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object:think of God
word class:trigram
word class:verb
class:Thought

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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
01.01_-_Sri_Aurobindo_-_The_Age_of_Sri_Aurobindo
0_1960-12-20
0_1968-04-23
1.01_-_MASTER_AND_DISCIPLE
1.025_-_Sadhana_-_Intensifying_a_Lighted_Flame
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.04_-_ADVICE_TO_HOUSEHOLDERS
1.06_-_Incarnate_Teachers_and_Incarnation
1.07_-_THE_MASTER_AND_VIJAY_GOSWAMI
1.08_-_RELIGION_AND_TEMPERAMENT
1.08_-_THE_MASTERS_BIRTHDAY_CELEBRATION_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.09_-_ADVICE_TO_THE_BRAHMOS
1.09_-_Concentration_-_Its_Spiritual_Uses
1.10_-_GRACE_AND_FREE_WILL
1.10_-_THE_MASTER_WITH_THE_BRAHMO_DEVOTEES_(II)
1.11_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_AT_DAKSHINEWAR
1.12_-_THE_FESTIVAL_AT_PNIHTI
1.14_-_INSTRUCTION_TO_VAISHNAVS_AND_BRHMOS
1.15_-_LAST_VISIT_TO_KESHAB
1.16_-_The_Process_of_Avatarhood
1.16_-_WITH_THE_DEVOTEES_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.17_-_M._AT_DAKSHINEWAR
1.21_-_A_DAY_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.22_-_ADVICE_TO_AN_ACTOR
1.240_-_1.300_Talks
1.240_-_Talks_2
1.24_-_Describes_how_vocal_prayer_may_be_practised_with_perfection_and_how_closely_allied_it_is_to_mental_prayer
1.24_-_RITUAL,_SYMBOL,_SACRAMENT
1.25_-_ADVICE_TO_PUNDIT_SHASHADHAR
1.27_-_AT_DAKSHINESWAR
1.439
1953-05-27
2.02_-_THE_DURGA_PUJA_FESTIVAL
2.03_-_THE_MASTER_IN_VARIOUS_MOODS
2.05_-_VISIT_TO_THE_SINTHI_BRAMO_SAMAJ
2.06_-_The_Higher_Knowledge_and_the_Higher_Love_are_one_to_the_true_Lover
2.06_-_WITH_VARIOUS_DEVOTEES
2.07_-_BANKIM_CHANDRA
2.08_-_ALICE_IN_WONDERLAND
2.09_-_THE_MASTERS_BIRTHDAY
2.10_-_THE_MASTER_AND_NARENDRA
2.16_-_VISIT_TO_NANDA_BOSES_HOUSE
2.17_-_THE_MASTER_ON_HIMSELF_AND_HIS_EXPERIENCES
2.18_-_SRI_RAMAKRISHNA_AT_SYAMPUKUR
2.20_-_THE_MASTERS_TRAINING_OF_HIS_DISCIPLES
2.21_-_1940
2.21_-_IN_THE_COMPANY_OF_DEVOTEES_AT_SYAMPUKUR
4.03_-_Prayer_of_Quiet
Phaedo
Sayings_of_Sri_Ramakrishna_(text)
Talks_026-050
Talks_076-099
Talks_600-652
The_Pilgrims_Progress
Timaeus
Verses_of_Vemana

PRIMARY CLASS

Thought
SIMILAR TITLES
It is by God's Grace that you think of God!
think of God

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH


TERMS ANYWHERE



QUOTES [18 / 18 - 103 / 103]


KEYS (10k)

   5 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   4 Sri Ramakrishna
   2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
   1 Swami Vijnanananda
   1 SWAMI SUBODHANANDA
   1 SWAMI PREMANANDA
   1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 Sri Ramakrishna
   1 Saint Augustine
   1 Epictetus

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   5 Sri Ramakrishna
   5 James Joyce
   3 Jeanette Winterson
   3 Epictetus
   3 C S Lewis
   3 Chip Gaines
   2 Wayne Grudem
   2 Sathya Sai Baba
   2 Paramahansa Yogananda
   2 Leylah Attar
   2 Karen Armstrong
   2 J I Packer
   2 Jimmy Carter
   2 A W Tozer

1:Think of God more often than thou breathest. ~ Epictetus,
2:It is by God's Grace that you think of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, [T0],
3:Sorrow makes one think of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Conscious Immortality, Ch 15, [T5],
4:It is by God's grace that you think of God! ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 29, [T5],
5:You must certainly think of God if you want to see God all round you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
6:Anyone who will think of God, and repeat His name, will have everything intact - here and hereafter. His name is true for ever. ~ SWAMI SUBODHANANDA,
7:In a pure body and pure mind, the power of God becomes manifest. Think and think of God; the impurities of the mind will be washed away. ~ SWAMI PREMANANDA,
8:If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
9:It is not good to say that what we ourselves think of God is the only truth and what others think is false. Can a man really fathom God's nature? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
10:Although it is possible to think of God without considering His goodness, it is impossible to think that God exists and is not good ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DV 10.12ad9).,
11:For then alone do we know God truly, when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 5, par. 3,
12:Unless one has acquired the habit of constantly thinking of God by long practice, everything becomes confused on account of the pangs of death, and one cannot think of God even once. So what is necessary is constantly meditate on Him and pray to Him. ~ Swami Vijnanananda,
13:Our very thought, when we think of God the Trinity, falls very far short of Him of whom we think, nor comprehends Him as He is; but He is seen, as it is written, even by those who are so great as was the Apostle Paul, through "a glass and in an enigma." ~ Saint Augustine, (DT 5.1),
14:Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of god at least at the time of death, since one becomes what he thinks of
at the time of death. But unless all your life you have been thinking of God, unless you have accustomed yourself to dhyana of 'God
always during life, it would not at all be possible for you think of God at the time of death. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 9-3-46,
15:The Master came back to the drawing-room and said: "The worldly minded practise devotions, japa, and austerity only by fits and starts. But those who know nothing else but God repeat His name with every breath. Some always repeat mentally, 'Om Rāma'.

