nonfiction-books

"Then a Voice said: "Behold this day, for it is yours to make. Now you shall stand upon the center of the earth to see, for there they are taking you.""

"Then the bay horse spoke to me again and said: "See how your horses all come dancing!" I looked, and there were horses, horses everywhere — a whole skyful of horses dancing around me."

"To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother—and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to me and I have seen. At the center of this sacred hoop you have said that I should make the tree to bloom. With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather — with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather. Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!"

"Then I saw ahead the rainbow flaming above the tepee of the Six Grandfathers, built and roofed with cloud and sewed with thongs of lightning; and underneath it were all the wings of the air and under them the animals and men. All these were rejoicing, and thunder was like happy laughter. As I rode in through the rainbow door, there were cheering voices from all over the universe, and I saw the Six Grandfathers sitting in a row, with their arms held toward me and their hands, palms out; and behind them in the cloud were faces thronging, without number, of the people yet to be."

"They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear's uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life. I knew it was the Grandfathers in the Flaming Rainbow Tepee who had cured me; but I felt afraid to say so."

"Then a song of power came to me and I sang it there in the midst of that terrible place where I was. It went like this:"

"Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children."

"Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished."

"Crazy Horse's father was my father's cousin, and there were no chiefs in our family before Crazy Horse; but there were holy men; and he became a chief because of the power he got in a vision when he was a boy. When I was a man, my father told me something about that vision. Of course he did not know all of it; but he said that Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world. He was on his horse in that world, and the horse and himself on it and the trees and the grass and the stones and everything were made of spirit, and nothing was hard, and everything seemed to float. His horse was standing still there, and yet it danced around like a horse made only of shadow, and that is how he got his name, which does not mean that his horse was crazy or wild, but that in his vision it danced around in that queer way."

"Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you — the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other. The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross; and where they cross, the place is holy."

"Behold," he said, "all the wings of the air shall come to you, and they and the winds and the stars shall be like relatives."

"A long time ago my father told me what his father told him, that there was once a Lakota holy man, called Drinks Water, who dreamed what was to be; and this was long before the coming of the Wasichus. He dreamed that the four-leggeds were going back into the earth and that a strange race had woven a spider's web all around the Lakotas. And he said: "When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve." They say he went back to Mother Earth soon after he saw this vision, and it was sorrow that killed him. You can look about you now and see that he meant these dirt-roofed houses we are living in, and that all the rest was true. Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking."

"But if the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost."

"Flames were rising from the waters and in the flames a blue man lived."

"My bay had lightning stripes all over him and his mane was cloud. And when I breathed, my breath was lightning."

"Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy."

"Everybody was glad that I was living; but as I lay there thinking about the wonderful place where I had been and all that I had seen, I was very sad; for it seemed to me that everybody ought to know about it, but I was afraid to tell, because I knew that nobody would believe me, little as I was, for I was only nine years old. Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body, but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me. I am sure now that I was then too young to understand it all, and that I only felt it. It was the pictures I remembered and the words that went with them; for nothing I have ever seen with my eyes was so clear and bright as what my vision showed me; and no words that I have ever heard with my ears were like the words I heard. I did not have to remember these things; they have remembered themselves all these years. It was as I grew older that the meanings came clearer and clearer out of the pictures and the words; and even now I know that more was shown to me than I can tell."

"You have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing face is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better for them to see."

"In sorrow I am sending a feeble voice, O Six Powers of the World. Hear me in my sorrow, for I may never call again. O make my people live!"

"Only those who have had visions of the thunder beings in the west can act as heyokas. They have sacred power and they share some of this with all the people, but they do it through funny actions. When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the west, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm."

"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth,—you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."

"Among other Indian curiosities, which Callisthenes transmitted to his uncle, was a technical system of logic, which the Brahmins had communicated to the inquisitive Greek."

"We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us"

"The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it."

"No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others."

"We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines."

"Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery: 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."

"We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace."

"Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas: (a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. (b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. (c) That God could and would if He were sought."

"The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power."

"But what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker; he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker; but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption, once he starts to drink."

"Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves."

"Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else."

"There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation."

"We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain's table."

"It was in the 1880s that Max Müller ’s arch-rival at Oxford, Monier-Williams , began to move away from his previously liberal position on ‘Oriental’ religions and to become increasingly critical of the ‘limp-wristed comparative scholarship’ exemplified by Müller’s Sacred Books, a project which he denounced in 1887 as an ‘unmanly’ example of ‘jelly-fish tolerance’."

"The fallacy originated from the unhesitating belief of Müller that Christianity and Europe blossomed forth ahead of the growth of any civilization at any point of time in human history. All his efforts were in tune with the resurrection of those lost kins. As he spoke in the Hibbert lecture series on 21 June 1878, ‘I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible,… and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfillment and a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored’. Of course, his other labour of love was, to explain his critics that his efforts are actually dedicated towards Christianity—‘I feel very certain, that this translation of the Sacred Books of the East , which some of the good people here consider most objectionable, will do a great deal towards lifting Christianity into its high historical position’. Müller wrote to lady Welby on July 27, 1879."

"In a letter dated 5 January 1883, he wrote—‘I saw the other day that some Buddhists in Japan meant to start what they call a „Bible Society“ for printing and distributing portions of the Tripitaka. I prefer to speak of „Sacred Books.“ Strictly speaking, “Sacred Books” are such only as have received some canonical sanction, and form a body of writings to which nothing could be added. They need not be considered of Divine origin or revealed, but they must have been formally recognized as authoritative by a religious body or their representatives’."

