CONTENTS
OF THIS SECTION
Last updated
01/10/07

 "பிறக்கும்போதும் அழுகின்றாய், இறக்கும்போதும் அழுகின்றாய்.... தன்னை அறிந்தாள் உண்மை இன்பம், தன்னலம் மறந்தாள் பெரும் பேரின்பம்..."  Singer: J.B.Chandra Babu

Psychology & Personality

Analytical

Ivan Pavlov

John Watson

more...

Cognitive

Humanist

Developmental

Existential

Ludwig Binswanger

Transpersonal

Unfolding Consciousness
at Tamil Nation Library

From Matter to Life to Mind...
AN UNFOLDING CONSCIOUSNESS

"Religion is for those who believe in hell,
spirituality is for those who have been there." - David Bowie

Collated & Sequenced by Nadesan Satyendra

every inside has an outside	every outside has an inside
...and the two always go together

1. We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it... (Sri Aurobindo) 2. If our bodies can be better understood through evolution, why not the things we do with those bodies? (C.George Boeree) Children go through specific stages as their intellect matures - sensorimeter,  pre operational, concrete operational, formal operational...(Jean Piaget) 3. We develop through a predetermined unfolding of our personalities in eight stages...Each stage involves certain developmental tasks that are psychosocial in nature... (Eric Erikson)  The activities of human beings, at all stages of development and organisation, are social products and must be seen as historical developments... (L.S.Vygotsky) 4.The structure of the personality in psychoanalytic theory is threefold - the id, the ego, and the superego... we are born with the id. (Sigmund Freud)  .. 'Where there is Id there shall be Ego,' can be realized only through the effort of reason to penetrate fictions and to arrive at the awareness of reality...(For Freud) Truth, was the weapon to induce individual change.. (Erich Fromm) 5.Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. The nature of our feelings is largely determined by the way that we think (Aaron Beck) The possession of a Weltanschauung is one of the ideal wishes of mankind - when one believes in such a thing, one feels secure in life... (Sigmund Freud) 6.Human beings' needs are arranged like a ladder - someone dying of thirst quickly forgets his  thirst when he has no oxygen. (Abraham Maslow) Why do we want air and water and food?  Why do we seek safety, love, and a sense of competence?   Because... it is in our nature as living things to do the very best we can. (Carl Rogers)  7.Man's primary motivational force is his search for meaning. (Victor Frankl) If we know where a person is going, we can understand why he is moving the way he is moving. (Alfred Adler) Our existences precede our essences -  it is how I choose to live that makes me what I am. (Jean Paul Sartre) 8. Every wish immediately suggests its opposite and the energy created from the opposition is "given" to both sides equally. (Carl Gustav Jung)  We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart. (Martin Luther King) 9. Psychology as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. (John Watson) The reductionist fallacy lies not in comparing man to a 'mechanism powered by a combustion system' but in declaring that he is 'nothing but' such a mechanism and that his activities consist of 'nothing but' a chain of conditioned responses which are also found in rats (Arthur Koestler) We are not simply the products of our natural and social environments... in each moment, we create ourselves out of these relations in terms of our desires, purposes, meanings, and values - in short our spirituality. (David Ray Griffin) 10.The general notions about human understanding ... which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. (Julius Robert Oppenheimer) A hundred years ago, paradox meant error to the scientific mind. But exploring such phenomena as the nature of light, electromagnetism; quantum mechanics and relativity theory, physical science has matured over the past century, to the point where it is increasingly recognized that at a certain level, reality is paradoxical  (M.Scott Peck) 11.All the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing...the limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (Luwig Wittgenstein) The capital period of my intellectual development was when I could see clearly that what what the intellect justified was true and its opposite was also true. (Sri Aurobindo) Every ideological framework is a limited structure, and therefore everything understandable is of limited content and potentiality. (Zen)  "Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." (Neil Postman) It isn't surprising that like most ageing religions, reason is able to get away with presenting itself as the solution to the problems it creates. (John Ralston Saul) Intelligence comes into being when the brain discovers its fallibility, when it discovers what it is capable of, and what it is not. (Jiddu Krishnamurthy)  12. Reason has a legitimate function to fulfill, for which it is perfectly adapted; and this is to justify and illumine for man his various experiences and to give him faith and conviction in holding on to the enlarging of his consciousness. But reason cannot arrive at any final truth because it can neither get to the root of things nor embrace their totality. (Sri Aurobindo) 13. For every outside there is an inside, and for every inside there is an outside, and though they are different, they go together. (Alan Watts) Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. (Jiddu Krishnamurthy)  I tell you: Only you yourself can be your liberator!... Wilhelm Reich 14. The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. (Alan Watts) The fundamental questions, "Who am I?" and "What am I?" arise increasingly in the struggle to find meaning and purpose in life.. Western psychology is severely handicapped in dealing with these questions, because the center of human experience - the observing self - is missing from its theories. (Arthur Deikman ) What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? (Ramana Maharshi ) 15.Life is suffering - Suffering is due to attachment - Suffering can be extinguished - And there is a way to extinguish suffering. (Buddha) No Nirvana is possible for a single consciousness. A single consciousness is a contradiction in terms.... To be means to communicate .... To be means to be for another, and through the other, for oneself. (Bakhtin)   16.Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind. (Sri Aurobindo) You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.  (Steve Jobs, CEO Apple Computer) Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water. You don't grab hold of the water when you swim. (Alan Watts) 17. I dreamed I had an interview with God....My dear child, please remember that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel... (Interview with God) When  Mother Teresa  received her Nobel Prize, she was asked the question, 'What can we do to  promote world peace?'  She replied...   'Go home and love your family.' ..(Pathways to Peace) அன்பும் சிவமும் இரண்டென்பர் அறிவிலார்  (Thirumular's Thirumanthiram) "...Over the course of time, I became aware that man's limited consciousness could expand to the level of divinity, that With Love, Man Is God!" (Samuel H. Sandweiss, M.D in With Love, Man is God) 18. I know that when you make a difference in your own life, you make a difference in the world. And the world is urgently in need of being made different now. (Neale Donald Walsch) I hope you will join me in a simple work that I believe can have great impact for good - hosting conversations as the means to restore hope to the future. (Margaret Wheatley in Turning to One Another ) We see that the world around us is not so great, and we aspire for it to change, but we have become wary of universal panaceas, of movements, parties, and theories. So we will begin at square one, with ourselves such as we are; it isn't much, but it's all we have. (Satprem in 'Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness)  19. A new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture, an awakening brought about by a critical mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding...(James Redfield in the Celestine Prophecy)  We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born. (Dee Hock) Many profound questions are offered, but the final winner is: How many roads must a man walk down?. (Ken Wilber)