Even the followers of the path of knowledge repeat, 'Soham', 'I am He'. There are others whose tongues are always moving, repeating the name of God. One should remember and think of God constantly." ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishana,
16:823. Should you think of God only at the time of meditation and remain forgetful of Him at all other times? Have you not noticed how during Durga Puja a lamp is kept constantly burning near the image? It should never be allowed to go out. If ever it is extinguished, the house-holder meets with some mishap. Similarly, after installing the Deity on the lotus of your heart, you must keep the lamp of remembering Him ever burning. While engaged in the affairs of the world, you should constantly turn your gaze inwards and see whether the lamp is burning or not. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna,
17: M.: Yes. When you see God in all, do you think of God or do you not?
  You should certainly keep God in your mind for seeing God all round you. Keeping God in your mind becomes dhyana. Dhyana is the stage before realisation. Realisation is in the Self only. Dhyana must precede it. Whether you make dhyana of God or of Self, it is immaterial. The goal is the same. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
18:  MASTER: "Repeat God's name and sing His glories, and keep holy company; and now and then visit God's devotees and holy men. The mind cannot dwell on God if it is immersed day and night in worldliness, in worldly duties and responsibilities; it is most necessary to go into solitude now and then and think of God. To fix the mind on God is very difficult, in the beginning, unless one practises meditation in solitude. When a tree is young it should be fenced all around; otherwise it may be destroyed by cattle. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
2:Don't think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
3:The most important thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
4:The mind that is full of God is empty of anxiety. Are you troubled, restless, sleepless? Then think of God more! ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove
5:If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove
6:If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must think of God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
7:When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
8:I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer - even as Wells thought about him - or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove
9:Harmony with nature will bring you a happiness known to few city dwellers. In the company of other truth seekers it will be easier for you to meditate and think of God. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
10:I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
11:I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove
12:In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first.  One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
13:When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nordiminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Think of God oftener than you breathe. ~ Epictetus,
2:Think of God more often than thou breathest. ~ Epictetus,
3:Think of God more often than thou breathest. ~ Epictetus,
4:It is by God’s Grace that you think of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
5:I know it’s weird, but I like to think of God as my homeboy. ~ Kim Holden,
6:Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
7:I guess that's the business of devotees - to make you think of God. ~ George Harrison,
8:When I think of God I feel like an ant crawling into a computer. ~ Richard Paul Evans,
9:Sorrow makes one think of God. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Conscious Immortality, Ch 15, [T5],
10:It is by God's grace that you think of God! ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks, 29, [T5], #index,
11:You must certainly think of God if you want to see God all round you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
12:You must certainly think of God if you want to see God all round you. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
13:Don't think of God in terms of forms, because forms are limited and God is unlimited. ~ C S Lewis,
14:It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport. ~ Fridtjof Nansen,
15:When I think of God, I think of all these magical, inexplicable things, multiplied by infinity. ~ Leylah Attar,
16:Locke has the idea that men were free to think of god in their own way, not as any religion told them to… ~ Rius,
17:The mind that is full of God is empty of anxiety. Are you troubled, restless, sleepless? Then think of God more! ~ Max Lucado,
18:We think of God as too much like what we are. Learn to acknowledge the full majesty of your incomparable God and Savior. ~ J I Packer,
19:The first step in realization is to always think of God. Then after some years you will realize that you are one with God. ~ Sathya Sai Baba,
20:We have a tendency to think of GOD being glorified only in the manifestation of his mercy----- He is just as glorified by His justice. ~ R C Sproul,
21:If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
22:If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must think of God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. ~ C S Lewis,
23:If you meditate on your ideal, you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #index,
24:When we would think of God, how many things we find which turn us away from Him, and tempt us to think otherwise. All this is evil, yet it is innate. ~ Blaise Pascal,
25:We think of God as too much like what we are. Put this mistake right, says God; learn to acknowledge the full majesty of your incomparable God and Savior. ~ J I Packer,
26:For then alone do we know God truly, when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, I, 5, par. 3,
27:Due to some mental hiccup I can’t explain, when I think of God, I picture Hugh Hefner: a thin, angular man with a prominent chin in a maroon smoking jacket. ~ Jonathan Tropper,
28:Think of God not as a word, or a stranger, or as someone on high, waiting to judge and punish you. Think of Him as you would want to be thought of if you were God. ~ Daya Mata,
29:When you sing, think of birds. When you dance, think of fish (Or snakes. Doesn’t matter.). When you play music, think of water, and when you act, think of god. ~ Katie Waitman,
30:well, it sounds strange, but when i think of God, i think of a soft whirring noise - like a spinning ball of energy - something i can tap into when i need it. ~ Ellen Wittlinger,
31:I can think of God as my savior and even my friend, but I must never forget that He is God, and after He saves me, I must put myself in subjection to Him and His will. ~ Lori Wick,
32:Religious men are and must be heretics now- for we must not pray, except in a "form" of words, made beforehand- or think of God but with a prearranged idea. ~ Florence Nightingale,
33:Reduce your wants and lead a happy and contented life. Never hurt the feelings of others and be kind to all. Think of God as soon as you get up and when you go to bed. ~ Dharma Mittra,
34:I would rather like to think of God as being a kind of adventurer - even as Wells thought about him - or perhaps as something within us making for some unknown purpose. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,
35:Harmony with nature will bring you a happiness known to few city dwellers. In the company of other truth seekers it will be easier for you to meditate and think of God. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
36:Self-confidence means thinking all the time, "God is in me... God is doing every­thing . . . without God I cannot be . . . all this is God . . . I only want to think of God." ~ Sathya Sai Baba,
37:I ask people to live in the world and at the same time fix their minds on God. I don't ask them to give up the world. I say, 'Fulfill your worldly duties and also think of God.' ~ Sri Ramakrishna,
38:Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic. ~ Emil M Cioran,
39:Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic. ~ Emile M Cioran,
40:we are strange indeed among all the plants and animals, who unlike us know their place, and if they think of God at all do not imagine him to be their kin, or themselves to be his heirs. ~ Orson Scott Card,
41:I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. ~ C S Lewis,
42:We should not think of God’s existence as spirit as meaning that God is infinitely large, for example, for it is not part of God but all of God that is in every point of space (see Ps. 139:7–10). ~ Wayne Grudem,
43:The trouble with a lot of modern theology and a lot of modern thinking about God, is that we think of God a sort of being like ourselves, but bigger and better with likes and dislikes similar to our own. ~ Karen Armstrong,
44:I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become. ~ Chip Gaines,
45:I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become. ~ Joanna Gaines,
46:I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become. When ~ Chip Gaines,
47:Only to sit and think of God, Oh what a joy it is! To think the thought, to breathe the Name; Earth has no higher bliss. Father of Jesus, love's reward! What rapture will it be, Prostrate before Thy throne to lie, And gaze and gaze on Thee! ~ A W Tozer,
48:Spiritual realization is theoretically the easiest thing and in practice the most difficult thing there is. It is the easiest because it is enough to think of God. It is the most difficult because human nature is forgetfulness of God. ~ Frithjof Schuon,
49:Whenever I think of God I can only conceive of Him as a Being infinitely great and infinitely good. This last quality of the divine nature inspires me with such confidence and joy that I could have written even a miserere in tempo allegro. ~ Joseph Haydn,
50:The words we use for the Creator are a reflect of ourselves. If we think of God as fear and shame, we are scared and have something to be ashamed of ... But if we see love, compassion and kindness, it is because we possess these qualities. ~ Shams Tabrizi,
51:The moral law is a reason to think of God as plausible - not just a God who sets the universe in motion but a God who cares about human beings, because we seem uniquely amongst creatures on the planet to have this far-developed sense of morality. ~ Richard Dawkins,
52:came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become. When I came back to Waco, I had a very ~ Chip Gaines,
53:I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but instead as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding. ~ Henri Nouwen,
54:I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,
55:We are close to God when we are close to people. If we think of God as something in favor of the betterment of human beings, and if we act in a way that brings about that betterment-if we do not cling to riches, selfishness, or greed-then I believe we are getting closer to God. ~ Daniel Ortega,
56:When we see a marvellous religious structure, some of us immediately think of God, some of us think of talented workers who built that structure, and some of us think that the money that can be given to the homeless is wasted here! Everyone thinks differently and that is the reason why life is rich! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
57:In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God. ~ Elie Wiesel,
58:Anytime you find another alcoholic standing in front of you,” he had said, “looking you in the eye and talking about sobriety, consider that God is there, speaking through him or her to you. Or anytime you’re sitting in a meeting, consider that God is there. For now, think of God as an acronym for ‘Group of Drunks. ~ Alan Kaufman,
59:It was a sense of belonging that blurs the lines between two people, when you find your ankle wrapped around someone else’s, or your fingers intertwined, and it’s so natural, so automatic, that you have no conscious thought of it happening. When I think of God, I think of all these magical, inexplicable things, multiplied by infinity. ~ Leylah Attar,
60:I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don’t think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don’t even know if God exists, but I do know if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
61:I accept Augustine's maxim of solvitor ambulando - things are solved by walking.' Sometimes when I walk, I think of God, and sometimes I explicitly direct worded thoughts to God. But my walking prayer is in no way limited to these times when I specifically speak to God. The whole experience is prayer when I walk with openness before God. ~ David G Benner,
62:I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
63:I do not think of God theistically, that is, as a being, supernatural in power, who dwells beyond the limits of my world. I rather experience God as the source of life willing me to live fully, the source of love calling me to love wastefully and to borrow a phrase from the theologian, Paul Tillich, as the Ground of being, calling me to be all that I can be. ~ John Shelby Spong,
64:It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. ~ James Joyce,
65:Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of god at least at the time of death, since one becomes what he thinks of
at the time of death. But unless all your life you have been thinking of God, unless you have accustomed yourself to dhyana of 'God
always during life, it would not at all be possible for you think of God at the time of death. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day, 9-3-46,
66:To think of God as an anthropomorphic being or a sort of glorified man with all the whims, eccentricities and peculiarities of man is neurotic infantilism and absolutely absurd. God is personal to you in this sense: You can at this very moment contemplate love, peace, harmony, joy, beauty, wisdom, power and guidance, and you will begin to express these qualities because you become what you contemplate. ~ Joseph Murphy,
67:We must not think of God as highest in an ascending order of beings starting with the single cell, then the fish, then the bird, then the animal, then man and angels and cherubs and God.… This would be to grant God eminence or even preeminence but that is not enough. We must grant God transcendence in the fullest meaning of that word. He’s wholly other. He breaks all the categories of being and knowing.24 ~ James MacDonald,
68:To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of. I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God! ~ Andre Breton,
69:People who think of God as a warrior may become warriors themselves, whether in a Christian crusade, a Muslim jihad, or an apocalyptically oriented militia. People who think of God as righteous are likely to emphasize righteousness themselves, just as those who think of God as compassionate are likely to emphasize compassion. People who think God is angry at the world are likely to be angry at the world themselves. ~ Marcus Borg,
70:low stage of progress, and follow their own nature closely in the intercourse and dealings which they have with God, because the gold of their spirit is not yet purified and refined, they still think of God as little children, and speak of God as little children, and feel and experience God as little children, even as Saint Paul says,106 because they have not reached perfection, which is the union of the soul with God. In ~ Juan de la Cruz,
71:When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nordiminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it. ~ David Hume,
72:Priming people to think of God as punitive decreases cheating; thinking of God as forgiving increases it. The researchers then studied subjects from sixty-seven countries, considering the prevalence in each of belief in the existence of a heaven and hell. The greater the skew toward belief in hell, rather than heaven, the lower the national crime rate. When it comes to Eternity, sticks apparently work better than carrots. ~ Robert M Sapolsky,
73:you must achieve liberation during your life time.
Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of god at least at the time of death, since one becomes what he thinks of
at the time of death. But unless all your life you have been thinking of God, unless you have accustomed yourself to dhyana of 'God
always during life, it would not at all be possible for you think of God at the time of death. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
74:Whatever thought grips the mind at the time of death is the one which will propel it and decide for it the nature of its future birth. Thus if one wants to attain god after death, one has to think of him steadfastly... This is not as simple as it sounds, for at the time of death the mind automatically flies to the thought of an object (i.e. money, love) which has possessed it during its sojourn in the world. Thus one must think of god constantly. ~ Stephen Mitchell,
75:What sort of power is it that really and truly renders the deity present? Human beings automatically think of God as someone who possesses and wields power. Jesus forces people to consider whether that deeply rooted conviction is true or not. In historical terms it is readily apparent that power, left to its own inertial tendencies, tends to be oppressive in fact. So it cannot be the ultimate meditation of God, though human beings might tend to think so ~ Jon Sobrino,
76:Having refuted, then, as well as we could, every notion which might suggest that we were to think of God as in any degree corporeal, we go on to say that, according to strict truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured. For whatever be the knowledge which we are able to obtain of God, either by perception or reflection, we must of necessity believe that He is by many degrees far better than what we perceive Him to be. ~ Origen On First Principles, Bk. 1, ch. 1; par. 5,
77:If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the 'comfort' of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment. ~ Tom Robbins,
78:Maybe God isn't the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, am I a good person? […] It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God? ~ Anita Blake, to Richard Zeeman ~ Laurell K. Hamilton (June 2007). "chapter 44". The Harlequin (1st edition ed.). Berkley Books. pp. pp. 391-392. ISBN 978-0-425-21724-5.,
79:The right to liberty was crucial: it is difficult to find a single reference to imprisonment in the whole of rabbinic literature, because only God can curtail the freedom of a human being. Spreading scandal about somebody was tantamount to denying the existence of God.104 Jews were not to think of God as a Big Brother, watching their every move from above; instead they were to cultivate a sense of God within each human being so that our dealings with others became sacred encounters. ~ Karen Armstrong,
80:The Master came back to the drawing-room and said: "The worldly minded practise devotions, japa, and austerity only by fits and starts. But those who know nothing else but God repeat His name with every breath. Some always repeat mentally, 'Om Rāma'.

Even the followers of the path of knowledge repeat, 'Soham', 'I am He'. There are others whose tongues are always moving, repeating the name of God. One should remember and think of God constantly." ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishana,
81:For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public. Why? Because authority is afraid that people may think of God knows what kind of horrible invaders. So the password still is: We have to avoid panic by all means ~ Gordon Cooper,
82:The heavens are not filled with hostility. The sky does not express a frown. When I look up I do not contemplate a face of brass, but the face of infinite good will. Yet when I was a child, many a picture has made me think of God as suspicious, inhumanly watchful, always looking round the corner to catch me at the fall. That "eye," placed in the sky of many a picture, and placed there to represent God, filled my heart with chilling fear. . . . Heaven overflows with good will toward us! Our God not only wishes good, he wills it! ~ John Henry Jowett,
83:Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ~ Jimmy Carter,
84:In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute? ~ Sue Monk Kidd,
85:Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God. ~ James Joyce,
86:Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. ~ Jimmy Carter, Living Faith (2001), p. 222,
87:A little lifting up of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, an interior act of adoration, even though made on the march and with sword in hand, are prayers which, short though they may be, are nevertheless very pleasing to God, and far from making a soldier lose his courage on the most dangerous occasions, bolster it. Let him then think of God as much as possible so that he will gradually become accustomed to this little but holy exercise; no one will notice it and nothing is easier than to repeat often during the day these little acts of interior adoration. ~ Brother Lawrence,
88:823. Should you think of God only at the time of meditation and remain forgetful of Him at all other times? Have you not noticed how during Durga Puja a lamp is kept constantly burning near the image? It should never be allowed to go out. If ever it is extinguished, the house-holder meets with some mishap. Similarly, after installing the Deity on the lotus of your heart, you must keep the lamp of remembering Him ever burning. While engaged in the affairs of the world, you should constantly turn your gaze inwards and see whether the lamp is burning or not. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna,
89:Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire...decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists. ~ N T Wright,
90:The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced that God is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal world to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit that they should accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the words there on the page are actually for them. A man may say, “These words are addressed to me,” and yet in his heart not feel and know that they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book. I ~ A W Tozer,
91:He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe?

Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began?

