... thought, whose reflective activity is concerned with the obvious world of common sense. If we turn such a person into a supreme standard we shall overlook three-fourths of the valuable activity of the human consciousness. The reflective Page 13 adult could never be a Plato considering the obvious world of common sense as no ultimate reality but the poor image of an eternal and ideal Beauty... us into thinking that the poet is trying to talk common sense but merely succeeding in talking nonsense. The two quotations which Mencken has offered may strike us as by themselves not magical enough and therefore somewhat easily made a target of criticism. But the second specimen, even from the Page 14 standpoint of common sense, is surely no imbecility. Do we not all feel that... with the few first enchanting touches of light on the long darkness, the early hour of seven when we are sufficiently awake and yet not too glaringly exteriorised but keep a mixture of dream and common sense. Secondly, there is the brief selective vision of those features of the ordinary world which are either a thing at its most exquisite or a thing in its most right place. What can be more exquisite ...
... almost signalling to death: "Here am I; come, come to me." And if such is the case, does not an unbiased practical common sense clearly dictate that it is nothing but utter foolishness to fear death, when one is genuinely seeking to avoid it? It is the lack of this common sense which makes one prone to nurture a mood of fear as regards the object or event one would like to avoid. Let us listen to... have to take recourse to procedures far more deep and internal and therefore far more effective. These procedures are based on the following principles: (i)a just application of a luminous common sense; (ii)to resign everything to the care of the Divine and to have unreserved and unwavering faith in the love, justice and wisdom of the divine Dispenser of our destiny; (iii)a judicious... the counter-measures one should adopt in order to be free from all fear of death? The very first means available to the rational man is the prompt and effective application of his robust common sense. Let us elucidate. One of the axioms of occult science is that whatever you fear most is what will feel itself as if magnetically attracted towards you. To fear something is almost equivalent ...
... this or that person. Which brings me to his alert common sense. I have been told that Sri Aurobindo once said, in joke, that the Divine wanted the aspirants to surrender many things which they guarded jealousy but one thing they did surrender with alacrity which was .not exacted: common sense. Sethna was not one of these. For his common sense was never an absentee in his talks and adjudications... atmosphere." This is not irrelevant. For Sethna impressed me the more because he not only never made such a claim to having reached "asuperior consciousness" but also he had the uncommon wisdom of common sense to see that one should accept what the Guru said even if it seemed— as it often enough must, intellectual egoism being what it is — unacceptable to one's mental Page 283 preconceptions ...
... stern! every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in unAurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are... grandeur and austerity imposed themselves not on this commonsense-lacking poor man alone, but on others too. I will say then that common sense is highly uncommon like yogic faculties. However, I am waiting to write in detail as soon as the signal is down. Common sense is exceedingly uncommon in this Asram. Sometimes I think the Mother and myself alone have our stock left unexhausted and all the... refusals. As for his meditations, in them he was always going to his house, getting attacked there by devils and still returning. Yet you think his keeping attachment unnatural and evitable! Have some common sense. As for G, I hear that he is preaching the Truth, saying, "Will you accept the Truth from Sri Aurobindo or from me?" What else is insanity! But he has always been like that. This fellow ...
... or that person. Which brings me to his alert common sense. I have been told that Sri Aurobindo once said, in joke, that the Divine wanted the aspirants to surrender many things which they guarded jealously but one thing they did surrender with alacrity which was not exacted: common sense. Sethna was not one of these. For his common sense was never an absentee in his talks and adjudications... This is not irrelevant. For Sethna impressed me the more because he not only never made such a claim to having reached "a superior consciousness" but also he had the uncommon wisdom of common sense to see that one should accept what the Guru said even if it seemed - as it often enough must, intellectual egoism being what it is - unacceptable to one's mental pre-conceptions. That is why ...
... that constantly, with everything—they cut Sri Aurobindo into bits, they cut Mother into bits, and there you are: it's the Law, the Rule, the Principle. Exactly, exactly! They have no common sense. Common sense completely escapes them. Yes. And now, he [the author of the poster] is in the right and I am in the wrong! ( silence ) When I was there at the Playground, 1 after ten minutes... other solution is no solution—well, it was a necessary experiment in the universal march, but flight is no solution: the solution is Victory. And the time has come when we can try. All ordinary common sense (which is still triumphant in this world) tells me, "What illusions you nurse, my child! You arrange things to your satisfaction, you're sugarcoating the pill for yourself," and so on, it comes... not even to write. But just imagine, I have some important "birthday cards" to write, and I was warned one month in advance! I was warned, I was told repeatedly, "Write these things down." So common sense says, "But there's time!"—"Write these things down." So I wrote them down. And now, if I had to write them, it would be quite a bother! All the time, all the time, I receive indications, which ...
... great national movement in which each man will work for the nation and not for himself or for his caste, a movement carried out on common-sense lines. It does not mean that we are to adopt a brand-new system from Europe, but it does mean that we must borrow a little common-sense in our solutions of the problems of life. We must resolutely see what we need, and if we find a plain and satisfactory solution... sense of national life, were allowed and induced to take a livelier interest in their own concerns and if they worked in unison, they would conduce to mutual strength. Government is a matter of common-sense and compromise, and its aim should be to secure the legitimate interests of the people governed. But at the same time I would warn you against some false Page 712 methods of encouraging ...
... petit.... Sri Aurobindo always said the greatest obstacle to true understanding and participation in the Work is common sense. He said that's why Nature creates madmen from time to time! They are people not strong enough to bear the dismantling of this petty stupidity called common sense. It's time to go now. Do you have anything to say? Sometimes I am a little troubled because I don't feel I... would be covered with snow. ( silence ) You see, when people are in this occult consciousness, everything is possible—it creates an atmosphere where ALL, all is possible. What to our European common sense seems impossible... is all possible. She was English and he.... I don't know whether he was Polish or Russian (he was of Jewish origin and had to leave his country for that reason). But they ...
... Commenting on these lines, Suzuki writes: Nothing can be more illogical and contrary to common sense than these few lines. The critic will be inclined to call Zen absurd, confusing and beyond the ken of ordinary reasoning. But Zen is inflexible and would protest that the so-called common-sense way of looking at things is not final, and that the reason why we cannot attain to a thoroughgoing... will be "to keep this mirror always bright and pure and ready to reflect simply and absolutely whatever comes before it. "' According to the Zen masters, we are too much the slaves of words and common-sense logic. So long as we remain thus fettered, we are miserable and suffering. They maintain that if we want to know something really worth knowing, we must endeavour once and for all to free ourselves ...
... (12) Common sense sent flying sky-high! NB: The Overmind seems so distant from us, and your Himalayan austerity and grandeur takes my breath away, making my heart palpitate! Sri Aurobindo: O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you... you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation — not imagining wild imaginations — or for that matter Page 364 despairing "I know not why" despairs ...
... expression of his feelings, and remained a controversial figure all his life. Did he believe that people could change for the better? It does not appear so in his plays. He may exalt such qualities as common sense, simplicity, true love, disinterestedness, straightforwardness and true devotion, but Moliere's way is not to sermonize —it is to make us laugh, to involve us deeply through emotion and laughter... is. You are both talking nonsense. I'm ashamed of your ignorance. For example, do you know what you are doing — what you are talking at this very moment? MRS JOURDAIN. I'm talking plain common sense —you ought to be mending your ways. MR JOURDAIN. That's not what I mean. What I'm asking is what sort of speech are you using? MRS JOURDAIN. Speech. I'm not making a speech. But what I'm... complicated government required long, hard work, and Louis paid the price. His education was poor, and he had little imagination, no sense of humor, and only a mediocre intelligence. But he had common sense, a knack of picking up information from others, and a willingness to work steadily at the business of governing. "If you let yourself be carried away by your passions," he once said, "don't do it ...
... country to the skies with wings so heavily weighed down. Common sense, it is said, should be our guide and not imagination. All this is well, and we would be the last to deny the necessity of the work so much insisted upon. But the work is nothing without the ideal, and will be fruitless if divorced from its inspiring force. Which is common sense? To tread the right path or to avoid it because it promises... promises to be thorny? Which is Page 879 common sense? To mislead ourselves or to speak the truth and do the right? The uplifting of a nation cannot be accomplished by a few diplomatic politicians. The spirit to serve, the spirit to work, the spirit to suffer must be roused. Men in their ordinary utilitarian course of life do not feel called upon to serve anyone except themselves. The ...
... you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy. This is a deep experience and you can always get it back as soon as you recover the contact with your psychic being. This is a truly interesting phenomenon, for it is automatic... least, not till now. The other two solutions are safe and sure and within your reach. Now, there is a small remedy which is very very easy. For it is based on a simple personal question of one's common sense.... You must observe yourself a little and say that when you are afraid it is as though the fear was attracting the thing you are afraid of. If you are afraid of illness, it is as though you were... accident, it is as though you were attracting the accident. And if you look into yourself and around yourself a little, you will find it out, it is a persistent fact. So if you have just a little common sense, you say: "It is stupid to be afraid of anything, for it is precisely as though I were making a sign to that thing to come to me. If I had an enemy who wanted to kill me, I would not go and tell ...
... never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people ? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least common sense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or def ...
... . —I understand that you are a sick man and I want to bring you back to your common sense, back home. —Common sense? I saw Björn clench his fists. —I mean, the normal life. In a normal country. —I don't want your normal country. —But, I say... —I don't want your life, I don't want your common sense, I don't want... Balu went and pressed himself against Björn and put his hand ...
... Keshav —Have you any historical data to bear out your generalisation? Trevor —I cannot say I have, but I appeal to common sense. Page 38 Keshav —Oh, if you appeal to Caesar, I am lost; but be sure that if you bring your case before the tribunal of common sense, I will appeal not to common, but to uncommon sense—and that will arbitrate in my favour. Trevor —Well, we must agree ...
... of great learning divorced, as great learning too often is, from sound judgment and sure taste and a faithful critical and comparative observation, from direct seeing and often even from plainest common sense or of a constant fitting of the text into the Procrustean bed of preconceived theory, it is surely this commentary, otherwise so imposing, so useful as first crude material, so erudite and laborious... evolutionary stages of human Page 670 development and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic hymns and their place in the history of mankind. Truth must hide herself, common sense disappear from the field so that a theory may flourish! I ask, in this point, and it is the fundamental point, who deals most straightforwardly with the text, Dayananda or the Western scholars? ...
... develop in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion." This is what it should be, instead of making children Page 162 ordinary, with that dull, vulgar common sense which becomes an inveterate habit and, when something is going well, immediately brings up in the being the idea: "Oh, that won't last!", when somebody is kind, the impression, "Oh, he will change... ambitions." And if you do this when you are very small, you have much less difficulty than if later on you have to undo, undo all the bad effects of a bad education, undo that kind of dull and vulgar common sense which means that you expect nothing good from life, which makes it insipid, boring, and contradicts all the hopes, all the so-called illusions of beauty. On the contrary, you must tell a child—or ...
... produces a kind of panic in the ordinary consciousness of people. Yes, it is that. It seems... it is no more what it was. And truly there is something new—it is no more as it was. All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense is dashed to the ground! Useless! It has no force any more, no reality any more; it no longer corresponds to what is. It is truly a new world. ( Silence... itself in words in my consciousness: "Why are you afraid? It is the new consciousness." It came several times. And then I understood. ( Silence ) You understand; it is this which in the human common sense says: "It is impossible, that has never been"; it is this which has come to an end. It is finished, it is foolish. It has become a stupidity. One might say: it is possible because it has never ...
... busy inflaming hostility, hounding on the Government to farther ill-advised measures of repression and adding darkness to darkness and confusion to confusion. Statesmanship they never had, but even common sense has departed from them. The Indian people made a fair offer of peace and alliance to them at the beginning of the movement by including goods produced in India through European enterprise and with... vast country by pressing a mailed heel on the throats of the people. The pride of race, the arrogance of colour, a bastard mercantile Imperialism are poor substitutes for wisdom, statesmanship and common sense. Undoubtedly, they may induce the Government to silence and suppress, to imprison and deport till all tongues are hushed and all organisations are abolished—except the voice of the bomb and the ...
... action sanctioned by science has been amply illustrated in the judgment of the Police Magistrate of Calcutta in the Nabasakti case. The Magistrate was confronted with the difficulty that neither common sense nor jurisprudence can penalise the preaching of a political truth. The strange syllogism with which he has sought to bring the preaching of an ideal within the purview of the bureaucratic law is... magisterial fashion, "the meaning and intention of this article admit of no doubt whatever. The writer is advocating independence and the article is seditious." Later on he has misgivings. Glimpses of a common sense buried deep away under long habits of reading political necessity into judicial interpretation seem to visit the official mind: "The ideal of national independence is one which appeals to Englishmen ...
... even its descending would not be of so urgent an importance, since it would take you some time to become aware of it or receive it. So there is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors." These words were in answer to the sadhak's reference to a disclosure the Mother had made to him on the eve of his departure from the Ashram. She had told... was not taken. The Mother appears to have found out that the Supreme's decision for the body was to end its struggle and suffering. She ceased in her efforts to keep the body going. Against the common-sense advice of her attendants she had been insisting for reasons of her own on walking, even though there had once been a frightening break-down. Now came a pause. The whole day of November 14 she was ...
