TERMS STARTING WITH
vision ::: 1. The mystical experience of seeing as if with the eyes the supernatural or a supernatural being. 2. A mystical insight. 3. Ability to see or conceive what might be attempted or achieved. 4. The faculty of sight; eyesight. 5. Something that is or has been seen. 6. A person, scene, etc., of extraordinary beauty. **Vision, vision"s, Vision"s, visions, All-vision, earth-vision, God-vision"s, seer-vision"s, self-vision, soul-vision, stress-vision, vision-plans.
visional ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a vision.
visionaries ::: pl. --> of Visionary
visionariness ::: n. --> The quality or state of being visionary.
visionary ::: 1. Of, pertaining to, or proper to, a vision. 2. Given to or concerned with seeing visions; having the ability to see them.
visionary ::: 1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to see things using TV cameras. The problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? See SMOP, AI-complete.)2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently, such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder.[Jargon File]
visionary 1. One who hacks vision, in the sense of an Artificial Intelligence researcher working on the problem of getting computers to "see" things using TV cameras. (There isn't any problem in sending information from a TV camera to a computer. The problem is, how can the computer be programmed to make use of the camera information? See {SMOP}, {AI-complete}.) 2. [IBM] One who reads the outside literature. At IBM, apparently, such a penchant is viewed with awe and wonder. [{Jargon File}]
visionary ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a visions or visions; characterized by, appropriate to, or favorable for, visions.
Affected by phantoms; disposed to receive impressions on the imagination; given to reverie; apt to receive, and act upon, fancies as if they were realities.
Existing in imagination only; not real; fanciful; imaginary; having no solid foundation; as, visionary prospect; a visionary scheme or project.
visionary) in the form of a German knight. A
vision, cosmic ::: see: cosmic vision
visioned ::: 1. Pertaining to, seen in, or arising from a vision. 2. Having the ability or power to perceive, see as in a vision, or bring before the eye of the mind. 3. Gifted and filled with prophetic vision. 4. The power of seeing. dull-visioned, keen-visioned, large-visioned, many-visioned.
visioned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Vision ::: a. --> Having the power of seeing visions; inspired; also, seen in visions.
visioning ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Vision
vision, inner ::: see: inner vision
visionist ::: n. --> A visionary.
visionless ::: 1. Lacking the faculty of sight; blind. 2. Lacking intelligent foresight or imagination; uninspired.
visionless ::: a. --> Destitute of vision; sightless.
vision-logic ::: The cognitive stage necessary to support integral consciousness. Typically subdivided into early, middle, and late vision-logic. Early vision-logic differentiates reality into relativistic systems, while middle and late vision-logic add up and integrate those perspectives into systems of systems. Vision-logic is often referred to as the first “postformal” stage of cognitive development since it is immediately beyond or “after” formal operational cognition. However, it is not yet “transrational,” but rather the limit of rational thought. Vision-logic is, in a sense, the bridge between the mental and the transmental.
vision processing unit (VPU) ::: A type of microprocessor designed to accelerate machine vision tasks.[318][319]Value-alignment complete – Analogous to an AI-complete problem, a value-alignment complete problem is a problem where the AI control problem needs to be fully solved to solve it.[citation needed]
visions of Beasts, which might terrifie Adam from
vision, subtle ::: see subtle vision
vision ::: “Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support.” Sri Aurobindo ‘The Mother’
vision ::: v. --> The act of seeing external objects; actual sight.
The faculty of seeing; sight; one of the five senses, by which colors and the physical qualities of external objects are appreciated as a result of the stimulating action of light on the sensitive retina, an expansion of the optic nerve.
That which is seen; an object of sight.
Especially, that which is seen otherwise than by the ordinary sight, or the rational eye; a supernatural, prophetic, or
Vision ::: A type of experience characterized by visual and auditory phemonena that is not linked to one's physical reality at the moment. Visions are thought of as distinct from visualizations and are either presented to one by an entity or through one's Higher Self. Contrast with Revelation.
VISION CENTRE. ::: We Forehead
Vision (Kabbalah) ::: The core experience that characterizes the current of a particular Sephirah in the Kabbalah.
Vision of Isaiah, as well as the Testament of Hezekiah.
Vision of Isaiah. See Charles.
Vision of Paul (or Apocalypse of Paul). In James, The
Vision of the ram and the he-goat ( Rf. Daniel 8) with Daniel kneeling before the angel Gabriel. [Note—The
Vision of the ram and the he-goat (Rf. Daniel 8) with Daniel kneeling before the angel Gabriel.
Visions — colours: When i!»c colours begin lo take definite shapes in the >jslons, it is a sign of some dynamic work of formation in the consciousness ::: a square, for instance, means that some kind of creation is in process in some field of the being ; the square indicates that the creation is to be complete in itself ; while the rectangle indicates somcihws partial and preliminary.
Visions do not come from the spiritual plane ; they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Dirae, c.g. the experience of Self every- where. of the Divine in all etc.
Visions of Ezekiel, The. A hechaloth text recovered from
Visions of Ezekiel where, however, the meaning of
Visions.]
VISIONS. ::: Visions are due to the groivth of the • tvhich sees things belonging to all the planes of “'s'"
Vision: The appearance of supernatural entities or scenes to the eyes of mortals.
TERMS ANYWHERE
1. Imagination, caprice, whim, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained. 2. The forming of mental images, esp. wondrous, extravagant or visionary fancy. 3. A mental image, esp. when unreal or fantastic; vision. fantasies.
abacus ::: n. --> A table or tray strewn with sand, anciently used for drawing, calculating, etc.
A calculating table or frame; an instrument for performing arithmetical calculations by balls sliding on wires, or counters in grooves, the lowest line representing units, the second line, tens, etc. It is still employed in China.
The uppermost member or division of the capital of a column, immediately under the architrave. See Column.
abstractions ::: things which have no independent existence, which exist only in idea; visionary and unrealistic.
avision ::: n. --> Vision.
acephala ::: n. pl. --> That division of the Mollusca which includes the bivalve shells, like the clams and oysters; -- so called because they have no evident head. Formerly the group included the Tunicata, Brachiopoda, and sometimes the Bryozoa. See Mollusca.
acetabulifera ::: n. pl. --> The division of Cephalopoda in which the arms are furnished with cup-shaped suckers, as the cuttlefishes, squids, and octopus; the Dibranchiata. See Cephalopoda.
achate ::: n. --> An agate.
Purchase; bargaining.
Provisions. Same as Cates.
"A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements — the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress — that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
“A cosmos or universe is always a harmony, otherwise it could not exist, it would fly to pieces. But as there are musical harmonies which are built out of discords partly or even predominantly, so this universe (the material) is disharmonious in its separate elements—the individual elements are at discord with each other to a large extent; it is only owing to the sustaining Divine Will behind that the whole is still a harmony to those who look at it with the cosmic vision. But it is a harmony in evolution in progress—that is, all is combined to strive towards a goal which is not yet reached, and the object of our yoga is to hasten the arrival to this goal. When it is reached, there will be a harmony of harmonies substituted for the present harmony built up on discords. This is the explanation of the present appearance of things.” Letters on Yoga
actinaria ::: n. pl. --> A large division of Anthozoa, including those which have simple tentacles and do not form stony corals. Sometimes, in a wider sense, applied to all the Anthozoa, expert the Alcyonaria, whether forming corals or not.
adamite ::: n. --> A descendant of Adam; a human being.
One of a sect of visionaries, who, professing to imitate the state of Adam, discarded the use of dress in their assemblies.
adelaster ::: n. --> A provisional name for a plant which has not had its flowers botanically examined, and therefore has not been referred to its proper genus.
adesmy ::: n. --> The division or defective coherence of an organ that is usually entire.
aery ::: n. --> An aerie. ::: a. --> Aerial; ethereal; incorporeal; visionary.
agrarian ::: a. --> Pertaining to fields, or lands, or their tenure; esp., relating to an equal or equitable division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which distributed the conquered and other public lands among citizens.
Wild; -- said of plants growing in the fields. ::: n.
agrarianism ::: n. --> An equal or equitable division of landed property; the principles or acts of those who favor a redistribution of land.
AHAMKARA. ::: Ego; ego-idea; egoism; the separative egosense; the divisional principle of ego-formation.
rājasika ahamkāra ::: dynamic egoism.
sāllvika ahamkāra ::: egoism as expressed in the sense of goodness and virtue.
tāmasika ahamkāra ::: egoism as expressed in ignorance and inertia.
aisle ::: a longitudinal division of an interior area, as in a church, separated from the main area by an arcade or divided by a row of pillars. aisles.
aisle ::: n. --> A lateral division of a building, separated from the middle part, called the nave, by a row of columns or piers, which support the roof or an upper wall containing windows, called the clearstory wall.
Improperly used also for the have; -- as in the phrases, a church with three aisles, the middle aisle.
Also (perhaps from confusion with alley), a passage into which the pews of a church open.
allantoidea ::: n. pl. --> The division of Vertebrata in which the embryo develops an allantois. It includes reptiles, birds, and mammals.
". . . all division is intended to enrich by an experience of various sweetness of unification the joy of realised unity.” The Life Divine
“… all division is intended to enrich by an experience of various sweetness of unification the joy of realised unity.” The Life Divine
All helpful or supporting contacts in dream or vision are to be welcomed and accepted. Experiences of the right kind are a
all- ::: prefix: Wholly, altogether, infinitely. Since 1600, the number of these [combinations] has been enormously extended, all-** having become a possible prefix, in poetry at least, to almost any adjective of quality. all-affirming, All-Beautiful, All-Beautiful"s, All-Bliss, All-Blissful, All-causing, all-concealing, all-conquering, All-Conscient, All-Conscious, all-containing, All-containing, all-creating, all-defeating, All-Delight, all-discovering, all-embracing, all-fulfilling, all-harbouring, all-inhabiting, all-knowing, All-knowing, All-Knowledge, all-levelling, All-Life, All-love, All-Love, all-negating, all-powerful, all-revealing, All-ruler, all-ruling, all-seeing, All-seeing, all-seeking, all-shaping, all-supporting, all-sustaining, all-swallowing, All-Truth, All-vision, All-Wisdom, all-wise, All-Wise, all-witnessing, All-Wonderful, All-Wonderful"s.**
almighty ::: ”See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human
Amal: “In occult vision the colour of the mind is either yellow or blue. The yellow intensifies into the gold of the Supramental and the blue into the Divine Mother’s compassionate infinity.”
Amal: “I suppose the phrase means cosmic powers that lead us into false perceptions, powers which, while seeming cosmic, are really our own selves whose image gets visioned on an enormous scale.”
Amal: “‘The earth’s strange twi-natured life’ means the earth’s self-division, one part tending upward, the other drawn downward.”
Amal: “There appears to be an allusion to the Greek concept or semi-vision of a heaven beyond death where the unfading flower called asphodel bloomed.”
Amal: “’Triple’ evidently refers to the division into past, present and future. The division was no longer a bar to a comprehensive vision and understanding.”
amharic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Amhara, a division of Abyssinia; as, the Amharic language is closely allied to the Ethiopic. ::: n. --> The Amharic language (now the chief language of Abyssinia).
ammunition ::: n. --> Military stores, or provisions of all kinds for attack or defense.
Articles used in charging firearms and ordnance of all kinds; as powder, balls, shot, shells, percussion caps, rockets, etc.
Any stock of missiles, literal or figurative. ::: v. t.
amoebea ::: n. pl. --> That division of the Rhizopoda which includes the amoeba and similar forms.
amphiaster ::: n. --> The achromatic figure, formed in mitotic cell-division, consisting of two asters connected by a spindle-shaped bundle of rodlike fibers diverging from each aster, and called the spindle.
amphibiotica ::: n. pl. --> A division of insects having aquatic larvae.
amphineura ::: n. pl. --> A division of Mollusca remarkable for the bilateral symmetry of the organs and the arrangement of the nerves.
anallantoidea ::: n. pl. --> The division of Vertebrata in which no allantois is developed. It includes amphibians, fishes, and lower forms.
anarthropoda ::: n. pl. --> One of the divisions of Articulata in which there are no jointed legs, as the annelids; -- opposed to Arthropoda.
And still we can recognise at once in the Overmind the original cosmic Maya, not a Maya of Ignorance but a Maya of Knowledge, yet a Power which has made the Ignorance possible, even inevitable. For if each principle loosed into action must follow its independent line and carry out its complete consequences, the principle of separation must also be allowed its complete course and arrive at its absolute consequence; this is Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source. There has already been a similar separation of Overmind from its supramental source, but with a transparency in the veil which allows a conscious transmission and maintains a certain luminous kinship; but here the veil is opaque and the transmission of the Overmind motives to the Mind is occult and obscure. Mind separated acts as if it were an independent principle, and each mental being, each basic mental idea, power, force stands similarly on its separate self; if it communicates with or combines or contacts others, it is not with the catholic universality of the overmind movement, on a basis of underlying oneness, but as independent units joining to form a separate constructed whole. It is by this movement that we pass from the cosmic Truth into the cosmic Ignorance. The cosmic Mind on this level, no doubt, comprehends its own unity, but it is not aware of its own source and foundation in the Spirit or can only comprehend it by the intelligence, not in any enduring experience; it acts in itself as if by its own right and works out what it receives as material without direct communication with the source from which it receives it. Its units also act in ignorance of each other and of the cosmic whole except for the knowledge that they can get by contact and communication,—the basic sense of identity and the mutual penetration and understanding that comes from it are no longer there. All the actions of this Mind Energy proceed on the opposite basis of the Ignorance and its divisions and, although they are the results of a certain conscious knowledge, it is a partial knowledge, not a true and integral self-knowledge, nor a true and integral world-knowledge. This character persists in Life and in subtle Matter and reappears in the gross material universe which arises from the final lapse into the Inconscience. …
anisopleura ::: n. pl. --> A primary division of gastropods, including those having spiral shells. The two sides of the body are unequally developed.
anisopoda ::: n. pl. --> A division of Crustacea, which, in some its characteristics, is intermediate between Amphipoda and Isopoda.
annelida ::: n. pl. --> A division of the Articulata, having the body formed of numerous rings or annular segments, and without jointed legs. The principal subdivisions are the Chaetopoda, including the Oligochaeta or earthworms and Polychaeta or marine worms; and the Hirudinea or leeches. See Chaetopoda.
annuloida ::: n. pl. --> A division of the Articulata, including the annelids and allied groups; sometimes made to include also the helminths and echinoderms.
annulosa ::: n. pl. --> A division of the Invertebrata, nearly equivalent to the Articulata. It includes the Arthoropoda and Anarthropoda. By some zoologists it is applied to the former only.
anseriformes ::: n. pl. --> A division of birds including the geese, ducks, and closely allied forms.
anthobranchia ::: n. pl. --> A division of nudibranchiate Mollusca, in which the gills form a wreath or cluster upon the posterior part of the back. See Nudibranchiata, and Doris.
anthropography ::: n. --> That branch of anthropology which treats of the actual distribution of the human race in its different divisions, as distinguished by physical character, language, institutions, and customs, in contradistinction to ethnography, which treats historically of the origin and filiation of races and nations.
anticipation ::: n. --> The act of anticipating, taking up, placing, or considering something beforehand, or before the proper time in natural order.
Previous view or impression of what is to happen; instinctive prevision; foretaste; antepast; as, the anticipation of the joys of heaven.
Hasty notion; intuitive preconception.
The commencing of one or more tones of a chord with
Anybody can do that merely by a little practice ; anybody who observes his own thoughts, feelings, actions, has begun doing it already. In yoga, we nwke the division complete, that is all.
apartment ::: n. --> A room in a building; a division in a house, separated from others by partitions.
A set or suite of rooms.
A compartment.
aplacophora ::: n. pl. --> A division of Amphineura in which the body is naked or covered with slender spines or setae, but is without shelly plates.
appear ::: 1. To come into sight; become visible; come into view, as from a place or state of concealment, or from a distance; esp. of angels, spirits, visions. 2. To come into existence; be created. 3. To be clear to the understanding. 4. To seem or look to be. appears, appeared, appearing.
apportionment ::: n. --> The act of apportioning; a dividing into just proportions or shares; a division or shares; a division and assignment, to each proprietor, of his just portion of an undivided right or property.
archencephala ::: n. pl. --> The division that includes man alone.
architrave ::: n. --> The lower division of an entablature, or that part which rests immediately on the column, esp. in classical architecture. See Column.
The group of moldings, or other architectural member, above and on both sides of a door or other opening, especially if square in form.
areolation ::: n. --> Division into areolae.
Any small space, bounded by some part different in color or structure, as the spaces bounded by the nervures of the wings of insects, or those by the veins of leaves; an areola.
argo ::: n. --> The name of the ship which carried Jason and his fifty-four companions to Colchis, in quest of the Golden Fleece.
A large constellation in the southern hemisphere, called also Argo Navis. In modern astronomy it is replaced by its three divisions, Carina, Puppis, and Vela.
army ::: n. --> A collection or body of men armed for war, esp. one organized in companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions, under proper officers.
A body of persons organized for the advancement of a cause; as, the Blue Ribbon Army.
A great number; a vast multitude; a host.
arrondissement ::: n. --> A subdivision of a department.
arthrogastra ::: n. pl. --> A division of the Arachnida, having the abdomen annulated, including the scorpions, harvestmen, etc.; pedipalpi.
arthropoda ::: n. pl. --> A large division of Articulata, embracing all those that have jointed legs. It includes Insects, Arachnida, Pychnogonida, and Crustacea.
arthrostraca ::: n. pl. --> One of the larger divisions of Crustacea, so called because the thorax and abdomen are both segmented; Tetradecapoda. It includes the Amphipoda and Isopoda.
articulata ::: v. --> One of the four subkingdoms in the classification of Cuvier. It has been much modified by later writers.
One of the subdivisions of the Brachiopoda, including those that have the shells united by a hinge.
A subdivision of the Crinoidea.
articulate ::: a. --> Expressed in articles or in separate items or particulars.
Jointed; formed with joints; consisting of segments united by joints; as, articulate animals or plants.
Distinctly uttered; spoken so as to be intelligible; characterized by division into words and syllables; as, articulate speech, sounds, words.
articulation ::: n. --> A joint or juncture between bones in the skeleton.
The connection of the parts of a plant by joints, as in pods.
One of the nodes or joints, as in cane and maize.
One of the parts intercepted between the joints; also, a subdivision into parts at regular or irregular intervals as a result of serial intermission in growth, as in the cane, grasses, etc.
The act of putting together with a joint or joints;
artiodactyla ::: n. pl. --> One of the divisions of the ungulate animals. The functional toes of the hind foot are even in number, and the third digit of each foot (corresponding to the middle finger in man) is asymmetrical and paired with the fourth digit, as in the hog, the sheep, and the ox; -- opposed to Perissodactyla.
aryan ::: n. --> One of a primitive people supposed to have lived in prehistoric times, in Central Asia, east of the Caspian Sea, and north of the Hindoo Koosh and Paropamisan Mountains, and to have been the stock from which sprang the Hindoo, Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, and other races; one of that ethnological division of mankind called also Indo-European or Indo-Germanic.
The language of the original Aryans.
aspect ::: n. --> The act of looking; vision; gaze; glance.
Look, or particular appearance of the face; countenance; mien; air.
Appearance to the eye or the mind; look; view.
Position or situation with regard to seeing; that position which enables one to look in a particular direction; position in relation to the points of the compass; as, a house has a southern aspect, that is, a position which faces the south.
asquint ::: adv. --> With the eye directed to one side; not in the straight line of vision; obliquely; awry, so as to see distortedly; as, to look asquint. html{color:
“As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man;—this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other,—invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
astigmatism ::: n. --> A defect of the eye or of a lens, in consequence of which the rays derived from one point are not brought to a single focal point, thus causing imperfect images or indistinctness of vision.
ASURA. ::: Titan; a being of ignorant egoism as opposed to the Deva or god, who is a being of Light; sons of Darkness and Division.
Asuras are really the dark side of the mental, or more strictly, of the vital mind plane. This mind is the very field of the Asuras. Their main characteristic is egoistic strength and struggle, which refuse the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas, and intelligence, but all that for the sake of his ego.
There are no Asuras on the higher planes where the Truth prevails, except in the Vedic sense -“ the Divine in its strength “. The mental and vital Asuras are only a deviation of that power.
There are two kinds of Asuras - one kind were divine in their origin but have fallen from their divinity by self-will and opposition to the intention of the Divine; they are spoken in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purpose of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as also the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pishachas and others resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don’t change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectual mind; but the basis of his thinking and feeling is vital and not mental, at the service of his desire and not truth. He is a formation assumed by the life-principle for a particular kind of work and not a divine formation or soul.
Some kinds of Asuras are very religious, very fanatical about their religion, very strict about rules of ethical conduct. There are others who use spiritual ideas without believing in them to give them a perverted twist and delude the sadhaka.
"At first when one begins to see, it is quite usual for the more ill-defined and imprecise figures to last longer while those which are successful, complete, precise in detail and outline are apt to be quite momentary and disappear in an instant. It is only when the subtle vision is well developed that the precise and full seeing lasts for a long time.” Letters on Yoga*
“At first when one begins to see, it is quite usual for the more ill-defined and imprecise figures to last longer while those which are successful, complete, precise in detail and outline are apt to be quite momentary and disappear in an instant. It is only when the subtle vision is well developed that the precise and full seeing lasts for a long time.” Letters on Yoga
athecata ::: n. pl. --> A division of Hydroidea in which the zooids are naked, or not inclosed in a capsule. See Tubularian.
A third eye does open there (in the centre of the forehead); it represents the occult vision and the occult powers which goes with that vision.
"A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
“A third step is to find out that there is something in him other than his instrumental mind, life and body, not only an immortal ever-developing individual soul that supports his nature but an eternal immutable self and spirit, and to learn what are the categories of his spiritual being, until he discovers that all in him is an expression of the spirit and distinguishes the link between his lower and his higher existence; thus he sets out to remove his constitutional self-ignorance. Discovering self and spirit he discovers God; he finds out that there is a Self beyond the temporal: he comes to the vision of that Self in the cosmic consciousness as the divine Reality behind Nature and this world of beings; his mind opens to the thought or the sense of the Absolute of whom self and the individual and the cosmos are so many faces; the cosmic, the egoistic, the original ignorance begin to lose the rigidness of their hold upon him.” The Life Divine
awry ::: adv. & a. --> Turned or twisted toward one side; not in a straight or true direction, or position; out of the right course; distorted; obliquely; asquint; with oblique vision; as, to glance awry.
Aside from the line of truth, or right reason; unreasonable or unreasonably; perverse or perversely.
babel ::: “The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other’s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
babel ::: "The reference is to the mythological story of the construction of the Tower of Babel, which appears to be an attempt to explain the diversity of human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and tower ‘with its top in the heavens". God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The tower was never completed and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works Sri Aurobindo: "The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other"s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle
baggage ::: n. --> The clothes, tents, utensils, and provisions of an army.
The trunks, valises, satchels, etc., which a traveler carries with him on a journey; luggage.
Purulent matter.
Trashy talk.
A man of bad character.
A woman of loose morals; a prostitute.
A romping, saucy girl.
balaenoidea ::: n. --> A division of the Cetacea, including the right whale and all other whales having the mouth fringed with baleen. See Baleen.
barony ::: n. --> The fee or domain of a baron; the lordship, dignity, or rank of a baron.
In Ireland, a territorial division, corresponding nearly to the English hundred, and supposed to have been originally the district of a native chief. There are 252 of these baronies. In Scotland, an extensive freehold. It may be held by a commoner.
basidium ::: n. --> A special oblong or pyriform cell, with slender branches, which bears the spores in that division of fungi called Basidiomycetes, of which the common mushroom is an example.
batoidei ::: n. pl. --> The division of fishes which includes the rays and skates.
battel ::: n. --> A single combat; as, trial by battel. See Wager of battel, under Wager.
Provisions ordered from the buttery; also, the charges for them; -- only in the pl., except when used adjectively. ::: v. i. --> To be supplied with provisions from the buttery.
battery ::: v. t. --> The act of battering or beating.
The unlawful beating of another. It includes every willful, angry and violent, or negligent touching of another&
battle ::: a. --> Fertile. See Battel, a. ::: v. t. --> A general action, fight, or encounter, in which all the divisions of an army are or may be engaged; an engagement; a combat.
A struggle; a contest; as, the battle of life.
A division of an army; a battalion.
battler ::: n. --> A student at Oxford who is supplied with provisions from the buttery; formerly, one who paid for nothing but what he called for, answering nearly to a sizar at Cambridge.
Besides these transcriptions or impresses the psychical vision receives thought Images and other forms created by constant activity of consciousaess in ourselves or in other human beings, and these may be according to the character of the activity, images of truth or falsehood or else mixed things, partly true, partly false, and may be too either mere shells and representa- tions or images inspired wth a temporary life and consciousness and, it may be, canjing in them in one way or another some kind of beneficent or maleficent action or some willed or unwilled effectiveness on our minds or vital being or through them e^'cn on the body. These transcriptions, impresses, thought images, life images, projections of the consciousness may also be representa- tions or creations not of the physical wxtrJd, but of vital, psychic or mental worlds beyond us, seen in our own minds or projected from other than human beings. And as there is this psychical vision of which some of the more cxremaf ana’ ordinary marrr- festaUons arc well enough known by the name of clairvoyance, so there is a psychical hearing and psychical touch, taste, smell
bifurcation ::: n. --> A forking, or division into two branches.
bigeminate ::: a. --> Having a forked petiole, and a pair of leaflets at the end of each division; biconjugate; twice paired; -- said of a decompound leaf.
binocular ::: a. --> Having two eyes.
Pertaining to both eyes; employing both eyes at once; as, binocular vision.
Adapted to the use of both eyes; as, a binocular microscope or telescope. ::: n.
bipartite ::: a. --> Being in two parts; having two correspondent parts, as a legal contract or writing, one for each party; shared by two; as, a bipartite treaty.
Divided into two parts almost to the base, as a leaf; consisting of two parts or subdivisions.
bisection ::: n. --> Division into two parts, esp. two equal parts.
BLACK MAGIC. ::: Occultism of the adverse powers. The occultism of the divine Powers is quite different. One is based on unity, the other on division.
bladderwort ::: n. --> A genus (Utricularia) of aquatic or marshy plants, which usually bear numerous vesicles in the divisions of the leaves. These serve as traps for minute animals. See Ascidium.
blastoidea ::: n. pl. --> One of the divisions of Crinoidea found fossil in paleozoic rocks; pentremites. They are so named on account of their budlike form.
blastomere ::: n. --> One of the segments first formed by the division of the ovum.
blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” The Life Divine
blindness ::: 1. A lack or impairment of vision. 2. *Fig.* Lack of vision or awareness.
blinkers ::: leather side pieces attached to a horse"s bridle to prevent sideways vision.
blue lotus of the Idea. ::: Sri Aurobindo: "It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
blur ::: v. t. --> To render obscure by making the form or outline of confused and uncertain, as by soiling; to smear; to make indistinct and confused; as, to blur manuscript by handling it while damp; to blur the impression of a woodcut by an excess of ink.
To cause imperfection of vision in; to dim; to darken.
To sully; to stain; to blemish, as reputation. ::: n.
board ::: n. --> A piece of timber sawed thin, and of considerable length and breadth as compared with the thickness, -- used for building, etc.
A table to put food upon.
Hence: What is served on a table as food; stated meals; provision; entertainment; -- usually as furnished for pay; as, to work for one&
"Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
“Body is the outward sign and lowest basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her multiple consciousness.” The Life Divine
book ::: n. --> A collection of sheets of paper, or similar material, blank, written, or printed, bound together; commonly, many folded and bound sheets containing continuous printing or writing.
A composition, written or printed; a treatise.
A part or subdivision of a treatise or literary work; as, the tenth book of "Paradise Lost."
A volume or collection of sheets in which accounts are kept; a register of debts and credits, receipts and expenditures, etc.
border ::: n. 1. A part that forms the outer edge of something. 2. The line or frontier area separating political divisions or geographic regions; a boundary. 3. A strip of ground, as that at the edge of a garden or walk, an edging. borders. v. 4. To form the boundary of; be contiguous to. fig. To confine. 5. To lie adjacent to another. bordered.
brachiata ::: n. pl. --> A division of the Crinoidea, including those furnished with long jointed arms. See Crinoidea.
branch ::: n. --> A shoot or secondary stem growing from the main stem, or from a principal limb or bough of a tree or other plant.
Any division extending like a branch; any arm or part connected with the main body of thing; ramification; as, the branch of an antler; the branch of a chandelier; a branch of a river; a branch of a railway.
Any member or part of a body or system; a distinct article; a section or subdivision; a department.
bronchia ::: n. pl. --> The bronchial tubes which arise from the branching of the trachea, esp. the subdivision of the bronchi.
bronchus ::: n. --> One of the subdivisions of the trachea or windpipe; esp. one of the two primary divisions.
bumboat ::: n. --> A clumsy boat, used for conveying provisions, fruit, etc., for sale, to vessels lying in port or off shore.
bunodonts ::: n. pl. --> A division of the herbivorous mammals including the hogs and hippopotami; -- so called because the teeth are tuberculated. html{color:
"But it is not a mental Intelligence that informs and governs all things; it is a self-aware Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence: it is this Truth-Consciousness which has not to think out things but works them out with knowledge according to the impeccable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and self-fulfilling Existence.” The Life Divine
“But it is not a mental Intelligence that informs and governs all things; it is a self-aware Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence: it is this Truth-Consciousness which has not to think out things but works them out with knowledge according to the impeccable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and self-fulfilling Existence.” The Life Divine
buttery ::: a. --> Having the qualities, consistence, or appearance, of butter. ::: n. --> An apartment in a house where butter, milk and other provisions are kept.
A room in some English colleges where liquors, fruit, and
But there arc visions and visions, just as there are dreams and dreams, and one has to develop discrimination and a sense of values and things and know how to understand and make use of these powers.
"But the Titan will have nothing of all this; it is too great and subtle for his comprehension. His instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel, — if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly, — it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
vision ::: 1. The mystical experience of seeing as if with the eyes the supernatural or a supernatural being. 2. A mystical insight. 3. Ability to see or conceive what might be attempted or achieved. 4. The faculty of sight; eyesight. 5. Something that is or has been seen. 6. A person, scene, etc., of extraordinary beauty. **Vision, vision"s, Vision"s, visions, All-vision, earth-vision, God-vision"s, seer-vision"s, self-vision, soul-vision, stress-vision, vision-plans.
visionary ::: 1. Of, pertaining to, or proper to, a vision. 2. Given to or concerned with seeing visions; having the ability to see them.
vision, cosmic ::: see: cosmic vision
visioned ::: 1. Pertaining to, seen in, or arising from a vision. 2. Having the ability or power to perceive, see as in a vision, or bring before the eye of the mind. 3. Gifted and filled with prophetic vision. 4. The power of seeing. dull-visioned, keen-visioned, large-visioned, many-visioned.
vision, inner ::: see: inner vision
visionless ::: 1. Lacking the faculty of sight; blind. 2. Lacking intelligent foresight or imagination; uninspired.
vision, subtle ::: see subtle vision
vision ::: “Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support.” Sri Aurobindo ‘The Mother’
by-law ::: n. --> A local or subordinate law; a private law or regulation made by a corporation for its own government.
A law that is less important than a general law or constitutional provision, and subsidiary to it; a rule relating to a matter of detail; as, civic societies often adopt a constitution and by-laws for the government of their members. In this sense the word has probably been influenced by by, meaning secondary or aside.
"By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement.” Letters on Yoga
“By the supermind is meant the full Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature in which there can be no place for the principle of division and ignorance; it is always a full light and knowledge superior to all mental substance or mental movement.” Letters on Yoga
cache ::: n. --> A hole in the ground, or hiding place, for concealing and preserving provisions which it is inconvenient to carry.
calendar ::: n. --> An orderly arrangement of the division of time, adapted to the purposes of civil life, as years, months, weeks, and days; also, a register of the year with its divisions; an almanac.
A tabular statement of the dates of feasts, offices, saints&
calyx ::: n. --> The covering of a flower. See Flower.
A cuplike division of the pelvis of the kidney, which surrounds one or more of the renal papillae.
cambrian ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Cambria or Wales.
Of or pertaining to the lowest subdivision of the rocks of the Silurian or Molluscan age; -- sometimes described as inferior to the Silurian. It is named from its development in Cambria or Wales. See the Diagram under Geology. ::: n.
canterbury ::: n. --> A city in England, giving its name various articles. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury (primate of all England), and contains the shrine of Thomas a Becket, to which pilgrimages were formerly made.
A stand with divisions in it for holding music, loose papers, etc.
canticle ::: n. --> A song; esp. a little song or hymn.
The Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, one of the books of the Old Testament.
A canto or division of a poem
A psalm, hymn, or passage from the Bible, arranged for chanting in church service.
canton ::: n. --> A song or canto
A small portion; a division; a compartment.
A small community or clan.
A small territorial district; esp. one of the twenty-two independent states which form the Swiss federal republic; in France, a subdivision of an arrondissement. See Arrondissement.
A division of a shield occupying one third part of the chief, usually on the dexter side, formed by a perpendicular line from
canto ::: n. --> One of the chief divisions of a long poem; a book.
The highest vocal part; the air or melody in choral music; anciently the tenor, now the soprano.
canto ::: one of the principal divisions of a long poem.
capitibranchiata ::: n. pl. --> A division of annelids in which the gills arise from or near the head. See Tubicola.
care ::: n. **1. A burdened state of mind, as that arising from heavy responsibilities; worry. 2. An object of or cause for concern. 3. Watchful oversight; charge or supervision. 4. An object or source of worry, attention, or solicitude. care, cares. v. 5. To be concerned or interested, have concern for. cares, cared.**
carinatae ::: n. pl. --> A grand division of birds, including all existing flying birds; -- So called from the carina or keel on the breastbone.
castlebuilder ::: n. --> Fig.: one who builds castles in the air or forms visionary schemes.
catallacta ::: n. pl. --> A division of Protozoa, of which Magosphaera is the type. They exist both in a myxopod state, with branched pseudopodia, and in the form of ciliated bodies united in free, spherical colonies.
catarrhine ::: n. --> One of the Catarrhina, a division of Quadrumana, including the Old World monkeys and apes which have the nostrils close together and turned downward. See Monkey.
cater ::: n. --> A provider; a purveyor; a caterer.
To provide food; to buy, procure, or prepare provisions.
By extension: To supply what is needed or desired, at theatrical or musical entertainments; -- followed by for or to.
The four of cards or dice. ::: v. t.
catery ::: n. --> The place where provisions are deposited.
cates ::: n. --> Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.
catskill period ::: --> The closing subdivision of the Devonian age in America. The rocks of this period are well developed in the Catskill mountains, and extend south and west under the Carboniferous formation. See the Diagram under Geology.
Cazing on a dame or a bright spot b the traditional means used by yogins for concentration or for awakening of the inner consciousness and vision.
cellarer ::: n. --> A steward or butler of a monastery or chapter; one who has charge of procuring and keeping the provisions.
cellar ::: n. --> A room or rooms under a building, and usually below the surface of the ground, where provisions and other stores are kept.
cell ::: n. --> A very small and close apartment, as in a prison or in a monastery or convent; the hut of a hermit.
A small religious house attached to a monastery or convent.
Any small cavity, or hollow place.
The space between the ribs of a vaulted roof.
Same as Cella.
A jar of vessel, or a division of a compound vessel, for holding the exciting fluid of a battery.
cenozoic ::: a. --> Belonging to the most recent division of geological time, including the tertiary, or Age of mammals, and the Quaternary, or Age of man. [Written also caenozoic, cainozoic, kainozoic.] See Geology.
centigrade ::: a. --> Consisting of a hundred degrees; graduated into a hundred divisions or equal parts.
Of or pertaining to the centigrade thermometer; as, 10¡ centigrade (or 10¡ C.).
centrosome ::: n. --> A peculiar rounded body lying near the nucleus of a cell. It is regarded as the dynamic element by means of which the machinery of cell division is organized.
centurion ::: n. --> A military officer who commanded a minor division of the Roman army; a captain of a century.
century ::: n. --> A hundred; as, a century of sonnets; an aggregate of a hundred things.
A period of a hundred years; as, this event took place over two centuries ago.
A division of the Roman people formed according to their property, for the purpose of voting for civil officers.
One of sixty companies into which a legion of the army was divided. It was Commanded by a centurion.
cephalata ::: n. pl. --> A large division of Mollusca, including all except the bivalves; -- so called because the head is distinctly developed. See Illustration in Appendix.
cephalous ::: a. --> Having a head; -- applied chiefly to the Cephalata, a division of mollusks.
cerebrum ::: n. --> The anterior, and in man the larger, division of the brain; the seat of the reasoning faculties and the will. See Brain.
champlain period ::: --> A subdivision of the Quaternary age immediately following the Glacial period; -- so named from beds near Lake Champlain.
chancery ::: n. --> In England, formerly, the highest court of judicature next to the Parliament, exercising jurisdiction at law, but chiefly in equity; but under the jurisdiction act of 1873 it became the chancery division of the High Court of Justice, and now exercises jurisdiction only in equity.
In the Unites States, a court of equity; equity; proceeding in equity.
chapter ::: an important portion or division of anything, esp. of a book, treatise, or other literary work. chapter"s, Chapters.
chapter ::: n. --> A division of a book or treatise; as, Genesis has fifty chapters.
An assembly of monks, or of the prebends and other clergymen connected with a cathedral, conventual, or collegiate church, or of a diocese, usually presided over by the dean.
A community of canons or canonesses.
A bishop&
cheer ::: n. --> The face; the countenance or its expression.
Feeling; spirit; state of mind or heart.
Gayety; mirth; cheerfulness; animation.
That which promotes good spirits or cheerfulness; provisions prepared for a feast; entertainment; as, a table loaded with good cheer.
A shout, hurrah, or acclamation, expressing joy enthusiasm, applause, favor, etc.
chemistry ::: n. --> That branch of science which treats of the composition of substances, and of the changes which they undergo in consequence of alterations in the constitution of the molecules, which depend upon variations of the number, kind, or mode of arrangement, of the constituent atoms. These atoms are not assumed to be indivisible, but merely the finest grade of subdivision hitherto attained. Chemistry deals with the changes in the composition and constitution of molecules. See Atom, Molecule.
chemung period ::: --> A subdivision in the upper part of the Devonian system in America, so named from the Chemung River, along which the rocks are well developed. It includes the Portage and Chemung groups or epochs. See the Diagram under Geology.
chime ::: n. --> See Chine, n., 3.
The harmonious sound of bells, or of musical instruments.
A set of bells musically tuned to each other; specif., in the pl., the music performed on such a set of bells by hand, or produced by mechanism to accompany the striking of the hours or their divisions.
Pleasing correspondence of proportion, relation, or sound.
To sound in harmonious accord, as bells.
choragus ::: n. --> A chorus leader; esp. one who provided at his own expense and under his own supervision one of the choruses for the musical contents at Athens.
chordata ::: n. pl. --> A comprehensive division of animals including all Vertebrata together with the Tunicata, or all those having a dorsal nervous cord.
chromatrope ::: n. --> An instrument for exhibiting certain chromatic effects of light (depending upon the persistence of vision and mixture of colors) by means of rapidly rotating disks variously colored.
A device in a magic lantern or stereopticon to produce kaleidoscopic effects.
chromosome ::: n. --> One of the minute bodies into which the chromatin of the nucleus is resolved during mitotic cell division; the idant of Weismann.
chronology ::: n. --> The science which treats of measuring time by regular divisions or periods, and which assigns to events or transactions their proper dates.
chronometry ::: n. --> The art of measuring time; the measuring of time by periods or divisions.
churchwarden ::: n. --> One of the officers (usually two) in an Episcopal church, whose duties vary in different dioceses, but always include the provision of what is necessary for the communion service.
A clay tobacco pipe, with a long tube.
chyle ::: n. --> A milky fluid containing the fatty matter of the food in a state of emulsion, or fine mechanical division; formed from chyme by the action of the intestinal juices. It is absorbed by the lacteals, and conveyed into the blood by the thoracic duct.
cirrobranchiata ::: n. pl. --> A division of Mollusca having slender, cirriform appendages near the mouth; the Scaphopoda.
cittakasa. These may be transcriptions there or impresses of physical things, persons, scenes, happenings, whatever is, was or will be or may be in the ph^ical universe. These images are very variously seen and under all kinds of conditions ; in samadhi or in the waking stale, and in the latter with the bodily eyes closed or open, projected on or into a physical object or medium or seen as if materialised in the physical atmosphere or only in a psychical ether revealing itself through this grosser physical atmosphere ; seen through the physical eyes themselves as a secondary instrument and as if under the conditions of the physical vision or by the psychical vision alone and indepen- dently of the relations of our ordinary sight to space. The real agent is always the psychical sight and the power indicates that the consciousness is more or less awake, intermittently or nor- mally and more or less perfectly, in the psj’chical body. It is possible to see In this way the transcriptions or impressions of things at any distance beyond the range of the physical vision or the images of the past or the future.
clamatores ::: n. pl. --> A division of passerine birds in which the vocal muscles are but little developed, so that they lack the power of singing.
class ::: n. --> A group of individuals ranked together as possessing common characteristics; as, the different classes of society; the educated class; the lower classes.
A number of students in a school or college, of the same standing, or pursuing the same studies.
A comprehensive division of animate or inanimate objects, grouped together on account of their common characteristics, in any classification in natural science, and subdivided into orders,
clause ::: a distinct article, stipulation, or provision, in a document.
clause ::: n. --> A separate portion of a written paper, paragraph, or sentence; an article, stipulation, or proviso, in a legal document.
A subordinate portion or a subdivision of a sentence containing a subject and its predicate.
See Letters clause / close, under Letter.
clear-seeing ::: a. --> Having a clear physical or mental vision; having a clear understanding.
cleavage ::: a critical division in opinion, beliefs, interests, etc. as leading to opposition between two groups.
cleavage ::: n. --> The act of cleaving or splitting.
The quality possessed by many crystallized substances of splitting readily in one or more definite directions, in which the cohesive attraction is a minimum, affording more or less smooth surfaces; the direction of the dividing plane; a fragment obtained by cleaving, as of a diamond. See Parting.
Division into laminae, like slate, with the lamination not necessarily parallel to the plane of deposition; -- usually
clock ::: n. --> A machine for measuring time, indicating the hour and other divisions by means of hands moving on a dial plate. Its works are moved by a weight or a spring, and it is often so constructed as to tell the hour by the stroke of a hammer on a bell. It is not adapted, like the watch, to be carried on the person.
A watch, esp. one that strikes.
The striking of a clock.
A figure or figured work on the ankle or side of a stocking.
collembola ::: n. pl. --> The division of Thysanura which includes Podura, and allied forms.
colorado group ::: --> A subdivision of the cretaceous formation of western North America, especially developed in Colorado and the upper Missouri region.
color ::: n. --> A property depending on the relations of light to the eye, by which individual and specific differences in the hues and tints of objects are apprehended in vision; as, gay colors; sad colors, etc.
Any hue distinguished from white or black.
The hue or color characteristic of good health and spirits; ruddy complexion.
That which is used to give color; a paint; a pigment; as, oil colors or water colors.
COLOURS. ::: When the colours begin to lake definite shapes in the visions, it is a sign of some dynamic work of formation in the consciousness. The waves of colour mean a dynamic rush of forces.
comma ::: n. --> A character or point [,] marking the smallest divisions of a sentence, written or printed.
A small interval (the difference between a major and minor half step), seldom used except by tuners.
commander ::: n. --> A chief; one who has supreme authority; a leader; the chief officer of an army, or of any division of it.
An officer who ranks next below a captain, -- ranking with a lieutenant colonel in the army.
The chief officer of a commandery.
A heavy beetle or wooden mallet, used in paving, in sail lofts, etc.
command ::: v. t. --> To order with authority; to lay injunction upon; to direct; to bid; to charge.
To exercise direct authority over; to have control of; to have at one&
commodore ::: n. --> An officer who ranks next above a captain; sometimes, by courtesy, the senior captain of a squadron. The rank of commodore corresponds with that of brigadier general in the army.
A captain commanding a squadron, or a division of a fleet, or having the temporary rank of rear admiral.
A title given by courtesy to the senior captain of a line of merchant vessels, and also to the chief officer of a yachting or rowing club.
commons ::: n. pl. --> The mass of the people, as distinguished from the titled classes or nobility; the commonalty; the common people.
The House of Commons, or lower house of the British Parliament, consisting of representatives elected by the qualified voters of counties, boroughs, and universities.
Provisions; food; fare, -- as that provided at a common table in colleges and universities.
A club or association for boarding at a common table,
comparation ::: n. --> A making ready; provision.
compartition ::: n. --> The act of dividing into parts or compartments; division; also, a division or compartment.
compart ::: v. t. --> To divide; to mark out into parts or subdivisions.
complin ::: n. --> The last division of the Roman Catholic breviary; the seventh and last of the canonical hours of the Western church; the last prayer of the day, to be said after sunset.
Cosmic vision is the seeing of the uni\ersal movements. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.
“Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements—it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga
cosmic vision
cosmic vision ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements — it has nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.” Letters on Yoga*
cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine
"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga
"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*
darkness ::: “Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision’s limited range.” Essays Divine and Human
DARSHAN. ::: ScU*revclation of the Deity to the devotee. It is an unveiling of his presence temporary or permanent, and may come as a vision or may come as a close feeling of his presence which is more intimate than sight and a frequent or constant communication with him ; that happens by the deepen- ing of the being into its inner self and growth of consciousness or by growth of the intensity of bhakti. When the crust of external consciousness is sufficiently broken by the pressure of increasing and engrossing bhakti, the contact comes.
dazzled ::: 1. Overpowered or dimmed the vision of (someone) by intense light. 2. Impressed deeply; awed, overwhelmed. 3. Overpowered by light.
Death in vision ::: The feeling of being dead in a vision or
division ::: “God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
division
dim ::: 1. Obscure to the mind or the senses. 2. Not clearly seen; indistinct; faint. 3. Having weak or indistinct vision. 4. Faintly outlined; indistinct. 5. Lacking in brightness. v. 1. To cause to seem less bright, as by comparison. 2. Make dim or lusterless. dimly, dim-eyed, dim-heart, dim-hearted, dim-masked, dim-souled.
dimmed ::: v.**1. Made or became dim; lost brightness. Also fig. adj. 2. Not brilliant; dull in lustre. 3.** Dulled; indistinct; not seen clearly or in detail as of sight or vision.
DIVISION. ::: Division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.
Division of being ■ A necessary stage In the yogic develop- ment and experience. One feels that there is a twofold being, the inner psychic which is the true one and the other, the outer human being which is instrumentaf for the outward life. To live in the inner psychic being in union with the Divine while doing the outward work is the first stage in Karmayoga.
Live always in the psychic being, your true being. The psychic will, in due time, awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it is and feels and does.
dream ::: 1. A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. 2. A vision occurring to a person while awake. 3. A person or thing that is as pleasant, or seemingly unreal, as a dream 4. An ideal or aspiration; goal; aim. 5. A wild or vain fancy. Dream, dream"s, Dream"s, dreams, dream-brood, dream-brush, dream-built, dream-caught, dream-fact, dream-fate, dream-god"s, dream-happiness, dream-hued, dream-life, dream-light, dream-made, dream-mind, dream-notes, dream-print, dream-sculptured, dream-shores, dream-smiles, dream-splendour, dream-truth, dream-vasts, dream-white, dream-world, half-dream, self-dream, sun-dream, world-dream. *adj. 6. Of a colour: misty, dim, or cloudy. v. 7. To have an image (of) or fantasy (about) in or as if in a dream. dreams, dreamed, *dreaming.
dreamer ::: a person who dreams; a prophet; visionary. Dreamer, dreamer"s.
dreaming ::: seeing or imagining in sleep or in a vision.
Dreams of physical mind and yogic dreams ; The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the bttddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the bram-memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co-ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, wnlh brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear pos- session of itself, though not of the physical world, works cohe- rently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelli- gence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of communication with material things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflec- tion, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the distractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have their after-consequences on the waking state subsequent to the cessa- tion of the trance.
dull ::: adj. **1. Causing boredom; tedious; uninteresting. 2. Not brisk or rapid; sluggish. 3. Lacking responsiveness or alertness; insensitive. 4. Not clear and resonant; sounding as if striking with or against something relatively soft. 5. (of color) Very low in saturation; highly diluted; 6. Slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity. duller, dull-eyed, dull-hued, dull-visioned. v. 7. To make numb or insensitive. 8. To make or become dull or sluggish. 9. To make less lively or vigorous. dulls, dulled.**
Dynamic symbol ::: Among the dynamic symbols sontb rfcty bring simply the influence of the thing symbolised, some indicate what is being done but not yet finished, some a formative experi- ence that visits the consciousness, some prophecy of something that may or will or is soon about to happen. There are others that are not merely symbols but present actualities seen by the vision in a symbolic figure.
Dyumatsena ::: : “Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory.” (Note at the beginning of Savitri from a letter of Sri Aurobindo to a disciple.)
dyumatsena ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory.” Author"s note at beginning of Savitri.
Dyumatsena ::: Sri Aurobindo: “Dyumatsena, Lord of the Shining Hosts, father of Satyavan, is the Divine Mind here fallen blind, losing its celestial kingdom of vision, and through that loss its kingdom of glory.” (Author’s Note at the beginning of Savitri.)**
eagle ::: Any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle’s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
eagle ::: any of several large, soaring birds of prey belonging to the hawk family. The strength, keen vision, graceful and powerful flight of the eagle are proverbial, and have given to him the title of the king of birds. eagle"s, eagles, eagle-peaks, eagle-poised, eagle-winged, she-eagle. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
earth ::: 1. The realm of mortal existence; the temporal world. 2. The softer, friable part of land; soil, especially productive soil. **Earth, earth"s, earth-beauty"s, earth-being"s, earth-beings, earth-bounds, earth-bride, earth-fact, earth-force, Earth-Goddess, earth-hearts, earth-habit"s, earth-heart, earth-instruments, earth-kind, earth-life, earth-light, earth-made, earth-matter"s, earth-mind, earth-mind"s, earth-myth, earth-nature, earth-nature"s, Earth-Nature"s, earth-nursed, earth-pain, Earth-plasm, earth-poise, earth-scene, earth-scene"s, earth-seat, earth-shapes, earth-stage, earth-stuff, earth-time, earth-time"s, earth-use, earth-vision, earth-ways, summer-earth.
executor ::: 1. A person who carries out or performs something. 2. A person named in a will to carry out the provisions of that will. executors.
flash ::: n.** 1. A brief, sudden burst of bright light. 2. A sudden thought, insight, inspiration, or vision. 3. A momentary brightness. 4. A very brief moment; instant. flashes, lightening-flash. v. 5. To move or proceed rapidly. 6. To communicate or reveal through flashes. 7. To appear or occur suddenly; come into perception. 8. To cause to flash, as powder by ignition or a sword by waving. flashes, flashed, flashing.**
FOREHEAD CENTRE. ::: In the forehead between the eyes but a little above is the afha cakra, the centre of the inner will, also of the inner vision, the dynamic mind etc. (This is not the ordinary outer mental will and sight, but something more power- ful, belonging to the inner being). When this centre opens and the Force there is active, then there is the opening of a greater will, power of decision, formation, effectiveness, beyond what the ordinary mind can achieve.
found ::: 1. To set up or establish on a firm basis or for enduring existence; to originate, create, initiate. 2. To establish or set up, especially with provision for continuing existence. Also fig. (All other references are to the word as the pp. or pt. of find. **half-found*.*) founds, founded.**
Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one's own being and one’s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness.
future. Things future are already accomplished to know- ledge and vision on higher planes of mind.
Gandhamadan ::: “In Hindu mythology, a mountain and forest in Ilavrta, the central region of the world which contains Mount Meru. Gandhamadan dorms the division between Ilavrta and Bhadrasva, to the east of Meru. The forest of Gandhamadan is renowned for its fragrance. (Dow.; Enc. Br). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works.
gandhamadan ::: "In Hindu mythology, a mountain and forest in Ilavrta, the central region of the world which contains Mount Meru. Gandhamadan dorms the division between Ilavrta and Bhadrasva, to the east of Meru. The forest of Gandhamadan is renowned for its fragrance. (Dow.; Enc. Br.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works.
gif: is not a freak or an abnormaiity ; it is a universal faculty present in all human beings, but latent in most, in some rarely or intermittently active, occurring as if by accident in others, frequent or normally active in a few. But just as anyone can, uith some training, learn science and do things which would have seemed miracles to his forefathers, so almost anyone, if he wants, can with a little concentration and training develop the faculty of supraphjsical vision. When one starts Yoga, this power is often, though not in\'ariably — for some find it difficult — one of the first to come out from its latent condition and manifest itself, most often without any efTori, Intention or previous know- ledge on the part of the sadhaka. It comes more easily with the eyes shut than with the eyes open, but it does come in both ways. Tlic first sign of its opening in the externalised way is very often that seeing of “sparkles’* or small luminous dots, shapes, etc. ; a second is, often enough, most easily, round lumi- nous objects like a star ; seeing of colours 1$ a third initial experi- cnee — but (hey do not alw'ay's come in that order.
glass ::: 1. A glass mirror, a looking-glass. 2. A mirror. 3. A device, such as a monocle or spyglass, containing a lens or lenses and used as an aid to vision. 4. A lens.
god ::: a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. gods, gods", God"s, Gods, God-bliss, God-born, god-chant, God-child, god-children, God-ecstasy, God-face, God-frame, God-Force, God-given, god-haunts, God-instinct"s, God-joy, God-Light, god-kind, God-knowledge, God-language, God-light, god-mind, god-phase, God-spark, god-speech, God-state, god-touch, God-vision"s, god-wings, child-god, dream-god"s, half-god, Sun-god"s.
golden Child ::: Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
grace ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Grace is something spontaneous which wells out from the Divine Consciousness as a free flow of its being. ::: It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law — for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate — only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts. ” *Letters on Yoga
His vision warned by the spirit"s inward eye
His vision warned by the spirit’s inward eye
His personal vision as impersonal fact,
"Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation*
“Ideals are truths that have not yet effected themselves for man, the realities of a higher plane of existence which have yet to fulfil themselves on this lower plane of life and matter, our present field of operation. To the pragmatical intellect which takes its stand upon the ever-changing present, ideals are not truths, not realities, they are at most potentialities of future truth and only become real when they are visible in the external fact as work of force accomplished. But to the mind which is able to draw back from the flux of force in the material universe, to the consciousness which is not imprisoned in its own workings or carried along in their flood but is able to envelop, hold and comprehend them, to the soul that is not merely the subject and instrument of the world-force but can reflect something of that Master-Consciousness which controls and uses it, the ideal present to its inner vision is a greater reality than the changing fact obvious to its outer senses. The Supramental Manifestation
::: "Identity is the first truth of existence; division is the second truth; all division is a division in oneness. There is one Existence which looks at itself from many self-divided unities observing other similar and dissimilar self-divided unities by the device of division. Being is one; division is a device or a secondary condition of consciousness; but the primary truth of consciousness also is a truth of oneness and identity.” Essays Divine and Human
“Identity is the first truth of existence; division is the second truth; all division is a division in oneness. There is one Existence which looks at itself from many self-divided unities observing other similar and dissimilar self-divided unities by the device of division. Being is one; division is a device or a secondary condition of consciousness; but the primary truth of consciousness also is a truth of oneness and identity.” Essays Divine and Human
“If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies,—not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine
If we would understand the difference of this global Overmind Consciousness from our separative and only imperfectly synthetic mental consciousness, we may come near to it if we compare the strictly mental with what would be an overmental view of activities in our material universe. To the Overmind, for example, all religions would be true as developments of the one eternal religion, all philosophies would be valid each in its own field as a statement of its own universe-view from its own angle, all political theories with their practice would be the legitimate working out of an Idea Force with its right to application and practical development in the play of the energies of Nature. In our separative consciousness, imperfectly visited by glimpses of catholicity and universality, these things exist as opposites; each claims to be the truth and taxes the others with error and falsehood, each feels impelled to refute or destroy the others in order that itself alone may be the Truth and live: at best, each must claim to be superior, admit all others only as inferior truth-expressions. An overmental Intelligence would refuse to entertain this conception or this drift to exclusiveness for a moment; it would allow all to live as necessary to the whole or put each in its place in the whole or assign to each its field of realisation or of endeavour. This is because in us consciousness has come down completely into the divisions of the Ignorance; Truth is no longer either an Infinite or a cosmic whole with many possible formulations, but a rigid affirmation holding any other affirmation to be false because different from itself and entrenched in other limits. Our mental consciousness can indeed arrive in its cognition at a considerable approach towards a total comprehensiveness and catholicity, but to organise that in action and life seems to be beyond its power. Evolutionary Mind, manifest in individuals or collectivities, throws up a multiplicity of divergent viewpoints, divergent lines of action and lets them work themselves out side by side or in collision or in a certain intermixture; it can make selective harmonies, but it cannot arrive at the harmonic control of a true totality. Cosmic Mind must have even in the evolutionary Ignorance, like all totalities, such a harmony, if only of arranged accords and discords; there is too in it an underlying dynamism of oneness: but it carries the completeness of these things in its depths, perhaps in a supermind-overmind substratum, but does not impart it to individual Mind in the evolution, does not bring it or has not yet brought it from the depths to the surface. An Overmind world would be a world of harmony; the world of Ignorance in which we live is a world of disharmony and struggle. …
ignorance ::: “Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” The Life Divine
“Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
ignorance ::: the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information. Ignorance, ignorance"s, Ignorance"s, ignorance", world-ignorance, World-Ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo: "Ignorance is the absence of the divine eye of perception which gives us the sight of the supramental Truth; it is the non-perceiving principle in our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality.” The Life Divine
"Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of the Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, — truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. . . . All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.” The Mother
". . . all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge . . . .”The Life Divine
"This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: . . . .” The Life Divine*
illumined mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
"As the Higher Mind brings a greater consciousness into the being through the spiritual idea and its power of truth, so the Illumined Mind brings in a still greater consciousness through a Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power.” The Life Divine*
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
In mental vision the images arc invented by the mind and are partly true, partly a play of possibilities. Or a mental vision like the vital may be only a suggestion, — that is, a formation of some possibility on the menial or vital plane which presents itself to the sadhaka in the hope of being accepted and helped to rcalbe itself.
Inner vision h vivid like actual sight, always precise and con- tains a truth in it.
"Inner vision is vivid like actual sight, always precise and contains a truth in it.” Letters on Yoga
“Inner vision is vivid like actual sight, always precise and contains a truth in it.” Letters on Yoga
"Inner vision means the vision with the inner seeing as opposed to outer vision, the external sight with the surface mind in the surface eyes.” Letters on Yoga
“Inner vision means the vision with the inner seeing as opposed to outer vision, the external sight with the surface mind in the surface eyes.” Letters on Yoga
Inner vision means the vision with the inner seeing as opposed to outer vision, the external sight with the surface mind in the surface eyes.
::: inner vision
inner vision
INNER CONSCIOUSNESS (Divisions) ::: There are five main divisions. At the top above the head arc layers (or as we call them planes) of which we arc not conscious and which become conscious to us only by sadhana — those above the human mind — that is the higher consciousness. Below from the crown of the head to the throat are the layers (there are many of them) of the mind, the three principal being one at the top of the head communicating with the higher consciousness, another between the eye-brows where is the thought, sight and will, a third in the throat which is the externalising mind. A second division is from the shoulders to the navel ; these are the layers of the higher vital presided over by the heart centre where is the emotional being with the psychic behind it. From the navel downwards is the rest of the vital being containing several layers. From the bottom of the spine downward are the layers of the physical consciousness proper, the material, and below the feet is the sub- conscient which has also many levels.
INNER SIGHT. ::: When one tries to meditate, the first obstacle in the beginning is sleep. When you get over this obstacle, there comes a condition in which, with the eyes closed, you begin to see things, people, scenes of all kinds. It is a good sign and means that you are making progress in yoga. There is, besides the outer physical sight which sees external objects, an inner .sight in us which can see things yet unseen and unknown, things at a distance, things belonging to another place or time or to other worlds.
Inner vision is vivid like actual sight, always precise and contains a truth in it. In mental vision the images are invented by the mind and are partly true, partly a play of possibilities. Or a mental vision like the vital may be only a suggestion,- that is a formation of some possibility on the mental or vital plane which presents itself to the sādhaka in the hope of being accepted and helped to realise itself.
insight ::: penetrating mental vision or discernment; faculty of seeing into the inner character or underlying truth of things.
In the middle of the forehead — the Ajna Chakra — (will, vision, dynamic thought).
In the middle of the forehead—the Ajna Chakra—(will, vision, dynamic thought).
intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.
Sri Aurobindo: "Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine
"Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine
"I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.
"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine
". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine
"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga
"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga
intuitive ::: 1. Obtained through intuition rather than from reasoning or observation. 2. Fig. Concerning spiritual vision or perception.
“I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
— it can come in afterwards as a powerful aid to experience; it can be full of indications which help to self-knowledge or knowledge of things or knowledge of people ; it can be veridical and lead to prevision, premonition and other openings of less importance but very useful to a Yogi. In short, vision is a great instrument though not absolutely indispensable.
It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law—for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate—only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts.” Letters on Yoga
“It is not necessary to have the mind quiet in order to see the lights—that depends only on the opening of the subtle vision in the centre which is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Many people get that as soon as they start sadhana. It can even be developed by effort and concentration without sadhana by some who have it to a small extent as an inborn faculty.” Letters on Yoga
It is the cryptic verses of the Veda that help us here; for they contain, though concealed, the gospel of the divine and immortal Supermind and through the veil some illumining flashes come to us. We can see through these utterances the conception of this Supermind as a vastness beyond the ordinary firmaments of our consciousness in which truth of being is luminously one with all that expresses it and assures inevitably truth of vision, formulation, arrangement, word, act and movement and therefore truth also of result of movement, result of action and expression, infallible ordinance or law. Vast all-comprehensiveness; luminous truth and harmony of being in that vastness and not a vague chaos or self-lost obscurity; truth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth of being: these seem to be the essential terms of the Vedic description.” *The Life Divine
It is the cryptic verses of the Veda that help us here; for they contain, though concealed, the gospel of the divine and immortal Supermind and through the veil some illumining flashes come to us. We can see through these utterances the conception of this Supermind as a vastness beyond the ordinary firmaments of our consciousness in which truth of being is luminously one with all that expresses it and assures inevitably truth of vision, formulation, arrangement, word, act and movement and therefore truth also of result of movement, result of action and expression, infallible ordinance or law. Vast all-comprehensiveness; luminous truth and harmony of being in that vastness and not a vague chaos or self-lost obscurity; truth of law and act and knowledge expressive of that harmonious truth of being: these seem to be the essential terms of the Vedic description.” The Life Divine
It is the insinimentation of the Sachchidananda, — the Infinite consciousness higher than the mental being. It Is a Self- awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of Self- determination Inherent in that Self-awareness. Supermind keeps always and in every status and condition the spiritual realisation of the unity of all. It is the Consciousness creatrix of the world, a W”!!! to light and vision and also a will to power of works. It
It is this which explains many of the phenomena of clair- voyance, clairaudience, etc. ; for these phenomena are only the exceptional admission of the waking mentality into a limited sensitiveness to what might be called the image memory of the subtle ether,' by which not only the signs of all things past and present, but even those of things future can be seized ; for things future are already accomplished to knowledge and vision on higher planes of mind and their images can be reflected upon mind in the present. But these things which are exceptional to the w’aking mentality, difficult and to be perceived only by the pos- session of a special power or else after assiduous training, are natural to the dream-state of trance consciousness in which the subliminal mind is free. And that mind can al^o take cognizance
Jhumur: Here you have the beginnings of the mind opening onto other planes of experience. Because mindhas no experience. This is the kingdom of the greater mind where it opens on to another phase of vision or experience or feeling. The heaven-bird is the feeling of poise that hasn’t taken off. It reminds me that in a certain place, the goal of the mental search is where ultimately the mind abdicates in light and one enters into what Shelley calls ‘thought wildernesses’. Before that concrete abdication there must be some sensation, some feeling of something other that is waiting for us, that has come from elsewhere. The mind has not quite yet abdicated but begins to pursue intuition, perception, feeling.”
j Mind ::: instrument of Truth. There are only three ways by which it can make itself a channel or instrument of Truth. Either it must fall silent in the Self and give room for a wider and greater consciousness ; or it must make itself passive to an inner Light and allow that Light to use it as a means of expres- sion ; or else it must itself change from the questioning intellec- tual superficial mind it now is to an intuitive intelligence, a mind of vision for the direct expression of the divine Truth.
Just as one can concentrate the thought on an object or the vision on a point, so one can concentrate will on a particular part or point of the body and give an order to the conscious- ness there. That order reaches the subconscient.
keen ::: 1. Intense, as feeling or desire. 2. Sharp; vivid; strong. 3. Having a fine, sharp cutting edge or point. 4. Intense; piercing. keen-edged, keen-visioned.
kingdom ::: 1. A territory, state, people, or community ruled or reigned over by a king or queen. 2. Fig. The eternal spiritual sovereignty of God; the realm of this sovereignty. 3. A realm or sphere in which one thing is dominant or supreme. 4. Anything conceived as constituting a realm or sphere of independent action or control. 5. A realm or province of nature, especially one of the three broad divisions of natural objects: the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 6. Rarely, in reference to the realm and rule of evil forces. kingdom"s, kingdoms.
lens ::: a ground or moulded piece of glass, plastic, or other transparent material with opposite surfaces either or both of which are curved, by means of which light rays are refracted so that they converge or diverge to form an image as for magnification, or in correcting defects of vision.
::: *"*Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms of Matter, and of this rigid division the atom, which is the basis of all material form, is the very type.” The Life Divine
“Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms of Matter, and of this rigid division the atom, which is the basis of all material form, is the very type.” The Life Divine
Light Is the power that enlightens whatever it falls upon ; the result may be vision, memory, knowledge, right will, right impulse etc.
light ::: Sri Aurobindo: ". . . light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy.” *The Life Divine
"Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light.” *The Hour of God
"Light is a general term. Light is not knowledge but the illumination that comes from above and liberates the being from obscurity and darkness.” The Mother
The Mother: "The light is everywhere, the force is everywhere. And the world is so small.” Words of the Mother, MCW Vol. 15. ::: *Light, light"s, lights, light-petalled, light-tasselled, half-light.
loomed ::: 1. Came into view as a massive, distorted, or indistinct image. 2. Rose before the vision with an appearance of great or portentous size. looming.
"Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul"s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment. ” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda, but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul’s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Madhav: “Moment is the sequence of Time. Each moment records what is happening at that point. It relates to the present. The Ray of the Eternal interrupts the movement of Time for a while and lights up things that are not yet manifest. It gives a peep into the future. The Ray of the Eternal is able to do it because the future is already present in the vision of the Eternal.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “The triple cord refers to the physical, the vital and the thought strands of the mind which constrict and narrow the range of human vision. As they are loosened, the gaze widens and larger horizons come into view.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Madhav: “This creation is an ordered manifestation of the Divine. There is a central Will, expressing the originating Truth-vision, impelling the whole movement. But also there are special emanations from the Divine charged with specific tasks in the organisation and maintenance of the emerging creation. These are the gods and goddesses, deities, Powers and Personalities that are in charge of their respective domains, on different levels of existence. Each world has its own guardians entrusted by the Supreme Creative Spirit with the work of building and furthering the manifestation of the particular Truth-principle that pushes for expression in that world-formula.” Readings in Savitri Vol. I.
MAHESHWARI ::: goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination; ~ TSOY, 4.18 - Faith and shakti
management ::: the act, manner, or practice of managing; handling, supervision, or control.
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor "slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my "dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase "a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that "happened”, "came” being a poetic equivalent for "happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words "slow” and "dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word"s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its "came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all! "Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what "miraculously dim” — it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else — but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn"s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
Man alive, your proposed emendations are an admirable exposition of the art of bringing a line down the steps till my poor”slow miraculous” above-mind line meant to give or begin the concrete portrayal of an act of some hidden Godhead finally becomes a mere metaphor thrown out from its more facile mint by a brilliantly imaginative poetic intelligence. First of all, you shift my”dimly” out of the way and transfer it to something to which it does not inwardly belongs make it an epithet of the gesture or an adverb qualifying its epithet instead of something that qualifies the atmosphere in which the act of the Godhead takes place. That is a preliminary havoc which destroys what is very important to the action, its atmosphere. I never intended the gesture to be dim, it is a luminous gesture, but forcing its way through the black quietude it comes dimly. Then again the bald phrase”a gesture came” without anything to psychicise it becomes simply something that”happened”,”came” being a poetic equivalent for”happened”, instead of the expression of the slow coming of the gesture. The words”slow” and”dimly” assure this sense of motion and this concreteness to the word’s sense here. Remove one or both whether entirely or elsewhere and you ruin the vision and change altogether its character. That is at least what happens wholly in your penultimate version and as for the last its”came” gets another meaning and one feels that somebody very slowly decided to let out the gesture from himself and it was quite a miracle that it came out at all!”Dimly miraculous” means what precisely or what”miraculously dim”—it was miraculous that it managed to be so dim or there was something vaguely miraculous about it after all? No doubt they try to mean something else—but these interpretations come in their way and trip them over. The only thing that can stand is the first version which is no doubt fine poetry, but the trouble is that it does not give the effect I wanted to give, the effect which is necessary for the dawn’s inner significance. Moreover, what becomes of the slow lingering rhythm of my line which is absolutely indispensable? Letters on Savitri
meditation ::: Sri Aurobindo: "There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation" and ‘contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. *Letters on Yoga
meditation ::: “There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana , ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’. Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana , for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. Letters on Yoga
Mental visions arc meant to bring in the mind the influences of the things they represent.
Mind acts by representations and constructions, by the separa- tion and weaving together of its constructed data ; it can make a synthetic constnietlon and see it as a whole, but when it looks for the reality of things, it takes refuge in abstractions — it has not the concrete vision, experience, contact sought by the mystic and the spiritual seeker. To know Self and Reality directly or truly, It has to be silent and reflect some light of these things or undergo self-exceeding and Iransfonnation, and this is only possible either by a higher Light descending into it or by its ascent, the taking up or immcrgcncc of it into a higher Light of e^tence.
Mind and the Divine Sakti ::: Be on your guard and do not try to understand and judge the Divine Mother by your little earthly mind that loves to subject even the things that arc beyond it to its own norms and standards, its narrow reasonings and erring impressions, its bottomless aggressive ignorance and its petty self-confident knowledge. The human mind shut in the prison of its half-lit obscurity cannot follow the many-sided freedom of the steps of the Divine Shakti. The rapidity and com- plexity of her vision and action outrun its stumbling comprehen- sion ; the measures of her movement are not its measures. Open rather your soul to her and be content to feel her with the psychic nature and see her with the psychic vision that alone make a straight response to the Truth.
Mind-centres ::: For the mind there are many centres. One in the throat (the outward-going or externalising mind) ; one between the eyes or rather in the middle of the forehead (the centre for inner thought, will and vision) ; one above, com- municating with the brain, which is called the sahasradala, thousand-petalled lotus and where are centralised the highest thought and intelligence, communicating with the greater mind planes (illumined mind, intuition, overmind) above.
MIND. ::: Part of the nature which has to do with cognillon and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, siith the truly mental mos’c- ments and formations, mental visions and will etc. that arc part of the intelligence.
mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The ‘Mind" in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind" and ‘mental" are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” *Letters on Yoga
"Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer.” The Life Divine
"Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects.” The Life Divine
"The mind proper is divided into three parts — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind — the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give).” Letters on Yoga
"The difference between the ordinary mind and the intuitive is that the former, seeking in the darkness or at most by its own unsteady torchlight, first, sees things only as they are presented in that light and, secondly, where it does not know, constructs by imagination, by uncertain inference, by others of its aids and makeshifts things which it readily takes for truth, shadow projections, cloud edifices, unreal prolongations, deceptive anticipations, possibilities and probabilities which do duty for certitudes. The intuitive mind constructs nothing in this artificial fashion, but makes itself a receiver of the light and allows the truth to manifest in it and organise its own constructions.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"He [man] has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult imperatives that necessitate the movements and forms of a creation. . . .” *The Life Divine
"The human mind is an instrument not of truth but of ignorance and error.” Letters on Yoga
"For Mind as we know it is a power of the Ignorance seeking for Truth, groping with difficulty to find it, reaching only mental constructions and representations of it in word and idea, in mind formations, sense formations, — as if bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality were all that it could achieve.” The Life Divine
The Mother: "The true role of the mind is the formation and organization of action. The mind has a formative and organizing power, and it is that which puts the different elements of inspiration in order for action, for organizing action. And if it would only confine itself to that role, receiving inspirations — whether from above or from the mystic centre of the soul — and simply formulating the plan of action — in broad outline or in minute detail, for the smallest things of life or the great terrestrial organizations — it would amply fulfil its function. It is not an instrument of knowledge. But is can use knowledge for action, to organize action. It is an instrument of organization and formation, very powerful and very capable when it is well developed.” Questions and Answers 1956, MCW Vol. 8.*
mind ::: “The ‘Mind’ in the ordinary use of the word covers indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are used to connote specially the part of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are part of his intelligence.” Letters on Yoga
movement ::: 1. The act or an instance of moving; a change in place or position. A particular manner of moving. 2. Usually, movements, actions or activities, as of a person or a body of persons. ::: movement"s, movements, many-movemented.
Sri Aurobindo: "When we withdraw our gaze from its egoistic preoccupation with limited and fleeting interests and look upon the world with dispassionate and curious eyes that search only for the Truth, our first result is the perception of a boundless energy of infinite existence, infinite movement, infinite activity pouring itself out in limitless Space, in eternal Time, an existence that surpasses infinitely our ego or any ego or any collectivity of egos, in whose balance the grandiose products of aeons are but the dust of a moment and in whose incalculable sum numberless myriads count only as a petty swarm." *The Life Divine
". . . the purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but movement. Two things alone exist, movement in Space, movement in Time, the former objective, the latter subjective.” The Life Divine
"The world is a cyclic movement (samsâra ) of the Divine Consciousness in Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a different kind of reality.” The Upanishads*
mystic ::: “I used the word ‘mystic’ in the sense of a certain kind of inner seeing and feeling of things, a way which to the intellect would seem occult and visionary—for this is something different from imagination and its work with which the intellect is familiar.” On Himself
Nolini: (The authors gave as an example the word”Vision”). When it is the supreme vision it is capitalized. Nolini also said: “When it is the personality of the thing, not only the quality of it. There is no set rule on capitalization.”
Nolini: “The image is that of the comoposition of an army or that of a mathematical series (e.g., arithmetical or geometrical progression). It is composed of regularised uits of different values (group of sums), but all measured and definite and precise—e.g.., in the case of an army—company, brigade, battalion, army—an ascending scale, the whole also forming one big unit, taken in at a single glance—that is the nature of overmind vision.
Once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit, Life becomes our helper. Intent, vi^lant, integrally conscious, iwe can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its move- ments as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the powers that oppose us. ; , ,
— or in it, our Father in heaven, — and t\e'do not feel or sec him in ourselves or around us. So long as we keep this vision, fbe mortaUty in us is queilcd by that Immortality ; it feeis the light, power and joy and responds to it according to its capa- city ; or it feels the descent of the spirit and it is then for a time transformed or else uplifted into some lustre of reflection of the light and power ; it ^comes a vessel of the Ananda. But at other times it lapses into old mortality and exists or works dully or pettily in the ruck of its earthly habits. The complete redemption comes by the descent of the divine Power into the
“Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision’s limited range.
parcellings ::: separations or divisions into parts, distributed, allotted or apportioned.
parishes ::: political subdivisions of a country or state, usually corresponding in boundaries to an original ecclesiastical parish.
part ::: n. 1. An essential portion, division, piece, or segment of a whole. 2. Participation, interest, or concern in something; role. 3. Region; area. parts, part-experience. *adj. 4. Partial. v. 5. To go or come apart; separate, as two or more things. 6. To go apart from or leave one another, as persons. 7. To put or keep apart; separate. *parts, parted, parting, half-parted.
patience to develop. For instance, the neutral quiet so dissatis- fying to five vital eagerness of the sadhaka is the first step towards the peace that passeth all understanding, the small current or thrill of inner delight the first trickling of the ocean of Ananda, the play of tights or colours the key of the doors of the inner vision and experience, the descent that stifTens the body into a concentrated stillness that first touch of something at the end of which is the presence of the Divine.
plan ::: n. 1. A systematic arrangement of elements or important parts; a configuration or outline. 2. A scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective. plans, heart-plan, life-plan, time-plan, world-plan, vision-plans, world-plan. *v. 3. To formulate a scheme or program for the accomplishment, enactment, or attainment of. *plans, planned, planning.
poetry ::: “All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
poetry ::: Sri Aurobindo: "All poetry is an inspiration, a thing breathed into the thinking organ from above; it is recorded in the mind, but is born in the higher principle of direct knowledge or ideal vision which surpasses mind. It is in reality a revelation. The prophetic or revealing power sees the substance; the inspiration perceives the right expression. Neither is manufactured; nor is poetry really a poiesis or composition, nor even a creation, but rather the revelation of something that eternally exists. The ancients knew this truth and used the same word for poet and prophet, creator and seer, sophos, vates, kavi.” Essays Human and Divine
::: "Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
“Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even with- out any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant or needs only a little practice to deve- . lop ; it is not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less extent ; but this does not alwa^ happen easily, especially if one has been habituated to live mnch in the intelfect or in art out- ward vital consciousness.
prevision ::: a knowing in advance; foreknowledge; foresight.
provisional ::: providing or serving for the time being only; existing only until permanently or properly replaced; temporary.
prophecy ::: “If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past.
provender ::: food or provisions.
PSYCHICISATION. ::: Change of the lower nature bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, ri^t movement and habit into the physical — all turned towards the Divine, all based on love, adoration, bhakti — finally the vision and sense of the Mother everywhere in all as w’ell as in the heart, her Force working in the being, faith, con- secration, surrender.
PSYCHIC POWERS. ::: The range of the psychic consciousness and its experiences is almost illimitable and the variety and com- plexity of its phenomena almost infinite The first and most prominent is the activity of the psychic senses of which the sight is the most developed ordinarily and the first to manifest itself with any largeness when the veil of the absorption in the surface consciousness which prevents the inner vision is broken. But all the physical senses have their corresponding powers in the psychical being, there is a p^hical hearing, touch, smell, taste ::: indeed the physical senses are themselves in reality only a pro- jection of the inner sense into a limited and externalised opera- tion in and through and upon the phenomena of gross matter.
pupil ::: a student under the direct supervision of a teacher or professor.
Purani: “He [Sri Aurobindo] does the same [improving spontaneously upon the original in the alchemy of his poetical process] with several Vedic symbols which he employs. It [gold-horned herds] indicates the descent of the ‘gold-horned’ Cows—symbolising the richly-laden Rays of Knowledge—into the Inconscient of the earth, its ‘cave-heart’. Generally in the Veda the action is that of breaking open the Cave of the inconscient and releasing the pen of Cows, the imprisoned Rays of Life for the conscious possessions by the seeker. Here is how a Vedic hymn speaks about it: ‘They drove upwards, the luminous ones,—the good milch-cows, in their stone-pen within the hiding cave.’ Rig Veda IV, 1-13. One sees in Savitri the process reversed and the Master’s vision lays open the original act of involution of the Light into the darkness of the Inconscient.” Sri Aurobindo’s”Savitri”: An Approach and a Study.
purblind ::: 1. Slow or deficient in understanding, imagination or vision. 2. Fig. Slow in understanding or discernment; dull.
quest ::: “The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings,—including Science itself,—must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
range ::: n. **1. The extent or scope of the operation or action of something, as in vision, perception. soul-range, swim-range. v. 2.** To wander freely; roam over a large area.
ration ::: a fixed allowance of food, provisions, etc.
::: ". . . reason can only establish half-lights and a provisional order.” *The Human Cycle
“… reason can only establish half-lights and a provisional order.” The Human Cycle
::: "Reason, on the contrary, proceeds by analysis and division and assembles its facts to form a whole; but in the assemblage so formed there are opposites, anomalies, logical incompatibilities, and the natural tendency of Reason is to affirm some and to negate others which conflict with its chosen conclusions so that it may form a flawlessly logical system.” The Life Divine*
“Reason, on the contrary, proceeds by analysis and division and assembles its facts to form a whole; but in the assemblage so formed there are opposites, anomalies, logical incompatibilities, and the natural tendency of Reason is to affirm some and to negate others which conflict with its chosen conclusions so that it may form a flawlessly logical system.” The Life Divine
REASON. ::: The reason has its place especially with regard to certain physical things and general worldly questions — though even there it is a very fallible judge — or in the forma- tion of metaphysical conclusions and generalisations ; but its claim to be the decisive aulhori^ in matters of yoga or in spiritual things is untenable. The activities of the outward intellect there lead only to the formation of personal opinions, not to the discovery of Truth. It has always been understood in India that the reason and its logic or its judgment cannot give you the realisation of spiiitua] truths but can only assist in an intellectual presentation of ideas; realisation comes by intuition and inner experience. Reason and intellectuality cannot make you see the Divine, it is the soul that sees. Mind and the other instruments can only share in the vision when it is imparted to them by the soul and welcome and rejoice in it. But also the mind may prevent it or at least stand long in the way of the realisation of the vision. For its prepossessions. prKonceived
Rectangle ::: Vide Visions.
Samadhi and norma! sleep, between the dream*state of Yoga and the physical state of dream. The latter belongs to the physical mind ; in the former the mind proper and subtle is at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind*faculttes disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain>memory, partly of refieclions from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflec- tions which arc, ordinarily, received without intelligence or co- ordination, wildly distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain-memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world. In the Yogic dream-state, on the other hand, the mind is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently and is able to use either its ordinary will and intelligence with a concentrated power or else the higher will and intelligence of the more exalted planes of mind. It withdraws from experience of the outer world, it puts its seals upon the physical senses and their doors of conununicatinn with maJerJal things ; but everything that is proper to itself, thought, reasoning, reflection, vision, it can continue to execute with an increased purity and power of sovereign concentration free from the dis- tractions and unsteadiness of the waking mind. It can use too its will and produce upon itself or upon its environment mental, moral and even physical effects which may continue and have
scene ::: 1. The place where an action or event occurs. 2. A view or picture presented to the eye (or to the mind) of a place, concourse, incident, series of actions or events, assemblage of objects, etc. 3. The place in which the action of a play, movie, or other narrative occurs; a setting. 4. A subdivision of an act of a play marked by the entrance or departure of one or more actors. 5. An action, episode, complication of events, or situation, in real life. 6. Fig. A view or prospect of something to come. scenes, scene-shifters, earth-scene, earth-scene"s, life-scene, soul-scene, world-scene.
scouts of vision
seasons ::: one of the four natural divisions of the year, spring, summer, fall and winter, in the North and South Temperate zones. Each season, beginning astronomically at an equinox or solstice, is characterized by specific meteorological or climatic conditions.
sections ::: distinct parts or subdivisions of anything; any of the portions into which a thing is cut or divided.
::: **"See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy.” Essays Divine and Human
“See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy.” Essays Divine and Human
seer ::: 1. A person gifted with profound spiritual insight or knowledge; a wise person or sage who possesses intuitive powers or one to whom divine revelations are made in visions. 2. One who sees; an observer. **Seer, seers, seer-evenings, seer-summit, seer-vision"s.
separate ::: v. 1. To set apart. 2. To put, bring or force apart, (two or more persons or things, or one from another); to disunite, disconnect, make a division between, part. 3. To sort, part or divide something previously combined or mixed. 4. To part or be parted from; depart or draw apart from; become divided; disunited. separates, separated. adj. 5. Detached, disconnected, or disjoined. 6. Withdrawn or divided from something else so as to have an independent existence by itself. 7. Being or standing apart; distant or dispersed. 8. Considered or reckoned by itself (although mentioned as one of several); single, individual. 9. Belonging or peculiar to one, not common to or shared with the other or the others. separateness.
Shruti: “The attraction and glitter of desire, thought perceptions and concepts which hide the direct vision of the truth, the slayer of the truth because it invades life as the apparent truth itself.”
Shruti: “The seven radiances of the Dawn, Usha (infinite consciousness, truth vision), the sevenfold principle of existence, the seven Sisters, rivers. The seven manifesting radiances of the primal light, Usha (Dawn).”
Since the Consciousness-Force of the eternal Existence is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on whatever self-formulation of that Consciousness expresses itself in that world. Equally, for each individual being, his seeing or representation to himself of the world he lives in will depend on the poise or make which that Consciousness has assumed in him. Our human mental consciousness sees the world in sections cut by the reason and sense and put together in a formation which is also sectional; the house it builds is planned to accommodate one or another generalised formulation of Truth, but excludes the rest or admits some only as guests or dependents in the house. Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision. Thus the mental reason sees Person and the Impersonal as opposites: it conceives an impersonal Existence in which person and personality are fictions of the Ignorance or temporary constructions; or, on the contrary, it can see Person as the primary reality and the impersonal as a mental abstraction or only stuff or means of manifestation. To the Overmind intelligence these are separable Powers of the one Existence which can pursue their independent self-affirmation and can also unite together their different modes of action, creating both in their independence and in their union different states of consciousness and being which can be all of them valid and all capable of coexistence. A purely impersonal existence and consciousness is true and possible, but also an entirely personal consciousness and existence; the Impersonal Divine, Nirguna Brahman, and the Personal Divine, Saguna Brahman, are here equal and coexistent aspects of the Eternal. Impersonality can manifest with person subordinated to it as a mode of expression; but, equally, Person can be the reality with impersonality as a mode of its nature: both aspects of manifestation face each other in the infinite variety of conscious Existence. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are to the Overmind intelligence complementaries. Our mind sees that all things are born from Matter or material Energy, exist by it, go back into it; it concludes that Matter is the eternal factor, the primary and ultimate reality, Brahman. Or it sees all as born of Life-Force or Mind, existing by Life or by Mind, going back into the universal Life or Mind, and it concludes that this world is a creation of the cosmic Life-Force or of a cosmic Mind or Logos. Or again it sees the world and all things as born of, existing by and going back to the Real-Idea or Knowledge-Will of the Spirit or to the Spirit itself and it concludes on an idealistic or spiritual view of the universe. It can fix on any of these ways of seeing, but to its normal separative vision each way excludes the others. Overmind consciousness perceives that each view is true of the action of the principle it erects; it can see that there is a material world-formula, a vital world-formula, a mental world-formula, a spiritual world-formula, and each can predominate in a world of its own and at the same time all can combine in one world as its constituent powers. The self-formulation of Conscious Force on which our world is based as an apparent Inconscience that conceals in itself a supreme Conscious-Existence and holds all the powers of Being together in its inconscient secrecy, a world of universal Matter realising in itself Life, Mind, Overmind, Supermind, Spirit, each of them in its turn taking up the others as means of its self-expression, Matter proving in the spiritual vision to have been always itself a manifestation of the Spirit, is to the Overmind view a normal and easily realisable creation. In its power of origination and in the process of its executive dynamis Overmind is an organiser of many potentialities of Existence, each affirming its separate reality but all capable of linking themselves together in many different but simultaneous ways, a magician craftsman empowered to weave the multicoloured warp and woof of manifestation of a single entity in a complex universe. …
Snanda. Vide Symbol ; Visions.
soul ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The word ‘soul", as also the word ‘psychic", is used very vaguely and in many different senses in the English language. More often than not, in ordinary parlance, no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire — the false soul or desire-soul — is intended by the words ‘soul" and ‘psychic" and not the true soul, the psychic being.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul is very vaguely used in English — as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That was why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.” *Letters on Yoga
"The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds all evolving formations here.” *Letters on Yoga
"A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine — none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)” *Letters on Yoga
"The soul or spark is there before the development of an organised vital and mind. The soul is something of the Divine that descends into the evolution as a divine Principle within it to support the evolution of the individual out of the Ignorance into the Light. It develops in the course of the evolution a psychic individual or soul individuality which grows from life to life, using the evolving mind, vital and body as its instruments. It is the soul that is immortal while the rest disintegrates; it passes from life to life carrying its experience in essence and the continuity of the evolution of the individual.” *Letters on Yoga
". . . for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events. . . .” *Essays on the Gita
". . . the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being — ‘no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers — and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity or ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
". . . the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature.” The Life Divine
"The true soul secret in us, — subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, — this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.” The Life Divine
*Soul, soul"s, Soul"s, souls, soulless, soul-bridals, soul-change, soul-force, Soul-Forces, soul-ground, soul-joy, soul-nature, soul-range, soul-ray, soul-scapes, soul-scene, soul-sense, soul-severance, soul-sight, soul-slaying, soul-space,, soul-spaces, soul-strength, soul-stuff, soul-truth, soul-vision, soul-wings, world-soul, World-Soul.
Sri Aurobindo: "As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man; — this was the significance of the contest between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and the later Semitic opposition of God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and Evil.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4.* Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "Finally, we have the goddess Dakshina who may well be a female form of Daksha, himself a god and afterwards in the Purana one of the Prajapatis, the original progenitors, — we have Dakshina associated with the manifestation of knowledge and sometimes almost identified with Usha, the divine Dawn, who is the bringer of illumination. I shall suggest that Dakshina like the more famous Ila, Saraswati and Sarama, is one of four goddesses representing the four faculties of the Ritam or Truth-consciousness, — Ila representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination.” *The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo: "Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one"s own being and one"s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner planes of one’s own being and one’s own consciousness as distinguished from worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "God and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is the cause of suffering.” *Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "His [the Titan"s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel, — if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly, — it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “His [the Titan’s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel,—if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly,—it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I suppose the golden child is the Truth-Soul which follows after the silver light of the spiritual. When it plunges into the black waters of the subconscient, it releases from it the spiritual light and the sevenfold streams of the Divine Energy and, clearing itself of the stains of the subconscient, it prepares its flight towards the supreme Divine (the Mother).” (Reply to a question in the chapter Visions and Symbols.) Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: “It can be taken as the (Avatar) incarnation on the mental plane.” Visions of Champaklal
Sri Aurobindo: "It is an achievement to have got rid so rapidly and decisively of the shimmering mists and fogs which modern intellectualism takes for Light of Truth. The modern mind has so long and persistently wandered – and we with it – in the Valley of the False Glimmer that it is not easy for anyone to disperse its mists with the sunlight of clear vision.” Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "I used the word ‘mystic" in the sense of a certain kind of inner seeing and feeling of things, a way which to the intellect would seem occult and visionary — for this is something different from imagination and its work with which the intellect is familiar.” *On Himself
Sri Aurobindo: "Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision"s limited range.” *Essays Divine and Human
Sri Aurobindo: ” See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret & violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly & unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see & experience the All-true, Almighty & All-blissful.” Essays Divine and Human*
Sri Aurobindo: “The legend of the Tower of Babel speaks of the diversity of tongues as a curse laid on the race; but whatever its disadvantages, and they tend more and more to be minimised by the growth of civilisation and increasing intercourse, it has been rather a blessing than a curse, a gift to mankind rather than a disability laid upon it. The purposeless exaggeration of anything is always an evil, and an excessive pullulation of varying tongues that serve no purpose in the expression of a real diversity of spirit and culture is certainly a stumbling-block rather than a help: but this excess, though it existed in the past, is hardly a possibility of the future. The tendency is rather in the opposite direction. In former times diversity of language helped to create a barrier to knowledge and sympathy, was often made the pretext even of an actual antipathy and tended to a too rigid division. The lack of sufficient interpenetration kept up both a passive want of understanding and a fruitful crop of active misunderstandings. But this was an inevitable evil of a particular stage of growth, an exaggeration of the necessity that then existed for the vigorous development of strongly individualised group-souls in the human race. These disadvantages have not yet been abolished, but with closer intercourse and the growing desire of men and nations for the knowledge of each other’s thought and spirit and personality, they have diminished and tend to diminish more and more and there is no reason why in the end they should not become inoperative.” The Human Cycle. Babel-builders’.
Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "There are two allied powers in man: Knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.” *The Hour of God
Sri Aurobindo: "There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” *Letters on Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: "This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form.” The Upanishads
Sri Aurobindo: ". . . thought in itself, in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception, a cognitive seizing of the object or of some truth of things which is a powerful but still a minor and secondary result of spiritual vision, a comparatively external and superficial regard of the self upon the self, the subject upon itself or something of itself as object.” *The Life Divine
Sri Aurobindo: "Visions come under the head of experiences, unless they fix themselves and are accompanied by a realisation of which they are as it were the support.” The Mother*
stanza ::: one of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines. stanzas.
STAR. ::: Vide Symbol ; Visions.
stress ::: 1. Physical, mental or emotional strain or tension; a situation, occurrence, condition or factor causing strain. 2. Stimulus or pressure of the influence of an adverse force. 3. Special or exceptional emphasis or significance attached to something. stress-vision.
subtle vision
subtle vision ("s) ::: Sri Aurobindo: " This power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even without any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant or needs only a little practice to develop; it is not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less extent; . . . .”*Letters on Yoga
"It is not necessary to have the mind quiet in order to see the lights — that depends only on the opening of the subtle vision in the centre which is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Many people get that as soon as they start sadhana. It can even be developed by effort and concentration without sadhana by some who have it to a small extent as an inborn faculty.” Letters on Yoga
"When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent — gradually one becomes aware of one"s inner being as separate from the outer, and what can be called a yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superficial mental and vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
subtle images ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Subtle images can be images of all things in all worlds.” *Letters on Yoga
"These are not mental images. There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
Suffering in yoga ::: There are two ways to meet ::: first that of the Self, calm, equality, a spint, a will, a mind, a vital, a physical consciousness that remain resolutely turned towards the Divine and unshaken by all suggestion of doubt, desire, attachment, depression, sorrow, pain, inertia. This is possible when the inner being awakens, when one becomes conscious of the Self, of the inner Mind, the inner Vital, the inner Physical, for that can more easily attune itself to the divine Will, and then there is a division in the being as if there were two beings, one within calm, strong, equal, unperturbed, a charmel of the Divine Consciousness and
symbol ::: A symbol, as I understand it, is the form on one plane that represents a truth of another. For instance, a flag is the symbol of a nation…. But generally all forms are symbols. This body of ours is a symbol of our real being and everything is a symbol of some higher reality. There are, however, different kinds of symbols: 1. Conventional symbols, such as the Vedic Rishis formed with objects taken from their surroundings. The cow stood for light because the same word `go ‘ meant both ray and cow, and because the cow was their most precious possession which maintained their life and was constantly in danger of being robbed and concealed. But once created, such a symbol becomes alive. The Rishis vitalised it and it became a part of their realisation. It appeared in their visions as an image of spiritual light. The horse also was one of their favourite symbols, and a more easily adaptable one, since its force and energy were quite evident. 2. What we might call Life-symbols, such as are not artificially chosen or mentally interpreted in a conscious deliberate way, but derive naturally from our day-to-day life and grow out of the surroundings which condition our normal path of living. To the ancients the mountain was a symbol of the path of yoga, level above level, peak upon peak. A journey, involving the crossing of rivers and the facing of lurking enemies, both animal and human, conveyed a similar idea. Nowadays I dare say we would liken yoga to a motor-ride or a railway-trip. 3. Symbols that have an inherent appositeness and power of their own. Akasha or etheric space is a symbol of the infinite all-pervading eternal Brahman. In any nationality it would convey the same meaning. Also, the Sun stands universally for the supramental Light, the divine Gnosis. 4. Mental symbols, instances of which are numbers or alphabets. Once they are accepted, they too become active and may be useful. Thus geometrical figures have been variously interpreted. In my experience the square symbolises the supermind. I cannot say how it came to do so. Somebody or some force may have built it before it came to my mind. Of the triangle, too, there are different explanations. In one position it can symbolise the three lower planes, in another the symbol is of the three higher ones: so both can be combined together in a single sign. The ancients liked to indulge in similar speculations concerning numbers, but their systems were mostly mental. It is no doubt true that supramental realities exist which we translate into mental formulas such as Karma, Psychic evolution, etc. But they are, so to speak, infinite realities which cannot be limited by these symbolic forms, though they may be somewhat expressed by them; they might be expressed as well by other symbols, and the same symbol may also express many different ideas. Letters on Yoga
televisioned ::: A word coined by Sri Aurobindo and used as an adv. to describe transmission of images as by the medium of television.
televisioned ::: a word coined by Sri Aurobindo and used as an adv. to describe transmission of images as by the medium of television.
television ("s) ::: the broadcasting of a still or moving image via radio waves to receivers that project a view of the image on a picture tube.
tentative ::: 1. Not fully worked out, concluded, or agreed on; provisional. 2. Unsure; uncertain; not definite or positive; hesitant.
text ::: 1. The original words of something written or printed, as opposed to a paraphrase, translation, revision, or condensation. 2. The body of a printed work as distinct from headings and illustrative matter on a page or from front and back matter in a book.
the act of separating or the state of being separated. division"s.
"The centre of vision is between the eyebrows in the centre of the forehead. When it opens one gets the inner vision, sees the inner forms and images of things and people and begins to understand things and people from within and not only from outside, develops a power of will which also acts in the inner (yogic) way on things and people etc. Its opening is often the beginning of the yogic as opposed to the ordinary mental consciousness.” Letters on Yoga
“The centre of vision is between the eyebrows in the centre of the forehead. When it opens one gets the inner vision, sees the inner forms and images of things and people and begins to understand things and people from within and not only from outside, develops a power of will which also acts in the inner (yogic) way on things and people etc. Its opening is often the beginning of the yogic as opposed to the ordinary mental consciousness.” Letters on Yoga
"The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*
“The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top:—(1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga,—(1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga
The field of vision, like every other field of activity of the human mind, is a mixed world and there is in it not only truth but much half-inith and error. For the rash and unwary to enter into it may bring confusion and misleading inspiration and false voices, and it is safer to have some sure guidance from those who know and have spiritual and psychic experience One must look at this field calmly and with discrimination, but to shut the gates and reject this or other supraphysical experiences is to limit oneself and arrest the inner development.
"The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“The general power of Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; . . . .” The Life Divine
“The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision; …” The Life Divine
The inner vision can sec the vibration of the forces which act through the object.
"The inner vision can see objects, but it can see instead the vibration of the forces which act through the object.” Letters on Yoga
“The inner vision can see objects, but it can see instead the vibration of the forces which act through the object.” Letters on Yoga
The inner vision does not come as easily to intellectuals as it docs to men with a strong life-power or the emotional and the imaginative.
"The inner vision is an open door on higher planes of consciousness beyond the physical mind which gives room for a wider truth and experience to enter and act upon the mind. It is not the only or the most important door, but it is one which comes readiest to very many if not most and can be a very powerful help.” Letters on Yoga
“The inner vision is an open door on higher planes of consciousness beyond the physical mind which gives room for a wider truth and experience to enter and act upon the mind. It is not the only or the most important door, but it is one which comes readiest to very many if not most and can be a very powerful help.” Letters on Yoga
"The intermediate link exists. We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it is a principle superior to mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions.” The Life Divine
“The intermediate link exists. We call it the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness, because it is a principle superior to mentality and exists, acts and proceeds in the fundamental truth and unity of things and not like the mind in their appearances and phenomenal divisions.” The Life Divine
"The message of the Gita is the gospel of the Divinity in man who by force of an increasing union unfolds himself out of the veil of the lower Nature, reveals to the human soul his cosmic spirit, reveals his absolute transcendences, reveals himself in man and in all beings. The potential outcome here of this union, this divine Yoga, man growing towards the Godhead, the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity.” Essays on the Gita ::: *Divinity"s.
“The message of the Gita is the gospel of the Divinity in man who by force of an increasing union unfolds himself out of the veil of the lower Nature, reveals to the human soul his cosmic spirit, reveals his absolute transcendences, reveals himself in man and in all beings. The potential outcome here of this union, this divine Yoga, man growing towards the Godhead, the Godhead manifest in the human soul and to the inner human vision, is our liberation from limited ego and our elevation to the higher nature of a divine humanity.” Essays on the Gita
Then there arc experiences that help or lead towards the realisation of things spiritual or divine or bring openings or progressions in the sadhana or arc supports on the way, — experiences of a symbolic character, visions, contacts of one kind or another with the Divine or with the workings of higher Truth, things like the waking of the Kundalini, the opening of the
::: "The perfect cosmic vision & cosmic sentiment is the cure of all error & suffering; but most men succeed only in enlarging the range of their ego.” Essays Divine and Human
“The perfect cosmic vision & cosmic sentiment is the cure of all error & suffering; but most men succeed only in enlarging the range of their ego.” Essays Divine and Human
"The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul"s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga
“The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga
The Rajayogic Pranayama purifies and clears- theaiervous system ; it enables us to circulate the vital energy equally through the body and direct it also where we will nccarding to need, and thus maintain a perfect health and soundness of the body and the vital being ; it gives us control of all the five habitual opera- tions of the vital energy in the system and at the same time breaks down the habitual divisions by which only the ordinary mechanical processes of the vitality arc possible (o the norma! life. It opens entirely the six centres of the psycho-physical system and brings Into (he waking consciousness the power of the awakened Shakti and the light of the unveiled Furusba on each of the as^nding planes. Cbupled with (be use of the mantra it brings the ^vine energy into the body and prepares for and facilitates that concentration in Samadbi which is the crown of the Rajayogic method.
"The reality of the Hostiles and the nature of their role and trend of their endeavour cannot be doubted by any one who has had his inner vision unsealed and made their unpleasant acquaintance.” Letters on Savitri
“The reality of the Hostiles and the nature of their role and trend of their endeavour cannot be doubted by any one who has had his inner vision unsealed and made their unpleasant acquaintance.” Letters on Savitri
There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of dhyana, * meditation ’ and ‘ contemplation ’. Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the know- ledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana, for the principle of dh)ona is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. There are other forms of dhyana. You stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as they will and simply observe them and see what they are. This may be called concentration in self-observation.
