledges, viz. the practice of the knowledge of a buddha. This practice is called prayoga. It is primarily at the level of meditation (BHĀVANĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ), and it leads to the SARVĀKĀRAJNATĀ, a buddha's omniscient knowledge of all aspects. The first prayoga is habituation to the perfect realization of all aspects (sarvākārābhisambodha); the second is learning to remain at the summit of the realization (murdhābhisamaya; cf. MuRDHAN); the third is a further habituation to each aspect, one by one (anupurvābhisamaya); and the fourth is the realization of all aspects in one single instant (ekaksanābhisamaya). This is the moment prior to omniscience. This prayoga is first detailed in twenty subtopics beginning with the cryptic statement that the practice is no practice at all; the 173 aspects (ĀKĀRA) that together cover the entire range of a bodhisattva's practice are set forth at all the stages of development, through the paths of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and cultivation (BHĀVANĀMĀRGA) up through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to the purification of the buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) and final instants of the path. Through the first of the four prayogas, the bodhisattva gains mastery over all the aspects; through the second, he abides in the mastery of them; with the third, he goes through each and makes the practice special; and with the fourth, he enters into the state of a buddha. See also PRAYOGAMĀRGA.
Predestination The doctrine that God has foreordained everything; specifically, that God has foreordained what people shall be saved and what damned. Reprobation is used in reference to those foreordained to be damned, and election is used for those who are to be saved. Endless sectarian disputes have prevailed as to whether or not the salvation offered by Christ provides a way of escape from the doom of reprobation; and the eternal dilemma as to free will has never ceased to perplex the minds of theologians. How to permit free will to enter into the picture without derogating from the authority of God, how to attribute plenary power to God without destroying free will; how to find a modus vivendi or ingenious sophism by which the contraries may be reconciled — these matters may be found discussed in theological treatises on the subject.
predicate logic "logic" (Or "predicate calculus") An extension of {propositional logic} with separate symbols for {predicates}, {subjects}, and {quantifiers}. For example, where propositional logic might assign a single symbol P to the proposition "All men are mortal", predicate logic can define the predicate M(x) which asserts that the subject, x, is mortal and bind x with the {universal quantifier} ("For all"): All x . M(x) Higher-order predicate logic allows predicates to be the subjects of other predicates. (2002-05-21)
predicate logic ::: (logic) (Or predicate calculus) An extension of propositional logic with separate symbols for predicates, subjects, and quantifiers.For example, where propositional logic might assign a single symbol P to the proposition All men are mortal, predicate logic can define the predicate M(x) which asserts that the subject, x, is mortal and bind x with the universal quantifier (For all): All x . M(x) Higher-order predicate logic allows predicates to be the subjects of other predicates.(2002-05-21)
Predicate: The four traditional kinds of categorical propositions (see Logic, formal, § 4) are: all S is P, no S is P, some S is P, some S is not P. In each of these the concept denoted by S is the subject and that denoted by P is the predicate.
predicate ::: v. t. --> To assert to belong to something; to affirm (one thing of another); as, to predicate whiteness of snow.
To found; to base.
That which is affirmed or denied of the subject. In these propositions, "Paper is white," "Ink is not white," whiteness is the predicate affirmed of paper and denied of ink.
The word or words in a proposition which express what is affirmed of the subject.
preraphaelitism ::: n. --> The doctrine or practice of a school of modern painters who profess to be followers of the painters before Raphael. Its adherents advocate careful study from nature, delicacy and minuteness of workmanship, and an exalted and delicate conception of the subject.
Probability: In general Chance, possibility, contingency, likelihood, likehness, presumption. conjecture, prediction, forecast, credibility, relevance; the quality or state of being likely true or likely to happen; a fact or a statement which is likely true, real, operative or provable by future events; the conditioning of partial or approximate belief or assent; the motive of a presumption or prediction; the conjunction of reasonable grounds for presuming the truth of a statement or the occurrence of an event; the field of knowledge between complete ignorance and full certitude; an approximation to fact or truth; a qualitative or numerical value attached to a probable inference, and by extension, the systematic study of chances or relative possibilities as forming the subject of the theory of probability. A. The Foundation of Probability. We cannot know everything completely and with certainty. Yet we desire to think and to act as correctly as possible hence the necessity of considering methods leading to reasonable approximations, and of estimating their results in terms of the relative evidence available in each case. In D VI-VII (infra) only, is probability interpreted as a property of events or occurrences as such: whether necessary or contingent, facts are simply conditioned by other facts, and have neither an intelligence nor a will to realize their certainty or their probability. In other views, probability requires ultimately a mind to perceive it as such it arises from the combination of our partial ignorance of the extremely complex nature and conditions of the phenomena, with the inadequacy of our means of observation, experimentation and analysis, however searching and provisionally satisfactory. Thus it may be said that probability exists formally in the mind and materially in the phenomena as related between themselves. In stressing the one or the other of these two aspects, we obtain (1) subjectize probability, when the psychological conditions of the mind cause it to evaluate a fact or statement with fear of possible error; and (2) objective probability, when reference is made to that quality of facts and statements, which causes the mind to estimate them with a conscious possibility of error. Usually, methods can be devised to objectify technically the subjective aspect of probability, such as the rules for the elimination of the personal equation of the inquirer. Hence the methods established for the study and the interpretation of chances can be considered independently of the state of mind as such of the inquirer. These methods make use of rational or empirical elements. In the first case, we are dealing with a priori or theoretical probability, which considers the conditions or occurrences of an event hypothetically and independently of any direct experience. In the second case, we are dealing with inductive or empirical probability. And when these probabilities are represented with numerals or functions to denote measures of likelihood, we are concerned with quantitative or mathematical probability. Methods involving the former cannot be assimilated with methods involving the latter, but both can be logically correlated on the strength of the general principle of explanation, that similar conjunctions of moral or physical facts demand a general law governing and justifying them.
programme ::: n. --> That which is written or printed as a public notice or advertisement; a scheme; a prospectus; especially, a brief outline or explanation of the order to be pursued, or the subjects embraced, in any public exercise, performance, or entertainment; a preliminary sketch.
Psychic or psychical: (Gr. psychikos, from psyche, the soul) (a) In the general sense, psychic is applied to any mental phenomenon. See Psychosis, Mental, (b) In the special sense, psychic is restricted to unusual mental phenomena such as mediumship, telepathy, prescience, etc. which are the subjects of "Psychic Research." See Telepathy, Prescience, Parapsychology. -- L.W.
Psychologists' Fallacy: The confusion of the standpoint of the psychologist with that of the subject upon whose introspective report the psychologist relies. See Wm. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 196. -- L.W.
Psychometry In its scientific sense, the measuring of the time taken by mental processes and sensations; borrowed by Prof. J. R. Buchanan to signify the occult power of receiving from various articles impressions as to their owners or as to events connected with them. It is the seeing or reading with the inner sight of incidents that have taken place in the neighborhood of physical articles. The art has been applied to such objects as fossils, fragments of ancient ruins, and old manuscripts, and the psychometers have been able by touching these articles, putting them to their forehead, etc., to describe ancient civilizations and bygone, forgotten, or unknown pages in human or world history. These phenomena show that material objects retain the impressions of events with which they have been associated, and presumably exert an influence even upon people who do not have psychometric power. This throws light on the subject of talismans, amulets, relics, etc.
Puji. (J. Fujaku; K. Pojok 普寂) (651-739). In Chinese, "Universal Quiescence"; CHAN monk and disciple of SHENXIU (606?-706) in the so-called "Northern School" (BEI ZONG) of the early Chan tradition. In his youth, Puji is said to have studied a wide range of Buddhist scriptures before ordaining at the age of thirty-eight. Soon afterwards, he left to study with Shenxiu at Yuquansi (Jade Spring Monastery) on Mt. Dangyang in Jingzhou. As the best-known disciple of Shenxiu, Puji was one of the subjects of a series of polemical attacks by the HEZE SHENHUI (684-758) beginning in 732. Shenhui denounced Puji and other disciples of Shenxiu as representing a mere collateral branch of BODHIDHARMA's lineage and for promoting what Shenhui called a "gradual" (jian) approach to enlightenment. Shenhui instead promoted a "sudden teaching" (DUNJIAO), which he claimed derived from a so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) founded by HUINENG (638-713), whom Shenhui claimed was the true successor of the fifth patriarch HONGREN (601-74). Later Chan historians such as GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841) came to refer to a "Northern school" (Bei zong) of Chan to describe this lineage of Shenxiu's, to which Puji, Yifu (661-736), and XIANGMO ZANG (d.u.) were said to have belonged.
Quesited: A term applied in horary astrology to the person or thing that is the subject of an inquiry.
rage ::: n. --> Violent excitement; eager passion; extreme vehemence of desire, emotion, or suffering, mastering the will.
Especially, anger accompanied with raving; overmastering wrath; violent anger; fury.
A violent or raging wind.
The subject of eager desire; that which is sought after, or prosecuted, with unreasonable or excessive passion; as, to be all the rage.
Raja yoga ::: This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts th
refore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalinı, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is able in the waking state to acquire directly whatever knowledge and exercise whatever mastery may be useful or necessary to his activities in the objective world. For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 36-37
Rapport: A mystic connection between two individuals; although the rapport is usually sympathetic, it may be antipathic, too. In hypnosis, the relationship between the hypnotist and his subject, in which the subject hears the orders of the hypnotist only and is oblivious to all other events around him.
recall ::: n. 1. The act of remembering; recollecting. v. 2. To summon back to awareness of or concern with the subject or situation at hand. 3. To revoke or withdraw. recalled, recalling.
receiver ::: n. --> One who takes or receives in any manner.
A person appointed, ordinarily by a court, to receive, and hold in trust, money or other property which is the subject of litigation, pending the suit; a person appointed to take charge of the estate and effects of a corporation, and to do other acts necessary to winding up its affairs, in certain cases.
One who takes or buys stolen goods from a thief, knowing them to be stolen.
Reduplicatively: (in Schol.) a term is taken reduplicatively or there is reduplication when to a term there is added as, just as, as though, inasmuch as, or some similar expression, either in order to double the same term, or in ordei to add another so as to indicate the meaning in which the first term is to be taken, or so as to indicate a reason why the predicate belongs to the subject. E.g. animal as animal cannot reason; Christ as man has suffered; Paul as a priest is worthy of honor. -- H.G.
reigen. (驗). In Japanese, lit. "numinous verification," a term used to refer to the miraculous efficacy of a prayer, vow, or religious praxis. The benefits are often understood as the result of the "sympathetic resonance" (C. GANYING) between buddhas and/or deities who are the objects of the prayer and the subject who engages in prayer. The term can also refer to the miraculous power and virtue of the buddhas and deities to respond to the prayers of people.
relative ::: a. --> Having relation or reference; referring; respecting; standing in connection; pertaining; as, arguments not relative to the subject.
Arising from relation; resulting from connection with, or reference to, something else; not absolute.
Indicating or expressing relation; refering to an antecedent; as, a relative pronoun.
Characterizing or pertaining to chords and keys, which,
"Religion in fact is not knowledge, but a faith and aspiration; it is justified indeed both by an imprecise intuitive knowledge of large spiritual truths and by the subjective experience of souls that have risen beyond the ordinary life, but in itself it only gives us the hope and faith by which we may be induced to aspire to the intimate possession of the hidden tracts and larger realities of the Spirit. That we turn always the few distinct truths and the symbols or the particular discipline of a religion into hard and fast dogmas, is a sign that as yet we are only infants in the spiritual knowledge and are yet far from the science of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga*
“Religion in fact is not knowledge, but a faith and aspiration; it is justified indeed both by an imprecise intuitive knowledge of large spiritual truths and by the subjective experience of souls that have risen beyond the ordinary life, but in itself it only gives us the hope and faith by which we may be induced to aspire to the intimate possession of the hidden tracts and larger realities of the Spirit. That we turn always the few distinct truths and the symbols or the particular discipline of a religion into hard and fast dogmas, is a sign that as yet we are only infants in the spiritual knowledge and are yet far from the science of the Infinite.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Repentance ::: A term used especially in protestant Christianity to indicate the subjective state of sorrow and concern over sin, on the way to salvation.
restructuring ::: The transformation from one representation form to another at the same relative abstraction level, while preserving the subject system's external behaviour (functionality and semantics).
restructuring The transformation from one representation form to another at the same relative abstraction level, while preserving the subject system's external behaviour (functionality and semantics).
reticence ::: n. --> The quality or state of being reticent, or keeping silence; the state of holding one&
Reversal Design ::: Any single subject design that includes the removal of treatment to determine if the subject reverts to baseline (ex. ABA, ABAB)
rnam thar. (namtar). In Tibetan, "complete liberation," translating the Sanskrit VIMOKsA. In the Tibetan context, rnam thar refers to a widespread literary genre of sacred biography or autobiography. As its translation suggests, the term usually indicates an emphasis on the stereotypically Buddhist aspects of the subject's life, including his or her religious training, practice of meditation, and eventual liberation. Such works often incorporate elements of the fabulous and the fantastic and have parallels with the genre of hagiography. Three types of rnam thar are often enumerated: the "outer autobiography" (phyi'i rnam thar), which narrates the important events of daily life, including travels and meetings with prominent persons; the "inner autobiography" (nang gi rnam thar), which describes religious teachings received and relationships with teachers and disciples; and the "secret autobiography" (GSANG BA'I RNAM THAR), which describes religious experiences, with the author often writing from the perspective of a transcendental subject.
sādhyadharma. (T. sgrub bya'i chos; C. suoli/suochengli; J. shoryu/shojoryu; K. sorip/sosongnip 所立/所成立). In Sanskrit, the "property being proven," a term in Buddhist logic that designates one of the elements of a correct syllogism or proof (PRAYOGA) leading to inference (ANUMĀNA). A syllogism is composed of three parts, the subject (dharmin), the property being proved (sādhyadharma), and the reason (HETU or LInGA). It is called sādhyadharma because the sādhya ("what is being proved") must be a dharma ("property") of the logical subject. For example, in the syllogism, "Sound is impermanent because of being produced," the subject is sound, the property being proved is impermanence, and the reason is being produced. In order for the syllogism to be correct, three relations must exist among the three components of the syllogism: (1) the reason must be a property (DHARMA) of the subject, also called the "position" (PAKsA), (2) there must be a relationship of pervasion (VYĀPTI) between the reason and the property being proved, such that whatever is the reason is necessarily the property being proved, and (3) there must be a relationship of "exclusion" or reverse pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti) between the property being proved and the reason such that whatever is not the property being proved is necessarily not the reason. In the example, the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced," is correct because the reason (being produced) is a quality of the subject (sound), there is pervasion because whatever is produced is necessarily impermanent, and there is reverse pervasion because whatever is not impermanent is necessarily not produced. See ANUMĀNA; LInGA.
samānapratibhāsadharmin. (T. chos can mthun snang). In Sanskrit, lit. "subject that appears the same" or "commonly appearing subject," a term in Buddhist logic, particularly important in Tibetan Buddhism. This term refers to the common basis (T. gzhi mthun) that must be present in order for a reasonable and constructive debate to occur. In other words, if adherents of two different doctrinal systems try to debate, but employ only terms and ideas that are unique to their own systems, then no position can be effectively proven or refuted. Furthermore, the participants in a debate must have a common understanding of the subject that is being debated and a shared understanding of what constitutes a logical example. This term is also understood to mean that the participants in a debate must understand the scripture on which the debate is based. Some Buddhist philosophers, such as Jayānanda, refuted the notion that debate or inference (ANUMĀNA) was in any way constructive on the following general grounds: to the enlightened mind, all phenomena are devoid of substance or definition and therefore no phenomenon can serve as a samānapratibhāsadharmin. This is a central issue in MADHYAMAKA, where the proponent of emptiness (suNYATĀ) rejects the notion of anything that possesses its own nature (SVABHĀVA). This raises the question of whether there is a commonly appearing subject in a debate between a Madhyamaka and non-Madhyamaka; if there is, to what degree is the appearance "common"; and how does the Madhyamaka present his position under such circumstances.
samathavipasyanā. (P. samathavipassanā; T. zhi gnas lhag mthong; C. zhiguan; J. shikan; K. chigwan 止觀). In Sanskrit, "calmness and insight," a term used to describe a meditative state that combines the clarity and stability of sAMATHA with the understanding of the nature of reality associated with VIPAsYANĀ. In Indian sĀSTRA literature, vipasyanā is defined as insight into reality that is conjoined with samatha and induced by analytical meditation. Thus, true vipasyanā includes samatha. The combination of samatha and vipasyanā marks the attainment of the wisdom arisen from reflection (CINTĀMAYĪPRAJNĀ); and the combination of the two with emptiness (suNYATĀ) as their object marks the beginning of the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA). In YOGĀCĀRA accounts, as in the YOGĀCĀRABHuMI and the ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA, the four concentrations (DHYĀNA) and attainments (SAMĀPATTI) are said to have two parts: a fundamental state (maula), which is samatha, and a neighboring part that is preparatory to that fundamental state (SĀMANTAKA), which is vipasyanā; this explanation suggests the vital interconnection between these two terms. Samatha and vipassanā are known in Pāli, but chiefly in a later stratum of the suttas and in commentarial literature. The terms are also important in Chinese Buddhism, serving for example as the subject of the magnum opus of TIANTAI ZHIYI, the MOHE ZHIGUAN, or the "Great Calmness and Insight."
Sammohavinodanī. In Pāli, "The Dispeller of Delusion," a commentary by the influential Pāli scholar BUDDHAGHOSA on the VIBHAnGA, the second book of the Pāli ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA. This work covers much of the same material found in Buddhaghosa's VISUDDHIMAGGA, which is thought to be the earlier of the two works. In his introduction to Sammohavinodanī, Buddhaghosa claims to have drawn his analysis from more ancient commentaries. The work is divided into eighteen sections, beginning with an exposition on the five aggregates (P. khandha, S. SKANDHA). Each subsequent section covers a different element of the Vibhanga's content, including analyses of the sense spheres (ĀYATANA), elements (DHĀTU), stages of meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA), the path (P. magga, S. MĀRGA), rules of training (P. sikkhāpada, S. sIKsĀPADA), and so on. This commentary is particularly well known for its analysis of conditioned origination (P. paticcasamuppāda, S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), which offers perhaps the most detailed examination of this doctrine found in the Pāli abhidhamma; there, Buddhaghosa represents the entire chain of causes and effects as occurring in both an entire lifetime as well as in single moment of consciousness. The Sammohavinodanī itself became the subject of extensive exegesis in the Pāli tradition.
samrajya ::: outward empire, "the control by the subjective conscioussamrajya ness of its outer activities and environment".
sanfen kejing. (J. sanbunkakyo; K. sambun kwagyong 三分科經). In Chinese, "threefold division of a scripture," an exegetical technique developed by the pioneering scholiast and cataloguer DAO'AN (312-385) to analyze a specific SuTRA's narrative structure. Dao'an's scriptural commentaries posited the following three major sections that were common to all sutras: (1) the prefatory setting (C. xufen; S. nidāna), which specifies the time and place where the sutra was delivered; (2) the "text proper" (zhengzongfen), viz., the main body of the sutra, which relates the doctrines and practices that were the subject of the discourse; and (3) the "dissemination section" (liutongfen; S. parīndanā), which describes the confidence and insight the scripture inspired in its audience. This schema was frequently employed in subsequent scriptural exegesis of most of the major scholastic schools of East Asian Buddhism and is still widely used even today. See also NETTIPPAKARAnA; PEtAKOPADESA; VYĀKHYĀYUKTI; WUZHONG XUANYI.
sarvākārajNatā. (T. rnam pa thams cad mkhyen pa; C. yiqiezhong zhi; J. issaishuchi; K. ilch'ejong chi 一切種智). In Sanskrit, "knowledge of all aspects," the preferred term in the ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA and its commentaries for the omniscience of a buddha, which simultaneously perceives all phenomena in the universe and their final nature. When explained from the perspective of the goal that bodhisattvas will reach, the knowledge of all aspects is indicated by ten dharmas, among which are cittotpāda (cf. BODHICITTOTPĀDA), defining all the stages of all the Buddhist paths; AVAVĀDA, defining all the instructions relevant to those stages, the stages leading to the elimination of the subject-object conceptualization (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA) along the entire range of accomplishments up to and including the state of enlightenment itself (see also NIRVEDHABHĀGĪYA); the substratum (GOTRA), objective supports (ĀLAMBANA) and aims (uddesa) of the practice; and the practices (PRATIPATTI) incorporating the full range of skillful means (UPĀYAKAUsALYA) necessary to turn the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) in all its variety. When described from the perspective of the bodhisattva's practice that leads to it, sarvākārajNatā has 173 aspects: twenty-seven aspects of a sRĀVAKA's knowledge of the four noble truths (SARVAJNATĀ), thirty-six aspects of a BODHISATTVA's knowledge of paths (MĀRGAJNATĀ) and one hundred ten aspects that are unique to a buddha. These are again set forth as the thirty-seven aspects of all-knowledge, thirty-four aspects of the knowledge of the paths, and the thirty-nine aspects of the knowledge of all aspects itself. See also ĀKĀRA.
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775-1854) Founder of the philosophy of identity which holds that subject and object coincide in the Absolute, a state to be realized in intellectual intuition. Deeply involved in romanticism, Schelling's philosophy of nature culminates in a transcendental idealism where nature and spirit are linked in a series of developments by unfolding powers or potencies, together forming one great organism in which nature is dynamic visible spirit and spirit invisible nature. Freedom and necessity are different refractions of the same reality. Supplementing science -- which deals with matter as extinguished spirit and endeavors to rise from nature to intelligence -- philosophy investigates the development of spirit, theoretically practically, and artistically, converts the subjective into the objective, and shows how the world soul or living principle animates the whole. Schelling's monism recognizes nature and spirit as real and ideal poles respectively, the latter being the positive one. It is pantheistic and aesthetic in that it allows the world process to create with free necessity unconsciously at first in the manner of an artist. Art is perfect union of freedom and necessity, beauty reflects the infinite in the finite. History is the progressive revelation of the Absolute. The ultimate thinking of Schelling headed toward mysticism in which man, his personality expanded into the infinite, becomes absorbed into the absolute self, free from necessity, contingency, consciousness, and personality. Sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols. (1856, re-edited 1927). Cf. Kuno Fischer, Schellings Leben, Werke und Lehre; E. Brehier, Schelling, 1912; V. Jankelevitch, L'Odysee de la conscience dans la derniere philosophie de Schelling, 1933. -- K.F.L.
Schindler, Oskar ::: (1908-1974) Sudeten businessman and protector of Jews during the Holocaust. Oskar Shindler was the subject of an acclaimed film by Steven Spielberg and book by Thomas Kneally. In 1939, Oskar Schindler in the wake of the German invasion went to Poland looking for business opportunities. In Cracow he took over a Jewish firm which manufactured enamel kitchenware products. Schindler employed mainly Jewish workers at his factory protecting them from deportations.
Science ::: A process through which knowledge is acquired. The scientific method conventionally begins with an observation and proceeds to formulate a hypothesis. From there a sound experiment is designed with appropriate variables to study and controls set to try to narrow the focus to the variable of study (i.e. whether the independent variable is causing a change in the dependent variable). If the results of the experiment align with the hypothesis then further experiments are designed and peer-reviewed to ensure validity. If the results do not align then the hypothesis may need to be reworked. This is a simplification of the process but is the primary method of knowledge acquisition in society today. Unfortunately the mental state of the experimenters and the subjects cannot be controlled adequately and there needs to be a rethinking of this method to truly understand and decipher the mystery of consciousness. The process of meditation is used to decipher the factors that give rise to conscious experience.
self ::: a. --> Same; particular; very; identical. ::: n. --> The individual as the object of his own reflective consciousness; the man viewed by his own cognition as the subject of all his mental phenomena, the agent in his own activities, the subject of his own feelings, and the possessor of capacities and character; a
Self-Concept ::: The subjective perception of the self.
Self-consciousness Awareness of oneself as the experiencer, attribution of one’s experiences to an ego, consciousness of being a separate individual; whereas consciousness in the abstract is merely awareness of the experience. Animals and very young children are conscious, man is self-conscious; yet the adult, when engrossed in an experience, may lose his self-consciousness for a while. But even man is only partially self-conscious, because he can contemplate only part of his being; that in him which is now the contemplator may become part of what is contemplated. As the subject, the knower, shifts upwards and inwards, so to speak, more and more of the vestures pass into the category of objects or what is known. The Unknown manifests the universe in order to attain full self-consciousness; and in man, the microcosm, an unself-conscious spark of divinity passes through stages of evolution and experience in order to achieve relatively full self-consciousness. The potentiality of self-consciousness, however, is in every atom. In order to become self-conscious, spirit must pass through every cycle of cosmic being, until every ego has attained full self-consciousness as a human being or equivalent entity. Man’s self-consciousness depends on his triple nature; it is man who is the separator of the One into various contrasted aspects.
seljukian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Seljuk, a Tartar chief who embraced Mohammedanism, and began the subjection of Western Asia to that faith and rule; of or pertaining to the dynasty founded by him, or the empire maintained by his descendants from the 10th to the 13th century.
SENSE Objective consciousness, the apprehension by consciousness of objective material reality in all worlds. K 1.17.2
Sense is direct, immediate, unreflective experience of reality. The attempt of the subjectivists to explain this psychologically is illogical and misleading, a confusion of logical and psychological problems... After testing, sense is always proved right. Our mistakes begin with doubting the correctness of sense, with incorrect working up by reason, with hypotheses and other kinds of guesswork. K 5.25.10
Physical sense is the ability of apprehending objectively the objective material realities in the &
Seventy-seven poems attributed to Taliesin come down, supposedly from the 6th century, though critics maintain that they are forgeries of the 12th or 13th. But the poetry of the later centuries is exceedingly different from the poetry of the Cynfeirdd — Talesin, Myrddin Gwyllt, Llywarch Hen, and Aneurin — said to have lived in the 6th century. Of these four, the first two are mystical and Druidical. The verse forms are simple, the rhythm is lofty: the thought, when it is apparent — for the language is exceedingly archaic and difficult — is in the grand manner. Twelfth and 13th century poetry on the other hand is ultra-tortuous in form — the extreme old age of a literature, when thought and inspiration are gone, and only delight in curious form remains — while the subject matter is practically always the Bard’s praise of his chieftain. Purely literary criticism would most certainly place the Cynfeirdd many centuries earlier than the 12th century poets.
Shenxiu. (J. Jinshu; K. Sinsu 神秀) (606?-706). Chinese CHAN master of the Tang dynasty and putative founder of the "Northern school" (BEI ZONG) of early Chan Buddhism. Shenxiu was a native of Kaifeng in present-day Henan province. As an extraordinarily tall man with well-defined features, Shenxiu is said to have had a commanding presence. In 625, Shenxiu was ordained at the monastery of Tiangongsi in Luoyang, but little is known of his activities in the first two decades following his ordination. In 651, Shenxiu became a disciple of HONGREN (601-674), cofounder of the East Mountain Teachings (DONGSHAN FAMEN) and the monk later recognized as the fifth patriarch of the Chan school; indeed, by many early accounts, such as the CHUAN FABAO JI and LENGQIE SHIZI JI, Shenxiu became Hongren's legitimate successor. According to the famous story in the LIUZU TANJING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"), however, Shenxiu lost a verse-writing contest to the unlettered HUINENG (638-713), whom Hongren then in secret sanctioned as the sixth patriarch. However, it is unclear how long Shenxiu studied with Hongren. One source states that it was for a period of six years, in which case he would have left Hongren's monastery long before Huineng's arrival, making the famous poetry contest impossible. Regardless of the date of his departure, Shenxiu eventually left Hongren's monastery for Mt. Dangyang in Jingzhou (present-day Hubei province), where he remained for over twenty years and attracted many disciples. Shenxiu and his disciples were the subjects of a polemical attack by HEZE SHENHUI (684-758), who disparaged Shenxiu as representing a mere collateral branch of BODHIDHARMA's lineage and for promoting what Shenhui called a "gradual" (jian) approach to enlightenment. Shenhui instead promoted a "sudden teaching" (DUNJIAO), which he claimed derived from a so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) founded by Huineng, another (and relatively obscure) disciple of Hongren, whom Shenhui claimed was Hongren's authentic successor and the true sixth patriarch (LIUZU). Later Chan historians such as GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841) began to use the designation "Northern school" (Bei zong) to describe the lineage of Shenxiu and his disciples YIFU (661-736), PUJI (651-739), and XIANGMO ZANG (d.u.). While Shenhui's characterization of Shenxiu and his supposed "gradualism" is now known to be misleading, subsequent histories of the Chan tradition (see CHUANDENG LU) more or less adopted Shenhui's vision of early Chan; thus Huineng, rather than Shenxiu, comes to be considered the bearer of the orthodox Chan transmission. As one mark of Shenxiu's high standing within the Chan tradition of his time, in 700, Shenxiu was invited to the imperial palace by Empress WU ZETIAN, where the empress prostrated herself before the nonagenarian monk. She was so impressed with the aged Chan master that she decided to build him a new monastery on Mt. Dangyang named Dumensi. She also gave him the title of state preceptor (GUOSHI). Upon his death, he was given a state funeral. He is one of only three Buddhist monks whose biography is included in the Tang shi ("Tang Annals"). This is clearly not the profile of an imposter within the Chan lineage. Shenxiu's teachings are known to have focused on the transcendence of thoughts (linian) and the five expedient means (fangbian; S. UPĀYA); these teachings appear in "Northern school" treatises discovered at Dunhuang, such as the YUANMING LUN, Guanxin lun, and DASHENG WUSHENG FANGBIAN MEN. Shenxiu was an expert on the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA, a text favored by Hongren and the early Chan tradition, and is also thought to have written a substantial commentary on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. Despite the uncomplimentary portrayal of the "Northern school" in mainstream Chan materials, it is now recognized that Shenxiu and his disciples actually played a much more important role in the early growth and development of the Chan school than the mature tradition acknowledged.
Siming shiyi shu. (J. Shimei jugisho; K. Samyong sibŭi so 四明十義書). In Chinese, "Siming's Letters on Ten Issues"; a collection of letters compiled by the TIANTAI monk SIMING ZHILI (960-1028) and edited together in 1006. The Siming shiyi shu is a valuable source of information on the SHANJIA SHANWAI, or "Home-Mountain/Off-Mountain," debate within the Song-dynasty Tiantai school. Two recensions of TIANTAI ZHIYI's commentary on the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA, an expanded and an abridged version, were known to have circulated during the late Tang and early Five Dynasties period. Zhili and the Shanjia faction, which later came to define Tiantai orthodoxy, defended the expanded recension when the monk Ciguang Wu'en (912-986) and others of the so-called Shanwai faction began questioning the authenticity of certain of its passages, particularly the ten modes of contemplation found in the text. The Siming shiyi shu speaks of Zhiyi's teachings on contemplation in ten general points: (1) not discerning the subject of contemplation, (2) not discerning the object of contemplation, (3) not distinguishing between inside and outside, (4) not constructing the duality of principle and phenomena, (5) not elucidating the workings of contemplation, (6) not lingering on the difficulties of the mind, (7) not knowing the levels of contemplation, (8) not collecting the meanings of contemplation, (9) not being skilled at collecting passages, (10) not being skilled at studying principle.
Skandhas (Sanskrit) Skandha-s Bundles, groups of various attributes forming the compound constitution of the human being. They are the manifested qualities and attributes forming the human being on all six planes of Being, beneath the spiritual monad or atma-buddhi, making up the totality of the subjective and objective person. They have to do with everything that is finite in the human being, and are therefore inapplicable to the relatively eternal and absolute. Every vibration of whatever kind, mental, emotional, or physical, that an individual has undergone or made, is derivative of and from one of the skandhas composing his constitution. Skandhas are the elements of limited existence. The five skandhas of every human being are: rupa (form), the material properties or attributes; vedana (sensations, perceptions); sanjna (consciousness, abstract ideas); sanskara (action), tendencies both physical and mental; vijnana (knowledge), mental and moral predispositions. Two further, unnamed skandhas “are connected with, and productive of Sakkayaditthi, the ‘heresy or delusion of individuality’ and of Attavada ‘the doctrine of Self,’ both of which (in the case of the fifth principle the soul) lead to the maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers and intercession”; “The ‘old being’ is the sole parent — father and mother at once — of the ‘new being.’ It is the former who is the creator and fashioner, of the latter, in reality; and far more so in plain truth, than any father in flesh. And once that you have well mastered the meaning of Skandhas you will see what I mean” (ML 111). The human skandhas are the causal activities which by their action and interaction attract the reincarnating ego back to earth-life. The exoteric skandhas have to do with objective man; the esoteric with inner and subjective man.
Sketchpad ::: A program that allowed users to draw on a screen with a light pen. It supported constraints (e.g. drawing a constrained ellipse produced a circle). It also had some computer aided design features (e.g. computing loads on beams).Sketchpad was the subject of Ivan E. Sutherland's 1963 MIT PhD thesis, which opened the field of computer graphics. It was the progenitor of computer drawing packages like MacDraw or Adobe Illustrator. There is a film of Sketchpad in action.It solved constraints using value inference and introduced the ring list structure.[Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, I.e. Sutherland, MIT Lincoln Lab, TR 296 (Jan 1963)].[Sammet 1969, p. 678]. (1995-02-14)
Sketchpad A program that allowed users to draw on a screen with a {light pen}. It supported constraints (e.g. drawing a constrained ellipse produced a circle). It also had some {computer aided design} features (e.g. computing loads on beams). Sketchpad was the subject of {Ivan E. Sutherland}'s 1963 {MIT} PhD thesis, which opened the field of {computer graphics}. It was the progenitor of computer drawing packages like {MacDraw} or {Adobe Illustrator}. There is a film of Sketchpad in action. It solved {constraints} using {value inference} and introduced the "{ring}" list structure. ["Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System", I.e. Sutherland, MIT Lincoln Lab, TR 296 (Jan 1963)]. [Sammet 1969, p. 678]. (1995-02-14)
slavery ::: the subjection of a person to another person, esp. in being forced into work; bondage.
sorites ::: n. --> An abridged form of stating of syllogisms in a series of propositions so arranged that the predicate of each one that precedes forms the subject of each one that follows, and the conclusion unites the subject of the first proposition with the predicate of the last proposition
sort 1. "application, algorithm" To arrange a collection of items in some specified order. The items - {records} in a file or data structures in memory - consist of one or more {fields} or members. One of these fields is designated as the "sort key" which means the records will be ordered according to the value of that field. Sometimes a sequence of key fields is specified such that if all earlier keys are equal then the later keys will be compared. Within each field some ordering is imposed, e.g. ascending or descending numerical, {lexical ordering}, or date. Sorting is the subject of a great deal of study since it is a common operation which can consume a lot of computer time. There are many well-known sorting {algorithms} with different time and space behaviour and programming {complexity}. Examples are {quicksort}, {insertion sort}, {bubble sort}, {heap sort}, and {tree sort}. These employ many different data structures to store sorted data, such as {arrays}, {linked lists}, and {binary trees}. 2. "tool" The {Unix} utility program for sorting lines of files. {Unix manual page}: sort(1). (1997-02-12)
sort ::: 1. (application, algorithm) To arrange a collection of items in some specified order. The items - records in a file or data structures in memory - some ordering is imposed, e.g. ascending or descending numerical, lexical ordering, or date.Sorting is the subject of a great deal of study since it is a common operation which can consume a lot of computer time. There are many well-known sorting algorithms with different time and space behaviour and programming complexity.Examples are quicksort, insertion sort, bubble sort, heap sort, and tree sort. These employ many different data structures to store sorted data, such as arrays, linked lists, and binary trees.2. (tool) The Unix utility program for sorting lines of files.Unix manual page: sort(1). (1997-02-12)
..[Spiritual planes above the normal range of Mind, the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind] of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a
reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind’s transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrateswith the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 981-982
spoiler ::: 1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense when reading the book or watching the movie.2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle, thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct answer (see also interesting). Either sense readily forms compounds like total spoiler, quasi-spoiler and even pseudo-spoiler.By convention, Usenet news articles which are spoilers in either sense should contain the word spoiler in the Subject: line, or guarantee via various tricks that the answer appears only after several screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via rot13, or some combination of these techniques.[Jargon File] (1995-01-18)
spoiler 1. A remark which reveals important plot elements from books or movies, thus denying the reader (of the article) the proper suspense when reading the book or watching the movie. 2. Any remark which telegraphs the solution of a problem or puzzle, thus denying the reader the pleasure of working out the correct answer (see also {interesting}). Either sense readily forms compounds like "total spoiler", "quasi-spoiler" and even "pseudo-spoiler". By convention, {Usenet} news articles which are spoilers in either sense should contain the word "spoiler" in the Subject: line, or guarantee via various tricks that the answer appears only after several screens-full of warning, or conceal the sensitive information via {rot13}, or some combination of these techniques. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-18)
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . thought in itself, in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception, a cognitive seizing of the object or of some truth of things which is a powerful but still a minor and secondary result of spiritual vision, a comparatively external and superficial regard of the self upon the self, the subject upon itself or something of itself as object.” *The Life Divine
Statement: See Meaning, Kinds of, 1. Statistics: The systematic study of quantitative facts, numerical data, comparative materials, obtained through description and interpretation of group phenomena. The method of using and interpreting processes of classification, enumeration, measurement and evaluation of group phenomena. In a restricted sense, the materials, facts or data referring to group phenomena and forming the subject of systematic computation and interpretation. The Ground of Statistics. Statistics have developed from a specialized application of the inductive principle which concludes from the characteristics of a large number of parts to those of the whole. When we make generalizations from empirical data, we are never certain of having expressed adequately the laws connecting all the relevant and efficient factors in the case under investigation. Not only have we to take into account the personal equation involved and the imperfection of our instru ments of observation and measurement, but also the complex character of physical, biological, psychological and social phenomena which cannot be subjected to an exhaustive analysis. Statistics reveals precisely definite trends and frequencies subject to approximate laws, in these various fields in which phenomena result from many independently varying factors and involve a multitude of numerical units of variable character. Statistics differs fiom probability insofar as it makes a more consistent use of empirical data objectively considered, and of methods directly inspired by the treatment of these data.
statistics "statistics, mathematics" The practice, study or result of the application of mathematical {functions} to collections of {data} in order to summarise or {extrapolate} that data. The subject of statistics can be divided into descriptive statistics - describing data, and analytical statistics - drawing conclusions from data. (1997-07-16)
statistics ::: (statistics, mathematics) The practice, study or result of the application of mathematical functions to collections of data in order to summarise or extrapolate that data.The subject of statistics can be divided into descriptive statistics - describing data, and analytical statistics - drawing conclusions from data. (1997-07-16)
story ::: v. t. --> A set of rooms on the same floor or level; a floor, or the space between two floors. Also, a horizontal division of a building&
Strictly speaking, there are no contraries in the category of substance, since substances are the subject of contraries, nor in the category of quantity, since these are relative. Two contrary states cannot obtain in one and the same individual at the same time and in the same respect; cf. contradiction. Some contraries, e.g. good-bad, black-white, have intermediaries; while others do not, e.g. odd-even. (ii) Propositions: Two universal propositions, having opposite quality (i.e. one affirmative and one negative) are contrary; De Interpretattone, 17b-4, See Logic, formal § 4, 8.
studied ::: a. --> Closely examined; read with diligence and attention; made the subject of study; well considered; as, a studied lesson.
Well versed in any branch of learning; qualified by study; learned; as, a man well studied in geometry.
Premeditated; planned; designed; as, a studied insult.
Intent; inclined. ::: imp. & p. p.
SUB-CONSCIOUS—That which pertains to the real nature or essence of a person or thing; proceeding from or taking place within the subject, as opposed to the objective. Thus sensation is subconscious, while perception is an objective experience.
Subjective idealism denies the existence of objective reality altogether, except perhaps as illusory, as for instance in the views of Berkeley. Objective idealism, such as the system of Schelling, recognizes the existence of objective worlds while regarding the ideal world as the primary production and paramount: the external world has a relative and temporary or mayavi reality. This latter view is the only strictly logical one; for if we annihilate the object, we must thereby annihilate the subject also, these two terms having no meaning except relatively to each other. In any theory of knowledge, there must be knower and thing known; and the latter is objective to the former. Absolute idealism logically is as unthinkable as is absolute materialism. See also MAYA
Subjective_probability ::: is a type of probability derived from an individual's personal judgment about whether a specific outcome is likely to occur. It contains no formal calculations and only reflects the subject's opinions and past experience. Subjective probabilities differ from person to person, and contains a high degree of personal bias. BREAKING DOWN 'Subjective Probability' An example of subjective probability is asking New York Yankees fans, before the baseball season starts, about the chances of New York winning the World Series. While there is no absolute mathematical proof behind the answer to the example, fans might still reply in actual percentage terms, such as the Yankees having a 25% chance of winning the World Series. Subjective probability is highly flexible, even in terms of one individual’s belief. While an individual may believe the chance of a specified event occurring is 25%, they could have a different belief when given a specific range from which to choose, such as 25% to 30%. This can occur even if no additional hard data is behind the change. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subjective_probability.asp
Subject Matching ::: A method of reducing bias in a sample of subjects by matching specific criteria of the sample to the true characteristics of the population. (Example: If the population is 60% female then 60% of the subjects in the sample should also be female)
Subsumption: Noun signifying that the subject of a proposition is taken under the predicate. Also the inclusion of the species under the genus, and the individual under the species. The minor premiss which applies a general law stated by the major premiss of a syllogism is called a subsumption. -- J.J.R.
sŭngkwa. (C. sengke; J. soka 僧科). In Korean, "ecclesiastical examinations," a clerical examination system used in Korea from the early Koryo through early Choson dynasties to exert state control over the ecclesiastical institution, by selecting monks who would hold official monastic positions. The examination system was established in 958 during the reign of the Koryo king Kwangjong (r. 949-975) and the examinations were originally administered every three years. There is no direct Chinese analogue for this kind of selective examination system conducted at the state level and it seems to have been a distinctively Korean creation. There were two separate examinations to select official monks: the Doctrinal (KYO, C. Jiao) school selection (KYOJONG SoN) and the Meditation (SoN, C. CHAN) school selection (SoNJONG SoN). The selection examination for the Doctrinal (Kyo) school was held at WANGNYUNSA, one of the ten major monasteries built in the Koryo capital of Kaesong by Wang Kon (T'aejo, r. 918-943), the first king of the Koryo dynasty; the Meditation (Son) exams were held at KWANGMYoNGSA, also located in the capital. Monks who passed the examination were qualified to hold official ecclesiastical status. Monks in both the Kyo and Son schools who passed the examinations were appointed, in ascending order, to the positions of taedok (great virtue), taesa (great master), ijungdaesa (second-grade great master), and samjungdaesa (third-grade great master). Beyond these positions common to both schools, there were two supreme positions exclusive to each school: sujwa (head seat) and SŬNGT'ONG for Kyo monks; and sonsa (Son master) and taesonsa (great Son master) for Son monks. State preceptors (KUKSA) and royal preceptors (WANGSA), the highest ecclesiastical offices during the Koryo dynasty and the symbolic religious teachers to the state and the king, were appointed from monks who held the positions of sŭngt'ong or taesonsa. The subject matter for the Kyo examination was derived from the AVATAMSAKASuTRA (Huayan jing) and the DAsABHuMIVYĀKHYĀNA (SHIDIJING LUN); for the Son examination, materials were taken from the JINGDE CHUANDENG LU and the SoNMUN YoMSONG CHIP. The examination system continued during the Choson dynasty despite the state suppression of Buddhism, but was abolished during the reign of King Chungjong (r. 1506-1544). The monastic examinations were subsequently revived in 1550 during the reign of King Myongjong (r. 1545-1567), but again abolished in 1565.
Suppositio personalis confusa (opposed to the preceding as suppositio personalis determinata) was further ascribed to a common noun used for the subject or predicate of a universal affirmative proposition. The relation of this to suppositio naturalis and suppositio simplex is not clear, and not uniform among different writers. -- A.C.
Surgical patients suffering from fright and fear before or during the induction of an anesthetic take it with more difficulty, and feel more aftereffects, than those who meet it without anxiety. The first stage of general anesthesia, usually not unpleasant, ends with the loss of physical consciousness. Then begins the second, or stage of struggling more or less vigorously, evidently due to the automatic reaction of the physical body, from which its conscious astral soul is being dissociated. In the third stage, the muscles relax and the disturbed heart and lungs settle down to regular rhythm, controlled by the sympathetic nervous system, as in a deep, dreamless sleep. The self-conscious ego, thus withdrawing from its ordinary state of being, enters more or less deeply into the subjective realm of its inner life. It is in a state of what has been called, paradoxically, conscious unconsciousness. The danger here is that the soul may become so far separated from its body that it does not come back again, and then death results.
sutrapitaka. (P. suttapitaka; T. mdo sde'i sde snod; C. jingzang; J. kyozo; K. kyongjang 經藏). In Sanskrit, "basket of discourses," one of the three constituents of the TRIPItAKA (together with the VINAYAPItAKA and the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA). This basket is a disparate collection of thousands of texts attributed to the Buddha (or said to be spoken with his sanction), varying in length from extended narrative accounts to short epigrams. The Pāli suttapitaka is divided into five groups, or NIKĀYA. These are the DĪGHANIKĀYA, or "Long Group," comprising thirty-four lengthier sutras; the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA, or "Middle [Length] Group," comprising 152 sutras; the SAMYUTTANIKĀYA or "Related Group," comprising (by some counts) some seven thousand sutras, organized largely by subject matter in fifty-six categories; the AnGUTTARANIKĀYA, literally, the "Group Increasing by a Factor," or more generally, the "Numerical Group," an anthology of nearly ten thousand brief texts organized by the number of the subject, with the first group dealing with single things, the second dealing with pairs, the third dealing with things that occur in threes, up to things that occur in groups of eleven; and finally the KHUDDAKANIKĀYA, or "Small Group," a diverse collection of miscellaneous texts, including such famous works as the Pāli DHAMMAPADA. Although the Khuddakanikāya contains some early works, as an independent nikāya, it appears to have been the last to be added to the tipitaka and is not mentioned in early accounts. The suttapitaka seems to have been preserved orally for centuries, before being committed to writing in Sri Lanka at the end of the first century BCE. The sutrapitakas of other Indian NIKĀYAs (schools) translated from a number of Indian languages into Chinese and Tibetan use the word ĀGAMA (tradition) in place of nikāya (group) for the groupings of sutras in their respective canons. In their Chinese translations, the DĪRGHĀGAMA or "Long Discourses," belonging to the DHARMAGUPTAKA school, corresponds to the Pāli Dīghanikāya; the MADHYAMĀGAMA or "Middle-Length Discourses" of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school corresponds to the Pāli Majjhimanikāya; the SAMYUKTĀGAMA or "Connected Discourses," belonging to the Sarvāstivāda school (with a partial translation perhaps belonging to the KĀsYAPĪYA school) corresponds to the Pāli SaMyuttanikāya; and the EKOTTARĀGAMA or "Numerically Arranged Discourses," variously ascribed to the DHARMAGUPTAKAs, or less plausibly the MAHĀSĀMGHIKA school or its PRAJNAPTIVĀDA offshoot, corresponds to the Pāli Anguttaranikāya. Despite the similarities in the titles of these collections, there are substantial differences between the contents of the Sanskrit āgamas and the Pāli nikāyas. The Khuddakanikāya ("Miscellaneous Collection"), the fifth nikāya in the Pāli canon, has no equivalent in the extant Chinese translations of the āgamas; such miscellanies, or "mixed baskets" (S. ksudrakapitaka), were however known to have existed in several of the mainstream Buddhist schools, including the Dharmaguptaka, MahāsāMghika, and MAHĪsĀSAKA.
svarajya (swarajya) ::: self-rule, subjective empire; "the entire control svarajya by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain".
svārthānumāna. (T. rang don rjes dpag; C. zibiliang; J. jihiryo; K. chabiryang 自比量). In Sanskrit, "inference for oneself," a term used in Buddhist logic to refer to what would generally be referred to as a correct inference, that is, a mental process of reasoning that results in a factual assumption about a particular state of affairs. Technically speaking, inference for oneself is a conceptual consciousness that discerns an object by means of a sign or reason (LInGA) that has the three qualities (trirupa) of legitimate evidence. This refers to three relations that must obtain between the three elements of a syllogism: the subject, the predicate, and the reason. The three qualities are (1) the PAKsADHARMA, that the reason is a quality of the subject; (2) the forward pervasion (anvayavyāpti), that whatever is the reason is necessarily the predicate; and (3) the "exclusion" or reverse pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti), that whatever is not the predicate is necessarily not the reason. DIGNĀGA contrasted the inference for oneself with the inference for others (PARĀRTHĀNUMĀNA), which is not an inference in a technical sense, but is used only metaphorically. Inference for others refers to a proof that would be stated to another person, such as an opponent in a debate, in order for that person to arrive at the correct conclusion that one oneself has understood. Because the proof serves as the cause of the other person's inference, it is called an inference for others.
svatantraprayoga. (T. rang rgyud kyi sbyor ba). In Sanskrit, "autonomous syllogism." Among the many meanings of the term PRAYOGA is its use as a technical term in logic, where it is often translated as "syllogism," and refers to a statement that contains a subject, a predicate, and a reason. A svatantraprayoga leads to a svatantrānumāna (T. rang rgyud rjes dpag), an "autonomous inference." The correct syllogism that gives rise to correct inference is composed of three parts, the subject (dharmin), the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), and the reason (HETU or LInGA). For example, consider the syllogism "Sound is impermanent because of being produced." The subject is sound, the property being proved is impermanence, and the reason is being produced. For the syllogism to be correct, three relations must exist among its three components: (1) the reason must be a property (DHARMA) of the subject, also called the "position" (PAKsA); (2) there must be a relationship of forward pervasion (anvayavyāpti) between the reason and the property being proved (SĀDHYADHARMA), such that whatever is the reason is necessarily the property being proved, and (3) there must be a relationship of "exclusion" or reverse pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti) between the property being proved and the reason such that whatever is not the property being proved is necessarily not the reason. In the example ("Sound is impermanent because of being produced"), the syllogism is correct because the reason ("being produced") is a quality of the subject ("sound"), there is forward pervasion in the sense that whatever is produced is necessarily impermanent, and there is reverse pervasion because whatever is not impermanent is necessarily not produced. It is generally the case in Indian logic that all elements of the syllogism must be accepted by both parties in a debate (see SAMĀNAPRATIBHĀSADHARMIN); such a syllogism is referred to as an "autonomous syllogism" (svatantrānumāna or svatantraprayoga). In the Madhyamaka school of Indian Buddhist philosophy, there was a controversy over whether such syllogisms were acceptable when a Madhyamaka debated with a proponent of another school. The locus classicus of the controversy is the debate between BHĀVAVIVEKA and CANDRAKĪRTI concerning BUDDHAPĀLITA's commentary on the first chapter of NĀGĀRJUNA's MuLAMADHYAMAKAKĀRIKĀ. It was Candrakīrti's position that the Madhyamaka should only use consequences (PRASAnGA) or an inference familiar to others (PARAPRASIDDHĀNUMĀNA), i.e., that they should only draw out the unintended consequences in others' positions; to use an autonomous syllogism implied acceptance of intrinsically established relations among the elements of the syllogism. Bhāvaviveka had argued that it was necessary for the Madhyamaka to state an autonomous syllogism at the conclusion of a debate. Based on this controversy, the Tibetans coined the terms *SVĀTANTRIKA and *PRĀSAnGIKA to designate these two positions.
Synthesis: In logic, the general method of deduction or deductive reasoning, which proceeds from the simple to the complex, from the general to the particular, from the necessary to the contingent, from a principle to its application, from a general law to individual cases from cause to effect, from an antecedent to its consequent, from a condition to the conditioned, from the logical whole to the logical part. The logical composition or combination of separate elements of thought, and also the result of this process. A judgment is considered as a synthesis when its predicate is accidental or contingent with respect to the subject: as the ground of such a synthesis is experience, synthetic judgments are a posteriori. The Kantian doctrine of synthetic judgments a priori involves a synthesis between two terms, prior to experience and through the agency of the forms of our intuition or of our understanding. The logical process of adding some elements to the comprehension of a concept in oider to obtain its 'logical division' in contradistinction to the 'real division' which breaks up a composition by analysis. The third phase in the dialectical process, combining the thesis and the antithesis for the emergence of a new level of being. In natural philosophy, the process of combining various material elements into a new substance. The ait of making or building up a compound by simpler compounds or by its elements. Also, the complex substance so formed.
Synthetic Judgment: (Kant. Ger. synthetische Urteil) A judgment relating a subject concept with a predicate concept not included within the subject proper. The validity of such a judgment depends on its 'ground'. Kant's central question was: "Are synthetic a priori judgments possible?" See Kantianism, Scientific Empiricism. See also Meaning, kinds of, 2. -- O.F.K.
Tārā. (T. Sgrol ma; C. Duoluo; J. Tara; K. Tara 多羅). In Sanskrit, lit. "Savioress"; a female bodhisattva who has the miraculous power to be able to deliver her devotees from all forms of physical danger. Tārā is said to have arisen from either a ray of blue light from the eye of the buddha AMITĀBHA, or from a tear from the eye of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA as he surveyed the suffering universe. The tear fell into a valley and formed a lake, out of which grew the lotus from which Tārā appeared. She is thus said to be the physical manifestation of the compassion of Avalokitesvara, who is himself the quintessence of the compassion of the buddhas. Because buddhas are produced from wisdom and compassion, Tārā, like the goddess PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ ("Perfection of Wisdom"), is hailed as "the mother of all buddhas," despite the fact that she is most commonly represented as a beautiful sixteen-year-old maiden. She is often depicted together with BHṚKUTĪ (one of her forms) as one of two female bodhisattvas flanking Avalokitesvara. Tārā is the subject of much devotion in her own right, serving as the subject of many stories, prayers, and tantric SĀDHANAs. She can appear in peaceful or wrathful forms, depending on the circumstances, her powers extending beyond the subjugation of these worldly frights, into the heavens and into the hells. She has two major peaceful forms, however. The first is SITATĀRĀ, or White Tārā. Her right hand is in VARADAMUDRĀ, her left is at her chest in VITARKAMUDRĀ and holds a lotus and she sits in DHYĀNĀSANA. The other is sYĀMATĀRĀ, or Green Tārā. Her right hand is in varadamudrā, her left is at her chest in vitarkamudrā and holds an utpala, and she sits in LALITĀSANA. Her wrathful forms include KURUKULLĀ, a dancing naked YOGINĪ, red in color, who brandishes a bow and arrow in her four arms. In tantric MAndALAs, she appears as the consort of AMOGHASIDDHI, the buddha of the northern quarter; together they are lord and lady of the KARMAKULA. But she is herself also the sole deity in many tantric SĀDHANAs, in which the meditator, whether male or female, visualizes himself or herself in Tārā's feminine form. Tārā is best-known for her salvific powers, appearing the instant her devotee recites her MANTRA, oM tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. She is especially renowned as Astabhayatrānatārā, "Tārā Who Protects from the Eight Fears," because of her ability to deliver those who call upon her when facing the eight great fears (mahābhaya) of lions, elephants, fire, snakes, thieves, water, imprisonment, and demons. Many tales are told recounting her miraculous interventions. Apart from the recitation of her mantra, a particular prayer is the most common medium of invoking Tārā in Tibet. It is a prayer to twenty-one Tārās, derived from an Indian TANTRA devoted to Tārā, the Sarvatathāgatamātṛtārāvisvakarmabhavatantra ("Source of All Rites to Tārā, the Mother of All the Tathāgatas"). According to some commentarial traditions on the prayer, each of the verses refers to a different form of Tārā, totaling twenty-one. According to others, the forms of Tārā are iconographically almost indistinguishable. Tārā entered the Buddhist pantheon relatively late, around the sixth century, in northern India and Nepal, and her worship in Java is attested in inscriptions dating to the end of the eighth century. Like Avalokitesvara, she has played a crucial role in Tibet's history, in both divine and human forms. One version of the creation myth that has the Tibetan race originating from a dalliance between a monkey and an ogress says the monkey was a form of Avalokitesvara and the ogress a form of Tārā. Worship of Tārā in Tibet began in earnest with the second propagation and the arrival of ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA in the eleventh century; she appears repeatedly in accounts of his life and in his teachings. He had visions of the goddess at crucial points in his life, and she advised him to make his fateful journey to Tibet, despite the fact that his life span would be shortened as a result. His sādhanas for the propitiation of Sitatārā and syāmatārā played a key role in promoting the worship of Tārā in Tibet. He further was responsible for the translation of several important Indic texts relating to the goddess, including three by Vāgīsvarakīrti that make up the 'chi blu, or "cheating death" cycle, the foundation of all lineages of the worship of Sitatārā in Tibet. The famous Tārā chapel at Atisa's temple at SNYE THANG contains nearly identical statues of the twenty-one Tārās. The translator Darmadra brought to Tibet the important ANUYOGA tantra devoted to the worship of Tārā, entitled Bcom ldan 'das ma sgrol ma yang dag par rdzogs pa'i sangs rgyas bstod pa gsungs pa. Tārā is said to have taken human form earlier in Tibetan history as the Chinese princess WENCHENG and Nepalese princess Bhṛkutī, who married King SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO, bringing with them buddha images that would become the most revered in Tibet. Which Tārā they were remains unsettled; however, some sources identify Wencheng with syāmatārā and Bhṛkutī with the goddess of the same name, herself said to be a form of Tārā. Others argue that the Nepalese princess was Sitatārā, and Wencheng was syāmatārā. These identifications, however, like that of Srong btsan sgam po with Avalokitesvara, date only to the fourteenth century, when the cult of Tārā in Tibet was flourishing. In the next generation, Tārā appeared as the wife of King KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN and the consort of PADMASAMBHAVA, YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, who in addition to becoming a great tantric master herself, served as scribe when Padmasambhava dictated the treasure texts (GTER MA). Later, Tārā is said to have appeared as the great practitioner of the GCOD tradition, MA GCIG LAP SGRON (1055-1149). Indeed, when Tārā first vowed eons ago to achieve buddhahood in order to free all beings from SAMSĀRA, she swore she would always appear in female form.
tathatā. (T. de bzhin nyid/de kho na nyid; C. zhenru; J. shinnyo; K. chinyo 眞如). In Sanskrit, "suchness" or "thusness"; a term for ultimate reality, especially in the MAHĀYĀNA schools. Along with terms such as DHARMATĀ, DHARMADHĀTU, and BHuTAKOtI, it has a more "positive" connotation than emptiness (suNYATĀ), referring to the eternal nature of reality that is "ever thus" or "just so" and free of all conceptual elaborations. In YOGĀCĀRA/VIJNĀNAVĀDA, the term refers to the ultimate wisdom that is free from the subject-object distinction (GRĀHYAGRĀHAKAVIKALPA). Buddhahood is sometimes described as tathatāvisuddhi, or "purity of suchness," that is, ultimate reality purified of all obstructions. In the MADHYAMAKA school, any attempt to substantiate the nature of reality is rejected, and tathatā is instead identified with emptiness and the cessation of all dichotomizing tendencies of thought. The Chinese equivalent, ZHENRU, is a seminal term in in East Asian Buddhist philosophy, figuring prominently, for example, in the DASHENG QIXIN LUN. See also TATTVA.
taxation ::: n. --> The act of laying a tax, or of imposing taxes, as on the subjects of a state, by government, or on the members of a corporation or company, by the proper authority; the raising of revenue; also, a system of raising revenue.
The act of taxing, or assessing a bill of cost.
Tax; sum imposed.
Charge; accusation.
Termmism: See Nominalism. Tertiary Qualities: Those qualities which are said to be imparted to objects by the mind. In contrast to primary and secondary qualities which are directed toward the objects (primary being thought of distinctly a part of objects) tertiary qualities are the subject's reactions to them. A thing, for example, is said to be good: The good points to the subject's reaction rather than to the object itself. -- V.F.
Tertii adjacentis: Latin expression employed to describe a proposition in which the subject, predicate, and copula are clearly distinguishable. -- J.J.R.
text ::: n. --> A discourse or composition on which a note or commentary is written; the original words of an author, in distinction from a paraphrase, annotation, or commentary.
The four Gospels, by way of distinction or eminence.
A verse or passage of Scripture, especially one chosen as the subject of a sermon, or in proof of a doctrine.
Hence, anything chosen as the subject of an argument, literary composition, or the like; topic; theme.
thanatopsis ::: n. --> A view of death; a meditation on the subject of death.
The diversity of concepts that Husserl himself expressed by the word "phenomenology" has been a source of diverse usages among thinkeis who came under his influence and are often referred to as "the phenomenological school." Husserl himself always meant by "phenomenology" a science of the subjective and its intended objects qua intentional; this core of sense pervades the development of his own concept of phenomenology as eidetic, transcendental, constitutive. Some thinkers, appropriating only the psychological version of this central concept, have developed a descriptive intentional psychology -- sometimes empirical, sometimes eidetic -- under the title "phenomenology." On the other hand, Husserl's broader concept of eidetic science based on seeing essences and essentially necessary relations -- especially his concept of material ontology -- has been not only adopted but made central by others, who define phenomenology accordingly. Not uncommonly, these groups reject Husserl's method of transcendental-phenomenological reduction and profess a realistic metaphysics. Finally, there are those who, emphasizing Husserl's cardinal principle that evidence -- seeing something that is itself presented -- is the only ultimate source of knowledge, conceive their phenomenology more broadly and etymologically, as explication of that which shows itself, whatever may be the latter 's nature and ontologicil status. -- D.C.
“The Formless (‘Arupa’) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being what we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane of the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of monads — each the mirror of its own Universe — and thus individualize for the time being an independent mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of magnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, out of the interstellar atoms” (SD 1:632-3). See also DHATU; LOKA; RUPA
"The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
“The Gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.” Essays on the Gita
The gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 19, Page: 346
The Greek Skeptics and Pyrrhonists demonstrate that rigid logic leads to contradictory conclusions (antinomies), a fact which led them to doubt the efficacy of the mentality as a means of ascertaining truth. A strictly logical system may be found in pure mathematics, where we lay down axioms and postulates, which are to be treated as not open to question; and then proceed by rigid rules to the inevitable conclusion. But what is possible in an ideal science is not possible in an actual world of infinite variety and fluidity. Theosophy places the subject in a different light, because it recognizes the existence in man of powers of direct cognition by the awakened faculties of buddhi. Thus man has the means of a true deductive system; but even so, deduction must be considered together with induction, analogy, and other methods, as merely one of the various means by which we arrive at a knowledge of truth.
The method is, of course, the dialectic. On its formal side, it is constituted by the triadic dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. In his logical writings Hegel is very fond of manipulating this formal apparatus, which he does in great detail. From his practice here one might be led to suppose that in his opinion the dialectic itself constitutes the essence of the method. In his other writings, however, little if any use is made of the schematism, except for the purpose of presenting the larger patterns of the subject-matter; and in his remarks on method its formal aspect is hardly referred to. In these remarks Hegel is concerned with emphasizing the logical structure underlying the machinery, namely, the relationship of contrariety and its resolution. Everywhere, the method is grounded in system, and the transition from thesis and antithesis to synthesis is held to be necessitated by the structure of the system within which it is grounded. Consequently the dialectical advance exhibits pari passu the structure of the system which is its matrix; the synthesis is positive throughout. This characteristic of the method, its "holding fast the positive in the negative," is what Hegel calls its negativity; and this characteristic is to him the essence of the dialectic.
The Norse tree of life is said to be rooted in the divine “ground” and to spread through the shelves of space, bearing living worlds upon its branches. Where the ash tree refers to humanity on earth it is the subject of the tale called “Askungen” (ash child or Cinderella), using an intricate play on words. See also YGGDRASIL
The origin, nature, and the continued existence or immortality of the soul is widely discussed in Jewish philosophy. As to origin, Saadia believes that each individual soul is created by God -- considering, of course, creation a continuous process -- and that it is of a fine spiritual substance. As to its faculties, he accepts the Aristotelian-Platonic division of the soul into three parts, namely, the appetitive, emotional, and cognitive. Ibn Daud thinks that the soul exists prior to the body potentially, i.e., that the angels endow the body with form; he further considers it a substance but says that it undergoes a process of development. The more it thinks the more perfect it becomes, and the thoughts are called acquired reason, it is this acquired reason, or being perfected which remains immortal. Maimonides does not discuss the origin of the soul, but deals more with its parts. To the three of Saadia he adds the imaginative and the conative. Gersonides' view resembles somewhat that of Ibn Daud, except that he does not speak of its origin and limits himself to the intellect. The intellect, says he, is only a capacity residing in the lower soul, and that capacity is gradually developed by the help of the Active Intellect into an acquired and ultimately into an active reason. All thinkers insist on immortality, but with Saadia and ha-Levi it seems that the entire soul survives, while the Aristotelians assert that only the intellect is immortal. Maimonides is not explicit on the subject, yet we may surmise that even the more liberal thinkers did not subscribe to Averroes' theory of unitas intellectus, and they believed that the immortal intellect is endowed with consciousness of personality. To this trend of connecting immortality with rational reflection Crescas took exception, and asserts that it is not pure thought which leads to survival, but that the soul is immortal because it is a spiritual being, and it is perfected by its love for God and the doing of good.
Theosophy holds that mesmerism is not hypnotism. In hypnotism the subject’s intermediate nature is disjoined from its natural relations with his physical and astral body and put out of the control of the person himself, becoming susceptible to other influences. This process is a reversal of all evolutionary currents which in every being unfold and manifest from conscious centers within. Such a reversal is dangerous and far-reaching in its results, spiritually, mentally, morally, psychically, and physically.
The phenomenon is a variety of black magic, involving both the practice of psychologization and in certain cases the subjection of the victim to astral obsession: either an involuntary astral seizure on the part of a mediumistic person, or a deliberate act of sorcery on the part of a degraded one. The lower realms of the astral light harbor baneful exuviae of various sorts, with which a pernicious commerce may be had through various forms of moral depravity and psychic weakness. It was an exaggerated and specialized form of obsessions which takes place in our day in people transported by passion or afflicted with violent insanity; hence it is often found convenient to describe it simply as a form of insanity, which however does not explain how the appearances of a wolf were caused. In extreme cases, however, the craving for physical life and the dread of personal extinction in a human kama-rupa may be so great that it may seize and enter the body of a living animal.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued after his death by other members of the Peripatetic school, the most important of whom were Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, and Strato of Lampsacus. In the Alexandrian Age, particularly after the editing of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes (about 50 B.C.), Aristotelianism was the subject of numerous expositions and commentaries, such as those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. With the closing of the philosophical schools in the sixth century the knowledge of Aristotle, except for fragments of the logical doctrine, almost disappeared in the west. It was preserved, however, by Arabian and Syrian scholars; from whom, with the revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it passed again to western Europe and became in Thomas Aquinas the philosophical basis of Christian theology. For the next few centuries the prestige of Aristotle was immense; he was "the philosopher," "the master of those who know." With the rise of modern science his authority has greatly declined. Yet Aristotelianism is still a force in modern thought: in Neo-Scholasticism; in recent psychology, whose behavioristic tendencies are in part a revival of Aristotelian modes of thought; in the various forms of vitalism in contemporary biology; in the dynamism of such thinkers as Bergson; and in the more catholic naturalism which has succeeded the mechanistic materialism of the last century, and which, whether by appeal to a doctrine of levels or by emphasis on immanent teleology, seems to be striving along Aristotelian lines for a conception of nature broad enough to include the religious, moral and artistic consciousness. Finally, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and in philosophy, is but the translation into modern tongues of the terms used by Aristotle, and carries with it, for better or worse, the distinctions worked out in his subtle mind. -- G.R.M.
There is yet a third kind of epohe that allegedly enables one to discriminate subjectivity qua transcendental -- by effecting yet another kind of reduction, which Husserl eventually called "transcendental-phenomenological." (In his Ideen he called it simply "phenomenological.") By refraining from participition in one's inveterate (and justifiable) natural attitude of presupposing the world and the status of one's subjectivity in the world, one can see the world (and whatever else one may intend) as fundamentally a noematic-intentional object for transcendental subjectivity -- for one's individual self, the subject whose life is one's own transcendental stream of consciousness, and for other transcendental subjects. As one can describe one's actual psychic subjectivity, so one can describe one's actual transcendental subjectivity and thus produce an empirical transcendental phenomenology. Again, as in the case of the purely psychic, so in the case of the purely transcendental, an eidetic reduction enables one to produce a purely eidetic science -- here an eidetic transcendental phenomenology, the theme of which is the absolutely universal domain of transcendental subjectivity in general, including the latter's noematic-objective sense: the entire world and all its possible variants. This eidetic transcendental phenomenology is what Husserl ordinarily meant when, in the Ideen or subsequent works, he spoke simply of "phenomenology. "
::: "The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
“The silent mind is a result of yoga; the ordinary mind is never silent. . . . The thinkers and philosophers do not have the silent mind. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.” Letters on Yoga
The structural problem stated in terms of the antithesis between subjective and objective is rather too vague for the purposes of epistemology and a more precise analysis of the knowledge-situation and statement of the issues involved is required. The perceptual situation -- and this analysis may presumably be extended with appropriate modifications to memory, imagination and other modes of cognition -- consists of a subject (the self, or pure act of perceiving), the content (sense data) and the object (the physical thing perceived). In terms of this analysis, two issues may be formulated Are content and object identical (epistemological monism), or are they numerically distinct (epistemological dualism)? and Does the object exist independently of the knowing subject (epistemological idealism) or is it dependent upon the subject (epistemological realism)? (h) The problem of truth is perhaps the culmination of epistemological enquiry -- in any case it is the problem which brings the enquiry to the threshold of metaphysics. The traditional theories of the nature of truth are: the correspondence theory which conceives truth as a relation between an "idea" or a proposition and its object --the relation has commonly been regarded as one of resemblance but it need not be so considered (see Correspondence theory of truth); the Coherence theory which adopts as the criterion of truth, the logical consistency of a proposition with a wider system of propositions (see Coherence theory of truth), and the intrinsic theory which views truth as an intrinsic property of the true proposition. See Intrinsic theory of truth. --L-W. Bibliography:
the subject of a woodcut reproduced in Paul
The subject of the philosophy of religion is regarded in conservative circles not as a discipline given to free philosophical inquiry but as a particular religion's philosophy. In this form it is a more or less disguised apologetics or defense of an already accepted religious faith. While the data for this subject include the so-called classical religions, philosophy of religion, in the genuinely philosophical sense, takes for its material religious expressions of all types, whether classical or not, together with all the psychological material available on the nature of the human spirit and man's whole cultural development. -- V.F.
The word may also mean a treatise on the subject, or a body of doctrine on it.
This seems to be another or new interpretation of Catholic doctrine on the subject.
Thoughts ::: Thought in itself, in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception, a cognitive seizing of the object or of some truth of things which is a powerful but still a minor and secondary result of spiritual vision, a comparatively external and superficial regard of the self upon the self, the subject upon itself or something of itself as object.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 979-80
thought ::: “… thought in itself, in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception, a cognitive seizing of the object or of some truth of things which is a powerful but still a minor and secondary result of spiritual vision, a comparatively external and superficial regard of the self upon the self, the subject upon itself or something of itself as object.” The Life Divine
tip of the ice-cube ::: [IBM] The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in situations where tip of the iceberg might be appropriate if the subject were at all important.[Jargon File]
tip of the ice-cube [IBM] The visible part of something small and insignificant. Used as an ironic comment in situations where "tip of the iceberg" might be appropriate if the subject were at all important. [{Jargon File}]
title ::: n. --> An inscription put over or upon anything as a name by which it is known.
The inscription in the beginning of a book, usually containing the subject of the work, the author&
topic drift "messaging" Term used on GEnie, {Usenet} and other electronic fora to describe the tendency of a {thread} to drift away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the Subject header of the originating message). Often used in gentle reminders that the discussion has strayed off any useful track. "I think we started with a question about Niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now *that's* topic drift!" [{Jargon File}] (1996-05-29)
topic drift ::: (messaging) Term used on GEnie, Usenet and other electronic fora to describe the tendency of a thread to drift away from the original subject of discussion (and thus, from the Subject header of the originating message), or the results of that tendency.Often used in gentle reminders that the discussion has strayed off any useful track. I think we started with a question about Niven's last book, but we've ended up discussing the sexual habits of the common marmoset. Now *that's* topic drift![Jargon File] (1996-05-29)
topic map "information science" A collection of "topics", their relationships, and information sources. A topic map captures the subjects of which information sources speak, and the relationships between them, in a way that is implementation independent. A topic is a symbol within the computer that represents something in the world such as the play Hamlet, the playwright William Shakespeare, or the "authorship" relationship. Topics can have names. They can also have occurrences, that is, information resources that are considered to be relevant in some way to their subject. Topics can play roles in relationships. Thus, topics have three kinds of characteristics: names, sources, and roles played in relationships. The assignment of such characteristics is considered to be valid within a certain scope, or context. Topic maps can be merged. Merging can take place at the discretion of the user or application (at runtime), or may be indicated by the topic map's author at the time of its creation. (2003-07-19)
topic map ::: (semantics) A collection of topics, their relationships, and information sources. A topic map captures the subjects of which information sources speak, and the relationships between them, in a way that is implementation independent.A topic is a symbol within the computer that represents something in the world such as the play Hamlet, the playwright William Shakespeare, or the authorship relationship.Topics can have names. They can also have occurrences, that is, information resources that are considered to be relevant in some way to their subject. Topics can play roles in relationships.Thus, topics have three kinds of characteristics: names, sources, and roles played in relationships. The assignment of such characteristics is considered to be valid within a certain scope, or context.Topic maps can be merged. Merging can take place at the discretion of the user or application (at runtime), or may be indicated by the topic map's author at the time of its creation.(2003-07-19)
traiguayavisaya vedah ::: the triple guna is the subject of the Vedas. [Gita 2.45]
Trapusa. (P. Tapussa/Tapussu; T. Ga gon; C. Tiwei; J. Daii; K. Chewi 提謂). Sanskrit proper name of one of the two merchants (together with his brother BHALLIKA) who became the first lay Buddhists (UPĀSAKA). Following his enlightenment under the BODHI TREE, the Buddha remained in the vicinity for seven weeks, each week spent at a different site (see BODHGAYĀ). At the end of the seventh week (or in some versions the sixth), he sat under a Rājāyatana tree, where he continued his meditation. Two merchants, Trapusa and his younger brother Bhallika, who were leading a large trading caravan with some five hundred carts, saw him there. Realizing that he had not eaten for weeks (as many as seven weeks), upon the encouragement of a deity, the brothers offered the Buddha sweet rice cakes with butter and honey. The Buddha, however, did not have a bowl in which to receive the food and said it was inappropriate for him to receive the food directly into his hands. The divine kings of the four directions (LOKAPĀLA) then offered him bowls. (According to one account, he received four bowls and collapsed them into one, which is the origin of the "four-bowl" meals served in some East Asian monastic refectories.) In response to their act of charity (DĀNA), the Buddha spoke with them informally and they took refuge (sARAnA) in the Buddha and the DHARMA (there being no third refuge, the SAMGHA, at this early point in the dispensation), thus making them the first lay Buddhists. The Buddha is said to have given the two brothers eight strands of hair from his head, which they took back to their homeland and interred for worship as relics (sARĪRA) in a STuPA. According to this account, it is interesting to note that the first thing the Buddha provided to another person after his enlightenment was not a teaching but a relic. In the account of the period of the Buddha's enlightenment in the NIDĀNAKATHĀ, this incident occurs immediately before the god BRAHMĀ descends from heaven and asks the Buddha to teach the dharma. According to Mon-Burmese legend, Trapusa and Bhallika were Mon natives, and their homeland of Ukkala was a place also called Dagon in the Mon homeland of RāmaNNa in lower Burma. The stupa they constructed at Ukkala/Dagon, which was the first shrine in the world to be erected over relics of the present Buddha, was to be enlarged and embellished over the centuries to become, eventually, the golden SHWEDAGON PAGODA of Rangoon. Because of the preeminence of this shrine, some Burmese chroniclers date the first introduction of Buddhism among the Mon in RāmaNNa to Tapussa and Bhallika. Trapusa achieved the stage of "stream-enterer" (SROTAĀPANNA); Bhallika eventually ordained and became an ARHAT. The merchants were also the subject of a prototypical Chinese apocryphal text, the TIWEI [BOLI] JING, written c. 460-464, which praises the value of the lay practices of giving (dāna) and keeping the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA).
trisaMvara. (T. sdom gsum). In Sanskrit, "three vows" or "three restraints"; a collective term for three different sets of precepts. The TrisaMvaranirdesaparivarta of the RATNAKutASuTRA collection sets forth the three types of vows as the three types of bodhisattva morality found in the sīlaparivarta ("morality chapter") of the BODHISATTVABHuMI. Usually, however, trisaMvara refers to the three sets of precepts a practitioner of the VAJRAYĀNA may take: the prātimoksasaMvara or monastic precepts (see PRĀTIMOKsA), the BODHISATTVASAMVARA or bodhisattva precepts, and the guhyamantrasaMvara ("secret mantra precepts") or tantric vows (SAMVARA) or pledges (SAMAYA). The relations between and among these three types of precepts are the subject of an extensive, and often polemical, literature in Tibet, the most famous treatment being the SDOM GSUM RAB DBYE, or "Differentiation of the Three Vows," by SA SKYA PAndITA. See also SAMVARA; SDOM GSUM; PUSA JIE.
T'ung: Mere identity, or sameness, especially in social institutions and standards, which is inferior to harmony (ho) in which social distinctions and differences are in complete concord. (Confucianism). Agreement, as in "agreement with the superiors" (shang t'ung). The method of agreement, which includes identity, generic relationship, co-existence, and partial resemblance. "Identity means two substances having one name. Generic relationship means inclusion in the same whole. Both being in the same room is a case of co-existence. Partial resemblance means having some points of resemblance." See Mo chi. (Neo-Mohism). --W.T.C. T'ung i: The joint method of similarities and differences, by which what is present and what is absent can be distinguished. See Mo chi. --W.T.C. Tung Chung-shu: (177-104 B.C.) was the leading Confucian of his time, premier to two feudal princes, and consultant to the Han emperor in framing national policies. Firmly believing in retribution, he strongly advocated the "science of catastrophic and anomalies," and became the founder and leader of medieval Confucianism which was extensively confused with the Yin Yang philosophy. Extremely antagonistic towards rival schools, he established Confucianism as basis of state religion and education. His best known work, Ch-un-ch'iu Fan-lu, awaits English translation. --W.T.C. Turro y Darder, Ramon: Spanish Biologist and Philosopher. Born in Malgrat, Dec. 8 1854. Died in Barcelona, June 5, 1926. As a Biologist, his conclusions about the circulation of the blood, more than half a century ago, were accepted and verified by later researchers and theorists. Among other things, he showed the insufficiency and unsatisfactoriness of the mechanistic and neomechanistic explanations of the circulatory process. He was also the first to busy himself with endocrinology and bacteriological immunity. As a philosopher Turro combated the subjectivistic and metaphysical type of psychology, and circumscribed scientific investigation to the determination of the conditions that precede the occurrence of phenomena, considering useless all attempt to reach final essences. Turro does not admit, however, that the psychical series or conscious states may be causally linked to the organic series. His formula was: Physiology and Consciousness are phenomena that occur, not in connection, but in conjunction. His most important work is Filosofia Critica, in which he has put side by side two antagonistic conceptions of the universe, the objective and the subjectne conceptions. In it he holds that, at the present crisis of science and philosophy, the business of intelligence is to realize that science works on philosophical presuppositions, but that philosophy is no better off with its chaos of endless contradictions and countless systems of thought. The task to be realized is one of coming together, to undo what has been done and get as far as the original primordial concepts with which philosophical inquiry began. --J.A.F. Tychism: A term derived from the Greek, tyche, fortune, chance, and employed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to express any theory which regards chance as an objective reality, operative in the cosmos. Also the hypothesis that evolution occurs owing to fortuitous variations. --J.J.R. Types, theory of: See Logic, formal, § 6; Paradoxes, logical; Ramified theory of types. Type-token ambiguity: The words token and type are used to distinguish between two senses of the word word. Individual marks, more or less resembling each other (as "cat" resembles "cat" and "CAT") may (1) be said to be "the same word" or (2) so many "different words". The apparent contradiction therby involved is removed by speaking of the individual marks as tokens, in contrast with the one type of which they are instances. And word may then be said to be subject to type-token ambiguity. The terminology can easily be extended to apply to any kind of symbol, e.g. as in speaking of token- and type-sentences. Reference: C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, 4.517. --M.B. Tz'u: (a) Parental love, kindness, or affection, the ideal Confucian virtue of parents. (b) Love, kindness in general. --W.T.C. Tzu hua: Self-transformation or spontaneous transformation without depending on any divine guidance or eternal agency, but following the thing's own principle of being, which is Tao. (Taoism). --W.T.C. Tzu jan: The natural, the natural state, the state of Tao, spontaneity as against artificiality. (Lao Tzu; Huai-nan Tzu, d. 122 B.C.). --W.T.C. U
Turingol "language" A {high-level language} for programming {Turing Machines} by {Donald Knuth}. It was the subject of the first construction of a nontrivial {attribute grammar}. ["Semantics of Context-Free Languages", D. Knuth, Math Sys Thy 2:127-145 (1975)]. (1995-10-08)
Turingol ::: (language) A high-level language for programming Turing Machines by Donald Knuth. It was the subject of the first construction of a nontrivial attribute grammar.[Semantics of Context-Free Languages, D. Knuth, Math Sys Thy 2:127-145 (1995-10-08)
Undistributed middle: In the categorical syllogism (logic, formal, § 5), the middle term must appear in at least one of the two premisses (major and minor) is dtstributed -- i.e., as denoting the subject of a proposition A or E, or the predicate of a proposition E or O. Violation of this rule is the fallacy of undistributed middle. A.C. Uniformity of Nature: Principle that what happens once in nature will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen again and as often as the same circumstances recur. -- A.C.B.
Unix "operating system" /yoo'niks/ (Or "UNIX", in the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics") Plural "Unices". An interactive {time-sharing} {operating system} invented in 1969 by {Ken Thompson} after {Bell Labs} left the {Multics} project, originally so he could play games on his scavenged {PDP-7}. {Dennis Ritchie}, the inventor of {C}, is considered a co-author of the system. The turning point in Unix's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972 - 1974, making it the first {source-portable} OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and {developer}-friendly environment. By 1991, Unix had become the most widely used {multi-user} general-purpose operating system in the world. Many people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see {Unix weenie} and {Unix conspiracy} for an opposing point of view). Unix is now offered by many manufacturers and is the subject of an international standardisation effort [called?]. Unix-like operating systems include {AIX}, {A/UX}, {BSD}, {Debian}, {FreeBSD}, {GNU}, {HP-UX}, {Linux}, {NetBSD}, {NEXTSTEP}, {OpenBSD}, {OPENSTEP}, {OSF}, {POSIX}, {RISCiX}, {Solaris}, {SunOS}, {System V}, {Ultrix}, {USG Unix}, {Version 7}, {Xenix}. "Unix" or "UNIX"? Both seem roughly equally popular, perhaps with a historical bias toward the latter. "UNIX" is a registered trademark of {The Open Group}, however, since it is a name and not an acronym, "Unix" has been adopted in this dictionary except where a larger name includes it in upper case. Since the OS is {case-sensitive} and exists in many different versions, it is fitting that its name should reflect this. {The UNIX Reference Desk (http://geek-girl.com/unix.html)}. {Spanish fire extinguisher (ftp://linux.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/pub/linux/people/okir/unix_flame.gif)}. [{Jargon File}] (2001-05-14)
Unix ::: (operating system) /yoo'niks/ (Or UNIX, in the authors' words, A weak pun on Multics) Plural Unices. An interactive time-sharing operating system originally so he could play games on his scavenged PDP-7. Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, is considered a co-author of the system.The turning point in Unix's history came when it was reimplemented almost entirely in C during 1972 - 1974, making it the first source-portable OS. Unix subsequently underwent mutations and expansions at the hands of many different people, resulting in a uniquely flexible and developer-friendly environment.By 1991, Unix had become the most widely used multi-user general-purpose operating system in the world. Many people consider this the most important victory yet of hackerdom over industry opposition (but see Unix weenie and Unix conspiracy for an opposing point of view).Unix is now offered by many manufacturers and is the subject of an international standardisation effort [called?]. Unix-like operating systems include AIX, A/UX, OSF, POSIX, RISCiX, Solaris, SunOS, System V, Ultrix, USG Unix, Version 7, Xenix.Unix or UNIX? Both seem roughly equally popular, perhaps with a historical bias toward the latter. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group, case-sensitive and exists in many different versions, it is fitting that its name should reflect this. . .[Jargon File](2001-05-14)
urim ::: n. --> A part or decoration of the breastplate of the high priest among the ancient Jews, by which Jehovah revealed his will on certain occasions. Its nature has been the subject of conflicting conjectures.
Urvasi (Sanskrit) Urvaśī [from uru wide, broad + the verbal root aś to pervade] Widely extending; in the Rig-Veda a beautiful divine nymph who, cursed by the gods, settled on earth and became the wife of Pururavas, the grandson of Soma (the moon) and son of Budha (esoteric wisdom, Mercury). Their love is the subject of Kalidasa’s drama, the Vikramorvasi. Urvasi originated in teachings connected with the human buddhi principle, the center and source or mother of all spiritual and intellectual beauty in the human constitution; cosmically therefore Urvasi is mahabuddhi (cosmic buddhi).
Vach(Sanskrit) ::: A term which means "speech" or "word"; and by the same procedure of mystical thoughtwhich is seen in ancient Greek mysticism, wherein the Logos is not merely the speech or word of theDivinity, but also the divine reason, so Vach has come to mean really more than merely word or speech.The esoteric Vach is the subjective creative intelligent force which, emanating from the subjectiveuniverse, becomes the manifested or concrete expression of ideation, hence Word or Logos. Mystically,therefore, Vach may be said to be the feminine or vehicular aspect of the Logos, or the power of theLogos when enshrined within its vehicle or sheath of action. Vach in India is often called Sata-rupa, "thehundred-formed." Cosmologically in one sense daiviprakriti may be said to be a manifestation or form ofVach.
various parts of Italy, finally depositing it in the village of Loretto. The miraculous haulage is the subject of a canvas
veeblefetzer "jargon" /vee'b*l-fetz'*/ (Or "veeblefeetzer"?) A purposely nonsensical sounding word applied to any sort of obscure or complicated object, e.g. a piece of computer code, model railroad equipment, auto parts, etc. The more immediate origin of the word is "Mad" Magazine. In the late 1950s and early 1960s it used the word along the same lines, especially in its send-ups of big business. "North American Veeblefetzer" was the subject of satires of an annual reports, an in-house newsletter, and more. A Veeblefetzer, in their case, was a robot-like device that did something or other. The more distant source was probably a 19th century yiddish word, possibly with limited usage. In German, "Fetzer" is any contraption, while "Veeble" is a likely corruption of "Webel" -- meaning weaving. Textile mills of this period were crammed with very complicated, wildly active and very loud pieces of machinery. See also {veeblefester}. [veeblefeetzer or veeblefetzer?] (1996-03-31)
verb: A verb "does" the subject's action in a sentence. For example, "She ate the apple" - ate is the verb. In English language verbs can take various tenses – for instance, past, present, or future.
Vessantara. (S. Visvantara/VisvaMtara; T. Thams cad sgrol; C. Xudana; J. Shudainu/Shudaina; K. Sudaena 須大拏). Pāli name of a prince who is the subject of the most famous of all JĀTAKA tales; he was the BODHISATTVA's final existence before he took rebirth in TUsITA heaven, where he awaited the moment when he would descend into Queen MĀYĀ's womb to be born as Prince SIDDHĀRTHA and eventually become GAUTAMA Buddha. During his lifetime as Prince Vessantara, the bodhisattva (P. bodhisatta) fulfilled the perfection (P. pāramī; S. PĀRAMITĀ) of generosity (DĀNA; see also DĀNAPĀRAMITĀ). The story is found in Sanskrit in Āryasura's JĀTAKAMĀLĀ and Ksemendra's Avadānakalpalatā, with the same main features as in the Pāli version. The story enjoys its greatest popularity in Southeast Asia, so the Pāli version is described here. ¶ The bodhisattva was born as the crown prince of Sivirattha, the son of King SaNjaya and Queen Phusatī of the kingdom of Jetuttara. On the day of his birth, a white elephant named Paccaya was also born, who had the power to make rain. When Vessantara was sixteen, he married a maiden named Maddī, with whom he had a son and a daughter, Jāli and Kanhajinā. Once, when Kalinga was suffering a severe drought, brāhmanas from that kingdom requested that Vessantara give them his white elephant to alleviate their plight. Vessantara complied, handing over to them his elephant along with its accessories. The citizens of Jetuttara were outraged that he should deprive his own kingdom of such a treasure and demanded his banishment to the distant mountain of Vankagiri. His father, King SaNjaya, consented and ordered Vessantara to leave via the road frequented by highwaymen. Before his departure, Vessantara held a great almsgiving, in which he distributed seven hundred of every type of thing. Maddī insisted that she and her children accompany the prince, and they were transported out of the city on a grand carriage pulled by four horses. Four brāhmanas begged for his horses, which he gave. Gods then pulled his carriage until a brāhmana begged for his carriage. Thereafter, they traveled on foot. Along the way crowds gathered, some even offering their kingdoms for him to rule, so famous was he for his generosity. At Vankagiri, they lived in two hermitages, one for Vessantara and the other for his wife and children. These had been constructed for them by Vissakamma, architect of the gods. There, they passed four months until one day an old brāhmana named Jujaka arrived and asked for Jāli and Kanhajinā as slaves. Vessantara expected this to occur, so he sent his wife on an errand so that she would not be distressed at the sight of him giving their children away. Jujaka was cruel, and the children ran away to their father, only to be returned so that Vessantara's generosity could be perfected. When Maddī returned, she fainted at the news. Then, Sakka (sAKRA), king of the gods, assumed the form of a brāhmana and asked for Maddī; Vessantara gave his wife to the brāhmana. The earth quaked at the gift. Sakka immediately revealed his identity and returned Maddī, granting Vessantara eight boons. In the meantime, Jujaka, the cruel brāhmana, traveled to Jetuttara, where King SaNjaya bought the children for a great amount of treasure, including a seven-storied palace. Jujaka, however, died of overeating and left no heirs, so the treasure was returned to the king. Meanwhile, the white elephant was returned because the kingdom of Kalinga could not maintain him. A grand entourage was sent to Vankagiri to fetch Vessantara and Maddī, and when they returned amid great celebration they were crowned king and queen of Sivirattha. In order that Vessantara would be able to satisfy all who came for gifts, Sakka rained down jewels waist deep on the palace. When Vessantara died, he was born as a god in tusita heaven, where he awaited his last rebirth as Siddhattha Gotama, when he would become a buddha. ¶ As a depiction of the virtue of dāna, the story of Vessantara is one of the most important Buddhist tales in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia and is depicted on murals throughout the region. Thai retellings of the Vessantara-Jātaka, known also as the Mahāchat, or "Great Jātaka," are found in the many Thai dialects and consist of thirteen chapters. The story is popular in Thailand's north and especially in the northeast, where virtually every monastery (excluding forest monasteries) holds a festival known as the Bun Phra Wet, usually in February or March, at which the entire story is recited in one day and one night. Laypeople assist in decorating their local monastery with trunks and branches of banana trees to represent the forest to which Vessantara was banished after giving away his kingdom's auspicious elephant. They also present offerings of flowers, hanging decorations, balls of glutinous rice, and money. The festival includes, among other things, a procession to the monastery that includes local women carrying long horizontal cloth banners on which the Vessantara story is painted. The merit earned by participating in the festival is linked to two beliefs: (1) that the participant will be reborn at the time of the future buddha, MAITREYA, known in Thai as Phra Si Ariya Mettrai (P. Ariya Metteyya), and (2) that the community, which remains primarily agricultural, will be blessed with sufficient rainfall.
Vibhanga. [alt. Vibhangappakarana]. In Pāli, "Analysis"; the second of the seven books that together constitute the ABHIDHAMMAPItAKA of the Pāli canon. Since most of this book concerns subject matter introduced in the abhidhammapitaka's first book, the DHAMMASAnGAnĪ, the Vibhanga is often spoken of as a supplement to, or a commentary on, the Dhammasanganī. The Vibhanga, however, applies different methods of analysis and includes a number of additional definitions and terms. The text is comprised of eighteen chapters (vibhanga), each of which presents a self-contained discourse on the following topics, in this order: the aggregates (P. khandha; S. SKANDHA), sense bases (ĀYATANA), elements (DHĀTU), truths (P. sacca; S. SATYA), faculties (INDRIYA), conditioned origination (P. paticcasamuppāda; S. PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), foundations of mindfulness (P. SATIPAttHĀNA; S. SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA), right effort (P. sammappadhāna; S. SAMYAKPRAHĀnA), bases of psychic or supernatural powers (P. iddhipāda; S. ṚDDHIPĀDA), factors of enlightenment (P. bojjhanga; S. BODHYAnGA), the eightfold path (P. magga; S. MĀRGA), mental absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA), the boundless states (P. appammaNNā; S. APRAMĀnA), training rules (P. sikkhāpada; S. sIKsĀPADA), analytical knowledges (P. patisambhidā; S. PRATISAMVID), various types of knowledge (P. Nāna; JNĀNA), minor topics (P. khuddhakavatthu), including an inventory of afflictions, and "the heart of the teaching" (P. dhammahadaya). Most, but not all, of these chapters are divided into three parts. First, they analyze the subject using the same method as the SUTTAs, often by simply quoting material directly from the suttas. Next, they analyze the subject using a typical ABHIDHARMA methodology-offering synonyms and numerical lists of categories, classes, and types of the phenomena. Finally, most treatments culminate in a catechistic series of inquiries (paNhāpucchaka). In this series of questions, the subject is analyzed by way of a set of "matrices" or "categories" (P. mātikā; S. MĀTṚKĀ) established in the Dhammasanganī. Many commentaries have been written on the Pāli Vibhanga, the most popular of which is BUDDHAGHOSA's SAMMOHAVINODANĪ, which was written in the fifth century.
Voluntarism: (Lat. voluntas, will) In ontology, the theory that the will is the ultimate constituent of reality. Doctrine that the human will, or some force analogous to it, is the primary stuff of the universe; that blind, purposive impulse is the real in nature. (a) In psychology, theory that the will is the most elemental psychic factor, that striving, impulse, desire, and even action, with their concomitant emotions, are alone dependable. (b) In ethics, the doctrine that the human will is central to all moral questions, and superior to all other moral criteria, such as the conscience, or reasoning power. The subjective theory that the choice made by the will determines the good. Stands for indeterminism and freedom. (c) In theology, the will as the source of all religion, that blessedness is a state of activity. Augustine (353-430) held that God is absolute will, a will independent of the Logos, and that the good will of man is free. For Avicebron (1020-1070), will is indefinable and stands above mature and soul, matter and form, as the pnmary category. Despite the metaphysical opposition of Duns Scotus (1265-1308) the realist, and William of Occam (1280-1347) the nominalist, both considered the will superior to the intellect. Hume (1711-1776) maintained that the will is the determining factor in human conduct, and Kant (1724-1804) believed the will to be the source of all moral judgment, and the good to be based on the human will. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) posited the objectified will as the world-substance, force, or value. James (1842-1910) followed up Wundt's notion of the will as the purpose of the good with the notion that it is the essence of faith, also manifest in the will to believe. See Will, Conation. Opposed to Rationalism, Materialism, Intellectualism. -- J.K.F.
Vowels [from Latin vocabilis pronounceable cf Greek phone vowel, voice] Largely synonymous with voice. Vowels are the most easily pronounced of speech sounds; no mute consonant can be pronounced without a vowel, and a liquid consonant is a type of vowel. Hence the subject connects with that of the power of sound.
wager ::: v. t. --> Something deposited, laid, or hazarded on the event of a contest or an unsettled question; a bet; a stake; a pledge.
