Pythagoras : (c.582-c.507 BC), Greek philosopher & mathematician; he founded of the Pythagorean brotherhood that formulated principles that contributed to the development of Europe’s mathematics & rationalism. The brotherhood’s interest in numbers extended to practical mathematics, & is credited with inspiring the first part of Euclidean geometry & the theorem that bears their name.
... to Spinoza, Kant or Hegel: even Plato does not fit into the term, though Pythagoras has a good claim to it. Hegel and other transcendental or idealistic philosophers were great intellects, not mystics."! Yes, Pythagoras, unlike Plato, is unchallengeable; actually elsewhere Sri Aurobindo has gone so far as to say: "Pythagoras was one of the greatest of the mystics." 5 But, although Plato is different... apropos of Heraclitus and the Age of the "Mysteries" in Greece: "To ignore the influence of the mystic thought and its methods of self-expression on the intellectual thinking of the Greeks from Pythagoras to Plato is to falsify the historical procession of the human mind. It was enveloped at first in the symbolic, intuitive, esoteric style and discipline of the Mystics, — Vedic and Vedantic seers... Mystics, our pristine fathers, purve pitarah, is the great defect of the modern account of our thought-evolution."? What is particularly relevant for us is the juxtaposition in the phrase: "from Pythagoras to Plato." The coupling of the two Greeks is meaningful, there is a line of thought joining them. But, in the context of mysticism, they are not on a par. "A mystic," Sri Aurobindo declares, "is ...
... degree rudimentary. Pythagoras was one of the greatest of sages, but his assertion that he fought at Troy under the name of the Antenorid and was slain by the younger son of Atreus is an assertion only and his identification of the Trojan shield will convince no one who is not already convinced; the modern evidence is not as yet any more convincing than the proof of Pythagoras. In absence of external... beings continue to think. In former times the doctrine used to pass in Europe under the grotesque name of transmigration which brought with it to the Western mind the humorous image of the soul of Pythagoras migrating, a haphazard bird of passage, from the human form divine into the body of a guinea-pig or an ass. The philosophical appreciation of the theory expressed itself in the admirable but rather ...
... follow the great current of universal life in an ever ascending march, inevitably moves towards downfall, towards the dissolution of his conscious being. This has been expressed very forcefully by Pythagoras, in the eloquent words recently pronounced here by Mr. Han Byner. And these words led me to decide against summarising in this last meeting what has been the object of our study course. We... India, in Cappadocia, will find them everywhere identical in substance behind their varied forms. For all these methods of development can be epitomised in one sublime teaching, the very teaching Pythagoras gave to his disciples and which Mr. Han Byner has told us about. The Self of each individual and the great universal Self are one; we bear God within ourselves. 19 April 1912 Page 98 ...
... intimate influence on the religion, the social ideas, the daily life of the people, its immense dynamic Page 244 power on the mind and actions of Indian humanity. The Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics and Epicureans, had also this practical aim and dynamic force, but it acted only on the cultured few. That was because Greek philosophy, losing its ancient affiliation... powerful movement which could, as in India, replace them by new symbols, new and more philosophic restatements of their hidden truths, new disciplines, schools of Yoga. Attempts, such as that of Pythagoras, were made; but Greece at large followed the turn given by Heraclitus, developed the cult of the reason and left the remnants of the old occult religion to become a solemn superstition and a conventional ...
... Sonnerat, an expert in Natural History. "We know ... that all the peoples came to them to draw the elements of their knowledge, and that Pythagoras went from Greece to study under the Brahmins, looked upon as the most enlightened of men." School children know Pythagoras of Samos (c. 569 B.C.) for his geometrical theorem. The Greek mathematician was also a great philosopher, whose doctrine included the ...