1

"....Man's highest aspiration - his seeking for perfection, his longing for freedom and mastery, his search after pure truth and unmixed delight - is in flagrant contradiction with his present existence and normal experience. Such contradiction is part of Nature's general method; it is a sign that she is working towards a greater harmony. The reconciliation is achieved by an evolutionary progress. We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a further step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond Mind... ...." - Sri Aurobindo in the Life Divine

2

 ".. if the way our bodies look and work as biological creatures can be better understood through evolution, why not the things we do with those bodies?.." C. George Boeree on Sociobiology  

Most infants develop motor abilities in the same order and at approximately the same age. In this sense, most agree that these abilities are genetically preprogrammed within all infants. The environment does play a role in the development, with an enriched environment often reducing the learning time and an impoverished one doing the opposite.

The following chart delineates the development of infants in sequential order. The ages shown are averages and it is normal for these to vary by a month or two in either direction.

2 months – able to lift head up on his own
3 months – can roll over
4 months – can sit propped up without falling over
6 months – is able to sit up without support
7 months – begins to stand while holding on to things for support
9 months – can begin to walk, still using support
10 months – is able to momentarily stand on her own without support
11 months – can stand alone with more confidence
12 months – begin walking alone without support
14 months – can walk backward without support
17 months – can walk up steps with little or no support
18 months – able to manipulate objects with feet while walking, such as kicking a ball

Motor Development in Infancy and Childhood

".... children go through specific stages as their intellect and ability to see relationships matures. These stages are completed in a fixed order with all children, even those in other countries. The age range, however can vary from child to child.