It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. ~ James Joyce,
92:— What were you thinking about, child?
— I was thinking of heaven.
— It’s unnecessary for you to think of heaven: there’s already enough to consider about earth. Are you tired of living, you who have barely been born?
— No, but everyone prefers heaven to earth.
— Well, not I. For since heaven, as well as earth, has been made by God, you may count on encountering up there the very same evils as here below. After your death, you will not be rewarded according to your deserts, for if injustices are done you on this earth (as you will find out later by experience) there is no reason why, in the next life, you will not be further wronged. The best thing for you to do is not think of God, and since it is refused you, to make your own justice. ~ Comte de Lautr amont,
93:seeking to meet our needs for security and significance.
But God calls us back in many ways. We can become aware of the inability of finding any lasting satisfaction in the things of this world (the first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness), and of the need and failure to make ourselves secure, and of our futile effort to establish our significance (the second and third temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness). The order of the world moves some of us to think about its source; and other things we have mentioned much earlier in the preface can move us to think of God, so that we are open to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. If we repent-turn around (the Greek word for "repentance" is metanoia, which means turning around in life and reorienting one's entire outlook ~ Diogenes Allen,
94:Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is “underneath” rather than “above” everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside. One might say that if religion is the opium of the people, the Hindus have the inside dope. What is more, no Hindu can realize that he is God in disguise without seeing at the same time that this is true of everyone and everything else. In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself. ~ Alan W Watts,
95:Calling God “Mother” is changing God’s own description of himself in the Bible. It is calling God by a name that he has not taken for himself. Therefore it is changing the way the Bible teaches us to think of God. It is thus changing our doctrine of God. Calling God “Mother” is the next step on the path to liberalism, and Christians for Biblical Equality and several evangelical feminist leaders are now promoting that step toward liberalism. Liberal Protestants have traveled this route before, during the 1970s. Mary Kassian, in her book The Feminist Mistake,16 points out how the three stages on the road traveled by secular feminists were (1) renaming themselves, (2) renaming the world, and (3) renaming God. The last stage includes “The Feminization of God,” and that took place in liberal Protestant thinking and writing in the 1970s.17 ~ Wayne Grudem,
96:What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God. ~ James Joyce,
97:As Thomas Watson beautifully wrote long ago: The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of God. “When I awake, I am still with thee” (Ps. 139:18). The thoughts are as travellers in the mind. David’s thoughts kept heaven-road, “I am still with Thee.” God is the treasure, and where the treasure is, there is the heart. By this we may test our love to God. What are our thoughts most upon? Can we say we are ravished with delight when we think on God? Have our thoughts got wings? Are they fled aloft? Do we contemplate Christ and glory? Oh, how far are they from being lovers of God, who scarcely ever think of God! “God is not in all his thoughts” (Ps. 10:4). A sinner crowds God out of his thoughts. He never thinks of God, unless with horror, as the prisoner thinks of the judge. ~ Dallas Willard,
98:He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God. ~ James Joyce,
99:It is extraordinarily difficult to be clear in one’s mind as to just what Rodd and many others who make the same move (at least Rodd is candid!) think they are doing. The difficulty does not arise out of their refusal to accept the Bible’s normativity: they are perfectly frank about that. But the overt appeal to think of God in line with what appears acceptable to the contemporary spirit is a strange one—as if God changes with the cultural mood. If this is the approach, how on earth can one avoid domesticating God? Anything each generation does not like, it dismisses as uncivilized, or unenlightened, or unacceptable, and reshapes God to a more pleasing fancy. It soon becomes difficult to see how this differs very much from Kaufman’s postmodernist insistence that theology does not describe or expound some being called “God” but is a “construct of the imagination which helps to tie together, unify and interpret the totality of experience.”72 In any case, the result here is a God not clearly personal, and, if absolute, sufficiently remote to be of little threat and of little use. ~ D A Carson,
100:But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup.

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. ~ Jeanette Winterson,
101:Such words are pleasing in the ear of the father of spirits. He is not a God to accept the flattery which declares him above obligation to his creatures; a God to demand of them a righteousness different from his own; a God to deal ungenerously with his poverty-stricken children; a God to make severest demands upon his little ones! Job is confident of receiving justice. There is a strange but most natural conflict of feeling in him. His faith is in truth profound, yet is he always complaining. It is but the form his faith takes in his trouble. Even while he declares the hardness and unfitness of the usage he is receiving, he yet seems assured that, to get things set right, all he needs is admission to the presence of God—an interview with the Most High. To be heard must be to have justice. He uses language which, used by any living man, would horrify the religious of the present day, in proportion to the lack of truth in them, just as it horrified his three friends, the honest pharisees of the time, whose religion was 'doctrine' and rebuke. God speaks not a word of rebuke to Job for the freedom of his speech:—he has always been seeking such as Job to worship him. It is those who know only and respect the outsides of religion, such as never speak or think of God but as the Almighty or Providence, who will say of the man who would go close up to God, and speak to him out of the deepest in the nature he has made, 'he is irreverent.' To utter the name of God in the drama—highest of human arts, is with such men blasphemy. They pay court to God, not love him; they treat him as one far away, not as the one whose bosom is the only home. They accept God's person. 'Shall not his excellency'—another thing quite than that you admire—' make you afraid? Shall not his dread'—another thing quite than that to which you show your pagan respect—' fall upon you? ~ George MacDonald,
102:Finding Favor in God’s Eyes Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD…. Noah did everything just as God commanded him. —GENESIS 6:8,22     One way to find favor with God is to love His little children. In the New Testament we read where Jesus loved the young children and warned us as adults to be careful not to harm the little children. As a grandparent, I can gain favor with God by being kind and gentle with the little ones in our family. What an honor to be a part of the spiritual development of any child. In government, sports, business, medicine, education, theater, and music—there are those who rise to the top of their professions and are honored because they find favor through their actions, personalities, efforts, or sometimes just because of their social connections. They might be known for very amazing and noble accomplishments like running a nonprofit, discovering a new cancer drug, teaching those thought unteachable, or singing the most beautiful aria the world has ever heard. These are all remarkable reasons to have favor among men. But have you ever thought how much richer life would be to have God find favor with you as a parent, a grandparent? I stand in awe when I think of God finding favor with me, but He does. Noah lived in a world much like today’s, a world full of sin. Humanity hasn’t changed much over the centuries—we just give sin a different name. Yet through all this wickedness, Noah was a person who lived a godly life. His life was pleasing to God even during those evil days. Noah didn’t find favor because of his individual goodness but through his obedience to God. We are also judged according to the same standard—that of our personal faith and obedience. Even though Noah was upright and blameless before God, he wasn’t perfect. God recognized that Noah’s life reflected a genuine faith, but not always a perfect faith. Do you sometimes feel all alone in your walk with God? I know I do. Noah found that it wasn’t the surroundings of his life that kept him in close fellowship with God, but it was the heart of Noah that qualified him to find friendship with God. It isn’t important to find favor from our fellow humans. God’s favor is so much more rewarding. Somehow God’s favor with me is passed down through the favor from my grandchildren. As we live in this very difficult time of history, I might ask, “Do I find favor in God’s sight?” God gives us grace to live victoriously: “He gives us more grace” (James 4:6). ~ Emilie Barnes,
103:A Preacher
"Lest that by any means
When I have preached to others I myself
Should be a castaway." If some one now
Would take that text and preach to us that preach, -Some one who could forget his truths were old
And what were in a thousand bawling mouths
While they filled his -- some one who could so throw
His life into the old dull skeletons
Of points and morals, inferences, proofs,
Hopes, doubts, persuasions, all for time untold
Worn out of the flesh, that one could lose from mind
How well one knew his lesson, how oneself
Could with another, may be choicer, style
Enforce it, treat it from another view
And with another logic -- some one warm
With the rare heart that trusts itself and knows
Because it loves -- yes such a one perchance,
With such a theme, might waken me as I
Have wakened others, I who am no more
Than steward of an eloquence God gives
For others' use not mine. But no one bears
Apostleship for us. We teach and teach
Until, like drumming pedagogues, we lose
The thought that what we teach has higher ends
Than being taught and learned. And if a man
Out of ourselves should cry aloud, "I sin,
And ye are sinning, all of us who talk
Our Sunday half-hour on the love of God,
Trying to move our peoples, then go home
To sleep upon it and, when fresh again,
To plan another sermon, nothing moved,
Serving our God like clock-work sentinels,
We who have souls ourselves," why I like the rest
Should turn in anger: "Hush this charlatan
Who, in his blatant arrogance, assumes
Over us who know our duties."
Yet that text
Which galls me, what a sermon might be made
Upon its theme! How even I myself
28
Could stir some of our priesthood! Ah! but then
Who would stir me?
I know not how it is;
I take the faith in earnest, I believe,
Even at happy times I think I love,
I try to pattern me upon the type
My Master left us, am no hypocrite
Playing my soul against good men's applause,
Nor monger of the Gospel for a cure,
But serve a Master whom I chose because
It seemed to me I loved him, whom till now
My longing is to love; and yet I feel
A falseness somewhere clogging me. I seem
Divided from myself; I can speak words
Of burning faith and fire myself with them;
I can, while upturned faces gaze on me
As if I were their Gospel manifest,
Break into unplanned turns as natural
As the blind man's cry for healing, pass beyond
My bounded manhood in the earnestness
Of a messenger from God. And then I come
And in my study's quiet find again
The callous actor who, because long since
He had some feelings in him like the talk
The book puts in his mouth, still warms his pit
And even, in his lucky moods, himself
With the passion of his part, but lays aside
His heroism with his satin suit
And thinks "the part is good and well conceived
And very natural -- no flaw to find" -And then forgets it.
Yes I preach to others
And am -- I know not what -- a castaway?
No, but a man who feels his heart asleep,
As he might feel his hand or foot. The limb
Will not awake without a little shock,
A little pain perhaps, a nip or blow,
And that one gives and feels the waking pricks.
But for one's heart I know not. I can give
No shock to make mine prick. I seem to be
Just such a man as those who claim the power
Or have it, (say, to serve the thought), of willing
29
That such a one should break an iron bar,
And such a one resist the strength of ten,
And the thing is done, yet cannot will themselves
One least small breath of power beyond the wont.
To-night now I might triumph. Not a breath
But shivered when I pictured the dead soul
Awaking when the body dies to know
Itself has lived too late, and drew in long
With yearning when I shewed how perfect love
Might make Earth's self be but an earlier Heaven.
And I may say and not be over-bold,
Judging from former fruits, "Some one to-night
Has come more near to God, some one has felt
What it may mean to love Him, some one learned
A new great horror against death and sin,
Some one at least -- it may be many." Yet -And yet -- Why I the preacher look for God,
Saying "I know thee Lord, what I should see
If I could see thee as some can on earth,
But I do not see thee," and "I know thee Lord,
What loving thee is like, as if I loved,
But I cannot love thee." And even with the thought
The answer grows "Thine is the greater sin,"
And I stand self-convicted yet not shamed,
But quiet, reasoning why it should be thus,
And almost wishing I could suddenly
Fall in some awful sin, that so might come
A living sense of God, if but by fear,
And a repentance sharp as is the need.
But now, the sin being indifference,
Repentance too is tepid.
There are some,
Good men and honest though not overwise
Nor studious of the subtler depths of minds
Below the surface strata, who would teach,
In such a case, to scare oneself awake
(As girls do, telling ghost-tales in the dark),
With scriptural terrors, all the judgments spoken
Against the tyrant empires, all the wrath
On them who slew the prophets and forsook
Their God for Baal, and the awful threat
For him whose dark dread sin is pardonless,
30
So that in terror one might cling to God -As the poor wretch, who, angry with his life,
Has dashed into a dank and hungry pool,
Learns in the death-gasp to love life again
And clings unreasoning to the saving hand.
Well I know some -- for the most part with thin minds
Of the effervescent kind, easy to froth,
Though easier to let stagnate -- who thus wrought
Convulsive pious moods upon themselves
And, thinking all tears sorrow and all texts
Repentance, are in peace upon the trust
That a grand necessary stage is past,
And do love God as I desire to love.
And now they'll look on their hysteric time
And wonder at it, seeing it not real
And yet not feigned. They'll say "A special time
Of God's direct own working -- you may see
It was not natural."
And there I stand
In face with it, and know it. Not for me;
Because I know it, cannot trust in it;
It is not natural. It does not root
Silently in the dark as God's seeds root,
Then day by day move upward in the light.
It does not wake a tremulous glimmering dawn,
Then swell to perfect day as God's light does.
It does not give to life a lowly child
To grow by days and morrows to man's strength,
As do God's natural birthdays. God who sets
Some little seed of good in everything
May bring his good from this, but not for one
Who calmly says "I know -- this is a dream,
A mere mirage sprung up of heat and mist;
It cannot slake my thirst: but I will try
To fool my fancy to it, and will rush
To cool my burning throat, as if there welled
Clear waters in the visionary lake,
That so perchance Heaven pitying me may send
Its own fresh showers upon me." I perchance
Might, with occasion, spite of steady will
And steady nerve, bring on the ecstasy:
But what avails without the simple faith?
31
I should not cheat myself, and who cheats God?
And wherefore should I count love more than truth,
And buy the loving him with such a price,
Even if 'twere possible to school myself
To an unbased belief and love him more
Only through a delusion?
Not so, Lord.
Let me not buy my peace, nay not my soul,
At price of one least word of thy strong truth
Which is Thyself. The perfect love must be
When one shall know thee. Better one should lose
The present peace of loving, nay of trusting,
Better to doubt and be perplexed in soul
Because thy truth seems many and not one,
Than cease to seek thee, even through reverence,
In the fulness and minuteness of thy truth.
If it be sin, forgive me: I am bold,
My God, but I would rather touch the ark
To find if thou be there than -- thinking hushed
"'Tis better to believe, I will believe,
Though, were't not for belief, 'Tis far from proved" -Shout with the people "Lo our God is there,"
And stun my doubts by iterating faith.
And yet, I know not why it is, this knack
Of sermon-making seems to carry me
Athwart the truth at times before I know -In little things at least; thank God the greater
Have not yet grown by the familiar use
Such puppets of a phrase as to slip by
Without clear recognition. Take to-night -I preached a careful sermon, gravely planned,
All of it written. Not a line was meant
To fit the mood of any differing
From my own judgment: not the less I find -(I thought of it coming home while my good Jane
Talked of the Shetland pony I must get
For the boys to learn to ride:) yes here it is,
And here again on this page -- blame by rote,
Where by my private judgment I blame not.
"We think our own thoughts on this day," I said,
"Harmless it may be, kindly even, still
Not Heaven's thoughts -- not Sunday thoughts I'll say."
32
Well now do I, now that I think of it,
Advise a separation of our thoughts
By Sundays and by week-days, Heaven's and ours?
By no means, for I think the bar is bad.
I'll teach my children "Keep all thinkings pure,
And think them when you like, if but the time
Is free to any thinking. Think of God
So often that in anything you do
It cannot seem you have forgotten Him,
Just as you would not have forgotten us,
Your mother and myself, although your thoughts
Were not distinctly on us, while you played;
And, if you do this, in the Sunday's rest
You will most naturally think of Him;
Just as your thoughts, though in a different way,
(God being the great mystery He is
And so far from us and so strangely near),
Would on your mother's birthday-holiday
Come often back to her." But I'd not urge
A treadmill Sunday labour for their mind,
Constant on one forced round: nor should I blame
Their constant chatter upon daily themes.
I did not blame Jane for her project told,
Though she had heard my sermon, and no doubt
Ought, as I told my flock, to dwell on that.
Then here again "the pleasures of the world
That tempt the younger members of my flock."
Now I think really that they've not enough
Of these same pleasures. Grey and joyless lives
A many of them have, whom I would see
Sharing the natural gaieties of youth.
I wish they'd more temptations of the kind.
Now Donne and Allan preach such things as these
Meaning them and believing. As for me,
What did I mean? Neither to feign nor teach
A Pharisaic service. 'Twas just this,
That there are lessons and rebukes long made
So much a thing of course that, unobserving,
One sets them down as one puts dots to i's,
Crosses to t's.
A simple carelessness;
No more than that. There's the excuse -- and I,
33
Who know that every carelessness is falsehood
Against my trust, what guide or check have I
Being, what I have called myself, an actor
Able to be awhile the man he plays
But in himself a heartless common hack?
I felt no falseness as I spoke the trash,
I was thrilled to see it moved the listeners,
Grew warmer to my task! 'Twas written well,
Habit had made the thoughts come fluently
As if they had been real -Yes, Jane, yes,
I hear you -- Prayers and supper waiting me -I'll come -Dear Jane, who thinks me half a saint.
~ Augusta Davies Webster,