... centre of Greek culture and philosophy. Secondly, there must have been compelling reasons for a number of prominent Greeks to journey to the Land of the Two Kingdoms (Upper and Lower Egypt) – Solon, Pythagoras, Herodotus and Plato among them – and to stay there for long periods. The Egyptian influence is quite evident in their teachings and writings. For example, Egypt is where Plato got his story about... impulse to fresh intellectual and material activity and progress. “The first attempt was the filtering of Egyptian, Chaldean and Indian wisdom through the thought of the Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato and the Neo-Platonists; the result was the brilliantly intellectual and unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism ...
... own mental form. There are many such thoughts in Plato's philosophy. Did he get them from Indian books? Not from Indian books—something of the philosophy of India got through by means of Pythagoras and others. But I think Plato got most of these things from intuition. 8 October 1933 Paul Brunton in his book A Search in Secret Egypt repeatedly speaks of Atlantis. I always thought that... Godhead and underlying or overshadowing forces does not make a man a mystic. One would never think of applying such a term to Spinoza, Kant or Hegel: even Plato does not fit into the term though Pythagoras has a good claim to it. Hegel and other transcendental or idealistic philosophers were great intellects, not mystics. Shaw is a keen and forceful intellect (I cannot call him a great thinker 8 ...
... its experience and it carried it thus changed in form but hardly in substance over all Asia and westward towards Europe. The ideas of the Upanishads can be rediscovered in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profoundest part of Neo-platonism and Gnosticism with all their considerable consequences to the philosophical thinking of the West, and Sufism only repeats them in another ...
... have themselves given a powerful impulse of expansion and richness to its thought and art and life; in Greece the mystics and the mysteries were there at the prehistoric beginning and in the middle (Pythagoras was one of the greatest of mystics) and not only in the ebb and decline; the mystic cults flourished in Rome too when its culture was at high tide; many great spiritual personalities of Italy, France ...
... general belief of that kind [ that a man may be born as an animal in his next birth ] not only in India but wherever "transmigration" or "metempsychosis" was believed in. Shakespeare is referring to Pythagoras' belief in transmigration when he speaks of the passage of somebody's grandmother into an animal. But the soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the ...
... Numbers In one form or another all these ideas [ such as the significance of numbers ] have existed in the past. The significance of numbers was one of the chief elements in the teaching of Pythagoras 5 centuries before Christ. The number 7 is the number of realisation—when there are four 7's it indicates perfect realisation. 7 is the figure of realisation. 3 x 3 means the descent ...
... were seekers after a veiled truth behind things and not of Page 9 an outward knowledge. The scientists and philosophers came afterwards; they were preceded by the mystics and often like Pythagoras and Plato were to some extent mystics themselves or drew many of their ideas from the mystics. In India philosophy grew out of the seeking of the mystics and retained and developed their spiritual ...
... And if God had not meant otherwise for our nation, the Sannyasin would have become an extinct type, Yoga been classed among dead superstitions with witchcraft & alchemy and Vedanta sent the way of Pythagoras & Plato. Nor was the old Vaishya type needed by the new dispensation. The Indian mechanician, engineer, architect, artist, craftsman got notice of dismissal; for to develop the industrial life of ...
... Record of Yoga Undated Notes, c. January 1927 Amrita— Moses, Brihaspati, Hermes, Michael Angelo, Rudra, Pythagoras. Bijoy Child Krishna, St Jean, Kartikeya, child Vishnu Barin Nefdi. Apollo-Aryaman St Hilaire— Ramakrishna—(The Four) Kshitish Narada—Bach-Isaie Kanai Sukadeva—One of the Vital Four Tirupati ...
... impulse to fresh intellectual and material activity and progress. The first attempt was the filtering of Egyptian, Chaldean and Indian wisdom through the thought of the Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato and the Neo-Platonists; the result was Page 141 the brilliantly intellectual and unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when ...
