BOOK 9 -23

Children's tantrums and toys, 'tiny spirits carrying corpses' - the Underworld in the Odyssey strikes more real.

BOOK 9 -23

Just as you are a complimentary part of a social system, so too your every action should compliment a life of social principle. If any action of yours, then, does not have direct or indirect relation to the social end, it pulls your life apart and destroys its unity. It is a kind of sedition, like an individual in a democracy unilaterally resigning from the common harmony.

BOOK 9 -22

Hurry to your own directing mind, to the mind of the Whole, and to the mind of this particular man. To your own mind, to make its understanding just; to the mind of the Whole, to recall what you are part of; to this man's mind, to see whether there is ignorance or design - and at the same time to reflect that his is a kindred spirit.

BOOK 9 -21

The termination of an activity, the pause when an impulse or judgement is finished - this sort is a sort of death, but no harm in it. Turn now to the stages of your life - childhood, say adolescence, prime, old age. Here too each change a death: anything fearful in that? Turn now to your life with your grandfather, then your mother, then with your [adoptive] father. And as you find many other examples of dissolution, change, or termination, ask yourself : 'Was there anything to fear?' So too there is nothing to fear in the termination, the pause, and the change  of your your life.

BOOK 9 -20

You should leave another's wrong where it lies.

BOOK 9 -19

All things are in the process of change. You yourself are subject to constant alteration and gradual decay. So too is the whole universe.

BOOK 9 -18

Penetrate into their directing minds, and you will see what sort of critics you fear - and what poor critics they are of themselves.

BOOK 9 -17

A stone thrown in the air: nothing bad for it on the way down or good for it on the way up.

BOOK 9 -16

Good or ill for the rational social being lies not in feeling but in action: just as also his own virtue or vice shows not in what he feels, but in what he does.

BOOK 9 -15

Mere things stand isolated outside our doors, with no knowledge or report of themselves. What then reports on them? Our directing mind.

BOOK 9 -14

All things are the same: familiar in experience, transient in time, sordid in substance. Everything now is as it was in the days of those we have buried.

BOOK 9 -13

Today I escaped from all bothering circumstances - or rather I threw them out. They were nothing external, but inside me, just my own judgements.

BOOK 9 -12

Work. Don't work as a miserable drudge, or in any expectation of pity or admiration. One aim only: action or inaction as civic cause demands.

BOOK 9 -11

If you can , show them the better way. if you cannot, remember that this is why you have the gift of kindness. The gods too are kind to such people, and in their benevolence even help them achieve some ends - health, wealth, fame. You can do it too. Or tell me -who is stopping you?

BOOK 9 -10

Man, god, and the universe all bear fruit, each in its own due season. No matter if common use confines the strict sense of 'bearing fruit' to vines and the like. Reason too has its fruit, both universal and particular; other things grow from it which share its own nature.

BOOK 9 -9-4

Look then at what is happening right now. Only the intelligent creatures have now forgotten that urge to be unified with each other: only  here will you see no confluence. They may run from it, but nevertheless they are overtaken: such is the power of nature. Look carefully and you see what I mean. You are more likely to find earth not returning to earth than a man cut off from man.

BOOK 9 -9-3

So right from the beginning among the irrational creatures there could be seen hives, flocks,birds rearing their young, a sort of love: already there were animate souls at work there, and in the higher orders an increasingly strong collective bond which is not found in plants or stones or wood. And among the rational creatures there were civic communities, friendships, households, assemblies: and in war treaties  and truces. Among yet higher things there exists a sort of unity even at a distance, as with the stars. Thus the upper reaches of being can effect fellow-feeling even when the members are far apart.

BOOK 9 -9-2

So too everything which shares in a common intelligent nature tends equally, or yet more so, to its own kind. Proportionate to its superiority over the rest, it is that much readier to mix an blend with its family.

BOOK 9 -9

All things which share some common quality tend to their own kind. Everything earthy inclines to earth. Everything watery flows together, and the same with air, so they need physical obstacles to force a separation. Fire rises upwards because of the element fire, but is nevertheless so eager to help the ignition of any fire here below that any material which is a little too dry is easily ignited, for the lack of ingredients which hinder combustion.

BOOK 9 -8

Irrational creatures share in one animate soul, and rational creatures partake in one intelligent soul: just as is one earth for all the things of the earth, and one light to see by, one air to breath for all of us who have sight and life.

BOOK 9 -7

Erase the print of imagination, stop impulse, quench desire: keep your directing mind its own master.

BOOK 9 -6

These will suffice: the present certainty of judgement, the present social action, the present disposition well content with any effect of an external cause.

BOOK 9 -5-6

There can often be wrongs of omission as well commission.

BOOK 9 -5-5

The sinner sins against himself: the wrongdoer wrongs himself, by making himself morally bad.

