life consists in the humble prayers

Higher stages still of contemplation are mentioned--a region where there exists nothing, and wherethe mediator says bioderma matricium: "There exists absolutely nothing," and stops. Then he reaches another regionwhere he says: "There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas," and stops again. Then another regionwhere, "having reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops finally." This would seem tobe, not yet Nirvana, but as close an approach to it as this life affords.[247]

[247] I follow the account in C. F. Koeppen: Die Religion des Buddha, Berlin, 1857, i. 585 ff.

In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish bodies are the possessors of themystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheismis so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested thatSufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little ofSufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. To give its existence a certain livelinessin your minds, I will quote a Moslem document, and pass away from the subject.

Al-Ghazzali, a Persian philosopher and theologian, who flourished in the eleventh century, andranks as one of the greatest doctors of the Moslem church, has left us one of the fewautobiographies to be found outside of Christian literature. Strange that a species of book soabundant among ourselves should be so little represented elsewhere--the absence of strictlypersonal confessions is the chief difficulty to the purely literary student who would like to becomeacquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian. M. Schmolders has translateda part of Al-Ghazzali's autobiography into French:[248]-[248] For a full account of him, see D. B. Macdonald: The Life Of Al-Ghazzali, in the Journal ofthe American Oriental Society, 1899, vol. xx., p. 71.

"The Science of the Sufis," says the Moslem author, "aims at detaching the heart from all that isnot God, and at giving to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. Theory beingmore easy for me than practice, I read [certain books] until I understood all that can be learned bystudy and hearsay. Then I recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is justwhat no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul. How great,for example, is the difference between knowing the definitions of health, of satiety, with theircauses and conditions , and being really healthy or filled. How different to know in whatdrunkenness consists--as being a state occasioned by a vapor that rises from the stomach--andBEING drunk effectively. Without doubt, the drunken man knows neither the definition ofdrunkenness nor what makes it interesting for science. Being drunk, he knows nothing; whilst thephysician, although not drunk knows well in what drunkenness consists, and what are itspredisposing conditions. Similarly there is a difference between knowing the nature of abstinence,and BEING abstinent or having one's soul detached from the world.--Thus I had learned whatwords could teach of Sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through theears, but solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life.

"Reflecting on my situation, I found myself tied down by a multitude of bonds--temptations onevery side. Considering my teaching, I found it was impure before God. I saw myself strugglingwith all my might to achieve glory and to spread my name. [Here follows an account of his sixmonths' hesitation to break away from the conditions of his life at Bagdad, at the end of which hefell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] Then, feeling my own weakness, and having entirely givenup my own will, I repaired to God like a man in distress who has no more resources. He answered,as he answers the wretch who invokes him. My heart no longer felt any difficulty in renouncingglory, wealth, and my children. So I quitted Bagdad, and reserving from my fortune only what wasindispensable for my subsistence, I distributed the rest. I went to Syria, where I remained abouttwo years, with no other occupation than living in retreat and solitude, conquering my desires,combating my passions, training myself to purify my soul, to make my character perfect, toprepare my heart for meditating on God--all according to the methods of the Sufis, as I had read ofthem.

"This retreat only increased my desire to live in solitude, and to complete the purification of myheart and fit it for meditation. But the vicissitudes of the times, the affairs of the family, the needof subsistence, changed in some respects my primitive resolve, and interfered with my plans for apurely solitary life. I had never yet found myself completely in ecstasy, save in a few single hours;nevertheless, I kept the hope of attaining this state. Every time that the accidents led me astray, Isought to return; and in this situation I spent ten years. During this solitary state things wererevealed to me which it is impossible either to describe or to point out. I recognized for certain thatthe Sufis are assuredly walking in the path of God. Both in their acts and in their inaction, whetherinternal or external, they are illumined by the light which proceeds from the prophetic source.