... to be correctly placed before them in order to understand their interests correctly. This is far from the truth about British character. The English are, or were, a people with a rough practical common sense and business-like regularity and efficiency which, coupled with a mighty thew and sinew and a bulldog tenacity and courage, have carried them through all dangers and difficulties and made them one... of the way by repression, but the way to achieve that end is to show a tenacity and courage and a power of efficiency rivalling the British, and not to make an appeal to the conscience and clear common sense of the British public. We could only imagine such an appeal having an effect in the as yet improbable circumstance of a Liberal Government with a small majority dependent for its existence on a ...
... much reproached for encouraging certain people to marry; there are lots of these children to whom I say, "Get married, get married!" I am told, "What! You encourage them?"—it's common sense. Page 309 It's common sense. They are human, but let them not pretend they aren't. It's only when the impulse spontaneously becomes impossible for you, when you feel it as something painful and contrary ...
... have reasoned, it is impossible at the same time to hold the scientific view of perception and deny an essential correspondence between image and object. Common sense has' always accepted an essential correspondence, and logic confirms common sense in the teeth of a seeming to the contrary. But when we try to understand how the image world and the real world could tally, science has no illuminating ...
... it is thought to be displaying remarkable industrial wisdom.” Qu'en dites-vous ? Seized with lunacy ? But that implies that nation is ordinarily led by reason ? Is it so ? Or even by common sense ? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason— individuals too mostly, though they frequently call in their reason as a lawyer to plead the vital's case. A little... adieu as Heaven wants no one” ... etc. Qu'en dites-vous re what the Mortal says to the Immortals (in Tagore's "Farewell to Heaven"): ... Very good poetry, but very bad psychology and no common sense! In the first place, because sorrow being alien to Heaven by the poet's own statement, no one who was still there could talk in this strain: even going out of it he would still carry the atmosphere ...
... below) "Ibid you adieu as Heaven Page 315 wants no one"—etc. Qu'en dites-vous? Re what the Mortal says to the Immortals. Very good poetry, but very bad psychology and no common sense! In the first place, because sorrow being alien to Heaven by the poet's own statement, no one who was still there could talk in this strain: even going out of it he would still carry the atmosphere... the guidance and control of the Guru who is at least supposed to know better than oneself what is or is not the Truth and the way to the Truth. All that is nothing very terrible, it is simple common sense. As to the particular kind of control you speak of, it is not imposed on anybody; it is only a few in the Ashram who at all follow any such rule. Amrita1 whom you mention would not have dreamed ...
... The bajra chappati, made from the flour of a dark millet, is remarkable in its ability to dry up a drippy nose — especially in cool, damp weather. Many of these properties are in line with common sense and do not come as a surprise because they are consonant with our experience. Most of the others follow logically from the principles of taste pharmacology. However, there is another set of properties... forth, which are predominantly katu or pungent with some bitter and astringent taste. They serve to balance the food and prevent it from having a fattening or kaphic effect. Of course, it is common sense, even to the Westerner, that seasoning a food so that it becomes hot and pungent decreases its mucus forming properties and "cleans out the sinuses." During ancient times when the Ayurvedic ...
... truth and dharma alone constitute God-realisation and true spirituality. Another very important characteristic distinguishing Ramakrishna is that he has taken spirituality in a simple, straight, common-sense view and has attained it in a very matter-of-fact way. He is generally depicted to a great extent as one who was rapt in a state of inwardness and devoid of external and worldly knowledge. Whatever... Dogmatism, nebulous fantasy and sophistry eclipse the truth, the thing in itself, and in the place of truth a semblance of truth or something quite non-essential is interpolated. The amount of common sense that is needed for success in ordinary life is also equally required for victory in the domain of consciousness. Sri Ramakrishna was endowed with an inborn, alert, practical sense. So nothing could ...
... adventures. In that case time will be gained. NIRODBARAN: If America and Russia joined with England, the three of them would make a formidable combination. SRI AUROBINDO: That is common sense. But nobody listens to common sense. Even if Hitler dies, there is Stalin. And if Stalin invades India, Subhas Bose and Nehru will oppose him, perhaps. NIRODBARAN: I wonder what Hitler's next move will be. ...
... Yoga, however, she was "the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth", the focus of the sadhaks' aspiration and activity. The loving acceptance of her authority was thus "the plain common sense of the matter". If that was to be questioned, there could then be no sadhana and no sadhaks; "Each can go his own way and there is Ashram and no Yoga." 23 As for those who were not ready... arrangements before deciding upon the best course. This, then, was the difficult psychological hurdle that the sadhak had to cross silencing the insidious promptings of his 'reason' and 'common sense' : that, firstly, the work assigned to him was really the Divine's work, and must be done in the right attitude of consecration; and, secondly, that the work being the Mother's, the Divine's ...
... future of a country is assured. Men of great gifts and strong character are often carried away by their eager perceptions and at such moments it is the sound common sense of a capable democracy that sets right the balance. It was this common sense that saved the situation after Surat. The people had the instinct to desire unity and the good sense to see that unity was not possible or, if possible, was ...
... a force exerted on them by a distant body. Is it not, however, plain that this new explanation is actually less mysterious than the Newtonian? As Denton points out on page 39 of Relativity and Common Sense, the Newtonian explanation "is one which involves a process impossible of conception - namely, that of 'action at a distance'. We can conceive of a force acting through a medium, but Newton's ... accuracy any theory previously advanced, induced philosophers as a body to accept such action as possible." Bolton, of course, is asking us not to reject Einstein on the score of contradiction of common sense or logic; but his reference to Newton serves excellently our purpose of showing that the suggestion of the supra-physical or occult is as strongly ascribable to Newtonian gravitation as to Einstein's ...
... ‘We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes that do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there... Under the Bo-tree, saw the eternal Light And, rising from its mighty solitude, Spoke of the Wheel and the eightfold Path all right … 19 “Western philosophies (including everyday common sense)”, writes Glenn Ward, “revolve around an illusory metaphysics of presence. This can be found in myths about ‘essence’, ‘meaning’, ‘cause’, and ‘self’ – But such a presence is never purely present ...
... time, difficulty or labour. Again, you speak of your experiences as vague and dream' like. In the first place the scorn of small experiences in the inner life is no part of wisdom, reason or common sense. is in the beginning of the sadhana and for a long time, the small experiences that come on each other and, if given the full value, prepare the field, build up a preparatory consciousness and one... understanding me comes from this habit of putting into my mouth things which are not actually there in what I write, My position is perfectly clear and there is nothing in it against reason or common sense. The Word has a power— even the ordinary written word has a power. If it is an inspired word it has still more power. What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration ...
... in attainment would have formed in spite of difficulties and relapses such as every one has in the Yoga. It is this faith that you need to develop,—a faith which is in accordance with reason and common sense—that if the Divine exists and has called you to the Path, as is evident, then there must be a Divine Guidance behind and that through and in spite of all difficulties you will arrive. Not to listen... genuine kind, —the signs are recognisable. And after all, the best way to make Humanity progress is to move on oneself—that may sound either individualistic or egoistic, but it isn't: it is only common sense. Yadyad ā carati ś restastattadevetaro janah. [Whatever the best do is put into practice by the rest (Gita, 3.21).] December 24,1932 I had already read most of the ...
... buying from a nasty shop unhealthy food and worm-ridden betel-nuts— these very people afterwards being those who complain frequently of stomach disorders. Or if they choose to defy both Yoga and common sense, they must be prepared to take their karmaphala [fruits of works]. There is no objection, either, to your butter and cheese provided the butter is not bad or old or rancid as bazaarbought... Light and Force—the external conditions easier. But of this I cannot write at the tail end of a letter. November 17,1931 (A letter from Mother.) For God's sake come back to your common sense! I never said that I would see you no more. Sri Aurobindo asked you only to be a little patient, as for the "silent expressionless love" He is not conscious of having written to you anything ...
... atheism and materialism of Science many a poet and many a mystic protested. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley — these were witnesses to a greater truth than that of Science. But in the eyes of common sense what were the results of the activity of poetic mysticism? Nothing comparable to the steam-engine, the telegraph, the mill-machinery or the system of mathematical laws by which everything could... the reasoning intelligence can make head or tail of, the reasoning intelligence which is the chief power of Science as well as in one way or another the chief power of what we call Common- Page 240 sense. Yes, Mallarme would have liked being called a poet of Nonsense — but he would not be Mallarme if he let you rest satisfied that you had got hold of him by the right end in saying so ...
... she lose her poise and her common sense? The reason for her persistence is evidently the fear she had expressed to her attendants—that her limbs might get paralysed by disuse and prove unresponsive to her demand on them to be fighting-fit. In a state of exceeding feebleness she still wanted to get up and battle with the enemies of life. Here is no loss of poise or common sense, but exceptional courage ...
... would cry it down as the pet notion of intellectual cranks and faddists had no longer the same volume and confidence, because it was no longer so solidly supported by the common sense of the average man, that short-sighted common sense of the material mind which consists in a strong feeling for immediate actualities and an entire blindness to the possibilities of the future. But there has as yet been ...
... with an admirable light-heartedness, compels it to mean waters. 1 But such a system of interpretation is not rational merely because it leads to a "rationalistic" or "common-sense" result. It rather flouts both reason and common sense. We can indeed arrive by it at any result we please, but no reasonable and unbiassed mind can feel convinced that that result was the original sense of the Vedic hymns ...
... constituted nervous body and the more richly convoluted brain of a Galileo of biology,—and then this great and simple truth will be proved, like many other things once scoffed at by the shallow common sense of humanity. But the difficulty is that it seems incapable of proof. Even with regard to life, which is by a great deal the lesser difficulty, the discovery of certain chemical or other physical... cosmic consciousness of the Yogin was only a combination of physiological reactions or a complex of the changes of grey brain matter or a flaming marvel of electrical discharges. It is not only that common sense and imagination boggle at these theories,—that objection may be disregarded,—not only that perception, reason and intuition have to be thrust aside in favour of a forced and too extended inference ...
... one gets freed from physical things. A few intellectuals lead the mental life and are indifferent to physical needs to a great extent, but these are very few. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least common-sense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are without inflation or deflation—not imagining wild imaginations—or for that matter despairing "I know ...
... estimate of him or not, you may be sure that his bhakti for me is humbug—as shown by the above newspaper incident—& you must accept at least the facts I have given you and draw any conclusions that common sense may suggest to you. 2) Do not print Yoga & its Objects unless & until I give you positive directions. It cannot be printed in its present form, & I may decide to complete the work before it is... removed an offer which had already been whittled down to a mere harmless Ambulance Corps in which the young men have plenty of chances of getting killed, but none of learning real warfare. Mere common sense warns us not to trust such an administration & to think ten times before accepting its offers. We know Lord Hardinge's policy; (1) sweet words, (2) quiet systematic coercion, (3) concession where ...
... every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in an unAurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all of you people? In order to reach the Overmind it is not at all necessary to take leave of this simple but useful quality. Common sense by the way is not logic (which is the least commonsense-like thing in the world), it is simply looking at things as they are ...
... this new marriage will not make him irregular. Should we give him the money? If you think it is necessary, I shall not say No. 6 July 1933 Sweet Mother, The measuring tape: mere common sense shows that the tape is not indispensable. But there is a dissatisfaction somewhere in my being. I can't pinpoint this recalcitrant spot. Is it my mind? Isn't it the mind that shows the absurdity... high time you learned this and I find that you give me very little credit, less perhaps than you would give an ordinary building contractor who, in your eyes, seems to know his job and have some common sense. ( The sadhak then gave several examples of difficulties with his workers and work projects. ) All that you say is quite true and there are still many other things you have not said, but ...
... October 1966 Sweet Mother, How can we know that our acts, our thoughts and our aspirations are not tainted by vital desire, though they may seem right to our common sense? It is a question of inner sincerity. Common sense is not a judge because it is a mental function of a rather inferior order. Moreover, there is a very simple way of knowing. One has only to imagine that the thing ...
... tasted. ) You don't have the time to try it? It's no use. There is something trying hard to stop me from eating. I don't know.... I still eat out of... (what should I say?) common sense, the old common sense. Of course, the body is still working in the old way, so the old means have to be used, but... That's all. ...
... sort of panic in the ordinary human consciousness. That's it. It seems that... things are no longer what they were. There's really something new—things are NO LONGER what they were. All our common sense, our human logic, our practical sense—collapsed, finished! No longer effective. No longer realistic. They are no longer relevant. A new world, really. ( silence ) And in the body, whatever... but it became words in my consciousness, said, "Why are you afraid? This is the new consciousness." It happened several times. Then I understood. ( silence ) You see, what in terms of human common sense says, "This is impossible, it's never been before," that's what is finished. This idiocy is over. It's become a stupidity. Now we could say: it's possible BECAUSE it has never been before. This ...