"There is a clear distinction in Vedic thought between kavi, the seer and manîshî, the thinker. The former indicates the divine supra-intellectual Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relations, the latter, the labouring mentality, which works from the divided consciousness through the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation in form and upward to their reality in the self-existent Brahman.” The Upanishads*
“There is a clear distinction in Vedic thought between kavi, the seer and manîshî, the thinker. The former indicates the divine supra-intellectual Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relations, the latter, the labouring mentality, which works from the divided consciousness through the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation in form and upward to their reality in the self-existent Brahman.” The Upanishads
“There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
*”…there is a spiritual mind which, can admit us to a greater and more comprehensive vision. *The Future Poetry*
“…there is a spiritual mind which, can admit us to a greater and more comprehensive vision. The Future Poetry
"There results an integral vision of the Divine Existent at once as the transcendent Reality, supracosmic origin of cosmos, as the impersonal Self of all things, calm continent of the cosmos, and as the immanent Divinity in all beings, personalities, objects, powers and qualities, the Immanent who is the constituent self, the effective nature and the inward and outward becoming of all existences.” Essays on the Gita*
“There results an integral vision of the Divine Existent at once as the transcendent Reality, supracosmic origin of cosmos, as the impersonal Self of all things, calm continent of the cosmos, and as the immanent Divinity in all beings, personalities, objects, powers and qualities, the Immanent who is the constituent self, the effective nature and the inward and outward becoming of all existences.” Essays on the Gita
“These are not mental images. There is an inner vision that opens when one does sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this physical world also.” Letters on Yoga
"These lights and visions are not hallucinations. They indicate an opening of the inner vision whose centre is in the forehead between the eyebrows.” Letters on Yoga
“These lights and visions are not hallucinations. They indicate an opening of the inner vision whose centre is in the forehead between the eyebrows.” Letters on Yoga
"The Unknowable, — not absolutely unknowable, but beyond mental knowledge, — can only be a higher degree in the intensity of being of that Something, a degree beyond the loftiest summit attainable by mental beings, and, if it were known as it must be known to itself, that discovery would not destroy entirely what is given us by our supreme possible knowledge but rather carry it to a higher fulfilment and larger truth of what it has already gained by self-vision and self-experience.” The Life Divine
“The Unknowable,—not absolutely unknowable, but beyond mental knowledge,—can only be a higher degree in the intensity of being of that Something, a degree beyond the loftiest summit attainable by mental beings, and, if it were known as it must be known to itself, that discovery would not destroy entirely what is given us by our supreme possible knowledge but rather carry it to a higher fulfilment and larger truth of what it has already gained by self-vision and self-experience.” The Life Divine
"The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake, — therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti, — in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“The whole energy of the soul is not at play in the physical body and life, the secret powers of mind are not awake in it, the bodily and nervous energies predominate. But all the while the supreme energy is there, asleep; it is said to be coiled up and slumbering like a snake,—therefore it is called the kundalinî sakti,—in the lowest of the chakras, in the mûlâdhâra. When by Pranayama the division between the upper and lower prana currents in the body is dissolved, this Kundalini is struck and awakened, it uncoils itself and begins to rise upward like a fiery serpent breaking open each lotus as it ascends until the Shakti meets the Purusha in the brahmarandhra in a deep samadhi of union.” The Synthesis of Yoga
"The whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
“The whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight. Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.
"The world expresses a foreseen Truth, obeys a predetermining Will, realises an original formative self-vision, — it is the growing image of a divine creation.” The Life Divine
“The world expresses a foreseen Truth, obeys a predetermining Will, realises an original formative self-vision,—it is the growing image of a divine creation.” The Life Divine
“The world is a cyclic movement (samsâra ) of the Divine Consciousness in Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a different kind of reality.” The Upanishads
They are one key (there are others) to contact with the other worlds or with the inner worlds and all that is there and these are regions of immense riches which far surpass the physical plane as it is at present. One enters into a larger, freer self and a larger, more pfastic world; of course indmrfual w/anr only give a contact, not an actual entrance, but the power of vision accompanied with the power of other subtle senses (hear- ing, touch, etc.) as it expands does give this entrance. These things have not the effect of a mere imagination but if fully fo * lowed out bring a constant growth of the being and the conscious- ness and its richness of experience and its scope.
They are one key (there are others) to contact with the other worlds or with the inner worlds and all that is there and these are regions of immense riches which far surpass the physical plane as it is at present. One enters into a larger, freer self and a larger, more plasdc world; of course individual visions only give a contact, not an actual entrance, but the power of vision accompanied with the power of other subtle semes (hear- ing, touch, etc.) as it expands does give this entrance. These things have not the effect of a mere imagination but if fully fol- lowed out bring a constant growth of the being and the conscious- ness and its richness of experience and its scope.
"Things inside can be seen as distinctly as outward things whether in an image by the subtle vision or in their essence by a still more subtle and powerful way of seeing; but all these things have to develop in order to get their full power and intensity.” *Letters on Yoga
“Things inside can be seen as distinctly as outward things whether in an image by the subtle vision or in their essence by a still more subtle and powerful way of seeing; but all these things have to develop in order to get their full power and intensity.” Letters on Yoga
THIRD EYE. ::: It represents the occult vision and the occult power which goes with that vision ; it is connected with the
"This inner vision is one form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that seeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“This inner vision is one form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that seeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form.” The Upanishads
“ This power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even without any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant or needs only a little practice to develop; it is not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less extent; …”Letters on Yoga
"This secret Self in all beings is not apparent, but it is seen by means of the supreme reason, the subtle, by those who have the subtle vision. — Katha Upanishad. *The Life Divine
“This secret Self in all beings is not apparent, but it is seen by means of the supreme reason, the subtle, by those who have the subtle vision.—Katha Upanishad. The Life Divine
"This supreme Soul and Self is the Seer, the Ancient of Days and in his eternal self-vision and wisdom the Master and Ruler of all existence who sets in their place in his being all things that are, . . . .” Essays on the Gita
“This supreme Soul and Self is the Seer, the Ancient of Days and in his eternal self-vision and wisdom the Master and Ruler of all existence who sets in their place in his being all things that are, …” Essays on the Gita
"This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty. ” Letters on Savitri*
“This universal aesthesis of beauty and delight does not ignore or fail to understand the differences and oppositions, the gradations, the harmony and disharmony obvious to the ordinary consciousness; but, first of all, it draws a Rasa from them and with that comes the enjoyment, Bhoga. and the touch or the mass of the Ananda. It sees that all things have their meaning, their value, their deeper or total significance which the mind does not see, for the mind is only concerned with a surface vision, surface contacts and its own surface reactions. When something expresses perfectly what it was meant to express, the completeness brings with it a sense of harmony, a sense of artistic perfection; it gives even to what is discordant a place in a system of cosmic concordances and the discords become part of a vast harmony, and wherever there is harmony, there is a sense of beauty.” Letters on Savitri
This would be the source of that wanting to get back to some- thing interesting and enthralling which accompanies the desire to fall into sleep. But this must not be encouraged in waking hours, it should be kept for hours set apart for sleep where it gets its natural field, Othenvisc there may be an unbalancing, a tendency to live more and too much in the visions of the supraphysical realms and a decrease of the hold on outer realities.
thought, iwill, t vision, !govenisi*the dynamic . mind, will, vision, mental formation. (Colour: white ;• petals ::: two.), Iv n
thought ::: “… thought in itself, in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception, a cognitive seizing of the object or of some truth of things which is a powerful but still a minor and secondary result of spiritual vision, a comparatively external and superficial regard of the self upon the self, the subject upon itself or something of itself as object.” The Life Divine
tions; but here there comes in the Overmind law of each Force working out its own possibilities. The natural possibilities of a world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness are the main principles, would be the emergence of Forces of Darkness impelled to maintain the Ignorance by which they live, an ignorant struggle to know originative of falsehood and error, an ignorant struggle to live engendering wrong and evil, an egoistic struggle to enjoy, parent of fragmentary joys and pains and sufferings; these are therefore the inevitable first-imprinted characters, though not the sole possibilities of our evolutionary existence. Still, because the Non-Existence is a concealed Existence, the Inconscience a concealed Consciousness, the insensibility a masked and dormant Ananda, these secret realities must emerge; the hidden Overmind and Supermind too must in the end fulfil themselves in this apparently opposite organisation from a dark Infinite. …
Titan ::: : “His [the Titan’s] instincts call for a visible, tangible mastery and a sensational domination. How shall he feel sure of his empire unless he can feel something writhing helpless under his heel,—if in agony, so much the better? What is exploitation to him, unless it diminishes the exploited? To be able to coerce, exact, slay, overtly, irresistibly,—it is this that fills him with the sense of glory and dominion. For he is the son of division and the strong flowering of the Ego. To feel the comparative limitation of others is necessary to him that he may imagine himself immeasurable; for he has not the real, self-existent sense of infinity which no outward circumstance can abrogate. Contrast, division, negation of the wills and lives of others are essential to his self-development and self-assertion. The Titan would unify by devouring, not by harmonising; he must conquer and trample what is not himself either out of existence or into subservience so that his own image may stand out stamped upon all things and dominating all his environment.” Essays in Philosophy and Yoga
"To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote "His anger climbed against me in a stream", it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
“To me, for instance, consciousness is the very stuff of existence and I can feel it everywhere enveloping and penetrating the stone as much as man or the animal. A movement, a flow of consciousness is not to me an image but a fact. If I wrote ’His anger climbed against me in a stream’, it would be to the general reader a mere image, not something that was felt by me in a sensible experience; yet I would only be describing in exact terms what actually happened once, a stream of anger, a sensible and violent current of it rising up from downstairs and rushing upon me as I sat in the veranda of the Guest-House, the truth of it being confirmed afterwards by the confession of the person who had the movement. This is only one instance, but all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character. What is to be done under these circumstances? The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity. A new kind of poetry demands a new mentality in the recipient as well as in the writer.” Letters on Savitri
TRaTAK. ::: Concentrating the vision on a single point or object, preferably a luminous object.
tribes ::: 1. Units of sociopolitical organizations consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent. 2. Social divisions of a people, esp. of a preliterate people, defined in terms of common descent, territory, culture, etc.
"True knowledge is to know with the inner being, and when the inner being is touched by the light, then it arises to embrace that which is seen, it yearns to possess, it struggles to shape that in itself and itself to it, it labours to become one with the glory of its vision. Knowledge in this sense is an awakening to identity and, since the inner being realises itself by consciousness and delight, by love, by possession and oneness with whatever of itself it has seen, knowledge awakened must bring an overmastering impulse towards this true and only perfect realisation.” Essays on the Gita
“True knowledge is to know with the inner being, and when the inner being is touched by the light, then it arises to embrace that which is seen, it yearns to possess, it struggles to shape that in itself and itself to it, it labours to become one with the glory of its vision. Knowledge in this sense is an awakening to identity and, since the inner being realises itself by consciousness and delight, by love, by possession and oneness with whatever of itself it has seen, knowledge awakened must bring an overmastering impulse towards this true and only perfect realisation.” Essays on the Gita
unprovisioned :::
Vide Visions ; Colours.
view ::: 1. Sight; vision. 2. Range of sight or vision. 3. A particular way of looking at something. 4. An individual and personal perception, judgment, or interpretation; an opinion. 5. A sight afforded of something from a position stated or qualified. self-view.
VISION CENTRE. ::: We Forehead
Visions — colours: When i!»c colours begin lo take definite shapes in the >jslons, it is a sign of some dynamic work of formation in the consciousness ::: a square, for instance, means that some kind of creation is in process in some field of the being ; the square indicates that the creation is to be complete in itself ; while the rectangle indicates somcihws partial and preliminary.
Visions do not come from the spiritual plane ; they come from the subtle physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind. What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Dirae, c.g. the experience of Self every- where. of the Divine in all etc.
VISIONS. ::: Visions are due to the groivth of the • tvhich sees things belonging to all the planes of “'s'"
wards ::: divisions or districts of a city or town.
—we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies,—not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance….
"We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit, the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also that beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature. And since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that all these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become many; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or beast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction the mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical finite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can become two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication; but this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which can contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and trillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and multiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of the Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would pursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite Oneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not mean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the Many: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all limitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all limitation by finite conceptual oneness.” The Life Divine
“We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit, the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also that beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature. And since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that all these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become many; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or beast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction the mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical finite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can become two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication; but this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which can contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and trillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and multiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of the Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would pursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite Oneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not mean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the Many: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all limitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all limitation by finite conceptual oneness.” The Life Divine
When it opens one gets the inner vision, sees the inner forms and images of things and people and begins to understand things and people from within and not only from outside, develops a power of will which also acts in the inner (yogic) way on things and people etc. Its opening is often the beginning of the yogic as opposed to the ordinary mental consciousness.
“When the centres begin to open, inner experiences such as the seeing of light or images through the subtle vision in the forehead centre or psychic experiences and perceptions in the heart, become frequent—gradually one becomes aware of one’s inner being as separate from the outer, and what can be called a yogic consciousness with all its deeper movements develops in the place of the ordinary superficial mental and vital movements.” Letters on Yoga
"When the inner vision opens, there can come before it all that ever was or is now in the world, even it can open to things that will be hereafter — so there is nothing impossible in seeing thus the figures and the things of the past.” Letters on Yoga*
“When the inner vision opens, there can come before it all that ever was or is now in the world, even it can open to things that will be hereafter—so there is nothing impossible in seeing thus the figures and the things of the past.” Letters on Yoga
"When we see with the inner vision and sense and not with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware of is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading its every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the whole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all of these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it extending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really separate from it or quite separate from other objects. ‘It stands," says the Gita, ‘undivided in beings and yet as if divided." Thus each object is that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that are also forms and names, — powers, numens, — of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
“When we see with the inner vision and sense and not with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware of is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading its every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the whole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all of these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it extending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really separate from it or quite separate from other objects. ‘It stands,’ says the Gita, ‘undivided in beings and yet as if divided.’ Thus each object is that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that are also forms and names,—powers, numens,—of the Infinite.” The Life Divine
wisdom ::: “There are two allied powers in man: Knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.” The Hour of God
"Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy. The bliss existence may come to us through either one of these centres. When the lotus of the heart breaks open, we feel a divine joy, love and peace expanding in us like a flower of light which irradiates the whole being.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy. The bliss existence may come to us through either one of these centres. When the lotus of the heart breaks open, we feel a divine joy, love and peace expanding in us like a flower of light which irradiates the whole being.” The Synthesis of Yoga
::: "Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy.” The Synthesis of Yoga
WORLDS. ::: The physical is not the only world ; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds ; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds ; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home ; others above with which we have littfe contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as w’cll as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the cons- ciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into conoeciion with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a sub- conscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happen- ings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil ; our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent constructions of our subcooscient, but others are records (often much mixed and distorted) or transcripts of experiences in these supraphystcal planes. When we do sadbana, this kind of dream becomes very common ; then subconscious dreams cease to predominate.
" Yes. A third eye does open there [in the centre of the forehead] — it represents the occult vision and the occult power which goes with that vision — it is connected with the ajnacakra.” Letters on Yoga
“Yes. A third eye does open there [in the centre of the forehead]—it represents the occult vision and the occult power which goes with that vision—it is connected with the ajnacakra.” Letters on Yoga
Yet, how can I not remember those moments at Her feet, the times when She and Sri Aurobindo came to me in vision during sleep, the gifts of the spirit they showered upon me and on all of us…
Yet it is not indiscriminate — only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and sea- sons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes, then the Grace itself acts.
y/ife Symbol ; Visions.
Yoga*cxpcriencc often begins with some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the brows) or of some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience.
You cannot expect every vision to translate itself in a corres- ponding physical fact. Some do, (he majority don't, others belong to the supraphysical entirely and indicate realities, possibilities or tendencies that have their scat there. How far these will influ- ence the life or realise ihcmsclvs in it or whether they will do so at all depends upon the nature of (he vision, the power in it, sometimes on the will or the formative power of the seer.
You carmot expect every vision to translate itself in a corres- ponding physical fact. Some do, the majority don’t, others belong to the supraphysical entirely and indicate realities, possibilities or tendencies that have their seat there. How far these will influ- ence the life or realise (hemseivs in it or svbether they will do so at all depends upon the nature of the rision, the power in it, sometimes on the will or the formative power of the seer.
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142 Sri Aurobindo
25 Sri Ramakrishna
5 The Mother
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4 Saint Thomas Aquinas
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2 Saint Gregory of Nyssa
2 Ramakrishna
2 Joseph Campbell
2 Fulton John Sheen
2 Bill Hicks
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
2 Aleister Crowley
1 we too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us
1 Victor Hugo
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1 Steve Jobs
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1 Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi
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As I walk
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17 John C Maxwell
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13 Sri Aurobindo
10 William Blake
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1:Its not what the vision is, its what the vision does.
~ Robert Fritz,#KEYS
2:When I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful. ~ Giorgio de Chirico, #KEYS
3:The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision. ~ T. S. Eliot, #KEYS
4:One needs a vision of the promised land in order to have the strength to move. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #KEYS
5:Every moment this cup fills with vision. This is my wine. I drink the given moment. ~ Bahauddin, #KEYS
6:Extreme longing is the surest way to God-vision. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
7:The glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God. ~ Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, #KEYS
8:Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #KEYS
9:Mere inherence in pure Being is known as the Vision of Wisdom. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
10:A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. ~ Brian Tracy, #KEYS
11:Without intense desire, no one can attain the blessed state of God-Vision. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
12:To wear out the veil that occludes the vision of reality is all that man can do, and that he has got to do. ~ Anandamayi Ma, #KEYS
13:Savitri
the supreme revelation
of Sri Aurobindo's
vision.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#KEYS
14:Let this light from within and without illuminate our inner vision and guide us through darkness in time of chaos. ~ Inca Texts, #KEYS
15:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
16:The vision of God does not depend on your will - you must depend on His. You must resign yourself completely. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
17:Vision only opens, it does not embrace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge, #KEYS
18:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
19:If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
~ Steve Jobs,#KEYS
20:Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ~ Carl Jung, #KEYS
21:Desire, the troubled seed of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
22:It is vision that sees Truth, not logic. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Russell, Eddington, Jeans, #KEYS
23:One cannot have the vision of God as long as one has these three- shame, hatred, and fear. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
24:A god come down and greater by the fall. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
25:The Enigma's knot is tied in human kind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
26:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
27:Divine love must awaken within your hearts and be intensified and crystallized. Then only the vision of God will open up. ~ Swami Turiyananda, #KEYS
28:Man's perfect Happiness consists in the vision of the Divine Essence ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.5.5)., #KEYS
29:Speak not my secret name to hostile Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
30:Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
31:Vision is not sufficient; one must become what inwardly one sees. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #KEYS
32:He has need of death to find a greater life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
33:Man is too weak to bear the Infinite's weight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
34:An immutable Power has made this mutable world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
35:All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
36:He has need of darkness to perceive some light
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
37:Numberless sadhus, devotees, and men of realization have come to holy places to have a vision of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
38:Effort is necessary for God vision. If you simply sit on the shore of a lake, will you catch any fish? ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
39:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
40:He who is face to face with reality, blessed with a vision of God, does not regard women with any fear. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
41:Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #KEYS
42:There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
43:You may talk of the vision of God or of meditation, but remember, the mind is everything. One gets everything when the mind becomes steady. ~ Sri Sarada Devi, #KEYS
44:All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, [T5],#KEYS
45:In the dangers of the sea, she comforted the very sailors, assuring them of a safe arrival, because she had been so assured by You in a vision. ~ Saint Augustine, #KEYS
46:The beginning of wisdom, perfection and beatitude is the vision of the One. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #KEYS
47:Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.
~ Sri Ramakrishna, [T5],#KEYS
48:Unless the illusory nature of the world ceases, the vision of the true nature of the Self is not obtained. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
49:Every breath of life is a breath too of death. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
50:Destruction is the first condition of progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
51:It is possible to be one with all, yet above all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - The Double Aspect, #KEYS
52:Being in it, why search for it? The ancients say: Making the vision absorbed in jnana, one sees the world as Brahman. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
53:As the rosy dawn comes before the rising sun, so is a longing and yearning heart the forerunner of the glorious vision of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
54:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. ~ G K Chesterton, "The Eternal Revolution," Orthodoxy, #KEYS
55:The native power of poetry is in its sight, not in its intellectual thought-matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
56:We shall be blessed with clear vision if we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, for he, as Paul teaches, is our head, and there is in him no shadow of evil. ~ Saint Gregory of Nyssa, #KEYS
57:So long as one has not seen the divine vision, so long there must remain the illusion: "I am the doer. I have done evil and good." ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
58:What separated Tesla from the competition was the willingness to charge after its vision without compromise, a complete commitment to execute to Musks standards.
~ Ashley Vance?,#KEYS
59:Hanuman was blessed with the vision of God, both Sakara (form) and Nirakara (formless). But he retained the ego of a servant of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
60:One attains God through japa. By repeating the name of God secretly and in solitude one receives divine grace. Then comes His vision. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
61:The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. ~ Thucydides, ?, 5th century BC, #KEYS
62:The vision of God brings infallibly the adoration and passionate seeking of the Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Works, Devotion and Knowledge, #KEYS
63:All we have done is ever still to do.
All breaks and all renews and is the same. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
64:The vision of faith penetrates into the remote future and turns the impossible into the possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - I, The Leverage of Faith, #KEYS
65:Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee. ~ Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice, [T3], #KEYS
66:The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
67:Drama is the poet's vision of some part of the world-act in the life of the human soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - II, #KEYS
68:Looking at you from within the Self, I never leave you.
How can this fact be known to your externalised vision? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Padamalai, 37,#KEYS
69:Do not consider one's Guru to be merely human. Before you see the Deity, you will see the Guru in the first vision of Divine Illumination. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
70:Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, [T5],#KEYS
71:Man, sole awake in an unconscious world,
Aspires in vain to change the cosmic dream. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
72:One feels restless for God when one's soul longs for His vision. To love God is the essence of the whole thing. Bhakti alone is the essence. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
73:Nature's vision climbs beyond her acts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 02.06, #KEYS
74:The Master of man and his infinite Lover,
He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,#KEYS
75:Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
76:He has need of darkness to perceive some light
And need of grief to feel a little bliss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
77:A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
78:The high gods look on man and watch and choose
Today's impossibles for the future's base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
79:All Nature is full of the secret Godhead and in labour to reveal him in her. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
80:A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
81:Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes;
It has no gaze on the deep heart of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
82:Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Maya, #KEYS
83:Our sight and sense are a fallible gaze and touch
And only the spirit's vision is wholly true. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#KEYS
84:A hundred years of life passed without the vision of the supreme law are not worth a single day of a life consecrated to that vision. ~ Dham-mapada, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
85:Always he journeys, but nowhere arrives;
He would guide the world, himself he cannot guide ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
86:God is seen, when the mind is tranquil. When the mental sea is agitated by the wind of desires, it cannot reflect God, and then God-vision is impossible ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
87:However man's mind may tire or fail his flesh,
A will prevails cancelling his conscious choice .
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
88:Find God and forget yourself. Be wholly surrendered, the moment you can give up everything and know your own nothingness, that moment God-vision will come and your will be free. ~ Swami Ramakrishnananda, #KEYS
89:Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
90:The man in whose vision all things are becomings of the Self and who sees in all things oneness, whence shall he have grief or delusion? ~ Isha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
91:Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
92:The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the Yoga. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III, Kinds of Vision, #KEYS
93:Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
Upon an inner vision's motionless verge,
Revealed a figure of the invisible, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 4:2,#KEYS
94:The enlightening power of the poet's creation is vision of truth, its moving power is a passion of beauty and delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Breath of Greater Life, #KEYS
95:Building of the Soul
For the most part we are much too busy living and thinking to have leisure to be silent and see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,#KEYS
96:All forces are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #KEYS
97:He is the Maker and the world he made,
He is the vision and he is the Seer;
He is himself the actor and the act, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
98:Create your vision, then systematically follow it. There are no guarantees of success. There is only the assurance that if you do nothing, you will accomplish nothing. . . . Where do you want to start?
~ Forsha (31),#KEYS
99:A perfect rhythm will often even give immortality to work which is slight in vision and very far from the higher intensities of style. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Rhythm and Movement, #KEYS
100:Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
101:All intuitive knowledge comes more or less directly from the light of the self-aware spirit entering into the mind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, #KEYS
102:It is not easy to confer upon the young a strength or vision which we do not possess, but sometime, these young people will be the leaders and supporters of world affairs. ~ Manly P Hall, (PRS Journal Autumn 1961, p.11), #KEYS
103:The Eternal is seen when the mind is at rest. When the sea of the mind is troubled by the winds of desire, it cannot reflect the Eternal and all divine vision is impossible ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
104:All life is fixed in an ascending scale
And adamantine is the evolving Law;
In the beginning is prepared the close. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
105:All the movement and action of Rudra the Terrible is towards perfection and divine light and completeness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - The Double Aspect, #KEYS
106:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
107:Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
108:The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
109:Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
110:Through wealth and honour our egoism gets bloated up, and there is no greater obstacle in the spiritual path than egoism. It is in fact this egoism, the product of ignorance, that masks our vision of God. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
111:Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,
But never has he seen the face behind:
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
112:Analogic vision precedes all real knowledge. Only those who perceive similarities between things and events are able to work with concepts.… To grasp essential similarities means to perceive primal phenomena. ~ Robert Spaemann, #KEYS
113:An Angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision and by bringing within his reach some truth which the Angel himself contemplates. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
114:The secret Self in all existences does not manifest Himself to the vision: yet is He seen by the seers of the subtle by a subtle and perfect understanding. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, 3:12, #KEYS
115:It is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
116:Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart…. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens." ~ Carl Jung, (1875-1961), a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, Wikipedia., #KEYS
117:Here 'neath veils, my Saviour darkly I behold; To my thirsting spirit all thy light unfold; Face to face in heaven let me come to thee, And the blessed vision of thy glory see. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #KEYS
118:The attempt to diminish the subjective view to the vanishing-point so as to get an accurate presentation is proper to science, not to poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
119:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - V, #KEYS
120:The world expresses a foreseen Truth, obeys a predetermining Will, realises an original formative self-vision,—it is the growing image of a divine creation. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Divine Maya, #KEYS
121:Then is the Eternal seen when the mind it at rest. When the sea of mind is tossed by the winds of desire, it cannot reflect the Eternal and all divine vision is impossible. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
122:He who contemplates the supreme Truth, contemplates the perfect Essence; only the vision of the spirit can see this nature of ineffable perfection. ~ Buddhist Mediations from the Japanese, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
123:The Eternal is seen when the mind is at rest. When the sea of the mind is troubled by the winds of desire, it cannot reflect the Eternal and all divine vision is impossible. ~ Ramakrishna, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
124:No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
125:The poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #KEYS
126:It is in fact this egoism, the product of ignorance, that masks our vision of God. Really His glory is present everywhere, but we fail to see Him because we refuse to remove the veil of ignorance that obstructs our vision. ~ Swami Vijnanananda, #KEYS
127:God the bountiful and prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and destroyer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #KEYS
128:His failure is not failure whom God leads; ...
It knows its steps, its way is inevitable,
And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
129:Still, right thought only becomes effective when in the purified understanding it is followed by other operations, by vision, by experience, by realisation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS
130:In that holy city, where perfect knowledge flows from the vision of almighty God, those who have no names may easily be known. But personal names are assigned to some to denote their ministry. Thus, Michael means "Who is like God".... ~ Gregory the Great, #KEYS
131:Each moment, each hour will bring him the vision of a new mystery, because his heart is detached from this as from the other world; an invisible aid guides all his steps and fires his ardour. ~ Baha-ullah, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
132:His form stands not within the vision of any, none seeth Him with the eye. By the heart and the thought and the mind He is experienced; who seize this with the knowledge, they become immortal. ~ Katha Upanishad, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
133:There Mind, a splendid sun of vision's rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts
And moved amidst the grandeur of its dreams. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,#KEYS
134:The heavens declare the glory of God… because, for those who understand, God's artistic vision, which is revealed through the heavens' harmonious revolutions, fulfills the same role as God's creative word. ~ Saint Gregory of Nyssa, On the Six Days of Creation 11, #KEYS
135:The true disciple rejects enervation and idleness; he is delivered from caieless lassitude. Loving the light, intelligent and clear of vision he purifies his heart of all carelessness and idleness. ~ Majjhima Sntta, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
136:Jung's vision for [The Red Book] was ... significantly influenced in form, style, content by The Bible, Dante's Divine Comedy, Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Goethe's Faust, medieval illuminated manuscripts, the illuminated works of William Blake. ~ Mark Winborn, #KEYS
137:The widest synthesis of perfection possible to thought is the sole effort entirely worthy of those whose dedicated vision perceives that God dwells concealed in humanity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Synthesis of the Systems, #KEYS
138:A divinising stream possessed his veins,
His body's cells awoke to spirit sense,
Each nerve became a burning thread of joy:
Tissue and flesh partook beatitude. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
139:Let me assure you that a man can realize his Inner Self through sincere prayer. But to the extent that he has the desire to 'enjoy worldly objects,his vision of the Self becomes obstructed. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
140:There is in human nature as such, because it is spiritual, a desire, a natural appetite, a sign of ontological ordination ... which could be satisfied in no way but through the very vision of God, face to face. ~ Henri de Lubac, 'Dsappearance of the Sense of the Sacred', #KEYS
141:Fanaticism rises from man's will to dominate others. Once it is born, it brings in its frame a lot of other evils. It blinds man's vision and stirs up the animal in him. It hardens man's heart, destroys all sublime sentiments that give sanctity to life. ~ Swami Abhedananda, #KEYS
142:8. Here proclaim which is he, O Fire, what demon-sorcerer, who is the doer of this deed? To him do violence with thy blaze, O youthful god, subject him to the eye of thy divine vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire, 2 - Other Hymns, #KEYS
143:O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternals artist Bride,
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand.
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
144:Though Necessity dons the garb of Chance,
Hidden in the blind shifts of Fate she keeps
The slow calm logic of Infinity's pace
And the inviolate sequence of its will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
145:When the feeling of God's presence became dulled and spiritual vision darkened, that is when pride entered into tradesmen and technologists, and they started to give glory exclusively to themselves for their buildings, handiwork and intellectual works. ~ Nikolai Velimirovich, #KEYS
146:There are two allied powers in man; knowledge & wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, #KEYS
147:And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, so that in this way the Wisdom of God, who consoles us as a mother, may refresh us from that very same bread [of the angels] and lead us through the sacraments of the incarnation to the knowledge and vision of divine splendor. ~ Bede, #KEYS
148:The philosopher cannot fly; he must ascend into the ether; but his wings inevitably melt in the heat of the sun, and he falls and breaks into fragments. On this flight, however, he sees something, and his philosophy speaks of this vision. ~ S. Bulgakov, The Tragedy of Philosophy, #KEYS
149:The ocean is full of precious pearls,but you may not get them at the first dive. My boys, once again I enjoin you, have firm faith in the words of your Guru, & try to get absorbed in deep meditation. Be sure, sooner or later you will have a vision of the Lord. ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA, #KEYS
150:The mind of ignorance relies on a certain foundation or element of relative or moral certainties, but for the rest a dealing with probabilities and possibilities is its chief resource. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, #KEYS
151:On his long way through Time and Circumstance
The grey-hued riddling nether shadow-Sphinx,
Her dreadful paws upon the swallowing sands,
Awaits him armed with the soul-slaying word: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
152:Illumined theocracies of the seeing soul
Throned in the power of the Transcendent's ray.
A vision of grandeurs, a dream of magnitudes
In sun-bright kingdoms moved with regal gait:
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
153:Clarity of knowledge and inner self-vision, subjugation of the ego, love, scrupulousness in selfless and dedicated works, are the four wheels of the chariot of Yoga. One who has them will progress safely on the path.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Himself And The Ashram,#KEYS
154:There Knowledge called him to her mystic peaks
Where thought is held in a vast internal sense
And feeling swims across a sea of peace
And vision climbs beyond the reach of Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge,#KEYS
155:There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #KEYS
156:At last he hears a chanting on the heights
And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
And passes over the edge of mortal sight
To a new vision of himself a ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Secret Knowledge,#KEYS
157:The plurality of persons in God is an article of faith, and natural reason is unable to discuss and adequately understand it though we hope to understand it in heaven when we shall see God in his essence, and faith will be replaced by vision ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (DP 9.5)., #KEYS
158:Perhaps the world is an error of our sight,
A trick repeated in each flash of sense,
An unreal mind hallucinates the soul
With a stress-vision of false reality,
Or a dance of Maya veils the void Unborn. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Triple Soul-Forces#KEYS
159:A soul shall wake in the Inconscient's house;
The mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle,
The body intuition's instrument,
And life a channel for God's visible power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
160:O living power of the incarnate Word,
All that the Spirit has dreamed thou canst create:
Thou art the force by which I made the worlds,
Thou art my vision and my will and voice.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation,#KEYS
161:There are three kinds of Ānanda, joy: the joy of worldly enjoyment, the joy of worship,& the Joy of Brahman. The joy of worldly enjoyment is the joy of 'lust & greed'. The joy of worship one enjoys while chanting the name & glories of God. The Joy of Brahman is the God-vision ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
162:He found the occult cave, the mystic door
Near to the well of vision in the soul,
And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
In the silent space where all is for ever known. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Spirit's Freedom and Greatness,#KEYS
163:To be at our most efficient, we need to be able to switch backwards and forward between the two modes. But ~ here's the problem ~ we too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us, we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view., #KEYS
164:A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;
There was a thunder as of worlds that fall;
Earth was o'errun with fire and the roar of Death
Clamouring to slay a world his hunger had made;
There was a clangour of Destruction's wings: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
165:All-vision gathered into a single ray,
As when the eyes stare at an invisible point
Till through the intensity of one luminous spot
An apocalypse of a world of images
Enters into the kingdom of the seer.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King The Yoga of the Souls Release,#KEYS
166:All-vision gathered into a single ray,
As when the eyes stare at an invisible point
Till through the intensity of one luminous spot
An apocalypse of a world of images
Enters into the kingdom of the seer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
167:Overpassing lines that please the outward eyes
But hide the sight of that which lives within
Sculpture and painting concentrated sense
Upon an inner vision's motionless verge,
Revealed a figure of the invisible,
Unveiled all Nature's meaning in ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Growth of the Flame,#KEYS
168:Ravana's mind thought it was hungering after universal sovereignty and victory over Rama; but the aim his soul kept its vision fixed upon all the time was to get back to its heaven as soon as possible & be again God's menial. Therefore, as the shortest way, it hurled itself against God in a furious clasp of enmity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #KEYS
169:A man develops a subtle power as a result of the strict observance of celibacy for twelve years. Then he can understand and grasp very subtle things which otherwise elude his intellect. Through that understanding the aspirant can have direct vision of God. That pure understanding alone enables him to realize Truth. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
170:On every plane the hieratic Power,
Initiate of unspoken verities,
Dreams to transcribe and make a part of life
In its own native style and living tongue
Some trait of the perfection of the Unborn,
Some vision seen in the omniscient Light,
Some ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
171:The Self in man enlarging light and knowledge and harmonising will with light and knowledge so as to fulfil in life what he has seen in his increasing vision and idea of the Self, this is man's source and law of progress and the secret of his impulse towards perfection. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle: The Ideal Law of Social Development #KEYS
172:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ Charles Dickens, #KEYS
173:This Self hidden in all existences shines not out, but it is seen with the supreme and subtle vision by those who see the subtle. The wise man should draw speech into the mind, mind into the Self that is knowledge; knowledge he should contain in the Great Self and that in the Self that is still. ~ Kathopanishad I.3.12,13, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
174:There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,
Oceans of an immortal luminousness,
Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,
There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;
A burning head of vision leads the mind,
Thought trails behind it its lo ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,#KEYS
175:But not the utter vision and delight.
A veil is kept, something is still held back,
Lest, captives of the beauty and the joy,
Our souls forget to the Highest to aspire.
In that fair subtle realm behind our own
The form is all, and physical gods are kings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdom of Subtle Matter,#KEYS
176:Jing naturally transforms into Qi,
Qi naturally transforms into Spirit,
and Spirit naturally transforms into pure openness,
uniting with cosmic space.
This is called returning to the root,
returning to origin.
The path of everlasting life
and eternal vision is complete. ~ Master Li, The Book of Balance and Harmony, (13th century, trans. By Thomas Cleary),#KEYS
177:'O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature's doom by the lone spirit's power.
A limitless Mind that can contain the world,
A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms
Moved by the passions of the gods shall come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
178:The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him;
They were his life's pattern and his privilege.
A pure perception lent its lucent joy:
Its intimate vision waited not to think;
It enveloped all Nature in a single glance,
It looked into the very self of thin ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Yoga of the King, The Yoga of the Soul's Release,#KEYS
179:When will I have vision of God ?" asked an ardent disciple of the Master. The Master took him to the sea shore and held him completely immersed in water for a while. "How did that feel ?" asked the Master. 'I thought I would die without air to breathe' replied the disciple.
Such a quest of God would reveal Him immediately' is the answer of the Master. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
180:Whoever wishes to attain to the highest perfection of his being and to the vision of the supreme good, must have a knowledge of himself as of the things about him to the very core. It is only so that he can arrive at the supreme clarity. Therefore learn to know thyself, that is better for thee than to know all the powers of the creation. ~ Maitre Eckhart, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
181:The striking discoveries of contemporary science are continually telling us new things about how material creation came to be and how it continues to evolve. Although we do not have all the answers, we are clearly going in a direction that transcends the cosmology in which the great world religions came into existence. Our vision, understanding, and our attitudes about God inevitably must change. ~ Thomas Keating, #KEYS
182:It is now long since Sri Aurobindo has put up everywhere in the Ashram this reminder that you all know: 'Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, because she is, indeed, always present.' This is not a mere phrase, not simply words, it is a fact. I am with you in a very concrete manner and they who have a subtle vision can see me.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T0],#KEYS
183:All visions have a significance of one kind or another. This power of vision is very important for the Yoga and should not be rejected although it is not the most important thing-for the most important thing is the change of the consciousness. All other powers like this of vision should be developed without attachment as parts and aids of the Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
184:The intellectual understanding is only the lower buddhi; there is another and a higher buddhi which is not intelligence but vision, is not understanding but rather an over-standings in knowledge, and does not seek knowledge and attain it in subjection to the data it observes but possesses already the truth and brings it out in the terms of a revelatory and intuitional thought.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
185:When we look beyond our first exclusively concentrated vision, we see behind Vishnu all the personality of Shiva and behind Shiva all the personality of Vishnu. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga: The Divine Personality
Shiva-Vishnu
For most the siddhi of the path, whatever it is, must be the end of a long, difficult and persevering endeavour. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, The Difficulties of Yoga,#KEYS
186:Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, #KEYS
187:Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range.
For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.
God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human,#KEYS
188:There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ~ John Lennon, #KEYS
189:There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Yoga of Divine Works, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1 [T1],#KEYS
190:Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities - what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction - what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of "time management." ~ Stephen Covey, #KEYS
191:When you only have sensations, perceptions, and impulses, the world is archaic. When you add the capacity for images and symbols, the world appears magical. When you add concepts, rules, and roles, the world becomes mythic. When formal-reflexive capacities emergy, the rational world comes into view. With vision-logic, the existential world stands forth. When the subtle emerges, the world becomes divine. When the causal emerges, the self becomes divine. When the nondual emerges, world and self are realized to be one Spirit.
~ Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology, 119,#KEYS
192:States of consciousness there are in which Death is only a change in immortal Life, pain a violent backwash of the waters of universal delight, limitation a turning of the Infinite upon itself, evil a circling of the good around its own perfection; and this not in abstract conception only, but in actual vision and in constant and substantial experience. To arrive at such states of consciousness may, for the individual, be one of the most important and indispensable steps of his progress towards self-perfection.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
193:But you must remember one thing. One cannot see God sporting as man unless one has had the vision of Him. Do you know the sign of one who has God-vision? Such a man acquires the nature of a child. Why a child? Because God is like a child. So he who sees God becomes like a child.
God-vision is necessary. Now the question is, how can one get it? Intense renunciation is the means. A man should have such intense yearning for God that he can say, 'O Father of the universe, am I outside Your universe? Won't You be kind to me, You wretch? ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
194:High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty's sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love's laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture's golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature's face.
Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond
And the work seems vain on which our heart's force was spent,
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#KEYS
195:We ought not to have or let ourselves be satisfied with any thought of God. When the thought goes, our God goes with it. No, what we want is a real (subsistent) God who far transcends the thoughts of men and creatures. This God does not disappear unless we turn our back on him of our own accord. He who has God thus, in reality, has gotten God divinely; to him God is apparent in all things. Everything smacks to him of God; everywhere God's image stares him in the face. God is gleaming in him all the time. In him there is riddance and return; the vision of his God is ever present to his mind. ~ Meister Eckhart, #KEYS
196:Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams. ~ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Volume 1, #KEYS
197:Drugs have a long history of use in magic in various cultures, and usually in the context of either ecstatic communal rituals or in personal vision quests. However compared to people in simple pastoral tribal situations most people in developed countries now live in a perpetual state of mental hyperactivity with overactive imaginations anyway, so throwing drugs in on top of this usually just leads to confusion and a further loss of focus. Plus as the real Shamans say, if you really do succeed in opening a door with a drug it will thereafter open at will and most such substances give all they will ever give on the first attempt.
~ Peter J Carroll, The Octavo,#KEYS
198:The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana. At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching excessive importance to the details - until the consciousness develops more. The opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is always the one important thing in the yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, Visions and Symbols,#KEYS
199:And so, please practice! Please let that be your guide. And I believe that you will find, if your practice matures, that Spirit will reach down and bless your every word and deed, and you will be taken quite beyond yourself, and the Divine will blaze with the light of a thousand suns, and glories upon glories will be given unto you, and you will in every way be home. And then, despite all your excuses and all your objections, you will find the obligation to communicate your vision. And precisely because of that, you and I will find each other. And that will be the real return of Spirit to itself. ~ Ken Wilber, Interview, Bodhisattvas will have to turn to politics, Interview with Frank Visser, 1995, #KEYS
200:It is from the Overmind that all these different arrangements of the creative Truth of things originate. Out of the Overmind they come down to the Intuition and are transmitted from it to the Illumined and higher Mind to be arranged there for our intelligence. But they lose more and more of their power and certitude in the transmission as they come down to the lower levels. What energy of directly perceived Truth they have is lost in the human mind; for to the human intellect they present themselves only as speculative ideas, not as realised Truth, not as direct sight, a dynamic vision coupled with a concrete undeniable experience.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 155,#KEYS
201:The Silver Call
There is a godhead of unrealised things
To which Time's splendid gains are hoarded dross;
A cry seems near, a rustle of silver wings
Calling to heavenly joy by earthly loss.
All eye has seen and all the ear has heard
Is a pale illusion by some greater voice
And mightier vision; no sweet sound or word,
No passion of hues that make the heart rejoice
Can equal those diviner ecstasies.
A Mind beyond our mind has sole the ken
Of those yet unimagined harmonies,
The fate and privilege of unborn men.
As rain-thrashed mire the marvel of the rose,
Earth waits that distant marvel to disclose.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, 594,#KEYS
202:I Have A Hundred Lives:::
I have a hundred lives before me yet
To grasp thee in, O spirit ethereal,
Be sure I will with heart insatiate
Pursue thee like a hunter through them all.
Thou yet shalt turn back on the eternal way
And with awakened vision watch me come
Smiling a little at errors past, and lay
Thy eager hand in mine, its proper home.
Meanwhile made happy by thy happiness
I shall approach thee in things and people dear
And in thy spirit's motions half-possess
Loving what thou hast loved, shall feel thee near,
Until I lay my hands on thee indeed
Somewhere among the stars, as 'twas decreed. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, 180,#KEYS
203:An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct" the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry - including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology-all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing. ~ Ken Wilber, #KEYS
204:Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom's touch,
Her days became a luminous sacrifice;
An immortal moth in happy and endless fire,
She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.
A captive Life wedded her conqueror.
In his wide sky she built her world anew;
She gave to mind's calm pace the motor's speed,
To thinking a need to live what the soul saw,
To living an impetus to know and see.
His splendour grasped her, her puissance to him clung;
She crowned the Idea a king in purple robes,
Put her magic serpent sceptre in Thought's grip,
Made forms his inward vision's rhythmic shapes
And her acts the living body of his will.
A flaming thunder, a creator flash,
His victor Light rode on her deathless Force;
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
205:It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, [305],#KEYS
206:Only, in all he sees God, sees the supreme reality, and his motive of work is to help mankind towards the knowledge of God and the possession of the supreme reality. He sees God through the data of science, God through the conclusions of philosophy, God through the forms of Beauty and the forms of Good, God in all the activities of life, God in the past of the world and its effects, in the present and its tendencies, in the future and its great progression. Into any or all of these he can bring his illumined vision and his liberated power of the spirit. The lower knowledge has been the step from which he has risen to the higher; the higher illumines for him the lower and makes it part of itself, even if only its lower fringe and most external radiation.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Higher and the Lower Knowledge,#KEYS
207:So it is that when Dante had taken the last step in his spiritual adventure, and came before the ultimate symbolic vision of the Triune God in the Celestial Rose, he had still one more illumination to experience, even beyond the forms of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. "Bernard," he writes, "made a sign to me, and smiled, that I should look upward; but I was already, of myself, such as he wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and more, through the radiance of the lofty Light which in Itself is true. Thenceforward my vision was greater than our speech, which yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to such excess. [167]
[167] "Paradiso," XXXIII, 49-57 (translation by Norton, op. cit., Vol. Ill, pp. 253-254, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers). ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Ultimate Boon,#KEYS
208:The Gods, who in their highest secret entity are powers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in their proper home, are in their knowledge 'truth-conscious' and in their action possessed of the 'seer-will'. Their conscious-force turned towards works and creation is possessed and guided by a perfect and direct knowledge of the thing to be done and its essence and its law, - a knowledge which determines a wholly effective will-power that does not deviate or falter in its process or in its result, but expresses and fulfils spontaneously and inevitably in the act that which has been seen in the vision. Light is here one with Force, the vibrations of knowledge with the rhythm of the will and both are one, perfectly and without seeking, groping or effort, with the assured result.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind as Creator 132,#KEYS
209:the central notion of the Veda :::
The sense of the first two verses is clear enough when we know Saraswati to be that power of the Truth which we call inspiration. Inspiration from the Truth purifies by getting rid of all falsehood, for all sin according to the Indian idea is merely falsehood, wrongly inspired emotion, wrongly directed will and action. The central idea of life and ourselves from which we start is a falsehood and all else is falsified by it. Truth comes to us as a light, a voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of ourselves and all around us. Truth of thought creates truth of vision and truth of vision forms in us truth of being, and out of truth of being (satyam) flows naturally truth of emotion, will and action. This is indeed the central notion of the Veda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Secret Of The Veda,#KEYS
210: There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distri bute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #KEYS
211:Savitri is neither fantasy nor yet mere philosophical thought, but vision and revelation of the actual structure of the inner Cosmos and of the pilgrim of life within its sphere — the Stairway of the Worlds reveals itself to our gaze — worlds of Light above, worlds of Darkness beneath, and we see also ever-encircling life ('kindled in measure and quenched in measure') ascending that stair under the calm unwinking gaze of the Cosmic Gods who shine forth now as of old. Poetry is indeed the full manifestation of the Logos and, when as here, it is no mere iridescence dependent on some special standpoint, but the wondrous structure of the mighty Cosmos, the 'Adored One', that is revealed, then in truth does it manifest its full, its highest grandeur.
It is an omen of the utmost significance and hope that in these years of darkness and despair such a poem as Savitri should have appeared. ~ Krishnaprem,#KEYS
212:Here where one knows not even the step in front
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
On this anguished and precarious field of toil
Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
Unwanted, fading from the mortal's range.
A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,
The worship of a Presence and a Power
Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts,
The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.
Only a little the god-light can stay:
Spiritual beauty illumining human sight
Lines with its passion and mystery Matter's mask
And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Symbol Dawn,#KEYS
213:A disciple asked his teacher, 'Sir, please tell me how I can see God.' Come with me,' said the guru, 'and I shall show you.' He took the disciple to a lake, and both of them got into the water. Suddenly the teacher pressed the disciple's head under the water. After a few moments he released him and the disciple raised his head and stood up. The guru asked him, 'How did you feel?' The disciple said, 'Oh! I thought I should die; I was panting for breath.' The teacher said, 'When you feel like that for God, then you will know you haven't long to wait for His vision.'
Let me tell you something. What will you gain by floating on the surface? Dive a little under the water. The gems lie deep under the water; so what is the good of throwing your arms and legs about on the surface? A real gem is heavy. It doesn't float; it sinks to the bottom. To get the real gem you must dive deep. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
214:I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin,#KEYS
215:burden and advantage to an Integral Yoga; :::
...The hope of an integral transformation forbids us to take a short cut or to make ourselves light for the race by throwing away our impedimenta. For we have set out to conquer all ourselves and the world for God; ... Our compensation is that even if the path is that even if the path is more rugged, the effort more complex and baffling arduous, yet after a certain point we gain an immense advantage. For once our minds are reasonably fixed in the central vision and our wills are on the whole converted to the single pursuit, Life becomes our helper. Intent, vigilant, integrally conscious, we can take every detail of its forms and every incident of its movements as food for the sacrificial Fire within us. Victorious in the struggle, we can compel Earth herself to be an aid towards our perfection and can enrich our realisation with the booty torn from the Powers that oppose us.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 74,#KEYS
216:The greatest value of the dream-state of Samadhi lies, however, not in these more outward things, but in its power to open up easily higher ranges and powers of thought, emotion, will by which the soul grows in height, range and self-mastery. Especially, withdrawing from the distraction of sensible things, it can, in a perfect power of concentrated self-seclusion, prepare itself by a free reasoning, thought, discrimination or more intimately, more finally, by an ever deeper vision and identification, for access to the Divine, the supreme Self, the transcendent Truth, both in its principles and powers and manifestations and in its highest original Being. Or it can by an absorbed inner joy and emotion, as in a sealed and secluded chamber of the soul, prepare itself for the delight of union with the divine Beloved, the Master of all bliss, rapture and Ananda.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Part Two: The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Chapter 26, Samadhi, pg. 503,#KEYS
217:The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras, they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation for others. Naturally, these mostly would be illuminations, not the settled and permanent realisation that is the goal of Yoga - but they could be steps on the way or at least lights on the way. Many have such illuminations, even initial realisations while meditating on verses of the Upanishads or the Gita. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written, can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,#KEYS
218:Jnanaprakasha:: Jnana includes both the Para and the Apara Vidya, the knowledge of Brahman in Himself and the knowledge of the world; but the Yogin, reversing the order of the worldly mind, seeks to know Brahman first and through Brahman the world. Scientific knowledge, worldly information & instruction are to him secondary objects, not as it is with the ordinary scholar & scientist, his primary aim. Nevertheless these too we must take into our scope and give room to God's full joy in the world. The methods of the Yogin are also different for he tends more and more to the use of direct vision and the faculties of the vijnana and less and less to intellectual means. The ordinary man studies the object from outside and infers its inner nature from the results of his external study. The Yogin seeks to get inside his object, know it from within & use external study only as a means of confirming his view of the outward action resulting from an already known inner nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Record Of Yoga - I,#KEYS
219:The Garden ::: There's an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,
Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;
Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,
And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday.
There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there's moss about the pool,
And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool:
In the silent sunken pathways springs a herbage sparse and spare,
Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air.
There is not a living creature in the lonely space arouna,
And the hedge~encompass'd d quiet never echoes to a sound.
As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find
When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;
I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more,
As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before.
Then a sadness settles o'er me, and a tremor seems to start -
For I know the flow'rs are shrivell'd hopes - the garden is my heart. ~ H P Lovecraft,#KEYS
220:The tide of materialistic thoughts is always on the watch, waiting for the least weakness, and if we relax but one moment from our vigilance, if we are even slightly negligent, it rushes in and invades us from all sides, submerging under its heavy flood the result sometimes of numberless efforts. Then the being enters a sort of torpor, its physical needs of food and sleep increase, its intelligence is clouded, its inner vision veiled, and in spite of the little interest it really finds in such superficial activities, they occupy it almost exclusively. This state is extremely painful and tiring, for nothing is more tiring then materialistic thoughts, and the mind, worn out, suffers like a caged bird which cannot spread its wings and yet longs to be able to soar freely.
But perhaps this state has its own use which I do not see.... In any case, I do not struggle; and like a child in its mother's arms, like a fervent disciple at the feet of his master, I trust myself to Thee and surrender to Thy guidance, sure of Thy victory.
~ The Mother, Prayers And Meditations, January 4th, 1914,#KEYS
221:Sails across the sea of life in the twinkling of an eye.' One attains the vision of God if Mahamaya steps aside from the door. Mahamaya's grace is necessary: hence the worship of Sakti. You see, God is near us, but it is not possible to know Him because Mahamaya stands between. Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita were walking along. Rama walked ahead, Sita in the middle, and Lakshmana last. Lakshmana was only two and a half cubits away from Rama, but he couldn't see Rama because Sita - Mahamaya - was in the way.
"While worshipping God, one should assume a definite attitude. I have three attitudes: the attitude of a child, the attitude or a maidservant, and the attitude of a friend. For a long time I regarded myself as a maidservant and a woman companion of God; at that time I used to wear skirts and ornaments, like a woman. The attitude of a child is very good.
"The attitude of a 'hero' is not good. Some people cherish it. They regard themselves as Purusha and woman as Prakriti; they want to propitiate woman through intercourse with her. But this method often causes disaster. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,#KEYS
222:My understanding is that these are interdmensional entities that have an objective existence apart from the tripper's consciousness
The narcissistic reductionistism of physicalism assumes that either consciousness is an epiphenomnon of brain activity, or, at best, that brain and consciousness are two different aspects of the same reality (e.g. Neutral Monism, Teilhard, Wilber). While the latter option is more receptive of alternate realities, neither of these options acknowledges entities or consciousness existing apart from the empirical material world.
Ufo researcher John Keel coined the term "ultraterrestrial." A similar phenomenon may be the case here. These are entities that are more "material" than the imaginal ("astral") world.
So, a continuum of being might be something like:
- Transcendent
- Mind or psyche apart from matter
- Imaginal world (sensu Henry Corbin, = Collective Unconscious of Jung)
- Interdimensional, Ultraterrestrial, ufos, drug vision entities, high strangeness
- Orgone (Reich), linga sharira (Blavatsky), Etheric body
- Empirical material reality ~ M Alan Kazlev, Facebook 2020-09-14,#KEYS
223:15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold:The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world. Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door, and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided" The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real. ~ Joseph Campbell, #KEYS
224:The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 610 [T3],#KEYS
225:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother, one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience.
But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother, the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,#KEYS
226: The fourth group: Saraswati, the wealth of the fullest inspiration of the complete Truth, signifies speedy and rhythmic truth. She is the divine hearing. No doubt, we see and meet the Truth with our divine vision, but to make, the Truth active and dynamic and fill the creation with the power of Truth we needs must take the help of divine hearing. As the truth possesses a form, even so it has a name. It is precisely because of form and name that the truth becomes concrete. The form of truth is Visible in the divine vision, the name of truth in the divine hearing. Saraswati gives the divine name and Ila gives the divine form to the truth. Under the inspiration of Saraswati the truth casts aside all untruths. Hence she is called Pavaka(the Purifier). Above the mind there abides the vast ocean of Truth. We have neither any knowledge nor any experience of it. In a sense, we are quite unconscious of it. Saraswati raises the intelligence into the vast ocean of Truth and purifies it Afterwards she brings it down to our understanding. She manifests the complete knowledge in all its facets and make them living. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, 08, 36.08 - A Commentary on the First Six Suktas of Rigveda, #KEYS
227:Central to shamanism is the perception of an otherworld or series of otherworlds. This type of astral or aetheric dimension containing various powers entities and forces allows real effects to be created in this world. The shaman's soul journeys through this dimension while in ecstatic or drug-induced state of trance. The journey may be undertaken for divinatory knowledge, to cure sickness, to deliver a blow to enemies, or to find game animals. Prospective shamans are usually selected from those with a nervous disposition. They may either be assigned to shamanic instruction or are driven to it by a power present in the shamanic culture. Initiation invokes a journey into the otherworld, a meeting with spirits and a death-rebirth experience. In the deathrebirth experience, the candidate has a vision of his body being dismembered, often by fantastic beings or animal spirits, and then reassembled from the wreckage. The new body invariably contains an extra part often described as an additional bone or an inclusion of magical quartz stones or sometimes an animal spirit. This experience graphically symbolizes the location of the aetheric force field within the body or the addition of various extra powers to it.
~ Peter J Carroll, Liber Null,#KEYS
228:In order to strengthen the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected between the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not only do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the appearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect to recognise the true intuilion, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can command for the light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious vision, -- the ideal would be a complete transition, -- or at least to increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Purified Understanding, 316,#KEYS
229:Truly speaking, I have no opinion. According to a vision of truth, everything is still terribly mixed, a more or less favourable combination of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance, and so long as decisions are made and action is undertaken according to opinions, it will always be like that.
We want to give the example of an action that is undertaken in accordance with a vision of truth, but unfortunately we are still very far from realising this ideal, and even if the vision of truth expresses itself, it is immediately distorted in its implementation.
So, in the present state of affairs, it is impossible to say, "This is true and that is false, this leads us away from the goal and that brings us nearer the goal."
Everything can be used for the progress to be made; everything can be useful if we know how to use it.
The important thing is never to lose sight of the ideal we want to realise and to make use of all circumstances in view of this goal.
And finally, it is always better not to make an arbitrary decision for or against things, and to watch the unfolding of events with the impartiality of a witness, relying on the Divine Wisdom which will decide for the best and do what is necessary. 29 July 1961 ~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I, [T8],#KEYS
230:The supramental memory is different from the mental, not a storing up of past knowledge and experience, but an abiding presence of knowledge that can be brought forward or, more characteristically, offers itself, when it is needed: it is not dependent on attention or on conscious reception, for the things of the past not known actually or not observed can be called up from latency by an action which is yet essentially a remembrance. Especially on a certain level all knowledge presents itself as a remembering, because all is latent or inherent in the self of supermind. The future like the past presents itself to knowledge in the supermind as a memory of the preknown. The imagination transformed in the supermind acts on one side as a power of true image and symbol, always all image or index of some value or significance or other truth of being, on the other as an inspiration or interpretative seeing of possibilities and potentialities not less true than actual or realised things. These are put in their place either by an attendant intuitive or interpretative judgment or by one inherent in the vision of the image, symbol or potentiality, or by a supereminent revelation of that which is behind the image or symbol or which determines the potential and the actual and their relations and, it may be, overrides and overpasses them, imposing ultimate truths and supreme certitudes.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
231:To see life steadily and see it whole is only permitted to a Perfect and Infinite Consciousness standing outside Time, Space and Conditions. To such a divine Vision the working out of preordainment may present itself as a perfect, immediate and unhindered consummation. God said, 'Let there be Light' and, straightway,there was Light; and when the Light came into being, God saw that it was good. But to the imperfect finite consciousness, Light seems in its inception to have come into being by a slow material evolution completed by a fortuitous shock of forces; in its operation to be lavished with a prodigal wastefulness since only a small part is used for the purposes of life; in its presentation to be conveyed to a blinking and limited vision, hampered by obstacles and chequered with darkness. Limitation, imperfection, progression and retrogression are inseparable from phenomenal work, phenomenal intelligence, phenomenal pleasure and satisfaction. To Brahman the Will who measures all Time in a moment, covers all Space with one stride, embraces the whole chain of causation in one glance, there is no limitation, imperfection, progression or retrogression. He looks upon his work as a whole and sees that it is good. But the Gods cannot reach to His completeness, even though they toil after it; for ever He outruns their pursuit, moving far in front. Brahman, standing still, overtakes and passes the others as they run.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad,#KEYS
232:the first necessity; :::
The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sensemind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being - soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body - must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga. Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore. Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 72,#KEYS
233:In terms of energy - there are three characteristic ways in which the energy manifests - Dang, Rolpa, and rTsal (gDang, rol pa, and rTsal). Dang is the energy in which 'internal' and 'external' are not divided from that which manifests. It is symbolised by the crystal sphere which becomes the colour of whatever it is placed upon. Rolpa is the energy which manifests internally as vision. It is symbolised by the mirror. The image of the reflection always appears as if it is inside the mirror. rTsal is externally manifested energy which radiates. It is symbolised by the refractive capacity of the faceted crystal. For a realised being, this energy is inseparable in its manifestation from the dimension of manifest reality. Dang, Rolpa, and rTsal are not divided.
Dang, Rolpa and rTsal are not divided and neither are the ku-sum (sKu gSum - the trikaya) the three spheres of being. Cho-ku (chos sKu - Dharmakaya), the sphere of unconditioned potentiality, is the creative space from which the essence of the elements arises as long-ku (longs sKu - Sambhogakaya) the sphere of intangible appearances - light and rays, non material forms only perceivable by those with visionary clarity. Trülku (sPrul sKu - Nirmanakaya), the sphere of realised manifestation, is the level of matter in apparently solid material forms. The primordial base manifests these three distinct yet indivisible modes. ~ Sam Van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection: Simultaneous and Gradual Methods of Dzogchen Practice in the Longchen Nyingtig,#KEYS
234:It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together,- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the souls realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal -and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, Self-Consecration, 80 [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
235:Why Ubuntu: If I were you I'd just install Ubuntu into a dual-boot partition (the Ubuntu website has instructions for this) and learn as you go. Ubuntu is similar enough to Windows that you should be able to start using it right away without much difficulty.
For running your Python scripts you'll want to drop into the shell (Ctrl + Alt + T If memory serves me right). As you become more comfortable with Ubuntu, you can start using the shell more and more. The shell is what gives you access to the power of Unix; every time you need to do something tedious and repetitive, try to find out how to do it through the shell.
Eventually you will find yourself using the shell constantly. You'll wonder how you ever managed without it, and deride other operating systems for their lack of sensible programming tools. One day you'll realise that desktop window managers are a needless distraction. You start using xmonad or awesomewm. Eventually you realise that this, too, is a bastardisaton of the Unix vision and start using tmux exclusively. Then suddenly it hits you - every computer, every operating system, no matter how insignificant or user-friendly, has the Unix nature. All of them are merely streams from where you can ssh back into the ocean of Unix. Having achieved enlightenment you are equally content using an iPad as your main work computer, using powershell in Windows or SSH into a Digital Ocean droplet from your parent's computer. This is the Zen of Unix.
~ JohnyTex, https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/38zytg/is_it_worth_my_time_to_learn_linux_while_learning,#KEYS
236:But what has fixed the modes of Nature? Or who has originated and governs the movements of Force? There is a Consciousness - or a Conscient - behind that is the lord, witness, knower, enjoyer, upholder and source of sanction for her works; this consciousness is Soul or Purusha. Prakriti shapes the action in us; Purusha in her or behind her witnesses, assents, bears and upholds it. Prakriti forms the thought in our minds; Purusha in her or behind her knows the thought and the truth in it. Prakriti determines the result of the action; Purusha in her or behind her enjoys or suffers the consequence. Prakriti forms mind and body, labours over them, develops them; Purusha upholds the formation and evolution and sanctions each step of her works. Prakriti applies the Will-force which works in things and men; Purusha sets that Will-force to work by his vision of that which should be done. This Purusha is not the surface ego, but a silent Self, a source of Power, an originator and receiver of Knowledge behind the ego. Our mental "I" is only a false reflection of this Self, this Power, this Knowledge. This Purusha or supporting Consciousness is therefore the cause, recipient and support of all Nature's works, but he is not himself the doer. Prakriti, NatureForce, in front and Shakti, Conscious-Force, Soul-Force behind her, - for these two are the inner and outer faces of the universal Mother, - account for all that is done in the universe. The universal Mother, Prakriti-Shakti, is the one and only worker. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214, #KEYS
237:But even when the desire to know exists in the requisite strength, the mental vision by which abstract truth is recognised is hard to distinguish from vivid imaginability and consonance with mental habits. It is necessary to practise methodological doubt, like Descartes, in order to loosen the hold of mental habits; and it is necessary to cultivate logical imagination, in order to have a number of hypotheses at command, and not to be the slave of the one which common sense has rendered easy to imagine. These two processes, of doubting the familiar and imagining the unfamiliar, are correlative, and form the chief part of the mental training required for a philosopher.
The naïve beliefs which we find in ourselves when we first begin the process of philosophic reflection may turn out, in the end, to be almost all capable of a true interpretation; but they ought all, before being admitted into philosophy, to undergo the ordeal of sceptical criticism. Until they have gone through this ordeal, they are mere blind habits, ways of behaving rather than intellectual convictions. And although it may be that a majority will pass the test, we may be pretty sure that some will not, and that a serious readjustment of our outlook ought to result. In order to break the dominion of habit, we must do our best to doubt the senses, reason, morals, everything in short. In some directions, doubt will be found possible; in others, it will be checked by that direct vision of abstract truth upon which the possibility of philosophical knowledge depends. ~ Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World,#KEYS
238:[the value of sublimation:]
And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour.
In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations, - an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations. What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, [71] [T1],#KEYS
239:This ego or "I" is not a lasting truth, much less our essential part; it is only a formation of Nature, a mental form of thought centralisation in the perceiving and discriminating mind, a vital form of the centralisation of feeling and sensation in our parts of life, a form of physical conscious reception centralising substance and function of substance in our bodies. All that we internally are is not ego, but consciousness, soul or spirit. All that we externally and superficiallyare and do is not ego but Nature. An executive cosmic force shapes us and dictates through our temperament and environment and mentality so shaped, through our individualised formulation of the cosmic energies, our actions and their results. Truly, we do not think, will or act but thought occurs in us, will occurs in us, impulse and act occur in us; our ego-sense gathers around itself, refers to itself all this flow of natural activities. It is cosmic Force, it is Nature that forms the thought, imposes the will, imparts the impulse. our body, mind and ego are a wave of that sea of force in action and do not govern it, but by it are governed and directed. The Sadhaka in his progress towards truth and self-knowledge must come to a point where the soul opens its eyes of vision and recognises this truth of ego and this truth of works. He gives up the idea of a mental, vital, physical, "I" that acts or governs action; he recognises that Prakriti, Force of cosmic nature following her fixed modes, is the one and only worker in him and in all things and creatures.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 214,#KEYS
240:Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the more eager for Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing before him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and instructing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating before his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. Worshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, Gospel, #KEYS
241:The second condition of consciousness is potential only to the human being and gained by an inner enlightening and transformation of the mind of ignorance; it is that in which the mind seeks for its source of knowledge rather within than without and becomes to its own feeling and self-experience, by whatever means, a mind, not of original ignorance, but of self-forgetful knowledge. This mind is conscious that the knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the being, but as if veiled and forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a thing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and known at once to be true, - each thing in its own place, degree, manner and measure. This is its attitude to knowledge even when the occasion of knowing is some external experience, sign or indication, because that is to it only the occasion and its reliance for the truth of the knowledge is not on the external indication or evidence but on the inner confirming witness. The true mind is the universal within us and the individual is only a projection on the surface, and therefore this second state of consciousness we have either when the individual mind goes more and more inward and is always consciously or subconsciously near and sensitive to the touches of the universal mentality in which all is contained, received, capable of being made manifest, or, still more powerfully, when we live in the consciousness of universal mind with the personal mentality only as a projection, a marking board or a communicating switch on the surface. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Towards the Supramental Time Vision, 887, #KEYS
242:There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [19],#KEYS
243:8. We all recognize the Universe must have been thought into shape before it ever could have become a material fact. And if we are willing to follow along the lines of the Great Architect of the Universe, we shall find our thoughts taking form, just as the universe took concrete form. It is the same mind operating through the individual. There is no difference in kind or quality, the only difference is one of degree.
9. The architect visualizes his building, he sees it as he wishes it to be. His thought becomes a plastic mold from which the building will eventually emerge, a high one or a low one, a beautiful one or a plain one, his vision takes form on paper and eventually the necessary material is utilized and the building stands complete.
10. The inventor visualizes his idea in exactly the same manner, for instance, Nikola Tesla, he with the giant intellect, one of the greatest inventors of all ages, the man who has brought forth the most amazing realities, always visualizes his inventions before attempting to work them out. He did not rush to embody them in form and then spend his time in correcting defects. Having first built up the idea in his imagination, he held it there as a mental picture, to be reconstructed and improved by his thought. "In this way," he writes in the Electrical Experimenter. "I am enabled to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of, and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete, the product of my brain. Invariably my devise works as I conceived it should; in twenty years there has not been a single exception. ~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,#KEYS
244:...that personality, like consciousness, life, soul is not a brief-lived stranger in an impersonal Eternity, but contains the very meaning of existence. This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very motive of the universal labour. As an occult vision opens in him, he becomes aware of worlds behind in which consciousness and personality hold an enormous place and assume a premier value; even here in the material world to this occult vision the inconscience of Matter fills with a secret pervading consciousness, its inanimation harbours a vibrant life, its mechanism is the device of an indwelling Intelligence, God and soul are everywhere. Above all stands an infinite conscious Being who is variously self-expressed in all these worlds; impersonality is only a first means of that expression. It is a field of principles and forces, an equal basis of manifestation; but these forces express themselves through beings, have conscious spirits at their head and are the emanation of a One Conscious Being who is their sorce. A multiple innumberable personality expressing that One is the very sense and central aim of the manifestation and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary, restrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered into its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and the infinite. Thus the world-creation is no more an illusion, a fortuitous mechanism, a play that need not have happened, a flux without consequence; it is an intimate dynamism of the conscious and living Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice, 127,#KEYS
245:Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. ~ Bertrand Russell,#KEYS
246:There is, indeed, a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind or intuitive reason, and this by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude. It acts in a self-light of the truth which does not depend upon the torch-flares of the sense-mind and its limited uncertain percepts; it proceeds not by intelligent but by visional concepts: It is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power of Involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind. The logical reason proceeds pace after pace and tries the sureness of each step like a marl who is walking over unsafe ground and has to test by the hesitating touch of his foot each span of soil that he perceives with his eye. But this other supralogical process of the reason is a motion of rapid insight or swift discernment; it proceeds by a stride or leap, like a man who springs from one sure spot to another point of sure footing, -- or at least held by him to be sure. He sees this space he covers in one compact and flashing view, but he does not distinguish or measure either by eye or touch its successions, features and circumstances. This movement has something of the sense of power of the intuition, something of its velocity, some appearance of its light and certainty, arid we always are apt to take it for the intuition. But our assumption is an error and, if we trust to it, it may lead us into grievous blunders.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
247:If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, - an image which in this experience becomes a reality, - we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, - not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind Mind and the Overmind Maya, 293, #KEYS
248:One can concentrate in any of the three centres which is easiest to the sadhak or gives most result. The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open that centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life and body and turn and open them all-fully-to the Divine, removing all that is opposed to that turning and opening.
This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the psychic being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the psychic being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised. The power of concentration in the eyebrows is to open the centre there, liberate the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [where to concentrate?],#KEYS
249:I have already told you this several times. When you are in a particular set of circumstances and certain events take place, these events often oppose your desire or what seems best to you, and often you happen to regret this and say to yourself, "Ah! how good it would have been if it were otherwise, if it had been like this or like that", for little things and big things.... Then years pass by, events are unfolded; you progress, become more conscious, understand better, and when you look back, you notice―first with astonishment, then later with a smile―that those very circumstances which seemed to you quite disastrous or unfavourable, were exactly the best thing that could have happened to you to make you progress as you should have. And if you are the least bit wise you tell yourself, "Truly, the divine Grace is infinite."
So, when this sort of thing has happened to you a number of times, you begin to understand that in spite of the blindness of man and deceptive appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere, so that at every moment it is the best possible thing that happens in the state the world is in at that moment. It is because our vision is limited or even because we are blinded by our own preferences that we cannot discern that things are like this.
But when one begins to see it, one enters upon a state of wonder which nothing can describe. For behind the appearances one perceives this Grace―infinite, wonderful, all-powerful―which knows all, organises all, arranges all, and leads us, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, that is, union with the Divine, the awareness of the Godhead and union with Him.
Then one lives in the Action and Presence of the Grace a life full of joy, of wonder, with the feeling of a marvellous strength, and at the same time with a trust so calm, so complete, that nothing can shake it any longer. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, 8 August 1956,#KEYS
250:middle vision logic or paradigmatic ::: (1:25) Cognition is described as middle-vision logic, or paradigmatic in that it is capable of co-ordinating the relations between systems of systems, unifying them into principled frameworks or paradigms. This is an operation on meta-systems and allows for the view described above, a view of human development itself. Self-sense at teal is called Autonomous or Strategist and is characterized by the emergent capacity to acknowledge and cope with inner conflicts in needs, ... and values. All of which are part of a multifacted and complex world. Teal sees our need for autonomy and autonomy itself as limited because emotional interdependence is inevitable. The contradictory aspects of self are weaved into an identity that is whole, integrated and commited to generating a fulfilling life.
Additionally, Teal allows individuals to link theory and practice, perceive dynamic systems interactions, recognize and strive for higher principles, understand the social construction of reality, handle paradox and complexity, create positive-sum games and seek feedback from others as a vital source for growth. Values embrace magnificence of existence, flexibility, spontaneioty, functionality, the integration of differences into interdependent systems and complimenting natural egalitarianism with natural ranking. Needs shift to self-actualization, and morality is in both terms of universal ethical principles and recognition of the developmental relativity of those universals. Teal is the first wave that is truly able to see the limitations of orange and green morality, it is able to uphold the paradox of universalism and relativism. Teal in its decision making process is able to see ... deep and surface features of morality and is able to take into consideration both those values when engaging in moral action. Currently Teal is quite rare, embraced by 2-5% of the north american and european population according to sociological research. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-53, Middle Vision Logic,#KEYS
251:mastering the lower self and leverage for the march towards the Divine :::
In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards tile superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine.
It is, then, in the highest mind of thought and light and will or it is in the inner heart of deepest feeling and emotion that we must first centre our consciousness, -- in either of them or, if we are capable, in both together, -- and use that as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. The concentration of an enlightened thought, will and heart turned in unison towards one vast goal of our knowledge, one luminous and infinite source of our action, one imperishable object of our emotion is the starting-point of the Yoga. And the object of our seeking must be the very fount of the Light which is growing in us, the very origin of the Force which we are calling to move our members. Our one objective must be the Divine himself to whom, knowingly or unknowingly, something always aspires in our secret nature. There must be a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul's realisation of the one Divine. There must be a flaming concentration of the heart on the All and Eternal and, when once we have found him, a deep plunging and immersion in the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of the will on the attainment and fulfilment of all that the Divine is and a free and plastic opening of it to all that he intends to manifest in us. This is the triple way of the Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Self-Consecration, 80-81,#KEYS
252:My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever; the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be examined beforehand, from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practice of a crude idea as is being generally done, is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money, and time. My early affliction had however, another compensation. The incessant mental exertion developed my powers of observation and enabled me to discover a truth of great importance. I had noted that the appearance of images was always preceded by actual vision of scenes under peculiar and generally very exceptional conditions, and I was impelled on each occasion to locate the original impulse. After a while this effort grew to be almost automatic and I gained great facility in connecting cause and effect. Soon I became aware, to my surprise, that every thought I conceived was suggested by an external impression. Not only this but all my actions were prompted in a similar way. In the course of time it became perfectly evident to me that I was merely an automation endowed with power OF MOVEMENT RESPONDING TO THE STIMULI OF THE SENSE ORGANS AND THINKING AND ACTING ACCORDINGLY.
~ Nikola Tesla, The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla,#KEYS
253:the spiritual force behind adoration :::
All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendor appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. Certain idolatries are indispensable for the development of our emotional being, nor will the man who knows be hasty at any time to shatter this image unless he can replace it in the heart of the worshipper by the Reality it figures. Moreover, they have this power because there is always something in them that is greater than their forms and, even when we reach the supreme worship, that abides and becomes a prolongation of it or a part of its catholic wholeness. our knowledge is still imperfect in us, love incomplete if even when we know That which surpasses all forms and manifestations, we cannot still accept the Divine in creature and object, in man, in the kind, in the animal, in the tree, in the flower, in the work of our hands, in the Nature-Force which is then no longer to us the blind action of a material machinery but a face and power of the universal Shakti: for in these things too is the presence of the Eternal.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, The Works of Love - The Works of Life, 159,#KEYS
254:And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout form the heart-perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example-but authentically always and absolutely carries a a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.
Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity. You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others because you don't want to upset your self. You are acting in bad faith, the taste of a bad infinity.
Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must.
And this is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any case there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong is simply no excuse: You might be right in your communication, and you might be wrong, but that doesn't matter. What does matter, as Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery-either way-and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever passion and courage you can find in your heart. You must shout, in whatever way you can. ~ Ken Wilber, One Taste,#KEYS
255:The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
2:In the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, 2.01 - The Object of Knowledge,#KEYS
256:Are there no false visions?
There are what in appearance are false visions. There are, for instance, hundreds or thousands of people who say that they have seen the Christ. Of that number those who have actually seen Him are perhaps less than a dozen, and even with them there is much to say about what they have seen. What the others saw may be an emanation; or it may be a thought or even an image remembered by the mind. There are, too, those who are strong believers in the Christ and have had a vision of some Force or Being or some remembered image that is very luminous and makes upon them a strong impression. They have seen something which they feel belongs to another world, to a supernatural order, and it has created in them an emotion of fear, awe or joy; and as they believe in the Christ, they can think of nothing else and say it is He. But the same vision or experience if it comes to one who believes in the Hindu, the Mohammedan or some other religion, will take a different name and form. The thing seen or experienced may be fundamentally the same, but it is formulated differently according to the different make-up of the apprehending mind. It is only those that can go beyond beliefs and faiths and myths and traditions who are able to say what it really is; but these are few, very few. You must be free from every mental construction, you must divest yourself of all that is merely local or temporal, before you can know what you have seen.
Spiritual experience means the contact with the Divine in oneself (or without, which comes to the same thing in that domain). And it is an experience identical everywhere in all countries, among all peoples and even in all ages. If you meet the Divine, you meet it always and everywhere in the same way. Difference comes in because between the experience and its formulation there is almost an abyss. Directly you have spiritual experience, which takes place always in the inner consciousness, it is translated into your external consciousness and defined there in one way or another according to your education, your faith, your mental predisposition. There is only one truth, one reality; but the forms through which it may be expressed are many. 21 April 1929 ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
257:higher mind or late vision logic ::: Even more rare, found stably in less than 1% of the population and even more emergent is the turquoise altitude.
Cognition at Turquoise is called late vision-logic or cross-paradigmatic and features the ability to connect meta-systems or paradigms, with other meta-systems. This is the realm of coordinating principles. Which are unified systems of systems of abstraction to other principles. ... Aurobindo indian sage and philosopher offers a more first-person account of turquoise which he called higher-mind, a unitarian sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamism capable of formation of a multitude of aspects of knowledge, ways of action, forms and significances of becoming of all of which a spontaneous inherient knowledge.
Self-sense at turquoise is called Construct-aware and is the first stage of Cook-Greuter's extension of Loveigers work on ego-development. The Construct-aware stage sees individuals for the first time as exploring more and more complex thought-structures with awareness of the automatic nature of human map making and absurdities which unbridaled complexity and logical argumentation can lead. Individuals at this stage begin to see their ego as a central point of reference and therefore a limit to growth. They also struggle to balance unique self-expressions and their concurrent sense of importance, the imperical and intuitive knowledge that there is no fundamental subject-object separation and the budding awareness of self-identity as temporary which leads to a decreased ego-desire to create a stable self-identity. Turquoise individuals are keenly aware of the interplay between awareness, thought, action and effects. They seek personal and spiritual transformation and hold a complex matrix of self-identifications, the adequecy of which they increasingly call into question. Much of this already points to Turquoise values which embrace holistic and intuitive thinking and alignment to universal order in a conscious fashion.
Faith at Turquoise is called Universalising and can generate faith compositions in which conceptions of Ultimate Reality start to include all beings. Individuals at Turquoise faith dedicate themselves to transformation of present reality in the direction of transcendent actuality. Both of these are preludes to the coming of Third Tier. ~ Essential Integral, L4.1-54, Higher Mind,#KEYS
258:Imperial Maheshwari is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother's eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient, unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads them according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet she has more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother, [39],#KEYS
259:The object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme, the Divine, the Infinite and the Absolute. This Supreme has its relations to our individual being and its relations to the universe and it transcends both the soul and the universe. Neither the universe nor the individual are what they seem to be, for the report of them which our mind and our senses give us, is, so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of higher supramental and suprasensuous knowledge, a false report, an imperfect construction, an attenuated and erroneous figure. And yet that which the universe and the individual seem to be is still a figure of what they really are, a figure that points beyond itself to the reality behind it. Truth proceeds by a correction of the values our mind and senses give us, and first by the action of a higher intelligence that enlightens and sets right as far as may be the conclusions of the ignorant sense-mind and limited physical intelligence; that is the method of all human knowledge and science. But beyond it there is a knowledge, a Truth-Consciousness, that exceeds our intellect and brings us into the true light of which it is a refracted ray.
There the abstract terms of pure reason and the constructions .of the mind disappear or are converted into concrete soul-vision and the tremendous actuality of spiritual experience. This knowledge can turn away to the absolute Eternal and lose vision of the soul and the universe; but it can too see that existence from that Eternal. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the apparent futilities of human life were not an useless excursion of the conscious being, an otiose blunder. Here they were planned as a rough ground for the self-expression of the Soul that comes from the Infinite, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. It is true that in themselves they and all that is here have no significance, and to build separate significances for them is to live in an illusion, Maya; but they have a supreme significance in the Supreme, an absolute Power in the Absolute and it is that that assigns to them and refers to that Truth their present relative values. This is the all-uniting experience that is the foundation of the deepest integral and most intimate self-knowledge and world-knowledge
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Object of Knowledge, 293, 11457,#KEYS
260:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.
No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,#KEYS
261:As far as heaven, as near as thought and hope,
Glimmered the kingdom of a griefless life.
Above him in a new celestial vault
Other than the heavens beheld by mortal eyes,
As on a fretted ceiling of the gods,
An archipelago of laughter and fire,
Swam stars apart in a rippled sea of sky.
Towered spirals, magic rings of vivid hue
And gleaming spheres of strange felicity
Floated through distance like a symbol world.
On the trouble and the toil they could not share,
On the unhappiness they could not aid,
Impervious to life's suffering, struggle, grief,
Untarnished by its anger, gloom and hate,
Unmoved, untouched, looked down great visioned planes
Blissful for ever in their timeless right.
Absorbed in their own beauty and content,
Of their immortal gladness they live sure.
Apart in their self-glory plunged, remote
Burning they swam in a vague lucent haze,
An everlasting refuge of dream-light,
A nebula of the splendours of the gods
Made from the musings of eternity.
Almost unbelievable by human faith,
Hardly they seemed the stuff of things that are.
As through a magic television's glass
Outlined to some magnifying inner eye
They shone like images thrown from a far scene
Too high and glad for mortal lids to seize.
But near and real to the longing heart
And to the body's passionate thought and sense
Are the hidden kingdoms of beatitude.
In some close unattained realm which yet we feel,
Immune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,
Escaping the search of sorrow and desire,
In bright enchanted safe peripheries
For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.
In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,
Across a subtle vision's inner field,
Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory's trail.
Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Glory and the Fall of Life,#KEYS
262:The fundamental nature of this supermind is that, all its knowledge is originally a knowledge by identity and oneness and even when it makes numberless apparent divisions and discriminating modifications in itself, still all the knowledge that operates in its workings even in these divisions, is founded upon and sustained and lit and guided by this perfect knowledge by identity and oneness. The Spirit is one everywhere and it knows all things as itself and in itself, so sees them always and therefore knows them intimately, completely, in their reality as well as their appearance, in their truth, their law, the entire spirit and sense and figure of their nature and their workings. When it sees anything as an object of knowledge, it yet sees it as itself and in itself, and not as a thing other than or divided from it about which therefore it would at first be ignorant of the nature, constitution and workings and have to learn about them, as the mind is at first ignorant of its object and has to learn about it because the mind is separated from its object and regards and senses and meets it as something other than itself and external to its own being. ..... This is the second character of the supreme supermind that its knowledge is a real because a total knowledge. It has in the first place a transcendental vision and sees the universe not only in the universal terms, but in its right relation to the supreme and eternal reality from which it proceeds and of which it is an expression. It knows the spirit and truth and whole sense of the universal expression because it knows all the essentiality and all the infinite reality and all the consequent constant potentiality of that which in part it expresses. It knows rightly the relative because it knows the Absolute and all its absolutes to which the relatives refer back and of which they are the partial or modified or suppressed figures. It is in the second place universal and sees all that is individual in the terms of the universal as well as in its own individual terms and holds all these individual figures in their right and complete relation to the universe. It is in the third place, separately with regard to individual things, total in its view because it knows each in its inmost essence of which all else is the resultant, in its totality which is its complete figure and in its parts and their connections and dependences, -- as well as in its connections with and its dependences upon other things and its nexus with the total implications and the explicits of the universe.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
263:30. Take the same position as heretofore and visualize a Battleship; see the grim monster floating on the surface of the water; there appears to be no life anywhere about; all is silence; you know that by far the largest part of the vessel is under water; out of sight; you know that the ship is as large and as heavy as a twenty-story skyscraper; you know that there are hundreds of men ready to spring to their appointed task instantly; you know that every department is in charge of able, trained, skilled officials who have proven themselves competent to take charge of this marvelous piece of mechanism; you know that although it lies apparently oblivious to everything else, it has eyes which see everything for miles around, and nothing is permitted to escape its watchful vision; you know that while it appears quiet, submissive and innocent, it is prepared to hurl a steel projectile weighing thousands of pounds at an enemy many miles away; this and much more you can bring to mind with comparatively no effort whateveR But how did the battleship come to be where it is; how did it come into existence in the first place? All of this you want to know if you are a careful observer.
31. Follow the great steel plates through the foundries, see the thousands of men employed in their production; go still further back, and see the ore as it comes from the mine, see it loaded on barges or cars, see it melted and properly treated; go back still further and see the architect and engineers who planned the vessel; let the thought carry you back still further in order to determine why they planned the vessel; you will see that you are now so far back that the vessel is something intangible, it no longer exists, it is now only a thought existing in the brain of the architect; but from where did the order come to plan the vessel? Probably from the Secretary of Defense; but probably this vessel was planned long before the war was thought of, and that Congress had to pass a bill appropriating the money; possibly there was opposition, and speeches for or against the bill. Whom do these Congressmen represent? They represent you and me, so that our line of thought begins with the Battleship and ends with ourselves, and we find in the last analysis that our own thought is responsible for this and many other things, of which we seldom think, and a little further reflection will develop the most important fact of all and that is, if someone had not discovered the law by which this tremendous mass of steel and iron could be made to float upon the water, instead of immediately going to the bottom, the battleship could not have come into existence at all. ~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,#KEYS
264:The Mahashakti, the universal Mother, works out whatever is transmitted by her transcendent consciousness from the Supreme and enters into the worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can be seen or experienced or put into motion of life. Each of the worlds is nothing but one play of the Mahashakti of that system of worlds or universe, who is there as the cosmic Soul and Personality of the transcendent Mother. Each is something that she has seen in her vision, gathered into her heart of beauty and power and created in her Ananda.
But there are many planes of her creation, many steps of the Divine Shakti. At the summit of this manifestation of which we are a part there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. All beings there live and move in an ineffable completeness and unalterable oneness, because she carries them safe in her arms for ever. Nearer to us are the worlds of a perfect supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. There all movements are the steps of the Truth; there all beings are souls and powers and bodies of the divine Light; there all experiences are seas and floods and waves of an intense and absolute Ananda. But here where we dwell are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from their source, of which this earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too with all its obscurity and struggle and imperfection is upheld by the Universal Mother; this too is impelled and guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.
The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation which has to be brought down here and this mounting and descending hierarchy of planes of consciousness that like a double ladder lapse into the nescience of Matter and climb back again through the flowering of life and soul and mind into the infinity of the Spirit. Determining all that shall be in this universe and in the terrestrial evolution by what she sees and feels and pours from her, she stands there... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
265:If we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a unitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself by its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect it offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a logical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must necessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect consistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or else by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see that the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the Immutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One becomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports personality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other than its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself and other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and the Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of qualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works, yet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we look carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible magic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared in it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery. There seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the physical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable, but this reason in things, when closely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or infrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of process seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and from life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it were rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the infinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance, it escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the world and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and Nature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and at points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works of Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges things according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours and a phantasy which baffles our imagination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.02, #KEYS
266:- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expression, - all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
For all must be done as a sacrifice, all activities must have the One Divine for their object and the heart of their meaning. The Yogin's aim in the sciences that make for knowledge should be to discover and understand the workings of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in man and creatures and things and forces, her creative significances, her execution of the mysteries, the symbols in which she arranges the manifestation. The Yogin's aim in the practical sciences, whether mental and physical or occult and psychic, should be to enter into the ways of the Divine and his processes, to know the materials and means for the work given to us so that we may use that knowledge for a conscious and faultless expression of the spirit's mastery, joy and self-fulfilment. The Yogin's aim in the Arts should not be a mere aesthetic, mental or vital gratification, but, seeing the Divine everywhere, worshipping it with a revelation of the meaning of its own works, to express that One Divine in ideal forms, the One Divine in principles and forces, the One Divine in gods and men and creatures and objects. The theory that sees an intimate connection between religious aspiration and the truest and greatest Art is in essence right; but we must substitute for the mixed and doubtful religious motive a spiritual aspiration, vision, interpreting experience. For the wider and more comprehensive the seeing, the more it contains in itself the sense of the hidden Divine in humanity and in all things and rises beyond a superficial religiosity into the spiritual life, the more luminous, flexible, deep and powerful will the Art be that springs from that high motive. The Yogin's distinction from other men is this that he lives in a higher and vaster spiritual consciousness; all his work of knowledge or creation must then spring from there: it must not be made in the mind, - for it is a greater truth and vision than mental man's that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and mould his works, not for his personal satisfaction, but for a divine purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 142 [T4],#KEYS
267:28 August 1957
Mother, Sri Aurobindo says here: "Whether the whole of humanity would be touched [by the Supramental influence] or only a part of it ready for the change would depend on what was intended or possible in the continued order of the universe."
The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 56
What is meant by "what was intended or possible"? The two things are different. So far you have said that if humanity changes, if it wants to participate in the new birth...
It is the same thing. But when you look at an object on a certain plane, you see it horizontally, and when you look at the same object from another plane, you see it vertically. (Mother shows the cover and the back of her book.) So, if one looks from above, one says "intended"; if one looks from below, one says "possible".... But it is absolutely the same thing, only the point of view is different.
But in that case, it is not our incapacity or lack of will to change that makes any difference.
We have already said this many a time. If you remain in a consciousness which functions mentally, even if it is the highest mind, you have the notion of an absolute determinism of cause and effect and feel that things are what they are because they are what they are and cannot be otherwise.
It is only when you come out of the mental consciousness completely and enter a higher perception of things - which you may call spiritual or divine - that you suddenly find yourself in a state of perfect freedom where everything is possible.
(Silence)
Those who have contacted that state or lived in it, even if only for a moment, try to describe it as a feeling of an absolute Will in action, which immediately gives to the human mentality the feeling of being arbitrary. And because of that distortion there arises the idea - which I might call traditional - of a supreme and arbitrary God, which is something most unacceptable to every enlightened mind. I suppose that this experience badly expressed is at the origin of this notion. And in fact it is incorrect to express it as an absolute Will: it is very, very, very different. It is something else altogether. For, what man understands by "Will" is a decision that is taken and carried out. We are obliged to use the word "will", but in its truth the Will acting in the universe is neither a choice nor a decision that is taken. What seems to me the closest expression is "vision". Things are because they are seen. But of course "seen", not seen as we see with these eyes.
(Mother touches her eyes...) All the same, it is the nearest thing.
It is a vision - a vision unfolding itself.
The universe becomes objective as it is progressively seen.
And that is why Sri Aurobindo has said "intended or possible". It is neither one nor the other. All that can be said is a distortion.
(Silence)
Objectivisation - universal objectivisation - is something like a projection in space and time, like a living image of what is from all eternity. And as the image is gradually projected on the screen of time and space, it becomes objective:
The Supreme contemplating His own Image.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS
268:Can it be said in justification of one's past that whatever has happened in one's life had to happen?
The Mother: Obviously, what has happened had to happen; it would not have been, if it had not been intended. Even the mistakes that we have committed and the adversities that fell upon us had to be, because there was some necessity in them, some utility for our lives. But in truth these things cannot be explained mentally and should not be. For all that happened was necessary, not for any mental reason, but to lead us to something beyond what the mind imagines. But is there any need to explain after all? The whole universe explains everything at every moment and a particular thing happens because the whole universe is what it is. But this does not mean that we are bound over to a blind acquiescence in Nature's inexorable law. You can accept the past as a settled fact and perceive the necessity in it, and still you can use the experience it gave you to build up the power consciously to guide and shape your present and your future.
Is the time also of an occurrence arranged in the Divine Plan of things?
The Mother: All depends upon the plane from which one sees and speaks. There is a plane of divine consciousness in which all is known absolutely, and the whole plan of things foreseen and predetermined. That way of seeing lives in the highest reaches of the Supramental; it is the Supreme's own vision. But when we do not possess that consciousness, it is useless to speak in terms that hold good only in that region and are not our present effective way of seeing things. For at a lower level of consciousness nothing is realised or fixed beforehand; all is in the process of making. Here there are no settled facts, there is only the play of possibilities; out of the clash of possibilities is realised the thing that has to happen. On this plane we can choose and select; we can refuse one possibility and accept another; we can follow one path, turn away from another. And that we can do, even though what is actually happening may have been foreseen and predetermined in a higher plane.
The Supreme Consciousness knows everything beforehand, because everything is realised there in her eternity. But for the sake of her play and in order to carry out actually on the physical plane what is foreordained in her own supreme self, she moves here upon earth as if she did not know the whole story; she works as if it was a new and untried thread that she was weaving. It is this apparent forgetfulness of her own foreknowledge in the higher consciousness that gives to the individual in the active life of the world his sense of freedom and independence and initiative. These things in him are her pragmatic tools or devices, and it is through this machinery that the movements and issues planned and foreseen elsewhere are realised here.
It may help you to understand if you take the example of an actor. An actor knows the whole part he has to play; he has in his mind the exact sequence of what is to happen on the stage. But when he is on the stage, he has to appear as if he did not know anything; he has to feel and act as if he were experiencing all these things for the first time, as if it was an entirely new world with all its chance events and surprises that was unrolling before his eyes. 28th April ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,#KEYS
269:It is thus by an integralisation of our divided being that the Divine Shakti in the Yoga will proceed to its object; for liberation, perfection, mastery are dependent on this integralisation, since the little wave on the surface cannot control its own movement, much less have any true control over the vast life around it. The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates, presents us with always newer and greater powers of vision, ideation, perception and newer and greater life-motives, enlarges and newmodels increasingly the soul and its instruments, confronts us with every imperfection in order to convict and destroy it, opens to a greater perfection, does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages so that new births and new vistas open constantly within us. Expansive in her action, she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working, separate from within the truth and falsehood of our perceptions, enlarge their field, extend and illumine their significance, become master of our own minds and active to shape the movements of Mind in the world around us. We begin to perceive the flow and surge of the universal life-forces, detect the origin and law of our feelings, emotions, sensations, passions, are free to accept, reject, new-create, open to wider, rise to higher planes of Life-Power. We begin to perceive too the key to the enigma of Matter, follow the interplay of Mind and Life and Consciousness upon it, discover more and more its instrumental and resultant function and detect ultimately the last secret of Matter as a form not merely of Energy but of involved and arrested or unstably fixed and restricted consciousness and begin to see too the possibility of its liberation and plasticity of response to higher Powers, its possibilities for the conscious and no longer the more than half-inconscient incarnation and self-expression of the Spirit. All this and more becomes more and more possible as the working of the Divine Shakti increases in us and, against much resistance or labour to respond of our obscure consciousness, through much struggle and movement of progress and regression and renewed progress necessitated by the work of intensive transformation of a half-inconscient into a conscious substance, moves to a greater purity, truth, height, range. All depends on the psychic awakening in us, the completeness of our response to her and our growing surrender. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 2, 183, #KEYS
270:
"The beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne d'Arc would, if seen by an Indian, have quite a different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of one's mind.... You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother; the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy; and others would give other names. It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths." Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (21 April 1929)
And then? You are not very talkative today! Is that all?
You say that "each person has his own world of dreamimagery peculiar to himself." Ibid.
Each individual has his own way of expressing, thinking, speaking, feeling, understanding. It is the combination of all these ways of being that makes the individual. That is why everyone can understand only according to his own nature. As long as you are shut up in your own nature, you can know only what is in your consciousness. All depends upon the height of the nature of your consciousness. Your world is limited to what you have in your consciousness. If you have a very small consciousness, you will understand only a few things. When your consciousness is very vast, universal, only then will you understand the world. If the consciousness is limited to your little ego, all the rest will escape you.... There are people whose brain and consciousness are smaller than a walnut. You know that a walnut resembles the brain; well these people look at things and don't understand them. They can understand nothing else except what is in direct contact with their senses. For them only what they taste, what they see, hear, touch has a reality, and all the rest simply does not exist, and they accuse us of speaking fancifully! "What I cannot touch does not exist", they say. But the only answer to give them is: "It does not exist for you, but there's no reason why it shouldn't exist for others." You must not insist with these people, and you must not forget that the smaller they are the greater is the audacity in their assertions.
One's cocksureness is in proportion to one's unconsciousness; the more unconscious one is, the more is one sure of oneself. The most foolish are always the most vain. Your stupidity is in proportion to your vanity. The more one knows... In fact, there is a time when one is quite convinced that one knows nothing at all. There's not a moment in the world which does not bring something new, for the world is perpetually growing. If one is conscious of that, one has always something new to learn. But one can become conscious of it only gradually. One's conviction that one knows is in direct proportion to one's ignorance and stupidity.
Mother, have the scientists, then, a very small consciousness?
Why? All scientists are not like that. If you meet a true scientist who has worked hard, he will tell you: "We know nothing. What we know today is nothing beside what we shall know tomorrow. This year's discoveries will be left behind next year." A real scientist knows very well that there are many more things he doesn't know than those he knows. And this is true of all branches of human activity. I have never met a scientist worthy of the name who was proud. I have never met a man of some worth who has told me: "I know everything." Those I have seen have always confessed: "In short, I know nothing." After having spoken of all that he has done, all that he has achieved, he tells you very quietly: "After all, I know nothing." ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, [T8],#KEYS
271:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,#KEYS
272:The supreme Form is then made visible. It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere and in whom are all the wonders of existence, who multiplies unendingly all the many marvellous revelations of his being, a world-wide Divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons, glorious with divine ornaments of beauty, robed in heavenly raiment of deity, lovely with garlands of divine flowers, fragrant with divine perfumes. Such is the light of this body of God as if a thousand suns had risen at once in heaven. The whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods. Arjuna sees him, God magnificent and beautiful and terrible, the Lord of souls who has manifested in the glory and greatness of his spirit this wild and monstrous and orderly and wonderful and sweet and terrible world, and overcome with marvel and joy and fear he bows down and adores with words of awe and with clasped hands the tremendous vision. "I see" he cries "all the gods in thy body, O God, and different companies of beings, Brahma the creating lord seated in the Lotus, and the Rishis and the race of the divine Serpents. I see numberless arms and bellies and eyes and faces, I see thy infinite forms on every side, but I see not thy end nor thy middle nor thy beginning, O Lord of the universe, O Form universal. I see thee crowned and with thy mace and thy discus, hard to discern because thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasurable. Thou art the supreme Immutable whom we have to know, thou art the high foundation and abode of the universe, thou art the imperishable guardian of the eternal laws, thou art the sempiternal soul of existence."
But in the greatness of this vision there is too the terrific image of the Destroyer. This Immeasurable without end or middle or beginning is he in whom all things begin and exist and end.
This Godhead who embraces the worlds with his numberless arms and destroys with his million hands, whose eyes are suns and moons, has a face of blazing fire and is ever burning up the whole universe with the flame of his energy. The form of him is fierce and marvellous and alone it fills all the regions and occupies the whole space between earth and heaven. The companies of the gods enter it, afraid, adoring; the Rishis and the Siddhas crying "May there be peace and weal" praise it with many praises; the eyes of Gods and Titans and Giants are fixed on it in amazement. It has enormous burning eyes; it has mouths that gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction; it has faces like the fires of Death and Time. The kings and the captains and the heroes on both sides of the world-battle are hastening into its tusked and terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between its teeth of power; the nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into its mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean or like moths that cast themselves on a kindled fire. With those burning mouths the Form of Dread is licking all the regions around; the whole world is full of his burning energies and baked in the fierceness of his lustres. The world and its nations are shaken and in anguish with the terror of destruction and Arjuna shares in the trouble and panic around him; troubled and in pain is the soul within him and he finds no peace or gladness. He cries to the dreadful Godhead, "Declare to me who thou art that wearest this form of fierceness. Salutation to thee, O thou great Godhead, turn thy heart to grace. I would know who thou art who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings." ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita, 2.10_-_The_Vision_of_the_World-Spirit_-_Time_the_Destroyer,#KEYS
273:The principle of Yoga is the turning of one or of all powers of our human existence into a means of reaching the divine Being. In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group of its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation.
In Hathayoga the instrument is the body and life. All the power of the body is stilled, collected, purified, heightened, concentrated to its utmost limits or beyond any limits by Asana and other physical processes; the power of the life too is similarly purified, heightened, concentrated by Asana and Pranayama. This concentration of powers is then directed towards that physical centre in which the divine consciousness sits concealed in the human body. The power of Life, Nature-power, coiled up with all its secret forces asleep in the lowest nervous plexus of the earth-being,-for only so much escapes into waking action in our normal operations as is sufficient for the limited uses of human life,-rises awakened through centre after centre and awakens, too, in its ascent and passage the forces of each successive nodus of our being, the nervous life, the heart of emotion and ordinary mentality, the speech, sight, will, the higher knowledge, till through and above the brain it meets with and it becomes one with the divine consciousness.
