I. On Education 6
II Our Place in the World Order as described
By Wordsworth 12
III On the Sense of Immortality in Youth as
Perceived by William Hazlitt 22
IV Self-Betterment of Benjamin Franklin 31
V Bewilderment and Concern of Henry
Adams at the Rapid Advance of Science
and Technology 40
VI Real Education of Abraham Lincoln 52
VII Two Incidents Change Gandhi’s Life 62
VIII Humour of Mark Twain 71
IX Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy 81
X 185 Points to Ponder 133
CHAPTER I - ON EDUCATION
As you depart for Edinburgh to continue your education at the Fettes college at the tender age of Sixteen I endeavour to give you my thoughts on some subjects that you will invariably encounter in your life – perhaps earlier than those children who remain at home at your age.
High school and university education to which you now aspire will help you to make inroads to a professional career and better-paying salaries and wages. Education will increase your (and the family's) level of health and health awareness. Furthering your level of education and advanced training will also increase the level of resources available to you. It will also, in addition, increase your communication with your family and your employers, and improve your civic participation such as voting or the holding of office.
More importantly, the education is likely to give you liberal views. It will accustom your mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own sake and to fix your thoughts on on the remote and permanent, instead of narrow and fleeting objects.
It will teach you to believe that there is something really great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuation of opinion, and raise you above that low and servile fear which bows only to present power and upstart authority.
Ancient India, Athens, Rome and modern America fill a place in the history of mankind which will always remain beacons to students with their lights shining like mighty sea-marks into the abyss of time.
In 262 B.C., eight years after his coronation, India’s Asoka, one of the greatest men in history, attacked and conquered Kalinga, a country that roughly corresponds to the modern state of Orissa. The loss of life caused by battle, reprisals, deportations and the turmoil that always exists in the aftermath of war so horrified Asoka that it brought about a complete change in his personality. After the war Asoka dedicated the rest of his life trying to apply Buddhist principles to the administration of his vast empire. He had a crucial part to play in helping Buddhism to spread both throughout India and abroad and built the first major Buddhist monuments.
Probably the best known Athenian statesman that ever was, Pericles was the son of the army commander Xanthippus who had defeated the Persians in the battle of Mycale in 479 BC. Pericles' rule as a statesman in Athens is called the Golden Age of Pericles, and he was an eager supporter of democracy. He wanted all citizens of Athens to take an active part in politics, and he was the first to pay servants to the state. Members of the council were chosen by all Athenians, and Pericles restored and built many temples and structures, such as the Parthenon on the Acropolis, employing the poorest citizens.
The rule of Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (121- 180), lasted 19 years. He was a learner and philosopher but in fact he was forced to spend much of his time at the head of his army against the barbarians who were pressing against the borders. During this period there was a great plague, brought by the soldiers who had served in the east. The sickness weakened the empire and the roman treasury was low. Marcus Aurelius did his utmost to check the advance of the invading hordes and made use of his learning as a philosopher to rule his subjects well. One of his best books is called "meditations" and it was written whilst on military campaign near the Danube. I am very proud to recall that at the tender age of ten you were wise enough to bring a copy of this book as a gift for me when you went to Washington with your parents. He had a Hindu’s sense of interdependence of the world and man. He marveled at the growth of child out of a little seed, the miraculous formation of organs, strength, mind and aspiration out of a little food. He believed that if we could understand we should find in the universe the same order and creative power as in man. “All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy. . .There is a common reason in all intelligent beings; one god pervades all things, one substance, one law, one truth. . . Can a clear subsist in thee, and disorder in all?” He wrote:
Observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus, tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes. . . The whole space of man’s life is but little, and yet with what troubles it is filled . . . and with what a wretched body it must be passed! . . . Turn it inside out, and see what kind of thing it is. As Aurelius I have Rome for my country; as a man the world.
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, guided his country through the most devastating experience in its national history--the CIVIL WAR. He is considered by many historians to have been the greatest American president. Lincoln's achievements--saving the Union and freeing the slaves--and his martyrdom just at the war's end assured his continuing fame. No small contribution was made by his eloquence as exemplified in the Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863), in which he defined the war as a rededication to the egalitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and in his second inaugural address (Mar. 4, 1865), in which he urged "malice toward none" and "charity for all" in the peace to come.
By conversing with the mighty dead you can imbibe their influence over your mind. You may then feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. It is hard to find in minds otherwise formed a real love of excellence. Language adds a softness and refinement to our ideas.
Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know. She is the most learned girl who knows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actual observation.
Most sensible people you will meet in society will be the men of business and the world, who argue from what they see and know instead of what things ought to be. Women have often more of what is called good sense than men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and judge objects from their immediate impressions on the mind, and therefore, more truly and naturally.
You will be there well placed to acquire best of knowledge with your natural good sense that you are gifted with. Make best of this opportunity and determine to come back an accomplished young woman with a realistic overview of life and the world.
3-year old Anika tries to tackle a big book while older brother Kiran reads imtently his own book
CHAPTER II - OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD ORDER AS DESCRIBED BY WORDSWORTH
7-year old Anika on a train journey from Bergen to Oslo
When many poets still wrote about ancient heroes in grandiloquent style, William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) focused on the nature, children, the poor, common people, and used ordinary words to express his personal feelings. His definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from "emotion recollected in tranquility" was shared by a number of his followers.
"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science."
William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature.
Stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.' About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published posthumously in 1850 under the title THE PRELUDE. The long work described the poet's love of nature and his own place in the world order.
"Dust as we are, the
immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling
together
In one society."
He moved to Dove Cottage, Grasmere in 1802 and married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth's sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of life – she had lost her mind as a result of physical ailments. Almost all Dorothy's memory was destroyed; she sat by the fire, and occasionally recited her brother's verses.
That day in August 2002 is still fresh in my mind – and may be in yours too – when Amma, you and I drove from Carlyle to Grasmere and visited the Dove Cottage set among a very picturesque view. And his thoughts came true for us too. We were indeed like dust yet inseparable part of this universe.
Wordsworth's path-breaking works were produced between 1797 and 1808. In a letter to Lady Beaumont he said: "Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished."
Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850. In the years of his death, his widow published THE PRELUDE, completed already by 1805. It was a part of a huge work, The Recluse, which Wordsworth and Coleridge had planned together over 50 years ago. The subject was to be life in general. Comparing his other published pieces with The Recluse, Wordsworth paralled "little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses" with the body of a Gothic church. What follow are some exquisite pieces from The Prelude.
THUS while the days flew by, and years passed on,
From Nature and her overflowing soul
I had received so much, that all my thoughts
Were steeped in feeling; I was only then
Contented, when with bliss ineffable
I felt the sentiment of Being spread
O’er all that moves and all that seemeth still;
O’er all that, lost beyond the reach of thought
And human knowledge, to the human eye
Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;
O’er all that leaps and runs, and shouts and sings,
Or beats the gladsome air; o’er all that glides
Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself,
And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not
If high the transport, great the joy I felt
Communing in this sort through earth and heaven
With every form of creature, as it looked
Towards the Uncreated with a countenance
Of adoration, with an eye of love.
One song they sang, and it was audible,
Most audible, then, when the fleshly ear,
O’ercome by humblest prelude of that strain,
Forgot her functions, and slept undisturbed.
II
—Of that external scene which round me lay,
Little, in this abstraction, did I see;
Remembered less; but I had inward hopes
And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed,
Conversed with promises, had glimmering views
How life pervades the undecaying mind;
How the immortal soul with God-like power
Informs, creates, and thaws the deepest sleep
That time can lay upon her; how on earth,
Man, if he do but live within the light
Of high endeavours, daily spreads abroad
His being armed with strength that cannot fail.
III
Attends the motions of the viewless winds,
Embodied in the mystery of words:
There, darkness makes abode, and all the host
Of shadowy things work endless changes,—there,
As in a mansion like their proper home,
Even forms and substances are circumfused
By that transparent veil with light divine,
And, through the turnings intricate of verse,
Present themselves as objects recognized,
In flashes, and with glory not their own.
IV
Imagination—here the Power so called
Through sad incompetence of human speech,
That awful Power rose from the mind’s abyss
Like an unfathered vapour that enwraps,
At once, some lonely traveller. I was lost;
Halted without an effort to break through;
But to my conscious soul I now can say—
‘I recognize thy glory’: in such strength
Of usurpation, when the light of sense
Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,
There harbours; whether we be young or old,
Our destiny, our being’s heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.
Under such banners militant, the soul
Seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils
That may attest her prowess, blest in thoughts
That are their own perfection and reward,
Strong in herself and in beatitude
That hides her, like the mighty flood of Nile
Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds
To fertilize the whole Egyptian plain.
V
Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy strait,
And with them did we journey several hours
At a slow pace. The immeasurable height
Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,
The stationary blasts of waterfalls,
And in the narrow rent at every turn
Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,
The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,
The rocks that muttered close upon our ears,
Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side
As if a voice were in them, the sick sight
And giddy prospect of the raving stream,
The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,
Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light—
Were all like workings of one mind, the features
Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;
Characters of the great Apocalypse,
The types and symbols of Eternity,
Of first, and last, and midst, and without end.
VI
Rest, and be not alone, but have thou there
The One who is thy choice of all the world:
There linger, listening, gazing, with delight
Impassioned, but delight how pitiable!
Unless this love by a still higher love
Be hallowed, love that breathes not without awe;
Love that adores, but on the knees of prayer,
By heaven inspired; that frees from chains the soul, Lifted, in union with the purest, best,
Of earth-born passions, on the wings of praise
Bearing a tribute to the Almighty’s Throne.
VII
This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist Without Imagination, which, in truth, Is but another name for absolute power And clearest insight, amplitude of mind, And Reason in her most exalted mood. This faculty hath been the feeding source Of our long labour: we have traced the stream From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard Its natal murmur; followed it to light And open day; accompanied its course Among the ways of Nature, for a time Lost sight of it bewildered and engulphed; Then given it greeting as it rose once more In strength, reflecting from its placid breast The works of man and face of human life; And lastly, from its progress have we drawn Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought Of human Being, Eternity, and God.
Gratuitous graces, which have inspired much literary and pictorial art, some splendid and some (where inspiration was not seconded by native talent) pathetically inadequate, seem generally to belong to one or other of two main classes sudden and profoundly impressive perception of ultimate Reality as Love, Light and Bliss, and a no less impressive perception of it as dark, awe-inspiring and inscrutable Power. In memorable forms, Wordsworth has recorded his own experience of both these aspects of the divine Ground.
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light.
.
Lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan ;
When, from behind that craggy steep, till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature, the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars. . . .
But after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude,
Or blank desertion.
7-year old Anika at Kontiki Museum, Oslo with Baba
CHAPTER III – ON THE SENSE OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH AS PERCEIVED BY WILLIAM HAZLITT
4-year old Anika with cousin Priya
William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. What follow are some of his ideas on the sense of immortality in youth.
William Hazlitt
There is a feeling of Eternity in youth. To be young is to be like one of the immortal Gods. Deaths, old age, are words without a meaning. Our short-lived connection with existence, we fondly flatter ourselves is a lasting union.
In the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations, nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them. We have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag; and it seems that we can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of life, and motion, and ceaseless progress; and feel in ourselves all the vigour and spirit to keep pace with it/
Like the foolish fat scullion, in Sterne, when she hears that Master Bobby is dead, our only reflection is--"So am not I!" The idea of death, instead of staggering our confidence, rather seems to strengthen and enhance our possession and our enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like leaves, or be mowed down like flowers by the scythe of Time
when the splendid boon is first granted us, our gratitude, our admiration, and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest impressions are taken from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we very innocently transfer its durability as well as magnificence to ourselves.
The change, from the commencement to the close of life, appears like a fable, after it has taken place; how should we treat it otherwise than as a chimera before it has come to pass? There are some things that happened so long ago, places or persons we have formerly seen, of which such dim traces remain, we hardly know whether it was sleeping or waking they occurred; they are like dreams within the dream of life, a mist, a film before the eye of memory, which, as we try to recall them more distinctly, elude our notice altogether.
Truth, friendship, love, books, are also proof against the canker of time; and while we live, but for them, we can never grow old. We take out a new lease of existence from the objects on which we set our affections, and become abstracted, impassive, and immortal in them.
I remember to have looked at Kailash for hours together, without being conscious of the flight of time, Is it not this that frequently keeps artists alive so long, viz. the constant occupation of their minds with vivid images, with little of the wear-and-tear of the body?
For my part, I set out in life with the Indian independence, and that event had considerable influence on my early feelings, as on those of others. Youth was then doubly such. It was the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men's minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon the sun of Life in the same day, and both were proud to run their race together. Little did I dream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand in hand with those of the human race, that long before my eyes should close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more in the night of despotism--"total eclipse!"
As long as we can keep alive our cherished thoughts and nearest interests in the minds of others, we do not appear to have retired altogether from the stage, we still occupy a place in the estimation of mankind, exercise a powerful influence over them, and it is only our bodies that are trampled into dust or dispersed to air.
There are a few superior, happy beings, who are born with a temper exempt from every trifling annoyance. This spirit sits serene and smiling as in its native skies, and a divine harmony (whether heard or not) plays around them. This is to be at peace. Without this, it is in vain to fly into deserts, or to build a hermitage on the top of rocks, if regret and ill-humour follow us there: and with this, it is needless to make the experiment. The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.
The peaceful order of Henry Adams’s life is turned to chaos when he receives a telegram informing him that his sister Louisa Catherine (Adams) Kuhn (1831–1870) has been thrown from a cab and injured. Tetanus has already set in when he arrives at her home in Italy. After ten days, she dies in convulsions. Having spent the Civil War years in London, Henry has not seen a great deal of death; he is profoundly affected by it. The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), beginning that summer, seems to echo the terrible turbulence in his soul. Hear him in his own words:
The last lesson -- the sum and term of education -- began then. He had
passed through thirty years of rather varied experience without having once
felt the shell of custom broken. He had never seen Nature -- only her surface
-- the sugar-coating that she shows to youth. Flung suddenly in his face, with
the harsh brutality of chance, the terror of the blow stayed by him thenceforth
for life, until repetition made it more than the will could struggle with; more
than he could call on himself to bear. He found his sister, a woman of forty,
as gay and brilliant in the terrors of lockjaw as she had been in the careless
fun of 1859, lying in bed in consequence of a miserable cab-accident that had
bruised her foot. Hour by hour the muscles grew rigid, while the mind remained
bright, until after ten days of fiendish torture she died in convulsion.
One had heard and read a great deal about death, and even seen a little of it,
and knew by heart the thousand commonplaces of religion and poetry which seemed
to deaden one's senses and veil the horror. Society being immortal, could put
on immortality at will. Adams being mortal, felt only the mortality. Death took
features altogether new to him, in these rich and sensuous surroundings. Nature
enjoyed it, played with it, the horror added to her charm, she liked the
torture, and smothered her victim with caresses. Never had one seen her so
winning. The hot Italian summer brooded outside, over the market-place and the
picturesque peasants, and, in the singular color of the Tuscan atmosphere, the
hills and vineyards of the Apennines seemed
bursting with mid-summer blood. The sick-room itself glowed with the Italian
joy of life; friends filled it; no harsh northern lights pierced the soft
shadows; even the dying women shared the sense of the
Italian
summer, the soft, velvet air, the humor, the courage, the sensual fulness of
Nature and man. She faced death, as women mostly do, bravely and even gaily,
racked slowly to unconsciousness, but yielding only to violence, as a soldier
sabred in battle. For many thousands of years, on these hills and plains,
Nature had gone on sabring men and women with the same air of sensual pleasure.