... If these misgivings have to be adequately resolved we must first inquire into the mystery of Matter and try to find out what physical substance essentially is. If, indeed, the common-sense view of Matter represents its whole truth or if Matter is the primary datum and the basic reality, all else being derivative and 'departmental activities of Matter', then Page 307 ... position of the traditional mechanist has become untenable and matter has lost much of its 'tangibility'. Its essential nature seems to be shrouded in an inscrutable mystery and along with the naive common-sense conception of matter many other well-entrenched concepts and notions have had to be thrown overboard. The advent of the Theory of Relativity, of Quantum Mechanics and Wave Mechanics has dealt ...
... into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological – "ghostly", it is said... process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's ...
... regarding the happenings at Tlemcen, that the greatest obstacle to true understanding and participation in the Work is common sense. He said that’s why Nature creates madmen from time to time: they are people not strong enough to bear the dismantling of this petty stupidity called common sense. 25 And Mother smiled, and in her smile it seemed we could catch fantastic possibilities in the wings. Perhaps ...
... Swadeshi a return from railway and motor traction to the ancient chariot and the bullock-cart. There is no doubt plenty of retrogressive sentimentalism about and there have been some queer violences on common sense and reason and disconcerting freaks that prejudice the real issue, but these inconsequent streaks of fantasy give a false hue to the matter. It is the spirit, the living and vital issue that we ...
... collocation, vahanti vahnayah, in the [fourteenth] sukta; for to suppose such a collocation to have been made without any reference to the common significance of the two words, is to do violence to common sense & to language. In the same rik we have the word asridhah rendered by Sayana, “undecaying or unwithering”, and ehimáyásah, in which he takes ehi to be á-íha, “pervading activity” & máyá in the sense ...
... of which they are the children. This physical imagery and these psychological indications are closely interwoven and they cannot be separated from each other. Therefore we are obliged by ordinary common sense to conclude that the Flame of which the Right and the Truth is the own home is itself a Flame of that Right and Truth, that the Light which is won by the Truth and by the force of true thought is ...
... comments seem to rise from the fact that you object to discipline, rule and order. That seems to be the general mind of the Asram. Each must be allowed to follow his own inclination, convenience or "common sense". Those who insist on stemming the chaos of vital indiscipline and disorder are martinets like X or capricious and tyrannical like the Mother. October 1933 What most want is that things ...
... must fight back. The method will always be the same: to reflect and reflect and reflect. Page 25 We must take these ideas one after another and analyse them by appealing to all our common sense, all our reason, our highest sense of equity; we must weigh them in the balance of our acquired knowledge and accumulated experience, and then endeavour to reconcile them with one another, to establish ...
... as you have a little more philosophical mind, I shall teach you how to come out of the difficulty. But, first of all, you must understand that that idea is a childish idea. I simply call on your common sense. You make of your Divine a person, because that way you understand him better. You make of him a person. And then this person has organised something (the earth, it is too big, it is difficult to ...
... before; it comes back with a vengeance. It depends upon what you call ascetic methods. If it is not to indulge in satisfying all Page 428 your desires, this indeed is not asceticism, it is common sense. It is something else. Ascetic methods are things like repeated fasting, compelling yourself to endure the cold... in fact, to torture your body a little. This indeed gives you only a spiritual ...
... would not be of so urgent an importance, since it would take you some time to become aware of it or receive it. So there is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave Page 364 to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors. 1 August 1938 By the way, you had better hurry up with your Supermind descent, Sir. Otherwise Hitler, Mussolini & Co. will gunfire it like—! What has ...
... calm and without attachment. If you do that, all these details—about how to address them, food and bathing, etc—become trifling matters which will arrange themselves according to convenience and common sense. It is simply that you have to stay at Vizianagaram for some time—as you have rightly seen, for several months, and during that time you must take what help they can give you for your material needs ...
... other hand a gigantic movement of noncooperation merely to get some Punjab officials punished or to set up again the Turkish Empire which is dead and gone, shocks my ideas both of proportion and of common sense. I could only understand it as a means of "embarrassing the Government" and seizing hold of immediate grievances in order to launch an acute struggle for autonomy after the manner of Egypt and Ireland ...
... lunacy, it is thought to be displaying remarkable industrial wisdom" [p. 67]. Qu'en dites-vous? Seized with lunacy? But that implies the nation is ordinarily led by reason? Is it so? Or even by common sense? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason—individuals too mostly, though they frequently call in their reason as a lawyer to plead the vital's case. 30 January 1936 ...
... you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy. This is a deep experience and you can always get it back as soon as you recover the contact with your psychic being. This is a truly interesting phenomenon, for it is automatic ...
... organise it, make you develop in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion." This is what it should be, instead of making children ordinary, with that dull, vulgar common sense which becomes an inveterate habit and, when something is going well, immediately brings up in the being the idea: "Oh, that won't last!", when somebody is kind, the impression, "Oh, he will change ...
... Ananda, infallible Will Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic or a gibbering imbecile or a fool...." Surely no one ever thought of you in these terms! No need of logic to see that—a little common sense is sufficient. If anyone, no matter who he be, thinks that this world of ignorance, limitation and suffering is a plane of eternal and infinite Light, Power and Ananda, infallible Will and Power ...
... ism. And this disease is very contagious, for even children do not escape from it. At an age when one should have dreams of beauty and greatness and perfection, perhaps too sublime for ordinary common sense, but certainly higher than this dull good sense, they dream of money and worry how to earn it. So when they think of their studies they think above all of what can be useful to them, so ...
... read and to see that only what is true and useful for their formation gets a place. It is not so much a question of subject-matter but of vulgarity of mind and narrowness and selfish common- sense in the conception of life, expressed in a form devoid of art, greatness or refinement, which must be carefully removed from the reading-matter of children both big and small. All that lowers and ...
... nineteenth century that the human mind had attained a certain level of intelligence and that it would have to be satisfied before any new idea could find acceptance. But it seems one can't rely on common sense to stand the strain. We find Nazi ideas being accepted; fifty years back it would have been impossible to predict their acceptance. Then, again, the ease with which the best intellectuals accept ...
... A gigantic movement of non-cooperation merely to get some Punjab officials punished or to set up again the Turkish Empire which is dead and gone, shocks my ideas both of proportion and of common sense. 83 * November, 1920 (From an article entitled "A Preface on National Education.") The living spirit of the demand for national education no more requires a return to the astronomy ...
... achieve. (5) Correct way of living. Not to cause harm or danger to any creature . This is relatively easy to understand. There are people who carry this principle to the extreme, against all common sense. Those who put a handkerchief to their mouths, for example, so as not to swallow germs, who have the path in front of them swept so as not to step on an insect. This seems to me a little excessive ...
... so obscure, so stupid that you listen and you begin to pay attention to yourself and everything is ruined. You have to begin all over again to infuse into your cells a little wisdom, a little common sense and learn once more not to worry. 30 May 1958 Page 257 ...
... that in the development of the mind, reason is the surest guide, the master, so to speak, who prevents you from deviating from the path or taking the wrong one, from straying away and losing your common sense. He makes reason the arbiter of man's mental activity, which guides and controls; and so long as you have to deal with mental activities, even the most speculative, it is reason which must guide ...
... it will go on increasing more and more! And that is Page 129 why I can't do now what I used to do when there were a hundred and fifty people in the Ashram. If only they had a little common sense, they would understand that I can't have the same relations with people now―there were 1800 of them here recently, my children! So I can't have the same relations with 1845 people―I believe that ...
... agitated, turning over all the ideas and actively seeking solutions, of worrying, fretting, running here and there inside your head—I don't mean externally, for externally you probably have enough common sense not to do that! but inside, in your head— remain quiet . And according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or widening or with all these together, implore the Light and wait for ...
... Swadeshi a return from railway and motor traction to the ancient chariot and the bullockcart. There is no doubt plenty of retrogressive sentimentalism about and there have been some queer violences on common sense and reason and disconcerting freaks that prejudice the real issue, but these inconsequent streaks of fantasy give a false hue to the matter. It is the spirit, the living and vital issue that we ...
... two extremes there is a gradation of countless intermediate planes that are superimposed one upon another and which influence each other. In one of the lower zones lies the practical reason, the common sense of which man is so proud and which, for ordinary minds, appears to be the expression of wisdom, although it still works wholly in the field of ignorance. To this region of practical reason belong ...
... common experience of pain and pleasure, but our heart's worship and our free and secret joy are for our Lover. 465—The joy of God is secret and wonderful; it is a mystery and a rapture at which common sense makes mouths of mockery; but the soul that has once tasted it, can Page 340 never renounce, whatever worldly disrepute, torture and affliction it may bring us. For the moment, ...
... need which makes it not painful—it is not painful effort, it is something that one can do with a smile. But to seek to impose it upon those who are not ready for this transition is absurd. It is common sense. They are human, but they must not pretend that they are not. It is only when spontaneously the impulse becomes impossible for you, when you feel that it is something painful and contrary to ...
... subjects like crime, violence and licentiousness should not be available to young people. ) It is not so much a question of subject-matter but of vulgarity of mind and narrowness and selfish common-sense in the conception of life, expressed in a form devoid of art, greatness or refinement, which must be carefully removed from the Page 146 reading-matter of children both big and small ...
... disregard of their leaders' orders. The school of politics which we advocate is not based upon abstractions, formulas and dogmas, but on practical necessities and the teaching of political experience, common sense and the world's history. We have not the slightest wish to put forward passive resistance as an inelastic dogma. We preach defensive resistance mainly passive in its methods at present, but active ...
... self-ignorance that is the only life known to them, and to live is their God-given impulse; therefore they must live egoistically rather than not at all, with whatever curb of law, ethics and practical common sense of self-restraint nature and experience have taught them. But subjectivism is in its very nature an attempt at self-knowledge and at living by a true self-knowledge and by an inner strength, and ...
... possible, practicable and expedient for the interests of the empire and of the subject nation so far as they could be accommodated with one another. It must be understood, in other words, as the common sense of the ordinary man would understand it; it could not be and has nowhere been understood in the sense which would be attached to it by the pure idealist of the Russian type who was careless of all ...
... escapes definition and yet has to be seized and cast into interpretative lines; in a lyrical intoxication; in a charm of subtle romance. It casts into the mould a higher urge of thought than the vital common sense of the Saxon can give, not the fine, calm and measured poetical thinking of the Greeks and the Latin races which deals sovereignly with life within the limits of the intellect and the inspired reason ...
... Shiva's brain is being knocked out of his head by the hammer of heaven. The last two lines elicit his first unquestioning approval; that, he says, is the right union Page 514 of poetry and common-sense expression. I don't ask you to take these Johnsonianisms seriously; I have only been taking a little exercise in a field foreign to me; but I am not sure this is not how some critics will grumble ...
... outward discord and struggle. That change of consciousness therefore is the only thing that matters; to reconcile with the intellect could make no difference. Yes, you need not listen to the "common sense" of others at least; usually there is much that is common in it but very little that is sense. What your inner being feels is rather to be followed than the superficial reasonings of the outer ...
... Language is not bound Page 634 by analogy and because has become "meditashun" it does not follow that it must become "meditashn" and that "tation" is now a monosyllable contrary to all common sense and the privilege of the ear. It might just as well be argued that it will necessarily be clipped farther until the whole word becomes a monosyllable. Language is neither made nor developed in that ...
... can be no possibility of a life divine on the earth. A mere metaphysical "sleight of mind", as one might call it, could not justify it against the objections of scientific negation and concrete common sense. I had thought that even many scientific minds on the Continent had come to admit that Science could no longer claim to decide what was the reality of things, that it had no means of deciding it ...
... I feel inclined to back out of the arena 1 or take refuge in the Page 435 usual saving formula, "There is much to be said on both sides." Your view is no doubt correct from the common-sense or what might be called the "human" point of view. Krishnaprem takes the standpoint that we must not only consider the temporary good to humanity, but certain inner laws. He thinks the harm, violence ...
... because it is greater and more complete, take altogether the room of the physical relation and replace it both in the inward and the outward life. There is nothing here that can confuse anyone who has common sense and a straightforward intelligence. The physical fact cannot in the least stand in the way of the greater psychic and spiritual truth or prevent it from being true. X is perfectly right when he ...
... accept the guidance and control of the Guru who is at least supposed to know better than oneself what is or is not the Truth and the way to the Truth. All that is nothing very terrible, it is simple common sense. As to the particular kind of control you speak of, it is not imposed on anybody; it is only a few in the Asram who at all follow any such rule. X whom you mention would not have dreamed a year ...
... and the believer to the New Testament - implies merely that different minds are bound to see the same thing differently. The involvement of the observer in what things are found to be like is a common-sense truism and has nothing to do with relativity and quantum physics. This truism transported to the philosophical domain leads to the controversy over solipsism. And surely no scientific worker can ...
... my sense of the term - a bit of a lion lurking within the bull in you and it relishes picking little quarrels. Instead of talking in a quiet tone, expressive of impartial sobriety and common sense, to the woman who was abusing the School's Headmaster, you may have indignantly raised your voice and sounded aggressive. Rather than appearing somewhat of a hothead on behalf of your boss ...
... "There is much, then, that is 'romantic' in classical Greek literature; yet it would Page 53 be easy to exaggerate. Homer is never unreal as Spenser is; Aeschylus never outrages common sense or common taste like Marlowe." 32 It is evident that Lucas is not unaware of Roman-ticism in Elizabethan poetry. Still, no whole-hearted and clear-eyed acknowledgment is forthcoming. Partial glows ...
