"The most important function of science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive. It is very difficult to explain the feeling to anyone who is entirely without it. The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims, and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."
|
| -Albert Einstein, |
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, where as imagination embraces the entire world stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
|
-Albert Einstein |
| "My conclusion is that taking the next evolutionary step, the Archaic Revival, the rebirth of the Goddess, and the ending of profane history are agendas that implicitly contain within themselves the notion or our reinvolvement with and the emergence of the vegetable mind. That same mind that coaxed us into self-reflecting language now offers us the boundless landscapes of the imagination. Without such a relationship to psychedelic exopheromones regulating our symbiotic relationship with the plant kingdom, we stand outside of an understanding of planetary purpose. And understanding of planetary purpose may be the major contribution that we can make to the evolutionary process. Returning to the bosom of the planetary partnership means trading the point of view of the ego for the intuitional translinguistic understanding of the maternal matrix." |
| -Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival |
"Whether humanity is to continue and prosper on spaceship Earth depends entirely on the integrity of the human individuals and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked, are humans a worthwhile invention?"
-Buckminster Fuller
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
-Albert Einstein
"Our earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexxed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory."
-Stephen Vincent Benet
"Understand that a self-centered attitude is the source of all suffering, and concern for others is the source of all happiness and goodness."
-The Dalai Lama, The Way to Freedom
"The wind can blow one way but actually move you in another, and like sailing, you can use the wind in the wrong direction and still get somewhere you want to go."
-Pete Seeger quoted in Whole Earth Review, spring 2001.
Visit the All Species Project
"I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world."
-Lao-Tzu
"In art and dream
may you proceed with abandon.
In life may you proceed with
balance and stealth."
-Patti Smith
"God is the shortest distance from zero to infinity."
-Alfred Jarry
It is in the stillness, in the silence, that the word of God is to be heard. There is no better avenue of approach to this Word than through stillness, through silence. It is to be heard there as it is - in that unself-consciousness, for when one is aware of nothing, that word is imparted to him and clearly revealed. "
-Meister Eckhart, from "The Sermons" in Meister Eckhart.
"Life's most persistent question is:
What are you doing for others?"
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him."
-Carl Jung
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. "
-Goethe
"Buddha did not suffer from fear of success. He was one of those rare characters, like Joan of Arc or Lawrence of Arabia or Pablo Picasso, who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their lives hold
a particular destiny. For people like this, life is just a matter of waiting, patiently, for the appropriate moment to come before stepping, in sandals or boxer shorts, into the mythos."
-Jeff Greenwald, Shopping for Buddhas
"DNA is a master of transformation, just like mythical serpents.
The cell-based life DNA informs made the air we breathe, the landscape we see,
and the mind-boggling diversity of living beings of which we are part.
In 4 billion years, it has multiplied itself into an incalculable number
of species, while remaining exactly the same."
-Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent.
"Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the
birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the
presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song.
These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open and we are
given a glimpse of what is hidden; an eff of the ineffable. Glory bursts
upon us in such hours: the dark glory of earthquakes, the slippery wonder
of new life, the radiance of...singing."
-Salmon Rushdie in The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
|
The Crossroads of Culture
"It is
probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful
developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought
meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in
different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions:
hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other
that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting
developments may follow."
|
| -Werner Heisenberg |
"We are
going to discover the plasticity, the mutability, the eternal nature of the mind and, I
believe, release it from the monkey. My vision of the final human future is an effort to
exteriorize the soul and internalize the body, so that the exterior soul will exist as a
superconducting lens of translinguistic matter generated out of the body of each of us at
a critical juncture of our psychedelic bar mitzvah."
|
| -Terrence MacKenna |
"Honesty
is the best policy in life, but it is essential in art."
|
| -Salmon Rushdie |
"There is
no situation that is not transfigurable,
there is no situation that has no hope."
|
| -Desmond Tutu |
"The
final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in a balance, and measured the
steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains
oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?"
|
| -Oscar Wilde, De Profundis |
"All
outer events in life are in a way only similes; they are only parables of an inner
process, synchronistic symbolisations. You have to look at them from that angle to
understand and integrated them, and that would be spiritualizing the physical. "
|
| -Marie Louise von Franz, Alchemy |
Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom.
|
| -Rumi |
"Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does."
-George
Bernard Shaw
|
"Knowing others is wisdom,
Knowing the self is enlightenment."
