Aum Gung Ganapathaye Namah
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa
Homage to The Blessed One, Accomplished and
Fully Enlightened
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most
Merciful
Miscellaneous Books
A Collection of
Articles, Notes and References
References
(Revised: Saturday, October 21,
2006)
References Edited by
An
Indian Tantric
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
- William Shakespeare
Copyright © 2002-2010 An Indian Tantric
The following educational writings are STRICTLY for academic
research purposes ONLY.
Should NOT be used for commercial, political or any other
purposes.
(The following notes are subject to update and revision)
For free distribution only.
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8 "...
Freely you received, freely give”.
- Matthew
10:8 :: New American Standard Bible (NASB)
1 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last
days.
2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—
5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires,
7 always learning but never able to acknowledge the
truth.
8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth--men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is
concerned, are rejected.
9 But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to
everyone.”
- 2
Timothy 3:1-9 :: New International
Version (NIV)
6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of
Melchisedec.
- Hebrews
5:6 :: King James Version (KJV)
Therefore,
I say:
Know
your enemy and know yourself;
in
a hundred battles, you will never be defeated.
When
you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself,
your
chances of winning or losing are equal.
If
ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself,
you
are sure to be defeated in every battle.
-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, c.
500bc
There are two ends not to be served by a wanderer. What
are these two? The pursuit of desires and of the pleasure which springs from
desire, which is base, common, leading to rebirth, ignoble, and unprofitable; and the pursuit of pain and
hardship, which is grievous, ignoble, and unprofitable.
- The Blessed One, Lord Buddha
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A Brief Word on Copyright
References
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A Brief Word on Copyright
Many of the articles whose educational copies are given below are
copyrighted by their respective authors as well as the respective publishers.
Some contain messages of warning, as follows:
Republication or redissemination of the contents of this
screen are expressly prohibited
without the written consent of “so and so”.
According to the concept of “fair use” in US copyright Law,
The reproduction, redistribution and/or exploitation of any
materials and/or content (data, text, images, marks or logos) for personal or
commercial gain is not permitted. Provided the source is cited, personal, educational and non-commercial use (as defined by fair use in US copyright law) is permitted.
Moreover,
I believe that satisfies the conditions for copyright and
non-plagiarism.
References
Some of the links may not be active (de-activated) due to various reasons, like removal of the
concerned information from the source database. So an educational copy is also
provided, along with the link.
If the link is active, do cross-check/validate/confirm the
educational copy of the article provided along.
References
Alcyone.
(J.Krishnamurti)
(1986) At the Feet of the Master. (Adyar Centenary Reprint) Adyar,
http://www.theosophical.ca/AtFeetMaster.htm
Alder, Vera Stanley. (October 1986) Finding
of the Third Eye.
Bancroft, Anne. (1989) Twentieth Century Mystics and Sages.
Bromage, Bernard. (1960) The Occult Arts of Ancient
Das, Dr. Jagannath Prasad. St-Pierre, Paui, Mohapatra, K
K, Mohapatra, Leelawati. (Trans.) (2002) Sunderdas: A Play in Three Acts. New Delhi, India Har-Anand Publications Private Limited.
Dasgupta, Shashi
Bhusan. (1958) An Introduction to
Tantric Buddhism. (2nd edition)
Evans, Keith. (2000) The
Language of Advocacy: What to Say and How to Say it in the English-speaking
Courts. (1st edition)
Gasson, Raphael. (December
1972) The Challenging Counterfeit.
(7th Reprint)
Goodman, Linda.
(1968) Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs.
Olcott, H S (1891) The
Vampire. Vol XII. The Theosophist; Adyar Pamphlet
No 112. Adyar, Chennai (
http://www.theosophical.ca/Vampire.htm
Peale, Norman
Vincent. (1982) Positive Imaging: The Powerful Way to
Change Your Life.
Pirsig, Robert M. (1984) Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Rao, Subba M. (1995)
Sadhu Santideva. (Edited) (2000)
Ascetic Mysticism: Puranic Records of Shiva and Shakti.
Sankaracharya. Chatterji, Mohini
M. (Trans.) Viveka-Cūdāmani or The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom of Śrī
Śamkarācārya. Adyar,
Sankaracharya.
Johnston, Charles. (Trans.) The Crest-Jewel of
Wisdom – Vivekachudamani.
Sharma, Prof. Vishnu. (1996) Indian Predictive Astrology: The Easy
and Accurate Way to Interpret Your Future.
Swami Chidananda.
(1999) The Philosophy, Psychology and Practice of
Yoga. (WWW Edition)
Stackhouse,
M L et al. (Ed.) (1995) On Moral Business:
Classical and Contemporary Resources For Ethics in Economic Life.
Westcott,
W Wynn. (Ed.) (1993) The Chaldæan
Oracles. (1st ed.)
http://pages.zoom.co.uk/midnight-sun/chaldean_oracles_-_1.htm
http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/oraclez.htm
Henry Thomas and Dana Lee Thomas.(1959) Living
Biographies of Great Philosophers.
V Amalan Stanley. (2004) Organic
Intelligence: Within and Beyond.
Wendy Doniger. (2000) Splitting the
Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient
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Educational Copy of Some of the References
FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY
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Reference
Alcyone.
(J.Krishnamurti)
(1986) At the Feet of the Master. (Adyar Centenary Reprint) Adyar,
http://www.theosophical.ca/AtFeetMaster.htm
Page 34
2- Self-control in
Action.
If your thought is
what it should be, you will have little trouble with your action. Yet remember
that, to be useful to mankind, thought must result in action. There must be no
laziness, but constant activity in good work. But it must be your own duty that
you do- not another man's, unless with his permission and by way of helping
him. Leave
every man to do his own work in his own way; be always ready to offer help
where it is needed, but never interfere. For many people the most difficult thing in the world to learn
is to mind their own business; but that is exactly what you must do.
…
(Reference: Alcyone. (J.Krishnamurti) (1986) At the Feet of the Master. (Adyar Centenary Reprint) Adyar,
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Reference
Alder, Vera Stanley. (October 1986) Finding
of the Third Eye.
Page 21
Every effort is made
to soak him through and through with an interest in sex – by means of cinemas,
theatres, books, newspapers and through the type of food most cheaply obtained.
He is never told the plain truth – that a preoccupation with sex is one of the
greatest deterrents to brain development.
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Reference
Bancroft, Anne.
(1989) Twentieth Century Mystics
and Sages.
Aldous Huxley
Page 4
But the
greatest tragedy of the spirit is that sooner or later it succumbs to the
flesh. Sooner or later every
soul is stifled by the sick body; sooner or later there
are no more thoughts, but only pain and vomiting and stupor. The tragedies of
the spirit are mere struttings and posturings on the margin of life, and the
spirit itself only an accidental exuberance, the product of spare vital energy,
like feathers on the head of a hoopoe or the innumerable populations of useless
and foredoomed spermatozoa…
- Those Barren Leaves (1)
(1) Aldous Huxley, Those
Barren Leaves (
Page 10
…It is a fact, confirmed
and re-confirmed during two or three thousand years of religious history, that
the ultimate Reality is not clearly and immediately apprehended, except
by those who have made themselves loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit.
This being so, it is hardly surprising that theology based upon the experience
of nice, ordinary, unregenerate people should carry so little conviction…The
self-validating certainty of direct awareness cannot in the very nature of
things be achieved except by those equipped with the moral ‘astrolabe of God’s
mysteries.’ (5)
(5) Aldous Huxley, The
Perennial Philosophy (
Page 13-14
Because both mescaline
and lysergic acid (LSD) had played such a remarkable part in Huxley’s “enlightenment,”
he regarded them as entirely beneficial, a means of saving the human race. He
argued that because most believers regard God as entirely spirit, only to be
approached by spiritual means, they would not believe that a divine experience
could be brought about by chemical conditioning. But, he said, “In
one way or another, all our
experiences are chemically conditioned, and if we imagine that
some of them are purely ‘spiritual’, purely ‘intellectual’, purely ‘aesthetic’,
it is merely because we have never troubled to investigate the internal
chemical environment at the moment of their occurrence.” (12)
Page 14
He emphasized that the
methods used by all religions, from yogic breathing to hymn singing, are really
devised to create a chemical change in the body – extra
carbon dioxide in the blood stream. One wonders if his
defensive fervor is inclined to protest too much. Now that we have discovered
the chemical conditions for self-transcendence, he said – and he writes
persuasively on how LSD inhibits the dualistic action of the brain, so that
there is no more sensation of separation between subject and object – it
is pointless to go in for years of meditation or spiritual exercises when
everything can be obtained in half an hour by the use of a drug.
In what sounds rather like an advertisement for a businesslike enlightenment,
he says: “For an aspiring mystic to revert, in the present state of knowledge,
to prolonged fasting and violent self-flagellation would be as senseless as it
would be for an aspiring cook to behave like Charles Lamb’s Chinaman, who
burned down the house in order to roast a pig. Knowing as he does (or at least
as he can know, if he so desires) what are the chemical conditions of
transcendental experience, the aspiring mystic should turn for technical help
to the specialists – in pharmacology, in biochemistry, in physiology and
neurology, in psychology and psychiatry and parapsychology.” (13) Almost as
much a labor for the aspiring mystic, one would think, as if he
went in for years of meditation.
(12) Aldous Huxley, The
Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (
(13) Aldous Huxley, The
Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (
Page 16
The world is an illusion,
but it is an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far
as it goes, and in those aspects of the reality which we
are capable of apprehending. Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways
in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our
self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly,
taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not
live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We
must continually be on our watch for ways in which we may enlarge our
consciousness. We must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given
us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it. Too much
“wisdom” is as bad as too little wisdom, and there must be no magic tricks. We
must learn to come to reality without the enchanter’s wand and his book of the
words. One must find a way of being in the world
while not being of it. A way of living in time without being
completely swallowed up in time. (15)
(15) Julian Huxley, Aldous
Huxley 1894 – 1963: A Memorial Tribute (
Ramana Maharshi
Page 153
Hindu thought has always
believed that ignorance lies in false identification, that we misunderstand our
real nature when we identify it with the feelings and sensations of the body
and call every body sensation “mine”. If we can see beyond this possessive
thinking, and see beyond the feeling of “I am this body, which is named so and
so,” our insight will be accompanied by intimations of bliss and liberation.
Page 153-154
For the initial act of
ignorance about our own self-nature leads to ignorance about everything else.
Because we think of the body as the self, we think that the world is composed
of a multiplicity of other bodies all containing separate selves. We dwell only
on outward appearances and are misled by them. A universe of names and forms
dominates our thinking.
Page 154
Hinduism teaches that the
creative force which upholds the world is neither name nor form but it is
consciousness itself. And the way for each one of us to experience this
consciousness is to give up identifying ourself with all the objects
of consciousness – with the body-centered world.
Yoga practices are
intended to bring about the end of the feeling that “I am my body.”
Dhiravamsa
Page 202
In 1971, he gave up the robe
and ceased to be a monk. This is less dramatic than it sounds for no life-vows
are taken in Buddhism and there is no stigma attached to such a decision.
Dhiravamsa still remains a meditation master, but now feels himself free to
know people in their ordinary lives. He considers the monk’s robe to be a
barrier to real communication –
Robes are a symbol, a form,
and when we put them on we are in a certain role where we try to conform to an
ideal or to rules without looking into all aspects of life. It therefore
fragments life, creating a division between the holy and the ordinary, and
tends to prevent the individual from experiencing the wholeness of life. People
think that the holy man should be dressed in a certain way, and they link
holiness with form. This is contrary to reality, because in reality the holy is
very ordinary, very simple. When we overlook simplicity, we shall not find the
holy, but instead just find the idea of holiness and worship this, in a
religious way.
(2)
(2) Dhiravamsa, The
Middle Path of Life, (No publisher), p. 92.
Dion Fortune
Page 255
Fortune died convinced
that the Qabalah would become the true Yoga of the West. She saw that a
religion that is all theory and welfare and that lacks the essential practices
of yoga and meditation is impoverished and limited. She
constantly stressed the need for yoga in Christianity, correctly foreseeing
that without its enriching life, more and more people would take up Eastern
methods.
impoverish
v
To reduce to poverty; make
poor.
To deprive of natural
richness or strength: impoverish the soil by overuse.
Rudolf Steiner
Page 260-261
His researches had taken
him, among other investigations, to the mysterious Emerald Tablet of Hermes
Trismegistus. References to this tablet, which is said to have been engraved by
Hermes with Phoenician characters and discovered in his dead hand by Alexander
the Great in a cave-tomb, abound throughout esoteric Western history.
Societies, such as the Rosicrucians, of which Steiner was an active member,
look upon the Emerald or Hermetic Tablet as the key to the transformation of
man’s knowledge of natural laws into the supersensible knowledge of the
spiritual laws of the universe, because the opening sentence of the Emerald
Tablet reads: “That which is above is like that which is
below and that which is below is like that which is above, in order to achieve
the wonders of the one thing.” In later life, Steiner
was to see this statement as the basis of alchemy, and to link it with the work
of other alchemical philosophers, such as Jacob Boehme.
Mother Theresa
Page 325
We must “taste God as the
sole good,” says the 17th century mystic, Jean Pierre de Caussade,
with whom Mother Theresa could be said to have many links. “We have to arrive
at the point at which the whole created universe no longer exists for us, for
God is everything…Creatures by themselves are (then) without power or efficacy
and the heart lacks any tendency or inclination towards them because the
majesty of God fills all its capacity.”(6)
The God-filled heart, he
continues, is moved towards creatures when they are seen as part of God’s
design.
(6) Jean-Pierre de
Caussade, Self-Abandonment to Divine
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley, Those
Barren Leaves (
Aldous Huxley, The
Perennial Philosophy (
Aldous Huxley, The
Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (
Julian Huxley, Aldous
Huxley 1894 – 1963: A Memorial Tribute (
Ramana Maharshi
Dhiravamsa
Dhiravamsa, The
Middle Path of Life, (No publisher)
Dion Fortune
Rudolf Steiner
Mother Theresa
Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Self-Abandonment
to Divine
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Reference
Bromage, Bernard. (1960) The Occult Arts of Ancient
Page 21
This is to say, that without being a Buddhist one can absorb and perhaps
transcend the best that Buddhism has to offer;
Page 22
without sharing in the nonsense of a
conventional or unconventional creed, one can extract from it its essence and adapt it to
one’s own needs and conditions.
No doubt the ancient Egyptian priesthood were aware of this fact;…
Page 25
At first sight the edifice of Egyptian magical
achievement and speculation is apt to strike one as top-heavy, filled with
inconsistencies, unordered in its accumulation and contradictory in some of its
assertions.
This impression arises from a peculiarity of
the Egyptian temperament. It was, in one sense, a hoarding temperament. It let nothing go. All was grist to the structural mill. For reasons of the conservation
of tradition, if for no other, the
priests were unwilling to leave unrecorded even the superseded experiments of the past.
Idiom:
grist for (one's)/the mill
Something that can be used to advantage.
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Reference
Das, Dr. Jagannath
Prasad. St-Pierre, Paui, Mohapatra, K K, Mohapatra, Leelawati. (Trans.) (2002) Sunderdas: A Play in Three Acts. New Delhi, India Har-Anand Publications Private Limited.
Back of Front-cover
The play Sundardas recounts the activities of the first
Christian missionaries in Orissa between 1826 and 1832, their meagre successes,
their discouragement and defeats. But the play is more than a simple retelling
of historical facts; rather, it gives reality to the underlying motivations of
the individual actors, as well as to the conflicting world views in contact in
this meeting of Christianity and Hinduism on the Indian subcontinent, in a
context of empire, subjugation and colonisation.
The real question
dealt with in the play is, however, a more philosophical one, that is, the nature of the relationship between
belief and the (religious) institutions whose role ostensibly is to further and protect it.
The fundamental theme
of the play is that truth cannot come through the denial of one’s identity and also that identity must not blind one to truth.
ostensible
adj.
apparent; professed;
pretended
Although the ostensible purpose of this expedition is to discover
new lands, we are really interested in finding new markets for our products.
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Reference
Dasgupta,
Shashi Bhusan. (1958) An Introduction to
Tantric Buddhism. (2nd edition)
Page 3-4
There
seems to be no essential difference between Tantricism within the
Page 14
...The Buddhist Tantras
are based more on the Yogacara school than on the Sunyavada, - and the monistic
tendency of the Yogacara school has often been consciously and unconsciously
drawn to pure Vedantic thought....
Mahayana
Buddhism has been roughly classed under two heads, viz., Sunyavada, and
Vijnanavada or Yogacara. The distinction between the two schools is not,
however, fundamental, and very often the one verges upon the other. Nagarjuna
(100 A.D.) was the chief exponent of Sunyavada with its uncompromising spirit
of negation. Another earlier current was flowing on with a spirit of compromise
with the Upanisadic doctrine of monism. We find trace of the latter in as early
a Mahayana text as the Lankavatara-sutra, we find it somewhat
systematised in the Tathata doctrine of Asvaghosa(1) and it took a definite
turn of uncompromising idealism in the hands of the Vijnanavadins like
Maitreya, Asanga, Vasubandhu and others; and we may add here that this trend of thought
attained fulfilment in the Vedantic monism of Sankara.
(1)
It has been hinted before that modern scholars are not sure about the
authorship of the work Mahayana-sraddhotpada-sutra where we find
Tathatavada expounded.
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Reference
Evans, Keith. (2000) The
Language of Advocacy: What to Say and How to Say it in the English-speaking
Courts. (1st edition)
Page 19
…
Chapter 3 Why Formality,
Anyway?
We don’t need to get too
philosophical about this. Just consider a class of excited five-year-olds in
the charge of a totally incompetent teacher. If they become unruly – as they
are very likely to – nothing will be learned and nothing useful will be
accomplished. In all pursuits, there has to be a certain level of order before anything
can get done. The old-fashioned language of the law court, implying as it does
a measure of deference to the fact that one
person – the judge – is in ultimate charge, helps to bring about
this necessary level of order. The politenesses of the courtroom serve a
tremendously useful function: they make it possible for stressed-out, anxious
people to settle their differences without losing their tempers and perhaps
their self-control. Without the old-fashioned courtesies it’s sometimes
difficult not to descend into brawling and quarrelling. And when this happens –
as the O. J. Simpson trial demonstrated again and again – everything slows
down, everyone involved feels stressed, and – and this surely the most
important part – the chances of arriving at the right result are diminished.
There’s also another
reason why all our courtroom courtesies are useful. They create an atmosphere,
an energy if you like, of something akin to ceremonial,
and an element of ceremonial is important in a court of law.
Page 20
The churches know all
about ceremonial. So do the armed forces. So do the Native Americans, with
their kachinas and dances, and so do peoples in all parts of the world. It is
only in this advanced Western civilization of ours that ceremonial has tended
to die down, but there’s still a lot of it around if you look for it.
Ceremonial has a power of
the kind science can’t explain – any more than science can explain why Mozart
was Mozart and Salieri was Salieri. Reason and clear-thinking don’t help us
much, not here. Why do a cope and mitre have the impact they do? Why do red
tabs on a staff officer’s lapel create the kind of energy they
do? Why have military parades, with bands playing and with every
marching man in step, always had more or less the same inspiring, exciting
effect on everyone involved? Why are the spectacles of Trooping the Colour or
the Changing of the Guard so magnetic to tourists and passers-by?
They are all tapping in
to the power created by ceremonial – just as the Pope does,
and the College of Cardinals, and the village parson, and the Lord Mayors.
Without the power generated by the orchestrated ceremonial of the
There is probably less ceremonial
in
Page 20-21
In the courts of
Page 21
gavel
n
a small mallet used by a presiding
officer or a judge [syn: hammer]
All manner of persons having anything to do before my
Lords, the Queen’s Justices at the Central
Criminal Court, draw near and give your attendance! God save the Queen!
It’s only slightly less
formal in
All manner of persons having anything to do before this
Honourable Court, draw nigh and you shall
be heard. God save the Queen.
Remain seated and come to order. This court, department
47 of the Superior Court of
…And an American citizen,
rather like almost everyone else in court, walks onto the bench wearing a black
robe over a summerweight suit and flowered tie. ‘Good morning folks,’ he says
as he takes his seat, ‘I hope you had a pleasant evening and you’re ready for
another day of this.’
Page 21-22
Although
…
Page 60
…
We come now to another
thing the psychologists have discovered, and another thing they never told us
about when we were students: colour. The advertising agencies and the marketing
experts have been taking colour seriously for over half a century. They realize
that the success or failure of a product-line in a supermarket depends on how
it is packaged: the colour and design of the packaging can be decisive.
Different colours, so they have discovered, have different subliminal effects
on the beholder. The reds, for instance, create an urge for activity. The blues
and the greens have a calming tendency. The brighter shades of yellow are,
apparently, ‘magnetic’ and ‘attractive’. Crude, primary colours – what we
sometimes think of as fairground colours – tend to promote feelings of energy
and the need to do something. Pastel shades, on the
other hand, have the opposite tendency, reducing one’s inclination to act
decisively.
If all this sounds like
the product of fertile minds run riot, consider this: American football teams
used to make a point of painting their home-team dressing rooms in ‘savage’
colours, while the visiting-team dressing rooms were decorated in gentle,
pastel, shades. After a while, it was noticed that the home teams seemed to
come out onto the field in a mood which was discernibly – and consistently – more
aggressive and taut. The pattern became so noticeable and so consistent that
reasons were searched for, and when it was discovered that the dressing rooms
were totally different in their décor, the differences were eliminated. When
that was done the home-team advantage seemed to diminish, and in the football
stadiums of
Page 60-61
The average person, and
the average lawyer, has very little awareness of such things. What goes on in
the human mind is only broadly understood, and most people have a kind of
instinct which encourages us to scoff at what we are not familiar with and
don’t understand. But this business of colour goes much further than the
interior decoration of football dressing rooms. It has been discovered, for
instance, that every human being’s skin tone – irrespective of race – ‘leans’
either towards a ‘blue base’ or a ‘yellow base’. Unless you have a trained eye,
you are unlikely to be able to see for yourself whether any given individual
has a blue bias or a yellow bias, but the difference is a very real one and,
although we don’t know what we are seeing, we are nevertheless influenced by
it. Let me explain.
Page 61
All shades and hues of
colour ‘lean’ towards one or other of those two primary colours – blue or
yellow. Every garment in every clothing outlet in the world is made of fabric
which is either blue based or yellow based. As a rather crude illustration,
consider the difference between a fire-engine red and a red which is more
plum-coloured. The first has a leaning towards yellow, and the second a leaning
towards blue. Even white material has such a bias – if you compare a blue-based
white with a yellow-based white, holding them next to each other, you will
probably have no difficulty in seeing the difference.
So, why is this
important? Is it important, indeed? It
certainly seems to be, and for the following reason: If a person with a
blue-based skin tone wears yellow-based clothing, that person is likely to look
slightly ill. There will be something about this person, something quite
indefinable, which makes the beholder feel there is something ‘wrong’. Without
knowing why, the beholder will be aware that something about this other person
makes him feel less than comfortable: ‘There was something about her I didn’t
like. I can’t put my finger on it, but she always made me feel a bit
uncomfortable.’
This same subliminal
discomfort in the beholder is also produced if the wearer ‘mixes’ colours. If a
blue-based person wears clothes some of which are blue-based and some of which
are yellow-based, the same subliminal message is transmitted. Again, the
decision-makers feel that there is something disquieting about this advocate,
without having the first notion of why they feel this way.