... he said when Lamb's answer came, as swiftly as the stutter would allow: "Yes, n-nothing is w-wanting but the m-mind." There is a bit of odd conceit, though mixed with a bit of startling common sense, in that incident in the English Channel where he and Dorothy and Mary had gone boating. A squall overtook them and it seemed as if the boat would Page 217 capsize. Wordsworth ...
... delay and loss by stating the printer's antecedents. It was not likely that he would conceal a conviction as that would be a thing impossible to suppress. But then, if officialdom were to acquire a common sense, the laws of Nature would be sadly contravened and it is better to inflict loss on individuals than to upset a law of Nature. Soham Gita Every Bengali is familiar with the name of Shyamakanta ...
... had a more than statesmanlike insight. His plan of a series of petty, local and necessarily abortive insurrections Page 184 strikes the ordinary practical man as the very negation of common sense and political wisdom. It seems almost as futile as the idea of some wild brains, if indeed the idea be really cherished, that by random assassinations the freedom of this country can be vindicated ...
... season at so huge a cost. Buddha's Ashes Again the powers that be have committed a blunder. If any of the wise men who weave the tangled web of Anglo-Indian statesmanship at Simla, had a little common sense to salt their superior wisdom, they would never have allowed the strong feeling against the removal of Buddha's ashes to vent itself so long in public expression without an assurance at least of ...
... The English people have often been accused as a brutal or a stupid nation; but they have a rugged humanity when their Page 46 interests are not touched and enjoy glimpses of a rough common sense. They have besides an honourable love of publicity and do not like, for themselves at least, secret police methods. They have rejected the investigating judge and torture in the fifth degree. But ...
... must remain satisfied and drop the matter. This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Ashram and no Yoga." April 11, 1930 Sri Aurobindo The Mother , XXV.23 It's going ...
... them understand! How to understand? As long as one is there [at the mind level], one does not understand. One can imagine all sorts of things, explain all sorts of things, but... with a pinch of common sense, you see very well that you don't explain a thing. ADDENDUM ( Extract from the 'Cosmic Review' of 1906 ) A VISION (of Mother's) From sleep, I now emerge awakened. I slept ...
... Sonnet 107 tries to show — a ridiculously bad master. And veiled preconception can be rampant elsewhere too. Allusions to private no less than public affairs may get a biased colour mimicking common sense. An instance is the phrase "You had a father" in Sonnet 13, on which I touch in my second chapter. But Auden's indiscriminate condemnation is still, in my view, unjustified. It is ...
... leap. It has provoked a modern physicist to exclaim: "Maxwell, by a train of argument which seems to bear no relation at all to molecules, or to the dynamics of their movements, or even to ordinary common sense, reached a formula which, according to all precedents and all the rules of scientific philosophy, ought to have been hopelessly wrong. In actual fact it was subsequently shown to be exactly right ...
... palpitate", he replied: "O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing I never was! I groan in an un-Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all you people?" Our age is one in which old pomp and ceremony are laughed to scorn. Sri Aurobindo's laughter has never been derisive, but he has made light of conventions and creeds ...
... no one can demand that she shall do so … This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Ashram and no Yoga.’ 29 Telling words indeed, addressed to the right person at the right ...
... of the mental incomprehension and even of the mental “comprehension”.’ 34 ‘The motive why people do things must no longer be taken seriously. What matters is that they do them.’ 35 ‘All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense: useless! finished! … All that does not correspond to what is .’ 36 ‘Anyway, all the former notions, all the former ways of understanding, all that is ...
... people have begun to call the Ashram food "the night soil of the dogs". It is a wonder to me how such expressions come out. I may be managing badly, H may be cooking badly—but we should have some common sense and some deep regard for You in our consciousness which could never allow such ungrateful expressions to come out. You are not managing badly and H is cooking quite well. But some people are ...
... demands and desires cannot be imposed on her … This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Ashram and no Yoga.’ 25 ‘As to the Mother, I could not reconcile myself to how a European ...
... drawing and portrait paintings, I wished to learn still life painting. I went to the inquiry office and followed one of the queues. Everyone stared at me curiously. I was perplexed. Soon I summoned my common sense and asked a girl who was in front of me whether I was in the right line. She said: "Well, this queue is for models." My God! I slipped out quietly to join the right one. After paying the fees and ...
... not only vital, it is also mental and supports its desires by some apparently reasonable principles which become aggressively stupid by their rigidity. When this seizes you, you seem to lose all common sense and the most elementary understanding. No wall at all—only the pure light, the white flame of purification penetrating right through, from outside inside, from inside outside. Now I can tell ...
... could have died, had the Lord willed it. But... it has been a sort of death, that's for sure—sure, sure, sure—although I don't say so, because.... After all, one must have some regard for people's common sense! But really, if I let myself go one step further I would say that I was dead and... have come back to life. But I don't say it. A lot of people have been praying for me and even taking vows ...
... set something up (which still didn't hold together), and finally they wrote me a little more clearly. (There is one very nice man involved, Y. He isn't particularly intellectual but has a lot of common sense and a very faithful heart—a very good man.) Y asked me some direct questions, without beating around the bush, and I replied directly: 'World Union is an entirely superficial thing, without any ...
... they say I am "Y.'s disciple." It's like that, you understand, I "am learning through Y.," I am learning life and yoga! I know! I've known it for a long time. There are people here who have common sense, but had difficulty getting out of that. And they don't want to say anything because the "disciples" (who believe they have a fantastic power) fly into great rages and make such scenes! Of course ...
... waiting to be recognised in dumb material things. Of course, this should not blur our perception of the diversity of instruments - we have to deal differently with persons and occasions, using common sense and tact and specific understanding - but all through we must still have the awareness of a secret divinity and whatever instrument Page 199 we face and whatever occasion we meet ...
... all the more strong because you have a sharp intelligence and an amiable disposition which easily makes friends and wins people over. I don't think it will ever do to suppress this element. It is common sense to equip yourself, as you are doing at present, to carry it to success. And there is Page 211 no reason why you should not go ahead nor is there any reason why at the same time ...
... as advising samata and a healthy confrontation of circumstances. Extremist interpretations would be out of tune with the supreme poise and the profound insight as well as the highly inspired common sense that are behind his pronouncements. Apropos of the subject of food I may recall some words of the Mother. When, after six and a half years of Ashram life with its vegetarian regime I went to ...
... only last for a time. There is a sort of wind blowing, like a gust of great confusion; a very dark confusion totally deprived of intelligence. Discernment, clear-sightedness, even enlightened common sense, seem to have disappeared everywhere. It's a phase to go through. Wealth doesn't depend on the amount of money you have: it depends on the proportion between that money and what you have to spend ...
... provoked a modern physicist to exclaim: "Maxwell, by a train of argument which seems to bear no relation at all to molecules, or to the dynamics of their movements, or to logic, or even to ordinary common sense, reached a formula which, according to all precedents and all the rules of scientific philosophy, ought to have been hopelessly wrong. In actual fact it was subsequently shown to be exactly right ...
... not. We should not proceed too mechanically. A hint on the correct compromise is given by the Mother herself when she says that the first thing people surrender to her when they come here is their common sense! Now I shall close the chapter of my role as furniture-keeper and turn to myself as flower-painter. As the only artist or the sole apology for one, I got many favours from the Mother ...
... of conduct you propose to adopt in case of not hearing from me. I think it is because, as you say, your mind is not yet in a completely right condition that you have proposed it. No one with any common-sense and certainly no one with a clear moral sense would support you in your intention. As to the law, it is not usual in France to take up things of this kind but only public offences against morals ...
... the idea that Shiva's brain is being knocked out of his head by the hammer of heaven. The last two lines elicit his first unquestioning approval; that, he says, is the right union of poetry and common sense. "I don't ask you to take these Johnsonianisms seriously; I have only been taking a little exercise in a field foreign to me; but 1 am not sure that this is not how some critics will grumble ...
... not only vital, it is also mental and supports its desires by some apparently reasonable principles which become aggressively stupid by their rigidity. When this seizes you, you seem to lose all common sense and the most elementary understanding. No wall at all — only the pure light, the white flame of purification penetrating right through, from outside inside, from inside outside. Now I can ...
... alone, the message of equal respect to all religions can be sustained. But the problem of the conflict of religions goes deeper. If equality of religions were to be advocated on the ground of the common sense of sacredness or holiness, the matter would have been much simpler, although there would still be a ground for claiming superiority of the one and inferiority of the other on the basis of the ...
... linking the Aegean Sea with the sea of Marmara. Page 95 been said that the greatest blessing in Alexander's life was his early death, and his greatest good fortune was that the practical common sense of his followers pre-vented him from crossing the Ganges. Had Napoleon been similarly forced to recognise his limits, his end might have been as great as his beginning. In Alexande's case ...
... and her country wit frequently disconcerted the learned examiners. ... To the ever- repeated, charge of immodesty and defiance in continuing to wear a man's dress, she pointed out with simple common sense that, being as she was in prison, at the mercy of lewd English soldiers, it was a mere act of prudence. But Cauchon won the day. Through various tricks, he managed to get her proclaimed ...
... disease is highly contagious, for even children are not immune to it. At an age when they should be dreaming of beauty, greatness and perfection, dreams that may be too sublime for ordinary common sense, but which are nevertheless far superior to this dull good sense, children now dream of money and worry about how to earn it. So when they think of their studies, they think above all about ...
... obscure, so stupid that you listen and you begin to pay attention to yourself and everything is ruined. "You have to begin all over again to infuse into your cells a little wisdom, a little common sense and learn once more not to worry." (MCW, Vol. 3, p. 257) A second nagging question may often confuse the sadhaka's mind, which may prevent him from making an effective surrender to the ...
... paltry gain of the moment? You are losing the prospect of an eternal and infinite spiritual bliss because of your infatuation with the vain and cheap pleasure of the vanishing present. Activate your common sense, Vital; don't lose the sense of proportion. "Brother Vital, cry halt to your reckless course; quieten your-self; choose your action and reaction keeping your future interest in view; and ...
... Language is not bound by analogy and because 'meditation' has become 'meditashun' it does not follow that it must become 'meditashn' and that 'tation' is now a monosyllable contrary to all common sense and the privilege of the ear. It might just as well be argued that it will necessarily be clipped farther until the whole word becomes a monosyllable. Language is neither made nor developed in that ...
... order and a priest of high journalism. When Dilip Kumar came to join the Ashram in 1928, he was deeply impressed by Amal Kiran both by the latter's intellectual prowess coupled with robust common sense and his appealing outer appearance. As DK himself has written: "I can clearly recapture with my mind's eye his delicate sensitive face which first attracted me with its fine crop of Christ-like ...
... Nazis were a gang of ruffians and blackguards, without God, tradition and dynasty. If you read Essays on the Gita, you'll see what type of non-violence it preaches. You can, by your common sense, know what Japan would have done if the whole country lay prostrate - they'd have wanted nothing better than that! Here is a story of non-violence that Sri Ramakrishna used to tell: One day ...
... ringworm and other privileges all over his body and he is scratching himself and wiping the dishes with his busy fingers. This, I believe, is objectionable according to medical science as well as to common sense? You had better interview him and insist on his taking some kind of treatment, also your good advice. What? SRI AUROBINDO May 20, 1937 There are plenty of alternatives and questions ...
... reaction it has produced: you fed the force, it gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require Supermind to find out, it requires common sense. Then, the Mahomedan reality and the Hindu reality began to break heads at Calcutta. (This refers to the riots in Calcutta the previous month). The leaders are busy trying to square the realities ...
... 1935 Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo January 1935 I am rather shocked to hear of the behaviour of D.S. lacking all common sense, not to speak of Yogic attitude and that too after living here for so many years! At any rate it is not Yoga that upset D.S. He never proposed to do any—he was interested only in medicine. That, he always said ...
... go against reason, having nothing inherently irrational in them and may be simply called non-rational, those that seem to be quite irrational, for they go frankly against all canons of logic and common sense. As an example of the last, the irrational type, the critic cites a story from the Chhandogya, which may be rendered thus: There was an aspirant, a student who was seeking after knowledge ...
... the body. The body, segregated from the mind and the vital, very easily can choose the right kind of food and the right quantity and even vary them according to the varying conditions of the body. Common sense is an inherent attribute of the body consciousness; it never errs on the side of excess and immoderation or perversity. The vital is dramatic, the mind is imaginative, but the body is sanity itself ...
... one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow, ignorant sense; it does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they ...
... that people who invite suffering torture the elements in the body and torture "Me", Krishna, who am seated in the body. When you say everything comes from God, you have to accept it with some common sense. It is all right so long as you are in the Vedantic consciousness. Everything comes from God is another way of saying that the Infinite manifests itself in everything. But it is not necessary that ...
... reaction it has produced : you fed the force, it gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require Supermind to find out, it requires common sense, Then, the Madan Reality and the Hindu Reality began to break heads at Calcutta. The leaders are busy trying to square the realities with their mental ideas instead of facing them straight. ...