IN CHAPTERS [57/57]



   33 Yoga
   6 Philosophy
   5 Integral Yoga
   1 Hinduism


   30 Sri Ramakrishna
   5 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   4 Aldous Huxley
   3 The Mother
   3 Swami Vivekananda
   2 Satprem
   2 Saint Teresa of Avila
   2 Plato


   29 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   4 The Perennial Philosophy
   4 Talks
   2 Bhakti-Yoga


0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   Nitya Niranjan Sen was a disciple of heroic type. He came to the Master when he was eighteen years old. He was a medium for a group of spiritualists. During his first visit the Master said to him: "My boy, if you think always of ghosts you will become a ghost, and if you think of God you will become God. Now, which do you prefer?" Niranjan severed all connexions with the spiritualists. During his second visit the Master embraced him and said warmly: "Niranjan, my boy, the days are flitting away. When will you realize God? This life will be in vain if you do not realize Him. When will you devote your mind wholly to God?" Niranjan was surprised to see the Master's great anxiety for his spiritual welfare. He was a young man endowed with unusual spiritual parts. He felt disdain for worldly pleasures and was totally guileless, like a child. But he had a violent temper. One day, as he was coming in a country boat to Dakshineswar, some of his fellow passengers began to speak ill of the Master. Finding his protest futile, Niranjan began to rock the boat, threatening to sink it in mid stream. That silenced the offenders. When he reported the incident to the Master, he was rebuked for his inability to curb his anger.
   --- JOGINDRA

01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Apart from the well-recognised fact that only in distress does the normal man think of God and non-worldly things, the real matter, however, is that the inner life is a thing apart and follows its own line of movement, does not depend upon, is not subservient to, the kind of outer life that one may happen to live under. The Bible says indeed, "Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn"... But the Upanishad declares, on the other hand, that even as one lies happily on a royal couch, bathes and anoints himself with all the perfumes of the world, has attendants all around and always to serve him, even so, one can be full of the divine consciousness from the crown of the head to the tip of his toe-nail. In fact, a poor or a prosperous life is in no direct or even indirect ratio to a spiritual life. All the miseries and immediate needs of a physical life do not and cannot detain or delay one from following the path of the ideal; nor can all your riches be a burden to your soul and overwhelm it, if it chooses to walk onit can not only walk, but soar and fly with all that knapsack on its back.
   If one were to be busy about reforming the world and when that was done then alone to turn to other-worldly things, in that case, one would never take the turn, for the world will never be reformed totally or even considerably in that way. It is not that reformers have for the first time appeared on the earth in the present age. Men have attempted social, political, economic and moral reforms from times immemorial. But that has not barred the spiritual attempt or minimised its importance. To say that because an ideal is apparently too high or too great for the present age, it must be kept in cold storage is to set a premium on the present nature of humanity arid eternise it: that would bind the world to its old moorings and never give it the opportunity to be free and go out into the high seas of larger and greater realisations.

0 1960-12-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   If I could only note all this down Its been so interesting all morning, right from the starton the balcony, then upstairs while walking for my japa! And it was on this same theme (experience of the speck of dust) This habit people have (especially in India, but more or less everywhere among those who have a religious nature), this habit of doing all things religious with respect and compunction and no mixing of things, above all there should be no mixing; in some circumstances, at certain times, you MUST NOT think of God, for then it would be a kind of blasphemy.
   Theres the religious attitude, and then theres ordinary life where people do thingsworking, living, eating, enjoying life; they regard these as the essentials, and as for the rest, well, when theres time they think about it. But what Sri Aurobindo brought down, precisely I remember at Tlemcen, Theon used to say that there was a whole world of things, such as eating, for example, or taking care of your body, that should be done automatically, without giving it any importanceits not the time to think of things divine.(!) Thats what he preached. So you have the religious attitude of all the religious types, and then ordinary life I found both of them equally unsatisfactory. Then I came here and told Sri Aurobindo my feeling; I said that if someone is truly in union with the Divine, it CANNOT change no matter what he does (the quality of what youre doing may change, but the union cant change no matter what youre doing). And when he said that this was the truth, I felt a relief. And that feeling has stayed with me all through my life.

0 1968-04-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In German, they asserted, Oh, if we put Divine, people will immediately think of God. I replied (laughing), Not necessarily, if theyre not idiots!
   But it has given me a very precise picture of what would happen if for some reason or other I were no longer here. Everyone would use my name to (Mother laughs) It would be frightening!

1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  M: "Sir, I like to think of God as formless."
  MASTER: "Very good. It is enough to have faith in either aspect. You believe in God without form; that is quite all right. But never for a moment think that this alone is true and all else false. Remember that God with form is just as true as God without form.
  --
  MASTER: "Repeat God's name and sing His glories, and keep holy company; and now and then visit God's devotees and holy men. The mind cannot dwell on God if it is immersed day and night in worldliness, in worldly duties and responsibilities; it is most necessary to go into solitude now and then and think of God. To fix the mind on God is very difficult, in the beginning, unless one practises meditation in solitude. When a tree is young it should be fenced all around; otherwise it may be destroyed by cattle.
  "To meditate, you should withdraw within yourself or retire to a secluded corner or to the forest. And you should always discriminate between the Real and the unreal. God alone is real, the Eternal Substance; all else is unreal, that is, impermanent. By discriminating thus, one should shake off impermanent objects from the mind."
  --
  "Those in bondage are sunk in worldliness and forgetful of God. Not even by mistake do they think of God.
  "The seekers after liberation want to free themselves from attachment to the world.
  --
  "The bound souls never think of God. If they get any leisure they indulge in idle gossip and foolish talk, or they engage in fruitless work. If you ask one of them the reason, he answers, 'Oh, I cannot keep still; so I am making a hedge.' When time hangs heavy on their hands they perhaps start playing cards."
  There was deep silence in the room.

1.025 - Sadhana - Intensifying a Lighted Flame, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  However, the point on hand is that a larger reality should also be qualitatively superior to the discrete particulars from which the mind is supposed to be withdrawn for the purpose of the practice of yoga. Though it is somewhat easy to bring about a quantitative increase in the concept of reality by methods such as the ones I just mentioned, it is a little more difficult to introduce a qualitative increase into the concept of reality. This is the main difficulty for everyone. However much we may concentrate on God, we will not be able to improve upon the human concept, even when there is a concept of God. So we feel unhappy even when we are meditating on God, because we have not improved the quality but have only increased the quantity, so that we may think of God as a large human individual a massive individual, as expansive as the universe itself, for example. That is quite wonderful, but still this human thought does not leave us.
  Even when we think of the Creator as a transcendent father, the anthropomorphic idea still persists and stultifies the aim at introducing a higher quality of thought into the concept of God. That is why we are unhappy even in meditation, even in our highest spiritual exalted moods. Even when we are exalted, we are quantitatively exalted; qualitatively, we are very poor. We are unhappy in some way or the other, and no one can make us happy. A tremendous effort is necessary to introduce a superior quality in the concept of reality. The difficulty lies in the mind being the only instrument that we have for doing anything whatsoever, and who is it who will introduce a higher order of value or a greater quality into this concept, other than the mind itself? But how can we expect the mind to conceive of a higher quality of reality other than the one in which it has found itself at the present moment? How can we jump over our own skin? Is it possible? How can we expect the mind to think of a reality superior in quality to the one in which it is living at present, and with which it is identified wholly? An immediate answer to this question cannot be given. However, there is an answer.

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Finally it is possible to think of God as an exclusively supra-personal being. For many persons this conception is too philosophical to provide an adequate motive for doing anything practical about their beliefs. Hence, for them, it is of no value.
  It would be a mistake, of course, to suppose that people who worship one aspect of God to the exclusion of all the rest must inevitably run into the different kinds of trouble described above. If they are not too stubborn in their ready-made beliefs, if they submit with docility to what happens to them in the process of worshipping, the God who is both immanent and transcendent, personal and more than personal, may reveal Himself to them in his fulness. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is easier for us to reach our goal if we are not handicapped by a set of erroneous or inadequate beliefs about the right way to get there and the nature of what we are looking for.