Page 61-62
And what effect is
produced if a person only wears clothes of the ‘right’ colour? The ‘feeling’
the observer gets is that this person is vibrant, healthy, energetic and – and
this is purely subliminal – magnetic. Above all, the observer feels
‘comfortable’ with this person – and the advocate who can make his
decision-maker feel comfortable in his presence has already taken a huge step
in the right direction.
Page 62
How do you know whether
you are wearing the ‘right’ colours? The ideal way is to seek help from a
‘colour consultant’, but there’s no need to take it that far. When next you go
to buy, say, a shirt, hold the garment up under your chin and note the effect.
If it is the ‘right’ colour for you, you are likely to notice that your eyes
look a little brighter and that the colour in your cheeks makes you look
healthy. If it’s the wrong colour, your eyes will seem dull by comparison, and
you are likely to feel you look a little pasty – or perhaps florid – but
noticeably less than completely healthy.
Do the same with suits,
and particularly with neckties. This isn’t an illusion and it isn’t imaginary.
If you start looking out for it, in yourself and in other people, you’ll find
that your eye quite soon becomes ‘trained’. When that happens, you will realize
how many of us are walking around, broadcasting a message that we are less than
we are. It doesn’t take much practice to start seeing all this fairly clearly, but
it can become quite fascinating to observe the awful mistakes some people are
constantly making. Take this as seriously as it deserves to be taken, and don’t
condemn yourself to starting every case with an indefinable but real
disadvantage.
…
Page 82
…
Headlines and paragraphs
are things virtually everybody is used to. Newspapers without headlines are
unimaginable. Radio news reports use them: the same goes for television.
Magazine articles usually have headlines at the start, and ‘box’ headlines in
the text. This is what we are all used to.
Since advocacy in court
relies upon the spoken rather than the written word, you cannot indicate
visually when you are headlining or paragraphing something. But the use of
suitable words and phrases, you can break your examinations (and arguments)
into paragraphs as clearly as you could in print. Headlines are as easy to use
as they are important. If you don’t headline and paragraph whatever it is you
are doing, you run the risk of exhausting your decision-maker – in just the
same way as you run the risk of wearying your reader if you present him or her
with a solid page of print or typescript, unbroken by paragraphs.
In advocacy, paragraphing
and headlining are more or less the same thing. You can use any form of words
you like, so long as you are alive to the need (a) to let everyone know where
you are going, and (b) to make your listeners feel that progress is being made.
For example:
Page 83
Every time you use such a
form of words, you signal to the decision-maker that you have come to the end
of something. This always carries the subliminal message that you are that much
nearer to the end of your entire task, and you thus achieve a certain momentum.
If you can hint (and keep hinting) that progress is being made, your listeners
are far more likely to keep giving you their unwandering attention. Thus it is
useful to employ an occasional link such as:
References to time,
incidentally, as in this last example, are very useful. Far too many lawyers
ignore, or seem to ignore, the fact that both judge and jury have other things
to do as well as sitting in court, listening to lawyers and witnesses. Take
every reasonable opportunity you have for letting them know you respect their
time:
…
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Reference
Gasson, Raphael. (December
1972) The Challenging Counterfeit.
(7th Reprint)
…
Chapter I From Satan to Christ
…
Page 13-14
I was born into a Jewish family, just after
my mother’s sister had died and according to Jewish tradition, was named, as near
as possible, after this aunt, whose name was Rachel (intimately abbreviated to
Ray). This naming procedure would have happened in any case and the subsequent
strange happenings were not really needed to force the issue.
Page 14
After the death of Ray, my grandparents,
although orthodox Jews, began to take an interest in Spiritualism and
frequented meetings in the hopes of being able to make contact with the spirit
of Ray. My grandmother became a confirmed Spiritualist and although my
grandfather never discussed the subject much, he apparently took some kind of
interest in the Movement. This attitude was maintained until both were killed
while crossing a road together in 1946.
As a result of my grandmother attending
these meetings, she made several contacts with what was supposed to be the
spirit of Ray and it was while Ray was presumably manifesting herself that she
insisted that when I was born, I should have her name. She also appeared to my
mother, making her promise that I would be named after her. Many strange things
arose out of these “spirit” messages that eventually revolutionized my whole
life – although it was many years before I was told of them.
Page 14-15
True to promise and Jewish tradition, I was
named Raphael – the nearest masculine equivalent – and brought up as a Jew. In
my bedroom was a life-size head and shoulder picture of Ray and something very
strange and sinister about it always puzzled me. One evening when I was about 5
years old, lying in bed, looking at this picture…it seemed to look straight
back at me in a way that it never had before. Ray’s eyes became real, her
features alive and while I watched, it seemed as if Ray stepped straight out of
the picture frame to my bedside. This was so unexpected that I was
terror-stricken, and covered my head with the sheets, screaming with fear,
which brought the entire family rushing into my room. All I was able to say was
the “lady moved” but after they had managed to pacify me, they tried to prove I
was mistaken by taking me to the picture, making me touch it and ensure that it
was only a picture. As already stated, theory cannot alter fact and although I
knew that it was only a picture, nothing could shake my conviction that Ray
actually moved, in spite of all that was said to the contrary. This recurred on
several occasions until I was in perpetual fear of the picture, so much so,
that it had to be taken down and hidden out of sight. This removal, however,
did not stop the spirit visitations and neither did my fears subside. We could
stop to wonder for a moment whether God would start working by instilling fear
into the heart and mind of a child!
Page 15-16
It became evident that something was
happening that could not be accounted for, and my grandmother was certain that
the spirit of Ray was coming to me at nights for a special purpose and made up
her mind that she was going to find out why. So she went to a Spiritualist
medium, and the “spirit” of Ray becoming manifest, she was asked why she was
coming to frighten me. She replied that she was only watching over me and did
not realize she was making me so afraid. This should have made my grandmother
decide at the time that the manifestation obviously was not from God, but it
did not, and she did not give up Spiritualism. The medium had to explain to the
“spirit” that she was dealing with a child who did not understand and she could
watch over me without even showing herself. This seemingly did the trick,
because I never had any more of these visits and I can only surmise that the
demon who was impersonating Ray, just contented himself by watching over me and
waiting his time. Satan doesn’t let go as easy as all that, and although I
wasn’t troubled by such visitation for some time, it is evident that Satan was
prepared to wait, having sown the seed in my young mind.
…
Page 25-26
We sat talking about the way of salvation
until
…
Chapter II The Spiritualist and the
Spiritist
…
Page 32-33
…
It does not take a child of God long,
through the revelation of the Scriptures, to realize that, although many of the
spirits in séances say gracious things about the love of God, the God of the
Spiritualists is not the Holy One of Israel, but the “God of this world.” In other words, their God is really the “Prince of the power of the air,
the Spirit who now works in the children of disobedience” (2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2). Other parts of the Scriptures
could be given in addition on these lines, but there are, of course, some
Spiritualists who do not believe in the Scriptures at all – neither in a
personal God. In view of the statements of Scripture which must remain the only
measuring rod for all true Christians, there is only one conclusion that a
Christian can arrive at, and that is that the spirits which so communicate, are
not highly evolved “spirit guides” and the souls of dead
persons, but actually demons impersonating dead people. This may sound strange and
unreal to those who have had little or no contact with the principalities and
powers of darkness, but to the student of Scripture, it is no new thing. In
confirmation of the fact that the God of the Spiritualists is the “God of this
world”, a periodical called “The Banner of Light” issued on
plausible
adj.
having a show of truth but open to doubt;
specious
Even though your argument is plausible, I still would
like to have more proof.
…
Chapter III The History of Spiritualism
Page 45
“In the latter times some shall depart from the
faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils…”
1
Tim. 4:1
Those who approach this subject find it
difficult to comprehend why the so-called spirits of the dead had to wait so long
before being able to spread this “New Revelation” until, in fact, they could
find two simple and uneducated girls in their early teens! We are told that
many of these intelligences who are presumed to have passed on thousands of
years ago, was supremely wise – that their main concern is to guide and uplift
mankind, yet, in spite of their intelligence and their strong desire to do so
much good, they were unable to do anything about it until 1848!
…
Page 47
…
In
Margaret and Kate Fox were born at
Hydesville, a little village about twenty miles from the town of Rochester,
N.Y. It was a very poor district with houses of a humble type, mainly built of
wood. Their parents were Methodists. There were other children in the family,
but their names have no actual bearing on the subject. The whole of the Fox
family took over the tenancy of the house in question on
Page 47-48
Many strange things happened – among others,
Mrs. Fox’s hair had turned completely white – and Satan established his
foothold. Church ministers were seduced by the subtleness of the enemy under
the guise of an angel of light. Many men of high character became interested in
the strange phenomena taking place at the home of the Fox family and they spoke
with sincere regard and sympathy of the two girls during their early years.
Page 48
The girls became practiced mediums and for
30 years produced remarkable phenomena, but it is regrettable that these
wonderworkers who for so long have been acclaimed as the founders of Spiritualism,
came to a tragic end which we shall refer to again later.
It is recorded that the first message
received through the Fox sisters was as follows:-
“Dear friends,…you must proclaim these truths
to the world. This is the dawning of a new era; and you must not try to conceal
it any longer. When you do your duty, God will protect you and good spirits
will watch over you”.
Margaret and Kate Fox devoted all their
energy to the propagation of Spiritualism, but the promised protection did not materialize and eventually
they took to drink. In time they
became victims of the drink menace, nothing could satisfy their craving for
alcohol, and they lost all sense of moral responsibility. Margaret, in the
presence of her sister Kate at an anti-Spiritualist meeting in 1888 declared,
“I am here tonight, as one of the founders of Spiritualism, to denounce it as
absolute falsehood…the most wicked blasphemy the world has ever known”.
Within a few years they were both dead, Kate
being the first to go. Spiritualism had sent them to their graves and Satan had
not lessened his hold upon them.
Page 48-49
An American newspaper described Margaret as
an “object of charity, a mental and physical wreck, whose appetite is only for
intoxicating liquors.” It continues to say, “the lips that utter little less
than profanity, once promulgated the doctrine of a new religion which still
numbers its tens of thousands of enthusiastic believers.” Kate is also reported
as having said, “I loathe the thing I have been,” and to those who wanted her
to give a séance, “You are driving me to hell.” Both died as a result of drink, and cursed God as they
died. What a testimony from two who
revived one of the oldest forms of heathenism known to men! How true it is that
their end was as “bitter as wormwood,
sharp as a two-edged sword.” Their “feet go down to death,” their “steps take
hold on hell” (Prov. 5:4,5). How much better is it to fight the good fight of
faith against all these principalities and powers, trusting in the God of all
grace, Who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, having fruit
unto holiness and the end, everlasting life.
…
Page 51-52
…
That Spiritualists themselves are, in the
main, deceived into thinking that they are doing the work of God must be
granted; hence the danger of such a movement which today is being propagated by
sincere, earnest and good living people – themselves deceived by the arch-enemy
of our souls – and no wonder, for miracles are wrought before their very eyes,
limbs restored, sight given to the blind, sickness removed, and all as a result
of their contact with “spirit guides”. It is difficult, nay impossible, apart
from the grace of God, to convince one who has been healed in some remarkable
way through spirit agency that that very agency is demonic! It is well to
remember that there shall arise false Christians and false prophets and shall
show great signs and wonders, inasmuch that if it were possible, they shall
deceive the very elect (Matt. 24:24). One scriptural way in which Spiritualism
definitely is “scriptural” is in its fulfillment of prophecy! Rational Spiritualism denies the divinity of Christ, the atoning value of
the cross, the existence of hell and a personal devil, the inspiration of the
Bible and the fall of man. At a
conference held in 1866 at Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A., at which 18 States
and Territories were represented, the following resolutions were passed:-
(1) To abandon all Christian ordinances and worship.
(2) To discontinue all Sunday schools.
(3) To denounce sexual tyranny.
(4) To affirm that animal food should not be
used.
amply demonstrating among this particular
branch of Spiritualists the proof of 1 Tim. 4:1-4. “In the latter times some
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of
demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot
iron; forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats…” Forbidding to marry refers to their teaching spiritual affinity, whereby many happy homes have been broken up as a result
of the teaching of spirits, that every one has a twin soul. The spirits even go
so far as to introduce “twin-souls” to each other, after which introductions
they are encouraged to leave homes, husbands, wives and children, to live
together, because it is the will of a spirit guide. The marriage vow is
entirely disregarded where necessary, and the result is immortality.
Page 52
Although Spiritualists celebrate their
anniversary as from 1848, they will also declare that it is an old religion and
that the Fox sisters only started a revival of what was already known. They
are, of course, quite correct! History tells us of the witch hunts, tortures,
burnings, etc., which were in operation long before the Fox sisters started the
Spiritualist revival, but now, instead of being referred to as witchcraft, it
is known as Spiritualism in almost every household all over the country, where
small home circles, called séances, are held by families and friends for the
purpose of contacting the spirits of
their loved ones.
The Israelites were corrupted by idolatry
and witchcraft (see Lev.
Page 52-53
During the Dark Ages, astrology, demonology,
magic and necromancy, etc., became really rampant in
Page 53
Numerous acts were passed at different times
by Parliament in order to stamp out the curse of witchcraft, beginning with one
in the time of Henry VIII, in 1530, but the main ones being the Witchcraft Act
of 1735, which will be referred to later on in this chapter.
…
Page 58-59
…
Although Spiritualists have only gained
State recognition comparatively recently, they are growing in numbers, and it
is recorded that they are getting 3,000 converts a year. Before they were
recognized as a “religion” there were many prosecutions of mediums suspected of
fraud, and even in recent times I have known of genuine mediums being sent to
prison for fraud. The reason for these prosecutions is in the fact that under
the Vagrancy Act of 1824 and the Witchcraft Act of 1735, a medium could still
be prosecuted until recently. These Acts state that a person has committed an
offence if they either conjure up spirits or even pretend to be able to do so.
Consequently they were caught both ways as once a medium was charged under the
Vagrancy Act or the Witchcraft Act they were liable to be punished either for
being frauds and pretending to conjure up spirits or for being literally able
to do so, if fraud could not be proved. Under such conditions the Spiritualist
movement as a whole was bound to keep within the law although the Home
Secretary promised at one time that mediums would be left alone if there was no
reason to believe that an element of fraud existed. Obviously then
Spiritualists had to be careful in the choosing of their ministers and mediums.
We have to grant that though they are deluded, they are sincere in their
beliefs and their recently granted “freedom” will no doubt only add to their
care in choosing their mediums since they will get wider publicity. Meetings
held in small churches or halls are open to the public, and anyone entering
will receive a warm welcome from the members or officers. The usual form of the
service is on the lines of a Free Church; there is hymn singing, prayer, and
sometimes a Bible reading. The visiting medium usually gives an address and at
the close of the service will give a demonstration of clairvoyance.
Page 59
Their churches are invariably well-attended,
they have their own Sunday schools (called Lyceums) and young people’s
meetings, but young people are not allowed to become members of the
Page 59-60
Spiritualism is now attempting World
Federation and such societies as the Universal Brotherhood Federation aim high
in order to achieve this end. Its founder, Mr. Noah Zerdin, apart from
organizing large indoor meetings, has also instilled enthusiasm into other
Spiritualists who voice their teachings and principles at Speakers Corner in
…
Chapter IV Christian Spiritualism
…
Page 63
…
It became a matter of even greater concern
when I discovered a medium who did not believe in God at all and said openly
that his “spirit guides” were evil spirits yet he had successful phenomena and
good works without any aid from prayer at all.
Healing is regarded as a very important part
of the Christian Spiritualist’s ministry and is looked upon as a gift of the
Spirit, in the same way as all the other eight gifts, which they consider to be
in operation among their members (all of which are very cleverly substituted
for the real thing by Satanic agency).
…
Page 67
…
An assertion is made that animals have the
same eternal souls as human beings. Belief is held in a second chance, whereas
we are told by the Word of God that it is given unto man once to die and after
death the judgment. The finished work of Christ is not considered sufficient to
redeem man but salvation depends also upon our “good works”, whereas the
written Word once again tells us that salvation is not of works, lest man
should boast.
…
Page 67-68
The twisting of Scripture or giving it such
a much wider interpretation than it was ever intended to have, is sufficient in
itself to condemn any movement that uses it in this way…”If they speak not
according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them…” (Isaiah
8:20).
…
Chapter VI The Developing Circle
Page 80-81
“…and there appeared unto them cloven tongues
like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with
the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them
utterance”.
Acts
2: 3 & 4
“…to another divers kinds of tongues; to
another the interpretation of tongues”.
1
Cor. 12:10
When Satan has gained a new convert to
Spiritualism his next step is to feed the “new born child” on the milk of his
own lies and, following the scriptural injunction to assemble together (thus
avoiding any suspicion on the part of the new believer), the convert will find
that he will be received with a warm welcome and will have the desire to go
deeper into the newly found religion. He will make many mistakes to start with,
like many converts to Christ, who start off full of zeal, thinking they are
going to convert the whole world, until they realize the necessity of waiting
upon the Lord for direction. The new convert to Spiritualism is very much the
same and has to learn to wait upon the “leadings” of the spirits – the best way
to obtain these leadings is by sitting in a developing circle. This is a circle
(group of people) for those who wish to learn how to develop their psychic
gifts and where proper instruction can be obtained from one who understands the
methods of the spirits.
Page 81
Most Spiritualist churches run a
The
Page 81-82
The circle progresses quietly and peaceably,
the sitters trying to forget themselves mentally and physically, allowing any
kind of thought to enter the mind, which according to teaching, is, in all
probability, a message from the spirit world. The sitter, having arrived at a
state of passivity, is just in the position required for evil spirits to work
through him. The individual thinks this working is of God and is therefore
deceived into believing anything that is taught by the demon who is
impersonating the spirit of the dead.
Page 82
After a time the leader of the circle calls
everyone to order and first one and then another is encouraged to relate experiences
obtained, while the circle was in progress, until everyone has spoken. They
will then be allowed to say whether anything strange was seen in connection
with the other sitters in the circle. As a medium who has taken charge of many
developing circles, I can say that I heard fantastic things which could easily
have been put down as just plain imagination, and students have to learn to
discriminate between what is really “spirit” and what may be just a touch of
migraine. Teaching is given not to accept everything that comes to one, but to
test all things and see that they are correct. By giving out all things that
come into their minds would-be mediums learn how to receive and to give, as it
is taught again that the more one gives out, the more one will receive.
Although only a small percentage of things at the beginning is actually
attributable to the supernatural, it is the teacher’s place to explain the
various reactions, teaching how to differentiate between an “evil” spirit and a
“good” spirit. As will be seen in Chapter 10, Spiritualists regard some spirits
as “evil” and some as “good”, whereas, of course, from a scriptural point of
view, all are bad.
Page 82-83
It is possible that there may be several
sittings before anything constructive takes place, mainly because the student
is probably shy of saying something that may sound trivial. In any case the
student is learning to relax his body and to keep his mind on one thing until
he has reached a state of what could be regarded as self-hypnosis and
passivity, which results in his not thinking for himself. He becomes an
automaton through which evil spirits work by taking advantage of his passivity.
This is, emphatically, not the way the Holy Ghost works, seeing that the Lord
does not take away our powers of thinking or conscious action following our
thoughts.
Page 83
Having listened to the thoughts and
experiences of the sitters and tried to explain them as best as he can, the
leader will then tell the students of what he himself has seen, heard or felt,
from the spirit world; description of various spirit forms which can only be
seen clairvoyantly (clairvoyance is the power to see spirits not visible to everyone) and
anything about the sitters which he has observed during the progress of the
circle. He would describe “spirit guides” to some and these would take the form
of Indians, Egyptians, Africans, Nuns and Priests, etc.
In time almost every medium gets to know his
“guides”. There may be several guides for different purposes;…
…
Page 84
…
Having been introduced to his guides the
beginner realizes that he is developing into a medium, which is what every
Spiritualist wants to be. He is encouraged with the thoughts of guides and now
has a greater incentive to go deeper (just where the enemy of his soul wants
him to go, deeper into the pit of destruction). He is now taking matters more
seriously than ever and goes all out for psychic development. It may be some
time before he is actually controlled by his guide, but he continues to sit and
wait for something to happen.
…
Page 84-85
The would-be medium, after being encouraged
by the teacher and messages received from the spirits through either the
teacher or other sitters, is able to experience what they consider to be
identical with the baptism of the Holy Ghost, that is to say, the spirit guide
taking control of the body. A spirit guide is a spirit that is more or less
constantly in attendance on the medium (or would-be medium, as all people are
supposed to have spirit guides, whether they ever become conscious of their
present guiding or not). The guide watches over his particular medium and is
the first spirit to take control of the body or mind – hence he becomes a
“familiar” spirit, giving guidance and advice to the medium. When other spirits
wish to use the medium to pass on messages, the guide either introduces the new
spirits to the assembled company or else merely describes them and passes on
their message. Spirit control takes different forms and is referred to as
“Light control” and Trance.
Page 85
In the case of light control, there is
little if any difference about the medium or his voice, although it becomes
obvious that whoever is doing the speaking it is not the medium himself. The
latter is fully conscious of what is going on in the circle and also is aware
of what he is saying. He has, however, no control over his words, his lips
being under the sway of the “spirit” and his mind being subordinate to the
powers of darkness. The controlling spirit invariably delivers a long address
full of deep truths and great wisdom, and will give its name and nationality
(i.e., what country it belonged to when alive in a body) and explain what it
wants the medium to do. It may describe other types of phenomena. For physical
mediumship, however, as against mental mediumship, the medium usually goes into
trance.
Page 85-86
This goes deeper than light control – it is
a term used very loosely in popular speech to denote any kind of sleep state
that presents differences to the normal sleep of a person. When a medium is
about to go into trance, he will begin to breathe deeply and heavily and it is
a theory among some Spiritualists that the medium’s own spirit leaves his body,
the controlling spirit taking its place. By this theory, the medium’s own
spirit is taken to other realms in the spirit world which he is completely
unable to describe on his return to earth apart from a general impression that
it is full of brightness. Trance mediumship has various stages of development
but more will be said about that in due course.
Page 86
During the process of the medium’s spirit
leaving the body (we will refer to this theory since it is more or less fitting
to resulting facts, for the sake of clarity) the medium will breathe heavily,
but will suddenly stop breathing altogether until the spirit guide enters the
body to speak, which is a matter of spilt seconds from the time one stops
breathing. The medium’s body becomes cold to the touch, as if dead, and when
the spirit speaks, it uses the vocal organs of the body which it is possessing.
The voice of the medium definitely changes into the recognizable accents of the
spirit guide – recognizable, that is, after a little acquaintance with the
guide. The medium himself is not conscious of anything that is being said or
done. The other sitters sense the spirit’s presence either by cool breezes
which seem to spread around the room or by heat permeating likewise. The latter
invariably signifies that the guide is a healing guide.
Page 86-87
Although trance is used for different forms
of physical phenomena, a more advanced state is “deep trance”. This is the same
as ordinary trance but intensified to a much greater degree and leaves the
medium feeling completely exhausted, rather as if one has just recovered from a
severe illness leaving one weak to the point of trembling, after the departure
of the controlling spirit, which process is the same as its entrance to the
body, only in reverse.
Page 87
During this deep trance the medium’s actual
body has been used to produce physical phenomenon and strength has been drawn
from it, which is naturally more weakening than having one’s mind and lips
controlled only. During this process of entering and departing from the
medium’s body, the spirit demands absolute silence on the part of sitters, as a
sudden noise, movement, etc., may result in the medium receiving a violent
shock to his system and may even go so far as to cause him to lose his life.