A contract by which two parties or more agree that a certain sum of money, or other thing, shall be paid or delivered to one of them, on the happening or not happening of an uncertain event.
That on which bets are laid; the subject of a bet.
To hazard on the issue of a contest, or on some question that is to be decided, or on some casualty; to lay; to stake; to bet.
wannabee /won'*-bee/ (Or, more plausibly, spelled "wannabe") [Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol; probably originally from biker slang] A would-be {hacker}. The connotations of this term differ sharply depending on the age and exposure of the subject. Used of a person who is in or might be entering {larval stage}, it is semi-approving; such wannabees can be annoying but most hackers remember that they, too, were once such creatures. When used of any professional programmer, CS academic, writer, or {suit}, it is derogatory, implying that said person is trying to cuddle up to the hacker mystique but doesn't, fundamentally, have a prayer of understanding what it is all about. Overuse of hacker terms is often an indication of the {wannabee} nature. Compare {newbie}. Historical note: The wannabee phenomenon has a slightly different flavour now (1993) than it did ten or fifteen years ago. When the people who are now hackerdom's tribal elders were in {larval stage}, the process of becoming a hacker was largely unconscious and unaffected by models known in popular culture - communities formed spontaneously around people who, *as individuals*, felt irresistibly drawn to do hackerly things, and what wannabees experienced was a fairly pure, skill-focussed desire to become similarly wizardly. Those days of innocence are gone forever; society's adaptation to the advent of the microcomputer after 1980 included the elevation of the hacker as a new kind of folk hero, and the result is that some people semi-consciously set out to *be hackers* and borrow hackish prestige by fitting the popular image of hackers. Fortunately, to do this really well, one has to actually become a wizard. Nevertheless, old-time hackers tend to share a poorly articulated disquiet about the change; among other things, it gives them mixed feelings about the effects of public compendia of lore like this one. [{Jargon File}]
well-known painting of the subject titled “Moses
we ::: pl. --> of I ::: obj. --> The plural nominative case of the pronoun of the first person; the word with which a person in speaking or writing denotes a number or company of which he is one, as the subject of an action expressed by a verb.
What are technically classified as obsessing ideas and feelings are evidence of the subjective reality of the astral plane and its disimbodied entities. Knowledge of man’s multifold nature, including the parts played by each of its principles both during life and after death, gives a key to many psychological problems in the postmortem survival of the kama-rupa. The differing aspects of obsession result from the varied types of the astral entities — ghosts or shades of the dead, elementaries of suicides and executed criminals, evil sorcerers, nature spirits, etc. The kama-rupic shells alone, being remnants of deceased personalities, differ as the latter had done in their imbodied desires and impulses. The variety of obsessing influences accounts for the medley of typical symptoms in conditions of inert melancholia, of sustained catalepsy, of violent mania and convulsions, of emotional egoism in hysteria, of childish grimaces and erratic muscular contractions in essential chorea, of subjective horrors in delirium tremens, and of the perverted brutality in purposeless, unhuman crimes. Though only a seer’s inner vision could reveal just what entity was active in each case, yet a student of human duality can recognize the unseemly and distorted play of the animal, lower nature, separated from the conscience and higher mind — the kama-rupic condition. Mild types of these disorders frequently are simply the uncontrolled play of the person’s own selfish nature; but these are in danger of drifting into the severer forms, because like attracts like. See also POSSESSION
Will: In the widest sense, will is synonymous with conation. See Conation. In the restricted sense, will designates the sequence of mental acts eventuating in decision or choice between conflicting conative tendencies. An act of will of the highest type is analyzable into: The envisaging of alternative courses of action, each of which expresses conative tendencies of the subject. Deliberation, consisting in the examination and comparison of the alternative courses of action with special reference to the dominant ideals of the self. Decision or choice consisting in giving assent to one of the alternatives and the rejection of the rest.
Without any claims whatever to treat of the subject-matter in its entire depth or to describe exhaustively its terminology, the Institute in December 1986 published the first Swedish edition of the present work to the Scandinavian readers. After this first edition ran out of print 1991, the work at a new edition was begun, and in 1996 this second edition was published. The present English edition is a translation of the
1996 Swedish edition.
witting the angel of death is the subject of Long¬
yoga sutras. ::: the oldest known writing on the subject of yoga, written by the sage Patanjali, a yogi of ancient India, and considered to be the most authoritative text on yoga; also known as
KEYS (10k)
9 Sri Aurobindo
2 Jean Piaget
1 Voltaire
1 Uttana Sutta
1 Slavoj Žižek
1 Shunryu Suzuki
1 Nandita Chatterjee
1 Longchenpa
1 Krisna Prem
1 Ken Wilber
1 Joseph Campbell
1 John Cleese
1 Henri Ellenberger
1 Hans Urs von Balthasar
1 Carl Jung
1 Alfred Korzybski
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
1 Aleister Crowley
1 Advanced Integral
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
26 Anonymous
11 Carl Jung
10 Jane Austen
9 Leo Tolstoy
9 C S Lewis
8 Plato
8 Bertrand Russell
8 Arthur Schopenhauer
8 Aristotle
7 John Stuart Mill
7 J K Rowling
6 William Zinsser
6 Swami Vivekananda
6 Sri Aurobindo
6 Roland Barthes
6 Rick Riordan
6 Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 Douglas Adams
5 Thomas Jefferson
5 Ludwig Feuerbach
1:The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.
~ Ken Wilber,#KEYS
2:The Great Work will then form the subject of the design.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, The Lamen,#KEYS
3:Meditation requires an object to meditate on, whereas in Self-enquiry there is only the subject and no object. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
4:No one who hasn't experienced for himself at least something of the nature and joys of the spiritual life can have any valid opinion on the subject." ~ Krisna Prem, (Ronald Henry Nixon, 1898 - 1965), #KEYS
5:The material world and the physical life exist for us only by virtue of our internal self and our internal life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Subject of the Upanishad, #KEYS
6:This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious. ~ John Cleese, #KEYS
7:The dissolution of the subject organisation into a disorganised crowd is the inevitable working of an alien despotism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Shall India Be Free? - Unity and British Rule, #KEYS
8:The space of being that is opened and illuminated in the subject makes available to the object an opportunity to be itself in a way that the inferior space of inanimate elements does not…. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, TheoLogic I, #KEYS
9:The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching. ~ Jean Piaget, #KEYS
10:We have in all functionings of the mentality four elements, the object of mental consciousness, the act of mental consciousness, the occasion and the subject.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, 532,#KEYS
11:The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #KEYS
12:Little by little there has to be a constant equilibrium established between the parts of the subject's knowledge and the totality of his knowledge at any given moment. There is a constant differentiation of the totality of knowledge into the parts and an integration of the parts back into the whole.
~ Jean Piaget, 1977, p. 839,#KEYS
13:enactment ::: no experience is innocent and pregiven, rather it is brought forth or enacted in part by the activity of the subject doing the experiencing thus one activity, paradigm or injunction will bring forth a particular set of experiences. experiences that are not themselves .... but rather are co-created and co-enacted by the paradigm or activity itself and accordingly one paradigm does not give the correct view of the world and therefore as if it did to negate, criticize, or exclude other experiences brought forth by other paradigms. ~ Advanced Integral, L1, slide30 enactment, #KEYS
14:There is only one Ethics, as there is only one geometry. But the majority of men, it will be said, are ignorant of geometry. Yes, but as soon as they begin to apply themselves a little to that science, all are in agreement. Cultivators, workmen, artisans have not gone through courses in ethics; they have not read Cicero or Aristotle, but the moment they begin to think on the subject they become, without knowing it, the disciples of Cicero. The Indian dyer, the Tartar shepherd and the English sailor know what is just and what is injust. Confucius did not invent a system of ethics as one invents a system of physics. He had discovered it in the heart of all mankind. ~ Voltaire, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
15:Systematic study of chemical and physical phenomena has been carried on for many generations and these two sciences now include: (1) knowledge of an enormous number of facts; (2) a large body of natural laws; (3) many fertile working hypotheses respecting the causes and regularities of natural phenomena; and finally (4) many helpful theories held subject to correction by further testing of the hypotheses giving rise to them. When a subject is spoken of as a science, it is understood to include all of the above mentioned parts. Facts alone do not constitute a science any more than a pile of stones constitutes a house, not even do facts and laws alone; there must be facts, hypotheses, theories and laws before the subject is entitled to the rank of a science. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, #KEYS
16:2. Refusal of the Call:Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or 'culture,' the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless-even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire or renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #KEYS
17:A major part of the book is devoted to poetry. It opens with Sri Aurobindo's Savitri. The author has a novel way of appreciating this most wonderful epic, which continually overwhelms and bewilders us. He has taken this bewilderment as the subject of the chapter "An Uninitiated Reader's Response to Savitri". This is a rarely explored area, namely the magical poetic beauty of Savitri that casts a spell on the reader even when he does not always understand its content. For the lover of poetry is attracted by its "beauty and strength", "he is overawed by the grandeur of the animated spirituality". Any time spent with Savitri thus becomes a special moment in his life. Later in the book we find another kind of appreciation of the epic in the chapter on K. D. Sethna as a "crusader of aesthetic yoga". There the author calls Savitri the "Odyssey of Integral Yoga" where yoga and poetry come together. He also appreciates the "sensitive analysis of stylistic effect" by Sethna, who uses wonderful quotations from Savitri as examples of adequate style, effective style, illumined style, etc. (From the Near to Far by Dr. Saurendranth Basu) ~ Nandita Chatterjee, review of the book, #KEYS
18:The necessary and needful reaction from the collective unconscious expresses itself in archetypally formed ideas. The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no one inside and no one outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is a world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins; where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.No, the collective unconscious is anything but an encapsulated personal system; it is sheer objectivity, as wide as the world and open to all the world. There I am the object of every subject, in complete reversal of my ordinary consciousness, where I am always the subject that has an object. There I am utterly one with the world, so much a part of it that I forget all too easily who I really am. ""Lost in oneself"" is a good way of describing this state. But this self is the world, if only a consciousness could see it. That is why we must know who we are. ~ Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #KEYS
19:A creative illness succeeds a period of intense preoccupation with an idea and search for a certain truth. It is a polymorphous condition that can take the shape of depression, neurosis, psychosomatic ailments, or even psychosis. Whatever the symptoms, they are felt as painful, if not agonizing, by the subject, with alternating periods of alleviation and worsening. Throughout the illness the subject never loses the thread of his dominating preoccupation. It is often compatible with normal, professional activity and family life. But even if he keeps to his social activities, he is almost entirely absorbed with himself. He suffers from feelings of utter isolation, even when he has a mentor who guides him through the ordeal (like the shaman apprentice with his master). The termination is often rapid and marked by a phase of exhilaration. The subject emerges from his ordeal with a permanent transformation in his personality and the conviction that he has discovered a great truth or a new spiritual world.
Many of the nineteenth and twentieth century figures recognized unquestionably as "great" - Nietzsche, Darwin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Freud, Jung, Piaget - were all additionally characterized by lengthy periods of profound psychological unrest and uncertainty. Their "psychopathology" - a term ridiculous in this context - was generated as a consequence of the revolutionary nature of their personal experience (their action, fantasy and thought). It is no great leap of comparative psychology to see their role in our society as analogous to that of the archaic religious leader and healer. ~ Henri Ellenberger,#KEYS
20:In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected.
It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement. Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism.
The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology.
~ Slavoj Žižek,#KEYS
21:DHARANA
NOW that we have learnt to observe the mind, so that we know how it works to some extent, and have begun to understand the elements of control, we may try the result of gathering together all the powers of the mind, and attempting to focus them on a single point.
We know that it is fairly easy for the ordinary educated mind to think without much distraction on a subject in which it is much interested. We have the popular phrase, "revolving a thing in the mind"; and as long as the subject is sufficiently complex, as long as thoughts pass freely, there is no great difficulty. So long as a gyroscope is in motion, it remains motionless relatively to its support, and even resists attempts to distract it; when it stops it falls from that position. If the earth ceased to spin round the sun, it would at once fall into the sun. The moment then that the student takes a simple subject - or rather a simple object - and imagines it or visualizes it, he will find that it is not so much his creature as he supposed. Other thoughts will invade the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itself will begin to play all sorts of tricks.
Suppose you have chosen a white cross. It will move its bar up and down, elongate the bar, turn the bar oblique, get its arms unequal, turn upside down, grow branches, get a crack around it or a figure upon it, change its shape altogether like an Amoeba, change its size and distance as a whole, change the degree of its illumination, and at the same time change its colour. It will get splotchy and blotchy, grow patterns, rise, fall, twist and turn; clouds will pass over its face. There is no conceivable change of which it is incapable. Not to mention its total disappearance, and replacement by something altogether different!
Any one to whom this experience does not occur need not imagine that he is meditating. It shows merely that he is incapable of concentrating his mind in the very smallest degree. Perhaps a student may go for several days before discovering that he is not meditating. When he does, the obstinacy of the object will infuriate him; and it is only now that his real troubles will begin, only now that Will comes really into play, only now that his manhood is tested. If it were not for the Will-development which he got in the conquest of Asana, he would probably give up. As it is, the mere physical agony which he underwent is the veriest trifle compared with the horrible tedium of Dharana.
For the first week it may seem rather amusing, and you may even imagine you are progressing; but as the practice teaches you what you are doing, you will apparently get worse and worse. Please understand that in doing this practice you are supposed to be seated in Asana, and to have note-book and pencil by your side, and a watch in front of you. You are not to practise at first for more than ten minutes at a time, so as to avoid risk of overtiring the brain. In fact you will probably find that the whole of your willpower is not equal to keeping to a subject at all for so long as three minutes, or even apparently concentrating on it for so long as three seconds, or three-fifths of one second. By "keeping to it at all" is meant the mere attempt to keep to it. The mind becomes so fatigued, and the object so incredibly loathsome, that it is useless to continue for the time being. In Frater P.'s record we find that after daily practice for six months, meditations of four minutes and less are still being recorded.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA,#KEYS
22:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
23: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
24:Education
THE EDUCATION of a human being should begin at birth and continue throughout his life.
Indeed, if we want this education to have its maximum result, it should begin even before birth; in this case it is the mother herself who proceeds with this education by means of a twofold action: first, upon herself for her own improvement, and secondly, upon the child whom she is forming physically. For it is certain that the nature of the child to be born depends very much upon the mother who forms it, upon her aspiration and will as well as upon the material surroundings in which she lives. To see that her thoughts are always beautiful and pure, her feelings always noble and fine, her material surroundings as harmonious as possible and full of a great simplicity - this is the part of education which should apply to the mother herself. And if she has in addition a conscious and definite will to form the child according to the highest ideal she can conceive, then the very best conditions will be realised so that the child can come into the world with his utmost potentialities. How many difficult efforts and useless complications would be avoided in this way!
Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life.
We propose to study these five aspects of education one by one and also their interrelationships. But before we enter into the details of the subject, I wish to make a recommendation to parents. Most parents, for various reasons, give very little thought to the true education which should be imparted to children. When they have brought a child into the world, provided him with food, satisfied his various material needs and looked after his health more or less carefully, they think they have fully discharged their duty. Later on, they will send him to school and hand over to the teachers the responsibility for his education.
There are other parents who know that their children must be educated and who try to do what they can. But very few, even among those who are most serious and sincere, know that the first thing to do, in order to be able to educate a child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one never sets a bad example to one's child. For it is above all through example that education becomes effective. To speak good words and to give wise advice to a child has very little effect if one does not oneself give him an example of what one teaches. Sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self-control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches. Parents, have a high ideal and always act in accordance with it and you will see that little by little your child will reflect this ideal in himself and spontaneously manifest the qualities you would like to see expressed in his nature. Quite naturally a child has respect and admiration for his parents; unless they are quite unworthy, they will always appear to their child as demigods whom he will try to imitate as best he can.
With very few exceptions, parents are not aware of the disastrous influence that their own defects, impulses, weaknesses and lack of self-control have on their children. If you wish to be respected by a child, have respect for yourself and be worthy of respect at every moment. Never be authoritarian, despotic, impatient or ill-tempered. When your child asks you a question, do not give him a stupid or silly answer under the pretext that he cannot understand you. You can always make yourself understood if you take enough trouble; and in spite of the popular saying that it is not always good to tell the truth, I affirm that it is always good to tell the truth, but that the art consists in telling it in such a way as to make it accessible to the mind of the hearer. In early life, until he is twelve or fourteen, the child's mind is hardly open to abstract notions and general ideas. And yet you can train it to understand these things by using concrete images, symbols or parables. Up to quite an advanced age and for some who mentally always remain children, a narrative, a story, a tale well told teach much more than any number of theoretical explanations.
Another pitfall to avoid: do not scold your child without good reason and only when it is quite indispensable. A child who is too often scolded gets hardened to rebuke and no longer attaches much importance to words or severity of tone. And above all, take good care never to scold him for a fault which you yourself commit. Children are very keen and clear-sighted observers; they soon find out your weaknesses and note them without pity.
When a child has done something wrong, see that he confesses it to you spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confessed, with kindness and affection make him understand what was wrong in his movement so that he will not repeat it, but never scold him; a fault confessed must always be forgiven. You should not allow any fear to come between you and your child; fear is a pernicious means of education: it invariably gives birth to deceit and lying. Only a discerning affection that is firm yet gentle and an adequate practical knowledge will create the bonds of trust that are indispensable for you to be able to educate your child effectively. And do not forget that you have to control yourself constantly in order to be equal to your task and truly fulfil the duty which you owe your child by the mere fact of having brought him into the world.
Bulletin, February 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
25: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
26:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.
Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6
The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7
Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8
Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:
Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.
At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.
I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
1. Relax completely
While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.
Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,
slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.
2. Observe the visual images
Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.
3. Enter the dream
When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,
but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!
Commentary
Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,
since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13
Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,#KEYS
27:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,#KEYS
28:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:The workmanship was better than the subject matter. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 2:Change but the name, and you are the subject of the story. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove 3:The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 4:What is the subject of our thought? Experience! Nothing else! ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 5:The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 6:Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 7:That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 8:I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better. ~ frida-kahlo, @wisdomtrove 9:Meditation is the means of unification of the subject and object. Meditate. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 10:If the subject's easy we may all be wise; What stands unfirm, the smallest force overthrows. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 11:If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove 12:Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 13:No good sensible working bee listens to the advice of a bedbug on the subject of business. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 14:The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject. ~ marcus-aurelius, @wisdomtrove 15:No & 16:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 17:On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 18:The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 19:I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 20:The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better. ~ gertrude-stein, @wisdomtrove 21:Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject ~ josh-billings, @wisdomtrove 22:I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether. ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 23:It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest the public, and I am sure that the views are original. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 24:They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove 25:Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing what others have not seen. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 26:A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. ~ winston-churchill, @wisdomtrove 27:More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 28:Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 29:When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 30:I knew a lot about what I did when I was 20. I had read a lot, and I aspired to learn everything I could about the subject. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 31:It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove 32:A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 33:First, study the present construction. Second, ask for all past experiences ... study and read everything you can on the subject. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 34:Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove 35:I know of nothing which I would choose to have as the subject of my ambition for life than to be kept faithful to my God till death. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 36:if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service& 37:A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 38:It matters not the subject taught, nor all the books on all the shelves, What matters most, yes most of all, is what the teachers are themselves. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 39:He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 40:I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 41:Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights. ~ alan-moore, @wisdomtrove 42:That 95 per cent. fail of those who start in business upon their own account seems incredible, and yet such are said to be the statistics upon the subject. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 43:In every science certain things must be accepted as first principles if the subject matter is to be understood; and these first postulates rest upon faith. ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 44:Say, for example, you develop the ability to make parking meters disappear. It's probably easier to put a quarter in it. That would be the wisdom on the subject. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 45:There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on the subject of morality. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 46:It is the subjective world that rules the objective. Change the subject, and the object is bound to change; purify youreslf, and the world is bound to be purified. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 47:Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 48:Everywhere there is apathy. Nobody cares whether that which is preached is true or false. A sermon is a sermon whatever the subject; only, the shorter it is, the better. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 49:Let no one say that I have said nothing new... the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 50:Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 51:Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 52:You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment and nobody else shows up and you think maybe that's part of the experiment? I'm like that all the time. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 53:The idea of the walls of monastery was to keep everybody else out because you wanted to develop a certain type of life. Most people in the world had different ideas on the subject. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 54:Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say & 55:It's necessary to respect all other ways and other teachings on the subject because even though they may not make a lot of sense to us, they might to someone else. Who are we to say? ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 56:I know nothing that can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow, so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 57:Before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 58:I pay very little regard... to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person. ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 59:She didn't even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies. ~ steve-martin, @wisdomtrove 60:You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 61:Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 62:The question of immortality is of its nature not a scholarly question. It is a question welling up from the interior which the subject must put to itself as it becomes conscious of itself. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 63:I am conscious of the fact that the subject of hell is not a very pleasant one. It is very unpopular, controversial and misunderstood... . As a minister, I must deal with it. I cannot ignore it. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 64:Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says; we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 65:Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 66:My mind is a chest of drawers. When I wish to deal with a subject, I shut all the drawers but the one in which the subject is to be found. When I am wearied, I shut all the drawers and go to sleep. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove 67:To the audience, it's like I'm changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show's almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 68:No man should dogmatize except on the subject of theology. Here he can take his stand, and by throwing the burden of proof on the opposition, he is invincible. We have to die to find out whether he is right. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 69:Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 70:And ever, as the story drained The wells of fancy dry, And faintly strove that weary one To put the subject by, "The rest next time& 71:Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 72:The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words& 73:Leave alone your desires and fears, give your entire attention to the subject, to him who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: & 74:I have often discussed the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path in talks I have given about meditation. But, since I also teach Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist mediation, I have a very eclectic approach to the subject. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 75:The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 76:Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject ... they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 77:The subject of the lesson itself should not become more important that the underlying basis. Drawing thus provides first the written forms of letters and then their printed forms. Based on drawing, we build up to reading. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 78:[A] man and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what everybody does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 79:When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 80:On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 81:[It is] essentially wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know, whether or not the will does any thing in those things which pertain unto Salvation. Nay, let me tell you, this is the very hinge upon which our discussion turns. It is the very heart of the subject ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 82:There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 83:The person is never the subject. You can see a person, but you are not the person. You are always the Supreme which appears at a given point of time and space as the witness, a bridge between the pure awareness of the Supreme and the manifold consciousness of the person. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 84:Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me? ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 85:Whenever Roosevelt (Theodore) expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested. For Roosevelt knew, all the leaders royal road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most. ~ dale-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 86:Before I started (college), that's the advice my dad gave me. He said to pick classes based on the teacher whenever you can, not the subject... his point was that good teachers are priceless. They inspire you, they entertain you, and you end up learning a ton even when you don't know it. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 87:The minister today preached about death and judgment, and what would become of those who behaved improperly - and somehow it scared me. He preached such an awful sermon I didn't think I should ever see you again until the Judgment Day. The subject of perdition seemed to please him somehow. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 88:See your "career" as one of creating a joyful life experience. You are not a regurgitator of what someone else has created or a gatherer of stuff. You are a creator, and the subject of your creation is your joyful life experience. That is your mission. That is your quest. That is why you are here. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 89:The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 90:The profession depends so much upon the relations the photographer establishes with the people he’s photographing, that is a false relationship, a wrong word or attitude, can ruin everything. When the subject is in any way uneasy, the personality goes away where the camera can’t reach it. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 91:So, the two factors that your emotions are always letting you know are: how focused the Energy is by virtue of your desire, and how your normal thoughts around the subject resonate or don’t resonate with that desire. Easier way to say it is, “what’s my attitude or what’s my mood about such-and-such? ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 92:You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number. Er, five, said the mattress. Wrong, said Marvin. You see? ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 93:The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove 94:I remember when I was in high school I didn't have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because of the size of my wardrobe but because they liked me. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 95:My passion has never been for photography ”in itself,“ but for the possibility– through forgetting yourself– of recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of the subject, and the beauty of the form; that is, a geometry awakened by what’s offered. The photographic shot is one of my sketchpads. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 96:I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 97:And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: & 98:The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 99:You are right, there can be no experience beyond consciousness. Yet there is the experience of just being. There is a state beyond consciousness, which is not unconscious. Some call it super- consciousness, or pure consciousness, or supreme consciousness. It is pure awareness free from the subject object nexus. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 100:Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference; the latter of Inference. The truths known by Intuition are the original premisses, from which all others are inferred. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 101:The power of meditation gets us everything. If you want to get power over nature, [you can have it through meditation]. It is through the power of meditation all scientific facts are discovered today. They study the subject and forget everything, their own identity and everything, and then the great fact comes like a flash. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 102:Change is always subjective. All through evolution you find that the conquest of nature comes by change in the subject. Apply this to religion and morality, and you will find that the conquest of evil comes by the change in the subjective alone. That is how the Advaitic system gets its whole force, on the subjective side of man. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 103:It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 104:The Witness is a huge step forward, and it is a necessary and important step in meditation, but it is not ultimate. When the Witness or the soul is finally undone, then the Witness dissolves into everything that is witnessed. The subject/object duality collapses and there is only pure nondual awareness, which is very simple, very obvious. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 105:Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it. You did it just the way you had to do it, and that is what makes us us. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 106:When you think about dollars, do you feel joyful? Does the subject of dollars make you feel free? Do you feel eager and enthusiastic about dollars? Do you feel afraid when you think about dollars? Are you angry about dollars? Are you embarrassed about dollars? Are you fitful about them; worried about them; eager about them, happy about them? ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 107:He is the witness of the world, he is the witness of his feelings and of its thoughts. This understanding liberates him from his identification with the body-mind, and opens the possibility for consciousness to be universal rather than personal. But this distinction has to be eventually transcended: the subject and its object are one, there is no “gap”. ~ jean-klein, @wisdomtrove 108:It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 109:If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 110:The person is of little use. It is deeply involved in its own affairs and is completely ignorant of its true being. Unless the witnessing consciousness begins to play on the person and it becomes the object of observation rather than the subject, realisation is not feasible. It is the witness that makes realisation desirable and attainable. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 111:No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence& 112:I guess the one-liner kind of comic sounds like a guy who can talk and talk and whatever the subject is, he can pull out a one-liner, but I couldn't do that. I didn't like the association. I mean, I love Steven Wright, but so many people started saying "Steven Wright" to me, and I would get mad, because I never wanted to be thought of as copying anybody. ~ mitch-hedberg, @wisdomtrove 113:When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,& 114:A photograph that is merely a superficial record of the subject fails as an aesthetic expression of that subject. The expression must be an emotional amplification, and this emotional amplification relates to point of view, organization, revelation of substance through textures, tonal relations, and the perfection of the technical expression of all these elements. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 115:Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 116:As a first step towards an understanding of the true nature of our experience, the non-dual teaching points out that it is not ‘I’, the body/mind, that is aware of things, others and the world, but rather ‘I’, Awareness, that is aware of the body and mind, as well as things, others and the world. As such, the body and mind are understood to be objects of experience, not the subject. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove 117:I am the subject and I am looking at nothing. Because nothing is not an object, I then disappear. You can only have ‘I’ when there is an object. And you can only have an object when there is ‘I’ looking at it. The truth is that here, inside me, in consciousness, there is no object. There is nothing … and so I disappear. That is an indescribable state called being. Don’t doubt it. Just be it. ~ barry-long, @wisdomtrove 118:In addition to deriving an identity from how we experience ourselves in the world, we also derive a sense of self from the very fact that we are experiencing. If there is experience, then there must, we assume, be an experiencer; there must be an "I" who is doing the experiencing. It certainly feels that way. Whatever is going on in my mind, there is this sense that I am the subject of it all. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 119:I suppose my interest in looking for life elsewhere in the universe really dates back to my teens. What teenager doesn't look up at the sky at night and think am I alone in the universe? Well most people get over it, but I never did and though I made a career more in physics and cosmology than astrobiology I've always had a soft spot for the subject of life because it does seem so mysterious. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 120:For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 121:... Nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial you have to use not a shadow but a sign, not the limitation but the image. The image is a new and different reality, and of course it does not convey an impression of some object, but the mind of the subject; and that is something else again. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 122:If the photographer is to have a chance of achieving a true reflection of a person’s world– which is as much outside him as inside him– it is necessary that the subject of the portrait should be in a situation normal to him. We must respect the atmosphere which surrounds the human being, and integrate into the portrait the individual’s habitat– for man, no less than animals, has his habitat. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 123:When you find yourself critical of the way anyone has attracted or is using money, you are pushing money away from yourself. But when you realize that what others do with money has nothing to do with you, and that your primary work is to think and speak and do what feels good to you, then you will be in alignment not only about the subject of money, but about every important subject in your physical experience. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 124:After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision. ~ charles-darwin, @wisdomtrove 125:For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 126:For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 127:If in the state of witnessing you ask yourself: & 128:One would suppose that the battle for religious liberty was won in the United States two hundred years ago. However, in the time since, and right now, powerful voices are always raised in favor of bigotry and thought control. It is useful, then, to have a compendium of the thoughts of great men and women of all faiths (and of none) on the subject, to convince us that we men and woman of freedom are not and never have been alone. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 129:Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. The photographers eye is perpetually evaluating. A photographer can bring coincidence of line simply by moving his head a fraction of a millimeter. He can modify perspectives by a slight bending of the knees. By placing the camera closer to or farther from the subject, he draws a detail — and it can be subordinated, or he can be tyrannized by it. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove 130:He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove 131:The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 132:By an ambitious chieftain, aiming only to aggrandize himself and establish his power, the subject might have been regarded in a different light; but the designs and actions of Washington centred in nobler objects, the freedom, tranquillity, and happiness of his country, in which he was to participate equally with every other citizen, neither seeking nor expecting any other preeminence than that of having been an instrument in the hand of Providence. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 133:He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove 134:Faith is a great thing, and really religious people would like us to believe that faith and knowing are the same thing, but I don't believe that myself. Because there are too many different ideas on the subject. What we know is this: When we die, one of two things happens. Either our souls and thoughts somehow survive the experience of dying or they don't. If they do, that opens up every possibility you could think of. If they don't, it's just blotto. The end. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 135:To see the butcher slap the steak before he laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was agreeable too - it really was - to see him cut it off so smooth and juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 136:... But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 137:Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short, decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could,with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject... ~ jane-austen, @wisdomtrove 138:What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life - the need for taking time to be alone with God? Lewis: "We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by Our Lord; and since they are his commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 139:How very seldom do you encounter in the world a man of great abilities, acquirements, experience, who will unmask his mind, unbutton his brains, and pour forth in careless and picturesque phrase all the results of his studies and observation; his knowledge of men, books, and nature. On the contrary, if a man has by any chance an original idea, he hoards it as if it were old gold; and rather avoids the subject with which he is most conversant, from fear that you may appropriate his best thoughts. ~ benjamin-disraeli, @wisdomtrove 140:I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the subject as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove 141:As an adult I discovered that I was a pretty good autodidact, and can teach myself all kind of things. And developed a great interest in a number of different things from how to build a street hot rod from the ground up to quantum mechanics, and those two different kinds of mechanics, and it was really in the sciences, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, I would begin looking at these things looking for ideas, but in fact you don't read it for ideas you read it for curiosity and interest in the subject. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 142:If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 143:I am the subject of depression so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to. But I always get back again by this-I know that I trust Christ. I have no reliance but in Him, and if He falls, I shall fall with Him. But if He does not, I shall not. Because He lives, I shall live also, and I spring to my legs again and fight with my depressions of spirit and get the victory through it. And so may you do, and so you must, for there is no other way of escaping from it. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 144:My doctrine means that I must identify myself with life, with everything that lives, that I must share the majesty of life in the presence of God. The sum-total of this life is God. .. Man is not at peace with himself until he has become like unto God. The endeavor to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realisation. This self-realisation is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures... to be a real devotee is to realise oneself. Self-realisation is not something apart. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 145:& 146:When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist. When thought objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish. Things are objects because of the subject; the mind is such because of things. Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness. In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains in itself the whole world. If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion. ~ jianzhi-sengcan, @wisdomtrove 147:The Spirit of God bears no witness to Christless sermons. Leave Jesus out of your preaching, and the Holy Spirit will never come upon you. Why should he? Has he not come on purpose that he may testify of Christ? Did not Jesus say, ‚ÄòHe shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you'? Yes, the subject was Christ, and nothing but Christ, and such is the teaching which the Spirit of God will own. Be it ours never to wander from this central point: may we determine to know nothing among men but Christ and his cross. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 148:The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with." ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 149:For us, mind has nature for its premise, being nature's truth and for that reason its absolute prius. In this truth nature has vanished, and mind has resulted as the idea arrived at being-for-itself, the object of which, as well as the subject, is the concept. This identity is absolute negativity, for whereas in nature the concept has its perfect external objectivity, this its alienation has been superseded, and in this alienation the concept has become identical with itself. But it is this identity therefore, only in being a return out of nature. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 150:It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it. ~ william-faulkner, @wisdomtrove 151:Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and other works both of a religious and moral nature, for themselves. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove 152:At some point in life, we all ask the same question: Who am I? And no one really knows the answer. The self is a slippery subject—especially when it’s the subject that is regarding itself as an object! So let’s begin by grounding this airy topic with an experiential activity—taking the body for a walk. Then we’ll investigate the nature of the self in your brain. Last, we’ll explore methods for relaxing and releasing self-ing in order to feel more confident, peaceful, and joined with all things. (For more on this profound matter, which reaches beyond the scope of a single chapter, see Living Dhamma by Ajahn Chah, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, or The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi.) ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove 153:When it comes right down to it, the challenge of mindfulness is to realize that this is it Right now is my life. The question is, What is my relationship to it going to be? Does my life just automatically happen to me? Am I a total prisoner of my circumstances or my obligations, of my body or my illness, or of my history? Do I become hostile or defensive or depressed if certain buttons get pushed, happy if other buttons are pushed, and frightened if something else happens? What are my choices? Do I have any options? We will be looking into these questions more deeply when we take up the subject of our reactions to stress and how our emotions affect our health. For now the important point is to grasp the value of bringing the practice of mindfulness into the conduct of our daily lives. Is there any waking moment of your life that would not be richer and more alive for you if you were more fully awake while it was happening? ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 154:In one of his traditional sermons transmitted by his disciples, is the following apologue on the subject of charity : " When God created the earth it shook and trembled, until he put mountains upon it, to make it firm. Then the angels asked, & 155:It is by participation of species that we call every sensible object beautiful. Thus, since everything void of form is by nature fitted for its reception, as far as it is destitute of reason and form it is base and separate from the divine reason, the great fountain of forms; and whatever is entirely remote from this immortal source is perfectly base and deformed. And such is matter, which by its nature is ever averse from the supervening irradiations of form. Whenever, therefore, form accedes, it conciliates in amicable unity the parts which are about to compose a whole; for being itself one it is not wonderful that the subject of its power should tend to unity, as far as the nature of a compound will admit. Hence beauty is established in multitude when the many is reduced into one, and in this case it communicates itself both to the parts and to the whole. But when a particular one, composed from similar parts, is received it gives itself to the whole, without departing from the sameness and integrity of its nature. Thus at one and the same time it communicates itself to the whole building and its several parts; and at another time confines itself to a single stone, and then the first participation arises from the operations of art, but the second from the formation of nature. And hence body becomes beautiful through the communion supernally proceeding from divinity. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:If the subject's easy we may all be wise; ~ Ovid, #NFDB
2:After that she changed the subject: Did ~ Gill Paul, #NFDB
3:Despite the seriousness of the subject, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
4:The style depends on the subject. ~ Mohsen Makhmalbaf, #NFDB
5:Buck next brought up the subject of the ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
6:Grasp the subject, the words will follow. ~ Cato the Elder, #NFDB
7:The workmanship was better than the subject matter. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
8:I hate being the subject of photographs. ~ Richard Griffiths, #NFDB
9:The subject comes first, the medium second. ~ Richard Prince, #NFDB
10:I seek truth in a book and not the subject. ~ Vaslav Nijinsky, #NFDB
11:Well, honor is the subject of my story. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
12:I want women to be the subject, not the object. ~ Jill Soloway, #NFDB
13:The subject of an outsider who becomes obsessed. ~ Wes Anderson, #NFDB
14:Despite the Cooper/Hofstadter papers on the subject, ~ Jodi Taylor, #NFDB
15:I am interested in the subject which is Russia. ~ Tatyana Tolstaya, #NFDB
16:Change but the name, and you are the subject of the story. ~ Horace, #NFDB
17:Between the subject and the object lies the value. ~ Robert M Pirsig, #NFDB
18:The subject of a rumor is always the last to hear it. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
19:Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject. ~ Jamie Wyeth, #NFDB
20:I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. ~ Frank Sinatra, #NFDB
21:We can't change the world, but we can change the subject ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
22:Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB
23:The subject of a good tragedy must not be realistic. ~ Pierre Corneille, #NFDB
24:The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
25:You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
26:Dead is when the chemists take over the subject. ~ Arthur Leonard Schawlow, #NFDB
27:So she did the English thing. She changed the subject. ~ Steve Hockensmith, #NFDB
28:When a doctor makes a mistake, it's best to bury the subject. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
29:Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera. ~ Minor White, #NFDB
30:What is the subject of our thought? Experience! Nothing else! ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
31:Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
32:The Democrats generally recoil from the subject of entitlements. ~ Bill Keller, #NFDB
33:On the subject of Carrie White, we're all relatively uninformed. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
34:Don't shoot til the subject hits you in the pit of your stomach. ~ Lisette Model, #NFDB
35:The student is infinitely more important than the subject matter. ~ Nel Noddings, #NFDB
36:The first songs I wrote were catchy, but the subject matter was God. ~ Katy Perry, #NFDB
37:The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
38:around here.” She changed the subject and rose to her feet. “And ~ Debra Burroughs, #NFDB
39:From now on the subject says: “Hullo object!” “I destroyed you. ~ Jessica Benjamin, #NFDB
40:I like speed in thrillers. It's a rhythm adapted to the subject. ~ Philippe Claudel, #NFDB
41:The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
42:Usually, the subject matter of the image is not the subject of the work. ~ Roni Horn, #NFDB
43:Color is the essence of painting, which the subject always killed. ~ Kazimir Malevich, #NFDB
44:However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto, #NFDB
45:She was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
46:For love concentrates on the object, sex concentrates on the subject. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
47:It’s not that gray water’s boring, but the subject does have its limits. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
48:Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
49:Teachers need to teach the subject rather than to teach the textbook. ~ James W Loewen, #NFDB
50:That's right, you get him, Mary. Don't let him change the subject! ~ Alexandra Bracken, #NFDB
51:That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
52:We need to have a talk on the subject of what's yours and what's mine. ~ Steig Larsson, #NFDB
53:We need to have a talk on the subject of what's yours and what's mine. ~ Stieg Larsson, #NFDB
54:When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
55:One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject. ~ Richard Diebenkorn, #NFDB
56:The subject under discussion, economics, purports to be a science. It ~ John Lanchester, #NFDB
57:A stubborn man can't change his mind and won't change the subject. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
58:Daily life is both the subject and environment of the work I am making. ~ Camille Henrot, #NFDB
59:If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
60:The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
61:Other people’s tragedies should not be the subject of idle conversation. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
62:The subject of food is like Chopsticks: almost anyone can improvise on it. ~ Helen DeWitt, #NFDB
63:The subject itself is of no account; what matters is the way it is presented. ~ Raoul Dufy, #NFDB
64:The subject’s pulse increased on contact,” he said. “Don’t write that. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
65:For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. ~ Diane Arbus, #NFDB
66:I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to better. ~ Frida Kahlo, #NFDB
67:The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
68:A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
69:It is the best book ever written on the subject. There is nothing like it! ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
70:On the subject of emigration, it is not my intention to dwell at any length. ~ Charles Sturt, #NFDB
71:The subject isn't always a help to the photographer, it's like handcuffs. ~ Raymond Depardon, #NFDB
72:Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the subject of them ~ Daniel Defoe, #NFDB
73:I don't think the subject of a documentary film should be producers on it. ~ Michael Rapaport, #NFDB
74:The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.
~ Ken Wilber,#NFDB
75:A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
76:Each of my book arrives at a form and a style that is appropriate to the subject. ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
77:She’s trying to change the subject, even though we weren’t speaking out loud. ~ Colleen Hoover, #NFDB
78:Meditation is the means of unification of the subject and object. Meditate. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
79:Its a beautiful woman's fate to be the subject of conversation where ever she goes ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
80:what summits would I not reach if my own life made the subject of the melody. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
81:Art is the writer not having control, but the subject having control of the writer. ~ Paula Vogel, #NFDB
82:I had passed from the subject to the direct object of every sentence of my life. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
83:I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
84:It was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
85:The artist has to transcend a subject, or he loses the battle. The subject wins. ~ Fritz Scholder, #NFDB
86:The most tedious of all discourses are on the subject of the Supreme Being. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
87:The subject’s pulse increased on contact,” he said.
“Don’t write that. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
88:I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best. ~ Frida Kahlo, #NFDB
89:It's the not the subject that interests me as much as my perception of the subject. ~ Roy DeCarava, #NFDB
90:Mine was not pop art. I maybe started with a subject, but I changed the subject. ~ Claes Oldenburg, #NFDB
91:If thy predicates are anthropomorphisms, the subject is an anthropomorphism too. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
92:So many teen films are overproduced and people are going to burnout on the subject. ~ Kirsten Dunst, #NFDB
93:The subject and the reality of having children came at the height of my career. ~ Melissa Etheridge, #NFDB
94:The subject does not belong to the world; rather, it is a limit of the world. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
95:Whatever is the object of a saint's hope is the subject of his prayer. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
96:Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped. ~ Frank Chodorov, #NFDB
97:The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry. ~ Philip Levine, #NFDB
98:Cheerless poverty has no harder trial than this, that it makes men the subject of ridicule. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
99:I think we live in a time where people are just insane on the subject of how they look. ~ Ali MacGraw, #NFDB
100:Poor people either mismanage their money or they avoid the subject of money altogether. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
101:The camera points both ways. In expressing the subject you also express yourself. ~ Freeman Patterson, #NFDB
102:The subject of Citizenfour, Edward Snowden, could not be here for some treason. ~ Neil Patrick Harris, #NFDB
103:No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
104:No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
105:Often in close relationships, the subject being discussed is not the subject at all. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
106:If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
107:The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
108:We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best. ~ Anatole France, #NFDB
109:The possibilities in sci-fi are wonderful. The subject is bigger than everything we know. ~ Joel Gretsch, #NFDB
110:Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
111:Only an elaborate treatise in ecology could do justice to the subject of what went wrong, ~ James C Scott, #NFDB
112:The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
113:The way I write is generally about love. I have a great fascination about the subject. ~ Carly Rae Jepsen, #NFDB
114:His girl? I was too freaked, and the subject was Jimmy Choos, so I didn’t ask about that. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
115:Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
116:Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
117:That Tom should be very conscientious on the subject of truth could hardly be expected. ~ Horatio Alger Jr, #NFDB
118:An expert knows the subject very well. A model teaches by showing instead of just telling. ~ Thomas Leonard, #NFDB
119:Besides, back to the subject of you being nuts, all writers are nuts, didn’t you know that? ~ Douglas Clegg, #NFDB
120:If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating. ~ Leigh Hunt, #NFDB
121:In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
122:No good sensible working bee listens to the advice of a bedbug on the subject of business. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
123:The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
124:Your tweet is as important as if you would have written a Ph.D. [dissertation] on the subject. ~ Raoul Peck, #NFDB
125:Arbus would later insist, ‘the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
126:As a writer reading, I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
127:Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion. ~ Franklin Pierce, #NFDB
128:If you were to create a piece of art, what would the subject be?
I haven't met her yet. :) ~ Amie Kaufman,#NFDB
129:After a certain age, you finally become the indisputable authority on the subject of yourself. ~ Gina Barreca, #NFDB
130:I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject. ~ Richard Attenborough, #NFDB
131:If I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
132:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
133:We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
134:Whoever our students may be, whatever the subject we teach, ultimately we teach who we are. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
135:You are all at once the subject, object, predicate, preposition, and period of my thoughts. ~ Daria Snadowsky, #NFDB
136:And while we are on the subject of medication you always need to look at risk versus benefit. ~ Temple Grandin, #NFDB
137:Perhaps the least cheering statement ever made on the subject of art is that life imitates it. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
138:The subject was the meaning of life. It was taught from experience.
The teaching goes on. ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
139:But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that. ~ Plato, #NFDB
140:On the subject of Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so vague she thought Ramses II was a jazz piano player. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
141:The character of the subject must influence the choice of the method of its representation. ~ Walter J Phillips, #NFDB
142:The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. ~ Eugene V Debs, #NFDB
143:[T]he object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
144:the task is “to get the subject to shift from a psychic reality to a true reality” (1988b, ~ Stephen A Mitchell, #NFDB
145:This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
146:Changing the subject is one of the most difficult arts to master, the key to almost all the others. ~ Cesar Aira, #NFDB
147:Changing the subject is one of the most difficult arts to master, the key to almost all the others. ~ C sar Aira, #NFDB
148:For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensations. ~ Paul Cezanne, #NFDB
149:I fail to see how turning the subject over like compost can do anything except raise its stink. ~ Sonya Hartnett, #NFDB
150:Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life ~ Protagoras, #NFDB
151:The most important thing... is not clicking the shutter... it is clicking with the subject. ~ Alfred Eisenstaedt, #NFDB
152:The subject [of Los Angeles] became a general metaphor for anxiety and the speed of modern life. ~ Edward Ruscha, #NFDB
153:When you look at good governance, you also need to look at how you approach the subject. ~ Cyrus Pallonji Mistry, #NFDB
154:I actually think the subject of young divorce is pretty funny; I'd like to write a movie about it. ~ Olivia Wilde, #NFDB
155:Looking and seeing are two different things. What matters is the relationship with the subject. ~ Christophe Agou, #NFDB
156:History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it? ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
157:I dig into my Cobb salad, waiting to jump knee deep into the subject I really want to talk about. ~ Alretha Thomas, #NFDB
158:I know for me the subject of how to be in a relationship is precious and complicated and challenging. ~ Helen Hunt, #NFDB
159:No error is more certain than the one proceeding from a hasty and superficial view of the subject. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
160:Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
161:See who is the subject; and this inquiry leads you to pure Consciousness beyond the subject. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
162:And the truth of the matter is that death is a mystery to me. I have no opinion on the subject. ~ Oscar Zeta Acosta, #NFDB
163:I think he will probably come round in time, I mean to renew the subject pretty often. ~ Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, #NFDB
164:On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
165:On the subject of motive, there are, generally speaking, six major motives for murder. Ready? They ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
166:There was never in my mind a desire to give in on the subject of freeing the political prisoners. ~ Robert Bourassa, #NFDB
167:The useful type of successful teacher is one whose main interest is the children, not the subject. ~ Walter Raleigh, #NFDB
168:Experience has shown that the more fascinating the subject, the less observant the photographer. ~ Andreas Feininger, #NFDB
169:For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself. ~ Alec Soth, #NFDB
170:I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it. ~ Jack Prelutsky, #NFDB
171:Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years. ~ Thomas Frank, #NFDB
172:The Great Work will then form the subject of the design.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, The Lamen,#NFDB
173:The subject says: I see first many things which dance... then everything gradually becomes connected. ~ Jim Morrison, #NFDB
174:The writer ultimately tires of the subject's self-serving story, and substitutes a story of his own. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
175:Whatever I write, no matter how gray or dark the subject matter, it's still going to be a comic novel. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
176:I think with art you have to do a bit of transforming of the subject to make the art worth having. ~ Matthew Collings, #NFDB
177:It is seldom that a gentleman raises the subject of sewage so early in a conversation, I reflected. ~ Deanna Raybourn, #NFDB
178:People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they're very rarely the same. ~ Ricky Gervais, #NFDB
179:The subject matter of the stories on the surface... there seem to be a number of stories about travel. ~ Kenneth Koch, #NFDB
180:The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end? ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
181:Every thing was safe enough and she smiled over the many anxious feelings she had wasted on the subject. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
182:I know all the theory of everything but when I paint I don't think of anything except the subject and me. ~ Alice Neel, #NFDB
183:No matter how righteous the subject, Caravaggio painted images that glowed with the vitality of evil. ~ Victor LaValle, #NFDB
184:Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate. ~ Dorothea Lange, #NFDB
185:The obscurity is much oftener in the passions and prejudices of the reasoner than in the subject. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
186:Every thing was safe enough, and she smiled over the many anxious feelings she had wasted on the subject. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
187:It's not the subject that's cliché; it's cliché or not. But in fact, this is the way you're talking about it. ~ Stromae, #NFDB
188:Let's face it, the subject of campaign finance is not always scintillating. But it's incredibly important. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
189:The portrait is the subject matter in photography where the problems of the media are the most visible. ~ Thomas Struth, #NFDB
190:We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. ~ Mark Rothko, #NFDB
191:Each painting has its own way of evolving. When the painting is finished, the subject reveals itself. ~ William Baziotes, #NFDB
192:I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
193:It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
194:For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
195:I think the best teachers had a real interest in the subject they were teaching and a love for children. ~ Beverly Cleary, #NFDB
196:The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, #NFDB
197:Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write. ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
198:while I hope the subject is fascinating and my treatment readable, such a book cannot be a page-turner. ~ Avinash K Dixit, #NFDB
199:Idealism, emphasized the existential rather than the essential (rational) character of the subject in thought. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
200:I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait. ~ Salvador Dali, #NFDB
201:If art's a seismographic project, when that project meets with failure, failure must become the subject too. ~ Chris Kraus, #NFDB
202:On the Subject of Non-American Blacks Suffering from Illnesses Whose Names They Refuse to Know. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
203:The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen. ~ Mary Ellen Mark, #NFDB
204:The Subject has really blue eyes that twinkle when he looks at someone like she's maybe a little bit insane. ~ Ally Carter, #NFDB
205:Faith is the subject of the head. Devotion is the subject of the heart and meditation connects both. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
206:It is a subject on which nothing final can be known.” The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
207:The doings of men, their prayers, fear, wrath, pleasure, delights, and recreations, are the subject of this book. ~ Juvenal, #NFDB
208:The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better. ~ Gertrude Stein, #NFDB
209:Vitellius would've given Percy an hour-long lecture on the subject, probably with a PowerPoint presentation. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
210:We are rarely in danger of examining to excess, especially when the subject is the shape of our own lives. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
211:It is the kind of learning you are practising that is important, not the subject-matter you are practising on. ~ Guy Claxton, #NFDB
212:The subject matter is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really. ~ Lucian, #NFDB
213:Fine writing is a distinct disadvantage. So is unique literary style. They take attention from the subject ~ Claude C Hopkins, #NFDB
214:I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. “I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
215:I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. 'I suppose she talks, she eats, and everything. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
216:What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
217:A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent. ~ Henry Moore, #NFDB
218:Empirical description involves enslavement to the object by decreeing passivity on the part of the subject. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
219:I don't have children, but I imagine if parents are really pushed on the subject, they probably have favorite children. ~ Moby, #NFDB
220:It's such a pain in the ass to write a book, I can't imagine writing one if I'm not interested in the subject. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
221:Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism that has been uttered on the subject. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
222:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.” ~ Jim Rohn ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
223:The idea of space is given to the artist to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space. ~ Willem de Kooning, #NFDB
224:A good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
225:I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether. ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
226:I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject. ~ Leslie Cockburn, #NFDB
227:The subtlety of your visual attention. You could alert me or change the subject with a contraction of your iris. ~ Forrest Gander, #NFDB
228:We have always wanted to find the 'it-ness' of anything we shoot. We want to get as deep into the subject as we can. ~ Jay Maisel, #NFDB
229:while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
230:You're not going to get any true confessions out of me," she said. "I'm a Leo, and our thing is changing the subject. ~ Ira Levin, #NFDB
231:["2012"] it was really more about the subject matter, and to do a modern retelling of Noah's Ark, a flood story. ~ Roland Emmerich, #NFDB
232:I don't really think about what the subject of my next album will be. I just know that I'm going to make another album. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
233:"In so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
234:It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest the public, and I am sure that the views are original. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
235:The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
236:Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
237:One must constantly meditate upon the absurdities of chance, a subject even more edifying than the subject of death. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
238:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.” ~ Kevin Horsley ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
239:They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
240:Though fanaticism drinks at many founts, its predisposing cause is mostly the subject of an invisible futurity. ~ Francis Atterbury, #NFDB
241:You always have to find something to say about the subject and in seven cases out of ten there is nothing to say. ~ Jonathan Meades, #NFDB
242:As is natural for an academic, when I want to learn about something, I volunteer to teach a course on the subject. ~ Steven Weinberg, #NFDB
243:Divination is turning out to be much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having studied the subject myself. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
244:I don't mean to change the subject or anything, but have you tried concealer on that zit?" Cynthia Lotte - Hot Six ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
245:Meditation requires an object to meditate on, whereas in Self-enquiry there is only the subject and no object. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
246:Modern philosophy from Descartes onward has asked itself the question: How can the subject really know the object? ~ William Barrett, #NFDB
247:Most persons who indulge in second thought don't do much thinking when the subject is presented for first thought. ~ William Feather, #NFDB
248:The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject. ~ Philip Kitcher, #NFDB
249:This is one of the last industries where the subject is off limits. Nobody’s comfortable in engaging in a conversation. ~ Rick Welts, #NFDB
250:A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
251:When it comes to dividing Americans on the basis of their gender, I know a little something about the subject. ~ Kay Bailey Hutchison, #NFDB
252:A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
253:Talent is the capacity to direct concentrated attention upon the subject: "the gift of seeing what others have not seen. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
254:That is what [Andy] Warhol portraits do: They elevate the subject into an icon of the pop culture he was documenting. ~ Giorgio Armani, #NFDB
255:A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity of the subject. It must be appropriate. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
256:I don't mean to change the subject or anything, but have you tried concealer on that zit?"
Cynthia Lotte - Hot Six ~ Janet Evanovich,#NFDB
257:Man and Superman: “the audience gets an exhausting idea of the inexhaustibility of the subject, and is bored brilliantly. ~ Clive James, #NFDB
258:My decision (for Christ) was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. I was decided upon. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
259:Sometimes a song just has to cater to whatever's goin' on. A well-written song is a song that stays true to the subject. ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
260:The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject ~ Theodor Adorno, #NFDB
261:To be perfectly frank, his ding-dong wouldn’t have been what you might call the subject of an exhaustive search. Albert ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
262:I was beginning to think that I was the subject of some existentialist experiment in permanently delayed gratification when ~ John Green, #NFDB
263:More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
264:Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
265:With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description; and hence we blend them together and obtain The One. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
266:After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
267:A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
268:A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
269:classic Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. To this day, it is the only attempt at a world synthesis on the subject. ~ Jeremy Narby, #NFDB
270:Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
271:He’d shut the door on the subject of loss, thrown all the bolts, and shoved a heavy table up against it for good measure. ~ Cecilia Grant, #NFDB
272:I take my job seriously, which means I'm going to need to get acquainted with the subject matter on a personal level. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
273:She was a sleuth and sleuths had to follow rules. ‘Get to the point; don’t allow the subject to digress’ was one of them ~ Renita D Silva, #NFDB
274:A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object. ~ Howard Hodgkin, #NFDB
275:Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. ~ John Henry Newman, #NFDB
276:To me there is no such thing as creative writing. It's either good writing, whatever the subject, or it's not creative. ~ Erskine Caldwell, #NFDB
277:When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
278:Change is always subjective. All through evolution you find that the conquest of nature comes by change in the subject. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
279:I think actually in any party it's a sign of general health to have different views, and especially on the subject of trade. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
280:It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
281:Julian Assange shouldn't be the subject of a grand jury hearing, he should be given a medal. He's contributing to democracy. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
282:Oh, you're an expert in crazy people now?"
"A month with you and I feel I have a master's degree in the subject. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
283:Really, for all the poetry in the world on the subject, when you get right down to it, it's mostly just boom! penis vagina. ~ Martin Leicht, #NFDB
284:the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well dressing it up. ~ Henry Fielding, #NFDB
285:When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
286:Young men are supposed to think themselves immortal, but the subject is not very often out of my mind for a long time together. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
287:I knew a lot about what I did when I was 20. I had read a lot, and I aspired to learn everything I could about the subject. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
288:I remember, growing up, if something big - God forbid - happened, the first jokes you heard on the subject came out of Jersey. ~ Oscar Nunez, #NFDB
289:I write scripts by myself. It's not for everybody. It's someone's personal work. I need to be in love with the subject. ~ Jean Pierre Jeunet, #NFDB
290:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.” ~ Kevin Horsley Jim Rohn ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
291:The Spirit, and your soul are not the same things. The Spirit is God - the source. Your soul is God's imagination - the subject. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
292:a book has no unwanted calories and you don’t have to worry about sizes as long as the subject matter appeals to the recipient. ~ Sue Grafton, #NFDB
293:I have a strong feeling that the subject of evolution is beautiful without the excuse of creationists needing to be bashed. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
294:It was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was. You were either moved by it or you weren’t. ~ Kate Atkinson, #NFDB
295:My philosophy is that one shall not resort to violence unless one is resolved to become the subject of violence at any time. ~ Takeshi Kitano, #NFDB
296:As a journalist, I'm not supposed to be the subject, but as an author, I'm fair game - another ingredient in the media soup. ~ Michael Azerrad, #NFDB
297:A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
298:Critic asks: 'And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?' - 'The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
299:if anyone present wishes to make me the subject of his wit, I am very much at his service--with my sword--whenever he has leisure. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
300:The authors of book reviews would consider themselves dishonored were they to mention, as they should, the subject of the book. ~ Louis Aragon, #NFDB
301:You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture. ~ Howard Hodgkin, #NFDB
302:Being a man of faith, what was so interesting to me was the subject, which started, by the way, with Anne Rice's wonderful books. ~ John Debney, #NFDB
303:For somebody who has injured their brain, every single thing they say and think will be the subject of their own questioning. ~ Richard Hammond, #NFDB
304:myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
305:On the subject of wild mushrooms, it is easy to tell who is an expert and who is not: The expert is the one who is still alive. ~ Donal Henahan, #NFDB
306:She also didn't listen to reason on the subject of the other two sentences. Go figure. Men had testicles and therefore were Wrong. ~ John Ringo, #NFDB
307:We think too fast, even while walking or on the way, or while engaged in other things, no matter how serious the subject. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
308:Before you try to convince anyone else, be sure you are convinced, and if you cannot convince yourself, drop the subject. ~ John Henry Patterson, #NFDB
309:Biologists have an adolescent fascination with sex. Like teenagers they are embarrassed by the subject because of their ignorance. ~ Steve Jones, #NFDB
310:Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth which continues to distort the continental geography of the subject. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
311:Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. ~ Saint John Henry Newman, #NFDB
312:The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.”
~ Kevin Horsley Jim Rohn ~ Kevin Horsley,#NFDB
313:There is no debate here, just scientists and non-scientists. And since the subject is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote. ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
314:two examiners, said simply that hardly anyone in Denmark was well enough informed on the subject to judge the candidate’s work. ~ Richard Rhodes, #NFDB
315:Health is not a condition of matter, but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear reliable testimony on the subject of health. ~ Mary Baker Eddy, #NFDB
316:His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world’s greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
317:I am working on a technical paper on compassion. So I am reading everything I can on the subject, including my own mind and heart. ~ Joan Halifax, #NFDB
318:I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes. ~ Robert Peel, #NFDB
319:In the dream, sheltered from the noise, the subject expressed a judgment much more on the mark than that manifested in wakefulness. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
320:Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; the subject, not the citizen... The man of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, #NFDB
321:People desperately resisted the idea of their own death by looking away for as long as they could and avoiding the subject. ~ Thomas Olde Heuvelt, #NFDB
322:The questions of economics, and how they infect, or rather how they affect intimacy. And that's probably the subject of all my films. ~ Ira Sachs, #NFDB
323:First, study the present construction. Second, ask for all past experiences ...study and read everything you can on the subject. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
324:I liked quantum mechanics very much. The subject was hard to understand but easy to apply to a large number of interesting problems. ~ Willis Lamb, #NFDB
325:I’m keeping an open mind on the subject,” Maddox said. “That allows me to see what is there instead of what I think I should see. ~ Vaughn Heppner, #NFDB
326:"True understanding happens when we dismantle the barrier between the object of understanding and the subject of understanding." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
327:As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world. ~ Juliette Binoche, #NFDB
328:Excuse me? You're a lady?"
"I bought a title on the Internet. I own one square inch of Scotland. And you're changing the subject. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB
329:I suppose you'd have to say that my interest in the subject fell somewhere between the Land of Hobbies and the Kingdom of Obsession. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
330:I think that former leaders are best seen occasionally and not too often heard - particularly on the subject of their successors! ~ Charles Kennedy, #NFDB
331:not seek for exactness in all matters alike, but in each according to the subject-matter, and so far as properly belongs to the system. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
332:Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter. ~ Bernard Malamud, #NFDB
333:The greatness of a writer has nothing to do with subject matter itself, only with how much the subject matter touches the author. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB
334:Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
335:I have long said that good teaching consists in loving the subject you are teaching in the presence of students whom you also love. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
336:It seemed that digression was the true principle of the universe, that the only real subject was the way the subject kept changing. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
337:I want to tell people that I had post-natal depression because there is so much stigma around the subject and there shouldn't be. ~ Jennifer Ellison, #NFDB
338:Japanese women live in fear of making the least sound in a bathroom stall. Japanese men pay no attention to the subject whatsoever. ~ Amelie Nothomb, #NFDB
339:The full beauty of the subject of generating functions emerges only from tuning in on both channels: the discrete and the continuous. ~ Herbert Wilf, #NFDB
340:"The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
341:There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
342:And the Vatican, whatever anyone else might have thought on the subject, answered, like Hebrew National hot dogs, to "a higher authority. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
343:Granted, there is still that picture of the Terminator jeering over practically every journalistic attempt to engage with the subject. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
344:His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of the world’s greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
345:No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion. ~ Jeremy Bentham, #NFDB
346:Time, you may be sure, will make one or the other of us think differently; and, in the meanwhile, we need not talk much on the subject. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
347:When you know you are ignorant in a subject, start educating yourself by finding an expert in the field or a book on the subject. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
348:A patient, long before he becomes the subject of medical scrutiny, is, at first, simply a storyteller, a narrator of suffering— ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee, #NFDB
349:A portrait is like an ornamental headstone. It is not for the subject, but for those who look upon it. For those you want to remember. ~ Julie Klassen, #NFDB
350:His contributions touched almost every corner of the subject and have had a deep and abiding influence over the way that physicists think. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
351:I don't mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else's object. ~ Tori Amos, #NFDB
352:Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
353:Not that he was any expert on the subject, but Matt believed he could tell a lot about a woman by observing the way she watched a sunset. ~ Peggy Webb, #NFDB
354:The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
355:Whenever you bring up women's internal workings, guys want to change the subject. Unless, of course, they're trying to change the laws. ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
356:For me, teaching is about weaving a web of connectedness between myself, my students, the subject I'm teaching, and the larger world. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
357:I enjoyed the hands-on nature of this work, and the challenge of creating an environment from which the subject would spring to life. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
358:I know of nothing which I would choose to have as the subject of my ambition for life than to be kept faithful to my God till death. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
359:The most frightening interview I've ever done was with Dr. Lonnie Thompson of The Ohio State University on the subject of global warming. ~ Bill Kurtis, #NFDB
360:Upon the subject of education ... I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
361:It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject. ~ Mario Testino, #NFDB
362:Page 25 "But if we accept the legitimacy of the subject nevertheless, then a new and contentious series of questions at once opens up. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
363:He was the subject of a little respectful ribbing. But he was, of course, the captain, which meant he had to do lots of the ribbing himself. ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
364:The old expression goes, a good speech is like a woman’s skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject. ~ Jonathan Tropper, #NFDB
365:The thing whose address I lost is not the End, it’s the Beginning. Not the object to be possessed but the subject that possesses me. Misery ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
366:A garment that is double dyed, dipped again and again, will retain the color a great while; so a truth which is the subject of meditation. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
367:I also agree with Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
368:It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
369:Then, I said, no science or art considers or enjoins the interest of the stronger or
superior, but only the interest of the subject and weaker? ~ Plato,#NFDB
370:You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved. ~ Tracy Kidder, #NFDB
371:Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
372:A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
373:For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
374:I'd rather meander through a pit of vipers than love one more person, but since I'm on the subject of snakes, we all know one, or are one. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
375:I scowled defensively. "My conversations don't usually include the subject of erections." "Too bad," he said. "All the best conversations do. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
376:The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology. ~ James Mark Baldwin, #NFDB
377:When I photograph someone, I want to shoot the subject and get them out of my studio so I can play with the photos and do all the stuff I want. ~ Nikki Sixx, #NFDB
378:I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
379:In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
380:Much has been written on the subject of bed-books. The general consensus of opinion is that a gentle, slow-moving story makes the best opiate ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
381:And so, at last, I come to the one firm conviction that I mentioned at the beginning: it is that the subject is too new for final judgments. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
382:Unfortunately, there are very few facilities which offer courses in the arts. Not all the secondary schools offer the subject for CXC examinations. ~ St Lucia, #NFDB
383:Whomever you're going to interview, you have to be interested in what it is you want to know from them. You have to be interested in the subject. ~ Kurt Loder, #NFDB
384:I do the same with my books...Nothing like a good argument in the margins with someone who's already said all they have to say on the subject. ~ Betsy Cornwell, #NFDB
385:I scowled defensively. "My conversations don't usually include the subject of erections."
"Too bad," he said. "All the best conversations do. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
386:On the subject of spinach: divide into little piles. Rearrange again into new piles. After five of six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full. ~ Delia Ephron, #NFDB
387:As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color. ~ James Whistler, #NFDB
388:Because that’s how snobs deal with uncomfortable subjects. We belittle their importance, laugh at them, and change the subject to weather or sport. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
389:"The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
390:Well, I think in my own work the subject matter usually deals with characters I know, aspects of myself, friends of mine - that sort of thing. ~ Martin Scorsese, #NFDB
391:I take more to the subject than to my ideas about it. I am not interested in any idea I have had, the subject is so demanding and so important. ~ Lee Friedlander, #NFDB
392:The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice. ~ Quintilian, #NFDB
393:You changed the subject." "From what?" "The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy." "You know." "Know what?" "That I only have eyes for you. ~ Khaled Hosseini, #NFDB
394:4.23..If 'thought' means: instance of the subject in a truth-procedure, then there is no thought of this thought, because it contains no knowledge. ~ Alain Badiou, #NFDB
395:Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject. ~ Harold Morowitz, #NFDB
396:Funnily enough, it is the subject one dreads talking about at length one ends up talking about at length, often without the slightest provocation. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
397:He continued, “I just want to say that your paper was the best discussion I know of the subject, and I’m grateful that you volunteered to give it. ~ John Williams, #NFDB
398:Lady Middleton resigned herself... Contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject, five or six times every day. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
399:He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
400:I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye. ~ Andre Kertesz, #NFDB
401:In cases in which the related previous personality had committed suicide, the subject has shown an inclination to contemplate and threaten suicide. ~ Ian Stevenson, #NFDB
402:The subject matter... is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
403:As for the subject matter in my painting.. ..it is very often an incidental thing in the background, elusive and unclear, that really stirred me. ~ William Baziotes, #NFDB
404:I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
405:Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse discrimination; a want of such classification and distribution as the subject admits of. ~ Edmund Burke, #NFDB
406:Putting her head back on the chair, she contemplated how she should revisit the subject without being disrespectful of his answer or lack thereof. ~ Aleatha Romig, #NFDB
407:The work now before the reader is the most extensive which our language contains on the subject. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
408:True learning only occurs when you love the subject you are studying and then the acquiring of knowledge is effortless because it is also a pleasure. ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
409:When ordinary folk perceive phenomena, They look on them as real, and not illusory. This, then, is the subject of debate Where ordinary and yogis differ. ~ ntideva, #NFDB
410:I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subject of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am. ~ Tony Horwitz, #NFDB
411:I'm not at liberty to discuss the governments knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO's at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject! ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
412:In fact he was rather boring on the subject, but I kept quiet and took comfort in that old saying about fallen apples and their distance from trees. ~ David Nicholls, #NFDB
413:I've never used my weight to get a laugh. That is, used my size as the subject for humor. You never saw me stuck in a door-way or stuck in a chair. ~ Roscoe Arbuckle, #NFDB
414:Richard at once declared that we must be content with that and drop the subject. I agreed with Richard. All's well that ends well. What say you, O.G? ~ Gaston Leroux, #NFDB
415:The big trick is to find the subject that relates to a human experience. Explain the rules, involve people, and they will do most of the work for you. ~ Billy Wilder, #NFDB
416:The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work. ~ Thorstein Veblen, #NFDB
417:Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects of Russia and of Europe will study the psychology of Russian crime, for the subject is worth it. But ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
418:Even if the painting is green, well then! The 'subject' is the green. There is always a subject; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible. ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
419:I did what any gentleman would do for a woman whose whole world, whose life, whose very existence was crumbling down around her. I changed the subject. ~ Tim Marquitz, #NFDB
420:I like to do the pictures before people get too self-conscious. I like to be spontaneous and get a shot before the subject thinks too much about it. ~ Keira Knightley, #NFDB
421:My pictures are not that interesting, nor the subject matter. They are simply a collection of facts; my book is more like a collection of Ready-mades. ~ Edward Ruscha, #NFDB
422:Occasionally I’d tune in to a music station, but I always preferred the sound of people talking, even if the subject was something I didn’t care about ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
423:The organism cannot be regarded as simply the passive object of autonomous internal and external forces; it is also the subject of its own evolution. ~ Richard Levins, #NFDB
424:There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
425:The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
426:The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
427:After macrobiotics, Zen, and channeling, the "poor Vanishing Indian" is once more the subject of "deep and meaningful conversation" in the high rises. ~ Mary Brave Bird, #NFDB
428:Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights. ~ Alan Moore, #NFDB
429:I am interested not in individual readings, but in constructing networks of images and meanings capable of reflecting the complexity of the subject. ~ Wolfgang Tillmans, #NFDB
430:The notion that we inherit and “relive” aspects of family trauma has been the subject of many books by the renowned German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. ~ Mark Wolynn, #NFDB
431:Who's the subject?"
"The psychiatrist - Dr. Hannibal Lecter," Crawford said.
A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering. ~ Thomas Harris,#NFDB
432:An egotist will always speak of himself, either in praise or in censure, but a modest man ever shuns making himself the subject of his conversation. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB
433:I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
434:It’s nothing to be ashamed of—often the greatest difficulty faced by people suffering from mental illness is society’s inexcusable ignorance of the subject. ~ David Wong, #NFDB
435:Knowledge is not predetermined by heredity; it is not predetermined in the things around us - in knowing things around him the subject always adds to them. ~ Jean Piaget, #NFDB
436:the subject is a negative entity, a pure self-relating negativity-which is why, in order not to "implode into itself;' it needs a minimum of objectal support ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
437:And although one broken heart doesn’t make me an expert in the subject, I believe you need both things—time and an emotional replacement—to fully mend one. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
438:On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do. ~ Elizabeth Bowen, #NFDB
439:No. When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
440:The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that! ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
441:Do you know?” “Do I know what?” “If they need more water.” “No, I don’t. You might ask a farmer.” “Don’t be ridiculous. There must be a book on the subject. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
442:Katie cleared her throat again. Then she looked into the window at her gums. She said, "To change the subject, do you think I could tell if I had gingivitis? ~ M T Anderson, #NFDB
443:Tech Jacket shares the same tone as Invincible, but the subject matter is very different. Where Invincible is about perfection, Tech Jacket is about flaws. ~ Robert Kirkman, #NFDB
444:There's nobody between you and the print. Nobody. It's you and the subject and the final print. And if you get it published that way, you've said it. ~ David Douglas Duncan, #NFDB
445:the subject is increased by the fact that while we have to deal with novel and strange facts, we have also to use old words in novel and inconsistent senses. ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
446:I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul. ~ Charles Baudelaire, #NFDB
447:I was sort of lazy at school, but I realize I still have something to bring to the subject which is comforting. I feel I am not as stupid as I thought I was. ~ Michel Gondry, #NFDB
448:Objectivity is the subject subjugating the object. That is how you assert yourself. You make yourself the active voice and the object is the passive no-voice. ~ Emily Levine, #NFDB
449:That 95 per cent. fail of those who start in business upon their own account seems incredible, and yet such are said to be the statistics upon the subject. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
450:The Analytical Engine is an embodying of the science of operations, constructed with peculiar reference to abstract number as the subject of those operations. ~ Ada Lovelace, #NFDB
451:The ongoing successful treatment of my depression is the single most important positive step I have taken in my life, hence my enthusiasm for the subject. ~ Peter McWilliams, #NFDB
452:“The subject of transformation is not the empirical man, however much he may identify with the “old Adam,” but Adam the Primordial Man, the archetype within us.” ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
453:And although one broken heart doesn't make me an expert in the subject, I believe you need both things - time and an emotional replacement - to fully mend one. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
454:In every science certain things must be accepted as first principles if the subject matter is to be understood; and these first postulates rest upon faith. ~ Nicholas of Cusa, #NFDB
455:It makes me happy that an arm of the US government has, in some official capacity, issued an opinion on the subject of firing nuclear missiles at hurricanes. ~ Randall Munroe, #NFDB
456:Sky passed out on the road today," Karen says, changing the subject. "Some adorable man-boy carried her inside." I laugh.
"Guy, Mom. Please just say guy. ~ Colleen Hoover,#NFDB
457:The reasons for doing so lie in changes that have taken place both in our society in the last thirty years and in the subject itself. Today many more of the young ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
458:If women have failed to make “universal” art because we’re trapped within the “personal,” why not universalize the “personal” and make it the subject of our art? ~ Chris Kraus, #NFDB
459:India knows that the subject of Land is not with the Central Government and the Centre does not require lands. All rights relating to land are with the states. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
460:My mother had said to me afterward, “Your father is a fool.” When I asked her why, she’d shrugged. “Men generally are,” she’d retorted, and changed the subject. ~ Charles Todd, #NFDB
461:The French have launched their own version of Google, called Quaero. You just type in the subject you're interested in, and Quaero refuses to look it up for you. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
462:Every wanton and causeless restraint of the will of the subject, whether practiced by a monarch, a nobility, or a popular assembly, is a degree of tyranny. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
463:Love could be such a squalid emotion: burning bright in the midst of pathos, the subject of pity and contempt, it blazed with brilliant stupidity all the same. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
464:She left them before Bagwy Llydiart, in midsentence. Geoffery and Sally got the subject and verb, and the girl who opened the farm door to her got the object. ~ Peter Dickinson, #NFDB
465:the subject described himself as a pacifist who can’t tolerate conflict. He claims to be an outsider in the family, ignored unless he is the object of criticism. ~ Jere Krakoff, #NFDB
466:What they were giving me seemed incredibly real to me, so I'd react to it in a very real way. That was frightening for me, especially because of the subject. ~ Mariel Hemingway, #NFDB
467:You changed the subject."
"From what?"
"The empty-headed girls who think you're sexy."
"You know."
"Know what?"
"That I only have eyes for you. ~ Khaled Hosseini,#NFDB
468:A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
469:In a perfect world I would be taller, you would be alive, and chickens could cross the road without being the subject of a joke. Guess you’ll just have to deal. ~ Suzanne Wright, #NFDB
470:So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor. ~ Rose Macaulay, #NFDB
471:The morality of individual liberation (which is the subject of this chapter) is mainly practiced by refraining from physical and verbal actions that cause harm. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
472:Do you ask me how I explain the origin of this world and origin of man? Alright I tell you. Charles Darwin has tried to throw some light on the subject. Study him. ~ Bhagat Singh, #NFDB
473:I punched to line. "Yes? What?"
"Norville. It's Cormac. If you don't change the subject right now, I'm going to have to go over there and have a word with you. ~ Carrie Vaughn,#NFDB
474:On the subject of Egypt, Ellen Cherry was so vague she thought Ramses II was a jazz piano player. From that, we might conclude that she was equally dumb about jazz. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
475:Say, for example, you develop the ability to make parking meters disappear. It's probably easier to put a quarter in it. That would be the wisdom on the subject. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
476:Stalin’s opinion on the subject boiled down to this: “Education is a dangerous weapon, whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands, and at whom it is aimed. ~ Winston Groom, #NFDB
477:the fact that she and I are now incorporated into this unique subject, the subject of love that views the panorama of the world through the prism of our difference ~ Alain Badiou, #NFDB
478:I first met the subject of X-ray diffraction of crystals in the pages of the book W. H. Bragg wrote for school children in 1925, Concerning the Nature of Things. ~ Dorothy Hodgkin, #NFDB
479:It is a feature of government that the more important the problem, the further it tends to be removed from handling by anyone well acquainted with the subject. ~ Barbara W Tuchman, #NFDB
480:People say don't stare. Through the photos, not only do I stare, but I allow viewers to stare at the subject, to see things that they cannot see with a casual glance. ~ Dawoud Bey, #NFDB
481:In my view (animal) knowledge is apt belief, where not only the belief (its existence and content) but also its correctness is creditable to the subject's competence. ~ Ernest Sosa, #NFDB
482:Unpleasant reading on the subject of anger tells us that there's not really anything wrong with it. In limited amounts. It can even be a good thing. A pressure valve. ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
483:I feel very strongly about the subject matter in The Dallas Buyer's Club - about AIDS and people fighting illnesses, and fighting for survival against bad conditions. ~ Bradford Cox, #NFDB
484:My interests were aroused, and my faith in the cliches of the subject destroyed, as so often with other subjects, by the discussions with my friend, Aaron Director. ~ George Stigler, #NFDB
485:The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
486:We may remain more or less open-minded on the subject of the death penalty, indisposed to commit ourselves, so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
487:What appears in the pictures was the subject's decision, not mine. I took what they presented - delicate moments - unadorned and unglamorous, yet tender and exquisite. ~ Ray Metzker, #NFDB
488:At its deepest level, I think teaching is about bringing people into communion with each other, with yourself as the teacher, and with the subject you are teaching. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
489:Definitions, her grandmother once said, had to be like a fat man's belt - big enough to cover the subject but elastic enough to allow for change.
The Sunborn ~ Gregory Benford,#NFDB
490:having a Ph.D. and working in a university is neither necessary nor certainly sufficient to provide one with unquestionable authority, no matter what the subject. ~ Massimo Pigliucci, #NFDB
491:I don't know of any way to control the subject of one's dreams although I'm fairly certain there are more than a few types of psychoanalysis dedicated to the topic. ~ Mallory Ortberg, #NFDB
492:If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie. ~ Michael Haneke, #NFDB
493:I’ve heard it said: ‘By his home you shall know him’; and we all know that we must pay attention to anyone who reverses the subject and auxiliary verb in his sentence. ~ Steven Brust, #NFDB
494:One of the reasons the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class struggles in debt is because the subject of money is taught at home, not at school. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
495:One of the reasons the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class struggles in debt is that the subject of money is taught at home, not in school. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
496:Only the subject's individual consciousness can testify for the unwitnessed acts, and there is no act more deprived of external testimony than the act of knowing. ~ Olavo de Carvalho, #NFDB
497:Brave New World founded my nascent moral philosophy and became the subject of my college admissions essay, in which I argued that happiness was not the point of life. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
498:Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
499:Dow to know – you might as well cut your own neck as make that evil bastard angry. ‘Any trouble while we was split up?’ he asked, looking to change the subject. Grim ~ Joe Abercrombie, #NFDB
500:Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
501:I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
502:It is the subjective world that rules the objective. Change the subject, and the object is bound to change; purify yourself, and the world is bound to be purified. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
503:The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill, for a time, the subject's dream of total union with the loved being: The longing for consummation with the other. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
504:But what do you say if you're asked a direct question and you can't tell the truth and you can't tell a lie?'
'You say “how very interesting” and change the subject. ~ Dick Francis,#NFDB
505:Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed.... Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
506:However, it is not the same with the subject matter, but, generally speaking, that which is true and better is naturally always easier to prove and more likely to persuade. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
507:I always try to convince people that there has to be a lot of material about the subject matter, so they created a couple of pieces. One is about doomsday prophecies. ~ Roland Emmerich, #NFDB
508:I am far from saying that this Treatise will be easy; the subject is a difficult one, as all know who have tried it. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
509:I pull out my phone to write a reporting note to myself, typing “Katy sucks” into the subject line. Then I accidentally send it to the entire NBC News political e-mail list. ~ Katy Tur, #NFDB
510:It is strange, is it not, how the more strenuously we deny the importance of race in human affairs, the more obsessed with it and the touchier on the subject we grow. ~ Anthony Daniels, #NFDB
511:It is the subjective world that rules the objective. Change the subject, and the object is bound to change; purify youreslf, and the world is bound to be purified. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
512:I dug out the pre-Reformation and Reformation classics written on the subject of Christian spirituality. Virtually every one of those books addressed one subject: prayer. ~ Gene Edwards, #NFDB
513:In fact, the more each person can remove his or her ego from the discussion and focus on the subject matter, the more fruitful the conversation will be for all involved. ~ Matthew Kelly, #NFDB
514:I think self-expression is present at all times, and whether or not you're talking about the outside world or your responses to it depends on the moment and the subject. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
515:No one can understand himself, for to do that he would have to get outside himself; the subject of the knowing and willing activity would have to become its own object. ~ Otto Weininger, #NFDB
516:Positive doesn't mean unflawed: It means human and vulnerable. If you make a film and you're portraying the subject with respect, you're gonna do it in an honest way. ~ Michael Rapaport, #NFDB
517:surrounded by students who were all folded easily on their seats, all flush with knowledge, not of the subject of the classes, but of how to be in the classes ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, #NFDB
518:that operate in a wide variety of ways, and the exact details of how and when electrical activity in one neuron affects other neurons is still the subject of active study. ~ Max Tegmark, #NFDB
519:Violence is the language of destruction, flesh so often the subject, fragile, easy to break beyond repair, precious; what else would we burn to make the world take note? ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
520:When I was a child of four I wasn't really drawing like a child, I wasn't sketching as a child. I would sketch and I was using perspective, the good relationship of the subject. ~ Arman, #NFDB
521:I am a particle physicist, which is the nearest branch to nuclear physics. So in that sense I was the sort of right connection with the subject of nuclear energy and so on. ~ Abdus Salam, #NFDB
522:I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion. ~ John Brown, #NFDB
523:I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered. ~ Denis Diderot, #NFDB
524:I start with the subject matter I want to write about. Then I make a musical base for that and create an atmosphere with the music. Once I've done that, the lyrics come last. ~ Midge Ure, #NFDB
525:"Since it is the point of reference for the field of consciousness, the ego is the subject of all successful attempts at adaptation so far as these are achieved by the will." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
526:The material world and the physical life exist for us only by virtue of our internal self and our internal life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, The Subject of the Upanishad, #NFDB
527:The [President's] Nomination, of Course, brings the Subject fully under the Consideration of the Senate; who have then a Right to decide upon its Propriety or Impropriety. ~ George Mason, #NFDB
528:The subject should be observed more for shape and color than for drawing... precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole, it destroys all sensations. ~ Camille Pissarro, #NFDB
529:When we recognize that the seemingly object nature of reality is nothing different than the subject nature of mind, which is rigpa, it is called enlightenment. ~ Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, #NFDB
530:Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
531:I guess the subject of race is so natural to me I never think of it as hefty. It's something I talk about and joke about and discuss with my loved ones every day of my life. ~ Danzy Senna, #NFDB
532:Let no one say that I have said nothing new... the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
533:Envoy
Prince, show me the quickest way and best
To gain the subject of my moan;
We've neither spinsters nor relics out West-These do I love, and these alone.
~ Eugene Field,#NFDB
534:Everywhere there is apathy. Nobody cares whether that which is preached is true or false. A sermon is a sermon whatever the subject; only, the shorter it is, the better. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
535:I do not know, sir, that the fellow is an infidel; but if he be an infidel, he is an infidel as a dog is an infidel; that is to say, he has never thought upon the subject. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
536:It is a horrible wonderful thing to be in love with you. To get to hear you sing for hour after hour but never be the subject of the song. To listen and listen and listen. ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
537:No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
538:One of the principal objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity. ~ J Willard Gibbs, #NFDB
539:The most elementary of good manners . . . at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics. ~ Laura Esquivel, #NFDB
540:If you're going to perform inception, you need imagination. You need the simplest version of the idea-the one that will grow naturally in the subject's mind. Subtle art. ~ Christopher Nolan, #NFDB
541:In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way. I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
542:It's the subject matter that counts. I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can't always see. ~ Harry Callahan, #NFDB
543:I want to stay on the subject of marriage equality because this is the part of the show that everybody loves but you hate if you're the one who has to hear your own voice. ~ Dahlia Lithwick, #NFDB
544:Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
545:The subject for a lot of non-fiction is very emotional, but if you read it, it's the most boring, dry stuff. I wanted 'Torn Apart' to be extremely accessible and readable. ~ James Patterson, #NFDB
546:Thomas Jefferson High
School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of
the world’s greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
547:Not only did she [Marilyn Monroe] master her own image, create it and ultimately control it, she was the subject of many of the great masters of photography of the 20th century. ~ Gail Levin, #NFDB
548:The “other world,” which is the object of this world’s disdain and the subject of the drunkard’s mocking song, is our carefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
549:An object of art creates a public capable of finding pleasure in its beauty. Production, therefore, not only produces an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object. ~ Karl Marx, #NFDB
550:The trick,” she says, “is to find a new dream for the next part of your life. Then empty nest becomes a beginning, not an ending.” “I know.” I try to shift her off the subject. ~ Lisa Wingate, #NFDB
551:Whenever the subject of household chores came up—had come up—I'd say, "You wash and clean, and I'll keep the windmill oiled and the hogs fed." A cushy deal I had. Had had. ~ Richard Stevenson, #NFDB
552:Yukiko steered the subject away from sex as fast as she could. She was still occasionally woken by nightmares about the day her father had tried to sit her down for "the talk". ~ Jay Kristoff, #NFDB
553:A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph. ~ Man Ray, #NFDB
554:A photographer looks at everything, which is why he must look from beginning to end. Face the subject head-on, stay fixed, turn the entire body into an eye and face the world. ~ Shomei Tomatsu, #NFDB
555:I think one of the major things a director has to do is to know his subject matter, the subject matter of his script, know the truth and the reality of it. That's very important. ~ Robert Wise, #NFDB
556:It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
557:(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
558:This thing Allegiance, as I suppose,
Is a ring fitted in the subject's nose,
Whereby that organ is kept rightly pointed
To smell the sweetness of the Lord's anointed. ~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
559:Why should the composer be more guilty than the poet who warms to fantasy by a strange flame, making an idea that inspires him the subject of his own very different treatment? ~ Franz Schubert, #NFDB
560:I find the subject of childhood fascinating. I explored this subject in Speak to me of love and I am curious about portraying the often painful transition into the adult world. ~ Sophie Marceau, #NFDB
561:I need another drink!” I said as a second attempt to change the subject.
“Shots!” America yelled.
Shepley rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. That’s what you need, another shot. ~ Jamie McGuire,#NFDB
562:I've never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves - it's just a question of finding the subject. ~ Clint Eastwood, #NFDB
563:Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
564:The subject of my work has a lot to do with general, artistic matters, questions like: What is creativity? Where do we come from? What are our motors? What is coincidence? What is logic? ~ Noto, #NFDB
565:The subject then of these chapters may be stated thus, - man's only righteousness is through the mercy of God in Christ, which being offered by the Gospel is apprehended by faith. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
566:Every essay - the subject matter of every essay - is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
567:Hamilton, [Melancton Smith] said, spoke ‘frequently, very long, and very vehemently,’ and ‘like publius,’ had ‘much to say’ that was ‘not very applicable to the subject’ at hand. ~ Pauline Maier, #NFDB
568:How exactly was I supposed to bring the subject up? Oh, by the way, I’ve been having a little midnight fuck fest with your brother. Really didn’t think that would go over too well. ~ Helen Hardt, #NFDB
569:I remember when I first got married, there was a certain amount of internet traffic on the subject of, "Who is this beard who is allegedly married to Ira Glass? Obviously, he's gay." ~ Ira Glass, #NFDB
570:It should be the aim of every photographer to make a single exposure that shows everything about the subject. I have been told that my portrait of Churchill is an example of this. ~ Yousuf Karsh, #NFDB
571:I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you. ~ Annie Leibovitz, #NFDB
572:"Mansome" was one of those projects where it was a great change to do something fun and look at the subject in an engaging way. My next film is not going to be about pedicures. ~ Morgan Spurlock, #NFDB
573:Since the object of our worship is the glorious and majestic God of heaven, when worship becomes empty, the problem lies somewhere with the subject (us), not the object (God). ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
574:The subject may be crude and repulsive. Its expression is artistically modulated and balanced. This is style. This is art. This is the only thing that really matters in books. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
575:The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses. ~ Louise Bourgeois, #NFDB
576:And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
577:Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
578:The brain process that results in a joke materializing where no joke was before remains a mystery. I'm not aware of any scholarly, scientific or neurological studies on the subject. ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
579:The people who do make big discoveries are the ones who somehow manage to free themselves from conventional ways of thinking and to see the subject from a new perspective. ~ Anthony James Leggett, #NFDB
580:The precise instant of creation is when you choose the subject. (meaning that the essential thing occurs at the moment when he, the photographer, meets the reality he wishes to capture. ~ Brassai, #NFDB
581:Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
582:You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment and nobody else shows up and you think maybe that's part of the experiment? I'm like that all the time. ~ Steven Wright, #NFDB
583:Discussions without end have been devoted to the subject of peace, and the efforts to obtain a general and lasting peace have been frequent through many years of world history. ~ George C Marshall, #NFDB
584:[I]f God as a subject is the determined, while the quality, the predicate, is determining, then in truth the rank of the godhead is due not to the subject, but to the predicate. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
585:it is the vibrational essence of the subject of your attention that is attracted. That which you really, really want, you get—and that which you really, really do not want, you get. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
586:Look at the subject as if you have never seen it before. Examine it from every side. Draw its outline with your eyes or in the air with your hands, and saturate yourself with it. ~ John Baldessari, #NFDB
587:The idea that any photography can't be personal is madness! I see something; it goes through my eye, brain, heart, guts; I choose the subject. What could be more personal than that? ~ Cornell Capa, #NFDB
588:…the subject is so important, and with such vast implications for society… The damage that psychopaths do to the global economy, and human civilization in general, is incalculable. ~ Robert D Hare, #NFDB
589:I’m sorry to say that people have written fifty or sixty books about me. I haven’t read a single one of them, since I know too much of the subject, and I’m sick and tired of it. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
590:I thought it was a huge conflict of interest to be the director and the subject - it's very sketchy territory to be in. I've seen what's happened to other directors who have done that. ~ Aaron Rose, #NFDB
591:People who ponder too much about the subject of enlightenment don't progress very fast. It is interesting to know it's there, but you can't know what it's like until you get there. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
592:The computer was, to the best of my feelings about the subject, not thinking like a mathematician, and it was much more successful, because it was thinking not like a mathematician. ~ Kenneth Appel, #NFDB
593:…the subject is so important, and with such vast implications for society… The damage that psychopaths do to the global economy, and human civilization in general, is incalculable. ~ Robert D Hare, #NFDB
594:What I hope I would do is something new, but I still love print. I love to touch paper. I'm not sure if I will ever do a magazine again, but I have plenty of ideas on the subject. ~ Carine Roitfeld, #NFDB
595:Intellectual adherence is never owed to anything whatsoever, for it is never in any degree a voluntary thing. Attention alone is voluntary. It alone forms the subject of an obligation. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
596:It's better to be talked about than to be forgotten. (In other words, if you are the subject of gossip or speculation, enjoy it! Don't let someone else's negative energy control you!). ~ Robin Meade, #NFDB
597:It's much different today than it was during the Cold War. The CIA is not the subject of many books anymore. But that might change, because of international terrorism and Red China. ~ Nelson DeMille, #NFDB
598:Let’s consider the subject exhausted except for choosing the wedding gift. Something tasteful with poison in it, perhaps. Although I can’t think which of them deserves it the more. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
599:The British are absolutely hung up on class, and whenever they start to really - class for the English is like sex for Americans: They start to shake all over when the subject comes up. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
600:The idea of the walls of monastery was to keep everybody else out because you wanted to develop a certain type of life. Most people in the world had different ideas on the subject. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
601:We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing. ~ Helen Frankenthaler, #NFDB
602:All suggested accounts of the origin of the solar system are subject to serious objections. The conclusion in the present state of the subject would be that the system cannot exist. ~ Harold Jeffreys, #NFDB
603:"It forms, as it were, the centre of the field of consciousness; and, in so far as this comprises the empirical personality, the ego is the subject of all personal acts of consciousness." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
604:It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
605:It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits, and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. ~ Bob Burg, #NFDB
606:It's necessary to respect all other ways and other teachings on the subject because even though they may not make a lot of sense to us, they might to someone else. Who are we to say? ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
607:The reason for this was not that the subject was simple enough to be explained without mathematics, but rather that it was much too involved to be fully accessible to mathematics. ~ Erwin Schr dinger, #NFDB
608:The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
609:Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrasing Amendment. ~ George Will, #NFDB
610:While analyzing some already-existing opinions on the subject, he also expressed his own view. The main thing was the tone of the article and its remarkably unexpected conclusion. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
611:All I want to do, is write rock and roll that you could listen to as you got older, and it wouldn't lose anything; it would be timeless, in the subject matter and the literacy of the lyrics. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
612:strict mathematical form, with propositions, proofs, corollaries, lemmas, scholiums, and the like. However, the subject matter of metaphysics and of morals is not very satisfactorily ~ Mortimer J Adler, #NFDB
613:The dissolution of the subject organisation into a disorganised crowd is the inevitable working of an alien despotism. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, Shall India Be Free? - Unity and British Rule, #NFDB
614:Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait 'til the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
615:You both think I know not what,' said I. 'Have the goodness to make me as little the subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as possible. I have my own sort of life apart from yours. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
616:And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain.