Impressions like these are not reasoned or catalogued in the mind; they are
felt as part of violent emotion; and the mind that feels them is a different
one from that which reasons; it is thought of a different power and a different
person. The first serious consciousness of Nature's gesture -- her attitude
towards life -- took form then as a phantasm, a nightmare, an insanity of
force. For the first time, the stage-scenery of the senses collapsed; the human
mind felt itself stripped naked, vibrating in a void of shapeless energies,
with resistless mass, colliding, crushing, wasting, and destroying what these
same energies had created and labored from eternity to perfect. Society became
fantastic, a vision of pantomime with a mechanical motion; and its so-called
thought merged in the mere sense of life, and pleasure in the sense. The usual
anodynes of social medicine became evident artifice. Stoicism was perhaps the
best; religion was the most human; but the idea that any personal deity could
find pleasure or profit in torturing a poor woman, by accident, with a fiendish
cruelty known to man only in perverted and insane temperaments, could not be
held for a moment. For pure blasphemy, it made pure atheism a comfort. God
might be, as the Church said, a Substance, but He could not be a Person.
This situation can be best explained by the
Theory of Karma. This is the principle that every action has its consequences,
positive or negative; it determines each existence of the transmigrated or
reincarnated soul.
A man is the creator of his own fate, and even in
his fœtal life he is affected by the dynamics of the works of his prior
existence. Whether confined in a mountain fastness or lulling on the bosom of a
sea, whether secure in his mother’s lap or held high above her head, a man
cannot fly from the effects of his own prior deeds. . . . Whatever is to befall
a man on any particular age or time will surely overtake him then and on that
date.
Anika’s fifth birthday – surrounded by Kiran, Uncle
Jinnah, Uncle Neil, Cousin Arun and Mother Ira
CHAPTER IV - SELF-BETTERMENT OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
13-year old Anika at Hotel Trnidad Hyatt
Born 1706 in Boston, Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of his father's 17 children. He went to school as a child with the intent of becoming a minister, as his father, Josiah, intended. However, that idea was dropped after Franklin showed a keen interest in reading and writing. His Autobiogrophy establishes in literary form the first example of the fulfillment of the American Dream. Franklin demonstrates the possibilities of life in the New World through his own rise from the lower middle class as a youth to one of the most admired men in the world as an adult. Furthermore, he asserts that he achieved his success through a solid work ethic. He proved that even undistinguished persons in Boston can, through industry, become great figures of importance in America. When we think of the American Dream today--the ability to rise from rags to riches through hard work - we are usually thinking of the model set forth by Franklin in this autobiography. Let us hear him in his own words how he improved himself.
There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharff there fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new house near the marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening, when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my play-fellows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away and built our little wharff. The next morning the workmen were surprised at missing the stones, which were found in our wharff. Inquiry was made after the removers; we were discovered and complained of; several of us were corrected by our fathers; and though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest.
Benjamin Franklin
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections; they were small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called an Essay on Projects, and another of Dr. Mather's, called Essays to do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events of my life. An acquaintance with the apprentices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.
There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and, perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.
When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.
While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. I continu'd this method some few years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced any thing that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or I should think it so or so, for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade men into measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting; and, as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure. For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.
The American character showed singular limitations which sometimes drove the student of civilised man to despair, continued Henry Adams. Crushed by his own ignorance,—lost in the darkness of his own gropings,—the scholar finds himself jostled of a sudden by a crowd of men who seem to him ignorant that there is a thing called ignorance; who have forgotten how to amuse themselves; who cannot even understand that they are bored. The American thought of himself as a restless, pushing, energetic, ingenious person, always awake and trying to get ahead of his neighbors. Perhaps this idea of the national character might be correct for New York or Chicago; it was not correct for Washington. There the American showed himself, four times in five, as a quiet, peaceful, shy figure, rather in the mould of Abraham Lincoln, somewhat sad, sometimes pathetic, once tragic; or like Grant, inarticulate, uncertain, distrustful of himself, still more distrustful of others, and awed by money. That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them. The amusement of the pursuit was all the amusement he got from it; he had no use for wealth. Jim Fisk alone seemed to know what he wanted; Jay Gould never did. At Washington one met mostly such true Americans, but if one wanted to know them better, one went to study them in Europe. Bored, patient, helpless; pathetically dependent on his wife and daughters; indulgent to excess; mostly a modest, decent, excellent, valuable citizen; the American was to be met at every railway station in Europe, carefully explaining to every listener that the happiest day of his life would be the day he should land on the pier at New York. He was ashamed to be amused; his mind no longer answered to the stimulus of variety; he could not face a new thought. All his immense strength his intense nervous energy, his keen analytic perceptions, were oriented in one direction, and he could not change it. Congress was full of such men; in the Senate, Sumner was almost the only exception; in the Executive, Grant and Boutwell were varieties of the type,—political specimens,—pathetic in their helplessness to do anything with power when it came to them. They knew not how to amuse themselves; they could not conceive how other people were amused. Work, whiskey, and cards were life. The atmosphere of political Washington was theirs,—or was supposed by the outside world to be in their control,—and this was the reason why the outside world judged that Washington was fatal even for a young man of thirty-two, who had passed through the whole variety of temptations, in every capital of Europe, for a dozen years; who never played cards, and who loathed whiskey.
Anika, the foregoing clearly shows that how grown up and even powerful people can waste away their lives if they do not have clear goals. It is always a great goal to continuously improve oneself both spiritually and in performing actions. At the same time one should not shun any enjoyments that come one’s way.
2-year old Anika with a trophy won by Baba in a Bridge Tournament
CHAPTER V – BEWILDERMENT AND CONCERN OF HENRY ADAMS AT THE RAPID ADVANCE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
14-year old Anika with (from left) mother Ira, father Imshah, Baba, Kiran and Amma at kiran’s graduation at Crown Plaza, Trinidad
‘The Education of the Henry Adams’ reviews Adams’s and the United States’s education and growth during the 19th century. Adams was an old man who had Puritan beliefs about sex
and religion. In this autobiography, Adams
voices his skepticism about man’s newfound power to control the direction of
history, in particular, the exploding world of science and technology, where
all certainties of the future have vanished. “In opposition to the medieval
Virgin, Adams saw a new godhead—the
dynamo—symbol of the modern history’s anarchic energies” (anova.org, 1). Adams desperately wanted to learn about the new world of
technology, the “dynamos”, yet he felt helpless to find this new knowledge and
to comprehend it. Adams was overwhelmed by the
technology of the dynamos. Extracts from his book follow.
Landed, lost, and forgotten, in the centre of this vast plain of self-content, Adams could see but one active interest, to which all others were subservient, and which absorbed the energies of some sixty million people to the exclusion of every other force, real or imaginary. The power of the railway system had enormously increased since 1870. Already the coal output of 160,000,000 tons closely approached the 180,000,000 of the British Empire, and one held one's breath at the nearness of what one had never expected to see, the crossing of courses, and the lead of American energies. The moment was deeply exciting to a historian, but the railway system itself interested one less than in 1868, since it offered less chance for future profit. Adams had been born with the railway system; had grown up with it; had been over pretty nearly every mile of it with curious eyes, and knew as much about it as his neighbors; but not there could he look for a new education. Incomplete though it was, the system seemed on the whole to satisfy the wants of society better than any other part of the social machine, and society was content with its creation, for the time, and with itself for creating it. Nothing new was to be done or learned there, and the world hurried on to its telephones, bicycles, and electric trams. At past fifty, Adams solemnly and painfully learned to ride the bicycle.
The industrial schools tried to teach so much and so quickly that the instruction ran to waste. Some millions of other people felt the same helplessness, but few of them were seeking education, and to them helplessness seemed natural and normal, for they had grown up in the habit of thinking a steam-engine or a dynamo as natural as the sun, and expected to understand one as little as the other. For the historian alone the Exposition made a serious effort. Historical exhibits were common, but they never went far enough; none were thoroughly worked out. One of the best was that of the Cunard steamers, but still a student hungry for results found himself obliged to waste a pencil and several sheets of paper trying to calculate exactly when, according to the given increase of power, tonnage, and speed, the growth of the ocean steamer would reach its limits. His figures brought him, he thought, to the year 1927; another generation to spare before force, space, and time should meet. The ocean steamer ran the surest line of triangulation into the future, because it was the nearest of man's products to a unity; railroads taught less because they seemed already finished except for mere increase in number; explosives taught most, but needed a tribe of chemists, physicists, and mathematicians to explain; the dynamo taught least because it had barely reached infancy, and, if its progress was to be constant at the rate of the last ten years, it would result in infinite costless energy within a generation. One lingered long among the dynamos, for they were new, and they gave to history a new phase. Men of science could never understand the ignorance and naivete; of the historian, who, when he came suddenly on a new power, asked naturally what it was; did it pull or did it push? Was it a screw or thrust? Did it flow or vibrate? Was it a wire or a mathematical line? And a score of such questions to which he expected answers and was astonished to get none.
Education ran riot at Chicago, at least for retarded minds which had never faced in concrete form so many matters of which they were ignorant. Men who knew nothing whatever -- who had never run a steam-engine, the simplest of forces -- who had never put their hands on a lever -- had never touched an electric battery -- never talked through a telephone, and had not the shadow of a notion what amount of force was meant by a watt or an ampere or an erg, or any other term of measurement introduced within a hundred years -- had no choice but to sit down on the steps and brood as they had never brooded on the benches of Harvard College, either as student or professor, aghast at what they had said and done in all these years, and still more ashamed of the childlike ignorance and babbling futility of the society that let them say and do it.
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts. Adams had looked at most of the accumulations of art in the storehouses called Art Museums; yet he did not know how to look at the art exhibits of 1900. He had studied Karl Marx and his doctrines of history with profound attention, yet he could not apply them at Paris. Langley, with the ease of a great master of experiment, threw out of the field every exhibit that did not reveal a new application of force, and naturally threw out, to begin with, almost the whole art-exhibit. Equally, he ignored almost the whole industrial exhibit. He led his pupil directly to the forces. His chief interest was in new motors to make his airship feasible, and he taught Adams the astonishing complexities of the new Daimler motor, and of the automobile, which, since 1893, had become a night-mare at a hundred kilometres an hour, almost as destructive as the electric tram which was only ten years older; and threatening to become as terrible as the locomotive steam-engine itself, which was almost exactly Adams’s own age. Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and explained how little he knew about electricity or force of any kind, even of his own special sun, which spouted heat in inconceivable volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout less or more, at any time, for all the certainty he felt in it. To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s-length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring,—scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’s-breadth further for respect of power,—while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.
He wrapped himself in vibrations and rays which were new, and he would have hugged Marconi and Branly had he met them, as he hugged the dynamo; while he lost his arithmetic in trying to figure out the equation between the discoveries and the economies of force. The economies, like the discoveries, were absolute, supersensual, occult; incapable of expression in horse-power. What mathematical equivalent could he suggest as the value of a Branly coherer? Frozen air, or the electric furnace, had some scale of measurement, no doubt, if somebody could invent a thermometer adequate to the purpose; but X-rays had played no part whatever in man’s consciousness, and the atom itself had figured only as a fiction of thought. In these seven years man had translated himself into a new universe which had no common scale of measurement with the old. He had entered a supersensual world, in which he could measure nothing except by chance collisions of movements imperceptible to his senses, perhaps even imperceptible to his instruments, but perceptible to each other, and so to some known ray at the end of the scale. Langley seemed prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of universes interfused,—physics stark mad in metaphysics.
In 1901 Russia had vanished, and not even France was felt; hardly England or America. Coal alone was felt,—its stamp alone pervaded the Rhine district and persisted to Picardy,—and the stamp was the same as that of Birmingham and Pittsburgh. The Rhine produced the same power, and the power produced the same people,—the same mind,—the same impulse. For a man sixty-three years old who had no hope of earning a living, these three months of education were the most arduous he ever attempted, and Russia was the most indigestible morsel he ever met; but the sum of it, viewed from Cologne, seemed reasonable. From Hammerfest to Cherbourg on one shore of the ocean,—from Halifax to Norfolk on the other,—one great empire was ruled by one great emperor—Coal. Political and human jealousies might tear it apart or divide it, but the power and the empire were one. Unity had gained that ground. Beyond lay Russia, and there an older, perhaps a surer, power, resting on the eternal law of inertia, held its own.
The work of domestic progress is done by masses of mechanical power,—steam, electric, furnace, or other,—which have to be controlled by a score or two of individuals who have shown capacity to manage it. The work of internal government has become the task of controlling these men, who are socially as remote as heathen gods, alone worth knowing, but never known, and who could tell nothing of political value if one skinned them alive. Most of them have nothing to tell, but are forces as dumb as their dynamos, absorbed in the development or economy of power. They are trustees for the public, and whenever society assumes the property, it must confer on them that title; but the power will remain as before, whoever manages it, and will then control society without appeal, as it controls its stokers and pit-men. Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central power-houses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces.
After 1500, the speed of progress so rapidly surpassed man’s gait as to alarm every one, as though it were the acceleration of a falling body which the dynamic theory takes it to be. Lord Bacon was as much astonished by it as the Church was, and with reason. Suddenly society felt itself dragged into situations altogether new and anarchic,—situations which it could not affect, but which painfully affected it. Instinct taught it that the universe in its thought must be in danger when its reflection lost itself in space. The danger was all the greater because men of science covered it with “larger synthesis,” and poets called the undevout astronomer mad. Society knew better. Yet the telescope held it rigidly standing on its head; the microscope revealed a universe that defied the senses; gunpowder killed whole races that lagged behind; the compass coerced the most imbruted mariner to act on the impossible idea that the earth was round; the press drenched Europe with anarchism. Europe saw itself, violently resisting, wrenched into false positions, drawn along new lines as a fish that is caught on a hook; but unable to understand by what force it was controlled. The resistance was often bloody, sometimes humorous, always constant. Its contortions in the eighteenth century are best studied in the wit of Voltaire, but all history and all philosophy from Montaigne and Pascal to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche deal with nothing else; and still, throughout it all, the Baconian law held good;—thought did not evolve nature, but nature evolved thought. Not one considerable man of science dared face the stream of thought; and the whole number of those who acted, like Franklin, as electric conductors of the new forces from nature to man, down to the year 1800, did not exceed a few score, confined to a few towns in western Europe. Asia refused to be touched by the stream, and America, except for Franklin, stood outside.
For this new creation, born since 1900, a historian asked no longer to be teacher or even friend; he asked only to be a pupil, and promised to be docile, for once, even though trodden under foot; for he could see that the new American,—the child of incalculable coal-power, chemical power, electric power, and radiating energy, as well as of new forces yet undetermined,—must be a sort of God compared with any former creation of nature. At the rate of progress since 1800, every American who lived into the year 2000 would know how to control unlimited power. He would think in complexities unimaginable to an earlier mind. He would deal with problems altogether beyond the range of earlier society. To him the nineteenth century would stand on the same plane with the fourth,—equally childlike,—and he would only wonder how both of them, knowing so little, and so weak in force, should have done so much.
Nature has educated herself to a singular sympathy for death. On the antarctic glacier, nearly five thousand feet above sea-level, Captain Scott found carcasses of seals, where the animals had laboriously flopped up, to die in peace. “Unless we had actually found these remains, it would have been past believing that a dying seal could have transported itself over fifty miles of rough, steep, glacier-surface,” but “the seal seems often to crawl to the shore or the ice to die, probably from its instinctive dread of its marine enemies.” In India, Purun Dass, at the end of statesmanship, sought solitude, and died in sanctity among the deer and monkeys, rather than remain with man.
Anika, it is right that we be bewildered with the pace of scientific progress as predicted by Adams. But there is no need to be concerned about it. To take just one example, Technology has made communications and transportation easy for everyone in the world. The trick is to concentrate on those aspects of Science which bring benefits to human beings.
Human beings – and seals – probably leave their environment sometimes to die. It is not necessarily because of the dread of the enemies in their environment. May be they want to spend all their remaining time on earth in meditation and simultaneously avoid troubling their dear and near ones. Not at all a bad idea. Follwing two verses of the Gita are instructive.
