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Saturday, June 8, 2013

open mindedness

"...The capital period of my intellectual development was when I could see clearly that what the intellect said might be correct and not correct, that what the intellect justified was true and its opposite was also true. I never admitted a truth in the mind without simultaneously keeping it open to the contrary of it.. And the first result was that the prestige of the intellect was gone..."Aurobindo quoted in Satprem's Adventure of Consciousness
"...The (mind)... seems to deal effectively only with parts of the total reality. It directs its attention to discrete and separate parts of the whole. In order that it may understand, the mind separates and conceptualises. It separates that which is connected and the very process of separation distorts an understanding of the whole. The mind thinks in sequence in time. The present is a fleeting moment and is then gone forever. Thoughts are so much grist to its mill. Words and concepts are the instruments of its trade. The mind seeks to clarify one concept by having recourse to another. It defines one word with another. There is no end to this process nor is there a starting point. The mind deals in opposites. There is no idealism without materialism; there are no means without ends; there is no detachment without attachment; there is no free will without determinism; there is no good without bad. If everything was good what would it mean? Presumably, we would stop using the word..." Nadesan Satyendra On the Bhavad Gita, 1981
"...all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing. To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence of all description, and thus the essence of the world. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. What can be shown, cannot be said. There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence..." Ludwig Wittgenstein 

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