BOOK 9 -5-4

If you want another criterion - unscientific but emotionally effective - you will find it quite easy to face death if you stop to consider the business you will be leaving and the sort of characters which will no longer contaminate your soul. You must not of course take offense at them, rather care for them and tolerate them kindly: but still remember that the deliverance death brings is not deliverance from the like-minded. This alone, if anything could, might pull you back and hold you to life - if you were allowed to live in the company of people who share your principles. But as things are you see how wearisome it is to live out of tune with your fellows, so that you say: 'Come quickly, death, or I too may forget myself.

BOOK 9 -5-3

Do not despise death: welcome it, rather, as one further part of nature's will. Our very dissolution is just like all the other natural processes which life's seasons bring - like youth and old age, growth and maturity, development  of teeth and beard and grey hair, insemination, pregnancy, and childbirth. In the dedicated attitude to death, then, there is nothing superficial or demanding or disdainful: simply awaiting it as one of the functions of nature. And just as you may now be waiting for the child your wife carries to come out of the womb, so you should look forward to the time when your soul will slip this bodily sheath.

BOOK 9 -5-2

A man of sense and sensitivity would depart the company of men without ever tasting falsehood, pretense of any kind, excess, or pomp. The next best course is at least to sicken of these things before your final breath. Or do you prefer to sit at table with wickedness? Has your experience not yet persuaded you to shun this plague? Because the corruption of the mind is much more a plague than any such contaminating change in the surrounding air we breathe. The latter infects animate creatures in their animate nature: the former infects human beings in their humanity.

BOOK 9 -5

By 'universal Nature treating these things indifferently' I mean that they happen impartially by cause and effect to all that comes into being and owes its being to the fulfillment of an original impulse of Providence. Under this impulse providence set out from a first premise to establish the present order of the universe: she had conceived certain principles of what was to be, and determined generative powers to create substances, transformations, and successive regeneration.

BOOK 9 -4

Further, anyone who fears pain will also at times be afraid of some future event in the world, and that is immediate sin. And a man who pursues pleasure will not hold back from injustice - an obvious sin. Those who wish to follow Nature and share her mind must themselves be indifferent to those pairs of opposites to which universal Nature is indifferent - she would not create these opposites if she were not indifferent either way. So anyone who is not himself indifferent to pain and pleasure, death and life, fame and obscurity - things which universal Nature treats indifferently - is clearly committing a sin.

BOOK 9 -3

Moreover, the pursuit of pleasure as a good and the avoidance of pain as an evil constitute sin. Someone like that must inevitably and frequently blame universal Nature for unfair distribution as between bad men and good, since bad men are often deep in pleasures and the possessions which make  for pleasure, while the good often meet with pain and the circumstances which cause pain.

BOOK 9 -2

Lying, too, is a sin against the same goddess: her name is Truth, and she is the original cause of all that is true. The conscious liar sins to the extent that his deceit causes injustice: the unconscious liar to the extent that he is out of tune with the nature of the Whole and out of order withe the nature of the ordered universe against which he fights. And it is fighting when he allows himself to be carried in opposition to the truth. He has received the prompts from nature: by ignoring them he is now incapable of distinguishing false from truth.

BOOK 9 -1

Injustice is sin. When universal nature has constituted rational creatures for the sake of each other - to benefit one another as deserved, but never to harm - anyone contravening her will is clearly guilty of sin against the oldest of the gods: because universal Nature is the nature of ultimate reality, to which all present existence is related.

BOOK 8 -61

Enter into the directing mind of everyone, and let anyone else enter your own.

BOOK 8 -60

An arrow flies in one way, the mind in another. Yet even when it is keeping on the alert or circling round an inquiry. the mind moves no less directly, and straight to its target. 

BOOK 8 -59

Men are born for the sake of each other. So either teach or tolerate.

BOOK 8 -58

He who fears death fears either unconsciousness or another sort of consciousness. Now if you will no longer be conscious you will not be conscious either of anything bad. If you are to take on a different consciousness, you will be a different being and life will not cease.

BOOK 8 -57

The sun appears to pour itself down, and indeed its light pours in all directions, but the stream does not run out. This pouring is linear extension: that is why its beams are called rays, because they radiate in extended lines. You can see what a ray is if you observe the sun's light entering a dark room through a narrow opening. It extends in a straight line and impacts, so to speak, on any solid body in its path which blocks passage throughout the air on the other side: it settles there and does not slip off or fall.

Something similar will be true of the flow and diffusion of the universal mind - not an exhaustible stream but rather a constant radiation. And there will be nothing forceful or violent in its impact on the obstacles it meets: it will not fall off, but will settle there and illuminate what it receives it.  Anything unreflective will deprive itself of that light.

