... catholic appearance. Professedly, it is nothing but an association of actual friends and allies. In the front rank stand confident and masterful five great and powerful empires or nations,—the sole great powers left standing by the hurricane in unimpaired strength, and two of them indeed with an enormously increased power, influence and dominion: behind crowd in dimly and ineffectively a number of smaller... their will vigorously against all dissidents,—that they may be expected to subscribe more or less readily to its terms or at any rate to enter in after a few years' experience of exclusion. The Great Powers too are not likely to have strong reasons for breaking asunder for some years to come, and time may perhaps, provided no new revolutions sweep across the world, confirm the habit of united action... should come to grief; but for the moment this contingency has been prevented or at least postponed. That possibility eliminated, the unification may still take the form of an oligarchy or hegemony of great powers, leaders and masters of the herd, with the weaker rabble rest hanging on the flanks or posteriors of their mighty bellwethers and following them and their omnipotent decisions in sometimes a submissive ...
... great world-wide interests. It is probable indeed that in any constitution of international unity the great Powers would see to it that their voice was equal to their force and influence; but even if the constitution were outwardly democratic, yet in effect it would become an oligarchy of the great Powers. Constitutions can only disguise facts, they cannot abrogate them: for whatever ideas the form of... criss-cross of heterogeneous, complicated, overlapping and mutually interpenetrating interests, a number of small Powers counting for something, but overshadowed and partly coerced by a few great Powers, the great Powers working out the inevitable complication of their allied, divided and contrary interests by whatever means the new world-system provided and using for that purpose whatever support of classes... the position of the small nobles in mediaeval times in relation to the great feudal princes, a position rather of vassals than of equals. The war brought into relief the fact that it is only the great Powers that really count in the international scale; all others merely exist by sufferance or by protection or by alliance. So long as the world was arranged on the principle of separate nationalities ...
... chance of it?’ – Sri Aurobindo: ‘Yes – for many reasons war was not favourable at that time.’ Nirodbaran: ‘But you stopped it at the humiliation of some Great Powers?’ – Sri Aurobindo: ‘I did not care for that.’ 10 On the one hand the Great Powers in question had not hesitated to betray a helpless Czechoslovakia and showed little greatness in their dealing with the Axis; on the other hand, even if ...
... of power or moral influence or likely to be peaceful or harmonious in its deliberations. It would either reduce itself to a representative of the sentiments and interests of a ruling oligarchy of great Powers or end in such movements of secession and civil war between the States as settled the question of slavery in America. There would be only one other possible issue,—that the liberal sentiments and... egoisms ended in secession and avoided a civil war among its members only by drawing back from its own commitments. In fact, it was never more than an instrument subservient to the policy of a few great Powers. × These revolutions have now happened and these obstacles, though not yet entirely, have faded ...
... revived dream of Italian colonial empire. The Boer republics had gone under before the advancing tide of imperialistic aggression. All the rest of Africa practically was the private property of three great Powers and two small ones. In Europe, no doubt, there were still a few small independent nations, Balkan and Teutonic, and also two quite unimportant neutralised countries. But the Balkans Page 525... nationalities out of the ruins of the Turkish empire; but these by their immaturity would all be foredoomed to remain, for a time at least, under the influence or the protection of one or other of the great Powers. In Europe it implied the diminution of Germany by the loss of Alsace and Poland, the disintegration of the Austrian empire, the reversion of the Adriatic coast to Serbia and Italy, the liberation ...
... "There is the Supreme beyond description, who manifests himself as Sat, Chit, Ananda; in this Sat is the universal individuality of beings. Then comes the Supermind with its four Maha Shaktis, great powers. In the Supermind unity is ¹. "Sri Aurobindo at Evening Talk", Mother India (Pondicherry), July 197 T,P.333. ². Op. at., p. 212. Page 11 the governing principle... which we have quoted, she admitted as much when she said that she could not tell precisely in what year had arrived on earth temporarily the power and personality of Ananda which, unlike her four great powers and personalities - Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati - had never appeared in the manifestation so far: she could only declare that it had arrived before Sri Aurobindo left his ...
... that the terrestrial life is not seen realistically just as it is to the physical mind but constantly in relation to the much that is behind it, the human action is surrounded and influenced by great powers and forces, Daivic, Asuric and Rakshasic, and the greater human figures are a kind of incarnation of these more cosmic personalities and powers. The objection that the individual there by loses... welfare is grounded. The principles of good government and the motives and impulses that move men to public action, no less than the rise and fall of States and the clash of mighty personalities and great powers form, incidentally and epically treated, the staple of Vyasa's epic. The poem was therefore, first and foremost, like the Iliad and Aeneid and even more than the Iliad and Aeneid, national — a poem ...
... Disciple : Was there no such thing in ancient India ? Sri Aurobindo : There was; you need not have the same thing to-day. In India the communal freedom was very great. The communities had great powers and the State had no autocratic authority. The State was a kind of general supervising agency of all the communities. What these modern princes can do is to create great centres of life amongst... seats of real power and life of the nation. The princes need not take part as leaders; but they can help the growth of the nation. Disciple : In olden times, had the villages also such great powers ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, they had; it is the European idea that makes you think that the parliamentary form or constitution is the best. We had great communal liberty and the communities ...
... public welfare is grounded. The principles of good government & the motives & impulses that move men to public action no less than the rise and fall of States & the clash of mighty personalities and great powers form, incidentally & epically treated, the staple of Vyasa's epic. The poem was therefore, first & foremost, like the Iliad and Aeneid and even more than the Iliad and Aeneid, national—a poem in ...
... The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Malavas Once in the long history of poetry the great powers who are ever working the finest energies of nature into the warp of our human evolution, met together and resolved to unite in creating a poetical intellect & imagination that, endowed with the most noble & various poetical gifts, capable ...