Therefore, Farewell: ~ Michel de Montaigne,#NFDB
617:Forgiveness wasn’t ever easy, but a feat much more manageable when you weren’t the subject of its grace. Maybe I’d always be a broken recipient of grace. And in that musing, I found rest. ~ Rachael Wade, #NFDB
618:He (The warden) was painfully afraid of a disagreement with any person in any subject....he felt horror at the thought of being made the subject of common gossip and public criticism. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
619:I'm lucky that my real-life Mom has both a great sense of humor about herself and an amazing ability to slip into complete denial if the subject matter gets a little too close to home. ~ Cathy Guisewite, #NFDB
620:What is especially irritating about the whole abortion debate is the way the subject has been used as a political football by those on both the right and the left of the political aisle. ~ Chuck Baldwin, #NFDB
621:I know nothing that can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow, so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
622:I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them. ~ Frank Sinatra, #NFDB
623:In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
624:I try to look at the whole thing and say 'yes' to the projects that I cannot stop thinking about. If I read a script and the subject stays with me - then that's when I want to go to work. ~ Penelope Cruz, #NFDB
625:To extend the depth of what has been called 'art' into photography requires... making available to the spectator the amazing transformations the subject undergoes to become the photograph. ~ Michael Snow, #NFDB
626:As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. ~ Protagoras, #NFDB
627:Before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
628:I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
629:Some of the most flowery praise you hear on the subject of teams is only hypocrisy. Managers learn to talk a good game about teams even when they're secretly threatened by the whole concept. ~ Tom DeMarco, #NFDB
630:2. Forgetfulness may depend, not on the past state, but on the actual state of the subject at the moment when he tries to call up the remembrances and connect them with his present personality. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
631:Being a medium who can communicate with souls isn't the same as one who can interact with them. It's the difference between listening in on a conversation and changing the subject. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div, #NFDB
632:Economics seeks to be a science. Science is supposed to be objective and it is difficult to be scientific when the subject matter, the participant in the economic process, lacks objectivity. ~ George Soros, #NFDB
633:Freely the subject makes himself what he is, never in this life is the making finished, always it is in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter. ~ Bernard Lonergan, #NFDB
634:it may well be that the subject-object dichotomy is false to begin with and that consciousness is primary in the cosmos, not just an epiphenomenon of physical processes in a nervous system. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
635:The media is almost entirely about defining the subject, defining the citizen, as one of three things: a consumer, a threat in this new age of surveillance, or as utterly disposable. Excess. ~ Henry Giroux, #NFDB
636:The subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
637:Verbs come in two types, active and passive. With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
638:We tend to think of politicians as time-servers and slackers. But on those committees they usually have an interest in the subject. And they're quite clever. I've seen them pick people apart. ~ Mark Thomas, #NFDB
639:All education is religious in nature and is never value free. If God is left out of the subject, it is by definition, humanism that governs the education since man alone is the measure of truth. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
640:Archaeology is the study of humanity itself, and unless that attitude towards the subject is kept in mind archaeology will be overwhelmed by impossible theories or a welter of flint chips. ~ Margaret Murray, #NFDB
641:…as though, capable themselves of suffering, they granted no reality to the suffering of others. ‘The subject exhibited a pain response.’ But not, under any circumstances, we hurt her. ~ John Brunner, #NFDB
642:Simply send an email to vharnish@gazelles.com and put “weekly insights” in the subject line. And please include a first and last name and your title, and tell us where your company is based. ~ Verne Harnish, #NFDB
643:The arguments are the same whether the subject is climate disruption, evolution, vaccination, tobacco, or sex education. The first argument is: Lacking certainty, we should do nothing. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
644:The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn... ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
645:There are many cases of these algebras which may obviously be combined into natural classes, but the consideration of this portion of the subject will be reserved to subsequent researches. ~ Benjamin Peirce, #NFDB
646:This is not a manifesto. Manifestos provide a glimpse of a world to come and also call into being the subject, who although now only a specter must materialize to become the agent of change. ~ Michael Hardt, #NFDB
647:When the honest, sincere Christian is faced with the decision regarding whether a thing is right or wrong, he should ask, does it agree with all that the Scripture has to say on the subject? ~ Curtis Hutson, #NFDB
648:Dragon intelligence was a mystery to men who made a study of the subject; he had no idea how much the dragon would hear or understand, but thought it better to avoid the risk of giving offense. ~ Naomi Novik, #NFDB
649:If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place. ~ Charles Kettering, #NFDB
650:In America, the government is accountable to the people, not the other way around,” says a constitutional law scholar sympathetic to the antiwar movement on the subject of the anonymous police. ~ Nathan Hill, #NFDB
651:She didn't even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies. ~ Steve Martin, #NFDB
652:Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
653:You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
654:Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
655:A photographic close-up is perhaps the purest form of portraiture, creating a confrontation between the viewer and the subject that daily interaction makes impossible, or at least impolite. ~ Martin Schoeller, #NFDB
656:But I know, at least, that you would keep a library on the subject, and I hoped that I might be allowed to read from it.” He regarded me with a bemused expression. “You want me for my library. ~ Marie Brennan, #NFDB
657:I am conscious of the fact that the subject of hell is not a very pleasant one. It is very unpopular, controversial and misunderstood.... As a minister, I must deal with it. I cannot ignore it. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
658:The question of immortality is of its nature not a scholarly question. It is a question welling up from the interior which the subject must put to itself as it becomes conscious of itself. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
659:L’amour coûte cher aux vieillards—I think that was the title of one of Balzac’s most moving stories, and many could be written on the subject. But the old people who know most about it are happy ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
660:Most of us are not really approaching the subject in order to find out what Christianity says; we are approaching it in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
661:Only in the present tense is the subject married to its verb. The action—all action, past and future—comes at the end. At the very end, when there is nothing left to do but act. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum, #NFDB
662:The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. ~ William James, #NFDB
663:Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson, #NFDB
664:Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. … And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. ~ Oliver Stone, #NFDB
665:When I reviewed Hayek's book, The Pure Theory of Capital, it is my sincere conviction that this work contains some of the most penetrating thoughts on the subject that have ever been published. ~ Fritz Machlup, #NFDB
666:While the subject matter is lynching, on a deeper level, this novel is about identity. Whom and what we identify ourselves with determines our characters, determines who we are, and what we do. ~ Julius Lester, #NFDB
667:Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
668:It is leashed. Now drop the subject or I’ll tell Sin you’ve seen me naked. (Kat) I will never bring this topic up again. Oh wait. What topic? I have Alzheimer’s. I know nothing at all. (Kish) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
669:I took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
670:Odin keep us.’ Hakon’s wisdom on the subject. ‘He’s as likely to as the White Christ.’ I had no bone to pick with heathen bone-pickers. One god or many, none of them ever seemed to like us much. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
671:Some movies I make for myself. I just sort of make them for myself. I do that sometimes when the subject matter is very sensitive and very personal and I really can't imagine I'm an audience. ~ Steven Spielberg, #NFDB
672:There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
673:In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
674:Now, I’ve got the taste for steak,” she changed the subject. “What do you have the taste for?” Straight up, he had the taste for cute, klutzy, classy pussy, eating her and listening to her moan. ~ Kristen Ashley, #NFDB
675:One always starts work with the subject, no matter how tenuous it is, and one constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter that one has started from. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
676:So many people seem to prefer my silver-screenings of movie stars to the rest of my work. It must be the subject matter that attracts them, because my death and violence paintings are just as good. ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
677:The art of conversation, or the qualification for a good companion, is a certain self-control, which now holds the subject, now lets it go, with a respect for the emergencies of the moment. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
678:The slighted person may or may not get angry, but he is more likely to get angry if he is in distress – for example, in poverty or in love – or if he feels insecure about the subject of the slight. ~ Neel Burton, #NFDB
679:Any authentically Christian system is going to have to keep off the kick of human merit and demerit and stick resolutely to a universalism of grace that overrides the subject of human works. ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
680:many words. "Sun Tzu's 13 Chapters and Wu Ch`i's Art of War are the two books that people commonly refer to on the subject of military matters. Both of them are widely distributed, so I will not discuss ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
681:The admitted right of a government to prevent the influx of elements hostile to its internal peace and security may not be questioned, even where there is not treaty stipulation on the subject. ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
682:The modern school without systematic lectures turns out many graduates who lack retention. No sooner has the sound of the word left their teacher's lips, the subject has been forgotten. ~ Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, #NFDB
683:The question, therefore, is not whether one should teach philosophy to Muslim students, but rather what kind or kinds of philosophy should be taught and how the subject should be approached. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr, #NFDB
684:There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that's the real person. But I'm interested in whatever is going on. And I'm not that comfortable myself. ~ Annie Leibovitz, #NFDB
685:Who are you going swimming with?” Kinsley asked again.
“You’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition,” I replied.
“Stop changing the subject! With whom do you plan to swim?! ~ R S Grey,#NFDB
686:And the usual course of affairs is that, as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a country, all the subject states are drawn to him, moved by the hatred that they feel against the ruling power. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
687:Aristotle maintains that the neck of the Lion is composed of a single bone. Aristotle knew nothing at all about Lions, a circumstance which did not prevent him from writing a good deal on the subject. ~ Will Cuppy, #NFDB
688:For after the subject is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when we see it...Imagination, therefore, is nothing more than decaying sense. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
689:I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I’m in love, I haven’t a clue. Now that I’m in love, I’m completely stupid on the subject. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
690:It is leashed. Now drop the subject or I’ll tell Sin you’ve seen me naked. (Kat)
I will never bring this topic up again. Oh wait. What topic? I have Alzheimer’s. I know nothing at all. (Kish) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
691:There is no need to distract the attention of the community from the essence of the subject substituting it with secondary questions dealing with the search of those who did it [hacker's attacks]. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
692:This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
693:This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious. ~ John Cleese, #NFDB
694:You never apologised to me for getting my legs broken either."
"I said sorry in my own way, Gary."
"By never referring to it again and dodging the subject whenever I brought it up."
"Exactly. ~ Mike Carey,#NFDB
695:And the usual course of affairs is that, as soon as a powerful foreigner enters a country, all the subject states are drawn to him, moved by the hatred which they feel against the ruling power. ~ Niccol Machiavelli, #NFDB
696:Maybe I fell in love with the idea of love, but I’m a teenage girl. This morning I fell in love with raspberry jam and a puppy in a tiny raincoat. I’m not exactly Earth’s top authority on the subject. ~ Leah Raeder, #NFDB
697:On the subject of God. He is not dead; and he is not a fable.
He is not mocked nor forgotten —
Successfully. God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars — ~ Robinson Jeffers,#NFDB
698:The complete disregard for the camera's presence indicates its complete saturation in their lives. The subject neither notices nor seems to care that someone has been invited into their private moment. ~ Nan Goldin, #NFDB
699:Well, now that we're on the subject, it's somewhat unhygienic for you to drink out of the milk jug."
"Babe, I had my tongue in your mouth for ten minutes this morning. How's that any different ? ~ Kristen Ashley,#NFDB
700:You can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
701:You know, God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States, a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
702:You never apologised to me for getting my legs broken, either."
"I said sorry in my own way, Gary."
"By never referring to it again and dodging the subject whenever I brought it up."
"Exactly. ~ Mike Carey,#NFDB
703:Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
704:Stop changing the subject," Taylor snapped. "And think before you speak."
Roo pressed her lips together and then sighed. "How long do you want me to think?"
Niall let out a snort of laughter. ~ Barbara Elsborg,#NFDB
705:The most important fact about the subject of education is that there is no such thing. Education is not a subject and it does not deal in subjects. It is instead the transfer of a way of life. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
706:The novel has been the subject of several scholarly essays and has become a staple of college classes in contemporary fiction (and even the occasional philosophy class).
Fifty-four rejections. ~ David Markson,#NFDB
707:I just tend to think about everyday things for my onstage act. Actually you know what I like to talk about just the absolute most - the more mundane the subject matter, the more interesting it is to me. ~ Brian Regan, #NFDB
708:The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it. ~ Paul Klee, #NFDB
709:The subject matter is very tricky. It's about the Munich massacre and what Mossad did afterwards with the assassination squads. I think it's a turning point in history, especially for the Palestinians. ~ Daniel Craig, #NFDB
710:Africans… their tired. They’re tired of being the subject of everybody’s charity and care. We are grateful, but we know that we can take charge of our own destinies if we have the will to reform. ~ Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, #NFDB
711:British writer G. K. Chesterton’s reply to an invitation by the Times to write an essay on the subject “What’s Wrong with the World?” Chesterton’s response: Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely, G. K. Chesterton ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
712:I thought that I would like to be affiliated with some school or institution. As time went on, I also decided on the subject that I wanted to get involved with in addition to music: it was Black Studies. ~ Donald Byrd, #NFDB
713:My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski, #NFDB
714:You must understand the following: In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
715:As a first approximation, I define belief not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as the subject's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as true. ~ Michel de Certeau, #NFDB
716:Biology can be divided into the study of proximate causes, the study of the physiological sciences (broadly conceived), and into the study of ultimate (evolutionary) causes, the subject of natural history. ~ Ernst Mayr, #NFDB
717:But be that as it may, I think it is more respectful to you that I should speak to you upon and do my best to interest you in the subject which has occupied me, and in which I am myself most interested. ~ Arthur Cayley, #NFDB
718:For love concentrates on the object, sex concentrates on the subject. Love is directed to someone else for the sake of the other’s perfection; sex is directed to self for the sake of self-satisfaction. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
719:Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
720:I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either. ~ James A Garfield, #NFDB
721:I spent nearly two hours deciding on an outfit that would look as if the subject of clothing had never crossed my mind, but would in fact show off my best features and miraculously hide the extra pounds. ~ Rosanne Cash, #NFDB
722:My mind is a chest of drawers. When I wish to deal with a subject, I shut all the drawers but the one in which the subject is to be found. When I am wearied, I shut all the drawers and go to sleep. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte, #NFDB
723:People can get obsessed with romance, they can get obsessed with political paranoia, they can get obsessed with horror. It's isn't the fault of the subject matter that creates the obsession, I don't think. ~ Adam Arkin, #NFDB
724: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
725:Anyhow, he gives large parties,” said Jordan, changing the subject with an urbane distaste for the concrete. “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
726:It's nice when people are passionate about something, and it's always better when they let the subject tell the story, more so then when you can tell people are trying to get their own philosophy into it. ~ Vince Vaughn, #NFDB
727:Surrealism! What is Surrealism? In my opinion, it is above all a reawakening of the poetic idea in art, the reintroduction of the subject but in a very particular sense, that of the strange and illogical. ~ Paul Delvaux, #NFDB
728:If in any divination the Tenth Card should be a Court Card, it shews that the subject of the divination falls ultimately into the hands of a person represented by that card, and its end depends mainly on him. ~ A E Waite, #NFDB
729:What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently than I do. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think. ~ Alexey Brodovitch, #NFDB
730:Yet when it happens to me that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
731:Youth's lost companion may be the measured friend of old age, I hope", said Daniel. "I may write a poem on the subject."
"Dear God, it sounds more like a cross-stitched pillow than a poem," said Hugh. ~ Helen Simonson,#NFDB
732:exposure treatment principles of behavioral therapy, in which a person’s phobic response gradually extinguishes itself when the subject learns the target stimulus does not produce the harm originally feared. ~ Steven Fies, #NFDB
733:I am inclined to attach some importance to the new system of manufacturing; and venture to throw it out with the hope of its receiving a full discussion among those who are most interestedin the subject. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
734:I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject. ~ Sam Waterston, #NFDB
735:I have thoroughly gone through the subject of the Incarnation; and if it served you, could at any time give you the history from the beginning of the controversies on this subject, and of its present form. ~ Edward Irving, #NFDB
736:My father quoted everyone, from Shakespeare to Emerson, on the subject of destiny, and then he'd point out that except for the Greeks, everyone agreed: The stars do fuck-all for us; you must make your own way. ~ Amy Bloom, #NFDB
737:The visual quality of the cameras now is such that you can shoot with available light, and if people are willing to mount a microphone on the camera and maybe even on the subject, then you're good to go. ~ Brian Lindstrom, #NFDB
738:Abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it --- on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger. ~ Julia Kristeva, #NFDB
739:A circus?’ I said, surprised at his enthusiasm. I had had a run-in with a circus five years before and to hear Hugh on the subject then, Caligula himself would have walked out and written to The Times. ~ Catriona McPherson, #NFDB
740:Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold. ~ Andrew Sullivan, #NFDB
741:Getting it off the ground is one thing because it has to do with finding the proper people and the financing, but finding the subject is another thing and this is always for me the most difficult part. ~ Philippe Falardeau, #NFDB
742:I pay very little regard," said Mrs. Grant, "to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
743:Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it with all the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
744:Often I forget that design is really about removing things: optimizing the flow of information, the display, so there are the fewest elements possible, but still they preserve the essence of the subject. ~ David Mccandless, #NFDB
745:There’s a way of doing it!” Hermione said crossly. “There just has to be!” She seemed to be taking the library’s lack of useful information on the subject as a personal insult; it had never failed her before. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
746:A ghost who has only a lay knowledge of the subject will be able to keep asking the same questions as the lay reader, and will therefore open up the potential readership of the book to a much wider audience. ~ Robert Harris, #NFDB
747:And ever, as the story drained The wells of fancy dry, And faintly strove that weary one To put the subject by, "The rest next time--" "It is next time!" The Happy voice cry. Thus grew the tale of Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
748:As soon as the subject moves to TV shows and movies, I'm a total failure. And I'd been paying for all those premium channels for years, but recently cancelled them, since I never watched any of those networks. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
749:The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession. ~ John Bright, #NFDB
750:Yossarian decided to change the subject. "Now you're changing the subject." he pointed out diplomatically. "I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
751:Craft is important, but cameras for their own sake are not. A sense of aesthetics, a connection with the subject matter, an enquiring and an inquisitive mind, these factors outweigh whatever equipment we use. ~ Michael Kenna, #NFDB
752:Did he get his brain fever, and then write all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? I suppose I shall never know, for I dare not open the subject to him. And yet that man we saw yesterday! He ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
753:I have not forgotten that she is what I am moving toward. If I seem to be caught in a slow circling of the subject, it is only appropriate, as she and I have always moved toward each other in slow circles. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
754:No man should dogmatize except on the subject of theology. Here he can take his stand, and by throwing the burden of proof on the opposition, he is invincible. We have to die to find out whether he is right. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
755:That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
756:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
757:Twice I have testified in congress that unbiased funding on the subject of the causes of warming would be much closer to a reality if 50% of that money was devoted to finding natural reasons for climate change. ~ Roy Spencer, #NFDB
758:Darling' there're things I haven't told you yet either, just didn't know how to broach the subject. We can't know everything about each other by writing a few letters and having dinner once." - Chance Holcomb ~ Caroline Fyffe, #NFDB
759:I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
760:I reflected that the value of a work of art has no relation whatever to the pleasure it gives; indeed, the more I have dwelt upon the subject, the more I have come to prize austerity rather than luxuriance. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
761:I think a lot of times, artists and albums can become formulaic. You're known for a certain thing, and you continue to do that. You just change the subject matter, but it's the same song. And that's what you do. ~ Eric Church, #NFDB
762:Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
763:There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
764:There are things that I teach, about building photographs, and that's why people come to my workshops. When people come to the workshops, they're consumed with seeking the subject, and I teach seeking the setting. ~ Sam Abell, #NFDB
765:The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words--that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
766:To learn more about parasites, check out Parasite Rex, by Carl Zimmer. There are many, many books on the subject, but his is one of the most accessible jumping-on points you’re likely to find. Welcome to the war. ~ Mira Grant, #NFDB
767:Whenever I met someone who seemed to know a lot about a subject, and who evinced, moreover, a certain happiness in his or her being, and if I were interested in the subject, I asked to be taught what they knew. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
768:Don't be so damned patronizing. Your performance so far has been a little less than dazzling."
"I didn't mean no harm," I said and kissed her. "That a new dress?"
"Ah! Changing the subject, you coward. ~ Dashiell Hammett,#NFDB
769:It always surprises me how much my followers appreciate how candid my photos are - they may not have a particularly unique subject, but it's more about the light you shed on the subject than the subject itself. ~ Connor Franta, #NFDB
770:It's important to see things in perspective. Automobile traffic is responsible for only 12 percent of total CO2 emissions. One should be able to point this out without being accused of changing the subject. ~ Martin Winterkorn, #NFDB
771:On the subject of money and politics and the rest, I have a DARE: Disclose who are these people; Amend the Constitution to overturn Citizens United; Reform: let's have public financing of campaigns; and Empower. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
772:Our teachers’ best qualities—their sense of humor, their love for the subject, their excitement, their interest in students as individuals—are not being honored or valued, because those qualities aren’t measurable. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
773:Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; 4 the latter, of Inference. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
774:And while we're on the subject of ducks, which we plainly are, the story, 'The Ugly Duckling' ought be banned as the central character wasn't a duckling or he wouldn't have grown up into a swan. He was a cygnet. ~ Russell Brand, #NFDB
775:Everyone stared at me now. I’d studied linguistics a long time ago. A little philology too, the study of languages from analyzing texts. Mostly for the fun of it, but the subject came in useful sometimes. Ellis ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
776:Should have a Ph.d. on the subject of women. Anyhow the fact of the matter is I've failed usually. I'm exceptionally enamored with women; I respect them. Yet, in the same way as all men, I don't comprehend them. ~ Frank Sinatra, #NFDB
777:The US remains an object of fascination for me, and the subject of much study, but while many of my friends etc. are American and I have no plans at present to move elsewhere, I consider myself a permanent outsider. ~ Luc Sante, #NFDB
778:Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can't think about them. I live with trees. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
779:I beg of you always to dwell upon the necessity of a thorough understanding of principles, in order to stop the vivacity of his mind, and please do not forget to meditate upon the subject of our discussion. ~ Nicolas Malebranche, #NFDB
780:When that happens - when risk is taken and the filmmakers dive into the subject matter without a parachute - very often what you get it something with those qualities that make it age well with the public. ~ Francis Ford Coppola, #NFDB
781:Again, you have a subject-object relationship with your thoughts. You are the subject, and thoughts are just another object you can be aware of. You are not your thoughts. You are simply aware of your thoughts. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
782:Crowride
When the crow
lands, the
tip of the sprung spruce
bough weighs
so low, the
system so friction-free,
the bobbing lasts
way past any
interest in the subject.
~ Archie Randolph Ammons,#NFDB
783:I appeal to #Arnab @republic to stop inviting John Dayal & Suneet Chopra to 9 ~10 pm debates. Please join in with your Like & RTs? They are too irritating who discuss anything but the subject for the evening?@noconversion, #NFDB
784:I can work with shyness, but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable. ~ Ryan McGinley, #NFDB
785:If the subject is in a suffering circumstance, it is all the more preferable to apply craft to the utmost. Call it art or not, we photographers should always try to pass on our observations with the utmost clarity. ~ Dennis Stock, #NFDB
786:Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
787:Most of us are not really approaching the subject [scriptures] in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it [them] in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
788:The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world, and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which the subject itself projects. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty, #NFDB
789:When you start meditating on your ego, on your thoughts, on your mind, you are suddenly separate, because whatsoever you meditate on, you are separate from it. That has become the object and you have become the subject. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
790:Dot wondered how she was to mention Phryne’s habit of strewing her boudoir with beautiful naked young men. She could not think of a method of introducing the subject and decided to leave it to Phryne to cope with. ~ Kerry Greenwood, #NFDB
791:I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
792:I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. ~ Frederick Douglass, #NFDB
793:Some of the subject matter is a little less weighty. When we were writing for Mr. Show, we were talking about how is this going to stand up to the test of time. Every little piece had to be this brilliant comedy jewel. ~ B J Porter, #NFDB
794:The subject is salvation, one of the greatest themes that could ever challenge the mind of man. Confusion about salvation means disaster, for the message of the Gospel is a matter of eternal life or eternal death. ~ Charles C Ryrie, #NFDB
795:And at that point, I think my experience in covering the subject helped me. I think editors felt comfortable with the idea of me telling this story because I had demonstrated that I know this business pretty well ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
796:Charlotte decided to change the subject. "You wouldn't believe what goes in these things." She offered her perfumed wrists. "Here, tell me which scent you prefer. Lilies and whale vomit, or lemon balm and beaver's arse. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
797:If the subject is no longer living, the immediate question is do you have enough first-person material to really get that story across. You'd like to avoid it just being other people's memories and interpretations. ~ Brian Lindstrom, #NFDB
798:I think that a good portrait reveals a suggestion of the subject’s mind, and not just a representation of how they look. It’s by no means easy; to snatch the right moment can feel impossible, like capturing fairies. ~ Elizabeth Ross, #NFDB
799:Once again, he backed off from a challenge by hiding behind a twisted sense of honor. “Let’s change the subject, shall we?”
“Sure. I got a Brazilian wax today.”
He choked on the piece of bread in his mouth. ~ Jennifer Probst,#NFDB
800:The most important thing you learn as a sports photographer is anticipation - not where the action is taking place, but where it’s going to take place. Not where the subject is now, but where they’re going to be. ~ Lawrence Schiller, #NFDB
801:We have in all functionings of the mentality four elements, the object of mental consciousness, the act of mental consciousness, the occasion and the subject.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, 532,#NFDB
802:But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement. ~ J L Austin, #NFDB
803:Don’t change the subject,” Blaze snapped. “You said dragons? And untie me, damn it. My wrists hurt.” He shrugged, completely ignoring her complaints. “Of course there are dragons. Where you think the myths come from? ~ Sara King, #NFDB
804:Four years after my father's death, when the subject of parents came up in conversation i would relate the information in a flat, matter-of-fact tone eager to detect in my listener the flinch of grief that eluded me. ~ Alison Bechdel, #NFDB
805:In breathing I am an object of the air, the air the subject; but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when I analyse it, I reverse the relation - I make myself the subject, the air an object. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
806:I noted too that I had on many occasions spoken on the subject of the pollution of the spirit (or so I told them), and how the spirit should not be polluted, and how I personally looked askance at, for instance, a latte. ~ Rick Moody, #NFDB
807:I see it all the time in politics. If a candidate gets caught in a lie, he quickly tries to change the subject by throwing more mud at his opponent. The mud keeps flying until some of the slanderous material sticks. ~ Joe Scarborough, #NFDB
808:"The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
809:The subject had reference to secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne, #NFDB
810:To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
811:You have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter. If you do it for other causes, other reasons, it doesn't hold you for a long time. There's no other way but struggling, forging ahead to do the film. ~ Haile Gerima, #NFDB
812:'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
813:I didn't get into acting to be a public service announcer or an advocate and yet, by virtue of this show and how we handle the subject matter that we've been given, that's kind of how it's evolved in certain ways. ~ Christopher Meloni, #NFDB
814:I havent watched Mad TV a lot, but I have seen some stuff on there that is truly funny. You have to have some sort of attitude toward the subject, and they seem to have it. It depends on how much blood you want to draw. ~ Joe Flaherty, #NFDB
815:We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. ~ Adam Smith, #NFDB
816:What are your goals? Where are you going? Why are you here? What are you? Scientology has answers to these questions, good answers that are true, answers that work for you. For the subject matter of Scientology is you. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
817:Do you dream of your victims?” he asked.
“Yes,” the murderer told him. “But only when I’m awake.”
Anzola had never heard a more perfect definition of guilt, and didn’t ask him anything else on the subject. ~ Juan Gabriel V squez,#NFDB
818:For her, choices were simple; either there was an action she could take to improve the situation, in which case she took it, or there was not, and everything else said on the subject was so much meaningless noise. ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
819:I have often discussed the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path in talks I have given about meditation. But, since I also teach Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist mediation, I have a very eclectic approach to the subject. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
820:Most illnesses do not, as is generally thought, come like a bolt out of the blue. The ground is prepared for years through faulty diet, intemperance, overwork, and moral conflicts, slowly eroding the subject's vitality. ~ Paul Tournier, #NFDB
821:Food from the platter / Water from the rain / The subject and the matter / I'm going home again / Can't sell a leaf to a tree / Nor the wind to the atmosphere / I know where I am meant to be / And I can't be satisfied here ~ Lemn Sissay, #NFDB
822:The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
823:The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching. ~ Jean Piaget, #NFDB
824:To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. No ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
825:Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre. ~ Val Kilmer, #NFDB
826:Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject ... they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
827:Im not really sure what social message my art carries, if any. And I dont really want it to carry one. Im not interested in the subject matter to try to teach society anything, or to try to better our world in any way. ~ Roy Lichtenstein, #NFDB
828:Only enter quotes from notable people. Generally, a person is notable if they have been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. ~ Testy McTesterson, #NFDB
829:The more the schemata are differentiated, the smaller the gap between the new and the familiar becomes, so that novelty, instead of constituting an annoyance avoided by the subject, becomes a problem and invites searching. ~ Jean Piaget, #NFDB
830:The Principle of Least Surprise is the concept that the idea or approach being taken would not surprise a reasonably knowledgeable person in the subject area being developed when first encountering this element of the system. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
831:Today, with the subject matter that's around politically, and internationally and everything, I think Carl Reiner would have a ball. I think the format should stay the same. I'd sure love to see him dealing with it today. ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
832:What had she learned about verbs? In the past and future tenses, the verb came at the end. And in the present it followed the subject. Wherever she went it tailed her. She dragged it behind like a sack of stones. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum, #NFDB
833:Academic experts may not be good at doing what they are experts in themselves, but they are good at explaining the subject matter to others. They write books, teach courses and offer lessons and give steps others can follow. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
834:It is one thing to be well-read on a subject; it is quite another to be part of the subject itself. It is an unfortunate fact that there are many individuals who make magick there life without making their life magick. ~ Lon Milo DuQuette, #NFDB
835:then the organ began to play the opening bars of the national anthem and they all sang, a choir of thousands of voices, and it sent shivers up her spine to know the subject of the anthem, the king himself, was listening. ~ Jennifer Robson, #NFDB
836:There are all different kinds of smut,” Pandora said, warming to the subject. “Smut balls, loose smut, stinking smut—”
“Pandora,” West interrupted in an undertone, “for the love of mercy, stop saying that word in public. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
837:There are countless books written on self-defense. Not all are non- sensical, but many are. Nathaniel Cooke has clearly thought a great deal about the subject and distilled its essence in a way that is wholly admirable. ~ Robert Twigger, #NFDB
838:The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly. The subject - as sculptors themselves are fond of saying - is hidden in the block of material. ~ Jacques Barzun, #NFDB
839:What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story. ~ Pierre Auguste Renoir, #NFDB
840:You start slow. You find the subject’s limits and get him to spend some time there. He gets used to it. Before long, the limits have moved. You never take him more than a centimeter beyond. You make it feel it’s his choice. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
841:A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about. ~ Richard Avedon, #NFDB
842:expressing unique perspectives on the subject matter. On the one hand, the choice of setting, character, and plot has to be somewhat familiar so that it is taken as “real” and can thereby move the beholder, reader, or audience. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
843:If the subject is a good one, we shall feel friendly towards it; if the subject of thought is one that is miserable, we must be merciful towards it. If it is good, we must be glad; if it is evil, we must be indifferent. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
844:Is that what love is?” “I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I’m in love, I haven’t a clue. Now that I’m in love, I’m completely stupid on the subject. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
845:I try to find a compositional structure in the subject itself, in nature... I rely on the angle where the wall meets the floor as a constant reference point, and against that I oppose the movements of the model's limbs. ~ Philip Pearlstein, #NFDB
846:I would never stop watching film. The reason why I say I like the old ones is I like the subject matter better. I thought they had more variety to them, they had more romantic comedies and things that appealed to me more. ~ Debbie Reynolds, #NFDB
847:Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters. ~ Pope Paul VI, #NFDB
848:During the sole argument we had when [Chelsea] was in high school, the subject of which I don't even remember, I looked at her and said, 'As long as you're in this house, being president is my second most important job'. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
849:I am convinced that the devil has caused the subject of giving to stir up resistance and resentment among God's people because he knows there are few ways of spiritual enrichment like the exercise of faithful stewardship. ~ Stephen F Olford, #NFDB
850:I knew that if the subject were to arise, I would once again speak words that would cut my friend, little ceremonial slashes to his soul, not to cause a mortal wound, just to draw blood and to relieve myself of a nameless burden. ~ Nomi Eve, #NFDB
851:On several occasions, I discussed with Bill Clinton the subject of inquiries by the media about our relationship. He told me to continue to deny our relationship, that if we would stick together, everything would be okay. ~ Gennifer Flowers, #NFDB
852:These symptoms may still more increase, suppress ' Stigmates inentaux, p. 205, above. *Sollier, "Anorexic," Revue de ined/cine, 1891, p. 627. well-nigh all mental synthesis, and throw the subject into a state of complete stupor. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
853:What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not defined by its content, by its "about"-ness. Where you read it irrespective of whether you're interested in the subject. ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
854:You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, “I am not; therefore I cannot think. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
855:The harder the push, the greater the Rebel push-back. I laughed when a Rebel friend told me, 'No one can tell me to do anything. I recently got an email saying "Please read" in the subject line, and I immediately deleted it. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
856:Though he had spoken of the subject many times, in the silence of his room he added the powerful kind of phrasing that would not have occurred to him as he spoke, because it's origins were in the collaboration of hand and pen. ~ Mark Helprin, #NFDB
857:Well, as we were saying when last we met—"
"I don't have to say dick to you without my lawyer."
"Did I ask you to say dick? Peabody, replay the record and verify that I at no time requested that the subject say dick. ~ J D Robb,#NFDB
858:I have accordingly considered it, and now appear not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented another petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject. ~ James Otis, #NFDB
859:I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
860:The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry. ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
861:I have a set of images that go around the world in an art gallery installation. Each of them have different audiences, and they kind of each elucidate the subject in a slightly different way, and they ping off of each other. ~ Tim Hetherington, #NFDB
862:Most of my writing has been concerned with understanding between people. Whether of different races, or religions, or even in the same family I tried in my books...to deal with the subject of understanding the other fellow. ~ Phyllis A Whitney, #NFDB
863:Since the background is as important as the subject, you mustn't let it default by chance. You must control not only vertical and horizontal, you must be aware of the depth of field (or lack of it) that you want in the background. ~ Jay Maisel, #NFDB
864:Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity which, independent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying on, continues its course in that department of my brain that is devoted to music. ~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
865:In any case, I hadn’t gone into the subject of dorm living too deeply with him, not because I hesitated to probe his tender spots but because I would have been probing my own. This is called tact, and is reputed to be a virtue. ~ Alexei Panshin, #NFDB
866:I think both of those: the subject matter, pop culture... the talent, I don't think... there's no Jim Belushi in Saturday Night Live, for me. And probably, you know, possibly the material. They've done everything over the years. ~ Dick Van Dyke, #NFDB
867:And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by,
"The rest next time--" "It is next time!"
The Happy voice cry.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll,#NFDB
868:Everything is a subject; the subject is yourself. It is within yourself that you must look and not around you... The greatest happiness is to reveal it to others, to study oneself, to paint oneself continually in [one's] work. ~ Eugene Delacroix, #NFDB
869:I think if you're writing from the heart, very often, the subject matter will adjust as you age... but you try to write the best song you can possibly write. For us, we have the same basic elements that make up the America sound. ~ Gerry Beckley, #NFDB
870:It's really not possible for someone to imagine himself/herself as a subject in the process of becoming without having at the same time a disposition for change. And change of which she/he is not merely the victim but the subject. ~ Paulo Freire, #NFDB
871:Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
872:Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequentur. grasp the words, and the subject will follow. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
873:We emphasize the transcendent worth of the human person. We insist that the human person must never be treated as an object; he must always be considered the subject. That is the basis for our teaching, the absolute standard. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
874:He picked one at random, a luridly violent far-future crime novel about a detective who could seemingly exchange bodies at will, but the subject matter was alien to him and his attention drifted. It all seemed very far-fetched. ~ Richard K Morgan, #NFDB
875:In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore. ~ Peter Mullan, #NFDB
876:[Sigmund ] Freud did not under-stand that the dream is a highly creative act, written in the universal language of symbolism, and only secondarily does censorship distort those parts that the subject refuses to accept even in sleep. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
877:Take two paintings by the same artist, one has a signature and the other doesn't. The signed picture is generally more valuable. The signature is almost graffiti or a tagging system, yet it can become more important than the subject. ~ Gavin Turk, #NFDB
878:I devour nature ceaselessly. I exaggerate, sometimes I make changes in the subject; but still I don't invent the whole picture. On the contrary, I find it already there. It's a question of picking out what one wants from nature. ~ Vincent Van Gogh, #NFDB
879:I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both. ~ Garry Winogrand, #NFDB
880:I'm not comfortable with walking the red carpet in a tuxedo and seeing all the women with their boobs pushed up and all the men dressed as penguins - particularly when the subject of your film is the nature of violence and humanity. ~ William Hurt, #NFDB
881:In discussing the subject of free will, the question is not, whether external obstacles will permit a man to execute what he has internally resolved, but whether, in any matter whatever, he has a free power of judging and of willing. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
882:[I]nternalized experiences of selfhood are linked to autobiographical narratives, which are linked to biographies, legal testimonies, and medical case histories, which are linked to forms of therapy and theories of the subject. . . ~ Anthony Kenny, #NFDB
883:Whatever helps you sleep is my opinion on the subject, and that's what I like about the western world's most popular religion, it has helped put so many people to sleep, although most of them permanently and without their approval. ~ Roseanne Barr, #NFDB
884:When you get into statistical analysis, you don't really expect to achieve fame. Or to become an Internet meme. Or be parodied by 'The Onion' - or be the subject of a cartoon in 'The New Yorker.' I guess I'm kind of an outlier there. ~ Nate Silver, #NFDB
885:Women? I'm still working on the subject. I haven't finished my studies. I would say I'm so happy that they're around. This is the salt and pepper of life. This is what makes me wake up in the morning - even more than work, really. ~ Vincent Cassel, #NFDB
886:At one time I thought the Editor of the Lancet would kindly publish a letter from me on the subject, but further reflection led me to doubt whether so insignificant an individual would be noticed without some special introduction. ~ William Banting, #NFDB
887:It is not, then, in the content or substance of folly that its difference from truth lies, but in where it comes from. It comes not from 'the wise man's mouth' but from the mouth of the subject assumed not to know and speak the truth. ~ J M Coetzee, #NFDB
888:that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city. ~ Terry Pratchett, #NFDB
889:Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
890:All the subject matter I talk about isn't new; all comics talk about the same things. But it's how you talk about them or present them or what you look like up there that makes the difference between an okay comic and a great one. ~ Andrew Dice Clay, #NFDB
891:I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute. ~ Alexandre Dumas, #NFDB
892:If we think back through our own lives, the subjects that you liked best in school almost certainly were taught by the teachers you liked best. And the teacher you liked best was the teacher who cared about the subject she taught. ~ David McCullough, #NFDB
893:Is that what happened as a mother grew older? She saw her children as adults she could confide in, despite how painful or revealing the subject matter? It seemed, almost, that because I was an adult I’d suddenly ceased to be her child. ~ Karen White, #NFDB
894:that window has enclosed everything we remember as history, and value as progress, and study as politics. What will it mean to live outside that window, probably quite far outside it? That reckoning is the subject of this book. ~ David Wallace Wells, #NFDB
895:The logical connection was irrefutable. Her vision channels were being forced to encompass more than the narrow field of commerce, thereby becoming wider. The subject matter or palatability of the new visions was irrelevant. That they ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
896:Again, when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
897:But if the views of some migrant communities on homosexuality were only a couple of generations out of date, the views of portions of those communities on the subject of women were shown to be out of date by many centuries, at least. ~ Douglas Murray, #NFDB
898:Last year I gave several lectures on "Intelligence and Musicality among Animals" ... Today I am going to speak to you about "Intelligence and Musicality among Critics" ... The subject is much the same, with some modifications, of course. ~ Erik Satie, #NFDB
899:The European policy is invariably the maintenance of the status quo, and you will do nothing for the subject races unless we, by taking initiative, make you realize that helping us against the Turks is the lesser of the evils. ~ Eleftherios Venizelos, #NFDB
900:[Vik] Okay, I’ll drop the subject. But if you ever do that to me again, I’ll stab you in the penis, which I’m sure will hurt.”
[Syn] “Yeah, it would.”
[Vik] “Good. Now I’m powering down for a bit to conserve my power. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
901:We're supposed to procreate and society, god knows, is ferocious on the subject. Heterosexuality is considered such a great and natural good that you have to execute people and put them in prison if they don't practice this glorious act. ~ Gore Vidal, #NFDB
902:A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
903:An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
904:A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
905:I want my books to last, to stand the test of time, and to do that I focus on the forces that shape the subject - the cultural and sociological geography - to capture them in a way that will explain them no matter what they are doing. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
906:Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe. ~ Irving Penn, #NFDB
907:[W] are belatedly realizing that the ill-treatment of the environment is damage to ourselves - for the simple reason that the subject and object cannot be separated, and that we and our surroundings are the process of a unified field[.] ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
908:[A] man and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing "what nobody does," or of not doing "what everybody does," is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
909:Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
910:I always feel myself being thrust back into loneliness when someone tells me it's cold on a hot day. It isn't good to talk so much about the weather — weather is a highly personal matter, and communication on the subject inevitably fails. ~ Y ko Tawada, #NFDB
911:If schools celebrated student scientists the same way they celebrate student athletes, more students would be encouraged to pursue the subject. Instead, science is considered nerdy because schools help students to paint it that way. ~ Alexandra Robbins, #NFDB
912:There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends—always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that. ~ J Donald Adams, #NFDB
913:The saying "He who teaches others, teaches himself" is very true, not only because constant repetition impresses a fact indelibly on the mind, but because the process of teaching itself gives deeper insight into the subject taught. ~ John Amos Comenius, #NFDB
914:This is the subject of books like Therapy Culture by Frank Furedi and One Nation Under Therapy by Christina Hoff Sommers, which charts the rising trend to treat feelings and emotions as things to be protected rather than challenged. ~ Milo Yiannopoulos, #NFDB
915:Why do the President and Vice-President constantly change the subject when asked to explain why things are going so badly in Iraq? The answer is simple. They have been consistently wrong about Iraq, and the results speak for themselves. ~ Patrick Leahy, #NFDB
916:Changing the subject, she turned to me and said: ‘I think poor Mr. Le Bas must be so glad that Charles has left at last. He used to write the most pathetic letters about him. Still, you weren’t expelled, darling. That was clever of you. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
917:If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe. ~ Werner Herzog, #NFDB
918:I grew up in a family in which there was very little religion. My father wasn't religious at all. But he was really interested in the subject of, you know, the birth and growth of Islam. And he basically transmitted that interest to me. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
919:In any type of activity or business divorced from the direct filter of skin in the game, the great majority of people know the jargon, play the part, and are intimate with the cosmetic details, but are clueless about the subject. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
920:All art constantly aspires to the condition of music....In its ideal, consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and completely saturate each other. ~ Walter Pater, #NFDB
921:Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
922:if the subject dedicates enough time to such endeavors to reach maximum cognitive intensity—the state in which real breakthroughs occur. This is why the minimum unit of time for deep work in this philosophy tends to be at least one full day. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
923:I think every painting should be the same size and the same color so they're all interchangeable and nobody thinks they have a better painting or a worse painting.... Besides even when the subject is different, people want the same painting. ~ Andy Warhol, #NFDB
924:The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives. ~ Eugene V Debs, #NFDB
925:I talk as I sketch, too, in order to keep their minds off what I'm doing so I'll get the most natural expression I can from them. Also, the talking helps to size up the subject's personality, so I can figure out better how to portray him. ~ Norman Rockwell, #NFDB
926:It’s not dissimilar to the reality-TV-show contestant’s ungrammatical attempt to appear grammatical, a quirk of using the subject pronoun after a preposition, instead of the correct object version. So: You have to choose between Brad or I. ~ Sloane Crosley, #NFDB
927:He’s… There are no perfect words for what I feel. For what I see. It’s staring at a Michelangelo painting and being intimate with the subject beneath the brush strokes. It’s falling to your knees and looking up at a god, who belongs to you. ~ Krista Ritchie, #NFDB
928:I received the proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a public discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the bump of reverence developed enough for ten priests. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
929:It's hard to look at anything with an objective eye. I think people bring themselves into the equation when they watch a movie. They bring their own prejudices, their own biases, their own feelings toward the subject matter, the characters. ~ James Ponsoldt, #NFDB
930:Psychologist Robert Kegan,8 chair of adult development at Harvard, has a term for unzipping those costumes. He calls it “the subject-object shift” and argues that it’s the single most important move we can make to accelerate personal growth. ~ Steven Kotler, #NFDB
931:There is no other subject on which the average mind is so much confused as the subject of tolerance and intolerance... Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
932:We must speak and yet we must maintain our silence, we must maintain distance amidst the proximity of God, and we must worship while being careful not to make God into the object of our worship: for God is the subject before whom we worship. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
933:I'd love to see more women working as directors and producers. Today it's almost impossible to do it unless you are an actress or writer with power. I wouldn't hesitate right this minute to hire a talented woman if the subject matter were right. ~ Ida Lupino, #NFDB
934:I love when you get boner spam for boner pills and the subject is Be a better lover. Oh, the boner was the problem on that? That's why I'm a bad lover? Do you have a pill that's gonna make me care if she cums? That would be a medical miracle. ~ Doug Stanhope, #NFDB
935:Patients are known only by their initials, their defining characteristics are lost, their lives go unmentioned. The subject of neurology—the owner of the brain in question—has largely become inconsequential to the science that surrounds them. ~ Helen Thomson, #NFDB
936:As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of antiquity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
937:Edward was now expressing himself on the subject of the French King, drawing upon a vocabulary that a Southwark brothel-keeper might envy. Some of what he was saying was anatomically impossible, much of it was true and all of it envenomed. ~ Sharon Kay Penman, #NFDB
938:Instead of giving it [war] a rest I continued pursuing more research, talking to more people on the subject as if I was to please this aftermath of the book by knowledge that was more historical and psychological than literary and aesthetical. ~ Sasa Stanisic, #NFDB
939:Abby Von Normal - And I'm like, "Don't change the subject, Kung Pao, what I want to know is if you're ready to spend some up-close and personal time with ninety pounds of barbarian woman-flesh! Sorry, I don't know how much that is in kilos. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
940:After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity. ~ Immanuel Kant, #NFDB
941:EVERY PROFESSION HAS ITS PITFALLS. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, morticians are told how interesting a profession that must be and then people change the subject fast. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
942:I was concerned with something like the notion of 'language speaking the subject,' and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity. ~ Martha Rosler, #NFDB
943:My first instinct was to make an excuse or to get bashful or to change the subject...but then I realized I was in good company. I could be honest, and this guy was the one who seemed to be holding back. "Actually, yeah, that was kind of amazing. ~ Tyler Oakley, #NFDB
944:No-one who has a real understanding of the art of painting attaches any importance to what we call the subject of a picture - what is represented. To one who feels the language of pictorial form, all depends on how it is presented, nothing on what. ~ Roger Fry, #NFDB
945:The income-tax law in toto has virtually no defenders, even though most fair-minded students of the subject agree that its effect over the half century that it has been in force has been to bring about a huge and healthy redistribution of wealth. ~ John Brooks, #NFDB
946:. . . what a burning shame it is that many of the pieces on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, contained in different school books, have been lost sight of, or been subject to the pruning knife of the slaveholding expurgatorial system! ~ Robert Purvis, #NFDB
947:Beauty and happiness and life are all the same and they are pervasive, unattached and abstract and they are our only concern. They are immeasurable, completely lacking in substance. They are perfect and sublime. This is the subject matter of art. ~ Agnes Martin, #NFDB
948:In a jump, the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera. ~ Philippe Halsman, #NFDB
949:The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
950:anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolutionin the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently. ~ Ernst Mayr, #NFDB
951:A semi-starvation diet induces precisely that—semi-starvation—whether the subject is obese or lean. “Of all the damn unsuccessful treatments,” Hirsch later said, “the treatment of weight reduction by diet for obese people just doesn’t seem to work. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
952:Every profession has its pitfalls. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, morticians are told how interesting a profession that must be and then people change the subject fast. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
953:I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
954:I have not had a moment's peace or happiness in respect to electromagnetic theory since November 28, 1846. All this time I have been liable to fits of ether dipsomania, kept away at intervals only by rigorous abstention from thought on the subject. ~ Lord Kelvin, #NFDB
955:People are tempted to politicize the fact that I paint black figures, and the complexity of this is an essential part of the work. But my starting point is always the language of painting itself and how that relates to the subject matter. ~ Lynette Yiadom Boakye, #NFDB
956:The highest truth is daiji, translated as dai jiki in Chinese scriptures. This is the subject of the question the emperor asked Bodhidharma: "What is the First Principle?" Bodhidharma said, "I don't know." "I don't know" is the First Principle. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
957:What gives journalism its authenticity and vitality is the tension between the subject's blind self absorption and the journalist's skepticism. Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
958:I may juggle the composition, as the strength of a picture is in the composition. Or I may play with the light. But I never interfere with the subject. The subject has to fall into place on its own and, if I don't like it, I don't have to print it ~ George Rodger, #NFDB
959:I think, 'How could anybody mock a good pop song?' It is timeless; it transcends barriers; it breaks down every single type of social barrier that you can possibly have. It can deal with the most difficult subjects, even if it abstracts the subject matter. ~ Mika, #NFDB
960:It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. ~ Joseph Story, #NFDB
961:There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act ~ Cuba Gooding Jr, #NFDB
962:It makes no difference whether you want the specifics of it or not; it is the vibrational essence of the subject of your attention that is attracted. That which you really, really want, you get—and that which you really, really do not want, you get. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
963:Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that 'death panels' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment, it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject. ~ Carl Hiaasen, #NFDB
964:The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it. ~ Teju Cole, #NFDB
965:Adam Smith, and other able writers to whom I have alluded, not having viewed correctly the principles of rent, have, it appears to me, overlooked many important truths, which can only be discovered after the subject of rent is thoroughly understood. ~ David Ricardo, #NFDB
966:"As a conscious factor the ego could, theoretically at least, be described completely. But this would never amount to more than a picture of the conscious personality; all those features which are unknown or unconscious to the subject would be missing." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
967:Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
968:Before this trip and all that she’d learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
969:But I wish to be enlightened.'
'Let me caution you against it.'
'Is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?'
'Yes, indeed.'
She laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her curiosity as his statement. ~ Thomas Hardy,#NFDB
970:For a border state, I would argue that Texas is less lunatic on the subject of immigration issues than other places around it, like Arizona. They're much more comfortable with their long-term identity as a place with a very large Hispanic population. ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
971:I don't think, Trotwood,' returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes to mine, 'I would consider that. Perhaps it would be better only to consider whether it is right to do this; and, if it is, to do it.' I had no longer any doubt on the subject. With a ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
972:In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession. ~ Alberto Giacometti, #NFDB
973:Most nonfiction writers have a definitiveness complex. They feel that they are under some obligation—to the subject, to their honor, to the gods of writing—to make their article the last word. It’s a commendable impulse, but there is no last word. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
974:Oh, my god," Augustus said. "i can't believe i have a crush on a girl with such cliché wishes." "i was thirteen," i said again, although of course i was only thinking "crush crush crush crush crush". I was flattered but changed the subject immediately. ~ John Green, #NFDB
975:Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli. - The doings of men, their prayers, fear, wrath, pleasure, delights, and recreations, are the subject of this book. ~ Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), I, I, 85., #NFDB
976:scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe; that is to say, everything that is, or has been, or may be related to man. ~ William Kingdon Clifford, #NFDB
977:I'm organizing documentary films, and whenever scriptwriting gets too tedious I go to my editing room and start to edit the documentary, even if I don't have the full funding yet. So you have to keep yourself busy, you have to like the subject matter. ~ Haile Gerima, #NFDB
978:What is time? What is this entity consisting of mere movement without anything that moves? and, What is space, this omnipresent nothing out of which no thing can emerge without ceasing to be something? That time and space belong to the subject, ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
979:And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. “Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock Turtle: “nine the next, and so on.” “What a curious plan!” exclaimed Alice. “That’s the reason they’re called lessons, ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
980:I do tend to look at my books in many ways as conceptual fiction, even to the point where I think the author's photograph is part of the package. And I have gone out of my way to select the photograph to connect to the subject matter of each book. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
981:The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
982:when you don’t know what a man is getting at, let your counter-question shift the subject to something you do want to talk about. Then, no matter what he answers, make your point and call on someone else. Logic does not enter into it—just tactics. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
983:Are the hormones as bad as everyone says they are?" I asked him to change the subject.
He looked at up to me his brown eyes widened as he understood what I meant. Finally he grinned.
"That explains it."
"So, is that yes?
"That is... good luck. ~ J J McAvoy,#NFDB
984:If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
985:I sometimes try to imagine what future historians will say about us. They'll be able to sum up modern man in a single sentence: he fornicated and read the papers. After that robust description, I should guess there will be no more to say on the subject. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
986:No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
987:Oh, my god," Augustus said. "I can't believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliche wishes."
"I was thirteen," I said again, although of course I was only thinking "crush crush crush crush crush". I was flattered but changed the subject immediately. ~ John Green,#NFDB
988:Are you seeing anyone these days?” I asked, changing the subject. “You mean, like a woman?” “Yeah.” Masahiko gave a small shrug. “I can’t say it’s going all that well. As usual. And things have gotten even rockier since I made this weird breakthrough. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
989:as I delved deeper into the subject, it was more than the eyes—it was what was behind the eyes, in the brain, wanting to please you, make you happy, give you joy, and take away the loneliness of never having anyone understand as you want to be understood. ~ V C Andrews, #NFDB
990:At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
991:Bengali poem by Ram Mohun Roy which bears on the subject matter of this essay.* Roy explains what is really dreadful about death: Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
992:In an article on Bunyan lately published in the "Contemporary Review" - the only article on the subject worth reading on the subject I ever saw (yes, thank you, I am familiar with Macaulay's patronizing prattle about "The Pilgrim's Progress") etc. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
993:The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on. ~ Gus Van Sant, #NFDB
994:The Handsome Prince Handbook is mute on the subject of chronic workaholism—Prince Charming, apparently, knew how to delegate—and I didn't know where else to turn for help. What do you do when life begins to go wrong and you've used up all three wishes? ~ Nancy Atherton, #NFDB
995:The present is always unsettled, no one has had time to contemplate it in tranquillity . I was a painter before I was a writer and a painter never wants the subject right under his nose; he wants to stand back and study a landscape with half-closed eyes. ~ Isak Dinesen, #NFDB
996:There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics. ~ Norman Foster, #NFDB
997:With slow care rather than stealth we must approach the subject of a certain woman. Her wildness is of such degree, I fear approaching her too quickly even in a story. Should I move recklessly, I might startle even the idea of her into sudden flight. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
998:And on the subject of naming animals, can I just say how happy I was to discover that the word yeti, literally translated, apparently means "that thing over there."
("Quick, brave Himalayan Guide - what's that thing over there?"
"Yeti."
"I see.") ~ Neil Gaiman,#NFDB
999:In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1000:My physics teacher, Thomas Miner was particularly gifted. To this day, I remember how he introduced the subject of physics. He told us we were going to learn how to deal with very simple questions such as how a body falls due to the acceleration of gravity. ~ Steven Chu, #NFDB
1001:Once you have surrounded the entire place with the nets of your thought, at least if practical experience has sharpened your skill, nothing will escape you, and everything that is in the subject matter will run up to you and fall into your hands. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1002:Coming into your powers can be a very confusing time. Perhaps there is a book on the subject. If you like, we can go see Marian."
Yeah, right. Choices and Changes. A Modern Girl's Guide to Casting. My Mom Wants to Kill Me: A Self-Help Book For Teens. ~ Kami Garcia,#NFDB
1003:For starters, let's dispense with the cheap jokes about cannibalism. That means cracks about giving an arm and a leg - sorry - for a good book on the subject, or similar tasteless - sorry, again - attempts to make the subject more palatable - last one. ~ Mitchell Zuckoff, #NFDB
1004:It may well be that we talk about sex more than anything else; we set our minds to the task; we convince ourselves that were have never said enough on the subject...where sex is concerned the most long-winded, the most impatient of societies is our own. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
1005:One 'is' a genius only in the sense that one 'is' a syphilitic, in the sense that 'one' is violently problematized by a ferocious exteriority. One returns to the subject of which genius has been predicated to find it charred and devastated beyond recognition. ~ Nick Land, #NFDB
1006:Two factors thus emerge as requisites of success in the field of creative photography. First, the subject must be photogenic. Second, its re-creation in a photograph must be based upon technical knowledge, guided and supported by artsitic inspiration. ~ Andreas Feininger, #NFDB
1007:Besides, if she was able to get away, Dorothea would obtain the one thing that Avelina had dreamed of, written stories about, and imagined in many a long hour—true romantic love—about which the troubadours sang, the subject of epic poems and tales. No, ~ Melanie Dickerson, #NFDB
1008:Eddie Murphy said once in an interview that nothing is offensive if it's funny. I sort of agree with that, but if something's funny and you're the subject of it, sometimes it's more offensive. If someone's insulting you, you want them to sound like an idiot. ~ Artie Lange, #NFDB
1009:How can you make informed decisions ... ? The key seems to be to gather experts who are knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter, and have them cooperatively discuss a series of questions designed to explore the limits of technical feasibility. ~ Peter Norvig, #NFDB
1010:Memorizing multiplication tables may be a seminal school experience, among the few that kids today share with their grandparents. But a Stanford University professor says rapid-fire math drills are also the reason so many children fear and despise the subject. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1011:There’s nothing funny about shame. Don’t lighten up the subject. Nietzsche said, ‘What do you consider the most humane? To spare someone shame. What is the seal of liberation? To no longer be ashamed in front of oneself.’ Be serious. You have the credentials. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
1012:What those inheritances meant, and still mean, is the subject of this inquiry, especially the last of these: What does it mean to be white in a nation created for the benefit of people like you? We don’t often ask this question, mostly because we don’t have to. ~ Tim Wise, #NFDB
1013:When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
1014:Let there be but two occasions for speech - when the subject is one which you thoroughly know and when it is one on which you are compelled to speak. On these occasions alone is speech better than silence; on all others, it is better to be silent than to speak. ~ Isocrates, #NFDB
1015:My cheeks flushed, and I felt a wave of warmth throughout my body, but not because of the subject matter. Because she had used the word us.
It was one of those times when you don’t realize how lonely you are until, suddenly, there’s someone by your side. ~ I W Gregorio,#NFDB
1016:Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you live. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1017:Self-deception actually determines one’s experience in every aspect of life. The extent to which it does that—and in particular the extent to which it determines the nature of one’s influence on, and experience of, others—is the subject of this book. ~ The Arbinger Institute, #NFDB
1018:Spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. True prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1019:Although there are some enormously gifted lecturers and preachers who do create community with oratory, I like to do anything I can to engage my students with each other, with me, and with the subject. And the subject, I think, always has to take prominence. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
1020:Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in replay as her own feelings could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject - and when he spoke again, it was something totally different. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1021:If you want to win the war for attention, don’t try to say ‘no’ to the trivial distractions you find on the information smorgasbord; try to say ‘yes’ to the subject that arouses a terrifying longing, and let the terrifying longing crowd out everything else.” For ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1022:I know there's always going to be feedback no matter what the subject. I am shocked by somebody commenting on my shoes or my clothes. Everyone has an opinion, everyone is logging about everything and has an opinion. So I can't possibly pay attention to that. ~ Ellen DeGeneres, #NFDB
1023:I never claim my photographs reveal some definitive truth. I claim that this is what I saw and felt about the subject at the time the pictures were made. That's all that any photographer can claim. I do not know any great photographer who would presume otherwise. ~ David Hurn, #NFDB
1024:Maybe you shouldn’t talk about anal sex behind our backs,” I retort, able to deduce the subject of their conversations.
“Fine, I’ll talk about it to your face,” Lo challenges. “I hear you like it in the ass.” He raises his can of Fizz Life to me. “Cheers. ~ Krista Ritchie,#NFDB
1025:Never forget that the subject is as important as your feeling; the mud puddle itself is as important as your pleasure in looking at it or splashing through it. Never let the mud puddle get lost in the poetry-because, in many ways, the mud puddle is the poetry. ~ Valerie Worth, #NFDB
1026:She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time. ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
1027:When the subject goes behind the curtain of appearance to search for the hidden essence, he thinks he will discover something that was always there; he does not realize that in passing behind the curtain, he is bringing with him the very thing that he will find. ~ Slavoj i ek, #NFDB
1028:As it was impossible however now to prevent their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with all the philosophy of a well bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times a day. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1029:Epitaph On The Countess Of Pembroke
Underneath this sable hearse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother:
Death! ere thou hast slain another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.
~ Ben Jonson,#NFDB
1030:It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1031:Our [Western] science has cut itself off from an adequate understanding of the Subject of Cognizance, of the mind. This is precisely the point where our present way of thinking needs to be amended, perhaps by a bit of blood-transfusion from Eastern thought. ~ Erwin Schr dinger, #NFDB
1032:Every one who understands the subject will agree that even the basis on which the scientific explanation of nature rests is intelligible only to those who have learned at least the elements of the differential and integral calculus, as well as analytical geometry. ~ Felix Klein, #NFDB
1033:for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1034:In LA I was watching At the Movies with Ebert and Roper, it was, nice to see them differentiate between the subject matter and the art form of making the film, and they both gave it thumbs up, and I was kind of pleased at their honesty as far as reviewers go. ~ Michael Berryman, #NFDB
1035:The prince exults whomever he selects as his consort, but the queen, rather than elevating the subject of her choice, humiliates him as a man. By all that is right, a man is not intended to be the husband of his wife, but a woman is to be her husband's wife. ~ Franz Grillparzer, #NFDB
1036:Thus the activity of preservation should be distinguished from the nostalgia accompanying fantasies of a lost home from which the subject is separated and to which he seeks to return. Preservation entails remembrance, which is quite different from nostalgia. ~ Iris Marion Young, #NFDB
1037:we must require an agreement to the principle that there are no sacred cows. Anything and everything must be the subject of free inquiry and skeptical investigation. To allow otherwise, for practical or any other kind of reasons, is an intellectual travesty. ~ Massimo Pigliucci, #NFDB
1038:But I won't bore you any longer on the subject of old men. It won't make things any better and all my plans of revenge (such as disconnecting the lamp, shutting the door, hiding his clothes) must be abandoned in order to keep the peace. Oh, I'm becoming so sensible! ~ Anne Frank, #NFDB
1039:I think what's happened in art criticism, or art thinking, in last 30 or 40 years is a confusion between the "what" - the subject - and the "how." Most attention goes to the "what," but it's the "how" that's the important part - how something is brought into being. ~ Joe Bradley, #NFDB
1040:My early childhood equipped me really well for my portrait work: The quick encounter, where you are not going to know the subject for very long. These days I am much more comfortable with the fifteen minute relationship, than I am with a life long relationship. ~ Annie Leibovitz, #NFDB
1041:A company should never outsource its eyes. There is simply no substitute for seeing for yourself. Great artists don’t paint from other people’s descriptions or even from photographs; they like to see the subject for themselves. The same is true for great strategists. ~ W Chan Kim, #NFDB
1042:After my brush with the suicidal impulse, I listen with new ears to others when they speak on the subject. I think there are people who were born with that little door open, and they have to go through life knowing that they might jump through it at any moment. ~ Douglas Coupland, #NFDB
1043:In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
1044:She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn’t have time. Now ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
1045:“The collective attitude hinders the recognition and evaluation of a psychology different from the subject's, because the mind that is collectively oriented is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection." ~#CGJung, Psychological Types, CW6, par 12, #NFDB
1046:The people make light of dying because of the greatness of their labours in seeking for the means of living. It is this which makes them think light of dying. Thus it is that to leave the subject of living altogether out of view is better than to set a high value on it. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
1047:The sun touches Maine first among every state in the US. But Maine likes to confuse people and generally feels conflicted on the subject of light and warmth, so its shattered coastline of necks and points and isles hides from the sun, facing any direction but east. ~ John Hodgman, #NFDB
1048:A contemporary or near-future book is much harder because you can't fake the facts. There are people alive who know much more than you do about the subject. You have to really have your research together - and of course no one can know everything about a topic. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1049:If you don’t want to cry about the state of the economy, why not laugh instead? This book is an ideal introduction to the subject for anybody who thinks they ought to understand what’s happening around them but is put off by the usual dense text and economics jargon. ~ Diane Coyle, #NFDB
1050:I never shot on sets, but if I was traveling somewhere or on location, I would always have my camera, and I'd always be - it's that kind of fly on the wall approach to photography, though. I don't engage the subject. I like to sneak around, skulk about in the dark. ~ Jessica Lange, #NFDB
1051:MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1052:Professional opinion is skeptical about anything that doesn't fit in with the version of reality it has been programmed to believe in. The skepticism comes from a lack of understanding and the need to defend the status quo and not from actual knowledge of the subject. ~ David Icke, #NFDB
1053:The boring thing with taking a walk with someone is that your thoughts are then dictated by the subject or subjects of your conversation; and that is made worse by the fact that most sane people are terrified of silence whenever they are with or near someone. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
1054:When I first started to take photographs in Czechoslovakia, I met this old gentleman, this old photographer, who told me a few practical things. One of the things he said was, "Josef, a photographer works on the subject, but the subject works on the photographer." ~ Josef Koudelka, #NFDB
1055:Clinical trials are currently under way to test this mode of cell transfer, and a moving story from late 2015 hints at its amazing potential. In fact, the subject of this story, Layla Richards, is the first human whose life was saved by therapeutic gene editing. ~ Jennifer A Doudna, #NFDB
1056:If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1057:It is however pretty evident, on general principles, that in devising for mathematical truths a new form in which to record and throw themselves out for actual use, views are likely to be induced, which should again react on the more theoretical phase of the subject. ~ Ada Lovelace, #NFDB
1058:Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the subject's range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outward world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interiour world which otherwise would be an empty waste. ~ William James, #NFDB
1059:...the subject of walking is, in some sense, about how we invest universal acts with particular meanings. Like eating or breathing, it can be invested with wildly different cultural meanings, from the erotic to the spiritual, from the revolutionary to the artistic. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
1060:The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
1061:This involves the principle discussed above. By placing oneself in harmony with the requirements of the subject in hand, the truth must become known, even as an instrument properly tuned must feel the influence of the ether waves with which it is in harmony. Again, ~ John A Widtsoe, #NFDB
1062:Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate. And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only science. ~ Mark Z Danielewski, #NFDB
1063:Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude. ~ Anthony Burgess, #NFDB
1064:Carve a cherry pit with the utmost skill, and at best it is still a cherry pit; but a diamond, even if cut poorly, is still a precious stone. Even if a speaker cannot deliver an eloquent speech, if the subject is important, attempting to speak isn’t useless. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1065:[It is] essentially wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know, whether or not the will does any thing in those things which pertain unto Salvation. Nay, let me tell you, this is the very hinge upon which our discussion turns. It is the very heart of the subject ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1066:That´s all,' I said after several minutes of fumbling around the subject. 'Or at least that´s enough of my talking about it. She confuses me like no other thing in the world.' I picked at a splinter in the tabletop with my finger. 'I hate not understanding a thing. ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
1067:That was what he was like. He always changed the subject with flattery. He was usually more artful. It’s hard to describe how someone has manipulated you because you’re generally not aware of it when it’s happening. You don’t exactly take notes, is what I am saying. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
1068:Poor teaching leads to the inevitable idea that the subject (mathematics) is only adapted to peculiar minds, when it is the one universal science and the one whose four ground-rules are taught us almost in infancy and reappear in the motions to the universe. ~ Henry John Stephen Smith, #NFDB
1069:The subject of the novel is reality liberated from soul. The reader in complete independence presented with a structured process:let him evaluate it, not the author. The façade of the novel cannot be other than stone or steel, flashing electrically or dark, but silent. ~ Alfred Doblin, #NFDB
1070:The tone of the repartee was familiar, as was the subject matter, a strangely comfortable background music to most of my waking hours over the last two decades or so - and I realised that, my God... I've been listening to the same conversation for twenty-five years! ~ Anthony Bourdain, #NFDB
1071:After my brush with the suicidal impulse, I listen with new ears to others when they
speak on the subject. I think there are people who were born with that little door open, and they
have to go through life knowing that they might jump through it at any moment. ~ Douglas Coupland,#NFDB
1072:Deborah just shook her head and muttered something I didn’t quite catch, although I heard several hard consonants in it. So because I always try to bring cheer wherever I go, I changed the subject. “Who is that supposed to be?” I said, nodding at the gigantic bloodstain. ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1073:I'd never painted anything before. I was quite content to take other people's work since I didn't care anyway about the subject matter. I approached subject matter as a scoundrel. I had nothing to say about it whatsoever. I only wanted to make these exciting paintings. ~ Tom Wesselmann, #NFDB
1074:It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living: how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1075:Obama wanted to offer his support to birth control activist Sandra Fluke. He wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy. ~ Jay Carney, #NFDB
1076:Oh, I usually don't know a whole lot about a subject when I begin; the process itself teaches me a lot as I go along. Usually I know enough about one narrow area of the subject to start myself going, and then everything - including a lot more research - follows from that. ~ Jim Shepard, #NFDB
1077:One cultivates one's life, one's friends, one's means, one's hopes. One goes from place to place, from triumph to triumph, in search of ambition and ambition's remedy as though in flight across some imagined map, the subject of a conversation in a comfortable English room. ~ Jesse Ball, #NFDB
1078:The characteristics of race, people, nation and sex are the subject matter of special branches of study. Only people who wish to live as nothing more than examples of the genus could possibly conform to a general picture such as arises from academic study of this kind. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
1079:Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1080:You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1081:Criticism ultimately at some degree is about the writer and not the subject. It's very easy if everybody else says, "He's a genius," to echo that, but then you're not functioning as a critic or as a writer in any meaningful way. You've got to take the risk of being wrong. ~ Gary Giddins, #NFDB
1082:—crowded out most other voices on the subject of whatever new crisis was engulfing the Trump administration. These quotes functioned as something like a stage whisper that Trump could pretend he didn’t hear. Trump, in fact, was always desperately seeking Bannon’s advice, ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
1083:I think you can write about what you know for about an hour and a half. Then you have to start bullshitting. So I say, lie to me and lie to me well. The only way to write well is to write accurately. Accuracy is not about the reader, it’s about the subject and the character. ~ A M Homes, #NFDB
1084:It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self...I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject. ~ Alexander Fleming, #NFDB
1085:I’m going to ask you a question, Izzy. I’ve never asked this of a woman before. And it’s taking me a great deal of courage to even broach the subject, so please—I beg you, consider your answer carefully.
Izzy, my heart . . . in the morning, will you make me a pancake? ~ Tessa Dare,#NFDB
1086:other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1087:Scan your subject for things that are clearly impossible. After all, paint isn't magic! If you see that certain elements in the subject are beyond the limits of your pigments, try to form an idea beforehand of how you are going to handle those areas when you get to them. ~ Richard Schmid, #NFDB
1088:So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. [Steve] Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
(Nytimes article, Sept. 10, 2014) ~ Nick Bilton,#NFDB
1089:Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers. ~ Josiah Warren, #NFDB
1090:you gave up any right to comment on the subject when you threw my ring back in my face, didn't you?"
She (Elly) stiffened."I didn't throw it back. I just sort of set in down on your desk."
He (Cooper)shrugged."We each have our own version of events, Want some fries? ~ Jayne Castle,#NFDB
1091:I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1092:Interestingly, the iteration protocol is even more pervasive in Python today than the examples so far have demonstrated — essentially everything in Python’s built-in toolset that scans an object from left to right is defined to use the iteration protocol on the subject object. ~ Mark Lutz, #NFDB
1093:I said it, just like that. No stupid jokes, no changing the subject. For once, I wasn't embarrassed, because it was the truth. I had fallen. I think I had always been falling. And she might as well know, if she didn't already, because there was no going back now. Not for me. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1094:Maybe it was just Mr. Wilson's obvious love of the subject he taught. Maybe it was simply his cool accent and his youth. The entire student body tried to mimic him. Girls crowded around him, and the boys watched him, fascinated, as if a rockstar had descended into our midsts. ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
1095:Although the way ahead [for immunology] is full of pitfalls and difficulties, this is indeed an exhilarating prospect. There is no danger of a shortage of forthcoming excitement in the subject. Yet, as always, the highlights of tomorrow are the unpredictabilities of today. ~ Cesar Milstein, #NFDB
1096:not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
1097:Since then he has said nothing and although from time to time I have thrown out what I hope were delicate hints and suggestions he has not seemed to notice them; and with a man Lucifer could not hold a book, bell or candle to for pride I cannot raise the subject directly. ~ Patrick O Brian, #NFDB
1098:So," I said climbing to my feet and changing the subject ASAP, "I had a dream last night someone tried to burn me alive, and I'm not entirely sure it was a dream."
Devon stiffened. Chase's pupils pulsed.
Subject successfully changed.
"Now who's ready to eat? ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes,#NFDB
1099:I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have a great respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution and paleontology). ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
1100:I do not believe that the present flowering of science is due in the least to a real appreciation of the beauty and intellectual discipline of the subject. It is due simply to the fact that power, wealth and prestige can only be obtained by the correct application of science. ~ Derek Barton, #NFDB
1101:In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it. ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1102:I read numerous books - loads in fact - and, as I always do when recording a historical project, immersed myself into the subject matter. I spent many hours at Henrys old homes, such as Hampton Court, and visiting the Tower of London. I read no other books during that period. ~ Rick Wakeman, #NFDB
1103:[O]ne of the greatest difficulties encountered in bringing about favorable change is this almost inescapable illusion that there is a perduring, unique, simple existent self, [which is] in some strange fashion, the patient's, or the subject person's, private property. ~ Harry Stack Sullivan, #NFDB
1104:Politicians are really getting desperate. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent out a final fundraising email to Democrats with the subject line, 'I'm begging.' Because what better way to show you're a strong leader than acting like you're drunk and dialing your ex? ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
1105:As for asking Tam Lin, Matt didn’t know how to bring up the subject. By the way, is anyone planning to cut me up into T-bone steaks? Even more terrifying was the bodyguard’s possible answer: You hit the nail on the head there, laddie. I always said you were bright as a button. ~ Nancy Farmer, #NFDB
1106:I know that obviously, that if you want to get the story, if you want to get close to somebody, if you want to find out what is really the truth or what's really interesting, you have to create a trust between these two things, between the journalist and the subject. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman, #NFDB
1107:In space, great distances force us to spread out cognition over time, enabling us to see how autonomy maps across the solar system as distributed human presence. How we program our models of the world into autonomous systems here on earth is the subject of the next chapter. ~ David A Mindell, #NFDB
1108:Instead of seeking fulfilment in an object, the subject must acknowledge that it can flourish only through another of its kind. It is when two free, equal individuals engage in an act of mutual recognition that desire can transcend itself into something rather more edifying. ~ Terry Eagleton, #NFDB
1109:It is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power-knowledge, the processes and struggles that transverse it and of which it is made up, that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
1110:This provided an excuse for sidelining questions of independence – until the subject people were ‘ready’. Hailey got the Americans to go along with this, by suggesting a similar line on Southern segregation. Economic betterment would come first; political liberation could wait. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
1111:[W]hen it is shown that what the subject is lies entirely in the attributes of the subject; … that the predicate is the true subject; it is also proved that if the divine predicates are attributes of the human nature, the subject of those predicates is also … human nature. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1112:I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
1113:I was pretty well through with the subject. At one time or another I had probably considered it from most of its various angles, including the one that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1114:Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1115:There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1116:There’s no way to release yourself from a memory. It ends when it wants to end, whether it’s in a flash or long after you’ve begged it to stop. What
was the next line? What did I say to you then? I probably changed the subject, and the new subject wasn’t worth remembering. ~ David Levithan,#NFDB
1117:When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
1118:And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1119:It's nothing but a matter of seeing, thinking, and interest. That's what makes a good photograph. And then rejecting anything that would be bad for the picture. The wrong light, the wrong background, time and so on. Just don't do it, not matter how beautiful the subject is. ~ Andreas Feininger, #NFDB
1120:As always, the subject of Bianca lay between them like a loaded gun – deadly, easy to reach, impossible to ignore. ‘I mean your other sister, Hazel … she has discovered that one of the Seven will die. She may try to prevent this. In doing so, she may lose sight of her priorities. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1121:But when I clicked over to my e-mail program, it was just another “great opportunity” spam, this time adding the words “don’t delete!” to the subject line. With a sense of perverse satisfaction, I deleted it. It was probably the only act of rebellion I’d get away with all day. ~ Shanna Swendson, #NFDB
1122:In the face of scary things, knowledge was always a comfort to me. No matter what the subject was, if I could find a book or two about it, I could squash any anxiety that it might provoke. As my heroine Scully once said, “The answers are there, you just have to know where to look. ~ Abby Norman, #NFDB
1123:I’ve worked all my life on the subject of awareness, whether it’s awareness of the body, awareness of the mind, awareness of your emotions, awareness of your relationships, or awareness of your environment. I think the key to transforming your life is to be aware of who you are. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1124:I was aware that you weren't supposed to write about suburbia, that it was undignified in some way, the subject matter not momentous enough. And so, for a long time, that kept me from writing about it. But once I began, I realized it was just as interesting as anywhere else. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
1125:Once you have linked yourself with love, a flood of inspiration is revealed to you, whatever the subject, whatever the problem in life may be. Whatever it be that your eye casts its glance upon, it will disclose itself. Then you are on the real road, and what a joy this is! ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1126:The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten. ~ Philip Jones Griffiths, #NFDB
1127:The subject matter of Entitlement remains relevant. Entitlement is an attitude: it is the assumption, I am owed what I get. It's a nasty attitude because people are not grateful for what they get. Instead, greed prevails and is expressed as, What have you done for me lately? ~ Judith M Bardwick, #NFDB
1128:I suffered unbearable torture in silence, weeping internallyat the sad turn of events, blaming myself bitterly again and again for having delved into the supernatural without first acquiring a fuller knowledge of the subject and providing against the dangers and risks of the path. ~ Gopi Krishna, #NFDB
1129:I've seen men like you in Doris Day films, but I never thought they existed in real life...The men who can't commit, who can't say 'I love you' even when they want to, who start to cough and sputter and change the subject. But here you are. A living, breathing specimen. Incredible. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1130:One fourth of the books in the Bible are of prophetic nature; the subject and statement of the books are eschatological, that is, they deal with prophecy. One fifth of the content of Scripture was predictive at the time of its writing; a large segment of that has been fulfilled. ~ J Vernon McGee, #NFDB
1131:I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed. ~ Steve Allen, #NFDB
1132:If anything is evident about people who manage money, it is that the task attracts a very low level of talent, one that is protected in its highly imperfect profession by the mystery that is thought to enfold the subject of economics in general and of money in particular. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
1133:Through "deprogramming" or cult intervention the only issues that are addressed focus upon the specific group and group involvement. The subject of such an intervention subsequently may leave the group and go on with their life reassuming their own basic individual values and beliefs. ~ Rick Ross, #NFDB
1134:What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: She is going to die: I shudder… over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
1135:If the Holocaust that you talk about was real, why don't you allow the subject to be studied? One can freely research any issue, except for this issue, which is sealed. It is a black box, which they do not allow to be opened or reexamined. They do this in order to exploit it. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, #NFDB
1136:I was 21 in 1968, so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared; the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies, in the West anyway, would have seemed absurd in 1968. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1137:One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education-rather a singular coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1138:On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think...of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
1139:The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
1140:We have struggled with terrorism for a long time. In the Reagan administration, I was a hawk on the subject. I said terrorism is a big problem, a different problem, and we have to take forceful action against it. Fortunately, Ronald Reagan agreed with me, but not many others did. ~ George P Shultz, #NFDB
1141:When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's . . . on morals. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1142:I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed. ~ John Hurt, #NFDB
1143:If I knew how to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects,” I said somewhat imperiously, because I wanted to change the subject and also because a natural inclination does truly lead me to recognize my moods in the motionless suffering of things. Miss ~ Italo Calvino, #NFDB
1144:In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it. Patients ~ Atul Gawande, #NFDB
1145:All religious systems enslave the mind. Certain things are demanded-certain things must be believed-certain things must be done-and the man who becomes the subject or servant of this superstition must give up all idea of indivuality or hope of intellectual growth or progress. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
1146:Franklin was perfectly philosophical on the subject: “For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
1147:I have such amazing memories [about The Hotel New Hampshire movie], because Tony Richardson was such an amazing director, and the subject matter was so bizarre, and yet it was the most sought-after part at that moment. And then it had the good fortune to come out on the same day as Splash. ~ Rob Lowe, #NFDB
1148:In all matters but particularly in architecture, that which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. One who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, #NFDB
1149:NO error is infused into the young mind, to lie there dormant, or to be reproduced only when the subject of thought or action recurs to which the error belongs; but the error becomes a model or archetype, after whose likeness the active powers of the mind create a thousand other errors. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1150:Resistance disappears and the balancing process comes into full effect not by intention on the part of the subject, but only as it is seen that the feeling of being the subject, the ego, is itself part of the stream of experience and does not stand outside it in a controlling position. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1151:Whenever Roosevelt (Theodore) expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested. For Roosevelt knew, all the leaders royal road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
1152:Kurt Godel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental - indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time. ... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Godel's achievement. ~ John von Neumann, #NFDB
1153:Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?' ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1154:At the current rate of 28 miles of SBInet [Secure Border Initiative network] technology every 4.5 years, it would take 320 years - or until the year 2330 - to deploy SBInet technology across the Southwest border. That statistic would be comical if the subject matter were not so serious. ~ Henry Cuellar, #NFDB
1155:You have to think for an email. What's the subject? What's it about? It takes two seconds to think about that. So you have to think, Is this a work thing or a social thing? Which? Then you get into a situation that you don't want to be in, because then people are thinking about it too much. ~ Biz Stone, #NFDB
1156:He wrote as if he were the reader. It was also how he kept his writing from becoming too cute, which is to say, about him not the subject. Rook was a journalist but strove to be a storyteller, one who let his subjects speak for themselves and stayed out of their way as much as possible. ~ Richard Castle, #NFDB
1157:What’ve we got this afternoon?” said Harry, hastily changing the subject. “Defense Against the Dark Arts,” said Hermione at once. “Why,” demanded Ron, seizing her schedule, “have you outlined all Lockhart’s lessons in little hearts?” Hermione snatched the schedule back, blushing furiously. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1158:With very little ado I stop the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never, get them out when they are once got in; ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
1159:Annabeth frowned. "That doesn't make sense. But why were you visiting --" Her eyes widened. "Hermes said you bear the curse of Achilles. Hestia said the same thing. Did you . . . did you bathe in the River Styx?" "Don't change the subject." "Percy! Did you or not?" "Um . . .maybe a little. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1160:As Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates pointed out in his recent talk on the subject: “The key thing you can do to reduce population growth is actually improve health. … [T]here is a perfect correlation, as you improve health, within half a generation, the population growth rate goes down. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
1161:Before I started (college), that's the advice my dad gave me. He said to pick classes based on the teacher whenever you can, not the subject...his point was that good teachers are priceless. They inspire you, they entertain you, and you end up learning a ton even when you don't know it. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
1162:Do you like vegetables?" Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food. "You is trying to change the subject," the Giant said sternly. "We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable. ~ Roald Dahl, #NFDB
1163:I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're the subject, the interviewee - actually tend to hold steady much more consistently in rural Africa than they do in the American inner city. ~ William Finnegan, #NFDB
1164:"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?"" ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
1165:The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, 'unity'
of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: 'The subject,' says one handbook for amateur photographers, 'must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity. ~ Roland Barthes,#NFDB
1166:What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it. ~ Aubrey Beardsley, #NFDB
1167:Enjoying it? I don’t reckon he’d come home if Dad didn’t make him. He’s obsessed. Just don’t get him on the subject of his boss. According to Mr. Crouch…as I was saying to Mr. Crouch… Mr. Crouch is of the opinion… Mr. Crouch was telling me… They’ll be announcing their engagement any day now. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
1168:I do not consider myself by any means an expert on the art of creative visualization. I am a student of the subject, and the more I study and use creative visualization myself, the more I discover how vast and deep its potential is…truly it is as infinite, creative as your own imagination. ~ Shakti Gawain, #NFDB
1169:I see the bomber pictures as an anti-war statement... which they aren't - at all. Pictures like that don't do anything to combat war. They only show one tiny aspect of the subject of war - maybe only my own childish feelings of fear and fascination with war and with weapons of that kind. ~ Gerhard Richter, #NFDB
1170:It gets super dark. I did a bunch of intense indie movies when I was starting out in my career and I was always in a bad mood because, when you're dealing with the subject matter of losing your baby, getting raped and all that stuff, it's not fun to go through. You really have to go there. ~ Busy Philipps, #NFDB
1171:Never Mind Nirvana is the first novel I’ve read that makes music as important as food, clothing romance — a fresh twist millions will be able to identify with – and the music of Lindquist’s language is a perfect match for the subject. I think he’s the writer to watch in the new millennium. ~ Tama Janowitz, #NFDB
1172:People start realising that I'm a responsible filmmaker and I'm not going to run away with the budget or do anything stupid. I think it probably depends on the subject matter and it depends on who's producing and all those things. My hope is that I'll be allowed to carry on making films. ~ David Mackenzie, #NFDB
1173:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1174:The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness…. To put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
1175:Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1176:Over the course of his sixteen years, Charles Cullen had been the subject of dozens of complaints and disciplinary citations, and had endured four police investigations, two lie detector tests, perhaps twenty suicide attempts, and a lock-up, but none had blemished his professional record. ~ Charles Graeber, #NFDB
1177:Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1178:Whilst on the subject of the spread of Buddhism in the West, I want to say that I have noticed some tendency towards sectarianism amongst new practitioners. This is absolutely wrong. Religion should never become a source of conflict, a further factor of division within the human community. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1179:I think that one of the reasons that we chose the word love as the subject is because your human connection and how you affect everybody around you, you'll only understand the gravity of that as you pass later on in life. I think as artists it's our ability to communicate that in certain ways. ~ Tom DeLonge, #NFDB
1180:NASA news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an e-mail message with the subject line subscribe to hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov. To unsubscribe from the list, send an e-mail message with the subject line unsubscribe to hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1181:The minister today preached about death and judgment, and what would become of those who behaved improperly - and somehow it scared me. He preached such an awful sermon I didn't think I should ever see you again until the Judgment Day. The subject of perdition seemed to please him somehow. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
1182:We noticed recently that people didn't like it when Facebook "experimented" with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That's how websites work. ~ Christian Rudder, #NFDB
1183:And yet the point of view from which his ideas on art had sprung was a simple one: for him, literary schools did not exist; the only thing that mattered was the temperament of the artist; the only thing of interest was the way his brain worked, regardless of the subject he was treating. ~ Joris Karl Huysmans, #NFDB
1184:Every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were coloured by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought. ~ John Gould, #NFDB
1185:I am only a physicist with nothing material to show for my labours. I have never even seen the ionosphere, although I have worked on the subject for thirty years. That does show how lucky people can be. If there had been no ionosphere I would not have been standing here this morning. ~ Edward Victor Appleton, #NFDB
1186:I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject WE think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think for others? No, no. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1187:I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited. ~ Stewart Copeland, #NFDB
1188:I had passed from the subject to the direct object of every sentence in my life. In fourteenth century philosophy, the word patient simply meant "the object of an action," and I felt like one. As a doctor, I was an agent, a cause; as a patient, I was merely something to which things happened ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
1189:If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1190:John A. Templer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of the definitive (and, it must be said, almost only) scholarly text on the subject, The Staircase: Studies of Hazards, Falls, and Safer Design, suggests that all fall-injury figures are probably severely underestimated anyway. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1191:You can remember mountains of information when you are interested in the subject. It almost feels automatic and your concentration is at a peak. Your deficits of attention are mostly interest deficits. Your mind never wanders away; it only moves towards more interesting and outstanding things. ~ Kevin Horsley, #NFDB
1192:Chief Justice Warren Burger—a well-known conservative, appointed by President Richard Nixon—said that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1193:O take heart, my brothers. Even now... with every leader & every resource & every strategy of every nation on Earth arrayed against Her - Even now, O even now, my brothers, Life is in no danger of losing the argument! - For after all .... (as will be shown) She has only to change the subject. ~ Kenneth Patchen, #NFDB
1194:On the subject of the nature of the gods, the first question is Do the gods exist or do the not? It is difficult you may say to deny that they exist. I would agree if we were arguing the matter in a public assembly, but in a private discussion of this kind, it is perfectly easy to do so. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, #NFDB
1195:The subject is also fascinating because of the nature of the revisionism—neuroplasticity radiates optimism. Books on the topic are entitled The Brain That Changes Itself, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life, hinting at the “new neurology ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1196:When the chronology of extinction is critically set against the chronology of human migrations,” Paul Martin of the University of Arizona wrote in “Prehistoric Overkill,” his seminal paper on the subject, “man’s arrival emerges as the only reasonable answer” to the megafauna’s disappearance. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert, #NFDB
1197:In the infinite consciousness universes come and go like particles of dust in a beam of sunlight that shines through a hole in the roof. Death is ever keeping a watch over our life. All objects are experienced in the subject and nowhere else. Whole worlds arise and fall like ripples in the ocean. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1198:I would not spend one further moment on the subject of UFOs if I didnt seriously feel that the UFO phenomenon is real and that efforts to investigate and understand it, and eventually to solve it, could have a profound effect -- perhaps even be the springboard to mankinds outlook on the universe. ~ J Allen Hynek, #NFDB
1199:Perceptions of black criminality aren’t likely to change until black behavior changes. Rather than address that challenge, however, too many liberal policy makers change the subject. Instead of talking about black behavior, they want to talk about racism or poverty or unemployment or gun control. ~ Jason L Riley, #NFDB
1200:The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1201:Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in. That every man may receive at least a moderate education...appears to be an object of vital importance... ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
1202:Annabeth frowned. "That doesn't make sense. But why were you visiting --" Her eyes widened. "Hermes said you bear the curse of Achilles. Hestia said the same thing. Did you . . . did you bathe in the River Styx?"
"Don't change the subject."
"Percy! Did you or not?"
"Um . . .maybe a little. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1203:SHORTLY AFTER Louis Freeh was sworn in as the fifth director of the FBI on September 1, 1993, he turned in his White House pass. He refused to enter the Oval Office. His reasons were pure and simple. Freeh regarded President Clinton not as commander in chief but as the subject of a criminal case. The ~ Tim Weiner, #NFDB
1204:The party to which he belonged had, as he knew, endeavoured to avoid the subject of the disendowment of the Church of England. It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1205:The recollection of almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it had a peculiar interest for her directly. She asked him to shake hands, and congratulated his mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearing her, called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly the right look. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1206:There’s something fishy about Google’s motto, “Don’t Be Evil.” I’m not saying it’s controversial but it makes you think, “Why bring that up? Why have you suddenly put the subject of being evil on the agenda?” It’s suspicious in the same way as Ukip constantly pointing out how racist they’re not – ~ David Mitchell, #NFDB
1207:Although I am very interested in the subject of human misjudgment - and lord knows I've created a good bit of it - I don't think I've created my full statistical share, and I think that one of the reasons was I tried to do something about this terrible ignorance I left the Harvard Law School with. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
1208:little known and not fully understood; fundamentally questionable on the surface; controversial, unseemly or scary; deemed inappropriate for “respectable” portfolios; unappreciated, unpopular and unloved; trailing a record of poor returns; and recently the subject of disinvestment, not accumulation. ~ Howard Marks, #NFDB
1209:While we cannot describe its appearance (the equivalent), we can define its function. When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed. ~ Minor White, #NFDB
1210:The training is a set of interpersonal interactions that lead to emotional and intellectual experiences that provide a circumstance and an intrument for self awareness, self observation and reflection on the circumstances of the subject trainee, both in his individual life and as a social being. ~ Humberto Maturana, #NFDB
1211:A few were journalists and one a novelist, who wanted to get it right. (Rhyme welcomed his presence; he himself was the subject of a series of novels based on cases he’d run and had written the author on several occasions about misrepresentations of real crime scene work. “Must you sensationalize?”) ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
1212:And while I’m on the subject, it’s inadvisable to wander the house at night in the home of a known rake. Your reputation could be compromised.” “I’m not worried. You said the thought of seducing me would never even cross your mind.” “Yes, but sometimes,” he murmured, “a man acts without thinking at all. ~ Tessa Dare, #NFDB
1213:I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and broken legs, and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and lacerated backs, and bites of dogs, and brands of red-hot irons innumerable: but as my readers will be sufficiently sickened and repelled already, I will turn to another branch of the subject. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1214:Is it possible that where the subject is socially approved (tah tah tah TAH tah, it's war) almost no one thinks we're "stuck," but when we think too much about what no one else wants to think about, as well as when we think without the thoughts evolving, then we're seen as trouble (and / or troubled)? ~ Laura Mullen, #NFDB
1215:Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader. ~ Irving Penn, #NFDB
1216:Of his views on education, he says, ‘My natural aversion to academic education was further strengthened when I came across an essay by Rabindranath Tagore on education. It confirmed my own precocious conclusions on the subject. I liked to be free to read what I please and not be examined at all.’ After ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
1217:The only problem is that it’s difficult to imagine something entirely new. We use the words and definitions of the past to shape our ideas. Something that is genuinely the next evolutionary step is unlikely to resemble anything we can imagine. Even the best books on the subject are limited.” She’d ~ Genevieve Cogman, #NFDB
1218:There's not gonna be any tuition cuts. There aren't gonna be any drastic reductions in salaries. And in fact when the subject of cuts comes up, the first thing that the opponents of cuts say, "You can't cut this faculty. You can't cut the salaries. You wouldn't save enough money, you can't go there." ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1219:What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible. ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1220:The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'. ~ Eminem, #NFDB
1221:through hand gestures was no easy business. A single gesture could have many different significations. Even the mano infica turned out to have three different interpretations: it could mean the subject was warding off evil, or dishing out an insult, or making “a kind of offensive or impertinent invitation. ~ Ross King, #NFDB
1222:Curiosity and listening [are the principles to an excellent interview]. I never go into an interview with a dedicated list of questions in which I will not deviate. You must be curious about the subject and listen to his answer and ask the next question off that rather than the next question on your list. ~ Michael Kay, #NFDB
1223:The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn, and anybody is cheating who takes politics as a way out. All the outs are too easy, and the thing itself is too hard to do. ~ Ernest Hemingway, #NFDB
1224:Deceiving world, that with alluring toysHast made my life the subject of thy scorn,And scornest now to lend thy fading joys,T'outlength my life, whom friends have left forlorn;How well are they that die ere they be born,And never see thy sleights, which few men shunTill unawares they helpless are undone! ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
1225:I remember when I was in high school I didn't have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because of the size of my wardrobe but because they liked me. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
1226:It is called education because it is learned. You do not have to have had an experience in order to sympathize or empathize with the subject. That is why books are written: so that we do not have to do the same things. We learn from experience, true; but we also learn from empathy.” A Theory of Patience ~ Nikki Giovanni, #NFDB
1227:Kurt Gödel's achievement in modern logic is singular and monumental – indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark which will remain visible far in space and time. ... The subject of logic has certainly completely changed its nature and possibilities with Gödel's achievement." —John von Neumann ~ John von Neumann, #NFDB
1228:Your right. We do spend a lot of time worrying about our looks, instead of focusing on what's inside. - Raven
The artist has the power to capture that. To express what he thinks about the subject. I thought that was much more romantic then seeing myself in a cold, stark glass reflection. - Alexander ~ Ellen Schreiber,#NFDB
1229:As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, or which [his family] profoundly disapproved. Everytime the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." After some fifty or sixty repititions, this remark ceased to amuse me. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1230:I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people. Therefore I have cause to wish nothing more than to content the subject and that is a duty which I owe. Neither do I desire to live longer days than I may see your prosperity and that is my only desire. ~ Elizabeth I, #NFDB
1231:I find her [Frances Trollope] simply delightful, even in her prejudices and cantankerousness. It is a gift to an author to find a funny, wry, perceptive contemporary observer to whom the subject matter seems almost as different and alien, and requiring as much struggling to understand, as it did to me. ~ Charles R Morris, #NFDB
1232:It is no longer taboo to say that President Roosevelt required Pearl Harbor to drag a war-weary American public into supporting another World War. Discussion of FDRʼs foreknowledge of the Japanese attack is not only the subject of books by respected historians, but of documentaries on cable television. ~ Smedley D Butler, #NFDB
1233:Mao said he was prepared to have millions of Chinese people perish in a nuclear war as long as China survived... I'm beginning to find it more and more sick that only humans make it into our calculations... Annihilate life on earth, but save the nation... what's the subject heading? Stupidity or Insanity? ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
1234:One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we're in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality. That is the subject that, if you have a brain in your head, is always dealt with in magic. The smarter the tricks you're doing, the more that' s an important thing. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
1235:The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1236:The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1237:But over and beyond all that can be written on the subject—inventiveness is a personal matter, beyond all formulas—the true general must be able to take in, deceive, decoy, delude his adversary at every turn, as the particular occasion demands. In fact, there is no instrument of war more cunning than chicanery; ~ Xenophon, #NFDB
1238:For whatever reason, efforts to improve oneself, to become happier in life, can become the subject of attacks. It is sometimes necessary to handle such directly. But there is a long-range handling that seldom fails. What, exactly, are such people trying to do to one? They are trying to reduce one downward. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
1239:In the infinite consciousness universes come and go like particles of dust in a beam of sunlight that shines through a hole in the roof. Death is ever keeping a watch over our life. All objects are experienced in the subject and nowhere else. Whole worlds arise and fall like ripples in the ocean. Vashistha ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1240:To want to give to prose the rhythm of verse (but keeping it very much prose), and to want to write about ordinary life as one writes history or the epic (without denaturing the subject) is perhaps an absurdity. That's what I wonder sometimes. But perhaps it's also a grand undertaking and very original! ~ Gustave Flaubert, #NFDB
1241:I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1242:I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it's hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer, #NFDB
1243:It’s tempting to suggest that one reason why the obesity-research community has paid little attention to the logical and scientific deficiencies of the overeating/sedentary-behavior hypothesis is that it becomes difficult even to discuss the subject without constantly tripping over the solecisms it engenders. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1244:Painting a conventional portrait for a pushy patron did not interest him. Nor did money motivate him. He painted portraits if the subject struck his fancy, such as the Musician, or if a powerful ruler demanded it, as in the case of Ludovico with his mistresses. But he didn’t dance to the music of patrons. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1245:The untimely death of John compelled him to accept an advantageous treaty; but he still continued, the subject and the soldier of Valentinian, to entertain a secret, perhaps a treasonable, correspondence with his Barbarian allies, whose retreat had been purchased by liberal gifts, and more liberal promises. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1246:Yes, seven years old she was, when she finally plucked up the courage to ask her mother what Christmas was all about, and Mrs Castaway replied (once only, after which the subject was forever forbidden): ‘It’s the day Jesus Christ died for our sins. Evidently unsuccessfully, since we’re still paying for them. ~ Michel Faber, #NFDB
1247:And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.' What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice. That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lessen from day to day. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
1248:At the same time, there flourished around them an equally remarkable, and for us more interesting, defiance of the Calvinist spirit: the art and culture of the Netherlands, in which man’s relation to the world of objects, and to his own physical life, became the subject of a profound spiritual interrogation. ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
1249:Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1250:Here’s a good rule of thumb: Your own rituals are okay as long as they don’t interfere with your responsibilities in daily life, or make you the subject of teasing or ridicule. Rituals become a problem whenever they prevent you from doing the stuff you’re supposed to do, or when they get you in trouble. ~ John Elder Robison, #NFDB
1251:You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.” “Er, five,” said the mattress. “Wrong,” said Marvin. “You see? ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1252:Chance the Rapper: if you listen to his narrative and the subject matter he covers in his music, you can see that he's strong, courageous and shows vulnerability. He asks some very poignant questions in his music and is still very melodic. The harmony and the melody of the music allows you to also come in closer. ~ MC Hammer, #NFDB
1253:I had two passions when I was a child. First was to learn about Einstein's theory and help to complete his dream of a unified theory of everything. That's my day job. I work in something called string theory. I'm one of the founders of the subject. We hope to complete Einstein's dream of a theory of everything. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1254:I have no idea why she quieted down on the subject. Maybe she was told to. I can imagine that it wasn't a very popular position in the Administration, with her own husband having ordered by executive order the internment. Maybe she was just told: "Look, we're in a war now. Turn off your social conscience." ~ William A Rusher, #NFDB
1255:I sound like an idiot. But what else am I supposed to say? My parents are getting a divorce?