... epithet, but with a pejorative and not a laudatory significance. To ignore the influence of the mystic thought and its methods of self-expression on the intellectual thinking of the Greeks from Pythagoras to Plato is to falsify the historical procession of the human mind. It was enveloped at first in the symbolic, intuitive, esoteric style and discipline of the Mystics,—Vedic and Vedantic seers, Orphic ...
... commonly understood as “fire,” it is Agni, the mystic fire of the Vedas “which is hymned as the upbuilder of the worlds, the secret Immortal in men and things.” It is the central Fire of Heraclitus, Pythagoras and the Stoics, “the heart of Zeus.” “In the Pythagorean cosmology the centre of the world is occupied by a fire (different from the Sun) around which orbit all the heavenly bodies (including the ...
... of the West. The very first time a graded world is mentioned seems to have been by Homer, who’s golden chain reaches from God’s throne down to the meanest worm. Plato, drawing his inspiration from Pythagoras, divided the human consciousness into three levels. The lowest was the desire soul, corresponding to the material and vegetative vital plane centered around the navel and below; higher up, purely ...
... the place for a detailed review of the arguments in favour of rebirth, and only one or two of the most relevant points should be borne in mind. Notable Westerners have believed in reincarnation: Pythagoras, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Goethe, Shelley, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Richard Wagner, Walt Whitman, Nietzsche, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Gauguin, Strindberg, Mondriaan, Jung ...
... of progress. ‘The first attempt [towards a spiritualization of the West by the East] was the filtering of Egyptian, Chaldean and Indian wisdom through the thought of the Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato and the Neo-Platonists; the result was the brilliantly intellectual and unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism ...
... religion of ancient Egypt were determined by an exceptional presence of the occult. What is occult is by definition unknown. It is worthwhile pointing out that many of the prominent Greeks – Solon, Pythagoras, Herodotus, Plato – found the sources of their knowledge in Egypt (which means that European culture has its roots deeper than Greece, in the Kingdom of the Two Lands). 96 All of these Greeks ...
... (Ramakrishna) Deck thyself now with majesty and excellence and array thyself with glory and beauty. (Job) Thou belongest to the divine world. (Baha Ullah) The race of man is divine. (Pythagoras) ...
... consciousness. So everything was shaping according to her Will. Her Force prepared me to face all kinds of experiences which were essential to make me strong and spirited. I should like to quote Pythagoras on the vicissitudes of life: It is all necessary for development of the soul. Whoever fathomed that truth fathomed the very heart of the Great Mystery. ...
... Aurobindo demands a background such as preceded the schools of intellectual philosophy in Europe. Just as the "Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries prepared the rich soil of mentality out of which sprang Pythagoras and Plato", so too does the Rigveda represent "the starting point... for the later march of thought in India". 2 In fact, to Sri Aurobindo, the Orphic and Eleusianian mysteries are "the failing ...
... symbolic interpretation 107 Proper background to the highly developed Upanishads required 107 A background like the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries before Pythagoras and Plato 107 The Rigveda belongs to the oldest Age of Mysteries with inner and outer meanings 107 The Upanishad's forms and symbols and the Brāhmaṇas' ...
... consciousness human and divine, are realities whole and entire englobing all the layers and grades of consciousness. Besides this metaphysics there is also an occult aspect in numerology of which Pythagoras was a well-known adept and in which the Vedic Rishis too seem to take special delight. The multiplication of numbers represents in a general way the principle of emanation. The One has divided and ...
... and colours. That inner form is not the outer visible form and still it is that form fundamentally, essentially. It is that and it is not that. We may add another analogy to illustrate the point. Pythagoras, for example, spoke of numbers being Page 23 realities, the real realities of all sensible objects. He was evidently referring to the basic truth in each individual and this truth ...
... there exist realities which are true symbols ? Numbers seem to have special properties seemingly self-existent, absolute and changeless, ruling the whole manifestation. Perhaps it is this that made Pythagoras and many other mystics see in numbers the highest abstract images of the laws of being ? Sri Aurobindo : What is your idea of the difference between the symbol and Reality ? Disciple ...