1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "After attaining God one forgets His external splendour; the glories of His creation. One doesn't think of God's glories after one has seen Him. The devotee, once immersed in God's Bliss, doesn't calculate any more about outer things. When I see Narendra, I don't need to ask him: 'What's your name? Where do you live?' Where is the time for such questions? Once a man asked Hanuman which day of the fortnight it was. 'Brother,' said Hanuman, 'I don't know anything of the day of the week, or the fortnight, or the position of the stars. I think of Rama alone.' "
  October 16, 1882
  --
  "One day Jatindra came to the garden of Jadu Mallick. I was there too. I asked him: 'What is the duty of man? Isn't it our duty to think of God?' Jatindra replied: 'We are worldly people. How is it possible for us to achieve liberation? Even King Yudhisthira had to have a vision of hell.' This made me very angry. I said to him: 'What sort of man are you? Of all the incidents of Yudhisthira's life, you remember only his seeing hell. You don't remember his truthfulness, his forbearance, his patience, his discrimination, his dispassion, his devotion to God.' I was about to say many more things, when Hriday stopped my mouth. After a little while Jatindra left the place, saying he had some other business to attend to.
  "Many days later I went with Captain to see Rj Sourindra Tagore. As soon as I met him, I said, 'I can't address you as "Rj", or by any such title, for I should be telling a lie.' He talked to me a few minutes, but even so our conversation was interrupted by the frequent visits of Europeans and others. A man of rajasic temperament, Sourindra was naturally busy with many things. Jatindra his eldest brother, had been told of my coming, but he sent word that he had a pain in his throat and couldn't go out.
  --
  MASTER: "Now you see that the mind cannot be fixed, all of a sudden, on the formless aspect of God. It is wise to think of God with form during the primary stages."
  M: "Do you mean to suggest that one should meditate on clay images?"
  --
  "The jnanis think of God without form. They don't accept the Divine Incarnation.
  Praising Sri Krishna, Arjuna said, 'Thou art Brahman Absolute.' Sri Krishna replied, 'Follow Me, and you will know whether or not I am Brahman Absolute.' So saying, Sri Krishna led Arjuna to a certain place and asked him what he saw there. 'I see a huge tree,' said Arjuna, 'and on it I notice fruits hanging like clusters of blackberries.' Then Krishna said to Arjuna, 'Come nearer and you will find that these are not clusters of blackberries, but clusters of innumerable Krishnas like Me, hanging from the tree.' In other words, Divine Incarnations without number appear and disappear on the tree of the Absolute Brahman.

1.06 - Incarnate Teachers and Incarnation, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  No man can really see God except through these human manifestations. If we try to see God otherwise, we make for ourselves a hideous caricature of Him and believe the caricature to be no worse than the original. There is a story of an ignorant man who was asked to make an image of the God Shiva, and who, after days of hard struggle, manufactured only the image of a monkey. So whenever we try to think of God as He is in His absolute perfection, we invariably meet with the most miserable failure, because as long as we are men, we cannot conceive Him as anything higher than man. The time will come when we shall transcend our human nature and know Him as He is; but as long as we are men, we must worship Him in man and as man. Talk as you may, try as you may, you cannot think of God except as a man. You may deliver great intellectual discourses on God and on all things under the sun, become great rationalists and prove to your satisfaction that all these accounts of the Avataras of God as man are nonsense. But let us come for a moment to practical common sense. What is there behind this kind of remarkable intellect? Zero, nothing, simply so much froth. When next you hear a man delivering a great intellectual lecture against this worship of the Avataras of God, get hold of him and ask what his idea of God is, what he understands by "omnipotence", "omnipresence", and all similar terms, beyond the spelling of the words. He really means nothing by them; he cannot formulate as their meaning any idea unaffected by his own human nature; he is no better off in this matter than the man in the street who has not read a single book. That man in the street, however, is quiet and does not disturb the peace of the world, while this big talker creates disturbance and misery among mankind.
  Religion is, after all, realisation, and we must make the sharpest distinction between talk; and intuitive experience. What we experience in the depths of our souls is realisation. Nothing indeed is so uncommon as common sense in regard to this matter.

1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "I once met a relative of Keshab Sen, fifty years old. He was playing cards. As if the time had not yet come for him to think of God!
  "There is another characteristic of the bound soul. If you remove him from his worldly surroundings to a spiritual environment, he will pine away. The worm that grows in filth feels very happy there. It thrives in filth. It will die if you put it in a pot of rice."
  --
  MASTER: "He can free himself from attachment to 'woman and gold' if, by the grace of God, he cultivates a spirit of strong renunciation. What is this strong renunciation? One who has only a mild spirit of renunciation says, 'Well, all will happen in the course of time; let me now simply repeat the name of God.' But a man possessed of a strong spirit of renunciation feels restless for God, as the mother feels for her own child. A man of strong renunciation seeks nothing but God. He regards the world as a deep well and feels as if he were going to be drowned in it. He looks on his relatives as venomous snakes; he wants to fly away from them. And he does go away. He never thinks, 'Let me first make some arrangement for my family and then I shall think of God.' He has great inward resolution.
  Parable of the two farmers

1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. The effects of such mistakes are often disastrous. For example, many Protestant sects have insisted on the necessity, or at least the extreme desirability, of a violent conversion. But violent conversion, as Sheldon has pointed out, is a phenomenon confined almost exclusively to persons with a high degree of somatotonia. These persons are so intensely extraverted as to be quite unaware of what is happening in the lower levels of their minds. If for any reason their attention comes to be turned inwards, the resulting self-knowledge, because of its novelty and strangeness, presents itself with the force and quality of a revelation and their metanoia, or change of mind, is sudden and thrilling. This change may be to religion, or it may be to something else for example, to psycho-analysis. To insist upon the necessity of violent conversion as the only means to salvation is about as sensible as it would be to insist upon the necessity of having a large face, heavy bones and powerful muscles. To those naturally subject to this kind of emotional upheaval, the doctrine that makes salvation dependent on conversion gives a complacency that is quite fatal to spiritual growth, while those who are incapable of it are filled with a no less fatal despair. Other examples of inadequate theologies based upon psychological ignorance could easily be cited. One remembers, for instance, the sad case of Calvin, the cerebrotonic who took his own intellectual constructions so seriously that he lost all sense of reality, both human and spiritual. And then there is our liberal Protestantism, that predominantly viscerotonic heresy, which seems to have forgotten the very existence of the Father, Spirit and Logos and equates Christianity with an emotional attachment to Christs humanity or, (to use the currently popular phrase) the personality of Jesus, worshipped idolatrously as though there were no other God. Even within all-comprehensive Catholicism we constantly hear complaints of the ignorant and self-centred directors, who impose upon the souls under their charge a religious dharma wholly unsuited to their naturewith results which writers such as St. John of the Cross describe as wholly pernicious. We see, then, that it is natural for us to think of God as possessed of the qualities which our temperament tends to make us perceive in Him; but unless nature finds a way of transcending itself by means of itself, we are lost. In the last analysis Philo is quite right in saying that those who do not conceive God purely and simply as the One injure, not God of course, but themselves and, along with themselves, their fellows.
  The way of knowledge comes most naturally to persons whose temperament is predominantly cerebrotonic. By this I do not mean that the following of this way is easy for the cerebrotonic. His specially besetting sins are just as difficult to overcome as are the sins which beset the power-loving somatotonic and the extreme viscerotonic with his gluttony for food and comfort and social approval. Rather I mean that the idea that such a way exists and can be followed (either by discrimination, or through non-attached work and one-pointed devotion) is one which spontaneously occurs to the cerebrotonic. At all levels of culture he is the natural monotheist; and this natural monotheist, as Dr. Radins examples of primitive theology clearly show, is often a monotheist of the tat tvam asi, inner-light school. Persons committed by their temperament to one or other of the two kinds of extraversion are natural polytheists. But natural polytheists can, without much difficulty, be convinced of the theoretical superiority of monotheism. The nature of human reason is such that there is an intrinsic plausibility about any hypothesis which seeks to explain the manifold in terms of unity, to reduce apparent multiplicity to essential identity. And from this theoretical monotheism the half-converted polytheist can, if he chooses, go on (through practices suitable to his own particular temperament) to the actual realization of the divine Ground of his own and all other beings. He can, I repeat, and sometimes he actually does. But very often he does not. There are many theoretical monotheists whose whole life and every action prove that in reality they are still what their temperament inclines them to bepoly theists, worshippers not of the one God they sometimes talk about, but of the many gods, nationalistic and technological, financial and familial, to whom in practice they pay all their allegiance.

1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "A holy man who has renounced the world will of course chant the name of God. That is only natural. He has no other duties to perform. If he meditates on God it shouldn't surprise anybody. On the other hand, if he fails to think of God or chant His holy name, then people will think ill of him.
  "But it is a great deal to his credit if a householder utters the name of the Lord. Think of King Janaka. What courage he had, indeed! He fenced with two swords, the one of Knowledge and the other of work. He possessed the perfect Knowledge of Brahman and also was devoted to the duties of the world. An unchaste woman attends to the minutest duties of the world, but her mind always dwells on her paramour.

1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "They are indeed bound souls who constantly dwell with 'woman and gold' and do not think of God even for a moment. How can you expect noble deeds of them? They are like mangoes pecked by a crow, which may not be offered to the Deity in the temple, and which even men hesitate to eat.
  "Bound souls, worldly people, are like silk-worms. The worms can cut through their cocoons if they want, but having woven the cocoons themselves, they are too much attached to them to leave them. And so they die there.

1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  We have seen in the foregoing aphorism that the only way of attaining to that superconsciousness is by concentration, and we have also seen that what hinder the mind from concentration are the past Samskaras, impressions. All of you have observed that, when you are trying to concentrate your mind, your thoughts wander. When you are trying to think of God, that is the very time these Samskaras appear. At other times they are not so active; but when you want them not, they are sure to be there, trying their best to crowd in your mind. Why should that be so? Why should they be much more potent at the time of concentration? It is because you are repressing them, and they react with all their force. At other times they do not react. How countless these old past impressions must be, all lodged somewhere in the Chitta, ready, waiting like tigers, to jump up! These have to be suppressed that the one idea which we want may arise, to the exclusion of the others. Instead they are all struggling to come up at the same time. These are the various powers of the Samskaras in hindering concentration of the mind. So this Samadhi which has just been given is the best to be practised, on account of its power of suppressing the Samskaras. The Samskara which will be raised by this sort of concentration will be so powerful that it will hinder the action of the others, and hold them in check.
    

1.10 - GRACE AND FREE WILL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  To think of God as mere Power, and not also, at the same time as Power, Love and Wisdom, comes quite naturally to the ordinary, unregenerate human mind. Only the totally selfless are in a position to know experimentally that, in spite of everything, all will be well and, in some way, already is well. The philosopher who denies divine providence, says Rumi, is a stranger to the perception of the saints. Only those who have the perception of the saints can know all the time and by immediate experience that divine Reality manifests itself as a Power that is loving, compassionate and wise. The rest of us are not yet in a spiritual position to do more than accept their findings on faith. If it were not for the records they have left behind, we should be more inclined to agree with Job and the primitives.
  Inspirations prevent us, and even before they are thought of make themselves felt; but after we have felt them it is ours either to consent to them, so as to second and follow their attractions, or else to dissent and repulse them. They make themselves felt without us, but they do not make us consent without us.

