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... in relation to a half-reflecting surface, whether it will pass through or be reflected. In this field of infinitesimals what we know is the total behaviour of an assemblage of particles, and the laws of nature are only laws of average computation. Statistics has ousted the more exact and rigid arithmetics. And statistics, we know, is a precarious science: the knowledge it gives is contingent, contingent... exorcise the ghost is possessed by the ghost itself. So the scientists of today are waking up to this disconcerting fact. And some have put the question very boldly and frankly: do not all laws of Nature contain this original sin of the observer's interference, indeed may not the laws be nothing else but that? Thus Science has landed into the very heart – the bog and quagmire, if you like – of... abstruse metaphysics. Eddington says, there is no other go for Science today but to Page 313 admit and delcare that its scheme and pattern of things, as described by what is called laws of Nature, is only a mental construct of the Scientist. The "wonderful" discoveries are nothing but jugglery and legerdemain of the mind – what it puts out of itself unconsciously into the outside world ...

... conform to the laws of nature or what we think to be the laws of nature. A man standing in the air without any support or squatting on the water – feats familiar to the yogis – are termed veritable miracles. The famous rope trick is a legendary miracle. Some of these miracles done by yogis are authentic facts. They apparently seem to violate the prevailing so-called laws of nature, but if we knew ...

... ² For the miracle does happen and man is waiting for that in spite of all the tragic interlude: If the leaves, branches, roots, trunk Had been granted a manual of freedom, The laws of nature would have intervened. But a miracle is a miracle, a miracle is God. When we are all confusion, That instant it finds us out.³ ¹ "Magdalene" (II). ²"Earth". ³ "Miracle". ...

... problem? Why go far, the very first step that the child takes in his adventurous journey of life, is it not a veritable step into the unknown? Indeed, many, in fact most of the scientific laws - the Laws of Nature - are they strictly the result of calculation and deduction from known and observed data or are they not rather "brilliant surmises", "sudden revelations" that overwhelm by their un-expected appearance ...

... add one word, a practical word, to what I have already said; it is an illustration of a detail, but it will be a kind of reply to some other questions put to me some time ago about the so-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, inevitable consequences in the material world, more particularly from the point of view of health: we are told that if some precautions are not taken, if we do not eat as we ...

... Prayag, the place of pilgrimage, where the Ganga and the Jamuna have met. Now, in the creation nothing can remain itself and unaltered for good. Difference and polarity are the inviolable laws of nature. Therefore it is not that we do not find glimpses of pure intuition here and there among the Bengalees. Chandidas, the pioneer poet of Bengal, represents an unalloyed, pure inspiration and Vidyapati ...

... necessity and as a reaction of the senses to their objects. The intellectual faculty develops in man so that he may handle material things properly and effectively. The so-called universal truths or laws of Nature that the scientist discovers by virtue Page 293 of his keen intellect have their chief advantage in enabling one to deal with the external world with considerable ease. That ...

... the element of the incalculable and the unforeseen in Nature. Nature, in one respect, seems to be a closed circle: it is a rigid mechanism and its movements are very definite and absolutely fixed admitting of no change or variation whatsoever. That was the idea which governed our earlier scientists when they spoke or the Law of Nature. Law of Nature was to them, in the great Sophoclean phrase, something... ordinary round, according to the normal laws, bound ,within their present frame: but always there drops in from elsewhere an unknown element, a force or energy or impulse of another quality, which causes a shift of emphasis in the actual, brings about a change unaccountable and unforeseen. This is what is called miracle: the imposition of a higher law, a generic law governing subtler forms and forces upon... in nature, quality and extent in the lower order. Such miracles, interventions, providential happenings are not rare. They are always occurring, only they do not attract attention. For it is these phenomena that are the real causes of all progress – cosmic as well as individual. Evolution is based upon this truth of Nature. Man is not bound to the present pattern or complex of his nature and ...

... move the other way round. Thus a Page 274 never-ending see-saw, a cyclic recurrence of the same sequence of movements appears to be an inevitable law governing human society: it seems to have almost the absolutism of a law of Nature.¹ ¹ In this connection we can recall Plato's famous serial of social types from aristocracy to tyranny, the last coming out of democracy the type... sanctity of the individual conscience against the established order of a mighty State. Indeed, individualised individuals were more or less freaks in the social set-up in the early days, revolutionaries or law-breakers, iconoclasts who were not very much favoured by the people. In Europe, it was perhaps with Luther that started a larger movement for the establishment and maintenance of the individual's right... exactly as we have experienced it in our own days). But the most interesting point to which we can look with profit is Plato's view that the types are as men are, that is to say, the character and nature of man in a given period determines the kind of government or social system he is going to have. There has been this cyclic rotation of types, because men themselves were rotating types, because, in ...

