Spirituality -A garden of wisdom. Jiddu Krishnamurti

[Bolusbikker]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberty bit hypocritical not?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom

liberty and freedom are far from being found in modern civilisation
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You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know we all want to change your head
You tell me, it's the institution.
Well, you know you better free your mind instead.

[The Cat]

Words like Freedom, Liberty, Love, God, Death, can hardly be defined except by what they are not. They refer to things beyond concepts, beyond what the mind can ever grasp, like Liberty as the absence of coertion, Love as the absence of fear, Silence the absence of noise, etc. Because fear, coertion, noise are the things of the mind so forevermore in darkness and ignorance of the Infinite, the Eternity of the Present Being. These words come into existence -only- when the mind is absent.


The disastrous heritage of philosophers like Plato & Aristotle in matter of spirituality, holding that speculations bring about comprehension, understanding and harmony, along with the 'Abrahamisation' of God, its 'nationalisation', like a copyright over the truth, led us straight to sectarian madness, while inculcating religious racism, its hatred for allegiances. There is no such thing as 'Peace of Mind'.



For newcomers...
I need to repeat that ending page 1 is a summary of all pages therein + links to every 5 pages.
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

--The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus (in 1883) engraved on a plaque in 1903.
''Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,
The tempest -tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.''



Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
--Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all
members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.


Facts about the Statue of Liberty (much more found into the site):
http://www.endex.com/gf/buildings/liberty/libertyfacts.htm

-Date Construction of the Statue began in France: 1875.
-Title of Statue: "Liberty Enlightening the World."
-Sculptor: Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
-Structural Engineer: Gustave Eiffel.
-Method of Fabrication: Repousse Process.
-Statue completed in Paris: June 1884.
-Statue presented to America by the people of France: July 4, 1884.
-Statue dismantled and shipped to US: Early 1885.
-Architect of the pedestal: Richard Morris Hunt (in 1877).
-Date of Final Assembly of statue & pedestal: 1886.

-Inscription on tablet: "July 4, 1776" (in Roman numerals); Independence from Britain: July 4, 1776.
-Number of spikes in the crown: Seven rays of the diadem (7 oceans of the World).
- 25 windows in the crown represent: "natural minerals" of the earth.
- Toga represents: The Ancient Republic of Rome.
- Torch represents: Enlightenment.
- Chains underfoot represent: Liberty crushing the chains of slavery.


We could then as well name it: The Statue of Enlightenment!
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

Quotes on Freedom... -1-
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_freedom.html
http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/freedom/
http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/freedom_liberty_quotes.htm
My notebooks.

Abraham Lincoln:
--As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. (On FFI front page).

--Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot retain it.

Albert Einstein:
--All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Alexander Meiklejohn:
--Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh:
--Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.

Archibald Macleish:
--Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

Benjamin Franklin:
--They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

C. Wright Mills:
--Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.

Clarence Darrow:
--You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

Dorothy Thompson:
--Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

--It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

Epictetus:
--We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
--The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.

--In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.



Liberty as Enlightenment in the midst of adversity.

_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

Quotes on Freedom: -2- (View on the Statue of Liberty from World Trade Center).


Frederick Douglass:
--Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

Goethe:
--None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

George Bernard Shaw:
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

George Orwell:
--Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Haile Selassie I - California 28th February 1968:
--Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; that until there is no longer any first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; that until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; that until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race -- until that day, the dreams of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

H. L. Mencken:
--Freedom isn't free.

--I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

--The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

Henry David Thoreau (precursor of Gandhi's Ahimsa):
--Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Hodding Carter:
There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.


James Madison:
--Conscience is the most sacred of all property.

John Adams:
--While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.

John Dewey:
--The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.

John F. Kennedy:
--We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

--The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

--Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.

--Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

Quotes on Freedom. -3-

John Philpot Curran:
--It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. (1790)

John Stewart Mill:
--The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Margaret Sanger:
--A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.


Marianne Williamson:
--As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marilyn Ferguson:
--Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:
--Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Noam Chomsky:
--In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Patrick Henry: --Is life so
dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!
I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!


Peyton Conway March:
--There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Ramsey Clark:
--A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.

Rosa Luxembourg:
--Liberty is the power to think differently.

Samuel Adams:
--If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Somerset Maugham:
--If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

Søren Kierkegaard:
--People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have. For example, the freedom of thought. Instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.


Thomas Jefferson:
--I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of people.

--Liberty is the great parent of science and virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.

--Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestous sea of Liberty.

--The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

--I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

--I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

--We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is left to combat it.

Voltaire:
--So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

William O. Douglas:
--Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions.
It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.



Page 21 are found many quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and J.F. Kennedy.
Page 36-37, we read large excerpts from Henry-David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

''In the end a fundamental decision must be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? (...) People must be protected from discremination by virtue of their race, but you cannot ring-fence their ideas. The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether its a belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision or contempt, freedom of thoughts become impossible'' --Salman Rushdie.

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''The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism'' --Wole Soyinka (Nigerian author).

_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

The mind must feed on passions, no doubt, but many out of them turn out to be dreadful illusions, like gambling and drugy addictions, which are but destructive ways to get rid of the ego's burden, yet so far away from the Enlightenment of Being Realized! This, in my understanding, is the real meaning behind the Christ's Passion, crucified on the Cross of karma, or conflictual opposites.