One who remembers the Supreme Being exclusively, even while leaving the body at the time of death, attains the Supreme Abode; there is no doubt about it. (8.05)
Whatever object one remembers as one leaves the body at the end of life, one attains that object. Thought of whatever object prevails during one's lifetime, one remembers only that object at the end of life and achieves it. (8.06)
3-year old
Anika with Baba
CHAPTER VI – REAL EDUCATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
14 year old Anika with cousin Anushka
Abraham Lincoln was a totally self-educated man. Though his childhood education was very limited, he learned much from books. When he was young, his mother died from drinking milk from a cow that had eaten the poisonous snakeroot plant. His father left the cabin and Abe and came back with Lincoln's new mother who started his childhood education.
It was hard to find a good teacher, and good schools were rare on the frontier. Everyone who could read and write was asked to be a teacher. To repay the teachers, families gave a teacher as much extra food as they could spare, such as deer meat, ham, corn, animal skins, or produce because money was often unavailable. Lincoln's teachers were Andrew Crawford, Azel W. Dorsey, and a man known as Sweeney. There was no fixed school year, because students went to school whenever there was a teacher to teach them. Teachers used a whip to keep the students in order. If students misbehaved, they had to wear a dunce cap and sit in the corner for the day. Abe thought school was simple. He did his work at night because of chores during the afternoon, and he sat in front of the fireplace, where he would get his only light. He did his arithmetic on a fire shovel because paper was hard to get.
Abe first went to school in the winter of 1815-1816 when he was six years old. He was happy to walk the four long miles to school and always arrived at school early. School opened in the winter because there were not many chores to be done around the house. The school was a one-room log cabin with one teacher and students of all ages and sizes. There were small children and large husky farm boys. It was called blab school, because the teacher made the Students read out loud, so they would not mispronounce words. Students also recited their lessons out loud to the teacher and the rest of the class. Abraham went to school when he was 6, 7, 11, 13, and 15 years old. All the time he went to school did not add up to a year. Abe did, though, remember much in between his schooling. At age 21 he could read, write, do arithmetic, and cipher to the rule of three, which was as much as most teachers in Indiana could do.
Abraham Lincoln's sister taught him and encouraged him to write. When he got tired of doing arithmetic, he would write poems. Many years later he wrote about how hard it was to find a school teacher. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. Since paper was hard to get, Abe sometimes wrote in the dust or snow. Abe had extremely good handwriting, so good in fact that neighbors would ask him to compose letters for them.
Abe received most of his education from the books he read. As he grew up, he became fascinated with books. He loved to read every minute of his spare time. When he went out to plow a field, he put a book under his shirt and read at the end of rows when the horses were resting. His best friend, Dennis Hanks, said, "I never saw Abe after he was 12, that he didn't have a book in his hand or in his pocket. It just didn't seem natural to see a guy read like that." Books were scarce in the backwoods, and each book he got was precious. The Lincolns did not have any books and Abe was forced to borrow. He was willing to walk miles to get a book that he might read over and over. Abe read everything he could get his hands on and once told his family, "My best friend is the man who will give me a book I haven't read." He read the Bible several times and other books such as Pilgrim's Progress and Aesop's Fables. His favorite book had a very long title: The Life of George Washington, With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honorable To Himself and Exemplary To His Young Countrymen. He tucked the book into a corner of the loft. During one night, rain from a big storm stained the cover of the book. To pay for the damage, Abe spent three days harvesting corn for the farmer from whom he borrowed it. George Washington later became one of Lincoln's heroes. One time, Abe walked twenty miles to borrow a book about the United States. In fact, he loved reading so much, he even read a spelling book. He used school books such as Murray's English Reader and Pike's Arithmetic.
Abraham Lincoln's childhood education was poor, but that did not matter. With determination and his love for reading, he became one of the greatest presidents of all time. When he was young he stood in doorways and on tree stumps and imitated speakers. He had no idea that someday he would be speaking to not only a country, but the world.
Growing to a muscular 6'4", he supported himself by manual labor until he was 21, when he settled in New Salem, Ill. There he continued his self-education while serving as storekeeper, militia captain in the Black Hawk War, and postmaster. In 1832, he lost a race for the state legislature but won a seat as a Whig 2 years later, serving 4 terms and gaining statewide popularity for his homespun wit and integrity. During this period, Lincoln also began his private study of law, borrowing books from a local attorney, and was licensed to practice in 1836.
A man of gentle spirit, Lincoln accepted the fact that only a vigorous prosecution of the war would restore the Union. His will to win never flagged despite enormous battle casualties and much political opposition, a substantial amount of it coming from members of his cabinet and from among the Radical Republicans.
Abraham
Lincoln
As commander in chief, Lincoln not only took care to win and keep the affection of the ordinary Union soldier but also displayed a surprising aptitude for military strategy. While he fumbled in his selection of generals, he learned from his mistakes. At considerable political risk, he dismissed the popular Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan because of his failure to lead the Army of the Potomac to victories. And despite pressure from ardent abolitionists, he countermanded premature efforts by army commanders to ban slavery in their jurisdiction. On Nov. 19, 1863, President Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery on the battlefield at Gettysburg, where a few months earlier over 7,000 men had died. Although Lincoln's address received little attention at the time, it has since come to be esteemed as one of the finest speeches in the English language and is inscribed on the South wall of the Lincoln memorial.
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Ever the masterful politician, he always took care not to alienate his basic constituency, the ordinary citizenry of Northern and Western states, while advancing the progress of the war. His Emancipation Proclamation was carefully framed to avoid offense to loyal but slaveowning states; only those slaves in Confederate-controlled areas were declared free at that early stage of the war.
The humane character of Lincoln was best demonstrated by his policy of reconciliation with the South, as expressed in his second inaugural address, March 4, 1865, in which he spoke of "malice toward none" and "charity for all."
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it -- all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
His death from an assassins bullet a few weeks later on April 15, not only cut short a great mans life but also delayed the restoration of the American union. The fate of the nation passed into the hands of lesser men.
4 years old Anika with six months old cousin Anushka
CHAPTER VII – TWO INCIDENTS CHANGE GANDHI’S LIFE
5 years old Anika with Amma
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, India. He became one of the most respected spiritual and political leaders of the 1900's. Gandhi helped free the Indian people from British rule through nonviolent resistance, and is honored by Indians as the father of the Indian Nation.
Gandhi studied law in London and returned to India in 1891 to practice. He writes in his Autobiogrophy:
Mahatma Gandhi
I got the first shock of my life about this time. I had heard what a British officer was like, but up to now had never been face to face with one.
My brother had been secretary and adviser to the late Ranasaheb of Porbandar before he was installed on his gadi1, and hanging over his head at this time was the charge of having given wrong advice when in that office. The matter had gone to the Political Agent who was prejudiced against my brother. Now I had known this officer when in England, and he may be said to have been fairly friendly to me. My brother thought that I should avail myself of the friendship and, putting in a good word on his behalf, try to disabuse the Political Agent of his prejudice. I did not at all like this idea. I should not, I thought, try to take advantage of a trifling acquaintance in England. If my brother was really at fault, what use was my recommendation? If he was innocent, he should submit a petition in the proper course and, confident of his innocence, face the result. My brother did not relish this advice. 'You do not know Kathiawad', he said, 'and you have yet to know the world. Only influence counts here. It is not proper for you, a brother, to shirk your duty, when you can clearly put in a good word about me to an officer you know.'
I could not refuse him, so I went to the officer much against my will. I knew I had no right to approach him and was fully conscious that I was compromising my self-respect. But I sought an appointment and got it. I reminded him of the old acquaintance, but I immediately saw that Kathiawad was different from England; that an officer on leave was not the same as an officer on duty. The political Agent owned the acquaintance, but the reminder seemed to stiffen him. 'Surely you have not come here to abuse that acquaintance, have you?' appeared to be the meaning of that stiffness, and seemed to be written on his brow. Nevertheless I opened my case. The sahib was impatient. 'Your brother is an intriguer. I want to hear nothing more from you. I have no time. If your brother has anything to say, let him apply through the proper channel.' The answer was enough, was perhaps deserved. But selfishness is blind. I went on with my story. The sahib got up and said: 'You must go now.'
'But please hear me out,' said I. That made him more angry. He called his peon and ordered him to show me the door. I was still hesitating when the peon came in, placed his hands on my shoulders and put me out of the room. The sahib went away as also the peon, and I departed, fretting and fuming. I at once wrote out and sent over a note to this effect: 'You have insulted me. You have assaulted me through your peon. If you make no amends, I shall have to proceed against you.' Quick came the answer through his sowar:
'You were rude to me. I asked you to go and you would not. I had no option but to order my peon to show you the door. Even after he asked you to leave the office, you did not do so. He therefore had to use just enough force to send you out. You are at liberty to proceed as you wish.'
With this answer in my pocket, I came home crest-fallen, and told my brother all that had happened. He was grieved, but was at a loss as to how to console me. He spoke to his vakil friends. For I did not know how to proceed against the sahib. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta happened to be in Rajkot at this time, having come down from Bombay for some case. But how could a junior barrister like me dare to see him? So I sent him the papers of my case, through the vakil who had engaged him, and begged for his advice. 'Tell Gandhi,' he said, 'such things are the common experience of many vakils and barristers. He is still fresh from England, and hot-blooded. He does not know British officers. If he would earn something and have an easy time here, let him tear up the note and pocket the insult. He will gain nothing by proceeding against the sahib, and on the contrary will very likely ruin himself. Tell him he has yet to know life.'
The advice was as bitter as poison to me, but I had to swallow it. I pocketed the insult, but also profited by it. 'Never again shall I place myself in such a false position, never again shall I try to exploit friendship in this way,' said I to myself, and since then I have never been guilty of a breach of that determination. This shock changed the course of my life.
In 1893 he took on a one-year contract to do legal work in South Africa. At the time the British controlled South Africa. Shortly after his arrival, Gandhi became involved in a second incident ending in defeat and ejection. A lawsuit required Gandhi’s presence in Pretoria. Let us hear Gandhi’s own narration:
On the seventh or eighth day after my arrival, I left Durban. A first class seat was booked for me. It was usual there to pay five shillings extra, if one needed a bedding. Abdulla Sheth insisted that I should book one bedding but, out of obstinacy and pride and with a view to saving five shillings, I declined. Abdulla Sheth warned me. 'Look, now,' said he, 'this is a different country from India. Thank God, we have enough and to spare. Please do not stint yourself in anything that you may need.' I thanked him and asked him not to be anxious.
The train reached Maritzburg, the capital of Natal, at about 9 p.m. Beddings used to be provided at this station. A railway servant came and asked me if I wanted one. 'No,' said I, 'I have one with me.' He went away. But a passenger came next, and looked me up and down. He saw that I was a 'coloured' man. This disturbed him. Out he went and came in again with one or two officials. They all kept quiet, when another official came to me and said, 'Come along, you must go to the van compartment.'
'But I have a first class ticket,' said I. 'That doesn't matter,' rejoined the other. 'I tell you, you must go to the van compartment.'
'I tell you, I was permitted to travel in this compartment at Durban, and I insist on going on in it.' 'No, you won't,' said the official. 'You must leave this compartment, or else I shall have to call a police constable to push you out.' 'Yes, you may. I refuse to get out voluntarily.'
The constable came. He took me by the hand and pushed me out. My luggage was also taken out. I refused to go to the other compartment and the train steamed away. I went and sat in the waiting room, keeping my hand-bag with me, and leaving the other luggage where it was. The railway authorities had taken charge of it.
It was winter, and winter in the higher regions of South Africa is severely cold. Maritzburg being at a high altitude, the cold was extremely bitter. My over-coat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered. There was no light in the room. A passenger came in at about midnight and possibly wanted to talk to me. But I was in no mood to talk.
I began to think of my duty. Should I fight for my rights or go back to India, or should I go on to Pretoria without minding the insults, and return to India after finishing the case? It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation. The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial – only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent that would be necessary for the removal of the colour prejudice. So I decided to take the next available train to Pretoria.
The following morning I sent a long telegram to the General Manager of the Railway and also informed Abdulla Sheth, who immediately met the General Manager. The Manager justified the conduct of the railway authorities, but informed him that he had already instructed the Station Master to see that I reached my destination safely. Abdulla Sheth wired to the Indian merchants in Maritzburg and to friends in other places to meet me and look after me. The merchants came to see me at the station and tried to comfort me by narrating their own hardships and explaining that what had happened to me was nothing unusual. They also said that Indians traveling first or second class had to expect trouble from railway officials and white passengers. The day was thus spent in listening to these tales of woe. The evening train arrived. There was a reserved berth for me. I now purchased at Maritzburg the bedding ticket I had refused to book at Durban.
The train reached Charlestown in the morning. There was no railway, in those days, between Charlestown and Johannesburg, but only a stage-coach, which halted at Standerton for the night en route. I possessed a ticket for the coach, which was not cancelled by the break of the journey at Maritzburg for a day; besides, Abdulla Sheth had sent a wire to the coach agent at Charlestown.
But the agent only needed a pretext for putting me off, and so, when he discovered me to be a stranger, he said, 'Your ticket is cancelled.' I gave him the proper reply. The reason at the back of his mind was not want of accommodation, but quite another. Passengers had to be accommodated inside the coach, but as I was regarded as a 'coolie' and looked a stranger, it would be proper, thought the 'leader', as the white man in charge of the coach was called, not to seat me with the white passengers. There were seats on either side of the coachbox. The leader sat on one of these as a rule. Today he sat inside and gave me his seat. I knew it was sheer injustice and an insult, but I thought it better to pocket it. I could not have forced myself inside, and if I had raised a protest, the coach would have gone off without me. This would have meant the loss of another day, and Heaven only knows what would have happened the next day. So, much as I fretted within myself, I prudently sat next the coachman.
At about three o'clock the coach reached Pardekoph. Now the leader desired to sit where I was seated, as he wanted to smoke and possibly to have some fresh air. So he took a piece of dirty sack-cloth from the driver, spread it on the footboard and, addressing me, said, 'Sami, you sit on this, I want to sit near the driver.' The insult was more than I could bear. In fear and trembling I said to him, 'It was you who seated me here, though I should have been accommodated inside. I put up with the insult. Now that you want to sit outside and smoke, you would have me sit at your feet. I will not do so, but I am prepared to sit inside.'
As I was struggling through these sentences, the man came down upon me and began heavily to box my ears. He seized me by the arm and tried to drag me down. I clung to the brass rails of the coachbox and was determined to keep my hold even at the risk of breaking my wrist bones. The passengers were witnessing the scene - the man swearing at me, dragging and belabouring me, and I remaining still. He was strong and I was weak. Some of the passengers were moved to pity and exclaimed: 'Man, let him alone. Don't beat him. He is not to blame. He is right. If he can't stay there, let him come and sit with us.' 'No fear,' cried the man, but he seemed somewhat crestfallen and stopped beating me. He let go my arm, swore at me a little more, and asking the Hottentot servant who was sitting on the other side of the coachbox to sit on the footboard, took the seat so vacated.
These two episodes made the man. When he encountered injustice at Maritsburg he did not bend, he took avoidable punishment out of which, however, came a resolution to combat the dread disease of racial prejudice. Intransigence and personal suffering highlighted the principle at stake and emphasized the need of fighting for it. In another incident, the magistrate of a Durban court ordered Gandhi to remove his turban, which he refused to do. These events were a turning point in his life, awakening him to social injustice and influencing his subsequent social activism. It was through witnessing firsthand the racism, prejudice and injustice against Indians in South Africa that Gandhi started to question his people's status within the British Empire, and his own place in society.
Gandhi extended his original period of stay in South Africa to twenty-one years during which he not only increased his moral and intellectual stature but became a successful leader and a lawyer.