1.10 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Sri Ramakrishna looked at the devotees assembled in the worship hall and said: "It is very good to gather in this way, now and then, and think of God and sing His name and glories. But the worldly man's yearning for God is momentary. It lasts as long as a drop of water on a red-hot frying-pan."
  Brahmo worship

1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  M: "Sir, nowadays I like to think of God without form. But I am also beginning to understand that it is God alone who manifests Himself through different forms."
  MASTER: "Will you take me in a carriage some day to Mati Seal's garden house at Belgharia? When you throw puffed rice into the lake there, the fish come to the surface and eat it. Ah! I feel so happy to see them sport in the water. That will awaken your spiritual consciousness too. You will feel as if the fish of the human soul were playing in the Ocean of Satchidananda. In the same manner, I go into an ecstatic mood when I stand in a big meadow. I feel like a fish released from a bowl into a lake.
  --
  MASTER (with a smile): "Why not? Live in the world like a mudfish. The mudfish lives in the mud but itself remains unstained. Or live in the world like a loose woman. She attends to her household duties, but her mind is always on her sweetheart. Do your duties in the world, fixing your mind on God. But this is extremely difficult. I said to the members of the Brahmo Samaj: 'Suppose a typhoid patient is kept in a room where there are jars of pickles and pitchers of water. How can you expect the patient to recover? The very thought of spiced pickles brings water to one's mouth.' To a man, woman is like that pickle. The craving for worldly things, which is chronic in man, is like the patient's craving for water. There is no end to this craving. The typhoid patient says, 'I shall drink a whole pitcher of water.' The situation is very difficult. There is so much confusion in the world. If you go this way, you are threatened with a shovel; if you go that way, you are threatened with a broomstick; again, in another direction, you are threatened with a shoe-beating. Besides, one cannot think of God unless one lives in solitude. The goldsmith melts gold to make ornaments. But how can he do his work well if he is disturbed again and again? Suppose you are separating rice from bits of husk. You must do it all by yourself. Every now and then you have to take the rice in your hand to see how clean it is. But how can you do your work well if you are called away again and again?"
  A DEVOTEE: "What then is the way, sir?"

1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  The ways of God are inscrutable MASTER (to M.): "Can a man ever understand God's ways? I too think of God sometimes as good and sometimes as bad. He has kept us deluded by His great illusion.
  Sometimes He wakes us up and sometimes He keeps us unconscious. One moment the ignorance disappears, and the next moment it covers our mind. If you throw a brick-bat into a pond covered with moss, you get a glimpse of the water. But a few moments later the moss comes dancing back and covers the water.
  --
  A VAISHNAVA DEVOTEE: "Sir, why should one think of God at all"
  MASTER: "If a man really has that knowledge, then he is indeed liberated though living in a body.

1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Hazra is given to too much calculation. He says, 'This much of God has become the universe and this much is the balance.' My head aches at his calculations. I know that I know nothing. Sometimes I think of God as good, and sometimes as bad. What can I know of Him?"
  M: "It is true, sir. Can anyone ever know God? Each thinks, with his little bit of intelligence, that he has understood all of God. As you say, an ant went to a sugar hill and, finding that one grain of. sugar filled its stomach, thought that the next time it would take the entire hill into its hole."
  --
  M: "No, sir. But I think of earning money in order to be free from anxiety, to be able to think of God without worry."
  MASTER: "Oh, that's perfectly natural."
  --
  "It is good to prepare for death. One should constantly think of God and chant His name in solitude during the last years of one's life. If the elephant is put into the stable after its bath it is not soiled again by dirt and dust."
  Balarm's father, Mani Mallick, and Beni Pl were all elderly men. Did the Master give this instruction especially for their benefit?
  MASTER: "Why do I ask you to think of God and chant His name in solitude? Living in the world day and night, one suffers from worries. Haven't you noticed brother killing brother for a foot of land? The Sikhs said to me, 'The cause of all worry and confusion is these three: land, woman, and money.'
  "You are leading a householder's life. Why should you be afraid of the world? When Rma said to Dasaratha that He was going to renounce the world, it worried His father, and the king sought counsel of Vasishtha. Vasishtha said to Rma: 'Rma, why should You give up the world? Reason with me; Is this world outside God? What is there to renounce and what is there to accept? Nothing whatever exists but God. It is Brahman alone that appears as Isvara, maya, living beings, and the universe.' "

1.15 - LAST VISIT TO KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Why do I feel so restless for Rkhl , Narendra, and the other youngsters? Hazra once asked me, 'When will you think of God if you are always anxious about these boys?'
  (Keshab and the others smile.) That worried me greatly. I prayed to the Divine Mother: 'Mother, see what a fix I am in! Hazra scolds me because I worry about these young men.' Afterwards I asked Bholanath about it. He said to me that such a state of mind is described in the Mahabharata. How else will a man established in samdhi occupy his mind in the phenomenal world, after coming down from samdhi? That is why he seeks the company of devotees endowed with sattva. I gave a sigh of relief when Bholanath told me of the Mahabharata.

1.16 - The Process of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  E SEE that the mystery of the divine Incarnation in man, the assumption by the Godhead of the human type and the human nature, is in the view of the Gita only the other side of the eternal mystery of human birth itself which is always in its essence, though not in its phenomenal appearance, even such a miraculous assumption. The eternal and universal self of every human being is God; even his personal self is a part of the Godhead, mamaivamsah., - not a fraction or fragment, surely, since we cannot think of God as broken up into little pieces, but a partial consciousness of the one Consciousness, a partial power of the one Power, a partial enjoyment of world-being by the one and universal Delight of being, and therefore in manifestation or, as we say, in Nature a limited and finite being of the one infinite and illimitable Being. The stamp of that limitation is an ignorance by which he forgets, not only the Godhead from which he came forth, but the Godhead which is always within him, there living in the secret heart of his own nature, there burning like a veiled Fire on the inner altar in his own temple-house of human consciousness.
  He is ignorant because there is upon the eyes of his soul and all its organs the seal of that Nature, Prakriti, Maya, by which he has been put forth into manifestation out of God's eternal being; she has minted him like a coin out of the precious metal of the divine substance, but overlaid with a strong coating of the alloy of her phenomenal qualities, stamped with her own stamp and mark of animal humanity, and although the secret sign of the Godhead is there, it is at first indistinguishable and always with difficulty decipherable, not to be really discovered except by that initiation into the mystery of our own being which distinguishes a Godward from an earthward humanity.

1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  (To the devotees) "One cannot renounce by the mere wish. There are prarabdha karma-inherited tendencies-and the like. Once a yogi said to a king, 'Live with me in the forest and think of God.' The king replied: 'That I cannot very well do. I could live with you, but I still have the desire for enjoyment. If I live in this forest, perhaps I shall create a kingdom even here. I still have desires.'
  "Natabar Panja used to look after his cows in this garden during his boyhood. He had many desires. Hence he has established a castor-oil factory and earned a great deal of money. He has a prosperous castor-oil business at Alambazar.

1.17 - M. AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  SRI RAMAKRISHNA was seated in his room with his devotees. He spoke highly of Devendranath Tagore's love of God and renunciation, and then said, pointing to Rkhl and the other young devotees, "Devendra is a good man; but blessed indeed are those young aspirants who, like Sukadeva, practise renunciation from their very boyhood and think of God day and night without being involved in worldly life.
  Nature of worldly people
  --
  That afternoon the Master, accompanied by M., Rkhl, and some other devotees, set out in a carriage for the temple of Siddhesvari in Calcutta. On the way the offerings were purchased. On reaching the temple, the Master asked the devotees to offer the fruit and sugar to the Divine Mother. They saw the priests and their friends playing cards in the temple. Sri Ramakrishna said: "To play cards in a temple! One should think of God here."
  From the temple the Master went to Jadu Mallick's house. Jadu was surrounded by his admirers, well-dressed dandies. He welcomed the Master.

1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "But it is not good to say that what we ourselves think of God is the only truth and what others think is false; that because we think of God as formless, therefore He is formless and cannot have any form; that because we think of God as having form, therefore He has form and cannot be formless. Can a man really fathom God's nature?
  "This kind of friction exists between the Vaishnavas and the Shaktas. The Vaishnava says, 'My Kesava is the only Saviour', whereas the Shakta insists, 'My Bhagavati is the only Saviour.'

1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "God no doubt dwells in all, but He manifests Himself more through man than through other beings. Is man an insignificant thing? He can think of God, he can think of the Infinite, while other living beings cannot. God exists in other living beings-animals, plants, nay, in all beings-, but He manifests Himself more through man than through these others. Fire exists in all beings, in all things; but its presence is felt more in wood.
  Rma said to Lakshmana: 'Look at the elephant, brother. He is such a big animal, but he cannot think of God.'
  Divine Incarnation
  --
  "Do your worldly duties with a part of your mind and direct most of it to God. A sdhu should think of God with three quarters of his mind and with one quarter should do his other duties. He should be very alert about spiritual things. The snake is very sensitive in its tail. Its whole body reacts when it is hurt there. Similarly, the whole life of a sdhu is affected when his spirituality is touched."
  Sri Ramakrishna was going to the pine-grove and asked Gopal of Sinthi to take his umbrella to his room. Arrangements had been made in the Panchavati for the kirtan.

1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  M.: Yes. Do you think of God in sleep?
  D.: But sleep is a state of dullness.
  --
  D.: It looks easy to think of God in the external world, whereas it looks difficult to remain without thoughts.
  M.: That is absurd; to look at other things is easy and to look within is difficult! It must be contrariwise.
  --
  M.: Yes. When you see God in all, do you think of God or do you not?
  You should certainly keep God in your mind for seeing God all round you. Keeping God in your mind becomes dhyana. Dhyana is the stage before realisation. Realisation is in the Self only. Dhyana must precede it. Whether you make dhyana of God or of Self, it is immaterial. The goal is the same.

1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  M.: Yes. Do you think of God in sleep?
  D.: But sleep is a state of dullness.
  --
  D.: It looks easy to think of God in the external world, whereas it looks difficult to remain without thoughts.
  M.: That is absurd; to look at other things is easy and to look within is difficult! It must be contrariwise.
  --
  M.: Yes. When you see God in all, do you think of God or do you not?
  You should certainly keep God in your mind for seeing God all round you. Keeping God in your mind becomes dhyana. Dhyana is the stage before realisation. Realisation is in the Self only. Dhyana must precede it. Whether you make dhyana of God or of Self, it is immaterial. The goal is the same.

1.24 - Describes how vocal prayer may be practised with perfection and how closely allied it is to mental prayer, #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  for it is right that you should understand what you are saying. Anyone unable to think of God may
  find herself wearied by long prayers, and so I will not begin to discuss these, but will speak simply

1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  IN OTHER words, rites, sacraments, and ceremonials are valuable to the extent that they remind those who take part in them of the true Nature of Things, remind them of what ought to be and (if only they would be docile to the immanent and transcendent Spirit) of what actually might be their own relation to the world and its divine Ground. Theoretically any ritual or sacrament is as good as any other ritual or sacrament, provided always that the object symbolized be in fact some aspect of divine Reality and that the relation between symbol and fact be clearly defined and constant. In the same way, one language is theoretically as good as another. Human experience can be thought about as effectively in Chinese as in English or French. But in practice Chinese is the best language for those brought up in China, English for those brought up in England and French for those brought up in France. It is, of course, much easier to learn the order of a rite and to understand its doctrinal significance than to master the intricacies of a foreign language. Nevertheless what has been said of language is true, in large measure, of religious ritual. For persons who have been brought up to think of God by means of one set of symbols, it is very hard to think of Him in terms of other and, in their eyes, unhallowed sets of words, ceremonies and images.
  The Lord Buddha then warned Subhuti, saying, Subhuti, do not think that the Tathagata ever considers in his own mind: I ought to enunciate a system of teaching for the elucidation of the Dharma. You should never cherish such a thought. And why? Because if any disciple harboured such a thought he would not only be misunderstanding the Tathagatas teaching, but he would be slandering him as well. Moreover, the expression a system of teaching has no meaning; for Truth (in the sense of Reality) cannot be cut up into pieces and arranged into a system. The words can only be used as a figure of speech.