Mediumship then is certainly not a thing to tamper with unless one is prepared
to risk everything for it. Again, during deep trance, the medium’s own spirit
travels through realms of light,…
…
Page 88
…
Frequently in the course of development
students will see many colored lights, all of which are presumed to denote
different things, such as healing, purity, love, etc.; and when a medium is
about to enter into trance, these spirit lights can often be seen just before
the guide is due to take control. Also when the guide does enter and speak, he
is invariably a native of a different country (or had been when on earth) from
the medium’s own and speaks in the language of the nation he states he belongs
to. This foreign language is often interpreted into the language of those
present in the circle by another spirit guide who is controlling the body of
another person in the circle simultaneously.
…
Chapter VII Clairvoyance and Clairaudience
Page 92
“… to another, the discerning of spirits…”
1
Cor. 12:10.
“..and thine ears shall hear a word behind
thee.”
Isaiah
30:21.
MEDIUMSHIP falls into sections. Mental
mediumship and Physical mediumship. The most common form of mental mediumship
is clairvoyance and clairaudience, which is the power to see and to hear
clearly – the former covering the ability to see supernatural things, the
latter covering the hearing of them.
The gift, as practiced by Spiritualist
mediums, is mistaken for the supernatural gift of the Spirit referred to as
“discerning of spirits” which is also the power to recognize the origin of
supernatural things. It must constantly be remembered that there is a true as
well as a false recognition of supernatural manifestations and, therefore, this
gift can either be a Divine gift which is the true manifestation of God, or the
result of a passive state expected of a medium who is “developing” or has
“developed”.
Page 92-93
Spiritualists claim that the gift of
clairvoyance and clairaudience is one gift; that it is a natural one that exists in everyone and it only
requires developing and instruction to be properly exercised.
…
Page 93
…
This type of mediumship is very often
referred to as thought reading or the ability to be able to tell of a person of
his faults and shortcomings, but it is not so. Mediums are not trained as
thought readers and being able to tell the character of people does not enter
into it. It is purely and simply what it says it is, the discerning of spirits
and it is spirits which they actually see.
…
Visions which are divine and seen by a child
of God who is endowed with this supernatural gift, mentioned in 1 Cor. 12:10,
usually have definite results.
…
Page 96
…
The manifestations of clairvoyance and
clairaudience usually work together and are regarded, as I said before, as one
gift. It has been known, however, for a medium to possess either one or the
other separately, in which case it is generally developed to a marked degree.
It is possible for the medium to give a
demonstration of this gift at any séance or public meeting, in a bus, train,
restaurant or park. It does not require any special lighting and can be
demonstrated anywhere. No form of trance condition is necessary, only the
tuning in to the spirit world by the medium, who being in a passive state of
mind is open to receive messages from those who presume to be the spirits of
the dead.
…
Page 97
Some mediums have this gift only to a slight
degree and instead of actually seeing the spirits themselves, see only signs
and symbols, the meaning of which the sitter has to fathom out for himself.
…
Chapter VIII Psychometry
Page 103
“…to one is given by the Spirit the word of
wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit.”
1
Cor. 12:8
“…to another prophecy…”
1
Cor. 12:10
Continuing “mental” mediumship, which
includes psychometry – this usually runs co-operatively with those gifts
already mentioned of clairvoyance and clairaudience, as it is possible to
demonstrate psychometry under the same conditions, e.g., in public halls,
parks, séances, etc. It is regarded
as the power to make a personal contact with a live person or persons who are
absent from the place where it is being demonstrated, and also to make contact
with the spirits of the dead,
through being able to handle an
article which belongs or belonged either to
the dead person or to the absent one.
Page 103-104
At certain times special meetings are held
in Spiritualist churches when a medium will give a demonstration of
psychometry. Although regarded as one of the more common types of mediumship,
it usually draws many people who are anxious for a message of advice from the
spirits. It can be developed to a very high standard, according, of course, to the willingness of the medium to forsake
everything else and concentrate on obtaining good results.
Page 104
Psychometry meetings vary in size. People
attending usually place an article, belonging either to themselves or a lost
relative, on a tray and then sit down with others also anxious to receive some
message of comfort or advice. One after another will enter the room and
carefully place his article on the tray, taking great care not to touch anyone
else’s article for fear of interfering with the etheric vibrations and thus
spoiling someone’s “message”. When all the company is ready the medium, being
ignorant of the owners of each individual article, will take one up at random
and begin to relate the thoughts or feelings which come to him while holding
the article. The article is presumed to be making contact with the enquirer and
through this means the medium, with the aid of the communicating spirits, is
able to relate many things regarding the owner’s condition of mind and life.
Care will be taken in giving out secrets that may be precious or embarrassing,
and tactful terms are used that can be understood by the enquirer and no one
else. Mediums can usually be trusted to keep any secrets that the spirits
reveal to them in private sittings or public meetings and if the matter is very
personal, the enquirer may even be asked to remain behind after the meeting to
have a private talk with the medium.
Page 104-105
Information given is dictated by the spirit
guide of the medium and very often, as in other cases, information is given
unknown by the enquirer that has to be checked on. Telepathy is out of the
question with regard to this gift as is shown in many ways and instances. After
the message or information has been given the medium will ask the owner of the
article to raise his hand and it will be returned. Quite probably the medium
will then see spirits clairvoyantly and will describe them. Further messages
are passed on by contact with the articles one by one until all of them have
been psychometrised.
Page 105
This gift was used to a large extent on behalf
of anxious parents, wives and relatives during the war years in trying to find
the whereabouts of somebody posted as “missing”. Messages of hope were given to
many which proved to be true, although it is also a fact that the spirits have
told many lies through the mediums and a lot of people were told that their
loved ones were still alive when in fact they were dead. This has led to the
enquirer anxiously waiting for the return of the “missing” person and haunting
Spiritualist meetings in the hope of further news. By the time the lie was
discovered, most of them were already habituees of the cult and the lie had
served its purpose. Also the thing had gotten such a hold on them that the lie
ceased to matter overmuch and certainly did not result in a revulsion of
feeling against the whole business, which is what one might expect.
However most of these messages proved true,
as it would not advertise Spiritualism much if lying were excessive.
…
Page 106
…
In times past it has been known for mediums
to assist the police to trace murderers and thieves from an article the
criminal has left behind at the scene of the crime, and many criminals have
been brought to justice as a result of the use of this gift. Also mediums can
trace a particular illness through contact with an article belonging to the
sick person and without ever seeing the invalid, will be able to describe the
symptoms, diagnose the illness (even in cases where doctors have failed) and
prescribe treatment which ends in the healing of the patient and the surprise
of the doctors.
…
Chapter IX Healing
Page 109
“To another the gifts of healing.”
1
Cor. 12:9.
“And they shall lay hands on the sick, and
they shall recover.”
Mark
…
There are many many Spiritualists today who
are endowed with this remarkable gift of power by Satan, …
…
Page 109-110
Through this type of mediumship the blind
have been made to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and it is powerfully
drawing folks into the Movement. It is impossible to doubt the fact that these gifts
are in operation in counterfeit in the Spiritualist movement. There are
different methods for healing the sick in these meetings and although all
Spiritualists do not accept the inspiration of the Bible, they will quote
different examples of healings recorded there. They believe in the laying-on of
hands according to Mark
Page 110
Healing meetings are held in large halls
from one period of time to another in this country, and all over the land
people flock either to see others healed or to receive healing themselves. They
can be seen waiting for hours outside the halls before the meeting is due to
start, and what a pathetic sight it is to see the sufferers making their way
eagerly one by one towards the platform where the healer is waiting. He or she
is also anxious to heal the sick and willing to be used to almost any extent to
accomplish this purpose.
Page 110-111
The healer without asking any questions will
lay his “healing hands” on the sufferer and the patient will feel the power
being transmitted from the medium to himself. A few moments of silence will
reign throughout the whole congregation who will co-operate by concentrating on
the patient and sending out “healing thought rays” and “love rays” to assist
the medium in his task. Later the one who has sought healing will testify that
healing has taken place. Crutches, splints, bath chairs and other appliances
left behind prove that the devil has successfully accomplished that which the
Church originally set out to do. The person now healed is full of joy and
praises of the healer and to the spirits who did the work. Please note that the
healing is done by the spirits, the medium is only the vessel through which
they work, and everyone, especially the medium himself, is very conscious of
this fact. However much the medium may be used, or in whatever way, whether his
hands are used for the manipulation of bones, etc., whether he is conscious or
unconscious of what is going on, the thanks are returned to the spirits who have accomplished the work, in
its entirety. The spirits, however, usually modestly ask that their “God”
should have the glory – their god incidentally being their father, the Devil,
although this is, of course, not plain to Spiritualists.
Page 111
The healing medium will be physically tired
after giving so much healing and through the loss of power which has been given
out. It has been recorded that one particular healing medium spent so long
giving relief to the sick in a special room set aside for this purpose that he
would have to be carried out himself as it left him so weak!
Some healers, before laying on hands, will
anoint with oil beforehand (according to the wording of James
Page 111-112
Up to now we have dealt with healings that can
be accomplished in public halls by the laying-on of hands, and anointing with
oil and by word of command. These same healings can also be achieved in private
home circles so long as a healing medium is present. Such healings take place
to the strains of soft music, whether in public hall or private home, either
recorded on a phonograph or sung by members of the circle. The medium can be
either under light control or in trance according to the type of complaint he
is dealing with. For instance, if a person is suffering from an ordinary kind
of illness, not of long standing, the medium can anoint with oil, lay hands on the sick person and bring about a
cure; if the complaint is deeply rooted or of a more serious nature, such as
cancer, growths, disfigured limbs, etc., it will probably necessitate trance for the medium and hypnosis for the patient as the pain caused by any manipulation or probing would be
more than is humanly possible to stand. Hypnosis, therefore, plays an important
part in the more difficult cases. Surely God doesn’t work in such a manner.
Page 112
Great success has been achieved in the small
home “healing circle” where a healing medium is present, and also results have
been fairly common in these circles without a healing medium. As its name
implies the sitters in this circle are only interested in healing and at the
very commencement of the circle, which can be conducted in ordinary light,
specials prayers are made for the sick. Names of needy ones are read from the
“healing list” and after each name a few minutes silence is maintained during
which every member sends out “healing thoughts” to the patient who is absent.
When all the names have been read out and if there is time, the whole circle
will continue in silence thinking only of healing for the sick. This type of
healing is referred to as “Absent Healing” and can be exercised without an
actual healing medium in charge. Many bad cases of sickness have been restored
to health through this method. It would be just as well if the reader should
deviate a little from the Spiritualist “healing circle” and realize how the
home prayer meeting is being very carefully and cunningly substituted by the
“home healing circle”. It is at the home prayer meeting that the testimony of
the saints is built up and the family united in one before God. It is a
contention among Spiritualists that it is no use just attending public meetings
if they are not prepared to develop in their own home circle. Unfortunately
there are many children of God who only pray in the public meetings and do not
bother overmuch about the home and family prayer meeting.
Page 113
To return to our subject, this gift of
healing is taken by Spiritualists into the open air, as well as to halls and
public meetings and home circles. Healings have been effected in streets and
parks before crowds of eager bystanders.
Another feature of this is animal healing;
Satan has also raised up special mediums who are possessed with this capacity
of curing sick animals. We know that John Wesley prayed for his horse and God
answered prayer. Considering that God has given us dominion over all animals
there does not seem to be anything antiscriptural about asking the Lord to heal
a sick beast or household pet. Instances are known where Christians have beseeched
Him to lay His hand on a favorite pet and God has answered the earnest prayer
of the saints.
Satan naturally wants to cast as much wool
over people’s eyes as possible and certain spirits teach special methods for
the laying of hands upon sick animals. Many Spiritualists testify that their
animals have been miraculously restored to health through their mediumship. It
is even known that certain of their churches have held actual services for sick
animals where people take their pets for the animal healer to heal. It must be
born in mind, of course, that Spiritualists believe that animals also progress
into the spirit world, so there is nothing incongruous about them being
concerned for the welfare of them.
…
Chapter X Rescue Work
Page 117
“…in My name shall they cast out devils…”
Mark
Can Satan cast out Satan? Can a house
divided against itself stand? The answer is emphatically “No”, but Satan has
carefully devised a method of psychic phenomena which could deceive the very
elect, if this were possible – thank God it is not, a scheme which would
convince anyone ignorant of the ways of God that Spiritualism “must be of God.”
Page 117-118
Satan knows a house divided against itself
cannot stand and there is no point in casting out his own demons from a human
body, as that would make division. The reader may be surprised to know,
however, that in some Circles there is a literal
counterfeit to the casting out of demons. This chapter is an attempt to show Satan’s methods in
this direction, that is to say, there is counterfeit of a counterfeit or a copy
of a copy, which only one who knows the power of the Holy Ghost and God’s Word
can really understand. Spirit-filled believers know that Jesus said, “In My name shall they cast out demons”, but
demons blind the Spiritualist into ignoring the source of the real power to
cast out demons which is based solely upon His Name.” Any other name is
powerless and even the use of the Lord’s Name is of no avail without the power
behind the command to “come out”. In Acts 19 we read of the vagabond Jews,
exorcists who tried to cast out evil spirits saying, “We adjure you by Jesus
whom Paul preacheth,” and the answer of the evil spirit saying, “Jesus I know,
and Paul I know, but who are ye?” The man then leaped on them and overcame
them! They thought that just the mention of the Name of Jesus would be
sufficient but obviously this is not so.
Page 118
Satan cleverly twists Scripture round to
make his followers believe that he is non-existent and that there are no such
things as fallen angels. No devil, No fallen angels, No hell; This puts him in
an awkward position if he wants to make his followers believe that they are
doing God’s work, so he has very
carefully inspired Spiritualists to change the term “casting out of demons” to
“rescue work” and from time to time, mediums are
specially chosen for this purpose of “rescuing”. However, whatever the name
given to it, the practice is the same and in order to produce this counterfeit
successfully, the spirits teach that as man is responsible for the expiation of
his own sins, he has to learn his lesson the hard way in the lesser spheres of
the spirit world.
Page 118-119
Spiritualists are taught that the spirit
world is divided into several spheres according to the various degrees of
“progress” and a spirit is relegated to whatever sphere is justifiable taking
into consideration the kind of life it has lived upon earth. This means that if
a man has been a renegade all his earthly life, he will pass into the lesser
spheres of spirit world where he will find other spirits like himself – and
they remain there possibly for centuries – until there comes to them a definite
consciousness of their shortcomings, followed by a desire to evolve into
something better. People who commit suicide, murderers and infidels, etc., are
all consigned to the lesser spheres until they are considered suitable for
promotion to a higher position in the spirit world. We are not told who does
the judging of suitability, presumably it is a “natural” state of evolution!
Page 119-120
When this consciousness of their fallen
condition is awakened and a desire to progress is shown, they are given an
opportunity of returning to earth again by being re-born to live a more
spiritual type of life in another body. This touches on the subject of reincarnation which is a
theory held by most Spiritualists. They believe that a person can be
reincarnated over and over again until they are perfected and so highly evolved
that they become full of wisdom and power. They claim that this accounts for
the fact that one individual is so brilliant while another is an idiot, because
the former is said to have been reincarnated more times than the latter and is
no doubt an “older soul”. They teach that a person who is bedridden for years is
really a spirit who has chosen to come back to earth in a physical body and
suffer, and this accounts for the apparent cheerfulness of the invalid. The
person who is born blind and cannot be cured of blindness remains blind only
because the spirit of that person chooses to suffer in that way. A still-born
child is a spirit who has evolved over and over again and all is needed to
attain perfection was just one more very short period in a physical body after
which it becomes a spirit of the highest evolution straight away. This belief
also extends to animals and insects who are gradually evolving until they
become human beings and so on! Having
attained the highest evolution possible in the spirit world, one becomes a ball
of light, which seems a somewhat tame ending
for so many aeons of hard work! Such, however are the pernicious doctrines that
are let loose on the people who follow this cult and Satan has carefully made
extra provision for the “bad” or “evil” spirits to be taught as well.
Page 120
While these bad spirits are dwelling in the
lesser spheres suffering for their misdeeds until repentance overtakes them,
some are able to break away and return to the earth to upset the plans of the
“good” spirits. They become earthbound spirits and it is this type of evil
spirit that is supposed to manifest itself in a “
…
Chapter XIII Trying
the Spirits
…
Page 151-152
…
In spite of the fact that Spiritualists often
quote Scriptures as a basis for their doctrines or arguments (in favour of their own viewpoint, of course) it is to be noted that these quotations are only fragments of the
Scriptures and they do not take into
consideration the sound doctrines that arise from a study of the whole Word of God, rightly divided. This
was a sound principle in the
confound
v.
confuse, puzzle
No mystery could confound Sherlock Holmes for
long.
…
Page 152
…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his book The New
Revelation, describes how he became a
Spiritualist; he describes conversations with spirits, also the messages
received, and states that these messages are from spirits of the departed. He
also states that these spirits testify that the information given is at the
Divine Will of God and that the Lord has permitted this “NEW
REVELATION” to be given.
…
Page 154
…
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle admits in his New Revelation that
Spiritualism is contrary to the Bible, yet Spiritualists will quote Scripture
to back up their claims. He even says, “Though The New Revelation may seem
destructive to those who hold Christian dogmas with extreme rigidity, it has
quite the opposite effect upon the mind which has come to look upon the whole
Christian scheme as a huge delusion.” In other words, he considers Christianity
to be a delusion to some people, admits that Spiritualism is destructive to
Christianity and that those who are deluded by Christian beliefs would find
Spiritualism to be “reconstructive.”
…
Further on, in the same book, he writes,
“Spiritualism would greatly modify conventional Christianity in the direction
of explanation and development.”
…
Page 156-157
…
In another Spiritualist book, entitled Whatever is, is Right, we read in
question and answer form “What is evil?” The reply is “Evil is good.” Ques.:
“What is a lie?” Ans.: “A lie holds a lawful place in creation, it is a
necessity.” Ques.: “What are evil spirits?” Ans.: “There is no Devil, there is
no Christ.”
…
Page 158
…the gates of hell only open inwards and not
outwards;…
…
Sir A. C. Doyle again says, “No common sense
man can see any justice in vicarious sacrifice…too much attention has been given to the death
of Christ.” In other words, the death of Christ is of no more avail than that
of thousands of others who have given their lives for some just cause.
vicarious
adj.
acting as a substitute; done by a deputy
Many people get a vicarious thrill at the
movies by imagining they are the characters on the screen.
…
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Reference
Goodman, Linda.
(1968) Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs.
Afterword
Page 538
Down through the
centuries the planets remain unchanged in their grandeur and their orbs.
The stars which shone over
Always remember that astrology
is not fatalistic. The stars incline, they do not compel. Most of us are
carried along in blind obedience to the influence of the planets and our
electromagnetic birth patterns, as well as to our environment, our heredity and
the wills of those stronger than us.
We show no perception, therefore no resistance; and our horoscopes fit us like
a fingerprint. We’re moved like pawns on
a chess board in the game of life, even while some of us
scoff at or ignore the very powers which are moving us. But anyone can rise
above the afflictions of his nativity. By using free will, or
the power of the soul, anyone can dominate his moods, change his character,
control his environment and the attitudes of those close to him.
When we do this, we become movers in the chess game, instead of
the pawns.
…
Page 539
…
There’s enough magnetic
power in you to make you immune to the strongest planetary pulls, now or in the
future. What a pity to submit so easily and let your
potential remain unrealized.
When hate and fear are
both conquered, the will is then free and capable of immense power. This is the
message of your own nativity, hidden in the silent stars.
Listen to it.
An ancient legend tells
of a man who went to a wise mystic to ask for the
key to power and occult secrets. He was taken to the edge
of a clear lake, and told to kneel down. Then the wise one disappeared, and the
man was left alone, staring down at his own reflected image in the
water.
‘What I do, you can do
also.’ ‘Ask, and you shall receive.’ ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’
‘Seek the truth, and the truth shall set you free.’
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Reference
Chapter
15. The Implementation of Statistical Process Control (SPC)
Page
325
The
fact is that people only cheat when they have an incentive to do so and when the
chances of being found out are low.
…
Without
entering into the more general subject of management and motivation, one should
recognize that external threat is a powerful motivator.
…
At
the moment of first implementing SPC, it is absolutely imperative to ensure
that there is a very clear understanding of
what is involved. This does not require the employment of statisticians,
but the acceptance of:
· The fact that all
work is always carried out by a process.
· The necessity to share the responsibility for the management
of quality.
· The inevitable presence of variation and the need to
manage it.
Page
326
· The obligation to
do nothing to a process unless and until there is clear evidence that change is
required.
· The recognition that stability and variation are partners
in all processes.
· The requirement for prevention and not detection.
· The belief that progress is made by both
ceasing to do what is known to be undesirable and by ensuring that it is
possible to do continuously what is known to be desirable.
· The acceptance of failure as an event
requiring investigation and remedial action and not the
apportionment of blame.
· The achievement of common training as a route to
common understanding for, without common understanding,
barriers within the hierarchy will be generated and these will prevent proper
management and control.
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Reference
Olcott, H S
(1891) The Vampire. Vol XII. The Theosophist; Adyar Pamphlet
No 112. Adyar, Chennai (
http://www.theosophical.ca/Vampire.htm
Of all the forms of the real or supposed intercourse between the
living and dead, that of the vampire is the most loathsome. The horrid physical
effects which follow after the burial of a corpse, have no doubt, had much to
do in creating the sentiment of disgust and terror which associates with the
thought of this return of the dead to prey upon the living. And it is another argument in favour of cremation—if
any were needed by thoughtful persons—that there are no vampires save in
countries where the dead are buried. We do not hear of Hindu vampires, but
where such cases occur in
…
The first stage of verification is the existence of an astral human double which is capable
of being projected from the body of the living man. This is the line of
proof followed out by D’Assier in his Posthumous Humanity, which most interesting work should be studied by all who wish
to know the evidence and the deductions therefrom of a Positivist man of
science. His theory—but before passing on to theories, we may as well confine
ourselves to a few out of the mass of facts that are available. The literature
of Vampirism is large and
copious, covering the records of many countries and epochs. As to the witnesses, “their name is legion”; as to their trustworthiness , all
that can be said is that, in nearly all cases where the ecclesiastical or
political authorities intervened, there was an inquest conducted at least under
the forms of law. The deaths of the victims were attested, their graves and
those of the alleged vampires were opened, the fresh and ruddy condition of the
corpses of the latter recognized, the spurting of fresh blood from them, and the
cries or other signs of momentarily revived physical vitality, when the pointed
stake or the executioner’s sword was driven through the heart, placed upon the
record of the inquest. If we are to open a scientific enquiry by first
violating the canon of science that corroborative evidence of probability
cannot be put aside, but should be kept as unproved theory awaiting the final
verdict, then it is but waste of energy to take up the research at all. There
are those who straightaway scout all testimony with respect to witchcraft and
sorcery as of necessity false and puerile, and such has been the fate of modern Spiritualism, mesmerism,
psychometry and various other branches of Occult Science. But times are changing, and
men—especially hypnotists—changing with them. Spiritualism survives its
thousand “final collapses,” psychometry has won its foothold, Reichenbach’s
vindication has commenced, mesmerism is stronger because on a more scientific
basis than ever, magic
and sorcery are discussed as thinkable phases of practical psychology, and Theosophy, that universal solvent
of mysteries and nursing-mother of every branch of psychical science, has
gained every year fifty times the influence it has ever lost by the most bitter
attacks of its cleverest antagonists. We may safely venture, then, to quietly
discuss vampirism
as one of group of psychical phenomena.