... appearance. That was the only thing. But I did not use to attend Church. I was then about ten years. The old lady's son, Mr. Drewett never used to meddle in these affairs because he was a man of common sense. But he went away to Australia and we came to India. Page 165 When we were staying in London this old lady used to have daily family prayers and reading of some passage from ...
... you, so that it may be done better. It is not meant for increasing the work or for other purposes. If you go on overdoing things, then the natural reaction is bound to come. A certain amount of common sense, of reasonableness, is required even in spirituality. CHAMPAKLAL: At one time I also used to feel a lot of energy while working with the Mother and I was never fatigued even when working day ...
... are pointers or notations, but they note and point to the existence and the manner of existence of real objects in a real world. In other words, one tries to come back more or less to the common-sense view of things. One does not argue about what is naturally given as objective reality; whatever the mental gloss over it, it is there all the same. One accepts it, takes it on trust, if you like ...
... observed but the observed telling its own story. The first step is well exemplified in the story of Galileo. When hot discussion was going on and people insisted on saying-as Aristotle decided and common sense declared – that heavier bodies most naturally fall quicker from a height, it was this prince of experimenters who straightaway took two differen.t weights, went up the tower of Pisa and let them ...
... body. The body, segregated from the mind and the vital, can very easily choose the right kind of food and the right quantity and even vary them according to the varying conditions of the body. Common sense is an inherent attribute of the body consciousness; it never errs on the side of excess and immoderation or perversity. The vital is dramatic, the mind is imaginative, but the body is sanity itself ...
... nineteenth century that the human mind had attained a certain level of intelligence and that it would have to be satisfied before any new idea could find acceptance. But it seems one can't rely on common sense to stand the strain. We find Nazi ideas being accepted; fifty years back it would have been impossible to predict their acceptance. Then, again, the way the intellectuals accept psychoanalysis is ...
... Senegalese Deputy who used to dominate over the Governors. But I wonder why they have never appointed an Indian Deputy in Pondicherry. The English people, on their side, have a certain liberality and common sense. DR. BECHARLAL: Liberality? SRI AUROBINDO: By liberality I don't mean generosity but a freedom of consciousness and a certain fairness. Because of this, along with their public spirit, there ...
... item in the news written down from the radio. SRI AUROBINDO (as Purani was reading out the news): The last item is interesting. Seems to be encouraging. I hope both the parties will have some common sense. PURANI: Yes. SRI AUROBINDO (when Satyendra arrived): Gandhi is staying on. He has called Azad and the Working Committee. There may be some hope. Something more than three seats, perhaps ...
... technical aspects of the plan had been meticulously prepared — why otherwise should it have originated at N° 18 rue de Martignac, as people -were beginning to realize that it had? That seemed sheer common sense, but it Page 88 led to many misunderstandings — beginning in London, where on their arrival Schuman and Clappier were bombarded with questions about the powers of the High Authority ...
... take the carriage.' 'All this due to Sri Aurobindo's saintliness.' I added. She concluded saying, 'Everything is a big event with you. Do go to sleep.'" ( Laughter ) SRI AUROBINDO: She has more common sense. I knew that he was imaginative, but not inventive. I thought that inventiveness was reserved for Dutt. SATYENDRA: He must have achieved something in order to be able to hold so many people together ...
... precaution so that nobody might find out about me. If you believe that just because God is protecting you, you need not follow any of the rules and norms of rational conduct and those that good common sense requires, you are totally unreasonable. "I remained all the time indoors, though it was not always the same house where I stayed. During that month, I moved two or three times. But it was mostly ...
... old things come back violently with a vengeance. But naturally all depends upon the meaning you attach to the word. If it means not yielding to your desires, then it is not asceticism, it is common sense, it is good sense. By asceticism people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other ...
... particular nation had been seized with lunacy, Sri Aurobindo promptly wrote back: Seized with lunacy? But this implies that the nation is ordinarily led by reason. Is it so? Or even by common sense? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason: individuals too do the same. If they call in their reason, it is as a lawyer to plead the vital's cause. 87 In another ...
... , half-god their mood, their shape. 14 All this no doubt impresses at first, this defiance of everyday experience, this willed derailment from the familiar track, this slap in the face of common sense. And yet - to what end? Is it anything more than what modern ingenious gadgetry accomplishes? Evidently there are non-Euclidean transactions that, for the man-in-the-street, are miracles even as ...
... miraculous in its results." The new Force that was abroad, as the instrument of the Divine, had power over Matter, being stronger than Matter. It could cause or prevent material accidents: All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense is dashed to the ground! useless!... It is truly a new world. 23 Almost four months later, on 30 August, the Mother reported that she could see that ...
... feet. But Mirra was a young woman with both her feet on the ground. Mother told Satprem, "I don't think there's anyone more materialistic than Page 13 I was, with my practical common sense and positivism .... The explanations I asked were always down-to-earth, and it seemed obvious to me that there's no need of any mystery, nothing of the sort — you explain things materially." ...
... the same life: come back to something else. It has been a sort of death, that's for sure—sure, sure, sure—although I don't say so, because.... After all, one must have some regard for people's common sense ! 4 And for eleven years, Mother never said anything (and now we well understand why Sri Aurobindo did not speak, we understand and will understand it better and better, for the whole story is ...
... its activities and robust in its health and organic functioning. 13 The regimen will include the building up of "nerves of steel" and muscular power, and this will involve regularity and common sense in sleep, food, physical exercise, work, and all other activities. It is not quantification that is important but how it is done, be it sleep, food, games, work or relaxation. On this question ...
... hostile world. As a matter of fact, if you are not completely freed from the habit of answering to adverse suggestions, then by giving up your reason, you give up reason itself, that is to say, common sense, and you begin to behave here also in such an incoherent manner as may lead you to a dangerous lack of balance. And if the adverse suggestions are not to touch you any more, you must be exclusively ...
... in the Council must join and shake off the white people. Then they can do anything. But somehow they did not take it well. Our people lack backbone. Sri Aurobindo : Not only backbone but common sense. 8-3-1924 Disciple : The Servant has written a long leader on the Khilafat. Sri Aurobindo : What does it say ? Disciple : That it is a momentous thing. ...
... that you don't easily submit your personality to somebody else who might not be as perfect as you imagine him to be; it removes superstitions, it prevents you from resigning your judgment and your common sense, sometimes, and so on. It prevents many faults. But the mind refuses to recognize the guru manifest in a body, or even the Divine incarnated in a human person. Mind has got the set idea that no ...
... material for the building of the Indian nation. The savoir-faire, the keen-witted ability and political instinct of her Brahmins, the thrift and industry of her merchants, the robust vigour and common sense of her Patidars, the physique and soldierly qualities of her Kathis and Rajputs, the strong raw human material of her northern and southern hills, are so many elements of strength which Nationalism ...
... regeneration could come through prayerful petitioning, that religious revival or doses of industrialisation could revitalise us! But Sri Aurobindo was able, through an appeal to history and common sense and some douche of satire, to shatter those delusions. 30 He was, however, gratified that the younger generation at least had valiantly risen to the occasion. The boys had, in fact, been ...
... ...a gigantic movement of non-cooperation merely to get some Punjab officials punished or to set up again the Turkish Empire which is dead and gone, shocks my ideas both of proportion and of common sense. I could only understand it as a means of "embarrassing the Government" and seizing hold of immediate grievances in order to launch an acute struggle for autonomy after the manner of Egypt and Ireland ...
... this disease is highly contagious, for even children are not immune to it. At an age when they should be dreaming of beauty, greatness and perfection, dreams that may be too sublime for ordinary common sense, but which are nevertheless far superior to this dull good sense, children now dream of money and worry about how to earn it. So when they think of their studies, they think above all about what ...
... antiquated and anomalous regulation. When its use by the Government of India was challenged, Lord Morley, the then Viceroy, answered, "The law is as good a law as any of the Statute Book." Common Page 506 sense would have called it a travesty of law and justice. Sri Aurobindo was incisive. "We say it is a lawless law, — a dishonest law, — a law that is, in any real sense of the word, no law ...
... nineteenth century that the human mind had attained a certain level of intelligence and that it would have to be satisfied before any new idea could find acceptance. But it seems one can't rely on common sense to stand the strain. We find Nazi ideas being accepted; fifty years back it would have been impossible to predict their acceptance.... These Nazi ideas are infrarational." The world was throwing ...
... of him or not, you may be sure that his Bhakti for me is humbug,—as shown by the above newspaper incident,— and you must accept at least the facts I have given you and draw any conclusions that common sense may suggest to you." So we now know what prompted the above letter to The Hindu. In actual fact however, the spies had dogged the footsteps of the Swadeshis from the very beginning. ...
... ons, and not geographical divisions of the cosmos. These are the worlds and times of the ancient tradition. Well, to return to our theme. I do think that Brahma was right. He had more common-sense than our inane legislators. It stands to reason that for the well-being of a body each of its parts must play its role for which it was created. Can the face do the duty of the feet? Can our arms ...
... them incomplete) on the characters of the play without indicating exactly how he intended to put the passages together. The editors have followed manuscript evidence, the flow of the argument and common sense in assembling the present text. White spaces indicate that the passages above and below are not physically continuous in the manuscript. The Spirit of the Times. Circa 1898-1901. Editorial ...
... lever have we then by which we can alter the entire fuse of English opinion on Indian matters? It is clear that we have none. Moreover the lessons of experience do not differ from the lessons of common sense. After years of constant effort and agitation a bill was brought forward in Parliament professing to remodel the Legislative Councils. This bill was nothing short of an insult to the people of India ...
... Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram Common Sense in an Unexpected Quarter 30-May-1907 It has given us quite a turn to find the following criticism of Mr. Morley's approaching "reforms" in the columns of India . "Tinkering with the Indian administrative machine will no longer avail. A thorough overhauling ...
... mouths by punishing the free expression of their feelings. Our ancient law-giver has not thought it necessary to support his dictum by reasons because its wisdom is obvious to the most ordinary common sense. The tendency towards repression in a government proceeds from a consciousness of instability or unsoundness in the foundation of its authority. If on the contrary the ruler is sure that his authority ...
... to the interest of the working classes; otherwise they will oppose it. We have met and talked with Mr. Keir Hardie and we found him a strong, shrewd-witted man possessed of a great deal of clear common sense. He is a Labourite and a Socialist. As a Labourite he will do whatever he thinks best in the interests of Labour; as a Socialist, the interests of whose creed are bound up with the progress of ...
... quest of fresh victims. Surrender your life, your liberty, your birth-rights to the English nation, go on ministering to their comforts and pleasures and you are Page 249 credited with common sense, prudence, intelligence and all other mental equipments. But if you think of making any strides in the direction of manhood—if you take it into your head to hold your own in the conflict of interests—if ...
... employed. We knew that the benignant bureaucracy had this weapon in their armoury, that they had used it once and might well use it again; but we thought it had more respect for its prestige and more common sense than to waste it on an insufficient occasion. The Natus were deported because it was suspected that they were behind the Poona assassinations and that the assassinations themselves were part of ...
... no revolt against it. The penalising of the pursuit of education in foreign countries and similar blunders recoiled on the caste system and it is notable that communities with a strong democratic common sense like the Mahrattas have even while adhering to orthodox religion avoided the worst of these errors. But the misuse of a necessary instrument is no argument against its necessary and discriminating ...
... he can in no sense be the one who pours the libation. He devours the libation, he does not offer or pour it. Hota, therefore, must have some other signification which, without outraging fact and common sense, can be applied to Agni. The root हु, like the roots हा and हि, is based on the consonant ह्, the essential gunas of which are aggression, violent action, impetuosity, loud breathing, and so ...
... restricted to the life-force whether viewed in itself or in its functionings. The popular sense of Prana was indeed the breath drawn into and thrown out from the lungs and so, in its most material and common sense, the life or the life-breath; but this is not the philosophic significance of the word as it is used in the Upanishads. The Prana of the Upanishads is the life-energy itself which was supposed to ...
... the old verses and that they themselves, divided from the Rishis not only by ages of time but by many gulfs and separating seas of an intellectualised mentality, know infinitely better. But mere common sense ought to tell us that those who were so much nearer in both ways to the original poets had a better chance of holding at least the essential truth of the matter and suggests at least the strong ...
... All you want to do is get out of the ring. The last minute seems an eternity. You come back for the next lesson or not? You have to pass your own muster — lily-livered or lion-hearted, one with common sense to avoid the avoidable or brash, brave enough to come back for more? ...
... usual for more than twenty years. No fuss over plastic bags nor colostomy societies giving helping hints and psychological boosts. Just old-fashioned cotton and bandages and still older-fashioned common sense and grit. Her patience and a strength born of that patience saw her through to the end. The end came of some other complication in her intestines. A few days bed-bound. Doctors said they had to ...
... inner strength and not be influenced by outward factors. What they tell me could be a manner of conveying what Sri Aurobindo deems essential for realising the Spirit in terms of Matter: a sublime common sense and a supreme poise. As for "47", it may be taken in the context of the word "independence" as appropriate since India won her independence in the year 1947 on August 15 which was also a birthday ...
... concept of eternity that reflects itself in the events and times of the world. Sri Aurobindo describes various forms of consciousness and its various stages. At first sight we can make a common sense distinction: Natural consciousness and Supernatural consciousness. This distinction makes us understand the difficult subject better. Natural consciousness may be again understood as perceptive ...