... lly. But Hellas is modern. There is a breath in the Ionian atmosphere, a breath of ozone, as it were, which wafts down to us, even into the air of today. Homer and Solon, Socrates and Aristotle, Pythagoras and Plato are still the presiding gods ruling over the human spirit that was born on Olympus and Ida. Human evolution took a decisive turn with the advent of the Hellenic culture and civilisation ...
... speculation, but they also connect with the higher spiritual thought of the civilised world, ancient and modern: The ideas of the Upanishads can be rediscovered in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profoundest part of Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism with all their considerable consequences to the philosophical thinking of the West, and Sufism only repeats them in another ...
... Its practical importance to [our] race is therefore immense. But it has also profoundly [affected] the thought of the West in many of the most critical stages of [its] development; at first through Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers, then through Buddhism working into Essene, Gnostic and Roman Christianity and once again in our own times through German metaphysics, Theosophy, and a hundred strange ...
... a flexible aesthetic appreciation, was in spite of his feeling of racial and cultural superiority to the barbarian much nearer to the Indian mind than a typical modern European. Not only could a Pythagoras or a philosopher of the Neo-platonist school, an Alexander or a Menander understand with a more ready sympathy the root ideas of Asiatic culture, but an average man of ability, a Megasthenes for ...
... though often truncated, has also been a part of other great wisdom traditions through the ages. “The ideas of the Upanishads, ” writes Sri Aurobindo, “can be rediscovered in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profounder part of Neoplatonism and Gnosticism with all their considerable consequences to the philosophical thinking of the West.” In his remarkable series of articles on ...
... acquainted with, is considerable. Moreover, “their writings are positively loaded with references to the Vedas, the Upanishads, Taoism (Bohr made the yin-yang symbol part of his family crest), Buddhism, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Kant, virtually the entire pantheon of perennial philosophers.” 35 Consequently Wilber divides the 20th century physicists into two batches: ...
... themselves given a powerful impulse of expression and richness to its thought and Art and life; in Greece the mystics and the mysteries were there at the prehistoric beginning and in the middle (Pythagoras was one of the greatest of mystics) and not only in the ebb and decline; the mystic cults flourished in Rome when its culture was at high tide; many great spiritual personalities of Italy, France ...
... 15, 16, 17, 61, 62, 85, 118 Pur, purah, iv, 95, 102, 103, 104, 119, 120, 131, 132 Puranas, 15, 16 Pusalker, A.D., 8, 26, 33, 49, 57, 87, 101, 110, 116, 126, 127 Pythagoras, 107 Quetta, 69 Rajasthan, 62, 63 Ramayana, 8, 10 Raksha, 116, 117 Rānā Ghundāī (RG), 58-60, 61, 68, 76 Ranhā, 14 Rao ...
... ancient Europe the schools of intellectual philosophy were preceded by the secret doctrines of the mystics; Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries prepared the rich soil of mentality out of which sprang Pythagoras and Plato. A similar starting-point is at least probable for the later march of thought in India. Much indeed of the forms and symbols of thought which we find in the Upanishads, much of the substance ...
... attempted to rise beyond the human animal—all who have tried to follow the path of the Christ, the Buddha; stigmatise as folly Vedanta, Tantra, Yoga, the way of the Jinas, Christ himself and Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, and any other pathfinder and seeker. On the other hand you write that in "the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there ...
... Zoroastrian and various other backgrounds. The v great Sufi "invisible teacher" Khidr is said to be a Jew. The Moghul Prince Dora Shikoh identified Sufi teachings in the Vedas and Upanishads. Even Pythagoras and Solomon are sometimes referred to as Sufi teachers. Page 154 But what is at the core of Sufism? It can be said that to follow Sufism is to die gradually to oneself and to become ...
