We know that with the very first awakening of knowledge, man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself. Neither of these can he prove or disprove, but they are facts: they constitute reality for him.
We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.
Charlotte Joko Beck, Zen teacher and author, teaches that the “secret” of spiritual life is the capacity to “… return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment—even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.” Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises. Like awakening from a dream, in the moment of pausing our trance recedes and Radical Acceptance becomes possible.
The worship of beauty apart from the soul becomes an idolatry enkindling desire instead of a reverence awakening devotion.
Conversion is the awakening of a soul to see into the awful= _truth_ =of things; to see that Time and its shows all rest on Eternity, and this poor earth of ours is the threshold either of heaven or hell.
That sagacious person John Wesley is reported to have replied to some one who questioned the propriety of his adaptation of sacred words to extremely secular airs, that he did not see why the Devil should be left in possession of all the best tunes. And I do not see why science should not turn to account the peculiarities of human nature thus exploited by other agencies: all the more because science, by the nature of its being, cannot desire to stir the passions, or profit by the weaknesses, of human nature. The most zealous of popular lecturers can aim at nothing more than the awakening of a sympathy for abstract truth, in those who do not really follow his arguments; and of a desire to know more and better in the few who do.
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences.
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity a total embrace of the entire Kosmos a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
Life is a dream and death an awakening.
The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
16:27. And the keeper of the prison, awakening out of his sleep and seeing the doors of the prison open, drawing his sword, would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled.
And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the duration of a dream.
However, as we have just pointed out, brains which are absorbed in some bit of wisdom, or folly, or, as it often happens, in both at once, are but slowly accessible to the things of actual life. Their own destiny is a far-off thing to them. There results from such concentration a passivity, which, if it were the outcome of reasoning, would resemble philosophy. One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult awaited them on this journey.
It was about six o'clock in the evening; an opal-colored light, through which an autumnal sun shed its golden rays, descended on the blue ocean. The heat of the day had gradually decreased, and a light breeze arose, seeming like the respiration of nature on awakening from the burning siesta of the south. A delicious zephyr played along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and wafted from shore to shore the sweet perfume of plants, mingled with the fresh smell of the sea.
But Villefort uttered words which even he himself did not believe. He dreaded not so much the revelation, for he could reply to or deny its truth;--he cared little for that mene, tekel, upharsin, which appeared suddenly in letters of blood upon the wall;--but what he was really anxious for was to discover whose hand had traced them. While he was endeavoring to calm his fears,--and instead of dwelling upon the political future that had so often been the subject of his ambitious dreams, was imagining a future limited to the enjoyments of home, in fear of awakening the enemy that had so long slept,--the noise of a carriage sounded in the yard, then he heard the steps of an aged person ascending the stairs, followed by tears and lamentations, such as servants always give vent to when they wish to appear interested in their master's grief. He drew back the bolt of his door, and almost directly an old lady entered, unannounced, carrying her shawl on her arm, and her bonnet in her hand. The white hair was thrown back from her yellow forehead, and her eyes, already sunken by the furrows of age, now almost disappeared beneath the eyelids swollen with grief. "Oh, sir," she said; "oh, sir, what a misfortune! I shall die of it; oh, yes, I shall certainly die of it!"
In this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing, calling, shouting, but he met no one. Two or three times he ran across the plain towards something which conveyed to him the effect of a human being reclining or crouching down; it turned out to be nothing but brushwood or rocks nearly on a level with the earth. At length, at a spot where three paths intersected each other, he stopped. The moon had risen. He sent his gaze into the distance and shouted for the last time, "Little Gervais! Little Gervais! Little Gervais!" His shout died away in the mist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, "Little Gervais!" but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. It was his last effort; his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisible power had suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his evil conscience; he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched in his hair and his face on his knees, and he cried, "I am a wretch!"
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle--heaven knows how and whence--a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning what is going on around them.