... but always limited time. Each one of these gods has around him a thousand cohorts selected and chosen from the worlds below, where they have been endowed by their divine head and leader with great powers and heightened capacities. These are his cohorts, ganas , souls to the last moment of their life faithful to their resplendent lords. These three great and bright flames of force of the ...
... The perception of the past belongs to Death, not simply to the physiological phenomenon of dying, but to the being, to the cosmic power which Death is, and in which some traditions see one of the great powers of Darkness, a formidably conscious Being whose function would appear to be to negate the divine state, the immortality of pure Being, and to prevent us from ever attaining to it. Nevertheless ...
... the first terrestrial movement heralding … the new world upon Earth.’ But then, who was Théon? The Mother has said repeatedly that he was an emanation of the Asura of Death. This explains his great powers, his fearlessness, and his combative character. It also explains why he was so interested in the mantra of life (and death), and why his anger was potent enough to cut Mirra’s lifecord. And with ...
... perish and provide the scattered material of new forms or to emerge rejuvenated and changed for a fresh term of existence. Indian Yoga, in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity. The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality ...
... the universal calm and joy, the seeing delight and will of the Spirit in itself and its manifestation. To see how this positive method works, we may note very briefly its principle in the three great powers of knowledge, will and feeling. All emotion, feeling, sensation is a way of the soul meeting and putting effective values on the manifestations of the Self in nature. But what the self feels is ...
... victorious allies dominating the rest of Europe, or by a concert of all the European Powers or else by a United States of Europe or some other form of European federation. A dominating alliance of great Powers would be simply a repetition in principle of the system of Metternich and would inevitably break down after some lapse of time, while a Concert of Europe must mean, as experience has shown, the ...
... greater powers than ourselves to manifest. As for the writing we use it, but there are other & better means—You think so? To what? Does he think he comes from the highest heights—If there are such great powers on earth in man, what is this they have done with the earth? Do they think the horrible gâchis they have made is a credit to the greatest powers in the world? Then we speak a different language ...
... would be within the grasp before those who could still prevent it had awakened to its possibility. Page 340 If, for instance, there were a series of struggles between the four or five great Powers now dominating the world, each of which left the aggressor broken without hope of recovery and without any new Power arising to take its place, it is conceivable that at the end one of them would ...
... to escape from these errors; but the attempt was not thoroughgoing and not altogether successful. A strong surviving element of oligarchy remained in the preponderant place assigned to the five great Powers in the Security Council and was clinched by the device of the veto; these were concessions to a sense of realism and the necessity of recognising the actual condition of things and the results of ...
... . Ambition Ambition is always a force of the vital. A kind of siddhi or siddhis can come [ even if there is ambition in the nature ]—siddhis of power etc. There are Yogins who have great powers and also a big ego. Of course there can be no liberation without overcoming ambition and ego. Suggestions of ambition etc. are always born in the vital mind or, as it might be called, the ...
... not written for publication. I do not propose to change the rule in order to set forth a programme for the Supermind energy to act on if and when it comes down now or fifteen years after. 1 Great Powers do not publish beforehand, least of all in a journalistic compilation, their war-plans or even their peace-plans; the Supermind is the greatest of all Powers and we can Page 68 leave ...
... story; I am going to tell you about Madame X. Madame X was born on the Isle of Wight and she lived in Tlemcen with her husband who was a great occultist. Madame X herself was an occultist of great powers, a remarkable clairvoyant, and she had mediumistic qualities. Her powers were quite exceptional; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself, that ...
... Albērūnī' who wrote: "People say that the Guptas were wicked powerful people." In the Buddhist Manjusrimūlakalpa 4 Samudragupta is described as follows: "He was lordly, shedder of excessive blood, of great powers and dominion, heartless, ever vigilant (mindful) about his own person, unmindful about the hereafter, sacrificing animals; with bad councillor he greatly committed sin." A suggestive point here ...
... the curriculum of the prince: Chandrapida undisturbed in mind kept to his work by the king, quickly grasped all the sciences taught him by his teachers, whose efforts were quickened by his great powers, as they brought to light his natural abilities; the whole range of arts assembled in his mind as in a pure Page 279 jewelled mirror. He gained the highest skill in word, sentence ...
... lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development of the human soul, types and exponents also of the three great powers which dispute and clash in the imperfect and half-formed temperament and harmonise in the formed and perfect. At the same time their works are pictures at once minute and grandiose of three moods ...
... and press and books and television would bring about the necessary inner and outer change. It is true that thought, idea and an ideal or some programme of social or economic progress—these are great powers for effecting a change in life. But the most important thing very often forgotten is that there is no outer problem. The problem is not outer, the problem is inner: the problem is man and his ...
... There is the Supreme beyond description, who manifests himself as Sat, Chit, Ananda; in this Sat is the universal individuality of beings. Then comes the Supermind with its four Maha Shaktis, great powers. On the Supermind unity is the governing principle. ? Then comes the world of the Gods, below the Supermind and behind the manifestation. The Gods of Hindu culture – Shiva, Vishnu etc. – ...
... ly the word 'yoga' is being bandied about too often and used too indiscriminately. "Indian Yoga", writes Sri Aurobindo, "in its essence a special action or formulation of certain great powers of Nature, itself specialised, divided and variously formulated, is potentially one of these dynamic elements of the future life of humanity." 35 Yoga, then, is the technique of ...
... because the powers working in it are not perfect. Therefore she says, "Wait. I will go back and bring powers from the Divine which will give you what you lack, what is wanting in you." Three great powers Savitri comes across in her passage: one is the Madonna of Suffering, the psychic fortitude or toleration in the consciousness of humanity, by which in spite of the greatest suffering, the human ...