Eventually he was proclaimed a Mahatma.
Gandhi is regarded as the father of non-violence, and he became an
extraordinary leader of peace and human rights. With nothing but simplicity,
truth and honesty, Gandhi developed a powerful weapon, Satyagraha, which means
'insistence on truth using non-violent non-cooperation', and employed it
successfully to win freedom, independence, reform and equality of all human
beings.
Numerous
leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela, employed
Gandhi's tools to accomplish some extraordinary results in their own struggles.
At a prayer meeting on 30th January 1948 one Nathuram Godse planted himself two feet in front of the Mahatma and fired three times. “Hey Ram,” he murmured, and was instantly dead.
Anika you can learn and implement two important lessons from Gandhi’s life right away.
First, lead a simple, stress-free life. Gandhi never got stressed. He meditated daily and spent hours in reflection and prayer. Though he was a world leader and idolised by millions, he continued to lead a simple life with few distractions and commitments.
Second, let your life be your message. Though he was a prolific writer and powerful speaker, in private Gandhi spoke very quietly and only when necessary. He was also very punchy and concise in his writing. He preferred to let his life do the talking for him.
2 years old Anika in her mother Ira’s lap with Amma in foreground and uncle Varun in background
CHAPTER VIII – HUMOUR OF MARK TWAIN
12 year old Anika laughing heartily at Kiran’s words of wisdom at New York Metro Station
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[ better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.
He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty
Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age, and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."
Mark Twain is known for his wit and humor. His wit, humor, and wisdom helped his lectures to be well received.
Mark Twain wrote in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer":
"...part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in."
He also wrote:
"I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game--the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but I have done my best to entertain them, for they can get instruction elsewhere."
In a petition to the Queen of England (requesting an exemption from the English tax on royalties), in 1887, Twain wrote:
"Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free."
In a letter to George Bainton, Mark Twain wrote:
"Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style."
In Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom, Huck and Jim
travel across the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air
balloon. They started out with a mad-genius professor, who wants to prove all
of his critics wrong by crossing the ocean in a fantastic balloon. Huck says of
the fellow: "As near as I can make out, geniuses think they know it all,
and so they won't take people's advice, but always go their own way..."
The Professor's way didn't last long, until he left Tom, Huck and Jim to their
own devices. Huck says, "And it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the
big sky up there, empty and awful deep, and the ocean down there without a
thing on it but just the waves... It made a body feel creepy, it was so creepy
and unaccountable."
From their height, they create stories about the people they see below. Huck
says, "you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their
sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you..." They see
wild animals and bandits, but they also experience some of the greatest wonders
of the world.
Twain’s No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger is different than many of his other
works. The novel is set in a medieval Austrian town. We wonder: Who is human?
What is real? What is human kindness? Or savagery? Is it kindness to let a poor
mad woman burn at the stake? And, then hope that she will receive her eternal
reward for her endurance? The pages are filled with invisibility, of magic and
much more. In fact, it's all "a vision, a dream..." No. 44 says,
"And you are not you — you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a
thought."
In this work, Mark Twain writes, "A man originates nothing in his head, he
merely observes exterior things and combines them in his head — puts several
things together and draws a conclusion. His mind is merely a machine..."
So, where does that all leave us?
Why, at the end, of course. No. 44 says,
"You perceive now, that these things are all
impossible, except in a dream. You perceive that they are all pure and puerile
insanities, the silly creatures of an imagination that is not conscious of its
freaks — in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it."
He says, "It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists
but You..." Then, "he vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and
realized, that all he had said was true."
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) was published
in 1884 in England and 1885
in the U.S.
The story takes place in the Mississippi
Valley "forty to fifty years
ago," or about the time of Twain's own boyhood in Hannibal,
Missouri, a town much like Huck’s hometown, St. Petersburg, Missouri.
Unlike his imaginative friend Tom Sawyer, who reads chivalric adventure stories
and loves to play games of make believe, Huck is a realist. He tolerates the
efforts of his caretakers, the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson, to “sivilize”
him, but his preference would be to live barefoot in rags, smoking his pipe and
fishing in the river.
The appearance of Huck’s “Pap,” an abusive drunk, serves as an inciting
incident, prompting Huck to fake his own death and escape down the river.
However, the two main plot lines of the story revolve around Huck’s friendship
with a runaway slave named Jim, and his adventures with two con men who attach
themselves to Huck and Jim. Huck struggles with his conscience over whether he
should turn Jim in or help him escape like “a low down Abolitionist.” Likewise,
the greedy exploits of the con men disgust Huck, making him feel “ashamed of
the human race.” Twain’s choice to let Huck tell his own story adds to the
realism of the narrative, while allowing Twain to satirize certain social
customs. For example, Huck is quick to point out the hypocrisy of Widow
Douglas’ admonition that he should not smoke tobacco while she herself uses
snuff (a ground form of tobacco). Twain also highlights ironies Huck overlooks.
For example, Huck ridicules the Christian faith of Miss Watson and Widow
Douglas, which he regards as pointless. Yet the first chapter reveals that Huck
is a slave to superstition when he inadvertently kills a spider, which he
believes to bring bad luck, then performs a number of rituals in an effort to
stave off the impending calamity he is convinced will befall him. Twain’s humor
is largely expressed through irony and sarcasm. By portraying people with
realism and shunning sentimentality, Twain makes a strong statement about human
foibles and societal hypocrisy.
Mark Twain
Here are some of the famous Mark Twain’s quotes:
Better a broken promise than none at all.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak
out and remove all doubt.
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The
biography of the man himself cannot be written.
Buy land, they're not making it anymore.
By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I
mean.
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of
unnecessary necessities.
'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence
on society.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of
fear.
Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish
the rest.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world
owes you nothing. It was here first.
Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may
still exist, but you have ceased to live.
When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look,
it's a sure sign you're getting old.
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction,
after all, has to make sense.
Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.
When in doubt tell the truth.
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good
is nobler and no trouble.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
I have been complimented many times and they always
embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.
George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the
commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
15 year old Anika with
cousins Anoushka and Sanjana
CHAPTER IX – ALDOUS HUXLEY’S PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY
9 year old Anika at a seminar on Economics at the University of West Indies – Amma on her right and Kiran on her left
Perennial philosophy is the philosophical concept, which states that each of the world’s religious traditions shares a single truth. Perennial philosophy asserts that there is a single divine foundation of all religious knowledge, referred to as the universal truth. Each world religion, independent of its cultural or historical context, is simply a different interpretation of this knowledge.
World religions including, but not limited to, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Sikhism and Buddhism, are all derived from the same universal truth. Although the sacred scriptures of these world religions are undeniably diverse and often oppose each other, each world religion has been formed to fit the social, mental and spiritual needs of their respective epoch and culture. Therefore, perennial philosophy maintains that each world religion has flourished from the foundation of the same universal truth, making these differences superficial and able to be cast aside to find religion’s deeper spiritual meaning.
Aldous Huxley
According to a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank, Aldous Huxley (1894 -1963), the perennial philosophy is:
the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions
The central idea of the
perennial philosophy is that there exists Divine Truth, Divine Reality which is
one and universal, and that different religions are different ways to express
that one Truth. However as Huxley writes this one Divine Reality cannot be
directly and immediately apprehended except by those whom we generally give the
name of 'saint' or 'prophet', 'sage' or 'enlightened one' and the only way is
to study, reflect and comprehend their experience, works and writings.
"If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best
thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those
who were, and who, because they had modified their merely human mode of being,
were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge" -
writes Huxley in the introduction to his ‘The Perennial Philosophy’.
This chapter is a collection of sayings of some of those sages and saints as quoted by Huxley.
Based upon the direct experience of those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions of such knowledge, this teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ("That art thou"); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being is to discover the fact for himself, to find out Who he really is.
The more God is in all things, the more He is outside them. The more He is within, the more without. -- Eckhart
Only the transcendent, the completely other, can be immanent without being modified by the becoming of that in which it dwells. The Perennial Philosophy teaches that it is desirable and indeed necessary to know the spiritual Ground of things, not only within the soul, but also outside in the world and, beyond world and soul, in its transcendent otherness -- "in heaven."
Though GOD is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. The natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of his habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the eternity -- I had almost said the infinity -- of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God. -- William Law’
All the following passages are taken from ninth century Indian saint Shankara’s work.
The Atman is that by which the universe is pervaded, but which nothing pervades; which causes all things to shine, but which all things cannot make to shine. . .
The wise man is one who understands that the essence of Brahman and of Atman is Pure Consciousness, and who realizes their absolute identity.
Caste, creed, family and lineage do not exist in Brahman. Brahman has neither name nor form, transcends merit and demerit, is beyond time, space and the objects of sense-experience. Such is Brahman, and ' thou art That.' Meditate upon this truth within your consciousness.
The truth of Brahman may be understood intellectually. But
(even in those who so understand) the desire for personal separateness is deep-rooted and powerful, for it exists from beginningless time. It creates the notion, 'I am the actor, I am he who experiences.' This notion is the cause of bondage to conditional existence, birth and death. It can be removed only by the earnest effort to live constantly in union with Brahman. By the sages, the eradication of this notion and the craving for personal separateness is called Liberation.
When a man follows the way of the world, or the way of the flesh, or the way of tradition (i.e. when he believes in religious rites and the letter of the scriptures, as though they were intrinsically sacred), knowledge of Reality cannot arise in him. The wise say that this threefold way is like an' iron chain, binding the feet of him who aspires to escape from the prison-house of this world. He who frees himself from the chain achieves Deliverance.
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be
enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as
transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and 'spiritual exercises,' by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. It is a significant historical fact that the poet-saint Kabir is claimed as a co-religionist both by Moslems and Hindus. The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars.
Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you
astray. – Kabir
I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me,
' O' thoul!' - Bayazid of Bistun
Two of the recorded anecdotes about this Sufi saint deserve to be quoted here. 'When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, "Four years." They said, "How can that be?" He answered, "I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one's life.'" On another occasion someone knocked at the saint's door and cried, 'Is Bayazid here?' Bayazid answered, 'Is anybody here except God?'
The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge. Eckhart
Our starting point has been the psychological doctrine,
'That art thou. The question that now quite naturally presents itself is a metaphysical one: What is the That to
which the thou can discover itself to be akin ? To this the fully developed Perennial Philosophy has at all times and in all places given fundamentally the same answer. The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances)
susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of
man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to 'die to self and so make room, as it were, for God. Out of any given generation of men and women very few will achieve the final end of human existence; but the opportunity for coming to unitive knowledge will, in one way or another, continually be offered until all sentient beings realize Who in fact they are.
Who is God ? I can think of no better answer than. He who is. Nothing is more appropriate to the eternity which God is. If you call God good, or great, or blessed, or wise, or anything else of this sort, it is included in these words, namely, He is. St. Bernard
The bodies of human beings are affected by the good or bad
states of their minds. Analogously, the existence at the heart
of things of a divine serenity and goodwill may be regarded as one of the reasons why the world's sickness, though chronic, has not proved fatal. And if, in die psychic universe, there should be other and more than human consciousnesses obsessed by thoughts of evil and egotism and rebellion, this would account, perhaps, for some of the quite extravagant and improbable wickedness of human behaviour.
Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union, and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the 'thou' from the 'That’.
God requires a faithful fulfilment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called. St. Franfois de Sales
When a man lacks discrimination, his will wanders in all directions, after innumerable aims. Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture ; but they are really denying its inner truth. They are full of worldly desires and hungry for the rewards of heaven. They use beautiful figures of speech; they teach elaborate rituals, which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who practise them. But, actually, they understand nothing except the law of Karma that chains men to rebirth.
Those whose discrimination is stolen away by such talk grow
deeply attached to pleasure and power. And so they are unable to develop that one-pointed concentration of the will, which leads a man to absorption in God. Bhagavad-Gita
For my part, I think the chief reason which prompted the invisible God to become visible in the flesh and to hold converse with men was to lead carnal men, who are only able to love carnally, to the healthful love of his flesh, and afterwards, little by little, to spiritual love. St. Bernard
In Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, as also among the Sufis, spirit and Spirit are held to be the same substance; Atman is Brahman; That art thou.
God in the world is best described by Trehan.
When not enlightened, Buddhas are no other than ordinary
beings; when there is enlightenment, ordinary beings at once
turn into Buddhas. Hid Neng
Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning
you awake in Heaven ; see yourself in your Father's palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys ; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband's chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you. You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars ; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made ; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own ; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning. Yet further, you never enjoyed the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error. The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said, God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place ! This is none other than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. Thomas Traherne
In the Diamond Sutra we read that if a Bodhisattva, in his attempt to realize Suchness, 'retains the thought of an ego, a person, a separate being, or a soul, he is no longer a Bodhisattva.' Al-Ghazzali, the philosopher of Sufism, also stresses the need for intellectual humbleness and docility. 'If the thought that he is effaced from self occurs to one who is in fana (a term roughly corresponding to Zen's "no-mind," or mushin\ that is a defect. The highest state is to be effaced from effacement.' There is an ecstatic effacement from effacement in the interior heights of the Atman-Brahman; and there is another, more comprehensive effacement-from effacement, not only in the inner heights, but also in and through the world, in the waking, everyday knowledge of God in his fullness.
How profound can be the spiritual ignorance by which 'enslavers of Heaven's ordinances' are punished is indicated by the behaviour of Cardinal Richelieu on his death-bed. The priest who attended him urged the great man to prepare his soul for its coming ordeal by forgiving all his enemies. 'I have never had any enemies,' the Cardinal replied with the calm sincerity of an ignorance which long years of intrigue and avarice and ambition had rendered as absolute as had been his political power, 'save only those of the State.' Like Napoleon, but in a different way, he was 'feeling heaven's power,' because he had refused to feel charity and therefore refused to know the whole truth about his own soul or anything else.
Feelings may be of service as motives of charity; but charity as charity has its beginning in the will - will to peace and humility in oneself, will to patience and kindness
towards one's fellow-creatures, will to that disinterested love of God which 'asks nothing and refuses nothing.' But the will can be strengthened by exercise and confirmed by perseverance. This is very clearly brought out in the following record delightful for its Boswellian vividness of a conversation between the young Bishop of Belley and his beloved friend and master, Francis de Sales.
I once asked the Bishop of Geneva what one must do to attain
perfection.
‘You must love God with all your heart,' he answered, 'and your neighbour as yourself’
'I did not ask wherein perfection lies,' I rejoined, 'but how to
attain it.' 'Charity,' he said again, *that is both the means and the end, the only way by which we can reach that perfection which is, after all, but Charity itself. . . . Just as the soul is the life of the body, so charity is the life of the soul.'
'I know all that,' I said. ' But I want to know how one is to love God with all one's heart and one's neighbour as oneself.'
But again he answered, 'We must love God with all our hearts, and our neighbour as ourselves.'
'I am no further than I was,' I replied. 'Tell me how to
acquire such love.'
'The best way, the shortest and easiest way of loving God with all one's heart is to love Him wholly and heartily !'
He would give no other answer. At last, however, the Bishop
said, 'There are many besides you who want me to tell them of methods and systems and secret ways of becoming perfect, and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working ; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. If you want to love God, go on loving Him more and more. Begin as a mere apprentice, and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master in the art. Those who have made most progress will continually press on, never believing themselves to have reached their end ; for charity should go on increasing until we draw our last breath.' Jean Pierre Camus
Listening four or five times a day to newscasters and commentators, reading the morning papers and all the weeklies and monthlies nowadays, this is described as
taking an intelligent interest in politics. St. John of the Cross would have called it indulgence in idle curiosity and the cultivation of disquietude for disquietude's sake.
I want very little, and what I do want I have very little wish for. I have hardly any desires, but if I were to be born again, I should have none at all. We should ask nothing and refuse nothing, but leave ourselves in the arms of divine Providence without wasting time in any desire, except to will what God wills of us. St. Franfois de Sales
Or we may say, with Kabir, that 'the devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the streams of Ganges and Jumna.'
