Gordian : ‘Gordian knot’ a proverbial term for a problem solvable only by drastic action. When on his march through Anatolia, Macedonian Alexander reached Gordium, capital of Phrygia; he was shown the chariot of the founder of the city, King Gordius, with its yoke lashed to the pole by means of a knot with its end hidden. In the popular account, he cut the knot through with his sword; but in an earlier version, he found the ends by cutting into the knot or by drawing out the pole.
... Your dream was certainly not moonshine; it was an inner experience and can be given its full value. As for the other questions, they are full of complications and I do not feel armed to cut the Gordian knot with a sentence. Certainly, you are right to follow directly the truth for yourself and need not accept X 's or anybody else's proposition or solution. Man needs both faith and reason so long ...
... to them an equal love and reverence; but their ancient mysteries are obscure and unfathomable to our gaze who, whether our view of things be materialistic or spiritual, are alike content to cut the Gordian knot of the problem of existence with one decisive blow and to accept an escape into an eternal bliss or an end in an eternal annihilation or an eternal quietude. The quarrel does not really commence ...
... writer. I took it up with keen interest, wondering how it would expound Buddha's Nirvana in lucid journalese. It made a good story, but to my disappointment I found that the author got over the Gordian knot of Nirvana by pretending there was no knot at all. To be a countryman of the great Gautama and yet to quote H.G.Wells on Buddhism—this was beyond belief. How could H.G.Wells probe into ...
... deeply held presuppositions … We have yet to see our first genuine scientific theory of the mind-body problem.” (Donald Hoffman 4 ) As to the second problem, materialistic science has cut this Gordian knot by proclaiming that, as everything is matter, the brain and all its functions, including the mind, are matter too. Nobody has yet explained, though, how matter can be conscious. René Descartes ...
... Great — he did, in effect, reject me calling my seeking a mere "mental" one. I was indeed cut to the quick, but I simply had to wait till I might develop in me the strength I then lacked to cut the Gordian knot, to exploit a vivid if a well- worn metaphor. But, as it turned out with me, I did not find that mere waiting helped; rather it increased my deep reluctance to take refuge in him unconditionally ...
... annihilation of the world-consciousness itself as a means of attainment of the goals. No doubt that we seek to disentangle the knots of life but we would not accept the short-cut procedure of cutting the Gordian knot. If somebody asks us: "But why not? If this is the only solution to the riddle, why should we shun it? Will it not prove that we are still caught in the meshes of the delusion of Ignorance ...
... unbridgeable hiatus. This is a position restated in a modern style, familiar to the Kantian Critique of Pure Reason. There are two ways effacing the problem. First, the Kantian way which cuts the Gordian knot. We say here that there are two realms in which man lives, but they are incommensurables: Page 207 the truths and categories of one cannot be judged and tested by those of the ...
... and ratified. It is the well-known policy of the camel which Aesop described in one of his Fables. We have to establish the inexorable logic of events which definitively solves the riddle, cuts the Gordian knot as it were. A theoretical, that is to say, a moral and legal pact or understanding is but a dam of sands. Power is best gained and increased in this way, viz., through work ...
... "Keep silent!" Another seminar was held on 22 November, and the subject given by the Mother was How to be steady and sincere in our aspiration for the Divine Life? 39 Again, the Mother cut the Gordian knot with her exhortation: "Consider the Divine Life as the most important thing to obtain." Or, as she had written to Huta in answer to a similar question: To want it and to want only that ...
... undejected, he looks forward to pursuing his quest in lives to follow, for, he knows that the bonds of aeons cannot be cut asunder with the same rapidity and ease with which Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot. A relentless fight with his lower self, renewed from hour to hour, sustained through long years of unrelaxed vigilance and unremitting Page 387 labour, and supported and fortified ...
... sprang, Wrathful, the Arabian seized the glittering neck And twines of bronze burning with many a fleck Of coloured fire. His angry grasp to quell Vainly the formidable folds rebel: Not all that gordian force and slippery strength Of coils availed. Inanimate at length, The immense destroyer on the Arabian's wrist Hung in a ruin loose; and to resist His wrath of love none now might intervene, ...
... as beyond enquiry; the contradiction exists, inexplicable but true; we need not enquire farther, for we have got rid of the original contradiction in which we were entangled & cutting through this Gordian knot of Nature, we have released the individual soul from the illusion of multiplicity & therefore from the necessity of phenomenal existence. In both cases the process & result are similar & a like ...
