Ways of Seeing
- Exploring Modern Metaphysics -
Eastern Quotations
"We take as given the idea of distinction and the idea of indication, and that we cannot make an indication without drawing a distinction. We take, therefore, the form of distinction for the form. Definition: Distinction is perfect continence. That is to say, a distinction is drawn by arranging a boundary with separate sides so that a point on one side cannot reach the other side without crossing the boundary. Once a distinction is drawn, the spaces, states, or contents on each side of the boundary, being distinct, can be indicated. There can be no distinction without motive, and there can be no motive unless contents are seen to differ in value. If a content is of value, a name can be taken to indicate this value. Thus the calling of the name can be identified with the value of the content.", J. Spencer Brown. [All of mathematics can thereafter be deduced by making a single distincion of any kind!]
"The self is the owner of the chariot,
The chariot is the body,
Soul is the [body's] charioteer,
Mind the reigns [that curb it].
Senses, they say, are the [chariot's] steeds,
Their object the tract before them;
What, then, is the subject of experience?
'Self, sense and mind conjoined,' wise men reply.", Katha Upanishad.
"A search for God, (for a spiritual or divine Reality within oneself and behind, above or within the phenomenon of existence), for perfection, for freedom, for an absolute Truth and Bliss, for immortality has been the persistent preoccupation of the highest human thought since the earliest times. This preoccupation seems to be a perpetual element in man's nature; for it survives the longest periods of scepticism. This aspiration is in contradiction with his present existence and normal experience of himself which is that of a mortal being full of imperfections, ego-ridden, largely animal, subject to transitory joys and much pain and suffering, bound by mechanical necessity. But the direct contradiction between what he is and what he seeks to be need not be a final argument against the validity of his aspiration. For such contradictions are part of Nature's general method; the aspiration may be realisable either by a revolutionary individual effort or by an evolutionary general process. The problems of existence are problems of harmony. Discords and disorder of the materials,oppositions, demand a solution by accordance, by the discovery of a harmony. Thus the accordance of an inanimation and inertia in a containing Matter and the active indwelling stress of Life is Nature's first problem, its initial difficulty; its perfect solution would be immortality in a material body. The accordance of an unconscious Matter and an unconscious or half-conscious Life with a conscious Mind and Will is her second problem; the possession of a direct and perfect instrumentation of knowledge in a living body would be its complete solution. The accordance of a mortal mind, life and body with a secretly indwelling immortal spirit is the final problem; the spiritualisation or divinisation of mind, life and body, a divine life, would be the perfect solution. The search after these solutions by the human being is not irrational; it is rather the very effort and striving of Nature within him. Life appears in Matter, Mind in Life, because they are already there. Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Mind; Mind may well be a form and veil of a higher power, the spirit, which is supramental in its nature. Nature has implanted an impulse towards life in certain forms of Matter and evolves it there, a similar evolutionary impulse towards mind in certain forms of life, an impulse in certain minds towards what is beyond
Mind, towards the unveiling of Spirit or the evolution of a spiritual being. Each impulse justifies itself by the creation of the necessary organs and
faculties. There is therefore no reason to put a limit to evolutionary possibility by taking our present organisation or status of existence as final. The animal is a laboratory in which Nature has worked out man; man may very well be a laboratory in which she wills to work out superman, to disclose the soul as a divine being, to evolve a divine nature.", Sri Aurobindo.
"I saw the Omnipotent's flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvelous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
the messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.
Into the fallen human sphere they came,
Faces that wore the Immortal's glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the Spirit's light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
Feet echoing in the corridors of Time.
High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty's sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love's laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture's golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature's face.", The Mother / Sri Aurobindo.
"After a certain period of physical functioning, the potentialities constituting the objective life of man retire again into the auric body. When the soul deserts the physical fabric and retires into its own substances, the body is referred to as dead and returns to the elements from which it came. Between lives, therefore, the philosopher was said to be sleeping in his egg -- that is, existing in the invisible worlds or, more correctly, in his own invisible bodies. Periodically he precipitates 'the golden germ', builds a new external form, and abides in it temporarily. He is then said to have emerged from his egg. The breaking of the egg had also another and very recondite significance, for it represented the attainment of Nirvana, or absolute unity with the formless Cause of existence. The breaking of the egg was the shattering of personality and the release of the spiritual nature into that Universal Being from which it originally emanated. The auric egg of man is so complex in its structure that all the description which applies to the universal system is equally applicable to the human auric envelope. Within man's aura are the zones and belts; the stars, the planets, and the elements; the gods, the angles, and the demons. Man is a universe and at his present state of development his physical personality is a golden embryo suspended within the brilliant shell of his auric sheaths. As the Rosicrucian would say, he is in a proper womb quickening, preparing himself to come gloriously forth with all the radiance and beauty of the Orphic Phanes.", unknown source.
"In the relation with God unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. He who enters on the absolute relation is concerned with nothing isolated any more, neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven; but everything is gathered up on the relation. For to step into pure relation is not to disregard everything but to see everything in the Thou, not to renounce the world but to establish it on its true basis. To look away form the word, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence. 'Here world, there God' is the language of It; 'God in the world' is another language of It; but to eliminate or leave behind nothing at all, to include the whole world in the Thou, to give the world its due and its truth, to include nothing beside God but everything in him -- this is the full and complete relation. Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find Him if they leave the world. He who goes out with his whole being to meet his Thou and carries to it all being that is in the world, finds Him who cannot be sought. Of course God is the 'wholly Other'; but He is also the wholly Same, the wholly Present. Of course He is the Mysterium Tremendum that appears and overthrows; but He is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I. If you explore the life of things and of conditioned being you come to the unfathomable; if you deny the life of things and of conditioned being you stand before nothingness; if you hallow this life you meet the living God.", unknown source.
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