Suppose a boat is crossing a river and another boat, an empty one, is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there was someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if he did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case there was no anger, in the second there was because in the first case the boat was empty, in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only pass empty through life, who would be able to injure him ? Chuang Tiu
When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found. Anonymous Sufi Aphorism
It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with 'I,' 'me,' 'mine' that we can truly possess the world in which we live. Everything is ours, provided that we regard nothing as our property. And not only is everything ours ; it is also everybody else's.
When mortification is perfect, its most characteristic fruit is
simplicity. A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness; external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him; all exaggeration or unreality, affectation and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine. The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight only. Such Christian simplicity is the very perfection of interior life God, his will and pleasure, its sole object. N. Grou
To be absorbed in the world around and never turn a thought within, as is the blind condition of some who are carried away by what is pleasant and tangible, is one extreme as opposed to simplicity.
That soul which looks where it is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity. Such simplicity is indeed a great treasure. How shall we attain to it? I would give all I possess for it; it is the costly pearl of Holy Scripture.
The first step, then, is for the soul to put away outward things
and look within so as to know its own real interest; so far all is right and natural ; thus much is only a wise self-love, which seeks to avoid the intoxication of the world.
In the next step the soul must add the contemplation of God,
whom it fears, to that of self. This is a faint approach to the real wisdom, but the soul is still greatly self-absorbed : it is not satisfied with fearing God; it wants to be certain that it does fear Him and fears lest it fear Him not, going round in a perpetual circle of self-consciousness. All this restless dwelling on self is very far from the peace and freedom of real love ; but that is yet in the distance; the soul must needs go through a season of trial, and were it suddenly plunged into a state of rest, it would not know how to use it.
The third step is that, ceasing from a restless self-contemplation, the soul begins to dwell upon God instead, and by degrees forgets itself in Him. It becomes full of Him and ceases to feed upon self. Such a soul is not blinded to its own faults or indifferent to its own errors ; it is more conscious of them than ever, and increased light shows them in plainer form, but this selfknowledge comes from God, and therefore it is not restless or uneasy. Fenelon
What follows is a summary by an eminent scholar of the Indian doctrines concerningy'mz/za, the liberating knowledge of Brahman or the divine Ground.
Jnana is eternal, is general, is necessary and is not a personal
knowledge of this man or that man. It is there, as knowledge
in the Atman itself, and lies there hidden under all avidya (ignorance) irremovable, though it may be obscured, unprovable, because self-evident, needing no proof, because itself giving to all proof the ground of possibility. These sentences come near to Eckhart's 'knowledge' and to the teaching of Augustine on the Eternal Truth in the soul which, itself immediately certain, is the ground of all certainty and is a possession, not of A or B, but of 'the soul. RudolfOtto
The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensuous wonder. ... It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized. Visvanatha
In the course of the last thirty centuries many attempts have
been made to work out a classification system in terms of which human differences could be measured and described.
For example, there is the ancient Hindu method of classifying people according to the psycho-physico-social categories of caste. There are the primarily medical classifications associated with the name of Hippocrates, classifications in terms of two main 'habits' the phthisic and the apoplectic or of the four humours (blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile) and the four qualities (hot, cold, moist and dry). More recently there have been the various physiognomic systems of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the crude and merely psychological dichotomy of introversion and extraversion; the more complete, but still inadequate, psychophysical classifications proposed by Kretschmer, Stockard, Viola and others ; and finally the system, more comprehensive, more flexibly adequate to the complex facts than all those which preceded it, worked out by Dr. William Sheldon and
his collaborators.
In Hindu thought the outlines of adequate classification are clearly indicated. The ways leading to the delivering union with God are not two, but three the way of works, the way of knowledge and the way of devotion In the Bhagavad-Gita Sri Krishna instructs Arjuna in all three paths liberation through action without attachment; liberation through knowledge of the Self and the Absolute Ground of all being with which it is identical ; and liberation through intense devotion to the personal God or the divine incarnationl
Do without attachment the work you have to do ; for a man who does his work without attachment attains the Supreme Goal verily. By action alone men like Janaka attained perfection.
But there is also the way of Mary.
Freed from passion, fear and anger, absorbed in Me, taking refuge in Me, and purified by the fires of Knowledge, many have become one with my Being.
And again :
Those who have completely controlled their senses and are of
even mind under all conditions and thus contemplate the Imperishable, the Ineffable, the Unmanifest, theOmnipresent, the Incomprehensible, the Eternal they, devoted to the welfare of all beings, attain Me alone and none else.
But the path of contemplation is not easy.
The task of those whose minds are set on the Unmanifest is the more difficult ; for, to those who are in the body, the realization of the Unmanifest is hard. But those who consecrate all their actions to Me (as the personal God, or as the divine Incarnation), who regard Me as the supreme Goal, who worship Me and meditate upon Me with single-minded concentration for those whose minds are thus absorbed in Me, I become ere long the Saviour from the world's ocean of mortality.
The Sanskrit dharma one of the key words in Indian formulations of the Perennial Philosophy has two principal
meanings. The dharma of an individual is, first of all, his essential nature, the intrinsic law of his being and development. But dharma also signifies the law of righteousness and piety. The implications of this double meaning are clear : a man's duty, how he ought to live, what he ought to believe and what he ought to do about his beliefs these things are conditioned by his essential nature, his constitution and temperament. Going a good deal further than do the Catholics, with their doctrine of vocations, the Indians admit the right of individuals with different dharmas to worship different aspects or conceptions of the divine. Hence the almost total absence, among Hindus and Buddhists, of bloody persecutions, religious wars and proselytizing imperialism.
Primitive Buddhism is no less predominantly cerebrotonic
than primitive Christianity, and so is Vedanta, the metaphysical discipline which lies at the heart of Hinduism. Confucianism, on the contrary, is a mainly viscerotonic system familial, ceremonious and thoroughly this-worldly. And in Mohammedanism we find a system which incorporates strongly somatotonic elements. Hence Islam's black record of holy wars and persecutions a record comparable to that of later Christianity, after that religion had so far compromised with unregenerate somatotonia as to call its ecclesiastical organization 'the Church Militant’.
In India the caste system represents an attempt to subordinate military, political and financial power to spiritual authority ; and the education given to all classes still insists so strongly upon the fact that man's final end is unitive knowledge of God that even at the present time, even after nearly two hundred years of gradually accelerating Europeanization, successful somatotonics will, in middle life, give up wealth, position and power to end their days as humble seekers after enlightenment. In Catholic Europe, as in India, there was an effort to subordinate temporal power to spiritual authority ; but since the Church itself exercised temporal power through the agency of political prelates and mitred business men, the effort was never more than partially successful.
All over the world millions of young men and even of young women are being systematically educated to be 'tough' and to value 'toughness' beyond every other moral quality. With this system of somatotonic ethics is associated the idolatrous and polytheistic theology of nationalism a pseudo-religion far stronger at the present time for evil and division than is Christianity, or any other monotheistic religion, for unification and good.
Fear, worry, anxiety these form the central core of individualized selfhood. Fear cannot be got rid of by personal effort, but only by the ego's absorption in a cause greater than its own interests. Absorption in any cause will rid the mind of some of its fears ; but only absorption in the loving and knowing of the divine Ground can rid it of all fear.
My daughter, build yourself two cells. First a real cell, so that you do not run about much and talk, unless it is needful, or you can do it out of love for your neighbour. Next build yourself a spiritual cell, which you can always take with you, and that is the cell of true self-knowledge; you will find there the knowledge of
God's goodness to you. Here there are really two cells in one, and if you live in one you must also live in the other; otherwise the soul will either despair or be presumptuous. If you dwelt in self-knowledge alone, you would despair; if you dwelt in the knowledge of God alone, you would be tempted to presumption.
One must go with the other, and thus you will reach perfection.
St. Catherine of Siena
Deliverance is out of time into eternity, and is achieved by obedience and docility to the eternal Nature of Things. We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a 'state of grace.' All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine Reality.
Take note of this fundamental truth. Everything that works in nature and creature, except sin, is the working of God in nature and creature. The creature has nothing else in its power but the free use of its will, and its free will hath no other power but that of concurring with, or resisting, the working of God in nature. The creature with its free will can bring nothing into being, nor make any alteration in the working of nature; it can only change its own state or place in the working of nature, and so feel or find something in its state that it did not feel or find before.
William Law
Perpetual inspiration is as necessary to the life of goodness, holiness and happiness as perpetual respiration is necessary to animal life.
William Law
Conversely, of course, the life of goodness, holiness and beatitude is a necessary condition of perpetual inspiration. The relations between action and contemplation, ethics and
spirituality are circular and reciprocal. Each is at once cause
and effect.
The difference between a good and a bad man does not lie in this, that the one wills that which is good and the other does not, but solely in this, that the one concurs with the living inspiring spirit of God within him, and the other resists it, and can be chargeable with evil only because he resists it.
William Law
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Bhagavad-Gita
Men are not in hell because God is angry with them ; they are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light of the sun, who puts out his own eyes.
William Law
The crimes which are everywhere forbidden proceed from states of mind which are everywhere condemned as wrong; and these wrong states of mind are, as a matter of empirical fact, absolutely incompatible with that unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, which, according to the Perennial Philosophy, is the supreme good.
THE universe is an everlasting succession of events; but its
ground, according to the Perennial Philosophy, is the timeless now of the divine Spirit.
We come to the arguments directed against those who have asserted that the eternal Ground can be unitively known by human minds. This claim is regarded as absurd because it involves the assertion, ' At one time I am eternal, at another time I am in time.' But this statement is absurd only if man is a being of a twofold nature, capable of living on only one level. But if, as the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy have always maintained, man is not only a body and a psyche, but also a spirit, and if he can at will live either on the merely human plane or else in harmony and even in union with the divine Ground of his being, then the statement makes perfectly good sense. The body is always in time, the spirit is always timeless and the psyche is an amphibious creature compelled by the laws of man's being to associate itself to some extent with its body, but capable, if it so desires, of experiencing and being identified with its spirit and, through its spirit, with the divine Ground.
Past and future veil God from our sight ; Burn up both of them with fire. How long Wilt thou be partitioned by these segments, like a reed ? So long as a reed is partitioned, it is not privy to secrets, Nor is it vocal in response to lip and breathing.
Jalal-uddin Rumi
In the eleventh chapter of the Bhagwat Gita Arjuna realizes, with fear and trembling, that the God of the universe is a God of destruction as well as of creation.
Now with frightful tusks your mouths are gnashing,
Flaring like the fires of Doomsday morning
North, south, east and west seem all confounded
Lord of devas, world's abode, have mercy ! . . .
Swift as many rivers streaming to the ocean,
Rush the heroes to your fiery gullets,
Moth-like to meet the flame of their destruction.
Headlong these plunge into you and perish. . . .
Tell me who you are, and were from the beginning,
You of aspect grim. O God of gods, be gracious.
Take my homage, Lord. From me your ways are hidden.
'Tell me who you are.' The answer is clear and unequivocal.
I am come as Time, the waster of the peoples,
Ready for the hour that ripens to their ruin.
But the God who comes so terribly as Time also exists timelessly as the Godhead, as Brahman, whose essence is Sat, Chit, Ananda; Being, Awareness, Bliss ; and within and beyond man's time-tortured psyche is his spirit, 'uncreated and uncreatable as Eckhart says, the Atman which is akin to or even identical with Brahman. The Gita, like all other formulations of the Perennial Philosophy, justifies God's ways to man by affirming and the affirmation is based upon observation and immediate experience that man can, if he so desires, die to his separate
temporal selfness and so come to union with timeless Spirit.
It affirms, too, that the Avatar becomes incarnate in order to
assist human beings to achieve this union. This he does in
three ways by teaching the true doctrine in a world blinded
by voluntary ignorance; by inviting souls to a 'carnal love*
of his humanity, not indeed as an end in itself, but as the means to spiritual love-knowledge of Spirit; and finally by serving as a channel of grace.
The mere act of dying is not in itself a passport to eternity; nor can wholesale killing do anything to bring deliverance either to the slayers or the slain or their posterity. The peace that passes all understanding is the fruit of liberation into eternity; but in its ordinary everyday form peace is also the root of liberation. For where there are violent passions and compelling distractions, this ultimate good can never be realized. That is one of the reasons why the policy correlated with eternity-philosophies is tolerant and non-violent. The other reason is that the eternity, whose realization is the ultimate good, is a kingdom of heaven within. Thou art That; and though That is immortal and impassible, the killing and torturing of individual 'thous' is a matter of cosmic significance, inasmuch as it interferes with
the normal and natural relationship between individual souls and the divine eternal Ground of all being. Every violence is, over and above everything else, a sacrilegious rebellion against the divine order.
Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism
is a menace to permanent world peace. The reign of violence will never come to an end until, first, most human
beings accept the same, true philosophy of life; until, second, this Perennial Philosophy is recognized as the highest factor common to all the world religions ; until, third, the adherents of every religion renounce the idolatrous time-philosophies, with which, in their own particular faith, the Perennial Philosophy of eternity has been overlaid ; until, fourth, there is a world-wide rejection of all the political pseudo-religions, which place man's supreme good in future time and therefore justify and commend the commission of every sort of present iniquity as a means to that end. If these conditions are not fulfilled, no amount of political planning, no economic blue-prints however ingeniously drawn, can prevent the recrudescence of war and revolution.
For those who, within the various religious traditions, have accepted the Perennial Philosophy as a theory and have done their best to live it out in practice, ‘heaven’ is something else. They aspire to be delivered out of separate selfhood in time and into eternity as realized in the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Since the Ground can and ought to be unitively known in the present life (whose ultimate end and purpose is nothing but this knowledge), ' heaven ' is not an exclusively posthumous condition. He only is completely ‘saved’ who is delivered here and now. As to the means to salvation, these are simultaneously ethical, intellectual and spiritual and have been summed up with admirable clarity and economy in the Buddha's Eightfold Path. Complete deliverance is conditional on the following : first, Right Belief in the all too obvious truth that the cause of pain and evil is craving for separative, egocentred existence, with its corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil, whether personal or collective, except by getting rid of such craving and the obsession of 'I,' 'me,' 'mine' ; second, Right Will, the will to deliver oneself and others ; third, Right Speech, directed by compassion and charity towards all sentient beings ; fourth, Right Action, with the aim of creating and maintaining peace and goodwill; fifth, Right Means of Livelihood, or the choice only of such professions as are not harmful, in their exercise, to any human being or, if possible, any living creature ; sixth, Right Effort towards Self-control; seventh, Right Attention or Recollectedness, to be practised in all the circumstances of life, so that we may never do evil by mere thoughtlessness, because 'we know not what we do' ; and, eighth, Right Contemplation, the unitive knowledge of the Ground, to which recollectedness and the ethical self-naughting prescribed in the first six branches of the Path give access. Such then are the means which it is within the power of the human being to employ in order to achieve man's final end and be ' saved.'
'This body'is mortal, for ever in the clutch of death. But within it resides the Self, immortal, and without form. This Self, when associated in consciousness with the body, is subject to pleasure and pain ; and so long as this association continues, no man can find freedom from pains and pleasures. But when the association comes to an end, there is an end also of pain and pleasure. Rising above physical consciousness, knowing the Self as distinct from the sense-organs and the mind, knowing Him in his true light, one rejoices and one is free.'
From the Chandogya Upanishad
What some Christian sects call the new birth of God within the soul is essentially the same fact of experience as that which the Hindus, two thousand and more years before, described as the realization of the Self as within and yet transcendentally other than the individual ego.
Not by the slothful, nor the fool, the undiscerning, is that Nirvana to be reached, which is the untying of all knots.
