Essence of Passages - 1

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But there is a higher reason in the human individual which, though it gets stifled many a time due to the clamours of the senses and the needs of life, raises its voice now and then, and in rare specimens of stalwarts among people in the world, the reason manifests itself as a brilliant radiance shedding a light which is not of this world, because anything that is totally a part of this world cannot know the world. An object cannot know itself. There is a necessity for something else to even know that there is such a thing as the object or the world. Who knows that there is a world? Does the world itself know it?

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Socrates equated knowledge with virtue, which ultimately leads to ethical conduct. He believed that the only life worth living was one that was rigorously examined. He looked for principles and actions that were worth living by, creating an ethical base upon which decisions should be made. Socrates firmly believed that knowledge and understanding of virtue, or "the good," was sufficient for someone to be happy. To him, knowledge of the good was almost akin to an enlightened state. He believed that no person could willingly choose to do something harmful or negative if they were fully aware of the value of life.

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Spiritual Atheists are people who do not believe in a literal "God”, but still consider themselves to be (often deeply) "Spiritual" people. There is no consensus among Spiritual Atheists regarding the literal existence of one's own "spirit" or a collective "spirit"; however, there is consensus that if any "spirit" does exist, it is not external to the universe and it is not "supernatural". Spiritual Atheists believe that nothing that exists or happens violates the nature of the universe; they believe that all such things only further define the nature of the universe. For Spiritual Atheists, being "spiritual" means (at the very least) to nurture thoughts, words, and actions that are in harmony with the idea that the entire universe is, in some way, connected; even if only by the mysterious flow of cause and effect at every scale. Therefore, Spiritual Atheists generally feel that as they go about their lives striving to be personally healthy and happy, they should also be striving to help the world around them be healthy and happy.

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The indisputable analogy between dreams and insanity extending as it does down to their characteristic details, is one of the most powerful props of the medical theory of dream-life, which regards dreaming as a useless and disturbing process and as the expression of a reduced activity of the mind. Nevertheless, it is not to be expected that we shall find the ultimate explanation of dreams in the direction of mental disorders; for the unsatisfactory state of our knowledge of the origin of these latter conditions is generally recognised. It is quite likely on the contrary; that a modification of our attitude will at the same time affect our views upon the internal mechanism of mental disorders and that we shall be working towards an explanation of the psychoses while we are endeavouring to throw some light on the mystery of dreams.

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Aristotle’s theology is based on his perception that there must be something above and beyond the chains of cause and effect for those chains to exist at all. Aristotle perceives change and motion as deep mysteries. Everything is subject to change and motion, but nothing changes or moves without cause.

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The longing not to die but to persist forever cannot arise in the mind which is locked up in time. Thus it is that man is not limited by time, really speaking. Otherwise, this desire to live long cannot arise in the mind. He is not even limited to space; otherwise, the desire to break the limitations of the world outside and probe into the corners of creation cannot arise in him. The longing to possess the whole world is not possible if it is locked up in a little space.

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Celebrated novelists’ greatness can be ascribed to partly their skill at binding the reader to a compelling narrative and partly due to the quality of the narrative itself.
Every man who has lived his own life has many new and strange things to tell – his experiences, his secrets, happenings that befell him, men and women he encountered in his journey, friends and relatives etc. The stories of his life may never be less than the substance of an enchanting novel. However, neither are all men endowed with the extraordinary ability to chronicle their life nor may they have the choice to devote time to penning down their life stories when so much more is happening in their life while they remain ever more active and responsive to the tumult in life.

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When one starts an institution, opens up an organisation, has followers, conducts conferences, writes books, meets people and does various things, it is very easy for the mind to miss its main purpose in the background and be carried away by the books that are written, the glory that comes as a consequence of one’s importance, the largeness of the institution, the number of the followers, and the facilities or comforts which are provided to the body and to the ego. No one loves anything more than comfort. Physical, psychological and social comfort is what we seek. It is very easy to interpret comfort in a very convenient manner, going on a tangent and totally missing the point, and in a way deceiving oneself. This is something one has to guard against, especially when one takes to a spiritual path and a religious life, and regards oneself as a spiritual seeker, a humble disciple of a great Master or perhaps a servant of God.

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The question whether there exists in man a non-material substance to which he owes his mental life did not come within the orbit of Helvelius’s studies. He touched upon the matter only en passant, and dealt with it most cautiously. On the one hand, he did not want to irritate the censors, for which reason he spoke with obvious deference of the Church, which had “established our faith on this point”. On the other hand, he disliked flights of “philosophical fancy”. We must follow up an observation, he said, halt at the moment it leaves us, and have the courage not to know what, cannot yet be known. This smacks of “reserve” rather than of “vanity” or the “superficial”.

Directions: The passage given below is followed by four alternative summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. Key in the number of the option you choose as your answer.

In self-conscious beings, we meet with a set of phenomena quite distinct from the physical or the vital or the merely conscious. Reflective mind is different from the unreflective mind of the infant or the animal. When the plain man protests that men are not to be confused with apes, he declares that however primitive man may be, he is still distinctly human. Man had been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years. Early specimens such as Pithecanthropus were dug up in Java and the skull of Eoanthropus was found at Piltdown. However strange and brutish they may seem, they were distinctly men. They not only used tools which were ready to hand, but made tools for their use. They had reason which was distinct from instinct, however highly developed the latter may be.