This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us — they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.
The most violent revolutions in an individual’s beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one’s own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.
Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his Glory.
Birth | Death | Envy | Existence | Good | Man | Nature | Peace | Power | Self | Soul | Spirit | Will |
The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.
O, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have; and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The Self stands indifferent, having seen Nature; Nature desists, having been seen. Though their coexistence continues, there is no motive for creation.
Self |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Verily, therefore, the Self is neither bounded nor emancipated, nor does it transmigrate; it is Nature alone, abiding in myriad forms, that is bounded, released and transmigrates.
Self |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
These, characteristically different from one another and variously modified by the gunas, present to the intellect (buddhi) the whole purpose of the Self (purusha), illumining it like a lamp.
Experience | Nature | Pain | Self | Suffering |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Without dispositions (bhavas) there would be no subtle body (linga), and without the subtle body there would be no cessation of dispositions. Evolution, therefore, proceeds in two ways, the elemental and the intellectual.
Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.
Better | Death | Immortality | Individual | Self |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Primary matter is not apprehended on account of its extreme subtlety and not because of its non-existence, as it is perceived through its effects. Intellect (mahat) and the rest are effects which are both similar and dissimilar to primarymatter (prakriti).
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The multiplicity of souls verily follows from the distributive allocation of birth, death and the instruments of causation, since occupations are not simultaneous, and since there are diverse modifications of the three gunas.
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Just as a painting does not stand without a support, or a shadow cannot exist without a stake and the like, so too the cognitive apparatus cannot subsist without a support, without specific particles.
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The constituents (gunas) consist in the pleasant, the painful and the delusive; they serve the purpose of illumination, activity and restraint; they are mutually dominating, dependent, productive, cooperative and coexistent.
Nature | Perception | Self |