I'm practically flunking drawing and literature?
My best friend's barely speaking to me and changes the subject when I ask where she was on Saturday night?
I think about you all the time and I want your body? ~ E Lockhart,#NFDB
1256:It is our Puritanism, insisting that discipline means repression or punishment, which confuses the subject. To discipline something, in the proper sense of the word, does not mean to repress it, but to train it - to encourage it to grow, and act, and be fruitful, whether it is a peach tree or a human mind. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
1257:My paintings are loosely based on meta narratives. The pictures float in and out of pictorial genres. Still life's become personified, portraits become events, and landscapes become constructions. I embrace the area between which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive. ~ Dana Schutz, #NFDB
1258:Now if, as a rule, the Count generally avoided drinking after eleven, he absolutely never drank after midnight. In fact, he had even found himself quoting his father to Sofia on the subject, asserting that the only things that came from the practice were foolhardy acts, ill-advised liaisons, and gambling debts. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
1259:One of the great things about our democracy is it expresses itself in all sorts of ways. And that includes people protesting. I've been the subject of protests during the course of my eight years and I suspect that there's not a president in our history that at some point hasn't been subject to these protests. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1260:There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1261:Unlike side issues like unemployment, unions, and minimum-wage laws, the subject of work itself is almost entirely absent from libertarian literature. Most of what little there is consists of Randite rantings against parasites, barely distinguishable from the invective inflicted on dissidents by the Soviet press. ~ Bob Black, #NFDB
1262:Addressing Lee’s stance on slavery, she acknowledged, with other historians, that he harbored deep misgivings on the subject. However, Ms. Pryor wrote, those misgivings stemmed not from his opposition to the institution itself, but from his resentment of the managerial burdens it could place on white slave owners. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1263:I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you MUST write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1264:I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you must write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1265:Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked 'classified' in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
1266:That's my goal, is to stay in a truthful place. And sometimes that means writing a silly song, or singing about sex or singing about environmental destruction or heartbreak, or my grandmother. The subject isn't what the core is about, it's about truthfulness and authenticity and that just comes from my heart and soul. ~ Mirah, #NFDB
1267:The young man who's had the Guggenheim fortune behind him all his life - he can hire all the authorities on the subject to teach him how to do a monologue, but he's never going to have the right stuff to pull it off. If he doesn't walk out onstage needing to walk out there, he doesn't have a dream of doing well. ~ Jerry Lewis, #NFDB
1268:To a mind like mine, restless, inquisitive, and observant of everything that was passing, it is easy to suppose that religion was the subject to which it would be directed; and, although this subject principally occupied my thoughts, there was nothing that I saw or heard of to which my attention was not directed. ~ Nat Turner, #NFDB
1269:You’re a guardian angel now.”.... I’m your guardian angel,” he said. “I get my very own guardian angel? What, exactly, is your job description?” “Guard your body.” His smile tipped higher. “I take my job seriously, which means I’m going to need to get acquainted with the subject matter on a personal level. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
1270:And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. "Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle: "nine the next, and so on." "What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice. "That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked: "because they lessen from day to day. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
1271:Eleanor felt, as she had the day before, that the conversation was being skillfully guided away from the thought of fear, so very present in her own mind. Perhaps she was to be allowed to speak occasionally for all of them so that, quieting her, they quieted themselves and could leave the subject behind them; ~ Shirley Jackson, #NFDB
1272:I had just arrived at these conclusions when the delightful husky laugh from the stage was echoed from behind me. I turned my head sharply. In the seat immediately behind mine, leaning forward with her lips slightly parted, was the subject of the present imitation—Lady Edgware, better known as Jane Wilkinson. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
1273:I have never made it a consideration whether the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
1274:The modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
1275:There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1276:The subject of autobiography is always self-definition, but it cannot be self-definition in a void. The memoirist, like the poet and the novelist, must engage with the world, because engagement makes experience, experience makes wisdom, and finally it's the wisdom—or rather the movement towards it—that counts. ~ Vivian Gornick, #NFDB
1277:Your aunt is the dearest woman in the world, and nobody could be fonder of her than I am, but I sometimes find her presence … what is the word I want … restrictive. She holds, as you know, peculiar views on the subject of my running around loose in London, as she puts it, and this prevents me fulfilling myself. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
1278:Obviously VIA DOLOROSA is completely artificial. It is as highly wrought as any of my plays. But basically all the artifice is to disguise itself so you don't feel it's there. You're attempting to make the artifice like a pane of glass that simply leads you through to the subject - not to decorate the bloody glass. ~ David Hare, #NFDB
1279:Sharon had read a lot of books on the subject of human society and psychology, and after a great deal about social identity and pack spirit, had taken away this simple conclusion: It is far better to talk bollocks at great length and feel okay about it, than to talk about nothing at all and end up killing people. ~ Kate Griffin, #NFDB
1280:The subject matter of mathematics has increased so rapidly and extensively that there is some element of truth in maintaining that mathematics is not so much a subject as a way of studying any subject, not so much a science as a way of life. ~ George Frederick James Temple, 100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)., #NFDB
1281:They sit down to commit an act of literature, and the self who emerges on paper is far stiffer than the person who sat down to write. The problem is to find the real man or woman behind the tension. Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
1282:If she had seen his face when, safe in his own room, he looked at the picture of a severe and rigid young lady, with a good deal of hair, who appeared to be gazing darkly into futurity, it might have thrown some light upon the subject, especially when he turned off the gas, and kissed the picture in the dark. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1283:There comes a time in every woman's life when she is desperately desires to be married. At least, this is what I have always been told by my father. I am beginning to doubt his word of the subject. I am officially, as of one week, twenty-three years old and haven't the slightest inkling of matrimony or desperation ~ Erynn Mangum, #NFDB
1284:But then it came time for me to make my journey—into America. [... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
1285:He’d completely neglected the subject: there had been plenty of material on the current non-Fae situation, but hardly any on the Fae themselves, their political implications, and their ongoing plans for world domination—since Fae always had plans for world domination. (It was more dramatic that way, after all.) ~ Genevieve Cogman, #NFDB
1286:I think she [Eleanor Roosevelt] never was called because she probably didn't know an awful lot. The whole burden of the criticism of her on the subject of Communism is naiveté, not participation. And again, being a public figure and our representative at the UN, there was nothing Communist about her, certainly. ~ William A Rusher, #NFDB
1287:Little by little there has to be a constant equilibrium established between the parts of the subject's knowledge and the totality of his knowledge at any given moment. There is a constant differentiation of the totality of knowledge into the parts and an integration of the parts back into the whole.
~ Jean Piaget, 1977, p. 839,#NFDB
1288:Our whole science is still, in spite of all its coldness, of all its freedom from passion, a dupe of the tricks of language, and has never succeeded in getting rid of that superstitious changeling “the subject” (the atom, to give another instance, is such a changeling, just as the Kantian “Thing-in-itself”). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1289:When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1290:As for me, I believe that if there's a God - and I am as neutral on the subject as is possible - then the most basic proof of His existence is black humor. What else explains it, that odd, reliable comfort that billows up at the worst moments, like a beautiful sunset woven out of the smoke over a bombed city. ~ Elizabeth McCracken, #NFDB
1291:Everybody enjoys arguing about the current state of music because it feels as if you are talking about something incredibly important, yet it requires little understanding of the subject matter at hand. It's like world politics meets the pink questions in Trivial Pursuit. Points are made but nothing gets accomplished. ~ John Mayer, #NFDB
1292:Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the lst word on the subject -- as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors! ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
1293:In writing the history of a life I believe absolutely that the reader cannot understand the character and deeds of the subject unless he is given a basic understanding of that person's sexual loves and hates and conflicts. It is the only way the reader can make sense out of innumerable apparently senseless actions. ~ Louise Brooks, #NFDB
1294:I try to find clues in the documented record - from the subject's own testimony, from the testimony of other people. When you're writing a biography, you're trying to understand your subject in the same way that you try to understand one of your friends, and that effort at understanding is always very imperfect. ~ Russell Freedman, #NFDB
1295:I was terrible in English. I couldn't stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention--it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature. Any word can be spelled just as well a different way. ~ Richard P Feynman, #NFDB
1296:Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice. ~ Martin Schoeller, #NFDB
1297:Deslenguadas. Somos las del español deficiente. We are your linguistic nightmare, your linguistic aberration, your linguistic mestisaje, the subject of your burla. Because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally crucified. Racially, culturally and linguistically somos huérfanos —we speak an orphan tongue ~ Gloria E Anzald a, #NFDB
1298:Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the last word on the subject -- as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors! ~ Thomas More, #NFDB
1299:There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries. ~ Frances Wright, #NFDB
1300:Yes, an old-fashioned feminist “consciousness-raising” still has enormous value. When the subject turns to abortion, cosmetic intervention, birth, motherhood, sex, love, work, misogyny, fear, or just how you feel in your own skin, women still won’t often tell the truth to each other unless they are very, very drunk. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
1301:And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.'
What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lessen from day to day. ~ Lewis Carroll,#NFDB
1302:For many people, this would be the point where one might do some soul-searching introspection, some painful confronting of truths as a means of personal growth. Being a scientist, I decided to avoid this by Studying the Subject. Donning my lab coat and postponing a microscope nearby ,I started making phone calls. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
1303:Here we observe the basic obsessive fantasy of Žižek's position: do nothing, sit still, prefer not to, like Melville's Bartleby, and silently dream of a ruthless violence, a consolidation of state power into one man's hands, an act of brutal physical force of which you are the object or the subject or both at once. ~ Simon Critchley, #NFDB
1304:How do you manage for money?’ I asked.
I was given two simultaneous replies of ‘We get by’ from Ian and ‘Don’t ask’ from Neil. I favoured Ian’s reply because it had less-sinister connotations. ‘Don’t ask’ left open the possibility that they raised funds by selling hitch-hikers into slavery. I changed the subject. ~ Tony Hawks,#NFDB
1305:Then, mother, you make me love her more. She is unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even. But why do we talk of love or hatred? She does not care for me, and that is enough,—too much. Let us never name the subject again. It is the only thing you can do for me in the matter. Let us never name her. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
1306:(And while I’m on the subject, why don’t those folks at Crayola either add some vitamins and minerals to their product, or make them taste bad? My kids love eating them and I’m tired of telling them no and having to buy more. Put up or shut up, Crayola. Fortify them or make them taste bad. This isn't rocket science.) ~ Robin O Bryant, #NFDB
1307:Dreamily the Princess stood up. "I'm not sure if I can walk," she said. "Then I'll carry you." "Is that what love is?" "I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1308:In one of the window recesses Rhapsodie Pantril was talking vaguely but beautifully to a small audience on the subject of chromatic chords; she had the advantage of knowing what she was talking about, an advantage that her listeners did not in the least share. “All through his playing there ran a tone-note of malachite green, ~ Saki, #NFDB
1309:I wanted to keep the complexity of the female experience in the film as much as it is in the book, and the subject of not wanting a child is a very interesting subject, one that's not dealt with very much actually.However that complexity was not serving the story of what became the film [The Girl on the Train]. ~ Erin Cressida Wilson, #NFDB
1310:The problem is that too many adults think their kids' lives are simple, or they try to make their lives simple, when their emotional lives are just as complicated as ours. They might have a few less tools to deal with it because they're young, but the emotions are all the same, and the subject matter is all the same. ~ Sherman Alexie, #NFDB
1311:You cannot do without one specialty. You must have some base-line to measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all Nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and general relations constituted his specialty. ~ Louis Agassiz, #NFDB
1312:But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1313:Efforts to remove the Christian faith from subjects like American history distort the content of the subject. Just as wrong is the idea that an evangelical textbook publisher should make it appear that evangelicals played a major role at every point in the history of the U.S. All such efforts are a travesty of history. ~ Ronald H Nash, #NFDB
1314:I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky's characters don't generate phatos, but they're flawed in ways that don't come across as faults. And while I'm on the subject, Tolstoy's characters' faults are so epic and out of scale, they're as static as backdrops. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1315:It has a lot to do with just sort of trust in the relationship that builds between the filmmaker and the subject. There are some people who will never be relaxed in front of a camera, and in some ways that's my failing as a filmmaker to not put them at ease. It's also a function of time, and if you have that type of time. ~ Liz Garbus, #NFDB
1316:Lucille licked her paw lazily, then busied herself with sniffing her tail. She might as well have flipped Thelma off. “You comin’ by to say you like Amma’s biscuits better ’n mine?” Lucille was the only cat I knew who ate biscuits and gravy instead of cat food. She meowed, as if she had a few choice words on the subject. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1317:Okay, the way I figure it, you’re just the subject of an experiment and the whole world you know is just an artificial construct populated by actors who play the roles of everybody in your life, and the weather is just special effects and the sky is painted blue and the landscape everywhere is just a set. Is that it? ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
1318:The American people are very, very ready for a woman president. They're far ahead of the politicians. I always thought it would be much easier to elect a woman president of the United States than Speaker of the House, because the people are far ahead, as I say, of the electeds, on the subject of a woman being president. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
1319:Through a portrait, we can potentially see everything — the history and depth of a person's life, as well as evidence of a primal universal presence. I have dedicated my life and creative energy to capturing these transcendent moments in which a connection is made between the subject, the photographer, and the viewer. ~ Joyce Tenneson, #NFDB
1320:When a general name stands for each and every individual which it is a name of, or in other words, which it denotes, it is said by logicians to be distributed, or taken distributively. Thus, in the proposition, All men are mortal, the subject, Man, is distributed, because mortality is affirmed of each and every man. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1321:I don't have personal experience and knowledge about anything but theater. I've been tutored very well on the subject, but ultimately I'm going back to the rules of drama. There are genres that I like as an audience member that I can't write as a writer. I can't write crime, and I like a good thriller as much as anybody. ~ Aaron Sorkin, #NFDB
1322:It is a subject on which nothing final can be known.” The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations. ~ Tara Westover, #NFDB
1323:The physical surroundings of most individuals, left to their own choice, vary little wherever they happen to live. No doubt that was the explanation. I was in the presence of one of those triumphs of mind over matter, like the photographer’s power of imposing his own personal visual demands on the subject photographed. ~ Anthony Powell, #NFDB
1324:this form of aphasia, the subject is able to speak fluently but unable to understand what is said to them. Moreover, their ‘fluent’ speech often is chock-a-block with abnormalities, such as nonsense words that, while fitting the sound patterns of their native language, mean nothing and are otherwise not words at all. ~ Daniel L Everett, #NFDB
1325:Topical-sketch writing were incredibly rational and well reasoned: don't do a joke if the subject doesn't deserve it. An ad hominem attack on someone might get you a cheap laugh, but it doesn't earn you any long-term trust. The biggest rule was: you attack whoever's in power. Don't bring your personal bias to the table. ~ Michael Schur, #NFDB
1326:I was playing heavy metal when I was 18. I had to evolve out of that into an alternative consciousness about what it meant to change the way I played guitar, and the kind of songs, and the subject matter, and singing about child abuse, and all this stuff. I had to come from somewhere, and I had to take chances to do that. ~ Billy Corgan, #NFDB
1327:The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
1328:Until the end of his life, whenever the subject of the vast growth of the LBJ Company and associated business enterprises was raised, Lyndon Johnson would emphasize that he owned none of it (“All that is owned by Mrs. Johnson.… I don’t have any interest in government-regulated industries of any kind and never have had”). ~ Robert A Caro, #NFDB
1329:Cal had told her all girls had it, it was natural as breathing, it was a sign they were growing up, and they had it until they were in their fifties. At the time, Jean Louise was so overcome with despair at the prospect of being too old to enjoy anything when it would finally be over, she refrained from pursuing the subject. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1330:One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. ~ Hunter S Thompson, #NFDB
1331:You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.”
“Er, five,” said the mattress.
“Wrong,” said Marvin. “You see? ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
1332:Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then suchand such another proposition is true of that thing.... Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1333:They changed the subject before I could tell them the other important lessons The Program had taught me, but perhaps they’ll read them here: —To believe in people over dogmas. —To not turn the other cheek, but to master and subvert the rules of the game. —To strive to find small joys even in the bleakest of circumstances. ~ Julia Scheeres, #NFDB
1334:Wonder — the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge — promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which the subject, overwhelmed by the object, has, as it were, fused into a single point or into nothing. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
1335:He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true. ~ Jim Thompson, #NFDB
1336:The close observer soon discovers that the teacher's task is not to implant facts but to place the subject to be learned in front of the learner and, through sympathy, emotion, imagination, and patience, to awaken in the learner the restless drive for answers and insights which enlarge the personal life and give it meaning. ~ Nathan M Pusey, #NFDB
1337:The people in this ballroom are not the subject of trumps speeches either. Their industries aren’t dead. Their jobs didn’t disappear overseas. More likely, these are the people shipping the jobs overseas. These are the people slashing budgets and enhancing their own bottom line while the bottom falls out of everyone else’s lives. ~ Katy Tur, #NFDB
1338:I made very clear at the time that the love of same sex couples is every bit as valuable as that of opposite sex couples but nevertheless my view actually is that marriage in the biblical sense is very clearly from the many many Christians who wrote to me on the subject in their opinion can only be between a man and a woman. ~ Andrea Leadsom, #NFDB
1339:Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love the organisms for themselves first, then strain for general explanations, and, with good fortune, discoveries will follow. If they don't, the love and the pleasure will have been enough. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
1340:No one knows, but don’t worry,” Zehrunisa said. “Just leave everything to God and keep praying. Now we have a lawyer who will say the right words, and then it will end, because the judge will pick up the truth.”
“Pick up the truth,” he repeated skeptically. As if truth were a coin on a footpath. He changed the subject. ~ Katherine Boo,#NFDB
1341:So, we know that as much as the subject needs nuance, groups of white men who rape and abuse children and babies are reported on by the press, but their crimes are not seized upon as indicative of the inherent problem with men in the same way that men of colour's crimes are held up as evidence of the savagery of their race. ~ Reni Eddo Lodge, #NFDB
1342:Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference; the latter of Inference. The truths known by Intuition are the original premisses, from which all others are inferred. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1343:Whenever the nature of the subject permits the reasoning process to be without danger carried on mechanically, the language should be constructed on as mechanical principles as possible; while in the contrary case it should be so constructed, that there shall be the greatest possible obstacle to a mere mechanical use of it ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
1344:Dreamily the Princess stood up. "I'm not sure if I can walk," she said.
"Then I'll carry you."
"Is that what love is?"
"I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject. ~ Tom Robbins,#NFDB
1345:ECONOMICS IS HAUNTED by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine—the special pleading of selfish interests. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
1346:I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not. ~ Laura Lippman, #NFDB
1347:It seems like with you everything leads back to the subject of death."
"Sure and show me the person's road that does not lead to death. we try to divert our attention, to pretend 'tisn't so, but the very air we breathe is vulture's breath. Please don't be insinuatin' your man is morbid. I dwell on death in order to defeat it. ~ Tom Robbins,#NFDB
1348:Many people will tell you that an expert is someone who knows a great deal about the subject. To this I would object that one can never know much about any subject. I would much prefer the following definition: an expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in the subject, and how to avoid them. ~ Werner Heisenberg, #NFDB
1349:The subject for which I am asking your attention deals with the foundations of mathematics. To understand the development of the opposing theories existing in this field one must first gain a clear understnding of the concept "science"; for it is as a part of science that mathematics originally took its place in human thought. ~ L E J Brouwer, #NFDB
1350:Whether all grow black, or all grow bright, or all remain grey, it is grey we need, to begin with, because of what it is, and of what it can do, made of bright and black, able to shed the former, or the latter, and be the latter or the former alone. But perhaps I am the prey, on the subject of grey, in the grey, to delusions. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
1351:Haven't you got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God? I'd like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can.”
The chaplain was apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone and make at least some passing reference to God. ~ Joseph Heller,#NFDB
1352:In attempting to explain F For Fake's state-side failure, it has occurred to me that perhaps the subject matter was at least partially to blame, and that this country is so blissfully enslaved by the notion of the special sanctity of the expert that an overtly anti-expert film was bound to go too much against the national grain. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
1353:I seem to have come out of the womb with existential angst and wasn't a happy kid, so I've been on a lifelong search trying to discover how to live the best life possible. I committed my life to doing what I could to experience greater happiness, which ultimately led me to write a book on the subject called Happy for No Reason. ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
1354:The bullying of citizens by means of dreads and fights has been going on since paleolithic times. Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than the tribal Wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. 'Oh no, Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
1355:The power of meditation gets us everything. If you want to get power over nature, [you can have it through meditation]. It is through the power of meditation all scientific facts are discovered today. They study the subject and forget everything, their own identity and everything, and then the great fact comes like a flash. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1356:After the frustration of being with emotionally buttoned-up guys, I was relieved how well, and how much, he expressed himself. Then one day, while listening him go on for ten minutes on the subject of vegetarianism, I realized, He’s not confiding in me. He was just an open fire hydrant. He wasn’t into me per se. He was into talking. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1357:Bertrand Russell had given a talk on the then new quantum mechanics, of whose wonders he was most appreciative. He spoke hard and earnestly in the New Lecture Hall. And when he was done, Professor Whitehead, who presided, thanked him for his efforts, and not least for 'leaving the vast darkness of the subject unobscured'. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer, #NFDB
1358:Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine - the special pleading of selfish interests. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
1359:He approached the task of finding good projects for his mission with the mindset of a marketer, systematically studying books on the subject to help identify why some ideas catch on while others fall flat. His marketing-centric approach is useful for anyone looking to wield mission as part of their quest for work they love. Purple ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1360:Of the twelve Caesars of the first century CE, six were bloodily assassinated, or were forced to commit suicide, at least two of them in their own palaces in Rome. A further three were the subject of lurid posthumous rumours as to the manner of their deaths, and of the remaining three, only one ruled for more than two years. ~ Elizabeth Speller, #NFDB
1361:She did what is the most dangerous thing anyone can do in politics; she discoursed without having the most remote acquaintance with the subject; she amateurishly thrust her fingers into every pie, interfering in matters of the utmost moment; she used her overwhelming influence with the King exclusively on behalf of her favorites. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
1362:In fact, objects are known only through the subject, while the subject can know himself or her- self only by acting on objects materially and mentally. Indeed, if objects are innumerable and science indefinitely diverse, all knowledge of the subject brings us back to psychology, the science of the subject and the subject's actions. ~ Jean Piaget, #NFDB
1363:The political liberty, of the subject, (separation of powers), is a tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has of [their] safety. In order to have this liberty. It is requisite the government be so constituted as one [person] need not to be afraid of another."
Baron de Montesquieu,
Spirit of laws
1748 ~ Montesquieu,#NFDB
1364:There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible. ~ Henry Hazlitt, #NFDB
1365:thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big. But not many words about Dresden came from my mind then—not enough of them ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1366:When I was collecting material for a political gossip column, and someone said something interesting, I would wait for them to add, "and I don't want to read that in your magazine!" In which case I wouldn't use it. But if they didn't remember to say it, I'd nip off to the loo, write the story up, come back and change the subject. ~ Simon Hoggart, #NFDB
1367:As much as the Democrats try to change the subject, this election will be about Barack Obama, period. Mitt's speech last night hit all the right notes, but this fight is not about him. He's just the vessel. Now the question is, does this guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. who thinks the private sector is doing fine get another four years? ~ Howie Carr, #NFDB
1368:If I was concerned about being accepted, I would have been doing Ansel Adams lookalikes, because that was easily accepted. Everything I did was never accepted...but luckily for me, my interest in the subject and my passion for the subject took me to the point that I wasn't wounded by that, and eventually, people came around to me. ~ Duane Michals, #NFDB
1369:It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat. ~ Jeremy Rifkin, #NFDB
1370:Strange Type
I wrote: in the dark cavern of our birth.
The printer had it tavern, which seems better:
But herein lies the subject of our mirth,
Since on the next page death appears as dearth.
So it may be that God’s word was distraction,
Which to our strange type appears destruction,
Which is bitter. ~ Malcolm Lowry,#NFDB
1371:There neither is nor ever will be a treatise of mine on the subject. For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1372:I remember being very affected by what was going on there towards the end of Apartheid. And the subject is still very pertinent, politically, to what's happening around the world today, in terms of negotiating peace talks. I had always been interested in this period of change in South Africa, generally, for a variety of reasons. ~ Chiwetel Ejiofor, #NFDB
1373:People are very good [at] thinking about agents. The mind is set really beautifully to think about agents. Agents have traits. Agents have behaviors. We understand agents. We form global impression of their personalities. We are really not very good at remembering sentences where the subject of the sentence is an abstract notion. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1374:Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian’s work is never done when he turned to those gathered loyally around him and whispered: “I am about to—or I am going to—die; either expression is used. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1375:You’re a guardian angel now.”....
"I’m your guardian angel,” he said.
“I get my very own guardian angel? What, exactly, is your job description?”
“Guard your body.” His smile tipped higher. “I take my job seriously, which means I’m going to need to get acquainted with the subject matter on a personal level. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
1376:Change is always subjective. All through evolution you find that the conquest of nature comes by change in the subject. Apply this to religion and morality, and you will find that the conquest of evil comes by the change in the subjective alone. That is how the Advaitic system gets its whole force, on the subjective side of man. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
1377:Derek, you just don't say things like that to a woman. Keep going this way and you'll spend your life alone."
"Don't change the subject. Andrea is cool. And she smells nice. It will be okay."
Apparently I was supposed to sniff people to determine their competence. "How do you know?"
He shrugged. "You just have to trust her. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
1378:Desire is a word I'm tired of. I've been living with that word for years. Yes, of course, we're all desiring machines. I have sometimes wondered what people would want, if there were no advertising. And death, what other subject is there? It's the subject. It's our subject. It's the great human dilemma, that we die and know we will. ~ Lynne Tillman, #NFDB
1379:In Luke it is, chap. xi. 13, “How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” This is the sum of the blessings that Christ died to procure, and that are the subject of gospel promises: Gal. iii. 13, 14, “He was made a curse for us, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
1380:It's funny what you really see when you're the subject of the completely bizarre gossip magazine industry. It's just like, 'WHAT?!?' All this stuff with Emilie [de Ravin, his costar in Remember Me] as well. The tabloids say stuff like 'They went on a date to an Indian restaurant.' We were doing a scene! There's a film crew there! ~ Robert Pattinson, #NFDB
1381:[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh. ~ Anton Chekhov, #NFDB
1382:Reasonable men may be allowed to differ where no one can reasonably be positive: Opposite sentiments, even without any decision, afford an agreeable amusement; and if the subject be curious and interesting, the book carries us, in a manner, into company, and unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of human life: study and society. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
1383:[T]here is no distinction between the predicates of the divine and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between the divine and human subject … [T]he predicates are not accidents, but express the essence of the subject … [T]he essence of religion … conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as divine relations[.] ~ Ludwig Feuerbach, #NFDB
1384:In portrait photography there is something more profound that we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as it is apparent on the outside...Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe. ~ Irving Penn, #NFDB
1385:Recording sessions were stimulating to photograph, because everything was in motion: the subject, the musicians, the technicians and the photographer. You needed fast reflexes to keep up with moving targets, and sensitivity and skill to get the pictures while keeping out of the performers' eyeline so as not to break their concentration. ~ Eve Arnold, #NFDB
1386:The truly great songs, the ones that age and golden-oldies radio stations cannot wither, are about our romantic feelings. And this is not because songwriters have anything to add to the subject; it’s just that romance, with its dips and turns and glooms and highs, its swoops and swoons and blues, is a natural metaphor for music itself. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1387:A great read; an exciting, frightening account of organized crime today. But like all important works of nonfiction, it goes further… This book is must reading for anyone with an interest in the enduring effects of the Vietnam War, the subject of crime in our streets, and the issue of personal responsibility in a harsh, chaotic world. ~ Le Ly Hayslip, #NFDB
1388:Photography has arrived at the point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. In any case, a certain aspect of the subject now belongs to the domain of photography. So shouldn't painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things? ~ Pablo Picasso, #NFDB
1389:Take two pictures representing the same subject; one may be dismissed as illustration if it is dominated by the subject and has no other justification but the subject, the other may be called painting if the subject is completely absorbed in the style, which is its own justification, whatever the subject, and has an intrinsic value. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
1390:Well, if this thing finally hits the radar, you can expect to see him. He wrote a bestselling book on the first go-round. I guarantee he’ll be back for the sequel.” Rachel thought about the book she had been reading on the plane and that was now in her bag. She wasn’t sure whether it was the subject or the author that had drawn her ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
1391:At the end of an especially angry letter to Reverend Twichell on the subject of political hypocrisy, he declared, “I have written you to-day, not to do you a service, but to do myself one. There was bile in me. I had to empty it. … I have used you as an equilibrium-restorer more than once in my time, & shall continue, I guess.”31 ~ Michael Shelden, #NFDB
1392:Compact and clearly defined at its center, migraine diffuses outwards until it merges with an immense surrounding field of allied phenomena. The only boundaries which exist are those which we are forced to adopt for nosological clarity and clinical action. We construct such boundaries and limits, for there is none in the subject itself. ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
1393:It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved "that the subject was in the air," or "that men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
1394:La Haine - first of all, it was the story of friendship. I was very close with Mathieu Kassovitz; he was somebody I met in the nights of Paris. And the hip-hop scene and all that... You know, it was very much about doing our own thing, and some of the subject matter was so close to what we knew and the people we were hanging out with. ~ Vincent Cassel, #NFDB
1395:She quotes three current studies into the subject of self-esteem, all of which reach this conclusion and she states that ‘people with high self-esteem pose a greater threat to those around them than people with low self-esteem and feeling bad about yourself is not the source of our country’s biggest, most expensive social problems.’1 ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1396:A few of my books, over the years, have been optioned for film. The subject matter of my books, however, is not exactly conducive to Hollywood film treatment. If and when a 'big-budget' film is ever made based on one of my books, my fans and I will more than likely loathe it because it won't be true to its source. That's almost a given. ~ Richard Laymon, #NFDB
1397:I am because the Chinese have agreed - entered into this agreement in 1997. It sets out the circumstances in which the release of a prisoner who is the subject of a transfer may occur in exceptional circumstances. So the Chinese, having agreed to those principles, I'm sure have no objection to them being applied in this particular case. ~ George Brandis, #NFDB
1398:The other aspect of NATO summits he found irritating was that they were group meetings. He was almost invariably enthusiastic about one-on-one world leader meetings—no matter the subject, no matter the leader—and agitated about collective gatherings. He worried about being ganged up on; he suspected that plots had been laid to trick him. ~ Michael Wolff, #NFDB
1399:The Witness is a huge step forward, and it is a necessary and important step in meditation, but it is not ultimate. When the Witness or the soul is finally undone, then the Witness dissolves into everything that is witnessed. The subject/object duality collapses and there is only pure nondual awareness, which is very simple, very obvious. ~ Ken Wilber, #NFDB
1400:When you are totally absorbed in the subject of your meditation, when you merge with or become one with the subject, you are completely unaware. That too is not jhana, at least not what Buddhism considers “right jhana.” In right jhana, you may be unaware of the outside world, but you are completely aware of what is going on within. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
1401:can't explain it,' said the Gryphon hastily. 'Go on with the next verse.' 'But about his toes?' the Mock Turtle persisted. 'How could he turn them out with his nose, you know?' 'It's the first position in dancing.' Alice said; but was dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject. 'Go on with the next verse,' the ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
1402:Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it. You did it just the way you had to do it, and that is what makes us us. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
1403:Still, women’s concerns about safety are frequently the subject of critical comments from the men in their lives. One woman told me of constant ridicule and sarcasm from her boyfriend whenever she discussed fear or safety. He called her precautions silly and asked, “How can you live like that?” To which she replied, “How could I not?” I ~ Gavin de Becker, #NFDB
1404:The essence and foundation of House of Commons debating is formal conversation. The set speech, the harangue addressed to constituents, or to the wider public out of doors, has never succeeded much in our small wisely-built chamber. To do any good you have got to get down to grips with the subject and in human touch with the audience. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
1405:The subject of British abolitionism has long been controversial, complex, and even baffling. It also raises the issue of moral progress in history - whether groups of reformers and even nations can succeed in eliminating deeply entrenched forms of human oppression, and if so, by what methods, misconceptions, and under what conditions? ~ David Brion Davis, #NFDB
1406:What do I want to express? The subject means little. The arrangement, the design, colour, shape, depth, light, space, mood, movement, balance, not one or all of these fills the bill. There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing, a heartbeat that pounds on yours, a recognition of the oneness of all things. ~ Emily Carr, #NFDB
1407:I am raising my children with the Christian faith and life lessons I was taught. I am equipping them with all of the information and guidance as a parent and hope they will make sound decisions. The most important thing is to teach kids to stand firm in what they believe and not be swayed by detractors no matter what the subject matter. ~ Gretchen Carlson, #NFDB
1408:I had never been into society; for me the world was the enclosure of the college and the seminary. I had a vague knowledge that there was a something
called woman, but I never dwelt upon the subject; I was absolutely innocent. I saw my infirm old mother only twice a year; that was the extent of my connection with the outside world. ~ Th ophile Gautier,#NFDB
1409:Then he was sorry he had not learnt the art of thinking, beginning by folding back the second and third fingers the better to put the index on the subject and the little finger on the verb, in the way his teacher had shown him, and sorry he could make no meaning of the babel, raging in his head, the doubts, desires, imaginings and dreads. ~ Samuel Beckett, #NFDB
1410:Well, I think tone is very important with this show [Masters of Sex] because there are certain elements or certain aspects to the show that may be reminiscent of other shows. But, it really is a very new kind of show, in terms of the subject matter and the way it's being dealt with, and the fact that it's about real people and real events. ~ Michael Sheen, #NFDB
1411:Who’s the woman?” she asked to change the subject, though Emma had known at first sight. “Cassandra. She’s a friend from the clan.” “Only a friend?” “O’ course. And that is tenuous, after she hurt you.” “You’d take my side over hers? When you’ve known me for so short a time?” He caught her gaze. “I will always take your side. Over anyone’s. ~ Kresley Cole, #NFDB
1412:In college all of them had studied the putative effects of deracination, which were angst and anomie, those dull horrors of the modern world. They had been examined on the subject, had rehearsed bleak and portentous philosophies in term papers, and they had done it with the earnest suspension of doubt that afflicts the highly educable. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1413:In the firm belief that the American public deserves a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs, and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment of the subject. ~ Gerald R Ford, #NFDB
1414:But I have no memory of how Arbus took Laurie’s place on the ledge. Or what made him fall. The way that Stephen and my brother steer me sharply away from the subject anytime I get near it makes me think I probably don’t want to know. Maybe it’s better this way—that we keep our darknesses close, hidden in our minds, protected by our hearts. * ~ Andrea Cremer, #NFDB
1415:National Science Foundation report on the subject pointed out, “nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace [by creating universal abundance]. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
1416:A last trick is to become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular trick, because everyone is able to carry it into effect. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
1417:Cognitive dissonance doesn’t leave a paper trail. There are no documents that can be pointed to when we reframe inconvenient truths. There is no violence perpetrated by the state or anyone else. It is a process of self-deception. And this can have devastating effects, not least on those who were the subject of chapter 4: the wrongly convicted. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1418:How often should a woman be pregnant? Continually, or hardly ever? Or must there be a certain number of pregnancy anniversaries established by fashion? What do you, at the age of forty-three, have to say on the subject? Is it a fact that the laws of nature, or of the country, or of propriety, have ordained this time of life for sterility? ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
1419:If he was asked at this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said he would like to be lying on the beach with at least fifty beautiful women and a small team of experts working out new ways they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. To this he would probably have added something passionate on the subject of food. ~ Douglas Adams, #NFDB
1420:Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information?” Bones asked, getting back to the subject. “You to take me,” she replied at once. “Not gonna happen!” I spat, squeezing him possessively. Three sets of widened eyes fixed on me. That’s when I realized that what I had a firm grip on was no longer his hand. ~ Jeaniene Frost, #NFDB
1421:Far too often scripts are being written with race in mind, but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to any conversation on race. I applaud Jesse [Zwick] for having the courage to say, this [About Alex] just a story about friends, and they could be anyone. There's no specific color that forces a relationship to be discussed in any other manner. ~ Nate Parker, #NFDB
1422:I do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics. ~ Balfour Stewart, #NFDB
1423:In a painting no one complains that the subject is posed, but everybody complains about what looks posed in a photograph. Except, I've found that if I go very close in to the face, then the posed expression no longer exists. The face becomes a landscape of the lakes of the eyes and the hills of the nose and the valley of the cleft of the chin. ~ John Loengard, #NFDB
1424:Madison struck in 1785, writing a “Memorial and Remonstrance” on the subject of state support for churches. When religious and civil power were intertwined, Madison said, “What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1425:No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence--a duty and a duty alone--and no hint of magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through. ~ Roger Penrose, #NFDB
1426:What attracted me to immunology was that the whole thing seemed to revolve around a very simple experiment: take two different antibody molecules and compare their primary sequences. The secret of antibody diversity would emerge from that. Fortunately at the time I was sufficiently ignorant of the subject not to realise how naive I was being. ~ Cesar Milstein, #NFDB
1427:Without being aware of it and without being rigorously systematic about it, we exclude the Subject of Cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavour to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of an onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world. ~ Erwin Schrödinger, Mind and Matter, #NFDB
1428:But can one not conceive of a presence, and of a presence to itself of the subject before speech or signs, a presence to itself of the subject in a silent and intuitive consciousness? Such a question therefore presupposes that, prior to the sign, and outside it, excluding any trace and any différance, something like consciousness is possible. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
1429:I sat in on a late-night party once in which the subject of friendship came up, and I listened in dumbstruck incredulity as one man explained that his friends had to like the same things he did—that they must not only read the same books and magazines he did, and listen to the same music, but pretty much share his opinions of all those things. He ~ David Drake, #NFDB
1430:It's important to understand it's OK to control the subject. If most editorial stories were photographed just as they are, editors would end up throwing most in the waste basket. You have to work hard at making an editorial picture. You need to re-stage things, rearrange things so that they work for the story, with truth and without lying. ~ Alfred Eisenstaedt, #NFDB
1431:One of the things I try to do is try to make repetitions, rhymes, and mirrorings across the subject matter of my own books so that the chapter titles and the epigraphs and pictures all kind of form a tapestry. In this book, I retell fifteen of the stories. You have the critical frame, and then you have these rosettes like the motif in a carpet. ~ Marina Warner, #NFDB
1432:The reason I don't want to say anything about it is it has a strange power to take over the conversation. Just like it's doing with us. I was asked to participate in a documentary about Richard Prince, and be the voice of someone who was appropriated, and I declined. The reason I did is I don't want it to be the subject of the discussion of my work. ~ Sam Abell, #NFDB
1433:There is a song of Gainsbourg that Jane Birkin sang, and the words are beautiful in French. It says, "Le jeu et les moi." It's impossible to translate, because it has a very nice sound. It sounds so lovely in French. So I took that because it was the subject: I and myself and myself and I. Which is, in a way, boring, because it is a contradiction. ~ Agnes Varda, #NFDB
1434:when we praise God for being our creator and redeemer, we are praising him for what he does. But behind what God does is the greater glory of who he is: behind his act is his being. In the sentence “God saves,” the subject, “God,” is the foundation of the predicate. ========== The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Fred Sanders) ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1435:For better than thirty years, as a working historian, I have written on leaders I knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew Franklin Roosevelt, a leader perhaps as indispensable in his way as was Lincoln to the social and political direction of the country. After living with the subject ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
1436:This axiom of Aristotelian logic has so deeply imbued our habits of thought that it is felt to be “natural” and self-evident, while on the other hand the statement that X is A and not A seems to be nonsensical. (Of course, the statement refers to the subject X at a given time, not to X now and X later, or one aspect of X as against another aspect.) ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1437:I think I may have too much of a scientific mindset and am always looking for the caveats and qualifications in any situation. I never thought seriously of doing a PhD until relatively late in the day. I was always diligent at the book-work at university but the brightest amongst my friends all seemed to have a more intuitive grasp of the subject. ~ Stephen Curry, #NFDB
1438:So ... you like her, Gabe?' Lauren pressed.
'Yes,' he answered, starting work on his spreadsheet again in an effort to stave off more questions.
'She's great, isn't she?'
Shit. A smile tugged at his mouth and Lauren was standing right next to him. No question she could see it. He tried to cover himself by changing the subject. ~ Victoria Dahl,#NFDB
1439:approach as the subject matter. Turning to my publisher/ editor, I asked him what I should write next, and he simply said: "Write what you know." With that advice in mind, I started writing a book about erectile dysfunction. Unfortunately, it ended up as a small pile of sticky-notes with sad-faced penis drawings on them, all stained with my tears. ~ Rodney Lacroix, #NFDB
1440:Surprisingly—or perhaps not surprisingly given the subject matter—there is disagreement among anthropologists regarding ritual cannibalism. Some deny that it ever occurred, while others claim that the behavior did occur but was uncommon. Still others claim that cannibalism was practiced by many cultures throughout history and for a variety of reasons. ~ Bill Schutt, #NFDB
1441:It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles: first, to make a good beginning, and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1442:Our investigation required us to answer two questions. The first question was whether classified documents were moved outside of classified systems or whether classified topics were discussed outside of a classified system. If so, the second question was what the subject of the investigation was thinking when she mishandled that classified information. ~ James Comey, #NFDB
1443:What exactly did having needs mean, while he was on the subject? That Delaney needed to have sex? that she craved an orgasm? And if that were the case, why couldn't she just take care of the matter on her won in the privacy of her home without putting him through all this torture? Anything was preferable to the thought of her being with Jake. ~ Sarah Mayberry, #NFDB
1444:If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
1445:I make people laugh hard; I'm a comic, that's just the way it is. And I make them laugh because I'm funny, not because I'm filthy. The subject matter is dirty, but the pictures I paint are really funny. A lot of comics don't understand that that's what it's about. It's just, "I'll be dirty and they'll laugh." Nobody's becoming a superstar that way. ~ Andrew Dice Clay, #NFDB
1446:On the subject of pornography, Lord MacCaulay believes that term only suitable for material lacking artistic merit, being designed solely for the purpose of sexual arousal. His own collection of books, sketches and cards (some more dog-eared than others) he deems akin to the Venus de Milo, rising above the common fodder of aids to ‘relief’. ~ Emmanuelle de Maupassant, #NFDB
1447:When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
1448:It is only when the question ceases to be identified with the subject-verb-predicate structure of grammar, and is recognized within its original ground, within existence itself, that we can start looking for an answer. But such an answer will not be restricted to the confinements of language; it too must be revealed within an existential structure. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
1449:Shut up, me,” Leo said aloud. “What?” Piper asked. “Nothing,” he said. “Long night. I think I’m hallucinating. It’s cool.” Sitting in front, Leo couldn’t see their faces, but he assumed from their silence that his friends were not pleased to have a sleepless, hallucinating dragon driver. “Just joking.” Leo decided it might be good to change the subject. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
1450:Again, when my mind is lifted up by the greatness of its thoughts, it becomes ambitious for words and longs to match its higher inspiration with its language, and so produces a style that conforms to the impressiveness of the subject matter. Then it is that I forget my rule and principle of restraint, and I am carried too far aloft by a voice no longer my own. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
1451:[as for evolution]....cutting out the sections [on the subject] is preferrable if the portions are not thick enough to cause damage to the spine of the book as it is opened and closed in normal use. When the sections needing correction are too thick, paste the pages together being careful not to smear portions of the book not intended for correction. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
1452:Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit, and the splendour of dress and furniture was the only distinction of the citizens of Antioch. The arts of luxury were honoured; the serious and manly virtues were the subject of ridicule; and the contempt for female modesty and reverent age announced the universal corruption of the capital of the East. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1453:I guess the one-liner kind of comic sounds like a guy who can talk and talk and whatever the subject is, he can pull out a one-liner, but I couldn't do that. I didn't like the association. I mean, I love Steven Wright, but so many people started saying "Steven Wright" to me, and I would get mad, because I never wanted to be thought of as copying anybody. ~ Mitch Hedberg, #NFDB
1454:only the lack of synthesis is still more accentuated. Not only is the new sensation not reunited to certain determined recollections, but it is not reconnected with any of the sensations which, at this moment, constitute the personality of the subject. It is for this reason that the subject says, quite justly: " / do not see; / do not remember; /cannot move. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1455:We would talk about chemistry for hours at end, for I liked complex benzene rings with methyl groups hanging here and there, and she liked the thirty-something teacher who taught us the subject. Little did I know that we wouldn’t last long. For, I was like an inert gas, unlikeable and uninteractive, while she was like an alkali, combustible and excitable. ~ Durjoy Datta, #NFDB
1456:A patient doesn't select his physical ailments. They happen to him. You could just as well ask when you are eaten by a crocodile, 'How did you select that crocodile?'. Nonsense. He has selected you. The patient doesn't even select the symptoms unconsciously. That is an extraordinary exaggeration of the subject to say he was choosing such things. They get him. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1457:feelings are warm, but I can imagine them rather changeable.—Every consideration of the subject, in short, makes me thankful that my happiness is not more deeply involved.—I shall do very well again after a little while—and then, it will be a good thing over; for they say every body is in love once in their lives, and I shall have been let off easily.” When ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1458:In [the soul] one part naturally rules, and the other is subject, and the virtue of the ruler we maintain to be different from that of the subject; the one being the virtue of the rational, and the other of the irrational part. Now, it is obvious that the same principle applies generally, and therefore almost all things rule and are ruled according to nature. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1459:One key area of U.S.-Russian tension was Ukraine. According to Steele’s sources, the Trump team agreed to sideline Russia’s intervention in Ukraine during the campaign. Instead, and in order to “deflect attention,” Trump would raise U.S.-NATO defense commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. This would help Putin, “who needed to cauterize the subject. ~ Luke Harding, #NFDB
1460:A considreable portion of my high school trigonometry course was devoted to the solution of oblique triangles... I have still not had an excuse for using my talents for solving oblique triangles. If a professional mathematician never uses these dull techniques in a highly varied career, why must all high school students devote several weeks to the subject? ~ John G Kemeny, #NFDB
1461:...but I do very emphatically believe there is an enormous amount of the androgynous in any all-or-nothing prose writer, or even a would-be one. I think that if he titters at male writers who wear invisible skirts he does so at his eternal peril. I'll say no more on the subject. This is precisely the sort of confidence that can be easily and juicily Abused. ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
1462:till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of chusing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1463:21:00 hours: The Subject admitted to leaving some of The Operative's listening devices within the East Wing. Or he tried to trick The Operative into admitting that there were remaining devices ... Or the subject was just making covert small talk. Or...
21:01 hours: the operative couldn't help but remember how much easier it is talking to regular boys. ~ Ally Carter,#NFDB
1464:A tolerant person should not be harrased. The subject or the ruled ones generally is loyal to the ruler. The people tak to revolt when they are helpless. The duty of the ruler is that his humble people mey not tak to revolt being suppressed by his bad polity. Considering the forbearance of the subject, do not ill behave with them so that they may feel oppressed. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB
1465:I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
1466:Okay, so maybe you are the world’s authority on the art of making butter sculptures of dead presidents’ heads, but if you want to sell a book on the subject you’ll have to do more than know your stuff. You’ll need to make the idea sound sexy, or cool, or hot, or timely, or cute, or something that instantly makes it clear to people why the world needs your book. ~ Sam Barry, #NFDB
1467:I watched him go for a second, marveling that such a truly awkward performance came so easily to such an apparently perfect man. It was so odd that for a moment I thought it had to be deliberate—perhaps a way to change the subject? Could he really be that uncomfortable talking about his affluent ways? Or was he hiding something even more nefarious than wealth? ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1468:One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this technique..., the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340 F and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble. ~ S J Perelman, #NFDB
1469:Conservatives tend not to want to fund early childhood education. First, they see it as a government program to be destroyed. Second, they are concerned about what would be taught—perhaps not the subject matter of what would be taught in a strict father household. They want to be sure that children are taught a conservative way of looking at the world. Children ~ George Lakoff, #NFDB
1470:Here. Have a Coke. That’s good for a sore throat, right?”
“Good for everything,” Shane croaked, and took the extended cold can with good grace. “Thanks.”
“You owe me a dollar,” Eve said. “I’ll add it to the five thousand you already owe me, though.”
He blew her a kiss, and she stuck her tongue out at him, and that was the end of the subject, thankfully. ~ Rachel Caine,#NFDB
1471:They tell the story of a bishop,” he began, “who was about to ordain candidates to the priesthood. They were speaking about virtues, including the virtue of humility. One of the candidates came up to the bishop and said, ‘My lord, I’ve been looking in the library to find a book on humility.’ The bishop said, ‘Oh, yes, I’ve written the best book on the subject. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
1472:We can program ourselves to be the person we want to be, whatever the subject matter is, live in it by a mental physical program - a system of learning and doing. Studying all the greats in that field and becoming greater. I believe we are powerful, but we don't use our minds to full capacity. Your mind is powerful enough to help you attain whatever you want. ~ Michael Jackson, #NFDB
1473:A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context. ~ Karl Mannheim, #NFDB
1474:The evil eye is the fascinum, it is that which has the effect of arresting movement and, literally, of killing life. At the moment the subject stops, suspending his gesture, he is mortified. This anti-life, anti-movement function of the terminal point is the fascinum, and it is precisely one of the dimensions in which the power of the gaze is exercised directly. ~ Jacques Lacan, #NFDB
1475:There's an element of realism to it. I immersed myself more in the subject as a young adult. Then I started to get involved with a lot of people that were involved in it, and they would just bring me along basically. And I learned and decided that my Christian charity, what I wanted to do to serve God's will, was to help people that were ensnared by the demonic. ~ Ralph Sarchie, #NFDB
1476:A photographer is a witness. He has a moral duty. Every picture must be true and honest. I believe a photographer's strength is his ability to accurately record reality. There are photographers who think they are lucky if they find unusual or special subject. But it is never the subject that is so marvelous. It is how alive and real the photographer can make it. ~ Edouard Boubat, #NFDB
1477:It is only occasionally shaken up, as when the Occupy Wall Street movement of recent years shone an embarrassing light on the financial sector and the grotesque separation between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. And then the media giants find new crises and the nation’s inherited disregard for class reboots, as the subject recedes into the background again. An ~ Nancy Isenberg, #NFDB
1478:My commodity as a writer, whatever I'm writing about, is me. And your commodity is you. Don't alter your voice to fit the subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that's enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés. ~ William Zinsser, #NFDB
1479:Two years ago, when leaders in neighboring Mathews County broached the subject of sea-level rise, Tea Partiers packed meetings, warning of an environmentalist plot to “put nature above man.” They linked a proposal to build dikes to a United Nations sustainability plan known as Agenda 21, which has inspired a number of conspiracy theories among far-right activists. ~ Deborah Blum, #NFDB
1480:Perhaps ironically, perhaps tellingly, the one thing physical science does not seem to be able to explain is what makes its own explanations possible: the existence of minds. It is our minds which have enabled us to understand the universe as much as we do, yet arguably this understanding has not extended to the subject of that understanding: human consciousness. ~ Julian Baggini, #NFDB
1481:elected officials on the right side of the political equation, Scott included, would spend less time hiding under their desks when the subject of climate change comes up, and familiarize themselves with the very weak evidence this computer-model house of cards is built on, there would be a chance we could head off one of the biggest frauds in the history of the planet. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1482:Shut up, me,” Leo said aloud.
“What?” Piper asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Long night. I think I’m hallucinating. It’s cool.”
Sitting in front, Leo couldn’t see their faces, but he assumed from their silence that his friends were not pleased to have a sleepless, hallucinating dragon driver.
“Just joking.” Leo decided it might be good to change the subject. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1483:To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex, and self-will, the church mumbles on about God's kindness but says virtually nothing about his judgment... The fact is that the subject of divine wrath has become taboo in modern society, and Christians by and large have accepted the taboo and conditioned themselves never to raise the matter. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1484:Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making, the subject seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination. ~ Judith Butler, #NFDB
1485:If an Elder shall give us a lecture upon astronomy, chemistry, or geology, our religion embraces it all. It matters not what the subject be, if it tends to improve the mind, exalt the feelings, and enlarge the capacity. The truth that is in all the arts and sciences forms part of our religion. Faith is no more a part of it than any other true principle of philosophy. ~ Brigham Young, #NFDB
1486:They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. ~ Eugene V Debs, #NFDB
1487:Unable to fit reason into the words she should probably say next, Evangeline chose instead to say nothing. Taking a long swig of her coffee, she waited for the moment to pass or for John to change the subject. She was prepared to wait an eternity if it meant holding back from saying something stupid. Something she should probably regret but doubted she would. ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel, #NFDB
1488:As he spoke, he turned and looked at me, with such complete comprehension in his eyes that I felt we'd somehow discussed the subject exhaustively. In fact, for just a second I was irrationally convinced that in some previous conversation I couldn't quite remember we'd talked about everything on earth . . . It was a queer sensation a―kind of flash of recognition ~ Eloise Jarvis McGraw, #NFDB
1489:By trying to give an artistic approach through my book I stepped unwillingly into other fields. Like a dentist being asked about a throat ache on a much more relevant scale, I was caught in trying to explain what was unexplainable for me. In the end, trying to explain why it was unexplainable finally led to a huge general insecurity in dealing with the subject at all. ~ Sasa Stanisic, #NFDB
1490:hesitated, thinking of all the ways I could change the subject, then made a spur-of-the-moment decision that I was finished with small talk and surface conversation and diversions and lies of any kind, no matter how small. At least for right now, as I sat at my parents’ dining room table, with a kind man who had once loved me, and who still prayed to God before supper. ~ Emily Giffin, #NFDB
1491:I believe - I know (there are not many things I should care to dogmatize about, on the subject of writing) that writers need solitude, and seek alienation of a kind every day of their working lives. (And remember, they are not even aware when and when not they are working.) ... The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer. ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
1492:If you want to get an interesting perspective do not think of Hugh as a traditional 20th century physicist but more of a Renaissance man with interests and skills in many different areas. He was smart and lots of things interested him and he brought the same general conceptual methodology to solve them. The subject matter was not so important as the solution ideas. ~ Hugh Everett III, #NFDB
1493:Most 20th century academic physicists, and academia as a whole, simply did not want to touch the subject of consciousness. We have seen psychology grow up, and we've seen the development of neurophysiology and other much more sophisticated science, but only in the recent years have the tools of quantum mechanics been applied to anything representing human scale size. ~ Edgar Mitchell, #NFDB
1494:Will Scott grinned. Grizel Beaton had slapped his face four times, and apart from these four small misjudgements, they had never touched on a topic more personal than which of Buccleuch’s bastards to invite to the wedding. But he liked her fine; and she was good and broad where it would matter to future Buccleuchs, which summed up all his mind so far on the subject. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
1495:At the beginning of each session, one of us will begin talking about some random idea, another person will chime in or change the subject, and miraculously, after twenty minutes, we find that we have zeroed in on a question that everyone is passionate about. What continues to astonish me is the frequency with which religion slips into the room, unbidden but persistent. ~ Alan Lightman, #NFDB
1496:At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
1497:Don’t you have a hangover?” Nykyrian asked. Syn licked his fingers. “Like a motherfucker. But I’m used to the brain damage. I’ll eventually drink enough to make it go away.” Nykyrian shook his head. Kiara decided to change the subject. “Will I be blessed with both of you today?” Syn sat next to her. “Cursed would be more apropos. In which case, I reply affirmatively. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1498:In New York, he would live for them, but in San Francisco, he could live for himself. And though he does not like to think about it, though he in fact avoids the subject pathologically, he allows himself to think it now: What if the woman on Hester Street is right? The mere thought turns his life a different color; it makes everything feel urgent, glittering, precious. ~ Chloe Benjamin, #NFDB
1499:Mathematical knowledge is not-as all Cambridge men are surely aware-the result of any special gift. It is merely the development of those conceptions of form and number which every human being possesses; and any person of average intellect can make himself a fair mathematician if he will only pay continuous attention; in plain English, think enough about the subject. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
1500:social treadmill effect: You get rich, move to rich neighborhoods, then become poor again. To that add the psychological treadmill effect; you get used to wealth and revert to a set point of satisfaction. This problem of some people never really getting to feel satisfied by wealth (beyond a given point) has been the subject of technical discussions on happiness. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
278 Integral Yoga
88 Occultism
63 Philosophy
55 Christianity
31 Yoga
30 Fiction
28 Psychology
26 Poetry
10 Education
9 Hinduism
7 Theosophy
5 Science
5 Integral Theory
4 Sufism
3 Baha i Faith
2 Mythology
1 Thelema
1 Mysticism
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
195 Sri Aurobindo
104 The Mother
54 Aleister Crowley
48 Satprem
41 Nolini Kanta Gupta
32 Plotinus
30 Carl Jung
24 H P Lovecraft
18 Swami Krishnananda
17 A B Purani
13 Saint Augustine of Hippo
11 James George Frazer
11 Aldous Huxley
10 Saint Teresa of Avila
9 Plato
9 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 William Wordsworth
7 Swami Vivekananda
7 Sri Ramakrishna
6 Vyasa
6 Percy Bysshe Shelley
6 Aristotle
6 Alice Bailey
4 Rudolf Steiner
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Jordan Peterson
3 Paul Richard
3 Nirodbaran
3 John Keats
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Friedrich Nietzsche
3 Edgar Allan Poe
3 Baha u llah
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Saint John of Climacus
2 Robert Browning
2 Patanjali
2 Ken Wilber
2 George Van Vrekhem
92 Record of Yoga
33 Magick Without Tears
24 Lovecraft - Poems
22 The Synthesis Of Yoga
20 The Life Divine
20 Liber ABA
18 The Study and Practice of Yoga
17 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
13 City of God
11 The Perennial Philosophy
11 The Golden Bough
11 Talks
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
11 Agenda Vol 08
10 The Human Cycle
10 On Education
10 Mysterium Coniunctionis
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
9 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
9 Questions And Answers 1954
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
8 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
8 Questions And Answers 1956
8 Questions And Answers 1953
8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
7 Wordsworth - Poems
7 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
7 Essays On The Gita
7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
7 Aion
7 Agenda Vol 04
7 Agenda Vol 03
6 Vishnu Purana
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Practice of Psycho therapy
6 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
6 Shelley - Poems
6 Poetics
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
6 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
5 Letters On Yoga IV
5 Isha Upanishad
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 The Problems of Philosophy
4 The Phenomenon of Man
4 The Future of Man
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
4 Agenda Vol 09
4 Agenda Vol 02
4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
3 Walden
3 Twilight of the Idols
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1955
3 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
3 Letters On Yoga II
3 Letters On Poetry And Art
3 Labyrinths
3 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Keats - Poems
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 05
3 Agenda Vol 01
2 The Way of Perfection
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
2 The Book of Certitude
2 Symposium
2 Sex Ecology Spirituality
2 Preparing for the Miraculous
2 Poe - Poems
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Browning - Poems
2 Bhakti-Yoga
2 Agenda Vol 13
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Some modern Nature-worshippers and members of the newly-washed and redeemed witch-cult have complimented me on this closing chapter which I entitled 'The Ladder." I am pleased about this. For a very long time I was not at all familiar with the topic of witchcraft. I had avoided it entirely, not being attracted to its literature in any way. In fact, I only became slightly conversant with its theme and literature just a few years ago, after reading "The Anatomy of Eve" written by Dr. Leopold Stein, a Jungian analyst. In the middle of his study of four cases, he included a most informative chapter on the Subject. This served to stimulate me to wider reading in that area.
In 1932, at the suggestion of Thomas Burke, the novelist, I submitted my manuscript to one of his publishers, Messrs. Constable in London. They were unable to use it, but made some encouraging comments and advised me to submit it to Riders. To my delight and surprise, Riders published it, and throughout the years the reaction it has had indicated other students found it also fulfilled their need for a condensed and simplified survey of such a vast subject as the Qabalah.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
To develop the devotee's love for God, Vaishnavism humanizes God. God is to be regarded as the devotee's Parent, Master, Friend, Child, Husband, or Sweetheart, each succeeding relationship representing an intensification of love. These bhavas, or attitudes toward God, are known as santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and madhur. The rishis of the Vedas, Hanuman, the cow-herd boys of Vrindavan, Rama's mother Kausalya, and Radhika, Krishna's sweetheart, exhibited, respectively, the most perfect examples of these forms. In the ascending scale the-glories of God are gradually forgotten and the devotee realizes more and more the intimacy of divine communion. Finally he regards himself as the mistress of his Beloved, and no artificial barrier remains to separate him from his Ideal. No social or moral obligation can bind to the earth his soaring spirit. He experiences perfect union with the Godhead. Unlike the Vedantist, who strives to transcend all varieties of the Subject-object relationship, a devotee of the Vaishnava path wishes to retain both his own individuality and the personality of God. To him God is not an intangible Absolute, but the Purushottama, the Supreme Person.
While practising the discipline of the madhur bhava, the male devotee often regards himself as a woman, in order to develop the most intense form of love for Sri Krishna, the only purusha, or man, in the universe. This assumption of the attitude of the opposite sex has a deep psychological significance. It is a matter of common experience that an idea may be cultivated to such an intense degree that every idea alien to it is driven from the mind. This peculiarity of the mind may be utilized for the subjugation of the lower desires and the development of the spiritual nature. Now, the idea which is the basis of all desires and passions in a man is the conviction of his indissoluble association with a male body. If he can inoculate himself thoroughly with the idea that he is a woman, he can get rid of the desires peculiar to his male body. Again, the idea that he is a woman may in turn be made to give way to another higher idea, namely, that he is neither man nor woman, but the Impersonal Spirit. The Impersonal Spirit alone can enjoy real communion with the Impersonal God. Hence the highest est realization of the Vaishnava draws close to the transcendental experience of the Vedantist.
--
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the Subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with Brahman. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. 'And this is the ultimate goal of all religions — to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own ignorance.
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
twenty paragraphs. the Subject of each chapter is
determined more or less definitely by the Qabalistic
--
Dharana gets rid of the Subjective.
Dhyana gets rid of the Ego.
--
the Subject of the chapter is OUR LADY BABALON,
who is conceived as the feminine counterpart of IT.
--
This chapter returns to the Subject of Laylah, and
to the Subject already discussed in Chapters 3 and
others, particularly Chapter 56.
--
The chapter recurs to the Subject of Laylah, whom
the author exalts above God, in continuation of the
--
Frater P. continues the Subject of Chapter 79.
He pictures himself as a vigorous, reckless, almost
--
the Subject of the chapter is consequently corollary
to Chapters 79 and 80, the ethics of Adept life.
--
This continues the Subject of Chapter 83.
The title refers to the mental attitude of the Master;
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, familiary known to the readers of the Gospel by his pen name M., and to the devotees as Master Mahashay, was born on the 14th of July, 1854 as the son of Madhusudan Gupta, an officer of the Calcutta High Court, and his wife, Swarnamayi Devi. He had a brilliant scholastic career at Hare School and the Presidency College at Calcutta. The range of his studies included the best that both occidental and oriental learning had to offer. English literature, history, economics, western philosophy and law on the one hand, and Sanskrit literature and grammar, Darsanas, Puranas, Smritis, Jainism, Buddhism, astrology and Ayurveda on the other were the Subjects in which he attained considerable proficiency.
He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail High School, City School, Ripon College School, Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from school to school were that he could not get on with some of the managements on grounds of principles and that often his spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidysgar and Surendranath Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English, philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase room of the third floor of it, administering the school and preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected in educational circles where he was usually referred to as Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods: "Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their instruction to what is given in books without much thought as to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting education through the medium of the mother tongue was being discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of instruction in the Morton School." (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
radiate? In that event the Subjective viewpoint coincides with
the way things are distributed objectively, and perception reaches
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
What was talked in the small group informally was not intended by Sri Aurobindo to be the independent expression of his views on the Subjects, events or the persons discussed. Very often what he said was in answer to the spiritual need of the individual or of the collective atmosphere. It was like a spiritual remedy meant to produce certain spiritual results, not a philosophical or metaphysical pronouncement on questions, events or movements. The net result of some talks very often was to point out to the disciple the inherent incapacity of the human intellect and its secondary place in the search for the ultimate Reality.
But there were occasions when he did give his independent, personal views on some problems, on events or other subjects. Even then it was never an authoritarian pronouncement. Most often it appeared to be a logically worked out and almost inevitable conclusion expressed quite impersonally though with firm and sincere conviction. This impersonality was such a prominent trait of his personality! Even in such matters as dispatching a letter or a telegram it would not be a command from him to a disciple to carry out the task. Most often during his usual passage to the dining room he would stop on the way, drop in on the company of four or five disciples and, holding out the letter or the telegram, would say in the most amiable and yet the most impersonal way: "I suppose this has to be sent." And it would be for someone in the group instantly to volunteer and take it. The expression he very often used was "It was done" or "It happened", not "I did."
0.04 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can tell you this to finish with the Subject, that from the
roof I concentrated the power on the bullocks ordering them to
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya, self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the Subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included
Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the Subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.
We perceive that as Hathayoga, dealing with the life and body, aims at the supernormal perfection of the physical life and its capacities and goes beyond it into the domain of the mental life, so Rajayoga, operating with the mind, aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence.
0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
although the Subject of the stanzas which he is glossing is a much wider one,
comprising the whole of the mystical life and ending only with the Divine embraces
--
and prepared for the desired union with the Spouse, a union which is the Subject
that the Saint proposed to treat in his commentary on the five remaining stanzas.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many things have been said on the Subject but, as far as my own
experience goes, I do not attach much importance to that belief.
01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It might be said, however, that the guarantee or sanction of Reason does not lie in the extent of its application, nor can its subjective nature (or ego-centric predication, as philosophers would term it) vitiate the validity of its conclusions. There is, in fact, an inherent unity and harmony between Reason and Reality. If we know a little of Reality, we know the whole; if we know the Subjective, we know also the objective. As in the part, so in the whole; as it is within, so it is without. If you say that I will die, you need not wait for my actual death to have the proof of your statement. The generalising power inherent in Reason is the guarantee of the certitude to which it leads. Reason is valid, as it does not betray us. If it were such as anti-intellectuals make it out to be, we would be making nothing but false steps, would always remain entangled in contradictions. The very success of Reason is proof of its being a reliable and perfect instrument for the knowledge of Truth and Reality. It is beside the mark to prove otherwise, simply by analysing the nature of Reason and showing the fundamental deficiencies of that nature. It is rather to the credit of Reason that being as it is, it is none the less a successful and trustworthy agent.
Now the question is, does Reason never fail? Is it such a perfect instrument as intellectualists think it to be? There is ground for serious misgivings. Reason says, for example, that the earth revolves round the sun: and reason, it is argued, is right, for we see that all the facts are conformableto it, even facts that were hitherto unknown and are now coming into our ken. But the difficulty is that Reason did not say that always in the past and may not say that always in the future. The old astronomers could explain the universe by holding quite a contrary theory and could fit into it all their astronomical data. A future scientist may come and explain the matter in quite a different way from either. It is only a choice of workable theories that Reason seems to offer; we do not know the fact itself, apart perhaps from exactly the amount that immediate sense-perception gives to each of us. Or again, if we take an example of another category, we may ask, does God exist? A candid Rationalist would say that he does not know although he has his own opinion about the matter. Evidently, Reason cannot solve all the problems that it meets; it can judge only truths that are of a certain type.
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the Subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the Subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is the Nietzsche we all know. But there is another aspect of his which the world has yet been slow to recognise. For, at bottom, Nietzsche is not all storm and fury. If his Superman is a Destroying Angel, he is none the less an angel. If he is endowed with a supreme sense of strength and power, there is also secreted in the core of his heart a sense of the beautiful that illumines his somewhat sombre aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the Subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are a sort of blot, a kind of ulcer on the beautiful face of humanity. The herd that wallow in suffering and relish suffering disfigure the aspect of the world and should therefore be relentlessly mowed out of existence. By being pitiful to them we give our tacit assent to their persistence. And it is precisely because of this that Nietzsche has a horror of Christianity. For compassion gives indulgence to all the ugliness of the world and thus renders that ugliness a necessary and indispensable element of existence. To protect the weak, to sympathise with the lowly brings about more of weakness and more of lowliness. Nietzsche has an aristocratic taste par excellencewhat he aims at is health and vigour and beauty. But above all it is an aristocracy of the spirit, an aristocracy endowed with all the richness and beauty of the soul that Nietzsche wants to establish. The beggar of the street is the symbol of ugliness, of the poverty of the spirit. And the so-called aristocrat, die millionaire of today is as poor and ugly as any helpless leper. The soul of either of them is made of the same dirty, sickly stuff. The tattered rags, the crouching heart, the effeminate nerve, the unenlightened soul are the standing ugliness of the world and they have no place in the ideal, the perfect humanity. Humanity, according to Nietzsche, is made in order to be beautiful, to conceive the beautiful, to create the beautiful. Nietzsche's Superman has its perfect image in a Grecian statue of Zeus cut out in white marble-Olympian grandeur shedding in every lineament Apollonian beauty and Dionysian vigour.
The real secret of Nietzsche's philosophy is not an adoration of brute force, of blind irrational joy in fighting and killing. Far from it, Nietzsche has no kinship with Treitschke or Bernhard. What Nietzsche wanted was a world purged of littleness and ugliness, a humanity, not of saints, perhaps, but of heroes, lofty in their ideal, great in their achievement, majestic in their empirea race of titanic gods breathing the glory of heaven itself.
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the Subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, for example; they are not merely an ethical exhortation, a moral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the words are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
Yasyaite himavanto mahitv
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Man then, according to Pascal, is by nature a sinful thing. He can lay no claim to noble virtue as his own: all in him is vile, he is a lump of dirt and filth. Even the greatest has his full share of this taint. The greatest, the saintliest, and the meanest, the most sinful, all meet, all are equal on this common platform; all have the same feet of clay. Man is as miserable a creature as a beast, as much a part and product of Nature as a plant. Only there is this difference that an animal or a tree is unconscious, while man knows that he is miserable. This knowledge or perception makes him more miserable, but that is his real and only greatness there is no other. His thought, his self-consciousness, and his sorrow and repentance and contrition for what he is that is the only good partMary's part that has been given to him. Here are Pascal's own words on the Subject:
"The greatness of man is great in this that he knows he is miserable. A tree does not know that it is miserable.
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
few words on the Subject of this freedom?
The freedom I speak of is the freedom to follow the will of the
--
told me that he had no opinion on the Subject. "My
business," he said, "is to write." And he asked me what
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the Subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Roerich discovered and elaborated his own technique to reveal that which is secret, express that which is not expressed or expressible. First of all, he is symbolical and allegorical: secondly, the choice of his symbols and allegories is hieratic, that is to say, the Subject-matter refers to objects and events connected with saints and legends, shrines and enchanted places, hidden treasures, spirits and angels, etc. etc.; thirdly, the manner or style of execution is what we may term pantomimic, in other words, concrete, graphic, dramatic, even melodramatic. He has a special predilection for geometrical patterns the artistic effect of whichbalance, regularity, fixity, soliditywas greatly utilised by the French painter Czanne and poet Mallarm who seem to have influenced Roerich to a considerable degree. But this Northerner had not the reticence, the suavity, the tonic unity of the classicist, nor the normality and clarity of the Latin temperament. The prophet, the priest in him was the stronger element and made use of the artist as the rites andceremoniesmudras and chakrasof his vocation demanded. Indeed, he stands as the hierophant of a new cultural religion and his paintings and utterances are, as it were, gestures that accompany a holy ceremonial.
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
You see, this is how it happened: theres this Ganesh2 We had a meditation (this was more than thirty years ago) in the room where Prosperity3 is now distributed. There were eight or ten of us, I believe. We used to make sentences with flowers; I arranged the flowers, and each one made a sentence with the different flowers I had put there. And one day when the Subject of prosperity or wealth came up, I thought (they always say that Ganesh is the god of money, of fortune, of the worlds wealth), I thought, Isnt this whole story of the god with an elephant trunk merely a lot of human imagination? Thereupon, we meditated. And who should I see walk in and park himself in front of me but a living being, absolutely alive and luminous, with a trunk that long and smiling! So then, in my meditation, I said, Ah! So its true that you exist!Of course I exist! And you may ask me for whatever you wish, from a monetary standpoint, of course, and I will give it to you!
So I asked. And for about ten years, it poured in, like this (gesture of torrents). It was incredible. I would ask, and at the next Darshan, or a month or several days later, depending, there it was.
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
However, you must have at least a little experience of these things to understand them. Otherwise, if you are convinced that all this is just human fancy or mental formations, if you believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have imagined them to be like that, or that they have such and such defects or qualities because men have envisioned it that wayas with all those who say God is created in the image of man and exists only in human thoughtall such people wont understand, it will seem absolutely ridiculous to them, a kind of madness. You must live a little, touch the Subject a little to know how concrete it is.
Naturally, children know a great dealif they have not been spoiled. There are many children who return to the same place night after night and continue living a life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoiled with age, they can be preserved within one. There was a time when I was especially interested in dreams, and I could return exactly to the same place and continue some work I had begun there, visit something, for example, or see to something, some work of organization or some discovery or exploration; you go to a certain place, just as you go somewhere in life, then you rest a while, then you go back and begin againyou take up your work just where you left it, and you continue. You also notice that there are things entirely independent of you, certain variations which were not at all created by you and which occurred automatically during your absence.
--
Once you have worked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact of having known this subject and of having studied it gives a particular tonality; on the other hand, if you have learned nothing of the Subject, if you know nothing at all, well, when the experience comes, the notation of it is entirely spontaneous and sincere. It can be more or less adequate, but it is not the result of a former mental formation.
What happened in my life is that I never studied or knew things until AFTER having the experienceonly BECAUSE OF the experience and because I wanted to understand it would I study things related to it.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But generally and this is something Theon had told me (Theon was very qualified on the Subject of hostile forces and the workings of all that resists the divine influence, and he was a great fighteras you might imagine! He himself was an incarnation of an asura, so he knew how to tackle these things!); he was always saying, If you make a VERY SMALL concession or suffer a minor defeat, it gives you the right to a very great victory. Its a very good trick. And I have observed, in practice, that for all things, even for the very little things of everyday life, its trueif you yield on one point (if, even though you see what should be, you yield on a very secondary and unimportant point), it immediately gives you the power to impose your will for something much more important. I mentioned this to Sri Aurobindo and he said that it was true. It is true in the world as it is today, but its not what we want; we want it to change, really change.
He wrote this in a letter, I believe, and he spoke of this system of compensation for example, those who take an illness on themselves in order to have the power to cure; and then theres the symbolic story of Christ dying on the cross to set men free. And Sri Aurobindo said, Thats fine for a certain age, but we must now go beyond that. As he told me (its even one of the first things he told me), We are no longer at the time of Christ when, to be victorious, it was necessary to die.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This enigmatic experience was actually very important, as Mother will later explain (on March 17): Mother was leaving behind the Subjection to mental functioning, symbolized by this place where Pavitra was working.
Salmon-colored hibiscus.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I told you last time about that experience [of March 11, with Pavitra] the night I met you and was saying good-bye, I neglected to mention one very important point, the most important, in fact: I was leaving the Subjection to mental functioning permanently behind That was the meaning of my departure.
For a very long time now I have been watching all the phases of the Subjection to mental functioning come undone, one after another for a very long time. That night was the end of it, the last phase: I was leaving this subjection behind and rising up into a realm of freedom. You had been very, very helpful, as I told you. Well, this latest experience was something else! It came to make me look squarely at the fact of our incapacity!
Can you imagine!
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have noticed that as soon as one speaks of Richard one is unwittingly led to tell lies. Thats why I am so terribly careful to avoid the Subject.
The first issue began with The Wherefore of the Worlds (the English following the French), and in it Richard attributed the origin of the world to Desire. They were in perpetual disagreement on this subject, Richard saying, It is Desire, and Sri Aurobindo, The initial force of the Manifestation is Joy. Then Richard would say, God DESIRED to know Himself, and Sri Aurobindo, No, God had the Joy of knowing Himself. And it went on and on like that!
0 1961-12-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then Mother thought that this message might not be too comforting and she put it aside (after asking the opinion of two disciples). Finally she chose the text of the experience which is the Subject of this conversation. But the coming year, 1962, would be marked by the first great turning-point in Mother's yoga and a rather calamitous ordeal for the body.
***
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive said something on the Subject somewhere. Do you remember that gentleman from Madras who had asked a question?1 There was an indication there.
Because I followed the thread, I put myself back in contact with the experience of the supramental ship, and I noticed that it had a DECISIVE effect on my position: the required conditions were established quite clearly, precisely, and definitively by that experience. In that respect, it was interesting.
--
So long as theres no question of physical transformation, the psychological and in large part, the Subjective point of view is sufficientand thats relatively easy. But when it comes to incorporating matter into the work, matter as it is in this world where the very starting point is false (we start off in unconsciousness and ignorance), well, its very difficult. Because, to recover the consciousness it has lost, Matter has had to individualize itself, and for that for the form to last and retain this possibility of individualityit has been created with a certain indispensable measure of rigidity. And that rigidity is the main obstacle to the expansion, to the plasticity and suppleness necessary for receiving the Supermind. I constantly find myself facing this problem, which is utterly concrete, absolutely material when youre dealing with cells that have to remain cells and not vaporize into some nonphysical reality, and at the same time have to have a suppleness, a lack of rigidity, enabling them to widen indefinitely.
There have been times, while working in the most material mind (the mind ingrained in the material substance), when I felt my brain swelling and swelling and swelling, and my head becoming so large it seemed about to burst! On two occasions I was forced to stop, because it was (was it only an impression, or was it a fact?) in any event it seemed dangerous, as if the head would burst, because what was inside was becoming too tremendous (it was that power in Matter, that very powerful deep blue light which has such powerful vibrations; it is able to heal, for example, and change the functioning of the organsreally a very powerful thing materially). Well then, thats what was filling my head, more and more, more and more, and I had the feeling that my skull was (it was painful, you know) that there was a pressure inside my skull pushing out, pushing everything out. I wondered what was going to happen. Then, instead of following the movement, helping it along and going with it, I became immobile, passive, to see what would happen. And both times it stopped. I was no longer helping the movement along, you see, I simply remained passive and it came to a halt, there was a sort of stabilization.
0 1962-05-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The beginning of this conversation, unfortunately not kept, dealt with certain instances of human ugliness. The topic, in fact, was Satprem's break with X who had been his guru for the past few years. The reasons for this rupture may one day be told, but it should be stressed right now that the fault did not really lie with X, whom Satprem continued to respect, but with a group of schemers at the Ashram who fastened onto X in the hope of god knows what "powers." It is perhaps just as well that the human "ugliness" here in question has vanished from Satprem's records, foralthough it did come up again immediately after Mother's departureit concerned only the Ashram disciples. All the details and all Mother's reflections on the Subject have thus been lost, with the exception of this last fragment:)
What a world!
0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The notion of subjective and objective STILL belongs to the old world and to the three, or at most four, dimensions. It is one and the same Power that changes the interrelations within one and the same element; to put things simply, the Power that gives the Subjective experience AND the objective realization is the same; it is only a matter of a greater or lesser totality of experience, as it were. And if the experience were total it would be the experience of the Supreme, and it would be universal.
Does what I am saying make any sense?
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Unexpectedly, this conversation led into the Subject of Satprem's break with X, who had been his guru for the past few years. Here then, briefly, is the story behind the rupture: No sooner had Satprem brought X to the Ashram than a swarm of disciples threw themselves at him. Conspicuous among these were the moneymen, the same wheelerdealers who, eleven years later, after Mother's departure, were to reveal their ambitions in Auroville as well as Pondicherry. Satprem's somewhat straightforward manner soon got in the way of their schemes. He had a deep affection for X and when he repeatedly saw that these peoplespiritual scoundrels is the only word for themwere, in the hope of sowing confusion (for they always prosper best in confusion), bringing false reports to Mother of things X had supposedly said, he tried in all innocence to put X on his guard against the false reports and dishonest people who were wronging him. But instead of listening to Satprem and understanding that he spoke out of love, Xwith all his Tantric power behindflew into a violent rage against him, as if he had been casting a slur on X's prestige. Satprem then broke with X, but not without sorrow.)
Anything new?
0 1962-07-07, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(A little later, the Subject of the increasing scarcity of the tapes Satprem uses to record these conversations comes up. It should be mentioned that Mother has never wanted to use the Ashrams tapes.)
And then after all, if its lost, its lost! It will have been the Lords decision, so it doesnt matter.
0 1962-07-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like an image. You see, the body is stretched out here on the chaise longue. You know how it is when experiments are done on animals? Its something like that the body is there as the Subject of an experiment. Then theres my consciousness, the part focused on the earthly experience and the present transformation (its what I mean when I say I). And then the Lord. I say the Lord Ive adopted that because its the best way of putting it and the easiest for me, but I never, NEVER think of a being. For me, its a simultaneous contact with the Eternal, the Infinite, the Vast, the Totality of everything the totality of everything: all that is, all that has been, all that will be, everything. Words spoil it, but its like thatautomaticallywith consciousness, sweetness and SOLICITUDE. With all the qualities a perfect Personality can offer (I dont know if you follow me, but thats the way it is). And That (I use all these words to say it, and three-fourths is left out) is a spontaneous, constant, immediate experience. So the I I spoke of asks that the body may have the experience, or at least an initial taste, even a shadow of the experience of this Love. And each time its asked for, it comes INSTANTLY. Then I see the three together1in my consciousness and perception the three are together and I see that this Love is dosed out and maintained in exact proportion to what the body can bear.
The body is aware of this and is a little sad about it. But immediately comes something soothing, calming, making it vast. The body instantly senses the immensity and regains its calm.
0 1962-08-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(It is extremely unfortunate that the beginning of this conversation, which would have thrown a clear light on what follows, was not kept. As far as Satprem remembers, the Subject was his sleep. It seems Mother was saying that while his "strolls by the sea" took place during sleep and by passing into another state, for herand this is where the notes beginthere was no more "sleep" and no more "passing" into another state, from the ordinary physical to the subtle physical, because everything seemed to have become or was becoming one and the same continuous Matter. The true Matter, probably.)
Thats one thing thats happening. The two [the ordinary physical and the subtle physical] seem to be fusing more and more.
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I could say a lot on the Subject, but At any rate, perhaps Ill tell you one day, but it cant be used for the Bulletin these arent public matters.
But what people call miracles nowadays are almost always performed by beings of the vital world, or by men in relation with such beings, so theres a mixtureit accepts the reality of certain things, the truth of certain things that arent true. And it works on that basis. So its unacceptable.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Which means there is a difference between the miracle taking place through or in the mind, and the miracle taking place directly in the physical and vital. For instance, all those who perform miracles like levitation, moving objects, generating lights (Mother keeps silent for a while, then drops the Subject). Its a field that I dont find very living, it doesnt interest me very much.2
But thats how it worked with healing. When the Power was there, he said it was even effortless, all he had to do was to put that Power of order, of supramental harmony, and it would act instantly.3
0 1963-03-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Later, Mother added: "That is to say, an extremely powerful experience but which doesn't stay, except in its effect: becoming another person, changing position. I wouldn't be able to describe the experience, but my position changed. That's what happened every time. It's very different from the other experiences: they stay, you understand them fully, they don't fade away but they don't have the power to change your person. They are two types of experience, both very useful, but very different from each other. The experiences of the very powerful but very brief type are those that, afterwards, are expressed in the form of the other type. The other experiences are those that ESTABLISH in a certain domain of consciousness that first experience which had come only as a shocka compelling but transient shock. And sometimes it may take longformerly it took years between the first experience and the resulting ones; now the interval seems a bit shorter, though it still takes some time. And it follows the same course every time: something comes, has the necessary effect, and then the consciousness seems to go to sleep on that point, as if a silent incubation period were neededyou stop dealing actively with the Subjectand it reemerges at the end of a long curve, but as if it had been digested, assimilated, and you were now ready for the full experience."
With a sort of incomprehensible comprehension, we are reminded of the words of the Vedic Rishis: "He uncovered the two worlds, eternal and in ONE nest."
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Later, the Subject is the English translation of Satprems recent book on Sri Aurobindo:)
I think E. will be able to find a public over there, in America especiallymore than in France.
0 1963-08-13a, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding an old "Playground Talk" of 1950 and noted from memory by a disciple, which Mother asks Satprem to scrap. the Subject was Nirvana, which one was to reachor so the notation saidby withdrawing all one's energies into the psychic being or soul.)
None of that is true!
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I delivered great speeches to you on the Subject, but I dont remember! (Laughing) It was in the night, I delivered a whole speech to you, and I even thought, in the middle of the night, Well, thats just what I should tell Satprem tomorrow!
I told you that the only process Ive known, and which recurred several times in my life, is to renounce an error. Something you believe to be truewhich probably was true for a timeon which you partly base your action, but which, in actuality, was only one opinion. You thought it was a truthful finding with all its logical consequences, and your action (part of your action) was based on it, so that everything proceeded from it automatically. Till suddenly an experience, a circumstance or an intuition warns you that your finding isnt so true as it appeared to be (!) Then there is a whole period of observation and study (sometimes too it comes as a revelation, a massive proof), and then its not just your idea or false knowledge that needs to be changed, but also all its consequences, perhaps an entire way of acting on a particular point. At that moment, you get a sort of sensation, something that feels like a sensation of renunciation; that is to say, you have to undo a whole collection of things you had built. Sometimes its quite considerable, sometimes a very small thing, but the experience is the same: the movement of a force, a dissolving power, and the resistance of all that must be dissolved, all the past habit. It is the contact of the movement of dissolution with the corresponding resistance that probably translates in the ordinary human consciousness as the sense of renunciation.
0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The beginning of this conversation was to disappear, but Satprem chanced on it on a second track of the tape-recording. He found it charming and inserted it back here. Quite often he deleted these beginnings of conversations.... Here the Subject was his health, Sujata having written to Mother that it was deteriorating" and proposed that a supplementary diet be given him.)
So, let me contemplate you! (laughter)
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ill have to find the way to organize this new type of experience and make use of it but I need to know how it comes about! Because when I was looking at those pictures, I wasnt at all in a special state, I was looking at them somewhat superficially I was finding them hm! I saw their effort to be artistic and I found the perspectives from which the photos were taken interesting, but thats all. the Subjects except for the angler (there were more than four anglers in the book, mon petit!) and people sleeping in the street, things of that sort. And then people kissing everywhere: on chairs, on the banks of the Seine, on benches, in swings in amusement parks. And rather vulgar. But the photos, the patches of light and shadewell taken. I didnt want to tire my eyes reading those peoples literature, but it must be very modern probably there were some authors signatures! The signature alone was the portrait of the individual: pretentious, affected.
The atmosphere of Paris is unbreathable. When I returned to France, first I fell sick, and then that atmosphere
0 1964-09-18, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont feel its really very immediate, but its clearly on the way to realization. Thats all I can tell you on the Subject.
I even saw rather interesting things, because there were events that were like reminiscences of your past lives, and they found a place in your book. Those things are still quite in your subliminal. (They call it subliminal, dont they? Its something thats neither the subconscient nor the clear supraconscient; its a sort of subliminal consciousness.) Theyre there, they have remained as a memory and it is clear. And those reminiscences are like you know, what they put inside a clay statue to hold it up?
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that they are printing two calendars, one here and one in Calcutta. In the Calcutta calendar, I look happy and I greet with folded hands; so I wrote underneath, Salut Toi, Vrit [Salute to you, O Truth]. In English (theyre a bit slow, you know!), they wanted something more explicit, so I wrote, Salute to the advent of the Truth. I am going to give the Subject to Sunil: Make some music on this.
But still, its a pity for you to give up music.
0 1965-06-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You can classify this one in the Subjects for meditation (!) on the Governments manners.
Sometimes, for someone or other, Ill write a sentence in that way, but I wont send it, Ill keep it; then, after a week or two weeks or a month, the person tells me he had an experience and that I told him such and such a thing the very thing I had written. Its a very good method.
0 1965-09-08, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just the other day I noted something down on the Subject (Mother looks for a note, then reads it):
Very rare and exceptional are the human beings who can understand and feel divine Love, because divine Love is free of attachment and of the need to please the object loved.
0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oddly, these last few days again, this has been the Subject of my meditations (not willed ones: they are imposed from above). Because in all the transition from plant to animal and from animal to man (especially from animal to man), the differences of form are, ultimately, minor: the true transformation is the intervention of another agent of consciousness. All the differences between the life of the animal and the life of man stem from the intervention of the Mind; but the substance is essentially the same and it obeys the same laws of formation and construction. There isnt much difference, for instance, between the calf being formed in a cows womb and the child being formed in its mothers womb. There is one difference: that of the Minds intervention. But if we envisage a PHYSICAL being, that is, as visible as the physical now is and with the same density, for instance a body that wouldnt need blood circulation and bones (especially these two things: the skeleton and blood circulation) its very hard to imagine. And as long as it is like this, with this blood circulation, this functioning of the heart, we could imaginewe can imagine the renewal of strength, of energy through a power of the Spirit, through other means than food. Its conceivable. But the rigidity, the solidity of the body, how is it possible without a skeleton? So it would be an infinitely greater transformation than that from animal to man; it would be a transition from man to a being that would no longer be built in the same way, that would no longer function in the same way, that would be like a densification or concretization of something. Up till now, it doesnt correspond to anything we have seen physically, unless the scientists have found something I am not aware of.
We may conceive of a new light or force giving the cells a sort of spontaneous life, a spontaneous strength.
0 1966-11-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, this question (I read the question, it has been published somewhere and it was read to me) is a question asked by ignorant people. They ask you something, but they are ignorant. They should begin by studying the Subject in the first place and learn something about it, then they would be able to understand the proof we can give them. Otherwise they wont understand it.
I was asked the question (by someone who sent me the article in the hope I would answer), I said, No! They arent ready for the answer; let them do their homework first, then well answer them.
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I do not know what Pavitra told you or asked you for, but here is a summary of what I said to him. For a long time I have been thinking of explaining to the students young and old alike, the particular truths that are found at the root of all human religions, each of them representing one aspect of the total Truth which exceeds them all. This has been perfectly explained in Sri Aurobindos writings, which one MUST have read and studied before one can even conceive of the way in which the Subject must be treated. At any rate, there was no question of asking anyone to do it, since I had reserved the Subject for myself, considering that it can be usefully treated only if one has oneself had the experience, that is to say, that one has lived the truth behind all the religions.
What I asked for was to give the students, as a preparation, a class on the history of religions, from the purely historical, external and intellectual standpoint. There is no question of dealing with the Subject from the spiritual angle.
At any rate, nothing useful can be done before carefully reading all that Sri Aurobindo has said on the Subject (Synthesis of Yoga: in the Yoga of Knowledge he deals with religions; the first chapters of Essays on the Gita; Foundations of Indian Culture; Thoughts and Aphorisms, and many others too). Therefore start reading first.
So I am not replying to your questions because they are part of the course I want to give myself and have not, besides, written yet.
--
See in addendum a letter of Mother's on the Subject.
A rather eccentric American disciple.
0 1967-03-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was precisely the Subject of (can we call it meditation?) of this mornings work. It came so clearly. But the experiences arent literary, they cant be expressed.1
(Mother goes into contemplation)
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He adds: I suggested it might be better to gather and listen to Mothers voice (the recordings of the Wednesday and Friday classes), for even if one doesnt understand at all, your voice would do its inner work, which we are not able to comprehend. In this regard I would like to know what is the best way to put the child in contact with you. For all the suggestions, mine included, seem to me arbitrary and worthless. Mother, would it not be better for the teachers to concentrate exclusively on the Subjects they teach, for you are there to look after spiritual life?
For?
0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Towards the end of the day, when I was alone, I began asking Sri Aurobindo precisely what he meant. Naturally, his hope is that the country that stood for Truth will be India for the moment, she is very far from it. But And since the Subject was before me, I asked him how he saw the terrestrial possibility, in a harmonious future.
Then he said to meit was very simple, very clear: A federation of all nations and countries without exception, all continents. A single federation: the federation of all human nations of the earth. And a groupa governing groupconsisting of one representative from each country, the most able man from the standpoint of political and economic organization. And nothing of the proportional question that would give large countries many representatives and small ones only oneone representative for each country. Because each country represents one aspect of the problem. And they would sit in rotation.
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wait, theres something else again. Oh, poor K., he held examinations (theyre out of their minds with their exams!), he held examinations on a text or a subject he had dictated to the students in his class. In other words, they had the answer quite ready. Two of the boys (one of whom K. finds very intelligen the is, moreover and has a liking for, while he doesnt like the other) were late, and K. asked the boy he doesnt like to bring to him at home the result of their work. He brought it. K. read it, and to one of the questions, the two boys answers were not quite identical but extremely similar. It was precisely the Subject K. had dictated to them, so it was natural enough that the answers should be similar. K. felt right away that the boy had copied from the other, and told him so! The boy lost his temper and spoke to him rather rudely. So K. writes to tell me the whole story in his own way, and the boy writes to tell me the whole story, in his own way, moreover expressing regret that he was rude to his teacher. But K. remains convinced that he copied. So, a flood of letters Finally I wrote to K., Send me the two texts, I will see (not see with my eyes, but like that, feeling the thing). The boy did NOT copy. But to me, its far worse, because it means K. made a mental formation with wordswords put in a certain order and stuffed it into their brains. And they repeat it parrot fashionnaturally, it bears an extraordinary similarity to his teaching. Finally, K. told me, If I accept that the boy didnt copy, I am obliged to give him a very good mark, which I cant do! (Mother laughs) And he asks me, What should I do? I replied yesterday evening: There is a very simple way out: cancel the exam. Take all the papers, tie them into a bundle, put them away in your cupboard, and pretend it never existed and in future, no more exams! And at the end of the year, when you have to give marks to the students, well, instead of using such an artificial method, you will be obliged to observe attentively, follow the childs inner development, have a deeper contact with him (Mother laughs mockingly), and know if he has really understood or not! Then you will be able to give marks instead of basing yourself on the parrot-like repetition of something they have learned without understanding. And I sent that. So now, theyre in a fix! (Mother laughs) I find it so funny, its very amusing!