BOOK 8 -56

To my determining will my neighbor's will is as indifferent as his breath and his body. Sure, we are born above all for the sake of each other: nevertheless the directing mind of each of us has its own sovereignty. Otherwise my neighbor's wickedness would be my own harm: and this was not god's intention, to leave my misfortune up to another.

BOOK 8 -55

Wickedness overall does no harm to the universe. Individual wickedness does no harm to the recipient: it is only harmful to the perpetrator, and he has the option to be rid of it just as soon as he himself decides.

BOOK 8 -54

Don't now just take your breath from the surrounding air, but take your thoughts too from the mind which embraces all things. The power of mind spreads everywhere and permeates no less than the air: it is there for all who want to absorb it, just like the air for those who can draw breath.

BOOK 8 -53

Do you want the praise of a man who curses himself three times an hour? Do you want to please a man who can't please himself?  Can a man please himself when he regrets almost everything he does?

BOOK 8 -52

Someone who does not know that there is an ordered universe does not know where he is. Someone who does not know the natural purpose of the universe does not know who he is or what the universe is. Someone who fails in any one of these ways could not tell the purpose of his own existence either. So what do you think of a man who fears or courts the applause of an audience who have no idea where they are or who they are?

BOOK 8 -51

Do not be dilatory in action, muddled in communication, or vague in thought. Don't let your mind settle into depression or elation. Allow some leasure in your life.

'They kill, they cut in pieces, they hunt with curses.'

What relevance has this to keeping your mind pure, sane and sober, just? As if a man were to come up to a spring of clear, sweet water and curse it - it would still continue to bubble up water good to drink. He could throw in mud or dung: in no time the spring will break it down, wash it away, and take no color from it. How then can you secure an everlasting spring and not a cistern? By keeping yourself at all times intent on freedom - and staying kind, and decent.

BOOK 8 -50

A bitter cucumber? Throw it away. Brambles in the path? Go round them. That is al you need, without going on to ask, 'So why are these things in the world anyway? That question would be laughable to a student of nature, just as any carpenter or cobbler would laugh at you if you objected to the sight of shavings or cut-offs from their wrk on the shop floor. Yet they have somewhere to throw their rubbish, whereas the nature of the Whole has nothing outside itself. The marvel of its craft is that it sets its own confines and recycles into itself all within them which seems to be decaying, growing old, or losing its use: and then creates afresh from the same material. This way it requires no substance other that its own, and has no need for a rubbish-dump. So it is complete in its own space, its own material, and its own craftsmanship.

BOOK 8-49

Do not elaborate to yourself beyond what your initial impressions report. You have been told that so-and-so is maligning you. That is the report: you have been told that you are harmed. I see that my little boy is ill. That is what I see: I do not see that he is in danger. So always stay like this within your first impressions and do not add conclusions from your own thoughts - and then that is all. Or rather you can add the conclusion of one acquainted with all that happens in the world.

BOOK 8 -48

Remember that your directing mind becomes invincible when it withdraws into it own self-sufficiency, not doing anything it does not wish to do, even if its position is unreasonable. How much more, then, when the judgement it forms is reasoned and deliberate? That is why a mind free from passions is a fortress: people have no stronger place of retreat, and someone taking refuge here is impregnable. Anyone who has not seen this is short of wisdom: anyone who has seen it and does not take refuge is short of fortune.

BOOK 8 -47

If your distress has some external cause, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgement of it - and you can erase this immediately. If it is something in your attitude that distresses you, no one stops you correcting your view. So too if you are distressed at not achieving some action you think salutary, why not carry on rather than fret? 

'But there's an obstacle in the way too solid to move.'

No cause for distress, then, since the reason for failure does not lie with you. 

'But life is not worth living I fail this.' 

Well then, you must depart this life as gracious in death as one who does achieve purpose, and at peace, too, with those who stood in your way.

BOOK 8 -46

Nothing can happen to any human being outside the experience which is natural to humans - an ox too experiences nothing foreign to the nature of the oxen, a vine nothing foreign to the nature of vines, a stone nothing outside the property of a stone. So if each thing experiences what is usual and natural for it, why should you complain? Universal nature has brought you nothing you can't endure.

BOOK 8 -45

Pick me up and throw me where you will. Wherever I land I shall keep the god within me happy - satisfied, that is, if attitude and action follow its own constitution.

Is this present thing any good for my human soul to be sick and out of sorts - humbled, craving, shackled, shying? Will you find any good reason for that?

BOOK 8 -44

Look, make yourself a gift of this present time. Those who are more inclined to pursue fame hereafter fail to reckon that the next generation will have people just like those they dislike now: and they too will die. What, anyway is it to you if this is the echo in future voices and this the judgement they make of you?