Iti-vuttaka
There has been a widespread wish for and belief in Saviours who will step into our lives, above all at the hour of their termination, and, like Alexander, cut the Gordian knots which we have been too lazy to untie. But God is not mocked. The nature of things is such that the unitive knowledge of the Ground which is contingent upon the achievement of a total selflessness cannot possibly be realized, even with outside help, by those who are not yet selfless. The salvation obtained by belief in the saving power of Amida, say, or Jesus is not the total deliverance described in the Upanishads, the Buddhist scriptures and the writings of the Christian mystics. It is something not merely in degree, but in kind.
Talk as much philosophy as you please, worships as many gods as you like, observe all ceremonies, sing number of divine beings liberation never comes, even at the end of a hundred aeons, without the realization of the Oneness of Self.
Shankara
IMMORTALITY is participation in the eternal now of the
divine Ground; survival is persistence in one of the forms
of time. Immortality is the result of total deliverance. Survival is the lot of those who are partially delivered into some heaven, or who are not delivered at all, but find themselves, by the law of their own untranscended nature, compelled to choose some purgatorial or embodied servitude even more painful than the one they have just left.
I have maintained ere this and I still maintain that I already possess all that is granted to me in eternity. For God in the fullness of his Godhead dwells eternally in his image the soul.
Eckhart
Troubled or still, water is always water. What difference can
embodiment or disembodiment make to the Liberated ? Whether calm or in tempest, the sameness of the Ocean suffers no change.
Yogavasistha
The fact that one has been born in a human body is one of the things for which, says Shankara, one should daily give thanks to God.
Having achieved human birth, a rare and blessed incarnation, the wise man, leaving all vanity to those who are vain, should strive to know God, and Him only, before life passes into death.
Srimad Bhagavatam
Good men spiritualize their bodies; bad men incarnate their
souls.
Benjamin Whichcote
The nature of any individual's deliverance after death depends upon three factors : the degree of holiness achieved by him while in the body, the particular aspect of the divine Reality to which he gave his primary allegiance, and the particular path he chose to follow.
For oriental theologians there is no eternal damnation; there are only purgatories and then an indefinite series of second chances to go forward towards not only man's, but the whole creation's final end total reunion with the Ground of all being.
In the Vedanta cosmology there is, over and above the Atman or spiritual Self, identical with the divine Ground, something in the nature of a soul that reincarnates in a gross
or subtle body, or manifests itself in some incorporeal state.
This soul is not the personality of the defunct, but rather the
particularized I-consciousness out of which a personality arises.
Molinos (and doubtless he was not the first to use this classification) distinguished three degrees of silence of the mouth, silence of the mind and silence of the will. To refrain from idle talk is hard ; to quiet the gibbering of memory and imagination is much harder; hardest of all is to still the voices of craving and aversion within the will.
The folk-lore of the North American Indian is full of stories about people who fast and pray egotistically, in order to get more than a reasonable man ought to have, and who, receiving what they ask for, thereby bring about their own downfall. From the other side of the world come all the tales of the men and women who make use of some kind of magic to get their petitions answered always with farcical or catastrophic consequence. Hardly ever do the Three Wishes of our traditional fairy lore lead to anything but a bad end for the successful wisher.
Picture God as saying to you, ' My son, why is it that day by day you rise and pray, and genuflect, and even strike the ground with your forehead, nay, sometimes even shed tears, while you say to Me : "My Father, my God, give me wealth !"
If I were to give it to you, you would think yourself of some importance, you would fancy you had gained something very great. Because you asked for it, you have it. But take care to make good use of it. Before you had it you were humble ; now that you have begun to be rich you despise the poor. What kind of a good is that which only makes you worse? For worse you are, since you were bad already. And that it would make you worse you knew not; hence you asked it of Me. I gave it you and I proved you; you have found and you are found out ! Ask of Me better things than these, greater things than these. Ask of Me spiritual things. Ask of Me Myself.'
St. Augustine
The savour of wandering in the ocean of deathless life has rid me of all my asking; As the tree is in the seed, so all diseases are in this asking.
Kabir
The goal of creation is the return of all sentient beings out of separateness and that infatuating urge-to-separateness which results in suffering, through unitive knowledge, into the wholeness of eternal Reality.
The elements which make up man produce a capacity for pain.
The cause of pain is the craving for individual life.
Deliverance from craving does away with pain.
The way of deliverance is the Eightfold Path.
The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism
The righteous man can escape suffering only by accepting it and passing beyond it; and he can accomplish this only by being converted from righteousness to total selflessness and God-centredness, by ceasing to be just a Pharisee, or good citizen, and becoming “perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” The difficulties in the way of such a transfiguration are, obviously, enormous. But of those who'speak with authority’ who has ever said that the road to
complete deliverance was easy or the gate anything but ‘strait and narrow'?
Faith
'Faith,' which is a belief in propositions which we know we cannot verify, even if we should desire to do so propositions such as those of the Athanasian Creed or those which constitute the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. This kind of 'faith' is defined by the Scholastics as an act of the intellect moved to assent by the will.
This is the kind of faith which, according to Christian theologians, justifies and saves. In its extreme and most uncompromising form, such a doctrine can be very dangerous. Here, for example, is a passage from one of Luther's letters. ' Be a sinner and sin strongly ; but yet more strongly believe and rejoice in Christ, who is the conqueror of sin, death and the world. So long as we are as we are, there must be sinning; this life is not the dwelling place of righteousness’.
To the danger that faith in the doctrine of justification by faith may serve as an excuse for and even an invitation to sin must be added another danger, namely, that the faith which is supposed to save may be faith in propositions not merely unverifiable, but repugnant to reason and the moral sense, and entirely at variance with the findings of those who have fulfilled the conditions of spiritual insight into the Nature of Things.
The core and spiritual heart of all the higher religions is the
Perennial Philosophy; and the Perennial Philosophy can be
assented to and acted upon without resort to the kind of faith about which Luther was writing in the foregoing passage.
God is not mocked
Karma exists ; but its equivalence of act and award is not
always obvious and material, as the earlier Buddhist and Hebrew writers
ingenuously imagined that it should be. The bad man in prosperity may, all
unknown to himself, be darkened and corroded with inward rust, while the good
man under afflictions may be in the rewarding process of spiritual growth. No,
God is not mocked; but also, let us always remember, He is not understood.
But, you urge, if men sin from the necessity of their nature, they are excusable; you do not explain, however, what you would infer from this fact. Is it perhaps that God will be prevented from growing angry with them ? Or is it rather that they have deserved that blessedness which consists in the knowledge and love of God ? If you mean the former, I altogether agree that God does not grow angry and that all things happen by his decree. But I deny that, for this reason, all men ought to be happy. Surely men may be excusable and nevertheless miss happiness, and be tormented in many ways. A horse is excusable for being a horse and not a man ; but nevertheless he must needs be a horse and not a man. One who goes mad from the bite of a dog is excusable; yet it is right that he should die of suffocation. So, too, he who cannot rule his passions, nor hold them in check out of respect for the law, while he may be excusable on the ground of weakness, is incapable of enjoying conformity of spirit and knowledge and love of God; and he is lost inevitably.
Spinoza
Karma,' according to the Hindus, 'never dispels ignorance, being under the same category with it. Knowledge alone dispels ignorance, just as light alone dispels darkness.'
The aim and purpose of human life is the unitive knowledge
of God. Among the indispensable means to that end is right
conduct, and by the degree and kind of virtue achieved, the
degree of liberating knowledge may be assessed and its quality evaluated. In a word, the tree is known by its fruits; God is not mocked.
Tantum Religio Potuit Suadere Malorum
Throughout recorded history an incredible sum of mischief has been done by ambitious idealists, self-deluded by their own verbiage and a lust for power into a conviction that they were acting for the highest good of their fellow-men. In the past, the justification for such wickedness was 'God' or 'the Church,' or 'the True Faith'; today idealists kill and torture and exploit in the name of 'the Revolution,' 'the New
Order,' 'the World of the Common Man,' or simply 'the Future.'
The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs. 'How can you object to
die? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?'
Then, speaking from the pigs' point of view, he continued :
'It is better perhaps, after all, to live on bran and escape from the shambles.'
'But then,' he added, speaking from his own point of view,
'to enjoy honour when alive, one would readily die on a warshield or in the headsman's basket.'
So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted his own
point of view. In what sense, then, was he different from the
pigs?
Chuang Tzu
Anyone who sacrifices anything but his own person or his own interests is on exactly the same level as Chuang Tzu's pigs.
Zen is the name given to this branch of Buddhism, which keeps itself away from the Buddha. It is also called the mystical branch, because it does not adhere to the literal meaning of the sutras.
The extract that follows is a moving protest against the crimes and follies perpetrated in the name of religion by those sixteenth-century Reformers who had turned to God without turning away from themselves and who were therefore far more keenly interested in the temporal aspects of historic Christianity the ecclesiastical organization, the logic-chopping, the letter of Scripture than in the Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit, the eternal Reality in the selfless knowledge of whom stands man's eternal life. Its author was Sebastian Castellio, who was at one time Calvin's favourite disciple, but who parted company with his master when the latter burned Servetus for heresy against his own heresy. Fortunately Castellio was living in Basel when he made his plea for charity and common decency; penned in Geneva, it would have earned him torture and death.
If you, illustrious Prince (the words were addressed to the Duke of Wiirtemberg) had informed your subjects that you were coming to visit them at an unnamed time, and had requested them to be prepared in white garments to meet you at your coming, what would you do if on arrival you should find that, instead of robing themselves in white, they had spent their time in violent debate about your person some insisting that you were in France, others that you were in Spain ; some declaring that you would come on horseback, others that you would come by chariot; some holding that you would come with great pomp and others that you would come without any train or following? And what especially would you say if they debated not only with words, but with blows of fist and sword strokes, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them? 'He will come on horseback/ *No, he will not; it will be by chariot, 'You lie’ ‘I do not; you are the liar’ 'Take that' a blow with the fist. 'Take that' a sword-thrust through the body. Prince, what would you think of such citizens ? Christ asked us to put on the white robes of a pure and holy life ; but what occupies our thoughts? We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of his relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free will, of the nature of God, of the angels, of the condition of the soul after death of a multitude of matters that are not essential to salvation; matters, moreover, which can never be known until our hearts are pure; for they are things which must be spiritually perceived.
Idolatry
What follows is an extract from a very remarkable letter written in 1836 by Thomas Arnold to his old pupil and future biographer, A. P. Stanley. 'Fanaticism is idolatry; and it has the moral evil of idolatry in it; that is, a fanatic worships something which is the creation of his own desire, and thus even his self-devotion in support of it is only an apparent selfdevotion; for in fact it is making the parts of his nature or his mind, which he least values, offer sacrifice to that which he most values. The moral fault, as it appears to me, is the idolatry - the setting up of some idea which is most kindred to our own minds, and the putting it in the place of Christ, who alone cannot be made an idol and inspire idolatry, because He combines all ideas of perfection and exhibits them in their just harmony and combination. Now in my own mind, by its natural tendency - that is, taking my mind at its best truth and justice would be the idols I should follow; and they would be idols, for they would not supply all the food which the mind wants, and whilst worshipping them, reverence and humility and tenderness might very likely be forgotten. But Christ Himself includes at once truth and justice and all these other qualities too. . . . Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness, because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral nature, and the neglect fosters wickedness in the parts so neglected.'
The idolatrous worship of ethical values in and for themselves defeats its own object and defeats it not only because, as Arnold insists, there is a lack of all-round development, but also and above all because even the highest forms of moral idolatry are God-eclipsing and therefore guarantee the idolater against the enlightening and
liberating knowledge of Reality.
The Miraculous
The Sufis regard miracles as Veils' intervening between the
soul and God. The masters of Hindu spirituality urge their
disciples to pay no attention to the siddhis, or psychic powers, which may come to them unsought, as a by-product of one poined contemplation. The cultivation of these powers, they warn, distracts the soul from Reality and sets up insurmountable obstacles in the way of enlightenment and deliverance. A similar attitude is taken by the best Buddhist teachers, and in one of the Pali scriptures there is an anecdote recording the Buddha's own characteristically dry comment on a prodigious feat of levitation performed by one of his disciples. 'This,' he said, 'will not conduce to the conversion of the unconverted, nor to the advantage of the converted.' Then he went back to talking about deliverance.
Ritual, Symbol, Sacrament
Rites, sacraments, and ceremonials are valuable to the extent that they remind those who take part in them of the true Nature of Things, remind them of what ought to be and (if only they would be docile to the immanent and transcendent Spirit) of what actually might be their own relation to the world and its divine Ground. Theoretically any ritual or sacrament is as good as any other ritual or sacrament, provided always that the object symbolized be in fact some aspect of divine Reality and that the relation between symbol and fact be clearly defined and constant.
Men whose discrimination has been blunted by worldly desires, establish this or that ritual or cult and resort to various deities, according to the impulse of their inborn nature. But no matter what deity a devotee chooses to worship, if he has faith, I make his faith unwavering. Endowed with the faith I give him, he worships that deity and gets from it everything he prays for. In reality, I alone am the giver. But these men of small understanding pray only for what is transient and perishable. The worshippers of the devas will go to the devas. Those who worship Me will come to Me.
Bhagavad-Gita
Europe is full of old shrines, whose saints and Virgins and relics have lost the power and the second-hand psychic objectivity which they once possessed. Thus, when Chaucer lived and wrote, the deva called Thomas Becket was giving to any Canterbury pilgrim, who had sufficient faith, all the boons he could ask for. This once-powerful deity is now stone-dead ; but there are still certain churches in the West, certain mosques and temples in the East, where even the most irreligious and un-psychic tourist cannot fail to be aware of some intensely ‘numinous' presence’.
To most of us on most occasions things are not symbols and actions are not sacramental; and we have to teach ourselves, consciously and deliberately, to remember that they are.
The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except when actions are performed as worship of God. Therefore you must perform every action sacramentally (as if it were yajna, the sacrifice that, in its divine Logos-essence, is identical with the Godhead to whom it is offered), and be free from all attachment to results.
Bhagavad-Gita
Spiritual Exercises
St. Francois de Sales used to say, 'I hear of nothing but perfection on every side, so far as talk goes; but I see very few
people who really practise it. Everybody has his own notion of perfection. One man thinks it lies in the cut of his clothes, another in fasting, a third in almsgiving, or in frequenting the
Sacraments, in meditation, in some special gift of contemplation, or in extraordinary gifts or graces but they are all mistaken, as it seems to me, because they confuse the means, or the results, with the end and cause. ' For my part, the only perfection I know of is a hearty love of God, and to love one's neighbour as oneself. Charity is the only virtue which rightly unites us to God and man. Such union is our final aim and end, and all the rest is mere delusion.
Jean Pierre Camus
Spiritual exercises constitute a special class of ascetic practices, whose purpose is, primarily, to prepare the intellect and emotions for those higher forms of prayer in which the soul is essentially passive in relation to divine Reality, and secondarily, by means of this self-exposure to the Light and of the increased self-knowledge and self-loathing resulting from it, to modify character.
Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the
Beloved. There is no other secret to be learnt, and more than
this is not known to me.
Ansari of Heart
The simplest and most widely practised form of spiritual exercise is repetition of the divine name, or of some phrase affirming God's existence and the soul's dependence upon Him.
The word shall be thy shield and thy spear, whether thou
ridest on peace or on war. With this word thou shalt beat on
this cloud and this darkness above thee. With this word thou
shalt smite down all manner of thought under the cloud offorgetting. Insomuch that, if any thought press upon thee to ask what thou wouldst have, answer with no more words than with this one word (GOD or LOVE). And if he offer of his great learning to expound to thee that word, say to him that thou wilt have it all whole, and not broken nor undone. And if thou wilt hold fast to this purpose, be sure that that thought will no while bide.