Thefirst condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of thecontemplative which escape from the fervent soul, and in themeditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only thebeginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The intuitions and allthat precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. From the beginningrevelations take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, theangels and the souls of the prophets.

They hear their voices and obtain their favors. Then thetransport rises from the perception of forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression,and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin. "Whosoeverhas had no experience of the transport knows of the true nature of prophetism nothing but thename. He may meanwhile be sure of its existence, both by experience and by what he hears theSufis say. As there are men endowed only with the sensitive faculty who reject what is offeredthem in the way of objects of the pure understanding, so there are intellectual men who reject andavoid the things perceived by the prophetic faculty. A blind man can understand nothing of colorssave what he has learned by narration and hearsay. Yet God has brought prophetism near to men ingiving them all a state analogous to it in its principal characters.

This state is sleep. If you were totell a man who was himself without experience of such a phenomenon that there are people who attimes swoon away so as to resemble dead men, and who [in dreams] yet perceive things that arehidden, he would deny it [and give his reasons]. Nevertheless, his arguments would be refuted byactual experience. Wherefore, just as the understanding is a stage of human life in which an eyeopens to discern various intellectual objects uncomprehended by sensation; just so in the propheticthe sight is illumined by a light which uncovers hidden things and objects which the intellect failsto reach. The chief properties of prophetism are perceptible only during the transport, by those whoembrace the Sufi life SUV.

any persuasions and much hesitation

The old man returned home in a state bordering on insanity, rushed to his bed and lay for a whole hour without moving. At last he got up, and to Anna Andreyevna’s

horror announced that he should curse his daughter for ever and deprive her of his fatherly blessing.

Anna Andreyevna was horrified, but she had to look after the old man, and, hardly knowing what she was doing, she waited upon him all that day and night, wetting his

head with vinegar and putting ice on it. He was feverish and delirious. It was past two o’clock in the night when I left them. But next morning Ichmenyev got up,

and he came the same day to me to take Nellie home with him for good. I have already described his scene with Nellie. This scene shattered him completely. When he

got home he went to bed. All this happened on Good Friday, the day fixed for Katya to see Natasha, and the day before Alyosha and Katya were to leave Petersburg. I

was present at the interview. It took place early in the morning, before Ichmenyev’s visit, and before Nellie ran away the first time .
Part 4 Chapter 6
ALYOSHA had come an hour before the interview to prepare Natasha. I arrived at the very moment when Katya’s carriage drew up at the gate. Katya was accompanied by

an old French lady, who after m had consented at last to accompany her. She had even agreed to let Katya go up to Natasha without

her, but only on condition that Alyosha escorted her while she remained in the carriage. Katya beckoned to me, and without getting out of the carriage asked me to

call Alyosha down. I found Natasha in tears. Alyosha and she were both crying. Hearing that Katya was already there, she got up from the chair, wiped her eyes, and

in great excitement stood up, facing the door. She was dressed that morning all in white. Her dark brown hair was smoothly parted and gathered back in a thick knot.

I particularly liked that way of doing her hair. Seeing that I was remaining with her, Natasha asked me, too, to go and meet the visitor.

“I could not get to Natasha’s before,” said Katya as she mounted the stairs. “I’ve been so spied on that it’s awful. I’ve been persuading Mme. Albert for a

whole fortnight, and at last she consented. And you have never once been to see me, Ivan Petrovitch! I couldn’t write to you either, and I don’t feel inclined to.

One can’t explain anything in a letter. And how I wanted to see you. . . . Good heavens, how my heart is beating.”

“The stairs are steep,” I answered.