In Rajayoga the chosen instrument is the mind. our ordinary mentality is first disciplined, purified and directed towards the divine Being, then by a summary process of Asana and Pranayama the physical force of our being is stilled and concentrated, the life-force released into a rhythmic movement capable of cessation and concentrated into a higher power of its upward action, the mind, supported and strengthened by this greater action and concentration of the body and life upon which it rests, is itself purified of all its unrest and emotion and its habitual thought-waves, liberated from distraction and dispersion, given its highest force of concentration, gathered up into a trance of absorption. Two objects, the one temporal, the other eternal,are gained by this discipline. Mind-power develops in another concentrated action abnormal capacities of knowledge, effective will, deep light of reception, powerful light of thought-radiation which are altogether beyond the narrow range of our normal mentality; it arrives at the Yogic or occult powers around which there has been woven so much quite dispensable and yet perhaps salutary mystery. But the one final end and the one all-important gain is that the mind, stilled and cast into a concentrated trance, can lose itself in the divine consciousness and the soul be made free to unite with the divine Being.
The triple way takes for its chosen instruments the three main powers of the mental soul-life of the human being. Knowledge selects the reason and the mental vision and it makes them by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of a Goddirected seeking its means for the greatest knowledge and the greatest vision of all, God-knowledge and God-vision. Its aim is to see, know and be the Divine. Works, action selects for its instrument the will of the doer of works; it makes life an offering of sacrifice to the Godhead and by purification, concentration and a certain discipline of subjection to the divine Will a means for contact and increasing unity of the soul of man with the divine Master of the universe. Devotion selects the emotional and aesthetic powers of the soul and by turning them all Godward in a perfect purity, intensity, infinite passion of seeking makes them a means of God-possession in one or many relations of unity with the Divine Being. All aim in their own way at a union or unity of the human soul with the supreme Spirit.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfection, The Principle of the Integral Yoga, 609,#KEYS
274:STAGE TWO: THE CHONYID
The Chonyid is the period of the appearance of the peaceful and wrathful deities-that is to say, the subtle realm, the Sambhogakaya. When the Clear Light of the causal realm is resisted and contracted against, then that Reality is transformed into the primordial seed forms of the peaceful deities (ishtadevas of the subtle sphere), and these in turn, if resisted and denied, are transformed into the wrathful deities.
The peaceful deities appear first: through seven successive substages, there appear various forms of the tathagatas, dakinis, and vidyadharas, all accompanied by the most dazzlingly brilliant colors and aweinspiring suprahuman sounds. One after another, the divine visions, lights, and subtle luminous sounds cascade through awareness. They are presented, given, to the individual openly, freely, fully, and completely: visions of God in almost painful intensity and brilliance.
How the individual handles these divine visions and sounds (nada) is of the utmost significance, because each divine scenario is accompanied by a much less intense vision, by a region of relative dullness and blunted illuminations. These concomitant dull and blunted visions represent the first glimmerings of the world of samsara, of the six realms of egoic grasping, of the dim world of duality and fragmentation and primitive forms of low-level unity.
According to the Thotrol. most individuals simply recoil in the face of these divine illuminations- they contract into less intense and more manageable forms of experience. Fleeing divine illumination, they glide towards the fragmented-and thus less intense-realm of duality and multiplicity. But it's not just that they recoil against divinity-it is that they are attracted to the lower realms, drawn to them, and find satisfaction in them. The Thotrol says they are actually "attracted to the impure lights." As we have put it, these lower realms are substitute gratifications. The individual thinks that they are just what he wants, these lower realms of denseness. But just because these realms are indeed dimmer and less intense, they eventually prove to be worlds without bliss, without illumination, shot through with pain and suffering. How ironic: as a substitute for God, individuals create and latch onto Hell, known as samsara, maya, dismay. In Christian theology it is said that the flames of Hell are God's love (Agape) denied.
Thus the message is repeated over and over again in the Chonyid stage: abide in the lights of the Five Wisdoms and subtle tathagatas, look not at the duller lights of samsara. of the six realms, of safe illusions and egoic dullness. As but one example:
Thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu will produce in thee fear and terror, and thou wilt wish to flee from it. Thou wilt begat a fondness for the dull white light of the devas [one of the lower realms].
At this stage, thou must not be awed by the divine blue light which will appear shining, dazzling, and glorious; and be not startled by it. That is the light of the Tathagata called the Light of the Wisdom of the Dharmadhatu.
Be not fond of the dull white light of the devas. Be not attached to it; be not weak. If thou be attached to it, thou wilt wander into the abodes of the devas and be drawn into the whirl of the Six Lokas.
The point is this: ''If thou are frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas [lower realms], then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer samsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Samsara, wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste the sufferings thereof."
But here is what is happening: in effect, we are seeing the primal and original form of the Atman project in its negative and contracting aspects. In this second stage (the Chonyid), there is already some sort of boundary in awareness, there is already some sort of subject-object duality superimposed upon the original Wholeness and Oneness of the Chikhai Dharmakaya. So now there is boundary-and wherever there is boundary, there is the Atman project. ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project, 129,#KEYS
275:To arrive then at this settled divine status must be the object of our concentration. The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect. Nor must it be merely the consecutive thought of the intellectual thinker, whose only object is to conceive and intellectually link together his conceptions. It is not, except perhaps at first, a process of reasoning that is wanted so much as a dwelling so far as possible on the fruitful essence of the idea which by the insistence of the soul's will upon it must yield up all the facets of its truth. Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestation of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the Sadhaka. The thought may come first and the experience afterwards, but equally the experience may come first and the knowledge arise out of the experience. Afterwards the thing attained has to be dwelt on and more and more held till it becomes a constant experience and finally the Dharma or law of the being.
This is the process of concentrated meditation; but a more strenuous method is the fixing of the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea only, so as to reach not the thought-knowledge or the psychological experience of the subject, but the very essence of the thing behind the idea. In this process thought ceases and passes into the absorbed or ecstatic contemplation of the object or by a merging into it m an inner Samadhi. If this be the process followed, then subsequently the state into which we rise must still be called down to take possession of the lower being, to shed its light, power and bliss on our ordinary consciousness. For otherwise we may possess it, as many do, in the elevated condition or in the inward Samadhi, but we shall lose our hold of it when we awake or descend into the contacts of the world; and this truncated possession is not the aim of an integral Yoga.
A third process is neither at first to concentrate in a strenuous meditation on the one subject nor in a strenuous contemplation of the one object of thought-vision, but first to still the mind altogether. This may be done by various ways; one is to stand back from the mental action altogether not participating in but simply watching it until, tired of its unsanctioned leaping and running, it falls into an increasing and finally an absolute quiet. Another is to reject the thought-suggestions, to cast them away from the mind whenever they come and firmly hold to the peace of the being which really and always exists behind the trouble and riot of the mind. When this secret peace is unveiled, a great calm settles on the being and there comes usually with it the perception and experience of the all-pervading silent Brahman, everything else at first seeming to be mere form and eidolon. On the basis of this calm everything else may be built up in the knowledge and experience no longer of the external phenomena of things but of the deeper truth of the divine manifestation.
Ordinarily, once this state is obtained, strenuous concentration will be found no longer necessary. A free concentration of will using thought merely for suggestion and the giving of light to the lower members will take its place. This Will will then insist on the physical being, the vital existence, the heart and the mind remoulding themselves in the forms of the Divine which reveal themselves out of the silent Brahman. By swifter or slower degrees according to the previous preparation and purification of the members, they will be obliged with more or less struggle to obey the law of the will and its thought-suggestion, so that eventually the knowledge of the Divine takes possession of our consciousness on all its planes and the image of the Divine is formed in our human existence even as it was done by the old Vedic Sadhakas. For the integral Yoga this is the most direct and powerful discipline.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Integral Knowledge, Concentration,#KEYS
276:Mother, how to change one's consciousness?
Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.
For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superficial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other - as I say for each one it is different - there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.
There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one fine day.
Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.
Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears and one enters the perception of a kind of indefinite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.
These experiences come to you suddenly in a flash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don't know why or how.... There are other ways, other experiences - they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing. So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue. For all those who are destined to find their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-flash - but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.
Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul's awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal - one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort - anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it. But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very fleeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one's life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, [T6],#KEYS
277:What are these operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and effectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the real Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.We can look into the inward of ourselves more easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because there, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form and secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or a powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. (2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being. Therefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the experience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in its pure being.
The status of knowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological experience of the modes of our being. It is a "realisation", in the full sense of the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and identity.
This internal vision, dr.s.t.i, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it-to the soul and not merely to the intellect-as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaks.a, of that which is present to the eyes, and paroks.a, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions of others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of it if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed arrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but only our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with the eyes,-for no other sense is adequate,-we possess, we realise; it is there secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the same rule holds good of psychical things and of he Self. We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration;3 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity.
(2) And it is only in ourselves that we can observe and know the 2 In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so much hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge,#KEYS
278:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?
Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.
Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.
Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.
Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.
Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.
There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.
The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,#KEYS
279:SECTION 1. Books for Serious Study
Liber CCXX. (Liber AL vel Legis.) The Book of the Law. This book is the foundation of the New Æon, and thus of the whole of our work.
The Equinox. The standard Work of Reference in all occult matters. The Encyclopaedia of Initiation.
Liber ABA (Book 4). A general account in elementary terms of magical and mystical powers. In four parts: (1) Mysticism (2) Magical (Elementary Theory) (3) Magick in Theory and Practice (this book) (4) The Law.
Liber II. The Message of the Master Therion. Explains the essence of the new Law in a very simple manner.
Liber DCCCXXXVIII. The Law of Liberty. A further explanation of The Book of the Law in reference to certain ethical problems.
Collected Works of A. Crowley. These works contain many mystical and magical secrets, both stated clearly in prose, and woven into the Robe of sublimest poesy.
The Yi King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XVI], Oxford University Press.) The "Classic of Changes"; give the initiated Chinese system of Magick.
The Tao Teh King. (S. B. E. Series [vol. XXXIX].) Gives the initiated Chinese system of Mysticism.
Tannhäuser, by A. Crowley. An allegorical drama concerning the Progress of the Soul; the Tannhäuser story slightly remodelled.
The Upanishads. (S. B. E. Series [vols. I & XV.) The Classical Basis of Vedantism, the best-known form of Hindu Mysticism.
The Bhagavad-gita. A dialogue in which Krishna, the Hindu "Christ", expounds a system of Attainment.
The Voice of the Silence, by H.P. Blavatsky, with an elaborate commentary by Frater O.M. Frater O.M., 7°=48, is the most learned of all the Brethren of the Order; he has given eighteen years to the study of this masterpiece.
Raja-Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. An excellent elementary study of Hindu mysticism. His Bhakti-Yoga is also good.
The Shiva Samhita. An account of various physical means of assisting the discipline of initiation. A famous Hindu treatise on certain physical practices.
The Hathayoga Pradipika. Similar to the Shiva Samhita.
The Aphorisms of Patanjali. A valuable collection of precepts pertaining to mystical attainment.
The Sword of Song. A study of Christian theology and ethics, with a statement and solution of the deepest philosophical problems. Also contains the best account extant of Buddhism, compared with modern science.
The Book of the Dead. A collection of Egyptian magical rituals.
Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, by Eliphas Levi. The best general textbook of magical theory and practice for beginners. Written in an easy popular style.
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. The best exoteric account of the Great Work, with careful instructions in procedure. This Book influenced and helped the Master Therion more than any other.
The Goetia. The most intelligible of all the mediæval rituals of Evocation. Contains also the favourite Invocation of the Master Therion.
Erdmann's History of Philosophy. A compendious account of philosophy from the earliest times. Most valuable as a general education of the mind.
The Spiritual Guide of [Miguel de] Molinos. A simple manual of Christian Mysticism.
The Star in the West. (Captain Fuller). An introduction to the study of the Works of Aleister Crowley.
The Dhammapada. (S. B. E. Series [vol. X], Oxford University Press). The best of the Buddhist classics.
The Questions of King Milinda. (S. B. E. Series [vols. XXXV & XXXVI].) Technical points of Buddhist dogma, illustrated bydialogues.
Liber 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicam Sanctissimorum Scientiæ Summæ. A complete Dictionary of the Correspondences of all magical elements, reprinted with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language.
Varieties of Religious Experience (William James). Valuable as showing the uniformity of mystical attainment.
Kabbala Denudata, von Rosenroth: also The Kabbalah Unveiled, by S.L. Mathers. The text of the Qabalah, with commentary. A good elementary introduction to the subject.
Konx Om Pax [by Aleister Crowley]. Four invaluable treatises and a preface on Mysticism and Magick.
The Pistis Sophia [translated by G.R.S. Mead or Violet McDermot]. An admirable introduction to the study of Gnosticism.
The Oracles of Zoroaster [Chaldæan Oracles]. An invaluable collection of precepts mystical and magical.
The Dream of Scipio, by Cicero. Excellent for its Vision and its Philosophy.
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, by Fabre d'Olivet. An interesting study of the exoteric doctrines of this Master.
The Divine Pymander, by Hermes Trismegistus. Invaluable as bearing on the Gnostic Philosophy.
The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, reprint of Franz Hartmann. An invaluable compendium.
Scrutinium Chymicum [Atalanta Fugiens]¸ by Michael Maier. One of the best treatises on alchemy.
Science and the Infinite, by Sidney Klein. One of the best essays written in recent years.
Two Essays on the Worship of Priapus [A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus &c. &c. &c.], by Richard Payne Knight [and Thomas Wright]. Invaluable to all students.
The Golden Bough, by J.G. Frazer. The textbook of Folk Lore. Invaluable to all students.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine. Excellent, though elementary, as a corrective to superstition.
Rivers of Life, by General Forlong. An invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation.
Three Dialogues, by Bishop Berkeley. The Classic of Subjective Idealism.
Essays of David Hume. The Classic of Academic Scepticism.
First Principles by Herbert Spencer. The Classic of Agnosticism.
Prolegomena [to any future Metaphysics], by Immanuel Kant. The best introduction to Metaphysics.
The Canon [by William Stirling]. The best textbook of Applied Qabalah.
The Fourth Dimension, by [Charles] H. Hinton. The best essay on the subject.
The Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. Masterpieces of philosophy, as of prose.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Appendix I: Literature Recommended to Aspirants#KEYS
280:Attention on Hypnagogic Imagery The most common strategy for inducing WILDs is to fall asleep while focusing on the hypnagogic imagery that accompanies sleep onset. Initially, you are likely to see relatively simple images, flashes of light, geometric patterns, and the like.
Gradually more complicated forms appear: faces, people, and finally entire scenes. 6
The following account of what the Russian philosopher P. D. Ouspensky called "half-dream states" provides a vivid example of what hypnagogic imagery can be like:
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and regularly in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane, one end of which leads to the old wharf and the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes. 7
Ouspensky's half-dream states developed out of a habit of observing the contents of his mind while falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening from a dream. He notes that they were much easier to observe in the morning after awakening than before sleep at the beginning of the night and did not occur at all "without definite efforts." 8
Dr. Nathan Rapport, an American psychiatrist, cultivated an approach to lucid dreaming very similar to Ouspensky's: "While in bed awaiting sleep, the experimenter interrupts his thoughts every few minutes with an effort to recall the mental item vanishing before each intrusion that inquisitive attention." 9 This habit is continued sleep itself, with results like the following:
Brilliant lights flashed, and a myriad of sparkles twinkled from a magnificent cut glass chandelier. Interesting as any stage extravaganza were the many quaintly detailed figurines upon a mantel against the distant, paneled wall adorned in rococo.
At the right a merry group of beauties and gallants in the most elegant attire of Victorian England idled away a pleasant occasion. This scene continued for [a] period of I was not aware, before I discovered that it was not reality, but a mental picture and that I was viewing it. Instantly it became an incommunicably beautiful vision. It was with the greatest stealth that my vaguely awakened mind began to peep: for I knew that these glorious shows end abruptly because of such intrusions.
I thought, "Have I here one of those mind pictures that are without motion?" As if in reply, one of the young ladies gracefully waltzed about the room. She returned to the group and immobility, with a smile lighting her pretty face, which was turned over her shoulder toward me. The entire color scheme was unobtrusive despite the kaleidoscopic sparkles of the chandelier, the exquisite blues and creamy pinks of the rich settings and costumes. I felt that only my interest in dreams brought my notice to the tints - delicate, yet all alive as if with inner illumination. 10
Hypnagogic Imagery Technique
1. Relax completely
While lying in bed, gently close your eyes and relax your head, neck, back, arms, and legs. Completely let go of all muscular and mental tension, and breathe slowly and restfully. Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and let go of your thoughts, worries, and concerns. If you have just awakened from sleep, you are probably sufficiently relaxed.
Otherwise, you may use either the progressive relaxation exercise (page 33) or the 61-point relaxation exercise (page 34) to relax more deeply. Let everything wind down,
slower and slower, more and more relaxed, until your mind becomes as serene as the calmest sea.
2. Observe the visual images
Gently focus your attention on the visual images that will gradually appear before your mind's eye. Watch how the images begin and end. Try to observe the images as delicately as possible, allowing them to be passively reflected in your mind as they unfold. Do not attempt to hold onto the images, but instead just watch without attachment or desire for action. While doing this, try to take the perspective of a detached observer as much as possible. At first you will see a sequence of disconnected, fleeting patterns and images. The images will gradually develop into scenes that become more and more complex, finally joining into extended sequences.
3. Enter the dream
When the imagery becomes a moving, vivid scenario, you should allow yourself to be passively drawn into the dream world. Do not try to actively enter the dream scene,
but instead continue to take a detached interest in the imagery. Let your involvement with what is happening draw you into the dream. But be careful of too much involvement and too little attention. Don't forget that you are dreaming now!
Commentary
Probably the most difficult part of this technique to master is entering the dream at Step 3. The challenge is to develop a delicate vigilance, an unobtrusive observer perspective, from which you let yourself be drawn into the dream. As Paul Tholey has emphasized, "It is not desirable to want actively to enter into the scenery,
since such an intention as a rule causes the scenery to disappear." 11 A passive volition similar to that described in the section on autosuggestion in the previous chapter is required: in Tholey's words, "Instead of actively wanting to enter into the scenery, the subject should attempt to let himself be carried into it passively." 12 A Tibetan teacher advises a similar frame of mind: "While delicately observing the mind, lead it gently into the dream state, as though you were leading a child by the hand." 13
Another risk is that, once you have entered into the dream, the world can seem so realistic that it is easy to lose lucidity, as happened in the beginning of Rapport's WILD described above. As insurance in case this happens, Tholey recommends that you resolve to carry out a particular action in the dream, so that if you momentarily lose lucidity, you may remember your intention to carry out the action and thereby regain lucidity.
~ Stephen LaBerge, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,#KEYS
281:
Mother, when one imagines something, does it not exist?
When you imagine something, it means that you make a mental formation which may be close to the truth or far from the truth - it also depends upon the quality of your formation. You make a mental formation and there are people who have such a power of formation that they succeed in making what they imagine real. There are not many of these but there are some. They imagine something and their formation is so well made and so powerful that it succeeds in being realised. These are creators; there are not many of them but there are some.
If one thinks of someone who doesn't exist or who is dead?
Ah! What do you mean? What have you just said? Someone who doesn't exist or someone who is dead? These are two absolutely different things.
I mean someone who is dead.
Someone who is dead!
If this person has remained in the mental domain, you can find him immediately. Naturally if he is no longer in the mental domain, if he is in the psychic domain, to think of him is not enough. You must know how to go into the psychic domain to find him. But if he has remained in the mental domain and you think of him, you can find him immediately, and not only that, but you can have a mental contact with him and a kind of mental vision of his existence.
The mind has a capacity of vision of its own and it is not the same vision as with these eyes, but it is a vision, it is a perception in forms. But this is not imagination. It has nothing to do with imagination.
Imagination, for instance, is when you begin to picture to yourself an ideal being to whom you apply all your conceptions, and when you tell yourself, "Why, it should be like this, like that, its form should be like this, its thought like that, its character like that," when you see all the details and build up the being. Now, writers do this all the time because when they write a novel, they imagine. There are those who take things from life but there are those who are imaginative, creators; they create a character, a personage and then put him in their book later. This is to imagine. To imagine, for example, a whole concurrence of circumstances, a set of events, this is what I call telling a story to oneself. But it can be put down on paper, and then one becomes a novelist. There are very different kinds of writers. Some imagine everything, some gather all sorts of observations from life and construct their book with them. There are a hundred ways of writing a book. But indeed some writers imagine everything from beginning to end. It all comes out of their head and they construct even their whole story without any support in things physically observed. This truly is imagination. But as I say, if they are very powerful and have a considerable capacity for creation, it is possible that one day or other there will be a physical human being who realises their creation. This too is true.
What do you suppose imagination is, eh? Have you never imagined anything, you?
And what happens?
All that one imagines.
You mean that you imagine something and it happens like that, eh? Or it is in a dream...
What is the function, the use of the imagination?
If one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life; one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to use it and has a power. In fact it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the capacity of imagination he would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the path of realisation. People who are not imaginative - it is very difficult to make them move; they see just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and they cannot go forward because they are clamped by the immediate thing. It depends a good deal on what one calls imagination. However...
Men of science must be having imagination!
A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by the projection. One can obviously have progressive and regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the power of making them come. It's like the antennae going into a world that's not yet realised, catching something there and drawing it here. Then naturally it is an addition to the earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an instrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. It is one of the faculties one can develop in himself and render serviceable, that is, use it for definite purposes.
Sweet Mother, can one imagine the Divine and have the contact?
Certainly if you succeed in imagining the Divine you have the contact, and you can have the contact with what you imagine, in any case. In fact it is absolutely impossible to imagine something which doesn't exist somewhere. You cannot imagine anything at all which doesn't exist somewhere. It is possible that it doesn't exist on the earth, it is possible that it's elsewhere, but it is impossible for you to imagine something which is not already contained in principle in the universe; otherwise it could not occur.
Then, Sweet Mother, this means that in the created universe nothing new is added?
In the created universe? Yes. The universe is progressive; we said that constantly things manifest, more and more. But for your imagination to be able to go and seek beyond the manifestation something which will be manifested, well, it may happen, in fact it does - I was going to tell you that it is in this way that some beings can cause considerable progress to be made in the world, because they have the capacity of imagining something that's not yet manifested. But there are not many. One must first be capable of going beyond the manifested universe to be able to imagine something which is not there. There are already many things which can be imagined.
What is our terrestrial world in the universe? A very small thing. Simply to have the capacity of imagining something which does not exist in the terrestrial manifestation is already very difficult, very difficult. For how many billions of years hasn't it existed, this little earth? And there have been no two identical things. That's much. It is very difficult to go out from the earth atmosphere with one's mind; one can, but it is very difficult. And then if one wants to go out, not only from the earth atmosphere but from the universal life!
To be able simply to enter into contact with the life of the earth in its totality from the formation of the earth until now, what can this mean? And then to go beyond this and enter into contact with universal life from its beginnings up to now... and then again to be able to bring something new into the universe, one must go still farther beyond.
Not easy!
That's all?
(To the child) Convinced?
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, [T1],#KEYS
282:This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice.
It is clear that a conception of this kind and its effective practice must carry in them three results that are of a central importance for our spiritual ideal. It is evident, to begin with, that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being. Now these implications of the Yoga of works are also of the very essence of an integral and absolute Bhakti. The seeker who puts them into living practice makes in himself continually a constant, active and effective representation of the very spirit of self-devotion, and it is inevitable that out of it there should emerge the most engrossing worship of the Highest to whom is given this service. An absorbing love for the Divine Presence to whom he feels an always more intimate closeness, grows upon the consecrated worker. And with it is born or in it is contained a universal love too for all these beings, living forms and creatures that are habitations of the Divine - not the brief restless grasping emotions of division, but the settled selfless love that is the deeper vibration of oneness. In all the seeker begins to meet the one Object of his adoration and service. The way of works turns by this road of sacrifice to meet the path of Devotion; it can be itself a devotion as complete, as absorbing, as integral as any the desire of the heart can ask for or the passion of the mind can imagine.
Next, the practice of this Yoga demands a constant inward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge, and a constant active externalising of it in works comes in too to intensify the remembrance. In all is the one Self, the one Divine is all; all are in the Divine, all are the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe, - this thought or this faith is the whole background until it becomes the whole substance of the consciousness of the worker. A memory, a self-dynamising meditation of this kind, must and does in its end turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing consciousness of that which we so powerfully remember or on which we so constantly meditate. For it compels a constant reference at each moment to the Origin of all being and will and action and there is at once an embracing and exceeding of all particular forms and appearances in That which is their cause and upholder. This way cannot go to its end without a seeing vivid and vital, as concrete in its way as physical sight, of the works of the universal Spirit everywhere. On its summits it rises into a constant living and thinking and willing and acting in the presence of the Supramental, the Transcendent. Whatever we see and hear, whatever we touch and sense, all of which we are conscious, has to be known and felt by us as That which we worship and serve; all has to be turned into an image of the Divinity, perceived as a dwelling-place of his Godhead, enveloped with the eternal Omnipresence. In its close, if not long before it, this way of works turns by communion with the Divine Presence, Will and Force into a way of Knowledge more complete and integral than any the mere creature intelligence can construct or the search of the intellect can discover.
Lastly, the practice of this Yoga of sacrifice compels us to renounce all the inner supports of egoism, casting them out of our mind and will and actions, and to eliminate its seed, its presence, its influence out of our nature. All must be done for the Divine; all must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence. Life becomes more and more the sacrifice of the eternal in the individual constantly self-offered to the eternal Transcendence. It is offered in the wide sacrificial ground of the field of the eternal cosmic Spirit; and the Force too that offers it is the eternal Force, the omnipresent Mother. Therefore is this way a way of union and communion by acts and by the spirit and knowledge in the act as complete and integral as any our Godward will can hope for or our soul's strength execute.
It has all the power of a way of works integral and absolute, but because of its law of sacrifice and self-giving to the Divine Self and Master, it is accompanied on its one side by the whole power of the path of Love and on the other by the whole power of the path of Knowledge. At its end all these three divine Powers work together, fused, united, completed, perfected by each other.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Sacrifice, the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice [111-114],#KEYS
283:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?
... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS
284:
Can a Yogi attain to a state of consciousness in which he can know all things, answer all questions, relating even to abstruse scientific problems, such as, for example, the theory of relativity?
Theoretically and in principle it is not impossible for a Yogi to know everything; all depends upon the Yogi.
But there is knowledge and knowledge. The Yogi does not know in the way of the mind. He does not know everything in the sense that he has access to all possible information or because he contains all the facts of the universe in his mind or because his consciousness is a sort of miraculous encyclopaedia. He knows by his capacity for a containing or dynamic identity with things and persons and forces. Or he knows because he lives in a plane of consciousness or is in contact with a consciousness in which there is the truth and the knowledge.
If you are in the true consciousness, the knowledge you have will also be of the truth. Then, too, you can know directly, by being one with what you know. If a problem is put before you, if you are asked what is to be done in a particular matter, you can then, by looking with enough attention and concentration, receive spontaneously the required knowledge and the true answer. It is not by any careful application of theory that you reach the knowledge or by working it out through a mental process. The scientific mind needs these methods to come to its conclusions. But the Yogi's knowledge is direct and immediate; it is not deductive. If an engineer has to find out the exact position for the building of an arch, the line of its curve and the size of its opening, he does it by calculation, collating and deducing from his information and data. But a Yogi needs none of these things; he looks, has the vision of the thing, sees that it is to be done in this way and not in another, and this seeing is his knowledge.
Although it may be true in a general way and in a certain sense that a Yogi can know all things and can answer all questions from his own field of vision and consciousness, yet it does not follow that there are no questions whatever of any kind to which he would not or could not answer. A Yogi who has the direct knowledge, the knowledge of the true truth of things, would not care or perhaps would find it difficult to answer questions that belong entirely to the domain of human mental constructions. It may be, he could not or would not wish to solve problems and difficulties you might put to him which touch only the illusion of things and their appearances. The working of his knowledge is not in the mind. If you put him some silly mental query of that character, he probably would not answer. The very common conception that you can put any ignorant question to him as to some super-schoolmaster or demand from him any kind of information past, present or future and that he is bound to answer, is a foolish idea. It is as inept as the expectation from the spiritual man of feats and miracles that would satisfy the vulgar external mind and leave it gaping with wonder.
Moreover, the term "Yogi" is very vague and wide. There are many types of Yogis, many lines or ranges of spiritual or occult endeavour and different heights of achievement, there are some whose powers do not extend beyond the mental level; there are others who have gone beyond it. Everything depends on the field or nature of their effort, the height to which they have arrived, the consciousness with which they have contact or into which they enter.
Do not scientists go sometimes beyond the mental plane? It is said that Einstein found his theory of relativity not through any process of reasoning, but through some kind of sudden inspiration. Has that inspiration anything to do with the Supermind?
The scientist who gets an inspiration revealing to him a new truth, receives it from the intuitive mind. The knowledge comes as a direct perception in the higher mental plane illumined by some other light still farther above. But all that has nothing to do with the action of Supermind and this higher mental level is far removed from the supramental plane. Men are too easily inclined to believe that they have climbed into regions quite divine when they have only gone above the average level. There are many stages between the ordinary human mind and the Supermind, many grades and many intervening planes. If an ordinary man were to get into direct contact even with one of these intermediate planes, he would be dazzled and blinded, would be crushed under the weight of the sense of immensity or would lose his balance; and yet it is not the Supermind.
Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.
Thus, if you go deep into silence, you can reach a level of consciousness on which it is not impossible for you to receive answers to all your questions. And if there is one who is consciously open to the plenary truth of the supermind, in constant contact with it, he can certainly answer any question that is worth an answer from the supramental Light. The queries put must come from some sense of the truth and reality behind things. There are many questions and much debated problems that are cobwebs woven of mere mental abstractions or move on the illusory surface of things. These do not pertain to real knowledge; they are a deformation of knowledge, their very substance is of the ignorance. Certainly the supramental knowledge may give an answer, its own answer, to the problems set by the mind's ignorance; but it is likely that it would not be at all satisfactory or perhaps even intelligible to those who ask from the mental level. You must not expect the supramental to work in the way of the mind or demand that the knowledge in truth should be capable of being pieced together with the half-knowledge in ignorance. The scheme of the mind is one thing, but Supermind is quite another and it would no longer be supramental if it adapted itself to the exigencies of the mental scheme. The two are incommensurable and cannot be put together.
When the consciousness has attained to supramental joys, does it no longer take interest in the things of the mind?
The supramental does not take interest in mental things in the same way as the mind. It takes its own interest in all the movements of the universe, but it is from a different point of view and with a different vision. The world presents to it an entirely different appearance; there is a reversal of outlook and everything is seen from there as other than what it seems to the mind and often even the opposite. Things have another meaning; their aspect, their motion and process, everything about them, are watched with other eyes. Everything here is followed by the supermind; the mind movements and not less the vital, the material movements, all the play of the universe have for it a very deep interest, but of another kind. It is about the same difference as that between the interest taken in a puppet-play by one who holds the strings and knows what the puppets are to do and the will that moves them and that they can do only what it moves them to do, and the interest taken by another who observes the play but sees only what is happening from moment to moment and knows nothing else. The one who follows the play and is outside its secret has a stronger, an eager and passionate interest in what will happen and he gives an excited attention to its unforeseen or dramatic events; the other, who holds the strings and moves the show, is unmoved and tranquil. There is a certain intensity of interest which comes from ignorance and is bound up with illusion, and that must disappear when you are out of the ignorance. The interest that human beings take in things founds itself on the illusion; if that were removed, they would have no interest at all in the play; they would find it dry and dull. That is why all this ignorance, all this illusion has lasted so long; it is because men like it, because they cling to it and its peculiar kind of appeal that it endures.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931, 93?
,#KEYS
285:[The Gods and Their Worlds]
[...] According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same.
This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the centre - it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest - and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.
There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary - more or less wildly imaginary - but that they correspond to a universal truth.
All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane - for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct - for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete.
One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that - all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is.
Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again - you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence.
But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.
When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation.
Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being!
I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out" - but it was a frightful thing! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised.
Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony - naturally! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness!
These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, "These people are cranks!" Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence - gods or demons, invisible beings and powers - do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.
In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism.
If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality.
If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. - 4 November 1958
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother III, 355
,#KEYS
286:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
287:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga.
*He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga.
All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.
These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen.
My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967
~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],#KEYS
288:VIJAY: "How can one see God?"
MASTER: "One cannot see God without purity of heart. Through attachment to 'woman and gold' the mind has become stained-covered with dirt, as it were. A magnet cannot attract a needle if the needle is covered with mud. Wash away the mud and the magnet will draw it. Likewise, the dirt of the mind can be washed away with the tears of our eyes. This stain is removed if one sheds tears of repentance and says, 'O God, I shall never again do such a thing.' Thereupon God, who is like the magnet, draws to Himself the mind, which is like the needle. Then the devotee goes into samdhi and obtains the vision of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, 1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:I have had my vision. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 2:Pain pushes until vision pulls. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 3:Without a vision the people perish. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 4:Vision without execution is delusion. ~ thomas-edison, @wisdomtrove 5:Knowledge is love and light and vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 6:Live your vision and demand your success. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 7:Between the vision and the act lies the shadow. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 8:Work up imagination to the state of vision. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 9:Negative thinkers always have a negative vision. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 10:When our inner vision opens, our horizons expand. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove 11:When there is no vision, there is no hope. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 12:A vision, without a plan, is just a hallucination. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 13:It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 14:Where God gives vision He always provides provision ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 15:Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 16:Don't bury your thoughts; put your vision to reality. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 17:The pain pushes you, until the vision pulls you ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 18:He who has no vision of eternity has no hold on time. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 19:May God us keep From Single vision and Newton's sleep. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 20:We are pushed by pain until we are pulled by vision. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 21:Me can't tell you how me know Rastafari. It is pure vision. ~ bob-marley, @wisdomtrove 22:The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 23:The worst thing is to be born sighted but to lack vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 24:It is better to have no sight than it is to have no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 25:Listen to me brother! bring the vision of the Beloved in your heart ~ kabir, @wisdomtrove 26:Redeem the time. Redeem the unread vision of a higher dream... ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 27:A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 28:I will never forget the vision of Jamie walking towards me. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove 29:One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 30:Redeem / The time. Redeem / The unread vision in the higher dream. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 31:Vision without execution is delusion. The joy is in the results ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 32:Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 33:There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 34:Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 35:It's a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 36:latest born and loveliest vision far of all Olympus' faded hierarchy. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove 37:Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 38:The saddest thing in life is people with sight, but without vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 39:The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight but no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 40:The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 41:The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 42:I would rather gamble on our vision than make a & 43:Success Procedure: Run your day by the clock and your life with a vision. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 44:The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 45:In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 46:It doesn't have to be the truth, just your vision of it, written down. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 47:The sight of a flower is as marvellous as the vision of God. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 48:The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 49:Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 50:Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 51:The Goal can disappear From the mind's sight But not From the heart's vision. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 52:The richest source of creation is feeling, followed by a vision of its meaning. ~ anais-nin, @wisdomtrove 53:was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music& 54:The world of tomorrow belongs to the person who has the vision for today. ~ robert-h-schuller, @wisdomtrove 55:What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 56:Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 57:Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 58:Blindness is an unfortunate handicap but true vision does not require the eyes. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 59:Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 60:Genius is the ability to hold one's vision steady until it becomes reality. ~ benjamin-franklin, @wisdomtrove 61:The ability to see the good in others and the bad in ourselves is perfect vision. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 62:Develop a clear vision for your organization. Where do you want to be in five years? ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 63:Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, and Hell the shadow from a soul on fire. ~ omar-khayyam, @wisdomtrove 64:The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 65:We lift ourselves by our own thought; we climb upon our vision of ourselves. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 66:Every fight is one between different angles of vision illuminating the same truth. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 67:Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 68:If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 69:The strength and clarity of your vision will lift you out of the depth of any hardship. ~ robin-sharma, @wisdomtrove 70:The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 71:A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 72:What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 73:Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. ~ arthur-schopenhauer, @wisdomtrove 74:Jesus gives us hope because He keeps us company, has a vision and knows the way we should go. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 75:When your sense of worth exceeds your conditions, conditions will shift to match your vision. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 76:I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David. ~ michelangelo, @wisdomtrove 77:Inner seeing has nothing to do with physical vision; it's the perception of life directly. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 78:That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 79:Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 80:Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 81:The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream! ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 82:When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 83:You can live your life out of a circumstance or you can live your life out of a vision. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 84:Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ melody-beattie, @wisdomtrove 85:Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 86:One essential ingredient for being an original in the day of copies is courageous vision. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 87:The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, / The young men's vision, and the old men's dream! ~ john-dryden, @wisdomtrove 88:Vision encompasses vast vistas outside the realm of the predictable, the safe, the expected. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 89:As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 90:Associate with people of vision. Be around those who inspire you and motivate you to reach your dreams. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 91:Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. ~ salvador-dali, @wisdomtrove 92:They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve. ~ kahlil-gibran, @wisdomtrove 93:To regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming vision of God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 94:We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 95:A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 96:The worst thing in the world is not to be born blind, but to be born with sight, and yet have no vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 97:When you have vision it affects your attitude. Your attitude is optimistic rather than pessimistic. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 98:Another of those phrases of Parmenides of Elea in which he clearly shows his monistic vision of what exists. ~ parmenides, @wisdomtrove 99:Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 100:The secret of image - worship is that you are trying to develop your vision of Divinity in one thing. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 101:I have a choice: Do I want to align with the GREATEST VISION OF MYSELF or Do I want to align with my EXCUSES? ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 102:Success needs vision to see, passion to transcend, patience to withstand and the character to overcome failures. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 103:Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 104:Success Recipe: 2 cups faith, 2 cups love, 1 cup hard work, 1 cup persistence, 1 tbsp vision and a dash of swagger. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 105:Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 106:I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 107:Meditation tells you only one thing: God is. Meditation reveals to you only one truth: yours is the vision of God. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 108:Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 109:All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation. ~ amsel-adams, @wisdomtrove 110:If you want to be a person with a large vision, you must cultivate the habit of doing the little things well. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 111:Take the limits off of yourself. You will never rise higher than your thinking. Create a great vision for your life. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 112:When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 113:Faith is a re-directing of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 114:Be free of desires and fears and at once your vision will clear and you shall see all things as they are. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 115:If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 116:Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 117:With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 118:Strength is derived from unity. The range of our collective vision is far greater when individual insights become one. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 119:What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time? ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 120:If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 121:I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 122:Leadership is not only having a vision, but also having the courage, the discipline, and the resources to get you there. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 123:Decide what you want to be, do, and have, think the thoughts of it, emit the frequency, and your vision will become your life. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 124:Standing in the inspiring vision of my future, I boldly take every step - large and small - with courage and intent. ~ jonathan-lockwood-huie, @wisdomtrove 125:When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 126:An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 127:It’s not our job to assess the merit of our vision or judge its importance. It is our job to receive the vision and act upon it. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 128:A dream is a vision, a goal is a promise. You can keep your promises to yourself by remaining flexible, focused, and committed. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 129:For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. ~ alfred-lord-tennyson, @wisdomtrove 130:If you don't have a vision you're going to be stuck in what you know. And the only thing you know is what you've already seen. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 131:The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 132:The more clear your vision of health, happiness and prosperity, the faster you move toward it and the faster it moves toward you. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 133:It takes someone with a vision of the possibilities to attain new levels of experience. Someone with the courage to live his dreams. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 134:The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 135:Vision is the ability to see God's presence, to perceive God‚Äôs power, to focus on God‚Äôs plan in spite of the obstacles. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 136:Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 137:Take the blinders from your vision, take the padding from your ears and confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears. ~ maya-angelou, @wisdomtrove 138:A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 139:The qualities of a great man are vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove 140:Leadership requires vision, and whence will vision come except from hours spent in the presence of God in humble and fervent prayer? ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 141:Vision lifts you up. It makes you smile a secret smile because you know that you have something very special to share. What is your vision? ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 142:Vocabulary enables us to interpret and to express. If you have a limited vocabulary, you will also have a limited vision and a limited future. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 143:To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership-not only on the movie set where I learned it, but everywhere. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 144:Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 145:With vision there is no room to be frightened. No reason for intimidation. It's time to march forward! Let's be confident and positive! ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 146:What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 147:Built on the foundation of concentration is the third aspect of the Buddha’s path of awakening: clarity of vision and the development of wisdom. ~ jack-kornfield, @wisdomtrove 148:The sooner you have a clear vision of what you want to be and the contributions you want to make, the more effective you’ll be in your life. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 149:Of course you don't die. Nobody dies. Death doesn't exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 150:If Macintosh hadn't been successful, then I should have just thrown in the towel, because my vision of the whole industry would have been totally wrong. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 151:Only when a man sees this universe as God does the veil fall from his eyes; then that man, purified and cleansed, finds his whole vision changed. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 152:A glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 153:Now man cannot live without some vision of himself. But still less can he live with a vision that is not true to his inner experience and inner feeling. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 154:extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 155:No vision of God and heaven ever experienced by the most exalted prophet can, in my opinion, match the vision of the universe as seen by Newton or Einstein ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 156:The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they're not complaining. They give young people a vision. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 157:Create a Vision Board .. pictures of what you want to attract .. every day look at it and get into the feeling state of already having acquired these wants. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 158:Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different song. In each man's troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique, shameful wrong. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 159:It is impossible for human tongue to exaggerate the riches which a vision from God brings to the soul: it even bestows health and refreshment on the body. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 160:You will find a common dichotomy in life. Those who don't have vision or determination, and refuse to dream the impossible, are always in the majority. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 161:The challenge of statesmanship is to have the vision to dream of a better, safer world and the courage, persistence, and patience to turn that dream into reality. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 162:There once was an umpire whose vision Was cause for abuse and derision He remarked in surprise, & 163:By learning to identify your energy patterns, you will be able to gain a much greater vision of the meaning and purpose of your many experiences and relationships. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 164:Don't let the vision be shot through with holes, but be damn sure some of your best and brightest are shooting at it - with bazookas as well as sniper's rifles. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 165:I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 166:In God's vision, no inside or outside exists. Still, in the beginning, Mother is asking all to meditate on Him in the heart, in order to achieve concentration. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 167:We need great prophetic leaders in religion and in spirituality... what we are getting is lacking in vision... not able to engage with the diversity of the culture. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 168:Clutter is a form of visual distraction, and everything in our vision pulls at our attention. The less clutter, the less visual stress we have. A simple home is calming. ~ leo-babauta, @wisdomtrove 169:A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 170:An angel can illumine the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision and by bringing within his reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 171:Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 172:Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 173:The freedom from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about. My vision of freedom is to be yourself. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove 174:An angel can illumine the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision and by bringing within his reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 175:If you are already an awakened soul, Then you must realise That God has already given you A supreme task to perform: He wants you to work For His Vision's world-blossoms. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 176:By learning to identify your energy patterns, you will be able to gain a much greater vision of the meaning and purpose of your many experiences and relationships. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 177:[In that vision] nothing is seen other than Thyself, [for Thou] art Thyself the object of Thyself (for Thou seest, and art That which is seen, and art the sight as well) ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 178:Moved by a passion they do not understand for a goal they seldom reach, men and women are haunted by the vision of a distant possibility that refuses to be extinguished. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 179:A strong, clear vision holds the power to transcend your current reality, bypassing the day-to-day challenges that might be keeping you stuck where you are. What is your vision? ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 180:I was very drawn to music of all types, from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix. There were musicians and composers who obviously were expressing a vision that was beyond the mundane. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 181:Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 182:Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 183:Practice clarity of vision. What do you want to create? Ask yourself what you really want, why you really want it, and if manifesting it will serve a higher purpose for humanity. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 184:The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 185:Here & 186:Here & 187:The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 188:When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 189:To ignite your confidence and reclaim your courage, you must step into the highest vision of who you are. The only way to do this is to make the journey back into the arms of the Divine. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 190:There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 191:Like a great athlete, we must have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish before we make a move. Vision, in preparation for an action, is as important as the action itself. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 192:There is a master way with words that cannot be learned but instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 193:We pray that we may come unto this Darkness which is beyond light, and without seeing and without knowing, to see and to know That which is above vision and above knowledge. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 194:For we have never actually understood the revolutionary sense beneath them ‚Äì the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 195:In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 196:Mind is indeed the Builder . . . what is held in the act of mental vision becomes a reality in the material experience. We are gradually builded to that image created within our own mental being. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 197:The picture must all come out of the artist's inside, awareness of forms and figures... It is more than memory. It is the image as it lives in the consciousness, alive like a vision, but unknown. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 198:The single greatest world transformation would simply be the embrace of global reasonableness and pluralistic tolerance the global embrace of egoic-rationality (on the way to centauric vision-logic). ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 199:Everybody’s vision is unique, and at different times in their lives their vision changes. It may be smaller and more personal for a while, and then it may grow larger, expanding outward to the world. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 200:My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars - this is very important - so you don't have to carry the return fuel when you go there. ~ elon-musk, @wisdomtrove 201:The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 202:What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 203:All successful people, men and women, are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 204:I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren't enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision. ~ w-clement-stone, @wisdomtrove 205:The learning we received only tended to obscure our vision. From the day we went to school we learned nothing; on the contrary, we were made obtuse, we were wrapped in a fog of words and abstractions. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 206:When he has the power to see things detached from self-interest and from the insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone can he have the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 207:Hold on to that new, enlarge vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 208:To me, a leader is a visionary that energizes others. This definition of leadership has two key dimensions: a) creating the vision of the future, and b) inspiring others to make the vision a reality. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove 209:We can enhance democracy by making it in line with its original vision. Read the dollar bill - E pluribus unum, out of many, one; novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. That's democracy. ~ barbara-marx-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 210:Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort. An Augean stable of metallic filth. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 211:Our Soul is a spark of the Divine. It is pure and perfect. Evil deeds merely obstruct our vision of the true nature of our Soul. Through good deeds we can become conscious of this perfection again. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 212:And if it’s just you, attempting to come up with a good idea before defining your purpose, creating a vision, and collecting lots of initial bad ideas is likely to give you a case of creative constipation. ~ david-allen, @wisdomtrove 213:Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 214:We human beings are born in ego, live in ego, are brought up in ego and will die in ego. We need a certain degree 0f vision when we live in this world for achieving and attaining our goals in life. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 215:Commitment to an idea that has the power to transform you personally in any way is a vision worth nurturing. The bottom line is, you need to remain committed to a vision long enough to see it vome to fruition. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove 216:To the wisest man, wide as is his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion and all experience thereof limits itself to some few computed centuries and measured square miles. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 217:Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 218:The vision of Christ that thou dost see is my vision's greatest enemy . Both read the Bible day and night, but thou read'st black where I read white. His seventy disciples sent against religion and government . ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 219:To have a vision of the cosmic plan, in which every form of life depends on directed movements which have effects beyond their conscious aim, is to understand the child's work and be able to guide it better. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 220:To begin with the end in mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 221:Achievement requires more than a vision - it takes courage, resolve and tenacity. All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality ~ earl-nightingale, @wisdomtrove 222:An America that is militarily and economically strong is not enough. The world must see an America that is morally strong with a creed and a vision. This is what has led us to dare and achieve. For us, values count. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 223:Commitment to an idea that has the power to transform you personally in any way is a vision worth nurturing. The bottom line is,you need to remain committed to a vision long enough to see it vome to fruition. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove 224:Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 225:We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it, as the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 226:Our vision of the future is a complete deregulation of everything from routes and airline access rights, all the way through to changing ownership and control regulations which would allow mergers and acquisitions, ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 227:Freedom is timeless, so constantly present; freedom is natural, so unconditional; freedom is direct, so pure vision obtains; freedom is unbounded, so no identity possible; freedom is unitary, so multiplicity is consumed. ~ longchenpa, @wisdomtrove 228:Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. ~ andrew-carnegie, @wisdomtrove 229:We're not aware of the joy of our own immortality. When we give to someone else it opens a doorway and gives us the vision to see those we give to are God. As we see this in others, suddenly we see it within ourselves. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 230:Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 231:I think that we already have a really good system in town, but I have a vision that it could be even better. My vision is that academic excellence is the area that we should pursue more, coupled with fiscal discipline. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 232:My vision of the future is no longer of people taking exams and proceeding from secondary school to University but of passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity and effort of will. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 233:The vision of Hinduism is unity in diversity. First, Hinduism lovingly embraces all alien elements; second, it tries to assimilate them; third, it tries to expand itself as a whole, with a view to serving humanity and nature. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 234:You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 235:The Vision of Christ that thou dost see, Is my vision's greatest enemy. Thine is the Friend of all Mankind, Mine speaks in Parables to the blind. Thine loves the same world that mine hates, Thy heaven-doors are my hell gates. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 236:The world economy is not yet a community& 237:As God talked with Arjuna, so will He talk with you. As He lifted up the spirit and consciousness of Arjuna, so will He uplift you. As he granted Arjuna supreme spiritual vision, so will He confer enlightenment on you. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 238:Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 239:In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream - an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the fantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 240:Cannons and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines; I believe them to have been the direct suggestion of the Devil. If Adam had seen in a vision the horrible instruments his children were to invent, he would have died of grief. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 241:True deliverance of man is the deliverance from Avidya i.e. ignorance. It is not in destroying anything that is positive and real, for that cannot be possible, but that which is negative, which obstructs our vision of truth. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 242:Fulfilling your vision for the best year of your life requires thought and introspection. It is not much different than planning an awesome vacation. It takes time, discussion, planning, decision making, and an array of other skills. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 243:Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:& 244:Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, Knowledge is love and light and vision. ~ hellen-keller, @wisdomtrove 245:Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 246:Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove 247:The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 248:If you want to move people, it has to be toward a vision that's positive for them, that taps important values, that gets them something they desire and it has to be presented in a compelling way so that they feel inspired to follow. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 249:There are thousands ready to die for their religion, but only are few willing to live by its principles. Because of their narrow vision and envy, they have missed the true essence and message of religion which is love and compassion. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 250:I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 251:When you meet the man [Brassai] you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes. And the sharpness of vision and depth of insight are revealed in Brassai's lifelong photographic exploration of Paris - its people, places, and things. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 252:Let's assume there is some validity in these prophecies. What vision of the future, of the new world, might we see so that we can place our attention upon this vision as a strange attractor to carry us through this critical transition? ~ barbara-marx-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 253:How long do small girls play with their dolls? As long as they are not married and do not live with their husbands. After marriage they put the dolls away in a box. What further need is there of worshipping the image after the vision of God? ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 254:The perspective of Love doesn't leave anybody out. Until your vision and compassion is big enough to include those who oppose you, you are simply contributing to the continuation of destructiveness . The end of separation is the salvation for all. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove 255:The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 256:What a great teacher, a great parent, a great psychotherapist and a great coach have in common is a deep belief in the potential of the person with whom they are concerned. They relate to the person from their vision of his or her worth and value. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 257:Compassion allows us to understand that, as citizens of the planet, we’re all in this together and that in order to ensure our survival we must hold and cultivate a new and larger vision of what’s possible for ourselves and for the human race as a whole. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 258:Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 259:The realms of life are many. For each one, special sciences develop. But life itself is a unity, and the more deeply the sciences try to penetrate into their separate realms, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 260:Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,& 261:Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision. ~ henry-miller, @wisdomtrove 262:Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, & 263:M: You are God, but you do not know it. Q: If I am God, then the world I create must be true. M: It is true in essence, but not in appearance. Be free of desires and fears and at once your vision will clear and you shall see all things as they are. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 264:We desperately need seers who can see through the mist- Christian leaders with prophetic vision. Unless they come soon it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 265:We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove 266:Your purpose is to create and recreate yourself anew in each golden moment of Now in the next grandest version of the greatest vision you have ever held about Who You Really Are. To announce and become, express and fulfil, experience and know your true Self. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 267:If hope is just a mere wish, if it is just like making friends with fantasy, then consciousness will not respond to it. But if it is something significant, like a vision that is trying to blossom inside the heart of an individual, then consciousness will be elevated. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 268:The greatest friend of the soul is the unknown. Yet we are afraid of the unknown because it lies outside our vision and our control. We avoid it or quell it by filtering it through our protective barriers of domestication and control. The normal way never leads home. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 269:Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgement. The artist... faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 270:It's necessary to know that everybody won't see it. That everybody won't join you, that everybody won't have the vision. It's necessary to know that. That a lot of people like to complain but they don't want to do anything about their situation. That you are UNCOMMON breed. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 271:The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a human being. It is to enable those experiences to be intelligible and generally recognized within the total framework of an ideal world. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 272:A bolder course would be to abandon the duality of seer and seen, and count both as one. In that vision the seer does not see or distinguish, or even imagine, two; he is changed, no longer himself nor owning himself there, but belongs to God, one with him, centre joined with centre. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 273:Trust God's love. His perfect love. Don't fear He will discover your past. He already has. Don't fear disappointing Him in the future. He can show you the chapter in which you will. With perfect knowledge of the past and perfect vision of the future, He loves you perfectly in spite of both. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 274:Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 275:I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader. ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove 276:Rather than beating yourself up for what you are not doing, appreciate and celebrate the things you are doing. When you shift your focus away from what you do not want, you can create a vision for what you do. Don't fight with yourself - focus on what you do, can do, choose to do, are ready to do. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 277:I am not seeking anything but service to my creator. I do not need a house, I do not need a car, I do not need any of that, but to be present with each guest that sits across from me, and I am committed to a bigger thing than me, which is the vision of own, because own is going to outlive all of us. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 278:Enthusiastic presenters of science documentaries bring the objectivist gospel to the people, inspiring us with a vision of the wonders of nature, which are truly astonishing yet there is a dark side to their vision which goes unmentioned, so they inadvertently lead us into a cold, futile, mechanical world. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 279:Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted; a truth cannot be created, but only perceived. The erroneous thoughts of man result from imperfections in his discernment. The goal of Yoga Science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may mirror the Divine vision in the Universe. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove 280:Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time you have to give up other lives you could be living. You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished. Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 281:& 282:Apparently, before we are born, each of us experiences a vision of what our life can be, complete with reflections on our parents and our tendencies to engage in particular control dramas, even how we might work through these dramas with these parents and go on to be prepared for what we want to accomplish. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 283:Nothing that comes from God will minister to my pride of self-congratulation. If I am tempted to be complacent and to feel superior because I have had a remarkable vision or an advanced spiritual experience, I should go at once to my knees and repent of the whole thing. I have fallen victim to the enemy. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 284:I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination... . It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision. ~ mary-oliver, @wisdomtrove 285:We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master. We then become witnesses to the development of the human soul; the emergence of the New Man who will no longer be the victim of events but, thanks to his clarity of vision, will become able to direct and to mold the future of mankind. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 286:A man develops a subtle power as a result of the strict observance of celibacy for twelve years. Then he can understand and grasp very subtle things which otherwise elude his intellect. Through that understanding the aspirant can have direct vision of God. That pure understanding alone enables him to realize Truth. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 287:If there were, it would mean that the discovery of the Real depends on the efforts of the individual. The Supreme would not be the Supreme if He were subject to anything at all. He and He alone is at all times. To wear out the veil that occludes the vision of Reality is all that man can do, and that he has got to do. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 288:As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand. ~ bruce-lee, @wisdomtrove 289:Trust the Universe. Trust and believe and have faith. I truly had no idea how I was going to bring the knowledge of The Secret onto the movie screen. I just held to the outcome of the vision, I saw the outcome clearly in my mind, I felt it with all my might, and everything that we needed to create The Secret came to us. ~ rhonda-byrne, @wisdomtrove 290:We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 291:I’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 292:O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 293:It has always been one of my unclerical sermons to myself, that that remark which Peter made on seeing the vision of a single hour, ought to be made by us all, in contemplating every panoramic change in the long Vision we call life... "It is good for us to be here - it is good for us to be here", repeating itself eternally. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 294:So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die." "Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried. "What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round. "No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove 295:You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 296:A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 297:God is beyond definition. But according to one's own vision or receptivity, one will define God in one's own way. Some will say that God is all Love. Others will say that God is all Power. Each one will see God according to his own necessity, his own receptivity and, finally, according to the way God wants him to see the ultimate Truth. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 298:At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service. ~ fred-rogers, @wisdomtrove 299:Today, continue to nourish your dreams. Hold fast to your vision and do something every day to bring it into manifestation. Everything is possible in God, because God is the infinite Possibility within everything. Know that you are God's Beloved in whom God is pleased. Never giving up on yourself is what it takes to be your own hero. ~ michael-beckwith, @wisdomtrove 300:In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of people be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved integrity. Do not lose your knowledge that our proper estate is an upright posture, ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 301:In the one instance, the dreamerloses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestionsuntilhe finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings,... forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 302:It's all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your business. And giving them good work. Then getting out of their way. And trusting them. You have to get out of the way so YOU can focus on the bigger vision. That's important. And here's the main thing... .you must make them see their work as a MISSION. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove 303:Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 304:I pray we could come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way, namely through the denial of all beings ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 305:I pray we could come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way, namely through the denial of all beings. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 306:It would be a mistake to ascribe this creative power to an inborn talent. In art, the genius creator is not just a gifted being, but a person who has succeeded in arranging for their appointed end, a complex of activities, of which the work is the outcome. The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring an effort. Creativity takes courage. ~ henri-matisse, @wisdomtrove 307:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 308:You are therefore able to run on this path, on which God is found above all vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell, speech, sense, rationality, and intellect. It is found as none of these, but rather above everything as God of gods and King of all kings. Indeed, the King of the world of the intellect is the King of kings and Lord of lords in the universe. ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 309:Our culture is dominated by quantity. Even those who have plenty hunger for more and more. Everywhere around us, the reign of quantity extends and multiplies. Sadly the voyage of greed has all the urgency but no sense of destination. Desire becomes inflated and loses all sense of vision and proportion. When beauty becomes an acquisition it brings no delight. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 310:That everyone won't see it, that everyone won't join you, that everyone won't have the vision... it's necessary to know that... See I wanted everyone to like me, I wanted to be perfect the first time around. IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN. You're gonna make some mistakes, you are gonna create some enemies whenever you decide to take on the world and go after you passion. ~ les-brown, @wisdomtrove 311:I cannot change you. I cannot change other people. So I have decided to put all of my energy where I have the most leverage , where I know I can make a difference. Instead of being upset that this world is not populated the way I want it to be populated, I have decided to become the citizen that I want the world to be populated with. That's how I create the vision. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 312:Two visions of the world remain locked in dispute. The first believes all men are created equal by a loving God who has blessed us with freedom. The second vision believes that religion is opium for the masses. It believes that eternal principles like truth, liberty, and democracy have no meaning beyond the whim of the state. And [Vladimir] Lenin spoke for them. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 313:No sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and that, each cunningly endeavoring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of himself. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 314:An archer competing for a clay vessel shoots effortlessly, his or her skill and concentration unimpeded. If the prize is changed to a brass ornament, the hands begin to shake. If it is changed to gold, he or she squints as if going blind. The abilities do not deteriorate, but belief in them does, as he or she allows the supposed value of an external reward to cloud the vision. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove 315:The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take, guys. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 316:W e ought not to question whence it [the experience of Unity] comes; there is no whence, no coming or going in place; it either appears [to us] or does not appear. We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it as the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 317:The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible... But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 318:This is not a bland experience of some monolithic ‘oneness’. It’s a profound experience of the ‘uni-variety’ of the universe. It’s seeing that on the surface of life everything is separate, like waves on an ocean, but at the depths all is one. When I experience the universe vision I find myself appreciating the multifarious variety of life as an expression of one mysterious essence. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 319:To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason? ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove 320:Many priests and employees at temples work for pay. No one should judge religion on the basis of the shortcomings of such workers. We should frame suitable rules and regulations for preventing them from falling prey to material temptations. The true guiding spirits of religion are those who engage in selfless service while dedicating their entire lives to attaining the vision of God. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 321:But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 322:Does anyone pray before they cut a tree? I haven't seen anyone do that yet in the timber industry. But my vision is that that day is coming. I have a vision of a world in which we relate to each other as souls - not as personalities - not as bodies and minds and capabilities to accomplish things in this domain of the five sense, but as immortal spirits learning together how to co-create this world. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 323:The goal of mysticism is communion with God. In this experience, the mystic no longer exists as a separate individual, but becomes one with the Oneness. This vision can only arise when the mystic realises that the ego-self is only an illusionary veil that masks the true divine Self: and that this Self is God, the being of all beings. God is not something & 324:You have sole ownership of your vision. And the Universe will give you what you want within your vision. What happens with most people is that they muddy their vision with "reality". Their vision becomes full of not only what they want but what everybody else thinks about what they want, too. Your work is to clarify and purify your vision so that the vibration that you are offering can then be answered. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove 325:Build this day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts. Never fret at any imperfections that you fear may impede your progress. Remind yourself, as often as necessary, that you are a creature of God and have the power to achieve any dream by lifting up your thoughts. You can fly when you decide that you can. Never consider yourself defeated again. Let the vision in your heart be in your life's blueprint. Smile! ~ og-mandino, @wisdomtrove 326:Write down the area of your life that most needs your attention right now and then write out all the details you saw of your soul's vision for this part of your life. What will that part of your life look like? How will achieving your goal change your life? How will it change the life of those around you? When you reach your goal, when you fulfill that desire, what will it make room for? Write that all down. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 327:After watching the State of the Union address the other night [1994], I'm reminded of the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only in this case, it's not flattery, but grand larceny: the intellectual theft of ideas that you and I recognize as our own. Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 328:My point is that the great challenge of an artist is to balance those two things: to be strong enough to have your own personal vision that you will put on the page or the canvas or the screen, no matter what people say, but it requires a radical sensitivity. You have to be completely open to what the world is telling you, to what your audience tells you. And balancing those two things is nearly impossible. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove 329:The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 330:If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both. . . . The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding. ~ bodhidharma, @wisdomtrove 331:Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself. ~ john-odonohue, @wisdomtrove 332:Man alone knows that he must die; but that very knowledge raises him, in a sense, above mortality, by making him a sharer in the vision of eternal truth. He becomes the spectator of his own tragedy; he sympathizes so much with the fury of the storm that he has no ears left for the shipwrecked sailor, though the sailor were his own soul. The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 333:Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 334:Just see the person you imagine yourself to be as a part of the world you perceive within your mind and look at the mind from the outside, for you are not the mind. After all, your only problem is the eager self-identification with whatever you perceive. Give up this habit, remember that you are not what you perceive, use your power of alert aloofness. See yourself in all that lives and your behaviour will express your vision. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 335:You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 336:Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 337:We're finally becoming aware of a process that has been unconscious since human experience began. From the start, humans have perceived a Birth Vision, and then after birth have gone unconscious, aware of only the vaguest of intuitions. At first in the early day of human history, the distance between what we intended and what we actually accomplished was very great, and then, over time, the distance has closed. Now we're the verge of remembering everything. ~ james-redfield, @wisdomtrove 338:Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control - all of which led us to this state in the first place... We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 339:We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need ‚Äî but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need ‚Äî within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 340:Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. When you add a goal to the enjoyment of what you do, the energy- field or vibrational frequency changes. A certain degree of what we might call structural tension is now added to enjoyment, and so it turns into enthusiasm. At the height of creative activity fueled by enthusiasm, there will be enormous intensity and energy behind what you do. ~ eckhart-tolle, @wisdomtrove 341:It’s one thing to make a pronouncement in a moment of inspiration about what you intend to manifest in your life or what kind of person you intend to become. It’s quite another thing to make a commitment to holding that vision regardless of what difficulties or obstacles may surface. Holding the vision involves an unwillingness to compromise what you’re visualizing for yourself. It means being willing to suffer through criticism and what appears to be an uncooperative universe. ~ wayne-dyer, @wisdomtrove 342:Fellow Americans, our duty is before us tonight. Let us go forward, determined to serve selflessly a vision of man with God, government for people, and humanity at peace. For it is now our task to tend and preserve, through the darkest and coldest nights, that "sacred fire of liberty" that President Washington spoke of two centuries ago, a fire that tonight remains a beacon to all oppressed of the world, shining forth from this kindly, pleasant, greening land we call America. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 343:Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 344:The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general... The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 345:Children, we may go to the temple, reverently circumambulate the sanctum sanctorum and put our offering in the charity box, but on our way out if we kick the beggar at the door, where is our devotion? Compassion towards the poor is our duty to God. Mother is not saying that we should give money to every beggar that sits in front of a temple, but do not despise them. Pray for them as well. When we hate others, it is our own mind that becomes impure. Equality of vision is God. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove 346:A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions... . He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer& 347:Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call genius has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove 348:Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 349:Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 350:So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. ~ virginia-woolf, @wisdomtrove 351:The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 352:Fear keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of the future-all these fears and more keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving outside the comfort-or even the familiar discomfort-of what we know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 353:Looking back over a decade one sees the ideal of a university become a myth, a vision, a meadow lark among the smoke stacks. Yet perhaps it is there at Princeton, only more elusive than under the skies of the Prussian Rhineland or Oxfordshire; or perhaps some men come upon it suddenly and possess it, while others wander forever outside. Even these seek in vain through middle age for any corner of the republic that preserves so much of what is fair, gracious, charming and honorable in American life. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 354:Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration. ~ thomas-carlyle, @wisdomtrove 355:‚ÄúBlessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.‚Äù This sentence alone would save mankind, if all books and prophets were lost. This purity of heart will bring the vision of God. It is the theme of the whole music of this universe. In purity is no bondage. Remove the veils of ignorance by purity; then we manifest ourselves as we really are and know that we were never in bondage. The seeing of & 356:There is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandalwood, out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his Madonna from a block of oak wood which was destined for the fire. He obeyed and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood. Many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandalwood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn. ~ orison-swett-marden, @wisdomtrove 357:We were to found a University magazine. A pair of little, active brothers-Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against the University building-had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjuct editors and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic-that flatterer of credulity-the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. ~ robert-louis-stevenson, @wisdomtrove 358:Q: If I know myself, shall I not desire and fear? M: For some time, the mental habits may linger in spite of the new vision, the habit of longing for the known past and fearing the unknown future. When you know these are of the mind only, you can go beyond them. As long as you have all sorts of ideas about yourself, you know yourself through the mist of these ideas; to know yourself as you are, give up all ideas. You cannot imagine the taste of pure water, you can only discover it by abandoning all flavourings. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 359:Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a world where everybody said, & 360:I behold Thee, 0 Lord my God, in a kind of mental trance, ... Thus, while I am borne to loftiest heights, I behold Thee as Infinity... And when I behold Thee as absolute Infinity, to whom is befitting neither the name of creating Creator nor of creatable Creator-then indeed I begin to behold Thee unveiled, and to enter into the garden of delights! ... [In that vision] nothing is seen other than Thyself, [for Thou] art Thyself the object of Thyself (for Thou seest, and art That which is seen, and art the sight as well) . ~ nicholas-of-cusa, @wisdomtrove 361:I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children’s souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 362:We go into a relationship looking for love, not realizing that we must bring love with us. We must bring a strong sense of self and purpose into a relationship. We must bring a sense of value, of who we are. We must bring an excitement about ourselves, our lives, and the vision we have for these two essential elements. We must bring a respect for wealth and abundance. Having achieved it to some satisfactory degree on our own, we must move into relationships willing to share what we have, rather than being afraid of someone taking it. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 363:When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 364:We in this country, in this generation, areby destiny rather than choicethe watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of peace on earth, good will toward men. That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove 365:If you set your bar at & 366:Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute... All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road... and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us. ~ victor-hugo, @wisdomtrove 367:When the mind is kept away from its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never known; and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you have passed through this experience, you will never be the same man again; the unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision; but it is bound to return, provided the effort is sustained; until the day when all bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated in the present. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 368:There, our Self-seeing is a communion with the Self, restored to purity. No doubt we should not speak of "seeing," but, instead of [speaking of] "seen" and "seer," speak boldly of a simple unity. For in this seeing we neither see, nor distinguish, nor are there, two. The man is changed, no longer himself nor belonging to himself; he is merged with the Supreme, sunken into It, one with It; it is only in separation that duality exists. This is why the vision baffles telling; for how could a man bring back tidings of the Supreme as something separate from himself when he has seen It as one with himself? ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 369:One cannot see God without purity of heart. Through attachment to "woman and gold" the mind has become stained -covered with dirt, as it were. A magnet cannot attract a needle if the needle is covered with mud. Wash away the mud and the magnet will draw it. Likewise, the dirt of the mind can be washed away with the tears of our eyes. This stain is removed if one sheds tears of repentence and says, "0 God, I shall never again do such a thing." Thereupon God, who is like the, magnet, draws to Himself the mind, which is like the needle. Then the devotee goes into samadhi and obtains the vision of God. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 370:Whenever I make a choice, I will ask myself two questions: “What are the consequences of this choice that I’m making?” and “Will this choice bring fulfillment and happiness to me and also to those who are affected by this choice?” I will then ask my heart for guidance and be guided by its message of comfort or discomfort. If the choice feels comfortable, I will plunge ahead with abandon. If the choice feels uncomfortable, I will pause and see the consequences of my action with my inner vision. This guidance will enable me to make spontaneously correct choices for myself and for all those around me. ~ deepak-chopra, @wisdomtrove 371:S uppose the soul have attained; the Highest has come to her, or rather has revealed Its presence; she has turned away from all about her and has made herself apt, beautiful to the utmost, brought into likeness [with the Divine] by the preparings and adornings known to those growing ready for the vision. She has seen that Presence suddenly manifesting within her, for there is nothing between, nor are they any longer two, but one; for so long as the Presence remains, all distinction fades. It is in this way that lover and beloved here [in this world], in a copy of that [Divine] union, long to blend their being. ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove 372:If you hope to bring meditation into your life in any kind of long-term, committed way, you will need a vision that is truly your own—one that is deep and tenacious and that lies close to the core of who you believe yourself to be, what you value in your life, and where you see yourself going. Only the strength of such a dynamic vision and the motivation from which it springs can possibly keep you on this path year in and year out, with a willingness to practice every day and to bring mindfulness to bear on whatever is happening, to open to whatever is perceived, and to let it point to where the holding is and where the letting go and the growing need to happen. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 373:Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 374:And this is truly a terrible burden, a horrible burden, because in any case there is no room for timidity. The fact that you might be wrong is simply no excuse: You might be right in your communication, and you might be wrong, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter, as Kierkegaard so rudely reminded us, is that only by investing and speaking your vision with passion, can the truth, one way or another, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. If you are right, or if you are wrong, it is only your passion that will force either to be discovered. It is your duty to promote that discovery—either way—and therefore it is your duty to speak your truth with whatever passion and courage you can find in your heart. You must shout, in whatever way you can. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 375:I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescalin or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realization of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision. All I am suggesting is that the mescalin experience is what Catholic theologians call "a gratuitous grace," not necessary to salvation but potentially helpful and to be accepted thankfully, if made available. To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large—this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 376:And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout form the heart—perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example—but authentically always and absolutely carries a a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you. Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity. You are hiding your true estate. You don’t want to upset others because you don’t want to upset your self. You are acting in bad faith, the taste of a bad infinity. Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove 377:Let us, therefore, re-ascend to the good itself, which every soul desires; and in which it can alone find perfect repose. For if anyone shall become acquainted with this source of beauty he will then know what I say, and after what manner he is beautiful. Indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. But they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments of matter, with which they become connected in their descent. Just as those who penetrate into the holy retreats of sacred mysteries, are first purified and then divest themselves of their garments, until someone by such a process, having dismissed everything foreign from the God, by himself alone, beholds the solitary principle of the universe, sincere, simple and pure, from which all things depend, and to whose transcendent perfections the eyes of all intelligent natures are directed, as the proper cause of being, life and intelligence. With what ardent love, with what strong desire will he who enjoys this transporting vision be inflamed while vehemently affecting to become one with this supreme beauty! For this it is ordained, that he who does not yet perceive him, yet desires him as good, but he who enjoys the vision is enraptured with his beauty, and is equally filled with admiration and delight. Hence, such a one is agitated with a salutary astonishment; is affected with the highest and truest love; derides vehement affections and inferior loves, and despises the beauty which he once approved. Such, too, is the condition of those who, on perceiving the forms of gods or daemons, no longer esteem the fairest of corporeal forms. What, then, must be the condition of that being, who beholds the beautiful itself? ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Global vision, local win. ~ Jack Ma, #NFDB
2:His vision blurred, and ~ S D Smith, #NFDB
3:I have had my vision. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
4:Desire Is Born With Vision ~ Zig Ziglar, #NFDB
5:I think I'm vision-impaired! ~ Jim Ross, #NFDB
6:Vision begins with you. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
7:Vision sees what could be. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
8:clarity of vision—especially ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
9:Church of the Fiery Vision. ~ Jeanne DuPrau, #NFDB
10:Glance is the enemy of vision. ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
11:O gentle vision in the dawn: ~ Harold Monro, #NFDB
12:Without vision a people perishes. ~ Solomon, #NFDB
13:Creation begins with vision. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
14:Fear & Hope are — Vision ~ William Blake, #NFDB
15:Fear is vision without hope. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
16:The best vision is insight. ~ Malcolm Forbes, #NFDB
17:We shared the same vision. ~ Dylan McDermott, #NFDB
18:Science begins with a vision. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
19:Vision is more than looking. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
20:With vision we flourish. ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
21:A typical dog has 20/75 vision, ~ Alan Russell, #NFDB
22:Science begins with a vision". ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
23:Vision is the end of religion. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
24:Tunnel vision can kill creativity. ~ Ami Vitale, #NFDB
25:Vision is seeing the invisible. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
26:Any kind of vision needs people. ~ Nobu Matsuhisa, #NFDB
27:Vision is not political rhetoric. ~ Jean Chretien, #NFDB
28:important and vision is critical, but ~ Zig Ziglar, #NFDB
29:In the vision there is no morality ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
30:Pain pushes until vision pulls. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
31:Days, when the ball of our vision ~ George Meredith, #NFDB
32:Long-term vision and product strategy. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
33:Without a vision the people perish. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
34:(Art is) the residue of vision. ~ Alberto Giacometti, #NFDB
35:I have a vision, and I know I'm right. ~ Lech Walesa, #NFDB
36:Close your eyes, they'll never see your vision ~ Tyga, #NFDB
37:Embrace your own vision. Your own voice. ~ Kim Chance, #NFDB
38:Isolated and limited vision problem. ~ Jacques Chirac, #NFDB
39:Vision is the true creative rhythm. ~ Robert Delaunay, #NFDB
40:Vision without execution is daydreaming. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
41:It's my job as governor to set a vision. ~ Mary Fallin, #NFDB
42:Knowledge is love and light and vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
43:Our vision is for pervasive computing. ~ James Robison, #NFDB
44:Our vision was to serve the whole area ~ Susan Collins, #NFDB
45:There is no vision without vulnerability. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
46:Vision isn't a template in PowerPoint. ~ Roger McNamee, #NFDB
47:A man without vision is a man without God. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
48:Make sure your vision is God's vision. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
49:my vision of Him is His vision
of me ~ Henry Corbin,#NFDB
50:Vision without execution is delusion. ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
51:A vision without a plan is a pipe dream. ~ Brian P Moran, #NFDB
52:older also helps you develop X-ray vision. ~ Amy Poehler, #NFDB
53:Only a vision - that is what one must have. ~ Ernst Haas, #NFDB
54:The Vision of Christ that thou dost see, ~ William Blake, #NFDB
55:Vision sometimes comes in a memory. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
56:Great vision precedes great achievement. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
57:Love is blind but jealousy has 20-20 vision, ~ Susie Tate, #NFDB
58:Love is not blind; love is the holy vision. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
59:Vision is an intelligent form of thought ~ Andreas Gursky, #NFDB
60:Live your vision and demand your success. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
61:Ones vision is not a road map but a compass. ~ Peter Block, #NFDB
62:Vision is meaning. Meaning is historical. ~ Nic Pizzolatto, #NFDB
63:Vision with action makes a powerful reality. ~ Ron Kaufman, #NFDB
64:Between the vision and the act lies the shadow. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
65:In the twilight, it was a vision of power. ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
66:Take your sensibility and use it as a vision ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
67:The engineering is secondary to the vision. ~ Cynthia Ozick, #NFDB
68:The vision always precedes the realization ~ Lilian Whiting, #NFDB
69:Work up imagination to the state of vision. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
70:Vision motivates, sustains and dispels doubt. ~ Thomas Young, #NFDB
71:Vision without execution is hallucination. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
72:Vision without execution is just hallucination. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
73:A country without vision runs to every direction. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
74:A vision without a strategy remains an illusion. ~ Lee Bolman, #NFDB
75:Fear appears from a false vision of reality. ~ Bokar Rinpoche, #NFDB
76:Hold on to your vision and make it your reality. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
77:I have such poor vision I can date anybody. ~ Garry Shandling, #NFDB
78:Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad, ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
79:Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad. ~ Robin Hobb, #NFDB
80:When there is no vision, people perish. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
81:Without a vision human beings are nasty creatures. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
82:A spirit with a vision is a dream with a mission. ~ Neil Peart, #NFDB
83:He has a very strong vision of what he wants. ~ Susan Sarandon, #NFDB
84:If the vision is there, the means will follow. ~ Faith Popcorn, #NFDB
85:It starts with vision, and the clarity of vision ~ Jeff Weiner, #NFDB
86:It was an idealistic vision that generation had. ~ Mat Hoffman, #NFDB
87:Movie makers now choose profit over vision. ~ Shirley MacLaine, #NFDB
88:Our approach and our vision ... is identical. ~ Jacques Chirac, #NFDB
89:The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision. ~ Lou Gerstner, #NFDB
90:The point of vision and desire are the same. ~ Wallace Stevens, #NFDB
91:Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
92:Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
93:Vision makes the difference for your future. ~ Michael Pfleger, #NFDB
94:We never found a real model (for our vision). ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
95:When our inner vision opens, our horizons expand. ~ Louise Hay, #NFDB
96:When there is no vision, there is no hope. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
97:A team aligned behind a vision will move mountains ~ Kevin Rose, #NFDB
98:Audacious vision never cowers in the darkness. ~ Steven Furtick, #NFDB
99:I see 'Ahab's Wife' as offering an alternative vision to ~ Moby, #NFDB
100:La Vision Du Grand Canal Royal Des Deux Mers
~ Charles Cros,#NFDB
101:Make sure you are passionate about the vision. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
102:stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
103:The grander the vision the greater the price tag. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
104:True leaders inspire people to a bigger vision. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
105:Vision without traction is merely hallucination. ~ Gino Wickman, #NFDB
106:Where there is no vision a people perish. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
107:Where there is no vision, the people perish, ~ Claude M Bristol, #NFDB
108:At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing. ~ William Golding, #NFDB
109:If you don't have a vision, nothing happens. ~ Christopher Reeve, #NFDB
110:It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
111:As a pastor I reinforced my vision over lunches. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
112:A vision without resources is an hallucination. ~ Thomas Friedman, #NFDB
113:Greatness starts with a clear vision of the future. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
114:If my vision was good enough, I'd be an astronaut. ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
115:Knowledge, I suppose, blocked the gates of vision. ~ Mary Stewart, #NFDB
116:Reality is what people who lack vision see. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
117:Real vision is the ability to see the invisible. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
118:Seeing within changes one's outer vision. ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce, #NFDB
119:Wilbur brought the vision and Rodney executed it. ~ Gerard Butler, #NFDB
120:Admiration involves a glorious obliquity of vision. ~ Max Beerbohm, #NFDB
121:Discover the tools to build your own vision. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher, #NFDB
122:Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
123:Great vision without great people is irrelevant. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
124:Initially, your vision will exceed your competency. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
125:Love may be blind but jealousy has 20-20 vision. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
126:The pain pushes you, until the vision pulls you ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
127:The vision you use determines the results you obtain. ~ Alan Cohen, #NFDB
128:Vision must be present for creativity to flourish. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
129:When your child is sick, you have tunnel vision. ~ Nick Cassavetes, #NFDB
130:I have no happy fairyland vision that she can win. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
131:Jesus’s time, the dominant social vision was centered ~ Matthew Fox, #NFDB
132:Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
133:People that complete other people's vision are understated. ~ Bjork, #NFDB
134:that at a certain point people need more than vision. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
135:Vision of the night: toads plunge from silver waters. ~ Georg Trakl, #NFDB
136:We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
137:A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
138:And part of my vision is to do dynamic videos for kids. ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
139:As our hearts become pure, our vision becomes clearer. ~ Heidi Baker, #NFDB
140:Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep? ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
141:it’s horrid to be someone else’s vision of yourself. ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB
142:Keep the childlike vision and remain true to your ideas. ~ Wolf Kahn, #NFDB
143:We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
144:Were there no men of vision, all who are blind would be dead. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
145:A different language is a different vision of life.~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
146:Effective leaders are always monitoring vision leakage. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
147:Every barren land is a VISION waiting for a VISIONARY ~ Fela Durotoye, #NFDB
148:History is a vision of God's creation on the move. ~ Arnold J Toynbee, #NFDB
149:I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals. ~ Paul Newman, #NFDB
150:I think your vision gets better as you get older. ~ Jennifer Donnelly, #NFDB
151:The only vision (many) of you have is television. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
152:Youth and vision make an unbeatable combination. ~ Toyotomi Hideyoshi, #NFDB
153:A different language is a different vision of life. ~ Federico Fellini, #NFDB
154:Google’s vision is tools that will do things for you. ~ Evgeny Morozov, #NFDB
155:He has the vision and energy to make Germany great. ~ Jessica Shattuck, #NFDB
156:He who has no vision of eternity has no hold on time. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
157:Hold firm to your vision but don't be a tyrant on set. ~ Werner Herzog, #NFDB
158:May God us keep From Single vision and Newton's sleep. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
159:The more boundless your vision, the more real you are. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
160:Vaughn's vision is older, wiser and harder than Ritchie's. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
161:Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
162:Vision is defined as a program for restoring the human. ~ Harold Bloom, #NFDB
163:Vision without implementation is counterproductive. ~ Douglas B Reeves, #NFDB
164:Where there is no vision, there is no hope. ~ George Washington Carver, #NFDB
165:And what is laughter anyway? Changing the angle of vision. ~ Erica Jong, #NFDB
166:A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
167:If God doesn't build the vision, He will tear it down. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
168:Influencers are dreamers. They are leaders with a vision. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
169:It is a task of art to express clear vision of reality. ~ Piet Mondrian, #NFDB
170:Its not what the vision is, its what the vision does.
~ Robert Fritz,#NFDB
171:Persistence of action comes from persistence of vision. ~ Steve Pavlina, #NFDB
172:Trust wisely and believe in yourself, in your vision. ~ Melissa McClone, #NFDB
173:We are pushed by pain until we are pulled by vision. ~ Michael Beckwith, #NFDB
174:When a man loses his vision of the future he dies. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
175:An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. ~ James Whistler, #NFDB
176:Book 5, Vision of the Griffin’s Heart is coming Winter 2015. ~ L R W Lee, #NFDB
177:company and the pain that accompanies a grand vision left ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
178:dreaming your x-ray vision could see the beauty in me. ~ Lucille Clifton, #NFDB
179:I stifled a sigh and ignored the Imprinted Drunk Vision Girl. ~ P C Cast, #NFDB
180:Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power. ~ Seth Berkley, #NFDB
181:Me can't tell you how me know Rastafari. It is pure vision. ~ Bob Marley, #NFDB
182:Now everyone reaches inward for his own vision of integrity. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
183:People are not going to give you a vision, but God can. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
184:Redeem the time. Redeem the unread vision of a higher dream. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
185:The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
186:The only cure from sin is by maintaining a vision of God. ~ John Ortberg, #NFDB
187:There is a better vision for our future: A return to freedom. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
188:The worst thing is to be born sighted but to lack vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
189:We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
190:Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision. ~ Joseph Joubert, #NFDB
191:Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
192:Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision: bad assumptions ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
193:emit the frequency, and your vision will become your life. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
194:Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
195:If your sin feels "too big," your vision of God is too small. ~ Mark Hart, #NFDB
196:It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision. ~ Bill Viola, #NFDB
197:Ragged curls of unfurling ampersands swam across her vision. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
198:Stressing and obsessing over your vision blocks it. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein, #NFDB
199:Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
200:Vision is the most powerful weapon in the leader's arsenal. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
201:Vision is tomorrow's reality expressed as an idea today. ~ Orrin Woodward, #NFDB
202:A lifestyle change begins with a vision and a single step. ~ Jeff Galloway, #NFDB
203:It is better to have no sight than it is to have no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
204:She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
205:When I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful. ~ Giorgio de Chirico, #NFDB
206:A great leader has brains, vision, soul, values and a heart. ~ Klaus Schwab, #NFDB
207:Friedan did not include black women in her vision. Black ~ Rebecca Traister, #NFDB
208:I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision. ~ Yayoi Kusama, #NFDB
209:innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision. ~ Jake Knapp, #NFDB
210:Is this a vision?
Is this a dream?
Do I sleep? ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
211:Seeing-is-believing is a blind spot in man's vision. ~ R Buckminster Fuller, #NFDB
212:The Communist vision is the vision of man without God. ~ Whittaker Chambers, #NFDB
213:Unable to voice the truth, she said simply, “Cyborg vision. ~ Marissa Meyer, #NFDB
214:Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own. ~ Robert Collier, #NFDB
215:Vision without passion is a picture without possibilities. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
216:When I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful. ~ Giorgio de Chirico, #NFDB
217:Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms. ~ Chaim Potok, #NFDB
218:As important as the funds are, the vision is the greatest gift. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
219:If your vision doesn't cost you something, it's a daydream. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
220:I know that this world is a world of Imagination and Vision. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
221:My imagination has always been inspired by nature’s vision ~ Gregory Colbert, #NFDB
222:People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
223:Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision. ~ Rainbow Rowell, #NFDB
224:Still, it was vision, or at least vision’s idiot cousin. ~ Alastair Reynolds, #NFDB
225:Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
226:We are pushed by our pain until we are pulled by our vision. ~ Kathryn Alice, #NFDB
227:We work for that part of our vision which is uncompleted. ~ Frederick Sommer, #NFDB
228:You can see the future best through peripheral vision. ~ Nicholas Negroponte, #NFDB
229:You have to keep your vision clear, cause only a coward lives in fear. ~ Nas, #NFDB
230:Your voice, your vision, your story is important and it matters ~ Kim Chance, #NFDB
231:Dawn has power to fertilise the most matter-of-fact vision. ~ John Galsworthy, #NFDB
232:Declare what you honestly want and live that vision fearlessly. ~ Mick Napier, #NFDB
233:For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
234:He wished he had some kind of X-ray vision for the human heart. ~ Kim Edwards, #NFDB
235:I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight. ~ Robin Green, #NFDB
236:I will never forget the vision of Jamie walking towards me. ~ Nicholas Sparks, #NFDB
237:Love helps you to know yourself... turn your vision inward. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
238:May God us keep
From Single vision
and Newton's sleep. ~ William Blake,#NFDB
239:Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director. ~ Tom Skerritt, #NFDB
240:One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
241:She was the light of our lives, our anchor, compass and vision. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
242:Your teammates will stretch your vision or choke your dream. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
243:You won't get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
244:Art is the beginning of vision into the realm of eternal life. ~ Lawren Harris, #NFDB
245:As a director, you can transform your vision more with the music. ~ Fatih Ak n, #NFDB
246:A vision could put you on a path you don't want to follow. ~ Thomas Yellowtail, #NFDB
247:Both must make tangible, immediate steps toward this vision. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
248:Genius is measured not by static volume but by kinetic vision. ~ Rich DiSilvio, #NFDB
249:Have a vision for increase. See yourself as a son rising higher. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
250:It's great working with directors and with somebody else's vision. ~ James Iha, #NFDB
251:Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
252:Louis Maistros has an original and dark vision, full of power. ~ Douglas Clegg, #NFDB
253:My vision is to inspire others to find purpose and happiness. ~ Tiffany Alvord, #NFDB
254:Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday's vision of the future. ~ Richard Corliss, #NFDB
255:Ones vision is not a roadmap but a compass. ~ Peter Block Business Philosopher, #NFDB
256:—saw a vision of the world and all the options there could be! ~ Jasper Fforde, #NFDB
257:The man who has no vision will undertake no great enterprise. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
258:You have to stick to your guns for what your vision is. ~ Reagan Gomez Preston, #NFDB
259:You won't get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
260:Discontent with the status quo is a great catalyst for vision. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
261:Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use them well; — my vision is the soul. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
262:Hold ever before you the vision of the new heaven and new earth. ~ Eileen Caddy, #NFDB
263:I would rather gamble on our vision than make a 'me, too' product. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
264:Jeffrey Carver imagines wonders and allows us to share his vision. ~ Terry Carr, #NFDB
265:Passion is meaningless without vision. Innovation demands both. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
266:Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish. ~ Ben Carson, #NFDB
267:Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
268:The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
269:This life is what I always wanted. I had a vision of our happiness. ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
270:To practice magic is to bear the responsibility for having a vision. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
271:Vision without execution is delusion. The joy is in the results ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
272:Vision without guts is fantasy.
Visi tanpa nyali adalah fantasi. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
273:Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18 KJV) ~ Lisa Bevere, #NFDB
274:Life doesn't care about your vision. You just gotta roll with it. ~ Harold Ramis, #NFDB
275:Opening to the sacred, we transform our vision of ourselves. ~ Stephanie Dowrick, #NFDB
276:Without a vision the people perish, but without courage dreams die. ~ Rosa Parks, #NFDB
277:A breeze pushed red curls in front of her gaze, obscuring her vision. ~ Emma Hamm, #NFDB
278:A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
279:Courage is simply doing whatever is needed in pursuit of the vision ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
280:Create a compelling service vision. When people want to, they will. ~ Ron Kaufman, #NFDB
281:Don't get so addicted to vision that the people feel like equipment ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
282:Ford shared this vision. We are inviting more players to join in. ~ Steve Ballmer, #NFDB
283:great innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision. ~ Jake Knapp, #NFDB
284:If you don't have a vision, you can never be focused in a direction. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
285:I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
286:Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present. ~ Rudy Giuliani, #NFDB
287:The range of your vision is impaired by the location of your head. ~ Steve Harvey, #NFDB
288:There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
289:There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
290:The world needs leaders of vision instead of leaders on television. ~ Lech Walesa, #NFDB
291:Vision, sometimes called talent, is not a teachable attribute. What ~ Nancy Kress, #NFDB
292:vision will speed up time,” he would say, “eventually deleting it.”) ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
293:We must always strive to reflect the highest vision of ourselves. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
294:A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
295:Every change begins with a vision and a decision to take action. ~ David Bornstein, #NFDB
296:I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind. ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
297:I'm thankful that my memory is good because my vision is going. ~ Paula Poundstone, #NFDB
298:It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. ~ James Joyce, #NFDB
299:It's a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
300:Many people have dreams. However, a vision is a dream with a plan: ~ Verne Harnish, #NFDB
301:Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
302:The devil ought not to be in our line of vision but in our shadow. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
303:The most important criteria for a DNC chair is going to be vision. ~ Keith Ellison, #NFDB
304:The saddest thing in life is people with sight, but without vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
305:The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
306:This is a mission and a vision to do good as well as doing well. ~ Benedetto Croce, #NFDB
307:True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
308:A common vision can unite people of very different temperaments. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
309:Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feelings as to sight? ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
310:Courage is simply doing whatever is needed in pursuit of the vision ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
311:Dream abides; it is the only things that abides; vision abides. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
312:In God’s economy, vision should move from the fringes to the middle. ~ Dave Gibbons, #NFDB
313:I would say I'm waiting for, I guess, designers to open up their vision. ~ Hari Nef, #NFDB
314:The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight but no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
315:The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
316:The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
317:The souls of the upright in sleep have vision of a mysterious heaven. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
318:The technicalities matter a lot, but the unifying vision matters more. ~ Ted Nelson, #NFDB
319:True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
320:We are immensed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
321:We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
322:You make the decision with vision and god makes the provision. ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
323:As the vision faded, the past and the present seemed to merge. ~ Alexandra Adornetto, #NFDB
324:Few, if any, forces in human affairs are as powerful as shared vision. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
325:I have an idea of who I want to be, I have a vision of my own success. ~ Wiz Khalifa, #NFDB
326:In order to serve its purpose, a vision has to be a shared vision. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
327:Mere inherence in pure Being is known as the Vision of Wisdom. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
328:My vision for the future? ... a world completely free from poverty. ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
329:Never abandon your vision. Keep reaching to further your dreams. ~ Benjamin Banneker, #NFDB
330:O latest born and loveliest vision far of all Olympus' faded hierarchy. ~ John Keats, #NFDB
331:The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
332:trinocular vision that permitted him to see time-become-space. There ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
333:You might define vision as foresight with insight based on hindsight. ~ George Barna, #NFDB
334:A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
335:Create a vision that makes you wanna jump out of bed in the morning. ~ Ella Henderson, #NFDB
336:Dream the dream, find that extraordinary vision, and keep it in focus. ~ Dewitt Jones, #NFDB
337:Everybody's got their own particular vision which is a personal thing. ~ Van Morrison, #NFDB
338:I'd rather sink with my own vision than float with somebody else's. ~ Rosie O Donnell, #NFDB
339:often the step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is very brief, ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
340:Our vision, which has not changed since the day the company was founded. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
341:Teamwork gives you the best opportunity to turn vision into reality. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
342:Tell me what your vision of the future and I will tell you what you are. ~ Fred Polak, #NFDB
343:The only thing they had in common was the grandeur of their vision. ~ Lawrence Wright, #NFDB
344:Your people have lost the vision and vitality of your ancestors (73). ~ Walter Mosley, #NFDB
345:A Great Movie Evolves when Everybody Has the Same Vision in Their Heads. ~ Alan Parker, #NFDB
346:Have a vision but hold it lightly, wear it like a loose garment. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein, #NFDB
347:I always have a vision when I go in, I always know what I want to do. ~ Olivia Palermo, #NFDB
348:I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision. ~ Nic Pizzolatto, #NFDB
349:I don't believe a team can lead itself. I'm a big believer in vision. ~ Robert Brunner, #NFDB
350:Innovation is born from the interaction between constraint and vision. ~ Marissa Mayer, #NFDB
351:I think I have a very clear vision of what I want things to look like. ~ Daniel Clowes, #NFDB
352:Let your vision be world embracing rather than confined to your own self. ~ Bah u ll h, #NFDB
353:Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.
