Saintliness

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies. Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically as Christianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed. Christians who have it strongly live in what is called 'recollection,' and are never anxious about the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is said that 'she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, moment by moment.' To her holy soul, 'the divine moment was the present moment, . . . and when the present moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the moment which came after.' Hinduism, mind-cure, and theosophy all lay great emphasis upon this concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand.

-William James, American Psychologist (The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902)

A Machine for Making Gods

Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods

-Henri Bergson, 20th Century French Philosopher (Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 1932)

The Great Companion

"In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute 'wisdom.' The final summary can only be expressed in terms of a group of antitheses, whose apparent self-contradictions depend on neglect of the diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.

"It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.

"It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.

"It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.

"It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.

"It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.

"It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God ...

"What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world ... In this sense, God is the great companion – the fellow-sufferer who understands.

-Alfred North Whitehead, British Philosopher (Process and Reality, 1929)

The Higher and Lower Worlds

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

-The Zohar, 13th Century Jewish Mystical Work

The Course of the Moon

If Reason seems to have any Power against Religion, it is only where Religion is become a dead Form, has lost its true State, and is dwindled into Opinion; and when this is the Case, that Religion stands only as a well-grounded Opinion, then indeed it is always liable to be shaken; either by having its own Credibility lessened, or that of a contrary Opinion increased. But when Religion is that which it should be, not a Notion or Opinion, but a real Life growing up in God, then Reason has just as much power to stop its Course, as the barking Dog to stop the Course of the Moon. For true and genuine Religion is Nature, is Life, and the Working of Life; and therefore, wherever it is, Reason has no more Power over it, than over the Roots that grow secretly in the Earth, or the Life that is working in the highest Heavens. If therefore you are afraid of Reason hurting your Religion, it is a Sign, that your Religion is not yet as it should be, is not a self-evident Growth of Nature and Life within you, but has much of mere Opinion in it.

-William Law, 18th Century English Theologian and Mystic

There is True Glory

And so little children, if you now want and desire to draw near by faith to the Life of God, Listen! You must enter inward to the depths within yourselves wherein Christ dwells — not without. For within you there exists an eternity, even as there is an eternity within Him. So you must go in to the depths of the hidden secret place within you, to the very depths of the abyss of the Eternal Willing in the Father, which is God's Desire and the source of all things (although this Desire is in no place; it is in fact nothing and also it is nowhere, yet it is present everywhere and in all things because all things come out of it), For it is within this Will or Desire that Wrath and Love eternally struggle against each other, and in which Love is the eternal victor out of the fiery dark wheel of selfishness, through the eternal cross in God's Heart, into regeneration bursting forth as the eternal glorious light of God's nature. His nature is Light, Gentleness, Mercy, Wisdom and Love forever, and it is expressed to us by His Voice, the Word, the Son, our Lord, Saviour, and God. And out of this eternally immense depth of God's Desire, there forever streams forth the light and Love which is the uncreated glory. And this is the true Heaven.

-Jakob Boehme, 16th Century Christian Mystic

Our Life Remains With Us After Death

"Some people believe it is hard to lead the heaven-bound life that is called "spiritual" because they have heard that we need to renounce the world and give up the desires attributed to the body and the flesh and "live spiritually." All they understand by this is spurning worldly interests, especially concerns for money and prestige, going around in constant devout meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life, devoting their lives to prayer, and reading the Word and religious literature. They think this is renouncing the world and living for the spirit and not for the flesh. However, the actual case is quite different, as I have learned from an abundance of experience and conversation with angels. In fact, people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion take on a mournful life for themselves, a life that is not open to heavenly joy, since our life does remain with us [after death]. No, if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses."