... generally they do not control these occult forces. The Jews, having a long-standing tradition about these powers, seem to know the way of mastering them. Théon, the Mother's first teacher, had great powers and knew bow to use them. Sometimes these powers are gifts. When one leaves the physical being and goes into the vital world he must know how to protect himself or someone must protect him. ...
... press, books even padayatras - would bring about the necessary inner and outer change. It is true, a system of thought, the ideal of service, some programme of social or economic change etc. are great powers for effecting a change in life. But the most important thing, very often forgotten, is that there is no mere outer problem. The problem is inner, the problem is man and his ignorance. The ...
... I return late, go and dine at Minakshi Lodge . He wrapped himself in his scarf. But it was no longer Prince Björn, it was another person. —I shall explain to you, he is my Master, he has great powers. It is he who has the key. We are going to find the secret together. Then he left hurriedly. I remained a moment looking at the acacias, the sands, and the mauve shadow round the well ...
... revelation. Writing on the Divine Mother and her Powers and Personalities in 1927, Sri Aurobindo had described Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati, and then added that there were other great Powers of the Mother too, but they were difficult to bring down; and yet, however difficult, "her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love," ...
... attended these 'classes.' "Madame Théon was born in the Isle of Wight," began Mother. "She lived in Tlemcen with her husband who was a great occultist. Madame Theon herself was an occultist with great powers, she was a remarkable clairvoyant and had mediumnistic faculties. Her powers were of an exceptional order. She had received an extremely thorough and rigorous training, and could exteriorize, that ...
... that the terrestrial life is not seen realistically just as it is to the physical mind but constantly in relation to the much that is behind it, the human action is surrounded and influenced by great powers and forces, Daivic, Asuric and Rakshasic, and the greater human figures are a kind of incarnation of these more cosmic personalities and powers. The objection that the individual thereby loses his ...
... these forms. There are other things, depending upon the persons. For some it is this; for others, they awaken ideas of grandeur: "If I continue in this way I shall become a great Yogi. I shall have great powers. I shall do much fine work. How nicely I am going to serve the Divine, how happy he will be with me!" It is very dangerous. The very opposite thing may happen: "After all, perhaps I am good for ...
... will is also developing, but it is not so powerful as yet as the other. My communication with the other world is yet of a troubled character, though I am certainly in communication with some very great powers. But of all these things I will write more when the final obstacles in my way are cleared from the path. What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely ...
... effort and preferred keeping their nature as it was, rather than working to transform it. Voilà ! Sweet Mother, do these people have powers? Page 72 Yes! There are some who have great powers. But these powers come from the vital and from an association with vital entities. There are all kinds of powers. Only, those powers don't hold out before the true divine Power—they can't resist ...
... of a so-called League of Nations. Practically, however, the League of Nations under present conditions or any likely to be immediately realised would still mean the control of the earth by a few great Powers,—a control that would be checked only by the necessity of conciliating the sympathy and support of the more numerous smaller or less powerful nations. On the force and influence of these few would ...
... reaction towards the rigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State,—is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path and go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take care not to ...
... effort and discipline and its fall in Dryden and Pope to a manner which got away from the most prominent defects of the Elizabethan mind at the price of a complete and disastrous loss of all its great powers. English poetry before Milton had not passed through any training of the poetic and artistic intelligence; it had abounding energy and Page 86 power, but no self-discipline of the idea ...
... the working of the seven sisters, the seven states of our consciousness which begin from Sat the pure state of conscious being & descend to Bhuh, its material state. The gods, that is to say, the great powers which work in our being to uplift the mortal to divinity, find the hidden Force of God concealed in the secret working of these sisters & bring him to light in our waking consciousness. 4) ...
... of those worlds. The Indian terms are: Asura, Rakshasa, Pishacha. In English they may be translated: Titan, Giant, Demon. Each has his special function. The Asura is a being who comes with great powers of thought, not a beautiful and systematic turn but a formidable vehemence of it. He has also great "moral" powers, he can be self-controlled, ascetic and chaste in his own life, a sort of ...
... not written for publication. I do not propose to change the rule in order to set forth a programme for the Supramental energy to act on if and when it comes down now or fifteen years after. Great Powers do not publish beforehand, least of all in a journalistic compilation, their war-plans or even their peace plans; the Supermind is the greatest of all Powers and we can leave it to its own ...
... these symbols creations of the individual human genius or are they creations of the Cosmic Mind, perceived by the bhakta or the sage. “The question extends itself to the forms of the great Powers of the Ishwara: is the Goddess Athena the expression of the Greek national thought form or was there a form of a great Devi who moulded the Greek mind and body in her own image? Does the Goddess ...
... tomorrow and people are almost panic-stricken at the thought of what lies in store for them in the near future, for peace is indivisible. Add to this the political and economic rivalries of the great powers who, instead of trying to find a solution to their difficulties, are only adding fuel to the fire by resorting to power-politics in every region of the earth making a world-wide conflagration almost ...
... p. 221. 141 Ibid ., p. 222. 142 Savitri , p. 809 ff. Page 472 which is close to the original ecstasy that made existence, the divine Ananda." 143 The great powers and expressions of the poets Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa and the ancient seer-poets are not denied in this synthesis, nor those of the great poets of world literature. There are five universal ...
... crookedness and the evil in the evolutionary manifestation. Therefore the Yama-Savitri debate is not a mere verbal duel, a logomachy, a metaphysical ^engagement, a conjuration of one-up-manship. Great powers are released even as they speak, the powers of opposition and negation and the powers of advancement and affirmation. Each utterance lets loose its charge, with occult mights clashing against formidable ...
... letters, not written for publication. I do not propose to change the rule in order to set forth a programme for the Supramental energy to act on if and when it comes down now or fifteen years after. Great Powers do not publish beforehand, least of all in a journalistic compilation, their war-plans or even their peace plans; the Supermind is the greatest of all Powers and we can leave it to its own secrecy ...