I note at the start two points, viz., that the most incredulous
writers concede that the exhumed bodies have, or may have, been found in a
preserved state, which they ascribe to either the preservative property of the
soil, or the burial alive. As for the noctambulation of the phantom, its
vampirising the living, and its making noisy “spiritual” phenomena, they
dismiss all with the sneer of denial and the charge of falsification by the
witnesses. It is true that a living man—a yogi or fakir–can be resuscitated
after inhumation for several weeks. Ranjit Singh’s startling case at Lahore is historical and
perfectly attested by Sir Claude Wade, Dr Macgregor and other unimpeachable eye-witnesses. It is,
therefore, possible that an apparently dead man may be buried for an indefinite
time without extinction of life, if the person be all the time in that state of
human hibernation known as Samadhi—a
state when the lungs need no air, because respiration is suspended, and the
heart propels no blood through the arteries, because the human clock is
stopped.
The vampire’s body may,
therefore lie fresh and rosy in the grave, so long as it can draw to itself
nutriment to counteract the waste by chemical and subtler actions which operate
upon the tissues, even in Samadhi. The
After
death, then the divine spirit which animated
man returns alone to heaven, and leaves upon earth and in the atmosphere two corpses, one
terrestrial and elementary, the other aerial and related to the stars; the one
already inert, the other still animated by the universal movement of the soul
of the world, but foredoomed to die slowly,
as absorbed by the astral powers which
produced it. When a man has lived a good
life, the astral corpse evaporates like a pure incense mounting towards the
higher regions; but if the man has lived in crime, his astral corpse, which
holds him prisoner, seeks still the objects of its passions and yearns to
resume the earthly life.
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Cross Reference
Bhikkhu, Thanissaro. (Translated from
the Pali) (Revised:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/majjhima/mn036.html
…
"I thought: 'Suppose that I,
clenching my teeth and pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, were to
beat down, constrain, & crush my mind with my awareness.' So, clenching my
teeth and pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I beat down,
constrained, & crushed my mind with my awareness. Just as a strong man,
seizing a weaker man by the head or the throat or the shoulders, would beat him
down, constrain, & crush him, in the same way I beat down, constrained,
& crushed my mind with my awareness. As I did so, sweat poured from my
armpits. And although tireless persistence was aroused in me, and unmuddled
mindfulness established, my body was aroused & uncalm because of the painful
exertion. But the painful feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind
or remain.
"I thought: 'Suppose I were to
become absorbed in the trance of non-breathing.' So I stopped the in-breaths
& out-breaths in my nose & mouth. As I did so, there was a loud roaring
of winds coming out my earholes, just like the loud roar of winds coming out of
a smith's bellows... So I stopped the in-breaths & out-breaths in my nose
& mouth & ears. As I did so, extreme forces sliced through my head,
just as if a strong man were slicing my head open with a sharp sword... Extreme
pains arose in my head, just as if a strong man were tightening a turban made
of tough leather straps around my head... Extreme forces carved up my stomach
cavity, just as if a butcher or his apprentice were to carve up the stomach
cavity of an ox... There was an extreme burning in my body, just as if two
strong men, grabbing a weaker man by the arms, were to roast & broil him
over a pit of hot embers. And although tireless persistence was aroused in me,
and unmuddled mindfulness established, my body was aroused & uncalm because
of the painful exertion. But the painful feeling that arose in this way did not
invade my mind or remain.
"Devas, on seeing me, said,
'Gotama the contemplative is dead.' Other devas said, 'He isn't dead, he's
dying.' Others said, 'He's neither dead nor dying, he's an arahant, for this is
the way arahants live.'
"I thought: 'Suppose I were to
practice going altogether without food.' Then devas came to me and said, 'Dear
sir, please don't practice going altogether without food. If you go altogether without
food, we'll infuse divine nourishment in through your pores, and you will
survive on that.' I thought, 'If I were to claim to be completely
fasting while these devas are infusing divine nourishment in through my pores,
I would be lying.' So I dismissed them, saying, 'Enough.'
"I thought: 'Suppose I were to
take only a little food at a time, only a handful at a time of bean soup, lentil soup, vetch soup, or pea soup.' So I took only a
little food at a time, only handful at a time of bean soup, lentil soup, vetch
soup, or pea soup. My body became extremely emaciated. Simply from my eating so
little, my limbs became like the jointed segments of vine stems or bamboo
stems... My backside became like a camel's hoof... My spine stood out like a
string of beads... My ribs jutted out like the jutting rafters of an old,
run-down barn... The gleam of my eyes appeared to be sunk deep in my eye sockets
like the gleam of water deep in a well... My scalp shriveled & withered
like a green bitter gourd, shriveled & withered in the heat & the
wind... The skin of my belly became so stuck to my spine that when I thought of
touching my belly, I grabbed hold of my spine as well; and when I thought of
touching my spine, I grabbed hold of the skin of my belly as well... If I
urinated or defecated, I fell over on my face right there... Simply from my
eating so little, if I tried to ease my body by rubbing my limbs with my hands,
the hair -- rotted at its roots -- fell from my body as I rubbed, simply from
eating so little.
…
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Cross Reference
Myths and legends on Ganesh, Hindu
god.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/ganapati/anglais/adetmyth.html
Ganesh and Kubera
Kubera, the god of wealth, was very proud of his boundless
fortune. One day, he organized a gorgeous dinner; among other
famous guests, the divine couple, Shiva and Pârvatî, with their son Ganesh,
were present.
The later, still a child, started to
eat and he appeared quickly to be insatiable. Soon, the other guests found plates
and dishes empty. Alas ! Not satisfied with all the available food, Ganesh
started to devour plates an dishes, the furniture and all the content of
Alakâpuri, the main city of
When he achieved to gulp down the
whole, the child Ganesh threatened to swallow Kubera himself. Frightened, the
god of wealth rushed forward to Shiva's feet to implore his help, since the Ganesh
voracious appetite seemed to be unlimited.
The remedy was simple but
spectacular : Shiva
gave his son a
handful of roasted cereal grains.
Ganesh ate it and, wonderfully, his
hunger stopped immediately.
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During life it is the body which develops and nourishes the
astral body; in the case of vampires the process is reversed, for the corpse, being confined in its coffin and by the superincumbent soil, cannot walk about, so the double, being an entity of the “Fourth
Dimension,” hence not impeded by either coffin, tomb or grave-soil, is free to move about in search of its blood-food, and to transmit it
by sympathetic psychical infusion to the cadaver, now become its mere
dwelling-convenience.
…
The one sweeping theory adopted by the Christian
Church to account for every phase of abnormal psychical phenomena, vampirism
included, is the action of the Bogey Man—the Devil. Nothing is easier
than the use of this universal solvent. Unfortunately, however, nobody nowadays
believes in that absurdity—nobody, at all events, who is in the least loyal to
science. One never tires of reading such absurdly stubborn demonologists as Des
Mouseaux, who detects the Devil behind the clairvoyant’s head, within the
medium’s circle, even behind the mesmerizer’s chair. He devotes many pages of
one of his books (La Magie au XIX me Siècle) to proving that
poor Margarita Hauffe, the Seeress of Prevorst, was a pucca vampire; and,
certainly, in the sense of her living upon the auric emanations of those about
her, there is some reasonableness in the use of his term Magnetic Vampirism. We have the good
Dr Kerner’s testimony to that effect. But as to her being obsessed by the
Devil, there was never a greater libel, her angelically pure
and spiritual life and teachings indicating that the source of her inspiration
was divine, not devilish. This magnetic vampirism is practiced every
day and hour in social, most especially in conjugal, intercourse: the weak
absorb strength from the strong, the sickly from the robust, the
aged from the young. One vampirizes by hand-shaking, by sitting
close together, by sleeping in the same bed; the full brains of the clever are
“sucked” by the spongy brains of the stupid. Throughout all
these phases the law of natural equilibration asserts itself, as it does in the
whole realm of physics. Great minds love
isolation, from an instinctive feeling that if they live the life of the crowd,
they will be sucked down to the crowd’s low level. It was this sense
which dictated to the yogi and the hierophant, that he must seclude himself
within the sanctum, or retire to the gupta (yogi’s cave), the
jungle, or the mountain summit. The magnetic aura (tejas) of a sage or an
adept is to his soul-starving disciples like mother’s milk to the babe, or a
fountain of cool waters to the parched traveler of the desert.
…
To conclude our analysis of this painful subject, it is most
evident that too much care cannot be taken to ascertain beyond doubt the actual
and complete death of a person before committing the body to the grave—if that
senseless, unscientific and revolting custom must be preserved. One shudders to
think of the untold agony that must have been felt by thousands of victims to
ignorant hurry to put the body out of sight, who, awakening too late from a
state of trance, found themselves screwed up in a coffin and buried under six
feet of earth, without the least possibility of succor. The case of poor
(Reference:
Olcott, H S (1891) The Vampire. Vol XII. The Theosophist; Adyar Pamphlet No 112. Adyar, Chennai
(
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Reference
Peale, Norman
Vincent. (1982) Positive Imaging: The Powerful Way to
Change Your Life.
Chapter 3 The Concept
That Conquers Problems
Page 30
1. Every human being has an enormous
problem-solving potential built into him or her. It’s only when that potential is
blocked or weakened by defeatist attitudes or negative emotions that problems
seem unsolvable or overwhelming.
2. Problems are an essential and necessary
ingredient of life. They can actually be good for you, although they may be painful
at the time. All worthwhile achievements are the result of problem solving.
Problem solvers are strong people because they struggle to overcome difficulties or adversities. And the
reverse is true: People who never have to face problems get soft, mentally and
spiritually, just as people who never exercise get flabby physically. When I
hear some troubled person cry, “Why does God let this happen to me?” I often
feel like saying, “Because He knows you’ll grow and be strengthened if you
grapple with your difficulty; He made you that way!”
3. The basic tools of problem solving are
available to anyone. One of the most effective is this technique of imaging. Anybody
can experiment with it. There’s nothing very difficult about it. And, … it can be applied to just about any
problem under the sun.
One cautionary word,
though, right here at the start. Make the Lord a silent partner in all forms of imaging,
because He is the touchstone that will keep your desires on the high plane of
morality where they belong. Imaging
can be applied to unworthy goals as well as worthy ones. Praying about goals is essential,
because if there are any selfish aims or sinful motives, they will appear as
you pray. Pray to be sure your goal is right, for if it isn’t right it is
wrong, and nothing that is wrong ever turned out right.
A wise man once said,
“Be very
careful what you wish for, because you may get it.” That applies to imaging even more
forcefully: if
you image something long enough and hard enough, you will get it.
I remember a somber
story of misused imaging that my psychiatrist friend Dr. Smiley Blanton once
told me without mentioning any names. A famous
Finally the inner
story emerged. The producer had met an attractive young actress who was trying
to get started in films. It was the old story. Although he was married, he
decided to have an affair with her. The girl had scruples and resisted, but the producer was a
persuasive and determined man, willing to use the power of his position. Also,
he was aware of the power of imaging, and he used it to visualize the whole course of the seduction:
buildup, timing, setting – he planned it like one of his scenarios. The outcome was just as he imaged it.
But then the girl
came to him and told him that she was pregnant. She thought he loved her,
perhaps enough to get a divorce and marry her. Instead, he told her to go and
have an abortion. She went back to her apartment and took a fatal dose of sleeping pills, leaving
a note that implicated the producer. Even in jaded
So never fail to hold
your imaging goals up to the light before you set about achieving them.
scruples
n
motivation deriving
logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and
actions [syn: conscience, moral sense, sense of right and wrong]
jaded
adj
Dulled by surfeit;
sated: “the sickeningly sweet life of the amoral, jaded, bored upper classes”
(John Simon).
Chapter 9 Imaging –
Key to Health?
Page 87
“We are essentially minds
with bodies.” Lew Miller told himself, “not the other way around. Therefore our
minds can dominate and control our bodies. If I affirm and visualize my
recovery, my thoughts will steadily be forming and producing their physical
counterparts.”
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Reference
Pirsig, Robert M. (1984) Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Page 43
“There’s nothing up
ahead that’s any better than it is right
here.”
Page 231
For the time being one can
meditate on the fact that the old English roots for the Buddha and Quality, God and good, appear to be identical.
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Reference
Rao, Subba M. (1995)
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Chapter 6. The Golden Era
of Poetry
Page 104
The cluster of love poems entitled “The
Take my flesh
to feed your dogs if you choose,
Water you
garden-trees with my blood if you will,
Turn my heart
into ashes, my dreams into dust –
Am I not
yours, O love, to cherish or Kill?
- Sarojini Naidu, ‘The
This kind of emotional untidiness occurs in an earlier love poem too. There she sings defying all logical sequence:
Hide
me in a shrine of roses,
Drown
me in a wine of roses
Drawn
from every fragrant grove!
Bind
me on a pyre of roses,
Burn
me on fire of roses,
Crown
me with the rose of Love!
- Sarojini Naidu, ‘The
Sarojini Naidu’s poems of life and death too jack the ‘fresh
inward eye’.
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Chapter 7. The
“Nightingale” and Her Fragile Verse
Page 117
When
the bees grew loud and the days grew long
And
the peach groves thrilled to the Oriole’s song
- Sarojini Naidu, ‘The Song of Radha, the
Milk Maid’.
‘We’ll
conquer the sorrow of life with the sorrow of song’.
-
Sarojini Naidu, ‘The Song of Radha, the Milk Maid’.
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Reference
Sadhu Santideva. (Edited) (2000)
Ascetic Mysticism: Puranic Records of Shiva and Shakti.
Chapter 1. Asceticism and Eroticism in early Indian Mythology.
B. The Seduction of the Ascetic by the Prostitute: Rsyasrnga.
Page 11
Moreover, in the
majority of texts, the sage is obviously seduced. Even the Mahabharata remarks, “Tell me how Santa filled the
deer-born one with lust”, and other texts revel in the details of the seduction: ‘She
kissed him and pressed her breasts against him, and the foolish Rsyasrnga
reached the summit of passion…Several lovely women of equivocal character gradually initiated the unsophisticated young Rishi in the pleasures of the
world.’
revel
intr.v.
To take great
pleasure or delight: She
reveled in her unaccustomed leisure.
To engage in
uproarious festivities; make merry.
To move playfully; to
indulge without restraint. ``Where
joy most revels.'' --Shak.
equivocal
adj
open to question
Of a doubtful or
uncertain nature.
unsophisticated
adj
pure; innocent;
genuine
lacking experience of
life
awkwardly simple and
provincial
Page 17-18
How much more
effective, then, will my (
satiation
n
the state of being
satisfactorily full and unable to take on more
…
In several myths of
ascetics and prostitutes, the ultimate purpose of the encounter is to strengthen
the ascetic’s chastity. In one late myth, a multiform of the primeval incest
myth, the seductress is Mohini (The Enchantress), the most famous of the
celestial prostitutes who serve Indra:
The apsaras
Mohini fell in love with Brahma. After performing tapas
and gaining the assistance of
sophisticated
adj
Adulterated; not pure; not
genuine.
Page 19
Except in the most ribald
versions, and sometimes even there, the ascetic learns something of value from
his contact with the woman of the world. The necessity
for a prostitute as the partner of the ascetic is not
merely the result of the metaphysics of the conjunction of the opposites, but
it is in part a consequence of the simple logistics of the necessary plot. After
his experiences with the woman, the ascetic
must be free to return to his yoga, in order to avoid
the problems attendant upon the combination of asceticism and marriage. The
one woman who can allow him to do this is the prostitute, who
is sexually free just as he is, moving below the morals of conventional
Hinduism just as he moves above them. It is she who reminds the ascetic of the
need to participate in the world of the flesh as well as the world of the
spirit.
ribald
adj
humorously vulgar
C. Chastity and the Loss of Chastity: Agastya.
Page 19-21
…a hymn of the Rg
Veda, a dialogue between the sage Agastya and his wife Lopamudra.
…
4. [Here there are
two significantly different possible interpretations]:
(a) [spoken by Lopamudra]: ‘Desire for the
bull who roars
and is held
back [Commentator: He holds back his seed as he practices
chastity] has
overcome me, coming upon me from all sides.’ OR:
(b) [spoken by Agastya]: The desire of my swelling reed [i.e. phallus], which is
held back, overwhelms me, coming upon me from all sides.’
[spoken by (a) the poet or (b) Agastya]: ‘Lopamudra entices the man; the foolish woman sucks dry the wise
man.’
5. [Agastya]:
‘By this Soma which have drunk, in my innermost heart I say: Let him forgive us
if we have sinned, for a mortal is full of many desires.’
…
Lopamudra (whose
name, significantly, means ‘Breaker of the Seal’) seduces him eventually, but it is not clear whether he merely yields to her desire (as indicated by the first
interpretation of the fourth verse) or actively desires her (as suggested by the second
interpretation).
…
The sage began, from
desire of secret union, to talk to his wife, the illustrious Lopamudra, when
she had bathed after her period. With the two stanzas she expressed what she
wished to do. Then Agastya, desiring to make love to her, satisfied her with
the following two stanzas.
…
The poet speaks with
disdain of the foolish woman who sucks the wise
man dry, an
instance of the traditional misogyny of the Indian ascetic tradition…
misogyny
n :
hatred of women
“Every organized
patriarchal religion works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny”
(Robin Morgan).
D. The Erotic Powers of the Ascetic.
Page 23-25
In the Mahabharata reworking of the Agastya hymn, Lopamudra stirs her husband’s passion
when she becomes a female ascetic (a role which, according to Sayana, she plays in the Vedic
hymn). In the earlier version, Agastya excites her when he practices asceticism: ‘She desires the bull who is held
back.’ In either case, the force is clear and psychologically valid: the
ascetic, whose chastity generates powers of fertility, becomes an
object of desire, in part merely because
he is taboo.
…
In spite of the
element of ‘forbidden fruit’…the appeal of the ascetic is best understood in
terms of powers rather than of morals. ‘The
yogin becomes as strong and beautiful as a god, and women desire him, but he
must preserve in chastity; on account of the retention of
semen there will be generated an agreeable smell in the body of the yogin.’
By ‘drawing up his seed’, the yogi preserves all his powers, particularly, of
course, those that he is explicitly restraining. Even in the Kamasutra,
the textbook of erotic science and hence ostensibly opposed to the
ascetic establishment, this concept, so basic to all Hindu
thought, emerges: the successful lover is
one who has conquered his senses and is not excessively passionate; he obtains
his powers by brahmacarya and great meditation.
The chaste ascetic is not only sexually attractive; he is
sexually active. The Atharva Veda brahmacarin
carries a great phallus along the earth and
pours seed upon the surface of the earth, and ascetics appear throughout Hindu
mythology in creative and erotic roles. The women of the
preserve
v. tr.
To maintain in safety from injury, peril,
or harm; protect.
To keep in perfect or unaltered
condition; maintain
unchanged.
To keep or maintain intact: tried to preserve family harmony.
See Synonyms at defend.
Synonyms: defend, protect, guard, preserve, shield, safeguard
These verbs mean to make or keep safe from danger,
attack, or harm. Defend implies repelling an attack: defending her territory; defended his
reputation. Protect often suggests providing a barrier to discomfort,
injury, or attack: bought
a dog to protect the children; wore sunglasses to protect her eyes. Guard suggests keeping watch: guarded the house against intruders. To preserve is to take measures to maintain something in safety: ecologists working to preserve our natural
resources. Shield suggests protecting with a piece of defensive armor: hid the newspaper to shield me from the bad
news. Safeguard stresses protection against potential danger: The Bill of Rights safeguards our
individual liberties.
phallus
n
(Anat.) The penis or clitoris, or the embryonic or primitive organ from
which either may be derived.
endow
tr.v.
1. To provide with property, income, or a source of
income.
2.
a. To equip or supply with a talent or quality: Nature endowed you with a beautiful singing
voice.
b. To imagine as having a usually favorable trait or
quality: endowed
the family pet with human intelligence.
virility
n
1: the property of being capable of
copulation and procreation
2: the trait of being manly; having the
characteristics of an adult male
continence
n.
Self-restraint; moderation.
Voluntary control over urinary and fecal
discharge.
Partial or complete abstention from
sexual activity.
E. The Rejuvenation of the Ascetic: Cyavana.
Page 31, 30
Cyavana’s impotence
is further emphasized by the king’s fear that the sage will not be able to satisfy Sukanya sexually, an objection worded in terms very
similar to Daksa’s misgivings about Siva.
…
Saryati thought ,
‘How can I give my daughter to a blind, old, deformed man? If she marries Cyavana and she is tortured by the arrows of
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Cross Reference
He is described as being of a ruddy or golden colour, and as having arms of enormous length; “but his forms are endless, and he can
assume any shape at will.”
…
According to the Maha-bharata he seduced, or endeavoured to
seduce, Ahalya, the wife of the sage Gautama, and that sage’s curse impressed
upon him a thousand marks resembling the female organ, so he was called Sa-yoni; but these marks were afterwards
changed to eyes, and he is hence called Netra-yoni, and Sahasraksha `the thousand-eyed.’
…
His libertine character is also shown by his frequently sending celestial
nymphs to excite the passions of holy men, and to beguile them from the potent
penances, which he dreaded.
“Indrani,wife of Indra,…in the Rig-veda, and is said to be
the most
fortunate of females, “for her husband shall never die of old age.”
(Reference: Encyclopedia –
Indra/Indrani.)
libertine
n
Like a
puffed and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
--Shak.
adj
unrestrained by convention or
morality;
"Congreve draws a debauched
aristocratic society"; "deplorably dissipated and degraded";
"riotous living"; "fast women"
[syn: debauched, degenerate, degraded,
dissipated, dissolute, profligate, riotous, fast]
(Eccl. Hist.) One of a sect of Anabaptists, in the fifteenth and
early part of the sixteenth century, who
rejected many of the customs and decencies of life, and
advocated a community of goods and of women. (libertine)
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F. Sexual Pleasures
as the Reward for Ascetism: The False Ascetic
Page 36
The belief that
beautiful women await one in heaven is old: a funeral hymn beseeches the
funeral fire not to burn up the phallus of the dead man for this reason. The apsarases are the particular reward of the
ascetic, just as their earthly counterparts are
his frequent temptation in mortal life. One apsaras says, ‘All the men of Puru’s race that come here delight us through their
ascetic merit,
and they do not transgress by this.’
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Personal Note
The Islam concept of virgins
awaiting those who die as a martyr for the cause of the Lord, in Heaven.
Written around 1225
pm
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Women as well as men
may obtain sensual rewards for their asceticism. Mohini performed tapas in
order to seduce Brahma, and even Indra, the traditional enemy of ascetics, is
won as a husband by the tapas of several different women.
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Personal Note
There are exceptions.
Bhishma refused Amba. Later she underwent intense tapas. She could not marry
Bhishma but only kill him, in a later life, in the form of a eunuch.
Written around 1225
pm
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Page 38
The placing of the
ascetic’s reward in another life or in heaven would seem to resolve the paradox
by a temporal division akin to that dividing the stages of life on earth: first
tapas, then sensual pleasures. But this is
an artificial distinction. Though it is said that the yogi will enjoy with
tenfold intensity in heaven all the pleasures he has renounced on earth, it is also said that, even on earth,
the yogi is attended by heavenly women. The
erotic and ascetic experiences are, as usual in
The structure of
Sanskrit and the conventions of Sanskrit verse are such that large elements of
a poem, and indeed whole poems, may be construed in either of two entirely
different ways….may be read in either the ascetic or the erotic mode.
…
Page 39-40
It should be evident
that there
is a serious and ancient tradition for ascetic practices to culminate in erotic
rewards, but
there are also many myths in which the aroused ascetic is simply a dirty old man.