The Cloud of Unknowing
In India the repetition of the divine name or the mantram (a
short devotional or doctrinal affirmation) is called japam and is a favourite spiritual exercise among all the sects of Hinduism and Buddhism. The shortest mantram is OM a spoken symbol that concentrates within itself the whole Vedanta philosophy. To this and other mantrams Hindus attribute a kind of magical power.
Constant repetition of 'this word GOD or this word LOVE' may, in favourable circumstances, have a profound effect upon the subconscious mind, inducing that selfless one-pointedness of will and thought and feeling, without which the unitive knowledge of God is impossible. Furthermore, it may happen that, if the word is simply repeated 'all whole, and not broken up or undone' by discursive analysis, the Fact for which the word stands will end by presenting itself to the soul in the form of an integral intuition. When this happens,
‘the doors of the letters of this word are opened' (to use the language of the Sufis) and the soul passes through into Reality.
In many cases, this effortless shift of attention will cause the distractions to lose their obsessive 'thereness' and, for a time at least, to disappear.
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Master's presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lord's presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
St Franfois de Sales
We come now to what may be called the spiritual exercises
of daily life. The problem, here, is simple enough how to keep oneself reminded, during the hours of work and recreation, that there is a good deal more to the universe than that which meets the eye of one absorbed in business or pleasure?
Whoever has God in mind. Simply and solely God, in all things, such a man carries God with him in all his works and into all places, and God alone does all his works. He seeks nothing but God, nothing seems good to him but God. He becomes one with God in every thought. Just as no multiplicity can dissipate God, so nothing can dissipate this man or make him multiple.
Eckhart
When you are walking alone, or elsewhere, glance at the general
will of God, by which He wills all the works of his mercy and justice in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and approve, praise and then love that sovereign will, all holy, all just, all beautiful. Glance next at the special will of God, by which He loves his own, and works in them in divers ways, by consolation and tribulation. And then you should ponder a little, considering the variety of consolations, but especially of tribulations, that the good suffer; and then with great humility approve, praise and love all this will. Consider that will in your own person, in all the good or ill that happens to you and may happen to you, except sin ; then approve, praise and love all that, protesting that you will ever cherish, honour and adore that sovereign will, and submitting to God's pleasure and giving Him all who are yours, amongst whom am I. End in a great confidence in that will, that it will work all good for us and our happiness. I add that, when you have performed this exercise two or three times in this way you can shorten it, vary it and arrange it, as you find best, for it should often be thrust into your heart as an aspiration.
St. Franfois de Sales
Perseverance and Regularity
To one of his spiritual children our dear father (St. Frangois de Sales) said, ' Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. I am glad you make a fresh beginning daily ; there is no better means of attaining to the spiritual life than by continually beginning again, and never thinking that we have done enough. How are we to be patient in bearing with our neighbour's faults, if we are impatient in bearing with our own ? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them; all profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind.'
Jean Pierre Camus
Contemplation, Action and Social Utility
The extracts that follow have been chosen in order to illustrate the older, truer, less familiar theses of the Perennial Philosophy.
Work is for the purification of the mind, not for the perception of Reality. The realization of Truth is brought about by discrimination, and not in the least by ten millions of acts.
Shankara
A thing may belong to the contemplative life in two ways, essentially or as a predisposition. . . . The moral virtues belong to the contemplative life as a predisposition. For the act of contemplation, in which the contemplative life essentially consists, is hindered both by the impetuosity of the passions and by outward disturbances. Now the moral virtues curb the impetuosity of the passions and quell the disturbance of outward occupations. Hence moral virtues belong to the contemplative life as a predisposition.
St. Thomas Aquinas
In Buddhism, as in Vedanta and in all but the most recent forms of Christianity, right action is the means by which the mind is prepared for contemplation. The first seven branches of the Eightfold Path are the active, ethical preparation for unitive knowledge of Suchness. Only those who consistently practice the Four Virtuous Acts, in which all other virtues are included namely, the requital of hatred by love, resignation, 'holy indifference' or desirelessness, obedience to the dharma or Nature of Things can hope to achieve the liberating realization that samsara and nirvana are one, that the soul and all other beings have as their living principle the Intelligible Light or Buddha-womb.
If the ways of devotion and works lead to liberation, it is because they lead into the way of knowledge. For total deliverance comes only through unitive knowledge. A soul which does not go on from the ways of devotion and works into the way of knowledge is not totally delivered, but achieves at the best the incomplete salvation of 'heaven.'
For the fully enlightened, totally liberated person, samsara and nirvana, time and eternity, the phenomenal and the Real, are essentially one. His whole life is an unsleeping and one-pointed contemplation of the Godhead in and through the things, lives, minds and events of the world of becoming. There is here no mutilation of the soul, no atrophy of any of its powers and capacities. Rather, there is a general enhancement and intensification of consciousness, and at the same time an extension and transfiguration.
We cannot hope to utter anything worth saying, unless we read and inwardly digest the utterances of our betters. We cannot act rightly and effectively unless we are in the habit of laying ourselves open to leadings of the divine Nature of Things. We must draw in the goods of eternity in order to be able to give out the goods of time. But the goods of eternity cannot be had except by giving up at least a little of our time to silently waiting for them. This means that the life in which ethical expenditure is balanced by spiritual income must be a life in which action alternates with repose, speech with alertly passive silence.
'What a man takes in by contemplation,' says Eckhart, 'that
he pours out in love.'
Daughters of Charity ought to love prayer as the body loves the soul. And just as the body cannot live without the soul, so the soul cannot live without prayer. And in so far as a daughter prays as she ought to pray, she will do well. She will not walk, she will run in the ways of the Lord, and will be raised to a high degree of the love of God.
St. Vincent de Paul
Households, cities, countries and nations have enjoyed great happiness, when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. . . . Such men not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.
Phib
Similar views are expressed by Al-Ghazzali, who regards the mystics not only as the ultimate source of our knowledge of the soul and its capacities and defects, but as the salt which preserves human societies from decay. 'In the time of the philosophers’ he writes, 'as at every other period, there existed some of these fervent mystics. God does not deprive this world of them, for they are its sustainers.' It is they who, dying to themselves, become capable of perpetual inspiration and so are made the instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit.
3 years old Anika
with cousin Arun, brother Kiran and Baba at Breakfast
CHAPTER X – 185 POINTS TO PONDER
One year old bewildered Anika with Amma and Baba
1. I am unique. There is no one else like me in the entire universe. I acknowledge and embrace the special qualities that make me the person that I am. Therefore I do not compare myself with other people.
2. My best hour is early in the morning when on waking at dawn I step on my roof. As I sit down to drink a glass of water, nearby I see roofs; further - a sprinkling of trees; beyond - a ridged hilltop perched on which I visualize a meditating Shiva that is actually glued to the top bar of our roof fence; then – sky with daily new slow-moving mosaic of clouds. I feel the gentle, pulsing waves of silence and allow it to cleanse me. I meditate for a minutes and find bliss within my soul.
3. I consider that caring for myself is no more selfish or self-centered than caring for the important people in my life. My willingness to see to my own needs facilitates my ability to ensure the well-being of others.
4. Here's what I tell anybody and this is what I believe. The greatest gift we have is the gift of life. We understand that. That comes from our Creator. We're given a body. Now you may not like it, but you can maximize that body the best it can be maximized.
5. Only the present moment exists. That is where life is (indeed it is the only place life can truly be found). Becoming aware of the ‘now’ has the added benefit that it will draw your attention away from your (negative) thoughts. Use mindfulness techniques to fully appreciate your surroundings and everything you are experiencing. Look and listen intently. Give full attention to the smallest details.
6. I ensure that most of my interpersonal interaction takes place on a plane of sincerity by making the choice to trust others until they give me some cause to question their integrity.
7. Going on a trip always adds much pleasure and excitement to my life – be it to my Gym, Bridge Club, a cricket match, homes of my daughters or friends; or traveling abroad.
8. Critically pondering the new ideas that I come across from books, internet or conversations enable me to draw new conclusions about the world around me and my place in it even at this age when I am in my seventies.
9. By instinct, I prefer some things - and some people – over others. And, sadly, what I do not prefer I avoid.
10. My life is interesting because I never had a quest for perfection and have rather aspired to do what was acceptable to my conscience.
11. The only person of whom I feel a little envious is George Santana, Spanish philosopher of 20th Century. He spent the entire World War II in Rome and when the liberating American soldiers asked him how he made out during the war, he replied: “I have no idea – I was living in eternity”.
12. We ensure that wisdom can flow freely into our private and professional lives when we are willing to pose the many questions that linger continuously in the forefront of our minds. While we may hesitate to articulate this burning curiosity because we fear our peers will deem us ignorant or green, we can fill in the gaps in our intellectual experience only when we are forthright about voicing our many inquiries.
13. We often remain entirely skeptical of advice or knowledge we have been given until we are afforded an opportunity to put it into practice in our own lives, in our own way. This is because it is only when we see for ourselves that we can truly grasp the significance of certain forms of experiential wisdom. Consequently, we should endeavor never to reject any advice from a reputable source without first considering how we can test it in a real-life situation.
14. The fear that others will perceive you as unintelligent can further influence your behavior, causing you to consciously avoid speaking your mind or asking questions.
15. "Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what's more than enough."
16. "We can learn a lot from trees: they're always grounded but never stop reaching heavenward."
17. "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong."
18. Weaving the thread of kindness into your everyday life can be as easy as choosing to offer a hearty “Good morning” and “Good night” to your coworkers or neighbors, a stranger on the street, or the grocery store clerk. When you commit a kind act, you are momentarily disconnected from your ego and bonded with the individual who has benefited from your kindness. Being fully present in each moment of your life facilitates kindness as it increases your awareness of the people around you. You’ll discover that each act of kindness you engage in makes the world, in some small way, a better place.
19. The sun also reminds us that our own shining truth is never extinguished. Our light shines within us at all times, no matter what else occurs around us. Though the sun gives us daily proof of its existence, sometimes our belief in our own light requires more time. If we think back, however, we can find moments when it showed itself and trust that we will see it again. Like the sun, our light is the energy that connects us to the movements of the universe and the cycles of life and is present at all times, whether we feel its glow or not.
20. Should you find yourself beset by annoyances, however, try to remember that you can choose whether you will carry them with you after the fact. No tragedy will befall you if you decide you would rather be happy than sad. Let go of any residual pain still within you
21. "It is the responsibility of every adult to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them."
22. "The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."
23. What is the current that makes machinery that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waste. What is the wind, what is it.
24. "It is one of my sources of happiness never to desire knowledge of other people's business."
25. When we take a realistic view of the virtues and faults of humanity as a whole, we can accept that people make mistakes without lingering over the disheartenment we naturally feel. Ultimately, we understand that the people who are a part of our lives, however much we love or revere these individuals, are on journeys similar to our own and prone to blunders. When you learn to both appreciate others’ humanity and forgive their errors today, your expectations regarding their conduct will be levelheaded and reasonable
26. "When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
27. Silent discord is understood rather than seen;
28. Since your experiences won’t be similar to others’ and your behavior will be shaped by those experiences, you may never stop reacting strongly to the challenging situations you encounter. Even if you are able to do nothing more than acknowledge what you are feeling and that there is little you can do to affect your current circumstances, in time you’ll alter your reaction to such circumstances. You can learn gradually to let negative thoughts come into your mind, recognize them, and then let them go. You may never reach a place of perfect peace, but you’ll find serenity in having done your best.
28. "I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse."
29. "A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything."
30. "It is infinitely more exciting to live a life of catastrophic failures than a life of could-haves, should-haves and would-haves."
31. "You are what you repeatedly do.
Excellence is not an event -- it is a habit."
32."Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help
them become what they are capable of becoming."-- J.W Von Goethe
33,"You have to start by changing the story you tell yourself about getting older... The minute you say to yourself, 'Time is everything, and I'm going to make sure that time is used the way I dream it should be used,' then you've got a whole different story."
34. "The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
35. It
is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is
the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and
the playtime.
36. "Real beauty isn't about symmetry or weight or makeup; it's about looking life right in the face and seeing all its magnificence reflected in your own."
37. Square your shoulders to the world, be not the kind to quit. It's not the load that weighs you down but the way you carry it.
38. "It is books that are the key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can."
39. "Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone."
40. "There are generations yet unborn, whose very lives will be shifted and shaped by the moves you make and the actions you take." Andy Andrews
41. "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward."
42. "If you haven't any
charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble."
Bob Hope
43. "Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned." Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
44. "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made." Robert Browning'wanting.' It is not logical, but it is often true."
45. "Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make yourself a happier and more productive person."-- Dr. David M. Burns
46. "We should be careful to
get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there; lest
we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down
on a hot stove lid again -- and that is well; but also she will never sit down
on a cold one anymore." -- Mark Twain
47. "The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out." – Macaulay
48. "Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next." -- Herbert Hoover
49. "No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." – Confucius
50. "You are the same today as you'll be in five years except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet
51. "There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." – Epictetus
52. The older I get, the more Hindu I become. V.S. Naipaul, Trinidadian novelist.
53. "Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place."-- Mark Twain
54. "Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." -- Lao Tzu
55. "You can do so much in 10 minutes' time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity." -- Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA
56. "Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody." -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
57. "We must let go of the
life we planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."
-- Joseph Campbell
58. "Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?"-- Babe Ruth
59. "The most pathetic
person in the world is someone who has sight but has no vision."
-- Helen Keller
60. One of the most beautiful lessons of Bhagwan Krishnas life is: never lose yourself due to external circumstances, never lose your smile, never lose your song Bhagwan Krishnas life was full of trials and tribulations, beginning on the day when He took birth in a locked jail cell and ending in the jungle shot by a hunters arrow. However, throughout it all through the innumerable challenges wrought upon Him He always maintained His divine smile. He always played His divine flute. Even after His physical flute was left with Radhaji, the song of Krishnas flute was always on, wherever He went. The song emanated from His very being. He never once said, Im in a bad mood today so I will not play my flute. No. Regardless of what the external world brought and wrought, the Song was on. This is a beautiful message for our own lives. Wherever He went, wherever He was, He was always blissful, always joyful, always shining His divine light upon others. When our hearts are full of God, then we live constantly in the most beautiful Golden Palace, regardless of where our bodies may be.
61. An old saying asks one never to go where one gets too much respect. This is because getting too much attention is a sure recipe for developing a temperament accustomed to throwing tantrums at the slightest perceived disrespect. Therefore, one should never cultivate the habit of receiving too much respect or honor.
62. "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." -- Nelson Mandela
63."Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence." – Unknown
64. The Bhagavad Gita explains, "As a blazing fire reduces the wood to ashes, O Arjuna, so does the fire of knowledge reduce all activity to ashes. There is nothing on earth which possesses such power to cleanse as wisdom. The perfect yogin finds this knowledge in himself by himself in due time."
65. Seek the Infinite, for that alone is Joy unlimited, imperishable, unfailing, self-sustaining, unconditioned, timeless. When you have this joy, human life becomes a paradise; the light, the grace, the power, the perfections of that which is highest in your inner consciousness, appear in your everyday life.
66. You may be someone who understands the true nature of reality, perceiving deeply that we all emanate from the same source, that we are all essentially one, and that we are here on earth to love one another. To understand this is to be awakened to the true nature of the self, and it is a blessing.
67. Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made." -- Robert H. Schuller
68. The mind is like milk. If you keep the mind in the world, which is like water, then the milk and water will get mixed. That is why people keep milk in a quiet place and let it set into curd, and then churn butter from it. Then that butter can easily be kept in the water. The mind will float detached on the water of the world. Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa
69. The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. Siddhartha Gautama (ca 566-486 bce)
70. "The one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: 'Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy lovingkindness.' Tolstoy ‘AK’
71. "Where the needle goes there goes the thread also."