"Well, my lad, I've never met any one like you," Fyodor Pavlovitch said shortly, and gave him ten roubles. We may add that he not only believed in his honesty, but had, for some reason, a liking for him, although the young man looked as morosely at him as at every one and was always silent. He rarely spoke. If it had occurred to any one to wonder at the time what the young man was interested in, and what was in his mind, it would have been impossible to tell by looking at him. Yet he used sometimes to stop suddenly in the house, or even in the yard or street, and would stand still for ten minutes, lost in thought. A physiognomist studying his face would have said that there was no thought in it, no reflection, but only a sort of contemplation. There is a remarkable picture by the painter Kramskoy, called "Contemplation." There is a forest in winter, and on a roadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a torn kaftan and bark shoes. He stands, as it were, lost in thought. Yet he is not thinking; he is "contemplating." If any one touched him he would start and look at one as though awakening and bewildered. It's true he would come to himself immediately; but if he were asked what he had been thinking about, he would remember nothing. Yet probably he has, hidden within himself, the impression which had dominated him during the period of contemplation. Those impressions are dear to him and no doubt he hoards them imperceptibly, and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he does not know either. He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years, abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage for his soul's salvation, or perhaps he will suddenly set fire to his native village, and perhaps do both. There are a good many "contemplatives" among the peasantry. Well, Smerdyakov was probably one of them, and he probably was greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.
"To seek me?" repeated Morrel, as if awakening from a dream.
On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary had found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince Andrew giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her during her father's illness, since his death, and especially since her meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey, anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house, meeting new people, and attending to her nephew's education. She was sad. Now, after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about her nephew's education for which she had always felt herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace--a peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal dreams and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her and were related to her meeting with Rostov.
"No, he is a Royalist, I will not go! And you went to the barricades, and you got yourself killed out of malice! To revenge yourself for what I said to you about Monsieur le Duc de Berry. It is infamous! Go to bed then and sleep tranquilly! he is dead, and this is my awakening."
"What? What has happened?" asked the countess, as though awakening from a sleep to the realities of life; "did you say a misfortune? Indeed, I should expect misfortunes."
There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow awakening.
"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!" And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as if powers till then confined within him had been liberated, and that strange lightness did not again leave him.
That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of undecided tenderness which reveals itself by chance, and which waits. It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself, and in which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a virgin looking like a woman.
We awake from every sleep except the one dreaded by Danglars. He awoke. To a Parisian accustomed to silken curtains, walls hung with velvet drapery, and the soft perfume of burning wood, the white smoke of which diffuses itself in graceful curves around the room, the appearance of the whitewashed cell which greeted his eyes on awakening seemed like the continuation of some disagreeable dream. But in such a situation a single moment suffices to change the strongest doubt into certainty. "Yes, yes," he murmured, "I am in the hands of the brigands of whom Albert de Morcerf spoke." His first idea was to breathe, that he might know whether he was wounded. He borrowed this from "Don Quixote," the only book he had ever read, but which he still slightly remembered.
Moreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing forced him to this. If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In this avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there was acceptance of peril. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter. A false name is security, and he had rejected that false name. He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive? Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Jean Valjean might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. There existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man. Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.
"What is the stone in your ring?" Mitya interrupted suddenly, as though awakening from a reverie. He pointed to one of the three large rings adorning Nikolay Parfenovitch's right hand.
As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser--he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he was approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a wide- open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening from a dream and lifted his head.
“You call us defeatists; but the real defeatists are those who wait for a more propitious moment to conclude peace, insist upon postponing peace until later, until nothing is left of the Russian army, until Russia becomes the subject of bargaining between the different imperialist groups.... You are trying to impose upon the Russian people a policy dictated by the interests of the bourgeoisie. The question of peace should be raised without delay.... You will see then that not in vain has been the work of those whom you call German agents, of those Zimmerwaldists[7] who in all the lands have prepared the awakening of the conscience of the democratic masses....”
Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden!