…
A Hindu jurist
remarked, “The billy-goat and a Brahmin learned in the Vedas are the two lewdest of all beings.” This opinion was shared
by Buddhists and Europeans and prevails to the present day in
…
lewd
adj.
lustful
This confusion was
due in part to the ambivalent attitude toward asceticism in Hindu society. Although from the time of the Upanisads
much lip service was paid to the ascetic, conventional Hinduism always maintained
a very real hostility toward renunciation. The Saiva ascetic, was considered a
despiser of Vedic rites and religious institutions, and his mere existence was a slur upon the
conventional society which he rejected. The non-Vedic Vratya ascetic was
classed with the dregs of society, such as incendiaries, prisoners, pimps,
spies, adulterers, abortionists, atheists and drunkards. Fringe members of society could find a
comparatively respectable status among the Saiva sects, and this led to a
general decline in the moral reputation of Saivas, while Siva himself was
eventually condemned as the author of their rites.
Particularly open to
satire and censure was the Saiva ascetic’s reputed ability to procreate asexually. Common sense objected to the mythology
of supernatural fertility.
G. The Importance of
Procreation
Page 41-42
The most frequent and
compelling objection to asceticism, however, is based not upon its occasional
bawdy misuses but, quite the contrary, upon its conflict with the deep-seated Hindu belief in the
importance of descendants, a belief central to Indian thought from the time of the Vedas
to the present day. Although from one standpoint the erotic ascetic could be said to
make the best of both worlds (to gain the powers and honours of chastity and the pleasures of sexuality), from another standpoint he could have neither. Brahmacarins were said to undertake their vows for
forty-eight years in order to conceal their lack of virility. A similar idea (or perhaps simply its
mirror image, the accusation of lustful hypocrisy) may underlie the stanza in
which the poet Bhartrhari mocked various ascetics (including Jains, Buddhists,
and Kapalikas) for
abandoning women and being driven mercilessly by Kama to undertake their
fruitless vows. The Vedas certainly did not revere celibacy; Lopamudra summed up Vedic opinion when
she said, ‘Men
should go to their wives.’ This injunction was elaborated by the time of the Epic as the formal duty of a man to make love
to his wife during her fertile period: ‘By ignoring the fertile period, a man
commits a sin which leads him to hell.’ The ancestors’ request for descendants
causes Agastya to seek the hand of Lopamudra.
This is in part a
sexual, rather than strictly procreative, phenomenon. Thus Mohini says to
Brahma, ‘Whether
a man be a householder or ascetic or lover, he must not abandon a woman who
comes to him or he will go to hell.’ (Similarly, a demon disguised as Siva
tries to seduce Parvati, saying, ‘Women who deny sexual intercourse to a man racked with
pain are certain to fall into hell.’) But the basic reason for the
injunction is to ensure progeny, particularly sons. To this day, it is believed
in
One Purana text says, ‘The man without a son has
an empty house, and his tapas is cut off’, thus denying to the ascetic both the pleasures
which he has voluntarily abandoned and the very goal for which he has
sacrificed them….
H. The Prajapati and
His Ascetic Sons
Page 48-49
…
Most of the creative
themes are here: the yogi Siva appears as the object of the tapas of the sages and of Brahma and as the
god who refuses to create, maintaining his chastity. But as the erotic god,
Siva neglects to reward the ascetic sons, and he himself appears as the androgyne and produces creatures who fill the universe.
Creative methods alternate similarly, intercourse replacing tapas and being replaced in turn. The final
creation is by a combination of the methods: the woman used tapas to obtain her husband and then procreates sexually.
androgyne
n:
one having both male
and female sexual characteristics and organs
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Cross Reference
15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him
into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat
of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
- Genesis 2:15-17 :: King James
Version (KJV)
25 And they were both naked, the man and his
wife, and were not ashamed.
- Genesis
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was
good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired
to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also
unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; …
- Genesis 3:6-7 :: King James Version (KJV)
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In another series of
variations on this theme, the ascetic sons of Brahma are caused to partake in
normal birth and rebirth as the result of a curse pronounced by Brahma: ‘Since you disregard my
instructions to beget children, and you have become passionless, despising your
life, longing for immortality, you will be reborn
seven times as fools. And in your seventh
birth you will obtain perfection.’ In this way, Brahma restores the balance that his sons
destroyed in their desire for complete perfection: because they sought knowledge he makes
them fools,
and because they practice chastity they are cursed
to become involved in rebirth. In yet another group of variations, the curse is more specifically sexual in nature, and is applied not to all the sons, but only to Narada:
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Personal Note
Cross refer to the Buddhist
concept of stream-enterer. The first of the four phases to Nibbana –
Stream-enterer, Once-returner, Arhat and the Buddha. The Stream-enterer will
have rebirth 7 more times as celibate. The Once-returner will have only one
more rebirth as a celibate.
Written around 1140
pm
Revised around 0440
pm
Cross Reference
Stream entry is the first of the four levels of Awakening.
It gains its name from the fact that a person who has attained this level
has entered the "stream" that flows inevitably to nibbana. He/she is guaranteed to achieve full
Awakening within seven lifetimes at most, and in the interim will not be reborn
in any of the lower realms.
(Reference: Bhikkhu, Thanissaro. (Revised:
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Brahma created many five-year-old
sons by meditation, and he told them to perform creation, but they refused and
went to do tapas. Brahma became angry; flames shot
forth from him, and the eleven Rudras appeared from his forehead. Then Brahma
created more sons, including Narada, and he told them to create, but Narada refused. Brahma cursed Narada, saying, ‘Your knowledge will be destroyed, and
you will become lascivious, lusting for women, the husband of
fifty lusty women. You will be master of all the erotic textbooks and a glutton for
orgies, a clever lover, handsome, a secret
seducer of women.’ Though
Brahma modified this curse, saying, ‘At the end of 100,000 celestial years,
you will be born again as my son, endowed with true knowledge’. Narada retaliated and cursed Brahma to
be no longer worshipped.
lascivious
adj.
Given to or expressing lust; lecherous.
Exciting sexual desires; salacious.
Tending to produce voluptuous or lewd emotions.
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious
pleasing of a lute.
- Shakespeare
driven by lust; preoccupied with or exhibiting lustful
desires;
"libidinous orgies" [syn: lewd, libidinous, lustful]
orgy
n. pl. orgies
A revel involving
unrestrained indulgence, especially sexual activity.
Uncontrolled or
immoderate indulgence in an activity: an orgy of spending. See Synonyms at binge.
A secret rite in the cults of ancient Greek or Roman
deities, typically involving frenzied singing, dancing, drinking, and sexual
activity.
A sacrifice
accompanied by certain ceremonies in honor of some pagan deity; especially, the
ceremonies observed by the Greeks and Romans in the worship of Dionysus, or
Bacchus, which were characterized by wild and dissolute revelry.
Word History: The word orgy has become connected in the minds of
many of us with unrestrained sexual activity, but its origins are much less
licentious. We can trace the word as far back as the Indo-European root *werg-, meaning “to do,” also the source of our
word work. Greek orgia, “secret rites, worship,” comes from *worg-, one form of this root. The Greek word was used with reference
to the rites practiced in the worship of various deities, such as Orpheus and Dionysus. The word in Greek did not denote sexual
activity, although
this was a part of some rites. The rites of Dionysus, for example, included
only music, dancing, drinking, and the eating of animal sacrifices. Having
passed through Latin and Old French into English, the word orgy is first recorded in English with
reference to the secret rites of the Greek and Roman religions in 1589. It is
interesting to note that the word is first recorded with its modern sense in
18th-century English and perhaps in 17th-century French. Whether this speaks to
a greater licentiousness in society or not must be left to the historian, but
certainly the religious nature of the word has gone into eclipse.
A later text adds a
stronger retaliation: Brahma cursed Narada to be young for ever, to make love in
deserted forests, and to beget children in a Sudra woman (of the fourth, lowest
class). Narada then cursed Brahma to be without worship and to desire a woman
who should not be desired. Because of this, Brahma lusted for his own daughter
and was ashamed. In this way, the cycle is completed: the final curse produces
the primeval incest from which the central episode originally arose. The curse is both a way of moving from
one phase to another and a reinforcement of the natural development of the myth: excessive desire for tapas
ultimately results in excess lust.
In another version of
this myth, however, a resolution is reached without the necessity for a curse,
by a division into periods:
Brahma told Narada to
marry, and he extolled at length the virtues of the householder. Narada,
however, argued that all contact with women was dangerous and evil. Brahma then complained that half of
his sons had disobeyed him and become ascetics, and he begged Narada to marry first, and
later to become an ascetic if he wished. Narada agreed to marry only after he had performed tapas, and he went to Siva, who taught him the vow of chastity.
I. Narada and the
Sons of Daksa
Page 49-50
Daksa, a son of
Brahma, is the most famous of the prajapatis, and he is the one particularly responsible for the idea
of sexual intercourse as a method of procreation (an invention elsewhere
attributed to Siva). When Brahma instructs Daksa in this new creative method,
Narada as usual opposes it:
Daksa produced many
creatures mentally, but they failed to increase. Brahma told him to marry and
engender sons by intercourse, but when he commanded these sons to create they
went to do tapas in order to increase progeny. When
Narada learned of this he sent Daksa’s sons on the road of no return, and they were destroyed. Daksa begat more
sons, but Narada sent them after their brothers. Then Daksa, in anger, said to
Narada, ‘Why did you teach my little boys to be beggars? The man who disregards
the three debts and leaves his home and parents, desiring Release, commits a
sin. I curse you to wander for ever over the earth, never remaining at rest.’
Daksa plays the
anti-ascetic role in this myth, while Narada is the ascetic son. This enmity
stems from the time of the Epic, and although the teachings of Narada are not
explicitly hostile of Daksa, they are clearly contrary to Daksa’s intention.
Whereas Brahma cursed Narada to be sexual, Daksa here curses him to be chaste
(homeless), a harmonizing rather than contrasting curse, which becomes more
explicit in another version in which Daksa says to Narada, ‘Therefore, you will
wander for ever without children.’ The character of a wanderer is particularly appropriate to
Narada, a notorious meddler
and gossip, who frequently acts as a mediating agent in these myths, catalyzing the
transition from one phase to the next by inspiring anger, jealousy, or lust in
characters
formerly uninvolved in the myth or temporarily inactive. The Seven Sages tell
Parvati the story of Narada and Daksa’s sons in order to discredit Narada, who
has meddled on Siva’s behalf, and they remarks:
Who ever listened to
Narada’s instructions and had a home to live in? He gave advice to Daksa’s sons
and they never saw their home again…Any man or woman who listens to
Narada’s advice is sure to leave home and become a beggar.
…
Meddle
intr.v.
To intrude into other people's affairs or business; interfere.
To handle something idly or ignorantly; tamper.
meddler
n:
One who meddles; one who interferes or busies himself with things
in which he has no concern; an officious person; a busybody.
an officious annoying person who interferes with others
gossip
n
1: light informal conversation for social occasions [syn: chitchat, small talk, gab,
gabfest, tittle-tattle, chin-wag, chin-wagging, causerie]
2: a report (often malicious) about the doings of other people; "the divorce caused much
gossip" [syn: comment, scuttlebutt]
3: a person given to gossiping [syn: gossiper, rumormonger,
rumourmonger, newsmonger]
v 1: wag one's tongue; speak about others and reveal secrets or
intimacies
…
Daksa practiced tapas to create, but his creatures did not
increase, for they were cursed by Siva. Then he produced sons by intercourse
with a great tapasvini, but Narada said to Daksa’s sons, ‘You must not create children to people
the surface of the earth when you do not know the measure of the earth. You
would create too much or too little in your ignorance, and that would be a
sin.’ Daksa’s
sons, thinking, ‘When we have learned the measure of the earth, then we will
create happily’, went forth on the path of the wind, and they (and their
brothers, whom Narada sent after them) have never yet returned, like men who have been shipwrecked at sea.
…
Page 51
The South Indian traditions tells a similar story, but
reverses the values:
[Daksa told his sons to perform tapas in order to obtain the power to
create. Narada came and taught them that only the three-eyed god (Siva) have
the function of creating and destroying, and that their efforts would be in vain. (Moreover, he explained, the power to create beings would give
them nothing but boredom and anguish. The sons of Daksa changed their
intention and aspired to Salvation.) Daksa created other children, and they too
worshipped the linga and obtained beatitude. Then Daksa became furious and cursed
Narada to remain celibate, never to marry or have children. Narada in turn
cursed Daksa to be chastised by Siva, the god with an eye in his forehead. And so, years
later, Daksa’s sacrifice was destroyed by Siva.]
beatitude
n
a state of supreme happiness [syn: blessedness]
chastise
tr.v.
To punish, as by beating.
To criticize severely; rebuke.
Archaic. To
purify.
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Cross Reference
“…the Buddha did not set out a full
code at once. Instead, he formulated rules one at a time, in response to
events. The considerations that went into formulating each rule are
best illustrated by the events surrounding the formulation of the first.
Ven. Sudinna, the story goes, had
strong faith in the Buddha and had ordained after receiving his parents'
grudging consent. He was their only child and, though married, was childless.
His parents, fearing that the government would confiscate their property at
their death if it had no heir, devised various schemes to lure Ven. Sudinna
back to the lay life, but to no avail. Finally, his mother realized that he was
firm in his intention to stay a bhikkhu and so asked him at least to have
intercourse with his former wife so that their property would have an heir.
Ven. Sudinna consented, took his wife into the forest, and had intercourse
three times.
Immediately he felt remorseful and eventually
confessed his deed to his fellow bhikkhus. Word reached the Buddha, who called
a meeting of the Community, questioned Ven. Sudinna, and gave him a rebuke. The
rebuke fell into two major parts. In the first part, the Buddha reminded Ven.
Sudinna of his position as a samana -- a contemplative -- and that his behavior was
unworthy of his position. Also, the Buddha pointed out to him of the aims of the
teaching and noted that his behavior ran
counter to them. The implication here was that Ven. Sudinna had not only
acted inconsistently with the content of the teaching, but had also shown
callous disregard for the Buddha's compassionate aims in making
the Dhamma known.
"'Misguided man, it is unseemly,
unbecoming, unsuitable, and unworthy of a contemplative; improper and not to be
done... Have I not taught the Dhamma in many ways for the sake of dispassion
and not for passion; for unfettering and not for fettering; for letting go and
not for clinging? Yet here, while I have taught the Dhamma for dispassion, you
set your heart on passion; while I have taught the Dhamma for unfettering, you
set your heart on being fettered; while I have taught the Dhamma for letting
go, you set your heart on clinging.
"'Misguided man, haven't I taught
the Dhamma in various ways for the fading of passion, the sobering of pride,
the subduing of thirst, the destruction of attachment, the severing of the
round, the depletion of craving, dispassion, stopping, unbinding? Haven't I
advocated abandoning sensual pleasures, understanding sensual perceptions,
subduing sensual thirst, destroying sensual preoccupations, calming sensual
fevers?... Misguided man, this neither inspires faith in the faithless nor
increases the faithful. Rather, it inspires lack of faith in the faithless and
wavering in some of the faithful.'"
The second part of the rebuke dealt in
terms of personal qualities: those that a bhikkhu practicing
discipline is to abandon, and those he is to develop.
"Then the Blessed One, having in
various ways rebuked Ven. Sudinna, having spoken in dispraise of being
burdensome, demanding, arrogant, discontented, entangled, and indolent; in
various ways having spoken in praise of being unburdensome, undemanding,
modest, content, austere, scrupulous, gracious, self-effacing, and energetic;
having given a Dhamma talk on what is seemly and becoming for bhikkhus,
addressed the bhikkhus."
This was where the Buddha formulated
the training rule, after first stating his reasons for doing so.
"'In that case, bhikkhus, I will
formulate a training rule for the bhikkhus with ten aims in mind: the
excellence of the Community, the peace of the Community, the curbing of the
shameless, the comfort of well-behaved bhikkhus, the restraint of effluents
related to the present life, the prevention of effluents related to the next
life, the arousing of faith in the faithless, the increase of the faithful, the
establishment of the true Dhamma, and the fostering of discipline.'"
These reasons fall into three main
types. The first two are external: 1) to ensure peace and
well-being within the Community itself, and 2) to foster and
protect faith among the laity, on whom the bhikkhus depend for their
support. (The origin stories of the various rules depict the laity as being
very quick to generalize. One bhikkhu misbehaves, and they complain, "How
can these bhikkhus do that?") The third type of reason, though, is
internal: The rule is to help restrain and prevent mental effluents
within the individual bhikkhus. Thus the rules aim not only at the
external well-being of the Community, but also at the internal well-being of
the individual. This latter point soon becomes apparent to anyone who
seriously tries to keep to the rules, for they foster mindfulness and
circumspection in one's actions, qualities that carry over into the training of
the mind.”
(Reference: Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff). The
Buddhist Monastic Code Volume I: The Patimokkha Training Rules Translated &
Explained. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/.
Introduction. Dhamma-Vinaya.)
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Although from the context and the pattern of the myth it
is clear that the sons remain celibate, they are said to worship the linga of Siva rather than his ascetic
aspect. Moreover, in this later, more devout Saiva context, the failure to create is rewarded with
enlightenment instead of with the curse of rebirth and ignorance. Here again Narada is cursed by Daksa
to be celibate rather than sexual, and it is evident that the South Indian poet
does not condemn this celibacy. For Daksa, the sexual creator, is also cursed,
and his punishment comes from Siva, to whom the story is devoted – Siva this
time in his ascetic aspect, the patron of Narada and the enemy of Brahma and
Daksa. The story has been given a complete change of significance while
retaining the traditional pattern and motifs.
Page 52
Another popular
version of the story reveals the same pro-ascetic outlook:
[Brahma, wishing to
create, produced four youths who meditated until Siva appeared to them and told
them that the world was only illusion and that,
if they wished to be free, they must refuse to become the fathers of the human
race. The
youths, seeing the truth of this, refused to create. Brahma then created the
eight prajapatis, including Daksa, to people the
universe, but Daksa’s sons, in their turn, refused to create offspring. Daksa
then changed himself into a woman and had many daughters, from whom creation
then proceeded.]
Here the two stories
are combined: Brahma’s sons and Daksa’s sons appear together in the role that
they play in separate myths. And Siva’s aspects are divided: he himself retains
his ascetic aspect, turning the sons of Brahma from the world, while Daksa
assumes Siva’s androgynous form and is responsible for creation by intercourse.
In both of these popular myths, asceticism is a preferred alternative to
conventional methods of creation for Daksa’s sons, yet that alternative is only acceptable on
the assumption that sexual
creation will in fact be performed by someone else.
J. The Two Forms of
Immortality
Throughout the
mythology, whether or not tapas is accepted as a valid means of creation, it is practised for
another goal: immortality, freedom from rebirth. In the Vedas, tapas is able to accomplish the chief
desideratum, fertility; in the Upanishads, tapas is the means to the new goal, Release.
Both are forms of immortality, both promising continuation of the soul without
the body – Release giving complete freedom of the soul (or absorption into the
Godhead), progeny giving a continuation of the soul’s life in the bodies of
one’s children. Thus from the earliest times there was a choice set before the
worshipper.
…
Page 53
The poet Bhartrhari
expressed this view:
In this vain fleeting universe, a man
Of wisdom has two courses: first he can
Direct his time to pray, to save his soul,
And wallow in religion’s nectar bowl.
But, if he cannot, it is surely best
To touch and hold a lovely woman’s breast,
And to caress her warm round hips, and thighs,
And to possess that which between them lies.
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Cross Reference
9 But if they have not self-control (restraint of their
passions), they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame [with passion and tortured continually with ungratified
desire].
- 1
Corinthians 7:9 :: Amplified Bible (AMP)
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…
The Seven Sages,
trying to dissuade Parvati from her desire for Siva, maintain that he is able to offer neither the
gratification of the body nor peace of mind, implying that Parvati might
choose either one. Such a decision must have been all the more perplexing in a society in which every other
important choice in life was dictated for the individual by society in the form of caste law. Even in this case, the choice was limited by natural propensities as well
as by svadharma, the individual’s particular place in
Hindu society. The god Indra was once enlightened by Siva and left his wife in
order to devote himself to tapas; his wife at length persuaded him to return to her and to rule
his kingdom, in order to fulfil his own role, his svadharma as king of the gods. In balancing this
myth, Zimmer wrote of ‘the re-establishment of a balance…We are also taught to
esteem the transient sphere of the duties and pleasures of individual
existence, which is as real and vital to the living man as a dream to the
sleeping soul.’ It
is the function of Indra, and of Siva, to maintain this balance, to defend the fullness of life against the negation threatened by metaphysical emptiness. The resolution of the two paths and the
two goals, the yogic fire and the elixir of love, is expressed in this
metaphor: ‘He who burns his body with the fire of Siva and floods it with the elixir of his consort by the path of yoga – he gains immortality.’
K. The Attempt to
Reconcile the Householder and Ascetic in Society
…
In praising the
ascetic life, the Upanisads condemn the values of the householder: ‘One must overcome the
desire for sons and live as mendicant. Some Puranas, too, maintain that the man who fears
rebirth does not even marry: ‘How can a man who is a householder find Release’?
This is the ascetic ‘party line’, a direct contradiction of the conventional
religious view represented by such stories as the Mahabharata tale of Sudarisana, who became a
householder thinking, ‘As a householder, I will conquer death. According to the
lawbooks, a man has three debts to pay: he owes sacrifice to the Gods, children
to his ancestors, and the study of the Vedas to the holy sages. If he does not
pay these debts but seeks Release instead, he is condemned to Hell.’ These are
the debts to which Daksa refers in his arguments with Narada.
The main stream of
Hinduism attempted to reassure the members of each group that by fulfilling the
dharma of that group – necessary for the survival of the system as a whole –
they would still be able to reap the rewards of other groups as well. The
jurists incorporated the ascetic ‘heresy’ and added its goals to those of the
conventional life. The Epics state that a married man may comply perfectly with
the laws of chastity by abstaining from intercourse with his wife except during
her fertile period; by this he gains the merit of a true brahmacarin. A similar equation appears in another
lawbook: “The
begetting of a son by the husband is [equivalent to] the experience of the
forest-dweller stage.’ In this way, the values of asceticism were absorbed into conventional
society.
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Personal Note
Ponder on the life of a
forest dweller…
Is it a life of
happiness, from the viewpoint of a worldly person?
It is a life of
hardship…a path of thorns…
And here you are
equating household life to the forest life…
In other words, if you
are bound to undergo certain pains, by virtue of your past actions, karma etc,
you will experience it whether you are a house holder or forest dweller…what
you are bound to suffer, will not stop from affecting you…the cause and its
effect will apply under all circumstances…
Then the question is
how much you can minimize the effect of reaction…to your past action…
That is where the laws
come in…to minimize damages…
Written around 0715
am
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Cross Reference
Energy
The Invisible Living Lord
http://www.geocities.com/praisethebuddha/lordenergy/chap.html
Concentration
…
Let’s try to quantify concentration in
numbers, in a fictitious manner. Instead of money account, let it be
concentration account. The amount of concentration in seconds, minutes, hours,
days, months etc.
Achieving a certain level, say siddhis,
require a certain level of concentration in the account. Anyone who achieves
the required account gets the siddhi.
Consider two people at the same level of
spirituality. One person did intense meditation, thereby fast-tracking the
amount of concentration. The concentration account increases by hours, random
jumps. He builds up his account in one life time to the required level of
siddhi and achieves that stage.