72. But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon.
73. In short, there are two kinds of Hindus--a majority who worship in the temples without a philosophical background and those who do have such a background and take part in their religion, discussion of the higher knowledge and meditation upon it, feeling no need for the Gods or for temple worship. The Panchakshara Mantra, Aum Namah Sivaya, the center of the Vedas, is the link between the two, between Siddhanta and Vedanta, because it makes the mindrealize what it knows. Every Siddhantin knows a little about Vedanta and disregards it. And every Vedantin knows a bit about Siddhanta and disregards it. Through chanting Aum Namah Sivaya, finally you will realize what you know, including what you previously disregarded, and that blends the two--makes the whole person. The purusha becomes satisfied living in the physical body. The jiva becomes Siva.
74. In working through
challenges, it can be helpful to first empty all worries from our heads onto
the safe pages of our journal. Fears can be brought to light rather than
allowing them to haunt the dark corners of our subconscious. We may even feel
heaviness dissipate once our heads are free from clutter, leaving space for
inspiration and the creation of positive images in their place. Often in the
process of writing out all the details of an event that troubles us, something
that had been forgotten will come to the surface, providing a missing piece of
the puzzle. Then we can truly begin to come up with answers, and write them
down beside the worries to map the way from concern to constructive thought.
For capturing guidance and flashes of inspiration, journaling is ideal. This is
especially true in the case of dreams, which often fade as we awaken. While
working toward goals, keeping track of progress as well as guidance from
readings or divination tools can be encouraging. Though it can be difficult to
keep all of our guidance in the front of our minds, if we write it down it can
serve as a reminder whenever we need it. We can also use our journals to
converse with our higher selves or even the universe. Journaling offers yet
another way to unburden mind and spirit, while also creating a record of the
present and preserving our hopes and dreams for the future.
75. No one can think a thought for me in the way
that no one can don my hat for me.
(1929) Wittgenstein. Telling someone
something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not
be able to understand it.
76. "Whatever acts a good or bad man may do, the fruits thereof follow him and will never stop pursuing him." -- Sri Sai Baba
77. Whenever you have the chance, laugh as much as you can. By this all the rigid knots in your body will be loosened. But to laugh superficially is not enough; your whole being must be united in laughter, both inwardly and outwardly. Do you know how this is to be expressed? You literally shake with merriment from head to foot; so that it is impossible to tell which part of your body is most affected. I want you to laugh with your whole countenance, with your whole heart and with all the breath of your life. Anandamayi–Her Life and Wisdom by Richard Lannoy
78. "It isn't sufficient just to want - you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
79."Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work. Twain
80.
"A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than
any wonder drug."
-- Patricia Neal
81. As long as we are in touch with our higher selves, our egos are not a threat. They are simply useful tools in the service of spirit. We keep our egos in check when we continually nurture our awareness of who we really are. Then our egos are free to serve without trying ineffectually to rule. It is healthy to have ego, but like all things in life, ego functions best when it is in balance and harmony with your whole self.
82. "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." -- Carl Jung
83. "Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think." – Horace
84. "Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice." -- Wayne Dyer
85. Every child comes with the
message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
Rabindranath Tagore
86. "The
future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts
and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but
unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and
humanity of mankind." -- Li Ka Shing
87. Children, love can accomplish anything and everything. Love can cure diseases. Love can heal wounded hearts and transform human minds. Mata Amritanandamayi Ma, or Ammachi.
88. To hear of the Self is a great blessing, indeed, but to desire to realize the Self means that in this and your past lives you have gone through all of the experiences that this Earth consciousness has to offer. You have died all of the deaths and had all of the emotional experiences. You have had the good of the world and the bad of the world, and the mixed good and bad of the world through all of your many lives before you come to the life where you say, "I want to realize the Self in this life." Now you begin to tie up all the loose ends of past experiences that have not been fulfilled or resolved, because those loose ends are what bring you back to birth.
89. "The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." -- Carlos Castaneda
90. John F. Kennedy loved a little proverb he thought was Irish, but actually came from the Indian epic Ramayana: There are three things which are real–God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.
91. Siva's ardent souls grow old gracefully, without fear, knowing that the soul is immortal and the mental body does not age, but becomes stronger and more mature, as do the emotions, if regulated stage by stage. Aum.
92. As the bee takes the essence of a flower and flies away without destroying its beauty and perfume, so let the sage wander in this life.
93.
Make the mind always remain poised, like a hummingbird over a flower, so that
you begin to live in the eternal now constantly, permanently.
Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
(1927-2001)
94. Knowing that the soul is deathless, Siva's devotees never suffer undue or prolonged sorrow for the departed, lest they bind these souls to Earth. They rejoice in the continuing journey of loved ones.
95. The Vedic edict is: "Ahimsa is not causing pain to any living being at any time through the actions of one's mind, speech or body."
96. As the dawn breaks on a New Year, let us give thanks for all we hold dear: Our health, our family, our friends, the grace of God which never ends. Let us release our grudges, anger and pains, for these are nothing but binding chains. Let us vow to live each day in the most pious, God-conscious way. Let us vow to serve all who are in need, regardless of race, caste, gender or creed. Let us vow to keep God in our heart, to chant His name each day at the start.
97. If one wants to abide in the
thought-free state, a struggle is inevitable. One must fight one’s way through
before regaining one’s original primal state. If one succeeds in the fight and
reaches the goal, the enemy, namely the thoughts, will all subside in the Self
and disappear entirely. Ramana Maharishi
98. "Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it... We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate ones, brave by doing brave ones."
99. "Envy consists in
seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire
glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied
Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed."
-- Bertrand Russell
100. An ancient Upanishad defines twenty obstacles, upasarga, to spiritual progress: hunger, thirst, laziness, passion, lust, fear, shame, anxiety, excitement, adversity, sorrow, despair, anger, arrogance, delusion, greed, stinginess, ambitiousness, death and birth. Another obstacle is the intellect which, unguided by intuition, merely juggles memory and reason as a way of life. The experience of these impediments creates reactions that combine with the sum of all past impressions, samskaras, both positive and negative. Residing in the subconscious mind, these are the source of subliminal traits or tendencies, called vasanas, which shape our attitudes and motivations. The troublesome vasanas clouding the mind must be reconciled and released. There are beneficial tantras by which absolution can be attained for unhindered living, including ayurveda, jyotisha, daily sadhana, temple worship, selfless giving, the creative arts and the several yogas. The Vedas explain, "Even as a mirror covered with dust shines brightly when cleaned, so the embodied soul, seeing the truth of atman, realizes oneness, attains the goal of life and becomes free from sorrow."
101. "There are those who work all day. Those who dream all day. And those who spend an hour dreaming before setting to work to fulfill those dreams. Go into the third category because there's virtually no competition." -- Steven J Ross
102. Our lives are definitely able to touch those of other people, and it's possible for us to contribute to the peace and compassion of the coming years by helping others to realize their hopes and dreams and goals, and to help their self-esteem through teaching and encouraging.
103. After receiving grace of a God, the
devotee can never be the same again, never look at life again in the old way.
By grace we are directed deeper into spiritual life, pointed in the right
direction, carefully guided on the San Marga, the straight path to our supreme
God. After grace has been received, our thoughts are enlivened, our life is
inspired with enthusiasm and energy, and we live daily in the joyous knowledge
that everything is all right, everything is happening around us in accord with
our karma, our dharma and God’s gracious will.
Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
104. "We are
like tea bags -- we don't know our own strength until e're in hot water."
-- Sister Busche
105. "Once the game is
over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-- Anonymous
106. I am divine love in expression. I make a sacred connection with others. Love is the glue that binds my relationships and evokes reverence and mutual appreciation.
107. "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
108. "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." C. S. Lewis
109. Remember and teach that God is, and is in all things. Spread the light of the One Great God, Siva--Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, immanent and transcendent, the Compassionate One, the Gracious One, the One without a second, the Lord of Lords, the Beginning and End of all that is. ... Sivaya Subramuniaswami
110. "If we did all the things that we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."
111. A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. Irish Proverb
112. "Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves." Helen Keller
113. The world looks like a mathematical
equation which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Every secret is told,
every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in
silence and certainty. Ralph Waldo Emerson
114. "My enemy is my best friend and my best teacher, because he gives me the opportunity to learn from adversity." Dalai Lama
115. I learned Namah Sivaya, and it has been the central core of my life, strength and fulfillment of destiny.
116. "Growing old is nothing more than mind over matter; If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." – Anonymous
117. "In these days, a man who says a thing cannot be done is quite apt to be interrupted by some idiot doing it."
118. "Determine never to be idle... It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."
119. "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be."-- Abraham Maslow
120. Whenever I have read any part of the
Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the
greatest teachings of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of
all ages, climes and nationalities and the royal road for the attainment of the
Great Knowledge. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
American naturalist, philosopher and writer
121. The secret of health for both mind and
body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to
anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
Siddhartha Gautama ( 566-486 bce)
122. Oh, if you only knew yourselves! You are
souls; you are Gods. If ever I feel like blaspheming, it is when I call you
man. Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)
123. To make joy a fixture in your existence, you must first accept that it is within your power to choose happiness over unhappiness every single day. Then, each time you discover some new source of happiness, the notion that the world is a happy place will find its way more deeply into your heart.
124. "What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fullness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us." -- John Bright
125. These principles laid down as invariable rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on.
126. "That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong." William J.H. Boetcker
127. "Sometimes when you
sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing
it on
to someone else." -- Mitch Albom
128. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
129. Sadhakas and sannyasins must be perfect in kshama, forbearing with people and patient under all circumstances, as they have harnessed their karmas of this life and the lives before, compressed them to be experienced in this one lifetime. There is no cause for them, if they are to succeed, to harbor intolerance or experience any kind of impatience with people or circumstances. Their instinctive, intellectual nature should be caught up in daily devotion, unreserved worship, meditation and deep self-inquiry. Therefore, the practice, niyama, that mitigates intolerance is devotion, Ishvarapujana, cultivating devotion through daily worship and meditation.
130. It's a great lifestyle to hold the perspective that we're a temporal being, and we're only here a few years and then we die.
131. "If
I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is
haphazard and full of beauties
which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will
ever return?" Margot Fonteyn
132. When your awareness is in superconsciousness, you see yourself as pure life force flowing through people, through trees, through everything. I have seen myself, in a certain state of samadhi, as pure life force flowing through a jungle, through trees, through plants, through water, through air. That is superconsciousness. It is so permanent. It is so real. Nothing could touch it. Nothing could hurt it. In this state we see the external world as a dream, and things begin to look transparent to us. People begin to look transparent. This is superconsciousness. When we look at a physical object and we begin to see it scintillating in light as it begins to become transparent, this is superconsciousness. It is a very beautiful and natural state to be in.
133. Siva's followers all believe there is no intrinsic evil. Evil has no source, unless the source of evil's seeming be ignorance itself. They are truly compassionate, knowing that ultimately there is no good or bad. All is Siva's will. Aum.
134. "I
like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient
in living. It's a way of
looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and
that enables you to laugh at
life's realities."
135. "People travel to
wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the
long
course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion
of the stars, and yet they pass
by themselves without wondering." -- St.
Augustine
136. "Just when you think that a person is just a backdrop for the rest of the universe, watch them and see that they laugh, they cry, they tell jokes... they're just friends waiting to be made."
137. "There are two
lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots, the other is
wings."
-- Hodding Carter, Jr
138. "Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life." -- Robertson Davies
139. I am the most wonderful person in the world because of the great spiritual force that flows through my spine, head and body, and the energy within that, and the That within that."
140. "A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book." -- Irish Proverb
141. "Think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived." -- Anna Quindlen
142. As the bee takes the essence of a flower and flies away without destroying its beauty and perfume, so let the sage wander in this life.
143. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." -- Franz Kafka
144. "Make your life a mission --- not an intermission."
145. "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
146. Instead of looking for defects in the day or in ourselves, we can affirm that all is deeply right with us and with what we experience. We can take pleasure in the familiar and remain open to the new, keeping the accent on gratitude and lightness. We can smile at friends and strangers and take in the warmth of returned smiles. We can keep our hearts light by seeking ways to be kind to others. Today, I cultivate a light heart. I let my kindness and happiness shine.
147. "Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."- Charles Schulz
148. We all love animals. Why do we call some pets and others dinner? K.D. Lang, pop singer
149. "This art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men." -- Captain J. A. Hadfield
150. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an
inconvenience, and I was frequently chided for my singularity, but with this
lighter repast I made the greater progress, from greater clearness of head and
quicker comprehension.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), inventor, founding
father of America,
on his vegetarianism
151. "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. Sam Johnson
152. What is the secret of the true life? To remain still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly awake while in meditation. Dada Vaswani
153, "There will be a time when loud-mouthed, incompetent people seem to be getting the best of you. When that happens, you only have to be patient and wait for them to self-destruct. It never fails."-- Richard Rybolt
154. As you pray to God for devotion, so also pray that you may not find fault with anyone. Sri Ramakrishna
155. "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."-- Henry David Thoreau
156. "If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it."-- Jonathan Winters
157. "I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self."—Aristotle
158. If you have difficulty remaining unaffected by someone’s behavior, take a moment to breathe deeply and remind yourself that you didn’t do anything wrong, and you aren’t responsible for people’s feelings. If you can see that this person is indirectly expressing a need to you—whether they are reaching out for help or wanting to be heard—you may be able to diffuse the attack by getting them to talk about what is really bothering them.
159. "Dance as though no one is watching. Love as though you've never been hurt. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth." – Souza
160. "Think for a minute about what makes you fabulous and how you can celebrate it."-- Laura Mercier
161. "Every situation,
every moment -- is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole
eternity."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
162. "Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."-- Mark Twain
163. The only true equalisers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library; the only wealth which will not decay is knowledge; the only jewel which you can carry beyond the grave is wisdom. -- J. A. Langford
164. “Possession of material riches without inner peace is like dying of thirst while bathing in the river.”
– Paramhansa Yogananda. Howard Hughes is a classic example of what it is like to gain wealth and lose your soul. He and many others like him should reinforce the idea that money cannot buy happiness, peace or health. This seems to be a contradiction. On the one hand you need money to get the things that will make you peaceful, happy and healthy. On the other hand the pursuit of money can bankrupt your mind, body and spirit. What is a person to do? Do Not Chase Money! Do what you do, using your talents and abilities because it makes you happy. Do Not Do Things for Money Only! In everything you do, have a purpose, principle or ideal that you hold dear and will not compromise if the price is right. Use Things to Help People; Do Not Use People to Get Things! If what you want or what you are doing is not the highest and the best for everyone involved, leave it alone.
165. "It is not who is right, but what is right, that is important."-- Thomas Henry Huxley
166. "If you see someone without a smile, give 'em yours!"-- Dolly Parton
167. “When ‘I’ am here, God is not. When God is here, ‘I’ am not.” – Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
168. "Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them." Napoleon Bonaparte
169. "Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it." W. Clement Stone
170. "When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free."Catherin Ponder
171. There is never any reason to be bored at a party, or on the bus, or in a conversation with a stranger. When we retain the spark of curiosity and the warmth required to open someone up, we always have in front of us the makings of a great story. All we have to do is ask.
172. "The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain." -- Susan B. Anthony
173. "You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime."-- Dale Carnegie
174. "Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances." -- Thomas Jefferson
175. "The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous."-- Carl Sagan
176. "There is progress whether ye are going forward or backward! The thing is to move!"-- Edgar Cayce
177. "It's hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you've earned." -- Frank Howard Clark
178. "If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old." -- James A. Garfield
179. "But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?"Albert Camus
180. "Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars." -- Henry Van Dyke
181. "We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
182. "The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best." -- Epictetus
183. "Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most
important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come." -- Robert H. Schuller.
184. "When you haven't forgiven those who've hurt you, you turn back against your future. When you do forgive, you start walking forward." -- Tyler Perry
185. "Never look back unless
you are planning to go that way."
-- Henry David Thoreau