Sensorimotor Stage. This stage occurs between the ages of birth and two years of age, as infants begin to understand the information entering their sense and their ability to interact with the world. During this stage, the child learns to manipulate objects although they fail to understand the permanency of these objects if they are not within their current sensory perception. In other words, once an object is removed from the child’s view, he or she is unable to understand that the object still exists.

The major achievement during this stage is that of Object Permanency, or the ability to understand that these objects do in fact continue to exist. This includes his ability to understand that when mom leaves the room, she will eventually return, resulting in an increased sense of safety and security. Object Permanency occurs during the end of this stage and represents the child’s ability to maintain a mental image of the object (or person) without the actual perception.

Preoperational Stage. The second stage begins after Object Permanency is achieved and occurs between the ages of two to seven years of age. During this stage, the development of language occurs at a rapid pace. Children learn how to interact with their environment in a more complex manner through the use of words and images. This stage is marked by Egocentrism, or the child’s belief that everyone sees the world the same way that she does. The fail to understand the differences in perception and believe that inanimate objects have the same perceptions they do, such as seeing things, feeling, hearing and their sense of touch.

A second important factor in this stage is that of Conservation, which is the ability to understand that quantity does not change if the shape changes. In other words, if a short and wide glass of water is poured into a tall and thin glass. Children in this stage will perceive the taller glass as having more water due only because of it’s height. This is due to the children’s inability to understand reversibility and to focus on only one aspect of a stimulus (called centration), such as height, as opposed to understanding other aspects, such as glass width.

Concrete Operations Stage. Occurring between ages 7 and about 12, the third stage of cognitive development is marked by a gradual decrease in centristic thought and the increased ability to focus on more than one aspect of a stimulus. They can understand the concept of grouping, knowing that a small dog and a large dog are still both dogs, or that pennies, quarters, and dollar bills are part of the bigger concept of money.

They can only apply this new understanding to concrete objects ( those they have actually experienced). In other words, imagined objects or those they have not seen, heard, or touched, continue to remain somewhat mystical to these children, and abstract thinking has yet to develop.

Formal Operations Stage. The final stage of cognitive development (from age 12 and beyond), children begin to develop a more abstract view of the world. They are able to apply reversibility and conservation to both real and imagined situations. They also develop an increased understanding of the world and the idea of cause and effect. By the teenage years, they are able to develop their own theories about the world. This stage is achieved by most children, although failure to do so has been associated with lower intelligence..."  Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

3

" ...we develop through a predetermined unfolding of our personalities in eight stages... Each stage involves certain developmental tasks that are psychosocial in nature. ... The child in grammar school, for example, has to learn to be industrious during that period of his or her life, and that industriousness is learned through the complex social interactions of school and family. The various tasks are referred to by two terms. The infant's task, for example, is called "trust-mistrust."...  Each stage has a certain optimal time as well. It is no use trying to rush children into adulthood, as is so common among people who are obsessed with success. Neither is it possible to slow the pace or to try to protect our children from the demands of life. There is a time for each task. If a stage is managed well, we carry away a certain virtue or psychosocial strength which will help us through the rest of the stages of our lives. On the other hand, if we don't do so well, we may develop maladaptations and malignancies, as well as endanger all our future development..." -Erik Erikson's 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development  

"...(Behaviourism)  is the other half of the same dualism.  Previously we had mind without behaviour. Now we have behaviour without mind. In both cases we have 'mind' and 'behaviour' understood as two distinct and separate phenomena.....social does not mean interpersonal; social interaction is not what the child has to learn... the activities of human beings, at all stages of development and organisation, are social products and must be seen as historical developments... Any higher mental function was external (and) social before it was internal. It was once a social relationship between two people.... We can formulate the general genetic law of cultural development in the following way: Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice or on two planes. . . . It appears first between people as an inter-mental category, and then within the child as an intra-mental category. This is equally true of voluntary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, and the development of will.." L.S.Vygotsky quoted in An Introduction to Vygotsky, Harry Daniels et al