"These Sacred Books of the East will become in future the foundation of a short but universal religion."

"In a letter dated 4 September 1881, he wrote to B. Malabari, an Indian poet and social reformer, on his perceived influence that Hibbert lectures would have on Indian minds—‘the views put forward in my Hibbert lectures are the result of the studies which have not ignored any one of the objections raised against religion whether in England or in India…There is no religion which does not contain some truth, none which contains the whole truth…The first duty which every student of religion has to perform is to make himself acquainted with the books on which each religion claims to be founded. Hence my publication of the Sacred Books of the East , i.e. of the world, for all religions comes from the East’."

"Ambedkar also attempted to uplift those who had suffered the most at the hands of Brahmanical Aryan culture: the Sudras. But, unlike Ramaswami, his method was not to attempt to uncouple this social class from an alien Aryan culture. On the contrary, according to Ambedkar (1946), "the Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the Solar race. . . . The Shudras did not form a separate Varna. They ranked as part of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society" (v). On the basis of a variety of passages, particularly Mahabharata, santi parvan 38-40 (which describes a Sudra by the name of Paijavana performing a major sacrifice conducted by Brahamanas), Ambedkar argued that the Sudras were once wealthy, glorified and respected by rsis, composers of Vedic hymns, and performers of sacrifice. Due to continuous feuding with the Brahmana class, the Sudras inflicted many tyrannies on the Brahmanas, who, in retaliation, denied them the upanayana initiation ceremony, causing them to eventually become socially degraded. Ambedkar, in his book Who Were the Sudras? (1946) offers a critique of the philological basis of the Aryan invasion theory, that in places is well-informed and well-argued. He adamandy rejected this theory, which he saw as partly responsible for propagating the erroneous idea that the Sudras were a non-Aryan, indigenous ethnic group."

"The true conclusion to be drawn from the Rig Veda is not that the Varna system did not exist, but that there were only three Varnas and that Shudras were not regarded as a fourth and a separate Varna. The second piece of evidence I rely on is the testimony of the two Brahmanas, the Satapatha and the Taittiriya. Both speak of the creation of three Varnas only. They do not speak of the creation of the Shudra as a separate."

"That the Dasas and Dasyus were the same as the Shudras is a pure figment of imagination. It is only a wild guess. It is tolerated because persons who make it are respectable scholars. So far as evidence is concerned, there is no particle of it, which can be cited in support of it."

"The Shudras were one of the Aryan communities of the Solar race. . . . The Shudras did not form a separate Varna. They ranked as part of the Kshatriya Varna in the Indo-Aryan society.."

"Anyone who reads these verses, notes what they say calmly and coolly and considers them against the postulates of the Western theory will be taken aback by them. If the authors of these verses of the Rig Veda were Aryas then the idea which these verses convey is that there were two different communities of Aryas who were not only different but opposed and inimical to each other. The existence of two Aryas is not a mere matter of conjecture or interpretation. It is a fact in support of which there is abundant evidence."

"Ambedkar was a nationalist, and he saw through the anti-national, colonial inspiration of the Aryan Invasion theory (which the British called the furniture of Empire)."

"(1) The Vedas do not know any such race as the Aryan race. (2) There is no evidence in the Vedas of any invasion of India by the Aryan race and its having conquered the Dasas and Dasyus supposed to be the natives of India. (3) There is no evidence to show that the distinction between Aryas, Dasas and Dasyus was a racial distinction. (4) The Vedas do not support the contention that the Aryas were different in colour from the Dasas and Dasyus."

"About the Dasyus, there is no evidence to show that the term is used in a racial sense indicative of a non- Aryan people. On the other hand, there is positive evidence in support of the conclusion that it was used to denote persons who did not observe the Aryan form of religion."

"Turning to the Vedas for any indication whether the Aryans had any colour prejudice, reference may be made to the following passages in the Rig Veda : In Rig Veda, i . 117 . 8, there is a reference to Ashvins having brought about the marriage between Shyavya and Bushati. Shyavya is black and Bushati is fair. In Rig Veda, i . 117 . 5, there is a prayer addressed to Ashvins for having saved Vandana who is spoken as of golden colour. In Rig Veda, ii . 3 . 9, there is a prayer by an Aryan invoking the Devas to bless him with a son with certain virtues but of ( pishanga ) tawny (reddish brown) complexion. These instances show that the Vedic Aryans had no colour prejudice. How could they have ? The Vedic Aryans were not of one colour. Their complexion varied; some were of copper complexion, some white, and some black. Rama the son of Dasharatha has been described as Shyama i.e., dark in complexion, so is Krishna the descendant of the Yadus, another Aryan clan. The Rishi Dirghatamas, who is the author of many mantras of the Rig Veda must have been of dark colour if his name was given to him after his complexion. Kanva is, an Aryan rishi of great repute. But according to the description given in Rig Yeda — x . 31 . 11, he was of dark colour."

"The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago. But far from being dead, the theory has a considerable hold upon the people. There are two explanations which account for this phenomenon. The; first explanation is to be found in the support which the theory receives from Brahmin scholars. This is a very strange phenomenon. As Hindus, they should ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its express avowal of the superiority of the European races over the Asiatic races. But the Brahmin scholar has not only no such aversion but he most willingly hails it. The reasons are obvious. The Brahmin believes in the two-nation theory. He claims to be the representative of the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendents of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him to establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and their superiority. He likes particularly that part of the theory which makes the Aryan an invader and a conqueror of the non-Aryan native races. For it helps him to maintain and justify his overlordship over the non-Brahmins."