“Yes . . apartment hong kong. the stairs . . . . tell me, what do you think, won’t Natasha be angry with me?”

made all sorts of promises

“Natasha,” I said, “there’s only one thing I don’t understand. How can you love him after what you’ve just said about him yourself? You don’t respect him, you don’t even believe in his love, and you’re going to him irrevocably and are ruining everyone for his sake. What’s the meaning of it? He’ll torture you so as to spoil your whole life; yes , and you his, too. You love him too much, Natasha, too much! I don’t understand such love!”
“Yes, I love him as though I were mad,” she answered, turning pale as though in bodily pain. “I never loved you like that, Vanya. I know I’ve gone out of my mind, and don’t love him as I ought to. I don’t love him in the right way PolyU has offered a wide variety of Student Development programmes, covering entrepreneurship development, placement / internship programmes and student exchange Programmes, altogether nurturing tomorrow's leaders.. . . . Listen, Vanya, I knew beforehand, and even in our happiest moments I felt that he would bring me nothing but misery. But what is to be done if even torture from him is happiness to me now? Do you suppose I’m going to him to meet joy? Do you suppose I don’t know beforehand what’s in store for me, or what I shall have to bear from him? Why, he’s sworn to love me, ; but I don’t trust one of his promises. I don’t set any value on them, and I never have, though I knew he wasn’t lying to me, and can’t lie. I told him myself, myself, that I don’t want to bind him in any way. That’s better with him; no one likes to be tied — I less than any,. And yet I’m glad to be his slave, his willing slave; to put up with anything from him, anything, so long as he is with me, so long as I can look at him! I think he might even love another woman if only I were there, if only I might be near. Isn’t it abject, Vanya?” she asked, suddenly looking at me with a sort of feverish, haggard look. For one instant it seemed to me she was delirious. “Isn’t it abject, such a wish? What if it is? I say that it is abject myself. Yet if he were to abandon me I should run after him to the ends of the earth, even if he were to repulse me, even if he were to drive me away. You try to persuade me to go back-but what use is that? If I went back I should come away tomorrow. He would tell me to and I should come; he would call, would whistle to me like a dog, and I should run to him. . . . Torture! I don’t shrink from any torture from him! I should know it was at his hands I was suffering! . . . Oh, there’s no telling it, Vanya!”
“And her father and mother?” I thought. She seemed to have already forgotten them.
“Then he’s not going to marry you, Natasha?”
“He’s promised to. He’s promised everything. It’s for that he’s sent for me now; to be married tomorrow, secretly, out of town. But you see, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Very likely he doesn’t know how one gets married. And what a husband! It’s absurd really. And if he does get married he won’t be happy; he’ll begin to reproach me. . . . I don’t want him to reproach me with anything, ever. I’ll give up everything for him, and let him do nothing for me! If he’s going to be unhappy from being married, why make him unhappy?”
“Yes, this is a sort of frenzy, Natasha,” said I. “Well, are you going straight to him now?”
“No, he promised to come here to fetch me. We agreed.”
And she looked eagerly into the distance, but as yet there was no-one.
“And he’s not here yet. And you’ve come first!” I cried with indignation.
Natasha staggered as though from a blow. Her face worked convulsively.
“He may not come at all,” she said with bitter mockery.
The day before yesterday he wrote that if I didn’t give him my word that I’d come, he would be obliged to put off his plan-of going away and marrying me; and his father will take him with him to the young lady. And he wrote it so simply, so naturally, as if it were nothing at all. . . . What if he really has gone to her, Vanya?”
I did not answer. She squeezed my hand tight, and her eyes glittered.
“He is with her,” she brought out, scarcely audibly. “He hoped I would not come here, so that he might go to her, and say afterwards that he was in the right, that he told me beforehand I wouldn’t, and I didn’t. He’s tired of me, so he stays away. Ach, my God! I’m mad! Why, he told me himself last time that I wearied him. . . . What am I waiting for?”
“Here he is,” I cried, suddenly catching sight of him on the embankment in the distance.
Natasha started, uttered a shriek, gazed intently at Alyosha’s approaching figure, and suddenly, dropping my hand, rushed to meet him. He, too, quickened his pace, and in a minute she was in his arms Dream beauty pro hard sell.