... of conduct you propose to adopt in case of not hearing from me. I think it is because, as you say your mind is not yet in a completely right condition that you have proposed it. No one with any common-sense and certainly no one with a clear moral sense would support you in your intention. As to the law, it is not usual in France to take up things of this kind but only public offences against morals ...
... is that the free expression of the vital, too, produces disturbances. Even though most psychiatrists would recommend moderation in the satisfaction of desires, such a recommendation is based upon common-sense and physiological considerations rather than on psychiatric principles. For psychiatry speaks of no specific psychological disturbances resulting from an excessive satisfaction of desires. And as ...
... displaying remarkable industrial wisdom!" Page 36 "Seized by lunacy?" Gurudev commented: "Well, this implies that the nation is ordinarily led by reason. But is it? Or even by common sense? Masses of men act upon their vital push, not according to reason: individuals too do the same. If they call in reason, it is as a lawyer to plead the vital's cause." I have quoted in full his ...
... authentic and verifiable! And with what an accent would he exhort me! — " It is this faith you need to develop ," he wrote once to me in the 'thirties, "a faith which is in consonance with reason and common sense — that if the divine exists and has called you to the path, as is evident, then there must be a Divine Guidance behind and that through and in spite of all difficulties you shall arrive. Not to ...
... le, and therefore it produces a kind of bewilderment in the ordinary consciousness of people … It is no longer as it was. Truly, there is something new: it is no longer as it was. All our common sense, all our logic, all our practical sense is dashed to the ground – useless! It has no force any more, no reality. It no longer corresponds to what is. This truly is a new world … “But there ...
... nineteenth century that the human mind had attained a certain level of intelligence and that this would have to be satisfied before any new idea could find acceptance. But it seems one cannot rely on common sense to stand the strain.” 1113 Now Hitler, convinced that he was pressed for time, loosened all the brakes. For a time he had gone easy on the Jews, heading straight for his world war and allowing ...
... be explained by causes now operating: there was nothing in the past that we cannot see in the world around us now.” 11 In science, this way of seeing is called ‘extrapolation backwards’. Even common sense will tell that it is a slippery way of reasoning, because experience teaches that things are never exactly the same. In 1830 Charles Lyell published the first volume of his trilogy: Principles ...
... means developing, increasing or growing in the evolution on Earth, as born out by the increasing level of consciousness. Dyson said he found this viewpoint “congenial and consistent with scientific common sense. I do not make a clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.” Few words are more often quoted that those of Stephen ...
... Dilip Kumar Roy's Correspondence Dilip's Correspondence with The Mother 17 November 1931 Dilip, For God's sake come back to your common sense. I never said that I would see you no more. Sri Aurobindo asked you only to be patient, and as for the "silent expressionless love" he is not conscious of having written to you anything of the kind. Now ...
... the great pulsations are still more so. ‘It has been a kind of death,’ she said on 12 June, ‘that much is sure – sure, sure, sure – but I don’t say it because, after all, one has to respect the common sense of the people! You see, a little more and I would say that I was dead and that I have come alive again. But I don’t say it.’ 2 In the following years she would from time to time make remarks ...
... to the benefit, the progress of the soul. Apart from that central concern it loses ultimate importance. Simple to save one's skin and ensure corporeal happiness cannot, for all the acceptable common sense of it, be an imperative ideal. Otherwise no risks would be worth running for a great cause, no deadly struggles with a force like Hitlerism could be faced. And in a Page 98 ...
... who, Garrick reported, Wrote like an Angel and talked like poor Poll. ("Poll" is the conventional proper name of the parrot — "Pretty Polly", as you surely know.) Johnson was a master of common-sense uncommonly expressed and of argument that was unanswer-able. He was a fighter who never let go: it was said of him that if he missed you with the fire of his pistol he would knock you down with ...
... own true self. You will be free from all fluttering of the small human heart and convey a helpful tranquillity to whoever you meet. Let me add to this spiritual advice a practical piece of common sense: "Fear never robbed tomorrow of its sorrow. It only robs today of its strength." The Mother once wrote to me that fear, rather than being of any help, tends to attract just the trouble we seek to ...
... "normal" people. And, among these, the subjects who would be most worth treating with an eye to the future of humanity are the practical thinkers, the matter-of-fact seekers, the leaders of organised common sense. As a result of their personal flashes of supernormal knowledge they would co-ordinate with the information of ordinary science the parascientific semi-mystic weltanschauung Page 350 ...
... warned him against any accident happening to him and doing serious damage to his body. - Editors Page 31 is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors." 1.8.38 It is well-known and pretty evident that you realised the Supermind years ago. But is the impression right that you stand on that high ...
... mentality, not in its originality and adventurous power, but in its temperate convention and fixity, renders its liberalism and its conservatism, its love of freedom and dislike of idealism, its surface common sense of doubt and traditional belief, its successful way of dealing with its material, its formal ethicism and its absence of passion. But to all these things he brings an artistic decorative quality ...
... the genuine kind—the signs are recognisable. And after all the best way to make humanity progress is to move on oneself—that may sound either individualistic or egoistic, but it isn't; it is only common sense. Yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tat tad evetaro janaḥ. 3 It is no use entertaining these feelings. One has to see what the world is without becoming bitter—for the bitterness comes ...
... reader would not be able to see any difference between the Inconscient and Ignorance unless the difference is expressly explained to him? This is not a matter of philosophical terminology but of common sense and the understood meaning of English words. One would say "even the inconscient stone" but one would not say, as one might of a child, "the ignorant stone". One must first be conscious before one ...
... to do with the tiny earth and her creatures. All science is like that, a contradiction of the sense view or superficial appearances of things and an assertion of truths which are unguessed by the common sense and the uninstructed reason. The same process has to be followed in psychology if we are really to know what our consciousness is, how it is built and made and what is the secret of its functionings ...
... straight into the sanctuary. Obviously if such exaggerations are put into my words, they become absurd and untenable. My statement is perfectly clear and there is nothing in it against reason or common sense. The Word has power—even the ordinary written word has a power. If it is an inspired word it has still more power. What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and ...
... in attainment would have formed in spite of difficulties and relapses such as everyone has in the Yoga. It is this faith that you need to develop,—a faith which is in accordance with reason and common sense—that if the Divine exists and has called you to the Path, as is evident, then there must be a Divine Guidance behind and that through and in spite of all difficulties you will arrive. Not to listen ...
... and now lo these energies white & bright in which is thy ecstasy, & they stream forward on his way for the Master of Life. एताः. It is impossible to understand स्तुतयः । And what in the name of common sense are shining praises? एताः answers to इमा ऊर्जः of the first verse, प्रसिस्रते recalls the सिंधवो न क्षरंतः. The first line of this rik is a parenthesis developing the idea of the expressions which ...
... the nineteenth were centuries of folly and superstition, but bent on discovering truth instead of limiting inquiry by a new dogmatism, obscurantism and furious intolerance which it chooses to call common sense and enlightenment; I seek a materialism that shall recognise matter and use it without being its slave. I seek an occultism that shall bring out all its processes and proofs into the light of day ...
... common experience of pain and pleasure, but our heart's worship and our free and secret joy are for our Lover. 464) The joy of God is secret and wonderful; it is a mystery and a rapture at which common sense makes mouths of mockery; Page 487 but the soul that has once tasted it, can never renounce, whatever worldly disrepute, torture and affliction it may bring us. 465) God, the world ...
... suppose—night is the night of ignorance here, very evidently—so a star is an illumination of the ignorance which is very different from the illumination of dawn and must disappear in the dawn. That is common sense, it seems to me. I am not aware that I have set up "deer" as a symbol of beauty. It was Nishikanta who did so in his fable of the deer and the lion. Every poet can use symbols in his own way, he ...
... that you should have lost yourself to an extravagant deception such as X has set on foot. It is simply the spirit of vital falsehood, dramatic and romantic, obscuring the reason and shutting out common sense and simple truth. To clear the vital, you must get out of it all compromise with falsehood—no matter how specious the reason it advances—and get the habit of simple straightforward psychic truth ...
... line of conduct you propose to adopt in case of not hearing from me. I think it is because, as you say, your mind is not in a completely right condition that you have proposed it. No one with any common sense and certainly no one with a clear moral sense would support you in your intention. As to the law, it is not usual in France to take up things of this kind but only public offences against morals ...
... 26 October 1934 The Kaiser, Hitler and His Lieutenants Hitler and his chief lieutenants Goering and Goebbels are certainly vital beings or possessed by vital beings, so you can't expect common sense from them. The Kaiser, though ill-balanced, was a much more human person; these people are hardly human at all. The nineteenth century in Europe was a preeminently human era—now the vital world ...
... must remain satisfied and drop the matter. This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the Divine Truth is the centre. Either she is that and all this is the plain common sense of the matter; or she is not and then no one need stay here. Each can go his own way and there is no Asram and no Yoga. If on the other hand one is not ready to be a member of the Asram or bear ...
... the time, difficulty or labour. Again you speak of your experiences as vague and dreamlike. In the first place the scorn of small experiences in the inner life is no part of wisdom, reason or common sense. It is in the beginning of the sadhana and for a long time the small experiences that come on each other and, if given their full value, prepare the field, build up a preparatory consciousness and ...
... suggestions of the adverse forces. For if you are not completely liberated from the habit of responding to adverse suggestions, if you give up your reason, you also give up reason itself, that is, common sense. And you begin to act in an incoherent way which may finally become quite unbalanced. Well, to be free from suggestions and adverse influences, you must be exclusively under the influence of the ...
... in quality to individual egos. Instead of being a multiplication or even an addition, it becomes a diminution, usually. Psychologically it is a well-known fact. Take men individually, they show common sense. But put them all together, it makes a stupid human mass. That's all? How can experience be purified? Sri Aurobindo has spoken at the beginning of experiences which become impure through ...
... not painful effort, it is something that one can do with a smile. But to seek to impose it upon those who are not ready for this transition is absurd. Page 74 It is common sense. They are human, but they must not pretend that they are not. It is only when spontaneously the impulse becomes impossible for you, when you feel that it is something painful and ...
... which makes it not painful—it is not painful effort, it is something that one can do with a smile. But to seek to impose it upon those who are not ready for this transition is absurd. It is common sense. They are human, but they must not pretend that they are not. It is only when spontaneously the impulse becomes impossible for you, when you feel that it is something painful and contrary to ...
... violence and licentiousness should be withheld from the school children.) It is not so much a question of subject matter but of vulgarity of mind and narrowness and selfish common sense in the conception of life, expressed in a form devoid of art, greatness or refinement, which must be carefully removed from the reading matter of children both big and small. All that lowers and ...
... only for gossip and falsehood, and once and for all I have closed my consciousness to all that, in order to avoid a Kali or a Durga manifestation. I hope that those who are faithful and have common sense will not lose their time listening to all that. All that you say about the food business was known to me―but you will admit that there is always a way of improving one's action and making it ...
... slightest unwatchfulness. The only remedy is a constant vigilance. 18 August 1954 Prudence: very useful for weakness because weakness needs prudence; strength does not need it. Common sense: it is very practical and avoids any mistakes, but it lacks light. Sobriety has never done harm to anyone. Equanimity: immutable peace and calm. In the deep peace of equanimity ...
... suppose in a bureaucracy it is inevitable that officials should be masters and be able to inflict inconvenience and loss on the citizen without any means of redress If officialdom were to acquire a common sense, the laws of Nature would be sadly contravened. * * * September 4, 1909 Every action for instance which may be objectionable to a number of Mahomedans is now liable to be ...
... stronger than before; it comes back with a vengeance. It depends upon what you call ascetic methods. If it is not to indulge in satisfying all your desires, this indeed is not asceticism, it is common sense. It is something else. Ascetic methods are things like repeated fasting, compelling yourself to endure the cold... in fact, to torture your body a little. This indeed gives you only a spiritual ...
... reaction it has produced: you fed the force, it gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require Supermind to find out, it requires common sense. Then, the Mahomedan reality and the Hindu reality began to break heads at Calcutta.*** The leaders are busy trying to square the realities with their mental ideas instead of facing them straight____ ...
... all the ideas and actively seeking solutions, of worrying, fretting, running here and there Page 422 inside your head—I don't mean externally, for externally you probably have enough common sense not to do that! but inside, in your head— remain quiet . And according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or widening or with all these together, implore the Light and wait for ...
... had observed it even then), it is this which makes people feel that they are going mad, which frightens them; and with the fright things come to pass, and then they hustle back into the ordinary common sense to get away from it. It is the equivalent—it is not the same thing—but it is the equivalent of what happens in the material: you feel that all the normal stability is disappearing. Well, for a long ...
... now more than 14,000 workers are out of work. The largest factory is closed, no one knows for how long, and the other one was burned down. The sign of the times seems to be a complete lack of common sense. But perhaps we see it this way simply because nearness makes us see all the details. From a distance the details fade and only the principal lines appear, giving a slightly more logical aspect ...