... the illumined mind is not, according to the Vedic yoga, sufficient to enable the seeker to be united with the supreme. It is not by development of only one faculty but by the development of four great powers by processes of a synthesis of the methods of yogic practices that one can enter into the realms of knowledge and action that lie between Indra and the Supreme. These four powers Page 19 ...
... specific problem and remedy. It might be the liver or the heart or anything else which should be then specifically treated. The body was not seen as the totality that it is, a complex whole possessing great powers of self-healing if given a fair chance to do so. Even now, most medical practices in modern medicine continue to treat the body as a machine by dint of which hospitals are often like "body processors ...
... through the fairylike brilliance of her court, her refined tastes and broad culture, was also to wrest her country from Turkish influence, thereby bringing up Russia as a modern state among the great-powers of Europe. She, who nurtured Russian culture to its flowering, gave her name to a whole era of Russian history and has been, in the generally accepted meaning of the term, a great monarch ...
... mountain-gods, house-gods, tree deities, snake deities peopled the world of ancient India. But the great gods of the Vedas, as well as the Olympians belonged to a much higher order. They were great powers, supporting universal laws and functions, and were not bound by life and matter. In Greece, already at the time of Homer, the gods had developed deep moral and psychological functions. ...
... that many defects of the League of Nations have been avoided in the Constitution of the UNO. And yet, one major defect remains because of the preponderant place that has been assigned to the five great Powers in the Security Council; and this defect has been clinched by the power of veto given to these Powers. That in recent years there is a serious demand from some quarters to get this defect removed ...
... is exactly what happened to the Holy Roman Empire. The force of Nationalism had been awakened in Europe and the constituent elements of the Empire were clamouring for independence and second, the Great Powers in Europe having no need for this empire were waiting for its dissolution. One may therefore, conclude that when an empire, like the Holy Roman Empire, a non-national empire, is broken to pieces ...
... to escape from these errors; but the attempt was not thorough-going and not altogether successful. A strong surviving element of oligarchy remained in the preponderant place assigned to the five great Powers in the Security Council and was clinched by the device of the veto; these were concessions to a sense of realism and the necessity of recognising the actual condition of things and the results of ...
... Then it is not that you can't know; only you are not concerned with it. That is what I wanted to find out. SRI AUROBINDO (after some time) : What is the result of the conference between the two great powers—X and Z? (Laughter) NIRODBARAN: I don't know. I haven't met X. I meet him only once a week. PURANI: Then he will complain about you too. NIRODBARAN: On the contrary, it is he who is not ...
... stop war the last time there was a chance of it? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes—for many reasons war was not favourable at that time. NIRODBARAN: But you stopped it at the cost of the humiliation of some great Powers. SRI AUROBINDO: I didn't care for that. NIRODBARAN: What do you think of the Sino-Japanese War? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't think much of either party. They are six of one and half-dozen of ...
... neither salvation nor liberation. All I ask for is the Strength to uplift this fallen nation, and to sacrifice my life to her cause.' "When I realised that by practising Yoga one could acquire great powers, I told myself that this then was the way by which I could help my country. Also a few things happened that increased my faith in the Yogic Force. Once Barin came back from the Vindhya mountain ...
... key to the flaming doors of the Mother's manifold epiphanies, and a key to the mystic machinery of her ministry on the earth. It is in the sixth and last section of the book that four of her great "Powers and Personalities" (Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati) are invoked with a mantra-shakti - the sheer verbal élan - for which there are no exact parallels even in Sri Aurobindo's ...
... feared being outvoted in a house where all the votes were equal. But after four or five years of running the U. N. 0. the voluntary surrender of the veto by one Page 66 or more of the great powers would have gone a long way in creating the psychological atmosphere necessary for the real unity of mankind. If international unity has any meaning all the nations participating in the U. N. 0 ...
... generally they do not control these occult forces. The JEWS, having a long-standing tradition about these powers, seem to know the way of mastering them. Théon, the Mother's first teacher, had great powers and knew how to use them. Sometimes these powers are gifts." 1 Madame Théon was amply gifted with this power. And between Théon and Théona (as Teresa called her), Mirra was given a complete ...
... (3)The Minister should try to make a good use of Mr. Ghose's abilities in entrusting him with the compilation of Annual Administration Reports and other important compilations. He is a man of great powers and every use should be made of his talents. (4)The Minister should also suggest from time to time the different uses to which Mr. Ghose's abilities can be Page 140 ...
... will is also developing, but it is not so powerful as yet as the other. My communication with the other world is yet of a troubled character, though I am certainly in communication with some very great powers." He called them his 'guides.' "What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness ...
... impulses to see their countries greatness, power, strength remain unimpaired even at the cost and expenses of other countries. This mentality dominated by the ignorant, crude and self-assertive vital propensities is responsible for the major international troubles and wars in economic and political fields. It was expected by the founders of the U. N. O. the five Great World Powers, U. S., U. S. S. R., France... occurring in any part of the world. Otherwise there is antagonism, rivalry and bitter competition in the two major fields of human existence, viz., politics and economics where you can see how the powers are ranged against themselves and spending millions, billions and trillions of dollars etc., simply for destructive purposes of their fellowmen. If we leave spirituality alone (the domain of saints... First you have to see that there are two forces- working in antagonism—this naturally has been the case all along but their struggles and contradictions have been much accentuated since the last Great World War. On the one side there is some constructive activity on the part of the U. N. O. and on the other hand, a global preparation for vast and immense destructive purposes. All this is naturally ...