1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Even the followers of the path of knowledge repeat, 'Soham', 'I am He'. There are others whose tongues are always moving, repeating the name of God. One should remember and think of God constantly."
  Pundit Shashadhar entered the room with one or two friends and saluted the Master.

1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  If, after having eight children, a man doesn't think of God, then who will? If, after, enjoying so much wealth, Devendranath hadn't thought of God, then people would have cried shame upon him."
  NIRANJAN: "But he paid off all his father's debts."

1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
  adopts. What is bhakti? To think of God. That means: only one
  thought prevails to the exclusion of all other thoughts. That thought

1953-05-27, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Later on, a disciple asked Mother what she meant by, "It is That, the Power." Mother answered, "Yes, they will find the same thing the mystics have found andreligious people have found, as everybody has foundit is That, the Power. What one finds is the Power. And to That, essentially, you can give neither a name nor a definition That is now the big quarrel about Auroville: in the 'Charter' I put the 'Divine Consciousness' (to live in Auroville one must be a 'willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness', so they say: it makes you think of God. I said (laughing), as for me, it does not make me think of God! So some translate it as 'the highest consciousness', others put other things. I agreed with the Russians to put 'Perfect Consciousness', but that is an approximation And it is Thatwhich you can neither name nor definewhich is the supreme Power. It is Power that one finds. And the supreme Power is only an aspect: the aspect concerning the creation."
   See Notes on the Way (13 March 1968 and 16 March 1968).

2.02 - THE DURGA PUJA FESTIVAL, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (to Vijay, smiling): "I understand that they have been finding fault with you for mixing with those who believe in God with form. Is that true? He who is a devotee of God must have an understanding that cannot be shaken under any conditions. He must be like the anvil in a blacksmith's shop. It is constantly being struck by the hammer; still it is unshaken. Bad people may abuse you very much and speak ill of you; but you must bear with them all if you sincerely seek God. Isn't it possible to think of God in the midst of the wicked? Just think of the rishis of ancient times. They used to meditate on God in the forest, surrounded on all sides by tigers, bears, and other ferocious beasts. Wicked men have the nature of tigers and bears. They will pursue you to do you an injury.
  How to deal with wicked people

2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "Yaoda went mad with grief because she was separated from Krishna. She went to Radhika, who was meditating. Radhika said to her an ecstatic state: 'I am the Ultimate Prakriti, the Primal Power. Ask a boon of Me.' Yaoda said to her: 'What shall I ask of You? Please bless me, that with all my body, mind, and speech I may think of God and serve Him; that with my ears I may hear the singing of God's name and glories; that with my hands I may serve Hari and His devotees; that with my eyes I may behold His form and His devotees.'
  "Your eyes fill with tears when you utter the name of God. Why then should you worry about anything? Divine love has grown in you.

2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "The entangled souls repeat those very actions that make them suffer so much. They are like the camel, which eats thorny bushes till the blood streams from its mouth, but still will not give them up. Such a man may have lost his son and be stricken with grief, but still he will have children year after year. He may ruin himself by his daughter's marriage, but still he will go on having daughters every year. And he says: 'What can I do? It's just my luck!' When he goes to a holy place he doesn't have any time to think of God. He almost kills himself carrying bundles for his wife. Entering the temple, he is very eager to give his child the holy water to drink or make him roll on the floor; but he has no time for his own devotions. These bound creatures slave for their masters to earn food for themselves and their families; and they earn money by lying, cheating, flattery.
  They laugh at those who think of God and meditate on Him, and call them lunatics.
  "So you see how many different kinds of men there are. You said that all men were equal. But how many varieties of men there are! Some have more power and some less.
  --
  "Man has no faith in God. That is the reason he suffers so much. They say that when you plunge into the holy waters of the Ganges your sins perch on a tree on the bank. No sooner do you come out of the water after the bath than the sins jump back on your shoulders. (All laugh.) A man must prepare the way beforehand, so that he may think of God in the hour of death. The way lies through constant practice. If a man practises meditation on God, he will remember God even on the last day of his life."
  A BRAHMO DEVOTEE: "You have spoken very beautifully, sir. Beautiful words, indeed."

2.06 - The Higher Knowledge and the Higher Love are one to the true Lover, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The Upanishads distinguish between a higher knowledge and a lower knowledge; and to the Bhakta there is really no dfference between this higher knowledge and his higher love (Par-Bhakti). The Mundaka Upanishad says: The knowers of Brahman declare that there are two kinds of knowledge worthy to be known. namely, the Higher (Par) and the Lower (Apar). Of these the Lower (knowledge) consists of the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Smaveda, the Atharvaveda, the Shiksh (or the science dealing with pronunciation and accent), the Kalpa (or the sacrificial liturgy), Grammar, the Nirukta (or the science dealing with etymology and the meaning of words), Prosody, and Astronomy; and the Higher (knowledge) is that by which that unchangeable is known. The higher knowledge is thus clearly shown to be the knowledge of Brahman: and the Devi-Bhgavata gives us the following definition of the higher love (Par-Bhakti):As oil poured from one vessel to another falls in an unbroken line, so, when the mind in an unbroken stream thinks of the Lord, we have what is called Para-Bhakti or supreme love. This kind of undisturbed and ever steady direction of the mind and the heart to the Lord with an inseparable attactment is indeed the highest manifestation of mans love to God. All other forms of Bhakti are only preparatory to the attainment of this highest form thereof, viz. the Par-Bhakti which is also known as the love that comes after attachment (Rgnug). When this supreme love once comes into the heart of man, his mind will continuously think of God and remember nothing else.
  He will give no room in himself to thoughts other than those of God, and his soul will be unconquerably pure, and will alone break all the bonds of mind and matter and become serenely free. He alone can worship the Lord in his own heart; to him, forms, symbols, books, and doctrines are all unnecessary and are incapable of proving serviceable in any way. It is not easy to love the Lord thus. Ordinarily human love is seen to flourish only in places where it is returned; where love is not returned for love, cold indifference is the natural result. There are, however, rare instances in which we may notice love exhibiting itself even where there is no return of love. We may compare this kind of love, for purposes of illustration, to the love of the moth for the fire; the insect loves the fire, falls into it and dies. It is indeed in the nature of this insect to love so. To love, because it is the nature of love to love, is undeniably the highest and the most unselfish manifestation of love that may be seen in the world. Such love working itself out on the plane of spirituality necessarily leads to the attainment of ParaBhakti.

2.06 - WITH VARIOUS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  I have heard that you live in the world and think of God; so I have come to see you.
  Please tell me something about God.'
  --
  "If you meditate on an ideal you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. A salt doll went into the ocean to measure its depth. It became one with the ocean. What is the goal of books or scriptures? The attainment of God. A man opened a book belonging to a sdhu. He saw the word 'Rma'
  written on every page. There was nothing else.

2.07 - BANKIM CHANDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (sharply): "Eh? You are very saucy! What you do day and night comes out through your mouth. A man belches what he eats. If he eats radish, he belches radish; if he eats green coconut, he belches green coconut. Day and night you live in the midst of 'woman and gold'; so your mouth utters words about that alone. By constantly thinking of worldly things a man becomes calculating and deceitful. On the other hand, he becomes guileless by thinking of God. A man who has seen God will never say what you have just said. What will a pundit's scholarship profit him if he does not think of God and has no discrimination and renunciation? Of what use is erudition if the mind dwells on 'woman and gold'?
  "Kites and vultures soar very high indeed, but their gaze is fixed only on the charnel-pit.
  --
  Sri Ramakrishna continued: "But like the swan are those who think of God, who pray day and night to get rid of their attachment to worldly things and their love for 'woman and gold', who do not enjoy anything except the nectar of the Lotus Feet of the Lord, and to whom worldly pleasures taste bitter. If you put a mixture of milk and water before the swan, it will leave the water and drink only the milk. And haven't you noticed the gait of a swan? It goes straight ahead in one direction. So it is with genuine devotees: they go toward God alone. They seek nothing else; they enjoy nothing else.
  (Tenderly, to Bankim) "Please don't take offence at my words."
  --
  MASTER (to Bankim): "'Woman and gold' alone is the world; that alone is my. Because of it you cannot see or think of God. After the birth of one or two children, husb and and wife should live as brother and sister and talk only of God. Then both their minds will be drawn to God, and the wife will be a help to the husb and on the path of spirituality. None can taste divine bliss without giving up his animal feeling. A devotee should pray to God to help him get rid of this feeling. It. must be a sincere prayer. God is our Inner Controller; He will certainly listen to our prayer if it is sincere.
  "And 'gold'. Sitting on the bank of the Ganges below the Panchavati, I used to say, 'Rupee is clay and clay is rupee;' Then I threw both into the Ganges."

2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  Man melting, like ice vanishing before the blaze of the sun. That is religion. When the sun of God-consciousness rises, this substance called body-consciousness evaporates into an ethereal nothing. Gradually, we begin to approximate God-being. The life of religion is the way of gradual approximation to God-consciousness. Here, true love begins to preponderate in our lives. We do not merely think of God as philosophers or academicians or professors. We love God; and we cannot love a thing which is not really there. We cannot love a thing which is only an idea or a concept in our mind.
  All love is an urge of the soul to contact that which it feels as a hard reality in front of itself.

2.09 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Householders do not know who is a good wife and who is a bad wife, who is a vidyaakti and who is an avidyaakti. A vidyaakti, a good wife, has very little lust and anger. She sleeps little. She pushes her husband's head away from her. She is full of affection, kindness, devotion, modesty, and other noble qualities. Such a wife serves all, looking on all men as her children. Further, she helps increase her husband's love of God. She doesn't spend much money lest her husb and should have to work hard and thus not get leisure to think of God.
  "Mannish women have different traits. These are bad traits: squint eyes and hollow eyes, catlike eyes, lantern jaws like a calf's, and pigeon-breast."

2.10 - THE MASTER AND NARENDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  Worldly people have no time for spiritual practice "When have worldly people time to think of God? A man wanted to engage a pundit who could explain the Bhagavata to him. His friend said: 'I know of an excellent pundit. But there is one difficulty: he does a great deal of farming. He has four ploughs and eight bullocks and is always busy with them; he has no leisure.' Thereupon the man said: 'I don't care for a pundit who has no leisure. I am not looking for a Bhagavata scholar burdened with ploughs and bullocks. I want a pundit who can really expound the sacred book to me.'
  "There was a king who used to listen daily to a pundit's exposition of the Bhagavata.

2.16 - VISIT TO NANDA BOSES HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "That is true. But one should think of God. It is not good to forget Him."
  NANDA: "But how little we think of God!"
  MASTER: "One thinks of God through His grace."
  --
  Only then, by virtue of practice, will he be able to think of God in the hour of death. If one dies thus, thinking of God, one will acquire God's nature.
  "Keshab Sen, too, asked me about the after-life. I said to him also, 'What need have you of all these calculations?' Then I said: 'As long as a man does not realize God, he will return to the world. The potter puts his clay jars and lids out in the sun to bake. If cattle trample them underfoot, he throws, away the baked ones. But he collects the soft ones, mixes them, with more clay, puts them on the wheel, and makes new vessels from them.' "

2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "I ask people to live in the world and at the same time fix their minds on God. I don't ask them to give up the world. I say, 'Fulfil your worldly duties and also think of God.' "
  DWIJA'S FATHER; "I tell my children that they should attend to their studies. I don't forbid them to come to you, but I don't want them to waste time in frivolities with the youngsters."