~ Jimmy Carter,#NFDB
354:STAR TREK is a show that had a vision about a future that was positive. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
355:The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
356:Your vision will be clearer only when you manage to see within your heart. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
357:You wish to see; listen. Hearing is a step toward Vision. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
358:All innovation begins with vision. It’s what happens next that is critical. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
359:Anyone who limits her vision to memories of yesterday is already dead. ~ Lillie Langtry, #NFDB
360:Between perfect vision and total blindness lies all the truth we know. ~ Peter Morville, #NFDB
361:Desire, the troubled seed of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
362:Following your own vision is one of the only things that will sustain you. ~ Joy Bryant, #NFDB
363:God has given us only a limited sphere of action and a limited vision. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
364:Increase your vision of achievement simply by raising your goals.... ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
365:In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
366:It doesn't have to be the truth, just your vision of it, written down. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
367:It was no big deal. It didn't affect my vision and I could breathe OK. ~ Maria Cantwell, #NFDB
368:Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
369:Texas is the finest portion of the globe that has ever blessed my vision! ~ Sam Houston, #NFDB
370:The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
371:was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep? ~ John Keats, #NFDB
372:Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
373:you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
374:Abilene possessed greater vision, perhaps because it possessed little else. ~ H W Brands, #NFDB
375:A movement without vision would be a movement without moral foundation. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
376:And of the fact that every vision of the past is a vision of the blind ~ Jacques Roubaud, #NFDB
377:Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
378:Developing a world class vision is the secret to world-class motivation. ~ Steve Siebold, #NFDB
379:Every God-given vision will become real if we will only have patience. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
380:Having just the vision's no solution, everything depends on execution ~ Stephen Sondheim, #NFDB
381:I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars. ~ Dylan Thomas,#NFDB
382:In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
383:May God us keep From simple vision and Newton’s sleep. —William Blake[xxvii] ~ John Gall, #NFDB
384:The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
385:There are actually very few US politicians who have integrity and vision. ~ David Korten, #NFDB
386:Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see. ~ Henry Adams, #NFDB
387:Vision is something pastors and churches cannot afford to live without. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
388:Do not focus only on what your eyes feed you; it limits one's vision... ~ Pedro L Alvarez, #NFDB
389:Don't sit around depressed and discouraged. Get a new vision for your life. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
390:Great leaders have three things; inner light, inner vision and inner strength. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
391:His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne, #NFDB
392:I believe in having a vision for the future but living each day at a time. ~ Miranda Kerr, #NFDB
393:I know other worlds exist. I can see them in my peripheral vision. ~ Joseph Gordon Levitt, #NFDB
394:I was single-minded and I had tunnel vision. Now it's time for a change. ~ Evelyn Ashford, #NFDB
395:Looking back, nothing seems so simple than a utopian vision realised. ~ Wernher von Braun, #NFDB
396:The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
397:The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision's greatest enemy. ~ William Blake,#NFDB
398:Too often, shared visions really mean, "I have a vision; you share it!" ~ Andy Hargreaves, #NFDB
399:Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
400:We're also confident that gamers are going to love our vision of the future. ~ Larry Hryb, #NFDB
401:Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
402:You live in my heart where no one sees you but I do. That vision becomes this art. ~ Rumi, #NFDB
403:you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
404:All innovation begins with vision. It’s what happens next that is critical. As ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
405:Artistic vision is having the clarity to fall in love with what you see. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #NFDB
406:Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love. ~ Mona Simpson, #NFDB
407:Company's vision must be driven by the aspirations of its customers. ~ Konosuke Matsushita, #NFDB
408:I'm now beginning to feel that the pessimistic vision is not for the movies. ~ Karel Reisz, #NFDB
409:It's one thing to see a vision; it's another thing to be seized by a vision. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
410:Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision. ~ Stevie Wonder, #NFDB
411:Principles are the basis for developing a vision and value system for all. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
412:The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life. ~ Angus Wilson, #NFDB
413:The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
414:To have no vision of your own means living the vision of someone else. ~ Laurie Beth Jones, #NFDB
415:A god come down and greater by the fall. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
416:Every vivid memory holds some essential truth about your vision of the world ~ Kim Stafford, #NFDB
417:I'll always rather be in a ship that's got a captain that has some vision. ~ Susan Sarandon, #NFDB
418:Meadowlark and I share a common vision of bringing joy and laughter to others. ~ Bill Cosby, #NFDB
419:Not everybody who has a vision is a leader, but every leader has a vision. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
420:The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
421:The Enigma’s knot is tied in human kind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
422:The Goal can disappear From the mind's sight But not From the heart's vision. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
423:There is a vision for my life that is greater than my imagination can hold. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
424:The richest source of creation is feeling, followed by a vision of its meaning. ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
425:The vision teller tells the vision to unguarded minds' of prey. The programmed. ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
426:Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? ~ John Keats,#NFDB
427:Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep? ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
428:We all see the world differently from each other; we all have unique vision. ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
429:World vision is getting on your heart what has always been on God's heart. ~ Dawson Trotman, #NFDB
430:All poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
431:Among the scarecrows in this vision he could see members of his own family. ~ Marius Gabriel, #NFDB
432:Be persistent, and hang on to your vision. And at the same time, be flexible. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
433:But I think the best movements are fueled by a joyful vision of what could be. ~ Robby Novak, #NFDB
434:But the threat of sexual violence never fully leaves women’s peripheral vision. ~ Lindy West, #NFDB
435:Feet sandaled with dreams tread paths of vision leading to wisdom’s sharp peaks. ~ Aberjhani, #NFDB
436:In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision. ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
437:Nowhere is our vision more distorted than when we turn it on ourselves. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
438:One needs a vision of the promised land in order to have the strength to move. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
439:Speak not my secret name to hostile Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
440:Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision. ~ John Naisbitt, #NFDB
441:The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid... ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
442:The vision fades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
443:What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
444:When you say vision you have a track that this is what I would like to say. ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
445:A leader shapes and shares a vision, which gives point to the work of others. ~ Charles Handy, #NFDB
446:Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision. ~ Indira Gandhi, #NFDB
447:It's quite amazingly radical, what their [the Kochs] vision of America would be. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
448:Leaders enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations. ~ James M Kouzes, #NFDB
449:One needs a vision of the promised land in order to have the strength to move. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
450:Seul le malheur procure une vision large et profonde des réalités de ce monde. ~ Stefan Zweig, #NFDB
451:Swaddle in our favorites, we missed out on what was in our peripheral vision. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
452:The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine. ~ Plato, #NFDB
453:The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
454:The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, #NFDB
455:The quality of a good leader therefore is his vision, tenacity, and his capability. ~ Jack Ma, #NFDB
456:Wake me not if this is vision,
Let me sleep not if 'tis true. ~ Pedro Calder n de la Barca,#NFDB
457:Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
458:Without vision you don't see, and without practicality the bills don't get paid. ~ Paul Engle, #NFDB
459:You have to see the pattern, understand the order and experience the vision. ~ Michael Gerber, #NFDB
460:America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry? ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
461:Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
462:Blindness is an unfortunate handicap but true vision does not require the eyes. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
463:Education should serve to enlarge the vision and broaden the outlook of the people. ~ Sai Baba, #NFDB
464:Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
465:Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
466:Genius is the ability to hold one's vision steady until it becomes reality ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
467:I found that tunnel vision, which an academic career simply requires, horrible. ~ Stefan Klein, #NFDB
468:If you think I’m handsome, there’s obviously nothing wrong with your vision. ~ Lisa Scottoline, #NFDB
469:Let's be pastors who cast vision that are worth people giving their life for. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
470:One effect of sustained conflict is to narrow our vision of what is possible. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
471:Service broadens your vision widens your awareness. Deepens your compassion. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
472:Sight is what you see with your eyes, vision is what you see with your mind. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
473:Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
474:The bigger our vision for the world, the less personal worries we have. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
475:There is blood in his mouth and his vision glitters with ephemeral stars. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, #NFDB
476:This obligation to move can be a burden to a player without strategic vision. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
477:Vision, the challenge of the next century, the new millennium, the road ahead. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
478:What I know about love, you could put in your eye and not impair your vision. ~ Deborah Coonts, #NFDB
479:Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
480:All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure. ~ Theodore Roethke, #NFDB
481:All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued. ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
482:Behead yourself!... Dissolve your whole body into Vision: become seeing, seeing, seeing! ~ Rumi, #NFDB
483:Every Man Mistakes the Limits of His Vision For The Limits Of The World.. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
484:Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. ~ Henry Miller, #NFDB
485:He has need of death to find a greater life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
486:Intentionality fuels the master's journey. Every master is a master of vision. ~ George Leonard, #NFDB
487:In the wake of my spiritual experience there came a vision of a society of alcoholics. ~ Bill W, #NFDB
488:I tend to have a kind of tunnel vision when I'm looking at an individual piece. ~ Edward Norton, #NFDB
489:My vision had always been that I was gonna be a stage actor and that was it. ~ Curtis Armstrong, #NFDB
490:The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity. ~ Guy de Maupassant, #NFDB
491:They all sat, nodding and rocking, entranced by a vision of the warm goodness of ~ Rebecca West, #NFDB
492:vision separates us from the world whereas the other senses unite us with it ~ Juhani Pallasmaa, #NFDB
493:We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
494:An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
495:A QUESTION OF VISION. From the sun’s seat, after all, humanity is an abstraction. ~ Lauren Groff, #NFDB
496:A writer is basically someone who shares his or her value or vision of the world. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
497:Every time an artist dies, part of the vision of mankind passes with him. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
498:Humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
499:In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination. ~ Steve Case, #NFDB
500:Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason. ~ Robert Graves, #NFDB
501:Passion fuels the rocket; vision directs the rocket to its ultimate destination. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
502:Right now she had about 20-80 vision—twenty percent alcohol, eighty-proof tequila. ~ Ann Charles, #NFDB
503:Sight is about what lies right in front of us. Vision is what lies ahead. ~ Thomas Haden Church, #NFDB
504:The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. HELEN KELLER ~ Pat Williams, #NFDB
505:The vision and the faculty divine; Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse. ~ William Wordsworth, #NFDB
506:Urgency and vision are the twin pillars on which humanity's hope now hangs. ~ Christopher Flavin, #NFDB
507:A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
508:All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a vision in your mind. ~ Bob Ross, #NFDB
509:An inspiring vision meets three criteria. It is specific, concise and consistent. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
510:I have a vision of the world as a global village, a world without boundaries. ~ Christa McAuliffe, #NFDB
511:It is better to fail with your own vision than to fail with another man's vision. ~ Johan Cruijff, #NFDB
512:Man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
513:N. T. Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision or What Paul Really Said. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
514:Owning your future is about having the discipline to execute your personal vision. ~ Chris Brogan, #NFDB
515:Que ta vision soit à chaque instant nouvelle. Le sage est celui qui s'étonne de tout. ~ Andr Gide, #NFDB
516:Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
517:The greatest leaders mobilize others by coalescing people around a shared vision. ~ Ken Blanchard, #NFDB
518:The iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing. ~ Tim Cook, #NFDB
519:The kingdom of God ought to reshape our vision of what matters and who matters, ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
520:The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
521:The real function of the artist is to give fresh vision to their own generation. ~ Doris McCarthy, #NFDB
522:To hold an unchanging youth is to reach at the end, the vision with which one started. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
523:Vision is an important part of being a good editor, but so is teamwork and grace. ~ Clara Jeffery, #NFDB
524:We must be global Christians with a global vision because we serve a global God. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
525:Write down this vision; d clearly inscribe it on tablets so one may easily read it. A ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
526:Your neighbor's vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you. ~ Miguel de Unamuno, #NFDB
527:Your path and purpose will become crystal clear when you begin to trust your vision. ~ Bill Walsh, #NFDB
528:A campaign is about defining who you are - your vision and your opponent's vision. ~ Donna Brazile, #NFDB
529:All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure. ~ Theodore Roethke,#NFDB
530:A man will remain a rag picker as long as he has only a rag picker’s vision. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
531:An immutable Power has made this mutable world; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
532:Artistic vision comes from a mind clear enough to fall in love with what we see. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #NFDB
533:Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision: bad assumptions can be just as blinding, ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
534:Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision: bad assumptions can be just as blinding. ~ Peter Watts, #NFDB
535:Every time I have had a heavenly vision, I have been undone by Jesus’s eyes of love. ~ Heidi Baker, #NFDB
536:Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
537:Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, and Hell the shadow from a soul on fire. ~ Omar Khayyam, #NFDB
538:I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up. ~ Karl Kraus, #NFDB
539:Leadership is working with goals and vision management is working with objectives. ~ Russel Honore, #NFDB
540:Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barac k Obama has a vision of Barack Obama. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
541:The NSA's vision statement is: keep the problem going so the money keeps flowing. ~ William Binney, #NFDB
542:Therefore art means: you have to believe, to have faith, that is, cultivate vision. ~ Josef Albers, #NFDB
543:True vision is the ability to see in another more than they are showing you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
544:We lift ourselves by our own thought; we climb upon our vision of ourselves. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
545:abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality. ~ Piet Mondrian, #NFDB
546:All was a limitless sea that heaved to the moon. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
547:A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value. ~ Charles Koch, #NFDB
548:Churches whose members fight with one another have lost their vision for the lost. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
549:Dream the biggest dream for yourself. Hold the highest vision of life for yourself. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
550:Every fight is one between different angles of vision illuminating the same truth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
551:Have a strong vision about the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it. ~ Robert Redford, #NFDB
552:In my vision, the thing that man needs first and foremost is a meditative consciousness. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
553:Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
554:The fact was I had the vision... I think everyone has... what we lack is the method. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
555:The greatest justice in life is that your vision and looks tend to go simultaneously. ~ Kevin Bacon, #NFDB
556:They see the pattern, understand the order, experience the vision. Peter Drucker ~ Michael E Gerber, #NFDB
557:Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture. ~ Muhammad Iqbal, #NFDB
558:We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
559:When God gives a vision, transact business on that line, no matter what it costs. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
560:Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigues, I have had my vision. ~ Virginia Woolf, #NFDB
561:Your purpose is why you you're living, your vision is how you're going to execute it. ~ Bob Proctor, #NFDB
562:You will never get any higher than your vision and your faith in that vision. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
563:Break the mold! Have the biggest vision you can! If you can't dream it, it cannot occur! ~ Judy Baca, #NFDB
564:Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
565:By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal activity and to present your vision. ~ Robert Henri, #NFDB
566:Clarity of vision - what you've been looking at from the wrong angle and not seen at all. ~ The Edge, #NFDB
567:Dark trees leaped across his vision like aghast dancers in the nacreous light. ~ Stephen R Donaldson, #NFDB
568:He has need of darkness to perceive some light
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
569:I want to be remembered much more by a total vision than a few perfect single pictures. ~ Ernst Haas, #NFDB
570:Many-sidedness of culture makes our vision clearer and keener in particulars. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
571:Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters. ~ Donna J Haraway, #NFDB
572:Sometimes the air is so thick with your judgment that its clouds obstruct your vision. ~ Sally Hanan, #NFDB
573:There is a difference between having a vision and suffering from a hallucination. ~ Peter R Scholtes, #NFDB
574:To me, crazy is not someone who has a creative vision and will fight for it. ~ Amy Sherman Palladino, #NFDB
575:Vision is knowing who you are, where you're going, and what will guide your journey. ~ Ken Blanchard, #NFDB
576:Vision is seeing a future state with the mind's eye. Vision is applied imagination. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
577:What would be worse than being born blind? She replied, To have sight without vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
578:When you have a clear vision of your goal, it's easier to take the first step toward it. ~ LL Cool J, #NFDB
579:You were given that pain and that vision because you have something to do with it. ~ Sandra Cisneros, #NFDB
580:4. The obstacle course: Offset a positive vision with thoughts of potential challenges. ~ Susan David, #NFDB
581:Any realistic vision of change must be based on the notion of empowerment of people. ~ Michael Manley, #NFDB
582:Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility BY JAMES P. CARSE ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
583:I believe in magic, and having a vision. The tough times made me a warrior. I work hard. ~ Neon Hitch, #NFDB
584:I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me. ~ Sidney Poitier, #NFDB
585:If people don't have their own vision, all they can do is 'sign-up' for someone else's. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
586:If you want to move people, it has to be toward a vision that's positive for ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
587:Ignore the people who tell you it won't work, and hire people who embrace your vision. ~ Michael Dell, #NFDB
588:I think that economic patriotism is the very foundation of a European vision. ~ Dominique de Villepin, #NFDB
589:I wish you could see yourself through my eyes,” he said softly. “My vision is better. ~ Eleanor Brown, #NFDB
590:Paul hesitated. There’d been no dwarf in the vision, but all else remained identical. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
591:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
592:the only life is a shadowy turbulence at the periphery of my vision, a fox perhaps, ~ Gilly Macmillan, #NFDB
593:The organization of light and shadow effects produce a new enrichment of vision. ~ Laszlo Moholy Nagy, #NFDB
594:The shorter your range of vision, the fewer options and changes to trouble you. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde, #NFDB
595:Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
596:You are there to support the vision of the people who you choose to excute the movie. ~ Nina Jacobson, #NFDB
597:Your time on this earth is limited, don’t live someone else's life, live by your vision. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
598:He walks over to me, and I can see his feet and shins in my field of vision. Naked feet. I ~ E L James, #NFDB
599:I am thrilled to be able to bring my vision of beauty to others who may be inspired by it. ~ Carol Alt, #NFDB
600:If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
601:Just because others cannot see your vision doesn’t mean that vision isn’t achievable. ~ Howard Schultz, #NFDB
602:Savitri
the supreme revelation
of Sri Aurobindo's
vision.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother I,#NFDB
603:The best leaders operate in four dimensions: vision, reality, ethics, and courage. ~ Peter Koestenbaum, #NFDB
604:There's all kind of vision in this Book. Just open it up and your people will follow. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
605:The strength and clarity of your vision will lift you out of the depth of any hardship. ~ Robin Sharma, #NFDB
606:The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
607:Vision always precedes preparation. Initially, your vision will exceed your competency. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
608:What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
609:Words are what make the song. I get a personal vision about what the lyrics are about. ~ Julie Andrews, #NFDB
610:A clear vision calms hearts down! A good understanding soothes anxious hearts! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
611:A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of a rag-picker. ~ Orison Swett Marden, #NFDB
612:Apple is so focused on its vision that it does things in a very careful, deliberate way. ~ John Sculley, #NFDB
613:Because vision appears so effortless, we are like fish challenged to understand water. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
614:Engineer who engendered the vision that helped build Brazil Norberto Odebrecht Construction ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
615:Everything begins in the mind. If you want to see clearly, you need clear vision. ~ Swami Satchidananda, #NFDB
616:He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
617:If I already have a vision, my work is almost done. The rest is a technical problem. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto, #NFDB
618:I have always been a fan of 'Star Trek.' I love Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. ~ LeVar Burton, #NFDB
619:I'm tearing down Route 80 East, the sun's on my right side. I'm drunk, but my vision's good. ~ Lou Reed, #NFDB
620:L'acte le plus révolutionnaire est une vision claire du monde tel qu'il est réellement ~ Rosa Luxemburg, #NFDB
621:Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
622:They got Indian vision and can sight back further than you and me will ever sight ahead. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
623:... This is the paradox of vision: Sharp perception softens our existence in the world. ~ Susan Griffin, #NFDB
624:Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, #NFDB
625:Vision comes alive when everyone sees where his or her contribution makes a difference. ~ Ken Blanchard, #NFDB
626:Call Berlin. Drop everything we're doing. I have a complete vision of what should be. ~ Daniel Libeskind, #NFDB
627:Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
628:If you have a vision, no matter how difficult things are, everything just becomes a process. ~ Cher Wang, #NFDB
629:I had a vision with which I might have saved my people, but I had not the strength to do it. ~ Black Elk, #NFDB
630:Let an idea swim to the surface like a fish in a pool...let the mind drift to the vision. ~ Dick Francis, #NFDB
631:Our vision is more obstructed by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge. ~ Krister Stendahl, #NFDB
632:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
633:There are a lot of pastors who have a vision and have not yet seen it become a reality. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
634:Vision only opens, it does not embrace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Status of Knowledge, #NFDB
635:You must find a way to get your vision seen, implemented, and contributed to by others. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
636:A healthy vision of the future is not possible without an accurate knowledge of the past. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
637:Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
638:Broaden your vision, and maintain stability while advancing forward. That is my philosophy. ~ Li Ka shing, #NFDB
639:Have a vision. Communicate it clearly. Pick the right people and put them in the right jobs. ~ Rick Levin, #NFDB
640:Honesty is a suitor with piercing vision who isn’t swayed by pretending and positioning. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
641:Only love has clear vision. Hatred has cloudy vision. When we hate we know not what we do. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
642:Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures. ~ Jennifer Crusie, #NFDB
643:Simultaneity in light is harmony, the rhythm of colors which creates the Vision of Man. ~ Robert Delaunay, #NFDB
644:Sometimes, we can’t trust our own vision. We have to see the good another sees in us. ~ Selena Montgomery, #NFDB
645:Success is different for every artist - I get psyched when i help realise their vision etc. ~ Matt Squire, #NFDB
646:The vision of the leader becomes the aspiration of the people. The impact is incredible. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
647:To use the power of the bison, I had to perform that part of my vision for the people to see. ~ Black Elk, #NFDB
648:vision is the God-given ability to see possible solutions to the everyday problems of life. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
649:Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. JAPANESE PROVERB ~ Dave Ramsey, #NFDB
650:what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
651:where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision? ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
652:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
653:As a leader, your job is to energize people around the mission and vision you've articulated. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
654:It is vital for artists to nurture and protect that which will make their vision unique. ~ Jane Fulton Alt, #NFDB
655:It's as if the more he cares about someone, the less he can see. Emotion clouds his vision. ~ Ransom Riggs, #NFDB
656:Jesus gives us hope because He keeps us company, has a vision and knows the way we should go. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
657:Later in the day, a second verse became clear to my vision. It read: "Pray without ceasing." ~ Mary C Neal, #NFDB
658:Nos conceptions politiques nous sont dictées par notre sentiment ou notre vision du temps. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
659:One thing that attracted me to Buddhism was the support for this larger vision of values. ~ Herbie Hancock, #NFDB
660:That larger vision is certain to make clear the value in our own lives of service to others. ~ Lucy Larcom, #NFDB
661:The curse of 'spherism' upon man's vision of the universe lasted for two thousand years. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
662:The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
663:The success of a vision is determined by its ownership by both the leader and the people. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
664:Turn your vision inward and then the whole world will be full of the Supreme Spirit. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
665:Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” — Japanese Proverb ~ Pat Flynn, #NFDB
666:Before a vision (dream) can become a reality, it must be owned by every member of the group. ~ Phil Jackson, #NFDB
667:Believe in your strength and your vision. Learn to repeat to yourself, 'It all depends on me'. ~ Andre Gide, #NFDB
668:Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
669:Every time I had a vision of myself lying dead somewhere, it was up there, in the Highlands. ~ Michael Herr, #NFDB
670:Hold faithfully to your unique vision and your detractors will eventually tire and give-up. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
671:I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David. ~ Michelangelo, #NFDB
672:Inner seeing has nothing to do with physical vision; it's the perception of life directly. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
673:It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
674:Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
675:My idea is to bring happiness, respect, vision, poetry, surrealism and magic [to design]. ~ Philippe Starck, #NFDB
676:Pick a vision that is ambitious and far-reaching enough to last decades, not years. Commit ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
677:That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
678:[The Democrats'] vision for the future: socialized medicine and Washington-run health care. ~ Pete Sessions, #NFDB
679:Those who cherish a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in their hearts, will one day realize it. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
680:Vision drive innovation and keeps the energy level high when the inevitable setbacks occur. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
681:Vision is a lot more than putting a plaque on the wall. A real vision is lived, not framed. ~ Ken Blanchard, #NFDB
682:vision is an idle dream at best and a cynical delusion at worst - but not an achievable end ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
683:Vision is dandy, but sustainable company excellence comes from a huge stable of able managers. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
684:We all have circumstances, choose not to live in your circumstance, but live in your vision! ~ Chuck Pagano, #NFDB
685:We live in a time of record breaking crisis but it's also a time of record breaking vision ~ Velcrow Ripper, #NFDB
686:A man's pursuit of knowledge is greater than his shortcomings, the limits of his vision. ~ Natasha Trethewey, #NFDB
687:An angel can illume the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
688:Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most. It ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
689:Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
690:Don’t you wonder sometimes,” sang Bowie all the way to Kinshasa, “about sound and vision? ~ Aleksandar Hemon, #NFDB
691:Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER ~ Ray Kurzweil, #NFDB
692:Few lack talent, but most people lack the vision and perseverance to develop their talents. ~ Orrin Woodward, #NFDB
693:His vision of the future, already shadowed by anxiety, had just grown several shades darker. ~ Jeanne DuPrau, #NFDB
694:If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream. ~ William Morris, #NFDB
695:I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
696:I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it in the form of photographs. ~ Alfred Stieglitz, #NFDB
697:I just have a vision of something, and it seems to go a long way. One thought goes a long way. ~ Sammy Hagar, #NFDB
698:It matters not whether the life is foggy or not as long as your mind’s vision is clear! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
699:Jobs and Wozniak shared a common vision - to build a computer everyone could afford and use. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
700:Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision. ~ Carlos Castaneda, #NFDB
701:Life wants you to thrive in the domain of your own unique creative vision for your yourself. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
702:My tunnel vision allows me to have a longer work day than most writers. I'm thankful for that. ~ Joshua Mohr, #NFDB
703:[on the Republican party] A party with a narrow vision, a party that is afraid of the future. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
704:Real vision demands that we make tough choices. Real vision is responsible and it is paid for. ~ Mike Easley, #NFDB
705:Skills are never taught, they are acquired. I can give you a camera, but can't feed your vision. ~ Raghu Rai, #NFDB
706:The cornerstone of religion, a clear vision can inspire great action and firm conviction. ~ Martin Lindstrom, #NFDB
707:The photographer’s vision convinces us to the degree that the photographer hides his hand. ~ John Szarkowski, #NFDB
708:Today well lived makes every yesterday a memory of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. ~ K lid sa, #NFDB
709:Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision? ~ Edward Weston, #NFDB
710:Without a clear moral vision, we devolve into moral relativism, and from there, into oblivion. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
711:Xi Jinping has articulated a simple but powerful vision: the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
712:All of us are near-sighted, except on the inside. Only our dreaming sees with clear vision. ~ Fernando Pessoa, #NFDB
713:Attachment constrains our vision so that we are not able to see things from a wider perspective. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
714:A vision flashed of a young, kind Penelope, the opposite of what he was. Of what he'd become. ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB
715:Directions are instructions given to explain how. Direction is a vision offered to explain why. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
716:Have you ever had to communicate someone else’s vision? It’s very difficult to do, isn’t it? ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
717:Having a vision for what you want is not enough...Vision without execution is hallucination ~ Thomas A Edison, #NFDB
718:Nothing as mundane as mere evidence can be allowed to threaten a vision so deeply satisfying. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
719:One cannot have the vision of God as long as one has these three- shame, hatred, and fear. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
720:The only human value of anything, writing included, is intense vision of the facts. ~ William Carlos Williams, #NFDB
721:The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream! ~ John Dryden, #NFDB
722:The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
723:Vision is a clear mental picture of what could be, fueled by the conviction that it should be. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
724:What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class. ~ Flannery O Connor, #NFDB
725:You can live your life out of a circumstance or you can live your life out of a vision. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
726:As I said earlier, there are no writers who could create a literary vision of the new reality. ~ Andrzej Wajda, #NFDB
727:A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself. ~ Jacques Monod, #NFDB
728:Every stimulus becomes an opportunity to find fresh ways to express your personal vision. ~ Alexandra Stoddard, #NFDB
729:Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
730:Great vision communication usually means heartfelt messages are coming from real human beings. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
731:if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
732:Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
733:my 50-year vision is that Africans will be welcome tourists in Europe and not unwanted refugees ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
734:The difference between a vision and a hallucination is that other people can see the vision. ~ Marc Andreessen, #NFDB
735:The last thing he saw before cobwebs clouded his vision was the blue beauty of a Nebraska sky. ~ Ezekiel Boone, #NFDB
736:The woman wins who calls herself beautiful, and challenges the world to change to fit her vision. ~ Naomi Wolf, #NFDB
737:We have a retirement crisis in America today nor from a lack of money, but from a lack of vision ~ Dave Ramsey, #NFDB
738:Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. ~ Tecumseh, #NFDB
739:Are you committed to your highest vision for your life or are you just satisfied to dream? ~ Colette Baron Reid, #NFDB
740:As a child, I watched 'Dallas' and that was my vision for my life for as long as I could remember. ~ Will Smith, #NFDB
741:As for my style, for my vision of the cinema, editing is not simply one aspect; it's the aspect. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
742:Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
743:It is vision that sees Truth, not logic. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Poetry and Art, Russell, Eddington, Jeans, #NFDB
744:Make sure your vision is biblical. You want to make sure you can defend the vision biblically. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
745:Only your limited vision stops you seeing success...open your mind and you open your vision. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
746:The prime minister says he has a vision for change, well put that to the people of the country. ~ David Cameron, #NFDB
747:Vision is easy. Ideas are even easier. It's execution that separates the amateurs from the pros. ~ Blaine Hogan, #NFDB
748:We rob men of a greater vision of God because we will not give them a lower vision of themselves. ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
749:You need to surround yourself with quality human beings that are intelligent and have a vision. ~ Vince McMahon, #NFDB
750:Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ~ Carl #Jung #quote #happiness #JoySMS #cgjung, #NFDB
751:A dream cannot become reality without vision and sacrifice. But in order to dream, one must sleep. ~ Johan Twiss, #NFDB
752:A guy who was taught the front-sight mantra might focus so hard he could lose his peripheral vision. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
753:All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, [T5],#NFDB
754:Ever new seemed this deathless city of vision, for here time has no power to tarnish or destroy. ~ H P Lovecraft, #NFDB
755:Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. —Arthur Schopenhauer ~ Marcus du Sautoy, #NFDB
756:I doubted myself for a long time... I'm comfortable not using my vision. I weave around my problems. ~ apl de ap, #NFDB
757:My vision of the future is so exact that if I had children, I should strangle them here and now. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
758:Nature’s vision climbs beyond her acts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #NFDB
759:People create these extravagant habitats because they have vision, love of beauty, hopes and dreams. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
760:Those churches have closed down or have been merged with a church that has a more positive vision. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
761:To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision. ~ Jane Campion, #NFDB
762:Vision stands on the shoulders of what is actual to get a better view of what is possible. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher, #NFDB
763:You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision. ~ Veronica Lake, #NFDB
764:A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. ~ Natasha Richardson, #NFDB
765:Is there anything worse than blindness? Oh, Yes! A person with sight and no vision. HELEN KELLER ~ Stuart K Weber, #NFDB
766:I think Democrats often hold the unconstrained vision, and Republicans focus more on the Rule of Law. ~ John Fund, #NFDB
767:It is the calling of each man and woman who draws breath to have a grand vision for our lives, ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
768:I try to get a vision of the future, and then I try to figure out where the discontinuities are. ~ Nolan Bushnell, #NFDB
769:Like a pane of glass framing and subtly distorting our vision, mental models determine what we see. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
770:My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue, an everlasting vision of the ever changing view. ~ Carole King, #NFDB
771:Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist. ~ Georges Seurat, #NFDB
772:There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
773:The tunnel was the place where vision narrows and the investigator sees only the bird in hand. ~ Michael Connelly, #NFDB
774:To be an artist is to take responsibility for the world's destiny. You shape it by your vision. ~ Laurence Gartel, #NFDB
775:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
776:Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others. ~ Jack Weatherford, #NFDB
777:. . .art is a discovery of harmony, a vision of disparities reconciled, or shape beneath confusion. ~ Robert Adams, #NFDB
778:As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
779:How narrow is the vision that exalts the busyness of the ant above the singing of the grasshopper. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
780:I both love and am terrified by Greg Van Eekhout's vision of Los Angeles. I already want to go back. ~ John Scalzi, #NFDB
781:If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily. ~ Georges Simenon, #NFDB
782:I remember those wild tints, for like my sisters I was looking at the scene with an exalted vision. ~ Rebecca West, #NFDB
783:I think the first and most important thing is that you've got to have a goal and a vision. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
784:Ma vision de l'avenir est si précise que, si j'avais des enfants, je les étranglerais sur l'heure. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
785:Once you find your positive vision, then share the victory of your loving attitudes with everyone. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
786:The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
787:The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
788:The guitar is your first wings. It's assigned and designed to unfold your vision and imagination. ~ Carlos Santana, #NFDB
789:There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
790:Time and reflection... modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us. ~ Paul Cezanne, #NFDB
791:We need to take advantage of the opportunity we have now to create a vision and become great. ~ Christine Gregoire, #NFDB
792:Why see life with only your eyes, when your heart has double-secret, interdimensional, X-ray vision? ~ Mike Dooley, #NFDB
793:You are my dark turned to bright, the day into my light. A vision of splendour to my lights, light. ~ Truth Devour, #NFDB
794:A man by the truth is a house by the sea: He has a clear range of vision and a very fresh air! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
795:create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
796:Directing for me is the ability to take the words from a page and share my vision with the world. ~ Denzel Whitaker, #NFDB
797:If you don't have a vision for the future, then your future is threatened to be a repeat of the past. ~ A R Bernard, #NFDB
798:I have seen the vision and for self I cannot live; Life is less than worthless till my all I give. ~ Oswald J Smith, #NFDB
799:I'm so motivated to collaborate with people and help them realize the kind of collective vision. ~ Rachel Griffiths, #NFDB
800:In some ways clarifying a vision is easy. A more difficult challenge comes in facing current reality. ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
801:I will see beauty and goodness in all things. From all that is unlovely shall my vision be immune. ~ Walter Russell, #NFDB
802:May we catch enough of a vision of Christ that we will not be satisfied unless we know him more fully. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
803:The clearest version of vision, backed by the purest grade of greed is a ripen file of failure. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
804:The Vision Festival was packed every night, always has been for the four years it's been happening. ~ Joseph Jarman, #NFDB
805:When somebody tells you he or she is leading something, a fair question is, "What is your vision?" ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
806:Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change. ~ Brian P Moran, #NFDB
807:A leader's responsibility is to cause a vision and mission to have tangible results in the real world. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
808:A mission statement describes what you make; a vision is how you will make the world a better place. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
809:Consciousness follows vision, and I step into the vision and explore a world just as real as this. ~ Neville Goddard, #NFDB
810:It's much more powerful and compelling to create a positive vision than it is to tear somebody down. ~ Mark McKinnon, #NFDB
811:Moses goes to the top of the mountain and he comes back glowing, transformed. He became the vision. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
812:offering a vision for how great a customer’s life could be if they engage your products or services. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
813:Our vision is only actionable if we share it. Without sharing, it’s just a figment of our imagination. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
814:Parecon is a very tough-minded economic vision and model, and it sets a standard for us to look at. ~ Gar Alperovitz, #NFDB
815:Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision. ~ Penn Jillette, #NFDB
816:See it better than it is or you have no future, without vision there is no possibility of improvement ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
817:Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. ~ Salvador Dal, #NFDB
818:The assembly line model of vision in introductory textbooks isn’t just misleading, it’s dead wrong. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
819:The Commedia , it must be remembered, is a vision of the progress of man’s soul toward perfection. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
820:The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
821:The desire to order other people around and make them conform to one own's vision takes many forms. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
822:The only organized political party with a Christian vision of morality is the Libertarian Party. ~ Walter E Williams, #NFDB
823:Ultimately when I throw myself behind a movie, I have to really believe in that directors vision. ~ Christine Vachon, #NFDB
824:Vision is not sufficient; one must become what inwardly one sees. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #NFDB
825:Vision provides guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward. ~ James C Collins, #NFDB
826:Water your dreams with the essence of love so it may nurture and grow beyond your vision and desires. ~ Truth Devour, #NFDB
827:As other perceptions arise...the total vision of human possibilities enlarges and is transformed. ~ Jean Baker Miller, #NFDB
828:If you let too many cooks in the kitchen it could cloud your vision of what you want to do. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead, #NFDB
829:I just kind of do my thing with sort of tunnel vision for the story and my role and how it fits together. ~ Lin Shaye, #NFDB
830:Leaders may inspire, but only when the people decide to act does the leader's vision become a movement. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
831:Musk’s vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
832:She was astonished at how lies had entirely filtered her vision for the last several weeks. Years, even. ~ Lydia Kang, #NFDB
833:Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. ~ Salvador Dali, #NFDB
834:There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn't think of. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
835:There are so many powerful people in this world who refuse to see any vision they didn’t think of. ~ Orson Scott Card, #NFDB
836:There are some things the arrogant mind does not see; it is blinded by its vision of what it desires. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
837:They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
838:We rob men of a greater vision of God because we will not give them a lower vision of themselves. ~ Paul David Washer, #NFDB
839:Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
840:Without the vision of a goal, a man cannot manage his own life, much less the lives of others,” he ~ Jack Weatherford, #NFDB
841:Writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction. ~ Raymond Chandler, #NFDB
842:Your vision, ideas and plans have the power to shape the future, but not if you keep them to yourself. ~ Gloria Feldt, #NFDB
843:a leader's vision for the future has to be supported with facts about both the past and present.” One ~ James M Kouzes, #NFDB
844:As an actor, I'm limited to re-in acting someone else's vision or portraying a fictitious character. ~ Denzel Whitaker, #NFDB
845:By love, harmony and beauty you must turn the whole of life into a single vision of divine glory. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
846:Every time you share your vision, you strengthen your own subconscious belief that you can achieve it. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
847:If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us. ~ Adam Grant, #NFDB
848:If you keep a clear vision for your future, it will pull you like a magnet through your toughest times. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
849:I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
850:Most pastors have a hard time grasping a vision. But vision is the indispensable quality of a leader. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
851:My vision of a 'new world order' foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping function. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
852:Schopenhauer wrote, ‘Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. ~ Derren Brown, #NFDB
853:The Biblical vision is not so much concerned with life after death but about life after life after death. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
854:The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision. ~ Abraham Lincoln, #NFDB
855:Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
856:We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job. That's what I'm telling you. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
857:yet it was vain and stupid to create our own vision of these gods and fight over whose vision was right. ~ Mainak Dhar, #NFDB
858:You can hook a rainbow to a goofy vision -Jellybean is doing that- but you can't hook a rainbow to a lie ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
859:At the end of the day, you cant have a vision; you have to have a hope. This is where the miracle comes in. ~ Dan Colen, #NFDB
860:Don’t tell them what you’re going to do - that’s vision. Do what you are going to do – that’s culture. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
861:Don't waste time responding to the naysayers. Don't dwell on what they've said. Stay true to your vision. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
862:Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision. ~ Herbie Hancock, #NFDB
863:His vision was just outstanding. If you think of him in the same way as Pele then you would come close. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
864:If you create a vision for yourself, and stick with it, you can make amazing things happen in your life. ~ Pete Carroll, #NFDB
865:I have a vision of India-an India free of hunger and fear, an India free of illiteracy and want. ~ Atal Bihari Vajpayee, #NFDB
866:I think that leadership more than anything is about setting a course and describing a vision for people. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
867:My father believed very strongly in Ataturk. Ataturk was a very powerful man and a man of great vision. ~ Ahmet Ertegun, #NFDB
868:One advances by standing on the shoulders of giants, but the ultimate goal is to find one's own vision. ~ Michael Kenna, #NFDB
869:the compulsion to work long years in pursuit of some inner vision must be fueled by stubborn fires. ~ Silvia Tennenbaum, #NFDB
870:The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
871:The orbit of human vision has widened and art has annexed fresh territories that were formerly denied to it. ~ Max Bill, #NFDB
872:The worst thing in the world is not to be born blind, but to be born with sight, and yet have no vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
873:Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
874:We do not build or create a spiritual consciousness; we merely get rid of all that obscures our pure vision ~ Roy Davis, #NFDB
875:Whoever buys into the vision God has for the congregation develops an affinity for all that is going on. ~ Phil Pringle, #NFDB
876:Work without vision is drudgery. Vision without work is dreaming. Work plus vision-this is destiny. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
877:You must shape your story in a way that both expresses your vision and satisfies the audience’s desires. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
878:A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
879:A script like Nightcrawler gives me an opportunity to truly realize a vision thats mine, which is exciting. ~ Dan Gilroy, #NFDB
880:A vision on its own is not enough. Hard work and dedication is required to make that vision a reality. ~ Strive Masiyiwa, #NFDB
881:Glad you put the robe on now, huh?” “Not sure it would have mattered. I’m pretty sure she has x-ray vision. ~ Cari Quinn, #NFDB
882:Human vision is untrustworthy, subjective and selective. Camera vision is total and non - objective. ~ Andreas Feininger, #NFDB
883:I didn't have a vision as in, This is where I'm going. I had a vision as in, "This is what I love to do." ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
884:I guess if everyone was blind, and you tried to describe vision to them, it would sound crazy and made up. ~ Maile Meloy, #NFDB
885:Let me plead with you, lovers of my Africa, to carry with you into the world the vision of a new Africa ~ Robert Sobukwe, #NFDB
886:One needs to have some sense of purpose. Next, you need to have a vision that grows out of that purpose. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
887:So awareness and enjoying this life can grow together simultaneously. And this is my vision of the whole man. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
888:there have been only two who were Yogis, possessing the Yogic vision and intuition—Swami Vivekananda and ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
889:The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. ~ Theodore Hesburgh, #NFDB
890:What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
891:When God gives us a vision, we must transact business with Him at that point, no matter what the cost. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
892:A Christian is someone who follows Jesus by devoting his or her One. Life to the kingdom vision of Jesus. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
893:A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
894:and words such as ideal and idealism, and in Latin videre for ‘to see’, leading to vision or visionary. ~ Jostein Gaarder, #NFDB
895:Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes. ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
896:Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
897:I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
898:Jim Jarmusch: Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision. ~ Jim Jarmusch, #NFDB
899:Many individuals are searching not only for the unified field in science, but for a unified vision of life. ~ Anne Baring, #NFDB
900:Open Awareness The Angle of Vision Leadership Openness Getting Out of The Way Possibilities MEDITATION: ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
901:Pictures, propagated by motion along the fibers of the optic nerves in the brain, are the cause of vision. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
902:Rage swelled inside Mapleshade’s head until the sounds of the forest faded away and her vision blurred. She ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
903:She who seeks shall find, find all to well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions. ~ Chantal Akerman, #NFDB
904:The secret of image - worship is that you are trying to develop your vision of Divinity in one thing. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
905:Vision is the ability to talk about the future with such clarity it is as if we are talking about the past. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
906:Vision remains vision until you focus, do the work, and bring it down to earth where it will do some good. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
907:We’ll know that Google has truly fulfilled its vision when the Googleplex no longer needs toilets at all. ~ Nicholas Carr, #NFDB
908:We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
909:When you don't have a vision or a plan for the future, your mind has no choice but to dwell in the past. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
910:as your heart rate goes up, your tunnel vision can get narrower and your auditory exclusion can increase.) ~ Dave Grossman, #NFDB
911:Create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
912:Eisenhower on LBJ: "He hadn't got the depth of mind nor the breath vision to carry great responsibility. ~ David Pietrusza, #NFDB
913:Elfrida’s vision of an old folks’ home was a little fuzzy, on account of her never having been in one. ~ Rosamunde Pilcher, #NFDB
914:If you're not out front defining your vision, your opponent will spend gobs of money to define it for you. ~ Donna Brazile, #NFDB
915:Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision. ~ Julia Alvarez, #NFDB
916:Musk’s vision, and, of late, execution seem to combine the best of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. With ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
917:The ageless melody, unheard, heals; the healing vision, unseen, leads; the true leaders, immortal, know... ~ Khalil Gibran, #NFDB
918:The core of any family is what is changeless, what is always going to be there—shared vision and values. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
919:The first step toward changing the world is to change our vision of the world and of our place in it. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
920:Then I abandoned comics for fine art because I had some romantic vision of being like Vincent Van Gogh Jr. ~ Bill Griffith, #NFDB
921:The worst thing you can do to anybody trying to be creative is to demand participation in their vision. ~ Chuck Klosterman, #NFDB
922:To be truly effective, your daily activity must align with your long-term vision, strategies, and tactics. ~ Brian P Moran, #NFDB
923:We live our lives in the eye of God, and not at the periphery but at the center of His vision, His concern. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
924:What I'm identifying with is the vision or the idea - whatever was the little nugget that started it. ~ Esperanza Spalding, #NFDB
925:When you begin to weave your own desires into your vision, the true seeing is taken from you. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, #NFDB
926:As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
927:A vision and strategy aren't enough. The long-term key to success is execution. Each day. Every day. ~ Richard M Kovacevich, #NFDB
928:Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer, #NFDB
929:Icy pillars of serenity, spun from airy mist, entered my quiet vision in echoes of worlds unknown. ~ Gina Marinello Sweeney, #NFDB
930:I have a choice: Do I want to align with the GREATEST VISION OF MYSELF or Do I want to align with my EXCUSES? ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
931:I'm not someone who likes having a master plan for everything, but I do believe in a vision for your life. ~ Matthew Hussey, #NFDB
932:Irenaeus of Lyons wrote this: “Life in man is the glory of God; the life of man is the vision of God.” In ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
933:No vision is worth the paper it's printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
934:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
935:So much of how we think, feel, and live depends on our vision-what we choose to see in any given situation. ~ Jocelyn Green, #NFDB
936:Success needs vision to see, passion to transcend, patience to withstand and the character to overcome failures. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
937:The rose does not have a why; it blossums without reason, forgetful of self and oblivious to our vision. ~ Angelus Silesius, #NFDB
938:Ultimate truths are to be attained, if at all, in some immediate way: by vision rather than by ratiocination. ~ E R Eddison, #NFDB
939:vision is the power that sustains. Whatever we keep in front of our eyes is what will determine our outcome! ~ James W Goll, #NFDB
940:You can live and lead small, live and lead safe, live and lead selfishly, or you can pursue a grander vision. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
941:80 percent of learning is visual, so children who can't afford vision correction are at such a disadvantage. ~ Ellen Hollman, #NFDB
942:And this is the best success I can dream for my life: to have spread a new vision of the world. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #NFDB
943:As my vision went dark, Sam and Hearth helped me leap off the cliff. Because, you know, what are friends for? ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
944:Celui qui regarde avec l'oeil du Monde, verra la face;
Celui qui regarde avec la vision du Coeur, verra l'essence. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
945:Data only exists within the framework of a vision you're building to, a hypothesis of where you're moving to. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
946:due to the limitations of our consciousness we perceive only a blurred vision of the world and live in time. ~ Carlo Rovelli, #NFDB
947:Everything about filmmaking tries to distract you from that first fine rapturous vision you have of the film. ~ Ted Kotcheff, #NFDB
948:If you can see the vision of your goal clearly, you can plan and map effectively, and navigate efficiently. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
949:irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay. ~ Ellen Glasgow, #NFDB
950:I think it goes back to the fact that the evangelical community often does not have a biblical vision of God. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
951:Life is like that. We can only see from birth to death. The rest of it is cut from our vision." Drake ~ Erle Stanley Gardner, #NFDB
952:Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
953:Movies are the work of a collective conscious. It takes 500-800 people on a movie to complete a vision. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
954:My mom and I had the same vision, and we want the same things. We would always make a goal list every year. ~ Kim Kardashian, #NFDB
955:The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies wth a vision of social change which challenges class elitism. ~ bell hooks, #NFDB
956:The tower of success stands on the pillars of vision, action, patience and the character to withstand criticisms. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
957:Your director is your everything and you devote yourself to them and you want to help create their vision. ~ Natalie Portman, #NFDB
958:As V lit up and inhaled, he tried not to look at the cop and failed. Fucking peripheral vision. Always did him in. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
959:But you have a vision. You put a frame around it. You sign your name anyway. That's the risk. That's the leap. ~ Maria Semple, #NFDB
960:'Camp' is a vision of the world in terms of style - but a particular style. It is the love of the exaggerated. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
961:For in the end, while vision guides analysis, analysis disciplines vision. The two cannot exist independently. ~ Anwar Shaikh, #NFDB
962:If there is hatred in your vision, you will see hatred everywhere. Hence, change your vision to start with. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
963:Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program. ~ Mary Douglas, #NFDB
964:Man can become purified, and with divine vision he can see God. You get pure by chanting, then you see Him. ~ George Harrison, #NFDB
965:Mount Shasta - a vision of immensity such as pertains to the vast universe rather than to our own planet. ~ James Dwight Dana, #NFDB
966:Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there; nor can four walls limit my vision. ~ Margaret Barber, #NFDB
967:Never confuse desire with vision. Desire has to do with what we want. Vision has to do with what we need. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
968:So, if a company is buying lots of smaller companies, they need a vision that explains why bigger is better. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
969:There's a lot of ignorance in our business... Everybody's an authority. To have your own vision is rewarding. ~ Robert Duvall, #NFDB
970:The vision Donald Trump has articulated to Make America Great Again means a stronger America at home and abroad. ~ Mike Pence, #NFDB
971:The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking. ~ Mia Hamm, #NFDB
972:This bottom-up overturning was also not in anyone’s 20-year vision. No web phenomenon has been more confounding ~ Kevin Kelly, #NFDB
973:You must have a long-range vision to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures.” —CHARLES NOBLE ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
974:as significant as your written business plan is, your vision and follow-through are twenty times more important. ~ Steven Fies, #NFDB
975:Ballot papers do not define leaders. Leadership is defined by conviction, vision, passion and inspiration. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
976:Barking at people earns their respect about as effectively as staring into the sun improves your vision. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
977:God gives us the vision, then He expects us to walk in obedience. As we do, the resources we need come to us. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
978:I have heard it said that living out of our vision is more powerful than living out of our circumstance. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
979:I share the opinion of those of broader vision, who see in the signs of the time hope of humanity for peace. ~ Frank B Kellogg, #NFDB
980:Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
981:Success Recipe: 2 cups faith, 2 cups love, 1 cup hard work, 1 cup persistence, 1 tbsp vision and a dash of swagger. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
982:though a team has to do a million things well, figuring out the overarching vision is of utmost importance. ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
983:Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
984:But of course, hindsight was a callous bitch with perfect vision, and the two of us had never seen eye-to-eye. ~ Shayne Silvers, #NFDB
985:Contemplative vision is the vision that says “you are good as you are because you are the sacrament of God’s love. ~ Ilia Delio, #NFDB
986:Creative vision, sometimes childlike, enhances our ability to explore and question the reality around us. ~ Taigen Dan Leighton, #NFDB
987:Education can really transform the insecurities in the world into a bigger vision of what we are as human beings. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
988:He's got great vision. If he can get outside, he can take it all the way. That's what we were worried about. ~ Lyndon B Johnson, #NFDB
989:In other words, it’s a way to make sure Keller Williams can support the vision and goals of a prospective employee. ~ Pat Flynn, #NFDB
990:It is very important that the president thematically shows where we're going in terms of the vision and an agenda. ~ Bill Frist, #NFDB
991:Many pastors fail to see God's vision fulfilled because they never have a strategy for fulfilling that vision. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
992:My books definitely are ambassadors, as you called them. They express what the vision is, what the purpose is. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
993:Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. ~ Robert M Pirsig, #NFDB
994:Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically. ~ Brian P Moran, #NFDB
995:Vision is the world’s most desperate need. There are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
996:With a penetrating vision you can dissipate the obstruction, remove the obstacle, dissolve the wrong condition. ~ Ernest Holmes, #NFDB
997:A moral vision must be balanced by the realist dimension of prudence to have a reasonable prospect of success. ~ Joseph S Nye Jr, #NFDB
998:Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
999:Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea. ~ Francis Ford Coppola, #NFDB
1000:Hermès and my own brand share the same philosophy, the same vision of women, but the two aren't identical. ~ Christophe Lemaitre, #NFDB
1001:I always find it much easier when there's one person whose vision you're following, as opposed to many people. ~ Keira Knightley, #NFDB
1002:I disapprove of certainties, said Virgil Jones. They limit one's range of vision. Doubt is one aspect of width. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1003:If you want to turn a vision into reality, you have to give 100% and never stop believing in your dream. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
1004:I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1005:I'm a woman with a mission. I've learned to believe in myself, my vision and to do things the way I want them done. ~ Irene Cara, #NFDB
1006:I wanted to kiss you,” he murmurs. “Me. Not because of some vision I saw. Because of you. Because of what I feel. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
1007:Meditation tells you only one thing: God is. Meditation reveals to you only one truth: yours is the vision of God. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
1008:Our vision is not just of economic growth, but also of a growth which would improve the life of the common man. ~ Manmohan Singh, #NFDB
1009:Step 1 in casting vision is to make sure your people love Jesus more than they love the vision you are casting. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
1010:Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1011:Unless the illusory nature of the world ceases, the vision of the true nature of the Self is not obtained. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1012:When you have your passion, you never even think about other things. It's tunnel vision. You go until you get it. ~ Nicola Peltz, #NFDB
1013:Without a vision our community will perish without Christ, but without a vision the church will perish as well. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1014:A movie's very different from the book, and it's different from the script, and it's usually one person's vision. ~ Casey Affleck, #NFDB
1015:As long as I stay true to what I believe is a good movie and what is my vision, that's all I can do. ~ Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, #NFDB
1016:A strong, authentic, compelling voice is the expression of identity, guided by vision, and achieved through mastery. ~ Todd Henry, #NFDB
1017:A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes. Mrs. ~ Kate Chopin, #NFDB
1018:But to be constantly asking ‘What is the use of it?’ is unbecoming to those of broad vision and unworthy of free men. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
1019:God in his wisdom circumscribed man's vision, and rightly too, for otherwise man's conceit would know no bounds. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1020:Have a vision. It is the ability to see the invisible. If you can see the invisible, you can achieve the impossible. ~ Shiv Khera, #NFDB
1021:I once heard a man speak, who had understanding, and the promise of vision. He was called the Master of Culter. ~ Dorothy Dunnett, #NFDB
1022:It’s so important to create in your own voice, to hold onto what makes you unique, and have faith in your vision. ~ John Lasseter, #NFDB
1023:Just as no great painting has ever been created by a committee, no great vision has ever emerged from the herd. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
1024:Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1025:The artist's personality, built upon strong desires and compassionate vision, is by its nature prone to depression. ~ Eric Maisel, #NFDB
1026:These are the radiancies of the perfected vision that sees the good and step by step moves nearer what it sees. ~ Dante Alighieri, #NFDB
1027:Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
1028:To settle for anything less than a true, glorious, exalted vision of God is utterly stupid and utterly sinful. ~ Stephen Altrogge, #NFDB
1029:Vision w/o execution is just hallucination. You need the right combination of visionary + team that can execute ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1030:What you put in your mind should be congruent with your future vision if you want to turn aspirations into reality. ~ Peter Voogd, #NFDB
1031:When you lose your vision, you lose contact with things. When you lose your hearing, you lose contact with people. ~ Helen Keller, #NFDB
1032:You don't run for public office unless you have a specific vision. You are driven by ideas and a vision. ~ Julie Nixon Eisenhower, #NFDB
1033:All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
1034:Bravery shows up in everyday life when people have the courage to live their truth, their vision and their dreams. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1035:But a real vision, a real change, isn’t safe,” Maya said. “You don’t pay a workshop fee for it, you pay with your life. ~ Starhawk, #NFDB
1036:Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
1037:Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can’t be avoided, and “vision” is often an illusion. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1038:Hecate teaches us that the way to the vision that inspires renewal is to be found in moving through the darkness. ~ Demetra George, #NFDB
1039:I do believe I am special. My special gift is my vision, my commitment, and my willingness to do whatever it takes. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1040:If I had a clear vision, none of my books would be what they are. I've got to let the characters show me the way. ~ Shandy L Kurth, #NFDB
1041:I have a vision for living. It's about elements of style. It's about all the things that I love, that I believe in. ~ Ralph Lauren, #NFDB
1042:Instead of getting what he wanted, he got what he needed—a deeper vision of God’s grace and strength in his life. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
1043:I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death. ~ Martin Gilbert, #NFDB
1044:Leadership is providing inspiration and vision, then developing and empowering others to achieve this vision. ~ Marshall Goldsmith, #NFDB
1045:Malcolm X had a clear vision and an understanding that we were - that he was a part of a broad freedom struggle. ~ Manning Marable, #NFDB
1046:"Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality." ~ Robert M. Pirsig, #NFDB
1047:The absolutist trumpets his plain vision; the relativist sees only someone who is unaware of his own spectacles. ~ Simon Blackburn, #NFDB
1048:The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
1049:The truly beautiful are often abused for apparent ugliness just as those with great vision often bump into things. ~ Simon Munnery, #NFDB
1050:The vision of a blood-washed Africa propelled me to go from Cape Town to Cairo and start Christ for all Nations. ~ Reinhard Bonnke, #NFDB
1051:The world of sight is still limitless. It is the artist who limits vision to the cramped dimensions of his own ego. ~ Marya Mannes, #NFDB
1052:What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true. ~ Steve Chandler, #NFDB
1053:With vision, every person, organization and country can flourish. The Bible says, 'Without vision we perish.’ ~ Mark Victor Hansen, #NFDB
1054:You just have to connect with people who believe in your vision and who will work with you and advance your cause. ~ Queen Latifah, #NFDB
1055:accomplishing a vision requires a lot more than pep talks, slogans, emotional stories, and heart-tugging video clips. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
1056:A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done. ~ Ralph Nader, #NFDB
1057:Clarify your vision and you will make better decisions about people, processes, finances, strategies, and customers. ~ Gino Wickman, #NFDB
1058:Executives should blog if they have a vision they are trying to communicate, or if they are very visible in the media. ~ Mark Cuban, #NFDB
1059:Faith is nothing else than reason grown courageous - reason raised to its highest power, expanded to its widest vision. ~ L P Jacks, #NFDB
1060:For this is the vision that unites all seven paths and creates the rainbow bridge to a new earth and a new heaven. ~ Joan Borysenko, #NFDB
1061:He who befriends a man whose conduct is vicious, whose vision impure, and who is notoriously crooked, is rapidly ruined. ~ Chanakya, #NFDB
1062:He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn't realize was precious until you lost it. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1063:I began to realize that the sterile world I had grown accustomed to had dulled my creativity and limited my vision ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1064:Indignation and compassion form a powerful combination. They are indispensable to vision, and therefore to leadership. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1065:It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost. ~ Black Elk, #NFDB
1066:It seems some have chosen to ignore or have simply forgotten the big-picture vision promoted by Dr. King and his kin. ~ Al Sharpton, #NFDB
1067:Real vision dies only when life dies. Once we live, we hope, we yearn for and we aspire to have something! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1068:The poet is a Cyclops in the Kingdom of the Blind whose sole cure for the madness of his vision must be starvation. ~ David B Lentz, #NFDB
1069:The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest. ~ Paul Cezanne, #NFDB
1070:Using the Lean Startup approach, companies can create order not chaos by providing tools to test a vision continuously. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
1071:Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
1072:Environmentalism is not about the environment. It is about people. It is about a vision for a better life-for people. ~ Colin Beavan, #NFDB
1073:Genuine leadership comes from the quality of your vision and your ability to spark others to extraordinary performance. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
1074:If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
1075:Life is a MISSION
Fulfilled through our VISION
Live life well this SEASON
You were born for a REASON... ~ Israelmore Ayivor,#NFDB
1076:our religious history has been too guilt-based and shame-based, and not enough of what some would call “vision logic, ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1077:Phosphenes, they were called - the sparks of colour that lit up your vision, the stars that appeared in the darkness. ~ Lauren James, #NFDB
1078:The Budget is in line with our vision for a skilled & digital India, guided by Mantra of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas'. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1079:The Master of man and his infinite Lover,
He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Who,#NFDB
1080:We can teach ourselves to see things the way they ARE. Only with vision can we begin to see things the way they CAN BE. ~ Max DePree, #NFDB
1081:Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1082:Don’t you dare plan on dying. We need you, so plan on living. Keep the right vision in front of you. You can. You will! ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1083:Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
1084:He [Steve Jobs] had more of the future vision: We can bring this to everyone; we can start a company; we can sell it. ~ Steve Wozniak, #NFDB
1085:I do believe I am special. My special gift is my vision, my commitment, and my willingness to do whatever it takes. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
1086:I never imagine myself as anything. I've never had a goal or any future vision at all. I just do what's in front of me. ~ Ian MacKaye, #NFDB
1087:Kurosawa was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled. ~ George Lucas, #NFDB
1088:Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God.
~ Sri Ramakrishna, [T5],#NFDB
1089:My vision is a future for humanity where we will be completely free to pursue activities outside of our planet. ~ Franklin Chang Diaz, #NFDB
1090:Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
1091:Ronald Reagan and Ron Paul had a message that was clear, it was principled, and it inspired. It was a vision for a future. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
1092:Technology has a critical role in realizing the vision of a Digital India - the power of 125 crore connected Indians. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1093:That is now my mission: to provide a European vision of growth, employment, prosperity - in one word, our future. ~ Francois Hollande, #NFDB
1094:The Master observes the world, but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. His heart is as open as the sky. ~ Laozi, #NFDB
1095:There she is," he announced in an almost sing-song manner, "my little devil lass, looking like a vision from Hell. ~ Kristen Callihan, #NFDB
1096:We can teach ourselves to see things the way they ARE. Only with vision can we begin to see things the way they CAN BE. ~ Max De Pree, #NFDB
1097:With me, my main vision for life was to avoid as many people as possible. The less people I saw the better I felt. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1098:A great teacher never strives to explain his vision. He simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself. ~ Bobby Ray Inman, #NFDB
1099:All we have done is ever still to do.
All breaks and all renews and is the same. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1100:As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing. ~ Serj Tankian, #NFDB
1101:A vision of truth which does not call upon us to get out of our armchair - why, this is the desideratum of mankind. ~ John Jay Chapman, #NFDB
1102:But the truth is, if you'd followed your vision, if you'd just trusted the plan, everything would have worked out fine. ~ Cynthia Hand, #NFDB
1103:Dissolution is the secret of the great work (alchemy) --dissolve certainty so that a new, enlarged vision can emerge. ~ Caroline Casey, #NFDB
1104:He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision. ~ Jess Walter, #NFDB
1105:...he felt the whole vision turn to darkness and his very feet give way. His head went round; he was going; he had gone. ~ Henry James, #NFDB
1106:I believed that by a process of what I can only describe as inward dilation of the eyes I could increase my actual vision. ~ Paul Nash, #NFDB
1107:I had a vision of what it would look like if like seventy people at the same time went nuts and sprayed water everywhere. ~ Beau Bokan, #NFDB
1108:It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength. ~ Katherine Paterson, #NFDB
1109:I've achieved 'the American dream.' I feel it's my duty to help others achieve their vision, too - especially the youth. ~ Joe Frazier, #NFDB
1110:Leadership is building a bridge that connects the vision with the purpose, in order to empower those who are around us. ~ David Walker, #NFDB
1111:Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home. We've never wavered from that vision. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
1112:Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
1113:Shambhala vision teaches that in the face of the world’s great problems, we can be heroic and kind at the same time. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
1114:The beginning of wisdom, perfection and beatitude is the vision of the One. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, Self-Realisation, #index, #NFDB
1115:The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
1116:The power of imagination created the illusion that my vision went much farther than the naked eye could actually see. ~ Nelson Mandela, #NFDB
1117:There's only one absolute rule in writing: None of us gets it right the first time. Revise, reverse, reinvent, re-vision. ~ Jane Yolen, #NFDB
1118:We cannot afford to exclude any vision - any way of looking at the world - that human beings have invented for ourselves. ~ John Clute, #NFDB
1119:You have to be tenacious, you have to be focused, you have to have a real vision, and be extremely passionate about it. ~ Jessica Alba, #NFDB
1120:Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score. ~ Paul Arden, #NFDB
1121:After my election there was talk of a postracial America. And such a vision, however well intended, was never realistic. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1122:An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect of the organ of vision. ~ Charles Babbage, #NFDB
1123:anointed ones [2] who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” A Vision of a Flying Scroll ZECHARIAH 5 Again I lifted my eyes ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1124:Decisions are being made a mile a minute while you're making the work, and it has to come out of experience and vision. ~ Jules Olitski, #NFDB
1125:I am a big believer that if you have a very clear vision of where you want to go, then the rest of it is much easier. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1126:I am sick and tired of the negative, dark, divisive dangerous vision and behavior of people who support Donald Trump. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
1127:I discovered that a lot of the songs I like, they're fantasies, a vision of something, but you don't actually live there. ~ Thomas Mars, #NFDB
1128:If we give purely, it opens up a doorway in our heart and it gives us the vision to see that those we give to are God. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
1129:If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1130:If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
~ Steve Jobs,#NFDB
1131:If you're using a computer as an artist and expressing your personal vision, I think your personal vision comes through. ~ Dave Gibbons, #NFDB
1132:People are beginning to understand my vision and my message because finally people are beginning to allow me to be heard. ~ John Kasich, #NFDB
1133:People with vision master the ability to see through to the heart of issues and investments. They value transparency. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
1134:The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1135:The first job of a leader is to define a vision for the organization...the capacity to translate vision into reality. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
1136:The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring. ~ Edward Hopper, #NFDB
1137:There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…)
A good novel editor is invisible. ~ Terri Windling,#NFDB
1138:to see the night sky clearly, you can’t overfocus; it’s the stars outside of your direct vision that come in brightest. ~ Camille Pag n, #NFDB
1139:What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time? ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1140:When your vision is a biblical vision, the people arguing with it are not arguing with you. They are arguing with God. ~ Matthew Carter, #NFDB
1141:Will America lead...and reap the rewards? Or will we surrender that advantage to other countries with clearer vision? ~ Susan Hockfield, #NFDB
1142:Without an elite in the arts, we have no leaders, which is to say we have no vision, which is to say we have no arts. ~ Robert Brustein, #NFDB
1143:your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1144:Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1145:A leader has the capacity of vision, the ability to see where things are headed before people in general see those things. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
1146:And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1147:As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see. But a hard life improves vision. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, #NFDB
1148:Being alone, out somewhere in a remote or semiremote spot on Mother Earth, is the main ingredient of a Vision Quest Ceremony. ~ Ed McGaa, #NFDB
1149:Be outrageous enough to trust God. Don't be adjusting your vision downward. Keep believing for radical things in Christ. ~ Brian Houston, #NFDB
1150:But did it wake, Kumiko wondered, when the alley was empty? Did its laser vision scan the silent fall of midnight snow? ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
1151:Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
1152:Every breath of life is a breath too of death. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #NFDB
1153:I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1154:That which is within a man, not that which lies beyond his vision, is the main factor in what is about to befall him: ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1155:The pursuit of an unobtainable purpose by absurd means is the way of freedom; this is my vision of the future. Of our future. ~ Tom King, #NFDB
1156:This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We have to offer an alternative vision. ~ Mitt Romney, #NFDB
1157:To create an extraordinary quality of life, you must create a vision that's not only obtainable, but that is sustainable. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1158:To some,Islam is nothing but a code of rules and regulations.But,to those who understand,it is a perfect vision of life ~ Yasmin Mogahed, #NFDB
1159:You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it. ~ Ben Horowitz, #NFDB
1160:Destruction is the first condition of progress. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - Time the Destroyer, #NFDB
1161:Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
1162:Generally, when you let go of your vision of how something is supposed to be, the universe hands you exactly what you need. ~ Sheryl Crow, #NFDB
1163:I am not attracted to those politicians who are short on vision and only want to make money. I like those who have vision. ~ Gautam Adani, #NFDB
1164:I don’t like the term ‘dream journal,’” she told me at our in-person appointment in June. “I prefer ‘night vision log. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh, #NFDB
1165:I heard the waves tumbling in a chorus of doves, inviting me to take part in their vision. A vision from Beyond. ~ Gina Marinello Sweeney, #NFDB
1166:Look at the world with the vision of peace, love, and compassion. Then the whole world will appear loving and peaceful. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1167:Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon, [T5],#NFDB
1168:Our vision is every book ever printed in any language [fetched and viewable on our eBook Kindle device] in under 60 seconds. ~ Jeff Bezos, #NFDB
1169:our vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside awakens ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1170:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1171:Strength is derived from unity. The range of our collective vision is far greater when individual insights become one. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
1172:The intensity of vision in the artist and of vividness in his creations are the sole tests of his imaginative power. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
1173:The most effective people are those who can "hold" their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly ~ Peter Senge, #NFDB
1174:The people who shape our lives and our cultures have the ability to communicate a vision or a quest or a joy or a mission. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1175:When divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1176:When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover. ~ Michael Hyatt, #NFDB
1177:But if the vision is strong enough, and your goals are steady, and you believe, pretty soon you bring other people with you. ~ Mike Rounds, #NFDB
1178:clear goals are the most powerful. Vision inspires effort. Focused vision inspires focused effort, which produces success. ~ Ruth Cardello, #NFDB
1179:David McKay, 1900. Wolfe, Thomas. Look Homeward, Angel. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929. Yeats, William Butler. A Vision ~ James Hollis, #NFDB
1180:Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
1181:Human vision is endowed with the greatest Reality, since it comes to us directly from the contemplation of the Universe. ~ Robert Delaunay, #NFDB
1182:If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-back ed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces - forever. ~ Julian Assange, #NFDB
1183:I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can't teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort. ~ Toni Morrison, #NFDB
1184:It is possible to be one with all, yet above all. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, The Vision of the World-Spirit - The Double Aspect, #NFDB
1185:Man, sole awake in an unconscious world,
Aspires in vain to change the cosmic dream. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1186:Photography... is either an expression of a cosmic vision, an embodiment of a life movement or it is nothing - to me. (1919) ~ Paul Strand, #NFDB
1187:The age of great men, when a single mind of intelligence and vision might change the destiny of the world, was long gone. ~ Helen Simonson, #NFDB
1188:Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs. ~ V clav Havel, #NFDB
1189:Vision isn’t enough—it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1190:When you do a rewrite, it's really about serving the director's vision, and what the director needs to go into that script. ~ Kelly Marcel, #NFDB
1191:When you write you have a certain vision of how it could be and it's great to be able to see it all the way to the goal line. ~ Etan Cohen, #NFDB
1192:Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1193:Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be. ~ Stephen Malkmus, #NFDB
1194:Being in it, why search for it? The ancients say: Making the vision absorbed in jnana, one sees the world as Brahman. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
1195:Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
1196:Commit to investing at least one hour per day studying subjects that will help you move closer toward your ultimate vision. ~ Steve Siebold, #NFDB
1197:Even when the local church has become less than it should be, the biblical vision is to reform the church, not to abandon it. ~ Scott Sauls, #NFDB
1198:Go for the sense of inner joy, of inner peace, of inner vision first and then all the other things from the outside appear. ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
1199:Human reasoning does not compass everything in all respects, just as vision does not reveal all things to sight. ~ Burhan al Din al Zarnuji, #NFDB
1200:If you want to be rich, you need to develop your vision. You must be standing on the edge of time gazing into the future. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
1201:In my view, the ideal prime minister is patient, hard-working, compassionate and has a clear vision, driven by the fair go. ~ Julia Gillard, #NFDB
1202:It's very important that you never depend on money to fulfill your creative vision. If you do that, you're doomed to fail. ~ Cliff Martinez, #NFDB
1203:Let them come with their night-vision glasses and their heavy, branch-breaking bodies. Right into the range of my arrows. ~ Suzanne Collins, #NFDB
1204:No vision issue today is bigger than the question of efficiency versus some combination of innovation and customer service. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
1205:Old Friend The Witch and the Werecat Of Reading and Plots Thieves in the Castle A Costly Mistake Vision of Perfection ~ Christopher Paolini, #NFDB
1206:Regardless of one’s impressive title, power without purpose and without vision was not the same thing as leadership. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin, #NFDB
1207:Shadow’s temples felt as if they had been reattached to the rest of his skull with roofing nails, and his vision was blurred. ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
1208:Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
1209:Some people worked well with daily discipline, but she’d always been more of a need-a-deadline or consumed-by-vision artist. ~ Melissa Marr, #NFDB
1210:Talent is the No. 1 priority for a CEO. You think it's about vision and strategy, but you have to get the right people first. ~ Andrea Jung, #NFDB
1211:The most effective people are those who can "hold" their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
1212:The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone. ~ Laura Bush, #NFDB
1213:The vision that God gives is not some unattainable castle in the sky, but a vision of what God wants you to be down here. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1214:As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things. ~ George Henry Lewes, #NFDB
1215:...a vision from when they were young and unmarred by what lay ahead of them in life. Memory does that, unerring as a spotlight. ~ Ivan Doig, #NFDB
1216:A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. But a vision and a task are the hope of the world. ~ Zig Ziglar, #NFDB
1217:Hope is not strategy. Hope fits with vision, but we must have a strategy and a process to make our vision become a reality. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1218:If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. ~ John F Kennedy, #NFDB
1219:I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it. ~ Henri Matisse, #NFDB
1220:Leadership is not only having a vision, but also having the courage, the discipline, and the resources to get you there. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
1221:Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too. ~ Aberjhani, #NFDB
1222:Our vision becomes very narrow when we need things to be a certain way and cannot accept things the way they actually are. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
1223:People don't always have the vision, and the secret for the person with the vision is to stand up. It takes a lot of courage. ~ Natalie Cole, #NFDB
1224:The stupendous task of human regeneration will be accomplished only by the purified vision of hearts that grow not cold. ~ Alexander Berkman, #NFDB
1225:The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer. ~ Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy, page 182 [2], #NFDB
1226:To come from no voice, no power, and to be able to achieve what I have means that only my own personal vision holds me back. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1227:Vision is the ability to see God’s presence, to perceive God’s power, to focus on God’s plan in spite of the obstacles. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1228:You Create A Peak When You Truly Follow Your Sensible Vision. Your Fear Fades And You Become More Peaceful And Successful. ~ Spencer Johnson, #NFDB
1229:Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1230:"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
1231:All poetry is an ordered voice, one which tries to tell you about a vision in the un-visionary language of farm, city, and love. ~ Paul Engle, #NFDB
1232:A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity--a ratification of one's way of being human and one's way in the world. ~ Deborah Tannen, #NFDB
1233:Decide what you want to be, do, and have, think the thoughts of it, emit the frequency, and your vision will become your life. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
1234:Donald crouched down, purple commas punctuating his vision, his windpipe feeling as if someone had shoved a flue-brush down it. ~ Lissa Evans, #NFDB
1235:For hours she lay on the ground, alternately body and space. Sometimes a vision of normal comfort obliterated reality: ~ Maxine Hong Kingston, #NFDB
1236:For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. ~ Alfred Tennyson,#NFDB
1237:I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. ~ Ansel Adams, #NFDB
1238:I see in [George H. W.] Bush a striving to be Reagan-like in the sense of having a big vision, and eschewing small details. ~ David E Hoffman, #NFDB
1239:ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1240:I wasn't part of John Kennedy's vision of the world, or Lyndon Johnson's. I thought of them as anti-Communist imperial monsters. ~ Bill Ayers, #NFDB
1241:My vision is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one mind, one heart, one life, one spirit at a time. They are married. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
1242:My work never directly addresses the literal subject matter of the photograph, but attempts to ask questions about vision itself. ~ Uta Barth, #NFDB
1243:Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1244:Oh let us continually keep faith in exercise, till it be entirely swallowed up in the boundless ocean of beatific vision. ~ George Whitefield, #NFDB
1245:On another occasion, he stared at the Sun for as long as he could bear, to determine what effect it would have upon his vision. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1246:Rather, our eyes have become lazy, our attention spans atrophied. Our self-preoccupation had reduced us to tunnel vision. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1247:This vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life. ~ Jennifer Egan, #NFDB
1248:To consciously evolve, we require clear vision of a compassionate future that draws out our enthusiastic participation in life. ~ Duane Elgin, #NFDB
1249:To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity continually in your mind and the value of it in your heart. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
1250:Turn your soul's vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him, and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him. ~ Lilias Trotter, #NFDB
1251:When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1252:Without mathematics, your world becomes foggy! For a clear vision, you need to be educated in the Temple of Mathematics! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1253:You can never underestimate the amount of energy and frequency you must give to vision casting. You can never underestimate it. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
1254:Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. ~ Lolly Daskal, #NFDB
1255:Zionism is, in sum, the constant and unrelenting effort to realize the national and universal vision of the prophets of Israel. ~ Yigal Allon, #NFDB
1256:Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will; ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1257:And though St. John saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1258:An organization which just perpetuates today's level of vision, excellence, and accomplishment has lost the capacity to adapt. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
1259:A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter, #NFDB
1260:Because there was no way I was letting that vision play out. I had a future I wanted, and by God, I was going to fucking get it. ~ Aileen Erin, #NFDB
1261:But the standouts in the generations immediately preceding Cleopatra’s were—for vision, ambition, intellect—universally female. ~ Stacy Schiff, #NFDB
1262:By just looking at a different direction than others, you may gain the vision of a genius because geniuses often do this! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1263:Great coaches are visionaries. Great coaches instill, nurture, and encourage vision, then model and motivate surrender to it. ~ Thomas G Bandy, #NFDB
1264:He has need of darkness to perceive some light
And need of grief to feel a little bliss. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1265:His judgment will be better and his vision clear if he is not emotionally entangled in the outcome of what he does. ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, #NFDB
1266:How can we lead the blind, if we are blind ourselves? His wine is coming to blur our vision, so that we can receive His vision. ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
1267:It’s not our job to assess the merit of our vision or judge its importance. It is our job to receive the vision and act upon it. ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
1268:I urge each of you to think seriously about the vision Dr. Daniel puts forth and think about what you can do to make it happen. ~ Henry R Luce, #NFDB
1269:I wouldn't do the music thing if it weren't for my brother, who's a producer. He understands me and helps my vision come to life. ~ Debby Ryan, #NFDB
1270:My father could look straight ahead but concentrate on something on the very edge of his vision, almost nearly behind him. ~ Dale Earnhardt Jr, #NFDB
1271:My idea is to give hope, because where there is no hope, there is no vision, and where there is no vision, people will perish. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1272:Now picture the suspenders attached to a pair of sweatpants. This vision is what first led me to coin the term “camel balls. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
1273:once observed: “most people take the limits of their vision to be the limits of the world. A few do not. Join them.” Profound ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1274:The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like. ~ Mark Zuckerberg, #NFDB
1275:The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may mirror the divine vision in the universe. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
1276:The majority of human beings live their whole lives unaware that they are only seeing a limited cone of vision at any moment. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
1277:the majority of human beings live their whole lives unaware that they are only seeing a limited cone of vision at any moment. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
1278:The reason many people fail is not for lack of vision but for lack of resolve and resolve is born out of counting the cost. ~ Robert H Goddard, #NFDB
1279:There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that once unleashed can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
1280:Vision, the hallmark of leadership, is less a derivative of spreadsheets and more a product of the mind called imagination. ~ Abraham Zaleznik, #NFDB
1281:We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters. ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
1282:Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller. ~ Abbas Kiarostami, #NFDB
1283:Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death. ~ Wendell Berry, #NFDB
1284:A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare
to the jeweled vision of a life started anew. ~ Aberjhani,#NFDB
1285:A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1286:All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision. ~ Joni Mitchell, #NFDB
1287:A photograph is not merely a substitute for a glance. It is a sharpened vision. It is the revelation of new and important facts. ~ Sid Grossman, #NFDB
1288:Every scene of heaven in the Bible shows us a vision of the Church praying together and singing together and praising together. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
1289:For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson, #NFDB
1290:If you don't have a vision you're going to be stuck in what you know. And the only thing you know is what you've already seen. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
1291:I have no patience for revelations, for new beginnings, for events that take place beyond the realm of my immediate vision. ~ Bret Easton Ellis, #NFDB
1292:I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever. ~ Susan Griffin, #NFDB
1293:It’s all part of the process, and it’s never ending. However, the key is to remain focused on your vision and embrace the journey. ~ Todd Henry, #NFDB
1294:Let us combine 'Look East' with 'Link West' & with our global vision, we can provide a new platform for our economic structure. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1295:Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1296:[Prozac] didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on my melancholy, my dark vision, and everything else that I'd taken it for. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
1297:Small minds select narrow roads; expand your mental vision and take to the broad road of helpfulness, compassion and service. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1298:The best work we can all do is create the highest vision possible for our lives and be led by that vision to the greatest good. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1299:The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
1300:The high gods look on man and watch and choose
Today’s impossibles for the future’s base. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1301:The leader continually passes on the vision to those who come around, knowing that dreams, if presented right, are contagious. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1302:The most radical thing we can do is connect people to one another. That starts conversations toward a vision for change. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter, #NFDB
1303:The Senior Council--"
"Couldn't find its heart if it had a copy of Grey's Anatomy, X-ray vision, and a stethoscope. ~ Jim Butcher,#NFDB
1304:The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching. ~ Jim Afremow, #NFDB
1305:When the pastor and his or her church have a vision, they will put their energy, time, money, and personnel into achieving it. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1306:When you’re in the eye of the tornado, the world looks blurry—especially when you’re working hard to avoid clear vision.” Mona ~ Deborah Coonts, #NFDB
1307:You have to save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. When you're not winning, you just have to get momentum back. ~ Sam Altman, #NFDB
1308:Apple makes computers but its employees believe in the company's bigger vision, which is to make tools to improve people's lives ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
1309:At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. ~ Herbie Hancock, #NFDB
1310:Belief and disbelief have divided humankind into so many sects, blinding its eyes to the vision of the Oneness of all Life. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1311:Determine the quality of life you want to have, and then surround yourself with the people who represent and support that vision. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1312:Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision. ~ Tim Robbins, #NFDB
1313:Fear punches holes in your eyes so that you don't see the future clearly. Faith enlarges your vision to behold your destiny. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1314:Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
1315:If you have a vision and you are trying to accomplish something, you have to be competitive, or things are going to slip by you. ~ Peter M Brant, #NFDB
1316:Love is old slaughterer. Love is not blind. Love is a canibal with extremely acute vision. Love is insectile, it is always hungry ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1317:[My] goal as an artist is to create increasingly complex images with greater and greater clarity of form and intensity of vision. ~ Roger Ballen, #NFDB
1318:Perfect” is that person we imbue with the capacity to enliven and support our vision or the person we believe in and want to help. ~ Gail Sheehy, #NFDB
1319:Receptivity requires a nimbleness, a fine-honed sensitivity in order to let one's self be the vehicle of whatever vision may emerge. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1320:The cost of ignorance is high and it can erode life, vision and wealth to the barren grounds of poverty and perplexity. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1321:The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice. ~ Thomas Carlyle, #NFDB
1322:The person who sees the difficulties so clearly that he does not discern the possibilities cannot inspire a vision in others. ~ J Oswald Sanders, #NFDB
1323:those who held on to a vision of the future were the ones throughout this ordeal who seemed to have a better chance for survival. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
1324:to let your vision for your life be guided not by what you can see but by what you can imagine. That’s called having faith. TRUST ~ Nick Vujicic, #NFDB
1325:Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1326:your vision will become clear only when you can look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.’ On ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
1327:A good vision is an appealing picture of future success, showing what the company will be like when the mission is accomplished. ~ George B Bradt, #NFDB
1328:A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1329:Literally as well as metaphorically, the man accustomed to inverting lenses has undergone a revolutionary transformation of vision. ~ Thomas Kuhn, #NFDB
1330:One road was simple acceptance of life, the other road offered sweet peace. When I made my decision, my vision became my release. ~ Dan Fogelberg, #NFDB
1331:Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
1332:Thank God for tunnel vision. Thank God for selective perception. Because without it, we might as well all be in a Lovecraft story. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1333:The lack of vision in public life and the emptying out of values that visionless leadership creates lead to a politics of complaint. ~ Jim Wallis, #NFDB
1334:The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone. ~ Laura Welch Bush, #NFDB
1335:The starship Enterprise was a metaphor starship Earth, and the vision was that the strength of this starship lay in its diversity. ~ George Takei, #NFDB
1336:As long as you believe in yourself and your own vision, you have something. When you give up that, you are personally bankrupt. ~ Olivia Goldsmith, #NFDB
1337:Bound together by our beliefs, we are like minded individuals, sharing a common vision, pushing toward a world rid of color lines. ~ Janet Jackson, #NFDB
1338:If we had kept the vision of interconnectedness, we would not have created the kind of environmental crisis facing the world today. ~ Satish Kumar, #NFDB
1339:I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There's vision, patience, and execution. ~ Steve Ballmer, #NFDB
1340:In a startup, the founders define the product vision and then use customer discovery to find customers and a market for that vision. ~ Steve Blank, #NFDB
1341:I think the Macintosh was created by a group of people who felt that ah there wasn't a strict vision between sort of science and art. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
1342:Leaders don't venture without vision. They don't pray without plans. They don't climb without clues. They are always prepared. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1343:Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes;
It has no gaze on the deep heart of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#NFDB
1344:Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
1345:Put down your guns and go home. Let’s rebuild the nation together. This was President Lincoln’s vision, to which Grant subscribed. ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
1346:She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision. ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
1347:The downside of videos is that it will put my vision in front of other people, so they might not get the chance to create their own. ~ Carole King, #NFDB
1348:The senses have their limits, and we can never know how short they fall in revealing to us the truth of a vision, a scent, a sound. ~ Laini Taylor, #NFDB
1349:What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson, #NFDB
1350:When you start something creative for the first time, you are completely free, no real influences other than your own vision. ~ Matthew Williamson, #NFDB
1351:Where is the voice that said altered carbon would free us from the cells of our flesh? The vision that said we would be angels. ~ Richard K Morgan, #NFDB
1352:A hundred years of life passed without the vision of the supreme law are not worth a single day of a life consecrated to that vision. ~ Dham-mapada, #NFDB
1353:All that I possess and use Is like the fleeting vision of a dream. It fades into the realms of memory, And fading, will be seen no more. ~ ntideva, #NFDB
1354:And so it’s a subtle balance: 1.You have a bold vision for the future pulling you forward. 2.Yet . . . you’re happy in the NOW. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
1355:And yet there were fragments of truth here and there which satisfied the conscience, and gleams of light that cheered the vision. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1356:A vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path [in Mediated Modeling page 43] ~ Donella Meadows, #NFDB
1357:Consider: What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time? ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1358:Creative vision creates art”—he motioned around the gallery—“that shows the rest of the world a new angle. That’s a beautiful thing. ~ Melissa Marr, #NFDB
1359:Great leaders must have two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate that vision clearly. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
1360:I have a vision of a Modern India. I have embarked on a huge mission to convert that vision into reality. My mantra is Development. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
1361:I really feel the need to create an alternate world, a vision of what might be magical and beautiful and fantastic about being human. ~ Shary Boyle, #NFDB
1362:Kubrick's vision seemed to be that humans are doomed, whereas Clarke's is that humans are moving on to a better stage of evolution. ~ Marvin Minsky, #NFDB
1363:Probably many people’s vision of “thinking something through” is of this nature: you do precisely what you
want to do—if you can. ~ Richard Ford,#NFDB
1364:requires both the outrageousness of God and the daily work of decreasing so that Jesus and God’s vision of peace may increase. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
1365:The insight is born with anxiety, guilt and the joy and gratification that is inseparable from the actualizing of a new idea or vision. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1366:The master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. He prefers what is within to what is without. ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
1367:Window washers increase the vision in the windows of the buildings; wisdom quotes do the same thing in the eyes of the people! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
1368:Without conviction that you can make change happen, you will not act, even if you see the vision. Your feelings will hold you back. ~ John P Kotter, #NFDB
1369:A number of cases have been reported in which a dying individual has a vision of a person about whose death he or she did not know. ~ Stanislav Grof, #NFDB
1370:a touchy-feely vision of our society that places individual self-expression and rights over self-sacrifice and adult responsibility. ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
1371:Hillary Clinton has a vision, she has knowledge and judgment. She is a strategic thinker, based on her experience and her connection. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
1372:I always have an idea in the back of my head, but that goes with anything else that I'm doing. There is a sort of vision behind it. ~ Olivia Palermo, #NFDB
1373:I have never met the man who had vision large enough to appreciate my genius," he said simply. "Perhaps it was not to be expected. ~ Georgette Heyer, #NFDB
1374:Manage the dream: Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality. ~ Warren G Bennis, #NFDB
1375:Once again, I've been thwarted by the massive difference between my vision of the successful me and the me I'm currently stuck with. ~ Lauren Graham, #NFDB
1376:One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
1377:Our sight and sense are a fallible gaze and touch
And only the spirit’s vision is wholly true. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Finding of the Soul,#NFDB
1378:Take the blinders from your vision take the padding from your ears and confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
1379:The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream. ~ Azar Nafisi, #NFDB
1380:Then there came a vision to me, a vision that was sent in answer to my prayer, or, perchance, it was a madness born of my sorrows. ~ H Rider Haggard, #NFDB
1381:Unhappiness, which also possesses a clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight which existed in this mind. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1382:What is key for winning the election is to be able to put forth a vision for our future and how this election affects people's lives. ~ Nancy Pelosi, #NFDB
1383:When a photographer masters the tools and processes of the art, then the quality of the work is only limited by his creative vision. ~ Edward Weston, #NFDB
1384:Women have plans for themselves, for their children, about their home, the meals. They have a Vision. A man wants to enjoy himself. ~ Muhammad Yunus, #NFDB
1385:Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” —Carl Jung ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1386:Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart… Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. —CARL JUNG ~ Judith E Glaser, #NFDB
1387:Bill Hicks - blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built. ~ Tom Waits, #NFDB
1388:Cool, logical, big-eared and level-headed, the center of Star Trek's optimistic, inclusive vision of humanity's future. I loved Spock. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1389:Halloween revolves around delicious candy, excessive alcohol, and horny women dressed as sluts. This also describes my vision of Heaven. ~ Tucker Max, #NFDB
1390:I'm fully aware that my vision of a European bicameral parliament can't be implemented tomorrow. I'm also not an integration fanatic. ~ Martin Schulz, #NFDB
1391:In my view, a political vision is not a grab-bag of discrete problems and solutions. It is the visionary anticipation of a direction. ~ Roberto Unger, #NFDB
1392:It has been the office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty but our eyes have no clear vision. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1393:It's really thrilling to work with an illustrator - your vision expands with the addition of someone else's artwork/artistic vision. ~ Matthea Harvey, #NFDB
1394:Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future. ~ Edwin H Friedman, #NFDB
1395:Like a soldier back from battle you fill my vision. You're a flood, a baptism I'd forgotten, and the force of you leaves me breathless. ~ Julie Berry, #NFDB
1396:Our love of beauty is merely a trick produced by the way we look, and the broader the vision grows the clearer the wrinkles are seen ~ Alaa Al Aswany, #NFDB
1397:Reading is the road you walk to discover yourself and your world, to see with renewed vision as you encounter the vision of another. ~ Sarah Clarkson, #NFDB
1398:Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
1399:Space has a way of looking. It seems like it has a presence of vision. When you come into it, it is there, it’s been waiting for you. ~ James Turrell, #NFDB
1400:The native power of poetry is in its sight, not in its intellectual thought-matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra, #NFDB
1401:Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age, no recognition of a specific value: wisdom, perceptiveness, experience, vision. ~ Roland Barthes, #NFDB
1402:Vision unknown is self-abuse. Vision known is self-abuse discovery. But vision applied is self-liberation. Application is the key ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
1403:After all, I want to make sure I stick with his original vision. So far, [Steven King] comments have always been the same - run with it! ~ Robin Furth, #NFDB
1404:A job is how you make money. A career is how you make your mark. A calling is how you acknowledge a higher vision, whatever it may be. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1405:Always he journeys, but nowhere arrives;
He would guide the world, himself he cannot guide ...
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1406:Directing offers you the hope that your vision will reach the screen, unmolested and intact. Therefore, it's tantalizing to all writers. ~ Jon Spaihts, #NFDB
1407:For new ideas to be translated into new realities requires not only clarity of vision but also the opportunity to change old realities. ~ Riane Eisler, #NFDB
1408:Independence of vision is a good thing,” Dorrin said. “So is thinking. But speaking and acting well require reflection—consideration. ~ Elizabeth Moon, #NFDB
1409:It stands for diversity. It stands for vision and strength. It stands for belief in the right things. That's what I think it stands for. ~ John Carlos, #NFDB
1410:It was bad enough that these creatures had children and art; that they might also have vision was too dangerous a thought to entertain. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1411:Leadership is the ability to influence people and motivate them to do what needs to be done to accomplish a goal, vision, or mission. ~ Robert Johnson, #NFDB
1412:Life, I learned then, belongs not to the just but to those who do whatever they must do in order to maintain their vision of reality. ~ Michael Hainey, #NFDB
1413:Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
1414:RIGHT HERE AND NOW, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1415:Science, while it penetrates deeply the system of things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of vision, the word mystery. ~ James Dwight Dana, #NFDB
1416:To be a good hairdresser, you have to understand what the vision is of the designer or the photographer and then sort of add your thing. ~ Guido Palau, #NFDB
1417:Vesna Esta Holicia, until you shine again, into vision, into the real world. Though a child of man knows time, life itself is eternal. ~ Miyuki Miyabe, #NFDB
1418:We have a vision of South Africa in which black and white shall live and work together as equals in conditions of peace and prosperity. ~ Oliver Tambo, #NFDB
1419:We need both to aspire and accomplish. Without a vision for your life, without a sense of purpose, you will begin to die a slow death. ~ Erwin McManus, #NFDB
1420:When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1421:When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision--then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1422:When one looks at the ocean, they can only see that part of it which comes within their range of vision; so it is with the truth. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
1423:You need mentors, people with that desire to support women and the vision to have more. We have that in Anglo American in a big way. ~ Cynthia Carroll, #NFDB
1424:You persist in this romantic vision of what it is to be a vampire, but despite my best efforts to curb it I have a taste for blood. ~ Deborah Harkness, #NFDB
1425:Also I didn't habe 20/20 vision whch you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen. ~ Mark Haddon, #NFDB
1426:A man should never be appointed into a managerial position if his vision focuses on people's weaknesses rather than on their strengths. ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
1427:A shared vision is the first step in allowing people who mistrusted each other to begin to work together. It creates a common identity. ~ Peter M Senge, #NFDB
1428:excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand. ~ William Blake, #NFDB
1429:Gear is the least important part of the equation. Having a vision and being able to articulate an idea visually are much more important. ~ Paul Nicklen, #NFDB
1430:Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up. ~ Dag Hammarskj ld, #NFDB
1431:Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up. ~ Dag Hammarskjold, #NFDB
1432:It illuminated a vision Dante could not have imagined in his wildest nightmares, nor Poe in the grasp of an uncontrollable delirium. ~ Alan Dean Foster, #NFDB
1433:It is a bad situation, the current state of the Labour leadership, a collective failure, the collapse of strategy and vision on all sides. ~ Owen Jones, #NFDB
1434:Movements of people create change - not just any one person or organization, but when lots of people are in motion around a shared vision. ~ Ai jen Poo, #NFDB
1435:No matter how good your idea or goal is, don’t expect others to immediately agree with your purpose or vision. You must be determined. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
1436:One attains God through japa. By repeating the name of God secretly and in solitude one receives divine grace. Then comes His vision. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1437:One of the reasons people perish without a vision is that they cannot endure the pain and cost required to achieve any worthwhile purpose. ~ Danny Silk, #NFDB
1438:One thing that I love about World Vision is every place they go, they go in with an exit plan, they don't want people dependent on them. ~ Hugh Jackman, #NFDB
1439:Prophets are those who take life as it is and expand it. They refuse to shrink a vision of tomorrow to the boundaries of yesterday. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
1440:Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. ~ Andrew Carnegie, #NFDB
1441:The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market. ~ Jonathan Dimbleby, #NFDB
1442:There's an ability to learn & adapt, an ability to constantly have a vision that's driving you, but to be taking input from all sources. ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
1443:The senses have their limits, and we can never know how short they fall in revealing to us the truth of a vision, a scent, a sound. ~ Stephanie Perkins, #NFDB
1444:The vision is that people should have the ultimate in convenience. Being able to get the things they care about on the appropriate device. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
1445:The vision people hold of the world to come is but a reflection, with predictable wishful distortions, of the world in which they live. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
1446:Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs. —Vaclav Havel ~ David Allen, #NFDB
1447:Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs. —Václav Havel ~ David Allen, #NFDB
1448:When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1449:When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1450:While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision. ~ Chuck Close, #NFDB
1451:You cannot conceive the many without the one...The study of the unit is among those that lead the mind on and turn it to the vision of reality. ~ Plato, #NFDB
1452:You need to dream a bigger dream for yourself. That is the lesson. Hold the highest vision possible for your life and it can come true. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
1453:America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
1454:Art should never be sociological; it has got to be timeless. It's got to be your vision and how you can represent the world you see. ~ Vivienne Westwood, #NFDB
1455:A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls. ~ Larry Crabb, #NFDB
1456:But in a game, you have a pocket forming, your vision is better and - at least for me - I just get a better feel for what I'm doing. ~ Stephanie McMahon, #NFDB
1457:compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction—what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1458:God gives us His strength by giving us His vision of things. Our seeing people as innocent is the only way to achieve God’s peace. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1459:Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. ~ Edward Hopper, #NFDB
1460:However man's mind may tire or fail his flesh,
A will prevails cancelling his conscious choice .
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Vision and the Boon,#NFDB
1461:If you have a clear vision, you will eventually attract the right strategy. If you don't have a clear vision, no strategy will save you. ~ Michael Hyatt, #NFDB
1462:I think every artist should follow their vision, their hearts is what they need to reveal, not something that society is looking out for. ~ Serj Tankian, #NFDB
1463:It is where life is fundamental and free that men develop the vision needed to reveal the human soul in the blossoms it puts forth. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, #NFDB
1464:It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go. ~ Lorene Scafaria, #NFDB
1465:Looking at you from within the Self, I never leave you.
How can this fact be known to your externalised vision? ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Padamalai, 37,#NFDB
1466:Nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clapp can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization. [on Finnegans Wake] ~ Ezra Pound, #NFDB
1467:Nous fuyons son Visage d'autant plus que nous l'apprécions
De peur que l'ineffable disgrâce de la vision
Entache Notre Adoration ~ Emily Dickinson,#NFDB
1468:One attains God through japa. By repeating the name of God secretly and in solitude one receives divine grace. Then comes His vision. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #NFDB
1469:The proper meaning of “theory” is not idle speculation but vision, and it was rightly said that “where there is no vision the people perish. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1470:What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be?...'
'I am Mother's child,' answered the scarlet vision, 'and my name is Pearl! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne,#NFDB
1471:Without a vision people and the church become self-centered. People start finding fault with one another and the church self-destructs. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1472:Don’t move.’ Those are good.” A hand grabbed my hair and a second later my head connected with the wall near the bathroom door. My vision ~ Renee Pawlish, #NFDB
1473:For me, President Obama is our best choice because he has a vision of the United States as a place where we are all in this together. ~ Bruce Springsteen, #NFDB
1474:If you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capable of becoming. ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
1475:It agitates me that the skyline there is forever our limit, I long for the power of unlimited vision...If I could behold all I imagine. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1476:It is only the women whose eyes have been washed clear with tears who get the broad vision that makes them little sisters to all the world. ~ Dorothy Dix, #NFDB
1477:I would give female filmmakers the same advice I’d give any filmmaker; believe in your vision, believe in your team, believe in yourself. ~ Leanne Pooley, #NFDB
1478:No matter how you describe a protagonist, each reader has a personal vision of that character. Leave room for the reader's imagination. ~ Mark Rubinstein, #NFDB
1479:The man in whose vision all things are becomings of the Self and who sees in all things oneness, whence shall he have grief or delusion? ~ Isha Upanishad, #NFDB
1480:The qualities of a great man are vision, integrity, courage, understanding, the power of articulation, and profundity of character. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
1481:The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
1482:Vision lifts you up. It makes you smile a secret smile because you know that you have something very special to share. What is your vision? ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
1483:Vision without action is merely a dream; action without vision is merely passing time; but vision and action together can change the world. ~ Sudha Murty, #NFDB
1484:Vocabulary enables us to interpret and to express. If you have a limited vocabulary, you will also have a limited vision and a limited future. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
1485:What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1486:And when it is accomplished—behold!—all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile—and the return to an eternal rest. ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1487:Can we live now “as if” God is loving, gracious, merciful, and all-powerful, even while the blinders of time are obscuring our vision? The ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1488:Globalism began as a vision of a world with free trade, shared prosperity, and open borders. These are good, even noble things to aim for. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
1489:"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world." ~ Edward Hopper, #NFDB
1490:I could mentally lift the vision wholesale and stick it into the already overflowing “crazy shit I’ll deal with later” box in my brain. ~ Kelley Armstrong, #NFDB
1491:If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian. ~ Fidel Castro, #NFDB
1492:I grew up watching movies that just transformed my vision, not just in cinema, in life, and you discover that this - it's an endless tool. ~ Pablo Larrain, #NFDB
1493:In short, I don't root against President Obama because I hate America. I root against President Obama because I hate his vision for America. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
1494:My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown. ~ Simon Callow, #NFDB
1495:Myth: Vampires have incredible vision.
Truth: Yeah, which is cool, unless you're trying to sneak something past your eagle-eyed mom. ~ Kimberly Pauley,#NFDB
1496:Pay the price. Embrace the vision. After all, everybody ends up somewhere in life. You have the opportunity to end up somewhere on purpose. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
1497:Respect is important, if someone has a very clear vision of what they want, as long as they find a way to communicate it, a respectful way… ~ Martin Starr, #NFDB
1498:Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee. ~ Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice, [T3], #NFDB
1499:Teaching art is a shared experience. Our ability to share our own personal vision and interact with others through art can become realized. ~ Michael Bell, #NFDB
1500:The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision. ~ Stewart Copeland, #NFDB
1009 Integral Yoga
303 Poetry
93 Fiction
88 Christianity
83 Yoga
73 Occultism
55 Philosophy
36 Psychology
27 Science
15 Mysticism
11 Islam
10 Integral Theory
8 Mythology
7 Theosophy
7 Hinduism
7 Education
6 Sufism
6 Baha i Faith
4 Buddhism
2 Philsophy
2 Cybernetics
1 Thelema
1 Kabbalah
1 Alchemy
565 The Mother
545 Sri Aurobindo
421 Satprem
168 Nolini Kanta Gupta
68 H P Lovecraft
54 William Wordsworth
52 Sri Ramakrishna
42 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
38 Percy Bysshe Shelley
38 Carl Jung
37 Aleister Crowley
21 A B Purani
20 Saint Augustine of Hippo
20 John Keats
19 Plotinus
18 Walt Whitman
14 Swami Krishnananda
12 Swami Vivekananda
12 Rudolf Steiner
12 Nirodbaran
12 Edgar Allan Poe
11 Muhammad
11 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
10 Robert Browning
9 Aldous Huxley
8 William Butler Yeats
8 Plato
8 Friedrich Schiller
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Saint John of Climacus
7 James George Frazer
7 George Van Vrekhem
7 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
6 Jorge Luis Borges
6 Baha u llah
5 Rabindranath Tagore
5 Ovid
5 Lucretius
5 Jalaluddin Rumi
4 Saint Teresa of Avila
4 Rainer Maria Rilke
4 Rabbi Abraham Abulafia
4 Lalla
4 Jordan Peterson
4 Anonymous
4 Al-Ghazali
3 Ramprasad
3 Paul Richard
3 Patanjali
3 Ken Wilber
3 Kabir
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Bokar Rinpoche
2 Vyasa
2 Solomon ibn Gabirol
2 Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 Norbert Wiener
2 Mansur al-Hallaj
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Jean Gebser
2 Hsuan Chueh of Yung Chia
2 Allama Muhammad Iqbal
2 Alice Bailey
118 Record of Yoga
90 The Synthesis Of Yoga
68 Lovecraft - Poems
54 Wordsworth - Poems
51 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
45 Agenda Vol 10
42 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
41 Agenda Vol 08
41 Agenda Vol 03
40 Savitri
39 Agenda Vol 01
38 Shelley - Poems
35 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
35 Agenda Vol 09
34 Agenda Vol 04
30 The Life Divine
30 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
26 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
25 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
25 Agenda Vol 07
25 Agenda Vol 02
24 Essays On The Gita
24 Agenda Vol 05
23 Magick Without Tears
23 Agenda Vol 11
22 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
22 Letters On Yoga IV
22 Collected Poems
21 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
21 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
21 Agenda Vol 13
21 Agenda Vol 12
20 Keats - Poems
20 Agenda Vol 06
19 Letters On Yoga II
18 Whitman - Poems
18 The Future of Man
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
16 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
15 Questions And Answers 1956
15 Letters On Yoga I
14 The Study and Practice of Yoga
14 Questions And Answers 1953
14 Letters On Poetry And Art
12 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
12 Questions And Answers 1955
12 Liber ABA
12 Essays Divine And Human
11 The Secret Of The Veda
11 Talks
11 Quran
11 Poe - Poems
11 On the Way to Supermanhood
11 Mysterium Coniunctionis
11 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
11 City of God
10 The Human Cycle
10 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
10 Prayers And Meditations
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
10 Browning - Poems
9 The Phenomenon of Man
9 The Perennial Philosophy
9 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
9 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
9 Questions And Answers 1954
9 Let Me Explain
9 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
9 Aion
9 5.1.01 - Ilion
8 Yeats - Poems
8 The Practice of Psycho therapy
8 Schiller - Poems
8 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
8 Letters On Yoga III
8 Isha Upanishad
7 Words Of Long Ago
7 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
7 The Golden Bough
7 The Bible
7 Preparing for the Miraculous
7 On Education
6 Vedic and Philological Studies
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 Some Answers From The Mother
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
6 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
6 Hymn of the Universe
6 Faust
6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
5 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
5 Theosophy
5 Tagore - Poems
5 Raja-Yoga
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
5 Of The Nature Of Things
5 Metamorphoses
5 Kena and Other Upanishads
5 Goethe - Poems
5 Amrita Gita
4 The Red Book Liber Novus
4 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
4 The Divine Comedy
4 The Alchemy of Happiness
4 Rilke - Poems
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Labyrinths
4 Bhakti-Yoga
3 Words Of The Mother III
3 Words Of The Mother II
3 Walden
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 The Book of Certitude
3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
3 Tara - The Feminine Divine
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
3 Crowley - Poems
2 Words Of The Mother I
2 Vishnu Purana
2 Twilight of the Idols
2 The Integral Yoga
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 Songs of Kabir
2 Emerson - Poems
2 Cybernetics
2 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
0 0.01 - Introduction, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Spirit nor even an improved Matter, but ... it could be called 'nothing,' so contrary was it to all we know. For the caterpillar, a butterfly is nothing, it is not even visible and has nothing in common with caterpillar heavens nor even caterpillar matter. So there we were, trapped in an impossible adventure. One does not return from there: one must cross the bridge to the other side. Then one day in that seventh year, while we still believed in liberations and the collected Upanishads, highlighted with a few glorious visions to relieve the commonplace (which remained appallingly commonplace), while we were still considering 'the Mother of the Ashram' rather like some spiritual super-director (endowed, albeit, with a disarming yet ever so provocative smile, as though
She were making fun of us, then loving us in secret), She told us, 'I have the feeling that ALL we have lived, ALL we have known, ALL we have done is a perfect illusion ... When I had the spiritual experience that material life is an illusion, personally I found that so marvelously beautiful and happy that it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, but now it is the entire spiritual structure as we have lived it that is becoming an illusion! - Not the same illusion, but an illusion far worse. And I am no baby: I have been here for forty-seven years now!' Yes, She was eighty-three years old then. And that day, we ceased being 'the enemy of our own conception of the Divine,' for this entire Divine was shattered to pieces - and we met Mother, at last. This mystery we call
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort.
--
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now, as regards the interpretation of the story cited, should not a suspicion arise naturally at the very outset that the dog of the story is not a dog but represents something else? First, a significant epithet is given to itwhite; secondly, although it asks for food, it says that Om is its food and Om is its drink. In the Vedas we have some references to dogs. Yama has twin dogs that "guard the path and have powerful vision." They are his messengers, "they move widely and delight in power and possess the vast strength." The Vedic Rishis pray to them for Power and Bliss and for the vision of the Sun1. There is also the Hound of Heaven, Sarama, who comes down and discovers the luminous cows stolen and hidden by the Panis in their dark caves; she is the path-finder for Indra, the deliverer.
My suggestion is that the dog is a symbol of the keen sight of Intuition, the unfailing perception of direct knowledge. With this clue the Upanishadic story becomes quite sensible and clear and not mere abracadabra. To the aspirant for Knowledge came first a purified power of direct understanding, an Intuition of fundamental value, and this brought others of the same species in its train. They were all linked together organically that is the significance of the circle, and formed a rhythmic utterance and expression of the supreme truth (Om). It is also to be noted that they came and met at dawn to chant, the Truth. Dawn is the opening and awakening of the consciousness to truths that come from above and beyond.
It may be asked why the dog has been chosen as the symbol of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the horse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed by the conscious intelligence. They form part of a dramatization (to use a term of the Freudian psychology of dreams), a psychological alchemy, whose method and process and rationale are very obscure, which can be penetrated only by the vision of a third eye.
I. The Several Lights
--
The Sun is the first and the most immediate source of light that man has and needs. He is the presiding deity of our waking consciousness and has his seat in the eyecakusa ditya, ditya caku bhtvakii prviat. The eye is the representative of the senses; it is the sense par excellence. In truth, sense-perception is the initial light with which we have to guide us, it is the light with which we start on the way. A developed stage comes when the Sun sets for us, that is to say, when we retire from the senses and rise into the mind, whose divinity is the Moon. It is the mental knowledge, the light of reason and intelligence, of reflection and imagination that govern our consciousness. We have to proceed farther and get beyond the mind, exceed the derivative light of the Moon. So when the Moon sets, the Fire is kindled. It is the light of the ardent and aspiring heart, the glow of an inner urge, the instincts and inspirations of our secret life-will. Here we come into touch with a source of knowledge and realization, a guidance more direct than the mind and much deeper than the sense-perception. Still this light partakes more of heat than of pure luminosity; it is, one may say, incandescent feeling, but not vision. We must probe deeper, mount higherreach heights and profundities that are serene and transparent. The Fire is to be quieted and silenced, says the Upanishad. Then we come nearer, to the immediate vicinity of the Truth: an inner hearing opens, the direct voice of Truth the Wordreaches us to lead and guide. Even so, however, we have not come to the end of our journey; the Word of revelation is not the ultimate Light. The Word too is clothing, though a luminous clothinghiramayam ptram When this last veil dissolves and disappears, when utter silence, absolute calm and quietude reign in the entire consciousness, when no other lights trouble or distract our attention, there appears the Atman in its own body; we stand face to face with the source of all lights, the self of the Light, the light of the Self. We are that Light and we become that Light.