... the subconscient. To complement this work, he does his pujas to Kali, and finally one of his friends, X, the 'High Priest' of the temple in Rameswaram (who presided over my initiation and has great occult powers), has undertaken to say a 'very powerful' mantra over me daily, for a period of eight days, to extirpate the dark forces from my subconscious. The operation already began four days ago. While... Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 December 24, 1958 ( Letter to Mother from Satprem ) Rameswaram, December 24, 1958 Sweet Mother, Your last letter was a great comfort to me. If you were not there, with me, everything would be so absurd and impossible. I am again disturbing you because Swami tells me that you are worried and that I should write to you. Not... I am following Swami's instructions to the letter. Sometimes it all seems to lack warmth and spontaneity, but I am holding on. I might add that we are living right next to the bazaar, amidst a great racket 20 hours a day, which does not make things easier. So I repeat my mantra as one pounds his fists against the walls of a prison. Sometimes it opens a little, you send me a little joy, and then ...
... he was lost. But he was too great to remain just a miracle-maker. To quote Satprem, "We Page 265 would be doing an injustice to Theon were we to think he was in pursuit of the great, dazzling powers.... He was in search of something much more momentous. Perhaps Théon's tragedy is this: the underlying defiance and grief and irony of a certain greatness that knows itself doomed to failure... do we hear her melodious voice, her gentle words inspired by wisdom, that powerful and profound poetry which flowed like a magnificent river from the pure source of the Soph, and through which this great intelligence expressed itself in the immense range of her vast knowledge! "The dear psychic children kiss no more her small hands of a Sensitive, her small industrious and diligent hands, ceaselessly... afraid of him. Nobody went inside his property. But he would be seen now and then, just like that, when he came down into town. We would see him walking; he had long hair, wore a beret, and also a great big costume. For us," the Arabs said, "only prophets dress in that fashion. So then ..." At any rate, it was one of the old men who kindly guided Patrice to Zarif. It was there that the latter ...
... is a bit of the bird in us, which remembers. Each time I suddenly discover that I am a man as one finds oneself dwarfed in a dream—no, it is not that that I seek! Not intelligence, not virtue, greatness, powers, not a superiority over all this mediocrity: but something else, something else, a complete elseness... autre chose, autre chose, une autreté complète . A new vision is what I want, it is my... navels. The misfortune is that I am not interested in my own salvation, my own liberation, I am interested only for others. —Listen, Björn, you want power—very well. Let us suppose you have all the powers, you are all-powerful. What are you going to do with it, tell me? Do you know, at least, for what you want to use this power? Do you know what is good, what is bad? And what is really bad? That is... and strange, as after a long journey elsewhere, and one goes on, one is that little image which walks under a great serene eye. I was going there as if after centuries, and nothing had changed; I had lived elsewhere perhaps, it was a dream, and I found again the smooth coolness of the great flagstones under my feet. We were going together, Björn and I, clad in white and barefooted, in that gigantic ...
... received an immense development in the West, and is at once its glory and danger. An exclusive reliance on it is a great hindrance to the development of the higher powers and potentialities of the human intelligence. The other aspect of the reason is idealistic, which, depending on its powers of comprehension, co- ordination and synthesis rather than on analysis and differentiation, seeks to command a... fields of human knowledge. By a masterful manipulation of the reports of the senses, and an induction from them of the general laws which govern the operations of Nature, it has armed man with great material powers and extended the horizons of his mental life. The reason has two aspects: pragmatic and idealistic. The pragmatic reason is bent upon life; the will in it is predominantly a will to creation... hierarchical order clearly indicated, if we are to embark upon the work of its Yogic as distinguished from ethical purification. A certain amount of detailed knowledge of the psychology of our nature is a great help in the beginning of the spiritual life, and saves us many a stumble and bewilderment. When the inner light dawns, we can dispense with the mental knowledge and know the whole working of our nature ...
... gs. The next reference to Ritam meets us in the twenty-third hymn of the Mandala, the last hymn of the series assigned to Medhatithi Kanwa, and once again it occurs in connection with the great twin powers, Mitra & Varuna. Mitram vayam havámahe, Varunam somapítaye jajnáná pútadakshasá Page 65 Ritena yáv ritávridhau, ritasya jyotishaspatí tá Mitrávaruná huve “Mitra... the gods in their sacrificial activity, the taste of the wine of immortality, the freedom from attachment, the increasing force of ideal Truth in the human being, then it is impossible for the great divine Powers to fling wide open for us the doors of the higher Heavens, the gates of Ananda, the portals of our immortal life. They start wide open on their hinges to receive before the throne of God the... protégé , however fiercely & by whatever powers assailed, cannot be crushed. At once, it begins to become clear that the protection in that case must, in all probability, be a spiritual protection against spiritual dangers & spiritual foes. The second verse neither confirms as yet nor contradicts Page 73 this initial suggestion. These three great gods, it says, are to the mortal as a multitude ...
... supernatural powers does he acquire. That Kundalini, the Mother of the Worlds, is the imperial greatness and glow, the majesty of the Lord of Consciousness himself. She is the one who takes care of the shoot that has sprung up from the little seed, the seed that bears within itself the whole cosmos. She is the body of the creative Non-Existence; she becomes a casket to hold the Great Self that is... acquired its several merits or siddhis. Not that this acknowledgement or certification from the contemporary Yogis and Siddhas or Commentators is needed for him. He had at his command great occult Page 77 powers and had control over things material and psychic. There are any number of legends, current even today, about the performance of ‘miracles’ by him. It is said that he was chased and... the possibility of living a life of truthful conduct; on him attend the great riches and gains, the exceptional yogic riddhis and siddhis ; he always inspires in us the spirit of the Perfect. The Sun of Knowledge never sets on this Adwaitin, the knower of the One. He himself becomes full of knowledge. About the greatness of such a Yogin Jnaneshwar says: He is the father-king of the knowers ...