4

"The structure of the personality in psychoanalytic theory is threefold -  the id, the ego, and the superego...We are born with our Id. The id is an important part of our personality because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met... The id doesn't care about reality, about the needs of anyone else, only its own satisfaction... Within the next three years, as the child interacts more and more with the world, the second part of the personality begins to develop.. the Ego. The ego is based on the reality principle. The ego understands that other people have needs and desires...Its the ego's job to meet the needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality of the situation....By the age of five... the Superego develops. The Superego is the moral part of us and develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers... In a healthy person... the ego is the strongest so that it can satisfy the needs of the id, not upset the superego, and still take into consideration the reality of every situation. Not an easy job by any means..."  On Sigmund Freud

"...for Freud (truth)  was the weapon to induce individual change; awareness was the main agent in Freud's therapy. If, so Freud found, the patient can gain insight into the fictitious character of his conscious ideas, if he can grasp the reality behind these ideas, if he can make the unconscious conscious, he will attain the strength to rid himself of his irrationalities and to transform himself. Freud's aim, 'Where there is Id there shall be Ego,' can be realized only through the effort of reason to penetrate fictions and to arrive at the awareness of reality...Eric Fromm

5

"The word "cognitive" or "cognition" means "to know" or "to think"... thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and perceptual biases influence what emotions will be experienced and also the intensity of those emotions...  Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them... The nature of our feelings is largely determined by the way that we think..." Robert Westermeyer on  Cognitive Therapy

"'Weltanschauung' is, I am afraid, a specifically German notion, which it would be difficult to translate into a foreign language. If I attempt to give you a definition of the word, it can hardly fail to strike you as inept. By Weltanschauung, then, I mean an intellectual construction which gives a unified solution of all the problems of our existence in virtue of a comprehensive hypothesis, a construction, therefore, in which no question is left open and in which everything in which we are interested finds a place. It is easy to see that the possession of such a Weltanschauung is one of the ideal wishes of mankind. When one believes in such a thing, one feels secure in life, one knows what one ought to strive after, and how one ought to organise one's emotions and interests to the best purpose..."  Sigmund Freud

6

"... human beings' needs (are) arranged like a ladder. The most basic needs, at the bottom, were physical -- air, water, food, sex. Then came safety needs -- security, stability -- followed by psychological, or social needs -- for belonging, love, acceptance. At the top of it all were the self-actualizing needs -- the need to fulfill oneself, to become all that one is capable of becoming. ...  unfulfilled needs lower on the ladder would inhibit the person from climbing to the next step. Someone dying of thirst quickly forgets their thirst when they have no oxygen... People who dealt in managing the higher needs were... self-actualizing people..."- Abraham Maslow

7.

"...man's primary motivational force is his search for meaning. Since persons are capable of deciding, they are also responsible for their decisions. A human being is not a mere puppet of biological, hereditary and environmental forces, but is always free to take a stand toward inner conditions and outer circumstances..." - Viktor Emil Frankl

"...As there is no end to the refinement in our method of analyzing parts, there is no end to the concept of totality... Another basic concept is that man is seen in motion, constantly on his way. Consequently the question arises: "Where is he going?" If we know where a person is going, we can understand why he is moving the way he is moving. In other words: we understand his behavior..." Alfred Adler

"...Men have always debated whether the mind governs the body or the body governs the mind. Philosophers have joined in the controversy and taken one position or the other; they have called themselves idealists or materialists; they have brought up arguments by the thousand; and the question still seems as vexed and unsettled as ever. Perhaps Individual Psychology may give some help towards a solution; for in Individual Psychology we are really confronted with the living interactions of mind and body..." Alfred Adler in What life should mean to you

"'Our existences precede our essences,' as Sartre put it. I don't know what I'm here for until I've lived my life. My life, who I am, is not determined by God, by the laws of Nature, by my genetics, by my society, not even by my family. They each may provide the raw material for who I am, but it is how I choose to live that makes me what I am. I create myself..." Ludwig Binswanger

