Monad

“ There are the monads of people; there are human monads, animal monads, vegetable monads; in short, the world is full of monads—they compose the world——"
"Heart's dearest!" interrupted the old lady, in a tone of displeasure, "I don't understand one word of all this! What stuff it is! What are monads?—fill the world, do they?—I see no monads!"
"But you see me, dear lady," said Jacobi, "and yourself. You are yourself a monad." ”

“ A monad may remain for perhaps millions of years, till the Pralaya comes, this time can be almost called infinity, but it is as nothing in comparison to the existence of the Logos itself.
Is the ego ever really wiped out or effaced?
The monad is never killed though the man may be. Yon call the monad by a particular name so long as it retains the owner's subjective experiences, but when the monad is made quite clean, you can say the experiences are wiped out. A monad is only a centre of energy. ”

“ I take it also for granted that every created being, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and even that this change is continual in each. ”

“ Now, it is essential to Monadism that the monads, because ultimately independent, shall only seem to interact. They appear to form a single world with a history in which each distinct state of each monad is a stage. But really, while the successive states of the individual monad are, what they seem to be, a connected process of development, the various processes do not make up a single-world history at all. They only seem to do so by an inevitable illusion. Hence the unity of the whole system must after all be not only ideal, but, strictly speaking, imaginary. ”

“ But in simple substances the influence of one Monad upon another is only ideal, and it can have its effect only through the mediation of God, in so far as in the ideas of God any Monad rightly claims that God, in regulating the others from the beginning of things, should have regard to it. ”

“ He has founded upon him a theory of the universe, which the creature bears without resentment, for the monad is a gentleman. Small as he is, the monad contains all the powers and possibilities needful to his evolution into a German philosopher of the first class —altogether a very capable little fellow. He is not to be confounded with the microbe, or bacillus; by its inability to discern him, a good microscope shows him to be of an entirely distinct species. ”

“ For since a created monad can have no physical influence upon the interior of another, it is only in this way that one can be dependent upon another. ”

“ That is to say, the monad which was imprisoned in the elementary being—the rudimentary or lowest astral form of the future man—after having passed through and quitted the highest physical shape of a dumb animal—say an orang-outang, or again an elephant, one of the most intellectual of brutes—that monad, we say, cannot skip over the physical and intellectual sphere of the terrestrial man, and be suddenly ushered into the spiritual sphere above. ”

“ These never die out but start into active existence again. All the human beings whose experiences have been brought to the Logos by the travelling monad may be said to have gained immortality, but sometimes the monad becomes so opposed in its magnetic effect to the Logos from which it has emanated, that its absorption is impossible. This happens only in the case of a very wicked man, and then that monad never gains immortality ”

“ For the monad, being subtle, flies to the most subtle and purest part of the æther. The two other elements being denser, he assigns to the dyad (to wit) earth and water, and he calls this the descending hemisphere and feminine and maleficent. And again the two upper elements when compounded with themselves have in themselves the male and the female for the fruitfulness and increase of the universals. And the fire is masculine, but the spirit feminine: and again the water is masculine and the earth feminine. ”

“ Well, the Over-Soul flows out into the All—into the universe of Think, (I can use no other term,) into that of Soul, Monads, Spirit, Matter; and while pervading and being imminent in All, is self-conscious at every point; in the Think, the Monad, the Soul, the Spirit, the Matter, in every particle that is, or can ever be. I hold this, as the truest definition of the Deity yet given; and in the radiant presence of such a thought, all human things must bow; all human pride stand back, all human ideas pale and fade. ”

“ Together with this Monotes there exists a power, which again I term Henotes (oneness) . This Henotes and Monotes, being one, produced, yet not so as to bring forth [apart from themselves, as an emanation] the beginning of all things, an intelligent, unbegotten, and invisible being, which beginning language terms "Monad." With this Monad there co-exists a power of the same essence, which again I term Hen (One) . These powers then—Monotes, and Henotes, and Monas, and Hen—produced the remaining company of the Æons. ”

“ The capital, Monaco, is built on a picturesque promontory, and 1 m. NE. stands Monte Carlo.
Monad, the name given by Leibnitz to one of the active simple elementary substances, the plurality of which in their combinations or combined activities constitutes in his regard the universe both spiritual and physical; it denotes in biology an elementary organism.
Monaghan (82) , an inland Ulster county, Ireland, surrounded by Louth, Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, and Meath; is undulating, with many small lakes and streams; grows flax and manufactures linen, and has limestone and slate quarries. ”

“ The smallest and the most active members of this immense family are the Monads, which so thickly populate the invisible world, that Ehrenberg has declared that a selected drop of water may actually contain as many as there are human beings upon the surface of the great globe itself! ”

“ Among all those gods which we have mentioned before, none surely would seem to have been more readily forgotten, swept away by the wind, which they claimed to render useless, or buried in the dust with which they seemed to compete, than those tiny, microscopic deities, called Monads. ”

“ It follows from what has just been said, that the natural changes of the Monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause can have no influence upon their inner being. ”

“ Now where there are no parts, neither extension, figure nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature, and, in a word, the elements of things. ”

“ There is scarce a monk in any lonely monastery, (such as those in the hot and unwholesome valley of Waldubba) , not a hermit of the many upon the mountains, not an old priest who has lived any time sequestered from society, that does not pretend to possess charms offensive and defensive, and several methods by which he can, at will, look into futurity. The Moors are all, to a man, persuaded of this: their arms and necks are loaded with amulets against witchcraft. Their women are believed to have all the mischievous powers of fascination ”