... When we turn from the great harmonies and victorious imaginations of the master to the raw and perhaps faltering workmanship of these uncertain beginnings, we are irresistibly impelled to cry out, "This is not by the same hand." But the impulse, however natural, is not always reasonable. The maxim that a poet is born and not made is only true in the sense that great poetical powers are there in the mind... Literature The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Seasons Its Authenticity The "seasons" of Kalidasa is one of those early works of a great poet which are even more interesting to a student of his evolution than his later masterpieces. We see his characteristic gift even in the immature workmanship and uncertain touch and can distinguish... by diligence a machine for producing elegant verse. But poetic genius needs experience and self-discipline as much as any other, and by its very complexity more than most. This is eminently true of great poets with a varied gift. A narrow though a high faculty works best on a single line and may show perfection at an early stage; but powerful and complex minds like Shakespeare or Kalidasa seldom find ...
... just as we accept the vigorous errors of a great personality. His limitations are very largely the condition of his powers. Certainly, he is no universal revealer, as his idolators would have him be,—for even in the life-soul of man there are a multitude of things beyond him; but to have given a form so wonderful, so varied, so immortally alive, in so great a surge of the intensest poetical expression... incarnates itself in him for the pleasure of poetic self-vision. All Shakespeare's powers and limitations—for it is now permissible to speak of his limitations—arise from this character of the force that moved him to poetic utterance. He is not primarily an artist, a poetic thinker or anything else of the kind, but a great vital creator and intensely, though within marked limits, a seer of life. His art... action. In his vision and therefore in his poetic Page 79 motive Shakespeare never really either rises up above life or gets behind it; he neither sees what it reaches out to nor the great unseen powers that are active within it. At one time, in two or three of his tragedies, he seems to have been striving to do this, but all that he does see then is the action of certain tremendous life-forces ...
... system of spiritual knowledge and an ordered belief in which matter, mind and spirit are connected and coordinated by the common action of great divine powers. When we know according to what idea of cosmic principle Surya and Agni could be at once material gods and great spiritual helpers, we shall have some clue to the system of the early Vedantins and at the same time, as I believe, to the genuine si... me that the Europeans are demonstrably wrong in laying so predominant a stress on the material aspects of the Vedic gods. I find Varuna and Mitra to be mainly moral and not material powers; Surya, Agni, Indra have great psychical functions; even Sarasvati, in whom the scholars insist on seeing, wherever they can, an Aryan river, presents herself as a moral and intellectual agency,—"Pâvakâ nah Sarasvatî... possession of the system of their Vedic predecessors and that they surely did not regard this system as merely a minute collection of ritual practices or merely an elaborate worship of material Nature-Powers. Minds that saw the world steadily as a whole, they did not repel that worship or disown that ritual. Surya was to them the god of the Sun; Agni they regarded as the master of fire; but they were not—and ...
... secret of the present; recluses who knew the secret of the worlds beyond and the ineffable Plenitude, but none who knew the plenitude of the world here. I have seen little dark beings who gave great, brilliant powers, I have seen powerful men who captivated with a single look, but none was stronger than that small flame within. I have bathed in icy springs, in foul rivers, I have meditated with the dead... He dropped his chimta: —The devil is behind your words. —So much the better. If there is the devil, it's already something! —My Master said: “There is the great expanse, and one is free.” —But I am free! I know that great expanse of yours, I go there at will. He remained open-mouthed as though he were about to swallow the moon. —Yes, there is a world up there, and one is free, and... one closes the lower door... one takes the key to the fields of light... And that evening, I found myself in front of the great. Contradiction. Yes, one day, bodies open like flowers. One day, under the pressure of an inner fire, the shell of obscurity bursts open, the great captive bird opens its wings of victory, and one glides—infinitely, marvellously—through smooth, luminous plains, through ...
... uniqueness of the individual and the oneness of the universal. For "The Sole in its solitude yearned towards the All And the Many turned to look back at the One." Great spiritual powers of the Timeless came pouring through time in works of ageless might. In this world "the eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house "Sporting with God as a Mother with her child: ... point of joy: Bliss was the pure undying truth of things. All Nature was a conscious front of God". In this vision of the new universe he found "A grand orchestra of spiritual powers" producing a deep harmonised oneness which was immeasurable and he saw himself as one point of that vast ocean "a ripple on a single sea of peace". He experienced in himself "The bliss of a myriad... searching to know its why and wherefore and the Self is struggling to emerge, to know and to rule. But the whole course of this cosmic manifestation which seems irrational appeared to be governed by three powers "In the beginning an unknowing Force, In the middle an embodied striving soul, In its end a silent spirit denying life." This dark world of Matter is unwilling to let go its ...
... ancient mind, light of a high ethical Dharma and others who are embodied Titans, the men of power more open than ours to the truth of things behind the physical veil, saw behind the life of man great cosmic Powers or beings representative of certain turns or grades of the universal Shakti, divine, titanic, gigantic, demoniac, and men who strongly represented in themselves these types of nature were themselves... to the slavery of the soul in Nature, to desire, wrath and greed, the three powers of the rajasic ego, and these are the threefold doors of Hell, the Hell into which the natural being falls when it indulges the impurity and evil and error of its lower or perverted instincts. These three are again the the doors of a great darkness, they fold back into Tamas, the characteristic power of the original... not mechanised, as is the human will, by the gunas. No doubt, since these modes are so universal in their action, they must proceed from something inherent in the power of the Spirit; there must be powers in the divine Will-force from which these from aspects of Prakriti have their origin. For everything in the lower normal nature is derived the higher spiritual power of being of the Purushottama, ...