8

"... Jung gives us three principles, beginning with the principle of opposites. Every wish immediately suggests its opposite. If I have a good thought, for example, I cannot help but have in me somewhere the opposite bad thought. In fact, it is a very basic point: In order to have a concept of good, you must have a concept of bad, just like you can't have up without down or black without white... The second principle is the principle of equivalence. The energy created from the opposition is "given" to both sides equally.... if you pretend that you never had that evil wish, if you deny and suppress it, the energy will go towards the development of a complex. A complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster - constellate - around a theme provided by some archetype... if you acknowledge it, face it, keep it available to the conscious mind, then the energy goes towards a general improvement of your psyche. You grow, in other words..." Carl Gustav Jung

"...The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militants are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self assertive or the self assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative syntheses of opposites in fruitful harmony.... truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the an emerging synthesis which reconciles the two. Jesus recognised the need for blending opposites...So he said to them, 'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves'. And he gave them a formula for action; 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves'. It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but that is what Jesus expects. We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart..." Martin Luther King Jr. in  A Testament of Hope : The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr

9.

"Psychology as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent on the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness." John Watson

"...the reductionist fallacy lies not in comparing man to a 'mechanism powered by a combustion system' but in declaring that he is 'nothing but' such a mechanism and that his activities consist of 'nothing but' a chain of conditioned responses which are also found in rats. For it is of course perfectly legitimate, and in fact indispensable, for the scientist to try to analyse complex phenomena into their constituent elements - provided he remains conscious of the fact that in the course of the analyses something essential is always lost, because the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and its attributes as a whole are more complex than the attributes of its parts. Thus the analysis of complex phenomena elucidates only a certain segment or aspect of the picture and does not entitle us to say that it is 'nothing but' this or that. Yet such 'nothing-but-ism' as it has been called, is still the - explicit or implied - world-view of reductionist orthodoxy. If it were to be taken literally, man could be ultimately defined as consisting of nothing but 90 per cent water and 10 per cent minerals - a statement which is no doubt true, but not very helpful...."Arthur Koestler in Janus : A Summing Up

"The relation between a society and its member's spirituality is reciprocal. A society's customs and laws, on the one hand reflect the spirituality of its members. The spirituality of its members, on the other hand, is largely shaped by the nature of society. This 'largely' is never, however, 'totally'.. Inspite of arch modernist B.F.Skinner's denial of 'freedom and dignity', we are not simply the products of our natural and social environments. We are, to be sure, deeply constituted by our relations to these environments. But in each moment, we create ourselves out of these relations in terms of our desires, purposes, meanings, and values - in short our spirituality. Because of this element of autonomy, individuals are not only shaped by their society; they can shape it in return. In stating this twofold position - that individuals are internally constituted by their social relations, and that they are nevertheless not totally determined by them - I have already rejected a modern for a post-modern viewpoint." David Ray Griffin in Spirituality and Society : Postmodern Visions (Suny Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought)

10.

"The general notions about human understanding ... which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, wholly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom... To what appear to be the simplest questions, we will tend to give either no answer or an answer which will at first sight be reminiscent more of a strange catechism than of the straightforward affirmatives of physical science. If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say "no", if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say "no"; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say "no." The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after his death; but they are not the familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth century science..." Julius Robert Oppenheimer in Science and the Common Understanding 

"...A hundred years ago, paradox meant error to the scientific mind. But exploring such phenomena as the nature of light, electromagnetism; quantum mechanics and relativity theory, physical science has matured over the past century, to the point where it is increasingly recognized that at a certain level, reality is paradoxical... Mystics have spoken to us through the ages in terms of paradox. Is it possible that we are beginning to see a meeting ground between science and religion? When we are able to say that "a human is both mortal and eternal at the same time" and "light is both a wave and a particle at the same time", we have begun to speak the same language. Is it possible that the path of spiritual growth that proceeds from religious superstition to scientific scepticism may indeed ultimately lead us to a genuine religious reality..." M.Scott Peck in the Road Less Travelled - A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

"...Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet. .." Arthur Koestler

" how (do) people see space and time -- not the physical space and time of measured distances and clocks and calendars, but human space and time, personal space and time.  Someone from long ago, who now lives far away, may be closer to you than the person next to you right now..." Medard Boss  