Thus Passions can only be redeemed by the 'sacrifice' of the ego on his way to Transfiguration and Realisation. This reading is far more reaching than the mere torture of a man, which we own to our spiritual pettiness. Don't we all have to 'carry the cross' as nailed to our passions? Like self-called religions, carrying the hell of selfishness, idolatry on the altar of vanity as neurotic obsessions too.


Kahlil Gibran: On Freedom.
And an orator said,
"Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:

At the city gate and by your fireside
I have seen you prostrate yourself
And worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble
Themselves before a tyrant
And praise him though he slays them.

Ay, in the grove of the temple
And in the shadow of the citadel
I have seen the freest among you
Wear their freedom
As a yoke and a handcuff.

And my heart bled within me;
For you can only be free
When even the desire
Of seeking freedom
Becomes a harness to you,
And when you cease
To speak of freedom
As a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days
Are not without a care nor your nights
Without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things
Girdle your life and yet
You rise above them
Naked and unbound.

And how shall you rise
Beyond your days and nights
Unless you break the chains which you
At the dawn of your understanding
Have fastened around your noon hour?

In truth that which you call freedom
Is the strongest of these chains,
Though its links glitter
In the sun and dazzle the eyes.

And what is it but fragments of your own self
You would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish,
That law was written with your own hand
Upon your own forehead.

You cannot erase it by burning your law books
Nor by washing the foreheads of your judges,
Though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone,
See first that his throne
Erected within you is destroyed.

For how can a tyrant rule
The free and the proud,
But for a tyranny in their own freedom
And a shame in their won pride?

And if it is a care you would cast off,
That care has been chosen by you
Rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel,
The seat of that fear is in your heart
And not in the hand of the feared.

Verily all things move within your being
In constant half embrace,
The desired and the dreaded,
The repugnant and the cherished,
The pursued and that
Which you would escape.

These things move within you as lights
And shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more,
The light that lingers becomes
A shadow to another light.

And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters
Becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

______________________________________________________
It was published page 40 but since it fit even better here, I replaced it over there by yet another Kahlil's topic: 'On Talking'. So really, page 40 is where the new posting is found. Excerpted from 'On Talking': ''For thought is a bird of space that in a cage of words. Many indeed unfold its wing but cannot fly. There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.''

From Mr K. Gibran, we now have: 'On Love' (p.31); 'On Marriage and Children' (p.32); 'On Giving' (p.33); 'On Religion' (p.34); 'On Work' (p.35); 'On Talking' (p.40) and 'On Pain' (p.43).

''Know thyself and you'll know the world and the gods'' Socrates.
''Know the Truth and the Truth shall set you Free'' (-John 8.32-);
''Before Abraham was, I AM'' (-Jn.8.58-):

i.e. Don't worship the past but rather be Realized in the Eternity
of the Present Being, that which can only be found Here and Now.
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[Lotus Feet]

The Universal Flag of Oneness

A beautiful presentation
http://www.universalflag.com

Love

Lotus Feet
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Sons of God commit no violence in thought, word or deed. For they are the light of divine love.

[Lotus Feet]

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. - Psalm 19:7f
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Sons of God commit no violence in thought, word or deed. For they are the light of divine love.

[The Cat]

Last time I made a stretch of posts, under the theme of freedom, it was to salute the 20,000th hit on this thread. Although it was dormant since then (mid-Jan.) still 5,000 hits were added. Since I didn't prepare much yet for this 'Resurrection', I will in a first post (and to make a bridge) bring out one more item from Kahlil Gibran's Prophet.

Of Reason and Passion
And the priestess spoke again and said:
"Speak to us of Reason and Passion."
And he answered saying:

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield,
Upon which your reason and your judgment
Wage war against passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul,
That I might turn the discord and the rivalry
Of your elements into oneness and melody.
But how shall I, unless you yourselves
Be also the peacemakers,
Nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder
And the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or our rudder be broken,
You can but toss and drift, or else
Be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining;
And passion, unattended, is a flame
That burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason
To the height of passion; that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason,
That your passion may live through
Its own daily resurrection, and like
The phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite
Even as you would two loved guests in your house.
Surely you would not honour one guest above the other;
For he who is more mindful of one
Loses the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit
In the cool shade of the white poplars,
Sharing the peace and serenity
Of distant fields and meadows –
Then let your heart say in silence,
"God rests in reason."

And when the storm comes,
And the mighty wind shakes the forest,
And thunder and lightning
Proclaim the majesty of the sky, -
Then let your heart say in awe,
"God moves in passion."

And since you are a breath In God's sphere,
And a leaf in God's forest,
You too should rest in reason
And move in passion.
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; And passion, unattended, is a flame that burns
to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion;
that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live
through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

Artwork by Steve Higgs.

The Phoenix Legend (Egyptian Benu; Vedic Vena; Kabbala: Milcham)
http://www.fengshuimiracle.com/legend_of_phoenix.shtml
http://www.phoenixarises.com/
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

And since you are a breath in God's sphere,
and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

A forest road in Russia...
_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[The Cat]

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails
or our rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

_________________
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.

[IamThat]