... attempted to rise beyond the human animal—all who have tried to follow the path of the Christ, the Buddha; stigmatise as folly Vedanta, Tantra, Yoga, the way of the Jinas, Christ himself and Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, and any other pathfinder and seeker. On the other hand you write that in the Avatar, "the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there ...
... glimpse of what the Vedas and the Upanishads call 'the golden beauty of a God' - the whole body bathed in golden light - golden Purusha. Yeats says in one of his poems: "World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras." However, that was only a moment's vision. Then we were busy trying to find out what had happened. Dr. Manilal set about it: each movement of the limb followed by a soft "ah!" not more ...
... bare, well-developed and the finely pressed snow-white dhoti drawn up contrasted with the shining golden thighs, round and marble-smooth, reminiscent of Yeats's line, "World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras". A sudden fugitive vision of the Golden Purusha of the Vedas! Each gentle movement of the leg by the doctor made Sri Aurobindo let out a short "Ah!" which prompted the Mother to ask, "Is it hurting ...
... under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dynamic in one – the earlier –phase through Plato, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and the mystic philosophers, and discursively and scientifically rational through the Aristotelian tradition. The practical and robust Roman did not indulge in the loftier and subtler ...
... professed to be its champions and adorers – the torch-bearers of the New Enlightenment; no, its direct descendants were to be found among the builders of the Christian civilization. Plato and Pythagoras and Heraclitus and the initiates to the Orphic and the Eleusinian mysteries continued to live in and through Plotinus and Anselm and Paracelsus and the long line 'Of Christian savants and sages. ...
... 187 Pope, 212 Pound, Ezra, 192 Pragmatism, 326 Prithwiraj, 90 Prometheus, 234 Proteus, 274 Prussia, 88 Puranas, the, 71 Pythagoras, 150,211,219 QUANTUM MECHANICS, 316 RACINE, 197 Raghus, the, 55 Ramayana, the, 217 Ramdas, 396 Raphael, 176-8 Red Cross, 104 Reichenbach ...
... effort, and these are indeed the qualities that open the door to a higher life." The Mother It is a curious but significant fact that some of the greatest philosophical thinkers, notably Pythagoras, Descartes, Pascal and Leibnitz, were great mathematicians as well. Some others like Thales, Democritus, Plato, Saint Augustine, Condorcet, Kant, Auguste Comte and Husserl were not professional ...
... interesting, provided we can show the interrelationship of a subject with those subjects which are supposed to be interesting. Many may not know how much mathematics is connected with music, and how Pythagoras saw the relationship between these two subjects; and many do not know or appreciate the relationship between music and poetry. Again, mathematics is closely connected with logic,--there is even a ...
... was only a restatement of one side of the Upanishadic experience, although it represented a new standpoint and provided fresh terms of intellectual definition and reasoning. Even in the thought of Pythagoras and Plato, one could rediscover the ideas of the Upanishads. Sufism has been found repeating the teaching of the Upanishads in another religious language. Even some of the modern thinkers of the ...
... systems of yoga 1ere developed, the historical curve of development, however took different turns. The age of the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in Greece was followed by a gradual development through Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato into an age of intellectual efflorescence; in India, the age of Vedic Mysteries was followed, after considerable loss of the yogic knowledge during an intermediate period, by ...
... under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith / a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dynamic in one—the earlier—phase through Plato, Pythagoras, Heraclitus and the mystic philosophers, and discursively and scientifically rational through the Aristotelian tradition. The practical and robust Roman did not indulge in the loftier and subtler ...
... Pax Britannica, 250 Persia, 284 Philolaus, 131 Pilate, 4 Plato, 247-8, 275n., 279 Poetry, 196n., 207n Pondicherry, 228 Pope, 85 Pound, Ezra, 88 Pravahan, 22 Pythagoras, 30 RAKsHASAS, 159 Rama, 187 Ramayana, the, 235 Ramprasad, 218 Reformation, the, 273 Renaissance, the, 71, 239 Renard, Jean-Claude, 209 -"Et Les lIes Feront Silence" ...