"...all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing. To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence of all description, and thus the essence of the world. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. What can be shown, cannot be said. There are, indeed,  things that cannot be put into words.  They make  themselves manifest. My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence..." Ludwig Wittgenstein  

"...The (mind)... seems to deal effectively only with parts of the total reality. It directs its attention to discrete and separate parts of the whole. In order that it may understand, the mind separates and conceptualises. It separates that which is connected and the very process of separation distorts an understanding of the whole. The mind thinks in sequence in time. The present is a fleeting moment and is then gone forever. Thoughts are so much grist to its mill. Words and concepts are the instruments of its trade. The mind seeks to clarify one concept by having recourse to another. It defines one word with another. There is no end to this process nor is there a starting point. The mind deals in opposites. There is no idealism without materialism; there are no means without ends; there is no detachment without attachment; there is no free will without determinism; there is no good without bad. If everything was good what would it mean? Presumably, we would stop using the word..." Nadesan Satyendra On the  Bhavad Gita, 1981

"...The capital period of my intellectual development was when I could see clearly that what the intellect said might be correct and not correct, that what the intellect justified was true and its opposite was also true. I never admitted a truth in the mind without simultaneously keeping it open to the contrary of it.. And the first result was that the prestige of the intellect was gone..."  Aurobindo quoted in Satprem's  Adventure of Consciousness

"...The intellect understands when it has succeeded in fitting the unknown into a framework of familiar ideas. But every ideological framework is a limited structure, and therefore everything understandable is of limited content and potentiality...Zen has only one thing to say finally, and that is “To thine own self be true; thou canst not then be false to any man.” Or “Be true to any man, thou canst not then be false to thine own self.” Or “Be true to anything, thou canst not then be false to anything else.” In short, “Be true,” that is, “Be the living truth itself.” “Be real, be reality itself.” Or in the shortest possible terms, Zen would only say, “Be”" (Zen Buddhism)

"..As things stand now, the geniuses of computer technology will give us Star Wars, and tell us that is the answer to nuclear war. They will give us artificial intelligence, and tell us that this is the way to self-knowledge. .. But that is only the way of the technician, the fact-mongerer, the information junkie, and the technological idiot. ..Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." Here is what Goethe told us: "One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words." And here is what Socrates told us: "The unexamined life is not worth living." ...  It is all the same: There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always.." Informing Ourselves To Death - Neil Postman, 1990

"..It isn't surprising that like most ageing religions, reason is able to get away with presenting itself as the solution to the problems it creates...The rootless wandering is perhaps the explanation for the hypnotic effect which the idea of efficiency has upon us. Deprived of direction, we are determined to go there fast... We confuse intention with execution. Decision making with administration. Creation with accounting. On the dark plain that we wander, totems have been erected, not to indicate the way, but to provide hopeful relief.... What hope there is lies precisely in the slow, close to reality enquiry and concern of the humanist. But first he, and perhaps more hopefully she, must stop believing that the accomplishments of the last few centuries are the result of rational methods, structure and self interest, while the failures and violence are those of humanity and sensibility. In spite of the rhetoric which dominates our civilisation, the opposite is true..." *John Ralston Saul in Voltaire's Bastards - The Dictatorship of Reason in the West

"...Intelligence is not personal, is not the outcome of argument, belief, opinion or reason. Intelligence comes into being when the brain discovers its fallibility, when it discovers what it is capable of, and what it is not.... When (thought) sees that it is incapable of discovering something new, that very perception is the seed of intelligence, isn't it? That is intelligence ...The discovery of that is intelligence...Thought is of time, intelligence is not of time. Intelligence is immeasurable... Intelligence comes into being when the mind, the heart and the body are really harmonious... Now what is the relationship of intelligence with this new dimension?... ...The different dimension can only operate through intelligence: if there is not that intelligence it cannot operate. So in daily life it can only operate where intelligence is functioning ..." Jiddu Krishnamurthi in The Awakening of Intelligence