... active, cannot be predetermined by any calculation, even if that is due to a definitely and precisely arranged bombardment. So we have come to posit a principle of uncertainty, as a very fundamental law of Nature. It practically declares that the ultimate particle is an autonomou unit, it is an' individual, almost a personality, and seems to have a will of its own. A material unit acts very much like a ... physical Science has been built up – is now being called in question. We thought that the unity and uniformity of Nature is a cardinal fact and nothing can shake it. Well, it appears that solid basis too has proved to be no more than an eidolon. The search for a universal principle of Nature is a meta-physical as well as a scientific preoccupation. In ancient days, fo example, we had the Water of Thales... the way of its predecessors. We thought for a time that we had found in Electric Energy the one sovereign principle in Nature. At a time when we had a few elements – discrete, different, fundamental units – that in their varying combinations built up the composite structure of Nature, apart from the fact that they reposed finally on the ultimate unifying principle of Ether, it was found also that they ...

... verily, the foxes have their holes, the birds their nests, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head." And this is bound to be so, for it is the inexorable law of nature: one who has identified himself with Nature, ignorant nature, of which the ignorant and suffering humanity is part and parcel, one whose body and soul are in unison and union with the body and soul of all beings and creatures... effective power of realisation. Inevitably this means as I have said the assumption of all the ills of nature; for the very purpose of incarnation is to purify the external nature, so that it becomes one with the inner being. So, all terrestrial human beings share in the impurity of the ignorant ordinary nature and share also, as secretly conscious entities although outwardly almost absolutely unconscious... unity, instead of a static unity, a never-ending repetition, an eternal recurrence. There is a consciousness above and a consciousness below: a consciousness above the ignorant nature and a consciousness within that nature. They are not, however, altogether distinct and incommensurable: it is the same consciousness with a double status as in the well-known figure of the two birds in in the Upanishad ...

... face, Janus like: violence and falsehood. In private life, in the political field, in the business world, in social dealings, it is now an established practice, it has gained almost the force of a law of nature that success can be achieved only with these two comrades on your either side. A gentle, honest, peace-loving man is inevitably pushed back, he has to go to the wall; a straightforward truthful... the apparent forms of his personality, the divine element, the very Divine in him. It is the outer man, the marginal man, man in his inferior nature that lives and moves in normal circumstances; instead, the central man, man in his higher and highest nature has to come out and take his place in the world. What is needed then is an army of souls: individuals, either separately or in groups, who have ...

... squarely the new situation and make the best use of it. India, that claims a spiritual heritage and a high and hoary civilisation, can afford to be idealistic even and envisage a deeper and higher law of Nature, of universal harmony and solidarity, of conscious co-operation. Apart from that, if as practical men, we look to our self-interest, then also it will be wise for us to take up the same line of... consider the present, look for those forces that make for the new world and thus help the course of evolution and progress. Nature does not care for her past formations, she is not bound to them; she is always throwing up chances and opportunities-varia­tions-for new developments. Nature red in tooth and claw is only one side of the shield; and the picture is not as true today as it was even a few hundred... change, although conditions and circumstances have changed, is known as the ideologist, the doctrinaire, the fanatic. The no-changer does not change with the times: for, according to him, that is the nature of the weather-cock, the time-server. On the contrary, he seeks to impose his ideas (sometimes called ideals), notions, prejudgments and even prejudices upon time and circumstance. Such an endeavour ...

... fact there will be no aggregates at all, the individual will be the sole, the first and the last unit. The individual, it is said, will have so developed and perfected its self-nature that by following the law of that nature, it will automatically and spontaneously live and move harmoniously with all the rest; each will be a self-contained unit and there will be a kind of pre-established harmony among... Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1 The Ideals of Human Unity THE unification of humanity is also a thing decreed. For it is the goal towards which Nature is proceeding slowly but inevitably, bringing into play factors and forces that work out that consummation. Man is a gregarious animal, a social being. He forms groups and collectivities and... firm, solid, self-conscious and selfishly aggressive entity that it has now become almost a barrier to a further enlargement of the unit towards a still greater and wider unification of mankind. But nature cannot be baulked, its straight urge hampered; it takes to by-ways and indirect routes and roundabout channels for its fulfilment. On three different lines a greater and larger unification of mankind ...

... is Dharma then? How does it accomplish the miracle which to others seems to have proved an impossibility? Dharma is self-law, that is to say, the law of the Self; it is the rhythm and movement of our inner or inmost being, the spontaneous working out of our truth-conscious nature.   We may perhaps view the three terms Right, Duty and Dharma as degrees of an ascending consciousness. Con... The individual souls, being made of one truth-nature in its multiple modalities, when they live, move and have their being in its essential law and dynamism, there cannot but be absolute harmony and perfect synthesis between all the units, even as the sun and moon and stars, as the Veda says, each following its specific orbit according to its specific nature, never collide or halt – na methate na tasthatuh... obe­ dience to the chief – the patriarch or pater familias –obedience to the laws and customs of the collectivity to which one belonged. It was called duty; it was called even dharma, but evidently on a lower level, in an inferior formulation. In reality it was more of the nature of the mechanical functioning of an automaton than the exercise of conscious will and deliberate ...