Resultat utgivare "Corner Office Books" i Filosofi

The Swami Vivekananda was sent by his friends and co-religionists to present their belief at the Congress of Religions that was held in connection with the World’s Fair in Chicago. This he did in a way to win general interest and admiration.

Some of these sketches and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Fortnightly Review, The New Age, The Quarterly Review, The Future, The Egoist, and The Little Review.

Democritus. Bring the Stranger, bring the Stranger. Let us see how he is put together. I smell one goodish ingredient, but the compound is newfangled, yes {sniffing), and ill mixed. Alcihiades. You can’t possibly scent him at this distance. Not even a dog could. For a Christian he is rather well washed. Democritus. Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him. The Stranger might be as clean as a river-god, who cannot live out of running water, and I should not be prevented from discerning the odor of his thoughts.

The history of Taoist philosophy may be conveniently divided into three stages: the primitive stage, the stage of development, and the stage of degeneration. The first of these stages is only known to us through the medium of a single semi-historical figure, the philosopher Lao Tzu, whose birth is traditionally assigned to the year 604 BC.

I have spent a goodly part of my life in study and research. During the last 30 years, I have read every single piece of literature on the subject of spiritualism that I could. I have accumulated one of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena, spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, demonology, evil spirits, etc - some of the material going back as far as 1489. And I doubt if any one in the world has so complete a library on modern spiritualism, but nothing I ever read concerning the so-called spiritualistic phenomena has impressed me as being genuine.

Historians, even historians of philosophy, have tended to dismiss Stoicism lightly, and popular opinion has taken the cue. No doubt, relevant reasons abound. The riches of Socrates, Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle served to accentuate the comparative poverty of the next age.

A system of ethics not based on rational demonstration of the universe is of no practical value. It is only a system of the ethics of individual opinions and individual convenience.

In this audiobook, a few of Nietzsche’s most interesting sayings are arranged. They show nothing of his wonderfully acute processes of ratiocination, but only his conclusions. Nevertheless, they may serve to give some notion of the manner, as well as of the matter, of his philosophy. He was a ruthless destroyer—the most savage and resolute, it is probable, that Christian morals and Christian civilization have ever had to face. Therefore, these extracts are confined chiefly to his objections and objurgations, and leave for the reader’s own inquiry his efforts to create.

The investigator who seeks to develop exact and careful conception of realities in a realm as temperamental as the occult faces from the beginning unsuspected difficulties. Every defining term as well as every accepted teaching and doctrine is variously interpreted by the different groups of students. Here is a field in which the most sincere teachers are swept into narrow prejudice by the sheer fire of their enthusiasm and so seem universally to emphasize their differences one from the other when they could as well build upon a meeting ground of common understanding.

I rather anticipate that superficial critics who do not like the argument of this essay will accuse it of pessimism, a charge which perhaps means little more than that they do not like it. If it is called "pessimism" to point out the methods by which men may escape destruction, because men do not care to adopt them, I suppose it must be "optimism" to rush violently and open-eyed down a precipice, and to expect to be saved by a miracle. Certainly such would appear to be the belief upon which human affairs are at present conducted.

We are face to face with this great world, and our relations to it are manifold. One of these is the necessity we have to live, to till the soil, to gather food, to clothe ourselves, to get materials from nature. We are always making things that will satisfy our needs, always in touch with this great world through hunger and thirst. Then, we have our mind; and our mind seeks its own food. It must find out reason in things, faced with a multiplicity of facts, and bewildered when it cannot find one unifying principle which simplifies the heterogeneity of things.

An intuitive imagination enjoys that supreme mode of understanding reality for which mystics crave. It "stands under" things; a reasoned system only "stands for" them.

This new old study of the Logos manifest in the macrocosm is awakening man to a principle of knowledge and a revelation of Providence. It is a priceless treasure, for in its study life becomes a beautiful stream of interpretation and an enjoyment of light. The Logos is and interprets cosmic force; it is life, sensation; it is man’s reason; it is his prescience, intuition and inspiration. The Logos is the archetype, original pattern of all created things. It overshadows all minds. It creates, advances, and evolves man.

In this short course of lessons we initiate you into the mysteries of some practical tests and experiments bearing on occult art magic.

Proverbs from antiquity that still make sense.