-Lao
Tzu |
| "Money may be the husk of many
things but not the kernel. It brings you food but not appetite; medicine, but not health;
acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace and happiness."
-Henrik
Ibsen |
| "The difference between scientific theory and reality is like the difference between reading the menu and eating dinner."
-Gregory
Bateson |
The Sacred Book of Nature
To the eye of the seer every leaf of the tree is a page of the holy book
that contains divine revelation, and he is inspired every moment of his
life by constantly reading and understanding the holy script of nature.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message
|
| Initiation is simply a set of challenges presented to an individual
so that he or she may grow. Consequently, the troubles we encounter
in our paths in the modern world are, in essence, initiatory to the
extent that each of them is life changing.
- Malidoma Patrice Some, The Healing Wisdom of Africa
|
" What's necessary is for us to understand that really, at the root of things is community. At the deepest level, that's the center of things. We come out of community. So how then can we organize our economics so that it's based on community, not accumulation? And how can we organize our religion to teach us about community? And when I say 'community,' I mean the whole earth community. That's the ultimate sacred domain-the earth community."
-Brian Swimme, mathematical cosmologist. The Universe is a Green Dragon.
|
| "I think we're shaped by failure at least as much as we're shaped by our successes.
We're taught to be afraid of failure. But it's really not the worst thing if you're resilient enough to get up and keep going."
-Terry Gross, National Public Radio interviewer.
|
| "I try to do what I call the three E's-educate, entertain and enlighten.
If you don't entertain, no one will show up. But you also have to educate, because people want
to discover specific things about a world unlike their own-whether it's how hard it is to go
to the moon or how scary it is to be on Omaha Beach. A story also has the opportunity to
enlighten us, because as we connect the extraordinary moments on film with the ordinary moments
of our lives, we ask ourselves: What am I going to do the next time I'm scared? What would it
be like to say goodbye to my family for the last time? Despite the fact that these movies are
big engines of commerce, the characters remind us that we're part of a greater humanity and
that we can actually affect the world by the choices we make once we leave the theater."
-Tom Hanks, movie actor.
|
| "Our human awareness is so powerful that even if we tap only a small part of it we can accomplish more that we ever thought possible. Using our complete potential, we can soar to the height where our accomplishments have great and lasting value for both ourselves and for future generations."
-Tarthang Tulku, in Knowledge of Freedom.
|
Learning from History
“Human nature never changes, events do. The great arrogance that the present has over the past is a completely fraudulent one. That arrogance says that somehow we’re better than what went on because we survived and they haven’t. But the people 5000 years ago were as smart as us. Loved as passionately as we do. So because of all these things, the study of human nature is the ultimate goal.
|
| -Ken Burns, Documentary Film Maker |
The Purpose of Life
The great task before us all is to rediscover the true significance of the inner life of man- not for its own sake or to take refuge there from the tribulations of the outer life- but because it is only the man who is inwardly alive who can play his part in the great work which lies before us. One thing and one thing only can save mankind from destruction and that is to arouse people from the illusion that nothing exists and nothing matters but the outer life of man. Those who are sunk in this illusion live like animals and perish like animals. Those who begin to escape from it realize that Life Is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am.’- This is the secret of right living on this earth and it is the secret of immortality.
|
-An Introduction to Gurdjieff
J. G. Bennet
Stonehill Publishing Company, New York City, NY, 1973
|
The Purpose of Human Existence
But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”
|
-Carl Jung |
Even the leaves of the tree become as pages of the sacred book once the eyes of the heart are open.
|
-Sa’di, Persian poet |
Our Earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, uncontrolled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color, or theory.
|
-Stephen Vincent Benet |
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, where as imagination embraces the entire world stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
|
-Albert Einstein |
Free Will
If we want to characterize the human in relation to other live organisms, without resorting to metaphysical hypotheses, we must point to the immense potential for movement that humans alone possess among all living beings. Our psychological complexity stems from our extraordinary mobility which allows us to explore all corners of the world, a mobility we don’t just passively acknowledge, but also hope to expand. So far, we can successfully travel through space, plunge into water, overcome fire (not without fear), descend underground, and penetrate objects after examining their surfaces. This feeling of freedom, power, and domination over things keeps us skeptical about any cosmic determinism controlling humanity. We experience a sense of free will.
|
-Mirror of the Marvelous- The Classic Surrealist Work on Myth
Pierre Mabille
Inner Tradition International, Rochester, Vermont, 1998 |
|
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