II. The Four Oblations
--
Hantakr is the appearance, the manifestation of the Divinity that which makes the worshipper cry in delight, "Hail!" It is the coming of the Dawnahanwhen the night has been traversed and the lid rent open, the appearance of the Divine to a human vision for the human consciousness to seize, almost in a human form.
Finally, once the Truth is reached, it is to be held fast, firmly established, embodied and fixed in its inherent nature here in life and the waking consciousness. This is Svadh.
--
The Science of the Five Agnis (Fires), as propounded by Pravahan, explains and illustrates the process of the birth of the body, the passage of the soul into earth existence. It describes the advent of the child, the building of the physical form of the human being. The process is conceived of as a sacrifice, the usual symbol with the Vedic Rishis for the expression of their vision and perception of universal processes of Nature, physical and psychological. Here, the child IS said to be the final fruit of the sacrifice, the different stages in the process being: (i) Soma, (ii) Rain, (iii) Food, (iv) Semen, (v) Child. Soma means Rasaphysically the principle of water, psychologically the 'principle of delightand symbolises and constitutes the very soul and substance of life. Now it is said that these five principles the fundamental and constituent elementsare born out of the sacrifice, through the oblation or offering to the five Agnis. The first Agni is Heaven or the Sky-God, and by offering to it one's faith and one's ardent desire, one calls into manifestation Soma or Rasa or Water, the basic principle of life. This water is next offered to the second Agni, the Rain-God, who sends down Rain. Rain, again, is offered to the third Agni, the Earth, who brings forth Food. Food is, in its turn, offered to the fourth Agni, the Father or Male, who elaborates in himself the generating fluid.
Finally, this fluid is offered to the fifth Agni, the Mother or the Female, who delivers the Child.
--
Now this is what is sought to be conveyed and expressed. The five movements of the sun here also are nothing but the five smas and they refer to the cycle of the Cosmic or Universal Brahman. The sixth status where all movements cease, where there is no rising and setting, no ebb and flow, no waxing and waning, where there is the immutable, the ever-same unity, is very evidently the Transcendental Brahman. It is That to which the Vedic Rishi refers when he prays for a constant and fixed vision of the eternal Sunjyok ca sryam drie.
It would be interesting to know what the five ranges or levels or movements of consciousness exactly are that make up the Universal Brahman described in this passage. It is the mystic knowledge, the Upanishad says, of the secret delight in thingsmadhuvidy. The five ranges are the five fundamental principles of delightimmortalities, the Veda would say that form the inner core of the pyramid of creation. They form a rising tier and are ruled respectively by the godsAgni, Indra, Varuna, Soma and Brahmawith their emanations and instrumental personalities the Vasus, the Rudras, the Adityas, the Maruts and the Sadhyas. We suggest that these refer to the five well-known levels of being, the modes or nodi of consciousness or something very much like them. The Upanishad speaks elsewhere of the five sheaths. The six Chakras of Tantric system lie in the same line. The first and the basic mode is the physical and the ascent from the physical: Agni and the Vasus are always intimately connected with the earth and -the earth-principles (it can be compared with the Muladhara of the Tantras). Next, second in the line of ascent is the Vital, the centre of power and dynamism of which the Rudras are the deities and Indra the presiding God (cf. Swadhishthana of the Tantras the navel centre). Indra, in the Vedas, has two aspects, one of knowledge and vision and the other of dynamic force and drive. In the first aspect he is more often considered as the Lord of the Mind, of the Luminous Mind. In the present passage, Indra is taken in his second aspect and instead of the Maruts with whom he is usually invoked has the Rudras as his agents and associates.
The third in the line of ascension is the region of Varuna and the Adityas, that is to say, of the large Mind and its lightsperhaps it can be connected with Tantric Ajnachakra. The fourth is the domain of Soma and the Marutsthis seems to be the inner heart, the fount of delight and keen and sweeping aspirations the Anahata of the Tantras. The fifth is the region of the crown of the head, the domain of Brahma and the Sadhyas: it is the Overmind status from where comes the descending inflatus, the creative Maya of Brahma. And when you go beyond, you pass into the ultimate status of the Sun, the reality absolute, the Transcendent which is indescribable, unseizable, indeterminate, indeterminable, incommensurable; and once there, one never returns, neverna ca punarvartate na ca punarvartate.
00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and therefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not always the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect form (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment; the gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the eye cannot see nor the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
--
Its figure does not lie in the field of vision, none can see it with the eye
The form of a thing can be beautiful; but the formless too has its beauty. Indeed, the beauty of the formless, that is to say, the very sum and substance, the ultimate essence, the soul of beauty that is what suffuses, with in-gathered colour and enthusiasm, the realisation and poetic creation of the Upanishadic seer. All the forms that are scattered abroad in their myriad manifest beauty hold within themselves a secret Beauty and are reflected or projected out of it. This veiled Name of Beauty can be compared to nothing on the phenomenal hemisphere of Nature; it has no adequate image or representation below:
00.05 - A Vedic Conception of the Poet, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The poet is a trinity in himself. A triune consciousness forms his personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara. He has the direct vision, the luminous intelligence, the immediate perception.12 A subtle and profound and penetrating consciousness is his,nigam, pracetas; his is the eye of the Sun,srya caku.13 He secures an increased being through his effulgent understanding.14 In the second place, the Poet is not only Seer but Doer; he is knower as well as creator. He has a dynamic knowledge and his vision itself is power, ncak;15 he is the Seer-Will,kavikratu.16 He has the blazing radiance of the Sun and is supremely potent in his self-Iuminousness.17 The Sun is the light and the energy of the Truth. Even like the Sun the Poet gives birth to the Truth, srya satyasava, satyya satyaprasavya. But the Poet as Power is not only the revealer or creator,savit, he is also the builder or fashioner,ta, and he is the organiser,vedh is personality. First of all, he is the Knower-the Seer of the Truth, kavaya satyadrara, of the Truth.18 As Savita he manifests the Truth, as Tashta he gives a perfected body and form to the Truth, and as Vedha he maintains the Truth in its dynamic working. The effective marshalling and organisation of the Truth is what is called Ritam, the Right; it is also called Dharma,19 the Law or the Rhythm, the ordered movement and invincible execution of the Truth. The Poet pursues the Path of the Right;20 it is he who lays out the Path for the march of the Truth, the progress of the Sacrifice.21 He is like a fast steed well-yoked, pressing forward;22 he is the charger that moves straight and unswerving and carries us beyond 23into the world of felicity.
Indeed delight is the third and the supremely intimate element of the poetic personality. Dear and delightful is the poet, dear and delightful his works, priya, priyi His hand is dripping with sweetness,kavir hi madhuhastya.24 The Poet-God shines in his pristine beauty and is showering delight.25 He is filled with utter ecstasy so that he may rise to the very source of the luminous Energy.26? Pure is the Divine Joy and it enters and purifies all forms as it moves to the seat of the Immortals.27Indeed this sparkling Delight is the Poet-Seer and it is that that brings forth the creative word, the utterance of Indra.28
The solar vision of the Poet encompasses in its might the wide Earth and Heaven, fuses them in supreme Delight in the womb of the Truth.29 The Earth is lifted up and given in marriage to Heaven in the home of Truth, for the creation and expression of the Truth in its varied beauty,cru citram.
The Poet creates forms of beauty in Heaven; but these forms are not made out of the void. It is the Earth that is raised to Heaven and transmuted into divine truth forms. The union of Earth and Heaven is the source of the Joy, the Ananda, that the Poet unseals and distributes. Heaven and Earth join and meet in the world of Delight; between them they press out Soma, the drink of the gods.
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All the gods are poetstheir forms are perfect, surpa, suda, their Names full of beauty,cru devasya nma.31 This means also that the gods embody the different powers that constitute the poetic consciousness. Agni is the Seer-Will, the creative vision of the Poet the luminous energy born of an experience by identity with the Truth. Indra is the Idea-Form, the architectonic conception of the work or achievement. Mitra and Varuna are the large harmony, the vast cadence and sweep of movement. The Aswins, the Divine Riders, represent the intense zest of well-yoked Life-Energy. Soma is Rasa, Ananda, the Supreme Bliss and Delight.
The Vedic Poet is doubtless the poet of Life, the architect of Divinity in man, of Heaven upon earth. But what is true of Life is fundamentally true of Art tooat least true of the Art as it was conceived by the ancient seers and as it found expression at their hands.32
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The Vedic term Kavi means literally 'a seer', 'one who has the vision', as the word 'poet' means etymologically 'a doer', 'a creator'. I have combined the two senses to equate the terms and bring out the meaning involved in their more current acceptation.
***
0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
May everyone who reads this new edition of A Garden of Pomegranates be encouraged and inspired to light his own candle of inner vision and begin his journey into the boundless space that lies within himself. Then, through realization of his true identity, each student can become a lamp unto his own path. And more. Awareness of the Truth of his being will rip asunder the veil of unknowing that has heretofore enshrouded the star he already is, permitting the brilliance of his light to illumine the darkness of that part of the Universe in which he abides.
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
THE FIRST vision OF KALI
GOD-INTOXICATED STATE
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Ten years after his coming to Kamarpukur, Khudiram made a pilgrimage on foot to Rameswar, at the southern extremity of India. Two years later was born his second son, whom he named Rameswar. Again in 1835, at the age of sixty, he made a pilgrimage, this time to Gaya. Here, from ancient times, Hindus have come from the four corners of India to discharge their duties to their departed ancestors by offering them food and drink at the sacred footprint of the Lord Vishnu. At this holy place Khudiram had a dream in which the Lord Vishnu promised to he born as his son. And Chandra Devi, too, in front of the Siva temple at Kamarpukur, had a vision indicating the birth of a divine child. Upon his return the husband found that she had conceived.
It was on February 18, 1836, that the child, to be known afterwards as Ramakrishna, was born. In memory of the dream at Gaya he was given the name of Gadadhar, the "Bearer of the Mace", an epithet of Vishnu. Three years later a little sister was born.
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About this time, on the Sivaratri night, consecrated to the worship of Siva, a dramatic performance was arranged. The principal actor, who was to play the part of Siva, suddenly fell ill, and Gadadhar was persuaded to act in his place. While friends were dressing him for the role of Siva — smearing his body with ashes, matting his locks, placing a trident in his hand and a string of rudraksha beads around his neck — the boy appeared to become absent-minded. He approached the stage with slow and measured step, supported by his friends. He looked the living image of Siva. The audience loudly applauded what it took to be his skill as an actor, but it was soon discovered that he was really lost in meditation. His countenance was radiant and tears flowed from his eyes. He was lost to the outer world. The effect of this scene on the audience was tremendous. The people felt blessed as by a vision of Siva Himself. The performance had to be stopped, and the boy's mood lasted till the following morning.
Gadadhar himself now organized a dramatic company with his young friends. The stage was set in the mango orchard. The themes were selected from the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Gadadhar knew by heart almost all the roles, having heard them from professional actors. His favourite theme was the Vrindavan episode of Krishna's life, depicting those exquisite love-stories of Krishna and the milkmaids and the cowherd boys. Gadadhar would play the parts of Radha or Krishna and would often lose himself in the character he was portraying. His natural feminine grace heightened the dramatic effect. The mango orchard would ring with the loud kirtan of the boys. Lost in song and merry-making, Gadadhar became indifferent to the routine of school.
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When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
Hindu society during the eighteenth century had been passing through a period of decadence. It was the twilight of the Mussalman rule. There were anarchy and confusion in all spheres. Superstitious practices dominated the religious life of the people. Rites and rituals passed for the essence of spirituality. Greedy priests became the custodians of heaven. True philosophy was supplanted by dogmatic opinions. The pundits took delight in vain polemics.
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--- THE FIRST vision OF KALI
And, indeed, he soon discovered what a strange Goddess he had chosen to serve. He became gradually enmeshed in the web of Her all-pervading presence. To the ignorant She is, to be sure, the image of destruction; but he found in Her the benign, all-loving Mother. Her neck is encircled with a garland of heads, and Her waist with a girdle of human arms, and two of Her hands hold weapons of death, and Her eyes dart a glance of fire; but, strangely enough, Ramakrishna felt in Her breath the soothing touch of tender love and saw in Her the Seed of Immortality. She stands on the bosom of Her Consort, Siva; it is because She is the Sakti, the Power, inseparable from the Absolute. She is surrounded by jackals and other unholy creatures, the denizens of the cremation ground. But is not the Ultimate Reality above holiness and unholiness? She appears to be reeling under the spell of wine. But who would create this mad world unless under the influence of a divine drunkenness? She is the highest symbol of all the forces of nature, the synthesis of their antinomies, the Ultimate Divine in the form of woman. She now became to Sri Ramakrishna the only Reality, and the world became an unsubstantial shadow. Into Her worship he poured his soul. Before him She stood as the transparent portal to the shrine of Ineffable Reality.
The worship in the temple intensified Sri Ramakrishna's yearning for a living vision of the Mother of the Universe. He began to spend in meditation the time not actually employed in the temple service; and for this purpose he selected an extremely solitary place. A deep jungle, thick with underbrush and prickly plants, lay to the north of the temples. Used at one time as a burial ground, it was shunned by people even during the day-time for fear of ghosts. There Sri Ramakrishna began to spend the whole night in meditation, returning to his room only in the morning with eyes swollen as though from much weeping. While meditating, he would lay aside his cloth and his brahminical thread. Explaining this strange conduct, he once said to Hriday: "Don't you know that when one thinks of God one should be freed from all ties? From our very birth we have the eight fetters of hatred, shame, lineage, pride of good conduct, fear, secretiveness, caste, and grief. The sacred thread reminds me that I am a brahmin and therefore superior to all. When calling on the Mother one has to set aside all such ideas." Hriday thought his uncle was becoming insane.
As his love for God deepened, he began either to forget or to drop the formalities of worship. Sitting before the image, he would spend hours singing the devotional songs of great devotees of the Mother, such as Kamalakanta and Ramprasad. Those rhapsodical songs, describing the direct vision of God, only intensified Sri Ramakrishna's longing. He felt the pangs of a child separated from its mother. Sometimes, in agony, he would rub his face against the ground and weep so bitterly that people, thinking he had lost his earthly mother, would sympathize with him in his grief. Sometimes, in moments of scepticism, he would cry: "Art Thou true, Mother, or is it all fiction — mere poetry without any reality? If Thou dost exist, why do I not see Thee? Is religion a mere fantasy and art Thou only a figment of man's imagination?" Sometimes he would sit on the prayer carpet for two hours like an inert object. He began to behave in an abnormal manner
, most of the time unconscious of the world. He almost gave up food; and sleep left him altogether.
But he did not have to wait very long. He has thus described his first vision of the Mother: "I felt as if my heart were being squeezed like a wet towel. I was overpowered with a great restlessness and a fear that it might not be my lot to realize Her in this life. I could not bear the separation from Her any longer. Life seemed to be not worth living. Suddenly my glance fell on the sword that was kept in the Mother's temple. I determined to put an end to my life. When I jumped up like a madman and seized it, suddenly the blessed Mother revealed Herself. The buildings with their different parts, the temple, and everything else vanished from my sight, leaving no trace whatsoever, and in their stead I saw a limitless, infinite, effulgent Ocean of Consciousness. As far as the eye could see, the shining billows were madly rushing at me from all sides with a terrific noise, to swallow me up! I was panting for breath. I was caught in the rush
and collapsed, unconscious. What was happening in the outside world I did not know; but within me there was a steady flow of undiluted bliss, altogether new, and I felt the presence of the Divine Mother." On his lips when he regained consciousness of the world was the word "Mother".
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Yet this was only a foretaste of the intense experiences to come. The first glimpse of the Divine Mother made him the more eager for Her uninterrupted vision. He wanted to see Her both in meditation and with eyes open. But the Mother began to play a teasing game of hide-and-seek with him, intensifying both his joy and his suffering. Weeping bitterly during the moments of separation from Her, he would pass into a trance and then find Her standing before him, smiling, talking, consoling, bidding him be of good cheer, and instructing him. During this period of spiritual practice he had many uncommon experiences. When he sat to meditate, he would hear strange clicking sounds in the joints of his legs, as if someone were locking them up, one after the other, to keep him motionless; and at the conclusion of his meditation he would again hear the same sounds, this time unlocking them and leaving him free to move about. He would see flashes like a swarm of fire-flies floating before his eyes, or a sea of deep mist around him, with luminous waves of molten silver. Again, from a sea of translucent mist he would behold the Mother rising, first Her feet, then Her waist, body, face, and head, finally Her whole person; he would feel Her breath and hear Her voice. Worshipping in the temple, sometimes he would become exalted, sometimes he would remain motionless as stone, sometimes he would almost collapse from excessive emotion. Many of his actions, contrary to all tradition, seemed sacrilegious to the people. He would take a flower and touch it to his own head, body, and feet, and then offer it to the Goddess. Or, like a drunkard, he would reel to the throne of the Mother, touch Her chin by way of showing his affection for Her, and sing, talk, joke, laugh, and dance. Or he would take a morsel of food from the plate and hold it to Her mouth, begging Her to eat it, and would not be satisfied till he was convinced that She had really eaten. After the Mother had been put to sleep at night, from his own room he would hear Her ascending to the upper storey of the temple with the light steps of a happy girl, Her anklets jingling. Then he would discover Her standing with flowing hair. Her black form silhouetted against the sky of the night, looking at the Ganges or at the distant lights of Calcutta.
Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
It is said that samadhi, or trance, no more than opens the portal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. For his meditation he built a place in the northern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of many of his visions.
As his spiritual mood deepened he more and more felt himself to be a child of the Divine Mother. He learnt to surrender himself completely to Her will and let Her direct him.
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His visions became deeper and more intimate. He no longer had to meditate to behold the Divine Mother. Even while retaining consciousness of the outer world, he would see Her as tangibly as the temples, the trees, the river, and the men around him.
On a certain occasion Mathur Babu stealthily entered the temple to watch the worship. He was profoundly moved by the young priest's devotion and sincerity. He realized that Sri Ramakrishna had transformed the stone image into the living Goddess.
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One of the painful ailments from which Sri Ramakrishna suffered at this time was a burning sensation in his body, and he was cured by a strange vision. During worship in the temple, following the scriptural injunctions, he would imagine the presence of the "sinner" in himself and the destruction of this "sinner". One day he was meditating in the Panchavati, when he saw come out of him a red-eyed man of black complexion, reeling like a drunkard. Soon there emerged from him another person, of serene countenance, wearing the ochre cloth of a sannyasi and carrying in his hand a trident. The second person attacked the first and killed him with the trident. Thereafter Sri Ramakrishna was free of his pain.
About this time he began to worship God by assuming the attitude of a servant toward his master. He imitated the mood of Hanuman, the monkey chieftain of the Ramayana, the ideal servant of Rama and traditional model for this self-effacing form of devotion. When he meditated on Hanuman his movements and his way of life began to resemble those of a monkey. His eyes became restless. He lived on fruits and roots. With his cloth tied around his waist, a portion of it hanging in the form of a tail, he jumped from place to place instead of walking. And after a short while he was blessed with a vision of Sita, the divine consort of Rama, who entered his body and disappeared there with the words, "I bequeath to you my smile."
Mathur had faith in the sincerity of Sri Ramakrishna's spiritual zeal, but began now to doubt his sanity. He had watched him jumping about like a monkey. One day, when Rani Rasmani was listening to Sri Ramakrishna's singing in the temple, the young priest abruptly turned and slapped her. Apparently listening to his song, she had actually been thinking of a law-suit. She accepted the punishment as though the Divine Mother Herself had imposed it; but Mathur was distressed. He begged Sri Ramakrishna to keep his feelings under control and to heed the conventions of society. God Himself, he argued, follows laws. God never permitted, for instance, flowers of two colours to grow on the same stalk. The following day Sri Ramakrishna presented Mathur Babu with two hibiscus flowers growing on the same stalk, one red and one white.
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One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Shortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the floor and filling the space before me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
A garbled report of Sri Ramakrishna's failing health, indifference to worldly life, and various abnormal activities reached Kamarpukur and filled the heart of his poor mother with anguish. At her repeated request he returned to his village for a change of air. But his boyhood friends did not interest him any more. A divine fever was consuming him. He spent a great part of the day and night in one of the cremation grounds, in meditation. The place reminded him of the impermanence of the human body, of human hopes and achievements. It also reminded him of Kali, the Goddess of destruction.
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Hardly had he crossed the threshold of the Kali temple when he found himself again in the whirlwind. His madness reappeared tenfold. The same meditation and prayer, the same ecstatic moods, the same burning sensation, the same weeping, the same sleeplessness, the same indifference to the body and the outside world, the same divine delirium. He subjected himself to fresh disciplines in order to eradicate greed and lust, the two great impediments to spiritual progress. With a rupee in one hand and some earth in the other, he would reflect on the comparative value of these two for the realization of God, and finding them equally worthless he would toss them, with equal indifference, into the Ganges. Women he regarded as the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Never even in a dream did he feel the impulses of lust. And to root out of his mind the idea of caste superiority, he cleaned a pariahs house with his long and neglected hair. When he would sit in meditation, birds would perch on his head and peck in his hair for grains of food. Snakes would crawl over his body, and neither would be aware of the other. Sleep left him altogether. Day and night, visions flitted before him. He saw the sannyasi who had previously killed the "sinner" in him again coming out of his body, threatening him with the trident, and ordering him to concentrate on God. Or the same sannyasi would visit distant places, following a luminous path, and bring him reports of what was happening there. Sri Ramakrishna used to say later that in the case of an advanced devotee the mind itself becomes the guru, living and moving like an embodied being.
Rani Rasmani, the foundress of the temple garden, passed away in 1861. After her death her son-in-law Mathur became the sole executor of the estate. He placed himself and his resources at the disposal of Sri Ramakrishna and began to look after his physical comfort. Sri Ramakrishna later spoke of him as one of his five "suppliers of stores" appointed by the Divine Mother. Whenever a desire arose in his mind, Mathur fulfilled it without hesitation.
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Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visitor with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
Very soon a tender relationship sprang up between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmani, she looking upon him as the Baby Krishna, and he upon her as mother. Day after day she watched his ecstasy during the kirtan and meditation, his samadhi, his mad yearning; and she recognized in him a power to transmit spirituality to others. She came to the conclusion that such things were not possible for an ordinary devotee, not even for a highly developed soul. Only an Incarnation of God was capable of such spiritual manifestations. She proclaimed openly that Sri Ramakrishna, like Sri Chaitanya, was an Incarnation of God.
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Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
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He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds. He heard the Anahata Sabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes. He acquired the eight supernatural powers of yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit. He had a vision of the divine Maya, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed. In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati. Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws, and crushed it. Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.
But the most remarkable experience during this period was the awakening of the Kundalini Sakti, the "Serpent Power". He actually saw the Power, at first lying asleep at the bottom of the spinal column, then waking up and ascending along the mystic Sushumna canal and through its six centres, or lotuses, to the Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus in the top of the head. He further saw that as the Kundalini went upward the different lotuses bloomed. And this phenomenon was accompanied by visions and trances. Later on he described to his disciples and devotees the various movements of the Kundalini: the fishlike, birdlike, monkeylike, and so on. The awaken- ing of the Kundalini is the beginning of spiritual consciousness, and its union with Siva in the Sahasrara, ending in samadhi, is the consummation of the Tantrik disciplines.
About this time it was revealed to him that in a short while many devotees would seek his guidance.
--
Vaishnavism is exclusively a religion of bhakti. Bhakti is intense love of God, attachment to Him alone; it is of the nature of bliss and bestows upon the lover immortality and liberation. God, according to Vaishnavism, cannot be realized through logic or reason; and, without bhakti, all penances, austerities and rites are futile. Man cannot realize God by self-exertion alone. For the vision of God His grace is absolutely necessary, and this grace is felt by the pure of heart. The mind is to be purified through bhakti. The pure mind then remains for ever immersed in the ecstasy of God- vision. It is the cultivation of this divine love that is the chief concern of the Vaishnava religion.
There are three kinds of formal devotion: tamasic, rajasic, and sattvic. If a person, while showing devotion, to God, is actuated by malevolence, arrogance, jealousy, or anger, then his devotion is tamasic, since it is influenced by tamas, the quality of inertia. If he worships God from a desire for fame or wealth, or from any other worldly ambition, then his devotion is rajasic, since it is influenced by rajas, the quality of activity. But if a person loves God without any thought of material gain, if he performs his duties to please God alone and maintains toward all created beings the attitude of friendship, then his devotion is called sattvic, since it is influenced by sattva, the quality of harmony. But the highest devotion transcends the three gunas, or qualities, being a spontaneous, uninterrupted inclination of the mind toward God, the Inner Soul of all beings; and it wells up in the heart of a true devotee as soon as he hears the name of God or mention of God's attributes. A devotee possessed of this love would not accept the happiness of heaven if it were offered him. His one desire is to love God under all conditions — in pleasure and pain, life and death, honour and dishonour, prosperity and adversity.
--
One day Jatadhari requested Sri Ramakrishna to keep the image and bade him adieu with tearful eyes. He declared that Ramlala had fulfilled his innermost prayer and that he now had no more need of formal worship. A few days later Sri Ramakrishna was blessed through Ramlala with a vision of Ramachandra, whereby he realized that the Rama of the Ramayana, the son of Dasaratha, pervades the whole universe as Spirit and Consciousness; that He is its Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer; that, in still another aspect, He is the transcendental Brahman, without form, attribute, or name.
While worshipping Ramlala as the Divine Child, Sri Ramakrishna's heart became filled with motherly tenderness, and he began to regard himself as a woman. His speech and gestures changed. He began to move freely with the ladies of Mathur's family, who now looked upon him as one of their own sex. During this time he worshipped the Divine Mother as Her companion or handmaid.
--
The Vaishnava scriptures advise one to propitiate Radha and obtain her grace in order to realize Sri Krishna. So the tortured devotee now turned his prayer to her. Within a short time he enjoyed her blessed vision. He saw and felt the figure of Radha disappearing into his own body.
He said later on: "It is impossible to describe the heavenly beauty and sweetness of Radha. Her very appearance showed that she had completely forgotten herself in her passionate attachment to Krishna. Her complexion was a light yellow."
--
The love of Radha is the precursor of the resplendent vision of Sri Krishna, and Sri Ramakrishna soon experienced that vision. The enchanting ing form of Krishna appeared to him and merged in his person. He became Krishna; he totally forgot his own individuality and the world; he saw Krishna in himself and in the universe. Thus he attained to the fulfilment of the worship of the Personal God. He drank from the fountain of Immortal Bliss. The agony of his heart vanished forever. He realized Amrita, Immortality, beyond the shadow of death.
One day, listening to a recitation of the Bhagavata on the verandah of the Radhakanta temple, he fell into a divine mood and saw the enchanting form of Krishna. He perceived the luminous rays issuing from Krishna's Lotus Feet in the form of a stout rope, which touched first the Bhagavata and then his own chest, connecting all three — God, the scripture, and the devotee. "After this vision", he used to say, "I came to realize that Bhagavan, Bhakta, and Bhagavata — God, Devotee, and Scripture — are in reality one and the same."
--- VEDANTA
The Brahmani was the enthusiastic teacher and astonished beholder of Sri Ramakrishna in his spiritual progress. She became proud of the achievements of her unique pupil. But the pupil himself was not permitted to rest; his destiny beckoned him forward. His Divine Mother would allow him no respite till he had left behind the entire realm of duality with its visions, experiences, and ecstatic dreams. But for the new ascent the old tender guides would not suffice. The Brahmani, on whom he had depended for, three years, saw her son escape from her to follow the command of a teacher with masculine strength, a sterner mien, a gnarled physique, and a virile voice. The new guru was a wandering monk, the sturdy Totapuri, whom Sri Ramakrishna learnt to address affectionately as Nangta, the "Naked One", because of his total renunciation of all earthly objects and attachments, including even a piece of wearing cloth.
Totapuri was the bearer of a philosophy new to Sri Ramakrishna, the non-dualistic Vedanta philosophy, whose conclusions Totapuri had experienced in his own life. This ancient Hindu system designates the Ultimate Reality as Brahman, also described as Satchidananda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute. Brahman is the only Real Existence. In It there is no time, no space, no causality, no multiplicity. But through maya, Its inscrutable Power, time, space, and causality are created and the One appears to break into the many. The eternal Spirit appears as a manifold of individuals endowed with form and subject to the conditions of time. The Immortal becomes a victim of birth and death. The Changeless undergoes change. The sinless Pure Soul, hypnotized by Its own maya, experiences the joys of heaven and the pains of hell. But these experiences based on the duality of the subject-object relationship are unreal. Even the vision of a Personal God
is, ultimately speaking, as illusory as the experience of any other object. Man attains his liberation, therefore, by piercing the veil of maya and rediscovering his total identity with Brahman. Knowing himself to be one with the Universal Spirit, he realizes ineffable Peace. Only then does he go beyond the fiction of birth and death; only then does he become immortal. 'And this is the ultimate goal of all religions — to dehypnotize the soul now hypnotized by its own ignorance.
--
Thus, after nirvikalpa samadhi, Sri Ramakrishna realized maya in an altogether new role. The binding aspect of Kali vanished from before his vision. She no longer obscured his understanding. The world became the glorious manifestation of the Divine Mother. Maya became Brahman. The Transcendental Itself broke through the Immanent. Sri Ramakrishna discovered that maya operates in the relative world in two ways, and he termed these "avidyamaya" and "vidyamaya". Avidyamaya represents the dark forces of creation: sensuous desires, evil passions, greed, lust, cruelty, and so on. It sustains the world system on the lower planes. It is responsible for the round of man's birth and death. It must be fought and vanquished. But vidyamaya is the higher force of creation: the spiritual virtues, the enlightening qualities, kindness, purity, love, devotion. Vidyamaya elevates man to the higher planes of consciousness. With the help of vidyamaya the devotee rids himself of avidyamaya; he then becomes mayatita, free of maya. The two aspects of maya are the two forces of creation, the two powers of Kali; and She stands beyond them both. She is like the effulgent sun, bringing into existence and shining through and standing behind the clouds of different colours and shapes, conjuring up wonderful forms in the blue autumn heaven.
The Divine Mother asked Sri Ramakrishna not to be lost in the featureless Absolute but to remain, in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness, the border line between the Absolute and the Relative. He was to keep himself at the "sixth centre" of Tantra, from which he could see not only the glory of the seventh, but also the divine manifestations of the Kundalini in the lower centres. He gently oscillated back and forth across the dividing line. Ecstatic devotion to the Divine Mother alternated with serene absorption in the Ocean of Absolute Unity. He thus bridged the gulf between the Personal and the Impersonal, the immanent and the transcendent aspects of Reality. This is a unique experience in the recorded spiritual history of the world.
--
From now on Sri Ramakrishna began to seek the company of devotees and holy men. He had gone through the storm and stress of spiritual disciplines and visions. Now he realized an inner calmness and appeared to others as a normal person. But he could not bear the company of worldly people or listen to their talk. Fortunately the holy atmosphere of Dakshineswar and the liberality of Mathur attracted monks and holy men from all parts of the country. Sadhus of all denominations — monists and dualists, Vaishnavas and Vedantists, Saktas and worshippers of Rama — flocked there in ever increasing numbers. Ascetics and visionaries came to seek Sri Ramakrishna's advice. Vaishnavas had come during the period of his Vaishnava sadhana, and Tantriks when he practised the disciplines of Tantra. Vedantists began to arrive after the departure of Totapuri. In the room of Sri Ramakrishna, who was then in bed with dysentery, the Vedantists engaged in scriptural discussions, and, forgetting his own physical suffering, he solved their doubts by referring directly to his own experiences. Many of the visitors were genuine spiritual souls, the unseen pillars of Hinduism, and their spiritual lives were quickened in no small measure by the sage of Dakshineswar. Sri Ramakrishna in turn learnt from them anecdotes concerning the ways and the conduct of holy men, which he subsequently narrated to his devotees and disciples. At his request Mathur provided him with large stores of food-stuffs, clothes, and so forth, for distribution among the wandering monks.
"Sri Ramakrishna had not read books, yet he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of religions and religious philosophies. This he acquired from his contacts with innumerable holy men and scholars. He had a unique power of assimilation; through meditation he made this knowledge a part of his being. Once, when he was asked by a disciple about the source of his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge, he replied; "I have not read; but I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge, wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother."
--
Toward the end of 1866 he began to practise the disciplines of Islam. Under the direction of his Mussalman guru he abandoned himself to his new sadhana. He dressed as a Mussalman and repeated the name of Allah. His prayers took the form of the Islamic devotions. He forgot the Hindu gods and goddesses — even Kali — and gave up visiting the temples. He took up his residence outside the temple precincts. After three days he saw the vision of a radiant figure, perhaps Mohammed. This figure gently approached him and finally lost himself in Sri Ramakrishna. Thus he realized the Mussalman God. Thence he passed into communion with Brahman. The mighty river of Islam also led him back to the Ocean of the Absolute.
--- CHRISTIANITY
Eight years later, some time in November 1874, Sri Ramakrishna was seized with an irresistible desire to learn the truth of the Christian religion. He began to listen to readings from the Bible, by Sambhu Charan Mallick, a gentleman of Calcutta and a devotee of the Master. Sri Ramakrishna became fascinated by the life and teachings of Jesus. One day he was seated in the parlour of Jadu Mallick's garden house (This expression is used throughout to translate the Bengali word denoting a rich man's country house set in a garden.) at Dakshineswar, when his eyes became fixed on a painting of the Madonna and Child. Intently watching it, he became gradually overwhelmed with divine emotion. The figures in the picture took on life, and the rays of light emanating from them entered his soul. The effect of this experience was stronger than that of the vision of Mohammed. In dismay he cried out, "O Mother! What are You doing to me?" And, breaking through the barriers of creed and religion, he entered a new realm of ecstasy. Christ possessed his soul. For three days he did not set foot in the Kali temple. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, as he was walking in the Panchavati, he saw coming toward him a person with beautiful large eyes, serene countenance, and fair skin. As the two faced each other, a voice rang out in the depths of Sri Ramakrishna's soul: "Behold the Christ, who shed His heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the Master Yogi, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love Incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the Son of the Divine Mother and merged in him. Sri Ramakrishna krishna realized his identity with Christ, as he had already realized his identity with Kali, Rama, Hanuman, Radha, Krishna, Brahman, and Mohammed. The Master went into samadhi and communed with the Brahman with attributes. Thus he experienced the truth that Christianity, too, was a path leading to God-Consciousness. Till the last moment of his life he believed that Christ was an Incarnation of God. But Christ, for him, was not the only Incarnation; there were others — Buddha, for instance, and Krishna.
--- ATTITUDE TOWARD DIFFERENT RELIGIONS
--
Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woman saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
On the return journey Mathur wanted to visit Gaya, but Sri Ramakrishna declined to go. He recalled his father's vision at Gaya before his own birth and felt that in the temple of Vishnu he would become permanently absorbed in God. Mathur, honouring the Master's wish, returned with his party to Calcutta.
From Vrindavan the Master had brought a handful of dust. Part of this he scattered in the Panchavati; the rest he buried in the little hut where he had practised meditation. "Now this place", he said, "is as sacred as Vrindavan."
In 1870 the Master went on a pilgrimage to Nadia, the birth-place of Sri Chaitanya. As the boat by which he travelled approached the sand-bank close to Nadia, Sri Ramakrishna had a vision of the "two brothers", Sri Chaitanya and his companion Nityananda, "bright as molten gold" and with haloes, rushing to greet him with uplifted hands. "There they come! There they come!" he cried. They entered his body and he went into a deep trance.
--- RELATION WITH HIS WIFE
--
To those who became his intimate disciples the Master was a friend, companion, and playmate. Even the chores of religious discipline would be lightened in his presence. The devotees would be so inebriated with pure joy in his company that they would have no time to ask themselves whether he was an Incarnation, a perfect soul, or a yogi. His very presence was a great teaching; words were superfluous. In later years his disciples remarked that while they were with him they would regard him as a comrade, but afterwards would tremble to think of their frivolities in the presence of such a great person. They had convincing proof that the Master could, by his mere wish, kindle in their hearts the love of God and give them His vision.
Through all this fun and frolic, this merriment and frivolity, he always kept before them the shining ideal of God-Consciousness and the path of renunciation. He prescribed ascents steep or graded according to the powers of the climber. He permitted no compromise with the basic principles of purity. An aspirant had to keep his body, mind, senses, and soul unspotted; had to have a sincere love for God and an ever mounting spirit of yearning. The rest would be done by the Mother.
--
The first of these young men to come to the Master was Latu. Born of obscure parents, in Behar, he came to Calcutta in search of work and was engaged by Ramchandra Dutta as house-boy. Learning of the saintly Sri Ramakrishna, he visited the Master at Dakshineswar and was deeply touched by his cordiality. When he was about to leave, the Master asked him to take some money and return home in a boat or carriage. But Latu declared he had a few pennies and jingled the coins in his pocket. Sri Ramakrishna later requested Ram to allow Latu to stay with him permanently. Under Sri Ramakrishna's guidance Latu made great progress in meditation and was blessed with ecstatic visions, but all the efforts of the Master to give him a smattering of education failed. Latu was very fond of kirtan and other devotional songs but remained all his life illiterate.
--- RAKHAL
Even before Rakhal's coming to Dakshineswar, the Master had had visions of him as his spiritual son and as a playmate of Krishna at Vrindavan. Rakhal was born of wealthy parents. During his childhood he developed wonderful spiritual traits and used to play at worshipping gods and goddesses. In his teens he was married to a sister of Manomohan Mitra, from whom he first heard of the Master. His father objected to his association with Sri Ramakrishna but afterwards was reassured to find that many celebrated people were visitors at Dakshineswar. The relationship between the Master and this beloved disciple was that of mother and child. Sri Ramakrishna allowed Rakhal many liberties denied to others. But he would not hesitate to chastise the boy for improper actions. At one time Rakhal felt a childlike jealousy because he found that other boys were receiving the Master's affection. He soon got over it and realized his guru as the Guru of the whole universe. The Master was worried to hear of his marriage, but was relieved to find that his wife was a spiritual soul who would not be a hindrance to his progress.
--- THE ELDER GOPAL
--
To spread his message to the four corners of the earth Sri Ramakrishna needed a strong instrument. With his frail body and delicate limbs he could not make great journeys across wide spaces. And such an instrument was found in Narendranath Dutta, his beloved Naren, later known to the world as Swami Vivekananda. Even before meeting Narendranath, the Master had seen him in a vision as a sage, immersed in the meditation of the Absolute, who at Sri Ramakrishna's request had agreed to take human birth to assist him in his work.
Narendra was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863, of an aristocratic kayastha family. His mother was steeped in the great Hindu epics, and his father, a distinguished attorney of the Calcutta High Court, was an agnostic about religion, a friend of the poor, and a mocker at social conventions. Even in his boyhood and youth Narendra possessed great physical courage and presence of mind, a vivid imagination, deep power of thought, keen intelligence, an extraordinary memory, a love of truth, a passion for purity, a spirit of independence, and a tender heart. An expert musician, he also acquired proficiency in physics, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, history, and literature. He grew up into an extremely handsome young man. Even as a child he practised meditation and showed great power of concentration. Though free and passionate in word and action, he took the vow of austere religious chastity and never allowed the fire of purity to be extinguished by the slightest defilement of body or soul.
--
A few more meetings completely removed from Narendra's mind the last traces of the notion that Sri Ramakrishna might be a monomaniac or wily hypnotist. His integrity, purity, renunciation, and unselfishness were beyond question. But Narendra could not accept a man, an imperfect mortal, as his guru. As a member of the Brahmo Samaj, he could not believe that a human intermediary was necessary between man and God. Moreover, he openly laughed at Sri Ramakrishna's visions as hallucinations. Yet in the secret chamber of his heart he bore a great love for the Master.
Sri Ramakrishna was grateful to the Divine Mother for sending him one who doubted his own realizations. Often he asked Narendra to test him as the money-changers test their coins. He laughed at Narendra's biting criticism of his spiritual experiences and samadhi. When at times Narendra's sharp words distressed him, the Divine Mother Herself would console him, saying: "Why do you listen to him? In a few days he will believe your every word." He could hardly bear Narendra's absences. Often he would weep bitterly for the sight of him. Sometimes Narendra would find the Master's love embarrassing; and one day he sharply scolded him, warning him that such infatuation would soon draw him down to the level of its object. The Master was distressed and prayed to the Divine Mother. Then he said to Narendra: "You rogue, I won't listen to you any more. Mother says that I love you because I see God in you, and the day I no longer see God in you I shall not be able to bear even the sight of you."
--
Kaliprasad visited the Master toward the end of 1883. Given to the practice of meditation and the study of the scriptures. Kali was particularly interested in yoga. Feeling the need of a guru in spiritual life, he came to the Master and was accepted as a disciple. The young boy possessed a rational mind and often felt sceptical about the Personal God. The Master said to him: "Your doubts will soon disappear. Others, too, have passed through such a state of mind. Look at Naren. He now weeps at the names of Radha and Krishna." Kali began to see visions of gods and goddesses. Very soon these disappeared and in meditation he experienced vastness, infinity, and the other attributes of the Impersonal Brahman.
--- SUBODH
--
She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
--
It was noticed at this time that some of the devotees were making an unbridled display of their emotions. A number of them, particularly among the householders, began to cultivate, though at first unconsciously, the art of shedding tears, shaking the body, contorting the face, and going into trances, attempting thereby to imitate the Master. They began openly to declare Sri Ramakrishna a Divine Incarnation and to regard themselves as his chosen people, who could neglect religious disciplines with impunity. Narendra's penetrating eye soon sized up the situation. He found out that some of these external manifestations were being carefully practised at home, while some were the outcome of malnutrition, mental weakness, or nervous debility. He mercilessly exposed the devotees who were pretending to have visions, and asked all to develop a healthy religious spirit. Narendra sang inspiring songs for the younger devotees, read with them the Imitation of Christ and the Gita, and held before them the positive ideals of spirituality.
--- LAST DAYS AT COSSIPORE
--
"I shall make the whole thing public before I go", the Master had said some time before. On January 1, 1886, he felt better and came down to the garden for a little stroll. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Some thirty lay disciples were in the hall or sitting about under the trees. Sri Ramakrishna said to Girish, "Well, Girish, what have you seen in me, that you proclaim me before everybody as an Incarnation of God?" Girish was not the man to be taken by surprise. He knelt before the Master and said, with folded hands, "What can an insignificant person like myself say about the One whose glory even sages like Vyasa and Valmiki could not adequately measure?" The Master was profoundly moved. He said: "What more shall I say? I bless you all. Be illumined!" He fell into a spiritual mood. Hearing these words the devotees, one and all, became overwhelmed with emotion. They rushed to him and fell at his feet. He touched them all, and each received an appropriate benediction. Each of them, at the touch of the Master, experienced ineffable bliss. Some laughed, some wept, some sat down to meditate, some began to pray. Some saw light, some had visions of their Chosen Ideals, and some felt within their bodies the rush of spiritual power.
Narendra, consumed with a terrific fever for realization, complained to the Master that all the others had attained peace and that he alone was dissatisfied. The Master asked what he wanted. Narendra begged for samadhi, so that he might altogether forget the world for three or four days at a time. "You are a fool", the Master rebuked him. "There is a state even higher than that. Isn't it you who sing, 'All that exists art Thou'? First of all settle your family affairs and then come to me. You will experience a state even higher than samadhi."
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
blazed upon my spiritual vision. From that moment
the O.T.O. assumed its proper importance in my
--
Aethyr (see The vision and The Voice).
[19]
--
The vision and The Voice (Liber 418). The Eqx.,
I, v. Reprint, Barstow, Cal., 1952, with Com-
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The reader will find mentioned in this work many visions and experiences that fall outside the ken of physical science and even psychology. With the development of modern knowledge the border line between the natural and the supernatural is ever shifting its position. Genuine mystical experiences are not as suspect now as they were half a century ago. The words of Sri Ramakrishna have already exerted a tremendous influence in the land of his birth. Savants of Europe have found in his words the ring of universal truth.
But these words were not the product of intellectual cogitation; they were rooted in direct experience. Hence, to students of religion, psychology, and physical science, these experiences of the Master are of immense value for the understanding of religious phenomena in general. No doubt Sri Ramakrishna was a Hindu of the Hindus; yet his experiences transcended the limits of the dogmas and creeds of Hinduism. Mystics of religions other than Hinduism will find in Sri Ramakrishna's experiences a corroboration of the experiences of their own prophets and seers. And this is very important today for the resuscitation of religious values. The sceptical reader may pass by the supernatural experiences; he will yet find in the book enough material to provoke his serious thought and solve many of his spiritual problems.
--
May it enable seekers of Truth to grasp the subtle laws of the supersensuous realm, and unfold before man's restricted vision the spiritual foundation of the universe, the unity of existence, and the divinity of the soul!
- Sw mi Nikhilnanda
0.01f - FOREWARD, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
sciousness, that is to say in vision. And that, doubtless, is why the
history of the living world can be summarised as the elaboration
--
valleys) from which, not only his vision, but things themselves
radiate? In that event the subjective viewpoint coincides with
--
really to become more, if vision is really fuller being, then we
should look closely at man in order to increase our capacity to
--
Without these qualities to illuminate our vision, man will
remain indefinitely for us whatever is done to make us see
--
disjointed world. Conversely, we have only to rid our vision of
the threefold illusion of smallness, plurality and immobility, for
--
In such a vision man is seen not as a static centre of the world
as he for long believed himself to be but as the axis and
0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The Evening Talks collected here may afford to the outside world a glimpse of his external personality and give the seeker some idea of its richness, its many-sidedness, its uniqueness. One can also form some notion of Sri Aurobindo's personality from the books in which the height, the universal sweep and clear vision of his integral ideal and thought can be seen. His writings are, in a sense, the best representative of his mental personality. The versatile nature of his genius, the penetrating power of his intellect, his extraordinary power of expression, his intense sincerity, his utter singleness of purpose all these can be easily felt by any earnest student of his works. He may discover even in the realm of mind that Sri Aurobindo brings the unlimited into the limited. Another side of his dynamic personality is represented by the Ashram as an institution. But the outer, if one may use the phrase, the human side of his personality, is unknown to the outside world because from 1910 to 1950 a span of forty years he led a life of outer retirement. No doubt, many knew about his staying at Pondicherry and practising some kind of very special Yoga to the mystery of which they had no access. To some, perhaps, he was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as 'public', 'altruistic' or 'beneficial'. Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind in general. His outward non-participation in public life was construed by many as lack of love for humanity.
But those who knew him during the days of the national awakening from 1900 to 1910 could not have these doubts. And even these initial misunderstandings and false notions of others began to evaporate with the growth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1927 onwards. The large number of books published by the Ashram also tended to remove the idea of the other-worldliness of his Yoga and the absence of any good by it to mankind.
0.01 - Life and Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
God. Therefore we see in India that a sharp incompatibility has been created between life in the world and spiritual growth and perfection, and although the tradition and ideal of a victorious harmony between the inner attraction and the outer demand remains, it is little or else very imperfectly exemplified. In fact, when a man turns his vision and energy inward and enters on the path of Yoga, he is popularly supposed to be lost inevitably to the great stream of our collective existence and the secular effort of humanity. So strongly has the idea prevailed, so much has it been emphasised by prevalent philosophies and religions that to escape from life is now commonly considered as not only the necessary condition, but the general object of Yoga. No synthesis of Yoga can be satisfying which does not, in its aim, reunite God and Nature in a liberated and perfected human life or, in its method, not only permit but favour the harmony of our inner and outer activities and experiences in the divine consummation of both. For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower. To avoid the life which is given him for the realisation of that possibility, can never be either the indispensable condition or the whole and ultimate object of his supreme endeavour or of his most powerful means of self-fulfilment. It can only be a temporary necessity under certain conditions or a specialised extreme effort imposed on the individual so as to prepare a greater general possibility for the race. The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious
Yoga in man becomes, like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly conterminous with life itself and we can once more, looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is Yoga."
0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Guru-griha-vsa staying in the home of the Guru is a very old Indian ideal maintained by seekers through the ages. The Aranyakas the ancient teachings in the forest-groves are perhaps the oldest records of the institution. It was not for education in the modern sense of the term that men went to live with the Guru; for the Guru is not a 'teacher'. The Guru is one who is 'enlightened', who is a seer, a Rishi, one who has the vision of and has lived the Truth. He has, thus, the knowledge of the goal of human life and has learnt true values in life by living the Truth. He can impart both these to the willing seeker. In ancient times seekers went to the Guru with many questions, difficulties and doubts but also with earnestness. Their questions were preliminary to the quest.
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I believe in the superiority of the inner vision over the outer
vision and this belief is based not merely on theoretical knowledge but on the thousands of examples I have come across in
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thing is good or not, because my vision is limited.
I never said that you should be the judge. I agree to be the judge
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My dear child, this is certainly a most unexpected way of interpreting this vision. I hadn't given it that meaning at all. The
images in these visions are always symbolic and should be taken
as such.
0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the gulf between actual life and the temperament of the thinker is too great, we see as the result a sort of withdrawing of the Mind from life in order to act with a greater freedom in its own sphere. The poet living among his brilliant visions, the artist absorbed in his art, the philosopher thinking out the problems of the intellect in his solitary chamber, the scientist, the scholar caring only for their studies and their experiments, were often in former days, are even now not unoften the Sannyasins of the intellect. To the work they have done for humanity, all its past bears record.
But such seclusion is justified only by some special activity.
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That highest thing, the spiritual existence, is concerned with what is eternal but not therefore entirely aloof from the transient. For the spiritual man the mind's dream of perfect beauty is realised in an eternal love, beauty and delight that has no dependence and is equal behind all objective appearances; its dream of perfect Truth in the supreme, self-existent, self-apparent and eternal Verity which never varies, but explains and is the secret of all variations and the goal of all progress; its dream of perfect action in the omnipotent and self-guiding Law that is inherent for ever in all things and translates itself here in the rhythm of the worlds. What is fugitive vision or constant effort of creation in the brilliant Self is an eternally existing Reality in the Self that knows2 and is the Lord.
But if it is often difficult for the mental life to accommodate itself to the dully resistant material activity, how much more difficult must it seem for the spiritual existence to live on in a world that appears full not of the Truth but of every lie and illusion, not of Love and Beauty but of an encompassing discord and ugliness, not of the Law of Truth but of victorious selfishness and sin? Therefore the spiritual life tends easily in the saint and Sannyasin to withdraw from the material existence and reject it either wholly and physically or in the spirit. It sees this world as the kingdom of evil or of ignorance and the eternal and divine either in a far-off heaven or beyond where there is no world and no life. It separates itself inwardly, if not also physically, from the world's impurities; it asserts the spiritual reality in a spotless isolation. This withdrawal renders an invaluable service to the material life itself by forcing it to regard and even to bow down to something that is the direct negation of its own petty ideals, sordid cares and egoistic self-content.
But the work in the world of so supreme a power as spiritual force cannot be thus limited. The spiritual life also can return upon the material and use it as a means of its own greater fullness. Refusing to be blinded by the dualities, the appearances, it can seek in all appearances whatsoever the vision of the same Lord, the same eternal Truth, Beauty, Love, Delight. The
Vedantic formula of the Self in all things, all things in the Self and all things as becomings of the Self is the key to this richer and all-embracing Yoga.
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The widest synthesis of perfection possible to thought is the sole effort entirely worthy of those whose dedicated vision perceives that God dwells concealed in humanity.
0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
of my heart so that I may be blessed with a vision
of your soul-captivating Presence in the full glory of
01.01 - The New Humanity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This mastery will be effected not merely in will, but in mind and heart also. For the New Man will know not by the intellect which is egocentric and therefore limited, not by ratiocination which is an indirect and doubtful process, but by direct vision, an inner communion, a soul revelation. The new knowledge will be vast and profound and creative, based as it will be upon the reality of things and not upon their shadows. Truth will shine through every experience and every utterance"a truth shall have its seat on our speech and mind and hearing", so have the Vedas said. The mind and intellect will not be active and constructive agents but the luminous channel of a self-luminous knowledge. And the heart too which is now the field of passion and egoism will be cleared of its noise and obscurity; a serener sky will shed its pure warmth and translucent glow. The knot will be rent asunderbhidyate hridaya granthih and the vast and mighty streams of another ocean will flow through. We will love not merely those to whom we are akin but God's creatures, one and all; we will love not with the yearning and hunger of a mortal but with the wide and intense Rasa that lies in the divine identity of souls.
And the new society will be based not upon competition, nor even upon co-operation. It will not be an open conflict, neither will it be a convenient compromise of rival individual interests. It will be the organic expression of the collective soul of humanity, working and achieving through each and every individual soul its most wide-winging freedom, manifesting the godhead that is, proper to each and every one. It will be an organisation, most delicate and subtle and supple, the members of which will have no need to live upon one another but in and through one another. It will be, if you like, a henotheistic hierarchy in which everyone will be the greatest, since everyone is all and all everyone simultaneously.
01.01 - The Symbol Dawn, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On life's thin border awhile the vision stood
And bent over earth's pondering forehead curve.
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Here too the vision and prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;
01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first contact that one has with this static supra-reality is through the higher ranges of the mind: a direct and closer communion is established through a plane which is just above the mind the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it. The Overmind dissolves or transcends the ego-consciousness which limits the being to its individualised formation bounded by an outward and narrow frame or sheath of mind, life and body; it reveals the universal Self and Spirit, the cosmic godhead and its myriad forces throwing up myriad forms; the world-existence there appears as a play of ever-shifting veils upon the face of one ineffable reality, as a mysterious cycle of perpetual creation and destructionit is the overwhelming vision given by Sri Krishna to Arjuna in the Gita. At the same time, the initial and most intense experience which this cosmic consciousness brings is the extreme relativity, contingency and transitoriness of the whole flux, and a necessity seems logically and psychologically imperative to escape into the abiding substratum, the ineffable Absoluteness.
This has been the highest consummation, the supreme goal which the purest spiritual experience and the deepest aspiration of the human consciousness generally sought to attain. But in this view, the world or creation or Nature came in the end to be looked upon as fundamentally a product of Ignorance: ignorance and suffering and incapacity and death were declared to be the very hallmark of things terrestrial. The Light that dwells above and beyond can be made to shed for a while some kind of lustre upon the mortal darkness but never altogether to remove or change itto live in the full light, to be in and of the Light means to pass beyond. Not that there have not been other strands and types of spiritual experiences and aspirations, but the one we are considering has always struck the major chord and dominated and drowned all the rest.
01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the world that Sri Aurobindo sees and creates? Poetry is after all passion. By passion I do not mean the fury of emotion nor the fume of sentimentalism, but what lies behind at their source, what lends them the force they have the sense of the "grandly real," the vivid and pulsating truth. What then is the thing that Sri Aurobindo has visualised, has endowed with a throbbing life and made a poignant reality? Victor Hugo said: Attachez Dieu au gibet, vous avez la croixTie God to the gibbet, you have the cross. Even so, infuse passion into a thing most prosaic, you create sublime poetry out of it. What is the dead matter that has found life and glows and vibrates in Sri Aurobindo's passion? It is something which appears to many poetically intractable, not amenable to aesthetic treatment, not usually, that is to say, nor in the supreme manner. Sri Aurobindo has thrown such a material into his poetic fervour and created a sheer beauty, a stupendous reality out of it. Herein lies the greatness of his achievement. Philosophy, however divine, and in spite of Milton, has been regarded by poets as "harsh and crabbed" and as such unfit for poetic delineation. Not a few poets indeed foundered upon this rock. A poet in his own way is a philosopher, but a philosopher chanting out his philosophy in sheer poetry has been one of the rarest spectacles.1 I can think of only one instance just now where a philosopher has almost succeeded being a great poet I am referring to Lucretius and his De Rerum Natura. Neither Shakespeare nor Homer had anything like philosophy in their poetic creation. And in spite of some inclination to philosophy and philosophical ideas Virgil and Milton were not philosophers either. Dante sought perhaps consciously and deliberately to philosophise in his Paradiso I Did he? The less Dante then is he. For it is his Inferno, where he is a passionate visionary, and not his Paradiso (where he has put in more thought-power) that marks the nee plus ultra of his poetic achievement.
And yet what can be more poetic in essence than philosophy, if by philosophy we mean, as it should mean, spiritual truth and spiritual realisation? What else can give the full breath, the integral force to poetic inspiration if it is not the problem of existence itself, of God, Soul and Immortality, things that touch, that are at the very root of life and reality? What can most concern man, what can strike the deepest fount in him, unless it is the mystery of his own being, the why and the whither of it all? But mankind has been taught and trained to live merely or mostly on earth, and poetry has been treated as the expression of human joys and sorrows the tears in mortal things of which Virgil spoke. The savour of earth, the thrill of the flesh has been too sweet for us and we have forgotten other sweetnesses. It is always the human element that we seek in poetry, but we fail to recognise that what we obtain in this way is humanity in its lower degrees, its surface formulations, at its minimum magnitude.
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It is the bare truth, "truth in its own home", as I have said already using a phrase of the ancient sages, that is formulated here without the prop of any external symbolism. There is no veil, no mist, no uncertainty or ambiguity. It is clarity itself, an almost scientific exactness and precision. In all this there is something of the straightness and fullness of vision that characterised the Vedic Rishis, something of their supernal genius which could mould speech into the very expression of what is beyond speech, which could sublimate the small and the finite into forms of the Vast and the Infinite. Mark how in these aphoristic lines embodying a deep spiritual experience, the inexpressible has been expressed with a luminous felicity:
Delight that labours in its opposite,
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And if there is something in the creative spirit of Sri Aurobindo which tends more towards the strenuous than the genial, the arduous than the mellifluous, and which has more of the austerity of Vyasa than the easy felicity of Valmiki, however it might have affected the ultimate value of his creation, according to certain standards,14 it has illustrated once more that poetry is not merely beauty but power, it is not merely sweet imagination but creative visionit is even the Rik, the mantra that impels the gods to manifest upon earth, that fashions divinity in man.
James H. Cousins in his New Ways in English Literature describes Sri Aurobindo as "the philosopher as poet."
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is borne out, effectuated only by the truth of the individual soul. When the individual soul becomes itself fully and integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. The individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspectBhava, a particular angle of vision of All. The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And for that the individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
Not to do what others do, but what your soul impels you to do. Not to be others but your own self. Not to be anything but the very cosmic and infinite divinity of your soul. Therein lies your highest freedom and perfect delight. And there you are supremely creative. Each soul has a consortPrakriti, Naturewhich it creates out of its own rib. And in this field of infinite creativity the soul lives, moves and has its being.
01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But wisdom comes, and vision grows within:
Then Nature's instrument crowns himself her king;
01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is there not a fundamental difference, difference not merely with regard to the poetic personality, but with regard to the very stuff of consciousness? There is direct vision here, the fullness of light, the native rhythm and substance of revelation, as if
In the dead wall closing from a wider self,
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Among the ancients, strictly speaking, the later classical Lucretius was a remarkable phenomenon. By nature he was a poet, but his mental interest lay in metaphysical speculation, in philosophy, and unpoetical business. He turned away from arms and heroes, wrath and love and, like Seneca and Aurelius, gave himself up to moralising and philosophising, delving 'into the mystery, the why and the how and the whither of it all. He chose a dangerous subject for his poetic inspiration and yet it cannot be said that his attempt was a failure. Lucretius was not a religious or spiritual poet; he was rather Marxian,atheistic, materialistic. The dialectical materialism of today could find in him a lot of nourishment and support. But whatever the content, the manner has made a whole difference. There was an idealism, a clarity of vision and an intensity of perception, which however scientific apparently, gave his creation a note, an accent, an atmosphere high, tense, aloof, ascetic, at times bordering on the supra-sensual. It was a high light, a force of consciousness that at its highest pitch had the ring and vibration of something almost spiritual. For the basic principle of Lucretius' inspiration is a large thought-force, a tense perception, a taut nervous reactionit is not, of course, the identity in being with the inner realities which is the hallmark of a spiritual consciousness, yet it is something on the way towards that.
There have been other philosophical poets, a good number of them since thennot merely rationally philosophical, as was the vogue in the eighteenth century, but metaphysically philosophical, that is to say, inquiring not merely into the phenomenal but also into the labyrinths of the noumenal, investigating not only what meets the senses, but also things that are behind or beyond. Amidst the earlier efflorescence of this movement the most outstanding philosopher poet is of course Dante, the Dante of Paradiso, a philosopher in the mediaeval manner and to the extent a lesser poet, according to some. Goe the is another, almost in the grand modern manner. Wordsworth is full of metaphysics from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe although his poetry, perhaps the major portion of it, had to undergo some kind of martyrdom because of it. And Shelley, the supremely lyric singer, has had a very rich undertone of thought-content genuinely metaphysical. And Browning and Arnold and Hardyindeed, if we come to the more moderns, we have to cite the whole host of them, none can be excepted.
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This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He kept the vision of the Vasts behind:
A power was in him from the Unknowable.
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An empyrean vision saw and knew;
The bounded mind became a boundless light,
--
Its intimate vision waited not to think;
It enveloped all Nature in a single glance,
--
A vision came of higher realms than ours,
A consciousness of brighter fields and skies,
--
Ever his consciousness and vision grew;
They took an ampler sweep, a loftier flight;
--
Into a vision that surpasses forms,
Into a living that surpasses life,
--
Broad spaces of a vision without line
Or limit swam into his spirit's ken.
--
A vision lightened on the viewless heights,
A wisdom illumined from the voiceless depths:
01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All movementswhe ther of thought or of life, whether in the individual or in the massproceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition, the psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain attitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited first; all other thingsall thoughts and feelings and activities are but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that formulates, this unknown power that fashions.
Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and philosophy, our religion and society? For, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
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All this may be good and necessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one thing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent impulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals of the mind to the soul that informs and inspires; we must carry ourselves up the stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative intuition that lies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings that we feel in our heartour urges and ideals and visions will attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an inevitable achievement.
That is to say, the change has been in the soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not always faithful representations, but very often distorted images of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We must know that if there has been going on a redistribution and new-marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Major.
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And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of sympathy, a community of feeling or sensibility with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being that while the former is an unconscious or semi-conscious power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility, it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the continuous flux of life-power the elan vital. He seems to deny any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow the Heraclitian panta reei is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?
Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic creative power. It is Being (Sat) that realises or expresses itself through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness (chit) in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (ananda). The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their prototypesswarupa and swabhavain the Spirit that lies the real transformation and transfiguration of the humanity of man.
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Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.
***
01.04 - The Poetry in the Making, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The consciously purposive activity of the poetic consciousness in fact, of all artistic consciousness has shown itself with a clear and unambiguous emphasis in two directions. First of all with regard to the subject-matter: the old-world poets took things as they were, as they were obvious to the eye, things of human nature and things of physical Nature, and without questioning dealt with them in the beauty of their normal form and function. The modern mentality has turned away from the normal and the obvious: it does not accept and admit the "given" as the final and definitive norm of things. It wishes to discover and establish other norms, it strives to bring about changes in the nature and condition of things, envisage the shape of things to come, work for a brave new world. The poet of today, in spite of all his effort to remain a pure poet, in spite of Housman's advocacy of nonsense and not-sense being the essence of true Art, is almost invariably at heart an incorrigible prophet. In revolt against the old and established order of truths and customs, against all that is normally considered as beautiful,ideals and emotions and activities of man or aspects and scenes and movements of Natureagainst God or spiritual life, the modern poet turns deliberately to the ugly and the macabre, the meaningless, the insignificant and the triflingtins and teas, bone and dust and dustbin, hammer and sicklehe is still a prophet, a violent one, an iconoclast, but one who has his own icon, a terribly jealous being, that seeks to pull down the past, erase it, to break and batter and knead the elements in order to fashion out of them something conforming to his heart's desire. There is also the class who have the vision and found the truth and its solace, who are prophets, angelic and divine, messengers and harbingers of a new beauty that is to dawn upon earth. And yet there are others in whom the two strains mingle or approach in a strange way. All this means that the artist is far from being a mere receiver, a mechanical executor, a passive unconscious instrument, but that he is supremely' conscious and master of his faculties and implements. This fact is doubly reinforced when we find how much he is preoccupied with the technical aspect of his craft. The richness and variety of patterns that can be given to the poetic form know no bounds today. A few major rhythms were sufficient for the ancients to give full expression to their poetic inflatus. For they cared more for some major virtues, the basic and fundamental qualitiessuch as truth, sublimity, nobility, forcefulness, purity, simplicity, clarity, straightforwardness; they were more preoccupied with what they had to say and they wanted, no doubt, to say it beautifully and powerfully; but the modus operandi was not such a passion or obsession with them, it had not attained that almost absolute value for itself which modern craftsmanship gives it. As technology in practical life has become a thing of overwhelming importance to man today, become, in the Shakespearean phrase, his "be-all and end-all", even so the same spirit has invaded and pervaded his aesthetics too. The subtleties, variations and refinements, the revolutions, reversals and inventions which the modern poet has ushered and takes delight in, for their own sake, I repeat, for their intrinsic interest, not for the sake of the subject which they have to embody and clothe, have never been dream by Aristotle, the supreme legislator among the ancients, nor by Horace, the almost incomparable craftsman among the ancients in the domain of poetry. Man has become, to be sure, a self-conscious creator to the pith of his bone.
Such a stage in human evolution, the advent of Homo Faber, has been a necessity; it has to serve a purpose and it has done admirably its work. Only we have to put it in its proper place. The salvation of an extremely self-conscious age lies in an exceeding and not in a further enhancement or an exclusive concentration of the self-consciousness, nor, of course, in a falling back into the original unconsciousness. It is this shift in the poise of consciousness that has been presaged and prepared by the conscious, the scientific artists of today. Their task is to forge an instrument for a type of poetic or artistic creation completely new, unfamiliar, almost revolutionary which the older mould would find it impossible to render adequately. The yearning of the human consciousness was not to rest satisfied with the familiar and the ordinary, the pressure was for the discovery of other strands, secret stores of truth and reality and beauty. The first discovery was that of the great Unconscious, the dark and mysterious and all-powerful subconscient. Many of our poets and artists have been influenced by this power, some even sought to enter into that region and become its denizens. But artistic inspiration is an emanation of Light; whatever may be the field of its play, it can have its origin only in the higher spheres, if it is to be truly beautiful and not merely curious and scientific.
That is what is wanted at present in the artistic world the true inspiration, the breath from higher altitudes. And here comes the role of the mystic, the Yogi. The sense of evolution, the march of human consciousness demands and prophesies that the future poet has to be a mysticin him will be fulfilled the travail of man's conscious working. The self-conscious craftsman, the tireless experimenter with his adventurous analytic mind has sharpened his instrument, made it supple and elastic, tempered, refined and enriched it; that is comparable to what we call the aspiration or call from below. Now the Grace must descend and fulfil. And when one rises into this higher consciousness beyond the brain and mind, when one lives there habitually, one knows the why and the how of things, one becomes a perfectly conscious operator and still retains all spontaneity and freshness and wonder and magic that are usually associated with inconscience and irreflection. As there is a spontaneity of instinct, there is likewise also a spontaneity of vision: a child is spontaneous in its movements, even so a seer. Not only so, the higher spontaneity is more spontaneous, for the higher consciousness means not only awareness but the free and untrammelled activity and expression of the truth and reality it is.
Genius had to be generally more or less unconscious in the past, because the instrument was not ready, was clogged as it were with its own lower grade movements; the higher inspiration had very often to bypass it, or rob it of its serviceable materials without its knowledge, in an almost clandestine way. Wherever it was awake and vigilant, we have seen it causing a diminution in the poetic potential. And yet even so, it was being prepared for a greater role, a higher destiny it is to fulfil in the future. A conscious and full participation of a refined and transparent and enriched instrument in the delivery of superconscious truth and beauty will surely mean not only a new but the very acme of aesthetic creation. We thus foresee the age of spiritual art in which the sense of creative beauty in man will find its culmination. Such an art was only an exception, something secondary or even tertiary, kept in the background, suggested here and there as a novel strain, called "mystic" to express its unfamiliar nature-unless, of course, it was openly and obviously scriptural and religious.
01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A vision meets her of supernal Powers
That draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost
--
He is the vision and he is the Seer;
He is himself the actor and the act,
--
It is a dream-fact vision of a truth
Which but for the dream would not be wholly true,
--
And journeyings in a larger vision's arc
And peoples unknown and still unvisited shores.
--
To a new vision of himself and things.
He is a spirit in an unfinished world
01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In an age when Reason was considered as the highest light given to man, Tagore pointed to the vision of the mystics as always the still greater light; when man was elated with undreamt-of worldly success, puffed up with incomparable material possessions and powers, Tagore's voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards, he held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of human solidarity, the living consciousness of the Divine, one and indivisible. When the Gospel of Power had all but hypnotised men's minds, and Superman or God-man came to be equated with the Titan, Tagore saw through the falsehood and placed in front and above all the old-world eternal verities of love and self-giving, harmony and mutuality, sweetness and light. When pessimism, cynicism, agnosticism struck the major chord of human temperament, and grief and frustration and death and decay were taken as a matter of course to be the inevitable order of earthlylifebhasmantam idam shariramhe continued to sing the song of the Rishis that Ananda and Immortality are the breath of things, the birth right of human beings. When Modernism declared with a certitude never tobe contested that Matter is Brahman, Tagore said with the voice of one who knows that Spirit is Brahman.
Tagore is in direct line with those bards who have sung of the Spirit, who always soared high above the falsehoods and uglinesses of a merely mundane life and lived in the undecaying delights and beauties of a diviner consciousness. Spiritual reality was the central theme of his poetic creation: only and naturally he viewed it in a special way and endowed it with a special grace. We know of another God-intoxicated man, the Jewish philosopher Spinoza, who saw things sub specie aeternitatis, under the figure or mode of eternity. Well, Tagore can be said to see things, in their essential spiritual reality, under the figure or mode of beauty. Keats indeed spoke of truth being beauty and beauty truth. But there is a great difference in the outlook and inner experience. A worshipper of beauty, unless he rises to the Upanishadic norm, is prone to become sensuous and pagan. Keats was that, Kalidasa was that, even Shelley was not far different. The spiritual vein in all these poets remains secondary. In the old Indian master, it is part of his intellectual equipment, no doubt, but nothing much more than that. In the other two it comes in as strange flashes from an unknown country, as a sort of irruption or on the peak of the poetic afflatus or enthousiasmos.
--
Socrates is said to have brought down Philosophy from Heaven to live among men upon earth. A similar exploit can be ascribed to Tagore. The Spirit, the bare transcendental Reality contemplated by the orthodox Vedantins, has been brought nearer to our planet, close to human consciousness in Tagore's vision, being clothed in earth and flesh and blood, made vivid with the colours and contours of the physical existence. The Spirit, yes and by all means, but not necessarily asceticism and monasticism. So Tagore boldly declared in those famous lines of his:
Mine is not the deliverance achieved through mere renunciation. Mine rather the freedom that tastes itself in a thousand associations.1
--
Not the acceptance of the world as it is, not even a joyous acceptance, viewing it as an inexplicable and mysterious and magic play of, God, but the asp ration and endeavour to change it, mould it in the pattern of its inner divine realities for there are such realities which seek expression and embodiment in earthly life that is the great mission and labour of humanity and that is all the meaning of man's existence here below. And Tagore is one of the great prophets and labourers who had the vision of the shape of things to come and worked for it. Only it must be noted, as I have already said, that unlike mere moral reformists or scientific planners, Tagore grounded himself upon the eternal ancient truths that "age cannot wither nor custom stale"the divine truths of the Spirit.
Tagore was a poet; this poetic power of his he put in the service of the great cause for the divine uplift of humanity. Naturally, it goes without saying, his poetry did not preach or propagandize the truths for which he stoodhe had a fine and powerful weapon in his prose to do the work, even then in a poetic way but to sing them. And he sang them not in their philosophical bareness, like a Lucretius, or in their sheer transcendental austerity like some of the Upanishadic Rishis, but in and through human values and earthly norms. The especial aroma of Tagore's poetry lies exactly here, as he himself says, in the note of unboundedness in things bounded that it describes. A mundane, profane sensuousness, Kalidasian in richness and sweetness, is matched or counterpointed by a simple haunting note imbedded or trailing somewhere behind, a lyric cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the still small voice.2
01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Near to the well of vision in the soul,
And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
--
And called to its mounting vision peaks divine:
An endless climb and adventure of the Idea
--
Surprised the vision with felicity;
Sunbelts of knowledge, moonbelts of delight
01.06 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Such is Vivekananda, the embodiment of Fearlessnessabh, the Upanishadic word, the mantra, he was so fond of. The life and vision of Vivekananda can be indeed summed up in the mighty phrase of the Upanishads, nyam tm balahnena labhya. 'This soul no weakling can attain.' Strength! More strength! Strength evermore! One remembers the motto of Danton, the famous leader in the French Revolution:De l'audance, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!
The gospel of strength that Vivekananda spread was very characteristic of the man. For it is not mere physical or nervous bravery, although that too is indispensable, and it is something more than moral courage. In the speeches referred to, the subject-matter (as well as the manner to a large extent) is philosophical, metaphysical, even abstract in outlook and treatment: they are not a call to arms, like the French National Anthem, for example; they are not merely an ethical exhortation, a moral lesson either. They speak of the inner spirit, the divine in man, the supreme realities that lie beyond. And yet the words are permeated through and through with a vibration life-giving and heroic-not so much in the explicit and apparent meaning as in the style and manner and atmosphere: it is catching, even or precisely when he refers, for example, to these passages in the Vedas and the Upanishads, magnificent in their poetic beauty, sublime in their spiritual truth,nec plus ultra, one can say, in the grand style supreme:
01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"The zeal for the Lord hath eaten me up." Such has indeed been the case with Pascal, almost literally. The fire that burned in him was too ardent and vehement for the vehicle, the material instrument, which was very soon used up and reduced to ashes. At twenty-four he was already a broken man, being struck with paralysis and neuras thenia; he died at the comparatively early age of 39, emulating, as it were, the life career of his Lord the Christ who died at 33. The Fire martyrised the body, but kindled and brought forth experiences and realisations that save and truths that abide. It was the Divine Fire whose vision and experience he had on the famous night of 23 November 1654 which brought about his final and definitive conversion. It was the same fire that had blazed up in his brain, while yet a boy, and made him a precocious genius, a marvel of intellectual power in the exact sciences. At 12 this prodigy discovered by himself the 32nd proposition of Euclid, Book I. At sixteen he wrote a treatise on conic sections. At nineteen he invented a calculating machine which, without the help of any mathematical rule or process, gave absolutely accurate results. At twenty-three he published his experiments with vacuum. At twenty-five he conducted the well-known experiment from the tower of St. Jacques, proving the existence of atmospheric pressure. His studies in infinitesimal calculus were remarkably creative and original. And it might be said he was a pioneer in quite a new branch of mathematics, viz., the mathematical theory of probability. We shall see presently how his preoccupation with the mathematics of chance and probability coloured and reinforced his metaphysics and theology.
But the pressure upon his dynamic and heated brain the fiery zeal in his mindwas already proving too much and he was advised medically to take complete rest. Thereupon followed what was known as Pascal's mundane lifea period of distraction and dissipation; but this did not last long nor was it of a serious nature. The inner fire could brook no delay, it was eager and impatient to englobe other fields and domains. Indeed, it turned to its own field the heart. Pascal became initiated into the mystery of Faith and Grace. Still he had to pass through a terrible period of dejection and despair: the life of the world had given him no rest or relaxation, it served only to fill his cup of misery to the brim. But the hour of final relief was not long postponed: the Grace came to him, even as it came to Moses or St. Paul as a sudden flare of fire which burnt up the Dark Night and opened out the portals of Morning Glory.
--
One is not sure if such reasoning is convincing to the intellect; but perhaps it is a necessary stage in conversion. At least we can conclude that Pascal had to pass through such a stage; and it indicates the difficulty his brain had to undergo, the tension or even the torture he made it pass through. It is true, from Reason Pascal went over to Faith, even while giving Reason its due. Still it seems the two were not perfectly synthetised or fused in him. There was a gap between that was not thoroughly bridged. Pascal did not possess the higher, intuitive, luminous mind that mediates successfully between the physical discursive ratiocinative brain-mind and the vision of faith: it is because deep in his consciousness there lay this chasm. Indeed,Pascal's abyss (l' abme de Pascal) is a well-known legend. Pascal, it appears, used to have very often the vision of an abyss about to open before him and he shuddered at the prospect of falling into it. It seems to us to be an experience of the Infinity the Infinity to which he was so much attracted and of which he wrote so beautifully (L'infiniment grand et l'infiniment petit)but into which he could not evidently jump overboard unreservedly. This produced a dichotomy, a lack of integration of personality, Jung would say. Pascal's brain was cold, firm, almost rigid; his heart was volcanic, the faith he had was a fire: it lacked something of the pure light and burned with a lurid glare.
And the reason is his metaphysics. It is the Jansenist conception of God and human nature that inspired and coloured all his experience and consciousness. According to it, as according to the Calvinist conception, man is a corrupt being, corroded to the core, original sin has branded his very soul. Only Grace saves him and releases him. The order of sin and the order of Grace are distinct and disparate worlds and yet they complement each other and need each other. Greatness and misery are intertwined, united, unified with each other in him. Here is an echo of the Manichean position which also involves an abyss. But even then God's grace is not a free agent, as Jesuits declare; there is a predestination that guides and controls it. This was one of the main subjects he treated in his famous open letters (Les Provinciales) that brought him renown almost overnight. Eternal hell is a possible prospect that faces the Jansenist. That was why a Night always over-shadowed the Day in Pascal's soul.
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
From the twentieth century back to the fourteenth is a far cry: a far cry indeed from the modern scientific illumination to mediaeval superstition, from logical positivists and mathematical rationalists to visionary mystics, from Russell and Huxley to Ruysbroeck and Hilton. The mystic lore, the Holy Writ, the mediaeval sage says, echoing almost the very words of the Eastern Masters, "may not be got by study nor through man's travail only, but principally by the grace of the Holy Ghost." As for the men living and moving in the worldly way, there are "so mickle din and crying in their heart and vain thoughts and fleshly desires" that it is impossible for them to listen or understand the still small voice. It is the pure soul touched by the Grace that alone "seeth soothfastness of Holy Writ wonderly shewed and opened, above study and travail and reason of man's kindly (i.e. natural) wit."
What is day to us is night to the mystics and what is day to the mystics is night for us. The first thing the mystic asks is to close precisely those doors and windows which we, on the contrary, feel obliged to keep always open in order to know and to live and move. The Gita says: "The sage is wakeful when it is night for all creatures and when all creatures are wakeful, that is night for the sage." Even so this sage from the West says: "The more I sleep from outward things, the more wakeful am I in knowing of Jhesu and of inward things. I may not wake to Jhesu, but if I sleep to the world."
--
This spiritual march or progress can also be described as a growing into the likeness of the Lord. His true self, his own image is implanted within us; he is there in the profoundest depth of our being as Jesus, our beloved and our soul rests in him in utmost bliss. We are aware neither of Jesus nor of his spouse, our soul, because of the obsession of the flesh, the turmoil raised by the senses, the blindness of pride and egoism. All that constitutes the first or old Adam, the image of Nought, the body of death which means at bottom the "false misruled love in to thyself." This self-love is the mother of sin, is sin itself. What it has to be replaced by is charity that is the true meaning of Christian charity, forgetfulness of self. "What is sin but a wanting and a forbearing of God." And the whole task, the discipline consists in "the shaping of Christ in you, the casting of sin through Christ." Who then is Christ, what is he? This knowledge you get as you advance from your sense-bound perception towards the inner and inmost seeing. As your outer nature gets purified, you approach gradually your soul, the scales fall off from your eyes too and you have the knowledge and "ghostly vision." Here too there are three degrees; first, you start with faith the senses can do nothing better than have faith; next, you rise to imagination which gives a sort of indirect touch or inkling of the truth; finally, you have the "understanding", the direct vision. "If he first trow it, he shall afterwards through grace feel it, and finally understand it."
It is never possible for man, weak and bound as he is, to reject the thraldom of his flesh, he can never purify himself wholly by his own unaided strength. God in his infinite mercy sent his own son, an emanation created out of his substancehis embodied loveas a human being to suffer along with men and take upon himself the burden of their sins. God the Son lived upon earth as man and died as man. Sin therefore has no longer its final or definitive hold upon mankind. Man has been made potentially free, pure and worthy of salvation. This is the mystery of Christ, of God the Son. But there is a further mystery. Christ not only lived for all men for all time, whether they know him, recognise him or not; but he still lives, he still chooses his beloved and his beloved chooses him, there is a conscious acceptance on either side. This is the function of the Holy Ghost, the redeeming power of Love active in him who accepts it and who is accepted by it, the dynamic Christ-Consciousness in the true Christian.
01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
This passage from the self-conscient to the super-conscient does not imply merely a shifting of the focus of consciousness. The transmutation of consciousness involves a purer illumination, a surer power and a wider compass; it involves also a fundamental change in the very mode of being and living. It gives quite a different life-intuition and a different life-power. The change in the motif brings about a new form altogether, a re-casting and re-shaping and re-energising of the external materials as well. As the lift from mere consciousness to self-consciousness meant all the difference between an animal and a man, so the lift again from self-consciousness to super-consciousness will mean the difference of a whole world between man and the divine creature that is to be.
Indeed it is a divine creature that should be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation, the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of the gods. The vision of angels and Siddhas, which man is having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the future actuality.
This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways. She has done with man as an essentially human being, she has brought out the fundamental possibilities of humanity and perfected it, so far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of experiment the evolving of another life, another being out of her entrails, that will be greater than the humanity we know today, that will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to one "the masses", to the other "the instincts". Their wild imperative roars: "Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!" But more characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which gives the whole value and speciality to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower. Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of Revanche in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world. Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education, the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased; and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived and moved as best as they could under the economics of laissez-faire. So Monsieur Thibon concludes: "Salvation has never come from below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher completely adopts and protects the lower." Here is a vision luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its evolution, both individually and collectively.
But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must "turn within, feel alive within himself", re-establish his living contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself off. Man must learn to subordinate having to being. Each individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur Thibon insistsand very rightlyupon the variety and diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the reviewer of the London Times succinctly puts it: "Let us abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each should be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he alone is qualified and able to do."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
have an opinion but a total vision of everything as a whole
and of the goal to be achieved, which is the only thing that
--
outside. It is also said elsewhere that our vision of the
outside (of the world around us) is the reflection of our
--
this a narrowness of vision on my part, or what?
Knowledge of past lives is interesting for an understanding of
01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Roerich is one of the prophets and seers who have ever been acclaiming and preparing the Golden Age, the dream that humanity has been dreaming continuously since its very childhood, that is to say, when there will be peace and harmony on earth, when racial, cultural or ideological egoism will no longer divide man and mana thing that seems today a chimera and a hallucinationwhen there will be one culture, one civilisation, one spiritual life welding all humanity into a single unit of life luminous and beautiful. Roerich believes that such a consummation can arrive only or chiefly through the growth of the sense of beauty, of the aesthetic temperament, of creative labour leading to a wider and higher consciousness. Beauty, Harmony, Light, Knowledge, Culture, Love, Delight are cardinal terms in his vision of the deeper and higher life of the future.
The stress of the inner urge to the heights and depths of spiritual values and realities found special and significant expression in his paintings. It is a difficult problem, a problem which artists and poets are tackling today with all their skill and talent. Man's consciousness is no longer satisfied with the customary and the ordinary actions and reactions of life (or thought), with the old-world and time-worn modes and manners. It is no more turned to the apparent and the obvious, to the surface forms and movements of things. It yearns to look behind and beyond, for the secret mechanism, the hidden agency that really drives things. Poets and artists are the vanguards of the age to come, prophets and pioneers preparing the way for the Lord.
0.13 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
could see things as they really are; and in the hope of understanding better, they have sought for a diviner vision, a global and true
vision - with the result of Yoga. And those who have succeeded
--
Divine, one's vision of things changes totally, and they have all
come to the same conclusion: unite with the Divine and you will
0.14 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When the vision of the whole and the vision of all the details
are united in a single active consciousness, the creation will have
0 1956-10-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It was because I hadnt thought of it. It hadnt even grazed my consciousness. The divine will is not at all like that, it is not a will: it is a vision, a global vision, that sees and No, it does not guide (to guide suggests something outside, but nothing is outside), a creative vision, as it were; yet even then, the word create does not here have the meaning we generally attribute to it.
And what is the Ashram? (I dont even mean in terms of the Universeon Earth only.) A speck. And why should this speck receive exceptional treatment? Perhaps if people here had realized the supermind. But are they so exceptional as to expect exceptional treatment?
--
But the divine vision is global. The people in the Ashram do not want this strike but what about the others? They are ignorant, mean, full of ill will, etc., but in their own way they are following a path, and why should they be deprived of the Grace? By the fact that their action is against the Ashram? It is certainly a Grace.
I said that I had not even thought of intervening. When things threatened to turn bad, I simply applied a force so that it wouldnt become too serious.
--
A consciousness and a vision. And one is filled with joy and
I used to be different (although I was said to be non-interfering); I acted, if at all, to defend myself But I understood very quickly that even this was a reaction of ignorance and that things would be set right automatically if one remained in the true consciousness.
0 1957-07-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
First, I could tell you that to do a collective yoga, there has to be a collectivity! And I could speak to you about the different conditions required to be a collectivity. But last night (smiling), I had a symbolic vision of our collectivity.
This vision took place early in the night and woke me up with a rather unpleasant feeling. Then I fell back to sleep and forgot about it; but a little while ago, when I was thinking of the question put to me, it returned. It returned with a great intensity and so imperatively that now, just as I wanted to tell you what kind of collectivity we wish to realize according to the ideal described by Sri Aurobindo in the last chapter of The Life Divinea gnostic, supramental collectivity, the only kind that can do Sri Aurobindos integral yoga and be realized physically in a progressive collective body becoming more and more divine the recollection of this vision became so imperative that I couldnt speak.
Its symbolism was very clear, though of quite a familiar nature, as it were, and because of its very familiarity, unmistakable in its realism Were I to tell you all the details, you would probably not even be able to follow: it was rather intricate. It was a kind of (how can I express it?)an immense hotel where all the terrestrial possibilities were lodged in different apartments. And it was all in a constant state of transformation: parts or entire wings of the building were suddenly torn down and rebuilt while people were still living in them, such that if you went off somewhere within the immense hotel itself, you ran the risk of no longer finding your room when you wanted to return to it, for it might have been torn down and was being rebuilt according to another plan! It was orderly, it was organized yet there was this fantastic chaos which I mentioned. And all this was a symbola symbol that certainly applies to what Sri Aurobindo has written here1 regarding the necessity for the transformation of the body, the type of transformation that has to take place for life to become a divine life.
--
She clearly remembered where her room was, but each time she set out to go there, either the staircase disappeared or things were so changed that she could no longer find her way! So she went here and there, up and down, searched, went in and out but it was impossible to find the way to her room! Since all of this assumed a physical appearanceas I said, a very familiar and very common appearance, as is always the case in these symbolic visions there was somewhere (how shall I put it?) the hotels administrative office and a woman who seemed to be the manager, who had all the keys and who knew where everyone was staying. So the daughter went to this person and asked her, Could you show me the way to my room?But of course! Easily! Everyone around the manager looked at her as if to say, How can you say that? However, she got up, and with authority asked for a key the key to the daughters roomsaying, I shall take you there. And off she went along all kinds of paths, but all so complicated, so bizarre! The daughter was following along behind her very attentively, you see, so as not to lose sight of her. But just as they should have come to the place where the daughters room was supposed to be, suddenly the manageress (let us call her the manageress), both the manageress and her key vanished! And the sense of this vanishing was so acute that at the same time, everything vanished!
So to help you understand this enigma, let me tell you that the mother is physical Nature as she is, and the daughter is the new creation. The manageress is the worlds organizing mental consciousness as Nature has developed it thus far, that is, the most advanced organizing sense to have manifested in the present state of material Nature. This is the key to the vision.
Naturally, when I awoke, I immediately knew what could resolve this problem which appeared so absolutely insoluble. The vanishing of the manageress and her key was an obvious sign that she was altogether incapable of leading what could be called the creative consciousness of the new world to its true place.
I knew this, but I did not have a vision of the solution, which means it has yet to manifest; this thing had not yet manifested in the building, this fantastic construction, although it is the very mode of consciousness which could transform this incoherent creation into something real, truly conceived, willed and materialized, with a center in its proper place, a recognized place, and with a REAL effective power.
(silence)
0 1957-09-27, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(A child's question concerning a vision in which Mother had appeared to her in a luminous body)
Why have you come as we are?
0 1957-12-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At the very top, a constant vision of the Supremes will.
In the world, an overall vision of what is to be done.
Individually, at each moment and in each circumstance, the vision of the truth of the moment, of the circumstance, of the individual.
In the external consciousness, the impersonal and mechanical recording of what is happening and of what are the people and things that comprise both the field of action and the limitations imposed upon this action. The recording is innately automatic and mechanical, without any kind of evaluation, as objective as possible.
0 1958-01-01, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
We must have a great deal of patience and a very wide and very complex vision to understand how things work.
(silence)
The miracles that are taking place are not what could be called literary miracles, for they do not take place as in storybooks. They are visible only to a very profound vision of thingsvery profound, very comprehensive, very vast.
(silence)
0 1958-02-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Last night, I had the vision of what this supramental world could become if men were not sufficiently prepared. The confusion existing at present upon earth is nothing in comparison to what could take place. Imagine that every powerful will has the power to transform matter as it likes! If the sense of collective oneness did not grow in proportion to the development of power, the resulting conflict would be yet more acute and chaotic than our material conflicts.
***
0 1958-05-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I saw and understood very well that by concentrating, I could have given it the attitude of the absolute authority of the eternal Mother. When Sri Aurobindo told me, You are She, at the same time he bestowed upon my body this attitude of absolute authority. But as I had the inner vision of this truth, I concerned myself very little with the imperfections of the physical body I didnt bother about that, I only used it as an instrument. Sri Aurobindo did the sadhana for this body, which had only to remain constantly open to his action.1
Afterwards, when he left and I had to do the Yoga myself, to be able to take his physical place, I could have adopted the attitude of the sage, which is what I did since I was in an unparalleled state of calm when he left. As he left his body and entered into mine, he told me, You will continue, you will go right to the end of the work. It was then that I imposed a calm upon this body the calm of total detachment. And I could have remained like that.
--
To be able to see the problem as it is, it is absolutely indispensable, as a first step, to get out of the mental consciousness, even out of a mental transcription (in the highest mind) of the supramental vision and truth. A thing cannot be seen as it is, in its truth, except in the supramental consciousness, and if you try to explain, it immediately begins to escape you because you are obliged to give it a mental formulation.
As for me, I saw the thing only at the time of this experience,4 and as a result of this experience. But it is impossible to formulate even the experience itself, and as soon as I endeavored to formulate it and the more I was able to formulate it, the more the thing faded, escaped.
0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When you had this experience of February 3, 1958 [the supramental ship], the vision of your usual consciousness, which is nevertheless a Truth Consciousness, no longer seemed true to you at all. Did you see things you had never before seen, or did you see things in another way?
Yes, one enters into another world.
0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
No, but I know all these people, I know them thoroughly! I know Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and Ramdas thoroughly. They are utterly familiar to me. It doesnt bother them. These are people who live with a certain feeling, who have an entirely concrete experience and live in this experience, but they dont care at all if their formation they have not even crystallized it, they leave it like that, vaguecontains things that are mutually contradictory, because, in appearance, they reconcile them. They do not raise any questions, they do not have the need for an absolutely clear vision; their feeling is absolutely clear, and thats enough for them. Ramakrishna was like that; he said the most contradictory things without being bothered in the least, and they are all exactly and equally true.
But this crystal clear vision Sri Aurobindo had, where everything is in its place, where contradictions no longer existthey never soared to that height. This was the thing, this really crystalline, perfect supramental vision, even from the standpoint of understanding and knowledge. They never went that far.
***
0 1958-08-09, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The gods are faultless, for they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint; it is their godly way. But if one looks at it from a higher point of view, if one has a higher vision, a vision of the whole, they have fewer qualities than man. In this film, it was proved that through their capacity for love and self-giving, men can have as much power as the gods, and even morewhen they are not egoists, when they can overcome their egoism.
Certainly man is nearer the Supreme than the gods. Provided he fulfills the necessary conditions, he can be nearerhe isnt so automatically, but he can be, he has the power, the potentiality to be.
0 1958-08-30, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(In the presence of Pavitra and Abhay Singh, Mother recounts a vision she had during the night)
[The disciple who managed the Ashram 'Atelier': mechanical workshop, maintenance garage, automobile service, etc.]
0 1958-10-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The other day when I was in this state of concentration, I had the vision that I mentioned to you. I felt I was being pulled, that something was pulling me and trying to draw my attention. I felt it very strongly. So I opened my eyes, my mental eyes (the physical eyes may remain opened or closed, it makes no difference either way; when I am concentrated, things on the physical plane no longer exist), I deliberately opened the minds eyes, for that is where I felt myself being pulled, and then I had this vision I told you of. Someone was trying to draw my attention, to tell me something. It takes someone really quite powerful, with a very great power of concentration, to do thatthere are certainly a great many people here and elsewhere who try to do this, yet I dont feel a thing.3
In the outer, practical domain, I might suddenly think of someone, so I know that this person is calling or thinking of me. When you left on your trip, I created a special link-up so that if ever, at any moment, you called me for anything, I would know it instantly, and I remained attentive and alert. But I do that only in exceptional cases. Generally speaking, when I havent made this special link-up, things keep coming in and coming in and coming in and coming in, and the answer goes out automatically, here or there or there or therehundreds and hundreds of things that I dont keep in my memory because then it would really be frightful. I dont keep these things in my consciousness; it is rather a work that is done automatically.
When you asked me if X4 were thinking of me, I consulted my atmosphere and saw that it was true, that even many times a day Xs thoughts were coming. So I know that he is concentrating on me, or something: it simply passes through me, and I answer automatically. But I dont particularly pay attention to X, unless you ask me a question about him, in which case I deliberately tune into him, then observe and determine whether its like this or like that. Whereas this vision the other day was something that thrust itself on me; I was in another region altogether, in my inner contemplation, my concentrationa very strong concentrationwhen I was forced to enter into contact with this being whose vision I had and who was obviously a very powerful being. After telling me what he had to tell me, he went away in a very peculiar way, not at all suddenly as most people appear and disappear, not at all like that. When I first saw him, there was a living form the being himself was there but upon leaving (probably to see the effect, to find out whether he had truly succeeded in making himself understood), he left behind a kind of image of himself. Afterwards, this image blurred and it left only a silhouette, an outline, then it disappeared altogether leaving only an impression. That was the last thing I saw. So I kept the impression and analyzed it to find out exactly what was involved; all this was filed away, and then it was over. I began my concentration once again.
I intentionally carry everybody in my active consciousness for the work, and I do the work consciously; but the extent to which people in the world, or those who are here in the Ashram, are conscious of this or receive the results depends upon them, though not exclusively.
The other day, for example, though I no longer recall exactly when (I forget everything on purpose)but it was in the last part of the night I had a rather long activity concerning the whole realization of the Ashram, notably in the fields of education and art. I was apparently inspecting this area to see how things were there, so naturally I saw a certain number of people, their work and their inner states. Some saw me and, at that moment, had a vision of me. It is likely that many were asleep and didnt notice anything, but some actually saw me. The next morning, for example, someone who works at the theater told me that she had had a splendid vision of me in which I had spoken to her, blessed her, etc. This was her way of receiving the work I had done. And this kind of thing is happening more and more, in that my action is awakening the consciousness in others more and more strongly.
Naturally, the reception is always incomplete or partially modified; when it passes through the individuality, it becomes narrowed, a personal thing. It seems impossible for each one to have a consciousness vast enough to see the thing in its entirety.
--
In this vision, the d. ceased tantric guru of the guru who initiated Satprem appeared to Mother in a dark blue light and 'imposed' himself on her to tell her certain things.
The disciple's tantric guru.
0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Then and this becomes rather amusing like lifes play Depending upon each ones nature and position and bias, and because human beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a realized soul. Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others dont have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for themas a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they arent perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades.
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He said he had received initiation in India (he knew a little Sanskrit and the Rig-Veda thoroughly), and then he formulated a tradition which he called the cosmic tradition and which he claimed to have received I dont know howfrom a tradition anterior to that of the Cabala and the Vedas. But there were many things (Madame Theon was the clairvoyant one, and she received visions; oh, she was wonderful!), many things that I myself had seen and known before knowing them which were then substantiated.
So personally, I am convinced that there was indeed a tradition anterior to both these traditions containing a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. Certainly, there is a similarity in the experiences. When I came here and told Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from the occult standpoint, he always said that it conformed to the Vedic tradition. And as for certain occult practices, he told me that they were entirely tantric and I knew nothing at that time, absolutely nothing, neither the Vedas nor the Tantras.
--
It was the same thing for visions of past lives. I knew NOTHING when I would have the experience, not even the possibility of past lives, and only after having had the experience would I study the question and, for example, even verify certain historical facts that had occurred in my vision but about which I had no prior knowledge.
***
0 1958-11-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
This vision of the Inconscient (Mother remains gazing for a moment) it was the MENTAL Inconscient. Because the starting point was mental. A special Inconscientrigid, hard, resistantwith all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material Inconscient! A mentalized Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixitya FIXITYcomes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless the plasticity has gone.
It is a terrible image of the Minds action in the Inconscient.
0 1958-11-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I had two visions which are certainly related to this. The most recent one was yesterday, and it concerned a past life in India. It is something that took place in India about one thousand years ago, perhaps a little more (I am not yet sure about this). And it contains both things. Its strange, both things together the origin of the power of realization in this life and the obstacle to be conquered.
I had the last vision yesterday evening. You were much taller than you are now; you were wearing the orange robe, and you were backed up against a door of bronze, a bronze door like the door of a temple or a palace but at the same time it was symbolic (it was a fact, it actually took place like this, but at the same time it was symbolic). And unfortunately, it didnt last because I was disturbed. But it contained the key.
I was VERY HAPPY with the vision, for there was a great POWER, though it was rather terrible. But it was magnificent. When I saw that, I This vision was given to me because I had concentrated with a will to find the solution, a true solution, an enduring and permanent solution that is, I had this spontaneous gratitude which goes out to the Grace when it brings some effective help. Only, what followed was interrupted by someone who came to call me and that cut it short, but it will return.
But now I KNOWbefore I did not know. The other morning I saw, and I was told very clearly that it was a karma1 to be worked out; so then I told you, but at the time I didnt know what it was.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So this is what I saw for you: that the crystallization of this karma occurred during a life in India in which you were put in the presence of the possibility of liberation and I dont know the details; I dont know the material facts at all. So far, I know nothing, I have only had a vision. I saw you there, as I told you, taller than you are now, in an Indian body, north Indian, for it was not dark but fair. But there was a HARDNESS in the being, the hardness born of a kind of despair mixed with rebellion, incomprehension and an ego that resists. That is all I know. The image was of you backed up against a bronze door: BACKED UP against it. I didnt see what had caused it. As I told you, something interrupted me, so I was unable to follow it.
The other indication is what I told you the other day. When you thought of leaving to join Swami, I immediately saw a stream of light: Ah, the road is opening up! So I said, It is good. And while you were away in Ceylon, I followed you from day to day. You called much more than the second time, when you were in the Himalayas; and with the physical hardships you were undergoing, I was very, very close to you I constantly felt what was happening.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And when I studied this, when I looked at this science of processes, of intermediaries, suddenly I clearly understood the working of karma, which I had not understood before. I had worked and intervened quite often to change someones karma, but sometimes I had to wait, without exactly knowing why the result was not immediate. I simply used to wait without worrying about the reasons for this slowness or delay. Thats how it was. And generally it ended, as I said, with the exact vision of the karmas source, its initial cause; and scarcely would I have this vision when the Power would come, and the thing would be dissolved. But I didnt bother about finding out why it was like that.
One day I had mentioned this to X1 when he was showing me or describing to me the different movements of the pujas, the procedure, the process of the puja. I said to him, Oh, I see! For the action to be immediate, for the result to be immediate, one must acknowledge, for example, the role or the participation of certain spirits or certain forces and enter into a friendly relationship or collaboration with these forces in order to obtain an immediate result, is it not so? Then he told me, Yes, otherwise it leaves an indefinite time to the play of the forces, and you dont know when you will get the result of your puja.
0 1958-12-15 - tantric mantra - 125,000, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Mother, things are far from being what they were the first time in Rameswaram, and I am living through certain moments that are hell the enemy seems to have been unleashed with an extraordinary violence. It comes in waves, and after it recedes, I am literally SHATTEREDphysically, mentally and vitally drained. This morning, while going to the temple, I lived through one of these moments. All this suffering that suddenly sweeps down upon me is horrible. Yes, I had the feeling of being BACKED UP AGAINST A WALL, exactly as in your vision I was up against a wall. I was walking among these immense arcades of sculptured granite and I could see myself walking, very small, all alone, alone, ravaged with pain, filled with a nameless despair, for nowhere was there a way out. The sea was nearby and I could have thrown myself into it; otherwise, there was only the sanctuary of Parvati but there was no more Africa to flee to, everything closed in all around me, and I kept repeating, Why? Why? This much suffering was truly inhuman, as if my last twenty years of nightmare were crashing down upon me. I gritted my teeth and went to the sanctuary to say my mantra. The pain in me was so strong that I broke into a cold sweat and almost fainted. Then it subsided. Yet even now I feel completely battered.
I clearly see that the hour has come: either I will perish right here, or else I will emerge from this COMPLETELY changed. But something has to change. Mother, you are with me, I know, and you are protecting me, you love me I have only you, only you, you are my Mother. If these moments of utter darkness return and they are bound to return for everything to be exorcised and conqueredprotect me in spite of myself. Mother, may your Grace not abandon me. I want to be done with all these old phantoms, I want to be born anew in your Light; it has to beotherwise I can no longer go on.
0 1959-01-14, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
In this regard, perhaps you know that X is the tenth in the line of Bhaskaraya (my spelling of this name is perhaps not correct), the great Tantric of whom you had a vision, who could comm and the coming of Kali along with all her warriors. It is from X that Swami received his initiation.