They had to hold a teachers meeting to face up to my answer! (Mother laughs) I upset the whole School!
--
(Mother gives Satprem the text of the three letters she sent to the teacher on the Subject of examinations at the School:)
The teachers question:
0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now they write to ask me, How can we know whether the children follow if we dont have exams? I had to explain the difference between a type of individual control based on observation, on a remark, on an unexpected question, etc., which allows the teacher to situate the child, and the other method in which you are forewarned, You will have an exam in eight days and the Subject will be on what you have learnedso everyone starts revising what he has learned and preparing himself, and thats that: the one with a good memory is the one who passes. I have explained all that.1
If I had been a teacher, my objection to this decision would not at all have been from the teachers point of view, but from the students because I remember my studies, and if there had not been an obligation every three or six months to revise what was learned in class, well, you know, one would have just let it go.
--
If you arent interested enough in the Subject to try and remember it and retain the result of what youve learned, well, too bad, its just too bad.
The students point of view is false, the teachers point of view is false.
--
Here is the text of Mother's fourth and last note on the Subject: "Naturally the teacher has to test the student to know if he or she has learnt something and has made a progress. But this test must be individual and adapted to each student, not the same mechanical test for all of them. It must be a spontaneous and unexpected test leaving no room for pretence and insincerity. Naturally also, this is much more difficult for the teacher but so much more living and interesting also. I enjoyed your remarks about your students. They prove that you have an individual relation with them and that is essential for good teaching. Those who are insincere do not truly want to learn but to get good marks or compliments from the teacher they are not interesting."
July 25, 1967
0 1967-08-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you unite your consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness and manifest It, all you think, feel or do becomes luminous and true. It is not the Subject of the teaching which is to be changed, it is the consciousness with which you teach that must be enlightened.
(July 31, 1967)
0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Later, on the Subject of Auroville
I met Y. Theyre preparing an issue on Auroville, and she came with a list of questions this long (gesture), saying, I dont know Aurovilles sociology too well. I told her (laughing), Neither do I! Then she asked me questions (very intelligent ones, mind you), and I answered her. But there was one thing about the selection of people and admissions to Auroville I told her that naturally, the essential condition to be able to select people was that preferences, attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes, all moral rules, all of that must have completely disappearednot that one should be on the way to overcoming it, its not that: it must have disappeared (laughing), there must be no more ego! Then I told her, Its not a judgment, its not that you look at people and judge whether they are fit to be there or not, if they are destined to be there or not, its not that at allyou dont judge. And after she left, I noted the end of the thing (Mother takes a note and reads):
0 1967-10-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday afternoon, I had an experience concerning a woman who has been in a coma for sixty-five days (!). After fifty or fifty-five days (the whole family was around her, but her son had gone to work), all of a sudden after fifty-five days, because her son had left, she started calling for him, shouting frantically! (Laughing) I think they all had a scare. And the usual stupid remarks: She was unconscious. I said, Good God! But why do you say she was unconscious, you know nothing about it! She cant express herself, but she isnt unconscious. She is entirely conscious, only the means of expression are damaged, she can no longer use them. And I made a long speech on the Subject, but there was no one to record it and I can never say the same thing twice. It came clearly (Sri Aurobindo was there), and with the absolutely clear picture of what death is. Now I cant repeat it.
In reality, to put it practically (but its not any longer the thing), what people call death is when the instrument of expression the instrument of connection with the milieu, and of expressionhas deteriorated to the point where it can no longer be used, and so there comes a moment when the consciousness abandons it. Probably for all sorts of reasons (there must be different reasons in each case), but the consciousness abandons it because it can no longer be used.
0 1967-11-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
On the Subject of what you told me last time: that your body left to itself doesnt have any experiences. He told you why. And he told you how to do it. But that I can repeat to you; I can repeat the how to do it: he told you that your body is still in a condition in which it has to go to school, and its your inner being, your consciousness, your true self that must teach it. He said, It is still at a stage when it must be taught its lesson, and so it must learn its lesson.
There.
0 1967-12-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This (gesture to the forehead), you know, is like an empty box (very pleasant, its very pleasant), an empty, peaceful box, like that: not closed, not compact, its open, but its a boxan empty box. Inside its all white, nothing moving. And then, I dont even make an effort to bring something down, nothing: Its not my business. If I am asked, I answer, Nothing, I have nothing to say. Or else, something goes like this immediately (gesture on the alert, wide awake), stands up and remains attentive, and after one minute, two minutes, ten minutes (I dont know), suddenly, plop! down it drops. Then I write it. And as it falls, it gathers words and makes its sentence. Sometimes its in French, sometimes in Englishit depends mostly on the person its intended for, but it also depends on the Subject. So then, if (thats why I keep pieces of paper and pencils everywhere), if I have my piece of paper and pencil, I write it down and its over; if I dont write it, if I say, Oh well, Ill note it down a little later, then it keeps coming and coming and coming back every second until its written down. And once its written, gone!
But there is (what did Sri Aurobindo call it?2) something we might call a critic (there is constantly a critic there), that says, Are you sure you put the right word? Wouldnt this be a better way to put it? Is it exactly the way it should be? And also, Are you sure there arent any spelling mistakes, have you written it properly? Like that. What a nuisance! So sometimes I say to it, Leave me in peace! (not even as politely as that). Sometimes I give the piece of paper, then take it back and say, Let me seeuntil its satisfied. Sometimes a word isnt quite correctly written, then it says, Ah! See, see, youve made a mistake there. Sometimes there are spelling mistakes: See, see, youve made a mistake!
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its those so-called Tantrics who make a yoga out of sexuality. And he asked me all sorts of questions on the place of sexuality in yoga, adding that for a year, he and his wife have been trying to live on another level and in a different way. So I tried to tell him the true standpoint, and I gave him a letter I had written a year earlier on the Subjecta letter I was really inspired to write1 on the problem of sexuality in yoga, at the end of which I gave two excerpts from Sri Aurobindo showing the vital error behind this so-called yoga. I sent him my letter, and three days later, I saw him come back with it. He was troubled. First he told me, Are you aware that there is in the Ashram an occult center working with Mothers blessings?
What? What on earth is that!
0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told you many times, and couldnt repeat it too often, that we are not made of a piece. Within ourselves we have lots of states of being, and each state of being has its own life. All that is gathered together in a single body, as long as you have one, and acts through a single body; thats what gives you the sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries. So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. Its only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable of unifying your being around the divine center that those beings remain linked together. If you havent been able to unify yourself, then at the time of death, all that will scatter: every being will go back to its own region. With the vital being, for example, your various desires will separate and each of them will go and chase its realization quite independently, because there will no longer be a physical being to hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the psychic being will return to the psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge. But if you have lived in your vital and all its impulses, each impulse will try to realize itself here and there. For instance, for the miser who was concentrated on his money, when he dies the part of his vital that was concerned with his money will hook on there and will keep watching over the money so no one takes it. People wont see him, but he is there nonetheless, and very unhappy if something happens to his dear money. Now, if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (which is difficult, because, after all, you have thoughts and feelings), if you live exclusively in your physical, when the physical being disappears, you disappear along with it, its over. There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit that lives on for seven days after your death. The doctors have declared you dead, but the spirit of your form is alive, and not only alive but conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, its quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them its like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate like a flame into thin air. And happily so, because if it were otherwise, there might be gods or kinds of superior men who would create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination, inside which they would shut you up. (Question:) It is said that there is a god of death. Is it true? Yes. As for me, I call him a genius of death. I know him very well. And its an extraordinary organization. You cant imagine how organized it is! I think there are many of those genii of death, hundreds of them. I met at least two of them. One I met in France, the other in Japan, and they were very different. Which leads me to believe that depending on the mental culture, the education, the countries and beliefs, there must be different genii. But there are genii for all manifestations of Nature: there are genii of fire, genii of air, water, rain, wind; and there are genii of death. Any one genius of death is entitled to a certain number of dead every day. Its truly a fantastic organization. Its a sort of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, Here is the number of people I am entitled to, say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, hell go straight and set himself up near the person whos going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if you see the genius going to the person but do not want him or her to die, then, if you have a certain occult power, you can tell him, No, I forbid you to take this person. Thats something which happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It wasnt the same genius. Which makes me say there must be many of them. If you can tell him, I forbid you to take this person and have the power to send him away, theres nothing he can do but go away; but he wont give up his due and will go elsewhere there will be a death elsewhere. (Question:) Some people, when they are about to die, are aware of it. Why dont they tell the genius to go away? Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesnt often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesnt want to fight and says, Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better. Thats enoughyoure dead. But its a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isnt that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesnt have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, Oh well? Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the Subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesnt want to, is made to do what he doesnt want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. Its worth trying. At any rate, I find its better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation. Its quite irksome. Well, I dont know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwisewithout anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didnt have the luck you havesomeone who can tell you, Here is what you must do. There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, its a long time since you were five?
Well cut out the end.
0 1968-09-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just yesterday, even before I read this (I didnt read it), I had a long vision on the Subject, thats the surprising thing!
But on such a different plane
0 1968-10-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A cook who had been dismissed went to a fakir (or Muslim Tantric) to get revenge. For several weeks in a row, at certain times of the day stones rained in the courtyard of the Guest-House: a disciple even had his arm injured. It was a condensation of vital forces. Amrita picked up some of those stones and preserved them to study them scientifically, but they were real stones, whose only peculiarity was that they were covered with moss all over. That was in 1921. Sri Aurobindo wrote a letter to Dilip on the Subject (on February 2, 1943).
***
0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ill take the bloom off the Subject.
Doesnt matter!
0 1971-11-27, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then give all the quotations from Sri Aurobindo on the Subject.
I think thats what the world most needs now, a word that gives the sense of what is to be realizedof what will be realized. And then, to awaken in each one the desire to collaborate.
0 1972-07-19, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The following has already been the Subject of several conversations the past year and will unfortunately come up again. It concerns the sales of my books abroad and a subsequent traffic in foreign currencies to which I was impudent or imprudent enough to call attention. But the real problem was that certain people were outrightly and openly robbing Mother. My books were in fact only a small part of a vaster racket that involved all of Sri Aurobindos works. Much like Don Quixote, then, I was pitching headlong into a battle whose outcome was foreseeable. It may be recalled that the head of SABDA, the book business, is the brother of the man who tried to appropriate Auroville. In reality I was taking on a well-organized mafia. But I was still unaware of it. This anecdote is reported here only insofar as it is symbolic of a larger whole.)
You have nothing to ask?
0 1973-03-14, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Extracts from a meeting with the schoolteachers. the Subject is the school squabbles and rivalry among groups of teachers.)
I cant make head or tail of these things. I can no longer be of any help, you see, because all these mental combinations dont make any sense to me anymore.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the Subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesgunakarma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Today I will speak of one of the Vedic rishis. Some names of great Vedic rishis must have reached your earsVashishtha, Vishwamitra, Atri, Parasara, Kanwa (I do not know if it is the same Kanwa of whom Kalidasa speaks in his Shakuntala), Madhuchchanda. All of them are seers of mantra, hearers of mantra, creators of mantra; all of them occupy a large place in the Veda. Each one of them has his speciality, each one delivers a mantra that is in its tone, temper and style his own although the Subject matter, the substance, the fundamental realisation is everywhere the same. For example, Vashishtha is characterised by a happy clarity, Vishwamitra has force and energy, Kutsa is sweetness, Dirghatama is well known for his oblique utterances, his paradoxical apopthegms.1
Today precisely it is of Dirghatama that we will speak. Dirghatama does not mean as the word would indicate to the layman, one who is verytalllaprmurmahbhuja in Kalidasa's phrase. Tama is not the superlative suffix (most), it istamas, darkness. So, from the name itself one may naturally expect that the person was not of an ordinary category. Indeed the amount of stories and legends that have been woven around the name is fantasticqueer, odd, unbelievable, impossible in every way. I need not open that chapter.
02.11 - New World-Conditions, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The relation between India and Britain is peculiar and has an especial significance. It is not enough to say that Britain is the imperialist overlord and India the Subject underling. The two stand for two world-forces and their relation is symbolic. The difficulty that will be solved between them will be a world-difficulty solved; what they achieve in common will be a world-achievement. India means nations in bondage aspiring to be free, peoples living in conditions of want and weakness and internecine quarrel, still struggling towards a harmonious and prosperous organised life; she is the cry of the down-trodden demanding her share of earth's air and lightlife-room. Britain represents the other side, the free people, organised, strong and successful. Neither America nor Russia fills this role. America is young; she has a wonderful grasp over life's externals; none can compare or compete with her in the ordering and marshalling of an efficient pattern of life, but what escapes her is the more abiding and deeper truth of life and living. Russia started to create on totally new foundations, indeed the outer aspect here has changed very much. But the forces that ruled Russia's past do not seem to have changed to the same extent. In spite of the rise of the proletariate, in spite of all local autonomies, it is doubtful if the true breath of freedom is blowing over the country, if the country is creating out of a deeper soul-vision. Life movement in either of these two countries seems to have a rigid mould; that is because they seek to build or reform, that is to say, fabricate life, in other words, they impose upon life a pattern conceived by notions and prejudgments, even perhaps idio-syncracies. The British are more amenable to change, precisely because they do not force a change and do not know they are changing. The British Empire is more loosely formed, its units have more freedom than is the case with other Empires built upon the pattern of the extremely centralised Roman Empire. Truly it has the spirit of a commonwealth. The spirit of decentralisation and federation that is increasing today and has seized even old-world Empires the Dutch, the French, the Russianhas come largely from the British example. Therefore, the unravelling of the Britain and India tangle would mean the solution of a world-problem. These two countries have been put together precisely because the solution is possible here and an ideal solution for all others to profit by.
The British people do not move by ideals and idealism, as the French do, for example. The French rise naturally in revolt and rebellion and revolution for the sake of an idea the motto of the Great Revolution was "Liberty or Death". Without an upsetting they cannot bring about a change; for the social moulds are rigid and more presistent. The AngloSaxons, on the contrary, go by an unfailing instinct, as it were, gradually and slowly, but surely and inevitablyfrom precedent to precedent", as they themselves say. A life-intuition guides them: the inherent merit of an ideal has not such a great value in their eye, but if the ideal means a practical utility, a thing demanded by time and circumstances, a clear issue out of a dead impasse, well, they hesitate no longer and go about it in right earnest as practical men of affairs.
02.14 - Panacea of Isms, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Again, Nationalism is also not the summum bonum of collective living. The nation has emerged out of the family and the tribe as a greater unit of the human aggregate. But this does not mean that it is the last word on the Subject, that larger units are not to be found or formed. In the present-day juncture it is nationalism that has become a stumbling-block to a fairer solution of human problems. For example, India, Egypt, Ireland, even Poland, whatever may be the justifying reasons, are almost exclusively, chauvinistically, nationalistic. They believe that the attainment of their free, unfettered, separate national existence first will automatically bring in its train all ideal results that have been postponed till now. They do not see, however, that in the actual circumstances an international solution has the greater chance of bringing about a happier solution for the nation too, and not the other way round. The more significant urge today is towards this greater aggregationPan-America, Pan-Russia, Pan-Arabia, a Western European Block and an Eastern European Block are movements that have been thrown up because of 'a greater necessity in human life and its evolution. Man's stupidity, his failure to grasp the situation, his incapacity to march with Nature, his tendency always to fall back, to return to the outdated past may delay or cause a turn or twist in this healthy movement, but it cannot be permanently thwarted or denied for long. Churchill's memorable call to France, on the eve of her debacle, to join and form with Britain a single national union, however sentimental or even ludicrous it may appear to some, is; as we see it, the cry of humanity itself to transcend the modern barriers of nationhood and rise to a higher status of solidarity and collective consciousness.
Internationalism
03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The gradations of consciousness are universal states not dependent on the outlook of the Subjective personality; rather the outlook of the Subjective personality is determined by the grade of consciousness in which it is organised according to its typal nature or its evolutionary stage.
It will be evident that by consciousness is meant something which is essentially the same throughout but variable in status, condition and operation, in which in some grades or conditions the activities we call consciousness can exist either in a suppressed or an unorganised or a differently organised state; while in other states some other activities may manifest which in us are suppressed, unorganised or latent or else are less perfectly manifested, less intensive, extended and powerful than in those higher grades above our highest mental limit.
03.14 - Mater Dolorosa, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The action of the three gunas is the Subject matter of the Veda: but do thou become free from the triple guna, O Arjuna.The Gita, II.45
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04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have said that this methodologism the knowledge of means and the consequent control over means the hall-mark of modern scientific knowledgeis a new degree of self-consciousness which is the special characteristic of the human consciousness. Put philosophically, we can say that the discovery of the Subject and its growing affirmation as an independent factor in a subject-object relation marks the evolutionary course of the human consciousness.
A still further unveiling seems to be in progress now. the Subject has discovered itself as separate from the observed object and still embracing it: but a given subject-object relationship in its turn again is being viewed as itself an object to another subject consciousness, a super-subject. That way lie the ever widening horizons of consciousness opened up by Yoga and spiritual discipline.
In other words, the self-consciousness which marks off man as the highest of living beings as yet evolved by Nature is still not her highest possible instrumentation. As has been experienced and foreseen by Yogins in all ages and climes and as it is being borne in upon the modern mind more and more imperatively, this self-consciousness has to be consciously transcended, lifted, transmutedworked out into the super-consciousness. Such is Nature's evolutionary nisus and such is the truth and fact man is being driven to face in his inner individual consciousness as well as outer collective life.
We can thus note, broadly speaking, three stages in the human cycle of Nature's evolution. The first was the period of emergence of self-consciousness and the trials and experiments it went through to establish and confirm itself. The ancient civilisations represented this character of the human spirit. the Subject freeing itself more and more from its environmental tegument, still living and moving within it and dynamically reacting upon itthis was the character we speak of. Next came the period when the free and dynamic subject feeling itself no more tied down to its natural objective sphere sought lines of development and adventure on its own account. This was the age of speculation and of scholasticism in philosophy and intellectual inquiry and of alchemy in natural sciencea period roughly equated with the Middle Ages. The Scientific Age coming last seeks to re-establish a junction and co-ordination between the free and dynamic self-consciousness and the mode and pattern of its objective field, involving a greater enrichment on one side the Subjective consciousness and on the other, the objective environment, a corresponding change and effective reorganisation.
The present age which ushers a fourth stagesignificantly called turiya or the transcendent, in Indian terminologyis pregnant with a fateful crisis. The stage of self-consciousness to which scientific development has arrived seems to land in a cul-de-sac, a blind alley: Science also is faced, almost helplessly, with the antinomies of reason that Kant discovered long ago in the domain of speculative philosophy. The way out, for a further growth and development and evolution, lies in a supersession of the self-consciousness, an elevation into a super-consciousnessas already envisaged by Yogis and Mystics everywherewhich will give a new potential and harmony to the human consciousness.
05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This faculty of direct knowledge, however, is not such a rare thing as it may appear to be. Indeed if we step outside the circumscribed limits of pure science instances crowd upon us, even in our normal life, which would compel one to conclude that the rational and sensory process is only a fringe and a very small part of a much greater and wider form of knowing. Poets and artists, we all know, are familiar only with that form: without intuition and inspiration they are nothing. Apart from that, modern inquiries and observations have established beyond doubt certain facts of extra-sensory, suprarational perceptionof clairvoyance and clairaudience, of prophecy, of vision into the future as well as into the past. Not only these unorthodox faculties of knowledge, but dynamic powers that almost negate or flout the usual laws of science have been demonstrated to exist and can be and are used by man. The Indian yogic discipline speaks of the eight siddhis, super-natural powers attained by the Yogi when he learns to control nature by the force of his consciousness. Once upon a time these facts were challenged as facts in the scientific world, but it is too late now in the day to deny them their right of existence. Only Science, to maintain its scientific prestige, usually tries to explain such phenomena in the material way, but with no great success. In the end she seems to say these freaks do not come within her purview and she is not concerned with them. However, that is not for us also the Subject for discussion for the moment.
The first point then we seek to make out is that even from a rigid positivist stand a form of knowledge that is not strictly positivist has to be accepted. Next, if we come to the content of the knowledge that is being gained, it is found one is being slowly and inevitably led into a world which is also hardly positivistic. We have in our study of the physical world come in close contact with two disconcerting facts or two ends of one fact the infinitely small and the infinitely large. They have disturbed considerably the normal view of things, the view that dominated Science till yesterday. The laws that hold good for the ordinary sensible magnitudes fail totally, in the case of the infinite magnitudes (whether big or small). In the infinite we begin squaring the circle.
05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Even Eddington is not so absurd or impossible as it may seem to some. He says, as we have seen, that all so-called laws of Nature can be discovered from within the mind itself, can be deduced logically from psychologically given premises: no empiricial observation or objective experimentation is necessary to arrive at them: they are found a priori in the Subject. Now, mystic experience always lays stress on extra-sensory knowledge: it declares that such a knowledge is not only possible, but that this alone is the right and correct knowledge. All thingsmatter and mind and life and allbeing but vibrations of consciousness, even as the colours of a spectrum are vibrations, electro-magnetic waves of different frequency, mystic discipline enables one to enter into that condition in which one's consciousness mingles with all consciousness or with another particular consciousness (Patanjali's term is samyama), and one can have all knowledge that one wishes to have by this inner contact or concentration or identification, one discovers the knowledge within oneself, no external means of sense observation and experimental testing, no empirical inductive process is needed. We do not say that Eddington had in view anything of this kind, but that his attitude points in this direction.
That seems to be the burden, the underlying preoccupation of modern physical science: it has been forced to grope towards some kind of mystic perception; at least, it has been put into a frame of mind, due to the crumbling of the very fundamentals of the past structure, which is less obstructive to other sources and spheres and ways of knowledge. Certainly, we must admit that we have moved very far from Laplace when we hear today a hard-boiled rationalist like De Broglie declare:
05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we seem to circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed from the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed, part and parcel of it that there are scientists who consider their whole scientific scheme of the world as only a mental set-up, we may replace it very soon by another scheme equally cogent, subjective all the same. the Subject has entered into all objects and any definition of the object must necessarily depend upon the particular poise of the Subject. That is the cosmic immanence of the Purusha spoken of in the Upanishads the one Purusha become many and installed in the heart of each and, every object. There is indeed a status of the Subject in which the Subject and the object are gathered into or form one reality. The observer and the observed are the two ends, the polarisation of a single entity: and all are reals at that level. But the scientific observer is only the mental purusha and in his observation the absolute objectivisation is not possible. The Einsteinian equations that purport to rule out all local view-points can hardly be said to have transcended the co-ordinates of the Subject. That is possible only to the consciousness of the cosmic Purusha.
II
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Now, there are four positions possible with regard to the world and reality, depending on the relation between the observer and the observed, the Subject and the object. They are:(I) subjective, (2) objective, (3) subjective objective and (4) objective subjective. The first two are extreme positions, one holding the Subject as the sole or absolute reality, the object being a pure fabrication of its will and idea, an illusion, and the other considering the object as the true reality, the Subject being an outcome, an epiphenomenon of the object itself, an illusion after all. The first leads to radical or as it is called monistic spirituality the type of which is Mayavada: the second is the highway of materialism, the various avataras of which are Marxism, Pragmatism, Behaviourism etc. In between lie the other two intermediate positions according to the stress or value given to either of the two extremes. The first of the intermediates is the position held generally by the idealists, by many schools of spirituality: it is a major Vedantic position. It says that the outside world, the object, is not an illusion, a mere fabrication of the mind or consciousness of the Subject, but that it exists and is as real as the Subject: it is dovetailed into the Subject which is a kind of linchpin, holding together and even energising the object. The object can further be considered as an expression or embodiment of the Subject. Both the Subject and the object are made of the same stuff of consciousness the ultimate reality being consciousness. the Subject is the consciousness turned on itself and the object is consciousness turned outside or going abroad. This is pre-eminently the Upanishadic position. In Europe, Kant holds a key position in this line: and on the whole, idealists from Plato to Bradley and Bosanquet can be said more or less to belong to this category. The second intermediate position views the Subject as imbedded into the object, not the object into the Subject as in the first one: the Subject itself is part of the object something like its self-regarding or self-recording function. In Europe apart possibly from some of the early Greek thinkers (Anaxagoras or Democritus, for example), coming to more recent times, we can say that line runs fairly well-represented from Leibnitz to Bergson. In India the Sankhyas and the Vaisheshikas move towards and approach the position; the Tantriks make a still more near approach.
Once again, to repeat in other terms the distinction which may sometimes appear to carry no difference. First, the Subjective objective in which the Subject assumes the preponderant position, not denying or minimising the reality of the object. The external world, in this view, is a movement in and of the consciousness of a universal subject. It is subjective in the sense that it is essentially a function of the Subject and does not exist apart from it or outside it; it is objective in the sense that it exists really and is not a figment or imaginative construction of any individual consciousness, although it exists in and through the individual consciousness in so far as that consciousness is universalised, is one with the universal consciousness (or the transcendental, the two can be taken together in the present connection). Instead of the Kantian transcendental idealism we can name it transcendental realism.
In the other case the world exists here below in its own reality, outside all apprehending subject; even the universal subject is in a sense part of it, immanent in itit embraces the Subject in its comprehending consciousness and posits it as part of itself or a function of its apprehension. The many Purushas (conscious beings or subjects) are imbedded in the universal Nature, say the Sankhyas. Kali, Divine Nature, is the manifest Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent reality holding within her the transcendent divine Purusha who supports, sanctions and inspires secretly, yet is dependent on the Mahashakti and without her is nothing, unyam. That is how the Tantriks put it. We may mention here, among European philosophers, the rather interesting conclusion of Leibnitz (to which Russell draws our attention): space is subjective to the view of each monad (subject unit) separately, it is objective when it consists of the assemblage of the view-points of all the monads.
The scientific outlook was a protest against the extreme subjective view: it started with the extreme objective standpoint and that remained the fundamental note till the other day, till the fissure of the nucleus opened new horizons to our somewhat bewildered mentality. We seem to have entered into a region where we still hold to the objective, no doubt, but not absolutely free from an insistent presence of the Subjective. It is the second of the intermediate positions we have tried to describe. Science has yet to decide the implications of that position; whether it will try to entrench itself as much as possible on this side of the Subjective or whether it can yield further and go over to or link itself with the deeper subjective position.
The distinction between the two may after all be found to be a matter of stress only, involving no fundamental difference, especially as there are sure to be gradations from the one to the other. The most important landmark, however, the most revolutionary step in modern science would be the discovery of the eternal observer or some sign or image of his seated within the observed phenomena of moving thingspuruah prakritisthohi, as the Gita says.
05.10 - Knowledge by Identity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us go back to our illustration. I am angry means both I am anger and I know I have anger. It is true in fact and experience. Similarly I am (existent) means both I am existence and I know I am existent. The transcendence of the Subject (of which Prof. Das speaks) is nothing but the poise of the consciousness as the apprehending Purusha: it does not negate or exclude identification, which is another arm of a biune process. The two are complementary to each other. Also Purusha and Prakriti are nor contradictories, not mutually exclusive; they are dual aspects or dispositions of the same consciousness or self-conscious reality. Consciousness involved and lost to itself and in itself is Prakriti, consciousness evolved and looking out at itself is Purusha. I am aware of myself and I am myself are two ways of saying the same thing. We imagine Shakespeare expressed the experience graphically and poetically when he made his character say:
Richard loves Richard, that is I am I.
In seeking to disvalue the principle of identity as a fundamental element in knowing, Prof. Das brings in to witness on his side the logical copula. Some logicians, of course, assert a parallelism if not identity between the laws of thought and the laws of language, language being conceived as the very imagea photographof thought, but the truth of the matter is that it is and it is not so, as in many other things. However, here when it is stated that the copula disjoining the Subject and the predicate is the very pattern of all process of knowledge, one mistakes, we are afraid, a scheme or a formula, for the thing itself, a way of understanding a fact for the fact itself. Such a formula for understanding, however it may be valid for more or less analytical languages, those of later growth, need not and did not have the same propriety in respect of other older languages. We know the evolution of language has been in the direction of more and more disjunction of its component limbs even like the progression of the human mind and intellect. The modern analytical languages with their army of independent prepositions have taken the place of the classical languages which were predominantly inflexional. The Greek and Latin started the independent prepositional forms in the form of a fundamentally inflexional structure. Still further back, in Sanskrit for example, the inflexional form reigns supreme. Prefixes and affixes served the role of prepositions. And if we move further backward, the synthetic movement is so complete that the logical components ( the Subject, the copula, the predicate) are fused together into one symbol (the Chinese ideogram). We are here nearer to the original nature and pattern of knowledgea single homogeneous movement of apperception. There is no sanctity or absoluteness in the logical disposition of thought structure; the Aristotelian makes it a triplicity, the Indian Nyaya would extend the dissection to five or seven limbs. But whatever the logical presentation, the original psychological movement is a single indivisible lan and the Vedantic fusion of the knower, the knowledge and the known in identity remains the fundamental fact.
Calcutta Review, 1948 August-September.
05.24 - Process of Purification, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are two typeswhich mean two stagesof control. You can control your nature by the force of your will, as one does a wicked horse by means of the toothed bit. But this control is precarious and the clearing or purification effected is only skin-deep. At the slightest weakening of the will or a momentary lack of vigilance, you may find yourself in the very midst of a volcanic eruption of passions. Even otherwise, even if there happens no external outburst, the burden or pressure of the ignorant nature is always there and the struggle or tension, although thrown into the background, obstructs the nature, does not give it the free and spontaneous higher poise of the spirit. The other control comes from the inmost being, from the spiritual self itself: it is automatic and it is occult in its action and therefore naturally effective. When the Spirit, the Inner Control (Antarymi)works, it happens that even if the desires are there, the occasions for their satisfaction are withdrawn from you. As the Mother says, some people who are destined for the spiritual life lose all earthly props whenever they wish to lean upon them, they lose their endeared objects whenever they are eager to cherish them. At a certain stage of the growth of the inner consciousness, the demand of the soul makes it impossible for the vital (or physico-vital), so far as it is unpurified and unprepared, to secure its objects: even if the lips yearn, the cup is taken away. The circumstances themselves yield to the pressure of the inner being and conspire, as it were, to withhold and remove all dangerous contacts. The being has not to say, "Lead me not into temptation", for the temptations by themselves slip away. That is the earlier poise of the interregnum we are describing; the next poise comes when the wish-impulses, the Subjective vibrations also melt and disappear. Then there appear no such things as temptations. Objects, events, circumstances that might have acted in that role come and go, but the being remains indifferent and unruffled, because suffused with the delight of another contact. The detachment from the worldly is secure and absolute because the being has found its attachment to the Divine. That is the beginning of the integral spiritualisation of the nature.
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07.22 - Mysticism and Occultism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is a thing, however, that can be learnt. But one must have the aptitude. If you have the power latent in you, you can develop it by practice; but if you have not, you can try for 50 years, it will come to nothing. Everybody cannot have the occult power; it is as if you said that everybody in the world could be a musician or a painter or a poet. There are people who can and there are those who cannot. Usually, if you are interested in the Subject, unless it is a mere idle curiosity, it is a sign that you have the gift. You then try. But, as I say, it is to be done with great precaution.
Thus, for example, when one goes out of the body I have often spoken to you of this phenomenon-even if it be just to a little extent, even if only mentally then what goes out is a part of the consciousness that controls the normal activities of the body, what remains is the portion that is automatic, producing the spontaneous involuntary movements such as blood circulation or secretion etc., also other nervous or automatic thought movements; this region is no longer under the control of the conscious thinking part. Now, there is always in the atmosphere around you a good number of small entities, quite small often, that are generally formed out of the disintegrated remains of a dead human being: they are like microbes, the microbes of the vital. They have forms and can be visible and they have a will of their own. You cannot say they are always wicked, but they are full of mischief, that is to say, they like amusing themselves at the cost of human beings. & soon as they see that someone is not sufficiently protected, they rush in and take possession of the mechanical mind and bring about all kinds of disagreeable happeningsnightmares, various physical disturbancesyou feel choked, bite or swallow your tongue and even more serious things. When you wish to go into trance, to have the experience of being outside the body, you must have someone by your side, not only to keep watch on your physical body, but also to prevent the vital entities from getting possession of the nerve centres which, as I said, are no longer under the control and protection of the conscious intelligence. There is a still greater danger. When one goes out of the body in a more or less concrete or material way, retaining only a thin and fragile contacta thread of light, as it werewith the body, this thread of contact must be protected, for the attack of the hostiles may come upon it and cut it; if it is cut one can no longer return into the body, and that means death.
08.07 - Sleep and Pain, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Usually there is a whole group of dreams, useless and tiresome, that prevent you from resting. You must avoid all that. You can avoid them, if just before you go to sleep you make a little effort at concentration, that is to say, try to be in relation with what is best in yourself, through an aspiration or a prayer. You do that and go to sleep. Now, if you have done your concentration in some way successfully, you are likely to get a kind of dreams, rather experiences in sleep which you remember, which are useful indications or signs about problems for which you had had no answer; it may be on the Subject of certain circumstances where you have to take a decision and are unable to do So; or it may be something in your consciousness which is not clear to you in your waking state, because you are not in the habit of noticing or recognizing it normally, but which you feel in some way doing you harm. All these things may appear to you in a revealing symbolic dream. Things are clear which were obscure before. And this does not depend upon what you have been or were doing the whole day long, but much upon the way in which' you get into sleep. A minute of sincere aspiration just before going to sleep is sufficient to make of your sleep a powerful help instead of an agent for obscuration.
There is also a proper way of getting out of sleep, as there is a proper way of getting into it. Instead of jumping out of the bed as soon as you are awake or moving about in it, you should keep quiet and still as you awake; you awake slowly without the least movement in your limbs; you feel a sort of vague impression left in you of something that has happened, something peculiar and even strange. Keep yourself still and observe, observe closely and attentively. Slowly you perceive a kind of half memory emerging of an activity in your past night. Remain concentrated and always still and immobile, gradually something like the tail-end of a dream appears and if you pull at it, follow it up, that is to say, backwardalways keeping yourself quietyou can recollect practically the whole of your dream, quite an interesting activity of yours in the night.
09.02 - The Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I stoop not with the Subject mob of minds
Who run to glean with eager satisfied hands
09.12 - The True Teaching, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On other occasions, the question posed and the Subject chosen are conveyed by the mind to the higher Consciousness. The mind receives a response from that Consciousness and conveys it through the word. This is what generally happens in all teachings, provided that the one who teaches has the capacity to pass the question on to the higher Consciousnessa capacity not always present.
I should tell you that the second method does not interest me much. Very often, when the question or the Subject fails to give me the possibility of entering into a state of consciousness that interests me, I far prefer to keep silent. And it is, as it were, a sense of duty that makes me talk.
I am informing you in advance, because in the past I have cut short the conversation and passed abruptly into meditation.
1.001 - The Aim of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
All our knowledge is insufficient, inadequate, temporal, empirical ultimately useless. It does not touch the core of life. Therefore, we will find that any learned person, whatever be the depth of his learning, whatever be the greatness of his scholarship, is miserable in the end. The reason is that life is different from this kind of knowledge. It is an all-comprehensive organic being in which the knowing individual is unfortunately included, a fact which misses the attention of every person. It is not possible for anyone to observe or see or know anything, inasmuch as the conditions which describe the object of observation also condition the Subject of observation. The Veda points this out in a mystical formula:tam eva viditv atimtyum eti nnya panth vidyate ayanya. Now, when it is said, by knowing 'That', every problem is solved, the Veda does not mean knowing this object or that object, or this person or that person, or this thing or that thing, or this subject or that subject it is nothing of that kind. It is a 'That' with a capital 'T', which means to say, the true object of knowledge. The true object of knowledge is to be known, and when 'That' is known, all problems are solved.
What are problems? A problem is a situation that has arisen on account of the irreconcilability of one person, or one thing, with the status and condition of another person, or another thing. I cannot reconcile my position with your position; this is a problem. You cannot reconcile your position with mine; this is a problem. Why should there be such a condition? How is it that it is not possible for me to reconcile myself with you? It is not possible because there is no clear perception of my relationship with you. I have a misconceived idea of my relationship with you and, therefore, there is a misconceived adjustment of my personality with yours, and a misconception cannot solve a problem. The problem is nothing but this misconception nothing else. The irreconcilability of one thing with another arises on account of the basic difficulty I mentioned, that the person who wishes to bring about this reconciliation, or establish a proper relationship, misses the point of one's own vital connection underline the word 'vital' with the object or the person with which, or with whom, this reconciliation is to be effected. Inasmuch as this kind of knowledge is beyond the purview or capacity of the ordinary human intellect, the knowledge of the Veda is regarded as supernormal, superhuman: apaurusheya not created or manufactured by an individual. This is not knowledge that has come out of reading books. This is not ordinary educational knowledge. It is a knowledge which is vitally and organically related to the fact of life. I am as much connected with the fact of life as you are, and so in my observation and study and understanding of you, in my relationship with you, I cannot forget this fact. The moment I disconnect myself from this fact of life which is unanimously present in you as well as in me, I miss the point, and my effort becomes purposeless.
1.008 - The Principle of Self-Affirmation, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Likewise, what type of assertion we are making is a different matter it is a detail. But why we are making this assertion at all is the Subject for analysis in yoga. Why is it that today we identify ourself as a sannyasi "I am a mandaleshwar" and we go on asserting that we are mandaleshwars; we are officers; we are such and such; we are this and that. This principle of affirmation is a peculiar twist in consciousness that has got identified with a changing condition. Every condition changes. We cannot have a permanent condition in life, so the affirmation of the ego also goes on changing. How do we know what we were in the previous birth? We had a different type of affirmation at that time. Who was our father in a previous birth? Who was our mother? And what has happened to that father and that mother? We have completely forgotten them. We now have another father and mother. In the next birth, what will happen to us? We will have some other father and mother. How many fathers? How many mothers? How many sisters? How many brothers? How many friends? How many enemies? So, who is our friend and who is our enemy? Who is our father and who is our mother.
The ego does not want all these questions to be raised; it cannot answer these questions. It is a terrific sword that we brandish before it, to put these questions to it. It will become mad if such questions are put. It doesn't want to listen to all these things; it will affirm a particular condition only. Immediately there is a ramification with two tentacles on one side there is love and on the other side there is hatred. They are automatic manifestations of the principle of individuality. The moment we assert ourselves in a particular condition, love and hatred must be there, because love is an automatic projection of the mind in respect of the counterpart of our present condition, which also explains hatred.
1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The worst thing for a person would be to get involved in something and not know that it has happened, because in such a case, observation, experiment, and analysis would not be possible. There should be some sort of a possibility for objective observation by a state of mind which will act as a witness of these conditions which are to be observed. But when these conditions to be observed get identified with the witnessing consciousness itself, then observation is not possible. So, self-analysis is a very difficult process. It is a difficult process because in the self which is to be analysed, the Subject and the object cannot be distinguished, and we are used to only those types and kinds of analyses where the objects of observation stand outside the Subject of investigation. Self-investigation is difficult merely for this reason. One cannot know oneself, analyse oneself, study oneself, examine oneself, or treat oneself, for obvious reasons.
Why has this situation arisen? Why this vehement affirmation of the ego, this assertion of the mind in respect of a particular condition which is passing, transitory, phenomenal? The attachment of the mind to a particular condition is the principle of egoism. Why does it happen? Why does it breed the further problems of like, dislike, love of physical life, individual life, fear of death, etc.? This happens because of a background which is still deeper than this particular psychological involvement. The very belief in the reality of externals is the cause for this calamity, because the moment we have a conviction that an object of perception is real, we have to develop a real attitude towards it. The perception of the object as something real is the beginning of the trouble. The trouble then intensifies itself as a compulsive activity towards the development of an attitude towards that object. The precondition of this attitude is egoism.
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So, it would not be judicious on the part of any individual to vehemently assert that the physical perceptions of the world are all-in-all. The materialist's conception is, therefore, not correct, because this conception arises on account of a miscalculated attitude towards everything. This is the reason why, in the practice of yoga, expert guidance is called for, because we are dealing with matters that are super-intellectual, super-rational. Here our own understanding is not of much use, nor are books of any use, because we are treading on dangerous ground which the mind has not seen and cannot contemplate. We are all a wonder, says the scripture. This is a mystery, a wonder. It is a wonder because it is not capable of intellectually being analysed. The scripture proclaims that the Subject is a great mystery, a great wonder and marvel; and one who teaches it is also a marvel, and the one who receives this knowledge, who understands it the disciple is also a wonder, indeed, because though the broadcasting station is powerful, the receiver-set also must be equally powerful to receive the message. The bamboo stick will not receive the message of the BBC. So the disciple is also a wonder to receive this mysterious knowledge, as the teacher himself is a wonder; and the Subject is a marvel by itself.
Thus arises the need to be cautious in the adjustment of the mind and the judgement of values in life. The sutras of Patanjali that I referred to give only a hint, and do not enter into details the hint being that the vrittis or the modifications of the mind are of a twofold character, which I translated as determinate and indeterminate, and have to be gradually controlled. This control of the vrittis or the modifications of the mind is regarded as yoga: yoga citta vtti nirodha (I.2). Yoga is the control of the modifications of 'the stuff' of the mind, the very substance of psychological action. Not merely the external modifications, but the very 'stuff' of it, the very root of it, has to be controlled, and this is done in and by successive stages. We have always to move from the effect to the cause in the manner indicated in this analysis that we have made.
1.00a - DIVISION A - THE INTERNAL FIRES OF THE SHEATHS., #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
From the very use of the term "sheath" it will be noted that we are considering those fires which manifest through the medium of those externalities, of those veils of substance which hide and conceal the inner Reality. We shall not here take up the Subject of the sheaths on the higher planes, but simply deal with the fires that animate the three lower vehicles,the physical body in its two divisions (etheric and dense), the emotional or astral body, and the mental sheath. It is frequently overlooked by the casual student that both the astral and the mental bodies are material, and just as material in their own way, as is the dense physical body, and also that the substance of which they are composed is animated by a triple fire, as is the physical.
In the physical body we have the fires of the lower nature (the animal plane) centralised at the base of the spine. They are situated at a spot which stands in relation to the physical body as the physical sun to the solar system. This central point of heat radiates in all directions, using the spinal column as its main artery, but working in close connection with certain central ganglia, wherever located, and having a special association with the spleen.
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We might now briefly consider the Subject of the fire elementals and devas, and then deal with the relation of the Personality Ray to this internal fire of the system in its threefold manifestation.
Certain facts are known in connection with the fire spirits (if so they may be termed). The fundamental fact that should here be emphasised is that AGNI, the Lord of Fire, rules over all the fire elementals and devas on the three planes of human evolution, the physical, the astral, and the mental, and rules over them not only on this planet, called the Earth, but on the three planes in all parts of the system. He is one of the seven Brothers (to use an expression familiar to students of the Secret Doctrine) Who each embody one of the seven principles, or Who are in Themselves the seven centres in the body of the cosmic Lord of Fire, called by H. P. B. "Fohat." He is that active fiery Intelligence, Who is the basis of the internal fires of the solar system. On each plane one of these Brothers holds sway, and the three elder Brothers (for always the three will be seen, and later the seven, who eventually merge into the primary three) rule on the first, third and the fifth planes, or on the plane of adi, of atma [xxii]22 and of manas. It is urgent that we here remember that They are fire viewed [66] in its third aspect, the fire of matter. In Their totality these seven Lords form the essence of the cosmic Lord, called in the occult books, Fohat. [xxiii]23
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I do not think I am boasting unfairly when I say that my personal researches have been of the greatest value and importance to the study of the Subject of Magick and Mysticism in general, especially my integration of the various thought-systems of the world, notably the identification of the system of the Yi King with that of the Qabalah. But I do assure you that the whole of my life's work, were it multiplied a thousand fold, would not be worth one ti the of the value of a single verse of The Book of the Law.
I think you should have a copy of The Equinox of the Gods and make The Book of the Law your constant study. Such value as my own work may possess for you should amount to no more than an aid to the interpretation of this book.
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No, there is this factor in all success: self-confidence. If we analyze this, we find that it means that one is aware that all one's mental and physical faculties are working harmoniously. The deadliest and subtlest enemy of that feeling is anxiety about the result; the finest gauze of doubt is enough to dim one's vision, to throw the entire field out of focus. Hence, even to be aware that there is a result in prospect must militate against that serenity of spirit which is the essence of self-confidence. As you will know, all our automatic physiological functions are deranged if one is aware of This then, is the difficulty, to enjoy consciously while not disturbing the process involved. The obvious physical case is the sexual act: perhaps its chief importance is just that it is a type of this exceptional spiritual-mental condition. I hope, however, that you will remember what I have said on the Subject in paragraphs 1517 of my 3rd Lecture on Yoga for Yellowbellies (pp. 71-72); there is a way of obtaining ecstacy from the most insignificant physiological function. Observe that in transferring the whole consciousness to (say) one's little finger or big toe is not trying to interfere with the normal exercise of its activities, but only to realize what is going on in the organism, the exquisite pleasure of a function in its normal activity. With a little imagination one can conceive the analogical case of the Universe itself; and, still less fettered by even the mildest limitation which material symbols necessarily (however little) suggest, "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; ..." (AL, II, 9).
Is it too bold to suggest that the gradual merging of all these Ways into an interwoven unity may be taken as one mode of presentation of the Accomplishment of the Great Work itself?
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P.S. I must write at length about the Higher Self or "God within us," too easy to get muddled about it, and the Subject requires careful preparation.
666
1.00b - DIVISION B - THE PERSONALITY RAY AND FIRE BY FRICTION, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
We here touch upon a matter of wide general interest yet which is withal very little comprehended. I refer to the Subject of the permanent atoms. [xxvi]26 Each body or form wherein Spirit functions has, for its focal point on each plane, an atom composed of matter of the atomic subplane of each plane. This serves as a nucleus for the distribution of force, for the conservation of faculty, for the assimilation of experience, and for the preservation [70] of memory. These atoms are in direct connection with one or other of the three great rays in connection with the microcosm:
a. The Monadic Ray, the synthetic ray of the microcosm.
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There is great interest attached to this subject and wide reaches of thought and vast fields for investigation open up before the earnest student. This threefold action varies in point of time and sequence according to the ray itself upon which the Monad may be found; but the Subject is too vast to be handled at this time.
In looking at the matter from the standpoint of fire the idea may be grasped a little through the realisation that the latent fire of matter in the atom is brought into brilliance and usefulness by the action of the personality Ray which merges with this fire and stands in the same position to the permanent atom in the microcosm as FOHAT does on the cosmic plane. The fire is there hidden within the sphere (whether the sphere systemic or the sphere atomic) and the personality Ray in the one case, and Fohat in the other, acts as the force which brings latency into activity and potentiality into demonstrated power. This correspondence should be thought out with care and judgment. Just as Fohat has to do with active manifestation or objectivity, so the personality Ray has to do with the third, or activity aspect in the microcosm. The work of the third aspect logoic was the arranging of the matter of the system so that eventually it could be built into form through the power of the second aspect. Thus the correspondence works out. By life upon the physical plane (that life wherein the physical permanent atom has its full demonstration) the matter is arranged and separated that must eventually be built into the Temple of Solomon, the egoic body, through the agency of the egoic life, the second [73] aspect. In the quarry of the personal life are the stones prepared for the great Temple. In existence upon the physical plane and in the objective personal life is that experience gained which demonstrates as faculty in the Ego. What is here suggested would richly repay our closest attention, and open up before us reaches of ideas, which should eventuate in a wiser comprehension, a sounder judgment, and a greater encouragement to action.
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The karma [xxxi]31, [xxxii]32, [xxxiii]33 of matter itself is an abstruse subject and has as yet scarcely been hinted at. It is nevertheless indissolubly mixed up with the karma of the individual. It involves a control of the evolution of the monadic essence, the elemental essence and of the atomic matter of the plane; it is concerned with the development of the four spirillae, with their activity, with their attachment to forms when atomic, and with the development of the inner latent heat and its gradual fiery increase until we have within the atom a repetition of what is seen within the causal body: the destruction of the periphery of the atom by the means of burning. It deals with the Subject of the building of matter into form by the interaction of the two rays, the Divine and the Primordial, producing thereby that fire by friction which tends to life and fusing.
The karma of form is likewise a vast subject, too [76] involved for average comprehension but a factor of real importance which should not be overlooked in connection with the evolution of a world, a synthesis of worlds, or of a system when viewed from higher levels. Everything is, in its totality, the result of action taken by cosmic Essences and Entities in earlier solar systems, which is working out through the individual atoms, and through those congeries of atoms which we call forms. The effect of the personality Ray upon the internal fires is therefore, in effect, the result of the influence of the planetary Logos of whatever ray is implicated, as He works out that portion of Karma which falls to His share in any one cycle, greater or lesser. He thus brings about and eventually transmutes, the effects of causes which He set in motion earlier in relation to His six Brothers, the other planetary Logoi. We get an illustrative parallel in the effect which one individual will have upon another in worldly contact, in moulding and influencing, in stimulating or retarding. We have to remember that all fundamental influence and effects are felt on the astral plane and work thence through the etheric to the dense physical thereby bringing matter under its sphere of influence, yet not itself originating on the physical plane.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
spiritual knowledge. When poets or metaphysicians talk about the Subject matter of
the Perennial Philosophy, it is generally at second hand. But in every age there have
1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
In dealing with the Subject of the etheric body and its functions as an assimilator and distributor of prana, we have dealt with it from the standpoint of its place in the scheme of things. We have considered this matter of etherics from the angle of correspondences, and have traced analogies in the system, the planet, and man. We have seen that it formed the foundation of the dense physical form, and in itself constituted a most important link between:
a. Physical man, and the emotional or astral plane.
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We might now narrow the Subject down to the consideration of the etheric body of the human being and not touch upon correspondences to things systemic or cosmic at all, though it may be necessary to remind ourselves that for the wise student the line along which wisdom [88] comes is the interpretative one; he who knows himself (in objective manifestation, essential quality, and comprehensive development) knows likewise the Lord of his Ray, and the Logos of his system. It is only then a matter of application, conscious expansion, and intelligent interpretation, coupled to a wise abstention from dogmatic assertion, and a recognition that the correspondence lies in quality and method more than in detailed adherence to a specified action at any given time in evolution.
All that it is possible to give here is material which, if rightly pondered on, may result in more intelligent practical living in the occult sense of the term "living"; which, if studied scientifically, religiously and philosophically, may lead to the furthering of the aims of the evolutionary process in the immediately coming lesser cycle. Our aim, therefore, is to make the secondary body of man more real, and to show some of its functions and how it can eventually be brought consciously into the range of mental comprehension.
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the Subject has necessarily to be handled in a superficial manner, and only outlines and scattered hints can be given. Nevertheless, it will be found that if this teaching is studied with care, it will convey a knowledge of truths whose calibre and content will prove invaluable and of a kind hitherto not given out. The place of the etheric sheath as a separator or ring-pass-not, and its functions as a receiver and distributor of prana, are dealt with here in a larger sense than heretofore, and the Subject may later be enlarged.
DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA - Part 2
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We have touched but little on the Subject of the fire, the purpose of the etheric body being to convey it and distribute it to all parts of its system. We have dwelt on facts which might stimulate interest and emphasise the utility of this pranic vehicle. Certain facts need emphasis and consideration as we study this static ring and its circulating fires. Let me briefly recapitulate for the sake of clarity:
The System receives prana from cosmic sources via three centres, and redistributes it to all parts of its extended influence, or to the bounds of the solar etheric web. This cosmic prana becomes colored by solar quality and reaches the furthest confines of the system. Its mission might be described as the vitalisation of the vehicle which is the physical material expression of the solar Logos.
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We have considered the reception and distribution of pranic emanations in man, the planet, and the system, and have seen what produces temporary disorders, and the devitalisation or the over-vitalisation of the organic form. Now we can look at the Subject from a third angle and therefore study:
c. Microcosmic static disorders, or a consideration of the etheric body in connection with its work of providing a ring-pass-not from the purely physical to the astral. As has been said, both here and in the books of H. P. B., the ring-pass-not [l]48a is that confining barrier which acts as a separator or a division between a system and that which is external to that system. This, as may well be seen, has its interesting correlations when the Subject is viewed (as we must consistently endeavour to view it) from the point of view of a human being, a planet and a system, remembering always that in dealing with the [111] etheric body we are dealing with physical matter. This must ever be borne carefully in mind. Therefore, one paramount factor will be found in all groups and formations, and this is the fact that the ring-pass-not acts only as a hindrance to that which is of small attainment in evolution, but forms no barrier to the more progressed. The whole question depends upon two things, which are the karma of the man, the planetary Logos, and the solar Logos, and the dominance of the spiritual indwelling entity over its vehicle.
IV. MACROCOSMIC AND MICROCOSMIC ETHERS
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Third. This leads finally, to the scattering of the atoms of the etheric body into their primordial condition. the Subjective life, the synthesis of will and love taking active form, is withdrawn. The partnership is dissolved. The form then breaks up; the magnetism that has held it in coherent shape is no longer present, and dissipation is complete. Matter persists, but the form no longer persists.
The work of the second Logos ends, and the divine [132] incarnation of the Son is concluded. But the faculty or inherent quality of matter also persists, and at the end of each period of manifestation, matter (though distributed again into its primal form) is active intelligent matter plus the gain of objectivity, and the increased radiatory and latent activity which it has gained through experience. Let us illustrate: The matter of the solar system, when undifferentiated, was active intelligent matter, and that is all that can be predicated of it. This active intelligent matter was matter qualified by an earlier experience, and coloured by an earlier incarnation. Now this matter is in form, the solar system is not in pralaya but in objectivity,this objectivity having in view the addition of another quality to the logoic content, that of love and wisdom. Therefore at the next solar pralaya, at the close of the one hundred years of Brahma, the matter of the solar system will be coloured by active intelligence, and by active love. This means literally that the aggregate of solar atomic matter will eventually vibrate to another key than it did at the first dawn of manifestation.
1.00c - INTRODUCTION, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
extraneous to the Subject, I may remark that this idea explains
the ethical theory that you must not hate, and must love,
1.00d - DIVISION D - KUNDALINI AND THE SPINE, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Very briefly, owing to the impossibility of revealing much on this necessarily dangerous subject, we will consider the Subject of kundalini and the spine.
We must remember here that we are dealing with the etheric counterpart of the spine, and not with the bony structure which we call the spine or spinal column. This is a fact not sufficiently recognised by those who treat of the matter. Too much emphasis has been laid on the three spinal channels that compose the threefold spinal cord.
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No more can be imparted concerning this subject. He who directs his efforts to the control of the fires of matter, is (with a dangerous certainty) playing with a fire that may literally destroy him. He should not cast his eyes backwards, but should lift them to the plane where dwells his immortal Spirit, and then by self-discipline, mind-control and a definite refining of his material bodies, whether subtle or physical, fit himself to be a vehicle for the divine birth, and participate in the first Initiation. When the Christ-child (as the Christian so beautifully expresses it) has been born in the cave of the heart, then that divine guest can consciously control the lower material bodies by means of consecrated mind. Only when buddhi has assumed an ever-increasing control [140] of the personality, via the mental plane (hence the need of building the antaskarana), will the personality respond to that which is above, and the lower fires mount and blend with the two higher. Only when Spirit, by the power of thought, controls the material vehicles, does the Subjective life assume its rightful place, does the God within shine and blaze forth till the form is lost from sight, and "The path of the just shine ever more and more until the day be with us."
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
We will now endeavor to confine ourselves strictly to the Subject of fire in matter, and its active effect upon the sheaths of which it is the animating factor, and upon the centers which come primarily under its control.
As we have been told, and as is generally recognised, the effect of heat in matter is to produce that activity which we call rotary, or the revolution of the spheres. Some of the ancient books, and among them a few that are not yet accessible in the occident, have taught that the entire vault of heaven is a vast sphere, revolving slowly like a stupendous wheel, and carrying with it, in its revolution, the entire number of constellations and of universes contained within it. This is a statement unverifiable by the finite mind of man at his present stage, and with his present scientific accessories, but (like all occult statements) it contains within it the seed of thought, the germ of truths, and the clue to the mystery of the universe. Suffice it here to say, that the rotation of the spheres within the solar periphery is a recognized occult fact, and indications are available to prove that science itself likewise formulates the hypothesis that the solar ring-pass-not similarly rotates in its appointed place among the constellations. But at this juncture we will not deal with this angle of the Subject, but will study the rotary action of the spheres of the system, and of its contentall the lesser spheres of every degreeremembering ever to keep the distinction clearly in mind that we are dealing now simply with the inherent characteristic of matter itself, and not with matter in co-operation with [152] its opposite, Spirit, which co-operation brings about spiral-cyclic movement.
II. THE EFFECTS OF ROTARY MOTION
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We can take up this matter of the centres along three lines. Much has been written and discussed anent the centres, and much mystery exists which has aroused the curiosity of the ignorant, and has tempted many to meddle with that which does not concern them. I seek to elucidate somewhat and to give a new angle of vision to [162] the study of these abstruse matters. I do not in any way intend to take up the Subject from such an angle as to convey rules and information that will enable a man to vivify these centres and bring them into play. I sound here a solemn word of warning. Let a man apply himself to a life of high altruism, to a discipline that will refine and bring his lower vehicles into subjection, and to a strenuous endeavor to purify and control his sheaths. When he has done this and has both raised and stabilised his vibration, he will find that the development and functioning of the centres has pursued a parallel course, and that (apart from his active participation) the work has proceeded along the desired lines. Much danger and dire calamity attends the man who arouses these centres by unlawful methods, and who experiments with the fires of his body without the needed technical knowledge. He may, by his efforts, succeed in arousing the fires and in intensifying the action of the centres, but he will pay the price of ignorance in the destruction of matter, in the burning of bodily or brain tissue, in the development of insanity, and in opening the door to currents and forces, undesirable and destructive. It is not the part of a coward, in these matters concerning the Subjective life, to move with caution and with care; it is the part of discretion. The aspirant, therefore, has three things to do:
1. Purify, discipline and transmute his threefold lower nature.
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All that is intended to do in this treatise, is to cast some further light upon these centres, to show their interrelation, and to trace the effects produced by their rightful development. To do this, as before stated, the Subject will be divided into the following divisions:
1. The nature of the centres.
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As can be seen from the above tabulation, the Subject is not only vast but abstruse. This is principally owing to the fact that until the race is normally clairvoyant, it is not in a position to verify what is said, and has to accept the statements of those who profess to know. Later when man can see and prove for himself, it will be possible to check up these statements; the time is not yet, except for the few.
1. The Nature of the Centres.
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Not much can be here imparted, as the Subject, if dealt with at all fully, would convey too much information to those liable to misuse it. As we know, the evolution of the centres is a slow and gradual thing, and proceeds in ordered cycles varying according to the ray of a man's Monad.
[174]
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Before taking up the Subject of kundalini and the centres, it would be well to extend the information given above, from its prime significance for man, as that which concerns himself, to the solar system, the macrocosm, and to the cosmos. What can be predicated of the microcosm is naturally true of the macrocosm and of the cosmos. It will not be possible to give the systemic triangles, for the information would have to be so blinded that, except for those who have occult knowledge and the intuition developed, it would be practically useless intellectually, but certain things may be pointed out in this connection that may be of interest.
The Solar System. We might briefly look at this from [180] the standpoint of the centres of the Heavenly Men and of the Grand Man of the Heavens, the Logos.
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b. Touch. In taking up the Subject of the second sense, that of touch, we must note that this sense is pre-eminently the sense of very great importance in this, the second, solar systema system of astral-buddhic consciousness. [lxxxiii]81 Each of these senses, after having reached a certain point, begins to synthesise with the others in such a way that it is almost impossible to know where one begins and the other ends. Touch is that innate recognition of contact through the exercise of manas or mind in a threefold manner:
As recognition.
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Each of the five senses, when coupled with manas, develops within the Subject a concept embodying the past, the present and the future. Therefore when a man is very highly evolved, has transcended time (as known in the three worlds), and can therefore look at the three lower planes from the standpoint of the Eternal Now, he has superseded the senses by full active consciousness. He knows, and needs not the senses to guide him any longer to knowledge. But in time, and in the three worlds, each sense on each plane is employed to convey to the Thinker some aspect of the not-self, and by the aid [194] of mind, the Thinker can then adjust his relationship thereto.
Hearing gives him an idea of relative direction, and enables a man to fix his place in the scheme and to locate himself.
--
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.
1.00g - Foreword, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"This plan has been put into action; the idea has been to cover the Subjects from every possible angle. The style has been colloquial and fluent; technical terms have either been carefully avoided or most carefully explained; and the letter has not been admitted to the series until the querent has expressed satisfaction. Some seventy letters, up to the present have been written, but still there seem to be certain gaps in the demonstration, like those white patches on the map of the World, which looked so tempting fifty years ago.
"This memorandum is to ask for your collaboration and support. A list, indicating briefly the Subject of each letter already written, is appended. Should you think that any of those will help you in your own problems, a typed copy will be sent to you at once ... Should you want to know anything outside the scope, send in your question (stated as fully and clearly as possible) ... The answer should reach you, bar accidents, in less than a month ... It is proposed ultimately to issue the series in book form."
This has now been done.
1.00 - INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
We purpose in these few introductory remarks to lay down the foundation for a 'Treatise on Cosmic Fire,' and to consider the Subject of fire both macrocosmically and microcosmically, thus dealing with it from the standpoint of the solar system, and of a human being. This will necessitate some preliminary technicalities which may seem at first perusal to be somewhat abstruse and complicated but which, when meditated upon and studied, may eventually prove illuminating and of an elucidating nature, and which also, when the mind has familiarised itself with some of the details, may come to be regarded as providing a logical hypothesis concerning the nature and origin of energy. We have elsewhere, in an earlier book, touched somewhat upon this matter, but we desire to recapitulate and in so doing to enlarge, thus laying down a broad foundation upon which the Subject matter can be built up, and providing a general outline which will serve to show the limits of our discussion.
Let us, therefore, look at the Subject macrocosmically and then trace the correspondence in the microcosm, or human being.
I. FIRE IN THE MACROCOSM
--
These three expressions of the divine Life may be regarded as expressing the triple mode of manifestation. First, the objective or tangible universe; second, the Subjective worlds or form; and thirdly, the spiritual aspect which is to be found at the heart of all. [viii] 8 The internal fires that animate and vitalise shew themselves in a twofold manner:
[42]
--
The whole matter dealt with in this Treatise concerns the Subjective essence of the solar system, not primarily either the objective or spiritual aspect. It concerns the Entities who indwell the form, who demonstrate as animating factors through the medium of matter, and primarily through etheric matter; who are evolving a second faculty, the fire of mind, and who are essentially themselves points of fire, cast off through cosmic friction, produced by the turning of the cosmic wheel, swept into temporary limited manifestation and due eventually to return to their central cosmic centre. They will return plus the results of evolutionary growth, and through assimilation they will have intensified their fundamental nature, and be spiritual fire plus the fire manasic.
The internal fire of matter is called in the Secret Doctrine "Fire by Friction." It is an effect and not a cause. It is produced by the two fires of spirit and of mind (electric and solar fire) contacting each other through the medium of matter. This energy demonstrates in [51] matter itself as the internal fires of the sun, and of the planets and finds a reflection in the internal fires of man. Man is the Flame Divine and the fire of Mind brought into contact through the medium of substance or form. When evolution ends, the fire of matter is not cognisable. It persists only when the other two fires are associated, and it does not persist apart from substance itself.
--
Later we will elaborate on this when we consider the Fire of Mind and deal with the nature of the thought elementals. All these elementals and devas are under the control of the fire Lord, Agni. When considering Him and His kingdom the Subject can be taken up at greater length.
We might here point out, however, that our first two statements concerning the internal fires, express the effect that the fire entities have upon their environment. Heat and radiation are other terms which might be applied in this sense. Each of these effects produces a [53] different class of phenomena. Latent fire causes the active growth of that in which it is embedded and causes that upward pushing which brings into manifestation all that is found in the kingdoms of nature. Radiatory fire causes the continued growth of that which has progressed, under the influence of latent fire, to a point receptive of the radiatory. Let us tabulate it thus:
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
It is forbidden you to wed your fathers' wives. We shrink, for very shame, from treating of the Subject of boys. Fear ye the Merciful, O peoples of the world! Commit not that which is forbidden you in Our Holy Tablet, and be not of those who rove distractedly in the wilderness of their desires.
108
1.00 - Preliminary Remarks, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Part II, "Magick," is more advanced in style than Part I; the student is expected to know a little of the literature of the Subject, and to be able to take an intelligent view of it. This part is, however, really explanatory of Part I, which is a crude outline sketch only.
If both parts are thoroughly studied and understood, the pupil will have obtained a real grasp of all the fundamentals and essentials of both Magick and Mysticism.
--
Finally something happens whose nature may form the Subject of a further discussion later on. For the moment let it suffice to say that this consciousness of the Ego and the non-Ego, the seer and the thing seen, the knower and the thing known, is blotted out.
There is usually an intense light, an intense sound, and a feeling of such overwhelming bliss that the resources of language have been exhausted again and again in the attempt to describe it.
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
38. In Psychological Types (1921) Jung noted that in psychology, conceptions are a product of the Subjective psychological constellation of the researcher (CW 6, 9). This reflexivity formed an important theme in his later work (see my jung and the Making of Modem Psychology: The
Dream of a Science, I).
1.01 - About the Elements, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The analysis of the elements will also be discussed and the great practical value of them underlined, so that every scientist, whether he be a chemist, a physician, a magnetizer, an occultist, a magician, a mystic, a quabbalist or a yogi, etc., can derive his practical benefit from it. Should I succeed in teaching the reader so far that he is able to deal with the Subject in the proper way and to find the practical key to the branch of knowledge most suitable for him, I will be glad to see that the purpose of my book has been fulfiled.
1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
today, that they had no thoughts whatever on the Subject. On
the other hand, the gods of the strangers still had unexhausted
--
am always the Subject that has an object. There I am utterly one
with the world, so much a part of it that I forget all too easily
1.01 - Asana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In a sense this is true, because any posture becomes uncomfortable sooner or later. The steadiness and easiness mark a definite attainment, as will be explained later on. Hindu books, such as the "Shiva Sanhita," give countless postures; many, perhaps most of them, impossible for the average adult European. Others insist that the head, neck, and spine should be kept vertical and straight, for reasons connected with the Subject of Prana, which will be dealt with in its proper place. The positions illustrated in Liber E (Equinox I and VII) form the best guide.
footnote: Here are four:
--
The extreme of Asana is practised by those Yogis who remain in one position without moving, except in the case of absolute necessity, during their whole lives. One should not criticise such persons without a thorough knowledge of the Subject. Such knowledge has not yet been published.
However, one may safely assert that since the great men previously mentioned did not do this, it will not be necessary for their followers. Let us then choose a suitable position, and consider what happens. There is a sort of happy medium between rigidity and limpness; the muscles are not to be strained; and yet they are not allowed to be altogether slack. It is difficult to find a good descriptive word. "Braced" is perhaps the best. A sense of physical alertness is desirable. Think of the tiger about to spring, or of the oarsman waiting for the gun. After a little there will be cramp and fatigue. The student must now set his teeth, and go through with it. The minor sensations of itching, etc., will be found to pass away, if they are resolutely neglected, but the cramp and fatigue may be expected to increase until the end of the practice. One may begin with half an hour or an hour. The student must not mind if the process of quitting the Asana involves several minutes of the acutest agony.
1.01 - Description of the Castle, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
1. Plan of this book. 2. The Interior Castle. 3. Our curable self ignorance. 4. God dwells in the centre of the soul. 5. Why all souls do not receive certain favours. 6. Reasons for speaking of these favours. 7. The entrance of the Castle. 8. Entering into oneself. 9. Prayer. 10. Those who dwell in the first mansion. 11. Entering. 12. Difficulties of the Subject.
1.: WHILE I was begging our Lord to-day to speak for me, since I knew not what to say nor how to commence this work which obedience has laid upon me, an idea occurred to me which I will explain, and which will serve as a foundation for that I am about to write.
--
12.: You may think, my daughters, that all this does not concern you, because, by God's grace, you are farther advanced; still, you must be patient with me, for I can explain myself on some spiritual matters concerning prayer in no other way. May our Lord enable me to speak to the point; the Subject is most difficult to understand without personal experience of such graces. Any one who has received them will know how impossible it is to avoid touching on subjects which, by the mercy of God, will never apply to us.
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
The reader will perceive that I am treating the Subject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable.
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
everywhere, but we cannot pursue the Subject any further here.
In the brief limits of this foreword these slight indications must
1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
and subjective. It is difficult, after all, to realize the Subjective nature of fear, and not to feel threat as part of
the real world.
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
The heart of man while in the spiritual world knew its maker and creator; it had mingled with angels and knew for what service it was created; and in the assembly where they said, "Yes," it was intoxicated as with wine at the [26] interrogation, "Am I not your Lord?" As at that moment, it was seen with the eye of certainty, no person had any doubt on the Subject, as God says in his holy word: "If you ask them, who created the heavens and the earth, they will answer thee, the wise and holy God."1 All the prophets were apparently of the same nature as other men without any difference, as we find in God's holy word: "Say, I am a man like you: it was revealed to me."2 Afterwards the heart descended from the world of divine union to this house of separation, from that assembly of love to this station of sorrow, and from the spiritual to the material, and entering within the curtain of the senses, it became occupied with the care of the body and was overcome by the animal affections and material pleasures. The heart of man, veiled with the garments of heedlessness, forgot the assembly with which it had been familiar, and imagining that this miserable place was to be its mansion of rest, it chose to establish itself here in this world of perdition, as if this was its home. Still the veil of heedlessness disappeared from the eyes of those to whom the grace and guidance of the Eternal and unchangeable gave aid and support, and the discovery of the invisible world was not concealed from the view of some of those who came into this material world, but was anew revealed to them, after a measure of exertion of spiritual ardor.
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 know also that the enjoyments of this world that are procured through the senses are cut off at death. The enjoyment of the love and knowledge of God, which depends upon the heart, is alone lasting. At death the hindrances that result from the presence of the external senses being removed, the light and brilliancy of the heart come to have full play, and it feels the necessity of the vision of beauty. What has hitherto been said is sufficient to enable a person of intelligence to comprehend the [36] dignity of the heart of man. the Subject could not be discussed more at large in this short treatise.
While the heart is one of the pillars of man, the body is another pillar. In the constitution of man's body, there is an infinity of most wonderful things to be observed. Each internal and external organ has various curious uses, of which man is entirely uninformed. Know, that in the body of a man there are thousands of veins and nerves: there are many bones, each of a particular shape and each one created for a particular purpose and effect. You are ignorant of all this, and you only know that the hand was formed to take hold with, the foot to walk with, and the tongue to speak with. But in reference to the hand, you know nothing about its blood, its bones, the number of its nerves and veins, and the uses of each one: nor in reference to the eye, do you know that it is composed of ten layers, nor of what the layers are composed, nor what is the use of them. And if the eye should meet with an injury in one of the layers, you could not tell the cause of it. You know nothing either of the internal organs in the belly, such as the spleen, the liver, the gall-bladder and the kidneys. While these have been given to you to perform, functions in which they are continually engaged, you are entirely unconcerned about it.
--
Many and even innumerable books, O student of the divine mysteries, have been written in explanation of the organization of the body and the uses of is parts: but they have no more made the Subject clear and exhausted it, than a drop can illustrate the ocean, or an atom illustrate the sun. [38] It is impossible for the thing formed to understand the knowledge of him that formed it. And how is it possible, that he who is of yesterday, should comprehend the secrets of the operations of the Ancient of days ?
The science of the structure of the body is called anatomy : it is a great science, but most men are heedless of it. If any study it, it is only for the purpose of acquiring skill in medicine, and not for the sake of becoming acquainted with the perfection of the power of God. But whoever will occupy himself with anatomy, and therein contemplate the wonders of the works of God, will reap three advantages. The first advantage will be, that in learning the composition of the thing made, and thereby gaining a comprehensive and condensed view of all other things like it he will see that it is impossible to discover imperfection or incompetence in the being who has created him in such perfection. The Creator himself will be acknowledged to be almighty and perfect. The second advantage will be, that he will see that it is impossible that a being who has created an organization so intelligent, capable of comprehension, endowed with beauty, and useful, should be otherwise than perfect in knowledge himself. And lastly, we shall understand the mercy, favor and perfect compassion of God towards us. Nothing that is either useful or ornamental has been omitted in the framing of our bodies, whether it be such things as are the sources of life, like the spirit and the head; or such as sustain life, as the hand, the foot, the mouth and the teeth : or such as are a means of ornament, as the beard, elegance of form, black hair and the lips. It is to be observed that similar organs have been provided not only for man, but for all creatures, so that nothing is wanting to initiate and sustain life in the mouse, the wasp, the snake and the ant. God has done all things perfectly, and may his name be glorified !
1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Bearing this in mind let us try to understand what the great Vedantic commentators have to say on the Subject. In explaining the Sutra vrittirasakridupadesht (Meditation is necessary, that having been often enjoined.), Bhagavn Shankara says, "Thus people say, 'He is devoted to the king, he is devoted to the Guru'; they say this of him who follows his Guru, and does so, having that following as the one end in view. Similarly they say, 'The loving wife meditates on her loving husband'; here also a kind of eager and continuous remembrance is meant." This is devotion according to Shankara.
"Meditation again is a constant remembrance (of the thing meditated upon) flowing like an unbroken stream of oil poured out from one vessel to another. When this kind of remembering has been attained (in relation to God) all bandages break. Thus it is spoken of in the scriptures regarding constant remembering as a means to liberation. This remembering again is of the same form as seeing, because it is of the same meaning as in the passage, 'When He who is far and near is seen, the bonds of the heart are broken, all doubts vanish, and all effects of work disappear' He who is near can be seen, but he who is far can only be remembered. Nevertheless the scripture says that he have to see Him who is near as well as Him who, is far, thereby indicating to us that the above kind of remembering is as good as seeing. This remembrance when exalted assumes the same form as seeing. . . . Worship is constant remembering as may be seen from the essential texts of scriptures. Knowing, which is the same as repeated worship, has been described as constant remembering. . . . Thus the memory, which has attained to the height of what is as good as direct perception, is spoken of in the Shruti as a means of liberation. 'This Atman is not to be reached through various sciences, nor by intellect, nor by much study of the Vedas. Whomsoever this Atman desires, by him is the Atman attained, unto him this Atman discovers Himself.' Here, after saying that mere hearing, thinking and meditating are not the means of attaining this Atman, it is said, 'Whom this Atman desires, by him the Atman is attained.' The extremely beloved is desired; by whomsoever this Atman is extremely beloved, he becomes the most beloved of the Atman. So that this beloved may attain the Atman, the Lord Himself helps. For it has been said by the Lord: 'Those who are constantly attached to Me and worship Me with love I give that direction to their will by which they come to Me.' Therefore it is said that, to whomsoever this remembering, which is of the same form as direct perception, is very dear, because it is dear to the Object of such memory perception, he is desired by the Supreme Atman, by him the Supreme Atman is attained. This constant remembrance is denoted by the word Bhakti." So says Bhagavn Rmnuja in his commentary on the Sutra Athto Brahma-jijns (Hence follows a dissertation on Brahman.).
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
lively interest in the Subject, without which there will neither
be the will nor the energy to practice. Doubts will arise in the
--
come before us. If the Subject is a good one, we shall feel
friendly towards it; if the Subject of thought is one that is
miserable we must be merciful towards the Subject. If it is
good we must be glad, if it is evil we must be indifferent.
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is through this central door, and just because it is central, that we shall make our entry into the Subject matter of this book. The psychology of the Perennial Philosophy has its source in metaphysics and issues logically in a characteristic way of life and system of ethics. Starting from this midpoint of doctrine, it is easy for the mind to move in either direction.
In the present section we shall confine our attention to but a single feature of this traditional psychology the most important, the most emphatically insisted upon by all exponents of the Perennial Philosophy and, we may add, the least psychological. For the doctrine that is to be illustrated in this section belongs to autology rather than psychologyto the science, not of the personal ego, but of that eternal Self in the depth of particular, individualized selves, and identical with, or at least akin to, the divine Ground. Based upon the direct experience of those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions of such knowledge, this teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi (That art thou); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out Who he really is.
1.01 - The Cycle of Society, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For always the form prevails and the spirit recedes and diminishes. It attempts indeed to return, to revive the form, to modify it, anyhow to survive and even to make the form survive; but the time-tendency is too strong. This is visible in the history of religion; the efforts of the saints and religious reformers become progressively more scattered, brief and superficial in their actual effects, however strong and vital the impulse. We see this recession in the growing darkness and weakness of India in her last millennium; the constant effort of the most powerful spiritual personalities kept the soul of the people alive but failed to resuscitate the ancient free force and truth and vigour or permanently revivify a conventionalised and stagnating society; in a generation or two the iron grip of that conventionalism has always fallen on the new movement and annexed the names of its founders. We see it in Europe in the repeated moral tragedy of ecclesiasticism and Catholic monasticism. Then there arrives a period when the gulf between the convention and the truth becomes intolerable and the men of intellectual power arise, the great swallowers of formulas, who, rejecting robustly or fiercely or with the calm light of reason symbol and type and convention, strike at the walls of the prison-house and seek by the individual reason, moral sense or emotional desire the Truth that society has lost or buried in its whited sepulchres. It is then that the individualistic age of religion and thought and society is created; the Age of Protestantism has begun, the Age of Reason, the Age of Revolt, Progress, Freedom. A partial and external freedom, still betrayed by the conventional age that preceded it into the idea that the Truth can be found in outsides, dreaming vainly that perfection can be determined by machinery, but still a necessary passage to the Subjective period of humanity through which man has to circle back towards the recovery of his deeper self and a new upward line or a new revolving cycle of civilisation.
It is at least doubtful. The Brahmin class at first seem to have exercised all sorts of economic functions and not to have confined themselves to those of the priesthood.
1.01 - The Ego, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
pirical personality, the ego is the Subject of all personal acts of
consciousness. The relation of a psychic content to the ego forms
--
scope of the Subject. Theoretically, no limits can be set to the
field of consciousness, since it is capable of indefinite extension.
--
unknown or unconscious to the Subject would be missing. A
total picture would have to include these. But a total descrip-
--
the field of consciousness in the Subjective inner world, where
it comes into conflict with the facts of the self. And just as
--
ness, the ego is the Subject of all successful attempts at adapta-
tion so far as these are achieved by the will. The ego therefore
1.01 - The King of the Wood, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
down to us on the Subject. According to one story the worship of
Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas,
1.01 - The Rape of the Lock, #The Rape of the Lock, #unset, #Zen
Slight is the Subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
12). Hakuin's ideas on the Subject may be summed up fairly well in the calligraphic works he prepared and distributed in large numbers to people. These works consisted of one large character, filiality or parent, followed by the inscription, "There is no more valuable act of filiality than to save one's father and mother from the sad fate of an unfortunate rebirth in the next life"-exactly the sentiments Hakuin had expressed to Sukefusa as a young monk. a It was considered extremely unfilial to injure or disfigure the body of one's (male) children. This was especially heinous in the case of an eldest son, who, according to the canons of filial piety, is venerated because of his superior birth, age, and gender. b Although not all of these references can be traced, most of them are found in Tales of the TwentyFour Paragons of Filial Virtue (Ehr-shih-ssu hsiao), a popular Confucian text of the Yuan dynasty that was reprinted and widely read in Edo Japan. c A legendary sage ruler of ancient China. According to Mencius, when ministers came to him with good advice, Yu always received it with deep gratitude.
1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
First let me go all Euclidean, and rub your nose in the Definition, Postulate and Theorems given in my comprehensive (but, alas! too advanced and too technical) Treatise on the Subject.[1] Here we are!
I. DEFINITION:
--
(Illustration: When a man falls in love, the whole world becomes, to him, nothing but love boundless and immanent; but his mystical state is not contagious; his fellow-men are either amused or annoyed. He can only extend to others the effect which his love has had upon himself by means of his mental and physical qualities. Thus, Catullus, Dante, and Swinburne made their love a mighty mover of mankind by virtue of their power to put their thoughts on the Subject in musical and eloquent language. Again, Cleopatra and other people in authority moulded the fortunes of many other people by allowing love to influence their political actions. The Magician, however well he succeeds in making contact with the secret sources of energy in nature, can only use them to the extent permitted by his intellectual and moral qualities. Mohammed's intercourse with Gabriel was only effective because of his statesmanship, soldiership, and the sublimity of his comm and of Arabic. Hertz's discovery of the rays which we now use for wireless telegraphy was sterile until reflected through the minds and wills of the people who could take his truth, and transmit it to the world of action by means of mechanical and economic instruments.)
22. Every individual is essentially sufficient to himself. But he is unsatisfactory to himself until he has established himself in his right relation with the Universe.
1.020 - The World and Our World, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But Ishvara srishti is pure existence of things. A lump of gold is a lump of gold; but, that it is a valuable substance, that it has great worth and, therefore, can be taken away or stolen these ideas are projections of the mind of the individual. So in the perception of any given object, two factors are supposed to be involved jiva shrishti and Ishvara srishti. This is a conclusion safely arrived at to obviate any kind of extreme position that people generally take, either from the objective side or from the Subjective side.
There are those who think that the object alone is real and the mind is only a stupid something, which merely reflects the nature of an object as it is. This is the realistic, materialistic attitude. They do not give any place for mind in the scheme of things. It is only a kind of exudation of material existences. This is one extreme view - where the objective world alone is the determining factor of every situation in life, and the mind has no place in the scheme of things. The other extreme is that the mind alone is the determining factor of everything and the object has no place in the scheme of things everything is on account of our thought. This is the extreme idealistic point of view, contrary to the extreme materialistic point of view of certain others. The via-media, the middle course, would be that both contri bute a percentage of meaning in the perception of objects. And so the act of mind-control, the restraining of the modifications of the mind, would not mean an abolition of the existence of objects at least according to thinkers such as the author of the Panchadasi - but is a withdrawal of those special modifications of the mind, on account of which the mind reads particular subjective meanings in objects.
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This is perhaps the significance of perception from an organic point of view, while what happens in our case, at present, is that this organic connection between the seer and the seen is lost sight of, and we have only a mechanised form of perception where there is a false evaluation projected on the object by the mind which is perceiving it, on account of its losing contact with the vital issue which is involved in perception, namely its connectedness to the object. Whether in attachment or in aversion, the mind is not properly related to the object. It has an improper relationship with things, both in love and hatred. The impropriety of this relationship arises on account of its false disconnectedness from the object, and we cannot properly understand the way of controlling the mind if we cannot understand the relationship that the mind has with the object. It has a twofold relationship. On the one side, it stands as a perceiver of the object and is obliged to regard the object as an outside something, which is the very meaning of perception, of course. But, on the other side, there is a basic similarity of nature between the seer and the seen, which is the reason why there is the very possibility of perception at all. A consciousness of the object would be impossible if the seer of the object is basically disconnected from the object. Basic disconnection would not be permissible. An utter isolation of the Subject from the object would defeat the very purpose of all perception.
Consciousness of an object implies a basic connectedness between the Subject and the object. It is this connection that pulls the object towards the Subject, and vice versa. We have an undercurrent of unity among ourselves, on account of which we sometimes feel a necessity to sit together and work in a unanimous manner. We have the urge of unity from one side, and the urge of diversity on the other side. The diversity aspect is emphasised by the senses, and the unity aspect is emphasised by the nature of our consciousness. The essence of our consciousness is unity par excellence. It is the basic existence of a unity of consciousness behind all perceptions that is responsible for the perception itself, and is also the reason for loves and hates. But the emphasis given by the senses is the other way round. They assert diversity of things and make externalised perception possible. So in the attraction that the Subject feels towards the object, two elements work vigorously the diversity aspect and the unity aspect. The attraction is possible basically on account of the structural similarity between the Subject and the object. But the need for being pulled by the object, or getting attracted towards the object, arises on account of the perception of diversity, or the duality of subject and object.
If unity is the whole truth there would be no need of perception, and the question of attraction would not arise, because the Subject has basically become one with the object, and is one with it. Where there is an utter unity of the Subject and the object, neither perception would be there, nor any kind of love or hatred. If there is utter isolation, even then there would be no perception. If we are really disconnected from all things, we can neither see anything, nor can we have love and hatred towards things.
If we are really one with things, then also it is the same thing. So either way, whether we emphasise the unity aspect or the diversity aspect exclusively, we find that there is no perception, and no love and hatred. Perception and love and hatred are hybrids born out of a mixed-up attitude that has arisen on account of a transference of values, by which what is meant is, a little of the unity aspect is transferred to the diversity aspect, and a little of the diversity aspect is transferred to the unity aspect, so that we live in a very utterly false world of created counterfeit circumstances. Neither do we live in unity, nor do we live in diversity. Then, where are we living.
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What is an individual, which we call the percipient? It is an abstracted group of characters, tentatively isolated from a larger set or group of characters to which these former really belong an act that has been perpetrated mysteriously for the purpose of playing a drama, we may say. We have falsely isolated ourselves. Even that isolation is not a real isolation, because a mere abstraction of a few characters from a group of larger characters cannot be regarded as real. It is only a closing of one's eyes to certain existent conditions. We can ignore the presence of things and conditions which are not conducive to our present purpose, but why this purpose itself has arisen is a very difficult thing to answer. This is maya, as they call it, a peculiar jugglery that has been projected by no one. Neither can we say that God created it, nor can we say that we created it. It is somewhere; and how it has come, neither can we say, nor can anyone else say. The inscrutability of the relationship between the individual and the cosmic, the difficulty in ascertaining the connection between appearance and reality this is called maya. To put it in more plain terms, the relationship between the Subject and the object is itself difficult to understand.
We cannot understand what our connection is with anything at all, and so we are in a helpless condition. Therefore we cannot even control the mind, because controlling the mind is an adjustment of the modifications of the mind in respect of the object of its cognition, and the object of its cognition is not properly understood because of its unintelligible character. Everything then becomes difficult, and our efforts become a source of failure in the end. Success does not seem to be forthcoming, because it is not clear to us what is the right direction that we have to take.
What is the mind to do, what are we to do, what is anyone to do in this prescription of yoga called 'mind-control'? Are we to subjugate the object, destroy the object, absorb the object into ourselves, or abstract the mind from the object and not cognise it? In an act of mind-control, what is to be done? Are we satisfied if we merely become unaware of the existence of the object, which is what is usually known as abstraction of the senses and the mind from objects, or is there anything to be done in respect of the object itself? This question arises on account of the necessity to understand the extent of influence the object exerts upon the Subject, and the extent of influence that the Subject exerts upon the object.
For all practical purposes, we can agree with the author of the Panchadasi and conclude that we need not interfere with the scheme of things from the point of view of Ishvara's creation. People can be there, and things can be there they have to be there. We have to change our attitude, which means to say we have to reorganise the method of the working of our own mind inside, in respect of existent objects outside. This is only a tentative answer, and not the final answer, because we have not yet finally given the judgement as to the nature of things. We have temporarily accepted the existence of a world outside us, just as we temporarily accept the meaning of an 'x' in an equation in algebra. Though the 'x' itself may have no meaning ultimately, it is a necessary assumption which solves the question, and afterwards it cancels itself.
So, in the end, we will find that while the acceptance of the existence of things independent of the mind by way of what is known as Ishvara srishti may be necessary for the solution of our problem, the world also will modify itself accordingly when the individual advances further, because all spiritual advance is a parallel advance both from the side of the Subject and the object. It is not only one side that is evolving. The evolution of the individual is, at the same time, a corresponding evolution of all conditions in which the individual is involved, including society and the world.
10.23 - Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This wonder-lyre has three strings, giving out a triple note or strain: there is a strain of philosophy, there is a strain of yoga and there is a strain of poetry. We may also call them values and say there is a philosophical, a yogic and a poetic value in these contemplations. The philosophical strain or value means that the things said are presented, explained to the intellect so that the human mind can seize them, understand them. The principles underlying the ideal, the fundamental ideas are elaborated in terms of reason and logical comprehension, although the Subject-matter treated is in the last analysis' beyond reason and logic. For example, here is true philosophy expressed in a philosophic manner as neatly as possible.
A quoi servirait l'homme s'il n'tait pas fait pour jeter un pont entre Ce qui est ternellement, mais qui n' est pas manifest, et ce qui est manifest, entre toutes les transcendances, toutes les splendeu-rs de la vie divine et toute l'obscure et douloureuse ignorance du monde matriel? L'homme est le lien entre ce qui doit tre et ce qui est; il est la passerelle jete sur l' abme, il est le grand X en croix, le trait d'union quaternaire. Son domicile vritable, le sige effectif de sa conscience doit tre dans le monde intermdiaire au point de jonction des quatre bras de la croix, l, o tout l'infini de l'impensable vient prendre forme prcise pour tre projet dans l'innombrable manifestation.1
1.02.4.2 - Action and the Divine Will, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
process of that attainment of Immortality which is the Subject
of the third movement, the state of bliss and truth within and
1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the practice of one reality, ekatattva abhyasah, mentioned by Sage Patanjali in one of his sutras for the purpose of restraining the modifications of the mind, there are, again, grades of approach. The one reality is not necessarily the Absolute Reality, though that is the aim, ultimately. As was mentioned previously, a reality, for the purpose of practice, is that condition which can fulfil a particular need of a specific state of mind under a given condition. So until the Absolute Reality is reached, all other realities are relative realities. Every reality, as far as we are concerned empirically, is relative subject to transcendence. Nevertheless, it is a reality to us, which only goes to prove that we are also only relative realities. We, as individuals, are not absolute realities and, therefore, we are satisfied with what is relative. We are not in daily contact with the Absolute; what we are in contact with is a relative reality. And inasmuch as the Subject experiencing and the object experienced are on the same level or degree of reality, it goes without saying that the empirical subjects that we all are come under relative reality, and not the Absolute Reality.
In the concentration of the mind on one reality, ekatattva, what is intended is that the attention should be focused on a system or order of values which is immediately superior to, or transcendent to, the current state of affairs, the present state of experience, and the conditions through which we are passing through at this moment. Anything which can include particulars in a more organised whole can be regarded as a higher reality for this purpose. There are tentative realities created for the purpose of practical convenience by organisations, associations or systems which we have created for the purpose of subjugating the individual ego and compelling it to affiliate itself to a larger body to which also it ought to belong and is made to belong.
1.02.9 - Conclusion and Summary, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
and time, the far and the near, the Subjective and the objective, internal and external, myself and others, one and many. Brahman,
the real existence, is all these things to our consciousness, but
1.02 - Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We propose to study these five aspects of education one by one and also their interrelationships. But before we enter into the details of the Subject, I wish to make a recommendation to parents. Most parents, for various reasons, give very little thought to the true education which should be imparted to children. When they have brought a child into the world, provided him with food, satisfied his various material needs and looked after his health more or less carefully, they think they have fully discharged their duty. Later on, they will send him to school and hand over to the teachers the responsibility for his education.
There are other parents who know that their children must be educated and who try to do what they can. But very few, even among those who are most serious and sincere, know that the first thing to do, in order to be able to educate a child, is to educate oneself, to become conscious and master of oneself so that one never sets a bad example to ones child. For it is above all through example that education becomes effective. To speak good words and to give wise advice to a child has very little effect if one does not oneself give him an example of what one teaches. Sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, courage, disinterestedness, unselfishness, patience, endurance, perseverance, peace, calm, self-control are all things that are taught infinitely better by example than by beautiful speeches. Parents, have a high ideal and always act in accordance with it and you will see that little by little your child will reflect this ideal in himself and spontaneously manifest the qualities you would like to see expressed in his nature. Quite naturally a child has respect and admiration for his parents; unless they are quite unworthy, they will always appear to their child as demigods whom he will try to imitate as best he can.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
of its most basic features familiarity, or lack thereof is something virtually defined by the Subjective.
This environmental subjectivity is non-trivial, as well: it is certainly the case that mere interpretation of a
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computer from EEG recordings averaged at different delays after the Subject being evaluated has been
presented with some sort of stimulus. The nature of this stimulus may vary. In the simplest case, it is
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N2/P3 waveform appears only when the experimental stimulus utilized has captured the Subjects attention
and reached his or her awareness.104 Consciousness (affiliated tightly with orienting, for the purposes of
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manifests itself in the Subjective sphere, with the fantasies of the ideal future constructed by the pre-motor
unit (acting in turn as the higher-order mediator the king, so to speak of all the specialized subsystems
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It is difficult for us to formulate a clear picture of the Subjective effects of the systems that dominate our
initial response to the truly unpredictable, because we strive with all our might to ensure that everything
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component elements of every sound.122 the Subject is lead to expect or predict one sort of sound, and
gets another. The unexpected other has indeterminate significance, in that particular context, and is
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system, the behaviors of the Subjects change dramatically, in many cases for 24 hours or more.124 The
initial active defensive behavior, flight to the tunnel/chamber system, is followed by a period of
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The knower is the creative explorer, the ego, the I, the eye, the phallus, the plow, the Subject,
consciousness, the illuminated or enlightened one, the trickster, the fool, the hero, the coward; spirit (as
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fact of the Subject, who does the experiencing. The world brought into being in archaic myths of creation is
phenomenological, rather than material includes all aspects of experience, including those things we now
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as such, on the part of the creating subject. The god must therefore be more than the Subject; more than the
subjects original narrative conception of himself.
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(unknowable) source of all things, the gods who rule human life, and the Subject or process who
constructs determinate experience, through voluntary encounter with the unknown. The full story
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evolves into the Subject, when it is differentiated. What might be regarded as the standard objective
viewpoint is predicated on the idea that things as they are perceived exist regardless of the perceiver.
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determining what a thing is in the absence of the Subject is much more difficult than might initially be
imagined. It is certainly the case as we have seen that the value of an object can shift with shift in frame
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This great mythological idea finds its echo in certain modern theories of the development of the Subject;
most particularly, among those entitled constructivist. The famous Swiss developmental psychologist Jean
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experience (and the Subjects who experienced them) emerged from the round chaos, which was a spherical
container of the primordial element.280 The God of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Alpha and Omega, the
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Everything presently known about the Subject and objects of human experience was at one time merely
the undifferentiated unknown which was far more than what yet remained to be discovered about the
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This dynamic representation might comprise part of the Subjective experience of a myriad of people, and
therefore have its own biologically grounded, culturally-determined existence, independent of any given
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gnostic term).294 The pleroma might be described as the Subjective world of experience, in remembrance
the episodic world, perhaps, from the perspective of modern memory theory although representations
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regard the latter the Subjective stance as something clearly psychological (as something akin to
wisdom in the modern sense). The former is more likely to be considered external, from our
1.02 - Pranayama, Mantrayoga, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Some schools advocate practising a mantra with the aid of instrumental music and dancing. Certainly very remarkable effects are obtained in the way of "magic" powers; whether great spiritual results are equally common is a doubtful point. Persons wishing to study them may remember that the Sahara desert is within three days of London; and no doubt the Sidi Aissawa would be glad to accept pupils. This discussion of the parallel science of mantra-yoga has led us far indeed from the Subject of Pranayama.