... put aside by the victorious empires. In its place we have the map of Europe remade on old diplomatic principles, Africa appropriated and partitioned as the personal property of two or three great European powers and western Asia condemned to be administered under a system of mandates that are now quite openly justified as instruments of commercial exploitation and have to be forced on unwilling peoples... mind and life of humanity. The war came only as a first shock and overturn, an opportunity for certain clearances, a death-blow to the moral though not as yet to the material hold of certain ideas and powers that were till then confident and throned, sure of the present and hopeful of their possession of the future. It has loosened the soil, but the uprooting of all the old growths was more than it could... possible. It is a fact of only outward significance that the Bolsheviks not so long ago threatened with the loss of Moscow are now on the road to Warsaw. It is of much more significance that the western Powers find themselves driven at last to negotiate with the first successful communist government of modern times still denounced by them as a monstrosity to be destroyed and a danger to civilisation. But ...
... sought to lead him through them to the psychic and spiritual truths of his own being and the being of the cosmos. It recognised that he was right when he saw behind the manifestations of Nature great living powers and godheads, even though he knew not their inner truth, and right too in offering to them worship and propitiation and atonement. For that inevitably must be the initial way in which his active... illumination. And in all these powers he is a luminous form of the one and infinite Godhead. All the Vedic godheads have this outer and this inner and inmost function, their known and their secret Names. All are in their external character powers of physical Nature; all have in their inner meaning a psychic function and psychological ascriptions; all too are various powers of some one Page 201 ... beyond this death, to become one of the immortals, he has to turn from the falsehood to the Truth; he has to turn to the Light and to battle with and to conquer the powers of the Darkness. This he does by communion with the divine Powers and their aid; the way to call down this aid was the secret of the Vedic mystics. The symbols of the outer sacrifice are given for this purpose in the manner of the ...
... this Supreme; all cosmic existences return to it and find in it alone their true and immeasurable existence. "For I am altogether and in every way the origin of the gods and the great Rishis." The gods are the great undying Powers and immortal Personalities who consciously inform, constitute, preside over the subjective and objective forces of the cosmos. The gods are spiritual forms of the eternal and... ādiḥ sarvaśaḥ . Nothing in the universe has its real cause in the universe; all proceeds from this supernal Existence. TThe great Rishis, called here as in the Veda the seven original Seers, maharṣayaḥ sapta pūrve , the seven Ancients of the world, are intelligence-powers of that divine Wisdom which has evolved all things out of its own self-conscious infinitude, prajñā purāṇī ,—developed them down... other powers of existence, it relegates to an inferior preliminary action which never arrives at any full or satisfying realisation in the Eternal and Infinite. Yet these things too which it restricts unduly, the potent will, the strong yearning of love, the positive light and all-embracing intuition Page 339 of the conscious mental being are from the Divine, represent essential powers of ...
... injustice to Theon if we thought he was in search of the great, dazzling powers from the lower door, and besides, he did not have to search for them: he had them fully at his disposal. He was in quest of something far grander—which he was not fated to attain. This may be Theon's tragedy: the underlying defiance and pain and irony of a greatness that knows it is doomed to failure, but which struggles... indeed, what is the use of "powers,” when all you want is to find some way out of this predicament? A single power is enough, the one that brings you out. And for centuries upon centuries (but not all), sages and saints of every color have nimbly or laboriously scaled the vertical world, as vertically as they could, without even seeing, as Sri Aurobindo said, these great and. luminous kingdoms of... y. She knew the world of colored waves, the world of rhythms that form great musical waves, as it were, and then all the way up, suddenly, along came a sound ... but so complete, so full! As if something exploded ...I don’t know what, much more resounding than an orchestra— something exploding. It was overwhelming!... Great, blue notes. 6 She had touched the origin of music, perhaps the source ...
... the length of the lifespan or lifetime, but the consciousness of each moment of life lived worthily. The story becomes even more specific: Sage Narad is an exceptional being of such great personal powers that he can walk in 8 Willi Hoffsummer, Kruz geschichten 3, Mathias Grilnewald-Verlag,Mainz, (Germany) 3 rd ed., 1988, ~230, p. 145. Page 306 and out of Heaven... heart, Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize. Only one boon, to greaten thy spirit, demand; Only one joy, to raise thy kind, desire. Above blind fate and the antagonist powers Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will; To its omnipotence leave thy work's result. All things shall change in God's transfiguring hour. 25 In the above excerpt, among... carry water from a pond at the bottom of the hill. It involved a great deal of long and arduous labour, as he had to climb up and down carrying water. As the Europeans came, they brought along with them their machinery too. They offered him a water pump, saying that it would spare him such a hard task as carrying water with such a great trouble. But the farmer politely refused the offer: "If I do ...
... Aswapati meets the guardian angels who await "for the heaven-bound soul" "holding the thousand keys of the Beyond." He also sees there "World-Time's enjoyers, favourites of World-Bliss." These great creative powers are the miracle workers of the Creator. They have built this material world, "this wide world-kindergarten of young souls" by lending finite shapes to infinite things. A timeless Spirit... fancy and flights of imagination. Furthermore, there is an attempt here to capture the highest truth in terms of mental images and conceptions which are insufficient to hold the great Truth. As the poet says, the powers of the greater mind measure the Illimitable with number's rods. They try to squeeze termless truths into transparent systems and to make the Timeless accountable to time. ... A hundred levels raised it to the Unknown. 8 Mankind has from the beginning of existence believed in the existence of other worlds and in the possibility of communication between their powers and the human race until the rationalistic period of human thought began to sweep this belief aside as an old-fashioned superstition. To Quote Sri Aurobindo: 6 The Life Divine, SABCL, ...