Your last letter gave us great pleasure, knowing that you have finally recovered physically. But we deeply hope that you will not again take up the countless activities that formerly consumed all your timeso many people come to you egoistically, for prestige, to be able to say that they are on familiar terms with you. You know this, of course
--
Sweet Mother, by what Grace have you guided and protected me through all these years? There are moments when I have the vision of this Grace, bringing me to the verge of tears. I see so clearly that you are doing everything, that you are all that is good in me, my aspiration and my strength. Me is all that is bad, all that resists, me is horribly false and falsifying. If your Grace withdraws for one second, I collapse, I am helpless.2 You alone are my strength, the source of my life, the joy and fulfillment to which I aspire.
I am at your feet, your child eternally.
0 1959-01-21, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Here is what X told me: I have received a message from my guru.1 In my vision, the Mother was there, next to my guru, and she was smiling. My guru told me that your present difficulties are a period of testing, but I could already give you the first stage of tantric initiation and that for you, the three stages of initiation could be done in an accelerated way.
I will therefore give you initiation this Friday or Saturday, on the day of the full moon or the day before. This first stage will last three months during which you will have to repeat 1 lakh2 times the mantra that I will give you. At the end of three months, I will come to see you in Pondicherryor you will come here for a fortnight, and as soon as I have received the message from my guru, I will give you the second stage that will last three months as well. At the end of these three months, you will receive the full initiation. X warned me that the first stage I am to receive provokes attacks and tests but that all this disappears with the second stage. Forewarned is forearmed. For what reason I do not know, but X told me that the particular nature of my initiation should remain secret and that he will say nothing about it to Swami, and he added (in speaking of the speed of the process), But you will not be less than the Swami. (!!) There, I wanted you to knowbesides, you were present in Xs vision. All this happened at a time when I was in the most desperate crisis I have ever known. Sweet Mother, there is no end to expressing my gratitude to you, and yet with the least trial, I am reduced to nothing. Why have you so much grace for me?
I would like very much to return to Pondicherry for the February Darshan and once again begin working for you. Today I am sending a second lot to Pavitra and tomorrow I will start on the Aphorisms, for I do not want to make you wait any longer. I will send a third and final lot to Pavitra by the end of the month, in time for printing. I am very touched, sweet Mother, by your attention and the money you are sending me.
0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For all these world events, I always leave it to the Divine vision and wisdom, and I say to the Supreme: Lord, may Thy Will be done.
I hope to hear from you soon.
0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
1) X spoke to me of the Vedic times when a single emperor or sage ruled the entire world with the help of governors; then these governors gradually became independent kings, and conflicts were born. So I asked him what was going to happen after this next war and whether the world would be better. He replied as follows: Yes, great sages like Sri Aurobindo who are wandering now in their subtle bodies will appear. Some sages may take the physical body of political leaders in the West. It will be the end of ignorant atomic machines and the beginning of a new age with great sages leading the world. So it seems that Xs vision links up with Sri Aurobindos prediction for 1967.
He did not give me any further details about this war, except to say that the countries which will suffer the most will be the countries of the North and the East, and he cited Burma, Japan, China and Russia. He said rather categorically that Russia would be swept away and that America would triumph.
0 1960-05-21 - true purity - you have to be the Divine to overcome hostile forces, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When X is here, I get the impression that things are going backwards instead of forwards. But once hes left, I suddenly leap ahead. And then I perceive that the progress is a real progress, that things won have really been won and they dont come undone again. That is Xs true power, a very material power. For I often feel that things could come into being, they could be realized in the consciousness above (and the vision is there, the Power is there, I have it the invisible power over the earth). But when you come down to the material plane, everything is uncertain. Whereas with X, once things have come down, they no longer dissipate. This is certainly why the Supreme put him on my path.
For example, there was one difficulty he helped me resolve. I have always been literally pestered, constantly, night and day, by all kinds of thoughts coming from peopleall kinds of calls, questions, formations2 that have naturally to be answered. For I have trained myself to be conscious of everything, always. But it disturbed me in the work, particularly when I needed absolute concentration and I could never cut myself off from people or cut myself off from the world. I had to answer all these calls and these questions, I had to send the necessary force, the necessary light, the healing power, I constantly had to purify all these formations, these thoughts, these wills, these false movements that were falling on me.
0 1960-06-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For instance, if I have a vision (not a vision with pictures, not that, but something without any form or sound or words or the THING itself, when I live the thing), and then later I speak of it to someone I have a very tangible feeling of having to pull something to make it visible, perceptible and communicable the splendor goes.
We need new organs of expression It will come.
0 1960-06-Undated, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I have been here seven years and I cant count a single concrete experience, not a single vision (the only things that have ever happened were in Ceylon or Rameswaram). I havent even managed to have a few slightly conscious nights.
Isnt this reason enough to be discouraged? In any case, these questions are stirring in meand the vital is not happy [nor the mental, nor the physical].
0 1960-07-12 - Mothers Vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1960-07-12 - Mothers vision - the Voice, the ashram a tiny part of myself, the Mothers Force, sparkling white light compressed - enormous formation of negative vibrations - light in evil
author class:The Mother
--
So in my vision, my body was as big as the universe, and that (the Ashram) was so tiny, so tiny.
***
0 1960-07-18 - triple time vision, Questions and Answers is like circling around the Garden, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1960-07-18 - triple time vision, Questions and Answers is like circling around the Garden
author class:The Mother
0 1960-07-23 - The Flood and the race - turning back to guide and save amongst the torrents - sadhana vs tamas and destruction - power of giving and offering - Japa, 7 lakhs, 140000 per day, 1 crore takes 20 years, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And it happened quite early in the nightat such an early hour, they are not visions or things you observe: they are things you do.
Ive been seeing for a long time that nights are actions. They are no longer images or symbols or representations they are all actions. And they take place certainly not on a human scale.
--
And again this morning, when I looked at this vision, I asked myself, Will there be war?I dont feel it will be like that It may be worse.
You see, it didnt seem human.
I remember wandering about one night some time ago. Its no longer very clear, but one thing has remained I had gone out of India, and then when I returned to India, I found huge elephants installed EVERYWHEREenormous elephants. At that time I was not at all aware that the Communists in India had adopted the elephant as their symbol; I only learned that later. What does this mean, I said to myself. Does it signify the Indian army? But they did not resemble war elephants. These elephants were like immense mammoths, and they looked like they were settling down with all the power of a tremendous inertia. That was the impression something heavy in an inert and very tamasic way, forever immovable. I did not like this occupation. When I came back, I had a rather painful feeling, and for several days I wondered if it did not mean war. Then by chance, in a conversation, I learned that the Communists had selected the elephant as their symbol whereas the Congress had chosen the bullock In my vision, I was moving (as I always do), I was moving among them, and nothing moved. And if I needed room, some of them even tried to stir a little.
But when human beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special formits a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly
The vehicle and the forward movement are the sadhana, beyond the shadow of a doubt. I understood that the speed of sadhana was greater than the speed of the forces of destruction. And it ended in certain victory, there is not a shadow of doubt. This feeling of POWER once I was firmly grounded there [in the square], enough power to help others.
--
In fact, the Ashrams financial situation has never been so bad. Were living from day to day, minute to minute One day, it will crackall these things are connected (Mother is alluding to the vision of the flood She has just described).
I myself am clearly seeing it from the other side; I see a black, muddy forma black, black force. And I see the [Divine] Force acting on people and, miraculously, the money comesand then its like something armored1it seeps in with difficulty, a thin trickle from day to day.
0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
object:0_1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient
author class:The Mother
--
I came out of the concentration at 4:10quite late. For I was VERY busy! I was in some sort of small house similar to my room, but it was at the top of a tower, for you could see the landscape from above. It was similar to my room here, with large windows. And I was much taller than I actually am, for there was a ledge below each window (there was a cupboard below each window, as in my room), and this ledge came quite low on me; in my room, it comes up to my chest, whereas it was much lower in my vision. And from there oh, what beautiful landscapes! It was surrounded by such lovely countryside! There was a flowing river, woods, sunlightoh, it was really lovely! And I was very busy looking up words in the dictionary!
I had taken out a dictionary. There, its this one, I said. Someone was next to me, but this someone is always symbolic: each activity takes on a special form which may resemble someone or other. (The people around me for the work here are like families in those worlds there; they are types, that iseach person represents a typeso then I know that Im in contact with all the people of this same type. If they were conscious, they would know that I was there telling them something in particular. But its not a person, its a type and not a type of character, but a type of activity and relationship with me.)
--
However, its not a personal subconscient, but a its more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individualityexcept in that vision the other day,1 which is what surprised me. Its hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So its like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny! It took a moment to see that vainquons is spelled q-u-o-n-s. And I wasnt sure! I meant to ask Pavitra for a dictionary which gives verb conjugations, for then if Im stuck on something while writing, I can look it up.
The other day I wrote somethingit was a letter I gave Pavitra to read. I think theres a spelling mistake, he said. Its quite possible, I answered, I make plenty of them. He looked it up in a splendid dictionary and, as a matter of fact, it was a mistake. I meant to ask him for a dictionary this morning.
--
The vision of July 12, 1960.
***
0 1960-10-02a, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Before going to bed, sometimes I say to myself, I will do what is necessary to spend my night in these great currents of force(because there is a way to do it). And then I think, Oh, what an egotist you are, my girl! So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesntwhen theres something important to do, it doesnt happen. But all I have to do is concentrate in a certain way before going to sleep to spend my whole night in these very far from here, very far I cant say very far from the earth, for surely its in an intermediate zone between the forces from above and the earths atmosphere. Thats what it mainly is, in any case. Its a great universal current as well, but mainly its what descends and comes onto the earth, and it is permeating the earths atmosphere all the time, all the time, and it comes with this wide, overall visionit makes for wonderful nights I no longer bother about people at allat least not as such, but in a more impersonal way.
(silence)
0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The day before yesterday, I spent the whole night looking on. I had read the passage by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis on supramental time (wherein past, present and future coexist in a global consciousness). While youre in it, its marvelous! You understand things perfectly. But when youre not in it Above all, theres this problem of how to keep the force of ones aspiration, the power of progress, this power which seems so inevitableso inevitable if existence (lets simply take terrestrial existence) is to mean anything and its presence to be justified. (This ascending movement towards a progressive better that will be eternally better)How is this to be kept when you have the total vision this vision in which everything coexists. At that moment, the other becomes something like a game, an amusement, if you will. (Not everyone finds it amusing!) And when you contain all that, why allow yourself the pleasure of succession? Is this pleasure of succession, of seeing things one after the other, equal to this intensity of the will for progress? Words are foolish!
The effort to see and to understand this gripped me all night. And when I woke up this morning, I thanked the Lord; I said to Him, Obviously, if You were to keep me totally in that consciousness, I could no longer I could no longer do my work! How could I do my work? For I can only say something to people when I feel it or see it, when I see that its what must be said, but if I am simultaneously in a consciousness in which Im aware of everything that has led to that situation, everything that is going to happen, everything Im going to say, everything the others going to feel then how could I do it!
--
I told this to Xor rather had someone tell himto see his reaction. And I realized that he did not understand in the least! Once Amrita asked him how he himself SAW and KNEW things. So he tried to explain; he told Amrita that he had to pull his consciousness upwards by a gradual effort, to go beyond the heart, beyond the throat center to pull it right up here (the top of the head), and once there, youre divine, you know! All of a sudden, I understood that when I said it was there, above the head, it must have seemed absolutely impossible to him! For him, its the crown of the head1 (what they call the thousand-petalled lotus), just at the top of the head, whereas in my experience it opens, it rises and you go above, and then you settle there For a number of years it even changed my [physical] visionit was as if I were looking at things from above. It returns from time to time, too, as if suddenly I were seeing from above instead of from here, at eye level.
But the faculty of forming thoughts is now there, up above; its no longer here (Mother points to her forehead). And thats contrary to their teachings.
0 1960-10-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I also wrote one or two things, experiences I had noted down; they were rather interesting, which is why Id like to get them back. I had described some of my visions to Madame Theon, and then she explained their meaning to me. So I would narrate the vision and give its explanation. That was readable and interesting, because there was some symbolism.
(Pavitra:) What was this Chronicle of KI?
0 1960-10-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
(No sooner had Mother finished telling this story than, by a curious coincidence, someone brought her a portrait drawn by P.K., one of the Ashram artists. Several days earlier, at about two in the morning during an uncommonly violent lightning storm, P.K. had suddenly SEEN amidst the flashes of lightning in the sky a rather terrible, demoniacal head in front of his very eyes. Having nothing else available, he hastily drew his vision in chalk on a schoolchilds slate, which is the portrait Mother speaks of here:)
Well, well! So P.K. is clairvoyant! Its him, for surethis is the being behind those people. Thats why they had so much power. And he came here because of tha the was furious. Quite a demon!
0 1960-11-08, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
All this came to me yesterday. I kept Z with me for more than half an hour, nearly 45 minutes. He told me some very interesting things. What he said was quite good and I encouraged him a great dealsome action on the right lines which will be quite useful, and then a book unfortunately mixed with an influence from that artificial world (but actually, even that can be used as a link to attract people). He must have spoken to you about this. He wants to write a kind of dialogue to introduce Sri Aurobindos ideasits a good idealike the conversations in Les Hommes de Bonne Volont by Jules Romain. He wants to do it, and I told him it was an excellent idea. And not only one typehe should take all types of people who for the moment are closed to this vision of life, from the Catholic, the fervent believer, right to the utmost materialist, men of science, etc. It could be very interesting.
This is what you see in life, its all like thateach thing has its place and its necessity. This has made me see a whole current of life I was very, very involved with people from this milieu during a whole period of my existence and in fact, its the first approach to Beauty. But it gets mixed.
--
Its an approach which is not at all mental nor intellectual nor (God knows!) moral in the leastno notion of Good or Evil nor any of those things, absolutely none of that. Theres a moment in life when you begin thinking a little and you see all this from an overall or universal point of view in which all moral notions completely disappearFOR ANOTHER REASON. This experience with Z reminded me of a certain way of approaching Beauty that enables you even to find it in what appears dirty and ugly to the common vision. It is She trying to express herself in this something which to the common vision is ugly, dirty, hypocritical. But of course, if you yourself have striven assiduously and have greatly held yourself in, then you look at it reprovingly.
From my earliest childhood, instinctively, I have never felt the slightest contempt or how should I say (well, well! I was thinking in English) shrinking or disapproval, severe criticism or disgust for the things people call vice.
--
I know I told you that I had had a vision, but you didnt understand what I told you that day. It was a vision of the place you occupy in my being and of the work we have to do together. Thats really how it is. These things [that I tell you] have their utility and a concrete life, and I see them as very powerful for world transformation theyre what I call experiences (which is much more than an experience because it extends far beyond the individual)and its the same whether its said or not said: the Action is done. But the fact that it is said, that it is formulated here and preserved, is exclusively for you, because you were made for this and this is why we met.
It doesnt need a lot of explaining.
And, even with Sri Aurobindo, even with him I didnt speak of these things for I wouldnt waste his time, and I found it quite useless to burden him with all this. I would tell him I always described my visions and experiences at night I always recounted that to him. And he would remember (I myself would forget; the next day, the whole thing would be gone), he would remember; then sometimes, long afterwards, even years afterwards, he would say, Ah, yes! You had seen that back then. He had a wonderful memory. While myself, I would already have forgotten. But those were the only things I told him, and even then only when I saw that it had a very sure, very superior quality. I didnt bother him with a whole jumble of words. But otherwise . even Nolini,4 who understands well I never, never felt even the (its not the need) not even the POSSIBILITY.
I dont want to tell you this too precisely, to expand on it, for these things cannot be explained. I want you tonot know nor think it, but feel it suddenly, like a little electric shock within that leaps forth.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For me its different, because I KNOW that it can and must become something else. But then all this Consciousness which is there and in which I live and which has this world vision must come forward and manifest in the vibration of EACH secondnot in a whole which looks interesting when seen from afar; it must enter the vibration of each second, the consciousness of each minute, otherwise
(silence)
0 1960-12-13, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Now X is coming, and these days of meditation with him.2 What is going to happen? By the way, he no longer writes that hes coming to help the Ashram. He wrote to Amrita that hes coming to have the opportunity (I cant exactly remember his words) anyway, to take advantage of his meditations with me so that he can make the necessary transformations! Quite a changed attitude. I had several visions concerning him which Ill tell you later.
Later, Mother added the following: 'In this regard I don't know where, but somewhereSri Aurobindo spoke of this physical mind, and he said that there was nothing you could do with it; it must only be destroyed.'
0 1960-12-17, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
It goes back and forth between the two all the timea kind of curve like an electric arc between them; it goes up, it goes down, it falls and then climbs back up. In a flash comes the clear vision that the universal realization will be achieved along with the perfection of the material, TERRESTRIAL world. (I say terrestrial, for the earth is still something unique; the rest of the universe is differentso this blown up speck of dust becomes of capital importance!) Then, at another moment, eternity for which all the universes are simply the expression of a second, and in which all this is a sort ofnot even an interesting game, but rather a breathing in and out, in and out And at such a moment, all the importance we give to material things seems so fantastically idiotic! And it goes in and out In this state, everything is obvious and indisputable. And in the other state, everything is obvious and indisputable. But between the two there is EVERY combination and every possibility.
(silence)
0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Oh, but you know, night after night, night after night, I SEE how things which in their truth are so simple become complicated here in the human atmosphere. Really, its so interesting; I have visions you see, the thing in its truth is so simple its stupefying, and then here it becomes so complicated, painful, exhausting, upsetting.
But its enough to take one step behind to come out of it all.
Ill tell you about that Wait, we still have three minutes; I want to tell you one of my most recent visions (but its almost the same thing every night):
I was in my home, somewherea world whose light is like a sun (golden with scarlet reflections); it was very beautiful. It was in a town, and my house was in that town. I wanted to take to someone some not presents, but things he needed. So I got everything together, prepared it all, and then loaded my arms with all the packages (I had taken my own time to arrange everything nicely), and I went out when the whole town was completely deserted there was not a soul on the streets. A complete solitude. And such a sense of well-being, of light and force! Yes, really a kind of felicity, for no reason. And instead of weighing me down, it seemed as if my packages were pulling me! They pulled me on in such a way that each step was a joy, like a dance.
0 1961-01-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With this comes TRUE collaboration. For when you have this vision, this awareness, when you live in this consciousness, you also get the power to PULL That into the manifestation on earth and put it into contact with what, for the time being, distorts and disguises; thus the deformation and disguise are gradually transformed by the influence of the Truth behind.
Here we are at the top rung on the scale of collaboration.
0 1961-01-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if we had the vision of the whole, if we were able to contain past, present and future simultaneously (as it is somewhere up above), then we would see how relative these things are and that its mainly the progressing evolutionary Force which gives us this will to reject; yet when these things still had their place, they were quite tolerable. However, to have this experience in a practical sense is impossible unless we have a total vision the vision that is the Supremes alone! Therefore, one must first identify with the Supreme, and then, keeping this identification, one can return to a consciousness sufficiently externalized to see things as they really are. But thats the principle, and in so far as we are able to realize it, we reach a state of consciousness where we can look at all things with the smile of a complete certainty that everything is exactly as it should be.
Of course, people who dont think deeply enough will say, Oh, but if we see that things are exactly as they should be, then nothing will budge. But no! There isnt a fraction of a second when things arent moving: theres a continuous and total transformation, a movement that never stops. Only because its difficult for us to feel that way can we imagine that by our entering certain states of consciousness things would not change. Even if we entered into an apparently total inertia, things would continue to change and we along with them!
Ultimately, disgust, rebellion and anger, all movements of violence, are necessarily movements of ignorance and of limitation with all the weakness that limitation implies. Rebellion is a weakness, for its the feeling of an impotent will. When you feel, when you see that things are not as they should be, then you rebel against whatever is out of keeping with your vision. But if you were all-powerful, if your will and your vision were all-powerful, there would be no opportunity to rebel! You would always see that all things are as they should be! That is omnipotence.1 Then all these movements of violence become not only useless but profoundly ridiculous.
Consequently, there is only one solution: by aspiration, concentration, interiorization and identification, to unite with the supreme Will. And that is both omnipotence and perfect freedom. Its the only omnipotence, the only freedomall the rest are approximations. You may be en route, but its not That, not the total thing.
--
When asked later about the meaning of this somewhat elliptical statement, Mother said: 'There are two stages. The first involves a mental (and possibly intuitive) vision of what will be (perhaps in an immediate future), and this is what we call seeing things "as they should be." The other is an identification with the supreme Will and the perception that at each second everything is exactly as the Supreme wants it to be, that it is the precise expression of the Supreme. The first is a vision of what is coming and says, "That's how things should be." But we overlook the distance between what presently exists and what is coming. While if we go high above and become one with the Consciousness of the supreme Will, we see that at every instant, at every moment in the universe, all is exactly as it should beexactly as the Supreme wants it to be. That is Omnipotence.'
Saraswati represents the universal Mother's aspect of Knowledge and artistic creativity. On this occasion, Mother would go down to the Meditation Hall and the disciples would silently pass in front of her to receive a message. This year they would receive a folder containing five photographs of Mother.
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I came out of this trance two hours later, at 3 a.m. And during these two hours I saw with a new consciousness, a new vision, and above all a NEW POWERI had a vision of the entire Work: all the people, all the things, all the systems, all of it. And it was it was different in appearance (this is only because appearances depend upon the needs of the moment), but mainly it differed IN POWERA considerable difference. Considerable. The power itself was no longer the same.9
A truly ESSENTIAL change in the body has occurred.
0 1961-01-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have done these things beforeits a knowledge I already hadand it always had its effect when I did them; its not that I am passing from powerlessness to power, not at all. But its this kind of yes, something definite, absolutea kind of absolute in vision, in knowledge, in action and ABOVE ALL in powera kind of absolute that doesnt need to conquer obstacles and resistances, but ANNULS the resistance automatically. Then I saw that something had truly changed.
(After a digression, Mother gives another example of the change:)
0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a curious thing speaking evidently helps me follow the experience. But I cant just begin speaking all alone up in my room! And talking to a tape recorder is useless. Up to now, it certainly flows the best with youby far. I havent tried with others, although occasionally Ive said something to Nolini, but his receptivity is fuzzy (I dont know whether you can understand this impression: its as though my. words were going into cotton-wool). Once, as I told you, I spoke with R., and with him I felt that three quarters of it was absolutely lostand as a matter of fact it was. But with you I begin to SEE, and the need to formulate makes me concentrate on my vision. And this I experience with you more than I ever have with anyone. So.
So you are bearing the consequences!
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of di vision and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I dont know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I cant give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it ? I dont know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasnt curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupationsthose very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Naturea natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kindeverything happened in the best way possible.
(silence)
--
This is the origin of such legends as Shangri-la. But 'psychics' most often confuse two planes of reality, attri buting to their SUBTLE vision a physical reality which it does not have or no longer has: they have merely entered into contact with the memory of a place for places, like beings, have a memory.
At first, Mother had said, 'But it's impossible.' Then, laughing, she had the word deleted.
0 1961-03-17, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The experience occurred in a place corresponding to ours [the main Ashram building], but immense: the rooms were ten times bigger, but absolutely one cant say emptythey were barren. Not that there was nothing in them, but nothing was in order, everything was just where it shouldnt be. There wasnt any furniture so things were strewn here and therea dreadful disarray! Things were being put to uses they werent made for, yet nothing needed for a particular purpose could be found. The whole section having to do with education [the Ashram School] was in almost total darkness: the lights were out with no way to switch them on, and people were wandering about and coming to me with incoherent, stupid proposals. I tried to find a comer where I could rest (not because I was tired; I simply wanted to concentrate a little and get a clear vision in the midst of it all), but it was impossible, no one would leave me alone. Finally I put a tottering armchair and a footstool end-to-end and tried to rest; but someone immediately came up (I know who, Im purposely not giving names) and said, Oh! This wont do at all! It CANT be arranged like that! Then he began making noise, commotion, disorderwell, it was awful.
To wind it all up, I went to Sri Aurobindos rooman enormous, enormous room, but in the same state. And he appeared to be in an eternal consciousness, entirely detached from everything yet very clearly aware of our total incapacity.
0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seemed made of transparent alabasterhard, harder than stone. It was the result of an individualization that was my impressionan individualization that has become very hardened. It has tried to become entirely transparent but has no tangible contact with thingsthings enter only through the higher regions, through intellectual perceptions (not intellectual, a sort of mental vision). And I began to bang on it!
It was mainly on your right side I banged on it. But strangely enough, it didnt break it became supple, but then it lost its beauty. (It was so beautiful, as though sculptured!) I tried to pass through it, but to do so (this is what I found interesting), instead of passing through at this level (the chest), the psychic plane the level of the souls vibration I had to climb up above and then descend; and finally, without even realizing it, I found myself inside I had entered through sheer force of concentration. There, at the vital level, the emotional vital (solar plexus), I put two flowers: one very large Endurance in the Most Material Vital [zinnia] and another flower like the one X just gave me [cosmos] but bigger and pure white (it concerns sexual movements, light in sexual movements). But curiously enough, I passed inside through a trance; I was quite busy trying to make it more fluid when all at once, poof! I found myself inside. But since I entered through a trance it became completely objective: no more thought, nothing. And I saw I had put these two flowers there (at the levels of the abdomen and chest), one more active, a very large, dark purple Endurance flower, and another much smaller, pure white, slightly lower down. While I was watching this I think the clock must have struck something pulled me and it all faded away.
--
Then its in the realm of visions, of conscious perception.
Yes, conscious perception, visiono therwise, nothing ever happens!
I understand! But yesterday when I was concentrating, I seemed to be sitting right in front of you again; and in the same way, with my left side, I was banging, banging on that absolutely rigid thing on your right. I was astonished: Why am I banging? (I had no intention of banging!) It was strange. The left side isnt like that, its the right.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I have had some cats. I had a cat who was the reincarnation of the mind of a Russian woman. I had a vision of it one day, it was so strangethis woman had been murdered at the time of the Russian Revolution, along with her two little children. And her mind entered a cat here. (How? I dont know.) But this cat, mon petit. I got her when she was very young. She would come and lie down, stretched out like a human being, with her head on my arm! (I used to sleep on a Japanese tatami on the floor.) And she would stay there, so well-behaved, didnt stir all night long! I was really amazed. Then she had kittens, and wanted to give birth to them lying stretched out, not at all like a cat. It was very difficult to make her understand that it couldnt be done that way! And one night after she had had her kittens, I saw her I saw a young woman in furs, with a fur bonnetyou could just see a tiny human face; she had two little ones and she came to me and placed them at my feet. Her whole story was there in her consciousness: how she and the two children had been murdered. And then I realized she was the cat!
The cat wouldnt leave her kittens for a moment! Not for anything. She wouldnt eat, wouldnt go outside to relieve herself, nothing: she stayed put. So I told her, Bring me your kittens. (If you know how to handle them, cats understand very well when theyre spoken to.) Bring me your little ones. She looked at me, went and brought one of her kittens, and placed it between my feet. Then she went to fetch the other one and placed it between my feet (not beside, between my feet). Now you can go out, I told her. And out she went.
0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I used to speak at the Playground, I tried to explain this one day I was facing the same problem: what really is? And clearly, it is utterly impossible to understand with the mind. But I had a vision of a kind of infinite Eternity through which the Supreme Consciousness voyages7; and the path this Consciousness travels is what we call the manifestation. And this vision explained absolute freedom, it explained how both thingsabsolute freedom and absolute determinismcould coexist in an absolute way. The image in my vision was of an eternal Infinity in which that Consciousness voyagesone cant even say freely, because freely would imply that it could be otherwise.
All who experience this say that the first movement of the manifestation, or the creation (creation, manifestation, objectification: all these words are imperfect) is CHIT, Consciousness that becomes Power. Consequently, Consciousness goes voyaging along in SAT, in Beingstatic, eternal, infinite and necessarily outside time and space and this movement of Consciousness is what produces time and space within this Infinity and Eternity.8 This leads to the understanding that things can simultaneously be absolutely free and absolutely determined.
This vision I had is of no value to anyone else, but it gave me a kind of satisfaction, a kind of peace (for a while).
(long silence)
0 1961-04-22, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a vision last night which lasted for a long timeit was rather interestingabout your work concerning Sri Aurobindo: the plane where its situated, what place Sri Aurobindo gives it and the HELP he is giving you. It was very, very interesting. I no longer recall all the details, but broad bands of a bluish-white light seemed to be spreading out in special forms (Mother sketches spirals in the air), showing how it would touch the earths mental atmosphere. It was truly interesting.
And Sri Aurobindo spoke of it as my work with you. I told him that I myself was doing nothing! But he told me it was my work with you.
0 1961-06-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday, when I was in that immobility, suddenly I felt something obliging me to turn my head. I didnt turn my head, but the consciousness turned (gesture to the left), and then I saw myself standing there in the corridor (that kind of corridor separating the hall and Sri Aurobindos room) in my usual outdoor dress [Indian shirt and light trousers]. I was standing up very straight and holding a globe of light above my head and such a light! It was shining brighter than those strong electric bulbsdazzling. My own clothing seemed to be made of golden-pink light. I was standing very straight and carrying this globe (gesture above the head). When I saw that I said to myself, Now why on earth is he making me see this? And that was all. Nothing else happened except that. But near me there was a figure I didnt know, and it reminded me of Xs great guru,1 whom I had already seen once. There he was by my side, a tall figure, and he seemed to be the one who had tugged at me to make me see that vision.
It was a large globe. Although no distinct rays could be seen, it appeared to be projecting innumerable rays like flashes of lightning. It was sparkling all over.
0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But there are all sorts of cases. Take N.D., for example, a man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindohe died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts of his being well organized around the psychic.6 The day he was going to leave his body little M. was meditating next to the Samadhi when suddenly she had a vision: she saw all the flowers of the tree next to the Samadhi (those yellow flowers I have called Service) gathering themselves together to form a big bouquet, and rising, rising straight up. And in her vision these flowers were linked with the image of N.D. She ran quickly to their house andhe was dead.
I only knew about this vision later, but on my side, when he left, I saw his whole being gathered together, well united, thoroughly homogenous, in a great aspiration, and rising, rising without dispersing, without deviating, straight up to the frontier of what Sri Aurobindo has called the higher hemisphere, there where Sri Aurobindo in his supramental action presides over earth. And he melted into that light.
Some time before his heart attack he said to his children: the gown is old, it must be thrown away.
0 1961-06-27, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Actually, as soon as one is not totally, totally tied down by the physical sense organs. For example, I am more and more frequently experiencing changes in the quality of vision. Quite recently, yesterday or the day before, I was sitting in the bathroom drying my face before going out and I raised my eyes (I was sitting before a mirror, although I dont usually look at myself); I raised my eyes and looked, and I saw many things (Mother laughs, greatly amused). At that moment, I had an experience which made me say to myself, Ah! Thats why, from the physical, purely material standpoint, my vision seems to be a bit blurred. Because what I was seeing was MUCH clearer and infinitely more expressive than normal physical sight. And I recalled that it is with these clearer eyes that I see and recognize all my people at balcony darshan. (From the balcony I recognize all my people.) And its that vision (but with open eyes!) which. It is of another order.
I am going to study what Sri Aurobindo says when I come to it in The Yoga of Self-Perfection. He says there comes a time when the senses changeits not that you employ the senses proper to another plane (we have always known we had senses on all the different planes); its quite different from that: the senses THEMSELVES change. He foretells this changehe says it will occur. And I believe it begins in the way I am experiencing it now.
0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If there werent this clear vision and constant aspiration withinoh, its so dreary and exasperating so dull, so gray ugh!
(silence)
0 1961-07-28, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had the experience of being missioned, so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combineddivine Love in its supreme purity, divine Consciousness in its supreme purity and emanated DIRECTLY, without passing through all the intermediate states, directly into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic Being in deep sleep so veiled that he was almost invisible. Then, at my contact, the veil seemed to be rent and, without his awakening, there was a sort of radiation spreading out. I can still see my vision.2
(silence)
--
A vision
(of Mothers)
--
See the addendum following this conversation for a transcription of Mother's vision as she noted it down for publication in Theon's Cosmic Review in 1906.
Cent. Ed., Vol. XVII, p. 28 ff.
0 1961-09-10, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Strangely enough, some years earlier, when Satprem was writing L'Orpailleur, Sujata had a vision in which she saw him typing, and from the typewriter came, not typewritten lines, but music!
***
0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There you are, petit. Now if I can pass this vision along to you, your book will come easily.
***
0 1961-09-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a clear vision of the two kinds of opposites in nature (not only in nature but in life) which almost everyone carries within himself: one is the possibility of realization, the other is the path chosen to attain it. There is always (its probably inevitable) the stormy path of struggle, and then there is the sunlit path. After much study and observation, I have had a sort of spiritual ambition (if it can be called that) to bring to the world a sunlit path, to eliminate the necessity for struggle and suffering: something that aspires to replace this present phase of universal evolution with a less painful phase.
It greatly interested me when I read your letter. I was looking at why you have so many difficulties; twice in your note you wrote that it [writing] is a suffering. You have very often written this word, very often spoken it, and it seems dominant in one aspect of your beingwhile in the other is the glory of a supreme joy, the very stuff of the future realization.
0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know, I didnt hear the beginning, but certainly everything dealing with physical events [of Sri Aurobindos life] will be expressed in a very reasonable and normal style so that there will be no danger of people saying, Hes a half-cracked visionary! I dont know, the first part of what you read to me was so good! Gusts of golden light kept coming. Perhaps you wanted to explain too much. You dont know what happened?
Yes, its precisely this need to explain.
--
I have a sort of vision in my head of parts of sentences, three or four words where the impression was what I told you: Not necessary. But it was a very minor thing. It was more an attitude, an attitude in the expression. But it wasnt disturbing.
I keep feeling that Sri Aurobindo wants the conclusion to be swift; and I myself (probably not with his power of comprehension) have a vision, a sort of feeling coming from a great height above, that the most important part of the book should be very abruptlike breaking through a door, flinging it wide-open, and emerging in a rush of light. Thats all. Now keep quiet and see what happens.
***
0 1961-10-30, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I would have liked at the beginning of the book is my visionhow I see him now. But its untranslatable.
(silence)
--
Nor was it insignificant that fire, Agni, was the core of the Vedic mysteries: Agni, the inner flame, the soul within us (for who can deny that the soul is fire?), the innate aspiration drawing man towards the heights; Agni, the ardent will within us that sees, always and forever, and remembers; Agni, the priest of the sacrifice, the divine worker, the envoy between earth and heaven (Rig-veda III, 3.2) he is there in the middle of his house (I.70.2). The Fathers who have divine vision set him within as a child that is to be born (IX.83.3). He is the boy suppressed in the secret cavern (V.2.1). He is as if life and the breath of our existence, he is as if our eternal child (I.66.1). O Son of the body (III.4.2), O Fire, thou art the son of heaven by the body of the earth (III.25.1). Immortal in mortals (IV.2. 1), old and outworn he grows young again and again (II.4.5). When he is born he becomes one who voices the godhead: when as life who grows in the mother he has been fashioned in the mother he becomes a gallop of wind in his movement (III.29.11). O Fire, when thou art well borne by us thou becomest the supreme growth and expansion of our being, all glory and beauty are in thy desirable hue and thy perfect vision. O Vastness, thou art the plenitude that carries us to the end of our way; thou art a multitude of riches spread out on every side (II.1.12). O Fire brilliant ocean of light in which is divine vision (III.22.2), the Flame with his hundred treasures O knower of all things born(I.59).
But the divine fire is not our exclusive privilegeAgni exists not only in man: He is the child of the waters, the child of the forests, the child of things stable and the child of things that move. Even in the stone he is there (I.70.2).
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont like to talk about these things, though they dont interest me. As Sri Aurobindo said, I lived my whole life absolutely free. I watched myself living through events like watching a movie. I had an inner vision, an inner will, and my inner reason for doing things was an Order received, an Order I was conscious of; but outwardlyfantastic! Naturallyhow else could it have been?
Here in Pondicherry, those last days might have become tragic (but of course it was impossible). There was the great argument (for he was perfectly aware of who I was): But after all, he would tell me, since you are the eternal Mother, why have you chosen Aurobindo as Avatar? Choose me! You must choose meme! It was the Asura speaking through him. I would smile and not discuss it. Thats not how its done! I would tell him (laughing). Then one day he said, Ah, so you dont want to. (gesture to the throat) Well, if you dont choose me, then. He was a strong fellow with powerful hands. I kept quite calm and said inwardly, My Lord, my Lord. I called Sri Aurobindo and I saw him come, like that (gesture enveloping Mother and immobilizing everything). Then Richards hands loosened their grip.
--
But the ifs. There is a domain where no more ifs exist, and when I am there, I still dont find any signs of inevitability. The place X looks from is all mixed up. I have had a certain number of visions, but not THE vision of inevitable war.
Not that they arent trying!
--
No, they had a hint, like a vision of the thing, but there is no proof that they realized it. Whats more, had they realized it, it seems to me that we would certainly have found some traces but no traces remain.
Theon knew something about it, and he called it the new world or the new creation on earth and the glorified body (I dont remember his exact terminology); but he knew of the Superminds existenceit had been revealed to him and he announced its coming. He said it would be reached THROUGH the discovery of the God within. And for him, as I told you the other day, this meant a greater densitywhich seems to be a correct experience. Well, on my side, I have made investigations and had innumerable visions concerning the earths history, and I spoke about it a good deal with Sri Aurobindo.
(silence)
--
Mother is alluding to the following aphorism of Sri Aurobindo: 'If when thou sittest alone, still and voiceless on the mountain-top, thou canst perceive the revolutions thou art conducting, then hast thou the divine vision and art freed from appearances.' This aphorism is completed by another: 'If when thou art doing great actions and moving giant results, thou canst perceive that THOU art doing nothing, then know that God has removed His seal on thy eyelids.'
Cent. Ed., Vol. XVII, p. 92
0 1961-12-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day (Im translating the last section of The Synthesis of Yoga, The Yoga of Self-Perfectionit plunges you into bottomless gulfs) and one day (I think Ive told you this), I had a vision of the gap between not even what ought to be, because we probably havent the slightest idea of that, but between our concept of what we would like to be and what is. And it was so dreadful that the body was thrown into, oh an anguish, a horror; and along with it an intensity of aspiration, a prayer. The gap seemed so tremendous: Is it possible?
Thats how it felt.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, just to give you an example: when I first began to work (not with Theon personally but with an acquaintance of his in France, a boy4 who was a friend of my brother), well, I had a series of visions (I knew nothing about India, mind you, nothing, just as most Europeans know nothing about it: a country full of people with certain customs and religions, a confused and hazy history, where a lot of extraordinary things are said to have happened. I knew nothing.) Well, in several of these visions I saw Sri Aurobindo just as he looked physically, but glorified; that is, the same man I would see on my first visit, almost thin, with that golden-bronze hue and rather sharp profile, an unruly beard and long hair, dressed in a dhoti with one end of it thrown over his shoulder, arms and chest bare, and bare feet. At the time I thought it was vision attire! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way.
Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before him in the Hindu manner. All this without any comprehension in the little brain (I mean I really didnt know what I was doing or how I was doing itnothing at all). I did it, and at the same time the outer being was asking, What is all this?!
I wrote the vision down (or perhaps that was later on) but I never spoke of it to anyone (one doesnt talk about such things, naturally). But my impression was that it was premonitory, that one day something like it would happen. And it remained in the background of the consciousness, not active, but constantly present.
As for Theon, he was European and wore a long purple robe that wasnt at all like the one in my vision. (Im not sure, but I think he was either Polish or Russian, but more probably Russian, of Jewish descent, and that he was forced to leave his country; he never said anything about this to anyone, its only an impression.) When I saw him I recognized him as a being of great power. And he bore a certain likeness to Sri Aurobindo: Theon was about the same size (not a tall man, of medium height) and thin, slim, with quite a similar profile. But when I met Theon I saw (or rather I felt) that he was not the man I saw in my vision because he didnt have that vibration. Yet it was he who first taught me things, and I went and worked at Tlemcen for two years in a row. But this other thing was always there in the background of the consciousness.
Then when Richard came here he met Sri Aurobindo (he was haunted by the idea of meeting the Master, the Guru, the Great Teacher). Sri Aurobindo was in hiding, seeing no one, but when Richard insisted, he met him, and Richard returned with a photograph. It was one of those early photos, with nothing in it. It was empty, the remnants of the political man, not at all resembling what I had seen I didnt recognize him. Its strange, I said to myself, thats not it (for I saw only his external appearance, there was no inner contact). But still, I was curious to meet him. At any rate, I cant say that when I saw this photograph I felt, Hes the one! Not at all. He impressed me as being a very interesting man, but no more.
I came here. But something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time. Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the afternoon. He was living in the house thats now part of the second dormitory, the old Guest House.5 I climbed up the stairway and he was standing there, waiting for me at the top of the stairs. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed the same way, in the same position, in profile, his head held high. He turned his head towards me and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked (gesture of instantaneous shock), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion the decisive shock.
But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiencesa ten months sojourn in Pondicherry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting in the same house and in the same waydid the END of the vision occur. I was standing just beside him. My head wasnt exactly on his shoulder, but where his shoulder was (I dont know how to explain itphysically there was hardly any contact). We were standing side by side like that, gazing out through the open window, and then TOGETHER, at exactly the same moment, we felt, Now the Realization will be accomplished. That the seal was set and the Realization would be accomplished. I felt the Thing descending massively within me, with the same certainty I had felt in my vision. From that moment on there was nothing to sayno words, nothing. We knew it was THAT.
But between these two meetings he participated in a whole series of experiences, experiences of gradually growing awareness. This is partly noted in Prayers and Meditations (I have cut out all the personal segments). But there was one experience I didnt speak of there (that is, I didnt describe it, I put only the conclusion)the experience where I say Since the man refused I was offering participation in the universal work and the new creation and the man didnt want it, he refused, and so I now offer it to God.6
I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
Then everything vanished.
--
It was after this vision, when I returned from Japan, that this meeting with Sri Aurobindo took place, along with the certainty that the Mission would be accomplished.
(silence)
0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Prakriti: Nature or the executive force, as opposed to Purusha, the conscious Soul which sees, knows and creates through its vision. These are the two principles, feminine and masculine, of the universe.
See Agenda of March 26, 1959 (Vol. I, p. 288): the Titan sent especially to attack Mother's body, and who uses the people around her for this purpose.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This was counterbalanced by a terrible censor which never left me.11 It took Sri Aurobindo to clear it from my path. But I didnt have the sense of sin, of Good and Evil, sin and virtuedefinitely not! My consciousness was centered around right action and wrong action12this should have been done, that shouldnt havewith no question of Good or Evil, from the standpoint of work, of action alone. My consciousness has always been centered on action. It was a vision, a perception of the line to be followedor the many lines to be followed for the action to be accomplished. And any deviation from what to me was the luminous line, the straight line (not geometrically straight: the luminous line, the line expressing the divine Will), the slightest deviation from that, and oh, it was the only thing that tormented me.
And the torment didnt come from me, it came from that character hooked on to my consciousness and constantly whipping me, hounding me, ill-treating mewhat people call their conscience, which has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness!13 Its an adverse being, and whatever it can change, it changes for the worse; whatever is susceptible to being changed into something antidivine, it changes. And it is constantly repeating the same thing: This is wrong, that is wrong, this is wrong.
--
And it has never left me. Ever since then I have kept that same vision of things. But I have to make it intelligible.
Ill see you on the 12th.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is exactly the experience I have been going through these past few days; since the day before yesterday it seems to have reached its peak, and this morning it developed into a comprehensive vision, an earth-encompassing vision.
Its almost like a reversal of attitude.
Actually, people have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse forces the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish ones own transformation thats what we must pray for, what we must work outrather than demand the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces.
And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, its quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.
And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness andeven worseall the ill will in the earths consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.
The adverse forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear.
--
It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming.2 Since this world is progressive, I was wondering, since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, wont there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Wont there always be what we call adverse forces, in other words, things that dont harmoniously follow the movement? Then came the answer, the vision of That: No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.
It was very concrete.
--
The first rather tangible manifestation was this vision of the boat; with that, things became more concrete, it radically changed something in the attitude.
Were at another stage now.
0 1962-02-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This analogy is very apt down here on this plane, but for the higher realms it doesnt applyup there its just the opposite! As long as you remain the archer, touching one point, thats how it is; all intelligence below is like that, seeing all sorts of possibilities, so it cant make a choice and act. To see the whole target, the all-inclusive Truth, you must cross to the other side. And when you do, what you see is not the sum of countless truths, an innumerable quantity of truths added together and viewed one after another, making it impossible to grasp the whole at a glance; when you go above, its the whole you see first, AT A GLANCE, in its entirety, without di vision. So there is no longer any choice to be made; its a vision: THAT is to be done. The choice is no longer between this and that, it doesnt work that way any more. Things are no longer seen in succession, one after another; there is rather a simultaneous vision of a whole that exists as a unit. The choice is simply a vision.
As long as youre not in that state, you cant see the whole. The whole cant be seen successively, by adding one truth to another; this is precisely what the mind does, and why it is incapable of seeing the whole. It cant do it. The mind will always see things in succession, by addition, but thats not IT, something will always elude you the very sense of truth will elude you.
--
Then, action is no longer a choice subject to error, correction, discussion, but the clear vision of what must be done. And this vision is infallible.
(silence)
0 1962-02-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I wish I had a more comforting vision.
Yes, its miserable. I must say, the farther I go, the more I.
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My vision of things the SAME thingshas become very, very different. Very different. When you read these Talks to me its exactly as though I were listening to someone else saying things I am transported back into a different persons consciousness. But at least its accessible, while now.
At that time, I had the sense of a higher way of living: I used to make a distinction between different ways of life. Now this so-called higher way of living seems so miserable to meso petty, mean, narrow that I very often find myself in the same position as those who ask, But is there really something to it? And I understand them (even though I have a different will and vision of something to come that is not yet here), I understand the feeling of those who came into contact with spiritual life and asked, What good is itwhat good is it? Is there anything worth living in it? We are NECESSARILY hemmed in, bound to live in narrowness and pettiness simply to keep alive, for the sake of all the bodys needs.
It takes such an effort to bring Light into this poverty, to bring a Force, a Reality, a Power, something, good Lord, something TRUE! Through constant effort and will, constant tension, suddenly, ah! I get two or three seconds and then it all ebbs away again.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The closer you approach absolute certainty, the greater is the time span, because the realm of such visions is quite close to the Origin, and a long time can pass between the revelation of what will be and its realization. But being so near the Origin, the revelation is very certain.
When one is identified with the Supreme, there is a place where all is unequivocally known: in the past, in the present, in the future and everywhere. But when they return, those who go there usually forget what they have seen. A particularly strict discipline is needed to remember. Thats the only realm where you cant be mistaken.
--
Anyway, to go back to what I was saying, depending on the plane of ones vision, one can judge approximately how much time it will take to be realized. Immediate things are already realized, they are self-existent and can be seen in the subtle physical they already exist there, and the reflection (not even transcription) or projection of this image is what will take place in the material world the next day or a few hours later. In this case you see the thing accurately, in all its details, because its already there. Everything hinges on the precision and power of your vision: if your vision is objective and sincere, you will see the thing as it is; if you add personal sentiments or impressions, it gets colored. Accuracy in the subtle physical depends exclusively on the instrument, the one who sees.
But as soon as you move into a subtler realm, like the vital (and the mental even more so), there is a narrow margin of possibilities. You can see the rough outlines of what is going to take place, but in the details it can be this way or that way: it is possible for certain wills or influences to interfere and create discrepancies.
This is so because the original Will is reflected, as it were, in different realms, and in each realm the organization and relation of the images are changed. The world we live in is a world of imagesnot THE thing itself in its essence, but its reflection. We could say that in our material existence we are merely a reflection, an image of what we are in our essential reality. And the modalities of these reflections are what introduce all the errors and all the falsifications (what is seen in its essence is perfectly true and pure, existing from all eternity, while images are essentially variable). And according to the amount of falsehood introduced into the vibrations, the amount of distortion and alteration increases. Each circumstance, each event and each thing can be said to have one pure existenceits true existence and a considerable number of impure or distorted existences in the various realms of being. There is a substantial beginning of distortion, for instance, in the intellectual realm (indeed, the mental realm holds a considerable amount of distortion), and it increases as all the emotional and censorial realms interfere. Arriving at the material plane, the vision is most often unrecognizable. Completely distorted. To such a point that its sometimes very hard to realize that this is the material expression of thattheres not much resemblance any longer!
This approach to the problem is rather new and can provide the key to many things.
Take the case of someone you know well and are used to seeing materially: seeing him in the subtle physical, certain aspects become more prominent, more visible, more marked; physically they went unseen because in the material grayness they had blended with many other things. Certain character traits that never showed up physically now become so marked as to be quite visible. When you look at someone physically, you see the color of his complexion, the shape of his features, his expression. Seeing him at the same moment in the subtle physical, you suddenly notice different colors on different parts of the face, in the eyes an expression or a particular light you hadnt seen beforea strong impression of a very different overall appearance, which to our physical eyes would seem rather outlandish. But for the subtle vision its all very expressive and revealing of the persons character, or even of the influences hes under (what I am talking about is something I observed a few days ago).
So, according to the plane where you are conscious and can see, you perceive images and see events from varying distances and with varying degrees of accuracy. The only true and sure vision is the vision of the Divine Consciousness. The problem, therefore, is to become conscious of the Divine Consciousness and constantly maintain it in all lifes details.
Meanwhile, there are all sorts of ways to receive indications. That exact, precise and (whats the word?) habitual vision certain people have may stem from various sources. It may be a vision through identity with circumstances and things when you have learned to expand your consciousness. It may be an indication from some chatterbox of the invisible world, who has got it into his head to let you know whats going to happenthis is often the case. Then everything depends on your harbingers morals: if he is having fun at your expense, he spins stories for youthis almost always happens to those who receive their information from entities. To bait you, they may repeatedly tell you how things are going to turn out (for they have a universal vision in some vital or mental realm); then, when they are sure you trust them, they may start telling you fibs and, as they say in English, you make a fool of yourself. This happens frequently! You have to be in a higher consciousness than these fellows, these entities (or these minor gods, as some call them) and able to check from above the value of their statements.
With a universal mental vision, you can see (and this is very interesting) how the mental world operates to get realized on the physical plane. You see the various mental formations, how they converge, conflict, combine and relate to one another, which ones get the upper hand, exert a stronger influence and achieve a more total realization. Now, if you really want a higher vision, you must get out of the mental world and see the original wills as they descend to take expression. In this case, you may not have all the details, but the central FACT, the fact in its central truth, is indisputable, undeniable, absolutely correct.
Some people also have the faculty of predicting things already existing on earth but at a distance, far from physical eyestheyre generally those who have the capacity to expand and extend their consciousness. Their vision is slightly more subtle than physical vision, and depends on an organ subtler than its purely material counterpart (what could be called the life of this organ). So, by projecting their consciousness, and having the will to see, they can clearly see things that already exist but are beyond our ordinary field of vision. Those who have this capacitysincere people who tell what they see, not blufferssee with perfect precision and exactness.
Ultimately, absolute sincerity is the great deciding factor for those who predict or foresee. Unfortunately, because of peoples curiosity, their insistence and the pressure they exert (which very few can resist), an almost involuntary mechanism of inner imagination comes to add just that small missing element to something not seen with precision or exactness. Thats what causes flaws in prediction. Very few have the courage to say, Ah no, I dont know this, I dont see that, this eludes me. They dont even have the courage to say it to themselves! So then, with a tiny drop of imagination, which acts almost subconsciously, the vision or information gets rounded outit can turn out to be anything at all! Very few people can resist this tendency. I have known many, many psychics, many extraordinarily gifted beings, and only a handful were able to stop just at the point where their knowledge stopped. Or else they embellish. Thats what gives these faculties their slightly dubious quality. One would have to be a great saint, a great sage, and completely free from other peoples influences (I dont speak of those who seek fame: they fall into the most flagrant traps); because even goodwillwanting to satisfy people, please them, help themis enough to distort the vision.
(Smiling) Are you satisfied? Have I answered everything?
--
It was a vision. He saw the bellboy, but instead of the elevator, the boy showed him his hearse. Then, when he saw the same boy making the very same gesture (really just like the cartoon), he said, No, thanks! Ill walk down. And the elevator (a hydraulic one) broke. It crashed down, crushing all those inside it.
He asked me about it and my explanation was that an entity had forewarned him. The image of the bellboy indicates an intelligent, conscious intermediaryit doesnt seem to come from the mans subconscient.1 Or else he had seen it in the subtle physical and his subconscient knew but then why did it present him with such an image? I dont know. Perhaps something in his subconscient knew, because the accident already existed in the subtle physical. Before it occurred here, the accident the law of the accidentexisted.
--
For the subtler senses, the method is to create an exact image of what you want, make contact with the corresponding vibration and then concentrate and practice. For instance, you practice seeing through an object, or hearing through a sound2 or seeing at a distance. As an example, I was once bedridden for several months, which I found quite boring I wanted to see. I was staying in one room and beyond that room was another little room and after that a sort of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge changed into a stairway going down into a very spacious and beautiful studio built in the middle of the garden.3 I wanted to go see what was happening in the studio I was bored stiff in my room! So I stayed very still, shut my eyes and gradually, gradually sent out my consciousness. I did the exercise regularly, day after day, at a set hour. You begin with your imagination, and then it becomes a fact. After a while, I distinctly sensed my vision physically moving: I followed it and saw things going on downstairs I knew absolutely nothing about. I would verify it in the evening, asking, Did it happen like this? Was that how it was?
But each of these things must be practiced for months, patiently, almost stubbornly. You take the senses one after another: hearing, sight, and eventually even the subtle aspects of taste, smell and touch.
0 1962-03-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day, didnt I tell you the story of those entities working for me? (It wasnt you? Id had a vision.) In fact, I very often see entities like Nature spirits when I enter the subtle physical and work there (usually for people here and the Ashram, and for the world at large), I very, very often have them with me, or else I meet them in the course of my work. They are forces, generally feminine in appearance, that do some work and have a great deal of power. They are usually the ones that respond to Tantric invocations (I dont mean the Tantrics who call on Kali or Durga, thats something else altogether, those belong to a totally different world). Most of the time these Nature forces are very willing to helpat any rate, they are wonderfully obliging with me! But they are limited beings, with their own ideas and laws, their own volition, and when vexed they can do unpleasant things. Yet they are not hostile beings, nor are they vital beings: they are personified forces of physical Nature, in the subtle physical.
A world of things could be said.
0 1962-04-03, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is in that group a man whom I must have seen once or twice, who is not with them in spirit, but only in appearance, but without knowledge. He does not know what kind of being it is. And he always hopes to make him accept me, believing it is truly Sri Aurobindo. I saw this being last night. I wont tell you all the details of the vision. It is not necessary. But I must say that I was fully conscious, aware of everything, knowing that there was an Asuric Force there, but not rejecting it, because of the infinity of Sri Aurobindo. I knew that everything is part of him and I do not want to reject anything. I met this being last night three times, even apologized for sins that I have not committed, and in full love and surrender.
I woke up at twelve, remembering everything.
--
I woke up at two and noticed that the heart had been affected by the attack of this group that is wanting to take my life away from this body, because they know that as long as I am in a body upon earth their purpose cannot succeed. Their first attack was many years ago in vision and action. It happened during the night and I spoke of it to no one. I noted the date, and if I can come out of this crisis, I will find it and give it out. They would have liked me dead years ago. It is they who are responsible for these attacks on my life. Until now I am alive because the Lord wants me to be alive, otherwise I would have gone long ago.
I am no more in my body. I have left the Lord to take care of it, if it is to have the Supramental or not. I know, and I have also said, that now is the last fight. If the purpose for which this body is alive is to be fulfilled, that is to say, the first steps towards the Supramental transformation, then it will continue today. It is the Lords decision. I am not even asking what He has decided. If the body is incapable of bearing the fight, if it has to be dissolved, then humanity will pass through a critical time. What the Asuric Force that has succeeded in taking the appearance of Sri Aurobindo will create is a new religion or thought, perhaps cruel and merciless, in the name of the Supramental Realisation. But everybody must know that it is not true, it is not Sri Aurobindos teaching, not the truth of his teaching. The truth of Sri Aurobindo is a truth of love and light and mercy. He is good and great and compassionate and divine. Et cest Lui qui aura la victoire finale.1
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you about that experience of meeting Sri Aurobindo (the true Sri Aurobindo) in the subtle physical. This is the exact dateearly that morning I jotted it down on this paper. And it gives me the approximate date of the other vision: that is, I must have had my first experience with those people somewhere around the end of June or the beginning of July, 1959.
Did I tell you about it? It was a sort of vision that I took for a beginning of work on the subconscient. I had come to a place where Sri Aurobindo was staying and found him closeted in his room. There was a sort of large hall, an immense hall with rooms opening onto it, and his apartment was off to one side (gesture). I asked to see him. I was told it wasnt possible and I had to wait. I was astonished. Then certain things happened in the hall concerning A. and M. (rather interesting things, but concerning them personally). And at the same time, I was waiting. When it was all over, I asked once again to go into the room. Then through the doorway I saw I saw a tall Sri Aurobindomuch taller than he actually wasstrong but rather thin, thin in a way that not the way he really wasit was rather a gauntness, very harsh, very cold; and he was somewhat darker than he used to be. I saw him there, walking up and down; and when he was told I was asking to see him, I saw him in the distance saying, No, I dont want to see her. I wont acknowledge her and I dont want anything to do with hershe has betrayed me. Something like that (I couldnt hear the actual words, but the gestures were plain enough). Well, that was the very first timenothing of the kind had ever occurred before.
And I immediately felt that it was the expression of certain peoples thoughts. During the war there was a whole clique (I know their names and all the details) who said I had influenced Sri Aurobindo, made him deviate from his nationalist path and turn towards the Allies; they considered me to have ruined his life, his consciousness, his workeverything, you understand.1
And I was seeing the very IMAGE of that in this vision. A person I wont name (but I spoke to him afterwards; hes still here) came out of the room to tell me all this. In my vision I told him two things (it seems very distant nowit was back in 59and I no longer recall if I told him one thing after the other or both together). First of all, I protested against everything that fake Sri Aurobindo was saying about me, and at the same time I was going towards the person coming out of the room (its someone living here, you know, who is, who was quite close to Sri Aurobindo. Apparently he was under the influence of certain doubting thoughts, certain doubts, thats why he was there). I called him by name and spoke to him in English: But surely we have had a true spiritual relationship, a true union! Immediately he melted and said yes, and rushed headlong into my arms. In other words, that was his conversion, and thats why I spoke to him about it afterwards; I didnt tell him about the experience but I spoke of the doubt that was in him. It was truly a beginning of conversion in one part of his being, and for that reason I wont name him. And along with this, in answer to what that fake Sri Aurobindo was saying, I said forcefully (also in English): This means the negation of all spiritual experience! And immediately the whole scene, the whole construction, everythingpoof! Vanished, dissolved. The Force swept it all away.
Later, when I had that second vision April 3, 1962, I saw that the same being was behind this would-be Sri Aurobindo (and with a whole group organized around himpeople, ceremonies and so on). So from that I concluded that the thing had been developing. But when I first encountered those people [in 1959] it was merely something in the Subconscient and the effect was only psychological (an hour or two was enough to sort things out and put them in order). It didnt affect my health. But this time.
So it was in 59 that I first saw them, and it must have been the end of June or the beginning of July. This note [the desk-calendar page] is what gave me the clue, because I know that the other experience [of Sri Aurobindo in the subtle physical] came a few weeks later.
--
No, nomy visions are in the subtle physical, but those people exist here on earth, although I dont know who they are. As I said, I knew only one of them. But its certain that a physical organization corresponding to these visions does exist. I dont know the details they just havent been given to me. But it corresponds to a group of PHYSICAL people.
Powerful?
--
But how powerful are they outwardly? The people around that fellow [the fake Sri Aurobindo], who leveled all those reproaches at me, used to be in the Ashram they have since left. They were quite real. But the ones in the last group [in the most recent vision], I dont know I dont know them physically, so I cant say.
One day, perhaps, Ill find out.
0 1962-05-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Pain is the one thing I sense the way I used to. Food, for instance, taste, smell, vision, hearingall thats completely changed. They belong to another rhythm. And this condition has come progressively, like a crystallization of something behind the senses that doesnt come from herein taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch. Except this one point. Even the sense of touch is different now but PAIN.
Pain is the old world.
0 1962-05-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I would like to ask you in what way your vision has changed since the experience of April 13what exactly is the difference?
I repeat.
--
In what way has your vision of the PHYSICAL world changed since that experience [of April 13]?
I cant give you more than an approximation of that awareness.
0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
and that its all closed to me now. I feel theres a knowledge Ive already had, a vision Ive already had
Certainly.
0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I know I was in a state of knowledge, because I suddenly knew who certain people herepeople I have known for a very, very long timewere the reincarnations of (I had never tried to find that out, it just came). I was almost calling them by their former names. Yes, a special state, a state of knowledge but not spiritual knowledge: a knowledge related to the material world. In such visions, water always represents the vital. When everything is harmonious with the water, it means the vital is harmonious.
It was delightful (it happened around 1:30 in the afternoon): sitting on the water the way you would sit on a chair! And the water was so clear, crystal clear, transparent, rippled with tiny waves; the depths were dark blue, but the surface was perfectly clear, transparent, almost colorless. Then when the big brother came, boasting that he knew how to do it too, and would take me across, the water began to get muddy, as river water always isa dirty grayish yellow.
--
You remember all the difficulties I encountered in those other visions at night. Well, this was very interesting because it was just the opposite: I was in a very complicated place full of obstacles and difficulties, but someone or something was always there when I arrivedeverything would get sorted out and I would go on my way. It all sorted itself out automatically the feeling of a power putting everything in order. And I remember when the mason arrived, just as I was facing that rather big obstacle, there was someone on my right (someone very official, wearing a dark coat) who thought (the contact was through thought rather than words), Oh! Shes always calling on the workers for help instead of. And I answered, The workers are more efficient and their goodwill (all that business of caste, you know, or of society or social position). The workers have simple hearts, I said, they are efficient in their work and have more goodwill than the people who think theyre so smart! It was funny. So this made two interesting experiences yesterday, one after the other.
The afternoon experience was very intriguing; I was busy working (organizing things for one of the departments, I no longer remember which) and then I said to the person I was with, Now I am going to my cousins place! When I was very young I had a cousin, the eldest son of one of my fathers brothers (he had a large family, such as you seldom see in France). This cousin became some kind of engineera civil engineer, maybe, or a mechanical engineer (he was an outstanding chemist). Anyway, this boy was very attracted to me. He went off to the war as an officer and caught some disease (I forget what) and died around 1915, at the time I returned to France. Well, in my experience yesterday afternoon, a certain family living HERE gave me exactly the same sensation I had had towards those people when I was young. And especially for this cousin (for the rest of the family it was more vague, like a background to the experience). I am going to their place, I said. They have a lovely estate here, just as they had a lovely estate in France before (they had Madame de Sevignes chateau at Sucy, near Parisa beautiful property). And it was all so concrete! It wasnt coming through the head; it wasnt a thought but a sensation. I have to go see him now, I said. And even as I was having my vision I was telling myself, You must be going crazy! Can they really be here in Pondicherry? This uncle with whom I had only rather distant relations and this cousin I never saw much of, but whom I knew to be very nice and very loyalAre they really here?! The sensation was most strange (the head wasnt functioning at all; it was a SENSATION). So off I went to see this cousin, and it was on the way to see him that I had the experience of crossing the river. And on the way back, after the discussion with the spiritual brother (whom I really told off: Get out of here! I dont need you!), after that, when I found myself back on the bank, I started collecting my consciousness again, telling myself, Look here now! Lets try to see clearly. And then I realized that the cousin who died prematurely during the war had reincarnated in someone here. How strange, I thought. And the dates coincided.
But that is a singular state: there is no mental intervention at all; you live things POSITIVELY, just as you experience them physically, in the same way that this (Mother knocks on the table next to her) is physically a table. Its that kind of perception something positive. I positively said, I am going to my cousins place, and the relationship had an absolutely positive vibrationit wasnt at all something thought or even remembered: theres no remembering anything, its simply there, alive. A strange state. I have had it on several occasions, and when I have it I am aware that this must be the state people who know what is happening and make predictions are inin this state there is no possibility of doubt. No thoughts intervenenone at all, not one. Absolutely nothing intellectual: simply certain vital-physical vibrations, and then you know. And you dont even wonder how you know; its not that kind of thingits self-evident. And since I was in that state when I saw the reincarnation of the cousin, I am perfectly sure of what I saw. And god knows (Mother laughs), when I came out of it and began to look at it all with my usual consciousness, I said to myself, My word! I would never have thought of such a thing! It was millions of miles from any thought of mine. Besides, I never used to think of that cousin; he was a fine boy but I never paid much attention to him, he had no place in my active consciousness.
0 1962-06-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, just now I was sitting and waiting for you. When I have nothing to do I cant stay one second without immediately turning withininstead of the consciousness being turned outside, its turned within and well, I noticed that the body, which was sitting and waiting, had the feeling of going into something woolly, rounded, soft. And in both cases I was motionless. I was simply sitting here waiting. Its like going from something crisp, clear, precise (forget about thought or vision: this is pure sensation), from something crisp, precise, defined, into something soft, mellow like a light white smokenot milky white, but soft, transparent and oh, such peace. As if nothing in the world could resist that peace.
It happened in a split second: I was sitting, waiting for you, thinking you were about to come; but the door wasnt opening, so automatically the body went like this (inward-turning gesture). And since it happened so suddenly, I noticed the difference in the way the body felt. What it normally feels is a formidable willvery tranquil, very peaceful, free of tension or agitation, yet so direct and clear, concentrated (not concentrated: coagulated) that it is almost hard. And thats what controls the body, thats what the body obeys. And when thats not there, its the other state: smooth, mellow, soft, woolly and what peace! As if nothing in the world could disturb it.
--
And what nights I have! Nights like the one I told you about the other day, with visions and actions; and then I have nights. All night last night, I didnt lose consciousness, I dont feel I slept for a minute; and it was like being in a sort of temporal Infinity (both hands open above the head). From time to time, I look at the clock (all at once I feel something pulling me and I look at the clock): two or two and a half hours have passedlike a second. Did I sleep, you ask? Did the consciousness fall asleep? No, not for a second. But the sense of time completely disappears into into an inner immobility. But an immobility in motion!
If it keeps on like this, they will put me in a padded cell!
0 1962-06-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If within that immobility I had a vision of the Mother, for instancea vision of the Motherif She were here well, yes, as though She knew me, was near me, was aware of my existence! A relationship, something. Well, that would change everything! If I could say to myself: close your eyes and you will see Herlike Ramakrishna, for example, he had that kind of relationship. I dont know, my whole life would be changed, I would feel linked to SOMETHING. It wouldnt just be silence, silence, silence.
But all that belongs to a lower stage.
0 1962-06-23, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I cant say I find it terribly interesting (!) but I am clearly meant to know about it. Not that I am seeking to see or know (my focus is rather on preparing the body and making it receptive; thats what I am actively doing), but what probably happens is that, in my contemplation, I suddenly exteriorize (or something of the sort) and then I see all kinds of things. But I DONT sleep, you see (I dont know how to explain it). I go from a state of conscious concentration to a more passive state in which I am made to take part in all kinds of scenes and visions, involving many people and many things, as if to complete my knowledge. Some of these visions are amusing, new and interesting, and I dont know, but I suspect Sri Aurobindo has something to do with it, because theres such a sense of humor running through it all! (Mother laughs) Things that make me laugh, comical things due mainly to the tremendous earnestness with which people take the most unimportant things; yes, the disproportionate importance people give to absolutely unimportant events!
(silence)
0 1962-06-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Later, Mother again speaks of her vision of the tall white being armed with a kind of halberd:)
What was standing there was a manifestation of one of my states of being, a part of my vital being, or rather one of my innumerable vital beingsbecause I have quite a few! And this one is particularly interested in things on earth.
--
I wrote a letter like that yesterday; I took a piece of paper and wrote in my habitual way, my old way. While I was writing, the feeling that it wasnt right came in; then I added a comment, written in the same manner, with the vision from above (a comment on a letter written by the person I was writing to). When that was done, the feeling of inadequacy lingered, so I took another piece of paperit was blue and wrote something and that still wasnt it. So I ended up taking yet another piece of paper and writing something else again then I put all three in one envelope! I hope that person has a solid head! But at the same time something was telling me, It will do him good; so I let it go.
It happened yesterday I dont yet know the outcome!
0 1962-07-04, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For several hours afterwards I had a vision of this state of mind and found absolutely no need to make hypotheses (you see, Pavitra was speaking of hypothesizing the existence of different states of being). Its just as I told you: I have passed that stage; I dont need inner dimensions any more.1 And observing this materialistic state of mind, it occurred to me that, on the basis of their own experiments, they are bound to admit onenessat least the oneness of matter; and to admit oneness is enough to obtain the key to the whole problem!
Once again it made me realize that this last experience [of April 13] may in reality have come to free me from ALL past knowledge, and that to live the Truth none of it is needed. I need neither all this terminology nor Sri Aurobindos terminology nor, of course, anyone elses; I dont need all these classifications, I dont need all sorts of experiences I need ONE experience, the one I have. And I have it in all things and in all circumstances: the experience of eternal, infinite, absolute Oneness manifesting in the finite, the relative and the temporal. And the process of change I am pursuing seems less and less of a problem; after looking like the ultimate problem, it doesnt seem to be one any more, because but that that cant be utteredit pleases Him to be that way, so He is that way.
0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have seen you very often in visions, symbolic visions in the mental realm, but thats not what it was. It was in the subtle physical, this close (same gesture); you came deliberately, and you looked at me. Oh, I told you, how nice!
I had a dream about you, but I felt the subconscient made it up.
--
Looking at it now (1979), this "dream" doesn't seem to be from the subconscient but actually from the subtle physical, with that whole crowd of people relentlessly assailing Mother and exhausting her (and pushing Satprem away, besides). But DESPITE the crowd, Satprem crossed through and came up "very close" to Mother, which concurs with her vision. "Dressed as a Sannyasin" means in his essentiality, divested of day-to-day material circumstances.
When one goes out of the body (and probably at death), there is always the impression of moving "upwards," or "inwards," which means into a deeper plane (either way, it is simply the expression of a change of dimension). What is striking about Mother's experience is this LEVEL movement, indicating that she had not left the physical world. We are faced with a strange enigma: a physical world WITHIN the physical worldano ther world, or the same one lived differently? A physical world where death no longer exists: one has died unto death. The world to come?...
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now let me discuss some particular points of your letter. I do not want to say much in this letter about what you have written as regards your yoga. We shall have better occasion when we meet. To look upon the body as a corpse is a sign of Sannyasa, of the path of Nirvana. You cannot be of the world with this idea. You must have delight in all thingsin the Spirit as well as in the body. The body has consciousness, it is Gods form. When you see God in everything that is in the world, when you have this vision that all this is Brahman, Sarvamidam Brahma, that Vasudeva is all thisVasudevah sarvamiti then you have the universal delight. The flow of that delight precipitates and courses even through the body. When you are in such a state, full of the spiritual consciousness, you can lead a married life, a life in the world. In all your works you find the expression of Gods delight. So far I have been transforming all the objects and perceptions of the mind and the senses into delight on the mental level. Now they are taking the form of the supramental delight. In this condition is the perfect vision and perception of Sachchidananda.
You write about the Deva Samgha and say, I am not a god, I am only a piece of much hammered and tempered iron. No one is a God but in each man there is a God and to make Him manifest is the aim of divine life. That we can all do. I recognize that there are great and small adharas [vessels]. I do not accept, however, your description of yourself as accurate. Still whatever the nature of the vessel, once the touch of God is upon it, once the spirit is awake, great and small and all that does not make much difference. There may be more difficulties, more time may be taken, there may be a difference in the manifestation, but even about that there is no certainty. The God within takes no account of these hindrances and deficiencies. He breaks his way out. Was the amount of my failings a small one? Were there less obstacles in my mind and heart and vital being and body? Did it not take time? Has God hammered me less? Day after day, minute after minute, I have been fashioned into I know not whether a god or what. But I have become or am becoming something. That is sufficient, since God wanted to build it. It is the same as regards everyone. Not our strength but the Shakti of God is the sadhaka [worker] of this yoga.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some thoughts. Are they thoughts? Its something much higher than thought, much higher than ideas. It is the vision OF KNOWLEDGE in an extremely luminous region where vibrations are very precise and very strong; and this is obviously what, as it descends, translates into sounds and words (but this is much lower down). In the form closest to the Origin, they are luminous vibrations.
But the human mind latches on to everything and copies it!
--
Many, many things in my life have completely vanished I dont remember them any more, theyre gone from my consciousness everything that was useless. But there is a very clear vision of everything that was preparing the jiva for its action here. Even before coming and meeting Sri Aurobindo, I had realized everything needed to begin his yoga. It was all ready, classified, organized. Magnificent! A superb mental construction which he demolished within five minutes!
How happy I was! Aah! It was really the reward for all my efforts.
--
Thats all I had told him (not in great detail, in a few words). Then I sat down near him and he began talking with Richard, about the world, yoga, the futureall kinds of thingswhat was going to happen (he already knew the war would break out; this was 1914, war broke out in August, and he knew it towards the end of March or early April). So the two of them talked and talked and talkedgreat speculations. It didnt interest me in the least, I didnt listen. All these things belonged to the past, I had seen it all (I too had had my visions and revelations). I was simply sitting beside him on the floor (he was sitting in a chair with Richard facing him across a table, and they were talking). I was just sitting there, not listening. I dont know how long they went on, but all at once I felt a great Force come into mea peace, a silence, something massive! It came, did this (Mother sweeps her hand across her forehead), descended and stopped here (gesture at the chest).4 When they finished talking, I got up and left. And then I noticed that not a thought remained I no longer knew anything or understood anything, I was absolutely BLANK. So I gave thanks to the Lord and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart.
And I was very careful not to disturb it; I held it like that for I dont know how long, eight or ten days. Nothingnot one idea, not one thought, nothinga complete BLANK. In other words, from the outside, it must have looked like total idiocy.
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Psychology: thats abstract. What they want is: on such and such a date he went to this place, saw these people and did thisall the most external and banal sorts of things. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down and stayed there for so many hours, he had this vision, he tried out that method, he did asanas and breathing exercises. That, for them, is concrete. That and that alone. Psychology is thoroughly abstractthoroughly. Its unreal to them.
But Ive tried to be as concrete as possible! Like cutting up a rat on a dissecting table to see whats inside it.
0 1962-08-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For several days before that incident, something else had been coming, a kind of imaginative and creative vision of the most material physical possibilities for the future.
Ive had this great formative power ever since my earliest childhood, but I had channeled it and stopped it because I considered it useless. But it came back recently, along with the sure sign that it was coming from the very highest origin: This is it, this is how things will be. But thats for later, of course. To our external reason, those things seem totally unrealizable, but they will be realizable in perhaps a few hundred years, I dont knowits the future being prepared. And indeed, that vision has a tremendous power of creation and realization, and it is always felt physically (the rest is very still), its always physical. But it triggered a kind of very rapid movement of the physical consciousness (within the most material substance), and caused a dislocation. And so2 the day before yesterday, that old formation suddenly returned and made me understand one aspect of the bodys nature, the way the body is CONSTRUCTED and the usefulness of that construction. So now things are all right. It has been one more step.
But when you receive those bad vibrations affecting your body,3 are they exhausted by your accepting them?
Its not that I receive bad vibrations, but that the physical substance is not entirely (how can I explain?) in the proper movement or rhythm. For instance, between the vision of that old formation I spoke of and this (I cant call it a toothache, but anyway, something went wrong) there was no visible connection to speak of. The toothache wasnt caused by a particular vibration, its rather as if one thing or another provided the opportunity for absorbing a certain quantity or type of vibration (its more a quantity than a typeprobably both), a vibratory MODE, in order to put it in contact with THE vibratory mode the divine one.
But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothingmaterially, what do we know? Only our immediate surroundings thats nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I dont remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horrorof terror, rather. A certain will of terror was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I dont remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with TOTAL conviction: Terror has been overcome in the world. Of course, its not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if UNDERMINED at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
I have had other similar experienceson Durgas day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, thats the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesnt kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durgas day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, Looktoday this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots. Thats how it works with the adverse forcesyes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. Thats also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.4 How much time will it take to exhaust it all? We cant say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little the karma is being exhausted.
The same goes for these little physical movements. Things dont seem to be initiated any more, I mean theyre no longer being generated. But everything thats already present in the world has to be exhausted.
--
To change a karma, to stop a karma, to withdraw a certain number of vibrations from circulation, as it were, requires yet another movement, another movement altogether and that Power isnt yet at hand. Thats what will yield visible, tangible results. The other movement has very tangible and concrete results, but theyre invisible (to human observation, that is, which is much too limited and superficial). But it obviously does have results. That vision of terror clearly diverted the course of events that nations were being pushed into. But only someone with inner vision can see it.
(silence)
--
Later, Satprem asked if this "and so" was connected to what precedes itif the old formation was connected to the vision of the future. Mother answered: "I think it is connected. I am not sure, but I think it is. I have the feeling that this curve of future realization is what put me in contact with the old formations that used to come to me [formations of creative imagination], and this put me in contact with one of the body's habits, and so on; and that habit of the body triggered this kind of toothache."
The abscessed tooth.
0 1962-08-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, during those hours the Presence lasted this morning, what I say here became so obvious, so obvious! You see (theres nothing but the Lord, of course), its exactly as if the Lord were seeing all things (and this body is part of what He sees!), seeing all things and laughing, laughingforever laughing at all the tragedy the tragedy of this existence! And I was seeing Him right here, you know, there was nothing but Himimmense, marvelous, yet at the same time scaled to the size of the earth, almost to the size of this room, you could say! He was here, in everythingin all the past, all the future, in all places, in everything. And He was smiling, smiling with the consciousness of that joyits not joy, joy sounds pallid. And there was no excitement, nothing of what human consciousness mixes into these things, only an eternal certitude, a crystal clear vision of the most MINUTE details. And all of this simultaneously, just like that, with a smile. And although I cant say what is He and what is me, I have the joy of perceiving Him (that isnt abolished), and yet I am nowhere in particular! Still I have the joy, I feel the joy of perceiving Him.
Its difficult to describe. It lasted from around midnight until eight oclock.
0 1962-08-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems he said that if we could make it to 1964, afterwards the difficulties would disappear. (But this is a very strong formationwhat did he pick up? Is it Sri Aurobindos formation? Is it the boys thought, or what?) But hes a wonderful mind-reader; he must have a marvelous power of vision in the mental world.
It really amused me. If you asked if you asked people here, not too many would have such a clear idea: They have come to do something entirely new and very difficult.
0 1962-08-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I think some people must have felt itmaybe they didnt fully understand, since they lack total vision, but they may have felt as if he were descending into them. Because in the afternoon, when everything had returned to normal (he is always here of course, but not that way! He is always here), there was a kind of wave of regret passing through the atmosphere, like something saying, Oh, this beautiful thing has come to an end! Oh, now August 15 is over, this beautiful thing is over. But it was like I described, something so more than concrete, I dont know how to express it, it was there was a sense of absoluteness about it.
I have often seen him in his supramental light; he has come very often (he used to come when I went to the balcony; sometimes he was above the Samadhi; he came very often). But that first of all, the proportions were enormoussitting down, I tell you, he extended beyond the compound; and he materialized in a way that could be PHYSICALLY felt. And there was such confidence, such joy, such certainty; everything was so sure, so altogether certain, as though all had been accomplished. There was none of that anguish, that tension for things to get done.
0 1962-08-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its not sleep, its a kind of peace that descends. It can begin as drowsiness, but it changes into a sort of inner immobilityimmobility of the Spirit. The body too becomes quiet, quiet, quiet, very still; and from there, if nothing disturbs you, you flow into a sense of eternity. Its a wonderful experience. The real sense of Eternity: everything stops, and then NOTHING. And if you have the gift of vision (its not necessary, but if you do), you see it all grow white and luminousall white. But that may well not happen because its its something youre born with.
All the cells open up and become conscious of their eternity.
0 1962-09-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Outwardly, of course, these troubles (these apparent troubles) upset people, especially the doctor! Ive explained to him that it was all yoga and transformation, and he shouldnt worry, but evidently its upsetting to ordinary eyes. One fact in particular is bewildering to ordinary vision: I am very, very regularly losing weight. Its already down to a ridiculous figure I weigh only 85 pounds! With my height and bone structure, my normal weight should be 130 pounds; when I was twenty-five I weighed 130 or 135. Now I am down to only 85, and its going down quite regularly. I understand how disturbing this might be for people who see things in the ordinary way! I dont eat much (not a little, not a lot, just average), and I dont seem to benefit from what I eat thats how it looks on the surface. And then there are these strange phenomena; I dont usually talk about them (youre the only one I have explained them to, nobody else), I dont talk about them, but from time to time I appear to I must appear to be fainting. And not in the usual way, you know, thats the thing! Nothing happens in the usual way, so its very upsetting! (Mother laughs) The Energy is tremendous, more tremendous than it has ever been; and there is practically no physical strength. I can act, but only if I bring in the Energy: the least physical act demands the Energy. I think the body is completely flimsy; it seems sometimes I touch it to see if its still if its hard or if its soft!
(silence)
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Somewhere in the overmind (beyond the higher mind and from the overmind onwards), things are luminous IN THEMSELVES. Light doesnt have to strike them: things themselves are luminous. And this makes a considerable difference in vision. Things are no longer lit from outside, they are luminous in themselves. This is the main difference in the quality of the light.
It has even come to the point where things lit from outside seem artificial to me. They have lost their light.
0 1962-09-18, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Her vision turned to read the enigmaed world,
Her will tempered in the blaze of Wisdoms sun
--
Sa vision attentive lire le monde nigmatique,
Sa volont trempe par le brasier du soleil de la Sagesse
0 1962-09-26, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, what I mainly want to know is the difference when you cross to the other side, into the Supermind the difference in vision between the Supermind and the overmind.
I dont know what Sri Aurobindo would tell you.
0 1962-10-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, but the difference in vision Im speaking of vision. You told me, for instance, that objects in the overmind were self-luminous.
Yes, from the overmind onwards.
--
Its the same when I look at people: I dont see them as they see themselves, I see them with the vibration of all the forces that are in them and pass through them, and quite frequently with the supreme Vibration of the Presence. And thats why my physical sight is not exactly failing, but changing in character, for the physical precision that normal physical sight gives is its false for me. Instinctively (not because I think of it that way), thats how it Is. So I no longer have the precision of a vision designed to see just the superficial crust of things.
But this doesnt keep me from seeing physicallyalthough, yes, it does at times make me unsure of whos in front of me, because I see a vibration that is sometimes very similar, almost identical, in three or four people (who arent all necessarily present, but anyway). So theres a slight external difference theres a very great external difference in the way the form looks, of course, but in the combination of vibrations theres only a slight external difference. And so sometimes I am not sure, I dont know whether its this person or that one; thats why I often ask, Whos there? Its not that I dont see anything, but I dont see in the same way.
--
But isnt what youre talking about here [Satprem points to the paperweight] what people call a clairvoyant vision?
No, no!
Its supramental vision?
Yes.
--
No, it has nothing to do with all the visions Ive had.
But that vision. I know it well, and its not a visionits not a vision! I cant call it an image: it is a knowledge. I cant even say its a knowledge, its something that is EVERYTHING at once, something embodying its own truth.
Let it get established! When its all well established, well speak about it again (Mother laughs).
--
In fact, Satprem was ever pursuing the same question: How far does the shift to the other vision change the vision of Matterwhat does true Matter look like?
***
0 1962-10-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had the vision of conflagration that always heralds war for me: I had it three or four days before the fighting began. But it wasnt long-lasting, it was coming to an end very quickly.
We shall see.
--
Mother told another disciple about a vision in which she saw a city (symbolic of a country) attacked by two bolts of lightning at once, one from the East and one from the West.
***
0 1962-10-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I play I generally hear what I am playing. Its hard to say. Its not just an ordinary sound, its a combination of sounds, and its not no, its true, its not the same sound but something like the essence of that sound. But for instance, I have a sort of feeling that what I am hearing should be expressed by a large orchestra. I SEE it, you know, I see something like large orchestras around me, on my right, on my leftand I am supposed to transcribe it on a harmonium! Its like an orchestra made up of groups of musicians, with each group expressing one part of that combination, which is a much more complete sound than the ear can perceive. Thats what it is. Its not something you can express just by humming a little tune, but a whole body of musical vibrations. And as I hear it, I see how it should be expressed. I see large orchestras around me. But its another kind of vision; its not the precise vision of the physical eye, but something very its how consciousness sees. How can I describe it! All you can say is that its not our normal kind of vision, or hearing, either.
Its quite a total knowledge, which includes a vision, an awareness of the combination of sounds and how they should be expressed.
Beyond the musical zone lies thought: thoughts, organized thoughts for plays and books, abstractions for philosophies. But what used to interest me particularly were the combinations that give birth to novels or plays.
0 1962-11-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No later than yesterday night, I had this feeling: My god, theres always farther down to go! Its always lower, ever lower. And at the same time, my identity with the Supreme keeps growing while I simultaneously seem to be going down into the most incredible dark dregs of yes, of mud, ever possible in life. Look, you speak of Sri Aurobindos experiencewell, I never knew hed had the vision of all sorts of torture,1 but I have just had it myself in detail, bit by bit and what things! Incredible, incredible. And I was wondering, But why! Why am I seeing all this? Am I losing my contact? On the contrary, it felt closer and closer, stronger and stronger, more and more conscious, luminous, and at the same time this (gesture below).
You have formulated it very, very well. Do you unwittingly feel my experience and write it, or do I. I dont know, its all bound up together. But its most interesting.
--
I have never stopped seeing things. Now I see both day and night, it makes no difference, although I dont see the same things or do the same work at night as during the day. But all the work is always expressed through visions (I also hear and remember words, but thats secondary): ideas are expressed as images, and wills are expressed as actions. And it all makes a sort of lifea life in other worlds, different worlds.
In the Alipore jail: "I was mentally subjected to all sorts of torture for fifteen days. I had to look upon scenes of all sorts of suffering...." (See A.B. Purani, Life of Sri Aurobindo, p. 122.)
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know its the will of that Asura Ive mentioned to you several times, the Lord of Falsehood who was born the Lord of Truth, and who knows that his hour is at hand (at hand relative to that world there) and has declared he will cause as much havoc as he can before disappearing. Quite recently, just before the present conflict broke out, I went to a realm in the vital world which is right above the earth, like a platform (not a mountain top, but a spot where you get an overall view, like the bridge of a ship, for instance, where the captain stands; it was a place like that in the vital world, overlooking all terrestrial life). I went there it was rather dark, very dark in factand that tall being was there (hes quite tall, higher than this roomMo ther looks up at the ceilinghe likes to look tall). Hes very tall and all black. (Thats more or less his natural state; he appears to humans blazing with light, but that doesnt fool someone with inner vision: its an icy light. But some people are fooled and take him for the supreme God. Anyway, thats an aside.) So he was there and I went to himnot to him: I went to that place and found him there. He was gloating and told me to take a look around.
From there you had a panoramic view of everything. And no sooner did I arrive than a storm broke outa terrible storm. I kept watching, and then I saw in this direction (I dont know whether it was north, south or west, but it was this direction: Mother points to the north), I saw two nearly simultaneous flashes of lightning. The first one (I was looking north, I was quite conscious of facing north) the first one, a terrific bolt, came and fell from the east; and just a moment after, very soon after, another came from the west. The two didnt come together, but they fell on the same spotthey didnt meet but they fell on the same spot. It was pitch dark, the earth and everything was dark, you couldnt see a thing, and suddenly those two flashes of lightning lit up the area where they fell, making a dreadful din, and (my field of vision was confined to that area; all the rest was in darkness, you see) it burst into flames! Everything was set ablaze. In the lightning flashes you could distinguish the tops of monuments, houses, all sorts of things, and then everything burst into flames: a dreadful conflagration.
I even remarked to myself (it was a rather curious feeling), Well, its interesting to have such a close view of it. That is, I had the feeling that my station, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, for viewing the world was very high up, and Id had to come down to that place. And thats what made me say, Well, its interesting to have such a close view of things. (I didnt say it to that being, I thought it.) And he was there next to me, gloating, standing some distance off to my right (looking up, I could see his headMo ther looks up at the ceiling). He was jubilant, gloating: You see, you see, you see! Overjoyed. I kept absolutely still; everything was still, calm, motionless (the thought that came was like something passing through me: Its interesting to have such a close view of it). And then I stopped everything, like this (Mother remains as still as a statue, fists clenched). And very soon afterwards (I cant say exactly because time there isnt the same as here), very soon afterwards, everything stopped.1 The storms only purpose was to cause the two thunderbolts, and it stopped after they fell on the earth. And then the flames the whole area was set ablaze (it was like a huge city, but not a city: most likely it was symbolic of a country): vroom! It burst into flames; some flames were leaping up very, very high. But I simply did this, stopped everything (Mother remains motionless, eyes closed, fists clenched), and then looked out once againeverything had returned to order. Then I said (I dont know why, but I was speaking to him in English yes, its because he was speaking English, saying, You see, you see!), I said, Ah, that didnt last long. They quickly brought it under control. With that he turned his back on me (laughing); he went off one way and I the other. Then I regained my outer consciousness, which is why I remember everything exactly.
--
But Ive had lots and lots of visions of all types, from the most frightful to the most wonderfulall very apocalyptic, in the realm of the incredible. Many, many things, detailed as well as general. They would fill a volume.
I dont know, I have the feeling that humanity isnt ready for peace and needs to be shaken up.
--
And with the consciousness here, I looked (of course I was asked how he could write or think such things), and I said that each realm has its own determinism, and if you see only that determinism, things seem absolutely decreed. Xs vision, I said, belongs to the vital-physical determinism of the earth (Life and Matter), in which the catastrophe seems inevitable; but there are higher realms whose intervention can change everything.
But one must see and live in those higher regions.
In Xs case, his personal contact rises to the heights, but its purely personal. While his overall vision (I am not saying universal: overall) stops at the vital-physical plane, with a touch of the mental, and THATS ALL. Theres a contradiction between his personal possibility, which reaches very high (although on quite a tenuous peak), and his overall vision. When his attention turns outward, it is very limited; it may be terrestrial, but its its crusted over, so to speak.
So thats the explanation I gave. But the truth.
--
Its true that they deserve it! They have acted perfectly stupidly all along. Out of ambition, vanity, all sorts of things, but especially out of stupidity and total lack of understandinga blind vision, reaching no farther than their noses.
Dont keep this. I dont want to keep political memories. I havent said anything about the world situation for a long time, because I dont want people to know (its not that I dont know, but I dont want it known). If I ever get involved in politicsif things take a positive turn, that is I will start saying what I know in 1967. But not before.
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The qualifier5 we use depends on our limited individual vision, but the fact in itself is probably quite correct: there will be a serious upheaval. But this doesnt mean it will be catastrophic. You see, it may be precisely the opening to something higher, and a new birth to Truth. Personally, I am certain of a very rapid progress [for you], because I see it. But I dont see any personal catastrophes. I havent seen that at all.
Unless. Once, you know, when Sri Aurobindo was still here, I saw. But it was just a vision, and lots of visions come (this was especially true at that time) as possibilities formed in a given world and descending towards the terrestrial manifestation. They come for me to give them the support of my consent, if I find them interesting. So there are all kinds of things! And most of them get sorted out at that point. But anyway, I had a vision in which Pondicherry was completely engulfed by a bomb (in those days there werent such powerful bombsso the vision was partly premonitory). So if that happens! (Mother laughs) As a result of the bombing, I was trapped in a radioactive area (it had been buried underground but not flatteneda kind of cave had been formed), where I stayed for two thousand years.
I woke up after two thousand years with a rejuvenated body. It was a very amusing little story. And I say vision, but you dont watch these things like a movie: you LIVE them. I somehow extricated myself from that sort of sealed grotto, and where Pondicherry had once stood (it had been completely razed), I came upon some people working. They were VERY DIFFERENT, and quite bizarre. I myself must have looked funny, with a kind of costume totally alien to their epoch. (My clothing had also survived the destruction the whole thing was right out of a storybook!) So of course I attracted some curiosity and they tried to make me understand. Ah, yes I know one of them said (I understood them because I could understand their thoughtsthose two thousand years had enabled me to read peoples minds), and they led me to a very old sage, a wise old fellow. I spoke to him and he began leafing through all kinds of books (he had many, many books), and suddenly he exclaimed, Ah, French! An ancient language, you see (Mother laughs).
It was very funny. I told the story to Sri Aurobindo, and he had a good laugh.
0 1962-11-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One day, I dont remember on what occasion, I saw what had motivated the forefa thers who wrote the Vedas: it was the need for immortality; they were in quest of immortality.6 From there, I went on to Buddha and saw what had set the Buddha on his way: this kind of need for permanence, purely and simply; the vision of the impermanence of things had profoundly troubled him, and he felt the need for Permanence. His whole quest was to find the Permanent (why was he so anxious to have the Permanent?). There are a few things like that in human nature, in the deep human need. And then I saw another such need: a need for the Certitude which is security. I dont know how to explain it. Because I had the experience of it, I saw it was one of the human needs; and I understood it very intensely, for when I met Sri Aurobindo, this Certitude is what made me feel I had found the Truth I needed. And I didnt realize how DEEP this need was until he left his bodyjust then, at the moment of the transition. Then the entire physical consciousness felt its certitude and security collapse. At that moment I saw (we spoke about it with Nolini a year later and he had had exactly the same impression), I saw this was similar to Buddhas experience when he realized that everything was impermanent and so all of life collapsed in other words, Something Else HAD to be found. Well, at that moment. Id already had all my experiences, but with Sri Aurobindo, for the thirty years I lived with him (a little more than thirty years), I lived in an absolute, an absolute of securitya sense of total security, even physical, even the most material security. A sense of absolute security, because Sri Aurobindo was there. And it held me up, you know, like this (gesture of being carried): not for ONE MINUTE in those thirty years did it leave me. That was why I could do my work with a Base, really, a Base of absolutenessof eternity and absoluteness. I realized it when he left: THAT suddenly collapsed.
And then I understood that it is one of lifes needs (there are several); and its what spurs the human being to get out of his present state and find another one. These needs are (whats the word?) the seeds, the germs of evolution. They compel us to progress. The whole time Sri Aurobindo was here, as I said, individual progress was automatic: all the progress Sri Aurobindo made, I made. But I was in a state of eternity, of absoluteness, with a feeling of such security, in every circumstance. Nothing, nothing unfortunate could happen, for he was there. So when he left, all at oncea fall into a pit. And thats what projected me wholly (Mother gestures forward).
0 1962-12-08, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, what he seems to be giving me these days, since December 5, is a very clear vision and experience of why he had to leave. But that its not yet time to speak of it.
It wasnt for personal reasons but for reasons of work. I mean he considered (I knew it from the start; he had told me), he considered it better to leave his body, that it was the best way to do the work now. It was necessary.
0 1962-12-19, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After twenty minutes, something said, Thats enough. And I saw that it was enough for the body, that it shouldnt exert itself further the formation withdrew. I couldnt have played a single note more! It was very interesting. And I realized that, truly, the will that moves my body isnt at all the same as before. Previously, it was the will of the being that had been placed into and formed in this body (it wasnt personal but still very individual). While now its not that: its a Will somewhere (somewhere which is everywhere and in everything), a Will somewhere that decides, and when it says Do, the body does; when it says No, nothing in the world could make the body move. And so, that conscious something somewhere, which is like an intermediary between the higher Will and the body and its outer life, has to tell the body, This is necessary. The body never protests, because that which speaks knows VERY WELL. It says, This is necessary, all right, the body does it. But when it says, Thats enough, now, the body stops. Because (how can I express it?) FOR THE BODY, the Most High knows better than the intermediary. In regard to circumstances and the vision of the work to be done, its all one; but for taking care of and educating the body, That (gesture on high) knows best. The intermediary doesnt really care (!), but when That says do, its done; inished, and its finished. Its very interesting.
Naturally, the whole crowd and the people around me kept asking, Now that its all set up, when will there be balcony darshans again? (Because when I came back inside I said, So! Youve built a balcony, have you?). When are we going to have them again? So the intermediary said, I dont know, its not up to me. Consternation! Then I kept very quiet for a little while, listening on high, and from high, high up there came, very slowly (it comes practically drop by drop because you have to do it VERY quietlyit comes drop by drop), what That said I had to reply: Nothing definite. I was told, It depends. It all depends I clearly see that it all depends on the special work being done on my body and on the results of that work. And it isnt formulated: I am not told, I am not told whats going to happen; I am only told, Heres how it might be. (Mother laughs) All right. Thats fine, I said.
But it was funny; it was really an experience, because had you asked me my impression beforeh and (my, I mean what usually talks), my impression was that I just had to decide to go to the balcony and it would happen (the only impossibility I saw was finding time for it). But thats not how it is, thats not it AT ALL. Its something else, utterly new, something I dont know; I have absolutely no reference points, and decisions are made on the highest levelonly with regard to the body. I mean for the work in general, for the terrestrial vision and all that, theres no difference: its seen, its known. But for this special thing in the body, I am not consulted.
I was really amused.
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had some rather strange things have been happening. I dont know whether you understand the difference between the memory of an inner experience (from the subtle physical, the subconscient, all the inner regions) and the memory of a physical fact. There is a very great difference in quality, the same difference that exists between inner vision and physical vision. Physical vision is precise, well defined, and at the same time flat I dont know how to explain it: its very flat, totally superficial, but very accurate, with the kind of accuracy and precision that defines things which are really not defined at all. Well, theres the same difference in quality between the two types of memory as between the two types of vision. And in the last few days Ive realized that I had the memory of having gone downstairs, of having seen certain people and things, spoken and organized certain thingsseveral different scenes of the PHYSICAL memory. Not at all things I saw with the inner vision while exteriorized, but the MATERIAL memory of having done certain things.
Afterwards, I had to look into it: it really was a memory. It suddenly struck me, and I wondered, Did I really go downstairs physically? There are plenty of people here to prove that I didnt, that I didnt stir from here. And yet I have the physical memory of having done so, and of having done certain other things as well; I even remember going outside.
--
And I found out about the immediate effects of it even before recalling it, for it all unfolded in reverse: when a certain thing was done, I thought, What on earth! This person is wonderful. And then I suddenly realized, But I told him to do that! I told him. Then the image came the image I dont mean the sort of memory one has of a vision, but the memory of something one has DONE. With that kind of image, its not that you look: it just enters into you quite naturally. It has a particular quality. Thats how I became aware of these changes. I noticed them on my own.
And they are facts. Theres nothing to discuss: they are facts. And yet materially, according to physical appearances, that is, I didnt stir from here.
0 1963-01-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother refers to the Bulletin and in particular to the Talk of July 3, 1957, in which she narrated her symbolic vision of the Big Hotel in perpetual demolition1:)
But all this seems to me on the outside. I understand it may interest people, but its still one of the things that make me smile. Thats how I see it. Even this vision.
I have three or four of them every night, great visions, with all the complications,2 all the symbols, all the explanations. And I meet people who are not as they think they are.
But its tremendous! Tremendous how much you can do in a few hours at night.
0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The trouble is writing, the materialization between the vision and the writing; the Force has to drive the hand and the pencil, and there is a slight theres still a very slight resistance. Otherwise, if I could write automatically, oh, how nice it would be!
There may be (I cant say, its all imagination because I dont know), there may come a few somewhat weird things. But there is an insistence on the need to keep to each line as though it stood all alone in the universe. No mixing up the line order, no, no, no! For when he wrote it, he SAW it that way I knew nothing about that, I didnt even know how he wrote it (he dictated it, I believe, for the most part), but thats what he tells me now. Everything comes to a stop, everything, and then, oh, how we enjoy ourselves! I enjoy myself! Its more enjoyable than anything. I even told him yesterday, But why write? Whats the use? Then he filled me with a sort of delight. Naturally, someone in the ordinary consciousness may say, Its very selfish, but And then its like a vision of the future (not too near, not extremely nearnot extremely far either) a future when this sort of white thingwhite and stillwould spread out, and then, with the help of this work, a larger number of minds may come to understand. But thats secondary; I do the translation simply for the joy of it, thats all. A satisfaction that may be called selfish, but when he is told, Its selfish, he replies that there is no one more selfish than the Lord, because all He does is for Himself!
There.
--
In my case it was from the age of twenty to thirty that I was concerned with French (before twenty I was more involved in vision: painting; and sound: music), but as regards language, literature, language sounds (written or spoken), it was approximately from twenty to thirty. The Prayers and Meditations were written spontaneously with that rhythm. If I stayed in an ordinary consciousness I would get the knack of that rhythm but now it doesnt work that way, it wont do!
Yesterday, after my translation, I was surprised at that sense a sense of absolute: THATS HOW IT IS. Then I tried to enter into the literary mind and wondered, What would be its various suggestions? And suddenly, I saw somehow (somehow, somewhere there) a host of suggestions for every line! Ohh! No doubt, I thought, it IS an absolute! The words came like that, without any room for discussion or anything. To give you an example: when he says the clamour of the human plane, clameur exists in French, its a very nice wordhe didnt want it, he said No, without any discussion. It wasnt an answer to a discussion, he just said, Not clameur: vacarme.1 It isnt as though he was weighing one word against another, it wasnt a matter of words but the THOUGHT of the word, the SENSE of the word: No, not clameur, its vacarme.
0 1963-02-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He goes into a completely different region, so much above thought! Its constant vision, it isnt something thought outwith thought everything becomes flat, hollow, empty, empty, just like a leaf; while this is full, the full content is there, alive.
Its an explanation of why the world is as it is. At the start he says, He worships her (here again, there are no words in French: Il lui rend un culte, but that makes a whole sentence). He worships her as something far greater than Himself. And then you are almost a spectator of the Supreme projecting Himself to take on this creative aspect (necessarily, otherwise it couldnt be done!), the Witness watching His own work of creation and falling in love with this power of manifestationyou see it all. And oh, He wants to give Her her fullest chance and see, watch all that is going to happen, all that can happen with this divine Power thrust free into the world. And Sri Aurobindo expresses it as though he had absolutely fallen in love with Her: whatever She wants, whatever She does, whatever She thinks, whatever She wills, all of itits all wonderful! All is wonderful. Its so lovely!