The other person did not fast track. He
lived a normal day-to-day life like the ordinary masses. He used to sleep as
everyone. He works. He drives vehicle. He does his prayers and so on. BUT in all these
activities, concentration account is slowly increasing in seconds, minutes. For any job or work
or activity, be it mental or manual require concentration. He died and again
came back in human form and lived normally. Again the concentration began to
accumulate from the previous left-off level. After a certain number of births,
his account equalized with that amount required for reaching that specific
spiritual stage. He also achieves the “siddhi”.
If we look from such an angle, all
human beings, man or woman are actually monks and nuns in training on a daily
basis. But living in an ignorant state of who and what they are.
Yes, on the battle field, Lord Krishna
advises the four stage of life – brahmacharya etc for the ordinary masses. The
ones who sleep. He also mentions the exceptional case of those who slowly wake
up. Such exceptions do not follow the four stages, for they are already in the true state of
monk-hood – the only state or way of life of a human being.
6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest
for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
-
Hebrews 5:6 :: King James Version (KJV)
So, is concentration, the true activity
going on everywhere? Any part of the planet. By one way or other? Be it “good”
or “evil”. Any job. Any work. Any activity.
What else?
Energy concentration. Concentration of
energy.
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At the other end of
the spectrum, the yogi could extend his worldly involvement almost limitlessly without
renouncing any aspect of the ascetic life. Yogis engaged in extensive commercial
enterprises, became rich, and even formed trade unions. The self-controlled
yogi may even be a householder and still attain Release if he remains
unattached to household affairs; the intention is all-important in this
context. Thus Brahma says to the
Thus the two realms
may meet on either side of the line – the householder may embrace the philosophy
and even the chastity of the ascetic, or the ascetic may go so far as to take a
wife and become a householder. The same text which teaches a man that he must
overcome the desire for sons and become a sage goes on to say that before attaining final Release he must
also overcome the desire to be a sage. Similarly, one must absorb the wisdom
of both desires. The ideal for Hinduism in general was a fully integrated life
in which all aspects of human nature could be of value.
L. The
Forest-dweller: An Inadequate Compromise
…
One tribal myth
contains several elements of the
[A sage lived in the
forest with his wife. For some reason he was cross with her and did not go to her. The woman thought, ‘If only some other man would come here, I would enjoy myself
with him.’ A man came to her begging for fire, and she seduced him. The sage caught
them and poured
water on them,
cursing her
to be hard to satisfy thenceforth.]
…
Physical chastity can
be regulated,
but in this realm it is the elusive chastity of the mind that is put to the test. A famous and
typical story illustrating this problem is the tale of Jamadagni:
The ascetic Jamadagni
performed tapas for many years. Then, at the gods’
command, he went to the king and asked for the hand of the princess Renuka in
marriage. Having obtained her, he went back to his hermitage with her and they performed tapas together for many years, during which five sons were born to
them. One day when the sons were out gathering fruit, Renuka went to bathe, and
in the river she saw a king with his wife. Then Renuka was overcome with desire
for him, and because of that transgression she fainted. She recovered and
returned to the hermitage, but as soon as her husband saw her, devoid of her holy lustre,
he knew that she had lost her virtue. He
was furious, and when he had reviled her he asked each of his sons in turn to
kill her. The first four refused, but the youngest took an axe and killed his mother, for
which his father praised him highly, offering him a boon. The son asked that
his mother be revived, and this was granted.
The sin, committed in
mind alone,
is so slight in proportion to the punishment that, setting aside the
possibility that this may be a somewhat Bowdlerized account of Renuka’s
transgression (an unlikely possibility in the light of the Epic’s general
disinclination to mince words), it seems necessary to seek the true fault in
the situation itself, not only in the troublesome presence of the wife, but in the
sons as well, whose birth to ascetics is a constant problem in the mythology. The virtue of the wife is often the crucial point in the
forest-dweller’s dilemma.
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Virtue
vir·tue ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vûrch)
n.
Idiom:
by/in virtue of
On the grounds or basis of; by reason of: well-off by virtue of a large inheritance.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English vertu, from Old French, from Latin virts,
manliness, excellence, goodness, from vir, man. See w-ro- in Indo-European
Roots.]
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English
Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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virtue
\Vir"tue\ (?; 135), n. [OE. vertu, F. vertu, L. virtus
strength, courage, excellence, virtue, fr. vir a man. See Virile, and cf.
Virtu.] 1. Manly strength or courage; bravery; daring; spirit; valor. [Obs.]
--Shak.
Built too strong For force or virtue ever to expugn.
--Chapman.
2. Active quality or power; capacity or power adequate to the
production of a given effect; energy; strength; potency; efficacy; as, the virtue of a medicine.
Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone
out of him, turned him about. --Mark v. 30.
A man was driven to depend for his security against
misunderstanding, upon the pure virtue of his syntax. --De Quincey.
The virtue of his
3. Energy or influence operating without contact of the material or
sensible substance.
She moves the body which she doth possess, Yet no part
toucheth, but by virtue's touch. --Sir. J. Davies.
4. Excellence; value; merit; meritoriousness; worth.
I made virtue of necessity. --Chaucer.
In the Greek poets, . . . the economy of poems is better
observed than in Terence, who thought the sole grace and virtue of their fable
the sticking in of sentences. --B. Jonson.
5. Specifically, moral excellence; integrity of character;
purity of soul; performance of duty.
Virtue only makes our bliss below. --Pope.
If there's Power above us, And that there is all nature
cries aloud Through all her works, he must delight in virtue. --
6. A particular moral excellence; as, the virtue of
temperance, of charity, etc. ``The very virtue of compassion.'' --Shak.
``Remember all his virtues.'' --
7. Specifically: Chastity; purity; especially, the chastity of
women; virginity.
H. I believe the girl has virtue. M. And if she has, I
should be the last man in the world to attempt to corrupt it. --Goldsmith.
8. pl. One of the orders of the celestial hierarchy.
Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers. --
Cardinal virtues. See under Cardinal, a.
In, or By, virtue of, through the force of; by authority of. ``He used to travel through
Theological virtues, the three virtues, faith, hope, and
charity. See --1 Cor. xiii. 13.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996,
1998 MICRA, Inc.
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virtue
n 1: the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong [syn: virtuousness, moral excellence]
2: any admirable quality or attribute; "work of great merit" [syn:
merit] [ant: demerit] 3: morality with respect to sexual relations [syn: chastity,
sexual morality] 4: a particular moral excellence
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University
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…
Hinduism has no
‘golden mean’; it seeks the exhaustion of two golden extremes. It was perhaps
as a reaction against this extremism that the Buddha called his teaching ‘the
Middle Path’, explicitly rejecting both the voluptuous life which he had known as a prince and the violent
asceticism which he had mastered at the start of his spiritual quest. Although
the Buddhists also stated the problem explicitly in positive terms, recognizing
the merit of both goals, the final choice was a negative one: there are two
pleasures, the pleasure of the householder and the pleasure of asceticism, but the latter is pre-eminent. For the Buddha taught nirvana – literally, the extinguishing of the
flame –
while Siva embodied the flame and danced within it. Hinduism has no use for
Middle Paths; this is a religion of fire and ice.
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Cross Reference
Brahma created many
five-year-old sons by meditation, and he told them to perform creation, but
they refused and went to do tapas. Brahma became angry; flames shot forth from him, and the
eleven Rudras appeared from his forehead. Then Brahma created more sons, including Narada, and he told them to create, but Narada
refused.
Brahma cursed Narada, saying, ‘Your knowledge will be destroyed, and you will become lascivious, lusting for women, the husband of
fifty lusty women. You will be master of all the erotic textbooks and a glutton for
orgies, a clever lover, handsome, a secret seducer of women.’ Though Brahma modified this curse,
saying, ‘At
the end of 100,000 celestial years, you will be born again as my son, endowed
with true knowledge’. Narada retaliated and cursed Brahma to be no longer
worshipped.
lascivious
adj.
Given to or expressing lust; lecherous.
Exciting sexual desires; salacious.
Tending to produce voluptuous or lewd emotions.
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious
pleasing of a lute.
- Shakespeare
driven by lust; preoccupied with or exhibiting lustful
desires;
"libidinous orgies" [syn: lewd, libidinous, lustful]
A later text adds a
stronger retaliation: Brahma cursed Narada to be young for ever, to make love in
deserted forests, and to beget children in a Sudra woman (of the fourth, lowest
class). Narada then cursed Brahma to be without worship and to desire a woman
who should not be desired. Because of this, Brahma lusted for his own daughter
and was ashamed. In this way, the cycle is completed: the final curse produces
the primeval incest from which the central episode originally arose. The curse is both a way of moving from
one phase to another and a reinforcement of the natural development of the myth: excessive desire for tapas
ultimately results in excess lust.
(Reference: Sadhu
Santideva. (Edited) (2000)
Ascetic Mysticism: Puranic Records of Shiva and Shakti.
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Reference
Sankaracharya. Chatterji, Mohini
M. (Trans.) Viveka-Cūdāmani or The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom of
Śrī Śamkarācārya. Adyar,
Verse
274 - 276
Page:
106 - 107
Aspiration towards the supreme atman is covered by the
dust of fatal desires lurking within, but becomes pure and emits a fine odour
by the friction of wisdom just as the sandal-wood (emits odour).
The aspiration
towards atman is stifled by the net of unspiritual desires, for by constant
devotion to atman they are destroyed, and divine
aspiration becomes manifest.
In proportion as the
mind becomes firm by devotion to atman, it renounces all desires for external things; when all desires
are completely exhausted, the realization of atman is unobstructed.
(Reference: Sankaracharya. Chatterji, Mohini
M. (Trans.) Viveka-Cūdāmani or The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom of
Śrī Śamkarācārya. Adyar,
Verse
358 - 359
Page:
137 - 138
The man, devoted to sat (the real), becomes sat through exclusive devotion to that one.
As the insect thinking constantly of the humble-bee becomes itself the beeº.
º It is usually
believed in
The insect,
abandoning attachment to all other action, meditating on that humble-bee,
attains the state of the humble-bee. Similarly the yogi meditating on the
Paramatman (Logos), becomes it through devotion to that one.
(Reference: Sankaracharya. Chatterji, Mohini
M. (Trans.) Viveka-Cūdāmani or The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom of
Śrī Śamkarācārya. Adyar,
What is meant is not
the bodily change, BUT the mental change. Exhibiting the mental characteristics of
the other after a sufficient duration of time…by constant and persistent
observation from the vicinity…through resonance. By vibrating on the same
frequency…in modern times by clandestine observation over a long time period
using wireless spy devices, web cams etc. Real life cases of the Australian
stalker, the medical representative and the cabaret dancer having certain
mental modifications after a sufficient period of clandestine surveillance is
documented in this stalking victim’s writings…
Written around
Revised around
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Reference
Sankaracharya.
Johnston, Charles. (Trans.) The Crest-Jewel of
Wisdom – Vivekachudamani.
The image of the
supreme Self, stained by the dust of imaginings, dwelling inwardly, endless,
evil, comes forth pure, by the stirring power of enlightenment, as the scent of
the sandalwood comes forth clear.
In the net of
imaginings of things not Self, the image of the Self is held back; by resting
on the eternal Self, their destruction comes, and the Self shines clear.
As the mind rests
more and more on the Self behind it, it is more and more freed from outward
imaginings; when imaginings are put away, and no residue left, he enters and
becomes the Self, pure of all bonds.
(Reference: Sankaracharya.
Johnston, Charles. (Trans.) The
Crest-Jewel of Wisdom – Vivekachudamani. Verse 274 - 276. Finding the Real Self: Bondage Through
Imagination.)
Attracted by the Self
the man goes to the being of the Self by resting on it alone; the grub,
thinking on the bee, builds up the nature of the bee.
The grub, throwing
off attachment to other forms, and thinking intently on the bee, takes on the
nature of the bee; even thus he who seeks for union, thinking intently on the
reality of the supreme Self, perfectly enters that Self, resting on it alone.
(Reference: Sankaracharya.
Johnston, Charles. (Trans.) The
Crest-Jewel of Wisdom – Vivekachudamani. Verse 358 - 359.)
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Reference
Sharma, Prof. Vishnu. (1996) Indian Predictive Astrology: The Easy
and Accurate Way to Interpret Your Future.
Page 10
Astrology is very
different from occultism. In occultism, a study of the horoscope or a knowledge
of the stars is
not essential.
All that is
needed by an occultist is his psychic power on which he depends for his predictions. Astrology, on the other hand, makes a
precise study of the position and interrelationship of the stars and planets on
the basis of which an astrologer offers predictions.
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Reference
Swami Chidananda.
(1999) The Philosophy, Psychology and Practice of
Yoga. (WWW Edition)
Chapter 2
The Psychology Of Yoga
…
The Nature of Purusha’s
Involvement in Prakriti—The Interplay of the Three Gunas
…
An urge to activity, a
constant restlessness, a tendency to movement, was the effect of the Rajas in
Prakriti. Everything ugly, negative, anti-social and destructive was the result
of the manifestation of the Tamas in Prakriti. Everything beautiful, sublime,
elevating, refined and subtle was seen to be the effect of the manifestation of
the Sattva in Prakriti. When we say “Prakriti”, you should not have in
your mind the picture of some goddess or some lady creating a lot of trouble.
It is not like that. Prakriti is only a word to indicate a cosmic principle
which is in the form of a force. It is not so much a power as a force. Power is
exercised or wielded, whereas force just manifests itself, carries everything
before it. Prakriti is therefore a cosmic force, a cosmic principle which is in
the form of a force, manifesting upon different levels. When this force
manifests upon one level, it is said to be Tamasic. When this force manifests
upon another level, it is said to be Rajasic. And when this force manifests
upon yet another level, a third level, it is said to be Sattvic. And, on all
these three levels, it keeps on manifesting. How this goes on has been hinted
at in the famous Bhagavad Gita which is both a Brahma Vidya and a Yoga Shastra.
They have hinted at a cyclic manifestation of this Prakriti wherein sometimes
Sattva predominates overriding Rajas and Tamas, sometimes Rajas predominates
overriding Sattva and Tamas, and sometimes Tamas predominates overriding Sattva
and Rajas.
…
Chapter 3
The Five Great Vows.
…
Eliminating the Brute in
Man—The Role of Vows.
The ego always wants to
express itself and if the ego is denied expression, terrible things can happen
to the psychic being of man. The person can become psychotic; he can become off
the rails mentally. He can even have a sudden crack-down in his head; he can
start raving. In short, man can become an abnormal
personality if self-expression is denied to his ego.
The Western psychologists are very much aware of this and one of the basic
concepts underlying the science of psychology formulated and expounded by
Sigmund Freud takes account of this fact and pays great attention to the ego
and self-expression.
…
Chapter 5
The Niyamas—Effective
Weapons to Destroy the Citadel of the Senses.
…
Transforming Human
Nature into Divine Nature—The Role of Saucha or Purity
In the last chapter
it was stated that it was necessary to grow in the likeness of whatever Tattva or principle in which you wished to become established. “Devo Bhutva Devamaradhayet” is a time-honoured adage. If you want to become divine, if you
want to worship God, you must become godly. If you want to worship Divinity,
meditate upon Divinity—meditation is the highest worship—and grow in divinity. That is the one and only way. There are no other ways. You cannot make an arithmetical
addition by adding 30 British Pounds sterling, 53 American Dollars and 77
Indian Rupees and striking a total. You cannot do it that way. To make a total
of the three different currencies, you must convert all into Pounds Sterling or
you must convert all into Dollars or you must convert all into Rupees. Then you
must add them up. In the same way, if you want to become godly, you must convert your
human nature into something spiritual, into something that is in the likeness
of that. So,
the commencement of that process of conversion is initiated and carried out in the first of the five Niyamas which is
Saucha. Saucha includes both outer cleanliness
and inner purity. It is Bahyantara Saucha. The way in which you feel, the way in
which you think, your imaginations, your thoughts, your feelings, your
motivations—all these should be Suddha, Nirmala. The outward action in the form of
speech, action, behaviour—Charitra and Varta—must be Pavitra, Nirmala. And there is always an inescapable give
and take between man and his environment—always. We are creatures who are all the time
being affected by what is around us and we always keep affecting what is around
us by what we are. This is an interchange, a two-way interchange, between a being
and everything surrounding the being. Therefore Patanjali asks you to launch upon a course of
keeping everything around you clean. Keep your body clean, keep your
clothes clean, keep your environment clean. What you are affects your
environment and what environment there is around you affects you too.
Therefore, the
taking up deliberately of the practice of purity in food, purity in dress and keeping everything around you clean—that is one of the Angas of this Yoga.
In terms of
cleanliness, food means Sattvic food. Read what the Gita has to say about food.
Food must be fresh, not stale and rotten, not that which is very extremely
pungent and sour. Things which are not Sattvic in nature should not be eaten,
because the
finest part of food affects the mind.
You should not move
indiscriminately with each and everyone, all and sundry, but you should keep
the company of only those people who are pure, who have got good tendencies,
who are moral in their character, who are ethical in their character. You should not mix with people given to
lustfulness and carnality, sensuality and indulgence and immorality, because if you keep company with them, you are
bound to be affected by their proximity and their thoughts. Company is a powerful factor. Keeping
company with people who always talk about vulgar things, who always talk about
sexual matters, about drinking and gambling, will pollute your mind. Such
people may sometimes be very good friends, very sociable, very popular and very
talented in other ways, but basically their character is gross and sensual.
They are Vishayavilasa Bhogis. To a spiritual aspirant they will do no good, though to one who is not a spiritual
aspirant, their company may prove beneficial socially and in other ways. But, that is a different dimension
altogether. No
matter how much beneficial their company might be—socially, economically and in
other ways—you
will lose spiritually. So much so, one Saint says in one of his Bhajans. “In whose heart there is no devotion to
the Lord, shun the company of that person as though he were not one enemy, not
a hundred enemies, not a thousand enemies, but as though he were more than a
million enemies”. Think of him to be more than a million enemies to you, even
though he is your best chum, best friend, living in your neighbourhood or your
hostel, or even in your own room as your room-mate. “Jake Priya Na Ram Vaidehi, Tyajiye Tako
Sangh Koti Vairi Sam Jadyepi Param Sanehi.” For whom the Lord is not dear, shun
his company as though he were akin to ten million enemies, even if he is your
own relative, your own brother-in-law, your own next-door neighbour, your own
friend, class mate or school-fellow. Such strong words have been used by this
saint. So, this indicates to what extent you must keep yourself uncontaminated,
unpolluted, by any factor that is likely to make you anything other than the
Being whom you are trying to attain; and that Being whom you are trying to
attain is the Nitya-Suddha Atma, the Parama-Pavitra, Nirmala, Amala, Vimala,
Nitya-Suddha, Niranjana Atma-Tattva.
The Rationale Behind
the Extreme Rigidity of Orthodox Rules and Regulations
The various rules and
regulations devised by our ancestors is only to make a person conscious that he must keep himself pure if he wants
to attain the pure Atman. Of course, it could be taken to extremes. That is a different
thing. It
may become a vice also. But, that is a great virtue if it is not taken beyond limits, if it
is not taken to extremes. Our ancients made so many devices and gave us an orthodox
pattern of behaving where we would always try to keep ourselves pure. If you take bath, it has to be three
times—morning,
The ancients carried
this concept of purity to such fineness that, following in their footsteps, you
grew into a state of awareness of yourself as an exceptional being, as an
exceptionally pure, sanctified, holy being, and that awareness kept your
consciousness raised upon a level where nothing that was drab or profane or
impure was allowed to reach and pollute it and make it impure. In the same way, the company that you
keep, the food that you eat, the environment that you live in, the thoughts
that you harbour, the type of things that you read—when the regulations
concerning these are taken to a very extreme state, it raises various problems.
For example, there are certain people in certain states who are supposed to
become polluted when some death has occurred in the family of a relative or
when a child has been born in the family of a relative. Then, for ten days
those people are not supposed to be pure; rather, they are supposed to he in a
state of untouchability. Now, supposing you are doing some Anushtan, and after
the day’s Anushtan you are sitting for your meal; and if you hear the voice of
someone who is in a state of such untouchability, in a state of such impurity,
then you have to leave your meal midway! You cannot eat your meal afterwards! By developing the concept of purity to
such a state of fineness, your entire psychology is raised to such an extreme
level of refinement that even the least contrary factor entering into it brings
about a change in its quality or degree of purity and therefore you have to go
and take a bath. Such extreme orthodoxy has its virtue. They say that drastic
diseases require the administration of drastic remedies. So, when you are
involved in a state of absolute impurity, it is only by bringing into being a
drastic state of the opposite condition, that you are able to release yourself
once and for all from your state of extreme impurity. So, inner and outer
purity was laid as an important Sadhana in the second Anga of Patanjali’s Yoga
Shastra so that you
were once and for all completely freed and raised up into a different level of
living, behaving and moving. The result was that your entire exterior as well as
interior shone with a certain condition of absolute purity, absolute
cleanliness.
…
Chapter 15
Focussing The Mind In
Antaranga Yoga
…
Nature of the Mind-stuff
or Mano-Tattva
…
How are you to deal with
the Samskaras and the Vasanas? How are you to deal with the suppressed
unfulfilled desires? They will constantly come up on the mental surface when
you try to close the mind from all the outer world, when you try to close all
the sense avenues and sit in one place and close your eyes, maybe, plug your
ears also. You go completely inward. Then the mind is unoccupied, and in
the empty mind, all sorts of thoughts start bubbling up from the Chitta through
the activation of the Vasanas and the Samskaras, and through the operation of
the process of memory or recollection. We have seen how
association of ideas operates in the mind. One little idea can take you a
hundred miles, a thousand miles, a million miles away through association of
ideas. One leads to another, another to another, and before you know what is
happening, you are already far off. Though the body is in the
meditation seat, you are far off. There is yet another
thing we have to understand about the mind. This is something
very, very subtle; this is a metaphysical factor.
Therefore, the Western psychologists do not know about it at all. They do not
know about it. They have understood very little about the mind. Though they
have understood a great deal, yet in truth, it is very little.
Our ancients discovered
one important metaphysical fact about the mind. And they have given it to us.
It is very difficult to understand; you cannot grasp it. They
say that there is really no such thing as the mind apart from thought-activity.
The mind is nothing but a vast bundle of thoughts, a vast bundle
of impressions. The mind is present only when thought is present. When thought is
present, the mind is present. When thought-activity is not there, there is no
mind. So, the ancients say that thought itself is the mind.
Thought-activity is itself the mind. Mind and thought are
inseparable. Mind is coexistent with thought. The mind is
a bundle of Vrittis and Vasanas. This is very difficult to understand. We
always think that mind is something from which thoughts emanate. But,
the Vedantins and the Yogis say that there is no such thing as mind separate
from thoughts, separate from the thought-process. Mind itself is thought; thought
itself is mind. Mind is nothing but thought-activity.
When thought-activity is not there, there is no mind. So, the ancients talk
about a state of no-mind, Amanaskata. They say that there is an Avastha called
Amanas-ka-Avastha. It is impossible to understand this very subtle distinction
that they make between a mind independent by itself and a mind coexistent with
the thought-process. They say that there is no mind
independent by itself. Mind and the thought-process are identical.
What we know as mind is nothing but the thought-process, because through
the thought-process only we come to the conclusion that inside us there is
something other than the body. Through our
thought-process only we recognise the existence of the mind. If there is no
thought-process, we will not even know that there is a mind. The ancient Rishis
discovered this and they have stated that this is the actual situation inside. When
thought ceases, mind ceases. If you can completely eliminate thought, you have
succeeded in eradicating the mind. Mind does not persist apart from thought.