-Emmanuel Swedenborg, 18th century Swedish Mystic (Heaven and Hell)

Capital A, Capital R

The intensity of the experience is entirely unlike any ordinary experience, but on the other hand it quite obviously resembles spontaneous experiences certain artists and religious people have unquestionably had. It's an immense intensification of the world, a transfiguration of the external world into incredible beauty and significance. It's also beyond this kind of aesthetic experience, there may be other experience, a sense of solidarity with the universe, solidarity with other people, understanding of such phrases as you get in the book of Job: "Yeah, Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust In Him", it becomes quite comprehensible. This thing opens the door to these experiences which can be of immense value to people if they choose to make use of them. If they don't choose to, I mean this is what the Catholics call a gratuitous grace, it doesn't guarantee salvation or it's not sufficient and it's not necessary to salvation but if it can be collaborated with and used in an intelligent way it can be an immense help to people. This sense that in spite of everything which of course is the ultimate, I suppose, the ultimate mystical conviction in spite of pain, in spite of death, in spite of horror, the universe is in some mysterious sense is all right, capital A capital R.

-Aldous Huxley, British writer

All is Well

All is well, and All shall be well, and All manner of thing shall be well."

"And so when the final judgment comes, we shall clearly see in God all the secrets that are hidden from us now. Then none of us will be moved in any way to say, 'Lord, if only things had been different, all would have been well.' Instead, we shall all proclaim in one voice, 'Beloved One, may you be blessed, because it is so: ALL IS WELL.'"

-Julian of Norwich, 14th century English Christian Mystic

Buddha's Zen

Buddha said: "I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons."

-"Buddha" (Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, 1919)

I Know I Am August

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn'd and unlearn'd feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed. 

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
 
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured . . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches . . . . and shall master all attachment."

-Walt Whitman, American Poet ("Leaves of Grass," 1855) 

Cosmic Consciousness

All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted a few seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed.

-Richard Maurice Bucke, Canadian Psychiatrist (Cosmic Consciousness, 1901)

No One Can Think of God

"No one can think of God.

Therefore it is my wish to leave everything that I can think of and choose for my love the thing that I cannot think. For while God may be loved but not thought. God can be taken and held by love but not by thought. Therefore though it is good at times to think of the kindness and worthiness of God in particular, and though this is a light and a part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this exercise, it must be cast down and covered over with a cloud of forgetting. You are to step above it stalwartly but lovingly, with a devout, pleasing, stirring of love and desire to pierce that darkness above you. You are to smite upon the thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love and do not cease no matter what happens."

-The Cloud of Unknowing, 14th Century

The Freedom of Life Everlasting

Dawn of love sent within us colours of awakening among the many wont to follow

Only tunes of a different age

As the links span our endless caresses for the freedom of life everlasting

-Yes "The Revealing Science of God"

"To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action. To shut out the person and to refuse to consider him as a person, as an other self, we resort to the impersonal "law" and to abstract "nature." That is to say we block off the reality of the other, we cut the intercommunication of our nature and his nature, and we consider only our own nature with its rights, its claims, it demands. And we justify the evil we do to our brother because he is no longer a brother, he is merely an adversary, an accused. To restore communication, to see our oneness of nature with him, and to respect his personal rights and his integrity, his worthiness of love, we have to see ourselves as similarly accused along with him … and needing, with him, the ineffable gift of grace and mercy to be saved. Then, instead of pushing him down, trying to climb out by using his head as a stepping-stone for ourselves, we help ourselves to rise by helping him to rise. For when we extend our hand to the enemy who is sinking in the abyss, God reaches out to both of us, for it is He first of all who extends our hand to the enemy. It is He who "saves himself" in the enemy, who makes use of us to recover the lost groat which is His image in our enemy.

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It “consents,” so to speak, to God's creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree."

-Thomas Merton, American Trappist Monk (Various)

I'm Just An Inner Self

"I realized that although everything by which I knew myself, even my body and this life itself, was gone, still I was fully aware! Not only that, but this aware "I" was watching the entire drama, including the panic, with calm compassion.
Instantly, with this recognition, I felt a new kind of calmness — one of a profundity never experienced before. I had just found that "I", that scanning device — that point — that essence — that place beyond. A place where "I" existed independent of social and physical identity. That which was I was beyond Life and Death. And something else — that "I" Knew — it really Knew. It was wise, rather than just knowledgeable. It was a voice inside that spoke truth. I recognized it, was one with it, and felt as if my entire life of looking to the outside world for reassurance — David Reisman's other-directed being, was over.

