United States or Nigeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The primordial substance corresponding to the "protyle" of our Monists is composed of Five Elements, which are mystically identified with Five Buddhas, all of whom are really but different modes of the One. With this idea of a primordial substance there is necessarily associated the idea of a universal sentiency. Matter is alive. Now to the German monists also matter is alive.
But in all the stillness, what sentiency, what passion as in her heart! Could she not draw HIM to her from those woods, from that dark gleaming river, draw him from the flowers and trees and the passion-mood of the sky draw him up to her waiting here, so that she was no more this craving creature, but one with him and the night! And she let her head droop down on her hands.
And yet ! Just as in this spring night Felix felt so much, so very much, lying out there behind the still and moony dark, such marvellous holding of breath and waiting sentiency, so behind this innocent petition, he could not help the feeling of a lurking fatefulness. That was absurd. And he said: "If you wish it, by all means.
For the moment she was benumbed, out-wearied with effort and enervated by the strain and depletion of force. She wished herself unconscious again, and looked back into the absence of sentiency from which she had issued, as a pilgrim reëntering the desert may recall the groves of Mekka and the silence of the Khabian tomb.
There is nothing in the testimony of those who have described, as best they could, their emotions upon attainment of this consciousness, which would argue the absorption of the individual soul into The Absolute. There is no testimony to argue that the attainment of cosmic consciousness, carries with it anything approaching annihilation of sentiency.
But all these monist ideas enter into surprising combination with the Buddhist teaching about matter as integrated Karma; and for that reason they are well worth citing in this relation. To Buddhist conception all matter is sentient, the sentiency varying according to condition: "even rocks and stones," a Japanese Buddhist text declares, "can worship Buddha."
"Son," the mystic's voice rang out, "now give yourself to your love for her with your strength!" Presently a warm glow flowed up into Skag's feet, filling his person and extending his physical sentiency into her body. That body was utterly bound in a strange vise very heavy; as if every particle of every part were separately frozen. . . . It seemed to Skag as if he could not breathe.
Nor, when we turn to organized things, do we find that it has any relation to the phenomena of plant-life; though we ascribe to plants superiorities and inferiorities, leading to successes and failures in the struggle for existence, we do not associate with them praise or blame. It is only with the rise of sentiency in the animal world that the subject-matter of ethics originates."
Spencer would probably acknowledge that we know of matter only as an aggregate of forces, and of atoms only as force-centres, or knots of force, he would not declare that an atom is a force-centre, and nothing else.... But we find evolutionists of the German school taking a position very similar to the Buddhist position, which implies a universal sentiency, or, more strictly speaking, a universal potential-sentiency.
Less like a revival of the dreams of the Alchemists is the very probable hypothesis of Schneider, that sentiency begins with the formation of certain combinations, that feeling is evolved from the non-feeling just as organic being has been evolved from inorganic substance.
Word Of The Day