... senses, do not stand in awe of inanimate objects, or of dawn & rain & shine or expect from them favours. But the great gods of the Veda belong to a higher order than these beings who attach themselves to the individual object and the particular movement. They are great world-powers; they support the wide laws & universal functions of the world. Their dwelling-place is in Swar, the world of pure mind... worship of material Nature-powers, henotheistic at their highest, Pagan, joyous and self-indulgent. Brahma & Shiva do not exist for the Veda; Vishnu & Rudra are minor, younger & unimportant deities. Many more discoveries of a startling nature, but now familiar to the most ignorant, have been successfully imposed on our intellects. The Vedas, it seems, were not revealed to great & ancient Rishis, but composed... In the language of the Rishis whatever we can make permanently ours is called our holding or wealth, dhanam or in the plural dhanáni; the powers which assist us in the getting, keeping or increasing of our dhanáni, the yoga, s áti & vriddhi, are the gods; the powers which oppose & labour to rob us of this wealth are our enemies & plunderers, dasyus, and appear under various names, Vritras, Panis, Daityas ...
... to see what happens. Thirdly, to play God and be worshipped. Fourthly, to bring about a manifestation of vital power. To this class belong those beings that effect miraculous cures and have great healing powers. Fifthly, to satisfy some desire or impulse like murder or lust. From this point of view you will see that capital punishment is absurd. The man who murders was, most probably, under possession... impossible for him to rest satisfied with the ordinary life. Disciple : Does the Fire always signify the psychic aspiration in the Veda ? Sri Aurobindo : Yes. But there are various forms and powers of Agni – Fire – in us and also in the universe. This Agni in the inner being they spoke of, most probably, as the g ā rhapatya – the Fire belonging to the Lord of the House. Disciple :... the fulfilment of such an ideal. Disciple : If the Supramental Power is working then why do so many difficulties from outside come to a Sadhaka like X? Sri Aurobindo : There are hostile powers that do not want the manifestation of this Higher Tower. The more you progress the more they become furious and try attack you. Secondly, it is not the highest Supramental Power itself that is working ...
... out Surya Deva as a God – the little stream flowing there is surely as much a flowing God? No, every being and thing is not a god. Well, because he is supposed to be one of the great cosmic Powers – the little stream is not. I have heard of sun-worshippers (I don’t know if there are moon-worshippers) but I could never take them seriously. There were both. Even now... service of evil forces and who is fated to be torn to pieces by the powers he serves. Page 95 Perhaps you feel that it is our duty to take a side even if only in thought. Well, if you feel so by all means do so, but, for myself, I feel that if one can keep one’s gaze fixed on Krishna, however feeble our powers, we shall be doing something, however little, towards removing the... prefer to replace vairagya by a firm and quiet rejection of what has to be rejected, sex, vanity, ego-centrism, attachment, etc. etc.; but that does not include rejection of the activities and powers that can be made instruments of the sadhana and the divine work, such as art, music, poetry, etc. Yoga can be done without the rejection of life, without killing or impairing the life-joy and the ...
... with a particular function. All of them are a portion of Māhākali. Actually speaking, Mahakali along with Maheshwari, Mahālakshmi and Mahā-saraswati (mahā = Great) are the Divine Mother's four Page 138 great leading Powers: Strength, Wisdom, Harmony and Perfection. However, in spite of their different functions, all the Kalis have certain similar characteristics. The Kali idols... anthem). The picture remained deeply engraved in my heart. Decades later, it suddenly dawned on me: Greatness. Who else but a truly great person could bow like that to a child? What else but Greatness has that simplity? And Rabindranath was great enough to recognize greatness in others. That his admiration for Sri Aurobindo knew no bounds is universally known. Page 71 ... spirit that animated it, most of us have forgotten or are completely unaware of what this great past was. Roughly speaking, there were three great ages of India's greatness: the spiritual, the intellectual and the classical. Page 29 In Sri Aurobindo's words: "The first age of India's greatness was a spiritual age when she sought passionately for the truth of existence through the ...
... the amorous sentiments of these beauties of Vraja and delighted them thereby. 47. When they found themselves entertained in this way by no less an individual than Śrī Krsna, a great personage and possessor of all divine powers, pride entered into the minds of these women and they thought themselves to be the most superior of their kind. 48. Seeing that pride of beauty and a sense of self-importance... some acted as cow-keepers and others as cattle-lifters. 28. O King! Some impersonated as keepers, some as animals and still others as thieves. 29. An Asura named Vyoma, the son of Maya, who had great magical powers, came there assuming the form of a Gopa and stole away many Gopa boys who were playing the part of goats and other animals. 30. The Asura took them one by one and shut them up in mountain caves... Commissioned by Karhsa, Akrūra spent that night at Mathurā in great expectation and started for Nanda's Gokula in the early morning. 2. The high-souled Akrūra, while on the way, had a great upsurge of devotion to the supreme lotus-eyed Lord, and thought thus: 3. What pious works must I have performed, what Tapas must I have done, what great charity to deserving persons must I have made that I shall be ...
... aesthetics. She was a friend of Rodin, of Monet, of... (who else?) of Sisley, of the great Impressionists. She tried the door of music – she was a great musician. She knocked on many doors. She was also gifted in mathematics. And then she knocked on a very interesting, and very dangerous door – the door of occult powers. Because, if there was to be another being, a step beyond the human, HOW was it going... greater danger of using these powers for the wrong ends. What would people immediately do with these powers? They would use them to get rid of everything that stands in their way! Or, worse, they would use them to eliminate everything that seems evil in this world. But what do they really know about that evil? What do they know? Human beings know nothing. A great vision is necessary in order... every avenue closed one after another before her. She clearly saw that playing with philosophies didn't lead anywhere beyond a play. Aesthetics had its limits. Music had its limits. All the great occult powers had their limits. None of that was the key to move on to... to a humanity that might be really human – what it scarcely is at present, or not yet. And that is how she came to Sri Aurobindo ...
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