I thought at that moment, "Wow, I've got it made. I'm just a new beautiful being — I'm just an inner self — all I'll ever need to do is look inside and I'll know what to do and I can always trust it, and here I'll be forever."

-Ram Dass, American Spiritual Leader (Be Here Now, 1971)

The Life of God

“Just as we experience thousands of dreams in this life of ours, so is this life one of thousands of such lives which we enter into from the more real, actual, true life from which we come when we enter this life, and to which we return when we die.

“Our life is one of the dreams of that truer life. But even that truer life is only one of the dreams of another, even truer life and so on to infinity, to the one last true life, the life of God.

“Birth and the appearance of one’s first notions of the world is a falling asleep and a most sweet sleep; death is an awakening.

“In the life which we call reality there is a semblance of love of one’s neighbor. But in the life we came from and to which we are going the relationship is much closer, and love is no longer something to be desired, but something real. And in the ultimate life for which even that life is a dream, relationship and love are greater still.

“I would like you to understand me. I’m not making it up to amuse myself. I believe in it, see it and know it for certain, and when I die I shall rejoice that I am waking up to that more real world of love.”

-Leo Tolstoy, Russian Novelist (Unsourced)

Lighting Strange Worlds

"You make your own reality. When I say that, you interpret it to mean that you make your own reality. You think that that you is the only you that concerns you. You think that you is your consciousness. You still hold that idea in conventional terms, now, of your own identity, so that you identify with what seems to be a whole consciousness that makes its reality.

"But each portion of your consciousness, your identity, is --using an analogy-- composed of an infinite number of glittering points of consciousness that come together to form your identity. And you hold them and grip them tightly and call them your own. Now your identity is your own. It will not dissolve under any circumstances. Yet you can have a much more adventurous kind of identity if you hold yourselves in less rigorous a grip.

"If you can, for example, sometimes in playful moments, imagine those separate, glowing points of consciousness like fireflies, glittering on and off and lighting strange worlds. If you close your eyes and imagine such a point and follow it in your imagination, where does it go? You will not lose yourself, you will discover a portion of yourself that you did not realize existed. You will begin to reclaim an ancient and yet new knowledge.

"In your terms, you will begin to learn that delicious alchemy that connects the so-called animals and the so-called gods.

"For this exercise -- for this play, for this game, for this delightful endeavor -- you must make a dangerous compromise, for you must pretend momentarily to forget your name. For you were before your name existed, and you will be when you have forgotten what your name was. Your name, accept for now, is not important. You will be yourself whether or not you have it.

"In this multidimensional drama, what you do is this: you imagine the consciousness that you have as an endless glowing sequence of pointed lights, emerging, swarming, coming and going. Always each point of consciousness is coming and going. No matter where it is, it knows that it is a part of you. So you need not fear that you will lose yourself.

"Each point journeys. Each point mixes and intermixes with the consciousness of animals, plants, worlds that you do not recognize. And if you want to know what these realities are about and your part in them, then follow where those points of light lead you. You will not be left in the darkness...

"You create your own reality -- here. What other realities do you help create? What other realities are you a part of? When I tell you to explore the dream state, you explore it with your own identity like a soldier going to battle: 'Ah ha! What have we here tonight, what adversary?' But when you dream at certain levels of awareness, your consciousness, now, separates into all of its parts and explores the physical universe and other worlds.

"You are not dispersed, in your terms. You do not break apart. The morning comes, and gloriously, there you are, girded for another day in which to survive. Yet when you sleep and dream and forget the Bible, only then do you understand the nature of the creativity that allows you to survive. Only then do you realize that, by not worrying about it, the magic happens. By taking it for granted that you know, then you know."