The influence of the French Revolution, which pervaded all Europe, extended to the shores of the Aegean. The Greeks, who had hitherto been drawn together mainly by a common religion, were now animated by the sentiment of nationality and by an ardent desire for political freedom. The national awakening, as in the case of the other subject Christian nations, was preceded by a literary revival. Literary and patriotic societies, the Philhellenes, the Philomousi, came into existence; Greek schools were founded everywhere; the philological labours of Coraës, which created the modern written language, furnished the nation with a mode of literary expression; the songs of Rhigas of Velestino fired the enthusiasm of the people. In 1815 was founded the celebrated _Philiké Hetaerea_, or friendly society, a revolutionary organization with centres at Moscow, Bucharest, Triest, and in all the cities of the Levant; it collected subscriptions, issued manifestos, distributed arms and made preparations for the coming insurrection. The revolt of Ali Pasha of Iannina against the authority of the sultan in 1820 formed the prelude to the Greek uprising; this despot, who had massacred the Greeks by hundreds, now declared himself their friend, and became a member of the Hetaerea. In March 1821 Alexander Ypsilanti, a former aide-de-camp of the tsar Alexander I., and president of the Hetaerea, entered Moldavia from Russian territory at the head of a small force; in the same month Archbishop Germanos of Patras unfurled the standard of revolt at Kalavryta in the Morea. Entry: AUTHORITIES
EASTERN QUESTION, THE, the expression used in diplomacy from about the time of the congress of Verona (1822) to comprehend the international problems involved in the decay of the Turkish empire and its supposed impending dissolution. The essential questions that are involved are so old that historians commonly speak of the "Eastern Question" in reference to events that happened long before the actual phrase was coined. But, wherever used, it is always the Turkish Question, the generic term in which subsidiary issues, e.g. the Greek, Armenian or Macedonian questions, are embraced. That a phrase of so wide and loose a nature should have been stereotyped in so narrow a sense is simply the outcome of the conditions under which it was invented. To the European diplomatists of the first half of the 19th century the Ottoman empire was still the only East with which they were collectively brought into contact. The rivalry of Great Britain and Russia in Persia had not yet raised the question of the Middle East; still less any ambitions of Germany in the Euphrates valley. The immense and incalculable problems involved in the rise of Japan, the awakening of China, and their relations to the European powers and to America--known as the Far Eastern Question--are comparatively but affairs of yesterday. Entry: EASTERN
President Chauncy's great-grandson, CHARLES CHAUNCY (1705-1787), a prominent American theologian, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 1st of January 1705, and graduated at Harvard in 1721. In 1727 he was chosen as the colleague of Thomas Foxcroft (1697-1769) in the pastorate of the First Church of Boston, continuing as pastor of this church until his death. At the time of the "Great Awakening" of 1740-1743 and afterwards, Chauncy was the leader of the so-called "Old Light" party in New England, which strongly condemned the Whitefieldian revival as an outbreak of emotional extravagance. His views were ably presented in his sermon _Enthusiasm_ and in his _Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England_ (1743), written in answer to Jonathan Edwards's _Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England_ (1742). He also took a leading part in opposition to the projected establishment of an Anglican Episcopate in America, and before and during the American War of Independence he ardently supported the whig or patriot party. Theologically he has been classed as a precursor of the New England Unitarians. He died in Boston on the 10th of February 1787. His publications include: _Compleat View of Episcopacy, as Exhibited in the Fathers of the Christian Church, until the close of the Second Century_ (1771); _Salvation of All Men, Illustrated and Vindicated as a Scripture Doctrine_ (1782); _The Mystery Hid from Ages and Generations made manifest by the Gospel-Revelation_ (1783); and _Five Dissertations on the Fall and its Consequences_ (1785). Entry: CHAUNCY
Although the Middle High German period had thus not succeeded in effecting any permanent advance in the direction of a uniform literary language, the desire for a certain degree of uniformity was never again entirely lost. At the close of the 13th century literature had passed from the hands of the nobility to those of the middle classes of the towns; the number of writers who used the German tongue rapidly increased; later the invention of printing, the increased efficiency of the schools, and above all the religious movement of the Reformation, contributed to awakening the desire of being understood by those who stood outside the dialectic community of the individual. A single authoritative form of writing and spelling was felt on all sides to be particularly necessary. This was found in the language used officially by the various chanceries (_Kanzleien_), and more especially the imperial chancery. Since the days of Charles IV. (1347-1378) the latter had striven after a certain uniform language in the documents it issued, and by the time of Maximilian I. (1493-1519) all its official documents were characterized by pretty much the same phonology, forms and vocabulary, in whatever part of Germany they originated. And under Maximilian's successor, Charles V., the conditions remained pretty much the same. The fact that the seat of the imperial chancery had for a long time been in Prague, led to a mingling of Upper and Middle German sounds and inflections; but when the crown came with Frederick III. (1440-1493) to the Habsburgs, the Upper German elements were considerably increased. The chancery of the Saxon electorate, whose territory was exclusively Middle German, had to some extent, under the influence of the imperial chancery, allowed Upper German characteristics to influence its official language. This is clearly marked in the second half of the 15th century, and about the year 1500 there was no essential difference between the languages of the two chanceries. Thuringia, Silesia and Brandenburg soon followed suit, and even Low German could not ultimately resist the accepted High German notation (_ö_, _o_, _ü_, _u_, _ou_, _ie_, &c.). We have here very favourable conditions for the creation of a uniform literary language, and, as has already been said, the tendency to follow these authorities is clearly marked. Entry: MODERN