... of man. They were solely interested in external expression through rhythm; cadence and harmony of a mental or rational idealism. There was Plato, no doubt, and the Platonists and esoterics (like Pythagoras), but Aristotle and not Plato came to be their teacher and legislator. The virtue of the Romans lay in virility and the spirit of conquest and effective organisation of life. And the virtue of Europe ...
... 200 Pishacha, the, 80,213 Plato, 34, 120, 134, 178 Plotinus, 34, 40 Pondicherry, 17 Pradyurnana,44,207 Prudhomme, Sully, 320 Puranas , the, 46 Pyramid, the, 200 Pythagoras, 180 RACINE, 210 Raghus, the, 214 Rakshasas, 46 Rama, 58 Ramakrishna, 116, 128, 141, 160, 243, 247,383 Raphael, 210 Ravana, 58 Ravel, 427 Red Sea, 324 Ribhus, the, 208 ...
... and colours. That inner form is not the outer visible form and still it is that form fundamentally, essentially. It is that and it is not that. We may add another analogy to illustrate the point. Pythagoras, for example, spoke of numbers being realities, the real realities of all sensible objects. He was evidently referring to the basic truth in each individual and this truth appeared to him as a number ...
... knowledge of the secret Mysteries of spiritual and occult knowledge. This eclipse proved there to be total, and even in Greece, where the light of the Mysteries continued for some time, through Pythagoras, Stoics, Plato and Neo-Platonists, there came about finally a cleavage between the old and the new and there arose a dominantly vital and mental civilization in which the knowledge of the old ...
... was only a restatement of one side of the Upanishadic experience, although it represented a new standpoint and provided fresh terms of intellectual definition and reasoning. Even in the thought of Pythagoras and Plato, one could rediscover the ideas of the Upanishads. Sufism has been seen to be repeating the teaching of the Upanishads in another religious language. Even some of the modem thinkers of ...
... Heraclitus were not merely different aspects of Nature-worship. We do not like to believe that these terms "water" and "fire" can ever be the symbols of spiritual truths. We study the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato. But we do not delve into the spiritual culture or esoteric aspect of which their philosophies are but outer expressions. Behind the mythologies of China, Japan, old-world America and ...
... prejudices and preconceptions. It is only the prophets who embody and express the inspirations of the Time-Spirit in their purity, so long as they remain loyal to it in the depths of their being. Pythagoras and Plato, Zoroaster and Christ and Mohammed, Leonardo, Galileo and Newton, Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Napoleon, Mazzini and Garibaldi, Marx and Lenin etc., in the West, and Rama, Sri Krishna ...
... Heraclitus, Voltaire, Tseu-Tse, Confucius, Minamoto Sanetomo, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Epictetus, Lao-Tse, Leibnitz, Hermes, Schopenhauer, Sadi, Asvaghosha, Rumi, Spinoza, Bahaaullah, Omar Khayyam, Pythagoras, Kant, Firdausi, Ramakrishna, Vivek ananda , Pasteur, Giordano Bruno and Antoine the Healer. It is a fascinating mosaic of the choicest quotations meant to inform, instruct and inspire at once. ...
... origin of the sounds that have inspired various composers. These are great musical waves without a sound. It may seem a bit strange, but that's how it is. Is this the ethereal music supposed by Pythagoras and other early mathematicians to be the "music of the spheres"? I don't know. But in India, very probably, it is this that is known as "unwounded music" — anāhata vāni (lit. music that never hurts ...
... 'Infinite been responded to with such a resounding chorus of Page 17 fervid assent. It is true that some forms of spiritual culture were prevalent in the West in the times of Pythagoras and Plato, and that Plotinus and some of the Gnostics and Stoics were regular Yogis, as also some of the Neo-Platonists and Essences. Among the mediaeval mystics of Europe and the Manicheans of ...
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