--
Of course, it [this vision or conception] isnt allowed into action, because when you start accepting everything and loving everything and seeing Glory everywherewhy change!? This is why the Force that had been in me for so long for the world to progress further made me reject precisely all that legitimized things as they are by putting you into contact with the inner joy of livingas he puts it, His Joy is there, everywhere, so nobody wants to leave the world.
In short, I was able to see the situation from above, a little higher than the creative Forcefrom the other side.
0 1963-02-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was really very interesting. Afterwards its just a memory, no longer the thing. It concerned the creation of the material world, the material universe, in the light of the conception of the Supreme in love with His emanation. But the vision was all-embracing, as if I were on the other side the side of the Supreme, not of the creation and saw the creation as a whole, with the true sense of progress, the true sense of advance, of movement, and the true way in which all that doesnt belong to the future creation will disappear in a kind of pralaya1 (it cant really disappear but it will be withdrawn from the Manifestation). And it was very interesting: all that doesnt collaborate (in the sense that it is a sufficient experience, an experience that has come to its end) was reabsorbed. It was like the true vision of what was rendered as the Last Judgment. It is something going on constantly, that mighty gust of manifestation, and there are things that have been, according to our vision of time, but that live on, that continue to exist in the future; there are things that exhaust themselves (thats in the present), and there are things that have no more purpose, that cannot keep pace with the movement (I dont know how to explain this) and enter the Non-Being the pralaya, the Non-Being, the unmanifestof course, not in their forms but in their essence; that is to say, the Supreme in them remains the Supreme but unmanifest.
But it was all a living, palpable experience which lasted for a day and a half. The entire universal movement was LIVED and sensed. Not merely seen but lived and in what light! What stupendous power! With that kind of certitude at the core of everything something very odd. Its very difficult to express. But the experience lasted so long that it became perfectly familiar. To translate it into words I might say: it is the Supremes way of seeingof feeling, of living. I was living things the way He does. And it gives a power of certitude of realization. In the sense that what we are heading for is already here; the road we look back on, the road we have traveled and the road yet to travel, it all lives simultaneously. And with such logic! An eternal, wonderful superlogic which makes it obviousness itselfeverything is obviousness itself. Struggle, effort, fear, all of that, oh, absolutely, absolutely nonexistent. And together with this, the explanation of the feeling we have of not wanting certain things any more: they leave the Manifest. You see, its like a sieve into which everything is thrown and where He to Him, everything, but everything is the same, but there is the vision of what He wants, and also of what is useless for what He wants or would prevent the fullness and totality of what He wants (contradictions of sorts, I dont know how to explain it)so with that He just goes this way (gesture of reswallowing) and it goes out of the Manifestation.
At the time I could have said it in a more understandable language, while now
--
I dont know how to explain it. Putting it like this implies an arbitrary fiat, but theres no such thing: it isnt a gentleman who decides to withdraw certain things he no longer likes! Its not that way. They are things which, owing to their own propensity (what we might call their essential truth), had at a given moment their place in the Manifestation, and which, once they have lost their purpose, quite naturally leave the Manifestation I could put it in fifty different ways just as poorly, I cant see how to explain it properly. But the fact was evident. It was part of such a wonderfully complete and harmonious Whole that Harmony is beyond us, we cannot understand it, caught as we are in the sensation of opposites. But there, opposites do not exist, there are only things that Like the fact of the Supreme seemingly dominated by His creation, wholly obedient to His creationas though He had no power, no knowledge, no vision, so things follow their course in the chaos we know. Well, when we put it like this, there is something unbelievable and shocking about it, yet it was so very natural, so very true, and part of such a perfect whole!
Only, you cannot see it unless you see the whole. At the time, everything was preexistent, although unfolding in time for the Manifestation. But it was preexistent. Not preexistent as we understand it, not everything at a given moment. Oh, how impossible! Its impossible to express it. I still feel what I could call the warmth of the experience the reality, the life, the warmth of the experience are there. You know, I have lived in a Light! A Light which isnt our light, which has nothing to do with what we call light, a Light so warm and powerful! A creative Light. So powerful! Everything was so perfectly harmonious: everything, everything without exception, even the things that appear to be the very negation of divinity. And a rhythm! (gesture as of great waves) A harmony, so wonderful a TOTALITY, where the sense of sequence Sequence doesnt mean things being like this (chopping gesture), one being abolished by the next, it is At the time I might have been able to find or invent the words, I dont know, now now, its only the memory of it. The memory, not the presence itself.
--
To make some decision or organize something (I am referring to practical examples I have four, five, ten of them every day), all it would take is a few minutes of clear and quiet, but TOTAL vision, and things would work out perfectly well. But then there are four or five of them to make a decision. Each one brings in his own idea, his own viewpoint, his own little angle. They throw it all together, jabber away for two hours and nothing gets done.
So the conclusion is that I shall have to start again. I had stopped long ago taking care of everythinglong before I came upstairs, I told people, See to your business yourselves. And what chaos it has become! That, too, made worse by the fact that they stopped seeing me physically. The physical presence was simply keeping a rein on them.
--
Thats what I always tell those who criticize the government: You deserve to be put in the place of the Prime Minister, or any other minister, with decisions to make; and with the responsibility placed on you, suppose you suddenly had to decide on things of which you know nothingyoud soon see what fun it is! You see, to govern properly, you have to be you have to be a sage! You should have a universal vision and be above all personal questions. There is not onenot one.
Some are sluggish (theyre the best, because I can make them do what I want them to do); theyre like automatons, so you can get something out of them. But unfortunately they think they are they have the sense of their responsibility, so they think they are very superior then its terrible!
0 1963-02-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Simply for want of training. If you train yourself, you remember quite well. There are small holes in the consciousness, gaps, and when you go through such a gap you forget. You may suddenly get a fleeting impression of something, and then it eludes youoh, its gone! Only, it takes a long time to train yourself; you shouldnt be in a hurry or too busy. I went through it at a time when I was bedridden for five months. I had nothing to do. (You cant keep reading all the timeduring those five months I read some eight hundred books no, nine hundred and fifty! But it tires the eyes.) So the rest of the time (you cant sleep too much either when youre in bed all the time), I trained myself: that was when I learned to have completely conscious nights. But its a discipline. When you wake up, either in the middle of the night or in the morning, dont budge, stay absolutely still, concentrated, very silent, and PULL the memory back. For one month, two months, you seem to get nowhere; after six months it begins to work; and eventually you remember everything. At the end, you do the opposite movement, in the sense that whenever you have an interesting dream, you wake up: you learn to wake up in the middle of the night every time you have a vision or a dream, or some activity (there are various cases), so that you can remember, and then you repeat it to your consciousness (once youre awake, you repeat it to yourself two or three or ten times, till youre certain not to forget), and then off you go again.
But you cant do that if, when morning comes, you have to leap out of your bed and attend to fifty thousand pressing matters. It isnt indispensable for the yoga, not at all. Its a hobby, rather, something to amuse yourself with.
--
Yesterday evening (was it yesterday? No, the day before), when I went out on the balcony-terrace,3 the difference in perception between the consciousness I have now and the one I had before felt enormous! Before, as I have always said, I would stay there, call the Lord, be in His presence, and only when He withdrew would I come in again thats how it was. And I had a certain relationship with people, things, the outside world (outside, well, not outsideanyway, the world). The day before yesterday, when I went to the balcony, I wasnt thinking of anything or observing anything, I simply went I didnt want to know what was going on, it didnt interest me, I wasnt observing. The other experience [of the previous balcony, one year ago] seemed to go back centuries! It was so much OTHER! And so spontaneous, so natural, and so immense too! The earth was tiny. Yet it was very much here: I wasnt over there, the BODY itself was feeling that way. And at the same time (I was two floors above people), every time I looked, I recognized scores and scores of people, they seemed to leap to my eyesa crystal clear vision, much sharper (the vision I had before was always a bit hazy because what I saw wasnt entirely physical: I saw the movement of forces), and yesterday, it was as if as if I had risen above the very possibility of haziness! It was far less physicalFAR MORE accurate.4
Formerly too, I used to sense the Force, the Consciousness, the Power concentrated in a particular point and then spreading out. While here, there was an IMMENSITY of Power, of Light, of Consciousness, of perception, concentrated in a tiny point: the people gathered there.
--
This far less physical vision was more accurate IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
Gradually Mother will stop struggling and intrusion will become the rule. As a result, these conversations will suffer greatly.
0 1963-03-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, for education, people should always encourage both tendencies side by side: the thirst for the Marvelous, the seemingly unrealizable, for something that fills you with a sense of divinity, while at the same time encouraging, in the perception of the world as it is, an exact, correct and sincere observation, the abolition of all imaginings, a constant control, and a most practical and meticulous feeling for exactness in details. Both tendencies should go side by side. Generally, people kill one with the idea that its necessary in order to develop the otherwhich is totally erroneous. The two can coexist, and as knowledge grows, a moment comes when you understand that they are two aspects of the same thing, namely, a clear vision, a superior discernment. But instead of the vision and discernment being limited and narrow, they become absolutely sincere, correct, exactAND immense, embracing an entire field thats not yet part of the concrete Manifestation.
This is very important from an educational point of view.
To see the world as it is, accurately, starkly, in the most practical and down-to-earth way, and to see the world as it can be, with the highest and freest vision, filled with hope and aspiration and a marvelous certainty these are the two poles of discernment. All the most splendid, marvelous, powerful, expressive and total things we are able to imagine are nothing compared to what they can be; and at the same time, our minute observation of the smallest detail can never be sufficiently exact. Both things must go together. When you know this (gesture below) and you know That (gesture above), you are able to make the two meet.
This is the best possible use of the need for miracles. The need for miracles is a gesture of ignorance: Oh, I wish it were that way! Its a gesture of ignorance and impotence. On the other hand, those who tell you, You live in a world of miracles, know only the lower end of things (and quite imperfectly at that), and they are impervious to anything else.
--
But the number of miracles Sri Aurobindo performed in the Mind is incalculable. Of course, only if you had a very honest, sincere and pure vision could you see them I saw them. Others too saw them. But he refused (this I know), he refused to perform any vital or material miracle, because of the admixture.
My own experience is like this: in the worlds present state, a direct miracle (vital or material, that is) must necessarily involve a number of fallacious elements which we cannot acceptthose miracles are necessarily fallacious miracles. And we cannot accept that. At least I always refused to do so. Ive seen what people call miracles. I saw many with Madame Thon, for instance, but it allowed a host of things to exist that to me are inadmissible.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was suggested to me in the form of a vision: I was sitting on a somewhat high chair downstairs, on the ground floor (in the meditation hall where I went in 1960), while people filed past me. But then there should be some sort of distribution, and I am more in favor of something printed than a material object. A material object I am much too poor, in the first place. Something printed.
Its vaguenot vague but incomplete. The details are precise, what I see is precise, but everything isnt there. Only certain points here and there its incomplete.
0 1963-03-13, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When he wakes up from that state, he has a vision of the universal Mother, and receives his mission.
This is very good, a very good indication.
--
The last chapter of the Synthesis of Yoga: "Towards the Supramental Time vision."
In Savitri, the King represents the human aspiration to discover the Earth's secret beyond all already explored spiritual knowledge.
0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive known several people, especially I., who worked with Dilip (she used to have visions, she danced also): when she went into meditation, it was all over; even when she tried to come back and move, she couldnt. Dilip had to come and pull her hands, disengage her fingers and move her body, till she began coming around. But you understand, that sort of thing wont do at all.
Better be more on this side than on that side.
0 1963-05-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The effect on others is increasing considerably, though it too isnt the result of an attempt in that direction, not at all: those things are automatic. Yet, as I said, at certain seconds, there rises something that wills. Wills, but not in the ordinary way: something that its between knowing, seeing and willing. A little something that has something of all three and is as hard as diamond (oh, how can I explain it? I dont know, there are no words for it), it has something of the emotive vibration, but thats not it; it has nothing to do with anything intellectual, nothing at all; its neither intellectual vision nor supramental knowledge, thats not it, its something else. It is a diamondlike, live forcelive, living. And thats all-powerful. But extremely fleetingit immediately gets covered over by a heap of things, like visions, supramental vision, understanding, discernmentall this has become a constant mass, you understand.
From the standpoint of sensitivity or sensation (I dont know what to call it), when the body rests and enters the static state of pure Existence Before, it was (or gave) a sense of total immobilitynot something motionless: a non-movement, I dont know; not the opposition between something motionless and something in motion, not that the absence of any possibility of movement. But now, as it happens, the body has the sense not only of a terrestrial movement, but of a universal movement so fantastically rapid that it is imperceptible, beyond perception. As if beyond Being and Non-Being, there were a something thats both I mean, that doesnt move WITHIN a space but is both beyond immobility and beyond movement, in the sense that its so rapid as to be absolutely imperceptible to ALL the senses (I dont mean merely the physical senses), all the senses in all the worlds.
--
When I lie down, I go from one state to the other with extraordinary speed. And Ive noticed (the thing is just at its beginning, so I cant really say), Ive noticed that in that state, the Movement2 exceeds the force or power that concentrates the cells into an individual form. And that state seems to be all-powerful, although devoid of conscious will or vision (for the moment). Its a state (how can I explain this?) whose characteristics exceed the power that concentrates the cells into an individual body. The effect is automatic (not willed): as soon as something takes the form of a physical pain, it disappears INSTANTLY. But then, and this is most interesting, the second the body reverts to a certain stateits ordinary state, which isnt the ordinary human state, of course, but its ordinary, habitual stateit recaptures the MEMORY of its pain, and along with the memory comes the possibility of reverting to it if a certain number of conditions are not automatically fulfilled. I dont know if what I am saying makes any sense, but thats how the experience is. It is probably the passage from the true thing to the thing no longer truenot what is meant by Falsehood here on earth (thats something else altogether), but a first alteration compared to the pure Vibration. It gives the impression of a wrong habit, what remains is merely a question of a wrong habit. Its not the principle of distortion that works here, but the wrong habit due to the effect of ANOTHER principle. And something is to be found to checkcheck, eliminate, prevent that effect from recurring automatically.
Because it happens CONSTANTLY. Its a constant phenomenon: passing from this to that, this to that, this to that, to such a pointits so strong that a second comes, or a minute, or anyway a certain interval of time (I dont know), when you are neither this nor that; then you have a feeling of nothingness. It lasts just an instant; if it lasted longer, it would probably result in fainting or something, I cant say what. But it happens all the time: this, that (oscillating gesture). And between this and that, there is a passage.
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It came to me while I was walking [for the japa]. I had a kind of vision of you squatting askew and writing. And I thought, But thats awful! Hell ruin his health!
What is needed is to have the inner attitude.
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because do you know the story of that Romanian who was tortured by the Communists and had visions of Sri Aurobindo2 (he didnt see him as he is, in fact, he saw him according to his own conception: thin and ascetic), and finally the apparition told him, I am your soul, and so on? But he had never read Sri Aurobindos name, he only heard it, and he wrote it in a very odd way [Aurobin Dogos]. It SEEMS to be something of Sri Aurobindo. Anyhow it gave him the strength to go through all those torturesappalling tortures, unimaginable. And he was able to escape, somebody helped him escape (now he is safe in England). But before that, he suffered so much that he thought of letting himself die, and that voice, that apparition which came and spoke to him for hours, was what gave him courage and told him that the soul NEVER gets discouraged, it has something to do, and you must endure. He endured thanks to that voice.
Well, similar things may have happened elsewhere and some people may have received inspirationswe cannot say.
0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its perfectly obvious that people can live, that men can exist and live BECAUSE they are unconscious. If they were conscious, really conscious of the state they live in, it would be intolerable. And I can see that there is a very difficult period when you go from that unconsciousness (unconsciousness of the habit of living in that state) to a conscious vision of the state you live in. When you become totally conscious of things as they areof what you are, of your condition and when you do not yet have the power to get out, like last night, its almost intolerable. And there was a very clear awareness, very precise, that it isnt a question of life or death: it doesnt depend on that sort of thing, which ultimately changes nothing but a wholly superficial appearance thats not it! You know, people who are unhappy think, Ah, a day will come when Ill die, and all my difficulties will be overtheyre simpletons! It wont be over at all, it will go on. It will go on until the time when they get out for good, that is, when they emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. Its the only way out: to emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. And you can die a thousand times, it wont get you out, its perfectly uselessit just goes on. Sometimes, on the contrary, it drags you even further down.
Thats the thing.
0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its yet too human a vision of things. I prefer I prefer the vision of the Lord telling the Asura, Go ahead, keep on growing and growing and growing and there will be no more Asura! (laughing) Thats better.
(silence)
0 1963-07-06, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But some of the faces I saw had come with the intention of making certain suggestions I saw that (I dont know what their suggestions were, it didnt interest me and I kept sweeping it all away, so it went away). I didnt attach any importance to it, except that I kept answering in the same way (the feather duster), and I thought, This must be putting order somewhere! But today, N. read me a letter and told me the story of a boy who was herea very nice boy who worked well and who suddenly was overcome by disquiet and fear and got so ill at ease that finally he said, My family is calling me, they want me, I must go. Then (I dont know when it happened, it was a while ago), he wrote that some time after he came back home (I dont recall the details), he came to know that a magician was regularly doing black magic against him (he was seeing ugly faces, incense burning, all kinds of odd little gestureshe tells the whole story in his letter and it affected him very much), and that the magician (who I believe was more or less connected with the family!) was doing that regularly to make him leave the Ashram. Then he went to see the magician, or rather someone went to see the magician and told him, The boy is back now, you need not continue, he is here, so there is no more reason to And from that moment on, everything immediately disappeared: his feeling of disquiet and all his visions. Anyway, it was clear proof that the magicians work had put him in that state, and that as soon as the magician stopped his work, everything ceased.
Well, I have lived many years, and we know those things to exist, but I didnt attach any importance to them because to me they seemed powerless. Indeed, they have never affected me (a few Tantrics did do some magic and succeeded in making me ill, but that had quite another character; this boys story is in the lowest, most material vital domain, you see), and only lately did I notice those little games. They didnt affect me in the leastit was like images shown on a cinema screen, unsightly images, and I just thought, Whats the point? Still, I did my cleanup, out of habit. But then, when I heard that story, I thought, Well, I must be teaching a good lesson or two to all those people who do dirty magic!
0 1963-07-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So all that must be having repercussions on the others, like Pavitra, when he told me the other day he was seeking me up above and could no longer find me! This very down-to-earth state (we can really call it down-to-earth), this very down-to-earth state of things may also create not an increased heaviness (because God knows it isnt heavy! Its so luminous, vibrant, luminous, so vibrant, vibrant), thats not it, but its really at ground level. At ground level. It has none of the flights and enthusiasms of mental things, visions and all that. So it appears a little monotonous and very much at ground level.
Yes, but we dont have the sense of participating in something. You are conscious, while were not.
0 1963-07-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The work consists, I could say, in either removing or transforming (I am not sure which of the two) all the bodys cells that are or have been under the influence of Falsehood (not lie but falsehood), of the state contrary to the Divine. But since probably a radical purge or transformation would have resulted in nothing but the bodys dissolution, the work goes on in stages, progressively (I am going very far back in time, to my first attacks). So the sequence is the following: first, a series of activities or visions (but those visions are always activities at the same time: both activities and visions) in the subconscious domain, showing in a very living and objective way the Falsehood that has to be removed (transformed or removed). At first, I took them as adverse attacks, but now I see they are states of falsehood to which certain elements in the physical being are linked (at the time, I thought, I am brought into contact with that because of the correspondence in me, and I worked on that level but its another way of seeing the same thing). And it produces certainly there is a dissolution there is a transformation, but a dissolution tooand that dissolution naturally brings about an extreme fatigue or a sort of exhaustion in the body; so between two of those stages of transformation, the body is given time to recover strength and energy.1 And I had noticed that those attacks always come after the observation (an observation I made these last few days) of a great increase in power, energy and force; when the body grows more and more solid, there always follows the next day or the day after, first, a series of nights I could call unpleasant (they are not, for theyre instructive), and then a terrible battle in the body. This time I was consciousnaturally, I am conscious every time, but (smiling) more so every time.
I had observed lately that the body was getting much stronger, much more solid, that it was even putting on weight (!), which is almost abnormal. Then, I had a first vision (not vision: an activity, but very clear), then another, and then a third. Last night, I was fed a subtle food, as if to tell me that I would need it because I wouldnt take any physical food2 (not that I thought about it, I simply noticed I had been fed, given certain foods). And with the visions I had the two preceding nights, I knew that at issue were certain elements forming part of the bodys construction (psychological construction), and that they had to be eliminated. So I worked hard for their elimination. And today, the battle was waged.
But then, as I had worked hard for the elimination, the battle was quite formidablewhen it exceeds a certain measure, the heart has trouble, and then I need to rest. Thats how it happened. But it was so clear, so obvious! And the entire process was SEEN from the beginning, every single step of it, its a marvel! A marvel of consciousness, of measure, of dosage, to allow the purification and transformation to take place without disrupting the balance, so that dissolution does not occur. Its based on the capacity to endure and withstand (naturally, if the body were unable to endure, that work couldnt be done).
0 1963-08-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This morning there was a kind of vision or sensation of the curve from the animal to mana spiral curve then of the return to the state above the animal, in which life, action, movement arent the result of Mind but of a Force, which is felt as a Force of SHADOWLESS light, that is, self-luminous, casting no shadows, and absolutely peaceful. And in that peace, so harmonious and soft oh, its supreme rest. That disharmony and hardness are the cause of fatigue in life.
I am speaking of the cells consciousness.
0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All sorts of things come that way; at one period one thing, at another period another thingthose are periods of inner transformation. For instance, the sense of a universal duplicity (what in the Vedas they call crookedness): the impression that nothing goes straight. I have extraordinary examples of writing a sentence with a clear, precise will, and it was understood (by someone with perfect goodwill) in quite another way, according to his own vision of things. It happened a few days ago. But it happens all the time! I say something, which to me is as clear as can be, and its understood absolutely differently, sometimes the very opposite! So theres the feeling, the sensation that EVERYTHING is that way, all life is that way, all consciousnesses are that way, all vibrations are that wayinstead of going straight, everything is crooked. Its so strong that, as you say, it almost makes you feel sort of ill-at-ease. You are disgusted, it makes you feel sick.
And at another time, its something else that comes.
0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
During all that period of concentration and meditation on what happens in a body after death (I am speaking of the bodys experience after what is now called death), well, several times the same kind of vision came to me. I had been told (shown and told) of certain saints whose bodies did not decompose (theres one here, there was one in Goafantastic stories). Naturally, people always romanticize those things, but there remains the material fact of a saint who died in Goa, left his body in Goa, but whose body didnt decompose.5 I dont know the story in all its details, but the body was removed from India, taken away to China and remained buried there, in Hong-Kong, I believe (or somewhere in that region) for a time; then it was taken out, brought back here, buried again. For ten or twelve years it stayed buried in those two places: it didnt decompose. It dried out, became mummified (dried out, that is, dehydrated), but it remained preserved. Well, this fact was presented to me several times as ONE of the possibilities.
Which means, to tell the truth, that everything is possible.
--
Many years earlier, Mother had told Satprem a vision she had had of one of her bodies petrified in a Himalayan cave, near a route of pilgrimage.
When Satprem suggested publishing this passage in the Bulletin along with the beginning of Mother's comment on the Aphorism, she observed, "I don't want to speak of that now, it isn't yet time. We need not tell them too clearly that the work is being done for them, they know it only too well! (Laughing) No need to insist!"
0 1963-08-13b, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(This note came apropos of an old Playground Talk, of December 21, 1950, which Satprem read Mother during the preceding conversation. Mother spoke in it of the clear, precise and constant vision of the Truth, and she added: Some call it the Voice of God or the Will of God. The real sense of these terms has been perverted, thats why I prefer to say the Truth, although it is but one very limited aspect of That which we cannot name but is the Source and Goal of all existence.)
Satprem,
0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time an experience of that kind occurs, the entire vision of things and of the relationship between things is changed (gesture of reversal). Even from a quite practical viewpoint. You see, Life is a sort of chessboard on which all the pawns are arranged according to certain inner laws, and every time it all changes: everything changes, the chessboard changes, the pawns change, the types of organization change. Also the inner quality of the pawnsvery much so.
For instance, these last few days I had a whole vision of X, of what he represents, the people around him, his relationship with the Ashramall that entirely changed. Every element took a new place in relation to all the others. And I have nothing to do with it, I dont try to understand, I dont try to see, nothing: the thing is simply shown to me. Like pictures that are shown to me. Each thing has its own special flavor, its own special color, its own special quality and its own special relationship with the restall the relationships are different.
Its growing very PRECISE, very minute, very sharp, not floating: very accurate to the last detail. And with a great simplicity.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What people see [when they look at Mothers body] is only the appearance, but this appearance is a reflection of something else. (silence) Theres a sort of knowledge (is it a knowledge?) or foreknowledge given to the body of how this appearance will be changed. And it sounds so simple, so easy, it can be done in a flash, because its not AT ALLit wont AT ALL be done in the way people think or expect. Its rather like the vision of the TRUE internal movement that would IMPOSE itself in such a way that it would veil the false vision which sees things like that [on the surface]. Its very hard to explain, but its Ive felt it several times for a few seconds (I have a sort of sensation of the thing): there is something true, the true Physical, which, although its not perceptible to our eyes as they see, could make itself perceptible through an INTENSIFICATION. And that intensification would be what would effect the transformation outwardly that would replace the false appearance with the real form.
But I have no idea whether the false appearance wouldnt still exist for those not ready to see the true thing. At any rate, it would be an intermediary period: those whose eyes were open would be able to see (what is called open eyes in the Scriptures), they would be able to see; and they would be able to see not through effort or seeking, but the thing would impose itself on them. While those whose eyes were not open for a time, at least, it would be that way, they wouldnt seethey would still see the old appearance. The two may be simultaneous.
--
Now, of course, when I say that, people imagine its a psychic or mental vision thats not it, I dont mean that! I mean a PHYSICAL vision, with these very eyes (Mother touches her eyes). But a TRUE physical vision, instead of the distorted vision we have now.
This means, basically, that the true reality is far more marvelous than we can imagine, because all that we can imagine is always a transformation or glorification of what we see but thats not it. Thats not it!
0 1963-08-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the body does profit from the experience, in the sense that it feels stronger afterwardsnot much stronger physically, we dont care about that strength! Its a very odd phenomenon: the sense of the concrete fades awayit fades farther and farther away. Concrete vision, concrete sense of smell, concrete taste, concrete hearing, it all seems far awayfar behind in a an unreal past. And that kind of dry and lifeless concrete is replaced by something thats very supple (round, global gesture), very complete in that all the senses function together, and VERY INTIMATE WITH EVERYTHING.
For a while I was shown the two functionings to enable me to perceive the difference: how the senses function now, and how they did formerly: and it gives a fuzzy impression, but its an impression of something both very intimate and very complete (same round gesture), whereas, before, each thing was separate, divided (choppy, hard gesture), unconnected with the other, it was very superficialvery precise but very superficial, like a pinpoint. Its not at all that way any more.
And I see very well that if we let ourselves be carried along instead of having that absurd resistance of habit, if we let ourselves be carried along, there would come a sort of very (same round, global gesture) very soft thing, in the sense of smooth, very soft, very complete, very living, and with a very intimate perception of things. Along with a knowledge that becomes if there werent that mixture of the old habit, it would be really extraordinary: the perception of things not as if they were outside, but an INTIMATE perception. When someone enters the room, for instance, or when the clock is about to strike, you know it just (I cant say a second, its a thousandth of a second), just before it takes place materially; which gives you the feeling of a foreknowledge, but its not that! Its not a foreknowledge, its It belongs to the realm of sensation, but its other senses. The FOREMOST feeling you get is one of intimacy, that is to say, there is no more distance, no more difference, no more seer and thing seen; yet, there is in it what corresponds to vision, hearing, sensation, all the perceptions, taste, smell and all of that.
There is here a very concrete change from before, very perceptible.
0 1963-09-18, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But in that state, it seems that what you see MUST beand inevitably (I should say necessarily), it is. And probably instantly so. But you have to see the whole at once for your vision to be all-powerful. If you see only one point (as, for example, when you feel that the action on earth is limited to a certain field that depends on you), as long as you see that way, you cant be all-powerful, its not possiblenot possible. Its inevitably conditioned.
(long silence)
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He clearly knows how to put mental substance into shape but this handling of mental matter to give it a shape, everybody does it unknowingly, automatically; you only have to think a little strongly for it to be done. Only, people dont see it because they dont have the mental vision. And here, it was so funny [Xs mental formation], because it responded so well (thats what made me think it was he who was doing it, not someone else), it responded so well to my immediate thought (and I didnt think strongly). I looked at the thing, and spontaneously, within myself, I thought, Oh, no! Almost as if Sri Aurobindo were saying, Oh, no! Thats my popular portrait, its no good! Voil.4
***
--
You see, what I do is this: the thing comes, its taken up, presented (gesture to the Heights) as though it were mine: But look, see how I am (but its the Ithe great I), its presented to the Lord, very humbly, with the sense and feeling of complete helplessness I simply say, Here, change it. The feeling that only He can do it, that everything that people have tried everywhere appears childisheverything appears to be childish. The most sublime intelligence seems to me childish. All the attempts that are made to enlighten, organize, educate mankind, to awaken it to a higher consciousness, to give it mastery over Nature and its forces, all of itall of it, which for a human vision is sometimes utterly sublime, seems absolutely like children playing and having fun in a nursery. And children who love dangerous games, who believe TERRIBLY in what they do (as do children, naturally). I have never met more serious and stern a justice than the justice children have in their games. They really take life seriously. Well, thats exactly the impression it makes on me: the impression of a mankind in infancy which takes what it does with ferocious seriousness. And which will never get out of itit will never get out of it, it lacks the little something (which may be really nothing at all), a very little something thanks to which ah, everything becomes clear and organizedall that comes from mankind always BORDERS on Truth.
So the only thing I can do is this (gesture of presenting): Look, Lord, see how ignorant and powerless we are, how utterly stupid we areits up to You to change it. How do you change it? You cant even imagine the change, you cant even do that. So all my time (same gesture)not from time to time: constantly, day and night, without letup, day and night without letup. If for an interval of one or two minutes this isnt done, there is something that catches up: Oh, all that time wasted! And if I take a close look at what happened, then I see; I see that for these few minutes, I was blissful in the Lord, letting myself live blissfully in the Lord; so I no longer presented things to Himit happens two or three times a day. A relaxation, you know, you let yourself flow blissfully in the Lord. And its so natural and spontaneous that I dont even notice it; I notice it when I resume my attitude (same gesture to the Heights) of transferring everything to the Lord every minute.
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I was looking at it and thinking, How come? I was neither angry nor upset nor anything at allwithin, there was always that same Love, unchanging, always, always there, for everything; even when I perceive things with a kind of discernment (not even an intuitive one, a discernment higher than intuitive, which is like a clear visionclear, precise, in the white Light), the discernment of all the stupidity, all the ill will, all the crookednessa very clear discernmentit is always with a Smile, there is always that same Vibration of an eternal Love. Then that Power comesit doesnt disturb anything, it doesnt take the place of anything: its an addition. Its an action: it does its action and then goes away. But while its there you know, the Force that made me bang my fist on the table could have smashed everything. But of course, a poor little hand, a poor little arm, could only shake the table! (Mother laughs) It could only make a lot of noise and shake the table. But the perception was tremendous.
That was the last time, but not the first.
0 1963-11-04, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An example: yesterday, for at least a quarter of an hour, I was filled with a sort of marvelousmarvelingadmiration for Natures fantastic imagination in inventing the animals. I saw all the animals in all their details that is, the prehuman age. Consequently, there was no mind. And without the mind, how wonderful that imagination was, you know! It was as though I lived in it: there was no man, no thought, but that imaginative power making one species emerge out of another, and then another; and all those details Everything is becoming like that, as if it were SEEN for the first time and from an altogether different angle; everything, everything: peoples character, circumstances, even the motion of the earth and the stars, everything is like that, everything has become entirely new and unexpected, in the sense that all the human mental visionis completely gone! So things are much better! (Laughing) Much better without the human mind. (I dont mean they are better without man, I mean that seen from another viewpoint than the human, mental viewpoint, everything is far more wonderful.) And then, all the details of every minute, all the people, all the things, all The trees (Mother looks at the coconut tree in front of her window) that were stripped by the cyclone; this one held up so marvelously and it has a new flowerit has old leaves damaged by the cyclone, but it has grown a new flower. So lovely, so fresh! Everything is like that.
Me too. Me too, I saw myself (laughing) from a new angle! And the things that in the past were, not positively problems, but anyway questions to be resolved (certain actions, certain relationships), all gone! And there is something that thoroughly enjoys itself I dont know what that something is, but it thoroughly enjoys itself.
Outwardly, as I told you, everything is heaped on me (on me, well, it isnt on me), on this body, which is obliged to answer questions, obliged to read letters, obliged to see people whereas it has so much more fun when it can enjoy the inner experience and have this new vision of thingsbecause all that is very material, its not going out of Matter to see the world in another way (that has been done for a long time, of course, its nothing new, and its nothing marvelous), thats not it: its Matter looking at itself in an entirely new way, and thats where the fun is! It sees the whole affair anew and altogether differently. Then they plunge me back into that stupid way of seeing things, the ordinary human way in which everything becomes a problem, a complication. And I am obligedobliged to answer people, to listen to what they tell me. Its a shame.
Theyre wasting my time.
--
Its too bad I cant keep note of all the experiences that come to me, because just these last few days, for a period of time, there was a very clear perception of the true functioning, which is the expression of the supreme Will and operates spontaneously, naturally and automatically through the individual instrument; I could even say (because the mind is quiet, it keeps quiet): through the body. And the perception of the moment when this expression of the divine Will is blurred, distorted by the introduction of a desire, the special vibration of desire, which has a quality all of its own and which comes for many apparent reasons: its not only a thirst for something, a need for something or an attachment to something; that same vibration can be triggered by the fact that, for instance, the will expressed seems to be (or at any rate has been taken for) the expression of the supreme Will, but there has been a confusion between the immediate action which was evidently the expression of the supreme Will, and the result which was to follow from that actionits a very common mistake. People are used to thinking that when they want a particular thing, thats what should come; because their vision is too shorttoo short and too limited, not an overall vision which would make them see that that particular vibration is necessary to trigger a number of other vibrations, and that its the TOTALITY of them all that will have an effect, which isnt the immediate effect of the vibration that was sent out. I dont know whether this is clear, but its a constant experience.
If I gave an example, it would be easier to grasp, but it must be a lived example, otherwise its worthless.
But during that period of time, I made a study and observation of the phenomenon: how the vibration of desire is added to the vibration of the Will sent out by the Supreme (for small everyday acts). And with the vision from above (if you take care, of course, to remain conscious of that vision from above), you see how the vibration sent out was exactly the one sent out by the Supreme, but instead of producing the immediate result which the superficial consciousness expected, it was intended to trigger a whole set of vibrations in order to reach another result, more distant and more complete. I am not talking of big things or terrestrial actions, I am talking of very small things in life. For example, you tell someone, Give me this, and the person, instead of giving that, misunderstands and gives something else; so if you dont take care to keep an overall vision, a certain vibration may occur, say of impatience, or a dissatisfaction, along with the feeling that the Lords vibration is neither understood nor received. Well, its that little ADDED vibration of impatience (or, in fact, of incomprehension of what happens), its that feeling of a lack of receptivity or response that has the quality of desirewe cant call it a desire, but its the same kind of vibration. And thats what comes and complicates things. If you have the complete, exact vision, you know that Give me this will produce a result different from the immediate one and that that other result will bring about yet another, which is exactly what should be. I dont know whether I am making myself clear, its a bit complicated! But it gave me the key to the difference in quality between the vibration of the Will and the vibration of desire. And together with this, the possibility of doing away with that vibration of desire through a broader and more total visionbroader, more total, more distant, that is to say, the vision of a vaster totality.
I am insisting on this, because it eliminates all moral elements. It eliminates the derogatory notion of desire. The vision increasingly eliminates all those notions of good and evil, good and bad, inferior and superior, and so forth. There is only what I might almost call a difference of vibratory qualityquality still evokes the idea of superiority and inferiority, it isnt quality, not intensity either, I dont know the scientific term they use to distinguish one vibration from another, but thats it.
But then, the remarkable thing is that the Vibration (what we could call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord) is constructive: it constructs, it is peaceful and luminous; while that other vibration, of desire and such like, complicates, destroys and confuses, it twists thingsconfuses and distorts them, twists them. And it takes away the light: it makes for a dullness, which can be intensified with violent movements to the point of very dark shadows. But even where there is no passion, where passion doesnt interfere, thats how it is. You see, the physical reality has become nothing but a field of vibrations mingling together and, unfortunately, clashing together too, in conflict with one another. And the clash, the conflict, is the climax of that kind of turmoil, of disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations, which are ultimately vibrations of ignorance (they come because people dont know, they are vibrations of ignorance), and are too small, too narrow, too limitedtoo short. The problem isnt seen from a psychological standpoint at all: its nothing but vibrations.
0 1963-11-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For some time, I had been encountering in N. a sort of resistance to the Action. Whenever he entered the atmosphere (Mother makes the gesture of banging against a wall), it resisted terribly. And I didnt have any intention other than to make it give way, in other words, I confined myself to the inner action (gesture indicating the Force at work). Then, as it happened, he fell ill. Yesterday, he came as every day, but he wasnt well. So I told him, Listen, go downstairs, shut yourself up in your room, enter Sachchidananda and dont move from it. (He is quite capable of doing it.) In the evening, the doctor came and told me that N. had a very high fever: He is restless. The fever was too high. I thought, The resistance is even stronger than I thought. At night, when I went to bed, I began to concentrate on him to see, and I saw him surrounded by a kind of black crust, which obviously comes from the fact that he isnt used to purifying himself as things come onto him from outside (me too, for example, I would be surrounded by a black cuirass, absolutely coal black, if I didnt do my work of purification all the time, all the time, all the time). So I saw this, and did what was needed. And this morning, the fever had dropped. But the interesting thing is that when he came this morning, he told me this: Last night I had a vision: I suddenly found myself entirely surrounded by coal, a thick crust of coal, and I wanted to get rid of it and get out of it. I looked at my hands, I had nothing in them, so I thought, How can I do it? I have nothing to do it with. And instantly, I saw the crust begin to crumble and crumble and crumble into dust and gone! And this morning, I feel weak and tired, but its over.
Its a minimum of distortion.
0 1963-11-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because I saw It was so precise, so concrete, material, that for a moment I wondered whether it was physical or not. There was only the arm and shoulder of someone who stood behind you, but veiled, that is, as if behind a mist so as not to be seen. It was a womans arm, very young, a very milky white, and a little roundednot fat (!), but without angles. There was a hand and an arm, very white-skinneda milky white and I could see the beginning of a sort of silver dress. She had words and sheets of paper, and she was arranging words on the sheets, and then the words were written in black on the sheetsshe had the words and the sheets separately, and she arranged the words on the sheets and then put the sheets in front of you. She was standing behind you. But not a vague and imprecise vision, it was very, very material. (smiling) So I wondered if you have a Muse?
It was only her right armshe wasnt very tall, but very young, and a shape without angles (I cant say plump!), a well-rounded shape. And with her small fingers she took the words and arranged them on the sheets, then when it was arranged (the sheets werent covered all over with words: in places only), she put the sheet in front of you.
0 1963-12-07 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was a very total vision. And such an acute experience that it seemed to be the only true thing. It didnt take up any space, yet there was that sensation of nearness and farness. And there was a kind of Focus, or a Center, I cant say (but it was everywhere), which was the climax of Theepurely Thee. And it had a quality of its own. Then it began to move farther and farther away, which produced a kind of mixture with something that was nothing that didnt exist but that altered the vibration, the intensity, which made it move farther and farther away to Darknessunconscious Darkness.
And something kept coming again and again to me: there is no other sin (because this followed a few lines I read in Savitri on the glorification of sin in the vital world, the words came to me because of that) there is no other sin, no other vice than to be far from Thee.
0 1963-12-14, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was an experience for a few seconds, with the clear vision and immediate action of the supreme Force over this [the emotive zone], but the experience wasnt sufficient so it could be noted down.
(silence)
0 1963-12-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But, to tell the truth, if we could always keep in our consciousness, in a clear and living way, the vision of WHAT SHOULD BE, not with the illusion that its already there (there must be no illusions), but a clear, positive vision of what should be, despite all that denies it we would be very strong. This necessity is beginning to impose itself: thats what I am asked to do now. We KNOW things are not as they should be (God knows we know it!), but to keep deliberately ignoring those denials in order to keep ACTIVELY in the consciousness the vision of what should be that, I feel, is true creative power.
You know, the fact of no longer having the physical support of Sri Aurobindos presence was a blow that might have been mortal (I prevented it from being mortal by closing a door, because he had asked me to continue and I decided to continue), but it made certain things rather difficult because it became necessary to have a constant perception of what has to be done and a constant effort to change what is into what should be. Probably its a period of work that must be completed now, and he was asking of me the capacity to live in the positive side. The trouble is, the body is itself a kind of contradiction but it was suggested to me that those contradictions of the body arise from the fact that I admit in the consciousness all the contradictions, and that consequently they are there in the body, too. Instead of looking at the body and saying, Oh, this (this limitation, that narrowness) is still here, I should look only at WHAT SHOULD BE, and the body would be forced to follow.
--
I have a feeling that something is pressing to eliminate in my active consciousness that discernment which is so sharp, so imperativesharp, you know, with a vision (like the vision I had the other day of the nearness and farness), a vision almost microscopically exact. Obviously, this is helpful to get rid of all the things that shouldnt be, but now there is a will for this attitude to move into the background, and for the active consciousness to see constantly and almost exclusively only WHAT SHOULD BE.
Which means there are movements of elimination, of rejection, movements (for a second) of transformation, and also movements of constructionit seems the time has come to step into the movement of construction.
--
And all the more great and difficult since (certainly because of the necessities of the work) I am surrounded only by people who are on the other side. I dont have around me a single optimist. All that people tell me, all that they bring to me, is always the vision (more or less clear and complete) of what should go; but the vision of what should be I have never found it except in Sri Aurobindo.
Its only in sudden gusts, in flashes, now and then, and only when he wrote (never when he spoke) that you could find that sort of sharp thing, of sharp discernment, like in what we translated the other day. Otherwise, when he spoke, when he was with people, there was never a negative criticism.
0 1963-12-31, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was even the vision of how the vibrations were in the cells: vibrations that were silvery, sparkling, rippling, but very regular, and precise (how can I put it?). It was the contradiction of Falsehood in the cells; like little flashes of silvery light.
But that [Falsehood] is the great obstacle, the extreme difficulty. Its something gluey which entered the creation and sticks to everything, and which has become a material habit too, because its not only Mind that has Falsehood in it: theres Falsehood in Life, in Life itself. In the completely inanimate, I dont know. Maybe it came with Life? (According to Savitri, the origin of Falsehood lies in Life.) But its as though Unconsciousness, in order to go towards Consciousness, to return to Consciousness, had taken the path of Falsehood and Death instead of the path of Truth.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mothers eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha6 and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
Ganapati, or Ganesh: the son of the supreme Mother, god of material knowledge and wealth. He is represented with an elephant's head.
0 1964-01-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once I had seen that, suddenly (it was as if on a screen) the whole story vanished and it was over. It had come only to make me see it, thats all. But it presented itself in that way in order to make me watch intently, seriously, not as a mental consideration: a vision and an experience.
Immediately afterwards, I had a visit from the Pope! The Pope [Paul VI] had come to Pondicherry (he does intend to visit India), he had come to Pondicherry and asked to see me (quite impossible things materially, of course, but they were perfectly simple and straightforward). So I saw him. He came, we met each other over there (in the music room), and we actually did speak to each other. I really felt the man in front of me (gesture of feeling), felt what he was. And he was very worried at the thought of what I was going to say to people about his visit: the revelation I would give of his visit. I saw that, but I didnt say anything. Finally he said (we were speaking in French, he had an Italian accent; but all this, you see, doesnt correspond to any thought: its like pictures in a film), he said, What will you tell people about my visit? So I looked at him (inner contacts are more concrete than pictures or words) and I simply answered him, after staring at him intently, I will tell them that we have been in communion in our love for the Lord. And there was in it the warmth of a golden lightextraordinary! Then I saw something relax in him, as if an anxiety were leaving him, and he left like that, in a great concentration.
--
I am giving these two examples because they are recent and a little unexpected (or at least, they didnt correspond to my occupations or preoccupations), but they come in hundreds! Every day thirty, forty of them will come and take hold of me, and then, all at once, Ill go into a concentration, Ill LIVE a certain thing, until I have seenseen, known through the vision something that had to be seen, and as soon as it is seen, pfft! gone away, finished. It loses its interest, its gone.
Ill go into a sort of concentration for a time during which I am completely isolated, absorbed; then when its over, hup! it goes away abruptly (gesture of pulling a curtain).
0 1964-01-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And always the same thing (the first vision was quite correct, I mean the vision of the cells was quite correct): it isnt something coming from outside, its the impulse that comes from outside, its the wrong vibration that comes from outside, and the difficulty is that you are unable to replace this wrong vibration or, rather, CANCEL it, with the True Vibration. Thats what I had already said: the proportion isnt sufficient, so it takes time. I can understand that with a sufficient proportion of cells remaining in the True Vibration, the cure should be instantaneous, that is, the effect of the wrong vibrations should be canceled automatically. But I had seen the thing and spent almost an hour, three quarters of an hour [in concentration], and the little bit that had been affected (it was in the throat) was canceledit didnt return. It was canceled. But after those three quarters of an hour, I had to resume my activities, see people, do things, take my bath, too (although the bath is always beneficial), and a sort of memory lingered. And then, from three oclock, a quarter to three, the invasion started: first one, then another, then two more, then a third, then So all at once, because my attention had been DIVERTED to what I had to do (scores of answers to be written, of blessings to be sent, of problems to be resolvedall of it dumped on me), as my attention was diverted to that, naturally all at once I started sneezing and so forththere was nothing to do but go through it.
Still, for actions in this domain, actions of transformation, I dont say solitude because thats sillythere is no such thing as solitude but peace is necessary, that is, the perfect control over the activity: the activity must be kept on a level where it doesnt interfere with the inner work thats the point. That was why, in fact, I was forced (apparently) to remain upstairs, because downstairs it had become it was infernalinfernal, no one can imagine! Its always the same principle: Why not me? And there are 1,300 of them, you understand let alone the visitors who come in their hundreds (some days, there are more than 200 or 300 of them at one time); they hear that there is someone worth seeing, and when I was downstairs and one of the circus showmen ([laughing] excuse me!) came, he would bring a troop along.
0 1964-01-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No. Ill be better also (Mother still has her cold), it will give me some time to get better. Not that the ideas arent clear (!), on the contrary theres a sort of very precise and sharp vision of things, but speaking is difficult.
But what I say is hard for people to understand, I find. I gave that text from the Agenda to A.he didnt say anything. Which shows that he didnt understand anything. As for Pavitra, he clearly didnt understand anything.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it wasnt an animated view, it wasnt a vision: it was a PHOTO, just like the other photos, the same color as the other photosa photo which I even studied critically as a photo for the way it was taken. It doesnt exist!
It must exist somewhere.
--
Some time ago, I was saying to myself, Some people see physical things at a distance, but I have never seen anything of the sort. I have seen things in the subtle physical (very close to the physical, with a very small difference), but that wasnt a physical vision: it was a vision in the subtle physical. Some time ago I said to myself, Thats odd, physically I have no special capacities, I have never observed interesting phenomena! (Mother laughs) But that was in passing. And now this story! But, mon petit, it took me forty-eight hours to be convinced that it wasnt in the book! I havent yet got over it! Because my eyes have the eyes memory, a very precise memory; they were educated by painting and they see things very exactly as they are (well, as they pretend to be materially). You know, I could have sworn that it was in the book. And clearly it isnt. Four people, apart from me, have seen the book, and its not there!
I found that interesting, its new.
0 1964-02-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This week, you know, I should have remained quiet (meaning that I would have liked to), because the result of that intensity of aspiration [in the body] is to give me a crystal clear and almost constant perception of the extent to which the material substance is made of Falsehood and Ignoranceas soon as the consciousness is clear, at rest, peaceful, in a luminous vision, falsities seem to come up from all sides. It isnt an active perception, in the sense that I dont try to know: these are things that PRESENT themselves to the consciousness. And then you realize what it takes to clarify all that, to transform all thatwhat tremendous power of Truth-Force! And you notice that the intensity of the aspirationwhich hastens the transformation and brings the realization nearermay well (Mother touches her eye) yes, heres the result.
And I notice that, all around, those nearer to the center of descent are very shaken upvery. I see very few bodies around me capable of bearing it. But then, if thats how it is, necessarily the descent is so filtered and diminished that how much will get through?
0 1964-03-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Your vision obviously its mental constructions standing in the way of the takeoff thats obvious. But it isnt an individual experience: its a collective thing.
It was very black, and it was a church like a church steeple. But the gold ciborium, what is that? It was very pretty, besides; it was beautiful, but hidden.
0 1964-03-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It [this body] wasnt much more interesting or important than many other bodiesit didnt at all have the sense of its importance. Even, in the overall vision of the Work, its present imperfections were quite simply tolerated, even accepted, not because they are unavoidable, but because the amount of concentration and exclusive attention necessary to change them does not appear to be important enough to stop or reduce the general work. Thats how it was there was a smile for lots of little things. Finally, as for the Thing (the great thing from the artistic point of view of the material appearance, great too from the point of view of public faith, which only goes by appearances, of course, and which will be convinced only when there is an obvious transformation), it appeared to be, for the moment, at any rate, something secondary and not urgent. But there was a fairly clear perception that soon (how can I put it?) the state of being or way of being (I think they say the modus vivendi) of the body, of this fragment of terrestrial Matter, could be altered, ruled, entirely driven by the direct Will. Because it was as if ALL the illusions had fallen away one after another, and every time an illusion disappeared it produced one of those little promises that came in succession, announcing something that would come about later. So that prepared the final realization.
When I got up this morning, I had the feeling that a corner had been turned. But not at alloh, not at all!a subjective thing, not at all: a corner has been turned FOR THE EARTH. It doesnt matter in the least if people arent aware of it.2
0 1964-03-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
102To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness.
(long silence)
--
Thats exactly what cannot be said! When you have the vision and consciousness of the Truth-Order, of that which is DIRECT, the direct expression of the Truth, you immediately feel something inexpressible, because all words belong to the other sphere; all images, all comparisons, all expressions belong to the other sphere.
I had precisely that great difficulty (it was on February 29): all the time while I was living in that consciousness of the DIRECT manifestation of the Truth, I tried to formulate what I was feeling, what I was seeingit was impossible. There were no words. And immediately, merely formulating things made me instantly fall back into the other consciousness.
--
There are partial proofs. But as they are partial, they arent conclusive. Because, to the ordinary vision and understanding, you can always find explanations: you can say it was foreseen and predestined that the accident would miscarry, for example, and that consequently that intervention isnt at all what made it miscarryit was Determinism that had decided it. And how do you prove anything? How do you even prove to yourself that it is otherwise? Its not possible.
You see, as soon as we express things we enter the mind, and as soon as we enter the mind theres that kind of logic, which is frightful because it is all-powerful: if everything has already been existing and coexisting from all eternity, how can you change one thing into another? How can anything at all change?
--
You see, this aphorism would eventually lead to an absolute subjectivity, and only that absolute subjectivity would be truewell, its NOT like that. Because that means pralaya, it means Nirvana. Well, there isnt only Nirvana, there is an objectivity thats real, not false but how can you say what it is! Its something I have felt several timesseveral times, not just in a flash: the reality of (How can we express ourselves? We are always deceived by our words) In the perfect sense of Oneness and in the consciousness of Oneness there is room for the objective, for objectivityone doesnt destroy the other, not at all. You may have the sense of a differentiation; not that it isnt yourself, but its a different vision. I told you, all that we can say is nothing, its nonsense, because the purpose of words is to express the unreal world, but Yes, that may be what Sri Aurobindo calls the sense of Multiplicity in Unity (maybe that corresponds a little), just as you feel the internal multiplicity of your being, something of that sort. I dont at all have the sensation of a separate self anymore, not at all, not at all, not even in the body, yet that doesnt prevent me from having a certain sense of an objective relationshipwell, yes, it leads us back to his change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness. (Laughing) Maybe thats really is the best way of putting it! Its a relation of consciousness. It isnt at all the relationship between oneself and othersnot at all, thats entirely canceled but it might be like the relation of consciousness between the various parts of ones being. And it gives objectivity to those various parts, obviously.
(long silence)
--
This has repeatedly been my experience lately, with a vision and a conviction, the conviction of an experience: the two vibrations are like this (concomitant gesture indicating a superimposition and infiltration), all the timeall the time, all the time.
Maybe the sense of wonder comes when the quantity that has infiltrated is large enough to be perceptible. But I have an impressiona very acute impression that this phenomenon is going on all the time, all the time, everywhere, in a minuscule, infinitesimal way (gesture of a twinkling infiltration), and that in certain circumstances or conditions that are visible (visible to this vision: its a sort of luminous swelling I cant explain), then, the mass of infiltration is sufficient to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise, its something going on all the time, all the time, all the time, continuously, in the world (same twinkling gesture), like an infinitesimal amount of Falsehood replaced by Light Falsehood replaced by Light constantly.
And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. Thats probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the Flamein the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a Flame.1 It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire.
0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I said that human action is based on reactions. Divine action, on the other hand, SPONTANEOUSLY stems from the vision through identity of the necessity of the dharma of each thing and each being. It is a constant perception, spontaneous, effortless, through identity, of the dharma of each being (I use the word dharma because its neither law nor truth, but both together). In order for this being to go by the shortest way to his goal, here is the curve of the most favorable circumstances; consequently the action will always be modeled on that curve. The result is that in seemingly similar circumstances, the action of the divine Wisdom will sometimes be completely different, at times even opposite. But then, how do you explain this to the ordinary consciousness? In one case, the Master loves this person, while in the other he doesnt love himits easy!
It was so clear! And such a constant, constantly repeated experience that its really very interesting. Its very clear that its impossible for the disciples to understand; even if they are told, What is done is done because of each beings dharma, for them its just words; it doesnt correspond to a living experience, they cant feel it.
--
It is said that divine Love doesnt manifest because, in the worlds present state of imperfection, the result would be a catastrophe thats a human vision. Divine Love manifests, has manifested eternally, will manifest eternally, and its the incapacity of the material world not only of the material world, but of the vital world and the mental world, and of many other worlds that arent ready, that are incapable but HE is there, He is there, right there! He is there permanently: its THE Permanence. The Permanence Buddha sought is there. He claims he found it in Nirvanait is there, in Love.
(silence)
0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The strange thing is that (I was very conscious, perfectly conscious; the Witness consciousness is never canceled, but it isnt in the way) is that I knew, I saw (yet my eyes were closed, I was lying in my bed), I saw my body movingit had movements of such a Rhythm! You see, every movement, every gesture, every finger, every attitude was a thing that was being realized. Then what I studied, what I saw during the half-hour that followed (with my eyes closed, seeing much more clearly than with my ordinary eyes) was the difference in the body the difference in the bodys movements between that moment [during the experience] and after [when Mother returned to the personal consciousness]. At that moment, the movements were it was creation! And with an EXACTNESS, a majesty! (Mother stretches out her arms and moves them slowly in a vast Rhythm.) I dont know what other people might have seen, I have no idea, but as for me, I saw myself; I saw especially the arms because it was the arms that acted: they were like the realizing intermediaries I dont know how to put it. But it was as vast as the world. It was the earth (its always the earth consciousness), not the universe: the earth, the earth consciousness. But I was conscious then of the universe and of the action on the earth (both things), of the earth as a very small thing in the universe (Mother holds a small ball in her hands). I dont know, its hard to say, but when it expressed itself, there was also the perception of the difference in vision between that moment [during the experience] and afterwards. But all this is inexpressible. Yet it is an absolute knowledgeits another way of knowing. Sri Aurobindo explained this, that all mental knowledge is a seeking: you seek; while this knowledge has another quality, another flavor. And then the power of the Harmony is so wonderful! (Mother again depicts a great Rhythm, her arms outstretched) So wonderful, so spontaneous, so SIMPLE. And It stays there, as if It supported the entire world as it is; it is a kind of inner support of the world the world leans on it.
But outwardly, that sort of film its like a thin film of difficulties, of complications, added on by the human consciousness (its much stronger with man than with the animal; the animal doesnt have that, very littleit has it more and more because of man, but very little; its something specific to man and the mental function), its something very thinas thin as an onion skin, as dry as an onion skinyet it spoils everything. It spoils everything ONLY FOR THE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. At the time [of the experience], it was unimportant. Unimportant, in the sense that it takes away all the Beauty, all the Power, all the Magnificence of the thing for the human consciousness. For man, it is of paramount importance. But for the Action, its almost negligible. Basically, its rather that it makes it difficult for man to become conscious and PARTICIPATE; otherwise, my feeling is that truly the time has come for things to get done: that experience was a NEW descent, that is, something new entering the terrestrial manifestation; it wasnt that I became conscious of how the world is: I WAS the Lords Will coming into the world to change it. Thats what it was. And that action was only very slightly affected (assuming it was affected at all) by that stupid onion skin of human mentality.
0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are ups and downs, moments when its more present and moments where its less so; to be exact: moments when its active and moments when it isnt. And whenever there is a period during which it isnt active, when it starts again it does so on a higher rung, that is, more intensely and clearly. The whole thing is obviously following a process of development. Its a sort of the word awareness might be the nearest; it isnt a perception, which still belongs to the mind, its a sort of phenomenon of vision. And it has an absolute character. For instance, from time to time, when I hear people speak of something or other and say, It will be like this and like that, instantly there comes a sort of tactile vision how can I explain this? It resembles touch and sight (yet its neither touch nor sight, but both together): its the thing as it is, thats IT; and they may say what they like, thats IT and it is irrefutable. And so far, there has never been any contradiction.
Its a consciousness in which the mental element is absent. It comes just on its own, and its so clear! Its like an immediate contact with the thing as it is.
0 1964-08-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Again! Thats amusing. Not only the memory of the time when I was occupied with that, but an entire detailed knowledge of the different methods and the vision of what should be done and howall that has been coming back to me these last few days! It came in the same way as the story of Janaka (Mother indicates a sort of film being projected): it comes, so I am a spectator, I watch I watch all sorts of thingsuntil the work appears to be over, then it stops, and then it goes away just as it came I have absolutely no part to play in it.
Its odd.
0 1964-09-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when you perceive this, you also see that the human way (the human doctors way) of seeing the illness isnt in accord with the higher vision of the SAME condition of the body; and that in each and every case (not in a general way for all cases), in each case there is ONE thing to be told, which is the True Thing, even if it is, for example, giving the patient the sense of a duration of life. You can shift your consciousness and place it inside that part of the patients being that lasts. It is difficult to explain, but I am saying this from experience because its a problem I have encountered very often. Just now, there is a person here who has had several cancers, who was operated on and was made to last for years with operations and treatments; only, she is told the usual lies; but she asks me, she asks me what I see and what I know. So I had the opportunity to see the answer that should be given.
It is, so to speak, the practical means to compel the doctor to enter a higher consciousness. That must be the crisis that has come to your brother; he has come to a point when he is imperatively obligedprofessionally obligedto enter a higher consciousness. Because, in his present state, he must be lying very badlyhe says he is a very good liar, but with the perception he has now, the result must be that, along with his lie, doubt enters the patients consciousness. So he isnt doing whats considered to be the useful thing.
--
Oh, what a beautiful realization to achieve! A beautiful work can be done in that way. To be able to feel and SEE the thing to be said, and THATS what should be saidnot with the thought, This man is going to die, I shouldnt make him too unhappy, I should, all that is perfectly useless. Perfectly useless, and you put yourself in a kind of mental muddle; besides, it doesnt really help, it doesnt have the expected effect. While this inner vision to see why that being is ill and what that physical disorder expresses in the destiny of the soul of that man or this womanits magnificent, magnificent!
And ultimately, saying, You will be cured, is just as useless as saying, You wont be cured, both are equally incorrect from the point of view of the true Truth, and unsatisfactory for someone who has had a first contact with a life other than physical life.
--
You understand, to know all the material, cellular questions with the full knowledge of all the details, and at the same time to have that visionif you could put both together, you would be a divine doctor. That would be marvelous.
Emerge from the moral problem in order to make it a spiritual problem. And then its no longer a problem.
0 1964-09-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It goes towards the person (I see it with the inner vision, you understand) or towards the circumstances or towards the event, and it pummels it without letting go of it: You will do what the Lord wills, it will be as the Lord wills.
I put it into words, but
0 1964-10-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if youve heard this, its something P. told me. She was still in Switzerland, and shortly before she came back here, she had a vision (she was in her home, simply meditating, and she had a vision), and in her vision she saw five big luminous cigars going past like this, slowly, one behind the other, in single file. When she woke up, she wondered what it was. And a few days later (maybe the next day or the day after, I dont know), she read in a newspaper the account of people in southern France (I dont remember in which part) who saw above the sea five luminous cigars go by, in single file, exactly the same color as those she had seen. But in their case, they saw it with their physical eyes. So that seems interesting.
It was clearly a phenomenon of a subtle physical order (in its origin) or material vital (in its origin), but which manifested physically, and which may very well have come from other planets that are a little more subtle than the earth.
0 1964-10-10, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a very long time, I used to seesee images, scenes and so on I used to see, but I didnt hear. Then, all of a sudden, I began to hear; and I would hear the slightest noise, I would hear in a perfectly coherent and natural way. It was as though the sense had suddenly developed. Well, there is a certain state of vision as a result of which I read I read written things; now that I no longer read physically, I read at night. Which means that all this inner development of the physical and subtle physical is still a whole unknown world to be learned.
I dont know its laws, I am only a spectator. And it obeys a will of an absolutely different order from the will at work in the physical world.
--
And then, this faith (its a faith in Matter) that in a flash (a flash we dont know, of course, it isnt a question of time as we understand it materially), a trigger and everything can be changed. Changed into the harmonious Rhythm of a Will expressing itself; and a Will which is a vision: a vision expressing itself, thats really it; the harmonious Rhythm of a vision expressing itself.
And all that we can think about it, imagine about it, deduce from it, all of that is nothing, nothingits nothing, it doesnt lead you THERE. What leads you THERE is the certitude, the inner faith that when the supreme (supreme what? We can say Truth, Love, Wisdom, Knowledge, all of that is nothing, its words the Something), when That expresses itself, all will be well.
--
I told you last time what had happened: that sense of liberation; yes, a liberation from suffocation, and a kind of opening and well-being that has become established. And the understanding (like the understanding of a detached witness) that everything, all those difficulties that come and pile up are absolutely indispensable so that nothing is forgotten in the march forwardso that EVERYTHING goes together; and that its only the vision of the details that blots out the vision of the whole.
Voil.
It will be like the chick popping out of the egg all at once: as long as its inside, to the superficial vision theres no chick; and all at once, pop! out it comes.
Lets hope so!
0 1964-10-24a, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then, as he saw I was talking to him, he took the opportunity to ask me, I would really like to have visions. I answered him all that had to be answered, and I told him that, in the last analysis, its only the Lord who decides when we should have visions, when we shouldnt have them, when we are making progress, when we arent, and so on. Then, in the most hypocritical tone (laughing), like someone who says something to be polite but doesnt believe a word of it, he said, Oh, then we are indeed fortunate, because we have the Lord among us. I pretended to believe he was sincere, and I answered him, No, no, no! You cant say that, its not possible I AM NOT the Lord! And I explained a little the consciousness I have of the Lord, I said, You shouldnt think I am the Lord (in my thought, it was: I am not the Lord as YOU imagine Him), because if I were the Lord (Mother smiles, amused), you would have visions and you would be cured.
This took place around 11:30. In the afternoon, usually I take my bath and stretch out a little, a good while, over there. I said to the Lord, And after all, why (laughing) cant I do something for people like this who are really nice? Why cant I work miracles? I asked Him this half seriously, half in jest. Then all of a sudden, it became very serious. All of a sudden, the Presence was very intense and it was very serious. Then l felt something that said in an absolutely positive way (it was translated into words), You MUST NOT have powers. And the total understanding.
0 1964-10-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its as if a fantastic amount of things were made known to me: people whom I dont know physically, things that I dont know physically. And with the clear vision of the true Consciousness behind it all: the workings of the Consciousness. Its interesting, but anyway It would be wonderful for a writer, he would have books and books to write! I even hear sentences; when things are written, I see them writtenits even more precise than in a film. And all the answers. And then the two consciousnesses side by side: the superficial consciousness, the way it works in people, and the true Consciousness that moves it all as it would puppets.
Its interesting, obviously.
0 1964-10-30, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you know, for hours, sometimes for hours something becomes fixed, really concentrated (in the true sense of the word) on the relationship between Eternity and the Unfolding. More and more, what comes is a vision, a certainty that its only ONE way of seeing, adapted to our humanized consciousness, and there is a kind of unmoving perception (which has more to do with sensation than with thought), a perception that what iswhat truly isis something else altogether: neither the Unfolding as we conceive of it and perceive it, nor Eternity (coexistent Eternity, one might say) as we can understand it. And its because of our incapacity to truly grasp the Thing that we are like this, having difficulty combining these two things properly.
I am putting it into words very poorly, but it isnt a vision, in the sense that it isnt an objective perception: it is a vibration, a way of being that you BECOME for a few seconds, and then you understand, but you cant put it into words.
Its odd; from the point of view of Truth, this is the problem thats being worked out. And when the concentration becomes very acute and very intense, something seems to burst inside the consciousness, and then spreadsspreads outin the intensity of a Love. And then it is like an answer, not to a question because it isnt formulated, but to the will to be.
0 1964-11-12, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With those faintings of sorts I told you about the other day, I observed (it went on the whole day), and I saw (saw with the inner vision): it is like the travelat times as quick as a flash, at other times slow and very measuredof a force that starts from one point to reach another one. That force travels along a precise route, which isnt always the same and seems to include certain cells on its way: the starting point and the arrival point (Mother draws a curve in the air). If you arent on your guard, if you are taken by surprise, during the passage of the force (whether long or short) you feel the same sensation (you, meaning the body), the same sensation as before fainting: its the phenomenon that precedes fainting. But if you are attentive, if you stay still and look, you see that it starts from one point, reaches another point, and then its overwhat that force had to do has been done, and there is no APPARENT consequence in the rest of the body.
I mentioned (not with so many details) the fact to the doctor, not in the hope that he would know, but because (its amusing) when I speak to him, he tries to understand, of course, and then there is the mirror of his mental knowledge, and in that mirror, sometimes I find the key! (Laughing) You understand, the scientific key of whats going on.
--
I was on the threshold of an understanding (an understanding: I am not talking about a mental understanding, I am talking about the experience of the fact). The experience of the fact is the experience of the coexistence of the static state and the state of developmentof the eternal static state and the state of eternal unfolding (indefinite, rather, not to use the same word). Then, at that point, there was this vision (Mother holds out a note):
When the truth manifests,
0 1964-11-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I met V., he had a vision two or three days ago. He saw a peacock coming down, and on the peacock someone was sitting, erect, who wasnt Kali but like Kali (the naked Kali) and was holding in her hand the severed head of a man.
Did he see whose head it was?
--
So when I said that [the twisted face of a Chinese], it seems to be beside the point, but thats because when those two things coincided,2 Kali suddenly became furious I saw Kali furious, as when she decides that it will be paid for. So V.s vision adds a few landmarks.
Oh, you know, when she goes into a fit of power you really feel that the earth is shaking.
0 1964-11-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And with such a clear vision of the whywhy it isnt transformed yet. Oh, theres work to be done.
But its not a purely individual question.
--
And anything that disturbs the Inertia is, for Inertia, a catastrophe. In the world, the earthly world (its the only one I can speak of with competence; of the others, I have only overall visions), in the earthly world, for Inertia (which is the basis of the creation and is necessary to fix, to concretize things), anything that disturbs it is a catastrophe. That is to say, the advent of Life was a monstrous catastrophe, and the advent of intelligence in Life another monstrous catastrophe, and now the advent of Supermind is the final catastrophe! Thats how it is. And for the unenlightened mind, it really is a catastrophe! I know cases, for instance, of people who are sick: if they follow the routine of the doctor and medicines and treatment and disease, they get well; if by some mischance (!) they call on the Force and I apply it, the more I apply, the more terrified they are! They feel absolutely unexpected phenomena and they are terrified: Whats happening to me! Whats happening to me! As if it were absolutely catastrophic. The minute the Force comes and they feel just a bit of it, like one drop, they tense up, they resist, they panic, they become absolutely restless. Thats right: they become so restless, so absolutely restless! That is, the whole system spends its time rejecting and rejecting all that comes.
Its very interesting.
0 1964-12-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, in matters of faith (I dont mean for a very precise and very clear scientific mind), but in matters of faith, there is so far no clear proof that the Lord wants to realize Himself here; except, perhaps, for two or three visionaries who had the experience. Someone asked me if there had been a supramental realization previously, that is, before historical times (because historical times are extremely limited, of course). Naturally, the question always corresponds to one of the things that are shown to me in moments of concentration. So I answered very spontaneously that there hadnt been a collective realization, but that there might have been one or several individual realizations, as examples of what would be and as a promisea promise and examples: This is what will be.
Ive had some very precise memorieslived memoriesof a human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasnt an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a timea lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with a perfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter, which men do not havethey need intermediaries, material instruments, whereas this was direct. And there were no thoughts or reasoning: it was spontaneous (gesture indicating the direct radiating action of will on Matter). I have the lived memory of this. It must have existed on earth because it wasnt premonitory: it wasnt a vision of the future, it was a past memory. So there must have been a moment It was limited to two beings: I dont have the feeling there were many. And there was no childbirth or anything animal, absolutely not; it was a life, yes, a truly higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I dont have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didnt even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were other beings on earth and that it was necessary to look after them or make a demonstrationnothing of the sort, absolutely nothing of mental life, nothing. A life just like that, like a beautiful plant or a beautiful animal, but with an inner knowledge of things, perfectly spontaneous and effortlessan effortless life, perfectly spontaneous. I dont even have the feeling that there was any question of food, not that I remember; but there was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty: there were flowers, there was water, there were trees, there were animals, and all that was friendly, but spontaneously so. And there were no problems! No problems to be solved, nothing at allone just lived!
An uncomplicated life, definitely.
0 1965-02-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the vision, the perception (it was like a perception, you know) wasnt exactly from very far because it had the accuracy of a microscope, but all was an object of observation. At that moment, all the fires were starting, then hundreds of brickbats (not stones: brickbats) were bombarding all the windows and doors (all our windows, all the doors have been smashed in), which means infernal din: a pack of several hundred people, all drunk, bellowing, and shouts all over the place. So that bombardment of stones and those flames leaping up to the sky the whole sky was redit was all seen I was simply seated at my table; when the attack started, I was having my dinner, and a little before it started, that experience came, that consciousness: I wasnt this body anymore, I was the earth the physical truth-consciousness of the earth, to be exactwith a PEACE, a STILLNESS unknown to the physical. And it all seemed like an absolute Falsehood, without any element of truth behind it. Yet at the same time, I had a microscopic perception (but absolutely precise and exact) of all the points of falsehood IN THE ASHRAMS ATMOSPHERE that established the contact.
So if that consciousness that was there had been collective, if it had been possible to receive it collectively, NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN TOUCHED: the stones would have been thrown, but wouldnt have hit anyone. Thats how it would have been. For instance, a stone (a brickbat) was flung and hit my window; it fell on the roof there (even causing a water leak that had to be plugged), and I saw that very minute, I saw in the consciousness of the people present the exact vibration of Falsehood that had allowed the stone to hit there. And AT THE SAME TIME, simultaneously (it cant be said, but it was simultaneous), everywhere, all over the town and especially over the Ashram here, I saw all the points, the exact vibration of Falsehood in everyone or everything that made the contact possible.
0 1965-03-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
While you were in hospital, I had a sort of I cant say it was a vision because it was very it was lived. It was lived in the subtle physical world, which is symbolic of Reality (the forms are symbolic of Reality, they express Reality, and at the same time they are self-existent). Almost every night I spend some time with Sri Aurobindo in that world, and things are always happening that are indications.1 But that night, it was quite particular.
Sri Aurobindo and I were in an extremely comfortable car, and we were both resting in an eternity of peace and blissquietly, next to each other. The car was driven by the eternal Driver. It was supreme Bliss, you know. Until suddenly, outside the car (I dont know how), two papers were thrown on the road, and one of the papers was a letter (it was an envelope that had come by mail, there were stamps on it), and the other was something written; and with a lightness (the car was still moving), quite a divine lightness, Sri Aurobindo leaps out of the car onto the road to pick up the letters. I said to myself, Ah, the Bliss is over (laughing) now well have to get back to work! And I also got out of the car (which disappeared).
--
I had lots and lots of visions while you werent here; but they werent visions, of course: it was intense life, and a life thats TRUEintense and intensely true.
And then, that sort of thing he was holding with his hand [Mother], which was watching all that, was simply the consciousness, the consciousness that works, the true consciousness; and the feet were my physical presence on the earth.
0 1965-04-28, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may simply be the incompleteness, I mean the limitation of our vision, our perception: we see the details too much instead of seeing the whole. You know, I had a sudden feeling with the tension of the concentration: What is the physical perception of the totality of the physical world? What is the consciousness of the totality of the physical world? Isnt, for that consciousness, isnt all that we call death and life a phenomenon analogous to the phenomenon of decomposition, assimilation, transformation that takes place in every living being?
Its enough to leave you completely dazed!
0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But everyone takes his stand. I have all the examples here, I have a little selection of samples of all the attitudes, and I see the reactions very clearly. I see the same Force the same single Forceacting in this selection of samples and, of course, producing different effects; but those different effects are, to the deep vision, very superficial: its just they like to think that way, so then they like to think that way. But to tell the truth, the inner advance, the inner development, and the essential vibration arent affectednot in the least. One aspires with all his heart to Nirvana, the other aspires with all his will to the supramental manifestation, and in both cases the vibratory result is about the same. And its a whole mass of vibrations which prepares itself more and more to to receive what must be.
There is a statean essentially pragmatic state, spiritually pragmaticin which of all human futilities, the most futile is metaphysics.
0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, Ive had the opportunity of studying this: For me, circumstances, characters, all events and all beings move about according to certain laws, if I may say so, which arent rigid, but which I perceive and because of which I can see: This will lead to that, and that will lead there, and this person being like that, such-and-such a thing is going to happen to him, and Its growing increasingly precise. I could, if it were necessary, make predictions based on that. But the relation of cause and effect in that domain is, for me, absolutely obvious and corroborated by facts. While for them, who do not have that vision and that consciousness of the soul, as Sri Aurobindo says, circumstances unfold according to other, superficial laws, which they consider to be the natural consequences of things; quite superficial laws that do not stand up to a deeper analysis, but they dont have the inner capacity, so that doesnt bother them, they find it obvious.
I mean that this inner knowledge doesnt have the power to convince them, thats an experience I have almost every day. So that when, concerning some event or other, I see, Oh, but its perfectly, perfectly obvious (for me): I saw the Lords Force act there, I saw such-and-such a thing happen, and so, quite naturally, this is what must take place, for me, its as obvious as could be, but I dont tell what I know, because it doesnt correspond to anything in their experience, so to them its raving or pretension. Which means that when you havent had the experience yourself, anothers experience isnt convincing, it cannot convince you.
0 1965-06-02, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its rather strange, this eyesight. There always seems to be a veil between me and things, constantly; I am so used to it; I see everything very well, but as if there were a slight veil. Then all of a sudden, without any apparent reason (an outwardly logical reason, I mean), a thing becomes clear, precise, sharp (gesture: leaping to the eyes)the next minute, its over. Sometimes its a word in a letter or written somewhere, sometimes its an object. And it is a different quality of vision, a vision (how can I explain it?) as if light were shining from within things instead of shining on them: it isnt a reflected light. It isnt luminous, it isnt like a candle, for instance, or a lamp, not that, but instead of being lit by a projected light, things have their own light, which doesnt radiate.
Its becoming more and more frequent, but with perfect illogic. Which means that I dont understand the logic of it at all; I dont know why this thing [lights up] rather than that thing, or that rather than this: suddenly something leaps to the eyesAh!and its gone in a flash. And the vision is so precise! Extraordinary, with the full understanding of the thing seen while you are seeing it. Otherwise, everything is as if behind is it a veil? I dont know.
Sometimes (often), the same thing happens to me with speech. I feel as if I am speaking from very far away or from behind a woolly substance that blunts the precision of vibrations. In its extreme form, its because of this that I sometimes dont hearnothing: when some people speak to me, I hear absolutely nothing. With others, I hear the drone of a sound devoid of meaning. And with other people, I hear EVERYTHING they say. But its a different way of hearing: what I hear is the vibration of their thought and thats what makes it very clear.
--
But I seemed to be told, Yes, you can. You no longer see this way, but you can see that way; you no longer see the ordinary way, but you can see (inward gesture). I have been left with enough vision to be able to move around freely, but this is clearly the preparation for a vision through the inner light rather than projected light. And it is oh, its warm, living, intense and of such precision! You see everything at the same time, not only the color and shape, but the character of the vibration: in a liquid, the character of its vibrationits marvelous. Only, it lasts a moment, its like promises that come and tell you (like when you make a promise to someone to comfort him and give him heart), It will be like this. Very well. (Mother laughs) In how many centuries, I dont know!
But when I used to use this magnifying glass, I could read very well (I stopped because of those hemorrhages, though my eyes seem to be well again), but now its absolutely no use! (Mother looks at a file with the magnifying glass) It doesnt grow any clearer, there is always the same cloudiness. Its bigger, thats all. (Mother looks again) Strange, its bigger but its the same thing, there is the same veil of unreality.
As for the sense of smell, the nature of my sense of smell changed long, long ago. To begin with, I practiced this (a long time ago, years, many years ago): being able to smell only when I wanted to and only what I wanted to. And it was perfectly mastered. It already prepared the instrument a great deal. I can see it was already a preparation. I can smell things I can smell the vibratory quality of things rather than simply their odor. There is a whole classification of odors: there are odors that lighten you, as if they opened up horizons to youthey lighten you, make you lighter, more joyful; there are odors that excite you (those belong to the category of odors I learnt not to smell); as for all the odors that disgust you, I smell them only when I want towhen I want to know, I smell them, but when I dont want to know, I dont. Now its automatic. But my sense of smell was very much cultivated even when I was just a child, very long ago: at that time I cultivated the eyes and the sense of smell, both. But my eyes have been used for everything, for all the visions, so its something much more complex, while the sense of smell has remained as it was: I can smell peoples psychological state when I come near them; I can smell it, it has an odorthere are very special odors a whole gamut. Ive had that for a very, very long time, its something thats quite dominated, mastered. I am able not to smell anything at all: when, for instance, there are bad odors that upset the bodys system, I can cut off the connection completely.
But I dont notice a great change in this domain because it had already been cultivated very much, while my eyes are much more (how can I put it?) ahead, in the sense that there is already a much greater difference between the old habit of seeing and the present one. I seem to be behind a veil thats really the feeling: a veil; and then, suddenly, something lives with the true vibration. But thats rare, its still rare. Probably (laughing) there arent many things worth seeing!
Oh, listen, it was Y.s birthday the other day. I told her to come. She came: her face was exactly like her monkeys! She sat down in front of me, we exchanged a few words, then I concentrated and closed my eyes, and then I opened my eyesshe had the face of the ideal madonna! So beautiful! And as I had seen the monkey (the monkey wasnt ugly, but it was a monkey, of course), and then that, Ah! it struck me, I thought, What wonderful plasticity. A face oh, a truly beautiful face, perfectly harmonious and pure, with such a lovely aspirationoh, a beautiful face! Then I looked a few times: it was no longer one or the other, it was it was something (what she usually is, I mean), and it was behind the veil. But those two visions were without the veil.
And for me thats how it is, I dont see people, I no longer see (but that has been going on for a long time), I no longer see the way people do, the way they are used to seeing. At times someone tells me, Have you noticed, so-and-so is like this or like that? I answer, No, I havent seen anything. And at other times I see things no one else sees! Its a much more complete development than simply switching from one vision to the other.
But my senses of smell and vision were developed a lot between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. It was a conscious, willed, methodical education, which had interesting results. And which did a great deal to prepare the instrument for now.
(Mother looks at the time)
0 1965-06-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That was very amusing (I didnt tell his mother), but I saw him a year or two ago when he arrived from America with his parents. They came here to see me. I saw him, I wasnt thinking of anything, I was simply looking at him (meaning that I was taking him inside me). He wasnt quite like an ordinary child, he had rather princely manners. I noticed it, but nothing special apart from that. I saw him in the morning, then in the afternoon when I rested, I had a vision, that is to say, I relived a life in Egypt. It was ancient Egypt, I saw it from my costume, from the walls, from everything (I dont know if I have noted it there), anyway it wasnt modern. And I clearly was the Pharaohs wife, or his sister (I dont remember now), and suddenly I said to myself, This child is impossible! He keeps doing what he isnt supposed to do! (Mother laughs) So I went out of my room, entered a great hall, and the little child was busy playing in a gutter! (Laughing) Which I found completely disgusting! So his tutor ran up to me immediately to tell me (I must have noted it): Such is the will of Amenhotep.
That is how I knew his name.
--
And I wasnt thinking of anything at all; I was looking at that child (who is obviously a conscious and very self-assured being), I looked at him and it amused me; then I put it out of my mind. And later on, I had that vision and I knew it was he I saw him. Such is the will of Amenhotep.
***
0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was like that vision of the supramental ship,6 in which everyone was dressed by his own will.
But in my night activities, its perfectly natural, I dont give it a thought I dont stand there, observing with the petty idiotic understanding of habit: its all perfectly natural.
0 1965-06-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As regards the construction, it will depend on R.s plasticity. I am not concerned about the details at all, there is only that pavilion that I would like to be very pretty I see it. Because I saw it, I had a vision of it, so Ill try to make him understand what I saw. The park, too, I sawthose are old visions I had repeatedly. But thats not difficult.
The biggest difficulty is water, because there is no nearby river up there; but they are already trying to harness rivers. There is even a project to divert water from the Himalayas and bring it across the whole of India (L. had made a plan and discussed it in Delhi; of course, they objected that it would be a little costly!). But anyway, without going into such grandiose things, something has to be done to bring water; that will be the biggest difficulty, thats what will take the longest time. As for the restlight, powerit will be made on the spot in the industrial section but you cant manufacture water! The Americans have given serious thought to a way of using sea water, because the earth no longer has enough drinking water for people (the water they call fresh5 its ironical); the amount of water is insufficient for peoples use, so they have already started chemical experiments on a big scale to transform sea water and make it usableobviously that would be the solution to the problem.
0 1965-06-30, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But a few years ago you told me an almost identical vision in which you were also in search of food for Sri Aurobindo, and you couldnt find anything: the people who were supposed to prepare it hadnt prepared it or didnt know how to.2
Thats it, it was the same thing.
--
I woke upnot woke up, anyway when I came out of the vision and pondered over it in the morning, I said to myself, Oh, if he really sees us like that, having eaten everything up! And I brought him a little earth in a pot!
It left me pensive for several hours.
--
I spoke [in the vision] to two people (who are in the Ashram) and to a few people from outside (one or two), and they really had a complete goodwill, they wanted to serve, you see, but there was nothing left. And the one who gave me the pot didnt hesitate, she said, Yes, yes! Ill give it to you, and she came back with that! Probably unconscious herself that what she was giving me as tea was only earthbread and red earth.
My tea, as I pictured it, was very goldenclear and golden; and I wanted to give him something with it, I dont remember what.
--
In the years 1972-73, an Ashram boy, V., an excellent clairvoyant whom Mother refers to several times in the Agenda, had the following vision, which may be related with Mother's: he saw the Ashram as if from above, and the whole Ashram ground was scraped clean, as it were, and riddled with innumerable holes and tunnels; rats were going and coming in and out, up and down in a constant hurry-scurry there was nothing left, everything had been scraped clean by the rats.
***
0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it brought me (what I have just said is nothing, it was the end) a clear vision of whats necessary for the world, the necessary transformations in the mental atmosphere of the earth to put an end to wars, for instance. The end to wars was one of the consequences. And each thing was in its place in relation to the other (Mother draws a sort of chessboard), and there was such a clear, clear vision of all the relationships, of all the positions, of all that.
Its great fun.
--
And it doesnt depend on me, I dont make an effort: it just comes. Its something that comes, then I seem to be plunged in a bath and I only have to look. It comes ready-made, effortlessly. Its a STATE in which I find myself, with, for example, the vision of the terrestrial mental progress, of the way in which the human mentality is organized (same gesture as if indicating a chessboard); and its very interesting because living conditions are conditioned by thought-states, and so I see how the thought-state must be changed in order for life to be changed (Mother draws currents of force on the chessboard). And I sit there, as if in a theater, and I watch, and it works.
If I had some peace I would write it down (because it comes all formulated) and it could be interesting. It must belong to the realm of revelation. Its like a luminous strip passing by, but it is all organized. But one needs peace (I scribbled the last note here while they were preparing my breakfast, and after that ). But anyway, its not of transcendent interest; its only because its very clear, very precise, and it obviously doesnt have the character of ordinary human thought: its ready-made, it comes ready-made.
0 1965-07-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, there was suddenly such a clear vision that the supremely perfect alone can give this body plenitude (gesture of junction between the High and the Low).
I found that interesting.
--
The series had begun with that vision (always in the same domain) in which I went to fetch tea for Sri Aurobindo and was given earth with a slice of plain bread!
Its a whole world thats beginning to open up. Well see.
0 1965-07-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To begin with, last time I told you that this physical mind is being transformed; and three or four days ago, that is, before our last conversation, early in the morning I woke up abruptly in the middle of a sort of vision and activity, precisely in this physical mind. Which isnt at all usual for me. I was here in this room, everything was exactly as it is physically, and someone (I think it was Champaklal) opened the door abruptly and said, Oh, I am bringing bad news. And I heard the sound physically, which means it was very close to the physical. He has fallen and broken his head. But it was as if he were speaking of my brother (who died quite a long time ago), and during the activity I said to myself, But my brother died long ago! And it caused a sort of tension (gesture to the temples) because Its a little complicated to explain. When Champaklal gave me the news, I was in my usual consciousness, in which I immediately thought, How come the Protection didnt act? And I was looking at that when a sort of faraway memory came that my brother was dead. Then I looked (its hard to explain with words, its complex). I looked into Champaklals thought to find out who he meant had fallen and broken his head. And I saw A.s face. And all that caused a tension (same gesture to the temples), so I woke up and looked. And I saw it was an experience intended to make me clearly see that this material mind LOVES (loves, thats a way of speaking), loves catastrophes and attracts them, and even creates them, because it needs the shock of emotion to awaken its unconsciousness. All that is unconscious, all that is tamasic needs violent emotions to shake itself awake. And that need creates a sort of morbid attraction to or imagination of those thingsall the time it keeps imagining all possible catastrophes or opening the door to the bad suggestions of nasty little entities that in fact take pleasure in creating the possibility of catastrophes.
I saw that very clearly, it was part of the sadhana of this material mind. Then I offered it all to the Lord and stopped thinking about it. And when I received your letter, I thought, Its the same thing! The same thing, its a sort of unhealthy need this physical mind has to seek the violent shock of emotions and catastrophes to awaken its tamas. Only, in the case of A. breaking his head, I waited two days, thinking, Let us see if it happens to be true. But nothing happened, he didnt break his head! In your case, too, I thought, I am not budging till we get news, because it may be true (one case in a million), so I keep silent. But this morning I looked again and saw it was exactly the same thing: its the process of development to make us conscious of the wonderful working of this mind.
--
And usually my nightly activities are never in the material, they are always in the subtle physical, its densest part, if I may say so. Maybe I havent even had in my life half a dozen visions with the material reality as it is: I saw the room as it is and heard the sound of Champaklals voice clearly. Then I understood it was this physical mind dreaming, having an activity, and that it was to show me that attraction You understand, the door opening abruptly, the man coming in and telling me (Mother takes on a tragic tone), I am bringing very bad news, and that tense atmosphere, and then, He has fallen down and broken his head. Then I tried to know who the he was, and little by little and so on.
With this sort of work to establish perfect equality, I never drive something away immediately, saying, No, thats not possible. One must be calm and collected in the face of all things. I was calm and collected, thinking, Let us see, let me wait for two days, and if he has really broken his head (laughing), Ill find out! Of course, nothing happened. And when I got your letter, I had the feeling it was the same thing, but I thought, Let us see, let us wait. I looked, and didnt see anything. Through your letter and your words I looked, but didnt see anything. And I had the feeling it was this same physical mind that made contact with a formationa malicious formation, because such is the habit of the physical mind.
0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
1) If you were asked to sum up, just in one sentence, your vision of India, what would be your answer?
Indias true destiny is to be the Guru of the world.
--
3) What, according to you, are the three main barriers that stand between the vision and the reality?
i) Ignorance ii) Fear iii) Falsehood.
--
Where to? We all know our final destination. It is no bigger than seven feet by four, after we have produced some offspring, who will do what we were doing and before us our fathers fathers, with a few technical improvements and even a lot of tele visions but without the one vision that changes everything. For we have changed nothing in the world as long as we havent changed inside.
Which is why the mystics send us back to heaven, and the realists to the ever-receding perfect society and automatic leisure.
0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And at night it corresponds to thoroughly strange activities: a completely new way of seeing, feeling and observing people and things. Last night, for example, for over two hours there was a clear visionan active vision (through action, that is)of the way in which human consciousnesses make the most simple things complicated and difficult. It was fantasticfantastic. And then, this consciousness was spontaneously impelled by the divine Presence, but it followed the others human movements with the clear perception of the simple thing and of the way in which it becomes complicated. It was symbolic, with images; an activity in images in the sense that it wasnt purely material, physical as we know it here, but in a symbolic, imaged physical (in which the material world is seen as clay). It was very interesting.
Only, there was a very great intensity of transformation, and (how can I explain?) Its like a shift in the directing will. And then, there was materially, physically, a sort of surprise, and a need to identify with the new directionits a little difficult. Its difficult to explain, too. Its no longer the same thing that makes you actact or anything, of course: move, walk, anything. It isnt the same center any longer. And then if, by habit, you try to reconnect with the old center, oh, that creates a great disorder, and you must be very careful not to let habit, the old habit, express itself and manifest.
--
Its a very bizarre phenomenon. At certain times I see with a far greater precision than ordinary precision, as I have never seen; at other times I have the feeling of a blanket of fog between me and the world. I can see (I KNOW things rather than see them), but its a vision through a veil.
For hearing, its the same thing. At times the slightest, faintest sound is distinct; but the sound isnt here anymore (in the ear), it is somewhere (gesture around or above the head). At other times I cant hear a thing anymore. For a long time it was a question of people, of hours, of placeswith you, for instance, I heard you very clearly. But now its no longer like that, its I woke up with, yes, like a blanket of fog between me and the world when I got up this morning, when I emerged from all thatoh, two hours of frightful, frightful activity (and so interesting at the same time, there were lots of people and fantastic things).
0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems, according to astrologers, that the combination of stars for the month of September is very bad for the earth. Naturally, this is always something to be cautious about, because it depends on peoples intuition, on their capacity to interpret, whether their vision is broad enough and so on, but it seems that all the signs are undeniable and indicate that things are bad (thats vague, of course), catastrophic. I was told this before, they said it in July. Only, I never attach too much importance to their conclusions, because they are always And also, they say some very vague things that contradict each other. Personally, I dont know the first thing about all that, I am not trying to seein fact I NEVER try to see (what came last night came very spontaneously, without my trying to see). The work, of course, is devoid of thought, of verbal expression, and constant; but it has been constant for a long time: the first time was at the beginning of the year, I think, at least six months ago. The second time, I told you I had one night an experience [the pressure of the Supreme] before anything really serious had taken place. Well, the first experience I had, of the consciousness hurling a fantastic power on the earth, which was necessarily going to shake things up, was at least six months before that second experience. And for those six months, it was constant: as soon as I came into contact with the earth consciousness, it was there, and constant, constant. Then came that indication: the pressure of the supreme Lord. And the third step was yesterday evening.
Well see.
0 1965-09-25, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its not their fault: its the fault of the United Nations; and the United Nations has acted from a single motive, because they were dreadfully scared of a general warof course, this blocks the vision.
Well see.
--
Thats perfectly correct. But I mean that according to my vision (which I dont think is mine, its not a personal vision), nights and days like yesterday (which arent pleasant) obviously give you a knowledge, and upheaval [Kali] still belongs to the old methodits accepting that the world hasnt changed. While this sort of apparent shrinking is in fact perhaps the proof that the earth consciousness has changed and is putting pressure on what resists, which gets smaller and smaller, but harder and harder.
Harder and harder, thats right.
--
And I cant say I am asking the question because thats not true, I am not asking it, but the two possibilities are there (gesture in suspense). Well, there is no answer either to one or to the other. At times I have the vision that its going to be the end (a very practical vision of what I want to do), that comes, but against a backdrop of complete uncertainty; and the next minute, there is the possibility of going right to the end of the transformation, with the clear vision of what must be done, but a backdrop there isnt a backdrop of the Assurance that it will BE that waynei ther in one case nor in the other. And I know this is deliberate, because its necessary for the work of the cells. If, for instance, I received from the Supreme the Order (sometimes I receive it clearly, as clearly as), if I received from Him the certitude that whatever the difficulties, whatever the appearances of the path, this body will go right to the end of the transformation, well, there would be a slackening somewhere, which would be very bad. I know that myself, I know it perfectly well. So, thats how it is: I walk on, without knowing what will happen tomorrow. Yesterday, I could have said, Yes, maybe this is the end (as it seems X3 kindly said to people who had gone to see him: he said I had six months to live, that in six months I would go[laughing] thats typical of his usual predictions), well, with yesterdays experience, I said, Its quite possible. And with that same total indifference, you know: Its quite possible. With a quotation from Sri Aurobindo saying, Nothing can alter the splendor of the Consciousness of Eternity. Thats it. And then when this state has gone and the other one comes, you say, Whatever does dying mean! What does it mean? How can you say that? And its not that the two states alternate with (how can I explain?) oppositionsits not that at all, its almost simultaneous (Mother intertwines the fingers of her two hands), but now you see this, now you see that. And its one and the same totality of something which is the Truth, but which is still a bit cloudyit isnt fully grasped like this (gesture).
This is the normal state, but its obviously being worked out, being built, taking shape.
0 1965-11-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It doesnt matter. It doesnt matter, mon petit, because we always see just one side of things; even being in contact up above, one doesnt have the vision of the whole every minute. So, as for me, whatever happens I say, Its all rightHe knows better than I do.
He knows better than I do.
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For, oh, for more than an hour, he made me live the concrete and living vision, as it were, of the condition of humanity and the various layers of humanity in relation to the new or supramental creation. And it was marvelously clear and concrete and living.
There was the whole humanity that isnt quite animal anymore, that has benefited from mental development and created a certain harmony in its lifea vital, artistic, literary harmony and the vast majority of which live satisfied with life. They have caught a sort of harmony and live in it a life as it exists in a civilized milieu, that is to say, somewhat cultured, with refinement in taste, refinement in habits. And this whole life has a sort of harmony in which they find themselves at ease, and unless something catastrophic happens to them, they live happy and content, satisfied with life. Those may be attracted (because they have taste, they are intellectually developed), they may be attracted to the new forces, the new things, the future life; for instance, they may mentally, intellectually become disciples of Sri Aurobindo. But they dont at all feel the need to change materially, and if they were to be forced to, it would be first of all premature and unjust, and it would quite simply create a great disorder and would upset their lives quite unnecessarily.
--
But it was so living, so real, that my whole attitude (how can I explain? A passive attitude, which isnt the result of an active will), the whole position taken in the work has changed. And this has brought a peacean absolutely decisive peace and tranquillity and trust. A decisive change. And even, all that in the previous position seemed to be obstinacy, clumsiness, unconsciousness, all sorts of deplorable things, all that has disappeared. It was like a vision of a great universal Rhythm in which each thing takes its own place and everything is just fine. And the effort of transformation limited to a small number becomes something FAR MORE precious and FAR MORE powerful for the realization. Its as if a choice had been made of those who will be the pioneers of the new creation. And all those ideas of spreading [the ideal], of preparing or churning Matterchildishness. Its human agitation.
The vision had such majestic and calm and smiling beauty, oh! It was full, really full of divine Love. And not a divine Love that forgives thats not at all the point, not at all!each thing in its own place, realizing its inner rhythm as perfectly as it can. Thats all.
That was a very beautiful gift.
--
It came after a vision of plants and the spontaneous beauty of plants (which is something so wonderful!), then of the animal with such a harmonious life (when men dont interfere), and all that was quite in its own place. Then true humanity seen as such, that is to say, the summit of what a balanced mind can produce in beauty, in harmony, in charm, in elegance in life, in taste for lifetaste to live in beautywhile eliminating, naturally, all that is ugly and low and vulgar. That was a lovely humanity. Humanity at its highest, but lovely. And perfectly satisfied as such, because it lives harmoniously. And it may also be like a promise of what almost the totality of humanity will become under the influence of the new creation: as I saw it, it was what the supramental consciousness can do with humanity. There was even a comparison with what humanity has done with animal kind (something extremely mixed, of course, but there have been improvements, betterments, more complete utilizations). Animality under the mental influence has become something else, which naturally has been mixed because the mind is incomplete; similarly there are examples of a harmonious humanity among the well-balanced people, and it appeared to be what humanity could become under the supramental influence.
Only, its very far ahead; we shouldnt expect it to come about immediatelyits very far ahead.
There is clearly, even now, a transitional period, which may last a rather long time and is rather painful. But the sometimes painful effort (often painful) is made up for by a clear vision of the goal to be reached, of the goal that WILL be reachedan assurance, you know, a certitude. But it1 would be something that had the power to eliminate all the errors, all the distortions and ugliness of mental life, and then a very happy humanity, quite satisfied with being human, feeling no need whatsoever to be anything but human, but with a human beauty, a human harmony.
It was very charming, it was as though I were living in it. Contradictions had disappeared. As though I lived in that perfection. And it was almost like the ideal conceived by the supramental consciousness of a humanity that had become as perfect as it can be. It was very good.
--
But it was so soothing, so sweet, so marvelous, that visioneach thing expressing its own kind, quite naturally.
And then, the Flame When the Flame lights up, everything becomes different. But this Flame is something totally different; its totally different from religious feeling, religious aspiration, religious worship (all that is very fine, its the summit of what man can do and its very fine, its excellent for humanity), but this Flame, the Flame of transformation, is something else. Oh, I remember now that Sri Aurobindo reminded me of something I had written in Japan (which is printed in Prayers and Meditations), and I had never understood what I had written. I always tried to understand and asked myself, What the devil did I mean? I have no idea. It had come like that and I had written it directly. It was about a child and it read, Do not come too near him because you will get burnt. (I dont remember the words at all.) And I always wondered, Whats this child I am referring to? And why should one take care not to come too near him??5 And suddenly, only yesterday or the day before, I understood; suddenly he showed me, he told me, Its this: the child is the beginning of the new creation, it is still in its infancy, so dont touch it if you dont want to be burntbecause it burns.
--
And its quite clear that with the breadth and totality of the vision something comes which is a compassion that understandsnot that pity of the superior for the inferior: the true divine Compassion, which is the total understanding that everyone is what he must be.
There remain only distortions. There was also the explanation of distortions. It was a decisive vision that puts everything in its place. A true revelation.
All those things have been told a thousand times, they have been written I dont know how many times, they have been thought and expressedall that is very fine, up there. But this is seen on the [material] plane itself, felt, lived, breathed, absorbed; its something else altogether. Its an understanding that has nothing to do with intellectual understanding.
0 1965-12-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
[After a silence] For years Ive had a feeling (its a feeling, not a vision), the feeling of a great expanse of light, there, and that when I remain silent long enough, I am peaceful, tranquil, there, and its for eternity. Well, all right, thats there, always.
But mon petit, thats wonderful!
--
I dont know. It always revolves around this problem of vision. If I had a beautiful vision from time to time Oncelook, once, in Ceylon (it was the only time in my life), I heard Music, it was marvelous, it was truly divine. Well, to me, thats a sign (it happened once in my life), I say to myself, Oh, good, Im not far, theres something. To me thats a sign. Or if I see a beautiful light or Then I am encouraged, I think, All right, its going well. I can descend into hell after that. After that I may do all sorts of absurd things, but I tell myself, At least I know I am moving towards that. Well, no! You see, it happens once in ten years. Of course, the vital seizes on it and turns it into dissatisfaction, but otherwise, in my normal reason, I simply say, Whats going on? I dont know. I am nowhere, I am waiting.
But so am I, mon petit, I am waiting I am millions of years old and I am waiting.
0 1966-01-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was about those big shrimps that are called jumbo prawns here: they are as big as crayfish. Someone (a disciple here), who died rather a long time ago, came and brought me prawns; that is to say, I met him in the rooms downstairs There are rooms that are reproduced somewhere, in a sort of subconscient, in fact the subconscient that has to be transformed, organized and so on, and there exists a sort of reproduction of the rooms downstairs [below Mothers room], but not exactly the same (yet with the same layout), and a certain category of activities takes place there. Thats where we were together once, I told you: you were trying to clarify peoples ideas (!) Its the same place. Its not physical here, its in the subconscient. So then, there was that tall fellow who watched over the Samadhi for a long time, Haradhan; he was there. And when he saw me arrive, he told me, I have brought something for you. And in a sort of dark-blue cloth, he had wrapped two big prawns, which he gave me! There were already cooked, ready to be eaten. The cloth wasnt very much to my liking! So I thought, How can I make them a little cleaner before eating them? (Laughing) You know, its a farcea farce to make you understand your stupidity. I began by removing the (what is it called?), its not skin Oh, here too the word hasnt come, but on a tangent came cuirass! (Laughing) Cuirass and cartilage! Anyway I removed that, and as soon as I had removed it, I said to myself, You fool! Now its even more exposed than before! I looked for a way, and I ran to a corner (in the place of Pavitras laboratory), found a water tap and put my prawn under the tap. Immediately someone told me (not someone, the inner voice told me [laughing]), Your water is even dirtier than the cloth! So the consciousness came along with the light, and I was shown with such a clear vision the relativity of the measures we take, which are all preconceived ideas, based on no true knowledge. And finally he told me, Come on, eat, thats the best you can do! So I ate my prawn, and it was very good!