... would mean killing something of your own future. Above all, we must refuse, energetically reject, this hideous morality of the Philistine which says that 'nothing ever changes,' this flat and vulgar common sense à la Sancho Panza. Simply, one must know how to wait and to nurture one's dreams for a long time. To conclude, this is what may be said: in the universe, there are no two destinies alike—there ...
... letter to the Mother. ) Yes, all these false and idiotic rumours have come to me after turning round the Ashram. I attached no importance to them. I hope that those who are faithful and have common sense will not lose their time listening to all that. All what you say about the food business was known to me—but you will admit that there is always a way of improving one's action and make it more ...
... indicate? But inevitably—it will increase more and more! Which is why I cannot do what I used to do when there were one hundred and fifty people in the Ashram. If they had just a little bit of common sense, they would understand that I cannot have the same relationship with people now (just imagine, 1,800 people these last days!), so I cannot have the same relationship with 1,845 people (exactly, ...
... international language, or their [the students'] vernacular?' I answered her, 'If only ONE language is known [well], it is better (international or common).' 1 These are matters of common sense—I don't even know why they bring them up. Then they asked some questions about teaching literature and poetry. I answered them. And then, at the bottom, I added this: 'If you carefully study ...
... here and saw how things were kept and issued. He was astonished at the organisation. He asked me whether I had been to America to learn all this. But it had come automatically, and then we used our common sense and had our own way of doing things. The parts were arranged by car and then by different sections, gearbox, engine, etc. That was easy. And then we used to have one extra engine. So when there ...
... touches matter ). But until one has a solid base... From the standpoint of concrete, physical, material things, I don't think there's anyone more materialistic than I was, with all the practical common sense and positivism; and now I understand why it was like that: it gave my body a marvelous base of equilibrium. It prevented me from having the very sort of madness we were talking about earlier. 3 ...
... said so, therefore it has to be so." There you are. And it's ugly everywhere. It is true that up till now, the government has multiplied blunders of such stupidity!... It seems a child with common sense wouldn't have committed such blunders. And naturally, even in those who have no bad will or vengeful feelings, it creates an unpleasant tension: you can't do anything anymore, you're bound on all ...
... taken three hours while there were hardly two hours left before nightfall, and they were in a jungle, without any light or anything. That was another impossibility. So with his reason and human common sense, he said, "The best is to swim across." But he hadn't foreseen (that was the reckless part) that the water would be icy. (Sujata:) But P. had already swum across the water once, because he wasn't ...
... but I had observed that), it's what gives people the feeling that they're going insane, and they get frightened (and with fear things Page 29 happen), so they rush back into ordinary common sense to escape it. It's the equivalent—not the same thing, but the equivalent of what happens in the material: you feel all the usual stability is vanishing. Well, for a long time—a long time—there was ...
... reasons why they were sent away, it's not merely to go faster—we said it was for the speed of the work, but it's not merely that, it's because the body left to itself has so much more practical common sense.... I don't know how to explain. An extraordinary STABILITY. The only thing in it that was a little morbid was this physical mind, the body-mind, which Sri Aurobindo regarded as impossible to ...
... and then ( laughing ) what happened with the State?—It's the State that has grown rich at the expense of everybody else. Now they are back-pedaling. But the other countries, without having the common sense of benefiting from the experience, want to follow the same blunder.... But no one has yet dared to say: money is a force and belongs to nobody, but it must be used by the most disinterested and ...
... to be unreal and unable to touch [Mother]... but you can't be sure. It's a life which, described in detail, would be absolutely the life of... [a madman]. Luckily, I still appear to have some common-sense! ( laughter ) But I don't talk about all that. ( At that precise moment, Satprem strongly had the following thought, which he almost told Mother: "If a caterpillar's vision were suddenly changed ...
... poetry is of two orders - one steeped in the English atmosphere, the other carrying a universal air, taking up any subject from any place or age and becoming its native speech. I suppose this is common sense and it could apply to any poetic literature. But it should apply all the more to English poetry by the very nature of the language concerned, the plasticity to which Sri Aurobindo has referred. ...
... trance of non-duality is only a sort of sublime sleep, and could logically as well as pragmatically mean not the annihilation but merely the oblivion of phenomena. He, no doubt, endorsed the common-sense of Ramanuja's contention that so long as the soul is aware of Nature and its own individuality it needs must believe in a Lord and Originator of them both. But he unmistakably said that the presence ...
... in the wine-pot. His imagery was so undisciplined. He roared like a bull, they said, piled up phrases like towers, talked mountains." How is it then that he, as Lucas 25 admits, "never outrages common sense or common taste like Marlowe"? Nor is it that the Greek poets conceived of their art tamely: they felt it to be a storm sent into them by Heaven, a divine madness. The theory of God-given inspiration ...
... who constituted the scientific community during the Middle Ages began a critical reflection on their traditional approach to science. Aristotelian science was based on daily-life experience and common sense and operated in a closed world — the earth as its centre — about which everything to be known had already been expounded by the great philosopher himself. This approach was naturally inimical to ...
... "What else would I do?" The sea is my work place, my playground, and my home. It has offered me a pathway to more disciplines than I can ever master. Oceanography, aerodynamics, astronomy, and common-sense problem solving are essential parts of sailing; hydrodynamics, physics, engineering, and intuitive extrapolation are essential to boat design; craftsmanship, metallurgy, forestry, and plastics ...
... if the whole world were to destroy itself to save the life of a single mosquito'. I used always to wonder what would become of the poor mosquito if the world were destroyed. It seems to my poor common sense that it would perish also in the glorious holocaust. I suppose you are watching with great apprehension the war-clouds that are gathering? No, I am not trembling, but I agree that it is ...
... that you had said no to oil. It seems to me if he takes oil and spices and greasy things before the bile is entirely out of his blood, it will be there for good. S has neither self-restraint nor common sense. His খেয়াল 13 is his guide. But are we to follow it? ... I am in sheer despair. I want to say—damn it all, damn it all. Let me— Don't damn, but lift up quietly. July 15, 1936 ...
... was Subodh Mullick at that time? I thought he was a detenue somewhere in the North. Then? NIRODBARAN: He wired to Dutt that you were going to be theatrical. SRI AUROBINDO: Theatrical? I had common sense enough not to plead guilty. PURANI: And Dutt wired to you, "No theatricals, please!" NIRODBARAN: No, not to Sri Aurobindo but to Mullick. Dutt himself first thought of going personally and ...
... one disease or another. Her nerves are very weak. SATYENDRA: Among these children T is the strongest. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he is strong in every way and he has a certain element of a mental common sense. He had tremendous difficulties in England but he overcame them all while M's nervous system is rather weak. Any difficulty knocks him down at once. Though apparently he has a strong and well-built ...
... embrace he came across a Yogi who as soon as he saw him threw a stone which struck his forehead. Meher Baba was startled and came back to normal consciousness. SRI AUROBINDO: Startled back into common sense? SATYENDRA: I have heard of Sadhus curing diseases by flinging things at people and hurting them in various other ways. In general I don't know how to view Sadhus. It is curious to see jealousy ...
... If by freedom is meant Dominion Status, India can get it tomorrow if Jinnah comes round. NIRODBARAN: It seems Gandhi is ready to accept Dominion Status. SRI AUROBINDO: Of course. That is common sense. If after Dominion Status you can secede from the British Government at any time and thus get without fighting what you want, what is the sense of fighting now? Only the defence question and British ...
... Page 14 "O rubbish! I am austere and grand, grim and stern! every blasted thing that I never was! I groan in un Aurobindian despair when I hear such things. What has happened to the common sense of all you people?" 28 On another occasion when Nirodbaran wrote to Sri Aurobindo: "I am much delighted and relieved to find that you have not lost your sense of humour by your Supramental ...
... by flashes which blind more than they enlighten, do they not lose themselves by that rash and premature adventure!" 28 In a vein of humour Sri Aurobindo once remarked about his disciples: "Common sense is exceedingly uncommon in this Ashram. Sometimes I think the Mother and myself alone have our stock left unexhausted and all the rest have sent theirs flying sky-high. However!" 29 That is ...
... too, now and then. But seldom does one meet an intelligence which aspires to be replenished at the fount of a deeper wisdom…. Sethna impressed me the more because… he had the uncommon wisdom of common sense to see that one should accept what the Guru said even if it seemed - as it often enough must, intellectual egoism being what it is - unacceptable to one’s mental preconceptions.” This is not ...
... a Mould of Aspiring Consciousness The students should not degenerate into actuality-bound, "practical-minded", unprogressive human beings possessing nothing else but a dull and coarse common sense. Instead, they should be helped to develop in themselves the spirit of Page 31 adventurous optimism and to look towards all that is high and wide and noble and true. It would ...
... the whole world, as he could well have attempted. In fact, it has been said that the greatest blessing in Alexander's life was his early death, and his greatest good fortune was that the practical common sense of his followers prevented him from crossing the Ganges. Had Napoleon been similarly forced to recognise his limits, his end might have been as great as his beginning. In Alexander's case ...
... suggested anything of the kind and in fact wrote nothing about his poetry or his past sadhana. There were other grievances, but I have forgotten them. God allow that I may be left some common sense even in the vortex of my troubles. You surprise me by saying that Y also wrote such letters to you! At least a dozen in which he was going to take the next train to commit suicide decently in ...
... even its descending would not be of so urgent an importance, since it would take you some time to become aware of it or receive it. So there is no reason why you should not in this matter cleave to common sense and the sage advice of the doctors. There is no irony there! So this is apropos of his miraculous escape after swallowing twenty-five times the recommended dose - a miracle ...
... karma? That can never be, I could never have done so much! I needed to have either been an impertinent sinner like Jogai-Madhai 11 or an advanced yogi in prospect. But I was neither, that much common sense God had given me! Why then, I used to ask myself, pour so much unlimited bounty on a very ordinary person like myself ? Once I put Him this question and His cryptic reply was, "Find out for yourself ...
... heart and remain so and those who rely on the Divine will arrive in spite of all difficulties, stumbles or falls. That is the occult knowledge pertinent here. I have expatiated—but in the line of common sense, not occultism. I have written 5 sonnets, Sir. Record! Gave a big dose? But are they only great in number, as in your young days?... Eh? We are staggered at Romen's success in poetry ...
... for this answer at all. For I thought rather childishly that she would forbid any use of such a facility there. It would be a profane act! This human trait in the Mother and Sri Aurobindo — simple common sense in the Divine — was so reassuring! My fears having been allayed and the sleeping problem resolved, the question of a place to work in had to be decided. Here too I feared lest the Mother should ...
... has been produced overnight. To produce it means staying up late. 31 Monnet was called by one of his biographers, Eric Roussel, a "pragmatic visionary". And indeed this visionary did not lack common sense. For instance in 1973, he proposed a plan for political union. It was a very pragmatic plan, because Monnet had realized that it was difficult to make people agree to the idea of a merger of sovereignty ...
... are pointers or notations, but they note and point to the existence and the manner of existence of real objects in a real world. In other words, one tries to come back more or less to the common-sense view of things. One does not argue about what is naturally given as objective reality; whatever the mental gloss over it, it is there all the same. One accepts it, takes it on trust, if you like—one ...
... observed but the observed telling its own story. The first step is well exemplified in the story of Galileo. When hot discussion was going on and people insisted on saying—as Aristotle decided and common sense declared—that heavier bodies most naturally fall quicker from a height, it was this prince of experimenters who straightaway took two different weights, went up the tower of Pisa and let them drop ...
... things come back violently with a vengeance. But naturally all depends upon the meaning you attach to the word. If it means not yielding to your desires, then it is not asceticism, it is common sense, it is good sense. By asceticism people usually understand fasting, bearing biting cold or burning heat, lying on a bed of sharp nails, that is to say, torturing the body in some way or other. That ...
... go against reason, having nothing inherently irrational in them and may be simply called non-rational; those that seem to be quite irrational, for they go frankly against all canons of logic and common sense. As an example of the last, the irrational type, the critic cites a story from the Chhnādogya, which may be rendered thus: There was an aspirant, a student who was seeking after knowledge ...
... this, one cannot do that. Sometimes we admit a thing to be possible but ask who would do it, so it is impossible and so on. Like slaves, like prisoners we bind ourselves to our limits. You call it common sense, but it is a stupid, narrow and ignorant sense; it does not truly know the laws of life. The laws of life are not what we think them to be, what our mind or intellect conceives them to be; they ...
... of equal page - 70 respect to all religions can be sustained. But the problem of the conflict of religions goes deeper. If equality of religions were to be advocated on the ground of the common sense of sacredness or holiness, the matter would have been much simpler, although there would still be a ground for claiming superiority of the one and inferiority of the other on the basis of the contention ...
... Indian spiritual culture for expression through the reawakened soul to the world. The full meaning and force of this cry can never be perfectly intelligible, translatable into the language of common sense.... It is the unutterable shriek of the political mystic, it is the call of the Beloved; it has simply to be obeyed. 16 The supreme regeneration which India demands can only come from this ...
... creations, and particularly in his monumental epic, Savitri. Mrs. Drewett, Mr. Drewett's mother, wished to convert the three brothers to Christianity, but Mr. Drewett, who was a man of strong common sense, objected to it, and Mrs. Drewett had to give up her benevolent idea. In 1885 the Drewetts had left for Australia, and "the three brothers lived in London for some time with the mother of Mr. ...