12

"...It is often claimed that reason is the highest faculty of man and that it has enabled him to master himself and to master Nature. Has reason really succeeded? When reason applies itself to life and action it becomes partial and passionate and the servant of other forces than the pure truth. Why does man have faith in reason? Because reason has a legitimate function to fulfill, for which it is perfectly adapted; and this is to justify and illumine for man his various experiences and to give him faith and conviction in holding on to the enlarging of his consciousness. But reason cannot arrive at any final truth because it can neither get to the root of things nor embrace their totality. It deals with the finite, the separate and has no measure for the all and the infinite...." Sri Aurobindo in the Evolution of Man

There is, in other words, a secret conspiracy between all insides and all outsides, and the conspiracy is this: To look as different as possible and yet underneath to be identical, because you do not find one without the other." - Alan Watts in Om - Creative Meditations, Edited and Adapted by Judith Johnstone, 1980

"...I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised... The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth...No man from outside can make you free... No one holds the Key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity..." Jiddu Krishnamurthy

"I tell you: Only you yourself can be your liberator! This sentence makes me hesitate. I contend to be a fighter for pureness and truth. I hesitate, because I am afraid of you and your attitude towards truth... My intellect tells me: 'Tell the truth at any cost.' The Little Man in me says: 'It is stupid to expose oneself to the little man, to put oneself at his mercy. The Little Man does not want to hear the truth about himself. He does not want the great responsibility which is his. He wants to remain a Little Man...." Wilhelm Reich

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 "The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. When we look through our telescopes and microscopes, or when we just look at nature, we have a problem. Somehow the idea of God we get from the holy scriptures doesn't seem to fit the world around us, just as you wouldn't ascribe a composition by Stravinsky to Bach...." The Essential Alan Watts

"The fundamental questions, "Who am I?" and "What am I?" arise increasingly in the struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. Therapists hear them as explicit queries or in indirect form: "Who is the real me?" or "I don't know what I want - part of me wants one thing and part of me wants something else. What do I want?" Western psychology is severely handicapped in dealing with these questions, because the center of human experience - the observing self - is missing from its theories...." Arthur J. Deikman

"What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? Men avoid this enquiry into the true Self, but what else is there so worthy to be undertaken?... The only thing that keeps us from realization is the belief that we are not realized..." Ramana Maharishi

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"The Four Noble Truths sound like the basics of any theory with therapeutic roots: 

1. Life is suffering. Life is at very least full of suffering, and it can easily be argued that suffering is an inevitable aspect of life. If I have senses, I can feel pain; if I have feelings, I can feel distress; if I have a capacity for love, I will have the capacity for grief. Such is life.

2. Suffering is due to attachment. We might say that at least much of the suffering we experience comes out of ourselves, out of our desire to make pleasure, happiness, and love last forever and to make pain, distress, and grief disappear from life altogether 

3. Suffering can be extinguished. At least that suffering we add to the inevitable suffering of life can be extinguished. Or, if we want to be even more modest in our claims, suffering can at least be diminished.

4. And there is a way to extinguish suffering. This is what all therapists believe -- each in his or her own way. But this time we are looking at what Buddha's theory --dharma -- has to say: He called it the Eightfold Path..." Towards a Buddhist Psychotherapy

"...No Nirvana is possible for a single consciousness. A single consciousness is a contradiction in terms. Consciousness is essentially multiple. I am conscious of myself and become myself only while revealing myself for another, through another, and with the help of another .... Separation, dissociation and enclosure within the self is the main reason for the loss of one's self. Not that which takes place within, but that which takes place on the boundary between one's own and someone else's consciousness, on the threshold .... Thus does Dostoevsky confront all decadent and idealistic (individualistic) culture, the culture of essential and inescapable solitude. He asserts the impossibility of solitude, the illusory nature of solitude. The very being of man (both external and internal) is the deepest communion. To be means to communicate .... To be means to be for another, and through the other, for oneself...." Bakhtin in Toward a Reworking of  Dostoevsky's Book quoted by Caryl Emerson in an Introduction to Vygotsky