... Your dream was certainly not moonshine: it was an inner experience and can be given its full value. As for the other questions, they are full of complications and I do not feel armed to cut the Gordian knot with a sentence. Certainly, you are right to follow directly the truth for yourself and need not accept Sotuda’s or anybody else’s proposition or solution. Man needs both faith and reason so ...
... civilisation which needs to be propped by such a puerile faith to be saved is hardly worth saving? Voila, qu'en dites-vous, 0 Guru?" To that Gurudev wrote back: "I do not feel armed to cut the Gordian Knot with a sentence and need not accept Staunch's or anybody else's proposition or solution. Man needs both faith and reason so long as he has not reached a surer insight and greater knowledge. Without ...
... powers alone can snap the bonds - a common, ideal of Yoga kept by both the parties and the constant personal contact of a Guru. Of course the faithlessness of a lover is like a sword cutting the Gordian knot and at times turning one sharply to the Divine -but this help cannot be ascribed to any merit in human love -it is a stroke of fate manipulated secretly by the Divine. Love's merit lies only ...
... extreme into the whole truth. He is disposed to be comprehensive and global and not confine himself to a limited and exclusive intensity of insight. He favours no sharp cutting asunder of the Gordian knot of the universe's mystery: his is the attempt to unravel all the devious strands and show how each of them has a part to play and does not deserve to be ripped off suddenly and summarily. ...
... unbridgeable hiatus. This is a position restated in a modern style, familiar to the Kantian Critique of Pure Reason. There are two ways off acing the problem. First, the Kantian way which cuts the Gordian knot. We say here that there are two realms in which man lives, but they are incommensurables: Page 300 the truths and categories of one cannot be judged and tested by those of ...
... and understanding of average culture can see and handle the 'scientific' forces, but not the mystic forces. Page 3 A scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue and cut the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference to spirit séances: "Very significant is the fact that spirits appear only in closed chambers, in half obscurity, to somnolent minds; they are nowhere ...
... understanding of average culture can see and handle the 'scientific' forces, but not the mystic forces. A Page 287 scientist once thought that he had clinched the issue and cut the Gordian knot when he declared triumphantly with reference to spirit seances: "Very significant is the fact that spirits appear only in closed chambers, in half obscurity, to somnolent minds; they are nowhere ...
... only in this way and not by compulsion or coercion or violence. Na hi vairena vairani samyantiha kadacana. Never by enmity is enmity appeased, says the Dhammapada.¹ This is a way of cutting the Gordian knot. But the problem is not so simple as the moralist would have it. Resist not evil: if it is made an absolute rule, would not the whole world be filled with evil? Evil grows much faster than good ...
... in this way and not by compulsion or coercion or violence. Na hi verena verani samantidha kudachana. Never by enmity is enmity appeased, says the Dhammapada. This is a way of cutting the Gordian knot. But the problem is not so simple as the moralist would have it. Resist not evil: if it is made an absolute rule, would not the whole world be filled with evil? Evil grows much faster than good ...
... and ratified. It is the well-known policy of the camel which Aesop described in one of his Fables. We have to establish the inexorable logic of events which definitively solves the riddle, cuts the Gordian Page 55 knot as it were. A theoretical, that is to say, a moral and legal pact or understanding is but a dam of sands. Power is best gained and increased in this way, viz., ...
... the Spirit, for in that case Reality will be self-divided at the fountain-source itself - a supposition that must be ruled out altogether. What, then, is Ignorance? Sri Aurobindo cuts the Gordian Knot by affirming that Ignorance too is Knowledge - only, it is partial or imperfect knowledge. He sees no need to presuppose the existence of a beginningless Power that creates the illusions and ...
... above which inspires and sustains you. For the victory will go to the most enduring. The Mother also mentions yet another method of conquering the fear of death, something like cutting the Gordian Knot: It is to enter into the domain of death deliberately and consciously while one is still alive, and then to return from this region and re-enter the physical body, resuming the course ...
... impatience of the human mind, defeated and distracted by the complex problems of life and its conflicting forces, assumes a spectacular loftiness when. it drives straight towards the cutting of the Gordian knot. —the complete sundering of puruṣa and prakṛti . The individual soul's retreat into itself or into the inactive Brahman is regarded as its release, and Nature is left unredeemed in her triumphant ...
... to them an equal love and reverence; but their ancient mysteries are obscure and unfathomable to our gaze who, whether our view of things be materialistic or spiritual, are alike content to cut the Gordian knot of the problem of existence with one decisive blow and to accept an escape into an eternal bliss or an end in an eternal annihilation or an eternal quietude. 11 And we recall this sublime ...
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