Pranayama is notably useful in quieting the emotions and appetites; and, whether by reason of the mechanical pressure which it asserts, or by the thorough combustion which it assures in the lungs, it seems to be admirable from the standpoint of health. Digestive troubles in particular are very easy to remove in this way. It purifies both the body and the lower functions of the mind,
1.02 - Prayer of Parashara to Vishnu, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Viṣṇu as creator, creates himself; as preserver, preserves himself; as destroyer, destroys himself at the end of all things. This world of earth, air, fire, water, ether, the senses, and the mind; all that is termed spirit[34], that also is the lord of all elements, the universal form, and imperishable: hence he is the cause of creation, preservation, and destruction; and the Subject of the vicissitudes inherent in elementary nature[35]. He is the object and author of creation: he preserves, destroys, and is preserved. He, Viṣṇu, as Brahmā, and as all other beings, is infinite form: he is the supreme, the giver of all good, the fountain of all happiness[36].
Footnotes and references:
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kara Siva. The Viṣṇu who is the Subject of our text is the supreme being in all these three divinities or hypostases, in his different characters of creator, preserver and destroyer. Thus in the Mārkaṇḍeya: 'Accordingly, as the primal all-pervading spirit is distinguished by attributes in creation and the rest, so he obtains the denomination of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva. In the capacity of Brahmā he creates the worlds; in that of Rudra he destroys them; in that of Viṣṇu he is quiescent. These are the three Avasthās (ht. hypostases) of the self-born. Brahmā is the quality of activity; Rudra that of darkness; Viṣṇu, the lord of the world, is goodness: so, therefore, the three gods are the three qualities. They are ever combined with, and dependent upon one another; and they are never for an instant separate; they never quit each other.' The notion is one common to all antiquity, although less philosophically conceived, or perhaps less distinctly expressed, in the passages which have come down to us. The τρεῖς ἀρχικὰς ὑποστάσεις of Plato are said by Cudworth (I. 111), upon the authority of Plotinus, to be an ancient doctrine, παλαιὰ δόξα: and he also observes, "Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato have all of them asserted a trinity of divine hypostases; and as they unquestionably derived much of their doctrine from the Egyptians, it may reasonably be suspected that the Egyptians did the like before them." As however the Grecian accounts, and those of the Egyptians, are much more perplexed and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus, it is most probable that we find amongst them the doctrine in its most original as well as most methodical and significant form.
[2]: This address to Viṣṇu pursues the notion that he, as the supreme being, is one, whilst he is all: he is Avikāra, not subject to change; Sadaikarūpa, one invariable nature: he is the liberator (tāra), or he who bears mortals across the ocean of existence: he is both single and manifold (ekānekarūpa): and he is the indiscrete (avyakta) cause of the world, as well as the discrete (vyakta) effect; or the invisible cause, and visible creation.
1.02 - Priestly Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
countries. Accordingly I propose to consider the Subject in some
detail.
1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
as we have been able to arrive at on the Subject of life in general.
But it has another advantage which I particularly wish to dwell
1.02 - The Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
7.: So obscure are these spiritual matters that to explain them an ignorant person like myself must say much that is superfluous, and even alien to the Subject, before coming to the point. My readers must be patient with me, as I am with myself while writing what I do not understand; indeed, I often take up the paper like a dunce, not knowing what to say, nor how to begin. Doubtless there is need for me to do my best to explain these spiritual subjects to you, for we often hear how beneficial prayer is for our souls; our Constitutions oblige us to pray so many hours a day, yet tell us nothing of what part we ourselves can take in it and very little of the work God does in the soul by its means.22' It will be helpful, in setting it before you in various ways, to consider this heavenly edifice within us, so little understood by men, near as they often come to it. Our Lord gave me grace to understand something of such matters when I wrote on them before, yet I think I have more light now, especially on the more difficult questions. Unfortunately I am too ignorant to treat of such subjects without saying much that is already well known.
8.: Now let us turn at last to our castle with its many mansions. You must not think of a suite of rooms placed in succession, but fix your eyes on the keep, the court inhabited by the King.23' Like the kernel of the palmito,24' from which several rinds must be removed before coming to the eatable part, this principal chamber is surrounded by many others. However large, magnificent, and spacious you imagine this castle to be, you cannot exaggerate it; the capacity of the soul is beyond all our understanding, and the Sun within this palace enlightens every part of it.
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 Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
This is proved from the scriptural text, "From whom all these things are born, by which all that are born live, unto whom they, departing, return ask about it. That is Brahman.' If this quality of ruling the universe be a quality common even to the liberated then this text would not apply as a definition of Brahman defining Him through His rulership of the universe. The uncommon attributes alone define a thing; therefore in texts like 'My beloved boy, alone, in the beginning there existed the One without a second. That saw and felt, "I will give birth to the many." That projected heat.' 'Brahman indeed alone existed in the beginning. That One evolved. That projected a blessed form, the Kshatra. All these gods are Kshatras: Varuna, Soma, Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu, Ishna.' 'Atman indeed existed alone in the beginning; nothing else vibrated; He thought of projecting the world; He projected the world after.' 'Alone Nryana existed; neither Brahm, nor Ishana, nor the Dyv-Prithivi, nor the stars, nor water, nor fire, nor Soma, nor the sun. He did not take pleasure alone. He after His meditation had one daughter, the ten organs, etc.' and in others as, 'Who living in the earth is separate from the earth, who living in the Atman, etc.' the Shrutis speak of the Supreme One as the Subject of the work of ruling the universe. . . . Nor in these descriptions of the ruling of the universe is there any position for the liberated soul, by which such a soul may have the ruling of the universe ascribed to it."
In explaining the next Sutra, Ramanuja says, "If you say it is not so, because there are direct texts in the Vedas in evidence to the contrary, these texts refer to the glory of the liberated in the spheres of the subordinate deities." This also is an easy solution of the difficulty. Although the system of Ramanuja admits the unity of the total, within that totality of existence there are, according to him, eternal differences. Therefore, for all practical purposes, this system also being dualistic, it was easy for Ramanuja to keep the distinction between the personal soul and the Personal God very clear.
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Why? Because He is the Subject of all the scriptural texts as regards creation etc., and the liberated souls are not mentioned therein in any connection whatsoever. The Supreme Lord indeed is alone engaged in ruling the universe. The texts as to creation etc. all point to Him. Besides, there is given the adjective 'ever-perfect'. Also the scriptures say that the powers Anima etc. of the others are from the search after and the worship of God. Therefore they have no place in the ruling of the universe. Again, on account of their possessing their own minds, it is possible that their wills may differ, and that, whilst one desires creation, another may desire destruction. The only way of avoiding this conflict is to make all wills subordinate to some one will. Therefore the conclusion is that the wills of the liberated are dependent on the will of the Supreme Ruler."
next chapter: 1.03 - Spiritual Realisation, The aim of Bhakti-Yoga
1.02 - THE POOL OF TEARS, #Alice in Wonderland, #Lewis Carroll, #Fiction
"I won't indeed!" said Alice, in a great hurry to change the Subject of conversation. "Are you--are you fond--of--of dogs? There is such a nice little dog near our house, I should like to show you! It kills all the rats and--oh, dear!" cried Alice in a sorrowful tone. "I'm afraid I've offended it again!" For the Mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.
So she called softly after it, "Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we won't talk about cats, or dogs either, if you don't like them!" When the
1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or "culture," the Subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.
His flowering world becomes a wastel and of dry stones and his life feels meaninglesseven though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.
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This is the aspect of the hero-problem illustrated in the won drous Arabian Nights adventure of the Prince Kamar al-Zaman and the Princess Budur. The young and handsome prince, the only son of King Shahriman of Persia, persistently refused the repeated suggestions, requests, demands, and finally injunctions, of his father, that he should do the normal thing and take to himself a wife. The first time the Subject was broached to him, the lad responded: "O my father, know that I have no lust to marry nor doth my soul incline to women; for that concerning their craft and perfidy I have read many books and heard much talk, even as saith the poet:
Now, an of women ask ye, I reply:
1.02 - The Shadow, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
that the Subject will perceive this himself. He must be con-
vinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to
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to isolate the Subject from his environment, since instead of a
real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections
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projections are thrust in between the Subject and the environ-
ment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. A
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which is always of the same sex as the Subject- but a contrasexual
figure. Here we meet the animus of a woman and the anima of a
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
attentive observation. The student says to himself: "The stone has a form; the animal also has a form. The stone remains motionless in its place. The animal changes its place. It is instinct (desire) which causes the animal to change its place. Instincts, too, are served by the form of the animal. Its organs and limbs are fashioned in accordance with these instincts. The form of the stone is not fashioned in accordance with desires, but in accordance with desireless force." (The fact here mentioned, in its bearing on the contemplation of crystals, is in many ways distorted by those who have only heard of it in an outward, exoteric manner, and in this way such practices as crystal-gazing have their origin Such manipulations are based on a misunderstanding. They have been described in many books, but they never form the Subject of genuine esoteric teaching.)
By sinking deeply into such thoughts, and while doing so, observing the stone and the animal with rapt attention, there arise in the soul two quite separate kinds of feelings. From the stone there flows into the soul the one kind of feeling, and from the animal the other kind. The attempt
1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
Perspectivation, let us remember, also includes a reduction; and this reductive nature is evident, for instance, in perspectival man's predominantly visual or sight orientation in contrast to unperspectival man's audial or hearing orientation. The basis of the perspectival world view is the visual pyramid; the two lines extend from the eyes and meet at the object viewed. The image formed by the isolated sector includes the Subject, the object, and the space in between. Pierodella Francesca clearly expresses this in his remark: "The first is the eye that sees; the second, the object seen; the third, the distance between the one and the other." On this Panofsky comments: "It [perspective] furnished a place for the human form to unfold in a life-like manner and move mimically [which is equivalent to the discovery of space]; but it also enabled light to spread and diffuse in space [the illumination of space is the emergence of spatial awareness] and permitted considerable freedom in the treatment of the human body. Perspective provides a distance between man and objects." Such detachment is always a sign of an emergent objectifying consciousness and of the liberation of previously innate potentialities that are subsequently rediscovered and realized in the outer world.
This example again suggests to what extent perspective is the most tangible expression of an entire epoch. The basic concern of perspective, which it achieves, is to "look through" space and thereby to perceive and grasp space rationally. The very word "perspective" conveys this intent, as Drer suggests: "Besides, perspectiva is a Latin term meaning `seeing through." It is a "seeing through" of space and thus a coming to awareness of space. It is irrelevant here whether we accept Drers interpretation and translate perspicere (from which perspectiva derives) in his sense as "seeing through," or render it, with Panofsky, as "seeing clearly." Both interpretations point to the same thing. The emergent awareness of distantiating space presupposes a clear vision; and this heightening of awareness is accompanied by an increase of personal or ego-consciousness.
--
These remarks express the change from a participation inconsciente to what we may call a relation consciente, or conscious relationship. Leonardo was able to place the vanishing point in space (on the horizon) in opposition to the passive or "enduring" point of the eye, the receptor of the stream of object impressions, and thus realized the close interrelationship between the two. As he himself notes, "the second pyramid [realized externally] results from the first." The emphasis has shifted to the eye of the Subject the eye which has realized space and thus established an equilibrium between the ego world (of the eye) and the external world (the horizon).
This Statement of Leonardo's is also a conceptual realization or actualization of perspective a realization that has determined the Western image of the world ever since. Perspective has determined and corresponded to this view to such a degree that even a mere generation after Leonardo (around 1530), Agrippa of Nettesheim was able to include a brief chapter entitled De Opticavel perspectiva in his late work De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium. There we find the revealing statement: "It [the art of perspective] shows how deformity can be avoided in painting." And in Pietro Aretino's Dialogodella Pittura, written about the same time in honor of Titian, there is a verse frequently repeated: "Chespessoocchioben san favedertorto," which alludes to the no longer current tendency toward a kind of prejudicial kind of seeing that, as the verse notes, "frequently allows even healthy eyes to see falsely."
1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
that is unconscious to the Subject transfers itself to an object, so
that it seems to belong to that object. The projection ceases the
--
belonging to the Subject. 17 Thus the polytheistic heaven of the
ancients owes its depotentiation not least to the view first pro-
--
something of which the Subject is not conscious and which seems
not to belong to him. The image of the parents is the very one
--
longing to consciousness, and also why, if the Subject identifies
with it, it often causes a devastating change of personality, gen-
1.03 - Hieroglypics Life and Language Necessarily Symbolic, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"But why? Why all this elaborate symbolism? Why not say straight out what you mean? Surely the Subject is difficult enough in any case must you put on a mask to make it clear? I know you well enough by now to be sure that you will not fob me off with any Holy-Willie nonsense about the ineffable, about human language being inadequate to reveal such Mysteries, about the necessity of constructing a new language to explain a new system of thought; of course I know that this had to be done in the case of chemistry, of higher mathematics, indeed of almost all technical subjects; but I feel that you have some other, deeper explanation in reserve.
"After all, most of what I am seeking to learn from you has been familiar to many of the great minds of humanity for many centuries. Indeed, the Qabalah is a special language, and that is old enough; there is not much new material to fit into that structure. But why did they, in the first place, resort to this symbolic jargon?"
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Here we may remark in passing that it is only the one-pointed, who are truly capable of worshipping one God. Monotheism as a theory can be entertained even by a person whose name is Legion. But when it comes to passing from theory to practice, from discursive knowledge about to immediate acquaintance with the one God, there cannot be monotheism except where there is singleness of heart. Knowledge is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Where the knower is poly-psychic the universe he knows by immediate experience is polytheistic. The Buddha declined to make any statement in regard to the ultimate divine Reality. All he would talk about was Nirvana, which is the name of the experience that comes to the totally selfless and one-pointed. To this same experience others have given the name of union with Brahman, with Al Haqq, with the immanent and transcendent Godhead. Maintaining, in this matter, the attitude of a strict operationalist, the Buddha would speak only of the spiritual experience, not of the metaphysical entity presumed by the theologians of other religions, as also of later Buddhism, to be the object and (since in contemplation the knower, the known and the knowledge are all one) at the same time the Subject and substance of that experience.
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.
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 - .REASON. IN PHILOSOPHY, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
enlightened, the assurance, the Subjective certitude, in the handling
of the categories of reason came into the minds of philosophers as a
1.03 - Some Practical Aspects, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
the way of esoteric training. And here something must be considered which can only be explained by giving an example. If anything be said to which we must reply, we must be careful to consider the speaker's opinion, feeling, and even his prejudice, rather than what we ourselves have to say at the moment on the Subject under discussion. In this example a refined quality of tact is indicated, to the cultivation of which the student must devote his care. He must learn to judge what importance it may have for the other person if he opposes the latter's opinion with his own. This does not mean that he must withhold his opinion. There can be no question of that. But he must listen to the speaker as carefully and as attentively as he possibly can and let his reply derive its form from what he has just heard. In such cases one particular thought recurs ever and again to the student, and he is treading the right path if this thought lives with him to the extent of becoming a trait of his character. This thought is as follows: The importance lies not in the difference of our opinions but in his discovering through his own effort what is right if I contri bute something toward it. Thoughts of this
p. 108
1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age
author class:Sri Aurobindo
--
It is this principle and necessity that justify an age of individualism and rationalism and make it, however short it may be, an inevitable period in the cycle. A temporary reign of the critical reason largely destructive in its action is an imperative need for human progress. In India, since the great Buddhistic upheaval of the national thought and life, there has been a series of re current attempts to rediscover the truth of the soul and life and get behind the veil of stifling conventions; but these have been conducted by a wide and tolerant spiritual reason, a plastic soul-intuition and deep subjective seeking, insufficiently militant and destructive. Although productive of great internal and considerable external changes, they have never succeeded in getting rid of the predominant conventional order. The work of a dissolvent and destructive intellectual criticism, though not entirely absent from some of these movements, has never gone far enough; the constructive force, insufficiently aided by the destructive, has not been able to make a wide and free space for its new formation. It is only with the period of European influence and impact that circumstances and tendencies powerful enough to enforce the beginnings of a new age of radical and effective revaluation of ideas and things have come into existence. The characteristic power of these influences has been throughoutor at any rate till quite recentlyrationalistic, utilitarian and individualistic. It has compelled the national mind to view everything from a new, searching and critical standpoint, and even those who seek to preserve the present or restore the past are obliged un consciously or half-consciously to justify their endeavour from the novel point of view and by its appropriate standards of reasoning. Throughout the East, the Subjective Asiatic mind is being driven to adapt itself to the need for changed values of life and thought. It has been forced to turn upon itself both by the pressure of Western knowledge and by the compulsion of a quite changed life-need and life-environment. What it did not do from within, has come on it as a necessity from without and this externality has carried with it an immense advantage as well as great dangers.
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.
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
quate one, since it purports to settle, by invoking the Subjective side
of our nature, a problem that is essentially objective, namely that of
1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Gnosis, they began considering the Subject in all its aspects.
One Adept had furthered the idea of reducing all their knowledge to a few symbols and glyphs, and hewing these into imperishable rock, as was done by King Asoka in
1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
ond place, of the Subjective modifications he has imposed upon
this picture. X's idea of his father is a complex quantity for
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:Entering into that Consciousness, we may continue to dwell, like It, upon universal existence. Then we become aware, - for all our terms of consciousness and even our sensational experience begin to change, - of Matter as one existence and of bodies as its formations in which the one existence separates itself physically in the single body from itself in all others and again by physical means establishes communication between these multitudinous points of its being. Mind we experience similarly, and Life also, as the same existence one in its multiplicity, separating and reuniting itself in each domain by means appropriate to that movement. And, if we choose, we can proceed farther and, after passing through many linking stages, become aware of a supermind whose universal operation is the key to all lesser activities. Nor do we become merely conscious of this cosmic existence, but likewise conscious in it, receiving it in sensation, but also entering into it in awareness. In it we live as we lived before in the ego-sense, active, more and more in contact, even unified more and more with other minds, other lives, other bodies than the organism we call ourselves, producing effects not only on our own moral and mental being and on the Subjective being of others, but even on the physical world and its events by means nearer to the divine than those possible to our egoistic capacity.
14:Real then to the man who has had contact with it or lives in it, is this cosmic consciousness, with a greater than the physical reality; real in itself, real in its effects and works. And as it is thus real to the world which is its own total expression, so is the world real to it; but not as an independent existence. For in that higher and less hampered experience we perceive that consciousness and being are not different from each other, but all being is a supreme consciousness, all consciousness is selfexistence, eternal in itself, real in its works and neither a dream nor an evolution. The world is real precisely because it exists only in consciousness; for it is a Conscious Energy one with Being that creates it. It is the existence of material form in its own right apart from the self-illumined energy which assumes the form, that would be a contradiction of the truth of things, a phantasmagoria, a nightmare, an impossible falsehood.
1.03 - The Uncreated, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
When the mind, starting from this unity, takes its second step, it arrives at a point where the possibility of differentiation manifests itself by a sort of duplication of the Unique in its two complementary elements. From the realist standpoint this duplication takes the form of an opposition between Force and the resistance to Force,inverse movements, contrary currents passing between two opposite signs of one and the same essence. From the idealist standpoint it can be regarded as a sort of objectivisation of the Subjective by which universal being takes cognizance of itself.
By introducing the third term in Number the mind is able to conceive as possible an indefinite differentiation, the limitation of the two elements and their reciprocal objectivity,the conditions of individual form and individual consciousness.
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is the purpose of satsanga, listening to discourses of a spiritual and philosophical nature, study of sacred scriptures, svadhyaya, etc. Direct meditation is impossible, for reasons well known; therefore, we go to satsangas and listen to discourses touching upon various subjects, though within a limited circle. the Subjects are variegated and yet limited to certain features. Similar is the case with study. If we study the Srimad Bhagavata, or the Ramayana, or the Bhagavadgita, the mind is given a large scope to think of many ideas and to bring into it notions of various features of reality. Though there is a variety presented in the study of a scripture of this kind, this variety is ultimately limited to a particular pattern of thinking.
The whole of the Srimad Bhagavata, to give only one concrete example, is filled with thousands of ideas expressed in various ways. Though these ideas are many, they are kindred, essentially. Therefore, the chaotic movement of the mind is brought to an end, and the first step is taken in bringing the mind under control by allowing it to think of sympathetic thoughts, though they may be variegated in their structure. There are several members in a family. Each person is different from the other one is tall, one is short, one is very active, another is idle, one is working outside, one is working inside, one is a man, and another is a woman. There are all sorts of persons in a family, but yet they are kindred spirits there is a sympathy of character among them. This is the reason why we call them a family, though they are individuals of different natures altogether. Likewise is any type of organisation it may be an institution; it may be a parliament; it may be a government or it may even be an army it may be anything. In the army we have thousands of people of different natures, yet they are brought together by a single ideal.
1.045 - Piercing the Structure of the Object, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It is now that a condition or a state supervenes where there is a sudden split of this cosmic condition into the external and the internal. This is the beginning of what they call samsara or bondage of the jiva. There is no bondage as long as a bifurcation is not introduced between the Subject and the object of knowledge. Bondage commences the moment there is a severance of the consciousness from its content, an isolation of the Subject from the object. This happens subsequent to the appearance of ahamkara. So, on the objective side, we have what are known as the tanmatras and the mahabhutas. The tanmatras are the subtle principles behind the five gross elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether, and they are called sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa and gandha in Sanskrit, meaning thereby the sensations of sound, touch, form, taste and smell which have connection with the five elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether prithivi, appu, tejo, vayu and akasa. This is the external side of the world. Generally, what we call the world is constituted of these five great elements or mahabhutas. But the experiencing side, the Subject side, is what is known as the jiva, the principle of individuality you, I, and everyone included who have an extrovert vision of these five mahabhutas, all of which we regard as something outside us, notwithstanding that every one of us, including the bhutas, have come from the same principle of ahamkara. It is something like the right hand looking at the left hand as an object of its perception, though both these are emanations of a single substance, a single unifying principle - namely, the bodily organism.
the Subject side is the individual, the jiva, which has a physical body made up of the five elements themselves earth, water, fire, air and ether. Then we have the five pranas prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. There are the senses the five senses of knowledge and the five of action. And then there is the principle of mentation there is the intellect and all these complexities constituting what is known as the subtle body of the individual. This is the Subject side, while the object side is formed of the five elements mentioned.
The bondage of the jiva consists in the isolation of its experiencing unit, namely, consciousness, from the object of its experience. This is the reason why there is desire of every kind. A desire is nothing but an attempt of consciousness to gain what is not contained within its own self. The content of consciousness is what is desired by consciousness, but that content is cut off due to a peculiar phenomenon that has arisen, and the phenomenon is the principle of isolation of the Subject from the object. The purpose of yoga is to bring about a reunion of this twofold principle known as the Subject and the object, so that it may go back to the original condition where it was not so separated. The means of action in the process of meditation, of course, is consciousness itself; we may call it mind in a grosser form.
The mind is the principle of activity in the process of meditation, and in the lowest form of mentation there is a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact conviction that the object is completely outside the mind and it has nothing to do with the mind at all. This is the lowest form into which the mind can sink, where the desires become very vehement, very strong and uncontrollable. There is an intense tension caused by this feeling that the object longed for is absolutely outside oneself, and there is practically no control one has over the objects of sense which one needs. The method of meditation tries to introduce a technique which gradually thins out this conviction that the objects of consciousness are external, and the internal relation that exists between the two is brought up to the surface of consciousness to a greater and greater degree.
--
The externalisation of the consciousness of the purusha takes place by degrees, as it was mentioned in this cosmological process. In the beginning there is only a potentiality of such manifestation, which is the condition of mulaprakriti. Then there is an actual manifestation, though not a binding form of it, which is called the mahat. Then again there is a further concretisation of it, which is a lower condition still, yet not a binding condition because of the universality of consciousness still present there, which is the state of the cosmic ahamkara. Then there is a fall, a sudden cut of consciousness into the Subjective side and the objective side, which is the problem of the jiva, the difficulty of man every form of tension and unknowing. So, in the beginning, the grossest form becomes the object of meditation. From the gross, we go to the subtle. From the subtle, we rise to that state of awareness which is prior to the manifestation of even the subtle and the gross. And finally, we go to the ultimate cause of all things.
These stages of meditation are referred to in a sutra of Patanjali from his first chapter, and these stages are designated by him as savitarka, savichara, sananda and sasmita. These are all peculiar technical words of the yoga philosophy, which simply mean the conditions of gross consciousness, subtle consciousness, cause consciousness and reality consciousness. Though he has mentioned only four stages for the purpose of a broad division of the process of ascent, we can subdivide these into many more. As a matter of fact, when we actually come to it and begin to practise, we will find that we have to pass through various stages, just as we do in a course of education. Though we may designate a particular year of study as being the first grade, second grade, third grade, etc., even in each grade we will find there are various stages of study through the divisions of the syllabus or the curriculum of study.
Similarly, in the process of meditation the stages are many, and we may find that practically every day we are in one particular stage. The details of these stages will be known only to one who has started the practice. They cannot be described in books because they are so many, and every peculiar turn of experience will be regarded by us as one stage. Each stage is characterised by a peculiar relation of consciousness to its object and the reaction which the object sets in respect of the consciousness that experiences it. In the beginning it looks very difficult on account of this aforementioned conviction that the object is completely cut off from the mind and that is why there is so much anxiety and heartache in this world. We seem to be completely powerless and helpless in every matter. We are helpless because the world is outside us, and it has no connection with our principle of experience, namely consciousness. To bring into the conscious level the conviction that the objects of experience are not as much segregated as they appear to be, requires very hard effort, philosophical analysis and deep thinking bestowed upon the Subject.
But Patanjali says that mere thinking and analysis will not do it requires direct meditation. While analytical techniques are good enough for the purpose of bringing about logical convictions in the mind, direct experience of the reality behind the objects would be possible only by meditation, which is not merely an analytical technique undertaken, but a profound attempt at piercing through the structure of the object by repeatedly hitting upon it by the use of a single technique which is practised regularly every day, so that when the object is bombarded in this manner by a repeated process of meditation, adopting a single technique, without remission of effort the object gives way. The complex structure of the object, which appeared to be a compact substance, is revealed before the mind as made up of bits of matter and little tiny processes of force which can be disintegrated by the power of meditation. The object can be dismembered, and we will find that afterwards there is no object at all.
--
The entire process of meditation is nothing but this peculiar technique of the absorption of the characteristics of the object into one's own self, stage by stage, though it may take years - sometimes it takes births. But the purpose is the same, and the method is this: namely, that the spatial isolation and the temporal distance of the object from the meditating consciousness should be diminished gradually, by repeated concentration. After repeated practise it will be realised that the object will reveal certain characters which are sympathetic with the constitution of the meditating consciousness. In the beginning stages, however, the sympathy that exists between the Subject and the object cannot be visualised.
This impossibility of visualising the sympathy between the two arises on account of the intensity of the activity of the senses. The senses are very powerful, and the only business of the senses is to intensify the isolated condition of the object from the Subject and to emphasise excessively the distance that the object maintains in respect of the Subject the materiality of the object, the desirability of the object, and so on and so forth. This is the work of the senses, which is an activity that is quite opposed to the attempt that the mind proposes in its meditations.
So the mind has to become friendly with the senses, and rather than oppose the activity of the senses, may have to convert the energy spent through the activity of the senses into meditative forces. This process of the conversion of energy from sense activity into mental activity is called pratyahara, which we shall be considering later on.
1.04 - Descent into Future Hell, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
102. On June 9, 1917, there was a discussion on the psychology of the world war in the Association for Analytical Psychology following a presentation by Jules Vodoz on the Song of Roland. Jung argued that "Hypothetically, the World War can be raised to the Subjective level. In detail, the authoritarian principle (tiling action on the basis of principles) clashes with the emotional principle. The collective unconscious enters into allegiance with the emotional." Concerning the hero, he said: The hero-the beloved figure of the people, should fall. All heroes bring themselves down by carrying the heroic attitude beyond a certain limit, and hence lose their footing (MAP,vol. 2, p. 10). The psychological interpretation of the First World War on the Subjective level describes what is developed in this chapter. The connection between individual and collective psychology which he articulates here forms one of the leitmotifs of his later work
(Of Present and Future [1957], CW 10).
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The spiritual torment cannot be understood, until a person is acquainted with his own soul and spirit. His soul exists in its own individuality: it is not dependent upon form or mould : it has neither hand or foot, nor eye or ear. The external senses which it possessed were dependent on the body, and remain inactive and useless after death, and all the enjoyments resulting from them become entirely null. Wife, children, friends, property, slaves and domestics, equipage, cattle, estates and fields were formerly sources of enjoyment to it. And if he were a lover of, and a seeker after these things, so that he had been always occupied with them, the torment of separation from them will make a deep impression upon his soul, and he will be most certainly the Subject of sorrow and lamentation. But if his heart was untrammeled by these delights, and was inclined towards the future world and was always awaiting death, if the enjoyments of the world were distasteful to him, while he was always occupied with the wants of the soul, which are to find out God - then, in the event of death, he will have attained his longing and his love, and have reached rest, joy and happiness.
[83]
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Every man ought to take as the Subject of his thoughts, the things which concern the future state,- the pains of its torments, the joys of its felicity, the delight and ecstasy of the vision of the beauty of the Lord, and finally the fact that these states are eternal. Now, is it not strange folly and sottishness to be proud of the transitory pleasures of the world in a life which lasts but for one or two days, and to turn our backs upon future eternal joys ? If you are wise you will acknowledge the frailly and errors of your soul, and with an understanding of the purpose for which it was created, you will meditate upon your soul, and upon [104] the almighty power and greatness of God as far as the human mind can comprehend them. Recognizing that God's design in creating you was, that you should know him and love him, you should never cease for one moment to walk with humility and prayer in the path of obedience. Regard this world as the place to sow seed for eternity, and after taking such a portion from this world as may give you strength to take the journey to the other world, turn away from whatever is more than this. Realize that the future world is the place for enjoyment and happiness which is eternal, and the land to behold the excellence and beauty of the Lord; and make it your purpose, divine and omniscient grace assisting you, never to cease from the pursuit of them, but to secure as your prey, the phoenix of felicity and happiness.
1.04 - Religion and Occultism, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Lord if so you decide. the Subjective point of view is much more widely prevailing than is generally admitted.
I have gone through the papers you sent me.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After each exposure the Subject was asked what he
had seen, and the run was terminated by two successive correct identifications.
--
all the Subjects identified them all. For the normal cards these identifications were usually correct, but
the anomalous cards were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as
--
by prior experience. One would not even like to say that the Subjects had seen something different from
what they identified. With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous cards, subjects did begin to
--
more than 10 per cent of the anomalous cards were not correctly identified. And the Subjects who then
failed often experienced acute personal distress. One of them exclaimed: I cant make the suit out,
--
come to view its resolution as the Subject matter of their discipline. For them the field will no longer
look quite the same as it had earlier. Part of its different appearance results simply from the new fixation
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or even psychosis. Whatever the symptoms, they are felt as painful, if not agonizing, by the Subject, with
alternating periods of alleviation and worsening. Throughout the illness the Subject never loses the
thread of his dominating preoccupation. It is often compatible with normal, professional activity and
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exhilaration. the Subject emerges from his ordeal with a permanent transformation in his personality
and the conviction that he has discovered a great truth or a new spiritual world.424
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equates the universe with the world of experience; assumes that the real presupposes the Subjective. This
idea seems exceedingly foreign to modern sensibility, which is predicated upon the historically novel
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form of self-reference to the universal structure. Self-consciousness the apprehension of the Subject by
himself appears to have added another.) The modern mind would consider nothing fundamental altered
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been investigated can therefore come to serve as symbols of representation for description of the Subject of
experience, comparatively difficult to comprehend. It is in this manner that the self, which is essentially
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 Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Therefore in nations so circumstanced this tendency of self-finding has been most powerful and has even created in some of them a new type of national movement, as in Ireland and India. This and no other was the root-meaning of Swadeshism in Bengal and of the Irish movement in its earlier less purely political stages. The emergence of Bengal as a sub-nation in India was throughout a strongly subjective movement and in its later development it became very consciously that. The movement of 1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. We must not forget, however, that in the first stages these movements followed in their superficial thought the old motives of an objective and mostly political self-consciousness. The East indeed is always more subjective than the West and we can see the Subjective tinge even in its political movements whether in Persia, India or China, and even in the very imitative movement of the Japanese resurgence. But it is only recently that this subjectivism has become self-conscious. We may therefore conclude that the conscious and deliberate subjectivism of certain nations was only the sign and precursor of a general change in humanity and has been helped forward by local circumstances, but was not really dependent upon them or in any sense their product.
This general change is incontestable; it is one of the capital phenomena of the tendencies of national and communal life at the present hour. The conception to which Ireland and India have been the first to give a definite formula, to be ourselves,so different from the impulse and ambition of dependent or unfortunate nations in the past which was rather to become like others,is now more and more a generally accepted motive of national life. It opens the way to great dangers and errors, but it is the essential condition for that which has now become the demand of the Time-Spirit on the human race, that it shall find subjectively, not only in the individual, but in the nation and in the unity of the human race itself, its deeper being, its inner law, its real self and live according to that and no longer by artificial standards. This tendency was preparing itself everywhere and partly coming to the surface before the War, but most prominently, as we have said, in new nations like Germany or in dependent nations like Ireland and India. The shock of the war brought about from its earliest moments an immediate and for the time being a militantemergence of the same deeper self-consciousness everywhere. Crude enough were most of its first manifestations, often of a really barbarous and reactionary crudeness. Especially, it tended to repeat the Teutonic lapse, preparing not only to be oneself, which is entirely right, but to live solely for and to oneself, which, if pushed beyond a certain point, becomes a disastrous error. For it is necessary, if the Subjective age of humanity is to produce its best fruits, that the nations should become conscious not only of their own but of each others souls and learn to respect, to help and to profit, not only economically and intellectually but subjectively and spiritually, by each other.
The great determining force has been the example and the aggression of Germany; the example, because no other nation has so self-consciously, so methodically, so intelligently, and from the external point of view so successfully sought to find, to dynamise, to live itself and make the most of its own power of being; its aggression, because the very nature and declared watchwords of the attack have tended to arouse a defensive self-consciousness in the assailed and forced them to perceive what was the source of this tremendous strength and to perceive too that they themselves must seek consciously an answering strength in the same deeper sources. Germany was for the time the most remarkable present instance of a nation preparing for the Subjective stage because it had, in the first place, a certain kind of visionunfortunately intellectual rather than illuminated and the courage to follow itunfortunately again a vital and intellectual rather than a spiritual hardihood,and, secondly, being master of its destinies, was able to order its own life so as to express its self-vision. We must not be misled by appearances into thinking that the strength of Germany was created by Bismarck or directed by the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Rather the appearance of Bismarck was in many respects a misfortune for the growing nation because his rude and powerful hand precipitated its subjectivity into form and action at too early a stage; a longer period of incubation might have produced results less disastrous to itself, if less violently stimulative to humanity. The real source of this great subjective force which has been so much disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germanys statesmen and soldiers for the most part poor enough types of men but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet Goethe, from her great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented. A nation whose master achievement has lain almost entirely in the two spheres of philosophy and music, is clearly predestined to lead in the turn to subjectivism and to produce a profound result for good or evil on the beginnings of a subjective age.
This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the Subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the Subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.
It may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the rigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State,is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path and go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take care not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion and chaos which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her failure which became evident by the turn her action took and was converted for the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate thinker who seeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding,a path exposed to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man,when he follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the Asura, I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament, and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, I am my life and body, and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false formation be embodied in the armour-plated social body of a huge collective human dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or the extinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable.
It is evident that there is a false as well as a true subjectivism and the errors to which the Subjective trend may be liable are as great as its possibilities and may well lead to capital disasters. This distinction must be clearly grasped if the road of this stage of social evolution is to be made safe for the human race.
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1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
She also saw to the proper atmosphere of the room. I shall give an instance: many newspapers were sent to us for Sri Aurobindo's perusal, out of which he read only The Hindu, and the Daily Mail for its comic "Curly Wee" feature. Since we had plenty of time we rummaged through all the papers, one after another, particularly with a view to make interesting news items the Subject of our talk with him. The Indian Express used to supply a lot of war news. Whenever the Mother entered the room her first glance was cast at our corner and often in the morning she found a heap of these newspapers, and ourselves making a jolly good feast of them. Suddenly one day to our surprise all the papers stopped coming except The Hindu and the Amrita Bazar Patrika. Sri Aurobindo looked as usual for the Daily Mail. We had to tell him that the Mother had banned all these papers, for they seemed to spoil the atmosphere of the room. The Mother did not know that Sri Aurobindo was interested in the Mail. He simply smiled. This one small incident is indicative of her ever-wakeful Intelligence operating over all affairs, mundane as well as spiritual and Sri Aurobindo's quiet acceptance of her decision. The room in the "Library" in which newspapers were kept for general reading was named by her "Falsehood", and yet she did not interfere with the sadhaks' liberty of reading them.
She was always out of sympathy with certain mechanical contrivances like the radio, gramophone and ceiling-fan. The radio was allowed in Sri Aurobindo's room only after the war had taken a full-blooded turn. His bedroom had no fan, in spite of considerable heat. The sitting-room had a table-fan. Only after the accident a table-fan was installed near Sri Aurobindo's bed which was not very effective in reducing the stuffiness of the room, closed as it was on the east, west and south. Hence the need of small hand-fans during his walk. It was only after the room had undergone thorough repairs and the old beams were replaced by new solid ones that a ceiling-fan came into operation. Till then the Mother feared that a ceiling-fan would be a risk to the old ceiling. This shows how the Mother guarded against all eventualities, inner as well as outer, and gave as little handle as possible to so-called accidents. She knew very well that shrewd and subtle occult forces were actively engaged in causing them grievous harm. Who could have imagined that Sri Aurobindo would meet with a serious accident in his own room at an unwary moment? He had asserted very firmly that their life was a battlefield in a very real sense and that the Mother and himself were actively waging a continuous war against the adverse forces. "The fact that it was being waged from a closed room made it no less real and serious." She said once that illnesses in their case are much more difficult to cure than in the case of sadhaks because of the concentrated attack of the adverse forces. I may mention in passing that the Mother was not only vigilant regarding Sri Aurobindo against all possible outer attacks and accidents, she is also cognizant of the welfare of the sadhaks. During an epidemic in the town, sadhaks are warned not to take any food from outside. All our raw vegetables and fruits are washed in an antiseptic solution before being cooked or eaten and many other precautions are taken to avoid any outbreak in the Ashram. The inspiration behind the origin of the sadhak Ganpatram's Cottage Restaurant came from the Mother, I was told. She did not want the Ashram children to take food from outside and fall ill; so she called him one day and asked him to open a restaurant only for the Ashram children and prepare food under strict hygienic conditions.
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The object of this book is to suggest a prior possibility,that the whole European theory may be from beginning to end a prodigious error. The confident presumption that religion started in fairly recent times with the terrors of the savage, passed through stages of Animism & Nature worship & resulted variously in Paganism, monotheism or the Vedanta has stood in the way of any extension of scepticism to this province of Vedic enquiry. I dispute the presumption and deny the conclusions drawn from it. Before I admit it, I must be satisfied that a system of pure Nature worship ever existed. I cannot accept as evidence Sun & Star myth theories which, as a play of ingenious scholastic fancy, may attract the imagination, but are too haphazard, too easily self-contented, too ill-combined & inconsequent to satisfy the scientific reason. No other religion of which there is any undisputed record or sure observation, can be defined as a system of pure Nature worship. Even the savage-races have had the conception of gods & spirits who are other than personified natural phenomena. At the lowest they have Animism & the worship of spirits, ghosts & devils. Ancestor-worship & the cult of snake & four-footed animal seem to have been quite as old as any Nature-gods with whom research has made us acquainted. In all probability the Python was worshipped long before Apollo. It is therefore evident that even in the lowest religious strata the impulse to personify Nature-phenomena is not the ruling cult-idea of humanity. It is exceedingly unlikely that at any time this element should have so far prevailed as to cast out all the others so as to create a type of cult confined within a pure & rigid naturalism. Man has always seen in the universe the replica of himself. Unless therefore the Vedic Rishis had no thought of their subjective being, no perception of intellectual and moral forces within themselves, it is a psychological impossibility that they should have detected divine forces behind the objective world but none behind the Subjective.
These are negative and a priori considerations, but they are supported by more positive indications. The other Aryan religions which are most akin in conception to the Vedic and seem originally to have used the same names for their deities, present themselves to us even at their earliest vaguely historic stage as moralised religions. Their gods had not only distinct moral attri butes, but represented moral & subjective functions. Apollo is not only the god of the sun or of pestilencein Homer indeed Haelios (Saurya) & not Apollo is the Sun God but the divine master of prophecy and poetry; Athene has lost any naturalistic significance she may ever have had and is a pure moral force, the goddess of strong intelligence, force guided by brain; Ares is the lord of battles, not a storm wind; Artemis, if she is the Moon, is also goddess of the free hunting life and of virginity; Aphrodite is only the goddess of Love & Beauty There is therefore a strong moral element in the cult & there are clear subjective notions attached to the divine personalities. But this is not all. There was not only a moral element in the Greek religion as known & practised by the layman, there was also a mystic element and an esoteric belief & practice practised by the initiated. The mysteries of Eleusis, the Thracian rites connected with the name of Orpheus, the Phrygian worship of Cybele, even the Bacchic rites rested on a mystic symbolism which gave a deep internal meaning to the exterior circumstances of creed & cult. Nor was this a modern excrescence; for its origins were lost to the Greeks in a legendary antiquity. Indeed, if we took the trouble to understand alien & primitive mentalities instead of judging & interpreting them by our own standards, I think we should find an element of mysticism even in savage rites & beliefs. The question at any rate may fairly be put, Were the Vedic Rishis, thinkers of a race which has shown itself otherwise the greatest & earliest mystics & moralisers in historical times, the most obstinately spiritual, theosophic & metaphysical of nations, so far behind the Orphic & Homeric Greeks as to be wholly Pagan & naturalistic in their creed, or was their religion too moralised & subjective, were their ceremonies too supported by an esoteric symbolism?
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The present essays are merely intended to raise the Subject, not to exhaust it, to offer suggestions, not to establish them. The theory of Vedic religion which I shall suggest in these pages, can only be substantiated if it is supported by a clear, full, simple, natural and harmonious rendering of the Veda standing on a sound philological basis, perfectly consistent in itself and proved in hymn after hymn without any hiatus or fatal objection. Such a substantiation I shall one day place before the public. The problem of Vedic interpretation depends, in my view, on three different tests, philological, historic and psychological. If the results of these three coincide, then only can we be sure that we have understood the Veda. But to erect this Delphic tripod of interpretation is no facile undertaking. It is easy to misuse philology. I hold no philology to be sound & valid which has only discovered one or two byelaws of sound modification and for the rest depends upon imagination & licentious conjecture,identifies for instance ethos with swadha, derives uloka from urvaloka or prachetasa from prachi and on the other [hand] ignores the numerous but definitely ascertainable caprices of Pracritic detrition between the European & Sanscrit tongues or considers a number of word-identities sufficient to justify inclusion in a single group of languages. By a scientific philology I mean a science which can trace the origins, growth & structure of the Sanscrit language, discover its primary, secondary & tertiary forms & the laws by which they develop from each other, trace intelligently the descent of every meaning of a word in Sanscrit from its original root sense, account for all similarities & identities of sense, discover the reason of unexpected divergences, trace the deviations which separated Greek & Latin from the Indian dialect, discover & define the connection of all three with the Dravidian forms of speech. Such a system of comparative philology could alone deserve to stand as a science side by side with the physical sciences and claim to speak with authority on the significance of doubtful words in the Vedic vocabulary. The development of such a science must always be a work of time & gigantic labour.
But even such a science, when completed, could not, owing to the paucity of our records be, by itself, a perfect guide. It would be necessary to discover, fix & take always into account the actual ideas, experiences and thought-atmosphere of the Vedic Rishis; for it is these things that give colour to the words of men and determine their use. The European translations represent the Vedic Rishis as cheerful semi-savages full of material ideas & longings, ceremonialists, naturalistic Pagans, poets endowed with an often gorgeous but always incoherent imagination, a rambling style and an inability either to think in connected fashion or to link their verses by that natural logic which all except children and the most rudimentary intellects observe. In the light of this conception they interpret Vedic words & evolve a meaning out of the verses. Sayana and the Indian scholars perceive in the Vedic Rishis ceremonialists & Puranists like themselves with an occasional scholastic & Vedantic bent; they interpret Vedic words and Vedic mantras accordingly. Wherever they can get words to mean priest, prayer, sacrifice, speech, rice, butter, milk, etc, they do so redundantly and decisively. It would be at least interesting to test the results of another hypothesis,that the Vedic thinkers were clear-thinking men with at least as clear an expression as ordinary poets have and at least as high ideas and as connected and logical a way of expressing themselvesallowing for the succinctness of poetical formsas is found in other religious poetry, say the Psalms or the Book of Job or St Pauls Epistles. But there is a better psychological test than any mere hypothesis. If it be found, as I hold it will be found, that a scientific & rational philological dealing with the text reveals to us poems not of mere ritual or Nature worship, but hymns full of psychological & philosophical religion expressed in relation to fixed practices & symbolic ceremonies, if we find that the common & persistent words of Veda, words such as vaja, vani, tuvi, ritam, radhas, rati, raya, rayi, uti, vahni etc,an almost endless list,are used so persistently because they expressed shades of meaning & fine psychological distinctions of great practical importance to the Vedic religion, that the Vedic gods were intelligently worshipped & the hymns intelligently constructed to express not incoherent poetical ideas but well-connected spiritual experiences,then the interpreter of Veda may test his rendering by repeating the Vedic experiences through Yoga & by testing & confirming them as a scientist tests and confirms the results of his predecessors. He may discover whether there are the same shades & distinctions, the same connections in his own psychological & spiritual experiences. If there are, he will have the psychological confirmation of his philological results.
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But all this triple labour is a work of great responsibility, minute research and an immense & meticulous industry. Meanwhile I hold myself justified in opening the way by a purely hypothetical entrance into the Subject, suggesting possibilities for the present rather than seeking to enforce a settled opinion. There is a possible theory that may be proposed, certain provisional details of it that may be formulated. A few initial stones may be laid down to help in crossing by a convenient ford this great stream of the Veda.
The statement of a few principal details of the Vedic system according to the theory I wish to suggest, a simple enumeration without comments, may help the reader to find his way through the following pages.
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(9) But in order that they may help, it is necessary to reinforce them in these lower worlds, which are not their own, by self-surrender, by sacrifice, by a share in all mans action, strength, being & bliss, and by this mutual help mans being physical, vital, mental, spiritual is kept in a state of perfect & ever increasing force, energy & joy favourable to the development of immortality. This is the process of Yajna, called often Yoga when applied exclusively to the Subjective movements & adhwara when applied to the objective. The Vritras, Panis etc of the Bhuvarloka who are constantly preventing mans growth & throwing back his development, have to be attacked and slain by the gods, for they are not entirely immortal. The sacrifice is largely a battle between evolutionary & reactionary powers.
(10) A symbolic system of external sacrifice in which every movement is carefully designed & coordinated to signify the Subjective facts of the internal Yajna, aids the spiritual aspirant by moulding his material sheath into harmony with his internal life & by mastering his external surroundings so that there too the conditions & forces may be all favourable to his growth.
(11) The Yajna has two parts, mantra & tantrasubjective & objective; in the outer sacrifice the mantra is the Vedic hymn and the tantra the oblation; in the inner the mantra is the meditation or the sacred formula, the tantra the putting forth of the power generated by mantra to bring about some successful spiritual, intellectual, vital or mental activity of which the gods have their share.
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One of the greatest deities of the Vedic Pantheon is a woman, Gna,a feminine power whether of material or moral nature,whether her functions work in the Subjective or the objective. The Hindu religion has always laid an overpowering stress on this idea of the woman in Nature. It is not only in the Purana that the Woman looms so large, not only in the Shakta cult that she becomes a supreme Name. In the Upanishads it is only when Indra, in his search for the mysterious and ill-understood Mastering Brahman, meets with the Woman in the heaven of thingstasminn evakashe striyam ajagama UmamHaimavatim, In that same sky he came to the Woman, Uma, daughter of Himavan,that he is able to learn the thing which he seeks. The Stri, the Aja or unborn Female Energy, is the executive Divinity of the universe, the womb, the mother, the bride, the mould & instrument of all joy & being. The Veda also speaks of the gnah, the Women,feminine powers without whom the masculine are not effective for work & formation; for when the gods are to be satisfied who support the sacrifice & effect it, vahnayah, yajatrah, then Medhatithi of the Kanwas calls on Agni to yoke them with female mates, patnivatas kridhi, in their activity and enjoyment. In one of his greatest hymns, the twenty-second of the first Mandala, he speaks expressly of the patnir devanam, the brides of the Strong Ones, who are to be called to extend protection, to brea the a mighty peace, to have their share the joy of the Soma wine. Indrani, Varunani, Agnayi,we can recognise these goddesses and their mastering gods; but there are threein addition to Mother Earthwho seem to stand on a different level and are mentioned without the names of their mates if they have any and seem to enjoy an independent power and activity. They are Ila,Mahi&Saraswati, the three goddesses born of Love or born of Bliss, Tisro devir mayobhuvah.
Saraswati is known to us in the Purana,the Muse with her feet on the thousand leaved lotus of the mind, the goddess of thought, learning, poetry, of all that is high in mind and its knowledge. But, so far as we can understand from the Purana, she is the goddess of mind only, of intellect & imagination and their perceptions & inspirations. Things spiritual & the mightier supra-mental energies & illuminations belong not to her, but to other powers. Well, we meet Saraswati in the Vedas;and if she is the same goddess as our Puranic & modern protectress of learning & the arts, the Personality of the Intellect, then we have a starting pointwe know that the Vedic Rishis had other than naturalistic conceptions & could call to higher powers than the thunder-flash & the storm-wind. But there is a difficultySaraswati is the name of a river, of several rivers in India, for the very name means flowing, gliding or streaming, and the Europeans identify it with a river in the Punjab. We must be careful therefore, whenever we come across the name, to be sure which of these two is mentioned or invoked, the sweet-streaming Muse or the material river.
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What is Mah or Mahas?The word means great, embracing, full, comprehensive. The Earth, also, because of its wideness & containing faculty is called mahi,just as it is called prithivi, dhara, medini, dharani, etc. In various forms, the root itself, mahi, mahitwam, maha, magha, etc, it recurs with remarkable profusion and persistence throughout the Veda. Evidently it expressed some leading thought of the Rishis, was some term of the highest importance in their system of psychology. Turning to the Purana we find the term mahat applied to some comprehensive principle which is supposed itself to be near to the unmanifest, avyaktam but to supply the material of all that is manifest and always to surround, embrace and uphold it. Mahat seems here to be an objective principle; but this need not trouble us; for in the old Hindu system all that is objective had something subjective corresponding to it and constituting its real nature. We find it explicitly declared in the Vishnu Purana that all things here are manifestations of vijnana, pure ideal knowledge, sarvani vijnanavijrimbhitaniideal knowledge vibrating out into intensity of various phenomenal existences each with its subjective reason for existence and objective case & form of existence. Is ideal knowledge then the Subjective principle of mahat? If so, vijnanam and the Vedic mahas are likely to be terms identical in their philosophical content and psychological significance. We turn to the Upanishads and find mention made more than once of a certain subjective state of the soul, which is called Mahan Atma, a state into which the mind and senses have to be drawn up as we rise by samadhi of the instruments of knowledge into the supreme state of Brahman and which is superior therefore to these instruments. The Mahan Atma is the state of the pure Brahman out of which the vijnana or ideal truth (sattwa or beness of things) emerges and it is higher than the vijnana but nearer us than the Unmanifest or Avyaktam (Katha: III.10, 11,13 & VI.7). If we understand by the Mahan Atma that status of soul existence (Purusha) which is the basis of the objective mahat or mahati prakriti and which develops the vijnanam or ideal knowledge as its subjective instrument, then we shall have farther light on the nature of Mahas in the ancient conceptions. We shall see that it is ideal knowledge, vijnanam, or is connected with ideal knowledge.
But we have first one more step in our evidence to notice,the final & conclusive link. In the Taittiriya Upanishad we are told that there are three vyahritis, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, but the Rishi Mahachamasya insisted on a fourth, Mahas. What is this fourth vyahriti? It is evidently some old Vedic idea and can hardly fail to be our maho arnas. I have already, in my introduction, outlined briefly the Vedic, Vedantic & Puranic system of the seven worlds and the five bodies. In this system the three vyahritis constitute the lower half of existence which is in bondage to Avidya. Bhurloka is the material world, our dwelling place, in which Annam predominates, in which everything is subject to or limited by the laws of matter & material consciousness. Bhuvar are the middle worlds, antariksha, between Swar & Bhur, vital worlds in which Prana, the vital principle predominates and everything is subject to or limited by the laws of vitality & vital consciousness. Swarloka is the supreme world of the triple system, the pure mental kingdom in which manasei ther in itself or, as one goes higher, uplifted & enlightened by buddhipredominates & by the laws of mind determines the life & movements of the existences which inhabit it. The three Puranic worlds Jana, Tapas, Satya,not unknown to the Vedaconstitute the Parardha; they are the higher ranges of existence in which Sat, Chit, Ananda, the three mighty elements of the divine nature predominate respectively, creative Ananda or divine bliss in Jana, the power of Chit (Chich-chhakti) or divine Energy in Tapas, the extension [of] Sat or divine being in Satya. But these worlds are hidden from us, avyaktalost for us in the sushupti to which only great Yogins easily attain & only with the Anandaloka have we by means of the anandakosha some difficult chance of direct access. We are too joyless to bear the surging waves of that divine bliss, too weak or limited to move in those higher ranges of divine strength & being. Between the upper hemisphere & the lower is Maharloka, the seat of ideal knowledge & pure Truth, which links the free spirits to the bound, the gods who deliver to the gods who are in chains, the wide & immutable realms to these petty provinces where all shifts, all passes, all changes. We see therefore that Mahas is still vijnanam and we can no longer hesitate to identify our subjective principle of mahas, source of truth & right thinking awakened by Saraswati through the perceptive intelligence, with the Vedantic principle of vijnana or pure buddhi, instrument of pure Truth & ideal knowledge.
We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. the Subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihatSacchidananda objectivisedis the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feelas Wordsworth felt itwhen we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it Sukritam, What I have made, is good. Whoever enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smritisees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memoryjust as we say of a friend This is he and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselvesthough we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,is in all things true. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefa thers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.
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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.
1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This fundamental experience will yet begin differently for different natures and take long to develop all the Truth that it conceals in its thousand aspects. I see perhaps or feel in myself or as myself first the eternal Presence and afterwards only can extend the vision or sense of this greater self of mine to all creatures. I then see the world in me or as one with me. I perceive the universe as a scene in my being, the play of its processes as a movement of forms and souls and forces in my cosmic spirit; I meet myself and none else everywhere. Not, be it well noted, with the error of the Asura, the Titan, who lives in his own inordinately magnified shadow, mistakes ego for the self and spirit and tries to impose his fragmentary personality as the one dominant existence upon all his surroundings. For, having the knowledge, I have already seized this reality that my true self is the non-ego, so always my greater Self is felt by me either as an impersonal vastness or an essential Person containing yet beyond all personalities or as both these together; but in any case, whether Impersonal or illimitable Personal or both together, it is an ego-exceeding Infinite. If I have sought it out and found it first in the form of it I call myself rather than in others, it is only because there it is easiest for me, owing to the Subjectivity of my consciousness, to find it, to know it at once and to realise it. But if the narrow instrumental ego does not begin to merge in this Self as soon as it is seen, if the smaller external mind-constructed I refuses to disappear into that greater permanent uncreated spiritual I, then my realisation is either not genuine or radically imperfect. There is somewhere in me an egoistic obstacle; some part of my nature has opposed a self-regarding and self-preserving denial to the all-swallowing truth of the Spirit.
On the other hand and to some this is an easier way I may see the Divinity first in the world outside me, not in myself but in others. I meet it there from the beginning as an indwelling and all-containing Infinite that is not bound up with all these forms, creatures and forces which it bears on its surface. Or else I see and feel it as a pure solitary Self and Spirit which contains all these powers and existences, and I lose my sense of ego in the silent Omnipresence around me. Afterwards it is this that begins to pervade and possess my instrumental being and out of it seem to proceed all my impulsions to action, all my light of thought and speech, all the formations of my consciousness and all its relations and impacts with other soul-forms of this one worldwide Existence. I am already no longer this little personal self, but That with something of itself put forward which sustains a selected form of its workings in the universe.
1.04 - The Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
54 I am speaking here of the Subjective feeling- value, which is
subject to the more or less periodic changes described above.
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tives"). 6 the Subjective feeling-tones or "value quanta" are
easily recognized by the kind and number of constellations, or
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tive factor that confronts the Subject independently of him, like
anima or animus; and just as the latter have a higher position in
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feeling-tone. This indicates the degree to which the Subject is
affected by the process or how much it means to him (in so far
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"affect" that the Subject becomes involved and so comes to feel
the whole weight of reality. The difference amounts roughly to
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be deemed impossible, even if the Subject cannot bring it about
by an act of will. Once metaphysical ideas have lost their capac-
1.04 - Wherefore of World?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Pure thought, which Idealism regards as the first essence, may well constitute the abstract and conceptual foundation of being; it is not sufficient to explain the living and concrete reality. And Will itself cannot be presented as ultimate cause of the world. For Will is a power of action, realisation, emotion, productive of movement, only in the domain of the Subjective energies. But the universe is not only an internal dynamism; it is a substantial activity.
It is, therefore, only an integral experience that can enable us to attain, beyond the multiple forms and successive depths of the reality, its ultimate sources. The discovery cannot be effected by the sole aid of the logical reason. The data of sensation must enter into it no less than those of the understanding, no less than those of the still more transcendent faculties of intuitive consciousness and of knowledge that is lived.
1.05 - 2010 and 1956 - Doomsday?, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
thusiasm for the Subject. We live in a time of adventure
and high intellectual excitement, but also in the midst of
1.052 - Yoga Practice - A Series of Positive Steps, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Enthusiasts in yoga are mostly under the impression that to take to yoga is to mortify but it is not. the Subjection of the personality to undue pain is not the intention of yoga. The intention is quite different altogether. It is a healthy growth of the personality that is intended, and the obviating of those unnecessary factors which intrude in this process of healthy growth of the personality just as eating is necessary, but overeating is bad, and not eating at all is also bad. We have to understand what it is to eat without overeating or going to the other extreme of not eating at all.
The famous exhortation on moderation in the sixth chapter of the Bhagavadgita is to the point. Yukthra-vihrasya yukta-ceasya karmasu, yukta-svapnvabodhasya yogo bhavati dukhah (B.G. VI.17): The pain-destroying yoga comes to that person who is moderate in every manner. Ntyanatas tu yogosti (B.G. VI.16): Yoga does not come to one who eats too much, enjoys too much, or indulges in the senses too much. Na caikntam ananata (B.G. VI.16):One who is excessively austere also is far from yoga. Na cti svapnalasya jgrato naiva crjuna (B.G. VI.16): One who is excessively torpid and lethargic and given to overindulgence in sleeping is far from yoga, but one who remains excessively awake to the torture of the body and the mind is also far from yoga.
1.057 - The Four Manifestations of Ignorance, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It is not true that anything is permanent in this world. So, how is it that we see everything as permanent? We see a tree, a wall or a building, and we see people living for years. All these are phenomena, no doubt. They are phenomena, not noumena not realities. This incapacity on the part of the perceiving consciousness to distinguish between the phenomenal feature in experience and the real element behind it is ignorance avidya. Inasmuch as things are interconnected, interrelated, vitally dependent upon one another there is an organic relationship of things it is not true that objects are really isolated completely and that there is a necessity for the mind to run after objects. There is no necessity for the mind to run after objects, inasmuch as the objects are really connected with the Subject. That they are not so connected, and therefore there is a need for desiring and possessing them, is ignorance.
The not-Self means the anatman that is to say, that which is not ones own Self. Inasmuch as there is something in this world which is not myself, I have naturally to face it in some proper manner. The way in which I face an object in this world is called the relationship that I establish with it. This is the cause of my likes and dislikes in respect of the object; and where there is an intense like or a dislike for anything, that particular thing is invested with certain characteristics that do not really belong to it. Why does ones own child look so beautiful? Well, it has to look beautiful merely because it is mine. If it is not mine, then it must be ugly. It is stupid merely because it is not mine. Characters which do not really inhere in an object can be visualised due to a prejudice of emotion. The likes and dislikes are the causative factors behind this investment of characters which are false.
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Thus, our very existence is a false existence; this is what is made out by this sutra. If our existence is itself illegal, untenable, unfounded and irrational, how can anything that we do on the basis of this individuality be right? So it is no wonder that we are suffering in this world. Ignorance has produced this peculiar sense of individuality, asmita this feeling of oneself being different from others. the Subject is cut off from the object; and each thing in this world has an asmita of its own. There is an affirming principle working in every item of creation. Because of this confirmed feeling of the sense of individual being, there is a further urge arising from this sense of individual being namely, a necessity felt to connect oneself with others. If I am different from you, what is my relationship with you? This question arises.
It is not possible to deny all relationship, because of the fact of perception. If I am completely oblivious of the existence of people outside, of things outside, of the world around me, then of course the question may not arise. But I see the world, I see people, I see things as completely different from me. So I feel a necessity to conduct myself in a particular manner in respect of these existences outside me. This manner is raga-dvesa like and dislike a peculiar, subtle relationship that we project for the purpose of stabilising this individuality and keeping it secure in the light of the presence of other individuals also. Here begins what is called social life.
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The distinguishing marks of charity are disinterestedness, tranquillity and humility. But where there is disinterestedness there is neither greed for personal advantage nor fear for personal loss or punishment; where there is tranquillity, there is neither craving nor aversion, but a steady will to conform to the divine Tao or Logos on every level of existence and a steady awareness of the divine Suchness and what should be ones own relations to it; and where there is humility there is no censoriousness and no glorification of the ego or any projected alter-ego at the expense of others, who are recognized as having the same weaknesses and faults, but also the same capacity for transcending them in the unitive knowledge of God, as one has oneself. From all this it follows that charity is the root and substance of morality, and that where there is little charity there will be much avoidable evil. All this has been summed up in Augustines formula: Love, and do what you like. Among the later elaborations of the Augustinian theme we may cite the following from the writings of John Everard, one of those spiritually minded seventeenth-century divines whose teachings fell on the deaf ears of warring factions and, when the revolution and the military dictatorship were at an end, on the even deafer ears of Restoration clergymen and their successors in the Augustan age. (Just how deaf those ears could be we may judge by what Swift wrote of his beloved and morally perfect Houyhnhnms. the Subject matter of their conversations, as of their poetry, consisted of such things as friendship and benevolence, the visible operations of nature or ancient traditions; the bounds and limits of virtue, the unerring rules of reason. Never once do the ideas of God, or charity, or deliverance engage their minds. Which shows sufficiently clearly what the Dean of St. Patricks thought of the religion by which he made his money.)
Turn the man loose who has found the living Guide within him, and then let him neglect the outward if he can! Just as you would say to a man who loves his wife with all tenderness, You are at liberty to beat her, hurt her or kill her, if you want to.
1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
felt whether the Subject is conscious of it or not. Yet, although
the attributes of Christ (consubstantiality with the Father, co-
1.05 - Dharana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
2:We know that it is fairly easy for the ordinary educated mind to think without much distraction on a subject in which it is much interested. We have the popular phrase, "revolving a thing in the mind"; and as long as the Subject is sufficiently complex, as long as thoughts pass freely, there is no great difficulty. So long as a gyroscope is in motion, it remains motionless relatively to its support, and even resists attempts to distract it; when it stops it falls from that position. If the earth ceased to spin round the sun, it would at once fall into the sun.
3:The moment then that the student takes a simple subject - or rather a simple object - and imagines it or visualizes it, he will find that it is not so much his creature as he supposed. Other thoughts will invade the mind, so that the object is altogether forgotten, perhaps for whole minutes at a time; and at other times the object itself will begin to play all sorts of tricks.
1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
It is obvious that it is only what goes on in our own minds that can be thus known immediately. What goes on in the minds of others is known to us through our perception of their bodies, that is, through the sense-data in us which are associated with their bodies. But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have minds. It seems natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the things that distinguish men from animals: animals, we may suppose, though they have acquaintance with sense-data, never become aware of this acquaintance. I do not mean that they _doubt_ whether they exist, but that they have never become conscious of the fact that they have sensations and feelings, nor therefore of the fact that they, the Subjects of their sensations and feelings, exist.
We have spoken of acquaintance with the contents of our minds as
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the Subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
1.05 - On the Love of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
In the first place, every one of man's faculties has its appropriate function which it delights to fulfil. This holds good of them all, from the lowest bodily appetite to the highest form of intellectual apprehension. But even a comparatively low form of mental exertion affords greater pleasure than the satisfaction of bodily appetites. Thus, if a man happens to be absorbed in a game of chess, he will not come to his meal, though repeatedly summoned. And the higher the Subject-matter of our knowledge, the greater is our delight in it; for instance, we would take more pleasure in knowing the secrets of a king than the secrets of a vizier. Seeing, then, that God is the highest possible object of knowledge, the knowledge of Him must afford more delight than any other. He who knows God, even in this world, dwells, as it were, in a paradise, "the breadth of which is as the breadth of the heavens and the earth,"[1] a, paradise the fruits of which no envy can.
[1. Koran.]
1.05 - Pratyahara and Dharana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
We hear "Be good," and "Be good," and "Be good," taught all over the world. There is hardly a child, born in any country in the world, who has not been told, "Do not steal," "Do not tell a lie," but nobody tells the child how he can help doing them. Talking will not help him. Why should he not become a thief? We do not teach him how not to steal; we simply tell him, "Do not steal." Only when we teach him to control his mind do we really help him. All actions, internal and external, occur when the mind joins itself to certain centres, called the organs. Willingly or unwillingly it is drawn to join itself to the centres, and that is why people do foolish deeds and feel miserable, which, if the mind were under control, they would not do. What would be the result of controlling the mind? It then would not join itself to the centres of perception, and, naturally, feeling and willing would be under control. It is clear so far. Is it possible? It is perfectly possible. You see it in modern times; the faith-healers teach people to deny misery and pain and evil. Their philosophy is rather roundabout, but it is a part of Yoga upon which they have somehow stumbled. Where they succeed in making a person throw off suffering by denying it, they really use a part of Pratyahara, as they make the mind of the person strong enough to ignore the senses. The hypnotists in a similar manner, by their suggestion, excite in the patient a sort of morbid Pratyahara for the time being. The so-called hypnotic suggestion can only act upon a weak mind. And until the operator, by means of fixed gaze or otherwise, has succeeded in putting the mind of the Subject in a sort of passive, morbid condition, his suggestions never work.
Now the control of the centres which is established in a hypnotic patient or the patient of faith-healing, by the operator, for a time, is reprehensible, because it leads to ultimate ruin. It is not really controlling the brain centres by the power of one's own will, but is, as it were, stunning the patient's mind for a time by sudden blows which another's will delivers to it. It is not checking by means of reins and muscular strength the mad career of a fiery team, but rather by asking another to deliver heavy blows on the heads of the horses, to stun them for a time into gentleness. At each one of these processes the man operated upon loses a part of his mental energies, till at last, the mind, instead of gaining the power of perfect control, becomes a shapeless, powerless mass, and the only goal of the patient is the lunatic asylum.
1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
elucidation, educationpasses to the Subjective level; in other words, what
happened to the patient must now happen to the doctor, so that his
1.05 - Solitude, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
We are the Subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances,have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the drift-wood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I _may_ be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I _may not_ be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
the classics for exhausting all the Subjects and themes. They railed at their own governments and their
own reactionaries who did not want to comprehend and adopt the advanced experience of the Soviet
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then there is a reciprocal and simultaneous construction of the Subject on the one hand and the object on
the other.595
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sensory and the Subjective, affective, mythological aspects of experience. The purpose of scientific
methodology, in large part, is to separate the empirical facts from the motivational presumption. In the
--
the journey through elements of experience and personal character that constitute the Subjective world
of experience (rather than the shared social and natural world). The inner world is divided into familiar
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source of things, the Subject to whom things appear, and the representations of the things characteristic of
that subject. This is not a mere material source; it is the absolute unknown itself, in whose embrace spirit
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Furthermore, it is the Subjective aspect of individuality of experience that is divine, not the objective.
Man is an animal, from the objective viewpoint, worthy of no more consideration than the opinion and
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with the unknown that human power grows, individually and then historically. Meaning is the Subjective
experience associated with that contact, in sufficient proportion. The great religious myths state that
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creature adapted for its conquest. the Subjective sense of meaning is the instinct governing rate of contact
with the unknown. Too much exposure turns change to chaos; too little promotes stagnation and
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interest provides the Subjective means by which these conditions can be met, and their boundaries
transcended. Meaning is the instinct that makes life possible. When it is abandoned, individuality loses its
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unspecifiable. This appears as true for the purely objective aspects of experience (which constitute the Subject matter
for science) (see Kuhn, T. (1970); Feyeraband, P.K. (1981).) as for the Subjective.
The word itself as case in point can no longer reasonably be regarded as a label for a thing [Wittgenstein,
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be shown to be a projection of an individuation process, the Subject of which, however, is the people, the chosen
collectivity, and not the individual. In the collective projection, history appears as the collective representation of
1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
When, in the ordinary way of business, we write 0, we should really write 0n.[4] For 0 implies that the Subject is not extended in any dimension under discussion. Thus a line may be two feet in length, but in breadth and depth the coefficient is Zero. We could describe it as 2f 0b 0d, or n2f + 0b + 0d.[5]
What I proposed in considering "What do we mean by Nothing?" was to consider every possible quality of any object as a dimension.
1.05 - True and False Subjectivism, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
1.05 - Yoga and Hypnotism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the mind is entirely passive, then the force of Nature which works in the whole of animate and inanimate creation, has free play; for it is in reality this force which works in man as well as in the sun and star. There is no doubt of this truth whether in Hinduism or in Science. This is the thing called Nature, the sum of cosmic force and energy, which alone Science recognises as the source of all work and activity. This also is the Prakriti of the Hindus to which under different names Sankhya and Vedanta agree in assigning a similar position and function in the Universe. But the immediate question is whether this force can act in man independently of mans individual will and initiative. Must it always act through his volition or has it a power of independent operation? The first real proof which Science has had of the power of action independent of volition is in the phenomena of hypnotism. Unfortunately the nature of hypnotism has not been properly understood. It is supposed that by putting the Subject to sleep the hypnotist is able in some mysterious and unexplained way to substitute his will for the Subjects. In a certain sense all the Subjects activities in the hypnotic state are the results of his own volition, but that volition is not spontaneous, it is used as a slave by the operator working through the medium of suggestion. Whatever the hypnotist suggests that the Subject shall think, act or feel, he thinks, acts or feels, and whatever the hypnotist suggests that the Subject shall become, he becomes. What is it that gives the operator this stupendous power? Why should the mere fact of a man passing into this sleep-condition suspend the ordinary reactions of mind and body and substitute others at the mere word of the man who has said to him, Sleep? It is sometimes supposed that it is the superior will of the hypnotist which overcomes the will of the other and makes it a slave. There are two strong objections to this view It does not appear to be true that it is the weak and distracted will that is most easily hypnotised; on the contrary the strong concentrated mind forms a good subject. Secondly, if it were the operators will using the will of the Subject, then the results produced must be such as the latter could himself bring about, since the capacities of the instrument cannot be exceeded by the power working through the instrument. Even if we suppose that the invading will brings with it its own force still the results produced must not exceed the sum of its capacity plus the capacity of the instrument. If they commonly do so, we must suppose that it is neither the will of the operator nor the will of the Subject nor the sum of these two wills that is active, but some other and more potent force. This is precisely what we see in hypnotic performance.
What is this force that enables or compels a weak man to become so rigid that strong arms cannot bend him? that reverses the operations of the senses and abrogates pain? that changes the fixed character of a man in the shortest of periods? that is able to develop power where there was no power, moral strength where there was weakness, health where there was disease? that in its higher manifestations can exceed the barriers of space and time and produce that far-sight, far-hearing and far-thinking which shows mind to be an untrammelled agent or medium pervading the world and not limited to the body which it informs or seems to inform? The European scientist experimenting with hypnotism is handling forces which he cannot understand, stumbling on truths of which he cannot give a true account. His feet are faltering on the threshold of Yoga. It is held by some thinkers, and not unreasonably if we consider these phenomena, that mind is all and contains all. It is not the body which determines the operations of the mind, it is the mind which determines the laws of the body. It is the ordinary law of the body that if it is struck, pierced or roughly pressed it feels pain. This law is created by the mind which associates pain with these contacts, and if the mind changes its dharma and is able to associate with these contacts not pain but insensibility or pleasure, then they will bring about those results of insensibility or pleasure and no other. The pain and pleasure are not the result of the contact, neither is their seat in the body; they are the result of association and their seat is in the mind. Vinegar is sour, sugar sweet, but to the hypnotised mind vinegar can be sweet, sugar sour. The sourness or sweetness is not in the vinegar or sugar, but in the mind. The heart also is the Subject of the mind. My emotions are like my physical feelings, the result of association, and my character is the result of accumulated past experiences with their resultant associations and reactions crystallising into habits of mind and heart summed up in the word, character. These things like all the rest that are made of the stuff of associations are not permanent or binding but fluid and mutable, anity sarvasaskr. If my friend blames me, I am grieved; that is an association and not binding. The grief is not the result of the blame but of an association in the mind. I can change the association so far that blame will cause me no grief, praise no elation. I can entirely stop the reactions of joy and grief by the same force that created them. They are habits of the mind, nothing more In the same way though with more difficulty I can stop the reactions of physical pain and pleasure so that nothing will hurt my body. If I am a coward today, I can be a hero tomorrow. The cowardice was merely the habit of associating certain things with pain and grief and of shrinking from the pain and grief; this shrinking and the physical sensations in the vital or nervous man which accompany it are called fear, and they can be dismissed by the action of the mind which created them. All these are propositions which European Science is even now unwilling to admit, yet it is being proved more and more by the phenomena of hypnotism that these effects can be temporarily at least produced by one man upon another; and it has even been proved that disease can be permanently cured or character permanently changed by the action of one mind upon another. The rest will be established in time by the development of hypnotism.
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 - Dhyana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
2:We shall treat of Dhyana as a result rather than as a method. Up to this point ancient authorities have been fairly reliable guides, except with regard to their crabbed ethics; but when they get on the Subject of results of meditation, they completely lose their heads.
3:They exhaust the possibilities of poetry to declare what is demonstrably untrue. For example, we find in the Shiva Sanhita that "he who daily contemplates on this lotus of the heart is eagerly desired by the daughters of Gods, has clairaudience, clairvoyance, and can walk in the air." Another person "can make gold, discover medicine for disease, and see hidden treasures." All this is filth. What is the curse upon religion that its tenets must always be associated with every kind of extravagance and falsehood?
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10:In the course of our concentration we noticed that the contents of the mind at any moment consisted of two things, and no more: the Object, variable, and the Subject, invariable, or apparently so. By success in Dharana the object has been made as invariable as the Subject.
11:Now the result of this is that the two become one. This phenomenon usually comes as a tremendous shock. It is indescribable even by the masters of language; and it is therefore not surprising that semi-educated stutterers wallow in oceans of gush.
1.06 - Magicians as Kings, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
strict sense of the word, will form the Subject of the following
chapter.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The fitting disposition for union with God is not that the soul should understand, feel, taste or imagine anything on the Subject of the nature of God, or any other thing whatever, but should remain in that pureness and love which is perfect resignation and complete detachment from all things for God alone.
St. John of the Cross
1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Similarly, the Subjective search for the self may, like the objective, lean preponderantly to identification with the conscious physical life, because the body is or seems to be the frame and determinant here of the mental and vital movements and capacities. Or it may identify itself with the vital being, the life-soul in us and its emotions, desires, impulses, seekings for power and growth and egoistic fulfilment. Or it may rise to a conception of man as a mental and moral being, exalt to the first place his inner growth, power and perfection, individual and collective, and set it before us as the true aim of our existence. A sort of subjective materialism, pragmatic and outward-going, is a possible standpoint; but in this the Subjective tendency cannot long linger. For its natural impulse is to go always inward and it only begins to feel itself and have satisfaction of itself when it gets to the full conscious life within and feels all its power, joy and forceful potentiality pressing for fulfilment. Man at this stage regards himself as a profound, vital Will-to-be which uses body as its instrument and to which the powers of mind are servants and ministers. This is the cast of that vitalism which in various striking forms has played recently so great a part and still exercises a considerable influence on human thought. Beyond it we get to a subjective idealism now beginning to emerge and become prominent, which seeks the fulfilment of man in the satisfaction of his inmost religious, aesthetic, intuitive, his highest intellectual and ethical, his deepest sympathetic and emotional nature and, regarding this as the fullness of our being and the whole object of our being, tries to subject to it the physical and vital existence. These come to be considered rather as a possible symbol and instrument of the Subjective life flowing out into forms than as having any value in themselves. A certain tendency to mysticism, occultism and the search for a self independent of the life and the body accompanies this new movementnew to modern life after the reign of individualism and objective intellectualism and emphasises its real trend and character.
But here also it is possible for subjectivism to go beyond and to discover the true Self as something greater even than mind. Mind, life and body then become merely an instrumentation for the increasing expression of this Self in the world,instruments not equal in their hierarchy, but equal in their necessity to the whole, so that their complete perfection and harmony and unity as elements of our self-expression become essential to the true aim of our living. And yet that aim would not be to perfect life, body and mind in themselves, but to develop them so as to make a fit basis and fit instruments for the revelation in our inner and outer life of the luminous Self, the secret Godhead who is one and yet various in all of us, in every being and existence, thing and creature. The ideal of human existence personal and social would be its progressive transformation into a conscious outflowering of the joy, power, love, light, beauty of the transcendent and universal Spirit.
1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The History of Magick has never been seriously attempted. For one reason, only initiates pledged to secrecy know much about it; for another, every historian has been talking about some more or less conventional idea of Magick, not of the thing itself. But Magick has led the world from before the beginning of history, if only for the reason that Magick has always been the mother of Science. It is, therefore, of extreme importance that some effort should be made to understand something of the Subject; and there is, therefore, no apology necessary for essaying this brief outline of its historical aspects.
There have always been, at least in nucleus, three main Schools of Philosophical practice. (We use the word "philosophical" in the old good broad sense, as in the phrase "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Knowledge.")
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These Schools represent three perfectly distinct and contrary theories of the Universe, and, therefore, practices of spiritual science. The magical formula of each is as precise as a theorem of trigonometry. Each assumes as fundamental a certain law of Nature, and the Subject is complicated by the fact that each School, in a certain sense, admits the formul of the other two. It merely regards them as in some way incomplete, secondary, or illusory. Now, as will be seen later, the Yellow School stand aloof from the other two by the nature of its postulates. But the Black School and the White are always more or less in active conflict; and it is because just at this moment that conflict is approaching a climax that it is necessary to write this essay. The adepts of the White School consider the present danger to mankind so great that they are prepared to abandon their traditional policy of silence, in order to enlist in their ranks the profane of every nation.
We are in possession of a certain mystical document*[AC13] which we may describe briefly, for convenience sake, as an Apocalypse of which we hold the keys, thanks to the intervention of the Master who has appeared at this grave conjuncture of Fate. This document consists of a series of visions, in which we hear the various Intelligences whose nature it would be hard to define, but who are at the very least endowed with knowledge and power far beyond anything that we are accustomed to regard as proper to the human race.
1.070 - The Seven Stages of Perfection, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Secondly, there will be a diminution of the extent of the object world in front of us which is, at present, hanging upon us as a heavy weight. The individual subject looks upon itself as a minute content of the vast world of objects, so that we always think that the world is larger than we are. It is far bigger than we are, so we are frightened of the world. The object is much bigger than the Subject. That is why the Subject is frightened always. It is always in a state of insecurity and sorrow.
As the ascent progresses, there is also a diminution in the extent of this object world, and the Subject becomes wider and wider. As we go higher and higher, the extent of the jurisdiction of the Subject becomes more and more, and that of the object becomes less and less, so that the world becomes smaller and we become bigger the reverse of what is happening now. There is a diminution of the content of consciousness in the form of the object world and a simultaneous expansion of the jurisdiction of the Subject consciousness, as well as a diminution in the intensity of the feeling of externality in oneself. This is what happens, stage by stage, by the practice.
Thus, these limbs of yoga the eight limbs especially mentioned in Patanjali are the eight degrees of mastery which consciousness gains over its environment by the development of harmony with its atmosphere. We cannot have mastery over anything unless we are harmonious with that thing. The moment we are disharmonious, we become puppets in the hand of that thing with which we are disharmonious. Harmony and power are identical. The more we are harmonious with a thing, a person, an atmosphere or a condition, whatever it is, the more say we have in the matter of that thing which means control over that thing, power over that thing.
We are coming to the conclusion that the highest power is identity of oneself with that thing over which we want to have power. That is intuition. What is known as intuition is the insight which one gains into the substance of that thing which is now regarded as the object of perception, and which is then to become the very self of the thing. So, as we approach nearer and nearer to the Subjecthood of the object, we gain greater mastery over it, and then it is that we have greater feeling for it, greater sympathy for it. This is what is known as the harmony that one has to establish with the object.
Hence, the harmony that we are speaking of is nothing but the development of the consciousness of a selfhood in the object, in consonance with the selfhood of ones own self. The object ceases to be an object as the consciousness rises in its awareness of itself, because what is called an object is nothing but an aspect of the self itself, which has got separated by peculiar factors. That is called ignorance. It is this separatist tendency that has become responsible for one aspect of the self recognising another aspect of it as the object, so that there is a fight of oneself with oneself, as it were. So, the world is nothing but a war of oneself with oneself.
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The body and the senses get adjusted between themselves. The body will not any more be a servant of the senses. There will be an agreement between them so that they become a compact whole. Then, there will be no dissipation of energy due to the impetuosity of the senses and the Subjection of the body to the senses. Also, there will gradually come about a cessation of the cravings of the senses naturally, by gradual practice. Further, the satisfactions that follow from the restraint of the senses and the mind and the disciplines of the body will give a conviction and bring about a new type of joy in oneself, because they indicate that one is progressing correctly. The powers that we acquire and the energies that are generated within will indicate the righteousness of ones procedure. They will, in return, bring greater and greater joy because when joy is increased in quantity and quality, there is less inclination of the senses to go to objects.
It is dissatisfaction within that makes us run to things of the world a kind of vacuousness in our system and an emptiness in the senses and the mind. We feel a bankruptcy in every sense and, therefore, there is felt a necessity to go to objects outside. But, this vacuum will be filled up by the joy that arises within, and then the senses will feel less necessity to go out of their seats.
1.078 - Kumbhaka and Concentration of Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
When this is acquired, this mastery is gained, some sort of a control is maintained over the pranic movements. Great consequences unexpected and unforeseen will follow. We will see strange phenomena appear within us as well as outside us if we gain mastery over the prana, because this kumbhaka that we are speaking of is nothing but another form of concentration of mind, as the mind is associated with the prana always. The object, or the ideal before oneself, is united with the meditating consciousness in a fast embrace, as it were, when the prana is withheld, and it is made to stick to ones consciousness inseparably. It becomes one with ones own self, and there is a sudden impact felt upon the object on account of the kumbhaka that we practise. The kumbhaka, the retention of the breath that we practise, coupled with concentration of mind on the object that is before us, will tell upon the nature of that object which we are thinking of, whatever be the distance of that object. It may be millions of miles away it makes no difference. This is because prana is omnipresent. It is like ether, and so it will produce an impact upon the object that we are thinking of in our meditation. It will stir it up into an activity of a desired manner, according to what we are contemplating in the mind. This effect cannot be produced if the prana is allowed to move hither and thither, distractedly. If we want quick success in meditation, the retention of the breath is absolutely necessary because it is this that impresses upon the object of meditation the necessity to commingle itself with the Subject. Therefore, a combination of pranayama and dharana, concentration, is the most effective method of bringing about a union of oneself with the ideal of meditation.
1.07 - Medicine and Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
anatomical and physiological phenomenon, and only to a lesser degreewith the human being psychically defined. But this precisely is the Subject
of psycho therapy. When we direct our attention to the psyche from the
1.07 - Note on the word Go, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The word Go in the Vedas appears to bear two ordinary meanings, first, cow, secondly, ray, light or lustre. In the hymns of Madhuchchhanda it occurs 6 times, in five hymns. It occurs twice in the fourth hymn addressed to Indra in the first three verses which are all of them important for the discovery of the proper sense of the word as it is used in this passage. In the third verse which is the key to the passage, we find the prayer Then may we know (of) thy ultimate good thoughts. Then may we know. When? as a consequence to what? Obviously as a consequence to the result of the second verse, which I translate Come to us, O bringer out of the nectar (savana), thou the Soma-drinker; drink of the ecstatic Soma wine, a giver of illumination, enraptured or in better English bringing out the sense & association of the words, Come to us, O thou who art a distiller of the nectar, thou, the Soma-drinker, drink of the impetuously ecstatic Soma wine & be in the rapture of its intoxication our giver of illuminating light. Then may we know thy ultimate perceptions of the intellect. Pass us not byO come! Id lays emphasis on goda as the capacity in which, the purpose for which Indra is to drink. Revato and madah give the conditions under which Indra becomes a giver of illumination, the rushing & impetuous ecstasy produced by the Soma wine. It is then that men know the ultimate perceptions of mind, the highest realisations that can be given by the intellect when Indra, lord of mental force & power, is full of the ecstasy of the immortalising juice. This clear & easy sense being fixed for these two verses, we can return to the first & discover its connection with what follows. From sky to sky, its Rishi says to Indra, thou callest forth for uti, (for favour or kindness, as the ordinary interpretation would have it or for manifestation, expansion in being, as I suggest), the maker of beautiful forms, (who, being compared with a cow, must be some goddess), who is like one that gives milk freely to the milker of the cows, or, as I suggest, who milks freely to the milker of the rays. Undoubtedly, sudugham goduhe may be translated, a good milch cow to the milker of the cows; undoubtedly the poet had this idea in his mind when he wrote. The goddess is in the simile a milch cow, Indra is the milker. In each of the skies (the lower, middle & higher) he calls to her & makes her bring out the beautiful forms which she reveals to the drinker of the Soma. But it is impossible, when we take the connection with the two following verses, to avoid seeing that he is taking advantage of the double sense of go, and that while in the simile Indra is goduh the cow-milker, in the Subject of the comparison he is goduh, the bringer out of the illumination, the flashes of higher light which produce the beautiful forms by the power of the goddess. The goddess herself must be one who is habitually associated with illumination, either Ila or Mahi. To anyone acquainted with the processes of Yoga, the whole passage at once becomes perfectly clear & true. The forms are those beautiful & myriad images of things in all the three worlds, the three akashas, dyavi dyavi, which appear to the eye of the Yogin when mental force in the Yoga is at its height, the impetuous & joyous activity (revato madah) of the mingled Ananda and Mahas fills the brain with Ojas and the highest intellectual perceptions, those akin to the supra-rational revelation, become not only possible, but easy, common & multitudinous. The passage describes the condition in which the mind, whether by drinking the material wine, the Karanajal of the Tantrics, or, as I hold, by feeding on the internal amrita, is raised to its highest exalted condition, before it is taken up into mahas or karanam, (whether in the state of Samadhi or in the waking state of the man who has realised his mahan atma, his ideal self), a state in which it is full of revealing thoughts & revealing visions which descend to it from the supra-rational level of the mahat, luminous & unerring, sunrita gomati mahi, where all is Truth & Light. Uti is the state of manifestation in Sat, in being, when that conscious existence which we are is stimulated into intensity & produces easily to the waking consciousness states of existence, movements of knowledge, outpourings of bliss which ordinarily it holds guha, in the secret parts of being.
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.
1.07 - On Dreams, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At first sight one might think that the Subject of dreams is an altogether secondary one; this activity generally seems to have very little importance compared to the activity of our waking state.
However, if we examine the question a little more closely, we shall see that this is not at all the case.
--
The mental enquiry had been going on throughout the period of sleep and the internal faculties, freed from all material activity, were able to concentrate solely on the Subject of their interest.
Very often, the work itself remains unconscious; only the result is perceived.
--
Moreover, as a general rule, we should take great intellectual precautions before interpreting a dream, and above all, we should review exhaustively all the Subjective explanations before we assign to it the value of an objective reality.
However, especially in those who have unlearnt the habit of always directing their thoughts towards themselves, there are cases where we can observe events outside ourselves, events which are not the reflection of our personal mental constructions. And if we know how to translate into intellectual language the more or less inadequate images into which the brain has translated these events, we can learn many things that our too limited physical faculties do not allow us to perceive.
1.07 - On mourning which causes joy., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
He who mourns when he wishes has not attained the beauty of mourning, but rather he who mourns on the Subjects of his choice, and not even on these, but on what God wants. The ugly tears of vainglory are often interwoven with mourning which is pleasing to God. Acting devoutly, we shall find this out by experiment when we see ourselves mourning and still doing evil.
Genuine compunction is pain of soul shorn of all elation,2 in which it gives itself no relief but hourly imagines only its dissolution; and it awaits, like cool water, the comfort of God who comforts humble monks.
1.07 - Production of the mind-born sons of Brahma, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[5]: Brahmā, after detaching from himself the property of anger, in the form of Rudra, converted himself into two persons, the first male, or the Manu Svāyambhuva, and the first woman, or Śatarūpā: so in the Vedas; 'So himself was indeed (his) son.' The commencement of production through sexual agency is here described with sufficient distinctness, but the Subject has been rendered p. 52 obscure by a more complicated succession of agents, and especially by the introduction of a person of a mythic or mystical character, Virāj. The notion is thus expressed in Manu: "Having divided his own substance, the mighty power Brahmā became half male and half female; and from that female he produced Virāj. Know me to be that person whom the male Virāj produced by himself." I. 32, 33. We have therefore a series of Brahmā, Virāj, and Manu, instead of Brahmā and Manu only: also the generation of progeny by Brahmā, begotten on Satarūpā, instead of her being, as in our text, the wife of Manu. The idea seems to have originated with the Vedas, as Kullūka Bhaṭṭa quotes a text; 'Then (or thence) Virāt was born.' The procreation of progeny by Brahmā, however, is at variance with the whole system, which almost invariably refers his creation to the operation of his will: and the expression in Manu, 'he created Virāj in her,' does not necessarily imply sexual intercourse. Virāj also creates, not begets, Manu. And in neither instance does the name of Śatarūpā occur. The commentator on Manu, however, understands the expression asrijat to imply the procreation of Virāj; and the same interpretation is given by the Matsya Purāṇa, in which the incestuous passion of Brahmā for Śatarūpa, his daughter in one sense, his sister in another, is described; and by her he begets Virāj, who there is called, not the progenitor of Manu, but Manu himself. This therefore agrees with our text, as far as it makes Manu the son of Brahmā, though not as to the nature of the connexion. The reading of the Agni and Padma P. is that of the Viṣṇu; and the Bhāgavata agrees with it in one place, stating distinctly that the male half of Brahmā, was Manu, the other half, Śatarūpā: ### Bhāgav. III. 12. 35: and although the production of Virāj is elsewhere described, it is neither as the son of Brahmā, nor the father of Manu. The original and simple idea, therefore, appears to be, the identity of Manu with the male half of Brahmā, and his being thence regarded as his son. The Kūrma P. gives the same account as Manu, and in the same words. The Li
ga P. and Vāyu P. describe the origin of Virāj and Śatarūpā from Brahmā; and they intimate the union of Śatarūpā with Puruṣa or Virāj, the male portion of Brahmā, in the first instance; and in the second, with Manu, who is termed Vairāja, or the son of Virāj. The Brāhma P., the words of which are repeated in the Hari Vaṃśa, introduces a new element of perplexity in a new name, that of Āpava. According to the commentator, this is a name of the Prajāpati Vaśiṣṭha. As, however, he performs the office of Brahmā, he should be regarded as that divinity: but this is not exactly the case, although it has been so rendered by the French translator. Āpava becomes twofold, and in the capacity of his male half begets offspring by the female. Again, it is said Viṣṇu created p. 53 Virāj, and Virāj created the male, which is Vairāja or Manu; who was thus the second interval (Antaram), or stage, in creation. That is, according to the commentator, the first stage was the creation of Āpava, or Vaśiṣṭha, or Virāj, by Viṣṇu, through the agency of Hiranyagarbha or Brahmā; and the next was that of the creation of Manu by Virāj. Śatarūpā appears as first the bride of Āpava, and then as the wife of Manu. This account therefore, although obscurely expressed, appears to be essentially the same with that of Manu; and we have Brahmā, Virāj, Manu, instead of Brahmā and Manu. It seems probable that this difference, and the part assigned to Virāj, has originated in some measure from confounding Brahmā with the male half of his individuality, and considering as two beings that which was but one. If the Puruṣa or Virāj be distinct from Brahmā, what becomes of Brahmā? The entire whole and its two halves cannot coexist; although some of the Paurāṇics and the author of Manu seem to have imagined its possibility, by making Virāj the son of Brahmā. The perplexity, however, is still more ascribable to the personification of that which was only an allegory. The division of Brahmā into two halves designates, as is very evident from the passage in the Vedas given by Mr. Colebrooke, (As. R. VIII. 425,) the distinction of corporeal substance into two sexes; Virāj being all male animals, Śatarūpā all female animals. So the commentator on the Hari Vaṃśa explains the former to denote the horse, the bull, &c.; and the latter, the mare, the cow, and the like. In the Bhāgavata the term Virāj implies, Body, collectively, as the commentator observes; 'As the sun illuminates his own inner sphere, as well as the exterior regions, so soul, shining in body (Virāja), irradiates all without and within.' All therefore that the birth of Virāj was intended to express, was the creation of living body, of creatures of both sexes: and as in consequence man was produced, he might be said to be the son of Virāj, or bodily existence. Again, Śatarūpā, the bride of Brahmā, or of Virāj, or of Manu, is nothing more than beings of varied or manifold forms, from Sata, 'a hundred,' and 'form;' explained by the annotator on the Hari Vaṃśa by Anantarūpā, 'of infinite,' and Vividharūpā, 'of diversified shape;' being, as he states, the same as Māyā, 'illusion,' or the power of multiform metamorphosis. The Matsya P. has a little allegory of its own, on the Subject of Brahmā's intercourse with Śatarūpā; for it explains the former to mean the Vedas, and the latter the Savitrī, or holy prayer, which is their chief text; and in their cohabitation there is therefore no evil.
[6]: The Brāhma P. has a different order, and makes Vīra the son of the first pair, who has Uttānapāda, &c. by Kāmyā. The commentator on the Hari Vaṃśa quotes the Vāyu for a confirmation of this account; but the passage there is, 'Śatarūpā bore to the male Vairāja (Manu) two Vīras,' i. e. heroes or heroic sons, p. 54 Uttānpāda and Priyavrata. It looks as if the compiler of the Brāhma P. had made some very unaccountable blunder, and invented upon it a new couple, Vīra and Kāmyā: no such person as the former occurs in any other Purāṇa, nor does Kāmyā, as his wife.
1.07 - The Continuity of Consciousness, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
Once this perceptive faculty is acquired and the experiences during sleep are present to the student's consciousness in complete lucidity and clarity, his attention should be directed to the following point. All these experiences are seen to consist of two kinds, which can be clearly distinguished. The first kind will be totally different from anything that he has ever experienced. These experiences may be a source of joy and edification, but otherwise they should be left to themselves for the time being. They are the first harbinger of higher spiritual worlds in which the student will find his way later on. In the other kind of experiences the attentive observer will discover a certain relationship with the ordinary world in which he lives. the Subjects of his reflections during life, what he would like to understand
p. 209
1.07 - THE GREAT EVENT FORESHADOWED - THE PLANETIZATION OF MANKIND, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
ness of the Subject (as we draw near to the Whole, physics, meta-
physics and religion strangely converge) I am prepared to maintain
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The true law of our development and the entire object of our social existence can only become clear to us when we have discovered not only, like modern Science, what man has been in his past physical and vital evolution, but his future mental and spiritual destiny and his place in the cycles of Nature. This is the reason why the Subjective periods of human development must always be immeasurably the most fruitful and creative. In the others he either seizes on some face, image, type of the inner reality Nature in him is labouring to manifest or else he follows a mechanical impulse or shapes himself in the mould of her external influences; but here in his subjective return inward he gets back to himself, back to the root of his living and infinite possibilities, and the potentiality of a new and perfect self-creation begins to widen before him. He discovers his real place in Nature and opens his eyes to the greatness of his destiny.
