Genre Philosophy. Page - 18

ich you require, you can evade those you do not require, you can utilize those you need, and thus you can bring about the result that nature, without that application of human intelligence, cannot so swiftly effect.

Take it, then, that Yoga is within your reach, with your powers, and that even some of the lower practices of Yoga, some of the simpler applications of the laws of the unfolding of consciousness to yourself, will benefit you in this world as well as in all others. For you are really merely quickening your growth, your unfolding, taking advantage of the powers nature puts within your hands, and deliberately eliminating the conditions which would not help you in your work, but rather hinder your march forward. If you see it in that light, it seems to me that Yoga will be to you a far more real, practical thing, than it is when you merely read some fragments about it taken from Sanskrit books, and often mistranslated into English, and you will begin to feel that to be a yogi is not necessarily

is not stringing anecdotes together; it is not inquisitive nor impertinent questioning. There are still other things which conversation is not: It is not cross-examining nor bullying; it is not over-emphatic, nor is it too insistent, nor doggedly domineering, talk. Nor is good conversation grumbling talk. No one can play to advantage the conversational game of toss and catch with a partner who is continually pelting him with grievances. It is out of the question to expect everybody, whether stranger or intimate, to choke in congenial sympathy with petty woes. The trivial and perverse annoyances of one's own life are compensating subjects for conversation only when they lead to a discussion of the phase of character or the fling of fate on which such-and-such incidents throw light, because the trend of the thought then encourages a tossing back of ideas.

Perhaps the most important thing which good conversation is not, is this: It is not talking for effect, or hedging. There are two kinds of hedging in c

tions, thoughts, and emotions. But dreams, being familiar, are credible; it is admitted that people do dream; we reach the less credible as we advance to the less familiar. For, if we think for a moment, the alleged events of ghostdom--apparitions of all sorts--are precisely identical with the every-night phenomena of dreaming, except for the avowed element of sleep in dreams.

In dreams, time and space are annihilated, and two severed lovers may be made happy. In dreams, amidst a grotesque confusion of things remembered and things forgot, we see the events of the past (I have been at Culloden fight and at the siege of Troy); we are present in places remote; we behold the absent; we converse with the dead, and we may even (let us say by chance coincidence) forecast the future. All these things, except the last, are familiar to everybody who dreams. It is also certain that similar, but yet more vivid, false experiences may be produced, at the word of the hypnotiser, in persons under the hypnotic

er merely whetting your appetite. We wish you to get these seven principles well fixed in your mind, so that you may be able to understand the terms when we use them later on.

3. Prana, or Vital Force.

We have said something of Prana in our little book, "The Science of Breath," which many of you have read. As we said in that book, Prana is universal energy, but in our consideration of it we will confine ourselves to that manifestation of Prana which we call vital force. This vital force is found in all forms of life - from the amoeba to man - from the most elementary form of plant life to the highest form of animal life. Prana is all-pervading. It is found in all things having life, and as the occult philosophy teaches that life is in all things - in every atom - the apparent lifelessness of some things being only a lesser degree of manifestation, we may understand that Prana is everywhere, in everything. Prana is not the Ego, but is merely a form of energy used by the Ego in its material manife

neral commitment to a cathedral-building style of development. If the overriding objective was for users to see as few bugs as possible, why then you'd only release a version every six months (or less often), and work like a dog on debugging between releases. The Emacs C core was developed this way. The Lisp library, in effect, was not-because there were active Lisp archives outside the FSF's control, where you could go to find new and development code versions independently of Emacs's release cycle [QR].

The most important of these, the Ohio State Emacs Lisp archive, anticipated the spirit and many of the features of today's big Linux archives. But few of us really thought very hard about what we were doing, or about what the very existence of that archive suggested about problems in the FSF's cathedral-building development model. I made one serious attempt around 1992 to get a lot of the Ohio code formally merged into the official Emacs Lisp library. I ran into political trouble and was largely unsucces

h with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions.

19. Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act. He sacrifices something, that the enemy may snatch at it.

20. By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him.

21. The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize combined energy.

22. When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped, to go rolling down.

23. Thus the energy developed by good fighting men is as the momentum of a round stone rolled down a mountain thousands of feet in height. So muc

m dare askand then answer the question we clones avoid like the plague, he doesso with relentless, laser-like precision. Read his book. Take your seatat the double-headed microscope and let Sam guide you through thedissection. Like a brain surgeon operating on himself, Sam explores andexposes the alien among us, hoping beyond hope for a respectable tumourbut finding instead each and every cell teaming with the same resistantvirus. The operation is long and tedious, and at times frightening andhard to believe. Read on. The parts exposed are as they are, despitewhat may seem hyperbolic or far-fetched. Their validity might not hithome until later, when coupled with memories of past events andexperiences.

I am, as I said, my own worst nightmare. True, the world is repletewith my contributions, and I am lots of fun to be around. And true,most contributions like mine are not the result of troubled souls. Butmany more than you might want to believe are. And if by chance you getcaught in my Web, I c

r a man will pass through that condition in this present life, and realise holiness and heavenly rest here and now, will depend entirely upon the strength of his intellectual and spiritual exertions, and upon the intensity and ardour with which he searches for Truth.

Temptation, with all its attendant torments can be overcome here and now, but it can only be overcome by knowledge. It is a condition of darkness or of semi-darkness. The fully enlightened soul is proof against all temptation. When a man fully understands the source, nature, and meaning of temptation, in that hour he will conquer it, and will rest from his long travail; but whilst he remains in ignorance, attention to religious observances, and much praying and reading of Scripture will fail to bring him peace.

If a man goes out to conquer an enemy, knowing nothing of his enemy's strength, tactics, or place of ambush, he will not only ignominiously fail, but will speedily fall into the hands of the enemy. He who would overcome his e

re on the baseball diamond or the football gridiron: readiness to do everything, or anything--or to do nothing, if he is so directed--in the interests of the team. It must take a leaf from the book of General Pershing and his fellow officers who, in a time of stress for the Allies, were willing and eager to brigade their troops with the soldiers of France and England, thus losing the identity of their forces in the interest of the great cause for which they stood. It must learn the lesson taught by the life of Him who emptied Himself for the sake of the world--and did it with a smile.

III

FORGIVING INJURIES

A gifted writer has told the story of a workman in a Bessemer steel furnace who was jealous of the foreman whom he thought had injured him. The foreman was making a good record, and the workman did not want to see him succeed. So he plotted his undoing--he loosened the bolts of the cable that controlled an important part of the machinery, and so caused an accident that not only interfe

and would have liked nothing better than to see some enormous mischief happen to Danae and her son. The only good man in this unfortunate island of Seriphus appears to have been the fisherman. As Perseus walked along, therefore, the people pointed after him, and made mouths, and winked to one another, and ridiculed him as loudly as they dared.

"Ho, ho!" cried they; "Medusa's snakes will sting him soundly!"

Now, there were three Gorgons alive at that period; and they were the most strange and terrible monsters that had ever been since the world was made, or that have been seen in after days, or that are likely to be seen in all time to come. I hardly know what sort of creature or hobgoblin to call them. They were three sisters, and seem to have borne some distant resemblance to women, but were really a very frightful and mischievous species of dragon. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous beings these three sisters were. Why, instead of locks of hair, if you can believe me, they had ea