"...Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realisation. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only bring a change of mind. And if your mind is sufficiently mobile, it will go on changing from one thing to another till the end without arriving at any sure way or any spiritual harbour. The mind can think and doubt and question and accept and withdraw its acceptance, make formations and unmake them, pass decisions and revoke them, judging always on the surface and by surface indications and therefore never coming to any deep and firm experience of Truth, but by itself it can do no more..." Sri Aurobindo on Reason, Science & Yoga

"..you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life...Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma--which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary..." Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish - Steve Jobs, CEO Apple Computer

"..Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water. You don't grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink. You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging, and holding on..."Alan Watts

 "I dreamed I had an interview with God..."Come in," God said. "So, you would like to interview Me?" "If you have the time," I said. God smiled and said: "My time is eternity and is enough to do everything; what questions do you have in mind to ask me?"    "What surprises you most about mankind?....My dear child, please remember that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel..."  Interview with God

"When  Mother Teresa  received her Nobel Prize, she was asked the question, 'What can we do to  promote world peace?'  She replied...   'Go home and love your family.'" ..Pathways to Peace

"அன்பும் சிவமும் இரண்டென்பர் அறிவிலார்,
அன்பேசிவமாவது யாரும் அறிகிலார்,
அன்பே சிவமாவது யாரும் அறிந்தபின்,
அன்பேசிவமாய் அமர்ந்திருந்தாரே."
- Thirumular's Thirumanthiram

"...Over the course of time, I became aware that man's limited consciousness could expand to the level of divinity, that With Love, Man Is God! This book describes a continuation of my search for the meaning of life.."Samuel H. Sandweiss, M.D in With Love, Man is God

"...First and foremost, understand what religion is. Religion is realization. Only when you realize the truth about yourself will you understand what religion is. Spirituality is not merely singing Bhajans, performing worship, and going to temples or on pilgrimages or undertaking any other good activity. Spirituality is recognizing the oneness of all beings.To recognize unity in diversity is spirituality. .. The questions and doubts arise when you see multiplicity in unity. The entire creation has emerged from love. Religion is the realization of your Self.  Spirituality also is discovering who you really are." Sathya Sai Baba

"...I know that when you make a difference in your own life, you make a difference in the world. And the world is urgently in need of being made different now. I know that I do not have to work hard to convince you of this. One look at today's headlines as you opened your Internet connection this morning has already done that. All that any of us are looking for now is a way to make a difference, a way to help change things. Now you may be one of those who believe that there is not really much that any of us can do to have any real impact in such a huge undertaking, but I call out to you now from the deepest reaches of my heart to beg you not to accept that belief, not to embrace it, for it is simply not true..." Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations with God

 "I hope you will join me in a simple work that I believe can have great impact for good --hosting conversations as the means to restore hope to the future. Many large-scale change efforts -- some of which have won the Nobel Peace Prize -- began with the simple but courageous act of friends talking to one another about their fears and dreams. In reviewing a number of these efforts, I always found a phrase, "Some friends and I started talking.".." Margaret Wheatley in Turning to One Another

"...We see that the world around us is not so great, and we aspire for it to change, but we have become wary of universal panaceas, of movements, parties, and theories. So we will begin at square one, with ourselves such as we are; it isn't much, but it's all we have. We will try to change this little bit of world before setting out to save the other. And perhaps this isn't such a foolish idea after all; for who knows whether changing the one is not the most effective way of changing the other?" Satprem on 'Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness'

 "We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born -- a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed..." -  Dee Hock, Founder & Emeritus CEO Visa

"..A new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture, an awakening brought about by a critical mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding... "James Redfield in the Celestine Prophecy

"In Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a massive supercomputer is designed to give the ultimate answer, the absolute answer, the answer that would completely explain "God, life, the universe, and everything." But the computer takes seven and a half million years to do this, and by the time the computer delivers the answer, everybody has forgotten the question. Nobody remembers the ultimate question, but the ultimate answer the computer comes up with is: 42. This is amazing! Finally, the ultimate answer. So wonderful is the answer that a contest is held to see if anybody can come up with the question. Many profound questions are offered, but the final winner is: How many roads must a man walk down?" - A Brief History of Everything - Ken Wilber