Existence is an infinite and therefore indefinable and illimitable Reality which figures itself out in multiple values of life. It begins, at least in our field of existence, with a material figure of itself, a mould of firm substance into which and upon which it can build,worlds, the earth, the body. Here it stamps firmly and fixes the essential law of its movement. That law is that all things are one in their being and origin, one in their general law of existence, one in their interdependence and the universal pattern of their relations; but each realises this unity of purpose and being on its own lines and has its own law of variation by which it enriches the universal existence. In Matter variation is limited; there is variation of type, but, on the whole, uniformity of the individuals of the type. These individuals have a separate movement, but yet the same movement; subject to some minute differences, they adhere to one particular pattern and have the same assemblage of properties. Variety within the type, apart from minor unicities of detail, is gained by variation of group sub-types belonging to one general kind, species and sub-species of the same genus. In the development of Life, before mind has become self-conscious, the same law predominates; but, in proportion as life grows and still more when mind emerges, the individual also arrives at a greater and more vital power of variation. He acquires the freedom to develop according, no doubt, to the general law of Nature and the general law of his type, but also according to the individual law of his being.
1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Sun's journey through the heavens, or rather to be some- what more accurate, the cycle of their lives attached itself to the greater cycle of the Sun. The Nativity occurring at the winter solstice, the Crucifixion at the equinox of spring, all suggest the birth Of the year and the elevation of the Sun above the equator. There are numerous varia- tions upon this theme, but the symbols are nearly always equivalent. the Subject of the picture or the story is ever the same ; it is that eternal miracle of abounding life, ever self-restored, triumphant over death- the return of the Sun.
Six, then, may imply carbon and the idea of the physical elements necessary for the manifestation of life, but to the
1.07 - The Primary Data of Being, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
In the synthetic unity, in the indivisibility of the conscious ego the same characteristic is represented on the contrary by pure internal movement and by an increasing mutability of the Subjective states of the being, a succession of more and more rapid movements in its becoming.
Finally, in the moral characteristics of the individual being, the two dissociated principles of the Absolute are diversely affirmed, that of unity by the exclusive and egoistic oneness of the personal I, that of permanence by a sort of fixity, of inertia, of resistance to the universal movement, a refusal unceasingly opposed to the powers of evolution and progress.
1.080 - Pratyahara - The Return of Energy, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
What happens in pratyahara is mentioned in the sutra: svaviaya asaprayoge cittasya svarpnukra iva indriy pratyhra (II.54). There are two changes that take place in this action of the senses in their abstraction from the objects. Firstly, they are disconnected from contact with the object due to the withdrawal of the consciousness which is animating the senses. Secondly, which is more important, the senses turn back to the mind and assume the character of the mind. Cittasya svarupanukarah means the senses accompanying the mind in its essential nature. They become almost one with the mind. In the usual activity of the senses, they are not one with the mind. They drag the mind out from its own chambers and then compel it to contemplate an external object, in which case the mind is something like a slave of the senses; the master has himself come under the Subjection of the servants. But in pratyahara, this is not what is happening. The master is recognised and his worth is known. The senses return. They do not return of their own accord. If the gas in the engine is completely removed, the vehicle will not move. The gas is the motive force, and that motive force is the consciousness that is attending upon the activity of the senses. If the supply of energy behind the movement of a vehicle is withdrawn, the vehicle cannot move. And, as long as the supply is there, the vehicle cannot be stopped. The vehicle may be said to be the senses which are running towards some objective. They cannot be stopped in their activities unless the energy is withdrawn. That energy is the consciousness.
Therefore, first and foremost, what is required is a severance of the attention of consciousness in respect of the movement of the senses towards objects. The attention is diverted. That is why sometimes, when we are deeply thinking over some important matter, even if we may be looking at some object, we may not see it. Our eyes may be open; it may appear that we are gazing at something, but we are seeing nothing at all on account of the fact that the energy that is necessary for the cognition of an object is withdrawn. There cannot be perception when the attention is diverted in some other way. Thus, in pratyahara there is first a diversion of attention from one place to another place. We have to find out what that place is, which is the object of meditation.
1.081 - The Application of Pratyahara, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Hence, there should be a very clear notion before we set about doing things; and this is a principle to be followed in every walk of life. Without knowing what is to be done, why do we start doing anything? Even if it is cooking, we must know the theory first. What is it about? We cannot run about higgledy-piggledy without understanding it. The purpose of the withdrawal of the mind or the senses from the objects is simple; and that simple answer to this question is that the nature of things does not permit the notion that the mind entertains when it contacts an object. The idea that we have in our mind at the time of cognising an object is not in consonance with the nature of Truth. This is why the mind is to be withdrawn from the object. There is a peculiar definition which the mind imposes upon the object of sense at the time of cognising it, for the purpose of contacting it, etc. This definition is contrary to the true nature of that object. If we call an ass a dog, that would not be a proper definition; it would be a misunderstanding of its real essence. The object of sense is not related to the Subject of perception in the manner in which the Subject is defining it or conceiving it.
Hence, the very activity of the mind in respect of this cognising or contacting is misdirected from the very beginning itself. Yoga asks us to set right this notion first; and this setting right of the notion cannot be done unless the mind is first withdrawn from the object. If there is a very serious illness from which someone is suffering, and the illness has come to a crisis, to an advanced stage, we first of all put the patient on a kind of semi-fast and isolate the patient completely from all contact of every kind social and personal, even psychological so that there is a proper atmosphere for the investigation and diagnosis. This is the pratyahara the complete quarantining of the patient, and not allowing any kind of intrusion from outside. Physically and in every sense of the term there should be isolation so that we can have a clear observation of the situation and also a study of the various techniques that have to be adopted for rectifying the mistaken notion that is in the mind. Pratyahara is not yoga proper. Just as the isolation of the patient in a ward is not the main treatment but is a necessary aspect of the treatment, likewise, pratyahara is an essential part of yoga though it is not yet yoga. Yoga is yet to start. For a few days the doctor may not do anything at all and will simply keep on observing what is happening. After days and days of observation, the physician may come to a conclusion as to what is the condition of the patient, and then the treatment will be started. Likewise, the mind is first of all segregated from its involvements. This segregation is pratyahara.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
of whatever nature, and suppress all thoughts by a direct concentration upon a single thought which itself is finally banished. Fichtean philosophy has shown us that the contents of the mind at any moment consisted of two things : the Object or Non-Ego, which is variable, and the Subject or Ego, apparently invariable. Success in meditation pro- duces the result of making the object as invariable as the subject, this coming as a terrific shock, for a union takes place and the two become one. Rabbi Baer, the Chassidic successor of Israel Baal Shem Tov, taught that when one becomes so absorbed in the contemplation of an object that the whole power of thought is concentrated upon the one point then the self becomes blended and unified with that point. This is the mystical Marriage so often referred to in occult literature, and concerning which so many extrava- gant symbols have been employed. This union has the effect of utterly overthrowing the whole normal balance of the mind, throwing all the poetic, emotional, and spiritual faculties into a sublime ecstasy, making at the same time the rest of life seem absolutely banal. It comes as a tre- mendous experience altogether indescribable even to those who are masters of language, remaining only as a wonder- ful memory - perfect in all its details.
During this state all conditions of limitation such as time and space and thought are wholly abolished. It is impos- sible to explain the real implication of this fact ; only repeated experience can furnish one with apprehension.
For it is an experience beyond any adequate description ; a pure termlessness where the Subject no longer speaks of any thing ; where both subject and object are transcended, and there remains only a sublime spiritual realization - an experience without a name.
It is the most vivid of all experiences, for it is an absolute stunning blow to the mind, all other events of normal life being as complete darkness in comparison with it. The man who has experienced the more intense forms of this state of consciousness is completely liberated. The universe with its bonds is destroyed for him and he for it, and his will is thus able to proceed unhampered.
1.08 - Introduction to Patanjalis Yoga Aphorisms, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Before going into the Yoga aphorisms I shall try to discuss one great question, upon which rests the whole theory of religion for the Yogis. It seems the consensus of opinion of the great minds of the world, and it has been nearly demonstrated by researches into physical nature, that we are the outcome and manifestation of an absolute condition, back of our present relative condition, and are going forward, to return to that absolute. This being granted, the question is: Which is better, the absolute or this state? There are not wanting people who think that this manifested state is the highest state of man. Thinkers of great calibre are of the opinion that we are manifestations of undifferentiated being and the differentiated state is higher than the absolute. They imagine that in the absolute there cannot be any quality; that it must be insensate, dull, and lifeless; that only this life can be enjoyed, and, therefore, we must cling to it. First of all we want to inquire into other solutions of life. There was an old solution that man after death remained the same; that all his good sides, minus his evil sides, remained for ever. Logically stated, this means that man's goal is the world; this world carried a stage higher, and eliminated of its evils, is the state they call heaven. This theory, on the face of it, is absurd and puerile, because it cannot be. There cannot be good without evil, nor evil without good. To live in a world where it is all good and no evil is what Sanskrit logicians call a "dream in the air". Another theory in modern times has been presented by several schools, that man's destiny is to go on always improving, always struggling towards, but never reaching the goal. This statement, though apparently very nice, is also absurd, because there is no such thing as motion in a straight line. Every motion is in a circle. If you can take up a stone, and project it into space, and then live long enough, that stone, if it meets with no obstruction, will come back exactly to your hand. A straight line, infinitely projected must end in a circle. Therefore, this idea that the destiny of man is progressing ever forward and forward, and never stopping, is absurd. Although extraneous to the Subject, I may remark that this idea explains the ethical theory that you must not hate, and must love. Because, just as in the case of electricity the modern theory is that the power leaves the dynamo and completes the circle back to the dynamo, so with hate and love; they must come back to the source. Therefore do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you, must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle. It is as certain as can be, that every bit of hatred that goes out of the heart of a man comes back to him in full force, nothing can stop it; similarly every impulse of love comes back to him.
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.
1.08 - Origin of Rudra: his becoming eight Rudras, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[1]: The sacrifice of Dakṣa is a legend of some interest, from its historical and archeological relations. It is obviously intended to intimate a struggle between the worshippers of Śiva and of Viṣṇu, in which at first the latter, but finally the former, acquired the ascendancy. It is also a favourite subject of Hindu sculpture, at least with the Hindus of the Śaiva division, and makes a conspicuous figure both at Elephanta and Ellora. A representation of the dispersion and mutilation of the gods and sages by Vīrabhadra, at the former, is published in the Archæologia, VII. 326, where it is described as the Judgment of Solomon! a figure of Vīrabhadra is given by Niebuhr, vol. II. tab. 10: and the entire group in the Bombay Transactions, vol. I. p. 220. It is described, p. 229; but Mr. Erskine has not verified the Subject, although it cannot admit of doubt. The groupe described, p. 224, probably represents the introductory details given in our text. Of the Ellora sculptures, a striking one occurs in what Sir C. Malet calls the Doomar Leyna cave, where is "Veer Budder, with eight hands. In one is suspended the slain Rajah Dutz." A. R. VI. 396. And there is also a representation of 'Ehr Budr,' in one of the colonades of Kailas; being, in fact, the same figure as that at Elephanta. Bombay Tr. III. 287. The legend of Dakṣa therefore was popular when those cavern temples were excavated. The story is told in much more detail in several other Purāṇas, and with some variations, which will be noticed: but the above has been selected as a specimen of the style of the Vāyu Purāṇa, and as being a narration which, from its inartificial, obscure, tautological, and uncircumstantial construction, is probably of an ancient date. The same legend, in the same words, is given in the Brāhma P.
[2]: Or this may he understood to imply, that the original story is in the Vedas; the term being, as usual in such a reference, ###. Ga
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
to come. 10 For the Subject matter of Savitri were the ex-
periences of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Death had not
1.08 - Stead and the Spirits, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
From this point of view Mr. Steads bizarre experiments are to be deprecated. The one redeeming feature about them is that, as conducted, they seem to remove the first elementary difficulty in the way of investigation, the possibility of human deceit and imposture. We presume that he has got rid of professional mediums and allows only earnest-minded and honourable investigators to be present. But the other elements of error and confusion are encouraged rather than obviated by the spirit and methods of Mr. Steads Bureau. First, there is the error and self-deception of the sitters. The spirit does not express himself directly but has to give his thoughts at third hand; they come first to the intermediary spirit, Julia or another, by her they are conveyed to the human medium and through him conveyed by automatic or conscious speech or writing to the listeners. It is obvious how largely the mind of the medium and, to a smaller but still great extent, the thought-impressions of the other sitters must interfere, and this without the least intention on their part, rather in spite of a strong wish in the opposite direction. Few men really understand how the human mind works or are fitted to watch the processes of their own conscious and half-conscious thought even when the mind is disinterested, still less when it is active and interested in the Subject of communication. The sitters interfere, first, by putting in their own thoughts and expressions suggested by the beginnings of the communication, so that what began as a spirit conversation ends in a tangle of the mediums or sitters ideas with the little of his own that the spirit can get in now and then. They interfere not only by suggesting what they themselves think or would say on the Subject, but by suggesting what they think the spirit ought dramatically to think or say, so that Mr. Gladstone is made to talk in interminable cloudy and circumambient periods which were certainly his oratorical style but can hardly have been the staple of his conversation, and Lord Beaconsfield is obliged to be cynical and immoral in the tone of his observations. They interfere again by eagerness, which sometimes produces replies according to the sitters wishes and sometimes others which are unpleasant or alarming, but in neither case reliable. This is especially the case in answers to questions about the future, which ought never to be asked. It is true that many astonishing predictions occur which are perfectly accurate, but these are far outweighed by the mass of false and random prediction. These difficulties can only be avoided by rigidly excluding every question accompanied by or likely to raise eagerness or expectation and by cultivating entire mental passivity. The last however is impossible to the medium unless he is a practised Yogin, or in a trance, or a medium who has attained the habit of passivity by an unconscious development due to long practice. In the sitters we do not see how it is to be induced. Still, without unemotional indifference to the nature of the answer and mental passivity the conditions for so difficult and delicate a process of communication cannot be perfect.
Error and self-deception from the other side of the veil cannot be obviated by any effort on this side; all that we can do is to recognise that the spirits are limited in knowledge and cabined by character, so that we have to allow for the mental and moral equation in the communicant when judging the truth and value of the communication. Absolute deception and falsehood can only be avoided by declining to communicate with spirits of a lower order and being on guard against their masquerading under familiar or distinguished names. How far Mr. Stead and his circle have guarded against these latter errors we cannot say, but the spirit in which the sittings are conducted, does not encourage us to suppose that scrupulous care is taken in these respects. It is quite possible that some playful spirit has been enacting Mr. Gladstone to the too enthusiastic circle and has amused himself by elaborating those cloudy-luminous periods which he saw the sitters expected from the great deceased Opportunist. But we incline to the view that what we have got in this now famous spirit interview, is a small quantity of Gladstone, a great deal of Stead and a fair measure of the disembodied Julia and the assistant psychics.
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
But since the Over-Soul is an experienced identity with all manifestation, it is an identity that most definitely and exuberantly embraces nature; and, to that degree, it begins to undercut the Subject/object dualism.10 Emerson explains:
We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul [the Over-Soul, the World Soul]. . . . And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the Subject and the object, are one.11
In his famous "transparent eyeball" section from the essay Nature, Emerson speaks movingly of the union of the
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In this state of formless and silent awareness, one does not see the Godhead, for one is the Godhead, and knows it from within, self-felt, and not from without, as an object. The pure Witness (which Eckhart calls "the essence of the Subject") cannot be seen, for the simple reason that it is the Seer (and the Seer itself is pure
Emptiness, the pure opening or clearing in which all objects, experiences, things and events arise, but which itself merely abides). Anything seen is just more objects, more finite things, more creatures, more images or concepts or visions, which is exactly what it is not.
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After the austerity of a night spent wholly in resting in a calm and peaceful sleep comes the austerity of a day which is sensibly organised; its activities will be divided between the progressive and skilfully graded exercises required for the culture of the body, and work of some kind or other. For both can and ought to form part of the physical tapasya. With regard to exercises, each one will choose the ones best suited to his body and, if possible, take guidance from an expert on the Subject, who knows how to combine and grade the exercises to obtain a maximum effect. Neither the choice nor the execution of these exercises should be governed by fancy. One must not do this or that because it seems easier or more amusing; there should be no change of training until the instructor considers it necessary. The self-perfection or even simply the self-improvement of each individual body is a problem to be solved, and its solution demands much patience, perseverance and regularity. In spite of what many people think, the athletes life is not a life of amusement or distraction; on the contrary, it is a life of methodical efforts and austere habits, which leave no room for useless fancies that go against the result one wants to achieve.
In work too there is an austerity. It consists in not having any preferences and in doing everything one does with interest. For one who wants to grow in self-perfection, there are no great or small tasks, none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is true, but it is truer still that one can learn to find interest in everything one does, even in what appear to be the most insignificant chores. The secret of this attainment lies in the urge towards self-perfection. Whatever occupation or task falls to your lot, you must do it with a will to progress; whatever one does, one must not only do it as best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to the most artistic and intellectual work. The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing.
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The question of mental austerity immediately brings to mind long meditations leading to control of thought and culminating in inner silence. This aspect of yogic discipline is too well known to need dwelling upon. But there is another aspect of the Subject which is usually given less attention, and that is control of speech. Apart from a very few exceptions, only absolute silence is set in opposition to loose talk. And yet it is a far greater and far more fruitful austerity to control ones speech than to abolish it altogether.
Man is the first animal on earth to be able to use articulate sounds. Indeed, he is very proud of this capacity and exercises it without moderation or discernment. The world is deafened with the sound of his words and sometimes one almost misses the harmonious silence of the plant kingdom.
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Lastly, we have all the words that are spoken for the purpose of teaching. This category ranges from the kindergarten to the university course, not forgetting all the artistic and literary creations of mankind that seek to entertain or instruct. In this domain, everything depends on the worth of the creation, and the Subject is too vast to be dealt with here. It is a fact that concern about education is very much in vogue at present and praiseworthy attempts are being made to make use of new scientific discoveries in the service of education. But even in this matter, austerity is demanded from the aspirant towards truth.
It is generally admitted that in the process of education a certain kind of lighter, more frivolous, more entertaining productions are necessary to reduce the strain of effort and give some relaxation to the children and even to adults. From a certain point of view, this is true; but unfortunately this concession has served as an excuse to justify a whole category of things which are nothing but the efflorescence of all that is vulgar, crude and base in human nature. Its coarsest instincts, its most depraved taste find in this concession a good excuse to display and impose themselves as an inevitable necessity. They are nothing of the kind, however; one can relax without being dissolute, take rest without being vulgar, enjoy oneself without allowing the grosser elements in the nature to rise to the surface. But from the point of view of austerity, these needs themselves change their nature; relaxation is transformed into inner silence, rest into contemplation and enjoyment into bliss.
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However, one should not think that the value of spoken words depends on the nature of the Subject of conversation. One can talk idly on spiritual matters just as much as on any other, and this kind of idle talk may well be one of the most dangerous. For example, the neophyte is always very eager to share with others the little he has learnt. But as he advances on the path, he becomes more and more aware that he does not know very much and that before trying to instruct others, he must be very sure of the value of what he knows, until he finally becomes wise and realises that many hours of silent concentration are needed to be able to speak usefully for a few minutes. Moreover, where inner life and spiritual effort are concerned, the use of speech should be subjected to a still more stringent rule and nothing should be said unless it is absolutely indispensable.
It is a well-known fact that one must never speak of ones spiritual experiences if one does not want to see vanishing in a flash the energy accumulated in the experience, which was meant to hasten ones progress. The only exception which can be made to the rule is with regard to ones guru, when one wants to receive some explanation or teaching from him concerning the content and meaning of ones experience. Indeed, one can speak about these things without danger only to ones guru, for only the guru is able by his knowledge to use the elements of the experience for your own good, as steps towards new ascents.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If indeed the philology of the Europeans were an exact science or its conclusions inevitable results from indisputable premises, there would be no room for any reopening of the Subject. But the failure of comparative philology to develop a sound scientific basis & to create a true science of language has been one of the conspicuous intellectual disappointments of the nineteenth century. There can be no denial of that failure. This so-called science is scouted by scientific minds and even the possibility of an etymological science has been disputed. The extravagances of the philological sun myth weavers have been checked by a later method which prefers the evidence of facts to the evidence of nouns & adjectives. The later ethnological theories ignore the conclusions & arguments of the philologists. The old theory of Aryan, Semite, Dravidian & Turanian races has everywhere been challenged and is everywhere breached or rejected. The philologists have indeed established some useful identities and established a few rules of phonetical modification and detrition. But the rest is hypothesis and plausible conjecture. The capacity of brilliant conjecture, volatile inference and an ingenious imagination have been more useful to the modern Sanscrit scholar than rigorous research, scientific deduction or patient and careful generalisation. We are therefore at liberty even on the ground of European science & knowledge to hesitate before the conclusions of philological scholarship.
But for my own part I do not hold myself bound by European research&European theories.My scepticism of nineteenth century results goes farther than is possible to any European scepticism. The Science of comparative religion in Europe seems to me to be based on a blunder. The sun & star theory of comparative mythology with its extravagant scholastic fancies & lawless inferences carries no conviction to my reason. I find in the Aryan & Dravidian tongues, the Aryan and Dravidian races not separate & unconnected families but two branches of a single stock. The legend of the Aryan invasion & settlement in the Panjab in Vedic times is, to me, a philological myth. The naturalistic interpretation of theVedas I accept only as a transference or adhyaropa of European ideas into the Veda foreign to the mentality of the Vedic Rishis & Max Mullers discovery of Vedic henotheism as a brilliant & ingenious error. Whatever is sound & indisputable in European ideas & discoveries, I am bound to admit & shall use, but these large generalisations & assumptions ought, I think, no longer to pass current as unchallengeable truth or the final knowledge about the Vedas. My method is rather to make a tabula rasa of all previous theories European or Indian & come back to the actual text of the Veda for enlightenment, the fundamental structure & development of the old Sanscrit tongue for a standard of interpretation and the connection of thought in the hymns for a guide to their meaning. I have arrived as a result at a theory of the Vedic religion, of which this book is intended to give some initial indications.
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But why, it might be asked, should each subjective order or stratum of consciousness necessarily involve the co-existence of a corresponding order of beings & objective world-stratum? For the modern mind, speculative & introspective like the Vedic, is yet speculative within the limits of sensational experience and therefore unable to believe in, even if it can conceive of existence, least of all of an objective existence under conditions different from those [with] which we are familiar and of which our senses assure us. We may therefore admit the profundity & subtlety of the Subjective distinction, but we shall be apt to regard the belief in objective worlds & beings unseen by our senses as either an early poetic fancy or a crude superstition of savages. But the Vedic mentality, although perfectly rational, stood at the opposite pole of ideas from the modern and its subjective consciousness admitted a class of experiences which we reject and cut short the moment they begin to present themselves by condemning them as hallucinations. The idea of modern men that the ancients evolved their gods by a process of poetic imagination, is an error due to inability to understand an alien mentality & unwillingness to investigate from within those survivals of it which still subsist though with difficulty under modern conditions. Encouraging this order of phenomena, fostering & developing carefully the states of mind in which they were possible and the movements of mind & sense by which they were effected, the Vedic Rishis saw and communed with the gods and threw themselves into the worlds of which they had the conception. They believed in them for the same reason that Joan of Arc believed in her saints & her voices, Socrates in his daemon or Swedenborg in his spirits, because they had constant experience of them and of the validity both of the experiences and of the instruments of mind & sense by which they were maintained in operation. They would have answered a modern objector that they had as good a proof of them as the scientist has of the worlds & the different orders of life revealed to his optical nerve by microscope & telescope. Some of them might even question whether these scientific discoveries were not optical illusions due to the excitation of the nerve by the instruments utilised! We may, similarly, get rid of the Vedic experiences, disbelieve and discount them, saying that they missed one essential instrument of truth, the sceptical distrust of their instruments,but we cannot argue from them in the minds that received them a childish irrationality or a savage superstition. They trusted, like us, their experience, believed their mind & senses and argued logically from their premisses.
It is true that apart from these experiences the existence of various worlds & different orders of beings was a logical necessity of the Vedic conception of existence. Existence being a life, a soul expressing itself in forms, every distinct order of consciousness, every stratum or sea of conscious-being (samudra, sindhu, apah as the Vedic thinkers preferred to call them) demanded its own order of objective experiences (lokas, worlds), tended inevitably to throw itself into forms of individualised being (vishah, ganah, prajah). Moreover, in a world so conceived, nothing could happen in this world without relation to some force or being in the worlds behind; nor could there be any material, vital or mental movement except as the expression of a life & a soul behind it. Everything here must be supported from the worlds of mind or it could not maintain its existence. From this idea to the peopling of the world with innumerable mental & vital existences,existences essentially vital like the Naiads, Dryads, Nereids, Genii, Lares & Penates of the Greeks and Romans, the wood-gods, river-gods, house-gods, tree-deities, snake-deities of the Indians, or mental like the intermediate gods of our old Pantheon, would be a natural and inevitable step. This Animism is a remarkably universal feature in the religious culture of the ancient world. I cannot accept the modern view that its survival in a crude form among the savages, those waifs & strays of human progress, is a proof of their low & savage originany more than the peculiarly crude ideas of Christianity that exist in uneducated negro minds [and] would survive in a still more degraded form if they were long isolated from civilised life, would be a proof to future research that Christianity originated from a cannibal tribe on the African continent. The idea is essentially a civilised conception proceeding from keen susceptibility & only possible after a meditative dwelling upon Naturenot different indeed in rank & order from Wordsworths experience of Nature which no one, I suppose, would consider an atavistic recrudescence of old savage mentality, and impossible to the animal man. The dog & crow who reason from their senses, do not stand in awe of inanimate objects, or of dawn & rain & shine or expect from them favours.
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We must examine, then, the rest of the hymn and by an impartial scrutiny discover whether it yields naturally, without forcing or straining, a subjective significance. If we find that no such subjective significance exists & it is the gods of rain & of stars & of material activities who are invoked, a serious if not a fatal doubt will be cast on the validity of the first step we have gained in our second chapter. Here, too, we must follow the clue by which we arrived at the Subjective physiognomy of Saraswati. We must see what is the evidence of the epithets & activities assigned to the several deities of the Sukta.
The first three riks are devoted to the Aswins & run in this strain:
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O Aswins, arrive with energetic force of a bright-flaming strength, givers of that which is radiant and brilliant or, if we take the interpretation of the ritualists, of wealth of cows & wealth of gold. We see that here too we have ish with two epithets denoting strength and force; here also we meet the words dasr and avray in connection with the Aswins; here also they are connected with light or radiance, go, rays or diffused light which we shall find to be the standing symbol-word in the Vedas for the diffusion of the light of the vijnana or mahas, for that ritam jyotih or light of ideal Truth which constitutes the luminous force hymned in connection with the Aswins by Praskanwa Kanwa, jyotishmatm isham. These fixed ideas, this constant relation of epithets, this order in the divine functions, points to a settled system large in idea & minute in detail accepted by all the Vedic Rishis throughout the long period covered by the ensemble of the hymns of the Rigveda. In the ritualistic and naturalistic interpretations we get an artificial sense, an incoherent connection of ideas, a vague, purposeless & merely ornamental use of figures & epithets, one Rishi apparently reproducing stupidly the decorative ideas, images & words of his predecessors. In the Subjective interpretation of the Vedas we shall find always a simple, lucid & straightforward sense perfectly connected & coherent, arising spontaneously from the text, in which there is a reason for the constant recurrence of ideas & terms, a complete appropriateness & fullness of meaning for every word that is used and an absolutely satisfying logical reason for the connection of each word with its predecessor & successor. According to our idea of the mentality of the Rishis we shall accept either the one interpretation which results in a confused barbaric intelligence or the other which reveals the culture & contents of a deep & splendid intellectuality. But there can be no doubt, which gives the best & most satisfying sense to the language of the Veda.
There are two epithets yet left which we have to fix to their right significance, before we sum up the evidence of this passage and determine the Subjective physiognomy of the Aswins,purudansas & nsaty. Sayana interprets dansas as active,the Aswins are gods of a great activity; I suggest fashioning or forming activity,they are abundant fashioners. Sayanas interpretation suits better with the idea of the Aswins as gods full of strength, speed and delight, purudansas, full of a rich activity. But the sense of fashioning is also possible; we have in I.30.16 the expression sa no hiranyaratham dansanvn sa nah sanit sanaye sa no adt, where the meaning may be he gave a car, but would run better he fashioned for us a brilliant car, unless with Sayana we are to disregard the whole structure & rhythmic movement of unahepas sentence. The other epithet Nsaty has long been a puzzle for the grammarians; for the ingenious traditional rendering of Yaska & Sayana, na asaty, not untruthful, is too evidently a desperate shift of entire ignorance. The word by its formation must be either a patronymic, Sons of Nasata, or an adjective formed by the termination tya from the old Aryan noun Nsa, which still exists in the Greek o, an island. The physical significance of n in the Aryan tongues is a gliding or floating motion; we find it in the Latin, nare, to swim or float, the Greek Nais, a river goddess, nama, a stream, nxis, swimming, floating, naros, water, (S. nra, water), necho, I swim, float or sail; but in Sanscrit, except in nra, water, and nga, a snake, elephant, this signification of the long root n, shared by it originally with na, ni, n, nu & n, has disappeared. Nevertheless, the word Nsa, in some sense of motion, floating, gliding, sailing, voyaging, must have existed among the more ancient Sanscrit vocables. But in what sense can it be applied to the Aswins? It seems to me that we get the clue in the seventh sloka of Praskanwas Hymn to the Aswins which I have already quoted. For immediately after he has spoken of the jyotishmat ish, the luminous force which has carried him over to the other shore of the Ignorance, Praskanwa proceeds,
no nv matnm, ytam prya gantave,
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The Aswins, then, are the gods of youthful delight & youthful strength, yuvn pitar, always young yet fathers of men, (purudansas, abundantly creating), as they are described in another sukta. They have a brilliant strength mental & physical, nar, a bright, strong & eager understanding, avray dhiy, full hands of bounty and strong fertility of creation, dasr, purudansas; an insatiable enjoyment, purubhuj; a swift speed and fiery energy in action, dravatpn rudravartan; they are the lords of bliss who give physical, vital & mental well-being to men and that inferior ease, pleasure and delight they lift into the high regions of the original & luminous Ananda supported on the ritam jyotih of Mahas of which all these things are but pallid & broken rays penetrating into this lower play of subjective light & shade which is called the triple world. Because of this double aspect of delight and the force for action & knowledge which is given by delight, of force and the delight in action & enjoyment which is sustained by force, they are twin gods and not one; it may be that Castor is more essentially the lord of delight, Polydeuces of force, but they are too like each other not to share in each others qualities. Eternal youth is the essence of their character & the bestowal, maintenance, & increase in men of the gifts which attend youth, is their function. This, if I do not err, was the Subjective aspect of the great Twin Brethren to the sages of the Veda.
For what functions are they called to the Sacrifice by Madhuchchhanda? First, they have to take delight in the spiritual forces generated in him by the action of the internal Yajna. These they have to accept, to enter into them and use them for delight, their delight and the sacrificers, yajwarr isho .. chanasyatam; a wide enjoyment, a mastery of joy & all pleasant things, a swiftness in action like theirs is what their advent should bring & therefore these epithets are attached to this action. Then they are to accept the words of the mantra, vanatam girah. In fact, vanatam means more than acceptance, it is a pleased, joyous almost loving acceptance; for vanas is the Latin venus, which means charm, beauty, gratification, and the Sanscrit vanit means woman or wife, she who charms, in whom one takes delight or for whom one has desire. Therefore vanatam takes up the idea of chanasyatam, enlarges it & applies it to a particular part of the Yajna, the mantras, the hymn or sacred words of the stoma. The immense effectiveness assigned to rhythmic Speech & the meaning & function of the mantra in the Veda & in later Yoga is a question of great interest & importance which must be separately considered; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to specify its two chief functions, the first, to settle, fix, establish the god & his qualities & activities in the Sacrificer,this is the true meaning of the word stoma, and, secondly, to effectualise them in action & creation subjective or objective,this is the true meaning of the words rik and arka. The later senses, praise and hymn were the creation of actual ceremonial practice, and not the root intention of these terms of Veda. Therefore the Aswins, the lords of force & joy, are asked to take up the forces of the sacrifice, yajwarr isho, fill them with their joy & activity and carry that joy & activity into the understanding so that it becomes avra, full of a bright and rapid strength.With that strong, impetuously rapid working they are to take up the words of the mantra into the understanding and by their joy & activity make them effective for action or creation. For this reason the epithet purudansas is attached to this action, abundantly active or, rather, abundantly creative of forms into which the action of the yajwarr ishah is to be thrown. But this can only be done as the Sacrificer wishes if they are in the acceptance of the mantra dhishny, firm and steady.Sayana suggests wise or intelligent as the sense of dhishnya, but although dhishan, like dh, can mean the understanding & dhishnya therefore intelligent, yet the fundamental sense is firm or steadily holding & the understanding is dh or dhishan because it takes up perceptions, thoughts & feelings & holds them firmly in their places.Vehemence & rapidity may be the causes of disorder & confusion, therefore even in their utmost rapidity & rapture of action & formation the Aswins are to be dhishnya, firm & steady. This discipline of a mighty, inalienable calm supporting & embracing the greatest fierceness of action & intensity of joy, the combination of dhishny & rudravartan , is one of the grandest secrets of the old Vedic discipline. For by this secret men can enjoy the world as God enjoys it, with unstinted joy, with unbridled power, with undarkened knowledge.
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Brahmni therefore may mean either the soul-activities, as dhiyas means the mental activities, or it may mean the words of the mantra which express the soul. If we take it in the latter sense, we must refer it to the girah of the second rik, the mantras taken up by the Aswins into the understanding in order to prepare for action & creation. Indra is to come to these mantras and support them by the brilliant substance of a mental force richly varied in its effulgent manifestation, controlled by the understanding and driven forward to its task in various ways. But it seems to me that the rendering is not quite satisfactory. The main point in this hymn is not the mantras, but the Soma wine and the power that it generates. It is in the forces of the Soma that the Aswins are to rejoice, in that strength they are to take up the girah, in that strength they are to rise to their fiercest intensity of strength & delight. Indra, as mental power, arrives in his richly varied lustre; yhi chitrabhno. Here says the Rishi are these life-forces in the nectar-wine; they are purified in their minute parts & in their whole extent, for so I understand anwbhis tan ptsah; that is to say the distillings of Ananda or divine delight whether in the body as nectar, [or] in the Subjective system as streams of life-giving delight are purified of all that impairs & weakens the life forces, purified both in their little several movements & in the whole extent of their stream. These are phenomena that can easily be experienced & understood in Yoga, and the whole hymn like many in the Veda reads to those who have experience like a practical account of a great Yogic internal movement accurate in its every detail. Streng thened, like the Aswins, by the nectar, Indra is to prepare the many-sided activity supported by the Visve devah; therefore he has to come not only controlled by the understanding, dhishnya, like the Aswins, but driven forward in various paths. For an energetic & many-sided activity is the object & for this there must be an energetic and many-sided but well-ordered action of the mental power. He has to come, thus manifold, thus controlled, to the spiritual activities generated by the Soma & the Aswins in the increasing soul (vghatah) full of the life-giving nectar, the immortalising Ananda, sutvatah. He has to come to those soul-activities, in this substance of mental brilliancy, yhi upa brahmni harivas. He has to come, ttujna, with a protective force, or else with a rapidly striving force & uphold by mind the joy of the Sacrificer in the nectar-offering, the offering of this Ananda to the gods of life & action & thought, sute dadhishwa na chanah. Protecting is, here, the best sense for ttujna. For Indra is not only to support swift & energetic action; that has already been provided for; he has also to uphold or bear in mind and by the power of mind the great & rapid delight which the Sacrificer is about to pour out into life & action, jvayja. The divine delight must not fail us in our activity; hostile shocks must not be allowed to disturb our established pleasure in the great offering. Therefore Indra must be there in his light & power to uphold and to protect.
We have gained, therefore, another great step in the understanding of the Veda. The figure of the mighty Indra, in his most essential quality & function, begins to appear to us as in a half-luminous silhouette full of suggestions. We have much yet to learn about him, especially his war with Vritra, his thunderbolt & his dealings with the seven rivers. But the central or root idea is fixed. The rest is the outgrowth, foliage & branchings.
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The precise meaning of the words has first to be settled. Charshani is taken in the Veda to be, like krishti, a word equivalent to manushya, men. The entire correctness of the rendering may well be doubted. The gods, no doubt, can be described as upholders of men, but there are passages & uses in which the application of this significance becomes difficult. For Indra, like Agni, is called vivacharshani. Can this expression mean the Universal Man? Is Indra, like Agni, Vaivnara, in the sense of being present in all human beings? If so, the Subjective capacity of Indra is indeed proved by a single epithet. But Vaivnara really means the Universal Existence or Force, from a sense of the root an which we have in anila, anala, Latin anima or else, if the combination be viv-nara, then from the Vedic sense of nara, strong, swift or bright. And what canwemake of such an expression as charshanipr?We must therefore follow our usual course & ask how charshani came to mean a human being. The root charsh or chrish is formed from the primary root char or chri (a lost form whose original presence is, however, necessary in the history of Sanscrit speech), as krish from kri. Now kri means to do, char means to do, work, practise or perform. The form krish was evidently used in the sense of action which required a prolonged or laborious effort; in the same way as the root Ar it came to mean to plough; it came to mean also to overcome or to drag or pull. From this sense of action or labour alone can krishti have been extended in significance to the idea, man; originally it must have been used like kru or keru to mean a doer, worker, and, from its form, have been capable also of meaning action. I suggest that charshani had really the same meaning & something of the same development. The other sense given to the word, swift, moving, cannot easily have led to the idea of man; strength, doing, thinking are the characteristics behind the human idea in the older languages. Charshani-dhrit applied to the Visvadevas or dhartr charshannm to Mitra & Varuna will mean the upholders of actions or activities; vivacharshani, applied to Indra or Agni, will mean the lord of all actions; charshanipr will mean filling the actions. That Indra in this sense is vivacharshani can be at once determined from two passages occurring early in the Veda,I.9.2 in Madhuchchhandas hymn to Indra, mandim Indrya mandine chakrim vivni chakraye, delight-giving for Indra the enjoyer, effective of action for the doer of all actions, where vivni chakri is a perfect equivalent to vivacharshani, and I.11.4 in another hymn to Indra, Indro vivasya karmano dhart, Indra the upholder of every action, where we have the exact idea of charshandhrit, vivacharshani & dhartr charshannm. The Visvadevas are the upholders of all our activities.
In the eighth rik, usr iva swasarni offers us an almost insoluble difficulty. Usr means, ordinarily, either rays or cows or mornings; swasaram is a Vedic word of unfixed significance. Sayana renders, hastening like sunbeams to the days, a rendering which has neither sense nor appropriateness; emending it slightly we get hastening like dawns or mornings to the days, a beautiful & picturesque, though difficult image but one, unhappily, which has no appropriateness to the context. If we can suppose the lost root swas to have meant, to lie, sleep, rest, like the simpler form sas (cf sanj to cling & swanj to embrace), we may translate, hastening like kine to their stalls; but this also is not appropriate to the Visvadevas hastening to the Soma offering not for rest, but for enjoyment & action. I believe the real meaning to be, hastening like lovers to their paramours; but the philological reasoning by which I arrive at these meanings for usra & swasaram is so remote & conjectural, that I cannot lay any stress on the suggestion. Aptur is a less difficult word. If it is a compound, ap+tur, it must mean swift or forceful in effecting or producing; but it may also be formed by the addition of a suffix tur in an adjectival sense to the root ap, to do, bring about, effect, produce or obtain.
1.08 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:In a sense all our experience is psychological since even what we receive by the senses, has no meaning or value to us till it is translated into the terms of the sense-mind, the Manas of Indian philosophical terminology. Manas, say our philosophers, is the sixth sense. But we may even say that it is the only sense and that the others, vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste are merely specialisations of the sense-mind which, although it normally uses the sense-organs for the basis of its experience, yet exceeds them and is capable of a direct experience proper to its own inherent action. As a result psychological experience, like the cognitions of the reason, is capable in man of a double action, mixed or dependent, pure or sovereign. Its mixed action takes place usually when the mind seeks to become aware of the external world, the object; the pure action when it seeks to become aware of itself, the Subject. In the former activity, it is dependent on the senses and forms its perceptions in accordance with their evidence; in the latter it acts in itself and is aware of things directly by a sort of identity with them. We are thus aware of our emotions; we are aware of anger, as has been acutely said, because we become anger. We are thus aware also of our own existence; and here the nature of experience as knowledge by identity becomes apparent. In reality, all experience is in its secret nature knowledge by identity; but its true character is hidden from us because we have separated ourselves from the rest of the world by exclusion, by the distinction of ourself as subject and everything else as object, and we are compelled to develop processes and organs by which we may again enter into communion with all that we have excluded. We have to replace direct knowledge through conscious identity by an indirect knowledge which appears to be caused by physical contact and mental sympathy. This limitation is a fundamental creation of the ego and an instance of the manner in which it has proceeded throughout, starting from an original falsehood and covering over the true truth of things by contingent falsehoods which become for us practical truths of relation.
6:From this nature of mental and sense knowledge as it is at present organised in us, it follows that there is no inevitable necessity in our existing limitations. They are the result of an evolution in which mind has accustomed itself to depend upon certain physiological functionings and their reactions as its normal means of entering into relation with the material universe. Therefore, although it is the rule that when we seek to become aware of the external world, we have to do so indirectly through the sense-organs and can experience only so much of the truth about things and men as the senses convey to us, yet this rule is merely the regularity of a dominant habit. It is possible for the mind - and it would be natural for it, if it could be persuaded to liberate itself from its consent to the domination of matter, - to take direct cognisance of the objects of sense without the aid of the sense-organs. This is what happens in experiments of hypnosis and cognate psychological phenomena. Because our waking consciousness is determined and limited by the balance between mind and matter worked out by life in its evolution, this direct cognisance is usually impossible in our ordinary waking state and has therefore to be brought about by throwing the waking mind into a state of sleep which liberates the true or subliminal mind. Mind is then able to assert its true character as the one and allsufficient sense and free to apply to the objects of sense its pure and sovereign instead of its mixed and dependent action. Nor is this extension of faculty really impossible but only more difficult in our waking state, - as is known to all who have been able to go far enough in certain paths of psychological experiment.
1.08 - The Three Schools of Magick 3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
There is no good purpose, even were there license, to discuss the nature of the basis of scientific attainment which is the core of the doctrines of the Society. It is only necessary to point out that its correspondence with alchemy is the one genuine fact on the Subject which has been allowed to transpire; for the Rosicrucian, as indicated by his central symbol, the barren cross on which he has made a rose to flower, occupies himself primarily with spiritual and physiological alchemy. Taking for "The First Matter of the Work a neutral or inert substance (it is constantly described as the commonest and least valued thing on earth, and may actually connote any substance whatever) he deliberately poisons it, so to speak, bringing it to a stage of transmutation generally called the Black Dragon, and he proceeds to work upon this virulent poison until he obtains the perfection theoretically possible.
Incidentally, we have an almost precise parallel with this operation in modern bacteriology. The apparently harmless bacilli of a disease are cultivated until they become a thousand times more virulent than at first, and it is from this culture that is prepared the vaccine which is an efficacious remedy for all the possible ravages of that kind of micro-organism.
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.
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What we are told here is that any particular object or any particular group of objects, for the matter of that do not constitute a separate entity or a reality by itself, or by themselves. On the other hand, this particular object, or a group of objects, represents merely a condition of prakriti, even as the mind itself is such a condition in a more rarefied form. the Subjective manifestation of prakriti is the mind, and its objective manifestation is the object, the visaya.
In samyama, or the practice of meditation in the form of total absorption, this point is borne in mind namely, that the meditation is more on a situation or a condition rather than a compact substance. We are under the mistaken notion that there is a solid object in front of us which is completely different from other objects, with no connection at all with other things, separated by space and time. This is not the truth of things.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
As I mentioned previously, these powers are of three kinds, or categories: the objective, the Subjective and the Absolute, or we may call it the Universal. Powers that one gains in respect of the objective world are of one kind; those pertaining to the Subjective faculties are of a different kind; and those that are intended to bring about the salvation of the spirit, ultimately, are of a third kind altogether. The secret of this practice, or rather the technique behind this samyama in respect of any chosen object, is given in a sutra in the Samadhi Pada itself, which we studied long ago.
How is it that we come to acquire power at all? What is the secret behind it? Why is it that we do not simply have any power now, at this present moment? Why has this power come now? Where was it hidden up to this time? This has been made clear in a sutra in the Samadhi Pada which goes as follows: kavtte abhijtasya iva mae graht grahaa grhyeu tatstha tadajanat sampatti (I.41). This requires the meditating mind to become consubstantial with the object the Subject united with the object so that it gains insight into the nature of the object. Then it is that the gulf separating the mind from the object is bridged by the practice of samyama, and the powers inherent in the object flow into the Subject. That is the secret. Whatever is your power becomes my power when I become one with you. This is to state the whole method in simple terms. That which is outside our capacity comes within our capacity when that in which this capacity is inherent comes under our control. And this control is not an ordinary type of authority that we exercise over an object, as a master exercises authority over a servant. It is not like that. It is a complete mastery where that which is to be controlled does not stand outside the Subject controlling it. It has become one, organically. This is the meaning of this sutra which has been given to us in the Samadhi Pada.
Now, applying this technique, Patanjali tells us that we can control anything, whether it is visible or invisible, material or otherwise. The objective side, which is known as grahaya samapatti in the language of yoga, is intended to control the elements. The five elements which constitute this vast world, or rather the entire universe of physical nature, are supposed to be under ones control, provided samyama is practised on them. Earth, water, fire, air and ether these are the elements, and no one can have any control over them. They are the masters, as is well known. But they can be controlled, says the sutra, provided we establish a harmony with them and we become one with the law which operates them in the universe. This is called bhutajaya control of the elements.
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These are, generally speaking, the objective powers that one gains. the Subjective powers are mastery over the senses and the mind. Just as there are five aspects mentioned in connection with the control of the elements, five aspects are also mentioned in respect of the control of the senses. Grahaa svarpa asmit anvaya arthavattva sayamt indriyajaya (III.48). The senses can be controlled if we can understand their structure. Just as the five gradations of the manifestation of prakriti through the elements were mentioned, similar gradations are mentioned in respect of the senses.
The character of grasping an object is called grahana. The way in which the eyes see, the ears hear, etc. that manner of the senses operating upon objects is called grahana. Svarupa is the senses themselves, independent of these functions. Apart from the functions that the senses perform, they have a nature of their own. That independent nature of the senses, apart from their activity, is called svarupa. Asmita is the I-principle that controls the operation of the five senses. It is the ego principle which organises the activities of the different senses and focuses them on a particular object. That means to say, the higher controls the lower, and the higher includes the lower. Ultimately, it is the I-principle that is the reason behind the working of the senses. Thus, if we can grasp the meaning of this ego, the meaning of the senses also is clear. The fourth one is anvaya. That is similar to the fourth aspect in respect of the power of the five elements namely, the operation of the gunas. The three gunas sattva, rajas and tamas of prakriti are the rudimentary principles behind the senses and also the ahamkara tattva, or I-principle. Arthavattva is the purpose of the activity of the senses which is, again, to bring about experience for the purpose of the liberation of the spirit. With these connotations of the activities of the senses, one can concentrate, do samyama on the senses themselves, and the senses come under ones control. Grahaa svarpa asmita anvay arthavattva sayamat indriyajaya (III.48).
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Our main point is samyama. There is no use merely counting the number of rich persons in the world and trying to find out the means by which they have become rich. Well, that may be a good science as a kind of theoretical pursuit, but what do we gain by knowing how many rich people are there in this world and how they have become rich? We will not become rich by knowing these methods, because it is a science by itself and not merely a historical study or a survey that we make statistically. The science is a more important aspect of the matter than merely a statement of the consequences or results that follow by the pursuit of the science. What is the science? That is samyama, the Subject that we have been studying all along. How are we able to concentrate the mind? For this purpose the author has taken great pains in some of the sutras to explain how the mind can be made to agree, wholeheartedly, with the pursuit of yoga, and how distractions can be eliminated. It is this that is the intention of the sutras, right from those which dealt with the nirodha parinama, etc., onwards.
The whole of yoga is summed up in one word: samyama. This is the entire system of Patanjali. How can we grasp the object in our consciousness? That is called meditation. This grasping of the object by consciousness is the gradual identification of consciousness with the object, and vice versa. How this can be done is the point on hand; and once this is understood, every other perfection will follow. We ourselves will be surprised at the powers that we gain. And as I mentioned, many times we will not even know that we have such powers. Only if we are rubbed hard will we know that the power is there.
1.097 - Sublimation of Object-Consciousness, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
These stages are the gradual sublimations of world-consciousness, or object-consciousness, by diminishing the distance between the Subject and the object of meditation, which takes place automatically and for which there is no need for any special effort. The distance that separates the experiencing consciousness from its object becomes less and less as one advances more and more, so that what is called samyama in the Vibhuti Pada is the abolition of this distance itself. There is a complete transcendence of spatial awareness in samyama.
Thus, there is a very scientific methodology provided to us in these sutras, which have to be studied gradually, stage by stage, in their successive intensity and applicability. Many authors think that the sutras of Patanjali in respect of yoga are concluded with the Vibhuti Pada because in it he mentions that kaivalya is attained. What else is there to say, afterwards? Some people are of the opinion that there are only three sections of Patanjali, not four sections, but there are others who think that there should be four sections, not three, because each section is called a pada Samadhi Pada, Sadhana Pada, Vibhuti Pada and Kaivalya Pada. A pada is a quarter, and we cannot have three quarters; quarters are always four. So, inasmuch as the word pada is used in respect of each section, it is the opinion of many that four sections must be there, not three. And the fourth section has a meaning of its own. Though it is not directly connected with practice, it furnishes certain details. Just as there are people who think that the Bhagavadgita ends with the eleventh chapter and the successive chapters are additions, as a kind of commentary, there are others who think that they are not simply additions; they have an organic connection with what has preceded.
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
But the most prominent of all these is samyama, which is the Subject of the Vibhuti Pada. That is also referred to here by the term samadhi. The communion of the individual with the object releases the total energy of the objects, and then it is that the meditating subject is invested with an enormous power which would have otherwise been completely isolated from it. The power of the world is outside us, and we seem to be little inhabitants of the world who cannot participate in the powers of nature. But by samyama, the powers of nature can be absorbed into our system.
How this happens is mentioned in the next sutra: jtyantara parima praktyprt (IV.2). The powers of nature are permanently there in a uniform state. There is neither an increase nor a decrease in the powers of nature. As scientists tell us, there is what is known as the system or the principle of conservation of energy, which states that the energy the total power or force of nature is constant. It does not increase or decrease day by day by external factors. Factors outside nature do not exist. And so, what appears to be an increase of power or capacity is only an entry of certain forces of nature into the system of a human individual. Any kind of transformation in a positive degree is the flowing of the powers of nature into ones system. Prakriti-apuratis the term used in the sutra. The filling up by prakriti is what is known as prakriti-apurat.
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Thus, by the increase of sattva in us, we allow the powers of nature to enter us. It is the rajas that is predominant in ourselves which cuts off nature from our individual lives. The principal function of rajoguna is separation differentiating one from the other, not allowing in the cooperation of one with the other, and creating a dissimilarity of character and difference in function. Due to the intensity of the action of rajas, there is this division of properties and a separation of individualities, so that there has been the perception and experience of a dividedness of life, while this is really not there. For nature, taken in its completeness, there is no division. It is one total, a comprehensive completeness in which there is no distinction of the Subject on one side and the object on the other side. The distinction has been created by certain artificial factors, and these are the operations of the gunas. By diminishing the intensity of the action of rajas through intense concentration of mind, we become more and more approximate to the original condition of prakriti. The integrating powers of nature begin to act when sattva rises in us. On the other hand, if the rajas is to be predominant, the disintegrating factors start operating.
Thus, what is yoga? Yoga is nothing but an endeavour in the direction of the increase of sattva in oneself and a decrease of rajas. The methods have already been described in the earlier sections. The sutra merely tells us of a principle of how prakriti acts namely, that it fills a vacancy wherever a vacancy is created. Empty thyself, and I shall fill thee. This great statement is similar to the principle of this sutra. When we empty ourselves of all those conditioning factors of our individuality, the universal forces will enter us. The universal is not outside us. It is, on account of its being universal by itself, everywhere. But it is not allowed to operate, just as we do not allow the sunlight to enter a house by closing the windows and doors. The vehemence or the force with which the ego-principle, or the I-principle, works in us prevents the entry of universal forces into us. Yoga is the technique of the diminution of the intensity of this I-principle.
1.09 - Civilisation and Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The pursuit of the mental life for its own sake is what we ordinarily mean by culture; but the word is still a little equivocal and capable of a wider or a narrower sense according to our ideas and predilections. For our mental existence is a very complex matter and is made up of many elements. First, we have its lower and fundamental stratum, which is in the scale of evolution nearest to the vital. And we have in that stratum two sides, the mental life of the senses, sensations and emotions in which the Subjective purpose of Nature predominates although with the objective as its occasion, and the active or dynamic life of the mental being concerned with the organs of action and the field of conduct in which her objective purpose predominates although with the Subjective as its occasion. We have next in the scale, more sublimated, on one side the moral being and its ethical life, on the other the aesthetic; each of them attempts to possess and dominate the fundamental mind stratum and turn its experiences and activities to its own benefit, one for the culture and worship of Right, the other for the culture and worship of Beauty. And we have, above all these, taking advantage of them, helping, forming, trying often to govern them entirely, the intellectual being. Mans highest accomplished range is the life of the reason or ordered and harmonised intelligence with its dynamic power of intelligent will, the buddhi, which is or should be the driver of mans chariot.
But the intelligence of man is not composed entirely and exclusively of the rational intellect and the rational will; there enters into it a deeper, more intuitive, more splendid and powerful, but much less clear, much less developed and as yet hardly at all self-possessing light and force for which we have not even a name. But, at any rate, its character is to drive at a kind of illumination,not the dry light of the reason, nor the moist and suffused light of the heart, but a lightning and a solar splendour. It may indeed subordinate itself and merely help the reason and heart with its flashes; but there is another urge in it, its natural urge, which exceeds the reason. It tries to illuminate the intellectual being, to illuminate the ethical and aesthetic, to illuminate the emotional and the active, to illuminate even the senses and the sensations. It offers in words of revelation, it unveils as if by lightning flashes, it shows in a sort of mystic or psychic glamour or brings out into a settled but for mental man almost a supernatural light a Truth greater and truer than the knowledge given by Reason and Science, a Right larger and more divine than the moralists scheme of virtues, a Beauty more profound, universal and entrancing than the sensuous or imaginative beauty worshipped by the artist, a joy and divine sensibility which leaves the ordinary emotions poor and pallid, a Sense beyond the senses and sensations, the possibility of a diviner Life and action which mans ordinary conduct of life hides away from his impulses and from his vision. Very various, very fragmentary, often very confused and misleading are its effects upon all the lower members from the reason downward, but this in the end is what it is driving at in the midst of a hundred deformations. It is caught and killed or at least diminished and stifled in formal creeds and pious observances; it is unmercifully traded in and turned into poor and base coin by the vulgarity of conventional religions; but it is still the light of which the religious spirit and the spirituality of man is in pursuit and some pale glow of it lingers even in their worst degradations.
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Disease. This body is the boat which will carry us to the other shore of the ocean of life. It must be taken care of. Unhealthy persons cannot be Yogis. Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the Subject, without which there will neither be the will nor the energy to practise. Doubts will arise in the mind about the truth of the science, however strong one's intellectual conviction may be, until certain peculiar psychic experiences come, as hearing or seeing at a distance, etc. These glimpses streng then the mind and make the student persevere. Falling away ... when obtained. Some days or weeks when you are practicing, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall.
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We must have these four sorts of ideas. We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful towards those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. So with all subjects that come before us. If the Subject is a good one, we shall feel friendly towards it; if the Subject of thought is one that is miserable, we must be merciful towards it. If it is good, we must be glad; if it is evil, we must be indifferent. These attitudes of the mind towards the different subjects that come before it will make the mind peaceful. Most of our difficulties in our daily lives come from being unable to hold our minds in this way. For instance, if a man does evil to us, instantly we want to react evil, and every reaction of evil shows that we are not able to hold the Chitta down; it comes out in waves towards the object, and we lose our power. Every reaction in the form of hatred or evil is so much loss to the mind; and every evil thought or deed of hatred, or any thought of reaction, if it is controlled, will be laid in our favour. It is not that we lose by thus restraining ourselves; we are gaining infinitely more than we suspect. Each time we suppress hatred, or a feeling of anger, it is so much good energy stored up in our favour; that piece of energy will be converted into the higher powers.
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1.09 - Fundamental Questions of Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
considers what the Subjective prejudice signifies: it is as a rule a carefully
constructed product into whose making has gone the whole experience of a
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judgments. Of these latter, only the Subjective premises (and then only a
part of them) belong to the personal sphere; for the rest they are derived
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which I have summed up under the term the Subjective factor. The man
with the extraverted attitude bases himself primarily on social
relationships; the other, the introvert, primarily on the Subjective factor.
The former is largely unaware of his subjective determinacy and regards it
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correctly andaccording to the Subjective premiselogically interpreted,
as was undoubtedly the case with Freud and Adler; and yet in spite of this,
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demolition of the Subjects false conclusions and wrong decisions. His
wrong attitude having been corrected, the patient can then fit into society
1.09 - Talks, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The talks of Sri Ramakrishna come naturally to our mind in comparison. Their spirit is perhaps the same, the lightness and vivacity too are there, but his talks were restricted in scope, while all life being yoga for us, no subject was too trivial for our discussions. And in Sri Aurobindo's case always samam brahman, impersonality marked all his utterances, no matter what the Subject ofthe discourse. Nevertheless, the warm touch of personality could always be felt from behind the usual frontof impersonality. For instance, though he would, while talking, hardly look at us or address us by our names, for his eyes were cast downwards or looking away in front, still the soft tone of his voice, sparks of personal humour reflected the "sweet rays of a temperate sun."
I have said so much about his voice, I might as well add a few words about his eyes. Opinions about them vary according to the inner quality of the person who saw them. Sir Edward Baker, Governor of Bengal, archenemy of Sri Aurobindo's fiery nationalism, described them as "the eyes of a madman" when he visited him in Alipore Jail. The English Principal of the Baroda College said, "...There is a mystic fire and light in them. They penetrate into the beyond. If Joan of Arc heard heavenly voices, Aurobindo probably sees heavenly visions." Upen Banerjee, a close associate of Sri Aurobindo during his revolutionary period, describes his first meeting with him, "That sickly, dark, malaria-afflicted man is Aurobindo? He is our Chief?... My spirit was awfully damped at the sight, but just then he turned to look at me. I don't know how to describe that look. There was a liquid sparkle of amusement in it, but the pupils gave me a sense of fathomless wonder that baffled all analysis. Even today the mystery has not left me."
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He was by no means a conversationalist as we understand and use the term. Tagore, for example, was one. Those who have heard or talked to Tagore, recall their experience as "great". When we read his talks, we can well imagine how brilliant he must have been with his rich similes and metaphors, his sparkling wit and banter, the twinkling of his eyes, the rise and fall of his voice and all the other concomitant dramatic gestures so that his personality came in front more than his talks. Sri Aurobindo is quite a different study in perfect contrast. Life here is steady; there are no eddies or whirls, the stream flowing unobstrusively in a quiet rhythm, the jokes uttered rather casually, in an even tone in a typically English fashion, which makes you laugh all the more. Here the personality remained behind and the Subject-matter became more prominent,
His talks with Dr. Manilal deserve special notice. The doctor had medical and worldly experience. The Mother considered him a master in his own field. But he still had a child-soul in him and it talked freely with Sri Aurobindo. The Guru with an equal paternal or friendly smile would listen to his prattle. His long rigmarole on Jainism that would bore us, would amuse him and after the doctor had departed, Sri Aurobindo would naively ask Purani how far Manilal's knowledge of Jainism was sound and dependable. It was most entertaining to see how Sri Aurobindo used to dodge, tease, play with him, yet obey his medical injunctions! "Oh! Dr. Manilal is coming! I must hang my leg!" he would exclaim and we in turn utter, "You seem to be afraid of Dr. Manilal!" The tone, one would feel, was that of a comrade chatting with another; the doctor's age, position and nature evoked from the Guru a response in tune with them. Sri Aurobindo once remarked that he was very simple and frank like a child.
1.09 - To the Students, Young and Old, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sometimes, if you are not in a very good mood, you say, How boring it is going to be! Yes, perhaps the teacher who is taking your class does not know how to amuse you. He may be a very good teacher, but at the same time he may not know how to entertain you, for it is not always easy. There are days when one does not feel like being entertaining. There are days, for him as for you, when one would like to be elsewhere than in school. But still, you go to your class. You go because you must, for if you obey all your fancies you will never have any control over yourselves; your fancies will control you. So you go to your class, but instead of going there and thinking, How bored I am going to be; I am sure it is not going to be interesting, you should tell yourselves, There is not a single minute in life, not one circumstance that is not an opportunity for progress. So what progress am I going to make today? The class I am going to now is on a subject that does not interest me. But perhaps that is because something is lacking in me; perhaps, in my brain, a certain number of cells are deficient and that is why I cannot find any interest in the Subject. If so, I shall try, I shall listen carefully, concentrate hard and above all drive out of my mind this aimlessness, this superficial shallowness which makes me feel bored when there is something I cannot grasp. I am bored because I do not make an effort to understand, because I do not have this will for progress. When one does not progress, one feels bored, everyone, young or old; for we are here on earth to progress. How tedious life would be without progress! Life is monotonous. Most often it is not fun. It is far from being beautiful. But if you take it as a field for progress, then everything changes, everything becomes interesting and there is no longer any room for boredom. Next time your teacher seems boring to you, instead of wasting your time doing nothing, try to understand why he bores you. Then if you have a capacity of observation and if you make an effort to understand, you will soon see that a kind of miracle has occurred and that you are no longer feeling bored at all.
This remedy is good in almost every case. Sometimes, in certain circumstances, everything seems dull, boring, stupid; this means that you are as boring as the circumstances and it clearly shows that you are not in a state of progress. It is simply a passing wave of boredom, and nothing is more contrary to the purpose of existence. At such a moment you might make an effort and ask yourself, This boredom shows that I have something to learn, some progress to make in myself, some inertia to conquer, some weakness to overcome. Boredom is a dullness of the consciousness; and if you seek the cure within yourself, you will see that it immediately dissolves. Most people, when they feel bored, instead of making an effort to rise one step higher in their consciousness, come down one step lower; they come down even lower than they were before and do stupid things, they make themselves vulgar in the hope of amusing themselves. That is why men intoxicate themselves, spoil their health, deaden their brains. If they had risen instead of falling, they would have made use of this opportunity to progress.
1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness is not, to my experience, a phenomenon dependent on the reactions of personality to the forces of Nature and amounting to no more than a seeing or interpretation of these reactions. If that were so, then when the personality becomes silent and immobile and gives no reactions, as there would be no seeing or interpretative action, there would therefore be no consciousness. That contradicts some of the fundamental experiences of Yoga, e.g., a silent and immobile consciousness infinitely spread out, not dependent on the personality but impersonal and universal, not seeing and interpreting contacts but motionlessly self-aware, not dependent on the reactions, but persistent in itself even when no reactions take place. the Subjective personality itself is only a formation of consciousness which is a power inherent, not in the activity of the temporary manifested personality, but in the being, the Self or Purusha.
Consciousness is a reality inherent in existence. It is there even when it is not active on the surface, but silent and immobile; it is there even when it is invisible on the surface, not reacting on outward things or sensible to them, but withdrawn and either active or inactive within; it is there even when it seems to us to be quite absent and the being to our view unconscious and inanimate.
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The gradations of consciousness are universal states not dependent on the outlook of the Subjective personality; rather the outlook of the Subjective personality is determined by the grade of consciousness in which it is organised according to its typal nature or its evolutionary stage.
Sachchidananda
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The modern world cares little for orthodox Hindu opinion, for the opinion of its Pandits or for the ancient authority of its received guides; putting these things aside as the heavy and now useless baggage of the dead past it moves on free and unhampered to its objective, seeking ever fresh vistas of undiscovered knowledge. But a Hindu writer, still holding the faith of his ancestors, owes a certain debt to the immediate past, not so much as to hamper his free enquiry and outlook upon truth, but enough to demand from him a certain respect for whatever in it is really respectworthy and some attempt to satisfy his coreligionists that in opening out a fresh outlook on ancient knowledge he is not uprooting truths that are essential to their common religion. Nothing in those truths compels us to accept the plenary authority of Sayana or the ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas. The hymns of the Veda are, for us, inspired truth and therefore infallible; it follows that the only interpretative authority on them which can claim also to be infallible is one which itself works by the faculty of divine inspiration. The only works for which the ordinary tradition claims this equal authority are the Brahmanas, Aranyakas & Upanishads. Even among these authorities, if we accept them as all and equally inspired and authoritative, and on this point Hindus are not in entire agreement,the Brahmanas which deal with the ceremonial detail of Vedic sacrifice, are authoritative for the ritual only; for the inner sense the Upanishads are the fit authority. Sayana can lay claim to no such sanctity for his opinions. He is no ancient Rishi, nor even an inspired religious teacher, but a grammarian and scholar writing in the twelfth century after Christ several millenniums subsequent to the Rishis to whom Veda was revealed. By his virtues & defects as a scholar his interpretation must be judged. His erudition is vast, his industry colossal; he has so occupied the field that everyone who approaches the Veda must pass to it under his shadow; his commentary is a mine of knowledge about Vedic Sanscrit and full of useful hints for the interpretation of Veda. But there the tale of his merits ends. Other qualities are needed for a successful Vedic commentary which in Sayana are conspicuous by their absence; and his defects as a critic are almost as colossal as his industry and erudition. He is not a disinterested mind seeking impartially the truth of Veda but a professor of the ritualistic school of interpretation intent upon reading the traditional ceremonial sense into the sacred hymns; even so he is totally wanting in consistency, coherence and settled method. Not only is he frequently uncertain of himself, halts and qualifies his interpretation with an alternative or not having the full courage of his ritualistic rendering introduces it as a mere possibility,these would be meritorious failings,but he wavers in a much more extraordinary fashion, forcing the ritualistic sense of a word or passage where it cannot possibly hold, abandoning it unaccountably where it can well be sustained. The Vedas are masterpieces of flawless literary style and logical connection. But Sayana, like many great scholars, is guiltless of literary taste and has not the least sense of what is or is not possible to a good writer. His interpretation of any given term is seldom consistent even in similar passages of different hymns, but he will go yet farther and give two entirely different renderings to the same word though occurring in successive riks & in an obviously connected strain of thought. The rhythm and balance of a sentence is nothing to him, he will destroy it ruthlessly in order to get over a difficulty of interpretation; he will disturb the arrangement of a sentence sometimes in the most impossible manner, connecting absolutely disconnected words, breaking up inseparable connections, inserting a second and alien sentence in between the head & tail of the first, and creating a barbarous complexity & confusion where the symbolic movement of the Rishis, unequalled in its golden ease, lucidity and straightforwardness, demands an equal lucidity & straightforwardness in the commentator. A certain rough coherence of thought he attempts to keep, but his rendering makes oftenest a clumsy sense & not unoften no ascertainable sense at all; while he has no scruple in breaking up the coherence entirely in favour of his ritualism. These are, after all, faults common in a scholastic mentality, but even were they less prominent & persistent in him than I have found them to be, they liberate us from all necessity for an exaggerated deference to his authority as an interpreter. Nor, indeed, were Sayana an ideal commentator, could he possibly be relied upon to give us the true sense of Veda; for the language of these hymns, whatever the exact date of their Rishis, goes back to an immense antiquity and long before Sayana the right sense of many Vedic words and the right clue to many Vedic allusions and symbols were lost to the scholars of India. Much indeed survived in tradition, but more had been lost or disfigured, and the two master clues, intellectual & spiritual, on which we can yet rely for the recovery of these losses, a sound philology and the renewal in ourselves of the experiences which form the Subject of the Vedic hymns, were the one entirely wanting, the other grown more & more inaccessible with time not only to the Pandit but to the philosopher. Even in our days the sound philology is yet wanting, though the seeds have been sown & even the first beginnings made; nor are the Vedic experiences any longer pursued in their entirety by the Indian Yogins who have learned to follow in this Kali Yuga less difficult paths and more modern systems.
But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient Scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
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The distinction is of the greatest importance; for not only does it show that the substance of our religious mentality and discipline goes back to the prehistoric antiquity of the Upanishads, but it justifies the hypothesis that the Vedantins of the Upanishads themselves held it as an inheritance from their Vedic forefa thers. If the Upanishads were only a record of intellectual speculations, the theory of a progression from Vedic materialism to new modes of thought would be entirely probable and no other hypothesis could hold the field without first destroying the rationalistic theory by new and unsuspected evidence. But the moment we perceive that the Upanishads are the result of this ancient & indigenous system of truth-finding, we are liberated from the burden of European examples. Evidently, we have here to deal with phenomena of thought which do not fall within the European scheme of a rapid transition from gross savage superstition to subtle metaphysical speculation. We have phenomena which are either sui generis or, if at any time common to humanity both within and outside India, then more ancient or at any rate earlier in the progression of mind than the modern intellectual methods first universalised by the Hellenic & Latin races; we have an intuitive and experiential method of truth finding, a fixed psychological theory and discipline, a system in which observation & comparison of subjective experiences forms the basis of fixed & verifiable psychological truth, just as nowadays in Europe observation & comparison of objective experiences forms the basis of fixed and verifiable physical truth. The difference between the speculative method and the experiential is that the speculative aims only at logical harmony and, due to the rigid abstract tendency, drives towards new blocks of thought and new mental attitudes; the experiential aims at verification by experience and drives towards the progressive discovery or restatement of eternal truths and their application to varying conditions. The indispensable basis of all Science is the invariability of the same result from the same experiment, given the same conditions; the same experiment with oxygen & hydrogen will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have one invariable result, the appearance of water. The indispensable basis of all Yoga is the same invariability in psychological experiments & their results. The same experiment with the limited waking or manifest consciousness and the unlimited unmanifest consciousness from which it is a selection and formation will always, in whatever age or clime it is applied, have the same result, the dissolution, gradual or rapid, complete or partial according to the instruments and conditions of the experiment, of the waking ego into the cosmic consciousness. In each method, physical Science or psychological Science, different Scientists or different teachers may differ as to some of the final generalisations to be drawn from the facts & the most appropriate terms to be used, or invent different instruments in the hope of arriving at a more rapid or a more delicate process, but the facts and the fundamental truths remain common to all, even if stated in different terms, because they are the Subjects of a common experience. Now the facts discovered by the Indian method, the duality of Purusha and Prakriti, the triple states of conscious being, the relation between the macrocosm & the microcosm, the fivefold and sevenfold principles of consciousness, the existence of more than one bodily case in which, simultaneously, we dwell, these and a number of other fixed ideas which the modern Yogins hold not as speculative propositions but as observable and verifiable facts of experience, are to be found in the Upanishads already enounced in more ancient formulae and in a slightly different language. The question arises, when did they originate? If they are facts, when were they first discovered? If they are hallucinations, when were the methods of subjective experiment which result so persistently in these hallucinations, first evolved and fixed? Not at the time of the Upanishads, for the Upanishads professedly record the traditional knowledge of older Rishis which is still verifiable by the moderns, prvebhir rishibhir dyo ntanair uta.Then, some time before the composition of the Upanishads, either by the earlier or later Vedic Rishis or by predecessors of the Vedic Rishis or in the interval between the Vedic hymns and the first Vedantic compositions. But for the period between Veda & Vedanta we have no documents, no direct & plain evidence. The question therefore can only be decided by an examination of the Vedic hymns themselves. Only by settling the meaning of Veda can we decide whether the early Vedantins were right in supposing that they were merely restating in more modern terms the substantial ideas & experiences of Vedic Rishis or whether this grand assumption of the Upanishads must take its rank among those pious fictions or willing & half honest errors which have often been immensely helpful to the advance of human knowledge but are none the less impostures upon posterity.
European scholars believe that they have fixed finally the meaning of Veda. Using as their tools the Sciences of Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology, itself a part of the strangely termed Science of Comparative Religion, they have excavated for us out of the ancient Veda a buried world, a forgotten civilisation, lost names of kings and nations, wars & battles, institutions, social habits & cultural ideas which the men of Vedantic times & their forerunners never dreamed were lying concealed in the revered & sacred words used daily by them in their worship and the fount and authority for their richest spiritual experiences deepest illuminated musings. The picture these discoveries constitute is a remarkable composition, imposing in its mass, brilliant and attractive in its details. The one lingering objection to them is a possible doubt of the truth of these discoveries, the soundness of the methods used to arrive at them. Are the conclusions of Vedic scholarship so undoubtedly true or so finally authoritative as to preclude a totally different hypothesis even though it may lead possibly to an interpretation which will wash out every colour & negative every detail of this great recovery? We must determine, first, whether the foundations of the European theory of Veda are solid & certain fact or whether it has been reared upon a basis of doubtful inference and conjecture. If the former, the question of the Veda is closed, its problem solved; if the latter, the European results may even then be true, but equally they may be false and replaceable by a more acceptable theory and riper conclusions.
1.10 - The Yoga of the Intelligent Will, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Soul, active but only by juxtaposition to that consciousness, by contact with it, as we would say, not so much one at first as indeterminate, triple in its qualities, capable of evolution and involution. The contact of soul and nature generates the play of subjectivity and objectivity which is our experience of being; what is to us the Subjective first evolves, because the soulconsciousness is the first cause, inconscient Nature-force only the second and dependent cause; but still it is Nature and not
Soul which supplies the instruments of our subjectivity. First in order come Buddhi, discriminative or determinative power evolving out of Nature-force, and its subordinate power of selfdiscriminating ego. Then as a secondary evolution there arises
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Buddhi, which is simply the determinative power that determines all inertly out of indeterminate inconscient Force, takes for us the form of intelligence and will. Manas, the inconscient force which seizes Nature's discriminations by objective action and reaction and grasps at them by attraction, becomes sense-perception and desire, the two crude terms or degradations of intelligence and will, - becomes the sense-mind sensational, emotive, volitional in the lower sense of wish, hope, longing, passion, vital impulsion, all the deformations (vikara) of will. The senses become the instruments of sense-mind, the perceptive five of our senseknowledge, the active five of our impulsions and vital habits, mediators between the Subjective and objective; the rest are the objects of our consciousness, vis.ayas of the senses.
This order of evolution seems contrary to that which we perceive as the order of the material evolution; but if we remember that even Buddhi is in itself an inert action of inconscient
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For evidently there are two possibilities of the action of the intelligent will. It may take its downward and outward orientation towards a discursive action of the perceptions and the will in the triple play of Prakriti, or it may take its upward and inward orientation towards a settled peace and equality in the calm and immutable purity of the conscious silent soul no longer subject to the distractions of Nature. In the former alternative the Subjective being is at the mercy of the objects of sense, it lives in the outward contact of things. That life is the life of desire. For the senses excited by their objects create a restless or often violent disturbance, a strong or even headlong outward movement towards the seizure of these objects and their enjoyment, and they carry away the sense-mind, "as the winds carry away a ship upon the sea"; the mind subjected to the emotions, passions, longings, impulsions awakened by this outward movement of the senses carries away similarly the intelligent will, which loses therefore its power of calm discrimination and mastery. Subjection of the soul to the confused play
The Yoga of the Intelligent Will
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If this is done, then it becomes possible to move among the objects of sense, in contact with them, acting on them, but with the senses entirely under the control of the Subjective self,
- not at the mercy of the objects and their contacts and reactions, - and that self again obedient to the highest self, the
1.11 - Correspondence and Interviews, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Apart from these discussions on politics in which Sri Aurobindo gave a prophetic warning about China's intention and about the Hindu-Moslem situation in Bengal, Surendra Mohan speaks of some astrological reading regarding Sri Aurobindo, which vitally concerned us. According to Bhrigu astrology, he says, Sri Aurobindo after his 78th year, would develop a loathing towards his body and then would leave it; otherwise death was in his control, he was such a great Yogi.... It was also mentioned there that the Mother or he himself could perform a particular yaja, a sacrificial ceremony following elaborate instructions and repeating certain mantras. On hearing this Surendra Mohan immediately came here and informed the Mother about it. When Sri Aurobindo heard of it, he consoled him saying, "Don't worry." The Mother asked him to send a copy of those instructions but due to some misunderstanding they arrived too late to be of any possible use. Now, this reading took place probably in October 1950. I remember very well the Mother having a talk with Sri Aurobindo on this point. That the reading was unhappily true has been borne out by later developments. Sri Aurobindo's answer to Surendra Mohan was equivocal; we now know that he had already decided to leave a year before. Had the instructions arrived earlier and the yaja been performed, it is still improbable that Sri Aurobindo would have changed his decision. The whole thing still remains a baffling mystery. We can only quote the Mother's words on the Subject, uttered on 28.12.50: "Our Lord has sacrificed himself totally for us.... He was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond the reach of human mentality.... And when one cannot understand, the only thing is to keep a respectful silence." Another utterance on 18.1.51: "We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation.
"He is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions."
1.11 - Higher Laws, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the Subject,I care not how obscene my _words_ are,but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature.
In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.
1.11 - Legend of Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[2]: The instructions of the Ṛṣis amount to the performance of the Yoga. External impressions are first to be obviated by particular positions, modes of breathing, &c.: the mind must then be fixed on the object of meditation; this is Dhārana: next comes the meditation, or Dhyāna; and then the Japa, or inaudible repetition of a Mantra, or short prayer; as in the text. the Subject of the Yoga is more fully detailed in a subsequent book.
1.11 - On Intuitive Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
It seems, however, highly probable that two different notions are combined in 'self-evidence' as above explained; that one of them, which corresponds to the highest degree of self-evidence, is really an infallible guarantee of truth, while the other, which corresponds to all the other degrees, does not give an infallible guarantee, but only a greater or less presumption. This, however, is only a suggestion, which we cannot as yet develop further. After we have dealt with the nature of truth, we shall return to the Subject of self-evidence, in connexion with the distinction between knowledge and error.
1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
retain the activity of the Subjective cause. The objects of sense are only an occasion for our bondage, the mind's insistence on them is the means, the instrumental cause. A man may control his organs of action and refuse to give them their natural play, but he has gained nothing if his mind continues to remember and dwell upon the objects of sense. Such a man has bewildered himself with false notions of self-discipline; he has not understood its object or its truth, nor the first principles of his subjective existence; therefore all his methods of self-discipline are false and null.1 The body's actions, even the mind's actions are nothing in themselves, neither a bondage, nor the first cause of bondage.
What is vital is the mighty energy of Nature which will have her way and her play in her great field of mind and life and body; what is dangerous in her, is the power of her three gun.as, modes or qualities to confuse and bewilder the intelligence and so obscure the soul. That, as we shall see later, is the whole crux of action and liberation for the Gita. Be free from obscuration and bewilderment by the three gun.as and action can continue, as it must continue, and even the largest, richest or most enormous and violent action; it does not matter, for nothing then touches the Purusha, the soul has nais.karmya.
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Since the mind is the instrumental cause, since inaction is impossible, what is rational, necessary, the right way is a controlled action of the Subjective and objective organism. The mind must bring the senses under its control as an instrument of the intelligent will and then the organs of action must be used for their proper office, for action, but for action done as Yoga. But what is the essence of this self-control, what is meant by action done as Yoga, Karmayoga? It is non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the fruit of the works. Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an impossibility, but action full and
I cannot think that mithyacara means a hypocrite. How is a man a hypocrite who inflicts on himself so severe and complete a privation? He is mistaken and deluded, vimud.hatma, and his acara, his formally regulated method of self-discipline, is a false and vain method, - this surely is all that the Gita means.
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Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, nis.kama karma, and unites the Subjective practice of the Sankhyas - rejecting their merely physical rule - with the practice of Yoga.
But still there is an essential difficulty unsolved. Desire is the ordinary motive of all human actions, and if the soul is free from desire, then there is no farther rationale for action.
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Sankhya. Vedism is a specialised and narrow form of Yoga; the principle of the Vedantists is identical with that of the Sankhyas, for to both the movement of salvation is the recoil of the intelligence, the buddhi, from the differentiating powers of Nature, from ego, mind, senses, from the Subjective and the objective, and its return to the undifferentiated and the immutable. It is with this object of reconciliation in his mind that the Teacher first approaches his statement of the doctrine of sacrifice; but throughout, even from the very beginning, he keeps his eye not on the restricted Vedic sense of sacrifice and works, but on their larger and universal application, - that widening of narrow and formal notions to admit the great general truths they unduly restrict which is always the method of the Gita.
1.12 - BOOK THE TWELFTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
Fame sits aloft, and sees the Subject ground,
And seas about, and skies above; enquiring all around.
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
and the Subject consciousness of man to enter into the masterconsciousness of the Lord? What bridge is there over this gulf?
Knowledge has already been pointed out as the supreme means
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the universe are Indra's field and the Subject of his functioning.
If then this unknown Existence is something that the senses can
1.12 - The Sacred Marriage, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
came to an understanding with them on the Subject. Then they
returned home, laid in a large stock of brandy, and having made
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
179 - At this stage of our search, it is not possible to say more on the Subject. The supramental experience would be needed to acquire the key to this false opposition.
180 - "Ecstasy," some have thought, would be better termed "enstasy." Is one then "in oneself" only when outside oneself? For "ecstasy" ex-stare means literally to be outside one's body or outside the perception of the world. To put it simply, our goal is an "in-oneself" that is not outside ourselves. Only when the supreme experiences can take place within our body and in the midst of everyday life will we be able to speak of "enstasy"; otherwise the term is misleading, though it perfectly illustrates the gulf we have created between life and Spirit.
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Constantly and unknowingly, we receive influences and inspirations from these higher, superconscious regions, which express themselves inside us as ideas, ideals, aspirations, or works of art; they secretly mold our life, our future. Similarly, we constantly and unknowingly receive vital and subtle-physical vibrations, which determine our emotional life and relationship with the world every moment of the day. We are enclosed in an individual, personal body only through a stubborn visual delusion; in fact, we are porous throughout and ba the in universal forces, like an anemone in the sea: Man twitters intellectually (=foolishly) about the surface results and attributes them all to his "noble self," ignoring the fact that his noble self is hidden far away from his own vision behind the veil of his dimly sparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his vital feelings, emotions, impulses, sensations and impressions.183 Our sole freedom is to lift ourselves to higher planes through individual evolution. Our only role is to transcribe and materially embody the truths of the plane we belong to. Two important points, which apply to every plane of consciousness, from the highest to the lowest, deserve to be underscored in order for us better to understand the mechanism of the universe. First, these planes do not depend upon us or upon what we think of them any more than the sea depends on the anemone; they exist independently of man. Modern psychology, for which all the levels of being are mixed together in a so-called collective unconscious, like some big magician's hat from which to draw archetypes and neuroses at random, betrays in this respect a serious lack of vision: first, because the forces of these planes are not at all unconscious (except to us), but very conscious, definitely more so than we are; and secondly, because these forces are not "collective," in the sense that they are no more a human product than the sea is the product of the anemone; it is rather the frontal man who is the product of that Immensity behind. The gradations of consciousness are universal states not dependent on the outlook of the Subjective personality; rather the outlook of the Subjective personality is determined by the grade of consciousness in which it is organized according to its typal nature or its evolutionary stage.184 Naturally, it is only human to reverse the order of things and put ourselves in the center of the world. But this is not a matter of theory, always debatable, but of experience, which everyone can have. If we go out of our body and consciously enter these planes, we realize that they exist outside us, just as the entire world exists outside Manhattan, with forces and beings and even places that have nothing in common with our earthly world; entire civilizations have attested to this, stating it, engraving it, or painting it on their walls or in their temples, civilizations that were perhaps less ingenious than ours, but certainly not less intelligent.
The second important point concerns the conscious forces and beings that occupy these planes. Here we must clearly draw a line between the superstition, or even hoax, arising from our "collective" contri bution, and the truth. As usual, the two are closely intermingled.
1.12 - Truth and Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
_subject_ in the judgement, and the remaining terms the _objects_. Thus, when Othello judges that Desdemona loves Cassio, Othello is the Subject, while the objects are Desdemona and loving and Cassio. the Subject and the objects together are called the _constituents_ of the judgement.
It will be observed that the relation of judging has what is called a
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We spoke of the relation called 'judging' or 'believing' as knitting together into one complex whole the Subject and the objects. In this respect, judging is exactly like every other relation. Whenever a relation holds between two or more terms, it unites the terms into a complex whole. If Othello loves Desdemona, there is such a complex whole as 'Othello's love for Desdemona'. The terms united by the relation may be themselves complex, or may be simple, but the whole which results from their being united must be complex. Wherever there is a relation which relates certain terms, there is a complex object formed of the union of those terms; and conversely, wherever there is a complex object, there is a relation which relates its constituents. When an act of believing occurs, there is a complex, in which 'believing' is the uniting relation, and subject and objects are arranged in a certain order by the 'sense' of the relation of believing. Among the objects, as we saw in considering 'Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio', one must be a relation--in this instance, the relation 'loving'. But this relation, as it occurs in the act of believing, is not the relation which creates the unity of the complex whole consisting of the Subject and the objects. The relation 'loving', as it occurs in the act of believing, is one of the objects--it is a brick in the structure, not the cement. The cement is the relation 'believing'. When the belief is
_true_, there is another complex unity, in which the relation which was one of the objects of the belief relates the other objects. Thus, e.g., if Othello believes _truly_ that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there is a complex unity, 'Desdemona's love for Cassio', which is composed exclusively of the _objects_ of the belief, in the same order as they had in the belief, with the relation which was one of the objects occurring now as the cement that binds together the other objects of the belief. On the other hand, when a belief is _false_, there is no such complex unity composed only of the objects of the belief. If Othello believes _falsely_ that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there is no such complex unity as 'Desdemona's love for Cassio'.
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the antithesis of the Subjective ego-psyche, is what I have called
the self, and this corresponds exactly to the idea of the An-
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the theologies of the various religions, salvation is also regarded as a deliverance out of folly, evil and misery into happiness, goodness and wisdom. But political and economic means are held to be subsidiary to the cultivation of personal holiness, to the acquiring of personal merit and to the maintenance of personal faith in some divine principle or person having power, in one way or another, to forgive and sanctify the individual soul. Moreover the end to be achieved is not regarded as existing in some Utopian future period, beginning, say, in the twenty-second century or perhaps even a little earlier, if our favourite politicians remain in power and make the right laws; the end exists in heaven. This last phrase has two very different meanings. For what is probably the majority of those who profess the great historical religions, it signifies and has always signified a happy posthumous condition of indefinite personal survival, conceived of as a reward for good behaviour and correct belief and a compensation for the miseries inseparable from life in a body. But for those who, within the various religious traditions, have accepted the Perennial Philosophy as a theory and have done their best to live it out in practice, heaven is something else. They aspire to be delivered out of separate selfhood in time and into eternity as realized in the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Since the Ground can and ought to be unitively known in the present life (whose ultimate end and purpose is nothing but this knowledge), heaven is not an exclusively posthumous condition. He only is completely saved who is delivered here and now. As to the means to salvation, these are simultaneously ethical, intellectual and spiritual and have been summed up with admirable clarity and economy in the Buddhas Eightfold Path. Complete deliverance is conditional on the following: first, Right Belief in the all too obvious truth that the cause of pain and evil is craving for separative, ego-centred existence, with its corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil, whether personal or collective, except by getting rid of such craving and the obsession of I, me, mine"; second, Right Will, the will to deliver oneself and others; third, Right Speech, directed by compassion and charity towards all sentient beings; fourth, Right Action, with the aim of creating and maintaining peace and good will; fifth, Right Means of Livelihood, or the choice only of such professions as are not harmful, in their exercise, to any human being or, if possible, any living creature; sixth, Right Effort towards Self-control; seventh, Right Attention or Recollectedness, to be practised in all the circumstances of life, so that we may never do evil by mere thoughtlessness, because we know not what we do"; and, eighth, Right Contemplation, the unitive knowledge of the Ground, to which recollectedness and the ethical self-naughting prescribed in the first six branches of the Path give access. Such then are the means which it is within the power of the human being to employ in order to achieve mans final end and be saved. Of the means which are employed by the divine Ground for helping human beings to reach their goal, the Buddha of the Pali scriptures (a teacher whose dislike of footless questions is no less intense than that of the severest experimental physicist of the twentieth century) declines to speak. All he is prepared to talk about is sorrow and the ending of sorrow the huge brute fact of pain and evil and the other, no less empirical fact that there is a method, by which the individual can free himself from evil and do something to diminish the sum of evil in the world around him. It is only in Mahayana Buddhism that the mysteries of grace are discussed with anything like the fulness of treatment accorded to the Subject in the speculations of Hindu and especially Christian theology. The primitive, Hinayana teaching on deliverance is simply an elaboration of the Buddhas last recorded words: Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your own salvation with diligence. As in the well-known passage quoted below, all the stress is upon personal effort.
Therefore, Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, shall not look for refuge to anyone beside themselves it is they who shall reach the very topmost Height. But they must be anxious to learn.
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Much of the literature of Sufism is poetical. Sometimes this poetry is rather strained and extravagant, sometimes beautiful with a luminous simplicity, sometimes darkly and almost disquietingly enigmatic. To this last class belong the utterances of that Moslem saint of the tenth century, Niffari the Egyptian. This is what he wrote on the Subject of salvation.
God made me behold the sea, and I saw the ships sinking and the planks floating; then the planks too were submerged. And God said to me, Those who voyage are not saved. And He said to me, Those who, instead of voyaging, cast themselves into the sea, take a risk. And He said to me, Those who voyage and take no risk shall perish. And He said to me, The surface of the sea is a gleam that cannot be reached. And the bottom is a darkness impenetrable. And between the two are great fishes, which are to be feared.
1.14 - IMMORTALITY AND SURVIVAL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Preoccupation with posthumous deliverance is not one of the means to such deliverance, and may easily, indeed, become an obstacle in the way of advance towards it. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that ardent spiritualists are more likely to be saved than those who have never attended a sance or familiarized themselves with the literature, speculative or evidential. My intention here is not to add to that literature, but rather to give the baldest summary of what has been written about the Subject of survival within the various religious traditions.
In oriental discussions of the Subject, that which survives death is not the personality. Buddhism accepts the doctrine of reincarnation; but it is not a soul that passes on (Buddhism denies the existence of a soul); it is the character. What we choose to make of our mental and physical constitution in the course of our life on earth affects the psychic medium within which individual minds lead a part at least of their amphibious existence, and this modification of the medium results, after the bodys death, in the initiation of a new existence either in a heaven, or a purgatory, or another body.
In the Vedanta cosmology there is, over and above the Atman or spiritual Self, identical with the divine Ground, something in the nature of a soul that reincarnates in a gross or subtle body, or manifests itself in some incorporeal state. This soul is not the personality of the defunct, but rather the particularized I-consciousness out of which a personality arises.
1.14 - (Plot continued.) The tragic emotions of pity and fear should spring out of the Plot itself., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Antigone, where Haemon threatens to kill Creon. The next and better way is that the deed should be perpetrated. Still better, that it should be perpetrated in ignorance, and the discovery made afterwards. There is then nothing to shock us, while the discovery produces a startling effect. The last case is the best, as when in the Cresphontes Merope is about to slay her son, but, recognising who he is, spares his life. So in the Iphigenia, the sister recognises the brother just in time. Again in the Helle, the son recognises the mother when on the point of giving her up. This, then, is why a few families only, as has been already observed, furnish the Subjects of tragedy. It was not art, but happy chance, that led the poets in search of subjects to impress the tragic quality upon their plots. They are compelled, therefore, to have recourse to those houses whose history contains moving incidents like these.
Enough has now been said concerning the structure of the incidents, and the right kind of plot.
1.15 - Conclusion, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
3 This thema is the Subject of an Oxford dissertation by Amy I. Allenby: A Psy-
chological Study of the Origins of Monotheism.
1.15 - The element of Character in Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described. The fourth point is consistency: for though the Subject of the imitation, who suggested the type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent. As an example of motiveless degradation of character, we have Menelaus in the Orestes: of character indecorous and inappropriate, the lament of
Odysseus in the Scylla, and the speech of Melanippe: of inconsistency, the Iphigenia at Aulis,--for Iphigenia the suppliant in no way resembles her later self.
1.15 - The Value of Philosophy, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the Subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect. The free intellect will see as God might see, without a _here_ and _now_, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge--knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.
The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is unaffected by any one man's deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.
1.15 - The world overrun with trees; they are destroyed by the Pracetasas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[23]: None of the authorities are more specific on the Subject of Aṛṣṭanemis' progeny. In the Mahābhārata this is said to be another name of Kaśyapa. The Bhāgavata substitutes Tārkṣa for this personage, said by the commentator to be likewise another name of Kaśyapa. His wives are, Kadru, Vinatā, Patangi, and Yāminī, mothers of snakes, birds, grasshoppers, and locusts.
[24]: Enumerated in astrological works as brown, red, yellow, and white; portending severally wind, heat, rain, famine.
1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
No, certainly not [thinkers and philosophers do not have a silent mind]. It is the active mind they have; only, of course, they concentrate, so the common incoherent mentalising stops and the thoughts that rise or enter and shape themselves are coherently restricted to the Subject or activity in hand. But that is quite a different matter from the whole mind falling silent.
***
1.16 - On Concentration, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The best way is the hardest; to forget all this and start from the beginning as if there had never been anything on the Subject written before.
I must keep always in mind that you are assumed to know nothing whatever about Yoga and Magick, or anything else beyond what the average educated person may be assumed to have been taught.
1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
I beg leave to return to the Subject, this time not
with the calmness of a theorist adding to his argu-
1.18 - Further rules for the Tragic Poet., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. As for the later poets, their choral songs pertain as little to the Subject of the piece as to that of any other tragedy. They are, therefore, sung as mere interludes, a practice first begun by Agathon. Yet what difference is there between introducing such choral interludes, and transferring a speech, or even a whole act, from one play to another?
author class:Aristotle
1.19 - GOD IS NOT MOCKED, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
IF THERE is freedom (and even Determinists consistently act as if they were certain of it) and if (as everyone who has qualified himself to talk about the Subject has always been convinced) there is a spiritual Reality, which it is the final end and purpose of consciousness to know; then all life is in the nature of an intelligence test, and the higher the level of awareness and the greater the potentialities of the creature, the more searchingly difficult will be the questions asked. For, in Bagehots words, we could not be what we ought to be, if we lived in the sort of universe we should expect. A latent Providence, a confused life, an odd material world, an existence broken short in the midst and on a sudden, are not real difficulties, but real helps; for they, or something like them, are essential conditions of a moral life in a subordinate being. Because we are free, it is possible for us to answer lifes questions either well or badly. If we answer them badly, we shall bring down upon ourselves self-stultification. Most often this self-stultification will take subtle and not immediately detectable forms, as when our failure to answer properly makes it impossible for us to realize the higher potentialities of our being. Sometimes, on the contrary, the self-stultification is manifest on the physical level, and may involve not only individuals as individuals, but entire societies, which go down in catastrophe or sink more slowly into decay. The giving of correct answers is rewarded primarily by spiritual growth and progressive realization of latent potentialities, and secondarily (when circumstances make it possible) by the adding of all the rest to the realized kingdom of God. Karma exists; but its equivalence of act and award is not always obvious and material, as the earlier Buddhist and Hebrew writers ingenuously imagined that it should be. The bad man in prosperity may, all unknown to himself, be darkened and corroded with inward rust, while the good man under afflictions may be in the rewarding process of spiritual growth. No, God is not mocked; but also, let us always remember, He is not understood.