... Press, Philadelphia, 1957). Strachey, Lytton. Biographical Essays (Chatto Windus, London, 1948). Literary Essays (Chatto Windus, London, 1948). Strong, L.A.G. Common Sense About Poetry (Victor Gollancz, London, 1934). Tagore, Rabindranath. Personality (Macmillan, London, 1948). The Religion of Man (Allen &Unwin, London, 2 nd Impression, 1932). ...
... more and go the way of all flesh, not enjoy the soul's immortality. Keats by calling the nightingale 'immortal Bird' and Shelley by calling the skylark 'blithe Spirit' have thrown a challenge to common sense. A bird is but a bird and must share the mortality of the world; how, then, can a bird either be a spirit or be immortal? "There are people", Sri Aurobindo once wrote to a cor ...
... went to live somewhere else. Sri Aurobindo says: "We felt relieved and I felt infinitely grateful to Dada [Manmohan]. Her son never used to meddle in these affairs because he was a man of strong common sense. But he was away in Australia. I In those days I was not particular about telling the truth and I was a great coward. Nobody could have imagined that later on I could face the gallows or carry on ...
... Poems & Plays, Vol.11, p. 279-80. 79. Savitri, p. 873. 'Overhead' Poetry and Savitri 1. Savitri, p. 920. 2. ibid. , p. 831. 3. Common Sense About Poetry, pp. 10-1 4. Cf. Ezra Pound: "It doesn't, in our contemporary world, so much matter where you begin the examination of a subject, so long as you keep ...
... cease to be. A ray can arrive only at nowhere through nothing. Disciple : That may be occult knowledge. Sri Aurobindo : It is not merely occult knowledge but occult knowledge and common sense. Disciple : What is space ? Sri Aurobindo : The question remains : either it is a conception Page 92 or any entity. If it is a conception only, then your ...
... 14 October. Letter from Pandit Nirmalchand about the illness of Jagat Singh. Talk on Grace. 2 November. Talk on yoga and humanity. 11 November. Talk on the need of samata: equality and common sense in yogic sadhana. Sri Aurobindo said about himself: "A perfect yoga requires perfect balance; that was the thing that saved me – the perfect balance. First of all I believed that nothing was impossible ...
... meanings and dangerous directives. And yet, - how rattled, how intrigued, how scandalised were the pillars of the bureaucracy! How they early lost their balance, their sense of measure, their very common sense almost! Mr. Denham, the Superintendent of Police, Special Branch, Calcutta, thought it fit to observe: Bhawani Mandir was nothing but a gigantic scheme establishing a central religious ...
... because it will have gone beyond in its consciousness. Meanwhile, we must give ourselves a good scrubbing and know what we want. Work well and take heart. Satprem Allow Sujata to add: common sense above all. May 11, 1981 End of volume XII. May 15, 1981 Beginning of volume XIII. May 15 (?) 1981 (Note in Satprem's papers regarding those heart attacks. I have ...
... desk, raised one of his legs and brought it down on the desk, saying "Yes', and Dara saw God present there. When an Ashramite's foolish behaviour was reported, Sri Aurobindo remarked that common sense was the first thing people surrendered here. When Indira Devi did not want to go back to her family, the family Guru, who was a tantrik, made an occult attack on her body. Her life was in danger ...
... fleeting and brittle." Of course there is the odour of 'death' everywhere and at all times. How shall we master this nameless but omnipresent fear? The first method is dictated by reason and common sense: death is apparently an inevitable thing, for it happens to everyone. That being so, it Page 563 is absurd to fear a thing that one cannot avoid. But this intellectualisation may ...
... clearly uttered more in love than in anger. Sri Aurobindo is reported to have once said, no doubt half-jocularly, that the only thing people surrendered easily on coming to the Ashram was their common sense! 30 The Mother is also likewise said to have remarked that the sadhaks who had really and truly made complete surrender to her could be counted on the fingers of one's hand. Page 599 ...
... organised so as to run with such smooth efficiency? How was it all financed? How was the interlinked problem of authority and responsibility solved in the organisation of the Ashram? It was but common sense that too much should not be claimed where all was the work of Grace. It would be advisable to let the inquisitive visitors see the work for themselves instead of making them listen to elaborate ...
... that the machinery could be landed at Pondicherry, rather than at Madras and then brought by road; and with implicit faith in her word further action had been taken - even in defiance of logic and common sense. Here was an instance of Faith really moving mountains! IX The year 1960 also saw the firm launching of two Ashram-based movements, "World Union" and "Sri Aurobindo Society", with the ...
... surrounded by incomprehension, resistance and ill-will, she left her body in 1973 at the age of ninety-five. “I don't think there ever was anyone more materialistic than I was, with all the practical common sense and positivism,” she would tell me while in the midst of her dangerous experiences in the consciousness of the cells, “and now I understand why it was that way! It gave my body a wonderful base ...
... and create death. They will call me mad or schizophrenic or paranoiac—because they are so fatally enamored of their death, they just want things to be "as they are," it is their "law," their "common sense," their "but-I-see-it-I-touch-it"—like monkeys feeling the shadows of trees. We feel the shadow of an unseen world. Our patent facts of today are scientific puerilities of improved apes. Basically ...
... positivist "iron bar" education: A splendid education, mon petit! Splendid. I am infinitely grateful to her. .. 24 I don't think there's anyone more materialistic than I was, with all the practical common sense and positivism; and now I understand why it was like that! It was the most solid base one could have for these experiences. No danger of imagining. 25 We are in search of the mechanism, not ...
... can become normal ones. "You see, when people themselves are in this occult consciousness, everything is possible; it creates an atmosphere where ALL, but all is possible. What to our European common sense seems impossible, is all possible." Certain mediums —not necessarily yogis —have a native 'psychic' faculty which gives them power over matter. It is the faculty of being able to identify themselves ...
... relieved and grateful to Dada. 1 We were then entering upon the agnostic stage in our development. The old lady's son, Mr. Drewett, never used to meddle in these affairs because he was a man of common sense. But he went away to Australia." Sri Aurobindo explained how meek he was. "In those days I was not particular about telling the truth and I was a great coward virtually and I was weak physically ...
... a great delight. However, I have been expecting something more from you than the ethereal wrapping the intensely imaginative, the light-heartedly floating, the many-motioned and the common-sensically balanced. This something more is the permeation of the four elements by the fifth. It is when one element or another - out of fire, air, water and earth - is permeated by ether that suddenly a... so-and-so and at once the phone rings, with so-and-so on the line. Or I may be discussing a problem and, on opening a book, see the key-word of it leap to the eye. I wonder whether in any valid sense your getting your copy of The Life Divine on November 25, 1950, one of my birthdays, is another of Asimovian coincidences. Of course, if I have been lucky enough to be your '"favourite" among those... line you have quoted is - Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? - Where are the snows of yesteryear? Knowing me to be a Parsi, you have inquired about the Zoroastrian religion. The original sense of it is still a matter of controversy. The ancient Greeks who were nearest to it among foreigners took it as a dualism, the God of Light and Goodness, Ormuzd, pitted against Ahriman, the Devil of Darkness ...
... body, next, a common life and vital interest for the constituents of the body, last, a conscious mind or sense of unity and a centre or governing organ through which that common ego-sense can realise itself and act. There must be in her ordinary process either a common bond of descent or past association that will enable like to adhere to like and distinguish itself from unlike and a common habitation... some think to Page 323 create as a bridge from the nation-idea to the empire-idea of political unity. That which unites men most securely now is the physical unity of a common country to live in and defend, a common economic life dependent on that geographical oneness and the sentiment of the motherland which grows up around the physical and economic fact and either creates a political and... . In order that it may impose itself, there must be a considerable force of the second natural condition, that is to say, a necessity of economic unity or habit of common sustenance and a necessity of political unity or habit of common vital organisation for survival, functioning and aggrandisement. And in order that this second condition may fulfil itself in complete force, there must be nothing to ...
... provided first, a natural body, second, a common life and vital interest for the constituents of the body, and third, a conscious mind or sense of unity and a centre or governing organ through which that common ego-sense can realize itself and act. 1. We see in the past that in the formation of human aggregates there has been in the normal process a common bond of descent or past association that... that the unity may impose itself, there must be a considerable force of the second natural condition, that is to say, a necessity of economic unity or habit of common sustenance 2. and a necessity of political unity or habit of common vital organization for survival, functioning and growth. And in order that this second condition may fulfill itself in complete force, there must be nothing to... Puranas. Yet they used the term Bharata, thus indicating that in spite of differences, there was commonness and an underlying unity. We see this illustrated in the epics. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata provide a clear example of how the various regions of India were linked by a common culture and awareness. Al-Biruni, writing about India from a place west of the Indus, was aware of ...
... formal education. These observations will be based more on my experience as a student, teacher and parent than on my predilection as a professional philosopher. Therefore, they claim to be only common-sensical and not in any way philosophical. To see how a set of values is ingrained ( anusyūta) in the very process of an educational practice conducted in a formally organized institution, say... fulfils the criteria of admission in the latter. This practice, not very common in the country, mostly because of economic and linguistic considerations, if made feasible, will increase social mobility and facilitate cultural and national integration. What I intend to show is that such values as punctuality, equality, sense of justice, awareness of rights, respect for discipline, expression of ... language of what has been said in (1) to (6) has become sometimes explicitly, sometime implicitly, normative. But it is not preceptorial. Rather, it gives an account of what is actually considered by the common run of a teacher or educationist to be the things any educational programme is ordinarily designed to achieve in its normal, routine, working. If the present-day educational practice is not doing it ...
... meet in a single word, but always there is the evidence borne by the rest of the family to their common origin not only in body but in spirit, not only in physical sound form, but in mental sense origin & development. The proof is complete. We have then a single great family with a common store of sense-property which each uses according to his needs.We have a number of meanings all going back to... (cf nidrā ); but this is probably connected in sense with drāgh , to be weary or heavy from exertion, & will then contain the common idea of heaviness or oppression; drāh , to wake; drāpa , heaven, either from shining or from the idea of covering; and one or two others of the kind. But these may all be traced with a little difficulty to the common significations and are extraordinarily few in number... rheum of the eyes; dūṣya meaning corruptible, pus, or poison, but also cotton, a garment, a tent,—the common root sense to cover suddenly turning up in this unexpected quarter as if to point out the entire identity of these families; duh , to milk or squeeze out (here we have the original sense of violent pressure), to yield or grant, to enjoy, to hurt, pain, distress, & its derivatives (cf also ...
... body with its energies cannot be neglected as untransmutable into a luminous and immortal vehicle. Consequently, Sri Aurobindo, while reading the Vedic and Upanishadic sense in the term Death, does not overlook its common physical sense which the Mahabharata kept in view. Unlike the old scriptures, he refuses to recognise the physical breaking-up as an unescapable destiny. The Aurobindonian Yogi does... chop and change about on the principle that it is sufficient if the same mental sense or part of it is given with some poetical beauty or power. One can only change if the change brings out more perfectly the thing behind that is seeking for expression - brings out in full objectivity and also in the full mystic sense. If I can do that, well, other considerations have to take a backseat or seek their... rhythms swayed in her time-born steps; Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives. A wide self-giving was her native act; A magnanimity as of sea or sky Enveloped with its greatness all that came And gave a sense as of a greatened world: Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun, ...
... body with its energies cannot be neglected as untransmutable into a luminous and immortal vehicle. Consequently, Sri Aurobindo, while reading the Vedic and Upanishadic sense in the term Death, does not overlook its common physical sense which the Mahabharata kept in view. Unlike the old scriptures, he refuses to recognise the physical breaking-up as an unescapable destiny. The Aurobindonian Yogi does... chop and change about on the principle that it is sufficient if the same mental sense or part of it is given with some poetical beauty or power. One can only change if the change brings out more perfectly the thing behind that is seeking for expression — brings out in full objectivity and also in the full mystic sense. If I can do that; well, other considerations have to take a back seat or seek their... rhythms swayed in her time-born steps; Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives. A wide self-giving was her native act; A magnanimity as of sea or sky Enveloped with its greatness all that came And gave a sense as of a greatened world: Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun, Her ...
... more that of the second where steeds of tawny colour are mentioned after a reference to 'these two' make an implied white steed pair with a bay. The sense of silver is impossible with a horse, especially in the company of other horses with common colours. And if early Sanskrit knows silver only as rajatám hiranyam, the Rigveda's rajatám - whatever it may 86.Review of J.P. Mallory's book... middle of the compound krsnayonih, which he translates 'which in their wombs hid the black people'. If yoni here means 'womb', signifying the interior of a fort - Griffith takes it in another common Vedic sense of 'dwelling place' - the compound would mean 'black-wombed' as applied to the forts of the Dāsas. In this interpretation also, the blackness would appear to refer to the milieu of the Dāsas... genitive (mahó divás) dependent on ásura-. In this case the partitive genitive is impossible, and the genitive of possession makes no sense. Thus the genitive must be dependent on an implied verbal aspect of ásura-. Of the possibilities here the most common verbal usage of the genitive - the genitive of rulership - is the most reasonable. Thus Rudra is described as the ásura who rules over great ...
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