makes for eloquence

He had the knack of the plausible phrase and that  which . Mr. Barnstaple forgot that slight impediment and the thickness of the voice that said these things. Mr. Catskill boldly admitted all the earthly evils and dangers that Mr. Burleigh had retailed. Everything that Mr. Burleigh had said was true. All that he had said fell indeed far short of the truth. Famine we knew, and pestilence. We suffered from a thousand diseases that Utopia had eliminated. We were afflicted by a thousand afflictions that were known to Utopia now only by ancient tradition. “The rats gnaw and the summer flies persecute and madden. At times life reeks and stinks. I admit it, Sir, I admit it. We go down far below your extremest experiences into discomforts and miseries, anxieties and anguish of soul and body, into bitterness, terror and despair. Yea. But do we not also go higher? I challenge you with that. What can you know in this immense safety of the intensity, the frantic, terror-driven intensity, of many of our efforts? What can you know of reprieves and interludes and escapes? Think of our many happinesses beyond your ken! What do you know here of the sweet early days of convalescence? Of going for a holiday out of disagreeable surroundings? Of taking some great risk to body or fortune and bringing it off? Of winning a bet against enormous odds? Of coming out of prison? And, Sir, it has been said that there are those in our world who have found a fascination even in pain itself. Because our life is dreadfuller, Sir, it has, and it must have, moments that are infinitely brighter than yours. It is titanic, Sir, where this is merely tidy. And we are inured to it and hardened by it. We are tempered to a finer edge. That is the point to which I am coming. Ask us to give up our earthly disorder, our miseries and distresses, our high death-rates and our hideous diseases, and at the first question every man and woman in the world would say, ‘Yes! Willingly, Yes!’ At the first question, Sir!”

Mr. Catskill held his audience for a moment on his extended finger.

“And then we should begin to take thought. We should ask, as you say your naturalists asked about your flies and suchlike offensive small game, we should ask, ‘What goes with it? What is the price?&rsquo Veda Salon; And when we learnt that the price was to surrender that intensity of life, that tormented energy, that pickled and experienced toughness, that rat-like, wolf-like toughness our perpetual struggle engenders, we should hesitate. We should hesitate. In the end, Sir, I believe, I hope and believe, indeed I pray and believe, we should say, ‘No!’ We should say, ‘No!’”

Mr. Catskill was now in a state of great cerebral exaltation. He was making short thrusting gestures with his clenched fist. His voice rose and fell and boomed; he swayed and turned about, glanced for the approval of his fellow Earthlings, flung stray smiles at Mr. Burleigh.

This idea that our poor wrangling, nerveless, chance-driven world was really a fierce and close-knit system of powerful reactions in contrast with the evening serenities of a made and finished Utopia, had taken complete possession of his mind. “Never before, Sir, have I realized, as I realize now, the high, the terrible and adventurous destinies of our earthly race. I look upon this Golden Lotus Land of yours, this divine perfected land from which all conflict has been banished —”

Mr. Barnstaple caught a faint smile on the face of the woman who had reminded him of the Delphic Sibyl.

“— and I admit and admire its order and beauty as some dusty and resolute pilgrim might pause, on his exalted and mysterious quest, and admit and admire the order and beauty of the pleasant gardens of some prosperous Sybarite. And like that pilgrim I may beg leave, Sir, to question the wisdom of your way of living. For I take it, Sir, that it is now a proven thing that life and all the energy and beauty of life are begotten by struggle and competition and conflict; we were moulded and wrought in hardship, and so, Sir, were you. And yet you dream here that you have eliminated conflict for ever. Your economic state, I gather, is some form of socialism; you have abolished competition in all the businesses of peace. Your political state is one universal unity; you have altogether cut out the bracing and ennobling threat and the purging and terrifying experience of war. Everything is ordered and provided for. Everything is secure. Everything is secure, Sir, except for one thing USR. . . .

“I grieve to trouble your tranquillity, Sir, but I must breathe the name of that one forgotten thing — degeneration! What is there here to prevent degeneration? Are you preventing degeneration?