You know, we could write a farce. And scenes of such buffoonery!
0 1966-02-11, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother carries on with her translation of "Savitri": the vision of the plane where all the formations of the human mind are found.)
All things the past has made and slain were there1
0 1966-02-23, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The extremely interesting fact is that a little later Mother will see the same phenomenon (of this "dead person" uniting with Pavitra) anew, with the consciousness of the cells, and that new vision of the body will bring out details that had escaped Mother's occult vision, as if the body alone could see accurately what is "on the other side."
That one did not die in the war but was murdered in Paris. He used to take part in gatherings of the small group of occultism that Mother looked after in Paris.
0 1966-03-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, with vision, for instance, the objective precision is missing (Mother makes a gesture of not seeing through her eyes). I see through and with the consciousness. With hearing, I hear in a totally different way; there is a sort of discrimination (it isnt discernment), something that chooses in the perception, something that decides (that decides, but not arbitrarilyautomatically) what is heard and what isnt heard, what is perceived and what isnt perceived. Its already there in vision, but its still stronger with hearing: with certain things, all thats heard is a continuous drone; others are heard very clearly, as clear as crystal; still others are blurred, half heard. With sight, its the same thing: everything is behind a sort of luminous fog (very luminous, but its a fog, which means there is no precision), then all at once, a particular thing will be absolutely precise and clear, seen with a most precise vision of detail. The vision is generally the expression of the consciousness in things. That is, everything seems to become more and more subjective, less and less objective. And they arent visions that impose themselves on the sight, or noises that impose themselves on the hearing: its a sort of movement of consciousness that makes certain things perceptible and keeps others as if in a very imprecise background.
The consciousness chooses what it wants to see.
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Aphorism 102: "To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness."
At the beginning of the conversation, Mother had remarked about a sick disciple: "She is extremely nervous and excited. I told her to take sedatives, I told her her whole trouble was physicalshe says she is the victim of terrible Asuras! It's ridiculous! It's a physical disturbance and she need not go and trouble the Asuras!"
0 1966-04-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I still see that vision I had.1 Strangely, it was one of the most unexpected visions, in the sense that I had no mental preparation: all of a sudden I saw that Sannyasin, with his back to a wall and a sort of hurricane approaching. It was a hurricane of noise, of clamor. Nothing could be seen; nothing could be seen but the force of the vibrations coming up like a storm: he had his back to the wall, there was a sort of gale, and a chasm in front.
And that vision of mine struck such a deep chord that every time I hear Sannyasin, I see it. Its strange. With his back to a wall: here, the sky; here, a chasm; and here, the clamor and the wind and the stormlike whirlwinds gathered over the earth by a storm. That and the wind blowing the robe and he throws himself into the void.
His back to the wall, on top of a hill. Not a high mountain: a hill. On top of a hill: I can see the ground rising in a slope like that, and the wall of the monastery.
This vision is still living and clear, clear. I could almost make an illustration for the cover of your book!
Its quite symbolic, besides: the storm of revolt, of course, the revolt OF THE EARTH against the principle of the Sannyasin. Quite symbolic. And its a magnificent image in the sense that there is great majesty in the appearance.
The vision of the Sannyasin with his back to a bronze door. See Agenda I, November 20, 1958 and November 22, 1958.
***
0 1966-05-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let us recall that vision of Mother's in which she saw Sri Aurobindo with a truss (!), and the truss was all the cuts the Ashram's editors were making in his works.
Satprem means that Death is a mask of "Him," of the Supreme.
0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The second time, with a normal dose of LSD (lysergic acid), as I rose in that luminous situation, I had terrible visions, the walls of my room came alive with thousands of malignant and desperate faces that persecuted me till night.
There.
--
Yes, but isnt there an objective vital in which those visions have nothing to do with your own subconscient?
Yes, there is, but it doesnt have the same character.
--
You know, when I listen to you, I seem to be lying down, stretched out on something that moves forward very gently and regularly, with the vision of a very luminous and harmonious atmosphere.
Thats the immediate effect it has on me.
0 1966-05-25, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding the conversation of May 18 in which Mother said that ninety percent of the visions and dreams in the vital, or even on the other, higher planes, are subjective.)
All the same, there is something disturbing about that almost total subjectivity.
0 1966-07-06, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
120If when thou sittest alone, still and voiceless on the mountain-top, thou canst perceive the revolutions thou art conducting, then hast thou the divine vision and art freed from appearances.
121The love of inaction is folly and the scorn of inaction is folly; there is no inaction. The stone lying inert upon the sands which is kicked away in an idle moment, has been producing its effect upon the hemispheres.
--
That experience came in relation to Auroville. You know, people get restless because things arent moving fast; then I had that vision of the divine formation, the divine creation taking place underneath, all-powerful, irresistible, regardless of that whole external hubbub.
***
0 1966-07-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is expressed by a vibration, which certainly gets clothed in vital power but acts in a subtle physical. There is a perception of a certain quality of vibration, which is difficult to describe but gives a sense of something coagulated (not broken up), something that feels denser than air, extremely homogeneous, with a golden luminosity, an AWESOME power of propulsion, and which expresses a certain willit doesnt have the nature of human will but more the nature of vision than that of thought: its like a vision imposing itself in order to be realized, in a domain very close to material Matter, but invisible except to the inner vision. And That, that Vibration, exerts a pressure on people, on things, on circumstances, in order to fashion them according to its vision. And its irresistible. Even people who think the opposite, who want the opposite, do what is willed without wanting it; even things that are opposed in their very nature are turned around.
For national events, relations between nations, terrestrial circumstances, thats how it acts, constantly, constantly, like an AWESOME Power. So then, if you are yourself in a state of union with the divine Will, without the thought and all the conceptions and ideas interfering, you follow, see, and know.
The resistance of inertia in consciousnesses and in Matter are the reason why that Action, instead of being direct and perfectly harmonious, becomes confused, full of contradictions, shocks and conflicts. Instead of everything working out normally, I might say, smoothly (as it should), all that resisting, opposing inertia causes things to start clashing together in a tangled movement, with disorder and destruction, which are made necessary only by the resistance but were NOT indispensable: they might not have beenthey should not have been, to tell the truth. Because that Will, that Power, is a Power of perfect harmony in which each thing is in its place, and It organizes everything wonderfully: It comes as an absolutely luminous and perfect organization, which you can see when you have the vision. But when It descends and presses down on Matter, everything starts seething and resisting. So to want to ascribe to the divine Action and the divine Power the disorder and confusion and destruction is yet more human nonsense. Its inertia (not to speak of ill will), its inertia that CAUSES the catastrophe. It isnt that the catastrophe is willed, or even that its foreseen: it is CAUSED by the resistance.
Then, added to this is the vision of the action of the Grace that comes and mitigates the results wherever possible, that is to say, wherever its accepted. And thats what explains that the aspiration, the faith, the complete trust of the human, terrestrial element, have a power of harmonization, because they allow the Grace to come and mend the consequences of blind resistance.
Its a clear, very clear vision, clear even in the details.
If one wanted to, one could prophesy by telling what one sees. But there is a sort of supercompassion preventing that prophecy, because the Word of Truth has a power of manifestation, and to express the result of resistance would make that state more concrete and would lessen the action of the Grace. Thats why even when one sees, one cannot speak, one MUST NOT speak.
0 1966-08-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, what discoveries I make! Extraordinary discoveries: how every experience always has an obverse and a reverse. For instance, the calm of a vision thats vast enough not to be disturbed by tiny infinitesimal points and is (I was about to say seems to be, but it doesnt seem to be: it IS) the result of a growth of consciousness and of an identification with the higher regions, and at the same time that apparent insensitiveness that looks like the negation of divine compassion; there comes a point when you see both as having become true and being able to exist not simultaneously but as ONE thing. As recently as the day before yesterday, I had the perfectly concrete experience of an extremely intense wave of divine Compassion [in the face of one of those psychological contagions], and I had the opportunity to observe how, if this Compassion is allowed to manifest on a certain plane, it becomes an emotion that may disturb or trouble the imperturbable calm; but if it manifests (they arent the same planes: there are imperceptible nuances), if it manifests in its essential truth, it retains all its power of action, of effective help, and it in no way changes the imperturbable calm of the eternal vision.
All those are experiences of nuances (or nuances of experiences, I dont know how to put it) that become necessary and concrete only in the physical consciousness. And then, it results in a perfection of realizationa perfection in the minutest detailwhich none of those realizations have in the higher realms. I am learning what the physical realization contri butes in terms of concreteness, accuracy and perfection in the Realization; and how all those experiences interpenetrate, combine with each other, complement each otherits wonderful.
0 1966-09-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But even when you have the vision of the true thing, its RARELY wise to intervene. It becomes indispensable only if someone wants to do something that will necessarily end in a catastrophe. And even then (smiling), the intervention isnt always very effective.
Ultimately, its only when you are absolutely sure you have the vision of the truth that its legitimate to intervene. Not only that, but also the clear vision of consequences. In order to intervene in anothers actions, you must be a propheta prophet. And a prophet with total benevolence and compassion. You must even have the vision of the consequence the intervention will have in the others destiny. People are constantly giving each other advice: Do this, dont do that. I see that, they dont realize the extent to which they create confusion, they add to the confusion and disorder. And sometimes they harm the individuals normal development.
I consider opinions to be always dangerous things, and most of the time without any value whatever.
0 1966-09-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Soon afterwards, Satprem suggests the publication in the Ashrams Bulletin of Mothers recent comments on the Aphorisms, including the vision of the birds turning into human opinions, omitting only a few personal passages.)
People will say I am lapsing into second childhood!
0 1966-09-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had a revelation, in the sense that it was more on the order of a vision.
For external reasons, I was looking at the sorry state in which all countries find themselves, the truly painful and dangerous conditions of the earth, and there was a sort of all-embracing vision showing how nations (men taken as nations) have acted and are increasingly acting in a growing Falsehood, and how they have used all their creative power to create such formidable means of destruction, with, at the back of their minds, the really childish notion that the destruction would be so terrible that no one would want to use them. But they dont know (they ought to know, but they dont) that things have a consciousness and a force of manifestation, and that all those means of destruction are pressing to be used; and even though men may not want to use them, a force stronger than they will be pushing them to do so.
Then, seeing all this, the imminence of the catastrophe, there was a sort of call or aspiration to bring down something that could at least neutralize that error. And it came, an answer I cant say I heard it with my ears, but it was so clear, so strong and precise that it was indisputable. I am obliged to translate it into words; if I translate it into words, I may say something like this: Thats why you have created Auroville.
And with the clear vision that Auroville was a center of force and creation, with (how can I explain?) a seed of truth, and that if it could sprout and develop, the very movement of its growth would be a reaction against the catastrophic consequences of the error of armament.
I found this very interesting because this birth of Auroville wasnt preceded by any thought; as always, it was simply a Force acting, like a sort of absolute manifesting, and it was so strong [when the idea of Auroville presented itself to Mother] that I could have told people, Even if you dont believe in it, even if all circumstances appear to be quite unfavorable, I KNOW THAT AUROVILLE WILL BE. It may be in a hundred years, it may be in a thousand years, I dont know, but Auroville will be, because it has been decreed. So it was decreed and done quite simply, like that, in obedience to a Command, without any thought. And when I was told that (I say, I was told, but you understand what I mean), when I was told that, it was to tell me, Here is why you have made Auroville; you are unaware of it, but thats why. Because it was the LAST HOPE to react against the imminent catastrophe. If some interest is awakened in all countries for this creation, little by little it will have the power to react against the error they have committed.
--
Now I know, I remember, this whole experience came after I saw a book that was published quite recently in India, in English, which they entitled The Roll of Honour, and in which there is a photo and a short biography of all those who died in the fight against the British, for Indias freedom. There were photos everywhere, lots of them (some were only photos the police took after they had just been killed and were lying on the ground). And it all brought a certain atmosphere: the atmosphere of those disinterested goodwilled people who meet with a tragic fate. It had the same impression on me as the horrors of the Germans during the war over there. These things are obviously under the direct influence of certain adverse forces, but we know that the adverse forces are, so to say, permitted to workthrough the sense of horror, in factin order to hasten the awakening of consciousness. So then, that experience, which was very strong and was very like the one I had when I saw the photographs of German atrocities in France, put me in contact with the vision of the human, terrestrial, modern error (its modern: it began these last one thousand years and has become more and more acute in the last hundred years), with the aspiration to counterbalance that: How to do it? What is to be done? And the answer: Thats why you have created Auroville.
There is a perception of forces the forces that act directly in events, material events, which are illusory and deceptive. For instance, the man who fought for his countrys freedom, who has just been assassinated because he is a rebel, and who looks defeated, lying there on the edge of the roadhe is the real victor. Thats how it is, it clearly shows the kind of relationship between the truth and the expression. Then, if you enter the consciousness in which you perceive the play of forces and see the world in that light, its very interesting. And thats how, when I was in that state, I was told, clearly shown (its inexpressible because it isnt with words, but these are facts): Thats why you have created Auroville. Its the same thing as with that photo.3
0 1966-10-12, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thons teaching wasnt at all metaphysical and intellectual: everything was expressed in a sort of pictorial objectification; and as I said the other day about that vision [of the birds], its a richer expression, less limited than the purely intellectual and metaphysical expression. Its more alive.
And thats pleasant I like meditating with you. Its not meditating, its a silent and very pleasant contemplation-concentration. Thats why, when you are here, I sit without uttering a word!
0 1966-10-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, if you knew to what point There arent any reactions, you understand. I look at it all with a very clear vision, a very clear knowledge of the consequences, but there arent any reactions: I simply become a kind of machine that signs this, does this and that. And then, when I need to write something, I turn into an automaton: I remain absolutely blank, silent, like this (gesture of immobility, turned upward), and then I leave it (it depends on the case), either Sri Aurobindo or else something from up above comes and dictates. I am like this (same gesture), and more and more so I am increasingly like this: nonexistent, a machine.
I have told them several times that they might as well replace this with a nicely designed robot, because this (laughing) doesnt need to be here! A well-designed robot, with a sophisticated mechanism: you press one button for one thing, another button for another thing, and it works!
0 1966-10-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But once, I had a curious experience with you. Ive never had visions with open eyes, but once (it struck me), many years ago, downstairs, you were telling me a story about cats and talking about the king of the cats you had met, the genius of the speciesand your face (it was extraordinary) was that of a cat! But a supercat, who was there in front of me! Yet I have no visions, absolutely none, but it was plainly visible. I found it very striking. It was quite extraordinary.
The bodys appearance had changed.
Yes, your whole face had changed its appearance. And I am sure a photograph would have shown it, because it wasnt a vision.
Yes, those are things photographs catch. Theyre very sensitive.
0 1966-11-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The number of memories of this kind Ive had is almost incalculable. But it doesnt have the same character as the memories of the higher consciousness (then its not a memory: its a sort of vision the higher beings2 have of life; but thats something else). The memories I speak of are memories of the psychic being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an acting consciousness. But the memories of the psychic being arent mentalized, that is, if for instance at the time of the recollection you werent paying attention to the way you were dressed or the surroundings, you dont remember them. You only remember what took place and especially what took place from the point of view of the consciousness and the feelings and the inner movements.
Its generally fragmentsfragments of life that were individualized, and when in the present life you follow a normal development with the [various beings] gathering around the central consciousness, all those elements come back to gather together. They come back, each with its own memories. For instance, I had a memory like that (I tell you, Ive had hundreds of them) when I was very young (I must have been twenty or so). It wasnt at night, but I was lying down, resting: suddenly I felt myself riding a horse, with tremendous warlike power and the sense a will for victory and the POWER of victory. And I felt as if I was riding a horse: I saw a white horse, I saw my legs, with riding breeches, you understand, and a red velvet costume. And there I was, at a gallop. I couldnt tell what the head was like or anything, naturally! And also, the crowd, the armies, and the rising sun. It was so strong, the sense that it was the sense of the will for victory and the POWER of victory. It came just like that. Then, sometime later, I read somewhere the story of Murat (I forget I think his victory was Magenta3 I no longer remember all that), and I immediately understood that my vision was at the moment of launching the battle: he had an inner call to a Power, so there was an identification [with Mothers power], and thats what I remembered and what came back. If I said (as the Theosophists tell you), I was Murat, it would be stupid. But it was a consciousness coming back. It was so strong! The impression lasted long enough, with the sense of the battle but above all the sense of that POWER making you invincible. It was interesting, because at the time (it was just in the beginning, I was beginning to take interest in these things and I had just come across the Cosmic teaching), I was convinced that a womans psychic being was always reincarnated in a woman and a mans psychic being was always reincarnated in a man (many schools teach that; Thon too believed so, he insisted on it). So it came as a surprise, because it wasnt in conformity with what I thought (!). Afterwards (long afterwards), I realized that naturally all those dogmas were nonsense, but
It fits with what I told you last time: the STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS are what reincarnate, evolving, developing, growing more perfect. Thats rather how it was, thats how that memory came. Its like that with many memories. And I know that to say states of consciousness are what reincarnate, to adopt that as the sole explanation would be incorrectits absolutely incorrect but its one way of looking at the question beyond the sense of the little personality. It broadens the consciousness: one has in oneself things far more universal and far less limited than personal experiences. Just as in life some people have an exceptional life, in the same way they also have exceptional moments in their life, when they no longer are one single little person: they are a force in action. Thats how it is.
0 1966-11-09, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This image [of the Sannyasin with his back to the bronze door] was so strong, you know! Every time you mention it, I see my vision again.1 It was so strong! There was the templeonly the door and the wall could be seen and the top of a mountain with the abrupt slope downward. Then there was a narrow path between the temple and the precipice, and a roaring crowd surging up, coming up the path, and then
And I always, always see the same thing.
--
The vision was a memory, that is, something which exists in the earth memory. But thats no reason to make a story out of it. Its better for your book to have a deeper basis.
So then, is that when he has the reaction against asceticism?
--
In reality, its a threefold movement: the creation, which was the flight from the Divine (according, of course, to the ordinary conception which says that the creation fell, it wandered away from the Divine and men wandered away from the Divine); that was the first movement. But thats because he sees it too closely; he doesnt see that the Divine plunged to the very bottom of the Inconscient. (And thats the question: Why did He plunge to the very bottom of the Inconscient? Thats to be investigated [Mother laughs], one doesnt yet know how to explain it: everyone explains it differently.) He plunged to the very bottom (as for me, I think I know why, but that will be for later). He plunged to the very bottom of the Inconscient: beneath the stone (Mother makes a gesture of immutability, at the very bottom), beneath the mineral; the mineral is already a first awakening of the consciousness. But you have to see it as a whole to understand that its an ascent. If you see human life as it is, the impression is that men become lost in the fall, but thats the result of the Mind; the Mind needed to go through the whole experience, to go down to the very bottom in order to understand everything and bring everything back towards the ascent. For plants, its really an ascent. Thus, according to this vision, there are three movements. But if you see the whole simultaneously, there are only two movements: the first movement is the descent of the Lord into the Inconscient (we cant say anything about that for the moment; once we have emerged from it, well be able to say); the second (the first we can conceive of) is, very, very slowly, through all possible experiences, even the most complete mental denials of the Divine, the ascent towards the Divine. And then, once we have climbed up (Mother makes a gesture of descent), Come, come here: change this prison into the mansion of the Divine.
That will be very good, a very good message for 4.5.67.
0 1966-11-19, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The vision was so clear. It was such a clear vision. If you follow this law of the guilty who must be punished, then little by little, with the unfolding of things, everything should be punished! (Mother laughs) Nothing would remain! So Sri Aurobindo said:
It is thanks to this law that the world can last and progress towards Truth and Love.
--
And I saw this note of yesterday as indicative of the key (I mean inwardly, in the universal attitudes). It was all clearly seen: men always believe that the guilty must be punished, that its the way out of the difficulty, but the true way is compassion and mercy. Its not that you are ignorant of the true movement and the false one, but you have SPONTANEOUS mercy, effortlessly and at all times. The vision was very clear that this is how progress is possibleif the fault were always punished, there wouldnt be anyone left to progress!
Thats the conclusion.
0 1966-11-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the first time this year it has happened to me. Previously, it used to happen fairly often, but its the first time this year. It shows that, all the same, things are improving. Oh, but it was terrible, people cant imagine what it is! It takes hold of everyone and everybody, every circumstance and everything, and it gives shape to disintegrationquite like this Gentleman (I think hes the one!), quite like him. But it doesnt have the poetic form [of Savitri], of course, its not a poet: it has all the meanness of life. And it insists on that a great deal. These last few days it insisted on it a great deal. I said to myself, See, all that is written and said is always in a realm of beauty and harmony and greatness, and, anyway, the problem is put with dignity; but as soon as it becomes quite practical and material, its so petty, so mean, so narrow, so ugly! Thats the proof. When you get out of it, its all right, you can face all problems, but when you come down here, its so ugly, so petty, so miserable. We are such slaves to our needs, oh! For one hour, two hours, you hold on, and after And its true, physical life is uglynot everywhere, but anyway I always think of plants and flowers: thats really lovely, its free from that; but human life is so sordid, with such crude and imperious needsits so sordid. Its only when you begin to live in a slightly superior vision that you become free from that; in all the Scriptures, very few people accept the sordidness of life. And of course, thats what this Gentleman insists on. I said, Very well. This bodys answer is very simple: We certainly arent anxious that life should continue as it is. It doesnt find it very pretty. But we conceive of a lifea life as objective as our material lifewhich wouldnt have all these sordid needs, which would be more harmonious and spontaneous. Thats what we want. But he says its impossiblewe have been told its not only possible but certain. So theres the battle.
Then comes the great argument: Yes, yes, one day it will be, but when? For the time being you are still swamped in all this and you plainly see it cant change. It will go on and on. In millennia, yes, it will be. Thats the ultimate argument. He no longer denies the possibility, he says, All right, because you have caught hold of something, youre hoping to realize it now, but thats childishness.
0 1966-11-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The organ is in good condition, it doesnt have any lesion. But the sight isnt the same with this eye as with that one. With this one (the right), its only an overall, slightly blurred vision. With that one (the left), its a precise, clear vision, but theres a tiny spot in the corner, like a black spot, because of which I see everything clearly but with a patch in the corner. Then if I concentrate, I see that patch grow bright and luminous, like a dark blue star, and that star moves in front of me (it doesnt depend on the eye), it moves about, and if I fix my eyes on someone, for instance, I see that dark blue star go and rest here or there (gesture at different levels of the person), at the exact spot where some work has to be done. So it means it doesnt depend on the eye, its independent of the eye. And also if I look at a photo, with a certain position between the right eye and the left, I suddenly see the photo come alive, in three dimensions, with the persons head sticking out. Thats how I can see the character. Its really strange, like an attempt to teach me to see in a different way.
We are learning our lesson.
0 1966-12-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate, because of the immensity of the work to be done, from an outward standpoint it looks like a quite thankless task. But thats only a purely superficial vision. Waves come to me like that from the world, from a whole class of the manifestation, saying, Ah, no! I dont want to bother about that, I just want to live peacefully, as well as I can. Well see once the world has been transformed, then we can start bothering about it. And thats among the most developed classes, the most intellectual, they are like that: Oh, very well, well see when its done. Which means they dont have the spirit of sacrifice. Thats what Sri Aurobindo says (I keep coming across quotations from Sri Aurobindo all the time), he says that to do the Work one must have the spirit of sacrifice.
But its true that, for instance, those few seconds (which come to me now and then and with increasing frequency), if you look at those few seconds calmly, well, theyre worth a great deal of effort. Having that is worth quite a few years of struggle and effort, because that is beyond anything perceptible, comprehensible, even beyond anything possible for life as it is now. Its its unimaginable.
0 1966-12-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same thing with my eyes. I have started seeing things with my eyes open, and, oh! Peoples state, their thoughts, and especially the state of their vital (because its a vision of the physical, a very subtle, very vitalized physical, and its a representation of things in pictures). And their state shows itself as if you knew (Mother laughs) the things one can see! A myriad of forms, faces, expressions. Youd think its an album by the sharpest humorist imaginable. Its extraordinarily humorous and sharp in the perception and the sense of how ridiculous people are. Then, in the middle of all that, suddenly a beautiful form, a beautiful picture, a beautiful expression appears; something so beautiful, so pure, so wonderfully noble! And it all turns round and round, constantly. Its very amusing, really.
I had always complained it was a realm in which I didnt see. I mostly saw (in the past), I mostly saw mentallymental visionsand also, naturally, I saw all the way up (but that was organized), and to some extent in the vital, especially at night, but anyway The vision was highly developed, very clear and precise, but physically (physically, I mean in the subtle physical and physically), I had never seen with open eyes: I always saw the stark reality as it is, never anything else, and I had always complained about it. Until suddenly it came: one day I started seeing, and then! (Mother laughs) Now I am obliged to calm it down, because (laughing) its too much. But its unbelievableunbelievable how full of forms the air is, and such expressive forms! Its as if, yes, a humorist, a caricaturist, even, were constantly making the subtle representation of what goes on materially.
And I think thats what people see when they have what medical science calls hallucinations, when they have a fever, for instance. But I already knew this because I once had such a high fever that I was in the state in which, according to doctors, you go off your head. Then I saw (with the material vision), I had the vision of all the hostile beings rushing to attack me from every sideit was frightful! You understand, its the support of the material consciousness thats no longer there, you are wholly in that vision, and thats why you generally get frightened, while others believe its a hallucination. I remember (Sri Aurobindo was there), at the time I told him, Ah, now I know what hallucinations caused by fever are.It has nothing to do with hallucinations! But its not pleasant, its the vision of a world thats not pretty.
But now, its not the result of fever, its simply the vision I have. But then! As I said, theres anything and everything there, all possibilities; and probably because of the quality of the aura [of Mother], I havent seen anything really unclean or ugly. But it must existit must exist, but it doesnt get in.
But what one sees is the work of a priceless humorist! Things like mens great ambitions, for example, also their self-satisfaction, the opinion they have of themselves, oh, its all so comical! Those lives are shown in relation to (and, so to speak, in contact with) the Truth-Light, and then the difference between peoples movement (or thought or attitude or action, or state of consciousness) and the Truth, the state of Truth, becomes plain to see, oh, if you knew! But its not seen by someone severe or harsh, no, no! Its seen by someone very sharpvery sharpwith a wonderful sense of humor and a charming irony.
--
And then, when you see how man has had to fight against all of Nature in order to exist, you get the feeling that those who will understand and love those beings will have with them a relationship of devotion, attachment, service, as animals have with man; but those who wont love them will be dangerous beings. I remember, I once had a very clear vision of the precarious situation of those new beings, and I said (this was before 1956, before the descent of the supramental power), I said, The Supramental will first manifest in its aspect of Power, because that will be indispensable for the safety of the beings. And it was indeed Power that descended firstPower and Light. The Light that gives Knowledge and Power.
Thats something I feel more and more clearly: the necessity of intermediary phases. Its perfectly obvious that something is going on, but its not the something that was seen and foreseen and will be the ultimate outcome: whats going to take place is ONE of the stages, not the ultimate outcome.
0 1967-01-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And the only perception when there is some clash or other in individuals, some shock or other, is always a clear vision of the ego the ego manifesting itself. They say, Its the others fault. I wouldnt say, Oh, so-and-so was angry or Oh, so-and-so No, its his ego; not even his ego: THE EGO, the ego principle the ego principle intervening again. Thats very interesting, because for me the ego has become a sort of impersonal entity, while for everyone, its the acute sense of his personality! Instead of that, its a sort of way of being (which we may call terrestrial, or human), a sort of way of being in greater or lesser quantity here or there or there, and which gives each one the illusion of his personality. Its very interesting.
Yes, but the trouble is, others dont learn their lesson, so So they intrude upon you.
0 1967-01-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats another possibility that came up in the past (but its part of the vision of all the possibilities there are all kinds of possibilities). Once, there was that vision (I had it when Sri Aurobindo was here) of the whole town engulfed by bombs, I think (I dont remember now,1 but it wasnt lived: it was known, like something that had already been), and the engulfing had resulted in a sort of burying very deep underground, in a grotto with a radiant atmosphere, therefore the body was preserved. Then I woke up two thousand years later. And the experience began after those two thousand years: I saw how I had learned where I was and how I had come out of that grotto, how I knew the number of years that had elapsed, and so on. All that unfolded one day and I related it to Sri Aurobindo. He said to me, Its one of the innumerable possibilities that offers itself up in order to be manifested. He didnt attach more importance to it than that.
All kinds of things are presented as possibilities.
0 1967-01-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Auroville is doing well and growing more and more real. But its realization is not progressing in the habitual human way, and it is more visible to the inner consciousness than to the outer vision.
***
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The body was in the habit of fulfilling its functions automatically, as something natural, which means that for it, the question of their importance or usefulness did not arise: it didnt have that mental vision, for instance, or vital vision of things, of whats important or interesting and what isnt. That didnt exist. But now that the cells are becoming conscious, they seem to step back (Mother makes a gesture of stepping back): they look at themselves, they begin to watch themselves act, and they very much wonder, Whats the use of all this? And then, an aspiration: How? How should things truly be? Whats our function, our usefulness, our basis? Yes, what should be our basis and our standard of life? To express it mentally again, we could say, How will we be when we are divine? What will be the difference? Whats the divine way of being? And there, what speaks is that whole kind of physical base which is entirely made up of thousands of small things absolutely indifferent in themselves, whose raison dtre is only as a whole, as a totality, like a support to another action, but which in themselves seem devoid of any meaning. And then, its again the same thing: a sort of receptivity, of silent opening to let oneself be permeated, and a very subtle perception of a way of being that would be luminous, harmonious.
That way of being is still quite indefinable; but in this search there is a constant perception (which translates itself in vision) of a multicoloured light, of all the coloursall the colours not in layers but as though (stippling gesture) a combination of dots, of all the colours. Two years ago (a little more than two years, I dont remember), when I met the Tantrics, when I came into contact with them, I started seeing that light, and I thought it was the tantric light, the tantric way of seeing the material world. But now, I see it constantly, associated with everything, and it seems to be what we might call a perception of true Matter. All possible colours are combined without being mixed together (same stippling gesture), and combined in luminous dots. Everything is as though made up of this. And it seems to be the true mode of being I am not yet sure, but in any case its a far more conscious mode of being.
I see it all the time: with eyes open, eyes closed, all the time. And one has a strange perception (for the body), a strange perception of subtlety, permeability (if I may call it that), of suppleness of form, and not exactly an elimination but a considerable lessening of the rigidity of forms (the rigidity is eliminated, but not the forms: a suppleness in the forms). And for the body itself, the first few times it felt that in some part or the other, it had the impression of being a bit lost, with the sense of something eluding it. But if one remains very quiet and waits quietly, its simply replaced by a sort of plasticity and fluidity that seems to be a new mode of the cells.
0 1967-02-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We could arrange guided tours, just like Cooks tours (!) We would have a tour of religions, with all the statues and monuments. The explanations could be read out by some guide or other, but they would be prepared by someone with a slightly higher vision (oh, not a supramental vision, just a slightly higher one), and who would show human creeds and how men have shed blood in the name of God.
The most bloodthirsty god is the most popular, I think. All the slaughters, all the horrors, all the tortures that have been committed in the name of God
--
The farther I go, the more I have a perception of a Harmony. A harmony, that is, a vision of the Whole in which everything is in its place: qualities, movements, even forms. Its something being worked out, a vision being worked out.
Yet outwardly, its apparent chaos. You know, an equilibrium is made up of a multitude of interlockings which hold together creating stability. But when you want to move on to a higher equilibrium, all that must be disintegrated, so to speak (gesture of a pyramid being flattened), then encompassed in a broader way, and all the interlockings must be formed again on a higher level. Its the transition from one to the other thats difficult. The disequilibrium is what prepares a new equilibrium.
0 1967-03-02, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some of the things I said in the Talk youve just read to me today, were true at the time, are still true for the majority of people, but are no longer true for me.1 To the present vision, there is nothing that isnt willed and doesnt come purposely (not exactly deliberately, but with a precise aim in view), and it is AT THE SAME TIME a complete, multifaceted and integral whole (which is why its very difficult to grasp). But now the thing is very clearly felt. And that is since two or three days, following a very minute observationprecise and minute The centre of consciousness is fairly high up (gesture far above the head); in the past it was always there (gesture near the top of the head) and it would see things around and inside, but it seems to have ascended and the field of the consciousness is much vaster. Also, the body has become transparent, so to speak, and almost nonexistent; I dont know how to put it it doesnt obstruct the vibrations: all vibrations can go through. For example (Ill give an example to make myself understood, omitting details deliberately), I was asked for a certain amount of money, an increase. (On the material level a certain number of things are controlledby Motherfrom here, and which I have to pay for regularly.) So then, an increase was asked for. Not that the request was unreasonable, thats not it (it was an increase for something special, a daily increase), but I dont know why (because heregesture to the foreheadnothing happens, I am absolutely, not only blank, but transparent, and everything is allowed to go through unobstructed), when I had to take the decision, there was immediately a vision (but a vision, as I said, from above, which sees over a much larger field), of conflict, battle, and to the observation there was something (in Mother) very much displeased, like a protest. I wondered why. If it had been translated into words, there would have been indignation at that request (without there being in the consciousness the least reason for this indignation: it all becomes very, very impersonalvery impersonal). I went on looking with the vision of the consciousness, and then, as if automatically, through this mouth I asked how much this increase would amount to per week (because even the mental state that enables you to calculate isnt there at all: its only a question of consciousness). I asked someone who was there, and he told me. Then, there immediately came the decision: I will give so much once a week. And everything calmed down. Why and how and who? I havent the faintest idea.
So I am forced to conclude that its a highly superior consciousness which sees things with reasons that completely elude us, sees how things must be done and sets them in motion (global gesture to indicate the play of forces) until they are done as they must be done. And where there was a person, it no longer exists there are no more persons: there are forces in movement that bring about certain material actions, but no more persons.
--
One has to be a little attentive and careful not to bump into things or drop them: the gestures are somewhat wobbly. Its very interesting. It must be a transitional phase, which will last until THE true consciousness is established; then it will have a wholly different functioning from the one it had previously, but with a precision that one can foresee will be incalculable. And of a very different order. With many things, for instance, the vision is clearer with eyes closed than with eyes open, but the same clarity is beginning (it began long ago), beginning to come with open eyes; they see differently (gesture showing the inside of things).
There are amusing details on the whole, but I will tell you about them later because they involve certain people, so Id rather not talk (the details are interesting only with the names), Id rather not talk about them right now. It is regarding the power of the Mother and how it will manifestamusing things, ambitions perhaps (it took on the appearance of ambitions), but I am watching (the I above the true I is watching to see if it corresponds to a concrete reality). From a quite external and ordinary point of view (and its not like that, its not SEEN like that), but expressed in the human consciousness, those are ambitions caused by the fact that the material age is increasing (Mother has just turned 89) and so one may foresee (laughing) my disappearance. Its very amusing. But Ill tell you about it later.
0 1967-03-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this has been seen Ive been seeing it for a long time, but just this morning it came back as an illustration of the new knowledge. Extraordinarily concrete (the association) in its effects, changing the capacities and movements of the others consciousness. And consciouslyan absolutely conscious life. And its the same consciousness that was conscious during the phase when there was no body left at all and the presence was visible only in the nocturnal vision.
There are other cases.
--
But its clear, precise and EVIDENT only with this new vision, because (how can I explain?) I knew this I knew it before, I knew it but I saw it again with the new consciousness, the new way of seeing, and then the understanding was total, the perception was total, absolutely concrete, with elements that were completely missingconvincing elements that were completely missing in the first perception, which was a vital-mental knowledge. While this is a knowledge of the consciousness of the cells.
But all this would only be interesting with all the facts (which cant be given). So Id like to have a more complete and impersonal experience, you might say, I mean not illustrated by facts but an overall vision of the process. Then I will be able to talk about it.
It will come.
0 1967-03-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One could say thanks to all this (not even because ofTHANKS TO all this), I have had these last days, these last three days, the vision the concrete vision, showing how at every second, the supreme Consciousness (which I personally find convenient to call the supreme Lord), how at EVERY SECOND, it makes you do or say or see or know ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move like this (round gesture expressing the innumerably ramified movement of universal forces), to move forward. Its not yet the direct, all-powerful, crushing Movement of direct Forces (gesture from above downward, like a sword of light): its a movement like this (same round gesture), but marvellousmarvellously subtle, ingenious, respectful of everything, but everything; you know, a movement that makes use of everything to lead towards the Goal, even errorswhich are not errors because when the Consciousness is there, the error isnt an error committed by ignorance: a thing is said or done because thats what needs to be said or needs to be doneit may in appearance be even a blunder, yet its ex-act-ly what is needed for everything to move forward (same innumerable round gesture), move forward luminously towards the desired goal. Its absolutely marvellous! And seen in tiny little details and in the whole. Its this marvel of a Consciousness that makes each one do what must be done, puts each thing in its place, arranges everything, and its our idiocy, an absolutely ignorant and stupid vision, that would have us believe in faults, in errors, in Each one is a problem to be resolved, so all those problems interpenetrate, and it is the WHOLE that must be led, precisely towards this famous Truth (the true one). But Ive spent, you know, hours in admirationa blissful admirationbefore this marvel of order, with all the little things around you, all the little people around you, all the little circumstances. Its wonderful! Wonderful!
And then, this presumptuous mind which understands nothing and asserts itself in its all-powerful knowledge, oh its so comical!
--
Then there was the vision of others and the remembrance of the time when those things had great importance and were taken very seriously, with a solemnity a wholly moral solemnity.
Thats amusing too.
0 1967-03-25, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, there is an overall vision which becomes more and more total, in which each thing has its own purpose, its own place, and which excludes nothing. That need to exclude the mind in order to surpass it no longer exists. Now the mind is perfectly tranquil, peaceful, and it sets itself in motion only when it receives a command, an imperative command. It receives a command, then it does something precise for a precise reason, a very precise action, and then silence and calm.
So then, that rehabilitates everything. Its only the quagmire that we have made of it that ceases to be.
0 1967-03-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even now, when they see in a vision someone they loved when he was alive, when they see him at night, they say, Ohh, a ghost! And they are horribly afraid!
So maybe this is going to terrify them.
0 1967-04-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have had this experience. Ive had it in an almost constant way. And in the most conscious part of the being (that which is one with the heights), the expression of this experience, lets say, All is from all eternity or All is the expression of the supreme vision (I am not using the word will, Ill say why in a moment), there was the sense of a limitation. I dont know how to express it, but thats how it was (it goes without saying that all words are approximations). Always, each time the experience was there, it was there with the sense that to put it crudely I might express it with the phrase, Thats not it!
So the other day (the day before I saw you), it came at the time of my experiences, that is, very early morning (the time of my lived experiences), and it was like that, with that same sense of inadequacy. Then I entered a certain state in which that remained quite luminous and clear, but at the same timeat the same time, simultaneously there came the perception (how can I put it?) of the original Vibration, as it were, in all the splendour of its all-powerful Light, and the two things that and Thatwere simultaneously translated on the level of expression, without opposition, both together like this (Mother clasps her two hands, interlacing her fingers), tightly joined, in an identical Light: every instantevery instantits like a pulsation of that Force (it is: creative Force-Light-Power, contained in the global Vibration of Love); with every pulsation, a complete re-creation.1
--
Then, at the same time, at the same moment, there came the experience (not an objectified one), the experience that the Will is on a much lower level than That, or rather, much more external. Because the Will sees and doessees AND doeswhereas there, its not seeing AND executing AND doing, or seeing AND being: its simultaneous. Its something above visionabove vision and above will something (silence) something that IS. And at that moment, simultaneously, that is to say, without any possible space (space or time, of course, its quite outside that, because its not a vision that sees itself seeing, its not a perception thats conscious of its perception, not a consciousness conscious of its consciousness), it IS, like that (one could say), such as it will be projected in space and time.
So when we say, To want what God wants or To unite with the divine Will, its our way of looking (gesture from the bottom upwards, or from below to above). And its quite approximate. But there And the marvellous thing is that its not what we in our infirmity may conceive of as a simplification, its really the Whole: the manifested, the non-manifested, the yet-to-be-manifested, everything, but everything the Whole. At that second, when you are there, its omnipotence. Omnipotence, absolute freedom, the unforeseeable, and the existent whole. And that
--
When I came back from That (it lasted long enough for me to have the full experience of itfull, total), there were many things I then understood. One, for instance, which I had noticed with Sri Aurobindo for all the small details of life, well all things as they are on earthmere nothings; when I went to him with an inner vision and said to him, This is how I see that (I would say it to him with words or not), it would AUTOMATICALLY become true, it would become real: things that were neither in my hands nor in his nor And it wasnt that we would take a decision: it was automatic. I noticed this several times and found it wonderful. It so happens that in a few psychological cases, that is, when it has to do with individual consciousness, since quite recently (it hasnt been like that very long), when someone is sincere (one must be sincere) and expresses an aspiration, for instance, a hope, or a vision of how he or she should be, I have seen this same phenomenon occur: it automatically becomes true.
Its not very frequent yet, but it has happened. And now I understand how it happens.
0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the children, precisely because they are children, the best would be to inculcate in them the will to conquer the future; the will to look ahead always and to move forward as rapidly as they can towards what will be. But not to drag along, like a millstone around their necks, the burden of a whole past weighing down on them. Only when you are already very high up in consciousness and knowledge is it good to look back in order to find the points wherein the future began to be outlined. When you can see the whole at a glance, when you have a very general vision, its interesting to know that what will be realized ahead was already announced before; just as Sri Aurobindo said that the divine life will manifest on earth because it is ALREADY buried in the depths of Matter. From this point of view its interesting to look back or look at the very bottom (not in order to know what happened or to know what men have known thats quite useless).
As for the child, he should be told, There are marvels to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them. Then, if they want something a little more concrete and easy to understand, they can be told, Sri Aurobindo came to announce these things; when you are able to read him, you will understand. This awakens the interest and the desire to learn.
0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the last part, what he calls the cellular level is indeed the descriptionONE descriptionof cellular phenomena and activities on their level of consciousness, and also on the level of consciousness of the infinitesimal. He speaks of great currents and cellular transformations and all that; its quite correct, only.1 Its what is going on at present, but its just the consciousness reduced to the dimension of the infinitesimal. And its a reproduction of what takes place in the other dimensions. But, for example, after all this discipline of the cells that there has been for several years now, his description strikes me as the same thing SEEN THROUGH AN ILLUSION. And the illusion is caused by that very imbalance: the illusion of an absolute reality, while its a quite relative reality. You understand, its the difference between seeing something with a sense of relativity, with a whole immensity of other things, and seeing it all alone as an exclusive and unique reality. Its the sense of the harmony and balance of the Whole that is gone. And so, it becomes dreadful: as he says, some people may find it frightening. And thats precisely because that equilibrium is missing. Its the same thing in a smaller version in an individual: that vision of the whole which gives the proportion of every event, the importance of every event and every thing, changes completely when you have the sense of the Whole, and what appears frightening or catastrophic or marvellous becomes again just a part of the Whole. Its the sense of equilibrium that is gone. When I read the end, it gave me one more confirmation of my experience.
It may be necessary, in certain cases, to disrupt that equilibrium so as to come into contact with something new, but thats always dangerous. And the way of consecration and surrender to the supreme Power is infinitely superiorits slightly more difficult. Its more difficult than swallowing a drug, but infinitely superior.
--
Also, the contact with all those beings of the Overmind, all those gods, all those Entities, all those divinities. There is here, in the cells, a sort of (what can I call it?) rectitude, and, yes, sincerity and honesty that says, Oh, what fuss they make! How all this is (Mother puffs up her cheeks) puff! puff! swollen up. Its very interesting, really very interesting. The vision of the world is quite different. Its far more honestfar more honest, far more sincere, far more upright. Its strange.
The consciousness expressed in transformed cells is a marvel. It justifies all those ages of misery. To reach that was really worth the trouble. Really worth it.
0 1967-04-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And there was the consciousness the Total Consciousness, in a light a light without any equivalent here, yet it was quite material. If you like, it was like molten goldmolten and luminous. It was very thick. And it had a powera weight, you know, like that, it was astonishing. And then, no more body, nothing anymorenothing anymore, nothing but That. And the vision of That, like this (gesture widening out above the head), in its immediate action, its action on the country, and its action on the whole earth. An action that doesnt cause any movement, I dont know how to explain it. A sort of pressurea pressure in which nothing is displaced.
The pressure went away after the meditation, but the effect has remained, and when, out of the old habit, I got up afterwards to take something on the table over there, I nearly fell! The body no longer knew how to walk! I had to concentrate, then it came back.
0 1967-05-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, there is (you will find this amusing), there is mental vision: when you are concentrated, you see things here (gesture around the head); not with the same kind of vision as with open eyes, but you see them. You see images, you see thoughts, you see There is a vital vision: you just have to close your eyes to see all sorts of things. Its not always pretty. Its the kind of dreams you have. You will have had dreams of that kind which werent very pleasant. And then, for (how long?) twenty, thirty years (I started seeing when I was quite small I didnt know what it was) but when I began to know what it was, I complained a lot that I didnt have perfectly objective visions (Mother gestures in front of her open eyes): not those one sees here around the head; not those one sees when one is in the vital; but those one sees like this, with open eyes. And when I met quite ordinary mediums, people who saw with open eyes, I used to say, Those people are great! When I met Sri Aurobindo, I told him. Naturally he made fun of mehe was right. So I took no more interest in it.
Then, quite recently, when I began doing the yoga in the cells, lo and behold, they started seeing! But then what a caravanserai! And it kept going and coming, and seeing and seeing, constantly, all the time. I would open my eyes: instead of seeing material things, I would see the physical things behind them. Oh! Then I said, I understand! It was the aspiration of Ignorance, now I understand: people who dont see are blessed! Because I always used to say, My visions arent concrete, they are subjective visions since they are inner visions; they are subjective visions, not concrete ones I want concrete visions, I want to see the material world as it is; not in its deceptive appearanceAS IT IS. When I started seeing, I said, No thanks! We are blessed not to see.
But thats not what I am asking.
--
Yes. My feeling (because Ive studied your problem a good deal I seem as if I couldnt care less, but thats not true! Ive studied your problem a great deal), my feeling is that in your higher mind, the faculty of expression is developedhighly developedso that as soon as the Light touches, it is transformed into ideas, words, concepts, like that. It DOESNT HAVE THE TIME to be visualized. Its not outwardly, but right up above that it is (how can I put it?) particularly and exceptionally active and expressive (something quite rare, because generally, in everyone, its nebulous up above). And because it has developed in that way (which is a higher condition), you are lacking the primary condition which is the vision, the shock of the Light.
So there is only one solution. To me, there is a solution: its the sudden contact with a HIGHER light in the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo said (thats obvious, its always like that) that there are several layers (its not quite like layers, but never mind), several layers of supramental light. The first (the one that has manifested), that one you immediately transformed into conceptions, ideas and words. That is, something a large number of intellectuals are praying and imploring to haveyou had it spontaneously, lets say. So the first contact, the dazzling contact of the Light, that you havent had. But when a HIGHER light comes, you will have it.
--
I dont know if your mind is critical or if To make myself clear, I mean whether your critical mind OR your faith, which of the two is stronger I hope its the faith. So to the faith (not to the critical mind, I dont speak to it), to the faith I say that since the 23rd weve been working hard. And I have asked a great deal that you may, tomorrow, be put into contact with that higher light, that you may have the bedazzlement of the vision of the Light.
If you have faith, you will have it. If the critical mind is stronger, it will be slightly delayed, maybe.
0 1967-05-06, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He even told me (I saw him), he even told me the vision that was at the origin of his cure. And it was really interesting. He said he saw it, as it were, almost with open eyes: everything was dark (it was in the night), the room was dark, he felt absolutely depressed, andit was a heart attackhad no more interest in anything, no more interest in life, and felt as if he was letting himself slip into death, just like that. Then, suddenly, he thought of me. Andhe says his eyes were open the whole room was dark, except for a sort of oval of light just in front of him. A quite dazzling oval of light, which remained. So he looked (he wasnt asleep), he looked to see what could be causing that light (he is sufficiently materialistic), but then, nothinghe realized there was nothing. Then he started watching that light, and he saw, rising from the bottom (he didnt know from where, couldnt see from where) like a flametwo small flamesof a very, very pale light, very bright. He found it interesting, and continued to watch. And all of a sudden, he saw in the light the shape of what he calls I think its Mahasaraswati (I forget which, but I think its Mahasaraswati: perfection in work), that he saw there, staying there. And at the same time he felt in himself, oh, a great desire to serve, to work well, to consecrate his life to the divine work, all that. And the next morning, when the doctors came they said, Oh, everything is changed!
Interesting.
0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After a silence) Listen, Ill give you an example. Some two years ago, I had a vision about U.s son. She had brought him to me (he was almost one) and I had just seen him there (in the music room). He struck me as someone I knew very well, but I didnt know who. Then, that same day in the afternoon, I had a vision. A vision of ancient Egypt, that is I was someone, the high priestess or I dont know who. (Because you dont say to yourself, I am so and so! The identification is total, there is no objectivity, so I dont know.) I was inside a wonderful monument, immense, so high! But it was completely bare: there was nothing, except for one place where there were magnificent paintings. Thats where I recognized the paintings of ancient Egypt. I was coming out of my apartments and entering a sort of great hall: there was a kind of gutter to collect water (on the ground) running round the walls. And I saw the child (who was half-naked) playing in it. I was very shocked, I said, What! This is disgusting! (But the feelings, ideas and so on were all expressed in French in my consciousness.) The tutor came, I had him sent for. I scolded him. I heard soundswell, I dont know what I said, I dont remember those sounds. I heard the sounds I uttered, I knew what they meant, but the expression was in French, and I didnt retain a memory of the sounds. I spoke to him, telling him, What! You let this child play in that? And he answered me (I woke up with his answer), saying (I didnt hear the first words, but to my thought it was), Such is the will of Amenhotep. I heard Amenhotep, I remembered it. So I knew the child was Amenhotep.1
Therefore, I know I spoke; I spoke in a language, but I dont remember more. I remembered Amenhotep because I know the word Amenhotep in my active consciousness. But otherwise, the other sounds didnt stay. I dont have the memory of the sounds.
--
Several other times, in visions ( visions, I mean memories: relived memories), I spoke the language of that time, I spoke it and heard myself speak, but the sound didnt stay. The MEANING of what I said stayed, but not the sound.
A pity.
--
Mother had recounted this vision before: See Agenda VI of June 5, 1965, and Agenda IV of June 3, 1963.
***
0 1967-05-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is increasingly a sort of pressure of the Consciousness to awaken all thats semiconscious, subconscious, and to reach the Inconscient; its like something going down (gesture like a drill) with a pressure. And as it goes down, as the pressure increases, there is a sort of (what can I call it?) a review or overall vision of the whole state of consciousness of the being and beings (gesture around). And the result is the perception of such imbecility! When you live, while you live something (you dont even know what you live while you live it), you feel you are in a light, that you receive a direction, that you follow that direction, that, well, that a light of consciousness is acting; and when there is that pressure of THE Consciousness (like that, from above; we could call it the truth-consciousness or anything THE consciousness), then all you have done, all you have thought, all you have felt, all you have seen, all those things which appeared to be conscious it all becomes so idiotic that you really need a faith very (how should I put it?), not only a very complete faith, but a very complete surrender in order not to be crushed under the weight of that imbecility.
All morning I reviewed all kinds of movements of consciousness (not a recollection in thought or sensation or vision, but a recollection in the consciousness) of whole periods of life, especially life with Sri Aurobindo, because at the time, I felt I was relying on the divine Consciousness and acting under its pressure (already); so its interesting that it should now look like an abyss of imbecility. And then, you wonder what Sri Aurobindohe who was consciouswhat he must have felt? How he must have seen all that around him, all those people bustling and acting and moving around him (Mother takes her head in her hands). You say to yourself that if he had the consciousness which is here now (he surely had it! He had that consciousness), well, it was a marvel of patience. Thats my conclusion.
You see, an undeniable goodwill, a will to do the right thing (Mother is speaking about herself), an attitude that seemed as good as possible, and already the sense of a surrender and an effort to express not at all personal movements, but the guiding Willall that, that whole attitude (which at the time seemed quite good), seen with todays consciousness! (Mother takes her head in her hands) So its easy to think that
0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What marvellous clarity of vision! And so total, isnt it, forgetting nothing.
Every word is full of meaning.
0 1967-05-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A time may come when well have to tell Sri Aurobindos vision and how the world has evolved since he spoke about it (that would be very interesting). For that wed have to find again everything he said on the different subjects. From the religious point of view, I have been thinking about it for a long time. Those are the two things that cant be touched without instantly arousing human passions, and there, peoples vision is quite narrow, limited, so that they no longer understand anything. Politics and religion, it would be better to wait a little. In ten years, perhaps. It could be, things are going fast. In ten years, maybe well be able to see and say a little something. In any case, its better to put this letter aside. (Laughing) Its not the time to fling stones at them!
***
0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was a vast vision, not so much with words as with a vision.
Thats where things stand. Today Have you heard todays news?
--
Of course, they will start arguing: BUT at that time, things were like that; at that time they were like this; and in the past this was ours; in the past Endless arguments. So there should be a higher vision, which is a balanced and just and deep vision of things, that can say, This is how it is. Otherwise there would be an indefinite source of arguments.
For the moment, in any case, all diplomatic relations are based on falsehood and the crudest falsehood at that: its recognized as a necessity and the only way out. Thats how they consider it. So thats what must be abolished to begin with.
--
The headquarters were here, in this room, the whole night till midnight; everybody met here. And I saw in everyoneeveryone. From above, it was such a clear, clear, clear vision, and imperturbable, absolutely impersonal. I saw what was going on everywhere, but everywhere.
There was a movement of excitement and a stone came from the street and hit the wire screen of my windowonly one. I knew why, who it was.
0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If, for this wear and tear, this deterioration (which comes from the Inconscient and is the result of the RESISTANCE of the Inconscient), if for this we can substitute the aspiration for progress and transformation (not with words the vibration) That experience has been given to me several times. For example, suppose there is something which goes wrong, there is a pain somewhere, something disorganized that no longer works properly; if there is the vision and conception in the faith (faith and consecration to the Supreme) that its deliberate, that the Supreme has allowed it to be (how can I express it? All words are meaningless), has allowed or willed it, or wanted it to be, because to Him it seems the best way to transform the thing, to have it make the necessary progress, if the cells that are somewhat disorganized and sick, as they say, are able to feel this then straight away it takes a marvellous turn for the betterimmediately, in five minutes, ten minutes. I could give concrete, precise examples, with all the details. So that means bringing the two extremes into contact, we could say. And if that can become the normal life of the elements which make up this outer form, then there is no reason why No, there is no need to die, no need whatsoever. There comes a point when death loses all meaning.
And one learns in the smallest detail, in the little cell or the faint sensation (and when it comes down to feelings, there is something which is the embryo of thoughtoh, then), the taste for drama. Ah, then everything is explained.
--
What people call death I see lots of people who to me are living dead (they are those who are without their psychic being, or even those who have no contact with their soul). But to know that, one must have the inner vision. But what people call death, that is, the decomposition of the cells and dissolution of the form, is when the most material vital subdegree, which brings into contact with Lifewith the vital force, lifegoes out. That is how death occurs in animals, for example. And that vital subdegree generally goes away when the external organism is unable to continuewhen, for instance, its cut in two or the heart has been removed, or anyway when something quite radical has happened to it! Because some people have met with accidents and had many parts missing, yet they lived on. But even cardiac arrest I can say, even that doesnt necessarily mean death, since after stopping, the heart can start up again. Those who have the material knowledge tell you that during a few I dont know if it is a few seconds or a few minutes, the heart can start up again; after that, decomposition sets in. With decomposition its over, naturally.
Therefore, we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: there are beings that are more or less alive, or if we want to put it negatively, there are beings that are more or less dead. Oh! But for those who know, and who know that this material form can manifest a supramental light, well, those who dont have the supramental light in them are already a little dead. Thats how it is. So there are gradations. What people are accustomed to call death is just a purely external phenomenon, because its something they cant deny: it falls to pieces.
--
There was also, in relation to those possibilities of magic and also to adverse forces, a vision of it all as being a part of the great Play (gesture from below), but This Immensity, luminous and smiling, an immensity (immensity is a wordinfinite too is a word), something absolutely limitless, which simply goes like this (gesture of descent) in a movement of manifestation; then, at a certain point, It encounters a sort of movement from below that seizes hold of That and turns That into what we see. In the higher part, its a mixture of perverted mind and extremely powerful vital, which obviously takes pleasure in the distortion; and as That becomes more concrete it becomes all those human reactions; and when That draws near the earth, then ah, you have the fine mess men have made of the earths atmosphere. So this Thing, this smiling, luminous, marvellous Immensity, sowhich is a living and conscious bliss That is what it becomes.
And if by chance, by miracle, one drop falls without getting completely distorted, it becomes a miracle!
0 1967-06-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(The disciple ventures to publish here a text he wrote on June 24, 1967, despite its daring or extreme predictions, for it may hold a grain of truth that time will reveal, and above all because it is obviously influenced by Mothers vision. Thus it is not so much an exercise in prediction as food for thought.)
THE END OF THE ASURA
0 1967-07-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my vision, his two feet were me. But in my vision, his feet had white tabis on, to make me clearly understand that it was me. And in my vision, he walked on the edge of a path strewn with bare flint stones, so it was very hard and sharp-edged, and he said, No, this is not the way it should be, lets walk higher up on the road where its smoother, and he came back to the middle of the road. So if its like that, if its the same symbol carrying on, it would mean something concerning mepossibly.
The shoes are a covering. A covering Pinkish cream, did you say?
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I stopped taking any interest in all that when I came here it was part of the occult knowledge, not of spiritual knowledge. I stopped taking any interest in it. But now that everything is being gathered together, it comes like that, like a part of the work, because the cells, when I had those visions, participated to some extent in the sense that they had the vibration in themselves; so all those vibrations have participated in the formation of all these cells, and now they relive it all. It gives them a possibility of breadth, of diversity, of synthesis and coordination of many, many things. And the sense of having thus lived for a long, long, long time.
(silence)
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I started talking, I almost stopped seeing. I was in an inner vision, very deep inside. A very special consciousness.
It was moving about and organizing itself with great suppleness (same gesture)
0 1967-07-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its hard to explain because its the state of consciousness that is different. Now its a memory, but at that moment it was a visiona very, very deep vision, very sharp, naturally exceeding all that occurred on earth, but also all the ways of expressing what occurred. The personality of Christ and so onit was all so different! And it became, yes, I might say symbolic, but thats not it. At the same time, it placed this religion among all the others, in a very defined place in the earth evolutionin the evolution of the earth CONSCIOUSNESS.
The experience lasted for half an hour, but everything, everything was differentdifferent not in its appearance, different in its deeper significance. Was the difference in my active consciousness? I dont know. I mean, did I make contact with a region of consciousness that was new to me? Possibly. But it seemed to me a wholly different vision of the earth and mans history.
During the experience I remembered what Sri Aurobindo had written: Men love suffering, therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.1 And that was like (smiling) a sort of froth of thought quite on the surface, all the way up, bathed in the light from above, and like the intellectual way of expressing what I was seeing (gesture from above downward), which came from above. From the point of view of light, it was a very interesting experience.
--
Have you sometimes had that kind of very global vision in time and space, in which each thing has its place and everything is coordinated by a total consciousness? (It must be new only to me.) It is a knowledge- vision. My consciousness, the consciousness there (gesture above and around) is constantly a consciousness of action. Since the beginning of those creative bursts of Love, it has been a consciousness of action, always actionaction, action, perpetual action. In fact, constant creation. But this morning, it wasnt action: it was (laughing) the observation, I could say, the observation of that action as a sort of vision, as you would look at a picture, you know. Instead of being on the highest intellectual plane, that of absolute comprehension and that puts each thing in its place, it was (how can I explain it?). Its a knowledge through subjective vision. Not the vision of something foreign to you: its the same state of consciousness as that of the doer, but instead of only doing, it sees at the same time. That was this mornings experience. It was rather new in the sense that I only had it now and then, like that, but never with that totality, that clarity and that sort of absoluteness. It is the sensation of a self-evident, absolute, indisputable knowledgeits not trying to express something: its SEEING. Seeing, really seeing, but seeing not one thing after another: seeing everything at once, a totality in space and in time. And seeing every detail with total precision, which makes it possible to write a thing like this (the note on Christianity).
To be clear, I should tell the whole thing. Yesterday I had an opportunity to speak to someone about this constant presence of Sri Aurobindo, here, who sees, says, does, all the time. Then, after I had spoken, I wondered, How is it that this brain Because, I think I told you, when Sri Aurobindo left his body, several times, several days in a row, I stood near his bed for one or two hours, and I feltMATERIALLY feltwhat came out of his body enter mine. To such a point that I remember having said, Well, if anyone denies afterlife, I have proof it exists. So I thought, Why does this brain (Mothers) go on working according to its usual routine now that the consciousness of the Presence is constant? Then this morning I had this experience, and while having the experience, I felt, This is how Sri Aurobindo used to see! (Laughing) That must be it! And for some time I have noticed that as soon as, for this body or for other bodies, for events, for as soon as something is formulated (its neither a desire nor an aspiration, but something like the living perception of a possibility that SHOULD be realizedit comes sometimes), it gets done! It gets done automatically and immediately. So this morning, for, oh, half an hour, the impression was so charming, so pleasant: Ah, there we are! THIS IS HOW we should see things!
--
And so the conclusion. Ive always heard it said (I dont know if its true) that men think in a certain way and women in another. On an external level, the difference is not visible, but the attitude the mental attitudeis perhaps different. The mental attitude on the Prakriti side is always action, always action; the mental attitude on the Purusha3 side is conception: conception, overall vision, and also observation, as though it observed what the Prakriti had done and saw how it was done. Now I understand that. Thats how it is. Naturally, no man (here on earth) is exclusively masculine and no woman is exclusively feminine, because it has all been mixed together again and again. Similarly, I dont think any one race is absolutely pure: all that is over, its been mingled together (it is another way to re-create Oneness). But there have been TENDENCIES; Its like that note about Israelites and Muslims, its just a manner of speaking; if I were told, This is what you said, I would reply, Yes, I said that, but I can also say something else and many other things! Its a way of selecting certain things and bringing them to the fore with an action in view (its always with an action in view). But for the moment, everything is like that, everywhere mixed and mingled together with a view to general unificationno one nationality is pure and separate from the others, that no longer exists. But to a certain vision, each thing has its essential role, its raison dtre, its place in universal history. Its like that very strong impression that the Chinese are lunar, that when the moon grew cold, some beings managed to come to the earth, and those beings are at the origin of the Chinese nation; but now there only remains a tracea trace which is the memory of that distinctiveness. And its everywhere the same thing: if you look at the individuals of every nation, you find in every nation that everything is there, but with the memory the memory of a specificness which has been its raison dtre in the great terrestrial unfolding.
(Mother goes into contemplation)
0 1967-08-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, it came to me as a discovery. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above). Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the son of God came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who werent ready, sacrificed him, and his Father, the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in its most comprehensive idea the vast majority of Christians dont understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, its possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (its very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity. There was already before it a fairly long earth historywe shouldnt forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (its the image of the Gita, the God who swallows the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but notnot by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.
It isnt simply a little remark noted down in passing: its a vision. One can always present it as something conceived mentally, but its not that; its not that, but it was, if you like, a necessity in the development. And that PLACES things.
Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasnt of a very superior quality, but from a vital viewpoint, it was extremely powerful, and thats what gave them so much power to spread, to appropriate, to seize, to dominate. But what they did is very beautifulall their art is magnificent, magnificent! It was a flowering of beauty. Then there were othersit all came one after the other. And every religion came as a stage in the development and the relationship with the Divine, to lead the consciousness towards a union which is a totality and not a removal from a whole reality so as to obtain another. The need for totality, completeness, is what caused those religions to come like that, one after another.
--
Instead of looking at it from below, there was all of a sudden an overall vision from right above of how it was all organized with such a clear consciousness, such a clear will, each thing coming just when it was necessary so nothing would be overlooked and everything might come out, emerge from that Unconsciousness, and become increasingly conscious. And so, in this immense history, the earth history, Christianity finds its placeits legitimate place. That has a double advantage: for those who despise it its value is restored, and as for those who believe its the unique truth, they are made to see that its only one element among others in the whole. There.
Thats why I found it interestingbecause it was the result of a vision, and that vision came because I started concerning myself with religions (started again, to tell the truth, because I was very familiar with that subject in the past). And when I was asked questions on the Israelites and the Muslims, I looked and said, Here is their place. Here is their place and their raison dtre. Then, one day I said to myself, Well, it is true! Seen in that way, its obvious: Christianity is like a rehabilitation of suffering as a means of development of the consciousness.
And so Sri Aurobindos sentence assumes its full value. Christianity came because men were rebelling against pain and trying to escape from the world in order to escape from pain. Then, as the years went by and with the unfolding, men took a liking to suffering! And because they love it (see how Sri Aurobindos sentence becomes clear), Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem. It assumes its full significance.
0 1967-08-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Do you know, I sat down, when it was nearly time, maybe half a minute before, and instantly, without warning like that, like a staggering blow: such a powerful descent (I was completely immobilised) of something. At the same time, it was as if Sri Aurobindo was telling me (because the definition came along with the thingit was a vision which wasnt a vision, which was absolutely concrete), and the word was: golden peace. But so strong! And it didnt budge at all. For the entire half-hour it didnt budge. Never before Its something new, I had never felt that before. I cant say. It was perceived, but not like an objective vision. And other people spontaneously told me that as soon as they sat down for the meditation (gesture of a massive descent), something came with a tremendous power and immobilised everything, with a sense of peace as they had never felt before in their life.
Golden peace
0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This morning, for two hours, I had what I believe to be really the most wonderful experience in my life from the point of view of knowledge- vision. And it was so total from the most essential perception of That which is beyond the creation down to the perception of the bodys cells, from high to low like that. And in every plane, the vision of the creation.
It went on for two hours. I walked about, had my washit didnt matter in the least, on the contrary there was, added to that, the knowledge of how the body can act without disturbing the state of consciousness.
Afterwards, there was a slight flagging, because there came I cant say the memory (it wasnt a memory), but all the complaints: the same thing as at the balcony on the darshan day the human attitude towards the Supreme is only to complain and demand complain and demand and complain Thats all. It came back. Before, the whole vision was there like that (gesture from high to low), it was magnificent, magnificent: each and every thing, the entire human history, the entire history of intellectual and material evolution, everything, everything like that, everything in its place. It was really fine. And afterwards, there came that wave of complaints.
It was as if the body were asking, What attitude (thats what provided the link), What attitude should I have? What should I do? Because there was the vision of life, death, of all occurences, everything was there. The full knowledge of everything. Oh, all the stories of death were very, very interesting, and how mankind has tried to understand, and how there have been all kinds of solutions (that is, partial attitudes), and all of it, all of it was part of the Whole.
Then the conclusion Oh, at that moment I could have said many things about all the different intellectual and even spiritual attitudes of mankind. There arent big differences. The spiritual (whats commonly called spiritual) boils down to the whole attempt at finding the Divine again by annulling the creation thats what has been regarded as spiritual life (thats why the word got distorted). To annul the creation in order to find the Divine again. And then, NOW: the vision of now. We are obviously drawing nearer to the moment of possibility that is clear. Its a question of timeof course, it cant be on the human scale, but we are on the borderline.
And as I said, the body asked oh, it had such a wonderful moment! A moment, a few minutes, so wonderful, when it KNEW how it ought to be. It was magnificent. Then the experience came.1 Till then, it was inexpressible: it was lived, it was a living consciousness, but the mind had become very quiet, so it was inexpressible. Then there came back that great complaint from the world, and the experience started being expressed (Mother looks for a note). It started being expressed, because it isnt just the anonymous demand of thousands of people: its virtually a shower of letters, questions, demands from people who believe who believe they are part of the Work, of the Action, who believe they have given themselves, and all their questionsand such futile questionswhich to them are of crucial importance, but which are so puerile, stupid, unimportant: how to start a business, the opening date, a name for a house, a message for a meeting. And what goings-on, its a deluge from every side. So it all was seen in the new attitudenot new, the consciousness was fully there, there had been a whole tendency to increasingly adopt that attitude, but now it was KNOWN, fully known: what one must be, how one must be. So I came down abruptly to reply to all that.
--
This morning, during the experience, the body felt the whole bliss of the condition, but it was very conscious of its incapacity to manifest and very conscious in such a perfect peace, like this (gesture with the palms of the hands open upward), in which there wasnt even the intensity of the need. It was simply a vision of how things were, how the condition was. And it was something like this: the conditions of the earth are such, the conditions of the substance are such that a local and momentary manifestation, as an example, is not impossible, but the transformation that would make possible the new Manifestation of the supramental being and not just as an isolated case, but with its place and role in earth lifedoes not appear to be immediate. That was the impression.
And there was no anguish to know or anything of the sort, there was simply a very tranquil vision of things, absolutely devoid of almost any need: it was like this (same gesture with palms open), as peaceful as can be, smiling, tranquil, with a sense of eternity. All that in this body, which was totally, entirely conscious of its incapacity. Naturally, the body, for its part, very clearly feels it neither knows nor is able to know or will or do: simply like this (gesture with palms open), as peacefully open, receptive, surrendered as possible. And that was the result (the vision that the Manifestation was not for the immediate future).
And it always ends in the same way: What You will.
But with a very clear vision that a collective transformation sufficient to create a new species on earth still seems some way off without any estimate of the length of time, but not immediate.
The fact is certain.
--
Mother seems to imply that the body's question was the "intermediary" that brought about this experience of the great vision of the Whole.
By a rather striking "coincidence," since Mother's vision of July 29 ("Christianity deifies suffering"), Christianity was going to crowd in on Mother in succession: monks, bishops etc., including the present lady who will figure in the Agenda on several occasions. Which goes to show that Mother's " visions" are in reality actions.
***
0 1967-08-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is from the universal and spiritual point of view that, not exactly good as people understand it, but the True, the Truth, will have the final word, that is well known. In other words, the Divine will eventually be victorious. That is what has been said, what all those who have lived a spiritual life have said and it is an absolute fact. When people transpose it, they say, I am a good boy, I live according to what I think to be true, consequently life should be a bed of roses for me! (Mother laughs) To begin with, self-appreciation is always dubious, and then, in the world as it now is, everything is mixed and what openly manifests to the half-blind human consciousnesses is not the Law of pure Truththey wouldnt even understand it. To put it more precisely, what is constantly realized is the supreme vision, but its realization in this mixed material world isnt seen by the ignorant human vision as the triumph of good (of what men call good and true). Butto put it humorouslyits not the Lords fault, its mens fault! That is, the Lord knows what he is doing, but men dont understand it.
In a true world, everything would perhaps be the same as now, but it would be seen differently.
--
It always comes down to this: mens judgment is falsefalse because their vision of things is false, incomplete and their judgment necessarily has false results too.
The world is in perpetual changeperpetual, it doesnt remain the same for one second and the general harmony expresses itself more and more perfectly; consequently nothing can remain as it is, and in spite of all contrary appearances, the WHOLE is always in constant progression: the harmony becomes increasingly harmonious, the truth becomes increasingly true in the Manifestation. But in order to see that, one must see the whole, and man only sees not even just the human field, but his own tiny, so tiny, microscopic fieldhe cant understand.
--
All those so-called problems (I constantly receive questions and more questions and problems of the mindall the problems of Ignorance) are problems of earth-worms. As soon as you emerge above, that type of problem no longer exists. There are no contradictions either. Contradictions always arise from the inadequacy of vision and the incapacity to see something from all standpoints at once.
In any case, to come back to the down-to-earth question in his notebook, I dont think any sage in any age said, Be good and all will outwardly go well for youbecause thats nonsense. In a world of disorder and a world of falsehood, to hope for that isnt reasonable. But if you are sincere enough and total enough in your way of being, you can have the inner joy and the full satisfaction, whatever the circumstancesand nobody, nothing has the power to touch that. But thats something else. But to ask for your business to do well, for your wife to be faithful and your children not to fall sick and all those things, that of course is nonsense!
0 1967-09-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is the vision, an extremely complex and at the same time complete vision, that those, for instance, who have tried to explain the power of imagination, of thought or will or faith (all those things: the direct action on matter), the vision that each of those things has caught hold of one little aspect of the Thing, but in the Thing, there are no di visions; its something which, when you perceive or conceive it, is divided into scores of little things, but its essentially (how should I put it?) a way of being, a state of consciousness its a WAY OF BEING, not even a state of consciousness because that implies being conscious OF something and its not that: its a way of being. And that way of being is what, in the human consciousness, expresses itself as Ah, the Divine!by opposition, you understand. Its a PERFECTLY NATURAL and spontaneous way of being but how, how does That become this? How does That become distorted? You constantly, constantly (gesture as of tiny reversals) switch from one to the other, back and forth, over and over again, as if to learnto learn how That becomes this (the mechanism of the passage). To us it looks like (to us, to all this poor consciousness that has gone through innumerable woeful experiences), it looks like a relapse into the old state; therefore its not that. But whats the mechanism?
In the end, we would have the solution only if we found the how and the why.
0 1967-09-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For several days there was (I told you the other day) the vision of cruelty in human beings, and a very active work to make it disappear from the manifestation. Thats part of the general work, with such a concrete power (Mother clenches her fist) for it to disappear. It began with visions of horrors (almost memories), which were seenmore than seen, you understand: things that aroused that reprobation, horror. Then it organizes itself in its totality and the whole thing was taken up like that (Mother opens her arms), all those movements in time (time and space merge into something an immensityimmensity, infinitude, and, I might say, multiplicity, but the words are poor), anyway it was a totality taken up in the consciousnessa totality of ways of being and vibrationsand as if presented to the Supreme Consciousness so it may be transformed, so it may cease to exist.
Thats how it began.
--
One can well understand why saints and sages, those who wanted to feel themselves live constantly in this divine atmosphere, had got rid of all material thingsbecause they werent transformed, and so they fell back into the old way of being. And there comes a moment when its unpleasant. But if you transform that its in-com-pa-rably, vastly superior, in the sense that it gives an extraordinary STABILITY and consciousness and REALITY. Things become the TRUE vision, the TRUE consciousness; it becomes so concrete, so real!
Nothingnothing else, nothing else can give that fullness.
0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And to think that It has happened not once or twice but hundreds of times that people who loved someone (they loved their father or brother, or their mother), as soon as that person is dead, if they see him in a dream or vision, they get terribly frightened and want to chase him away! Why? If I ask them why, its such a spontaneous movement in them that they cant answer me. They cant, they find it so natural that they are surprised I should ask the question.
Thats what I said to T. (I dont think she understood), I told her that there isnt so much difference between what men call life and what they call death; the difference is very small, and grows still smaller when you go into the problem in depth and in all the details. One always make a clean cut between the twoits quite stupid: some living are already half dead, and many dead are VERY alive.
0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But thats what was so interesting this morning. Once these divine egos have abdicated, and depending on the extent of that abdication, it will mean an EXTRAORDINARY transformation in the creation. It was like a vision being worked out slowly (Mother closes her eyes), almost with images, as if you saw the entire earth (gesture like a hall) and the image of Durga (gesture enveloping the earth), and the two together, it was quite lovely.
The earth in her arms
--
And in those visions (lets take this one, for instance), Durga has a visible, defined form, while this body (Mothers) isnt there because this body belongs here, on earth; so its a radiating centre of white light that can take a form (but doesnt have a form), a radiance of light, a vibration of light, of consciousnessof conscious light. And thats very interesting. (Mother remains with her eyes closed) It was as if to see how thisthis consciousness, this lightcan manifest in feasible forms on earth without losing something of the purity and radiance of the consciousness.
(Mother goes into a long contemplation)
0 1967-10-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When it came, I said (laughing), What a victory! Then came the memory, the vision of Sri Aurobindos time, and the impression, Well, is this (Durga was there, watching), is this what you want to vanquish? She didnt answer me, she smiled. And a few minutes later, poff! (same gesture of bursting), like that, I dont know how to explain it. But it was strange, I had never seen that before. The other times, when Sri Aurobindo was there, whenever she overcame something, the impression was of a power surrounding a falsehood (gesture as if to pull out a tuft of grass), surrounding it like that, forcibly isolating it, paralyzing it and taking all support away from it; but this time it was an odd phenomenon. Something totally nonexistent, without any truth in it. And all that way of being was as if hanging over the earth, in contact with certain people, but as if wrapped inside a bag: you understand, it had no contact with the rest, but once you were inside it, impossible to get out! You were shut in, it was impossible. Then it burst all at once: Ah! And nothing was left.
It was interesting in that it was the first time I was the witness to such a thing. And really it was as if I tried to feel, to touch it I tried, but there was nothing left! It was oppressive, you know: you tried to get out of it, but it was impossibleyou were shut in, a slave, powerless.
0 1967-10-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The vision was so clear (not vision: lived, the experience), it was so clear that it contained in itself the purpose of the creation. You could see the work of the consciousness to permeate the inconscient and make it progressively more capable of manifesting the consciousness (gesture like a flower rising out of the earth), with increasing complications, but the complications are the result of the inability of the inconscientof inconscient matterwhich adds one device to another in the hope of reconstructing the supreme Possibility. Then, through all those complications, and as the substance becomes increasingly permeated with consciousness, the need for devices will diminish, and we will be able to return to the higher Simplicity.
But all that was lived, seenseen, and so clear!
0 1967-10-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the awakening of the Supreme Consciousness and its power of vision.
(the second card)
--
And Sri Aurobindo himself was very insistent because To tell you the truth, I asked him (for that vision you would like to have, that state of vision), I asked him that it may be given to you, that you may have it since you aspire for it. Then he said to me (on one of the cards I wrote what he said), the vision you will have will be the vision of the Truth-Consciousness. Its the supreme vision, the true vision. (One may have visions in the subtle physical, in the vital, many in the mind, but none of that is satisfying, one always gets a sense of a not quite accurate transcription.) But the true vision is the vision of the Consciousness, the supreme Consciousness. And he told me thats what you would have.
The ship is the development, the means of advance towards that realization. It all came like that.
0 1967-11-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One or two days ago, I dont know, there was a sort of general vision of this striving of the earth towards its divinization, and someone seemed to be saying (not someone: it was the witness-consciousness, the consciousness observing, but it gets formulated in wordsvery often its formulated in English and I have a kind of impression that it is Sri Aurobindo, his active consciousness, but sometimes it gets translated into words only in my consciousness), and these last few days, it was something saying, Yes, the time of proclamations, the time of revelations is pastnow, on to action.
Proclamations, revelations, prophecies, all that is after all very comfortable, it gives a sense of something concrete; now its very obscure, there is a sense that its very obscure, invisible (it will be visible only in results far, far ahead), and not understood.
0 1967-11-29, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the strange thing was that this time, on the 24th, when I went to the balcony, it was someone (and that happens to me now and then, more and more frequently) someone looking on from a sort of plane of eternity, with, mingled in it, a great benevolence (something like benevolence, I dont know how to express it), but with an absolute calm, almost indifference, and the two are together looking on like that (Mother draws waves far away below), as though it were seen from far away, far above, far (how should I put it?) seen from such an eternal vision. That was what my body felt when I went out for the balcony. So the body said, But I have to aspire, there must be an aspiration for the Force to descend on all these people! And That was like that (sovereign gesture above), oh, so benevolent, but with a sort of indifference the indifference of eternity, I dont know how to explain it. And the body feels it all as something making use of it.
Thats why I find these photos interesting, its to objectify the state.
0 1967-11-Prayers of the Consciousness of the Cells, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The task of completing Sri Aurobindos vision has been given to the Mother. The creation of a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness is the work she has undertaken. Because of the very nature of things, it is an ideal that seeks to broaden the base of the attempt to establish harmony between body and Soul, Spirit and Matter.
***
--
The task of giving Sri Aurobindos vision a concrete form has been given to the Mother.
***
0 1967-12-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its perfectly obvious that the higher-ups are the ones responsible, because theyre not genuine: they have neither the knowledge nor the vision nor the wisdom necessary to govern. For example, Indira, it seems, was complaining; one of her friends (her close friends), who is a very good disciple of mine, told her one day when she was complaining (she said the people and the government were in a dreadful state), she told her, But why dont you go and consult Mother? She will give you wisdom. Then Indira replied, I dare not.1
You understand, all this confusion, all this disorder seems to be intended to prepare people for one thing, which, obviously, has not so far even been imagined as being possible the recourse to a disinterested wisdom in order to govern. Theyre all caught up in If I do this, these people will be against me; if I do that, those people
0 1968-01-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah! But, you know, I am no longer the same person! I no longer say the same thingsits impossible. Impossible. I have been looking at it; in fact this whole story has come back now as if to illustrate the huge differencehuge, but colossal difference in the state of consciousness. For me now, that [notation about Savitri] is such a personal vision of things. Yesterday, I had an interesting day from that point of view.
Its the physical ego that has been destroyed and is now like this (gesture with arms open upward). So it finds it odd! I dont know how to explain. This way of putting oneself in the center of things and seeing them in relation to that center of consciousness seems so You understand, the consciousness is spread out; its as much there or there as here, and it sees everything in relation to a higher, central Consciousness (Mother brings her two arms together, joining the tips of her hands above her head in a triangle pointing towards the Supreme), which is like a kind of Beaconan immutable, all-powerful beacon throwing the same light on all things, without the least personal reaction of any sort.
--
That makes speaking difficult, because of this old habit (maybe also a necessity to make oneself understood) of using the word II, whats this I? It no longer corresponds to anything, except for a mere appearance. And this appearance is the only contradiction. Thats the interesting point: this appearance is clearly a contradiction of the truth; its something that still belongs to the old laws, at least, in fact, in its appearance. And because of that, you are forced to say things in a certain way, but it doesnt correspondit doesnt correspond to your state of consciousness, not in the least. There is a fluidity, a breadth, a sort of totality, and above all, more and more strongly the sense that this (pointing to the body) must grow INCREASINGLY SUPPLEsupple, fluid, so to speak, so as to express without resistance or distortion the vision the real vision, the real state of consciousness. To the consciousness, this possibility of fluidity, of plasticity, is growing more and more evident, with only, only just something outwardly which is increasingly becoming an illusion. And yet, yet thats what others see, understand, know and call me. And it truly strives and strives to adapt more and more, but time still appears to have its importance.
(long silence)
0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, (poking fun at Satprem) but thats superficial, its a superficial vision!
(silence)
0 1968-01-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These experiences, I tell only one of them once in a whilethey are innumerable, constant. Each one is very interesting in itself, it teaches you something, a new vision of the world, a new action, but to tell it all it would be endless, and each experience in itself has only a very relative interest.
This morning again, for an hour I lived in a certain state of consciousness, a certain vision of the world, it was extremely interesting because it was wholly new, but to tell it all in detail. Anyway Ill let the two of you [Satprem and Nolini] judge, its for you to decide, its the same to me!
***
0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was the vision of the thing, and it instantly translated into French words.
India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern mankind.
--
And the clear vision: the same thing which in the history of the universe made the earth the symbolic representation of the universe so as to concentrate the work on one point, the same phenomenon is now taking place: India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that the cure will be found. And then, that is whyTHAT IS WHY I was made to start Auroville.
It came and it was so clear, so tremendously powerful!
--
It was very interesting. It remained the whole time, for more than an hour, such a strong and clear vision, as if suddenly everything became clear. I often used to wonder about it (not wonder, but there was a tension to understand why things, here in India, have become such a chaos, with such sordid difficulties, and all of it piling up), and instantly, everything became clear, like that. It was really interesting. And immediately there was: Here is why you have made Auroville. I didnt know it, you understand, I did the thing under pressure, and it took larger and larger proportions (its becoming really worldwide), and I would wonder why. For a time I thought it was the only present possibility to prevent a war,2 but it seemed to me a somewhat superficial explanation. Then it came all of a sudden: Ah! Thats why.
And as that whole power was in it, I said, Put it. Well seethey wont understand anything, but that doesnt matter, it will act.
--
Thats precisely the so interesting curve at present unfolding. At times, you feel as if everything, everything is dissolving, getting disorganized; and I have observed closely: at first the physical consciousness wasnt sufficiently enlightened, and when those inner preparations took place, it would feel, Ah, this must be what heralds death; then, little by little, came the knowledge that it wasnt that at all, it was only the inner preparation to be capable, capable of identification. And then, on the contrary, the very clear vision of this plasticity so particular, this suppleness so extraordinary that if it were realized once its realized, it obviously means the abolition of the necessity of death.
This mornings experience was Everything was an immense ocean of luminous consciousness, and so powerful! Tremendously powerful. And something so sweet at the same time, so compassionate, but causeless there was no cause: just like that. Like Divine Love which is without object, its like that. So this body starts floating in that, lighter and lighter, more and more transparent, and still remains the impression is of bark, but not even all over. Its a strange impression of something that still has contradictions. But not deliberate contradictions, its not that: incapacitiesspots of powerlessness, a lack of receptivity. But little by little, gradually, slowly, that gets cured.
--
There are amusing little details. When I am in the presence of someone who, for some reason or other, gets a shock or feels uneasy because now I am stooped (someone who knew me before), it creates an atmosphere that gives the body a sort of regret for this appearancenot a regret, but rather a disapproval of this appearance of decay (I am giving one example among many others). Then, almost immediately, there is the very clear vision of what can cure this, of the STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS that can cure this. But to be constant, this state has to be spontaneous. There will be a moment of transition for this as for all the rest, and it will probably be dangerous. The state of truth-consciousness must be sufficiently ESTABLISHED to be spontaneous: there should be no need of a concentration and a will, you understand, the state should be spontaneous. Then it will be possible for the transition to occur.
In my life, I have been given so many, so many experiences, as proof that EVERYTHING is possible. For instance, when I was twenty-two, one night, after an experience I had in the night (I forget the details of it) at the time women wore dresses that exactly touched the ground, just touched it without resting on it (gesture of skimming the ground), and in my experience at night, I had grown tallin the morning, there was one inch between the dress and the ground! Which means that the body had grown one inch WITH THE NIGHTS EXPERIENCE. You see, in the nights experience I had grown tall (I dont remember the details), and in the morning And Ive been given that material verification for many such experiences, so as to be sure, so the body may be convinced without having to repeat the experiences over and over again. So it KNOWS, it knows there is nothing impossible, it knows impossible doesnt mean anything. But it doesnt depend on an individual will, you understand. The Consciousness which rules things is a marvel of wisdom, patience, compassion, endurance. When there is destruction or disorder, it means its absolutely unavoidable, absolutelybecause matters resistance in the individual or in things is so strong that it quite naturally brings about disorder or destruction. But that doesnt form part of the Action, the supreme Action, which is a marvel. The body has understood that; it has understood, it is patient. Only, from time to time (how can I put it?) There are people whom I prevent from dyingseveral people. I dont yet have the consciousness, the conscious power to cure them, but the possibility is there and I maintain it above them. That is to say, its not all-powerful in the sense that a certain receptivity, a certain response, a certain attitude are necessary which arent always there (human natures are very fluctuating, there are ups and downs and more ups and downs, and that makes the work very difficult), but at times, during a down spell, when a being suffers or sags, there is something in the consciousness [of Mother], a compassion (how can I explain that?) Affliction and all those movements are movements of weakness, but that is something at once very strong and very sweet, almost like sorrow, and the whole, entire consciousness in the body rises like a prayer and an aspirationa pure prayer: Why are things still in this pitiful state, why? Why? And it instantly has an effect [in the sick person]. Unfortunately, the effect doesnt last; it doesnt last because certain conditions in others are still necessary. But its wonderful, you know! Its something so wonderful. And it makes one understand the necessity of a presence on this side, a presence capable of feeling, understanding still IN THE OTHER WAY, so the suffering of others may be a reality. And that also is taken into account, that also means time is needed, patience is needed. Now the body knows ittheres no longer any impatience; there is only, now and then, that sort of sorrow, especially when beings are full of aspiration, goodwill, faith, and in spite of it this suffering is still there, clinging. That on one side, and on the other, one thing: there is still a sort of horror and reprobation of acts of cruelty, of THE cruelty; thats And then, there is this awesome Poweryou feel, you can feel that a mere nothing, a simple little movement would, oh, bring about a catastrophe. So you have to keep that still, still, still so what happens may always be the best.
0 1968-02-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a very clear vision, now, very clear and certain, that death is the acceptance of defeat, so But everywhere, and for everybody.
Previously, it was an inescapable habit (Mother draws a circle), the inevitable outcomeits no longer that at all, no longer at all! Its still the memory of a disastrous past.
0 1968-02-17, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its with this knowledge and this certaintythis vision of things that most of the time I remain as a noninterfering witness. Its only if things take a really nasty turn then one is forced to intervene.
Well see.
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The true attitude is this: money is a universal force meant to do the work on earth, the work needed to prepare the earth to receive the divine forces and manifest them, and it must come into the hands (the utilizing power, that is) of those who have the clearest vision, the most general and truest vision.
The first thing, to begin with (this is elementary), is to have no sense of possession Its mine, what does that mean? What does it mean? I cant really understand it now. Why do people want it to be theirs?To be able to use it as they wish, do with it what they wish and handle it according to their own idea. Thats how it is. Otherwise, yes, there are people who love to keep it in a pile somewhere But thats a disease. To be sure of always having money, they heap it up. But if people understood that one must be like a receiver-transmitter set; that the vaster the set (just the contrary of personal), the more impersonal and generous and vast the set is, and the more forces it can contain (forces, that is, to translate materially, banknotes or money). And that power to contain is in proportion to the best capacity of utilization the best, that is, from the standpoint of general progress: the broadest vision, the broadest understanding and the most enlightened, exact, true utilization, not according to the egos falsified needs, but according to the earths general need in its evolution and development. In other words, the broadest vision should have the broadest capacity.
Behind all false movements, there is a true one: there is a joy in being able to direct, utilize, organize things so as to keep wastage to a minimum while having a maximum of results. (Thats a very interesting vision to have.) And that must be the true side in those who want to amass: a capacity of utilization on a very large scale.
As this vision grows clearer Its a long, long time, years and years, since the sense of possession went away; thats childishness, its nothingits so silly! Will you tell me what pleasure a man can take in keeping heaps of papers in a box or in his wall! A real pleasure he cant have. The height of pleasure is that of the miser who goes and opens his box to look at it thats not much! Some people love to spend, they love to possess and spend; thats different, they are generous natures, but unregulated, unorganized. But the joy of enabling all TRUE needs, all NECESSITIES to express themselves, thats good. Its like the joy of turning an illness into good health, a falsehood into truth, a suffering into joy, its the same thing: turning an artificial and stupid need, which doesnt correspond to anything natural, into a possibility which becomes something quite naturala need for so much money to do this and that which needs to be done, to set right here, repair there, build here, organize there thats good. And I understand one may enjoy being the transmitting channel for all that and bring money just where its needed. It must be the true movement in people who enjoy (thats when it becomes stupid selfishness) who need to hoard.
The combination of the need to hoard and the need to spend (both of them ignorant and blind), the two combined can make for a clear vision and a utilization as useful as possible. Thats good.
So then, there slowly, slowly comes the possibility of putting it into practice.
--
Money belongs to no one: money is a collective property that only those with an integral and general, universal vision must use. And let me add, a vision not only integral and general, but also essentially TRUE, which means you can distinguish between a utilization in conformity with universal progress, and a utilization that might be called fanciful. But those are details, because even errorseven, from a certain point of view, wasteful useshelp in the general progress: they are lessons in reverse.
(silence)
--
And its not something you can pretend to have; a being cant pretend to have it: either he has it or he doesnt, because (laughing) if its a pretense, life will use the slightest opportunity to make it obvious! And moreover, it wont give you any material powerhere also, Thon said something in this regard, he said, Those who are all the way up (he was referring to the TRUE hierarchy, the hierarchy based precisely on each ones power of consciousness), one who is all the way up (one or those) necessarily has the least amount of needs; his material needs decrease as his capacity of material vision increases. And its perfectly true. Its automatic and spontaneous; its not the result of an effort: the vaster the consciousness and the more things and realities it embraces, the smaller the material needs becomeautomatically sobecause they lose all their importance and value. Its reduced to a minimal need of material necessities, which will itself change with the progressive development of Matter.
And thats easily recognizable, of course. Its difficult to feign.
--
That would be the true vision.
But all those participating in the experience would have to be absolutely convinced that the highest consciousness is the best judge of the MOST MATERIAL THINGS. You see, what has ruined India is this idea that the higher consciousness has to do with higher things, while its not interested in lower things and knows nothing about them! Thats what has caused the ruin of India. Well, this error must be completely abolished. Its the highest consciousness that sees the most clearly the most clearly and the most trulywhat the needs of the most material thing should be.
0 1968-05-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And at the same time, there was the clear vision, the very clear consciousness of the whole thing from the point of view of the earths evolution: whats being worked out in the earths evolution.
(long silence)
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It gave me a whole series of experiences in the night and the morning, certainly far exceeding the field covered by their four reflections. With the little girl [Rita], there was the impression, the vision of all those to whom death is a gateway to a marvelous realization.
It all came so spontaneously and naturally that I felt as if it was THERE. Now that youve read it back to me (laughing), I realize its not there! But it came so spontaneously: I sat there, reading those four notes, and it came one after another. Especially Abhijits, this completely objective, or anyway completely detached vision of the phenomenon: Circulation stops As if you were looking at a small instrument or tool (Mother gestures as if fingering a small object), and you remarked, Oh, its stopped now thats why it no longer works. Like that. In other words, none of those uncertainties or anxieties or aspirations. All that was emotions, sentiments, psychological phenomenait was all completely absent. A very simple little contraption (same fingering gesture) which you look at as you would a machine, and the machine stops because it no longer goes like that. There. And as a result, this body was completely detached from all human anguishfrom everything: not only from anguish, but from the habit, the whole human formation about deathit was all gone. As if I were all the way up above, like that, and looking all the way downhup! it went away.
Its what we might express as perfect detachment from the phenomenon.
--
There was that whole, overall vision of the history of the creation. It was really interesting. Interesting because whew! you felt so free! So free, so peaceful, so smiling! And at the same time, with such a certitude that everything is moving towards a more harmonious, less chaotic, less painful manifestation and that there is only one more step to be made in the creation.
What I admired (I often admire this) was that its often apparently mediocre or rather unimportant things (all that people regard as insignificant), its generally what brings on the most considerable progress. In the course of yesterday, and apparently (I know its only an appearance), apparently through D.s visit and those childrens answers, that entire phase of the manifestation became clear, found its place and lost all its power of influence and all its grip on the consciousness. It was as if the consciousness rose wholly free and luminous, joyous, above all that.
--
Its free in an absolute wayspontaneously free. Spontaneously. All action is spontaneous. Its like a vision. A vision expressing itself.
(Mother finishes copying her note)
0 1968-05-22, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With this latest adventure [the attack on Mother], this body has learned trust. It was very much steeped in pessimism because of its material antecedents. Certain antecedents, that is, father and mother, had been chosen for their great practicality and a very concrete material honesty, but no mysticism, nothing of the sortdeliberately. But then, it gave a kind of not exactly pessimism, but a very sharp vision of how things go wrong. The body had that, and its faith had to struggle against a habit of expecting difficulty, obstacles, resistance; although it had complete faith in the final Victory, it couldnt overcome the habit of expecting difficulties on the path. This latest adventure has given it a good push forward: its trust is much more smiling. And the general vision is as I told you. And constantly, all the time, even at the time of the worst difficulties, all the time there is it wells up from the cells, like a golden hymn: an incantation, you know, a call, an incantation to the supreme Power. And with such faith! A marvelous faith.
(silence)
--
They themselves would rather have no violenceit seems its not the students who started the violence, but the police. And thats very interesting, because the police stand for the defense of the past. When I read those childrens letters, and when later I was given the news, then there came in me (it was said very, very clearly, a very clear vision): the future. Its the higher Power COMPELLING people to do what they must do. Between now and that (which is a long way ahead), there must be the power of an IMMOBILE number. And the vision was very clear: if millionsnot thousands, millionsof people assemble together and occupy the place absolutely peacefully (simply assemble and occupy the place, naturally with representatives who will say what they like), then it will have power. But there must be no violence; as soon as one indulges in violence, its the return to the past and the open door to all conflicts. At the time, I didnt know it was the police that had started the violence; I didnt know, I wasnt aware of the details of the events. But it was a very clear vision: an occupation by the mass, but a mass all-powerful in its immobility, imposing its will through sheer numbers, with intellectual representatives for negotiations.
I dont know. De Gaulle5 is open to something more than the purely material force. Is he capable? I dont know. At any rate, he is among the best instruments.
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the new way of being would only be visible to someone who himself or herself had the supramental vision. I MATERIALLY see all sorts of things, which arent visible to others (Mother looks around Satprem). But its materially.
A funny state.
--- Overview of noun vision
The noun vision has 5 senses (first 5 from tagged texts)
1. (13) vision ::: (a vivid mental image; "he had a vision of his own death")
2. (8) sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality ::: (the ability to see; the visual faculty)
3. (7) vision, visual sensation ::: (the perceptual experience of seeing; "the runners emerged from the trees into his clear vision"; "he had a visual sensation of intense light")
4. (2) imagination, imaginativeness, vision ::: (the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses; "popular imagination created a world of demons"; "imagination reveals what the world could be")
5. (1) vision ::: (a religious or mystical experience of a supernatural appearance; "he had a vision of the Virgin Mary")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun vision
5 senses of vision
Sense 1
vision
=> imagination, imaging, imagery, mental imagery
=> representational process
=> basic cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality
=> modality, sense modality, sensory system
=> sense, sensation, sentience, sentiency, sensory faculty
=> faculty, mental faculty, module
=> ability, power
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
=> exteroception
=> sensitivity, sensitiveness, sensibility
=> sense, sensation, sentience, sentiency, sensory faculty
=> faculty, mental faculty, module
=> ability, power
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
vision, visual sensation
=> sensation, esthesis, aesthesis, sense experience, sense impression, sense datum
=> perception
=> basic cognitive process
=> process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
imagination, imaginativeness, vision
=> creativity, creativeness, creative thinking
=> ability, power
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
vision
=> experience
=> happening, occurrence, occurrent, natural event
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun vision
3 of 5 senses of vision
Sense 1
vision
=> prevision
=> retrovision
Sense 2
sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality
=> stigmatism
=> achromatic vision
=> acuity, visual acuity, sharp-sightedness
=> binocular vision
=> central vision
=> color vision, chromatic vision, trichromacy
=> distance vision
=> eyesight, seeing, sightedness
=> monocular vision
=> near vision
=> night vision, night-sight, scotopic vision, twilight vision
=> daylight vision, photopic vision
=> peripheral vision
Sense 4
imagination, imaginativeness, vision
=> imaginary place, mythical place, fictitious place
=> fancy
=> fantasy, phantasy
=> dream, dreaming
=> imaginary being, imaginary creature
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun vision
5 senses of vision
Sense 1
vision
=> imagination, imaging, imagery, mental imagery
Sense 2
sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality
=> modality, sense modality, sensory system
=> exteroception
Sense 3
vision, visual sensation
=> sensation, esthesis, aesthesis, sense experience, sense impression, sense datum
Sense 4
imagination, imaginativeness, vision
=> creativity, creativeness, creative thinking
Sense 5
vision
=> experience
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun vision
5 senses of vision
Sense 1
vision
-> imagination, imaging, imagery, mental imagery
=> mind's eye
=> vision
=> picturing, envisioning
=> dream, dreaming
=> chimera, chimaera
=> evocation
=> pretense, pretence, make-believe
Sense 2
sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality
-> modality, sense modality, sensory system
=> sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality
=> somatosense
=> hearing, audition, auditory sense, sense of hearing, auditory modality
=> taste, gustation, sense of taste, gustatory modality
=> smell, sense of smell, olfaction, olfactory modality
-> exteroception
=> sight, vision, visual sense, visual modality
=> touch, sense of touch, skin senses, touch modality, cutaneous senses
=> hearing, audition, auditory sense, sense of hearing, auditory modality
=> taste, gustation, sense of taste, gustatory modality
=> smell, sense of smell, olfaction, olfactory modality
Sense 3
vision, visual sensation
-> sensation, esthesis, aesthesis, sense experience, sense impression, sense datum
=> threshold, limen
=> masking
=> vision, visual sensation
=> smell, odor, odour, olfactory sensation, olfactory perception
=> taste, taste sensation, gustatory sensation, taste perception, gustatory perception
=> sound, auditory sensation
=> synesthesia, synaesthesia
Sense 4
imagination, imaginativeness, vision
-> creativity, creativeness, creative thinking
=> fecundity, fruitfulness
=> flight
=> genius, wizardry
=> imagination, imaginativeness, vision
=> invention, innovation, excogitation, conception, design
=> inventiveness, ingeniousness, ingenuity, cleverness
Sense 5
vision
-> experience
=> appalling
=> augury, sign, foretoken, preindication
=> flash, flashing
=> good time, blast
=> loss
=> near-death experience
=> ordeal
=> out-of-body experience
=> taste
=> time
=> trip, head trip
=> vision
--- Grep of noun vision
achromatic vision
administrative division
advertising division
air division
benthic division
binocular vision
cable television
cell division
cellular division
central vision
chromatic vision
closed-circuit television
color television
color vision
color vision deficiency
colour television
colour vision deficiency
cross-division
daylight vision
distance vision
division
double vision
field-sequential color television
field of vision
form division
foveal vision
high-definition television
line of vision
long division
monochromatic vision
monocular vision
naval air warfare center weapons division
naval division
near vision
night vision
peripheral vision
phase of cell division
photopic vision
porcupine provision
prevision
provision
reduction division
retrovision
revision
sales division
satellite television
scotopic vision
short division
stereoscopic vision
subdivision
supervision
television
territorial division
tunnel vision
twilight vision
vision
vision defect
visionary
word division