Riddle of the Universe : title of the English translation (first published in 1929) done by Joseph McCabe, of a German book (1899) written by Prof. Ernst Haeckel.
... mysticism and spirituality that are primarily concerned with the existence of other worlds beyond this one. He has little sympathy with people who are absorbed in finding an answer to the riddle of the universe, as it leads them "away from the individual and social problems of today". Nehru's interest is in this world, and the cornerstone of his philosophy is a deep conviction in man's ability to... and betterment of human living and social organisation. There has been in the past, and there is to a lesser extent even today among some people, an absorption in finding an answer to the riddle of the universe. This leads them away from the individual and social problems of the day, and when they are unable to solve that riddle they despair and turn to inaction and triviality or find comfort in some ...
... contentedly dwell, is mere imagery and form. The animal in us insists that this body is the real Self and the satisfaction of its needs our primal duty; but Science (of whom Prof. Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe is not the concluding utterance) bids us beware of identifying our Self with a mere mass of primitive animal forms associated together by an aggregating nucleus of vital impulses; this surely ...
... received to the world of Bernard Shaw ("a laughing colossus") made him disdain "cheap religionism, as well as cheap materialism, puritanical sham no less than erotic tawdriness". Ernst Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe and the work of the Catholic priest Joseph McCabe led him to a crisis of faith. I suffered fits of somber depression, a tearing at the vitals made me miserable whenever I wanted ...
... self-existence, and this aim presupposes the admission that our present mode of being is not our true self-existence. No doubt, we have rejected the trenchant solutions which cut the knot of the riddle of the universe; we recognise it neither as a fiction of material appearance created by Force, nor as an unreality set up by the Mind, nor as a bundle of sensations, ideas and results of idea and sensation ...
... the prospect of a supreme manifestation by the conscious and no longer a veiled and enigmatic descent of the Spirit and its powers in their fullness even into this lowest world of Matter. The riddle of the universe need be no longer a riddle; the dubious mystery of things would put off its enigma, its constant ambiguity, the tangled writings would become legible and intelligible. In this revelation, supermind ...
... of approach that he can take, he is confronted with a constant Duality, a separation between two terms of existence that seem to be opposites and their opposition to be the very root of the riddle of the universe. Later, he may and does discover that these are the two poles of One Being, connected by two simultaneous currents of energy negative and positive in relation to each other, their interaction ...
... monastic or cloistered life, the hermit's ascetic seclusion, are far greater than rotting in the sty of Epicurus, but they do not solve the problem posed by God. They intensely bypass the entire riddle of the universe. And once we accept the principle of bypassing it, the most logical thing is not to retire merely into the cloister where at least we have the company of other human beings and a roof ...
... for the non-materialist either. But that is surely to confess that fundamental issues go into the melting-pot as soon as we warm up to relativity theory. And when a large look is taken at the riddle of the universe, even the most rabid materialist must grant that the Totum Simul is more in tune with the concept of God than with the concept of a universe having no consciousness at its back and bearing ...
... Nachiketas asked the question about whether after death, 'man is' or 'man is not', we can expand the question and try to get an answer from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to what we may call 'The riddle of the Universe'. The Katha Upanishad states that the doors of the body face outward; these doors are the doors of the senses, and it is true that all the senses are naturally sensitive to the impacts ...
... life because this joy is there – everywhere. It needs nothing to exist; it is , irrefutably, like a bedrock throughout time and space, like a smile behind everything. There lies the entire Riddle of the universe. That's all there is. An imperceptible smile – a mere nothing that is everything. All is Joy because all is the Spirit which is Joy, Sat-Chit-Ananda . Existence-Consciousness-Joy – the eternal ...
... the prospect of a supreme manifestation by the conscious and no longer a veiled and enigmatic descent of the Spirit and its powers in their fullness even into this lowest world of Matter, The riddle of the universe need be no longer a riddle; the dubious mystery of things would put off its enigma, its constant ambiguity, the tangled writings would become legible and intelligible. In this revelation, supermind ...
... ideas raced in his head, but not caring to reduce them into a formal system, he turned them into knotted or pregnant aphorisms, often couched in a language that is as much of a riddle as the riddle of the universe that he would fain unriddle if he could. He did indeed say, "All is in flux... nothing stays still" and "you cannot step twice into the same stream, for ever other and other waters are flowing ...
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