Now, this is very
difficult to understand. It is a very subtle metaphysical experience, a very
subtle metaphysical fact. And even though we are not able to grasp it, we are
able to experience it in a rather unpleasant and bitter way when we try to
practise concentration. By some peculiar misconception if you think
that concentration or meditation is trying to keep the mind blank, keep the
mind empty, and that is the real way to meditate, it is totally
wrong. This idea that meditation
means to keep the mind empty is a generally prevalent idea, a very popular
notion, and this notion has brought many people to grief. Yoga
does not say anywhere that emptiness of mind is meditation.
Most certainly, classical or traditional Yoga does not say
that blankness is a state to be desired. On the contrary, it says
that blankness is an undesirable state and that it should not be
encouraged. It says that you must try to overcome the
state of blankness and eradicate it. And Yoga definitely says that concentration
or meditation is actual focussing upon a specific point, upon a specific
objective. And yoga says this for a very, very valid
reason. What is this reason? This reason you will know
if you try to practise thoughtlessness. Because, what happens then? After a
great deal of effort and a great deal of waste of time and energy, you
ultimately come to the conclusion, come to the experience, that only two tasks
are possible for the mind. Either it must think or it must sleep.
Either it must think of something, of many things or one thing, but it must
think, or it will promptly go to sleep. The mind is either active
or it is sleepy. If you try to keep the mind blank, the next thing you know is
that you feel drowsy. The mind is about to sleep. There cannot be a third state
for the mind. It must either think or it must go to sleep. This is at the level
of the mind.
It is a different matter
altogether for the Yogi who goes beyond the mind into a state of Turiya consciousness.
In that state, mind has come to a standstill, and therefore, it is a state of
sleep so far as the mind is concerned, because in sleep, the mind is at a
standstill. So far as the mind is concerned, it is in a
state of sleep; so far as the individual is concerned, he is aware of this
state. The Jivatma is aware of this state. The
Jivatma in Turiya consciousness knows: “I am in a state of absolute
thoughtlessness. Shanti...Shanti...Shanti...”. That is Prashant Avastha. And
that is the difference between superconsciousness and
deep sleep, between Turiya and Sushupti. Therefore
it is that the state of superconsciousness is called the sleepless sleep.
They do not deny that it is sleep. They do accept that it is sleep. At the same
time, it is not sleep also, because in sleep there is no awareness, whereas in
that state, there is full awareness, because, transcending
the mind, the Jiva has gone into a level of pure consciousness, of pure
awareness. So, this does not contradict the experience
that at the level of the mind, so far as the mind is concerned, the mind has to
be either active or asleep. Therefore, in order to prevent this
undesirable and unfortunate state, a state of negativity and waste of time,
we are asked to hold on to some focal point and continuously
hold on to that point for some time; we are told to practise
this again and again, again and again. This is concentration. This is Dharana.
…
(Reference:
Swami Chidananda. (1999)
The Philosophy, Psychology and Practice of Yoga.
(WWW Edition)
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Reference
Stackhouse,
M L et al. (Ed.) (1995) On Moral Business:
Classical and Contemporary Resources For Ethics in Economic Life.
Page
59-61
Stackhouse,
Max L. The Ten Commandments: Economic Implications
1. You shall have no other God before me.
2.
You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
3.
You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.
4.
Observe the Sabbath. Six days shalt thou labor but the seventh shalt thou rest.
5.
Honor your father and your mother.
6.
Thou shalt not kill.
7.
Neither shall you commit adultery.
8.
You shall not steal.
9.
You shall not bear false witness.
10.
You shall not covet.
Page 384-385
Teachings from the Suttas
The Noble Eightfold Path
Magga
Panna (wisdom) 1.
Right View (samma-ditthi)
2.
Right Thought (samma-sankappa)
Sila (morality) 3.
Right Speech (samma-vaca)
4.
Right Action (samma-kammanta)
5.
Right Livelihood (samma-ajiva)
Samadhi 6.
Right Effort (samma-vayama)
(mental discipline) 7.
Right Mindfulness (samma-sati)
8.
Right Concentration (samma-samadhi)
Page
386
Rajavaramuni, Phra. Buddhist Attitudes
toward Poverty and Wealth
The
term poverty may sometimes be misleading. The familiar
Buddhist concepts are rather contentment (santutthi) or limited
desires (appicchata). Poverty (daliddiya) is in no place
praised or encouraged in Buddhism. The Buddha says, “Poverty is a
suffering in the world for a layman.” He also says, “Woeful in the world
is poverty and debt” (A.III.350, 352). Though monks should be
contented and have few wishes, poverty is never encouraged even for monks.
The
possession of wealth by a king or even an average layman is often praised and
encouraged in the Pali canon. In other words, wealth is something to be amassed
or sought after. Among the Buddha’s lay disciples, the better known, the most
helpful, and the often praised were mostly wealthy persons such as
Anathapindika. For the monks, though they are not expected to
seek wealth, to be a frequent recipient of offerings can be regarded
as a good qualification. Two monks may be equal in other qualifications and
virtues, but the one who receives more offerings is praised. Even the Buddha
praised a monk who was foremost in receiving offerings: “Chief among my
disciples who are obtainers of offerings is Sivali” (A.I.24).
However, these remarks must be qualified and further clarified.
The
main theme in these texts is that it is not wealth that is praised or
blamed, but the way one acquires and uses it. For the monks, as
mentioned above, it is not acquisition as such that is blamed, nor poverty that
is praised. The things that are blamed are greed for gain, stinginess,
clinging, attachment to gain, and hoarding of wealth. Acquisition is
acceptable if it is helpful in the practice of the Noble Path or if it benefits
one’s fellow members of the order. This does not mean that monks are
encouraged to own possessions. Insofar as it is allowable by the vinaya, or monastic code,
gain is justifiable if the possessions belong to the sangha or the community. But if a monk is
rich in personal possessions, it is evidence of his
greed and attachment and therefore he cannot be said to conform to Buddhist
principles. The right practice is to own nothing except the basic
requisites of life. Here the question is not
one of being rich or poor, but of having few personal cares, easy
mobility, the spirit of contentment, and few wishes, and as the monk’s
life is dependent for material sustenance on other people, of making oneself
easy to support. With high mobility and almost no personal
cares, monks can devote most of their time and energy to their
work, whether for their individual perfection or for the social good. Thus, it is contentment
and paucity of wishes accompanied by commitment to the development of good and
the abandonment of evil that is praised. Even contentment
and paucity of wishes are to be qualified, that is, they must be accompanied by
effort and diligence, and not by passivity
and idleness. In other words, for a monk it can
be good to gain many possessions, but not to own or hoard them. It is good rather
to gain much and to give it away.
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Reference
Westcott,
W Wynn. (Ed.) (1993) The Chaldæan
Oracles. (1st ed.)
http://pages.zoom.co.uk/midnight-sun/chaldean_oracles_-_1.htm
http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/oraclez.htm
Page 15
The term "Oracles" was probably bestowed upon these epigrammatic utterances in order to enforce the idea of their profound and deeply
mysterious nature. The Chaldæans, however, had an Oracle, which they venerated as highly as the Greeks did that at
Sub-Notes
** Stephanus, De Urbibus.
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epigram
n.
1. A short poem treating concisely and
pointedly of a single thought or event. The modern epigram is so contrived as
to surprise the reader with a witticism or ingenious turn of thought, and is
often satirical in character.
Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?
--Shak.
Note: Epigrams were
originally inscription on tombs, statues, temples, triumphal arches, etc.
2. An effusion of wit; a bright
thought tersely and sharply expressed, whether in verse or prose.
3. The style of the epigram.
Antithesis, i. e., bilateral stroke, is the
soul of epigram in its later and technical signification. --B. Cracroft.
4. A concise, clever, often paradoxical
statement.
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Page 17
It has been asserted that the Chaldæan magi* preserved
their occult learning among their race by continual tradition from Father to Son. Diodorus says: "They learn these things, not after the same fashion
as the Greeks: for amongst the Chaldæans, philosophy is delivered by tradition
in the family, the Son receiving it from his Father, being exempted from all other employment; and thus having their parents for their teachers, they
learn all things fully and abundantly, believing more firmly what is
communicated to them."**
Sub-Notes
* This powerful Guild was the guardian of
Chaldæan philosophy, which exceeded the bounds of their country, and diffused
itself into Persia and Arabia that borders upon it; for which reason the
learning of the Chaldæans, Persians and Arabians is comprehended under the
general title of Chaldæan.
** Diodorus, lib. I.
Page 29
Some strong Souls were able to reach up to the
Light by their own power: "The mortal who approaches the fire shall have
Light from the divinity, and unto the persevering mortal the blessed
immortals are swift." But what of those of
a lesser stature? Were they, by
inability, precluded from such illumination? "Others," we read, "even when asleep, He makes fruitful from
his own Strength." That is to say, some men acquire divine knowledge through communion with Divinity in sleep. This idea has given
rise to some of the most magnificent contributions to later literature; it has
since been thoroughly elaborated by Porphyry and Synesius. The eleventh Book of the Metamophoses of Apuleius and the Vision of
Scipio ably vindicate this; and, although no doubt every Christian has heard that "He giveth unto his beloved in sleep," few, indeed, realise
the possibility underlying that conception.
Page 30
And the first step in that admirable progress was a return to
the simple life; hardly, indeed, a return, for most
of the Magi were thus brought up from birth."
**** The hardihood engendered by the rugged life, coupled with
that wisdom which directed their association, rendered these children of Nature
peculiarly receptive of Nature's Truths. "Stoop not down," says the Oracle, "to the darkly splendid World, For a precipice lieth
beneath the Earth, a descent of seven steps, and therein is established the
throne of an evil and fatal force. Stoop not down unto that darkly splendid
world, Defile not thy brilliant flame with
the earthly dress of matter, Stoop not
down for its splendour is but seeming, It is but the habitation of the Sons of
the Unhappy." No more
beautiful formulation of the Great Truth that the exterior and sensuous life is
death to the highest energies of the Soul could possibly have been uttered: but to such as by purification and the practice
of virtue rendered themselves worthy, encouragement
was given, for, we read, "The Higher powers build up the body of the holy
man."
Sub-Notes
**** They renounced rich attire and the
wearing of gold, Their raiment was white upon occasion; their beds the ground, and
their food nothing but herbs, cheese and bread.
The law of Karma was as much a feature of
the Chaldæan philosophy as it is of the Theosophy of today: from a passage in
Ficinus, we read, "The Soul
perpetually runs and passes through all things in a certain space of time,
which being performed it is presently compelled to pass back again through all
things and unfold a similar web of generation in the World, according to
Zoroaster, who thinks that as often as the same causes return, the same effects
will in like manner return."
Page 33
1. But God is He having the head of the
Hawk. The same is the first, incorruptible, eternal, unbegotten, indivisible,
dissimilar: the dispenser of all good; indestructible; the best of the good, the Wisest of
the wise; He is the Father of Equity and
Justice, self-taught, physical, perfect, and
wise-He who inspires the Sacred
Philosophy.
- Eusebius. Praeparatio Evangelica, liber.
Sub-Notes
This Oracle does not appear in either of the
ancient collections, nor in the group of oracles given by any of the medieval
occultists. Cory seems to have been the first to discover it in the voluminous
writings of Eusebius, who attributes the authorship to the Persian Zoroaster.
Page 55-56
144. Direct not thy mind to the vast surfaces of the Earth; for the Plant of
Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting
rules, for he is carded by the Eternal Will of the Father,. and not for your
sake alone. Dismiss (from your
mind) the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your
sake. The wide aërial flight of birds gives no true knowledge nor the
dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all
mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud:, flee from
these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety, where Virtue,
Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.
- Psel., 4. Z.
piety
n.
1. Veneration or
reverence of the Supreme Being, and love of his character; loving obedience to
the will of God, and earnest devotion to his service.
Piety is the only proper and adequate relief
of decaying man. --Rambler.
2. Duty; dutifulness; filial reverence and
devotion; affectionate reverence and service shown toward parents, relatives,
benefactors, country, etc.
Conferred upon me for the piety Which to my
country I was judged to have shown. --
Syn: Religion; sanctity; devotion; godliness;
holiness.
Page 62
192. For three days and no longer need ye sacrifice.
- Pic. Concl. Z.
Page 63-64
ORACLES FROM PORPHYRY.
1. There is above the Celestial Lights an
Incorruptible Flame always sparkling; the Spring of Life, the Formation of all
Beings, the Original of all things! This Flame produceth all things, and
nothing perisheth but what it consumeth. It maketh Itself known by Itself. This Fire
cannot be contained in any Place, it is without Body and without Matter. It encompasseth the Heavens. And there goeth out from it
little
No subtilty nor excuse can disguise anything from His piercing Eyes. All is full
of God, and God is in All!
subtilty
n.
1. The quality or state of being subtile; thinness;
fineness; as, the subtility of air or light.
2. Refinement; extreme acuteness; subtlety.
Intelligible discourses are spoiled by too
much subtility in nice divisions. --Locke.
3. Cunning; skill; craft. [Obs.]
To learn a lewd man this subtility.
--Chaucer.
4. Slyness in design; artifice; guile; a cunning design or
artifice; a trick; subtlety.
O full of all subtility and all mischief.
--Acts xiii. 10.
Note: In senses 2, 3, and 4 the word is more
commonly written subtlety.
2. There is in God an Immense Profundity of
Flame! Nevertheless, the Heart should not fear to approach this Adorable Fire,
or to be touched by it; it will never be consumed by this sweet Fire, whose
mild and Tranquil Heat maketh the Binding, the Harmony, and the. Duration of
the World. Nothing subsisteth but by this Fire, which is God
Himself. No Person begat Him; He is without
Mother; He knoweth all things, and can be taught
nothing.
He is Infallible in His designs, and His name is
unspeakable, Behold now, what God is! As for us who are His messengers, We are
but a Little Part of God.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Note
Vocabulary Refer the diverse meanings of the word used using any good
dictionary, say WordWeb http://wordweb.info/
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Reference
Henry Thomas and Dana Lee Thomas.(1959) Living
Biographies of Great Philosophers.
Kant
Page 202
Kant had come at last to the end of his
philosophical quest. He had sought for God and he had discovered
Hegel
Page 206
But EVEN a philosopher must eat. In
accordance with the biblical maxim, “seek ye first food and clothing, and
the kingdom of heaven shall be added unto you,” he decided
upon teaching for a livelihood.
Page 208
The world is intelligible, said Hegel.
Reason
lies at the heart of things, under their apparent
disunity on the surface. Skeptics like
Hume had thrown doubt into men’s minds and had created an atmosphere of
cynicism that had produced unscrupulous adventurers like Napoleon. When man
loses faith in the values of human life civilization is on the retrograde. For life is a
great and systematic scheme of truth. Man can understand this truth through
his faculties
of reason even if he cannot apprehend it through his faculties of
sense. In other words, Hegel directly throws out a
challenge to Hume. After all, it is possible for man to know things
beyond his experience. Through his
reason. There are two types of reason: the practical
reason, which deals with everyday affairs and with sensible
objects that have a tangible existence, and the abstract
reason, which deals with ideas beyond our sensory
existence.
Page 208 – 209
And here we come to the crux of the
matter – the principal issue between the skeptics and the metaphysicians. The skeptics maintain
that those things alone exist which we can apprehend through the senses. The
metaphysicians, on the other hand, insist that
there are things beyond the senses which have an equally real existence. All our
conceptions which are not material – declares Hegel – exist just as
surely as a material table or chair. Consider, for example, our conception
of quantity. We have seen two pencils but we have never seen the
abstract quantity, two. And yet the abstract
conception of two exists in the reason just as
surely as the concrete two pencils exist in space. For without
the existence of an abstract measure of quantity we would never be able to
distinguish between the concrete quantities of things in experience.
Page 209
There is therefore pure reason as opposed
to practical reason – or, to put it in another way, there is a formal existence as
opposed to a material existence. The
proposition that two and two equal four has a formal existence. It does not
exist in space; it does not exist in time. It does not exist even in our minds,
for regardless of what happens to our minds the proposition remains true. Yet it exists
in the abstract with as much reality as the house of my next-door neighbor
exists in the concrete.
This is the
fundamental assumption of Hegel. And upon this
assumption he rears his structure of philosophy. Hume has maintained that we can never discover a first cause for the world, or indeed a cause for anything. And Hegel agrees.
But, he insists, if we cannot find a cause we can at
least find a reason for things. This may
sound like a quibble, but it is not. A cause is an
active force that produces an effect in time. A reason is a logical necessity
which has nothing to do with time. The cause of the
world’s existence, Hegel would agree with Hume, is an expression which makes no
sense. But the reason for the world’s existence is an
expression which makes very good sense indeed. The reason for the world has a
logical nontemporal priority to the world, just as a
mathematical problem has a logical nontemporal priority to its solution. The logical
exists just as truly as the physical. The real is the rational – this is Hegel’s
battlecry.
Page 209-210
Reason, continues Hegel, is self-explanatory.
The world is reason. For reason is identical with existence. To the question as
to what
is the reason for everything, we must answer – everything. But since existence is all-inclusive, maintains
Hegel, it comprises within it the state of not-being as well as of being. Everything contains within itself its own opposite. It is
impossible to conceive of anything without conceiving at the same time of its
opposite. You cannot think of finiteness without thinking of
infinity or of time without thinking of timelessness. A cow is a cow and is at
the same time not a cat. A thing is itself only because at the same time it
is not something else. Every thesis for an argument has its antithesis.
Life has death, and love has hate. Day has night, and youth has age. But Hegel
goes a step beyond this perfectly obvious conclusion and comes forward with a
startling pronouncement. Not only
has everything an opposite but everything is
its own opposite! The truth lies on both sides of every
question. The truth is either side. After all, life is a
struggle of opposing forces attempting to
combine with one another into a higher unity. And this unity, the quest of
the philosophers and the dream of the poets, is achieved only
at the cost of much blood. It is a
unity born out of strife
and agony and despair. It is the concord of love that rises out of the discord of hatred, the precept of
denial that is translated into the principle
of affirmation, the spirit that dies in order to live!
Page 210
All nature, then, is a reconciliation of opposites.
And,
like
everything else, man too finds his opposite. He wrestles with nature. He is finally
overcome by nature. But only to achieve his immortality. For when he yields
himself in death he is merely yielding his one self to his other self. For life is death. And nature is man. Here, too, underneath the surface
diversity as apprehended by our fragile senses, there is a profound and
moving unity. Nothing
external to man is really different from man. The world around us is our other
self.
We see a tree. The tree is known to us. It exists for us only as it is known to
us. Therefore its existence is included in our faculty for knowledge which
exists in us. Its existence is part of us. Our existence is part
of it. Nature is the objective self as
opposed to the conscious self. If we wish to obtain the truth, we must
not only view the world from the standpoint of our inner
selves but we
must view our inner selves from the standpoint
of the world. This is the supreme test we
must pass
if we are to follow the highest laws of reason. We
must regard ourselves with complete objectivity as our own opposite, or antithesis.
And then, we are ready for the highest
union, or synthesis, known to human experience. Liberated
from the petty prejudices of our sensuous
perceptions, we may now breathe the clear cool air of freedom. By withdrawing
from our imperfect and fragile consciousness we have achieved a far greater
consciousness, the sublime and perfect consciousness
of Self. And this Self, as we then
realize, is completely aware of its own organic unity
and all-inclusive
power. Nature rises to self-consciousness in
#########################################################################################
Personal Note - On the mental world of
any man or woman
Intersexes: Individuals exhibiting intersexuality.
Intersexual: Related to or characterized by intersexuality.
Intersexuality: The condition of having both male and
female characteristics; being intermediate between the sexes.
Reference: Stedman’s Medical Dictionary (1986)(23/e)(Indian edition)
#########################################################################################
Page 232
Schopenhauer
The Hindu mystics were the deities of his
philosophic system. It was they who had preached the glory of
resignation, who had retired from the strife of the world to sit in meditation upon the futility
of life and who had longed for the approach of death, not because
they believed in an afterlife of blessedness but rather because they saw in death a return of the individual to a
state of nothingness. Such was the peace of the soul that the
Hindu mystics had dreamed about. It was the complete obliteration of man.
This philosophy was thoroughly congenial to
Schopenhauer. “I get more out of one page of these
ancient Hindu books,” he declared, “than I do out
of ten
volumes of European philosophers after Kant.”
Emerson
1803-1882
Page 246
Yet to many of the reactionaries his
iconoclasm was anything but tender. Indeed, they maintained that he had
enthroned the devil in the place of God. He would be punished for his sins. “We are sorry
for Mr. Emerson, but it certainly looks as if he is going
to hell.” “It does indeed look so,” replied one
of his friends. “But I am sure of one thing – if Emerson
goes to hell, he will so change its climate that it will become a popular resort
for all the good souls of heaven.”
When EMERSON left his pulpit he went
out to search for the meaning of life. He took long walks in the country. He
tried to attune his ear and his heart to the music of Nature. And before long
he made a strange discovery. He learned that the heart of Nature was beating in unison with his own
heart. He was an intimate part of a living world. His
mind was an important cell of the world mind – or, as he
called it, the World Soul or Oversoul. And this abstract discovery led him to a practical observation. He noticed,
when he reflected upon the intimate relationship between
himself and the rest of the world, that his whole
being was electrified with a surge of power, an overmastering confidence in
himself and in his fellow men. This power was infinite. He would draw
upon it at will. And he could teach others to draw upon
this same power within themselves. Each of us, he
concluded, possesses the spiritual capital for developing an
enormous business – the business of acquiring and exchanging beauty and
joyousness and freedom and friendship and peace.
It was a doctrine admirably suited to
the temperament and the genius of
And thus Emerson became a teacher of
man, the immortal pupil – “a professor,” to use his own expression, “of the Science of
Joy.”
Page 249-250
And his friends
were among the richest personalities in the world. For some
mysterious reason which the scientists have not as yet been able to explain the gods
occasionally select a single spot on earth and people it with the citizens of
heaven. This happened in the Athens of the fifth century
(B.C.), with its Aeschylus and Euripides and Phidias and Socrates and Plato; in
the London of the Elizabethan period, with its Beaumont and Drayton and
Fletcher and Jonson and Shakespeare; in the Germany of the early nineteenth
century, with its Goethe and Schiller and Heine and Mozart and Schubert and
Beethoven; and in the Russia of the latter part of the nineteenth century, with
its Turgenev and Tchaikovsky and Chekhov and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. In a
lesser sense the
Page 250
With these friends and many others, in
Boston and in Cambridge as well as in Concord, Emerson exchanged
ideas; and then he went into his study and transformed these ideas into the
minted gold of his essays and his lectures.
Herbert Spencer
1820-1903
Page 264
His scientific philosophy grew into a
work of eighteen volumes. He was recognized as the leader in all the
important controversies on evolution. He wrote one of
the most important texts on psychology in the nineteenth century without any study of the works of his predecessors
in the field. He prepared a book on biology and performed only
one laboratory experiment to test his theories. And he became one
of the most talked of men in
Page 266
His writing was an immense
monument of egotism. His mind was utterly unreceptive to
any idea that was not his own. For a
philosopher he was singularly unappreciative of Plato. He attempted time
and time again to read the Dialogues and with each
succeeding attempt put them down with greater exasperation. “There is more dramatic propriety in the
conversations of our third-rate novelists,” he said. He felt contempt for the
fine arts. He ascribed this feeling to his analytical habit which rendered
him prone to dwell “upon defects” and which
diminished his “appreciation for the beauties...So is it
also with my (lack of) appreciation for literature – more especially poetry.”