“ CLOISTERS OF MONTSERRAT.
All this may still be seen and heard now and then, but with the number of monks sadly curtailed. It is said that they now never exceed twenty. When their day of persecution came they escaped to their mountain fastness, climbing higher and ever higher like hunted deer, hiding in the cracks and crevices of the rocks; fear giving them strength to reach parts never yet trodden by the foot of man, whilst many a less active monk slipped and fell into the bottomless abyss, his last resting place, like that of Moses, remaining for ever unknown. ”

“ A third and most baneful kind of monk are the self-appointed ones, sylfdemena, who have been tried by no rule nor by the experience of a master, as gold in the furnace, but being soft as lead and still serving the world in their works, are known by their tonsure to lie to God. ”

“ And shaking their hairy heads, they advanced with hideous laughter and savage cries:
"I can shoot a hundred arrows at one time; I shall seize the body of the monk." "My hand can crumple up the sun, the moon and the stars; how easy it will be to crush this man and his tree." ”

“ With bitter scorn and mockery the man pronounced these words from the Ritual, in a hoarse croaking voice, imitating, at the same time, to the very life, the postures and gesture of a monk. He turned himself as if before the altar, he kneeled, and rose again. At last he stopped, drew himself up, and assumed a proud look of defiance, stared widely, and cried, "Mine is the world! I am more wealthy, more wise, prudent, and intelligent, than all of ye, ye blind moles! ”

“ And when we talk of the sensuality of the monks, of their gross indulgences and corporeal ease, we surely do so without discrimination; for when we speak of the middle ages thus, our thoughts are [4] dwelling on the sixteenth century, its mocking piety and superstitious absurdity; but in the olden time of monastic rule, before monachism had burst its ancient boundaries, there was surely nothing physically attractive in the austere and dull monotony of a cloistered life. Look at the monk; mark his hard, dry studies, and his midnight prayers, his painful fasting and mortifying of the flesh ”

“ Then the shepherd said unto him, “It is not right that rational men should make themselves like unto the beasts, but they should eat whatsoever is prepared for them at the seasons which are duly ordered and appointed for them, and afterwards they should fast from everything until an appointed time.” And the monk profited by these words, and he added to his labour and became perfect, and he praised God, and marvelled how many were the saints in the world who were not known to the children of men. ”

“ And thus is it in the matter of the monk. If the body remain continually in its cell, the mind thereof will certainly come back to it after all its wanderings, for many reasons which will come upon it, but if the body as well as the soul wander outside the cell, both will become a prey and a thing of joy to the enemy.”
39. A certain brother belonging to a habitation of brethren said to Abbâ Bessarion, “What shall I do?” The old man said unto him, “Keep silence, and consider thyself to be nothing.”
40. Abbâ Moses besought Abbâ Zechariah, saying, “Speak a word of consolation to the brethren” ”

“ An old man who had delivered himself unto God used to say, “The monk must have no will of his own, but he whose will is of God continueth to minister to Him unwearyingly; for if thou doest thine own will, thou becomest weary, and thou labourest, and God hearkeneth not to thee.” ”

“ Slowly, slowly, its legs labored through the thin sand. At last it stopped some six inches from Monk's face.
It appeared immense, like a lumbering, scaly giant from the planet's billion-year-ago past.
It rubbed its claws together, threateningly. Its black mouth opened, closed, opened, closed. Its needle tongue twisted like a silver snake.
I am hungry, came the thought. So very hungry. But I should call the others.
Combined fear and hope hung over Monk like an omnipresent shower of fire and ice. Sweat dripped into his hot eyes, obscuring his vision. ”

“ After a while the old monk’s thirst grew grievous, and he strove, slowly and tremulously, to raise his aged limbs.
“It is but a little way to yonder jug,” he murmured, “I am a selfish old man; the lad is tired with toil. I will seek the water for myself.”
He rose slowly, groped a pace or two, stumbled, and fell to the floor of his cell. He lay there, moaning a little now and then, and shivering. Thus did he lie during two hours of the night ”

“ We have seen the reverence paid by certain “ancients of old” to the supposed divinities whose crystal thrones were veiled beneath the waves. Men under a better dispensation have shown, perhaps, a worse superstition. Bede makes mention of a Monk who thought he would purify his sin-stained spirit by actual ablution. He had, the church-historian tells us, a solitary place of residence [Pg 19] assigned him in the monastery, adjacent to a river: into the latter he was accustomed to plunge, by way of penance to his body. ”

“ And doubtless the average monk, even when well-conducted himself and in a well-conducted monastery, was, like average men of every creed, rank, or occupation, a very common-place person, acting from very mixed and often very questionable motives; and valuing his shaven crown and his sheepskin cloak, his regular hours of prayer and his implicit obedience to his abbot, more highly than he valued the fear and the love of God. ”

“ In spite of the lack of exactitude about places and dates, the Memoirs provide an extensive account of some of the ways religious, psychological, and spiritual problems combined in the mind of an aristocratic oblate, who became an aggressive Benedictine monk, fervently attached to his pious mother, fascinated and horrified by sexuality, enraged at the extent of contemporary ecclesiastical corruption, intensely alert to possible heresies, and generally impatient with all opinions not his own. [4] The personality that dominates the Monodiae had already permeated the earlier, historical text. ”

“ The Mudjee Monedo had already visited her lodge to observe whether the boy was sufficiently grown to be challenged to the race; and so crafty in his approaches and so soft in his manners was the monedo, that the mother feared he would yet decoy the son in spite of all her struggles and make way with him as he had done with her husband and the seven elder sons.
And yet she strove with all her might to strengthen her son in every good course. She taught him, as best she could, what was becoming for the wise hunter and the brave warrior. ”