Per nella giustizia sempiterna
1.19 - The Curve of the Rational Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In that case the curve of the Age of Reason, now threatened with an abrupt cessation, may prolong and complete itself; the Subjective turn of the human mind and life, avoiding a premature plunge into any general external action before it has found itself, may have time and freedom to evolve, to seek out its own truth, its own lines and so become ready to take up the spiral of the human social evolution where the curve of the Age of Reason naturally ends by its own normal evolution and make ready the ways of a deeper spirit.
These hesitations of social democracy, its uneasy mental poise between two opposing principles, socialistic regimentation and democratic liberty, may be the root cause of the failure of socialism to make good in so many countries even when it had every chance on its side and its replacement by the more vigorous and ruthlessly logical forces of Communism and Fascism. On the other hand, in the northernmost countries of Europe a temporising, reformist, practical Socialism compromising between the right regulation of the communal life and the freedom of the individual has to some extent made good; but it is still doubtful whether it will be allowed to go to the end of its road. If it has that chance, it is still to be seen whether the drive of the idea and the force it carries in it for complete self-effectuation will not prevail in the end over the spirit of compromise.
1.19 - Thought, or the Intellectual element, and Diction in Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
It remains to speak of Diction and Thought, the other parts of Tragedy having been already discussed. Concerning Thought, we may assume what is said in the Rhetoric, to which inquiry the Subject more strictly belongs. Under Thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech, the subdivisions being,--proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger, and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite. Now, it is evident that the dramatic incidents must be treated from the same points of view as the dramatic speeches, when the object is to evoke the sense of pity, fear, importance, or probability. The only difference is, that the incidents should speak for themselves without verbal exposition; while the effects aimed at in speech should be produced by the speaker, and as a result of the speech. For what were the business of a speaker, if the Thought were revealed quite apart from what he says?
Next, as regards Diction. One branch of the inquiry treats of the Modes of Utterance. But this province of knowledge belongs to the art of Delivery and to the masters of that science. It includes, for instance,--what is a command, a prayer, a statement, a threat, a question, an answer, and so forth. To know or not to know these things involves no serious censure upon the poet's art. For who can admit the fault imputed to Homer by Protagoras,--that in the words, 'Sing, goddess, of the wrath,' he gives a comm and under the idea that he utters a prayer? For to tell some one to do a thing or not to do it is, he says, a command. We may, therefore, pass this over as an inquiry that belongs to another art, not to poetry.
1.200-1.224 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The Self is more intimate than the objects. Find the Subject, and the objects will take care of themselves. The objects are seen by different persons according to their outlook and these theories are evolved. But who is the seer, the cogniser of these
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi theories? It is you. Find your Self. Then there is an end of these vagaries of the mind.
1.201 - Socrates, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
Again I replied that I did not know. She retorted, And do you suppose you will ever become expert on the Subject of love if you are not going to think about this matter?
But Diotima, as I said just now, it is precisely because I recognise that I need teachers that I have come to you. Just tell me the reason for this and for everything else to do with love.
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.
1.20 - Death, Desire and Incapacity, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
1.20 - The Hound of Heaven, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Swar," where the Subject is evidently the same but the son has nothing to do with any brood of puppies.
The two Sarameya dogs, messengers of Yama, are mentioned in a late hymn in the tenth Mandala, but without any reference to Sarama as their mother. This occurs in the famous
1.20 - Visnu appears to Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
THUS meditating upon Viṣṇu, as identical with his own spirit, Prahlāda became as one with him, and finally regarded himself as the divinity: he forgot entirely his own individuality, and was conscious of nothing else than his being the inexhaustible, eternal, supreme soul; and in consequence of the efficacy of this conviction of identity, the imperishable Viṣṇu, whose essence is wisdom, became present in his heart, which was wholly purified from sin. As soon as, through the force of his contemplation, Prahlāda had become one with Viṣṇu, the bonds with which he was bound burst instantly asunder; the ocean was violently uplifted; and the monsters of the deep were alarmed; earth with all her forests and mountains trembled; and the prince, putting aside the rocks which the demons had piled Upon him, came forth from out the main. When he beheld the outer world again, and contemplated earth and heaven, he remembered who he was, and recognised himself to be Prahlāda; and again he hymned Puruṣottama, who is without beginning or end; his mind being steadily and undeviatingly addressed to the object of his prayers, and his speech, thoughts, and acts being firmly under control. "Om! glory to the end of all: to thee, lord, who art subtile and substantial; mutable and immutable; perceptible and imperceptible; divisible and indivisible; indefinable and definable; the Subject of attributes, and void of attributes; abiding in qualities, though they abide not in thee; morphous and amorphous; minute and vast; visible and invisible; hideousness and beauty; ignorance and wisdom; cause and effect; existence and non-existence; comprehending all that is good and evil; essence of perishable and imperishable elements; asylum of undeveloped rudiments. Oh thou who art both one and many, Vāsudeva, first cause of all; glory be unto thee. Oh thou who art large and small, manifest and hidden; who art all beings, and art not all beings; and from whom, although distinct from universal cause, the universe proceeds: to thee, Puruṣottama, be all glory."
Whilst with mind intent on Viṣṇu, he thus pronounced his praises, the divinity, clad in yellow robes, suddenly appeared before him. Startled at the sight, with hesitating speech Prahlāda pronounced repeated salutations to Viṣṇu, and said, "Oh thou who removest all worldly grief, Keśava, be propitious unto me; again sanctify me, Achyuta, by thy sight." The deity replied, "I am pleased with the faithful attachment thou hast shown to me: demand from me, Prahlāda, whatever thou desirest." Prahlāda replied, "In all the thousand births through which I may be doomed to pass, may my faith in thee, Achyuta, never know decay; may passion, as fixed as that which the worldly-minded feel for sensual pleasures, ever animate my heart, always devoted unto thee." Bhagavān answered, "Thou hast already devotion unto me, and ever shalt have it: now choose some boon, whatever is in thy wish." Prahlāda then said, "I have been hated, for that I assiduously proclaimed thy praise: do thou, oh lord, pardon in my father this sin that he Bath committed. Weapons have been hurled against me; I have been thrown into the flames; I have been bitten by venomous snakes; and poison has been mixed with my food; I have been bound and cast into the sea; and heavy rocks have been heaped upon me: but all this, and whatever ill beside has been wrought against me; whatever wickedness has been done to me, because I put my faith in thee; all, through thy mercy, has been suffered by me unharmed: and do thou therefore free my father from this iniquity." To this application Viṣṇu replied, "All this shall be unto thee, through my favour: but I give thee another boon: demand it, son of the Asura." Prahlāda answered and said, "All my desires, oh lord, have been fulfilled by the boon that thou hast granted, that my faith in thee shall never know decay. Wealth, virtue, love, are as nothing; for even liberation is in his reach whose faith is firm in thee, root of the universal world." Viṣṇu said, "Since thy heart is filled immovably with trust in me, thou shalt, through my blessing, attain freedom from existence." Thus saying, Viṣṇu vanished from his sight; and Prahlāda repaired to his father, and bowed down before him. His father kissed him on the forehead[1], and embraced him, and shed tears, and said, "Dost thou live, my son?" And the great Asura repented of his former cruelty, and treated him with kindness: and Prahlāda, fulfilling his duties like any other youth, continued diligent in the service of his preceptor and his father. After his father had been put to death by Viṣṇu in the form of the man-lion[2], Prahlāda became the sovereign of the Daityas; and possessing the splendours of royalty consequent upon his piety, exercised extensive sway, and was blessed with a numerous progeny. At the expiration of an authority which was the reward of his meritorious acts, he was freed from the consequences of moral merit or demerit, and obtained, through meditation on the deity, final exemption from existence.
1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
thick about the Subject of food; and he abstains from eating many
animals and plants, wholesome enough in themselves, which for one
1.21 - The Ascent of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
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.
1.22 - EMOTIONALISM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
This particular letter is not only an admirable piece of character analysis; it also contains some very interesting remarks on the Subject of emotional excitement in its relation to the life of the spirit.
The phrase, religion of experience, has two distinct and mutually incompatible meanings. There is the experience of which the Perennial Philosophy treats the direct apprehension of the divine Ground in an act of intuition possible, in its fulness, only to the selflessly pure in heart. And there is the experience induced by revivalist sermons, impressive ceremonials, or the deliberate efforts of ones own imagination. This experience is a state of emotional excitementan excitement which may be mild and enduring or brief and epileptically violent, which is sometimes exultant in tone and sometimes despairing, which expresses itself here in song and dance, there in uncontrollable weeping. But emotional excitement, whatever its cause and whatever its nature, is always excitement of that individualized self, which must be thed to by anyone who aspires to live to divine Reality. Experience as emotion about God (the highest form of this kind of excitement) is incompatible with experience as imme thate awareness of God by a pure heart which has mortified even its most exalted emotions. That is why Fnelon, in the foregoing extract, insists upon the need for calm and simplicity, why St. Franois de Sales is never tired of preaching the serenity which he himself so consistently practised, why all the Buddhist scriptures harp on tranquillity of mind as a necessary condition of deliverance. The peace that passes all understanding is one of the fruits of the spirit. But there is also the peace that does not pass understanding, the humbler peace of emotional self-control and self-denial; this is not a fruit of the spirit, but rather one of its indispensable roots.
1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What then will be that state of society, what that readiness of the common mind of man which will be most favourable to this change, so that even if it cannot at once effectuate itself, it may at least make for its ways a more decisive preparation than has been hitherto possible? For that seems the most important element, since it is that, it is the unpreparedness, the unfitness of the society or of the common mind of man which is always the chief stumbling-block. It is the readiness of this common mind which is of the first importance; for even if the condition of society and the principle and rule that govern society are opposed to the spiritual change, even if these belong almost wholly to the vital, to the external, the economic, the mechanical order, as is certainly the way at present with human masses, yet if the common human mind has begun to admit the ideas proper to the higher order that is in the end to be, and the heart of man has begun to be stirred by aspirations born of these ideas, then there is a hope of some advance in the not distant future. And here the first essential sign must be the growth of the Subjective idea of life,the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers, its possibilities, its growth, its expression and the creation of a true, beautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thing of first and last importance. The signals must be there that are precursors of a subjective age in humanitys thought and social endeavour.
These ideas are likely first to declare their trend in philosophy, in psychological thinking, in the arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, in the main idea of ethics, in the application of subjective principles by thinkers to social questions, even perhaps, though this is a perilous effort, to politics and economics, that hard refractory earthy matter which most resists all but a gross utilitarian treatment. There will be new unexpected departures of science or at least of research,since to such a turn in its most fruitful seekings the orthodox still deny the name of science. Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the external senses and are infinitely plastic and subtle. There will be a labour of religion to reject its past heavy weight of dead matter and revivify its strength in the fountains of the spirit. These are sure signs, if not of the thing to be, at least of a great possibility of it, of an effort that will surely be made, another endeavour perhaps with a larger sweep and a better equipped intelligence capable not only of feeling but of understanding the Truth that is demanding to be heard. Some such signs we can see at the present time although they are only incipient and sporadic and have not yet gone far enough to warrant a confident certitude. It is only when these groping beginnings have found that for which they are seeking, that it can be successfully applied to the remoulding of the life of man. Till then nothing better is likely to be achieved than an inner preparation and, for the rest, radical or revolutionary experiments of a doubtful kind with the details of the vast and cumbrous machinery under which life now groans and labours.
A subjective age may stop very far short of spirituality; for the Subjective turn is only a first condition, not the thing itself, not the end of the matter. The search for the Reality, the true self of man, may very easily follow out the natural order described by the Upanishad in the profound apologue of the seekings of Bhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the ultimate reality to be Matter and the physical, the material being, the external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life as the Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit; in the third essay he penetrated to Mind and the mental being; only afterwards could he get beyond the superficial subjective through the supramental Truth-Consciousness to the eternal, the blissful, the ever creative Reality of which these are the sheaths. But humanity may not be as persistent or as plastic as the son of Varuna, the search may stop short anywhere. Only if it is intended that he shall now at last arrive and discover, will the Spirit break each insufficient formula as soon as it has shaped itself and compel the thought of man to press forward to a larger discovery and in the end to the largest and most luminous of all. Something of the kind has been happening, but only in a very external way and on the surface. After the material formula which governed the greater part of the nineteenth century had burdened man with the heaviest servitude to the machinery of the outer material life that he has ever yet been called upon to bear, the first attempt to break through, to get to the living reality in things and away from the mechanical idea of life and living and society, landed us in that surface vitalism which had already begun to govern thought before the two formulas inextricably locked together lit up and flung themselves on the lurid pyre of the world-war. The vital lan has brought us no deliverance, but only used the machinery already created with a more feverish insistence, a vehement attempt to live more rapidly, more intensely, an inordinate will to act and to succeed, to enlarge the mere force of living or to pile up a gigantic efficiency of the collective life. It could not have been otherwise even if this vitalism had been less superficial and external, more truly subjective. To live, to act, to grow, to increase the vital force, to understand, utilise and fulfil the intuitive impulse of life are not things evil in themselves: rather they are excellent things, if rightly followed and rightly used, that is to say, if they are directed to something beyond the mere vitalistic impulse and are governed by that within which is higher than Life. The Life-power is an instrument, not an aim; it is in the upward scale the first great subjective supraphysical instrument of the Spirit and the base of all action and endeavour. But a Life-power that sees nothing beyond itself, nothing to be served except its own organised demands and impulses, will be very soon like the force of steam driving an engine without the driver or an engine in which the locomotive force has made the driver its servant and not its controller. It can only add the uncontrollable impetus of a high-crested or broad-based Titanism, or it may be even a nether flaming demonism, to the Nature forces of the material world with the intellect as its servant, an impetus of measureless unresting creation, appropriation, expansion which will end in something violent, huge and colossal, foredoomed in its very nature to excess and ruin, because light is not in it nor the souls truth nor the sanction of the gods and their calm eternal will and knowledge.
But beyond the Subjectivism of the vital self there is the possibility of a mental subjectivism which would at first perhaps, emerging out of the predominant vitalism and leaning upon the already realised idea of the soul as a soul of Life in action but correcting it, appear as a highly mentalised pragmatism. This first stage is foreshadowed in an increasing tendency to rationalise entirely man and his life, to govern individual and social existence by an ordered scientific plan based upon his discovery of his own and of lifes realities. This attempt is bound to fail because reason and rationality are not the whole of man or of life, because reason is only an intermediate interpreter, not the original knower, creator and master of our being or of cosmic existence. It can besides only mechanise life in a more intelligent way than in the past; to do that seems to be all that the modern intellectual leaders of the race can discover as the solution of the heavy problem with which we are impaled. But it is conceivable that this tendency may hereafter rise to the higher idea of man as a mental being, a soul in mind that must develop itself individually and collectively in the life and body through the play of an ever-expanding mental existence. This greater idea would realise that the elevation of the human existence will come not through material efficiency alone or the complex play of his vital and dynamic powers, not solely by mastering through the aid of the intellect the energies of physical Nature for the satisfaction of the life-instincts, which can only be an intensification of his present mode of existence, but through the greatening of his mental and psychic being and a discovery, bringing forward and organisation of his subliminal nature and its forces, the utilisation of a larger mind and a larger life waiting for discovery within us. It would see in life an opportunity for the joy and power of knowledge, for the joy and power of beauty, for the joy and power of the human will mastering not only physical Nature, but vital and mental Nature. It might discover her secret yet undreamed-of mind-powers and life-powers and use them for a freer liberation of man from the limitations of his shackled bodily life. It might arrive at new psychic relations, a more sovereign power of the idea to realise itself in the act, inner means of overcoming the obstacles of distance and division which would cast into insignificance even the last miraculous achievements of material Science. A development of this kind is far enough away from the dreams of the mass of men, but there are certain pale hints and presages of such a possibility and ideas which lead to it are already held by a great number who are perhaps in this respect the yet unrecognised vanguard of humanity. It is not impossible that behind the confused morning voices of the hour a light of this kind, still below the horizon, may be waiting to ascend with its splendours.
Such a turn of human thought, effort, ideas of life, if it took hold of the communal mind, would evidently lead to a profound revolution throughout the whole range of human existence. It would give it from the first a new tone and atmosphere, a loftier spirit, wider horizons, a greater aim. It might easily develop a science which would bring the powers of the physical world into a real and not only a contingent and mechanical subjection and open perhaps the doors of other worlds. It might develop an achievement of Art and Beauty which would make the greatness of the past a comparatively little thing and would save the world from the astonishingly callous reign of utilitarian ugliness that even now afflicts it. It would open up a closer and freer interchange between human minds and, it may well be hoped, a kindlier interchange between human hearts and lives. Nor need its achievements stop here, but might proceed to greater things of which these would be only the beginnings. This mental and psychic subjectivism would have its dangers, greater dangers even than those that attend a vitalistic subjectivism, because its powers of action also would be greater, but it would have what vitalistic subjectivism has not and cannot easily have, the chance of a detecting discernment, strong safeguards and a powerful liberating light.
--
Therefore a society which was even initially spiritualised would make the revealing and finding of the divine Self in man the supreme, even the guiding aim of all its activities, its education, its knowledge, its science, its ethics, its art, its economical and political structure. As it was to some imperfect extent in the ancient Vedic times with the cultural education of the higher classes, so it would be then with all education. It would embrace all knowledge in its scope, but would make the whole trend and aim and the permeating spirit not mere worldly efficiency, though that efficiency would not be neglected, but this self-developing and self-finding and all else as its powers. It would pursue the physical and psychic sciences not in order merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and to use them for material human ends, but still more to know through and in and under and over all things the Divine in the world and the ways of the Spirit in its masks and behind them. It would make it the aim of ethics not to establish a rule of action whether supplementary to the social law or partially corrective of it, the social law that is after all only the rule, often clumsy and ignorant, of the biped pack, the human herd, but to develop the divine nature in the human being. It would make it the aim of Art not merely to present images of the Subjective and objective world, but to see them with the significant and creative vision that goes behind their appearances and to reveal the Truth and Beauty of which things visible to us and invisible are the forms, the masks or the symbols and significant figures.
A spiritualised society would treat in its sociology the individual, from the saint to the criminal, not as units of a social problem to be passed through some skilfully devised machinery and either flattened into the social mould or crushed out of it, but as souls suffering and entangled in a net and to be rescued, souls growing and to be encouraged to grow, souls grown and from whom help and power can be drawn by the lesser spirits who are not yet adult. The aim of its economics would be not to create a huge engine of production, whether of the competitive or the cooperative kind, but to give to mennot only to some but to all men each in his highest possible measure the joy of work according to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly, as well as a simply rich and beautiful life for all. In its politics it would not regard the nations within the scope of their own internal life as enormous State machines regulated and armoured with man living for the sake of the machine and worshipping it as his God and his larger self, content at the first call to kill others upon its altar and to bleed there himself so that the machine may remain intact and powerful and be made ever larger, more complex, more cumbrous, more mechanically efficient and entire. Neither would it be content to maintain these nations or States in their mutual relations as noxious engines meant to discharge poisonous gas upon each other in peace and to rush in times of clash upon each others armed hosts and unarmed millions, full of belching shot and men missioned to murder like war-planes or hostile tanks in a modern battlefield. It would regard the peoples as group-souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human collectivities, group-souls meant like the individual to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the whole race in the one common work of humanity. And that work would be to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest, largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature.
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.
1.23 - Epic Poetry., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Sicily took place at the same time, but did not tend to any one result, so in the sequence of events, one thing sometimes follows another, and yet no single result is thereby produced. Such is the practice, we may say, of most poets. Here again, then, as has been already observed, the transcendent excellence of Homer is manifest. He never attempts to make the whole war of Troy the Subject of his poem, though that war had a beginning and an end. It would have been too vast a theme, and not easily embraced in a single view. If, again, he had kept it within moderate limits, it must have been over-complicated by the variety of the incidents. As it is, he detaches a single portion, and admits as episodes many events from the general story of the war--such as the
Catalogue of the ships and others--thus diversifying the poem. All other poets take a single hero, a single period, or an action single indeed, but with a multiplicity of parts. Thus did the author of the Cypria and of the Little Iliad. For this reason the Iliad and the Odyssey each furnish the Subject of one tragedy, or, at most, of two; while the
Cypria supplies materials for many, and the Little Iliad for eight--the
1.23 - The Double Soul in Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
7:We have seen, when we considered the Delight of Existence in its relations to the world, that there is no absoluteness or essential validity in our standards of pleasure and pain and indifference, that they are entirely determined by the Subjectivity of the receiving consciousness and that the degree of either pleasure and pain can be heightened to a maximum or depressed to a minimum or even effaced entirely in its apparent nature. Pleasure can become pain or pain pleasure because in their secret reality they are the same thing differently reproduced in the sensations and emotions. Indifference is either the inattention of the surface desire-soul in its mind, sensations, emotions and cravings to the rasa of things, or its incapacity to receive and respond to it, or its refusal to give any surface response or, again, its driving and crushing down of the pleasure or the pain by the will into the neutral tint of unacceptance. In all these cases what happens is that either there is a positive refusal or a negative unreadiness or incapacity to render or in any way represent positively on the surface something that is yet subliminally active.
8:For, as we now know by psychological observation and experiment that the subliminal mind receives and remembers all those touches of things which the surface mind ignores, so also we shall find that the subliminal soul responds to the rasa, or essence in experience, of these things which the surface desire-soul rejects by distaste and refusal or ignores by neutral unacceptance. Self-knowledge is impossible unless we go behind our surface existence, which is a mere result of selective outer experiences, an imperfect sounding-board or a hasty, incompetent and fragmentary translation of a little out of the much that we are, - unless we go behind this and send down our plummet into the subconscient and open ourself to the superconscient so as to know their relation to our surface being. For between these three things our existence moves and finds in them its totality. The superconscient in us is one with the self and soul of the world and is not governed by any phenomenal diversity; it possesses therefore the truth of things and the delight of things in their plenitude. The subconscient, so called,6 in that luminous head of itself which we call the subliminal, is, on the contrary, not a true possessor but an instrument of experience; it is not practically one with the soul and self of the world, but it is open to it through its world-experience. The subliminal soul is conscious inwardly of the rasa of things and has an equal delight in all contacts; it is conscious also of the values and standards of the surface desire-soul and receives on its own surface corresponding touches of pleasure, pain and indifference, but takes an equal delight in all. In other words, our real soul within takes joy of all its experiences, gathers from them strength, pleasure and knowledge, grows by them in its store and its plenty. It is this real soul in us which compels the shrinking desire-mind to bear and even to seek and find a pleasure in what is painful to it, to reject what is pleasant to it, to modify or even reverse its values, to equalise things in indifference or to equalise them in joy, the joy of the variety of existence. And this it does because it is impelled by the universal to develop itself by all kinds of experience so as to grow in Nature. Otherwise, if we lived only by the surface desire-soul, we could no more change or advance than the plant or stone in whose immobility or in whose routine of existence, because life is not superficially conscious, the secret soul of things has as yet no instrument by which it can rescue the life out of the fixed and narrow gamut into which it is born. The desire-soul left to itself would circle in the same grooves for ever.
1.2.3 - The Power of Expression and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Writing by itself on ordinary subjects has the externalising tendency unless one has got accustomed to write (whatever be the Subject) with the inner consciousness detached and free from what the outer is doing.
***
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
(a) To remove ignorance completely, he has to hear the truth repeatedly, until his knowledge of the Subject-matter becomes perfect;
(b) to remove doubts, he must reflect on what he has heard; ultimately his knowledge will be free from doubts of any kind;
--
M.: Avidya is like Maya [she who is not is maya (illusion)]. Similarly that which is not is ignorance. Therefore the question does not arise. Nevertheless, the question is asked. Then ask, "Whose is the avidya? Avidya is ignorance. It implies subject and object. Become the Subject and there will be no object.
D.: What is avidya?
--
The fact is this. Drishti (sight) is consciousness. It forms the Subject and object. Can there be drishti apart from the Self? The Self is all - drishti, etc.
D.: How to discern the ego from the Perfect 'I-I'?
--
M.: The 'I-thought' arises first and then all other thoughts. They comprise the mind. The mind is the object and the 'I' is the Subject. Can there be will without the 'I'? It is comprised in the
'I'. The 'I-thought' is the vijnanamaya kosa (intellectual sheath).
--
('I') is the Subject; the two together form the vijnanamayakosa
(intellect-sheath).
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
(a) To remove ignorance completely, he has to hear the truth repeatedly, until his knowledge of the Subject-matter becomes perfect;
(b) to remove doubts, he must reflect on what he has heard; ultimately his knowledge will be free from doubts of any kind;
--
M.: Avidya is like Maya [she who is not is maya (illusion)]. Similarly that which is not is ignorance. Therefore the question does not arise. Nevertheless, the question is asked. Then ask, Whose is the avidya? Avidya is ignorance. It implies subject and object. Become the Subject and there will be no object.
D.: What is avidya?
--
The fact is this. Drishti (sight) is consciousness. It forms the Subject and object. Can there be drishti apart from the Self? The Self is all - drishti, etc.
D.: How to discern the ego from the Perfect I-I?
--
M.: The I-thought arises first and then all other thoughts. They comprise the mind. The mind is the object and the I is the Subject. Can there be will without the I? It is comprised in the
I. The I-thought is the vijnanamaya kosa (intellectual sheath).
--
(I) is the Subject; the two together form the vijnanamayakosa
(intellect-sheath).
--
In the present stanza the tiny dot = the ego; the tiny dot made up of darkness = the ego consisting of latent tendencies, the seer or the Subject or the ego rising, it expands itself as the seen, the object or the antahkaranas (the inner organs). The light must be dim in order to enable the ego to rise up. In broad daylight a rope does not look like a snake. The rope itself cannot be seen in thick darkness; so there is no chance of mistaking it for a snake. Only in dim light, in the dusk, in light darkened by shadows or in darkness lighted by dim light does the mistake occur of a rope seeming a snake. Similarly it is for the
Pure Radiant Being to rise up as the Ego - it is possible only in Its
--
But the gross body is of the mind only. The mind may be said to consist of four inner organs, or the principle composed of thoughts, or the sixth sense; or combining intellect with the ego, and chitta with the mind (i.e. memory-faculty with the thinking faculty), it may be taken to consist of two parts (the ego and the mind). In the latter case the vijnanatma (the intellectual Self) or the ego or the seer forms the Subject, and the mental sheath or the seen, the object.
The waking, dream and sleep states have their origin in the Original
--
Now, what is this I-thought (the ego)? Is it the Subject or the object, in the scheme of things?
Inasmuch as it witnesses all other objects in the waking and dream states, or at any rate we think that it does so, it must be considered to be the Subject. On realising the Pure Self, however, it will be an object only.
Whose is this I-thought (the ego)? This investigation forms the vichara.
--
Illustration: the necklace supposed lost. One does not see the world or ones own body, being away from the Self. Always being the Self, one sees everything else. God and the world are all in the Heart. See the Seer and everything will be found to be the Self. Change your outlook. Look within. Find the Self. Who is the substratum of the Subject and the object? Find it and all problems are solved.
The lady was then told of the pamphlet, Who am I? She agreed to read it before asking further questions of Sri Bhagavan.
--
The thought rises up as the Subject and object. I alone being held, all else disappears. It is enough, but only to the competent few.
The others argue, Quite so. The world that exists in my sleep has existed before my birth and will exist after my death. Do not others see it? How can the world cease to be if my ego appears not? The genesis of the world and the different schools of thought are meant to satisfy such people.
--
Tiruvannamalai is the same by whichever route it is gained. Similarly the approach to the Subject varies according to the personality. Yet the Self is the same. But still, being in Tiruvannamalai, if one asks for the route it is ridiculous. So also, being the Self, if one asks how to realise the Self it looks absurd. You are the Self. Remain as the Self. That is all. The questions arise because of the present wrong identification of the Self with the body. That is ignorance.
This must go. On its removal the Self alone is.
--
M.: You seek the confirmation from others. Each one though addressed as you, styles himself I. The confirmation is only from I. There is no you at all. All are comprised in I. The other can be known only when the Self is posited. The others do not exist without the Subject.
D.: Again, this is nothing new. When I was with Sir C. V. Raman he told me that the theory of smell could be explained from his theory of light. Smell need no longer be explained in terms of chemistry. Now, there is something new; it is progress. That is what I mean, when I say that there is nothing new in all the statements I hear now.
--
The so-called genius is one who worked hard in his past births and acquired knowledge and kept it in store as samskaras. He now concentrates his mind until it merges in the Subject. In that stillness the submerged ideas flash out. That requires favourable conditions also.
6th April, 1937
--
M.: They are many, and meant to indicate that the creation has a cause and a creator should be posited so that one might seek the cause. The emphasis is on the purpose of the theory and not on the process of creation. Moreover, the creation is perceived by someone. There are no objects without the Subject, i.e., the objects do not come and tell you that they are, but it is you who says that there are the objects.
The objects are therefore what the seer makes of them. They have no existence independent of the Subject. Find out what you are and then you understand what the world is. That is the object of the theory.
D.: The soul is only a small particle whereas the creation is so huge.
--
M.: Meditation requires an object to meditate upon, whereas there is only the Subject without the object in vichara. Meditation differs from vichara in this way.
D.: Is not dhyana one of the efficient processes for Realisation?
--
There are three outlooks possible:(1) The Vyavaharika: The man sees the world in all its variety, surmises the creator and believes in himself as the Subject. All these are thus reduced to the three fundamentals, jagat, jiva and Isvara. He learns the existence of the creator and tries to reach him in order to gain immortality. If one is thus released from bondage, there are all other individuals existing as before who should work out their own salvation. He more or less admits the One Reality underlying all these phenomena. The phenomena are due to the play of maya. Maya is the sakti of Isvara or the activity of Reality. Thus, existence of different souls, objects, etc., do not clash with the advaitic point of view.
(2) The Pratibhasika: The jagat, jiva and Isvara are all cognised by the seer only. They do not have any existence independent of
--
The object is seen or the light is recognised because there is the Subject to do so. How does it affect the Subject whether the objects are seen or not? If the light, i.e., the cogniser or the consciousness is seen, there will be no object to be seen. Pure light, i.e.,
Consciousness, will alone remain over.
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi all the same. Did you then perceive the world through this or other bodies? Nevertheless, you cannot deny your existence then. There must be a subject to see the world and the Subject must also be limited. If unlimited how can there be others beside the unlimited Self?
D.: Does God have any limits?
1.24 - (Epic Poetry continued.) Further points of agreement with Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Epic poetry has, however, a great--a special--capacity for enlarging its dimensions, and we can see the reason. In Tragedy we cannot imitate several lines of actions carried on at one and the same time; we must confine ourselves to the action on the stage and the part taken by the players. But in Epic poetry, owing to the narrative form, many events simultaneously transacted can be presented; and these, if relevant to the Subject, add mass and dignity to the poem. The Epic has here an advantage, and one that conduces to grandeur of effect, to diverting the mind of the hearer, and relieving the story with varying episodes. For sameness of incident soon produces satiety, and makes tragedies fail on the stage.
As for the metre, the heroic measure has proved its fitness by the test of experience. If a narrative poem in any other metre or in many metres were now composed, it would be found incongruous. For of all measures the heroic is the stateliest and the most massive; and hence it most readily admits rare words and metaphors, which is another point in which the narrative form of imitation stands alone. On the other hand, the iambic and the trochaic tetrameter are stirring measures, the latter being akin to dancing, the former expressive of action. Still more absurd would it be to mix together different metres, as was done by Chaeremon. Hence no one has ever composed a poem on a great scale in any other than heroic verse. Nature herself, as we have said, teaches the choice of the proper measure.
--
Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of irrational parts. Everything irrational should, if possible, be excluded; or, at all events, it should lie outside the action of the play (as, in the Oedipus, the hero's ignorance as to the manner of Laius' death); not within the drama,--as in the Electra, the messenger's account of the Pythian games; or, as in the Mysians, the man who has come from Tegea to Mysia and is still speechless. The plea that otherwise the plot would have been ruined, is ridiculous; such a plot should not in the first instance be constructed. But once the irrational has been introduced and an air of likelihood imparted to it, we must accept it in spite of the absurdity. Take even the irrational incidents in the Odyssey, where Odysseus is left upon the shore of Ithaca. How intolerable even these might have been would be apparent if an inferior poet were to treat the Subject. As it is, the absurdity is veiled by the poetic charm with which the poet invests it.
The diction should be elaborated in the pauses of the action, where there is no expression of character or thought. For, conversely, character and thought are merely obscured by a diction that is over brilliant.
1.24 - Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
call sense, but here it has to be an obscure externalised sense which must be assured of the reality of what it contacts. The descent of pure substance into material substance follows, then, inevitably on the descent of Sachchidananda through supermind into mind and life. It is a necessary result of the will to make multiplicity of being and an awareness of things from separate centres of consciousness the first method of this lower experience of existence. If we go back to the spiritual basis of things, substance in its utter purity resolves itself into pure conscious being, self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity, but not yet turning its consciousness upon itself as object. Supermind preserves this self-awareness by identity as its substance of selfknowledge and its light of self-creation, but for that creation presents Being to itself as the Subject-object one and multiple of its own active consciousness. Being as object is held there in a supreme knowledge which can, by comprehension, see it both as an object of cognition within itself and subjectively as itself, but can also and simultaneously, by apprehension, project it as an object (or objects) of cognition within the circumference of its consciousness, not other than itself, part of its being, but a part (or parts) put away from itself, - that is to say, from the centre of vision in which Being concentrates itself as the Knower,
Witness or Purusha. We have seen that from this apprehending consciousness arises the movement of Mind, the movement by which the individual knower regards a form of his own universal being as if other than he; but in the divine Mind there is immediately or rather simultaneously another movement or reverse side of the same movement, an act of union in being which heals this phenomenal division and prevents it from becoming even for a moment solely real to the knower. This act of conscious union is that which is represented otherwise in dividing Mind obtusely, ignorantly, quite externally as contact in consciousness between divided beings and separate objects, and with us this contact in divided consciousness is primarily represented by the principle of sense. On this basis of sense, on this contact of union subject to division, the action of the thought-mind founds itself and prepares for the return to a higher principle of union in which
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.
--
If sacramental rites are constantly repeated in a spirit of faith and devotion, a more or less enduring effect is produced in the psychic medium, in which individual minds ba the and from which they have, so to speak, been crystallized out into personalities more or less fully developed, according to the more or less perfect development of the bodies with which they are associated. (Of this psychic medium an eminent contemporary philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, has written, in an essay on telepathy contri buted to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, as follows. We must therefore consider seriously the possibility that a persons experience initiates more or less permanent modifications of structure or process in something which is neither his mind nor his brain. There is no reason to suppose that this substratum would be anything to which possessive adjectives, such as mine and yours and his, could properly be applied, as they can be to minds and animated bothes. Modifications which have been produced in the substratum by certain of Ms past experience are activated by Ns present experiences or interests, and they become cause factors in producing or modifying Ns later experiences.) Within this psychic medium or non-personal substratum of individual minds, something which we may think of metaphorically as a vortex persists as an independent existence, possessing its own derived and secondary objectivity, so that, wherever the rites are performed, those whose faith and devotion are sufficiently intense actually discover something out there, as distinct from the Subjective something in their own imaginations. And so long as this projected psychic entity is nourished by the faith and love of its worshippers, it will possess, not merely objectivity, but power to get peoples prayers answered. Ultimately, of course, I alone am the giver, in the sense that all this happens in accordance with the divine laws governing the universe in its psychic and spiritual, no less than in its material, aspects. Nevertheless, the devas (those imperfect forms under which, because of their own voluntary ignorance, men worship the divine Ground) may be thought of as relatively independent powers. The primitive notion that the gods feed on the sacrifices made to them is simply the crude expression of a profound truth. When their worship falls off, when faith and devotion lose their intensity, the devas sicken and finally the. Europe is full of old shrines, whose saints and Virgins and relics have lost the power and the second-hand psychic objectivity which they once possessed. Thus, when Chaucer lived and wrote, the deva called Thomas Becket was giving to any Canterbury pilgrim, who had sufficient faith, all the boons he could ask for. This once-powerful deity is now stone-dead; but there are still certain churches in the West, certain mosques and temples in the East, where even the most irreligious and un-psychic tourist cannot fail to be aware of some intensely numinous presence. It would, of course, be a mistake to imagine that this presence is the presence of that God who is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit; it is rather the psychic presence of mens thoughts and feelings about the particular, limited form of God, to which they have resorted according to the impulse of their inborn naturethoughts and feelings projected into objectivity and haunting the sacred place in the same way as thoughts and feeling of another kind, but of equal intensity, haunt the scenes of some past suffering or crime. The presence in these consecrated buildings, the presence evoked by the performance of traditional rites, the presence inherent in a sacramental object, name or formulaall these are real presences, but real presences, not of God or the Avatar, but of something which, though it may reflect the divine Reality, is yet less and other than it.
Dulcis Jesu memoria
1.24 - The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This, as the Subjective religions recognise, can only be brought about by an individual change in each human life. The collective soul is there only as a great half-subconscient source of the individual existence; if it is to take on a definite psychological form or a new kind of collective life, that can only come by the shaping growth of its individuals. As will be the spirit and life of the individuals constituting it, so will be the realised spirit of the collectivity and the true power of its life. A society that lives not by its men but by its institutions, is not a collective soul, but a machine; its life becomes a mechanical product and ceases to be a living growth. Therefore the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to it and to make it the recognised goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which they carry this evolution, the yet unrealised potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future.
A great access of spirituality in the past has ordinarily had for its result the coming of a new religion of a special type and its endeavour to impose itself upon mankind as a new universal order. This, however, was always not only a premature but a wrong crystallisation which prevented rather than helped any deep and serious achievement. The aim of a spiritual age of mankind must indeed be one with the essential aim of subjective religions, a new birth, a new consciousness, an upward evolution of the human being, a descent of the spirit into our members, a spiritual reorganisation of our life; but if it limits itself by the old familiar apparatus and the imperfect means of a religious movement, it is likely to register another failure. A religious movement brings usually a wave of spiritual excitement and aspiration that communicates itself to a large number of individuals and there is as a result a temporary uplifting and an effective formation, partly spiritual, partly ethical, partly dogmatic in its nature. But the wave after a generation or two or at most a few generations begins to subside; the formation remains. If there has been a very powerful movement with a great spiritual personality as its source, it may leave behind a central influence and an inner discipline which may well be the starting-point of fresh waves; but these will be constantly less powerful and enduring in proportion as the movement gets farther and farther away from its source. For meanwhile in order to bind together the faithful and at the same time to mark them off from the unregenerated outer world, there will have grown up a religious order, a Church, a hierarchy, a fixed and unprogressive type of ethical living, a set of crystallised dogmas, ostentatious ceremonials, sanctified superstitions, an elaborate machinery for the salvation of mankind. As a result spirituality is increasingly subordinated to intellectual belief, to outward forms of conduct and to external ritual, the higher to the lower motives, the one thing essential to aids and instruments and accidents. The first spontaneous and potent attempt to convert the whole life into spiritual living yields up its place to a set system of belief and ethics touched by spiritual emotion; but finally even that saving element is dominated by the outward machinery, the sheltering structure becomes a tomb. The Church takes the place of the spirit and a formal subscription to its creed, rituals and order is the thing universally demanded; spiritual living is only practised by the few within the limits prescribed by their fixed creed and order. The majority neglect even that narrow effort and are contented to replace by a careful or negligent piety the call to a deeper life. In the end it is found that the spirit in the religion has become a thin stream choked by sands; at the most brief occasional floodings of its dry bed of conventions still prevent it from becoming a memory in the dead chapters of Time.
1.24 - The Killing of the Divine King, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Parkinson was unable to ascertain any particulars on the Subject.
At Babylon, within historical times, the tenure of the kingly office
1.25 - The Knot of Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2:Certainly, there is a vast practical difference and on that difference the whole indivisible series and ever-ascending degrees of the world-existence are founded. Substance, we have said, is conscious existence presenting itself to the sense as object so that, on the basis of whatever sense-relation is established, the work of world-formation and cosmic progression may proceed. But there need not be only one basis, only one fundamental principle of relation immutably created between sense and substance; on the contrary, there is an ascending and developing series. We are aware of another substance in which pure mind works as its natural medium and which is far subtler, more flexible, more plastic than anything that our physical sense can conceive of as Matter. We can speak of a substance of mind because we become aware of a subtler medium in which forms arise and action takes place; we can speak also of a substance of pure dynamic lifeenergy other than the subtlest forms of material substance and its physically sensible force-currents. Spirit itself is pure substance of being presenting itself as an object no longer to physical, vital or mental sense, but to a light of a pure spiritual perceptive knowledge in which the Subject becomes its own object, that is to say, in which the Timeless and Spaceless is aware of itself in a pure spiritually self-conceptive self-extension as the basis and primal material of all existence. Beyond this foundation is the disappearance of all conscious differentiation between subject and object in an absolute identity, and there we can no longer speak of Substance.
3:Therefore it is a purely conceptive - a spiritually, not a mentally conceptive difference ending in a practical distinction, which creates the series descending from Spirit through Mind to Matter and ascending again from Matter through Mind to Spirit. But the real oneness is never abrogated, and, when we get back to the original and integral view of things, we see that it is never even truly diminished or impaired, not even in the grossest densities of Matter. Brahman is not only the cause and supporting power and indwelling principle of the universe, he is also its material and its sole material. Matter also is Brahman and it is nothing other than or different from Brahman. If indeed Matter were cut off from Spirit, this would not be so; but it is, as we have seen, only a final form and objective aspect of the divine Existence with all of God ever present in it and behind it. As this apparently brute and inert Matter is everywhere and always instinct with a mighty dynamic force of Life, as this dynamic but apparently unconscious Life secretes within it an ever-working unapparent Mind of whose secret dealings it is the overt energy, as this ignorant, unillumined and groping Mind in the living body is supported and sovereignly guided by its own real self, the Supermind, which is there equally in unmentalised Matter, so all Matter as well as all Life, Mind and Supermind are only modes of the Brahman, the Eternal, the Spirit, Sachchidananda, who not only dwells in them all, but is all these things though no one of them is His absolute being.
1.26 - Mental Processes - Two Only are Possible, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
One of the best items of the education system at the Abbey in Cefal was the weekly Essay. Everyone, including children of five or six, had to write on "The Housing Problem," "Why Athens Decayed," "The Marriage System," "Buddhist Ethics" and the like; the Subject didn't matter much; the point was that one had to discover, arrange and condense one's ideas about it, so as to present it in a given number of words, 93 or 156, or 418 as like as not, that number, neither more nor less. A superb discipline for any writer.
I had a marvellous lesson myself some years earlier. I had cut down a certain ritual of initiation to what I thought were the very barest bones, chiefly to make it easy to commit to memory.[48] Then came a candidate who was deaf not merely "a little hard of hearing;" his tympana were ruptured and the question was How?
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
All the contrary virtues are born of parents contrary to these. But without enlarging on the Subject (for I should not have time if I were to inquire into them all one by one), I will merely say that for all the passions mentioned above, the remedy is humility. Those who have obtained that virtue have won the whole fight.
The mother of all the vices is pleasure and malice. He who has them within him will not see the Lord; and abstinence from the first will bring but little benefit without abstinence from the second.
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
In the present stanza the tiny dot = the ego; the tiny dot made up of darkness = the ego consisting of latent tendencies, the seer or the Subject or the ego rising, it expands itself as the seen, the object or the antahkaranas (the inner organs). The light must be dim in order to enable the ego to rise up. In broad daylight a rope does not look like a snake. The rope itself cannot be seen in thick darkness; so there is no chance of mistaking it for a snake. Only in dim light, in the dusk, in light darkened by shadows or in darkness lighted by dim light does the mistake occur of a rope seeming a snake. Similarly it is for the
Pure Radiant Being to rise up as the Ego - it is possible only in Its
--
But the gross body is of the mind only. The mind may be said to consist of four inner organs, or the principle composed of thoughts, or the sixth sense; or combining intellect with the ego, and chitta with the mind (i.e. memory-faculty with the thinking faculty), it may be taken to consist of two parts (the ego and the mind). In the latter case the vijnanatma (the intellectual Self) or the ego or the seer forms the Subject, and the mental sheath or the seen, the object.
The waking, dream and sleep states have their origin in the Original
--
Now, what is this 'I-thought' (the ego)? Is it the Subject or the object, in the scheme of things?
Inasmuch as it witnesses all other objects in the waking and dream states, or at any rate we think that it does so, it must be considered to be the Subject. On realising the Pure Self, however, it will be an object only.
Whose is this 'I-thought' (the ego)? This investigation forms the vichara.
--
Illustration: the necklace supposed lost. One does not see the world or one's own body, being away from the Self. Always being the Self, one sees everything else. God and the world are all in the Heart. See the Seer and everything will be found to be the Self. Change your outlook. Look within. Find the Self. Who is the substratum of the Subject and the object? Find it and all problems are solved.
The lady was then told of the pamphlet, Who am I? She agreed to read it before asking further questions of Sri Bhagavan.
--
The thought rises up as the Subject and object. 'I' alone being held, all else disappears. It is enough, but only to the competent few.
The others argue, "Quite so. The world that exists in my sleep has existed before my birth and will exist after my death. Do not others see it? How can the world cease to be if my ego appears not?" The genesis of the world and the different schools of thought are meant to satisfy such people.
--
Tiruvannamalai is the same by whichever route it is gained. Similarly the approach to the Subject varies according to the personality. Yet the Self is the same. But still, being in Tiruvannamalai, if one asks for the route it is ridiculous. So also, being the Self, if one asks how to realise the Self it looks absurd. You are the Self. Remain as the Self. That is all. The questions arise because of the present wrong identification of the Self with the body. That is ignorance.
This must go. On its removal the Self alone is.
--
M.: You seek the confirmation from others. Each one though addressed as 'you', styles himself 'I'. The confirmation is only from 'I'. There is no 'you' at all. All are comprised in 'I'. The other can be known only when the Self is posited. The others do not exist without the Subject.
D.: Again, this is nothing new. When I was with Sir C. V. Raman he told me that the theory of smell could be explained from his theory of light. Smell need no longer be explained in terms of chemistry. Now, there is something new; it is progress. That is what I mean, when I say that there is nothing new in all the statements I hear now.
--
The so-called genius is one who worked hard in his past births and acquired knowledge and kept it in store as samskaras. He now concentrates his mind until it merges in the Subject. In that stillness the submerged ideas flash out. That requires favourable conditions also.
365
--
M.: They are many, and meant to indicate that the creation has a cause and a creator should be posited so that one might seek the cause. The emphasis is on the purpose of the theory and not on the process of creation. Moreover, the creation is perceived by someone. There are no objects without the Subject, i.e., the objects do not come and tell you that they are, but it is you who says that there are the objects.
The objects are therefore what the seer makes of them. They have no existence independent of the Subject. Find out what you are and then you understand what the world is. That is the object of the theory.
D.: The soul is only a small particle whereas the creation is so huge.
--
M.: Meditation requires an object to meditate upon, whereas there is only the Subject without the object in vichara. Meditation differs from vichara in this way.
371
--
There are three outlooks possible:(1) The Vyavaharika: The man sees the world in all its variety, surmises the creator and believes in himself as the Subject. All these are thus reduced to the three fundamentals, jagat, jiva and Isvara. He learns the existence of the creator and tries to reach him in order to gain immortality. If one is thus released from bondage, there are all other individuals existing as before who should work out their own salvation. He more or less admits the One Reality underlying all these phenomena. The phenomena are due to the play of maya. Maya is the sakti of Isvara or the activity of Reality. Thus, existence of different souls, objects, etc., do not clash with the advaitic point of view.
(2) The Pratibhasika: The jagat, jiva and Isvara are all cognised by the seer only. They do not have any existence independent of
1.30 - Describes the importance of understanding what we ask for in prayer. Treats of these words in the Paternoster: Sanctificetur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum. Applies them to the Prayer of Quiet, and begins the explanation of them., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
I know about the matter now. If you do not like the Subject, think out some other meditations for
yourselves, for our Master will allow us to do this, provided we submit in all things to the teaching
--
and anyone ignorant of the Subject might think that the two had nothing to do with one another,
though I know this is certainly not true. Forgive my wanting to speak of it, for I know there are
1.3.2.01 - I. The Entire Purpose of Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He is also Absolute and Supreme Personality playing in the universe and as the universe; in the universe He appears to be its Soul & Lord, as the universe He appears to be the motion or process of the Will of the Lord and to become all the Subjective and objective results of the motion. All the states of the Brahman, the transcendent, the continent, the universal, the individual are informed & sustained by the divine Personality. He is both the Existent & the state of existence. We call the state of existence the Impersonal Brahman, the Existent the
Personal Brahman. There is no difference between them except to the play of our consciousness; for every impersonal state depends upon a manifest or secret Personality and can reveal the Personality which it holds and veils and every Personality attaches to itself and can plunge itself into an impersonal existence. This they can do because Personality & Impersonality are merely different states of self-consciousness in one Absolute
--
Being in Sat is one in multiplicity, one that regards its multiplicity without being lost or confused in it and multiplicity that knows itself as one without losing the power of multiple play in the universe. Under the conditions of mind, life & body, ahankara is born, the Subjective or objective form of consciousness is falsely taken for self-existent being, the body for an independent reality & the ego for an independent personality; the one loses itself in us in its multiplicity & when it recovers its unity, finds it difficult, owing to the nature of mind, to preserve its play of multiplicity. Therefore when we are absorbed in world, we miss God in Himself; when we seek God, we miss
Him in the world. Our business is to break down & dissolve the mental ego & get back to our divine unity without losing our power of individual & multiple existence in the universe.
1.34 - Continues the same subject. This is very suitable for reading after the reception of the Most Holy Sacrament., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
which He Himself bore, and to make them the Subject of our meditations.
With regard to other bread121-the bread of bodily necessaries and sustenance-I neither like
1.35 - The Tao 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I am only too painfully aware that the above exposition is faulty in every respect. In particular, it presupposes in the reader considerable familiarity with the Subject, thus practically begging the question. It must also prove almost wholly unintelligible to the average reader, him in fact whom I especially aim to interest.
For his sake I will try to elucidate the matter by an analogy. Consider electricity. It would be absurd to say that electricity is any of the phenomena by which we know it. We take refuge in the petitio principii of saying that electricity is that form of energy which is the principal cause of such and such phenomena. Suppose now that we eliminate this idea as evidently illogical. What remains? We must not hastily answer "Nothing remains." There is some thing inherent in the nature of consciousness, reason, perception, sensation, and of the universe of which they inform us, which is responsible for the fact that we observe these phenomena and not others; that we reflect upon them as we do, and not otherwise. But, even deeper than this, part of the reality of the inscrutable energy which determines the form of our experience, consists in determining that experience should take place at all. It should be clear that this has nothing to do with any of the Platonic conceptions of the nature of things.
1.36 - Quo Stet Olympus - Where the Gods, Angels, etc. Live, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Speculation on such points is unpardonably profitless; I have only devoted these few paragraphs to the Subject because it is useful to re but the somewhat soapbox type of critic who thinks to re but the whole thesis "Sunt Daemones" by the snook-cocking query "Quo Stet Olympus."
Love is the law, love under will.
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
The object is seen or the light is recognised because there is the Subject to do so. How does it affect the Subject whether the objects are seen or not? If the light, i.e., the cogniser or the consciousness is seen, there will be no object to be seen. Pure light, i.e.,
Consciousness, will alone remain over.
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi all the same. Did you then perceive the world through this or other bodies? Nevertheless, you cannot deny your existence then. There must be a subject to see the world and the Subject must also be limited. If unlimited how can there be others beside the unlimited Self?
D.: Does God have any limits?
--
M.: A figure on the screen in the cinema show appears to watch the whole world. What is the reality behind the Subject and the object in the same show? An illusory being watches an illusory world.
D.: But I am the witness of the show.
1.4.03 - The Guru, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One has to learn from the master and act according to his instructions because the master knows the Subject and how it is to be learnt - just as in spiritual things one has to follow the Guru who has the knowledge and knows the way. If one learns all by oneself, the chances are that one will learn all wrong. What is the use of a freedom to learn wrongly? Of course if the pupil is more intelligent than the master, he will learn more than the master, just as a great spiritual capacity may arrive at realisations which the Guru has not - but even so, the control and discipline in the early stages is indispensable.
The Guru in the Supramental Yoga
14.05 - The Golden Rule, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Here I will tell you a story narrated to our children. There used to be every evening a meeting where seekers and enquirers after the spiritual life assembled and conversed or meditated on the Subject. There used also to come to that meeting a remark able woman who had true realisations and was ready to help others on the path. Once the talk turned on souls and their re-birth and she was telling how after the death of the body souls pass out into another world, and when the time comes each one returns to the earth and takes a human body. Now there was one in the audience who felt a little puzzled about this matter of birth and wanted clarification. She put a question: (it was a she): "You say that souls come down and take birth, that is to say, assume a human body. But people are increasing in number upon earth, every year the human population becoming larger and larger. Now the question is: the additional number of people born every year, where were they before? Were they there all along since the creation, waiting? Do they appear gradually as time passes and bide their hour?" We in the modern age may suggest an analogy. Is it like the stars or galaxies that are gradually coming into our ken, phenomenally distant stars whose lights are taking time to reach the present day earth? The questioner asked: "Is there a fixed number of souls, can they be counted?" The speaker answered, "Yes, they are limited and they can be counted." With great curiosity and eagerness the questioner asked: "How many? how many?" Quietly the one who was speaking extended her hand and put out one single index finger, and said: "Only one."
So, that is the truth. All these many bodies, many persons you see, it is only appearance, there is only one Soul and every one is that. If you realise this truth, you can love everyone equally, not merely love but be one with all, because you are all and all are you. That universal Self, your own true Self you have to find, you have to know, you have to become. That is the golden rule as the ideal.
14.06 - Liberty, Self-Control and Friendship, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In this path there is another line for growth and development which is of considerable importance as you will see. You are here or for that matter anywhere in society-not alone but you live together with others. You study together, play together, work together. You have friends, comrades, companions, you are in a group, in a company. Now it is of great importance to have the right company, you must have good companions, good comrades, good friends. That will help you in ways more than one. In this connection I can do nothing better than just to read out what the Mother says on the Subject. She says: usually in your ignorance and simplicity, foolish simplicity, you choose convenient friends, that is to say, those who praise you, flatter you, who do not contradict you even if you go the wrong way, even they encourage you in doing the wrong thing in order to be friendly with you. Such friends are dangerous, dangerous to yourself and dangerous to your so-called friends too. Here is the text of the Mother's words:
C'est cela qui doit tre la base de l'attitude que l'on est en droit d'attendre d'un vritable ami: il ne doit pas vouloir que vous lui ressembliez, mais que vous soyez, au contraire, tel que vous tes.
1.40 - Coincidence, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
A fortiori, Coincidence is destroyed by Purpose, if, wishing to enlighten you on the Subject, I write this letter and post it to your address, your receipt of it is no longer Coincidence. So then coincidence must be entirely both unforeseen and unintentional; in other words, absolutely senseless. But we have just proved that the Universe is nothing but Coincidence; it therefore is senseless.
So, having established the asymptote of our hyperbolic hyperbola, and shewn it to be asynartete, why should we not acquiesce, and say olive oil?
1.41 - Are we Reincarnations of the Ancient Egyptians?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I found almost at once, that is to say after about a month, that practically every dream that I could remember, could be quite clearly ascribed to one of two causes: (a) the events of the previous day or days, or the Subjects which had interested and excited me during that period, and (b) the physical conditions of the moment. For instance, a good deal of the time of the experiment I was sleeping in what might have been euphemistically called a houseboat. It was liable to leak; and on such occasions as I woke to find water trickling down my nose, I found that the dream from which I had wakened was an adventure of some sort in connection with water. (It is quite notorious, I believe, that many asthmatic subjects are pestered by dreams of having been guillotined in a previous incarnation. Alan Bennett, I may mention, was one such.)
As the practice proceeds, you should find not only that your dreams increase in number per night, but also became very much fuller, clearer and more coherent. I assume that the reason is that the fact of your paying attention to them brings them to the surface.
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: A figure on the screen in the cinema show appears to watch the whole world. What is the reality behind the Subject and the object in the same show? An illusory being watches an illusory world.
D.: But I am the witness of the show.
--
Siva? He is both the Subject and the object. You cannot be without
Siva. Siva is always realised here and now. If you think you have not realised Him it is wrong. This is the obstacle for realising Siva.
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi universe in diverse forms. But if he sees his Self he is not aware of his separateness from the universe; in fact his individuality and the other entities vanish although they persist in all their forms. Siva is seen as the universe. But the seer does not see the background itself. Think of the man who sees only the cloth and not the cotton of which it is made; or of the man who sees the pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show and not the screen itself as the background; or again the man who sees the letters which he reads but not the paper on which they are written. The objects are thus Consciousness and forms. But the ordinary person sees the objects in the universe but not Siva in these forms. Siva is the Being assuming these forms and the Consciousness seeing them. That is to say, Siva is the background underlying both the Subject and the object, and again Siva in Repose and Siva in Action, or
Siva and Sakti, or the Lord and the Universe. Whatever it is said to be, it is only Consciousness whether in repose or in action. Who is there that is not conscious? So, who is not realised? How then can questions arise doubting realisation or desiring it? If I am not pratyaksha to me, I can then say that Siva is not pratyaksha.
These questions arise because you have limited the Self to the body, only then the ideas of within and without, of the Subject and the object, arise. The objective visions have no intrinsic value. Even if they are everlasting they cannot satisfy the person. Uma has Siva always with
Her. Both together form Ardhanariswara. Yet she wanted to know
--
M.: So you see that it is wrong to suppose that awareness has passing phases. The Self is always aware. When the Self identifies itself as the seer it sees objects. The creation of the Subject and the object is the creation of the world. Subjects and objects are creations in Pure
Consciousness. You see pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show. When you are intent on the pictures you are not aware of the screen. But the pictures cannot be seen without the screen behind.
The world stands for the pictures and Consciousness stands for the screen. The Consciousness is pure. It is the same as the Self which is eternal and unchanging. Get rid of the Subject and object and Pure Consciousness will alone remain.
D.: But why did Pure Brahman become Isvara and manifest the universe if He did not mean it?
--
The result will be the conclusion that the objective world is in the Subjective consciousness. The Self is thus the only Reality which permeates and also envelops the world. Since there is no duality, no
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi thoughts will arise to disturb your peace. This is Realisation of the
--
Rajas is the Subject, and
Tamas is the object.
Even the satva light is only reflected light. Were it pure, original Light, there would be no modification in it. The manokasa (mind-ether) is reflected as bhootakasa (element-ether) and objects are seen as being separate from the Subject.
Samadhi is present even in vyavaharadasa (practical life). Our activities (vyavahara) have no existence apart from samadhi. The screen is there when the pictures move past on it and also when they are not projected. Similarly, the Self is always there in vyavahara
--
The Self is the source of subject and object. Now ignorance prevailing, the Subject is taken to be the source. the Subject is the knower and forms one of the triads whose components cannot exist independent of one another. So the Subject or the knower cannot be the ultimate Reality. Reality lies beyond subject and object. When realised there will be no room for doubt.
Bhidyate hridayagranthih chhidyante sarvasamsayah.
--
M.: Yes. There is room for kama (desire) so long as there is an object apart from the Subject (i.e., duality). There can be no desire if there is no object. The state of no-desire is moksha. There is no duality in sleep and also no desire. Whereas there is duality in the waking state and desire also is there. Because of duality a desire arises for the acquisition of the object. That is the outgoing mind, which is the basis of duality and of desire. If one knows that Bliss is none other than the Self the mind becomes inward turned. If the Self is gained all the desires are fulfilled. That is the apta kamah atma kamah akamascha (fulfilment of desire) of the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad. That is moksha.
--
M.: Do the objects exist in the absence of the Subject?
D.: Their existence is independent of the Subject.
M.: Do you say that they exist, or do they come and announce their existence to you?
--
Sri Bhagavan observed: Dakshinamurti observed silence when the disciples approached Him. That is the highest form of initiation. It includes the other forms. There must be subject-object relationship established in the other dikshas. First the Subject must emanate and then the object. Unless these two are there how is the one to look at the other or touch him? Mowna diksha is the most perfect; it comprises looking, touching and teaching. It will purify the individual in every way and establish him in the Reality.
Talk 520.
--
1. The first stanza is the auspicious beginning. Why should the Subjectmatter of the piece be brought in here? Can knowledge be other than
Being? Being is the core - the Heart. How then is the Supreme Being to be contemplated and glorified? Only to remain as the Pure Self is the auspicious beginning. This speaks of attributeless Brahman according to the jnana marga (method of knowledge).
--
Furthermore the second indicates (1) the fit reader (2) the Subjectmatter (3) the relationship and (4) the fruit. The fit reader is the one who is competent for it. Competence consists in non-attachment to the world and desire to be liberated.
All know that they must die some time or other; but they do not think deeply of the matter. All have a fear of death: such fear is momentary.
--
Thus the Self is realised and Bliss results. This is then the Subject-matter: freedom from misery and gain of Happiness. This is the highest good to be gained. Surrender is synonymous with Bliss itself. This is the relationship.
Fruit is to reflect on the Subject-matter and gain Knowledge which is ever-present, here and now. The stanza ends with the immortal ones.
3. The five senses mean the subtle functions (tanmatras), namely, hearing, touch, seeing, taste and smell. Variations of these form the whole universe; they vary according to the three gunas as follows: by tamas (dullness) the gross elements; by rajas (activity) the instruments for knowing objects; by sattva (clearness) the different kinds of knowledge of the senses; also: by tamas - the gross objects i.e., the world; by rajas - the vital airs and the karmendriyas by sattva - the sense organs of perception (jnanendriyas).
--
How? The man says, I do not know myself. Are there then two selves - one the Subject and the other the object? He cannot admit it. Is then ignorance at an end for him? No. The rise of the ego is itself the ignorance and nothing more.
Talk 576.
--
A devotee asked Sri Bhagavan: With every thought the Subject and the
object appear and disappear. Does not the I disappear when the Subject
disappears thus? If that be so how can the quest of the I proceed?
M.: the Subject (knower) is only a mode of mind. Though the mode
(vritti) passes, the reality behind it does not cease. The background
--
When these cease there remains the atma-vritti or the Subjective
vritti that is the same as jnanam. Without it ajnanam will not cease.
--
I. If you seek it, asking Who am I? the Subject and objects would
coalesce. After that there is no quest. Till then thought will arise, things
--
what will happen. If the Subject be known then the objects will merge
in the Subject. If without that knowledge, one applies the mind to
objects, because these objects appear and disappear, and one does not
--
the object of meditation or the Subject who meditates is alone left behind
without anything else to know, it is jnana. Jnana is said to be ekabhakti
--
such theories of creation. This method of dealing with the Subject of
creation is called krama srshti (gradual creation). But the true seeker
1.44 - Demeter and Persephone, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
authority on the Subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter,
the riddle is not hard to read; the figures of the two goddesses,
1.44 - Serious Style of A.C., or the Apparent Frivolity of Some of my Remarks, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I know that I too am at times obscure; I lament the fact. The reason is twofold: (a) my ineradicable belief that my reader knows all about the Subject better than I do myself, and (at best) may like to hear it tackled from a novel angle, (b) I am carried away by the exultant exaltation of my theme: I boil over with rapture not the crystal-clear, the cool solution that I aimed at.
On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there.
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Siva? He is both the Subject and the object. You cannot be without
Siva. Siva is always realised here and now. If you think you have not realised Him it is wrong. This is the obstacle for realising Siva.
--
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi universe in diverse forms. But if he sees his Self he is not aware of his separateness from the universe; in fact his individuality and the other entities vanish although they persist in all their forms. Siva is seen as the universe. But the seer does not see the background itself. Think of the man who sees only the cloth and not the cotton of which it is made; or of the man who sees the pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show and not the screen itself as the background; or again the man who sees the letters which he reads but not the paper on which they are written. The objects are thus Consciousness and forms. But the ordinary person sees the objects in the universe but not Siva in these forms. Siva is the Being assuming these forms and the Consciousness seeing them. That is to say, Siva is the background underlying both the Subject and the object, and again Siva in Repose and Siva in Action, or
Siva and Sakti, or the Lord and the Universe. Whatever it is said to be, it is only Consciousness whether in repose or in action. Who is there that is not conscious? So, who is not realised? How then can questions arise doubting realisation or desiring it? If 'I' am not pratyaksha to me, I can then say that Siva is not pratyaksha.
These questions arise because you have limited the Self to the body, only then the ideas of within and without, of the Subject and the object, arise. The objective visions have no intrinsic value. Even if they are everlasting they cannot satisfy the person. Uma has Siva always with
Her. Both together form Ardhanariswara. Yet she wanted to know
--
M.: So you see that it is wrong to suppose that awareness has passing phases. The Self is always aware. When the Self identifies itself as the seer it sees objects. The creation of the Subject and the object is the creation of the world. Subjects and objects are creations in Pure
Consciousness. You see pictures moving on the screen in a cinema show. When you are intent on the pictures you are not aware of the screen. But the pictures cannot be seen without the screen behind.
The world stands for the pictures and Consciousness stands for the screen. The Consciousness is pure. It is the same as the Self which is eternal and unchanging. Get rid of the Subject and object and Pure Consciousness will alone remain.
D.: But why did Pure Brahman become Isvara and manifest the universe if He did not mean it?
--
The result will be the conclusion that the objective world is in the Subjective consciousness. The Self is thus the only Reality which permeates and also envelops the world. Since there is no duality, no
479
--
Rajas is the Subject, and
Tamas is the object.
Even the satva light is only reflected light. Were it pure, original Light, there would be no modification in it. The manokasa (mind-ether) is reflected as bhootakasa (element-ether) and objects are seen as being separate from the Subject.
494
1.45 - The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
sheaf or digs the last potato is the Subject of much banter, and
receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old
--
but their individual histories and characters are not the Subject of
myths. For they exist in classes rather than as individuals, and the
1.46 - Selfishness, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Let us look into the matter. (First consult AL II, 24, 25, 48, 49, 58, 59 and III, 18, 58, 59. It might be confusing to quote these texts in full; but they throw much further light on the Subject.) The word "compassion" is its accepted sense which is bad etymology implies that you are a fine fellow, and the other so much dirt; that is, you insult him by pity for his misfortunes. But "Every man and every woman is a star."; so don't you do it! You should treat everybody as a King of the same order as yourself. Of course, nine people out of ten won't stand for it, not for a minute; the mere fact of your treating them decently frightens them; their sense of inferiority is exacerbated and intensified; they insist on grovelling. That places them. They force you to treat them as the mongrel curs they are; and so everybody is happy!
The Book of the Law is at pains to indicate the proper attitude of one "King" to another. When you fight him, "As brothers fight ye!" Here we have the old chivalrous type of warfare, which the introduction of reason into the business has made at the moment impossible. Reason and Emotion; these are the two great enemies of the Ethic of Thelema. They are the traditional obstacles to success in Yoga as well as in Magick.
1.47 - Lityerses, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
at least the Subject of ridicule or is thought to be destined to
suffer some misfortune in the course of the year. Hence the
1.49 - Thelemic Morality, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Cesspools in every theologian's back garden: sewers in every legislator's garden city: there is no end to the literature of the Subject. But one point is amusing; the Jesuits have always been accused of answering that question in the affirmative, apparently for no better reason than that their doctrine is unanimously adverse to admitting it. (People are like that! They say that I spent months in Yucatan the only province in Mexico that I did not visit. They say that my home is a Tibetan monastery; and Tibet is almost the only country in East and Central Asia that my feet have never trodden. They say that I lived for years in Capri the only town in Italy, of those that I know at all, where I spent less than 48 hours.)
The Law of Thelema helps us to deal with this question very simply and succinctly. First, it obviates the need of defining the proper "End;" for with us this becomes identical with the "True Will;" and we are bound to assume that the man himself is the sole arbiter; we postulate that his "End" is self-justified.
1.50 - A.C. and the Masters; Why they Chose him, etc., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I did indeed "finish" this, even announced publication; it was just going to Press when War (also announced five years before by Bartzabel, the Spirit of Mars) came along in 1914. I toted the rod around the world with me (excuse my American!) and in a fatal hour of weakness, self-mistrust, took to shewing it to some of my students. Of course I might have known they all with one accord began: "Oh, but you haven't said anything about " all the Subjects in the world. So I started to fill in the gaps. As I did so, I found any amount more to do on my own. It went on like that for 14 years! Since it came out the voices of detraction have been dumb. I really do believe that I've covered the ground at last. Of course, time shewed that Part I, although it did really give the essentials of Yoga in the simplest possible language, was hardly more than an outline. More, it did not correlate Yoga with general philosophy. Eight Lectures have, I believe, remedied this.
As to Part IV, The Book of the Law section, the idea was that the volume should comply with the instructions given in AL III,39: "All this and a book to say how thou didst come hither and a reproduction of this ink and paper for ever for in it is the word secret & not only in the English and thy comment upon this The Book of the Law shall be printed beautifully in red ink and black upon beautiful paper made by hand; and to each man and woman that thou meetest, were it but to dine or to drink at them, it is the Law to give. Then they shall chance to abide in this bliss or no; it is no odds. Do this quickly!" I mistook "Comment" for "Commentary" a word-by-word exposition of every verse (and much of it I loathed with all my heart!) including the Qabalistic interpretation, a task obviously endless.
1.51 - How to Recognise Masters, Angels, etc., and how they Work, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(Let me emphasize that this wild adventure had not the remotest connection with Magick. Virakam was utterly ignorant of the Subject. She had hardly so much as a smattering of Christian Science. She had never attended a sance or played Planchette.)
... Lassati sed non Satiati[105] by midnight, I expected to sleep; but was aroused by Virakam being apparently seized with a violent attack of hysteria, in which she poured forth a frantic torrent of senseless hallucination. I was irritated and tried to calm her. But she insisted that her experience was real; that she bore an important message to me from some invisible individual. Such nonsense increased my irritation. But after about an hour of it my jaw fell with astonishment. I became suddenly aware of a coherence in her ravings, and further that they were couched in my own language of symbols. My attention being thus awakened, I listened to what she was saying. A few minutes convinced me that she was actually in communication with some Intelligence who had a message for me.
1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
hangs over the Subject entirely dissipated by a later and fuller
account which we possess of the ceremony. From it we learn that the
1.53 - Mother-Love, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The first condition of a "Brave New World" must be the dissociation of sexual from reproductive life.[110] The word "mother" must be as nauseating to all properly human minds as it now is to every one that has contemplated the Subject with clear vision.
I know there is an answer to all this; in fact, The Book of the Law enables us to take it in our stride.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
1. The first stanza is the auspicious beginning. Why should the Subjectmatter of the piece be brought in here? Can knowledge be other than
Being? Being is the core - the Heart. How then is the Supreme Being to be contemplated and glorified? Only to remain as the Pure Self is the auspicious beginning. This speaks of attributeless Brahman according to the jnana marga (method of knowledge).
--
Furthermore the second indicates (1) the fit reader (2) the Subjectmatter (3) the relationship and (4) the fruit. The fit reader is the one who is competent for it. Competence consists in non-attachment to the world and desire to be liberated.
All know that they must die some time or other; but they do not think deeply of the matter. All have a fear of death: such fear is momentary.
--
Thus the Self is realised and Bliss results. This is then the Subject-matter: freedom from misery and gain of Happiness. This is the highest good to be gained. Surrender is synonymous with Bliss itself. This is the relationship.
Fruit is to reflect on the Subject-matter and gain Knowledge which is ever-present, here and now. The stanza ends with "the immortal ones."
3. The five senses mean the subtle functions (tanmatras), namely, hearing, touch, seeing, taste and smell. Variations of these form the whole universe; they vary according to the three gunas as follows: by tamas (dullness) the gross elements; by rajas (activity) the instruments for knowing objects; by sattva (clearness) the different kinds of knowledge of the senses; also: by tamas - the gross objects i.e., the world; by rajas - the vital airs and the karmendriyas by sattva - the sense organs of perception (jnanendriyas).
--
How? The man says, "I do not know myself." Are there then two selves - one the Subject and the other the object? He cannot admit it. Is then ignorance at an end for him? No. The rise of the ego is itself the ignorance and nothing more.
Talk 576.
1.57 - Beings I have Seen with my Physical Eye, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
When it was a matter of the sense of touch, it was far otherwise; I got it good and hearty but that is not the Subject of this letter. I find all this excessively tedious; I resent having to write about it at all; I wonder whether I am breaking some beastly by-law; in fact, I shall ask you to be content with Buer as far as details go; I never saw anything of importance with purely physical sight with anything like the clarity of my adventure on Mont Collon.
Yes, as I think it over, that by-law is to thank. This Spring I saw very plainly, on four separate occasions, various beings of another order than ours. I was ass enough to tell one or two pupils about it...
1.59 - Geomancy, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I am afraid that all this is a digression. As I indicated above, what you want to know is to be found in the official instruction on the Subject in the Equinox.
Now far be it from me to cast any doubt on any official instruction, but I cannot help saying that in this particular instance it does not give very full details, and I think you would be well advised to investigate the whole subject afresh, basing you enquiry on the general principles of the science.
--
I do not think there is anything further to add to these scattered remarks except that so far as I know none of the treatises on the Subject (with the single exception of the official instruction) are any use at all.
I feel rather acutely how unsatisfactory these remarks must sound to you, but it is the best that I can do for you. You must regard it either as an excuse, or a confession of incompetence, that I have always had this instinctive distaste for the Subject.
Love is the law, love under will.
1.60 - Between Heaven and Earth, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
not appear that the Subjects or worshippers of such a spiritual
potentate form to themselves any very clear notion of the exact
--
illustrate the Subject with some further examples.
Thus in the Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia there is, or used
1.65 - Man, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
You must be patient; you must go over and over again everything that is presented to you, and by obeying you will not only come to a clear comprehension of the Subject, but find yourself automatically thinking in the language which you have been at such pains to acquire.
I feel then that I must leave you with these descriptions and these charts until painfully at first, but at the end with intense pride and gratification, you find yourself spontaneously grasping the more complex combinations of these letters and words which are the anatomy of the body of our Learning.
1.66 - Vampires, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
In 1916, I was the first trained scientific observer to record the appearance commonly called "St Elmo's fire" indiscreetly revealing this fact in a letter to the New York Times. I was pestered for the next six months and more by professors of physics (and the rest) from all over the U.S.A. The Existence of the phenomenon had been doubted until then because of certain theoretical difficulties. That, sister, is the point. If a statement is hard to reconcile with the whole body of evidence on the laws of the Subject, it is rightly received with suspicion.
A moment with great Huxley, and his illustration of the centaur in Piccadilly, reported to him (he humorously hypothesizes) by Professor Owen. What occasions Huxley's doubt, and inspires the questions by means of which he seeks to confirm or to discredit it? Just this, no more: here is the head and torso of a man fitted to the shoulders of a horse; how are the mechanical adjustments effected?
--
Am I digressing again? No, not really; I am just putting forward a case for keeping an open mind on the Subject of Vampires, even of the Clan Dracula.
But certainly there is little or no evidence of the existence of that species in England.
How then is the Subject in any way important to you? Thus, that there are actually people running about all over the place, who actually possess, and exercise, faculties similar to those mentioned by Lvi, but in much greater intensity, even of a kind far more formidable, and directed by malignant will.
There is a mighty volume of theory and practice concerning this and cognate subjects which will be open to you when and if you attain the VIII of O.T.O. and become Pontiff and Epopt of the Illuminati. Further, when you enter the Sanctuary of the Gnosis oh boy! Or, more accurately, oh girl!
1.67 - Faith, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Here is my own lamentable foresight on the Subject!
The Convert
--
In faith of this kind there are of course in practice delicately shaded degrees; these depend mostly upon the authority of the speaker and your relations with, and opinion of, him. In practice, moreover, faith is usually tinged should I say clouded? by questions of probability. I see no need to weary you with examples of varying degrees; it is enough to dismiss the Subject with the remark that faith is not true faith if any considerations of any kind sully its virgin nullity.
To prop faith is to destroy it: I am reminded of Mr. Harry Price's young lady of Brocken fame, who was so timorously careful of her virginity that she never felt it safe unless she had a man in bed with her.
1.68 - The God-Letters, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Various modifications extend them to fifty-nine and there are twenty- seven vowels. I shall naturally concern myself only with those that matter to the Subject: in practice, the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet will serve for this preliminary study, especially as in that case, we have already the attri butions. I will begin by classing them.[133]
Gutturals:
--
I am not at all sure how far it is wise to take this letter. To make it complete, we should need a Book about three times the size of The Book of Thoth, and I should want another half-century of research before I started to write it! As this seems for divers reasons a little awkward in practice, I am rather afraid that we must content ourselves with this very sketchy account: always, when one touches the Subject, one "goes all woolly." One lacks not only completeness, but precision. Then there is the "over-lapping" nuisance, and the fact that the natures and the names of the Gods change slowly as time goes by. The confusion! The contradictions! I could wish to be the proverbial bargee. Oh! I could go on making excuses for another hour! I can't be helped; and I feel that I shall have rendered you quite a bit of service by calling your attention to the existence of the Subject, by stimulating you to research, by suggesting certain potential lines on which to attack the same, and perhaps even by giving you a few tips which you may find useful in practical Magick.
the Subject is closely bound up with Mantra-Yoga, and with Invocation. You will doubtless have noticed (for instance) that many chapters of the Q'uran have the letter L for a leit-motif. Islam attaches immense importance to this liquid L, as it appears in Allah (compare the Hebrew L-Gods, AL, Aloah, Elohim, A'alion, etc., and look up the L-idea in your Book of Thoth, and in Magick, pp. 331 sqq.[136]) and other peculiarly sacred names and words.
1.69 - Original Sin, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Hey! Hasn't the dear old The Book of Lies got its word on the Subject? Never known to fail!
The Wound of Amfortas
1.71 - Morality 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
You are a "student" of AA, and become a Probationer as soon as you take and pass the examination. (This is intended mostly to make sure that you have some general idea of the principal branches of the Subject, and know the more important correspondences,) The rest: please read One Star in Sight again, and do for God's sake try to assimilate the information there very clearly and very fully given!
It is terrifyingly near the state of mind which we symbolize by Choronzon, this hurrying flustered dash of yours from one point of view to another: a set of statements all true after a fashion, but flung out with such apprehensive agitation that a sensitive reader like myself comes near to being upset.
1.72 - Education, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
But when your teaching is of the disputable kind, explain that too; encourage him to question, to demand a reason and to disagree. Get him to fence with you; sharpen his wits by dialectic; lure him into thinking for himself. I want tricks which will show him the advantages of a given subject of study; make him pester you to teach him. We did this most successfully at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu; let me give you an instance: reading. One of us would take the children shopping and bring up the Subject of ice-cream. Where, oh where could we get some? Presently one would exclaim and point to a placard and say, "I really do believe there'll be some there" and lo! it was so. Then they would wonder how one knew, and one would say: Why, there's "Helados" printed on that piece of card in the window. They would want to learn to read at once. We would discourage them, saying what hard work it was, and how much crying it cost, at the same time giving another demonstration of the advantages. They would insist, and we should yield to active, eager children, not to dullards that hated the idea of "lessons." So with pretty well everything; we first excited the child's will in the desired direction.
But (you ask) are there any special branches of learning which you regard as essential for all?
--
However, I looked up the typescript. The book is itself Education; there are, however, six chapters which treat of the Subject in the Special sense in which your question has involved us.
So I shall fling these chapters headlong into this letter.
--
Their vocabulary to mine, he said, holds just about the same proportion as mine does to yours; I hypothesized modestly, "about five per cent." (After all, I am forty-five years his senior.) He roared at me. "Not one in a hundred," he said, "know so much as the names of nine-tenths of the Subjects that I discuss habitually and fluently. They gasp, they gape, they grunt, the gibber; it is almost always black bewilderment.*[AC52] And some of them are college graduates which I'm not."
He was snatched from school, and given a commission on the spot, apparently because he was one of very few that could be differentiated from the average Learned Pig.
1.76 - The Gods - How and Why they Overlap, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
(They are bound to appear different, because the mountain does not look the same from Zermatt as it does from Domodossola, or even as seen by a French-Swiss and a German-Swiss.) In the same way read the Life of Napoleon written by one of his marshals, by Michelet (a rabid Republican), by Lord Rosebery, by a patriotic Russian, and by a German poet and philosopher: one can hardly believe that the Subject of any two of these biographies is the same man.
But upon certain points the identity is bound to transpire; even when we read of his crushing and classic defeat at Waterloo by the Belgians, the man is detected. Transferring the analogy to the Gods, it is then open to us to suppose that Tahuti, Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, Loki, Hanuman and the rest are identical, and that the diversity of the name and the series of exploits is due merely to the accidents of time and space. But it is at least equally plausible to suggest that these Gods are different individuals, although of the identical Order of Being, characteristics and function. Very much as if one took Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh, Hood, Blake, Rodney and Nelson, as seen through the mists of history, tradition, legend and plain mythopoeia. Add a few names not English, and our position is closely parallel. Personally, I incline to the latter hypothesis; but it would be hard to say why, unless that it is because I feel that to identify them completely would be to reduce their stature to that of personifications of various cosmic energies.
Wikipedia - Circle of competence -- The subject area which matches a person's skills or expertise
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Wikipedia - The Bowery Boys -- Fictional New York City characters, portrayed by a company of New York actors, who were the subject of feature films released by Monogram Pictures from 1946 through 1958
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Airy Me -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Music -- Dementia Drama Horror Music -- Airy Me Airy Me -- A test subject is administered daily medication by a nurse in a ward where mysterious medical experiments take place. One day, when the nurse presses the switch of the test subject, it successfully transforms into a chimera. When the test subject continues to hold human desires to take on non-human forms, what spectacle will arise as a result? And what effect will this have on the subject's relationship with the nurse? -- -- (Source: Japan Media Arts Festival) -- Music - Jul 17, 2013 -- 3,909 6.32
Clannad: Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Tomoyo-hen -- -- Kyoto Animation -- 1 ep -- Visual novel -- Drama Romance School Slice of Life -- Clannad: Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Tomoyo-hen Clannad: Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Tomoyo-hen -- Clannad: Mou Hitotsu no Sekai, Tomoyo-hen is set in an alternate reality where Tomoya Okazaki dates his junior, Tomoyo Sakagami. -- -- Tomoyo has been elected to be the school's next Student Council President. This is great news as she can now work toward her goal of preventing the school's cherry blossom trees from being axed. Although Tomoya is ecstatic for her, given his reputation as a delinquent in school, his relationship with Tomoyo is making them the subject of gossip around the campus, which can potentially compromise her standing as Student Council President. The school community's disapproval of their relationship becomes more apparent when the Student Council's Vice-President and even the school's administration warn Tomoya to distance himself from Tomoyo. -- -- With the bad atmosphere widening the rift between Tomoya and Tomoyo, will Tomoya succumb to societal pressure and do as they say, or will their love for each other rise above it all? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- Special - Jul 16, 2008 -- 262,192 7.98
Gall Force 1: Eternal Story -- -- AIC, animate Film, Artmic -- 1 ep -- Original -- Action Military Sci-Fi Adventure Space Mecha -- Gall Force 1: Eternal Story Gall Force 1: Eternal Story -- Two advanced civilizations, the Paranoids (a race of alien humanoids) and the Solenoids (who are all women) are waging a war that has gone on for centuries. When the Solenoid fleet leaves a battle to defend an experimentally terraformed world from the Paranoids, one damaged Solenoid ship, the Star Leaf, is separated from the fleet. -- -- Only seven women remain alive on the ship: Eluza, the captain, Rabby, the solid more or less main character, Lufy, the brash pilot, Catty, the mysterious science officer, Pony, the pink-haired ditzy tech, Patty, a solid crew member, and Remy, the cute one. -- -- After narrowly escaping the battle, the crew of the Star Leaf decides to continue with their orders and rendezvous at planet Chaos to defend it. It turns out, however, that their ship is the subject of a Paranoid experiment. In the end, it is up to the remaining crew Star Leaf to defend the artificial paradise of Chaos from the Paranoid fleet and the plans of the Solenoid leaders. -- -- (Source: AniDB) -- -- Licensor: -- Central Park Media -- Movie - Jul 28, 1986 -- 5,485 6.46
High School DxD New -- -- TNK -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Action Harem Comedy Demons Romance Ecchi School -- High School DxD New High School DxD New -- The misadventures of Issei Hyoudou, high school pervert and aspiring Harem King, continue on in High School DxD New. As the members of the Occult Research Club carry out their regular activities, it becomes increasingly obvious that there is something wrong with their Knight, the usually composed and alert Yuuto Kiba. Soon, Issei learns of Kiba's dark, bloody past and its connection to the mysterious Holy Swords. Once the subject of a cruel experiment, Kiba now seeks revenge on all those who wronged him. -- -- With the return of an old enemy, as well as the appearance of two new, Holy Sword-wielding beauties, it isn't long before Issei and his Devil comrades are plunged into a twisted plot once more. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 703,097 7.52
Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- -- Ajia-Do -- 14 eps -- Light novel -- Slice of Life Fantasy -- Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- Urano Motosu loves books and has an endless desire to read literature, no matter the subject. She almost fulfills her dream job of becoming a librarian before her life is ended in an accident. As she draws her last breath, she wishes to be able to read more books in her next life. -- -- As if fate was listening to her prayer, she wakes up reincarnated as Myne—a frail five-year-old girl living in a medieval era. What immediately comes to her mind is her passion. She tries to find something to read, only to become frustrated by the lack of books at her disposal. -- -- Without the printing press, books have to be written and copied by hand, making them very expensive; as such, only a few nobles can afford them—but this won't stop Myne. She will prove that her will to read is unbreakable, and if there are no books around, she will make them herself! -- -- 162,089 8.02
Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- -- Ajia-Do -- 14 eps -- Light novel -- Slice of Life Fantasy -- Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen -- Urano Motosu loves books and has an endless desire to read literature, no matter the subject. She almost fulfills her dream job of becoming a librarian before her life is ended in an accident. As she draws her last breath, she wishes to be able to read more books in her next life. -- -- As if fate was listening to her prayer, she wakes up reincarnated as Myne—a frail five-year-old girl living in a medieval era. What immediately comes to her mind is her passion. She tries to find something to read, only to become frustrated by the lack of books at her disposal. -- -- Without the printing press, books have to be written and copied by hand, making them very expensive; as such, only a few nobles can afford them—but this won't stop Myne. She will prove that her will to read is unbreakable, and if there are no books around, she will make them herself! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll -- 162,089 8.02
Kara no Kyoukai: Mirai Fukuin -- -- ufotable -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Drama Mystery Seinen Supernatural -- Kara no Kyoukai: Mirai Fukuin Kara no Kyoukai: Mirai Fukuin -- Shiki Ryougi, Mikiya Kokutou, and Touko Aozaki begin investigating a bomber after they witness a nearby explosion. That same night, Shiki catches a glimpse of the bomber, and as a result, he becomes fixated on her. To get rid of her, the madman plays a game of cat and mouse in attempts to lure her to an empty parking garage. And bombs are not the only thing he has in his arsenal: he also possesses the ability to see the future, and he intends to bring an end to Shiki. -- -- Elsewhere a few days prior, a student at Reien Girls' Academy, Shizune Seo, plans to head home for the summer. However, while exiting a bus, she has a vision of the future involving a nearby stranger's death. While trying to warn the stranger, she meets Mikiya—who succeeds in utilizing Shizune's information effectively. -- -- Subsequently, an employee is sent on a job with his employer's 10-year-old daughter in tow. However, the subject of his investigation turns out to be a ghost from both of their pasts. -- -- Mirai Fukuin tells the stories set during the main timeline of the Kara no Kyoukai films, as well as one set in the future. -- -- Movie - Sep 28, 2013 -- 89,191 8.03
Mirai no Mirai -- -- Studio Chizu -- 1 ep -- Original -- Adventure Drama Fantasy -- Mirai no Mirai Mirai no Mirai -- In a quiet corner of the city, four-year-old Kun Oota has lived a spoiled life as an only child with his parents and the family dog, Yukko. But when his new baby sister Mirai is brought home, his simple life is thrown upside-down; suddenly, it isn't all about him anymore. Despite his tantrums and nagging, Mirai is seemingly now the subject of all his parents' love. -- -- To help him adapt to this drastic change, Kun is taken on an extraordinary journey through time, meeting his family's past, present, and future selves, as he learns not only what it means to be a part of a family, but also what it means to be an older brother. -- -- -- Licensor: -- GKIDS, NYAV Post -- Movie - Jul 20, 2018 -- 91,764 7.31
Mirai no Mirai -- -- Studio Chizu -- 1 ep -- Original -- Adventure Drama Fantasy -- Mirai no Mirai Mirai no Mirai -- In a quiet corner of the city, four-year-old Kun Oota has lived a spoiled life as an only child with his parents and the family dog, Yukko. But when his new baby sister Mirai is brought home, his simple life is thrown upside-down; suddenly, it isn't all about him anymore. Despite his tantrums and nagging, Mirai is seemingly now the subject of all his parents' love. -- -- To help him adapt to this drastic change, Kun is taken on an extraordinary journey through time, meeting his family's past, present, and future selves, as he learns not only what it means to be a part of a family, but also what it means to be an older brother. -- -- Movie - Jul 20, 2018 -- 91,764 7.31
Nodame Cantabile OVA -- -- J.C.Staff -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Comedy Josei Music Romance Slice of Life -- Nodame Cantabile OVA Nodame Cantabile OVA -- Yukihisa Matsuda, principal conductor of the Rising Star Orchestra, arrives in Paris to perform Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture as a guest conductor for the Recyl Symphony Orchestra. When Matsuda overhears the orchestra members praising Shinichi Chiaki, the budding Japanese conductor of the Roux-Marlet Orchestra, he can barely contain his contempt at there being another "Black-Haired Noble" in the same city. Freshly dumped by his mistress following the performance, Matsuda catches Chiaki and takes him out to drink under the pretense of discussing career. But much to Chiaki's chagrin, the subject soon turns to Chiaki's own special someone. -- -- OVA - Aug 10, 2009 -- 24,910 7.47
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu -- -- Diomedéa -- 12 eps -- Light novel -- Comedy Romance -- Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu -- Haruka Nogizaka is the most popular student in the prestigious Hakujo Academy, possessing unparalleled beauty, talent, and influence. Unbeknownst to her fellow students, however, she keeps an embarrassing secret of being an otaku—something that can potentially destroy her elegant reputation. -- -- Unfortunately for Haruka, an encounter with the timid Yuuto Ayase in the school library spells the end of her well-kept secret. However, the two reach a mutual agreement with Yuuto promising to keep Haruka's secret, sparking an unexpected friendship between them. Nonetheless, with Haruka's status as the school celebrity and her friendly relationship with Yuuta, both of them are bound to be the subject of gossip everywhere they go! -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- TV - Jul 3, 2008 -- 118,929 7.23
ReLIFE -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 13 eps -- Web manga -- Slice of Life Romance School -- ReLIFE ReLIFE -- Dismissed as a hopeless loser by those around him, 27-year-old Arata Kaizaki bounces around from one job to another after quitting his first company. His unremarkable existence takes a sharp turn when he meets Ryou Yoake, a member of the ReLife Research Institute, who offers Arata the opportunity to change his life for the better with the help of a mysterious pill. Taking it without a second thought, Arata awakens the next day to find that his appearance has reverted to that of a 17-year-old. -- -- Arata soon learns that he is now the subject of a unique experiment and must attend high school as a transfer student for one year. Though he initially believes it will be a cinch due to his superior life experience, Arata is proven horribly wrong on his first day: he flunks all his tests, is completely out of shape, and can't keep up with the new school policies that have cropped up in the last 10 years. Furthermore, Ryou has been assigned to observe him, bringing Arata endless annoyance. ReLIFE follows Arata's struggle to adjust to his hectic new lifestyle and avoid repeating his past mistakes, all while slowly discovering more about his fellow classmates. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Crunchyroll, Funimation -- 754,980 8.02
Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin -- -- A-1 Pictures -- 13 eps -- Original -- Sci-Fi Mystery Comedy Supernatural School -- Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin -- The story revolves around Maya, the daughter of the former Headmaster of Waldstein Academy, and a time traveling agent Fumiaki Uchida. In the year 2012, the world had been invaded by aliens and time travelers were sent back to the year 1999 in order to find and destroy the Nostradamus Key, which Nostradamus Prophecy foretold as what would bring about the apocalypse. The series then turns to the year 1999, where Maya returns to the Academy with the intention of destroying the Academy by superseding her late father's position as the principal. Her plan was interrupted when she meets Fumiaki and learns of the forthcoming destruction. Despite being distrusting towards Fumiaki, they form a pact to look for the Nostradamus Key. -- -- In order to find the Nostradamus Key, time agents were provided with specially created cell phones. When a user finds an object of interest, by thinking of destroying it and taking a photo, and if the resulting image is that of a peaceful world, then the subject is the Nostradamus Key. Conversely, if the subject is not the Nostradamus Key, then the photo displays destruction. By using the phone, Maya and Fumiaki investigates occult occurrences as they occur in the town. -- -- (Source: Wikipedia) -- 91,327 7.07
True Tears -- -- P.A. Works -- 13 eps -- Original -- Drama Romance School -- True Tears True Tears -- Shinichirou Nakagami was living the life other boys from his grade could only dream of—staying under the same roof as prodigal student Hiromi Yuasa. However, the bright and cheerful Hiromi has been depressed and cold at home ever since her mother passed away. While he is the subject of the ignorant jealousy of his peers, rumors begin to spread when Shinichirou meets Noe Isurugi—a girl known for cursing classmates, curses which always end up becoming reality. -- -- Noe curses Shinichirou as well, but two pits are created when you curse someone, and her curse on Shinichirou comes back to bite her in the form of a raccoon to her beloved chicken, Raigomaru. Despite this, she does not shed a single tear; Noe had had her tears stolen. For Noe to be able to cry again, she would need the tears of another, and Shinichirou knows a person whose tears he wants to take away. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Bandai Entertainment, Bandai Visual USA, Discotek Media -- 187,883 7.35
Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. OVA -- -- Brain's Base -- 1 ep -- Light novel -- Comedy Romance School -- Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. OVA Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. OVA -- One morning, Hachiman Hikigaya contemplates the superfluous nature of marriage and its misleading image of happiness. However, he is forced into confronting his skepticism when the Volunteer Service Club is tasked with assisting a local municipal magazine advertise the allure of marriage to younger people. Unfortunately, neither the club's advisor, Shizuka Hiratsuka, nor the other club members have any firsthand experience with the subject. With only one week until the deadline, the group must quickly learn about the intricacies behind the special ceremony, even if they have to resort to more creative means! -- -- OVA - Sep 19, 2013 -- 206,248 7.60
Yami Shibai 6 -- -- ILCA -- 13 eps -- Original -- Dementia Horror Supernatural -- Yami Shibai 6 Yami Shibai 6 -- Late at night, in a clearing within a dark fog-filled forest, there sits a kamishibai storyboard. A visitor approaches, and suddenly, the fog recedes. A shape begins to take form beside the board—this figure is the masked Storyteller, who once again starts to spin tales of horror and despair. -- -- The events described in these macabre tales might happen to anyone, even your neighbors or friends: a group of girls bully one of their members in a cave, only to find themselves the victims of a dark presence; a boy with scopophobia moves to the countryside, but he still cannot escape the eyes of others; a man has a window that won't stay closed, and is the recipient of strange phone calls; and a salaryman steals an umbrella on a rainy day, but this seemingly insignificant act leads to consequences he never expected. Visitors may enjoy the Storyteller's offerings, but they should also be vigilant so that they don't wind up as the subjects of his next story. -- -- 14,635 6.15
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