He seemed to have as much spirit as an
adding machine. “The passionless thin lips told of a total lack of
sensuality, and the light eyes betrayed a lack of
emotional depth,” observed one of his secretaries. Once as a
young man, Spencer tells us in his diary, he met a young
lady of exceptional beauty in face and figure. After the
meeting his friends asked him what he thought of her. “Any other young fellow,”
he writes, “would have launched out into unmeasured
praise. But my reply was, ‘I do not like
the shape of her head’ – referring, of course, to my phrenological diagnosis.” He was fond of making
mental measurements of people’s skulls when he was introduced to
them
and of using these measurements as a basis for his
judgment of their character. As a young man he had been very friendly with Marian
Evans. Spencer and Miss Evans were seen constantly together. People waxed romantic
about them. They even expected an engagement. But the only thing that
ever came of their “romance” was the following observation about Marian Evans
in Spencer’s autobiography: “Usually heads have, here and there,
either flat places or slight hollows, but her head was everywhere convex.”
Page 268-269
For no man was ever less equipped
physically for the mental job at hand. At thirty-five he had begun
to experience peculiar sensations in the head and to suffer from chronic
insomnia. These symptoms were the prelude to a general
nervous breakdown from which he never recovered. A year later his condition had become
so pathetic that his physician advised him
not to live alone but to take up his
residence with other people who might be able to look after him.
It was under such handicaps that he
prepared the first draft of his Synthetic Philosophy.
Page 269
And Spencer, his body racked with pain and his mind distracted with worry, kept traveling
with his manuscripts from one boardinghouse to another, a restless
nomad. So weakened was he physically that he was able to
dictate only a few hours at a time. He resorted to
all sorts of methods in order to ward off cerebral
congestion. He wrote the opening chapters of First
Principles in a rowboat at St Regent’s Park. He would row
for five minutes and then dictate for fifteen. Thus he relieved the severe
pain in his head.
Under these conditions his work
advanced at a snail’s crawl.
Page 270
Spencer continued doggedly. He still took constant doses of morphia. His walks were
restricted to two or three hundred yards a day when he was at his best. A drive
of fifteen minutes in a carriage with india-rubber tires was his only
exercise in the afternoon. Toward the
end of his life he was unable to dictate for more than ten minutes at a time.
And the sum total of his dictation period for the entire day was fifty minutes.
For the rest of the day mental as well
as physical excitement was taboo. Reading, even of the lightest kind, was
injurious to his eyes. So, too, was the use of his microscope. Social
intercourse was strictly prohibited during the last ten years
of his life. He was allowed to dine out only twice in
that decade. Public
amusements were rigorously excluded. His
waking hours had become a torture.
He did not permit himself to think of any serious subject after his morning’s
dictation. He lay on the sofa or sat in the
open air watching the drifting clouds and waiting for the night. And when the
night came it brought him anything but relief. During a
“good” night with a strong dose of opium he managed to get three or four
hours
of broken slumber. And on all nights, good and bad alike,
there were long stretches of tossing and waiting for the dawn.
This was the state to which he had
brought himself “by forty years of brainwork – a brainwork
which would have been by no means too much had I not at the outset overstrained
myself.” And it was under these circumstances that he wrote some
of the most interesting sections of his monumental work. The Principles
of Sociology, which was the product of this period, is a
comprehensive plan for universal peace through the development of industry
and international trade.
Page 271
But a worse fate than mere
physical collapse was in store for him. He lived to
see the decline of his fame.
Page 272
As he wrote the final pages of his Autobiography just before
his death, he asked himself: ‘Had
all my subsequent disappointment and the prospect of shattered health been
known to me when I embarked upon my career, would it have discouraged me from
continuing?” And with a brave hand he answered, “I cannot say yes.”
Nietzsche
Page
278-279
Such were the thoughts that came out
of the sick man’s chamber. Many miles away similar thoughts were being born out
of sickness. In
Page
279
Nietzsche accepted Schopenhauer’s idea
of the will, but he transformed it from a negative into a positive
philosophy. Man must use his will not to die but to live. It is cowardly to will
death as a release from suffering. On the other hand, it is noble to will life in spite of suffering. Such a positive
assertion of the will raises us above ourselves. Indeed, it transforms
man
into God.
Page
283
But with the exception of Wagner,
Nietzsche had practically no other friends. He lived alone
with his strange philosophy about the splendor of darkness
and the happiness of pain. A doctor,
alarmed at his frequent headaches, was tactless
enough to warn him against a gradual paralysis of the brain. Nietzsche was
terrified. He adopted a vegetarian diet in the hope
of regaining his health. He succeeded merely in losing his strength. He became
convinced that he was dying of cancer. He fled from one sanatorium to another and finally
returned home in despair. He had not been able to flee from
himself. And then, as he entered upon his thirty-fifth
year, he prepared to die. Had not his father died in his thirty-fifth
year? Had he not died of paralysis of the brain accompanied by frequent
frightful headaches? Nietzsche recalled the tragedy with
superstitious horror. The tides of fate were regular in their ebb
and flow. They recurred eternally. They had
swept his father away. And they would sweep him away also. He shivered. He
wrote grimly in his notes, “My hour may come upon me at any moment...”
Page
283-284
His thirty-fifty year passed, and
still he lived. During that terrible year he had suffered more
than a hundred attacks of pain. He resigned his professorship and
went to Marienbad for the climate. But the southern sun sent the fever to his
head. He could stand it no longer. He shut himself in an
attic. Still he did not die.
Page
284
And with the coming of the next year
the pains in his head had stopped. He was once more able to think of
life. He tramped through the mountains and looked long at the Mediterranean
waters. They were blue, defiantly blue. And all
around was the dignity of massive cliffs aspiring upwards. And the heavens were
silent. They were empty, infinite heavens. They were waiting for Man to ascend
them, to take his place as Lord and Master over his
rightful domain. There was nothing to bar his way but his own
stupidity, his own fear. In an evil moment Man had
invented a myth called God. And ever thereafter he had been chained to the story
of his own creation. There was only one real divinity –
Man.
If
only Man would have the courage to be himself and then – to surpass himself. That was it
– Man
must strive to become Superman!
Nietzsche came down from the mountains
and went to
Nietzsche was undaunted. He had
completely misunderstood her refusal. He believed that she had objected to the
marriage because it would interfere with her plans for a career. But surely, he
pleaded, she would not refuse an offer of free love. After all, was she not a
disciple of his? And had not their mutual friend, Richard Wagner, entered into a
free-love arrangement with Cosima?
Page
285
But again she rebuffed him. Hurt and
humiliated, Nietzsche returned to his books. And then the
news reached him that the young lady had accepted a similar
proposal from another man – not a philosopher.
For once in his life Nietzsche turned cynical. (Cynicism, someone has
observed, is the weapon of the wounded.) “After all,”
he said, “I didn’t create either the world or Lou von
Salome. If I had done so, both would
have been more perfect.”
His unfortunate love affair directed
him into another channel of speculation – the question of morality, of good
and evil. All our ideas about good and evil, he
concluded, come not from God, for there is
no God, nor from a higher moral law, since there is no such higher law. These
ideas have developed through the evolution of the human mind. The term “good”
was originally not an ethical qualification but a social and political
distinction. The “good” men were the ruling classes. They were the warriors,
the aristocrats in every society. Good meant brave, athletic, strong. The prestige of the aristocracy was
founded on its strength. The strong men imposed their own
values upon society and drew up their own moral code which happened to fit
their own characteristics. The “bad” men in this society were the people who
occupied the inferior positions owing to their physical inferiority. A good man was
a fighter and a master; a bad man was an underling and a
slave.
Page
285-286
But as time went on, argued Nietzsche,
a very unfortunate development took place in the history of morality. The concepts
“good” and “bad” slowly lost their original meaning. For a new
class of men had slowly risen to the top. The leaders of this class were not
the fighters, or the “strong” men; they were the priests,
or the “weak” men. These men relied upon their mental rather than
upon their physical vigor. In their struggle against their former warrior
masters they imposed a new code of conduct upon the society they wished to
dominate. Lacking the powers of the body, they invented the so-called virtues of
the “soul”. They created a systems
of ethics to cover their own infirmities. Unable to
conquer by the sword, they ruled by “piety and prayer.” They proclaimed the
“rights” of the underdog, the dignity of the timid and the glory of the weak – all this, to shackle the
natural instincts of the strong and to perpetuate their own impotent rule. And they founded a
religious propaganda that exalted their own impotency. “The
wretched,” they said, “are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly are
alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome are alone the
pious and the blessed; for them alone is salvation. But you, on the other hand,
you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the
horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be
the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!”
In such a way “did the fox replace the
eagle.” In such a manner was the code of
morality “subverted.” It was an act of clever revenge on the part
of the cowardly against the courageous. The masters were banished from the
kingdom of heaven. The morality of the vulgar man had triumphed. And what is the
emergence of this slave morality called? The rise of
Christianity. “It is the most pious fraud in history,” alleges
Nietzsche. Strength is made a devil, weakness a god. The old doctrine
of virility is
transformed into the new doctrine of debility. “Christianity
is the subterfuge of the slave.”
Such is the teaching of Nietzsche, the suffering philosopher. All the talk
about “good and bad conscience” that has crept into “civilized” society is
sheer balderdash. Actually no one who is
strong and free feels a sense of shame for any of his deeds. Do the great
birds of prey feel ashamed because they seize upon the helpless sheep? Should
we demand of strength not to express itself as strength? The strong has no more
the option of being weak than the weak has the option of being strong.
William James
Page
298
Before he entered upon his work,
however, he underwent a physical breakdown and a siege of mental depression.
For a time, he thought of committing suicide. “No man,” he said in
later life, “is psychologically complete unless he has at least
once in his life meditated on self-destruction.”
Page
298 – 299
In the course of his readings during
his sickness he had come upon the Essais of Renouvier, and he had
been struck with the French thinker’s definition of Free Will – “the sustaining
of a thought because one actively chooses to sustain it when he
might have other thoughts.” William James had chosen to sustain the thought
of becoming well. He had willed himself out of sickness. “From now on he will
abstain from speculation and depend upon action.” For action is
the human will transformed into life.
Page
299
This was but a continuation
of Emerson’s philosophy of optimism. But James added something to it. Or
rather he modified it. He transformed the somewhat impractical idea of
optimism, the theory that all’s well with the world, into the more practical
idea of meliorism, the theory that all’s not well with the world but that we
can make things better if we will. It was an excellent philosophy for
Bergson
Page
314
Bergson now concentrated all his
efforts on the study of the human mind. The most significant phenomenon of the
mind, for the purposes of his study, was the memory. He became
absorbed in this subject. He conducted numerous experiments in which he found
that the victims of brain injury frequently managed to keep
their memory intact. If the mind were merely a
function of the brain, he concluded, then for
every brain lesion there would be a corresponding impairment of the memory. On the other
hand, he found that some patients were known to have lost their memory without
any injury to the brain. Are recollections, then, stored up in the cells of the
brain? In some cases yes.
Page
315
Bergson calls our intuitive self the
creative intellect. It is the inner consciousness of our duration and growth –
the “enduring withinness” of our life, ,our own
profound sense of our unlimited depths. Indeed, our day-to-day
thoughts and wishes and actions are but a small surface demonstration of the potential
resources in the vast warehouse of our subconscious. It is only in times of great duress
that we recognize our true souls and rise
to feats of
superhuman energy. In the ordinary course of events the
brain keeps the lid down on the magic
vessel of our personality. It functions like a military draft
officer who calls up the relatively small number of ideas
needed for present active service. It is a
selective instrument that adapts us to our immediate needs. It grasps the
temporary interrelationship of things and enables us to choose between them. It acts as a
counselor of the will. Yet, the brain, as we have
seen, is but a small part of the mind. In and by
itself it can never transcend our daily experience. It is wholly
material. It resides in the lower animals as well as in men. It functions
only in space and develops its strength through the gradual and painful process of trail and
error.
#########################################################################################
Reference
V Amalan Stanley. (2004) Organic
Intelligence: Within and Beyond.
None sees Him, none sees His form with the
eyes. It is in the mind, in the
pure
mind, that He is seen, and this immortality is
gained.
-
Upanishad
That’s it! That’s it! That’s me!
That’s me that’s
shining so brilliantly!
How wondrous! How wondrous!
All beings are endowed with this pure
nature!
What a wondrous, astonishing thing has
been realized!
All the ten thousand things, all the
flowers, all the trees,
All the rocks, all things everywhere
are shining brilliantly!
What an amazing thing!
It’s the same landscape, but how
brilliantly it is illuminated!
What a freshness
in everything!
-
Buddha
For thirty years in the past, before
started to study Zen, this old monk had seen mountains were mountains and waters
were waters.
Until when I met good Dharma teacher
who showed the entrance, then to me, mountains were not mountains and waters
were not waters at all.
Now in the state
of joyfulness and solitude, everything as-it-is, I see mountains are
just mountains and waters are just waters.
-
Ching-yuan Wei-hsin, a Chinese Zen master
Using nature, which is mine own, I create again
and again all this multitude of beings dependent on and bound by nature.
-
Bhagavad Gita
Under my over-seeing
eye,
nature brings forth the moving and unmoving and keeps the
world rolling on.
-
Bhagavad Gita
Knowing a lump of clay we know the nature of all the clay that is the universe.
-
Vedanta
This physical nature is my inferior manifestation. My other and
higher value is the life principle by which the universe
is upheld.
-
Bhagavad Gita
You are your only master
Who else?
Subdue yourself and discover your
master.
-
Buddha
‘Neti neti’ – Truth can be
found
only through negation of all
thoughts about it.
-
Yagnavalkya
#########################################################################################
Reference
Wendy Doniger. (2000) Splitting the
Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient
Page
11-12
But already in the Valmiki text there
is evidence that Sita is sexually vulnerable. Before Ravana
comes to abduct her, successfully masquerading as a human ascetic, he sends the
demon Marica to her in the form of a golden deer, an illusion created by the
demons precisely in order to lure Rama away so that Ravana can capture Sita.
Sita is fooled and insists that Rama go after the deer; she is also fooled when
the demon mimics Rama’s voice calling for help, and she insists that Rama’s
brother Lakshmana go to him, ignoring Lakshmana’s wise warning that it is
probably just a demonic imitation. Indeed, she adds insult to injury by
implying that Lakshmana desires her and therefore wishes for Rama’s death. A
Tibetan text of uncertain provenance states that when Sita sent Lakshmana after
Rama she not only accused him of designs on her but added a curse: “Perhaps the
younger brother thinks in his mind that, when the elder brother is dead, he
will live together with me. If I do not want it, then, let whoever will touch
me be burned.” And it was this curse, uttered by Sita herself, that protected
her, not against the innocent Lakshmana, but against Ravana, who when he
arrived “knew that, if he touched the queen, he would be burned.” Sita herself assumes one aspect of the roles played by Rambha and
Vedavati in the Sanskrit texts – she curses her potential rapist even before he
exists, just as Vedavati swears by her still nonexistent husband.
Page
18
A different sort of shadow Sita was
constructed for the opposite purpose, not to protect the real Sita from sexual
contact but to allow the false Sita to achieve sexual contact with Rama. This
shadow is conjured up by the demoness Shurpanakha, who, in the Valmiki text, attempts to
seduce Rama in her own
ugly form and is repulsed by Lakshmana, who cuts off
her nose. In Kamban’s Tamil version of the Ramayana,
composed in the twelfth century C.E., Shurpanakha impersonates Sita for Rama,
who, as in Tulsi, sees through the trick:
Page
19
The Demon Shadow Sita Fails
The demoness Shurpanakha, the sister
of Ravana, well aware of
her ugliness, fell in love with Rama, who rejected her and instructed
his brother to mutilate her by cutting off her nose, ears, and breasts. She
then transformed herself into the image of the divine form of Sita. When the
real Sita appeared, Shurpanakha told Rama that the other woman [the real Sita]
was a deceitful, man-eating demoness who was skilled in the arts of illusion
and had adopted a false form. Rama knew who was who but continued to tease
Shurpanakha. When Sita ran to Rama and embraced him, Rama rejected Shurpanakha.
The poet makes explicit the demoness’s
motive; she reasons, “He will never look at me while she who has no equal is near
him. / Best for me to run there fast, take her and hide her away somewhere
quickly / and then I will assume that form that he loves and I will live with
him.” But she does not in fact hide Sita away; the two Sitas, the original and
the double, stand there side by side.
A fourteenth-century Nepalese
dramatization of this episode turns it entirely on its head: this time Rama is
completely fooled by the apparition and has to resort to tests of her identity.
Here is a summary of the first act:
The Demonic Shadow Sita Succeeds
Now Shupanakha comes looking for Rama.
Shurpanakha admires the big arms of Rama and wants to embrace him, but seeing
Sita she gets angry and waits for an opportunity to embrace Rama. Sita wakes up
and suddenly embraces Rama. She has seen a bad dream: a fearful ogress
[rakshasi] came to eat her up. Rama tells her that she need not be frightened
when both he and Lakshmana are there; she should take a bath in the
Rama here behaves not only unlike a
god but even unlike a man: the words in which he meditates on his suspicions of
his wife reflect, and may well have been borrowed from, the strikingly similar
words in which a woman, Ahalya, meditates on her suspicions of the man posing
as her husband Gautama (“We should not make love in the daytime”). Not only
that: where Ahalya used that logic to figure out that her bed partner was
not her true spouse, Rama draws precisely the wrong conclusion and goes on with
the lovemaking.
The logic of the test that Lakshmana
finally sets is taken from another Hindu tradition, the tales of Mariatai
Raman, in which the imposter betrays himself by succeeding in the test of
supernatural powers. Though Rama is, as in Valmiki’s text, the one who condemns
Shupanakha to mutilation rather than death, Lakshmana here prevents Rama from
committing an even more terrible crime, against Sita herself, and the
superiority of Lakshmana’s discernment over Rama’s in this text is one of several
strong hints that Rama here is very definitely not God. His failure to
recognize his own wife, even after embracing the imposter, is a far cry from
his omniscience in Tulsi’s text.
Page
20-21
Kamban’s Tamil
text also constructs an even more elaborate shadow Sita, this time in the mind
of the demon Ravana himself. Here is R.K. Narayan’s retelling of
this incident:
The Demon’s Shadow Sita and Rama
In that utter darkness Ravana suffered
hallucinations of Sita’s figure approaching and receding, and
addressed it endearingly...Still doubting his own vision, he ordered, “Fetch my
sister at once...I see this woman before me. Is this the one you meant?”
[Shurpanakha] looked hard and said, “Oh, no. The person who stands before us is
not a woman at all. It’s Rama, that – that man. I don’t see Sita here. You are
only imagining...” “If it’s mere imagination
on my part, how is it you see Rama here?” [Shurpanakha] merely said, “Ever since
that day he did this damage to me, I find it impossible to forget him,” trying not to
be too explicit about her feelings for Rama, equivocating her meaning.
This text presents us with a
remarkable reification of fantasy: Ravana and his sister carry on a long
argument about a figment of Ravana’s imagination that both of them can see –
or, more precisely, that they see simultaneously as a figment of his
imagination and hers.
Shurpanakha goes on to explain what
has happened to Ravana: “As your consciousness, obsessed, fixes on nothing
else, / and your great desire, spreading wide, burns within you, / everywhere that
your eyes turn, they light on her, / and she appears for you! Look! This is an
old story.” The translator suggests that the reference to the
“old story” means that “since everyone knows Ravana has a weakness for
beautiful women, it is natural that he should mistakenly see Sita everywhere.” Or does
everyone do it, not just Ravana? Or is it the idea of multiple Sitas
itself the “old story?”
Page
22
In the Tibetan text cited above, Sita
is not Ravana’s stepdaughter but his daughter, whom he throws into a river; a
farmer finds her in the watery channel
of a furrow and adopts her, giving her the name of Rolrnedma, “Found in a
Furrow.” But this time a quite unmagical double actually precipitates Sita’s
ordeal at Rama’s hands instead of protecting her from it. After Sita’s return
from Lanka, Rama (here called Ramana) begins to suspect her chastity when he
hears a husband quarreling with his promiscuous wife, who defends
herself by saying that other women are like that too, citing the case of Sita
and concluding, “Do you know the nature of all women?”:
King Ramana heard this and thought in
his mind: “Alas, it is true that my wife has slept with the demon.” He was full
of doubt and dejected. He thought: “In connection with her saying: ‘Do you know
the nature of women?,’ it is likely to be different
from that of men. I must examine the wife of
[that husband].” [He slept with her.] He asked her:
“Fair one, you said the nature of women is not like that of
men. How is it?”
She replied that while women do
sleep with men other than their husbands, they fear “shame,” and thus, though
they “obtain the object of [their] desire even with a stranger,” they do so in
a solitary place. Men, in contrast, “though feeling blame, do not
feel ashamed.” The distinction that anthropologists once made between “shame”
and “guilt” cultures is here made between women and men, together with a cunning if twisted logic for the double standard, the
gender asymmetry that haunts these myths. There are no magical doubles in this
down-to-earth telling, just an anonymous woman who can double for Sita because
all women are alike. But women are different from men,
they know infidelity is wrong, it is wrong – for them. Ramana is convinced by
his own infidelity (with the promiscuous wife) that Sita has been unfaithful
(with the demon), and so he banishes her.
Page 23
In Valmiki’s text Sita has some agency
– she leaves Rama, in the end – and Rama himself admits (when he claims that he
knew all along that she was chaste, and made her enter the fire only to prove
it to everyone else), “Ravana could not even think of raping Sita, for she was
protected by her own energy.” Yet that very verb, meaning “to rape, assault,
or violate,” is used when Ravana grabs Sita by the hair. This Sita seems to
lack Vedavati’s
power to paralyze Ravana with her glance. Why? The Valmiki text does not raise
this question, let alone answer it, but we might speculate that Vedavati’s (or
Rambha’s) earlier curse on Ravana both made it unnecessary for Sita to defend
herself and rendered her powerless to prevent Ravana from violating her in the
mildest sense of the word. We might go one step further and suggest that it was
precisely in order to sidestep this issue – to make it possible for Ravana to
carry off Sita so that Rama could get her back – that later texts invented the
shadow Sita, who had the form of the real Sita but not her chaste
power.
Page
28
The complex doublings of Sita grow in
part out of the doctrine of illusion that is woven throughout all Ramanayas.
But they are also inspired by a deep ambiguity in the attitude to Sita’s
sexuality. On the one hand, she is the epitome of female chastity. On the other
hand, the demoness Shurpanakha is able to double for Sita, David
Shulman suggests, because both
of them are highly sexual women – a quality that, as I have suggested,
may also explain why Ravana is able to carry her off in the first place.
Indeed, as the Ramayana came to play a major role in political rhetoric in
later Indian history, Sita began to look too good to be true – or too good to
be good. Thus, according to one reinterpretation by a South Indian author, keen
to mock North Indian piety: “Sita...is Ravana’s paramour who did not resist but
‘clung like a vine’ when she was abducted.”
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“Thou belongest to That Which Is Undying, and not merely to time alone,” murmured the Sphinx, breaking its muteness at last. “Thou art eternal, and not merely of the vanishing
flesh. The soul in man cannot be killed, cannot die. It waits, shroud-wrapped, in
thy heart, as I waited, sand-wrapped, in thy world. Know thyself, O mortal! For there is One within thee, as in all men, that comes and
stands at the bar and bears witness that there IS a God!”
(Reference: Brunton, Paul. (1962) A Search in Secret
Amen