2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  "Therefore one should trust in the words of holy men and great souls, those who have realized God. They constantly think of God, as a lawyer of his lawsuits. Do you believe the story of the crow Bhushandi?"
  DOCTOR: "I accept as much as I want to. All difficulties come to an end if only God reveals His true nature to the seeker. Then there can be no confusion. How can I accept Rma as an Incarnation of God? Take the example of His killing Vali, the monkey chieftain. He hid Himself behind a tree, like a thief, and murdered Vali. This is how a man acts, and not God."
  --
  "But this renunciation is not meant for householders like you. It is meant only for sannysis. You may live among women, as far as possible in a spirit of detachment. Now and then you must retire into solitude and think of God. Women must not be allowed there. You can lead an unattached life to a great extent if you have faith in God and love for Him. After the birth of one or two children a married couple should live as brother and sister. They should then constantly pray to God that their minds may not run after sense pleasures any more and that they may not have any more children."
  GIRISH (to the doctor, with a smile): "You have already spent three or four hours here.

2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  DOCTOR: "But God has also given us free will. I can think of God, or not, as I like."
  GIRISH: "You think of God or do some good work because you like to. Really it is not you who do these things, but your liking of them that makes you do so."
  DOCTOR: "Why should that be so? I do these things as my duty."
  --
  "Keshab Sen also said something like that. He said to me: 'Sir, suppose a man wants, first of all, to make a suitable arrangement of his property and estate and then think of God; will It be all right for him to do so? Is there anything wrong about it?' I said to him: 'When a man feels utter dispassion, he looks on the world as a deep well and his relatives as venomous cobras. Then he cannot think of saving money or making arrangements about his property.' God alone is real and all else illusory. To think of the world instead of God!
  "A woman was stricken with intense grief. She first tied her nose-ring in the corner of her cloth and then dropped to the ground, saying, 'Oh, friends, what a calamity has befallen me!' But she was very careful not to break the nose-ring."

2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It is one thing not to think of tomorrow and quite another to try to remove poverty by feeding the poor. People don't understand that philanthropy cannot remove poverty, it can at the most relieve it. If you want to remove poverty you must find the causes of poverty and remove them. It is not a correct idea that when people have plenty they will think of God, since the greater number of spiritual people have been those who have renounced everything and lived on very little. As soon as people have money they forget those who have no money.
   Disciple: His idea was that people cannot believe that God is all-merciful, kind and loving, unless at least their physical needs are satisfied.
  --
   People think of God as a kind of super-dictator. The Divine Will lays down general lines but in the actual Play it consents to limitations that are self-imposed. It has also to pay the price in the play of forces. Otherwise you can argue that Rama willed that Sita may be taken away by Ravana! And that Christ knew that he had to be crucified for the work and yet something in him wished it might be otherwise!
   So, it is not all my 'will'; it is the Karma of France and England also that is working.

2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER: "For many years you have devoted yourself to various worldly things. You will not be able to think of God and meditate on Him in this confusion of the world. A little solitude is necessary for you; otherwise your mind will not be steady. Therefore you must fix a place for meditation at least half a mile away from your house."
  Shyam Basu remained silent a few moments. He appeared absorbed in thought.
  --
  M: "Why, you say that during your experiments in the laboratory you go into ecstasy when you think of God's creation. Further, you feel the same emotion when you think of man. If that is so, why shouldn't we bow our heads before God? God dwells in the heart of man.
  "According to Hinduism God dwells in all beings. You have not studied this subject much.

4.03 - Prayer of Quiet, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
  3.: I think I never put this matter so clearly before. To seek God within ourselves avails us far more than to look for Him amongst creatures; Saint Augustine tells us how he found the Almighty within his own soul, after having long sought for Him elsewhere.28' This recollection helps us greatly when God bestows it upon us. But do not fancy you can gain it by thinking of God dwelling within you, or by imagining Him as present in your soul: this is a good practice and an excellent kind of meditation, for it is founded on the fact that God resides within us;29' it is not, however, the prayer of recollection, for by the divine assistance less labour in entering within oneself than in rising above oneself and therefore it appears to me that when the soul is ready and fit for either, you ought to do the former, because the other will follow without any effort, and will be all the more pure and spiritual; however, follow what course your soul prefers as this will bring you more grace and benefit,' (Tr. ix, ch, viii). Some editors of the Interior Castle think that St. Teresa refers to the following passage taken from the Confessions of St. Augustine: 'Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, ever ancient yet ever new! too late have I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within me and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee, and, deformed as I was, I pursued the beauties that Thou hast made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, could have had no being' (St. Augustine's Confessions, bk. x, ch. xxvii.). The Confessions of St. Augustine were first translated into Spanish by Sebastian Toscano, a Portuguese Augustinian. This edition, which was published at Salamanca in 1554, was the one used by St. Teresa. St. Teresa quotes a passage which occurs in a pious book entitled Soliloquia, and erroneously attributed to St. Augustine: 'I have gone about the streets and the broad ways of the city of this world seeking Thee, but have not found Thee for I was wrong in seeking without for what was within.' (ch. xxxi.) This treatise which is also quoted by St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, stanza i. 7, Ascent of Mount Carmel, bk. i. ch. v. 1, appeared in a Spanish translation at Valladolid in 1515, at Medina del Campo in 1553, and at Toledo in 1565. every one can practise it, but what I mean is quite a different thing. Sometimes, before they have begun to think of God, the powers of the soul find themselves within the castle. I know not by what means they entered, nor how they heard the Shepherd's pipe; the ears perceived no sound but the soul is keenly conscious of a delicious sense of recollection experienced by those who enjoy this favour, which I cannot describe more clearly.
  4.: I think I read somewhere30 that the soul is then like a tortoise or sea-urchin, which retreats into itself. Those who said this no doubt understood what they were talking about; but these creatures can withdraw into themselves at will, while here it is not in our power to retire into ourselves, unless God gives us the grace. In my opinion, His Majesty only bestows this favour on those who have renounced the world, in desire at least, if their state of life does not permit their doing so in fact. He thus specially calls them to devote themselves to spiritual things; if they allow Him power to at freely He will bestow still greater graces on those whom He thus begins calling to a higher life. Those who enjoy this recollection should thank God fervently: it is of the highest importance for them to realize the value of this favour, gratitude for which would prepare them to receive still more signal graces. Some books advise that as a preparation for hearing what our Lord may say to us we should keep our minds at rest, waiting to see what He will work in our souls.31' But unless His Majesty has begun to suspend our faculties, I cannot understand how we are to stop thinking, without doing ourselves more harm than good. This point has been much debated by those learned in spiritual matters; I confess my want of humility in having been unable to yield to their opinion.32

Phaedo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  12. When we think of God and of man in his relation to God; of the imperfection of our present state and yet of the progress which is observable in the history of the world and of the human mind; of the depth and power of our moral ideas which seem to partake of the very nature of God Himself; when we consider the contrast between the physical laws to which we are subject and the higher law which raises us above them and is yet a part of them; when we reflect on our capacity of becoming the 'spectators of all time and all existence,' and of framing in our own minds the ideal of a perfect Being; when we see how the human mind in all the higher religions of the world, including Buddhism, notwithstanding some aberrations, has tended towards such a beliefwe have reason to think that our destiny is different from that of animals; and though we cannot altogether shut out the childish fear that the soul upon leaving the body may 'vanish into thin air,' we have still, so far as the nature of the subject admits, a hope of immortality with which we comfort ourselves on sufficient grounds. The denial of the belief takes the heart out of human life; it lowers men to the level of the material. As Goe the also says, 'He is dead even in this world who has no belief in another.'
  13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of thought under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented to us. It is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be described, as in a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird, half-human, nor in any other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as in Milton, singing the Almighty's praises, are a noble image, and may furnish a theme for the poet or the painter, but they are no longer an adequate expression of the kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is there any mansion, in this world or another, in which the departed can be imagined to dwell and carry on their occupations. When this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, no other habitation or building can take them in: it is in the language of ideas only that we speak of them.

Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  823. Should you think of God only at the time of meditation and remain forgetful of Him at all other
  times? Have you not noticed how during Durga Puja a lamp is kept constantly burning near the image? It

Talks 026-050, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
    (prasad or arul). It is by Gods Grace that you think of God.
    D.: Is not the Masters Grace the result of Gods Grace?

Talks 076-099, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  D.: When I sit down to think of God, thoughts wander away to other objects. I want to control those thoughts.
  M.: In the Bhagavad Gita it is said that it is the nature of the mind to wander. One must bring ones thoughts to bear on God. By long practice the mind is controlled and made steady.

Talks 600-652, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  (Swarupa). One is always that. He realises it by the means he adopts. What is bhakti? To think of God. That means: only one thought prevails to the exclusion of all other thoughts. That thought is of God which is the Self or it is the Self surrendered unto God.
  When He has taken you up nothing will assail you. The absence of thoughts is bhakti. It is also mukti.

The Pilgrims Progress, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  IGNOR. Why, I think of God and heaven.
  CHR. So do the devils and damned souls.

Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Leaving the further explanation of details, which the reader will find discussed at length in Boeckh and Martin, we may now return to the main argument: Why did God make the world? Like man, he must have a purpose; and his purpose is the diffusion of that goodness or good which he himself is. The term 'goodness' is not to be understood in this passage as meaning benevolence or love, in the Christian sense of the term, but rather law, order, harmony, like the idea of good in the Republic. The ancient mythologers, and even the Hebrew prophets, had spoken of the jealousy of God; and the Greek had imagined that there was a Nemesis always attending the prosperity of mortals. But Plato delights to think of God as the author of order in his works, who, like a father, lives over again in his children, and can never have too much of good or friendship among his creatures. Only, as there is a certain remnant of evil inherent in matter which he cannot get rid of, he detaches himself from them and leaves them to themselves, that he may be guiltless of their faults and sufferings.
  Between the ideal and the sensible Plato interposes the two natures of time and space. Time is conceived by him to be only the shadow or image of eternity which ever is and never has been or will be, but is described in a figure only as past or future. This is one of the great thoughts of early philosophy, which are still as difficult to our minds as they were to the early thinkers; or perhaps more difficult, because we more distinctly see the consequences which are involved in such an hypothesis. All the objections which may be urged against Kant's doctrine of the ideality of space and time at once press upon us. If time is unreal, then all which is contained in time is unrealthe succession of human thoughts as well as the flux of sensations; there is no connecting link between (Greek) and (Greek). Yet, on the other hand, we are conscious that knowledge is independent of time, that truth is not a thing of yesterday or tomorrow, but an 'eternal now.' To the 'spectator of all time and all existence' the universe remains at rest. The truths of geometry and arithmetic in all their combinations are always the same. The generations of men, like the leaves of the forest, come and go, but the mathematical laws by which the world is governed remain, and seem as if they could never change. The ever-present image of space is transferred to timesuccession is conceived as extension. (We remark that Plato does away with the above and below in space, as he has done away with the absolute existence of past and future.) The course of time, unless regularly marked by divisions of number, partakes of the indefiniteness of the Heraclitean flux. By such reflections we may conceive the Greek to have attained the metaphysical conception of eternity, which to the Hebrew was gained by meditation on the Divine Being. No one saw that this objective was really a subjective, and involved the subjectivity of all knowledge. 'Non in tempore sed cum tempore finxit Deus mundum,' says St. Augustine, repeating a thought derived from the Timaeus, but apparently unconscious of the results to which his doctrine would have led.

Verses of Vemana, #is Book, #unset, #Zen
  When their crimes fall on their head, they think of God. When they(fall with their heads under) live headlessly they think not on God. Like sinners do they make a noise as if in (or seeing) a dream, See they this? O Vema.
  1104

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