-Jane Roberts as Seth, American Trance Medium (Unsourced)

What a God We Have

"What kind of God would He be, if He did not hear the bangles ring on an ant’s wrist, as they move the earth in their sweet dance? And what kind of God would He be, if a leaf’s prayer was not as precious to creation as the prayer His own son sang from the glorious depth of his soul – for us. And what kind of God would He be, if the vote of millions in this world could sway Him to change the divine law of love that speaks so clearly with compassion’s elegant tongue, saying, eternally saying: "all are forgiven – moreover, dears, no one has ever been guilty."

What kind of God would He be if He did not count the blinks of your eyes and is in absolute awe of their movements? What a God - what a God we have."

-Kabir, Bhakti Poet (Unsourced)

Centered in the Universe

"Regardless of your circumstances, your condition in life, your training or your aptitudes, at your own threshold you stand at the center of all realities -- for at your center all existences intersect.You are everywhere part of them, and they are of you. Each portion of the universe carries the knowledge of all other parts, and each point of a reality is that reality's center. You are, then, centered in the universe."

-Jane Roberts as Seth, American Trance Medium (Unsourced)

Eternity Has Nothing To Do With Time

"Eternity is not a long time; rather, it is another dimension. It is that dimension to which time-thinking shuts us. And so there never was a creation. Rather, there is a continuous creating going on. This energy is pouring into every cell of our being right now, every board and brick of the buildings we sit in, every grain of sand and wisp of wind."

"People ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world, about how terrible it is?" And I say, "Yes, it's great the way it is" … I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with [a Hindu guru] and the first thing he said to me was "Do you have a question?", cause the teacher always answers questions... I said, "Yes, I have a question." I said, " Since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine, a manifestation of divinity itself, how can we say no to anything in the world? How can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to thoughtlessness?" And he said, "For you and me, you must say yes." Well, I learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to be the first question he asked his guru, and we had a wonderful conversation for an hour there."

Moyers: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?
Campbell: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time — namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

-Joseph Campbell, Mythology Scholar (The Power of Myth, 1988)

The Immeasurable Mind

"None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world. See how nations and races flit by on the sea of time, and leave no ripple to tell where they floated or sunk, and one good soul shall make the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zoroaster, reverend forever. None assayeth the stern ambition to be the Self of the nation, and of nature, but each would be an easy secondary to some Christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man. Once leave your own knowledge of God, your own sentiment, and take secondary knowledge, as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or Swedenborg's, and you get wide from God with every year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries, — the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine.

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, `I also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, — are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, — but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Philosopher ("Harvard Divinity School Address," 1838)

What Will You Have to Do with God?

“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.

But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?”

-"Hermes Trismegitus"(Corpus Hermeticum, 2nd Century)

The Road Leads Upward Ever

“We do not live in a world of dreams, but in an Universe which, while relative, is real so far as our lives and actions are concerned. Our business in the Universe is not to deny its existence, but to LIVE, using the Laws to rise from lower to higher–living on, doing the best that we can under the circumstances arising each day, and living, so far as is possible, to our highest ideas and ideals. The true Meaning of Life is not known to men on this plane–if, indeed, to any–but the highest authorities, and our own intuitions, teach us that we will make no mistake in living up to the best that is in us, so far as is possible, and realizing the Universal tendency in the same direction in spite of apparent evidences to the contrary. We are all on The Path–and the road leads upward ever, with frequent resting places.”

"And Death is not real, even in the Relative sense — it is but Birth to a new life — and You shall go on, and on, and on, to higher and still higher planes of life, for aeons upon aeons of time. The Universe is your home, and you shall explore its farthest recesses before the end of Time. You are dwelling in the Infinite Mind of THE ALL, and your possibilities and opportunities are infinite, both in time and Space. And at the end of the Grand Cycle of Aeons, when THE ALL shall draw back into itself all of its creations — you will go gladly, for you will then be able to know the Whole Truth.”

-"Three Initiates" (The Kybalion, 1908)

Esoterica

“What we term ‘esoteric’ is not really a term for something that is unknowable or can only be known by a few. The term more generally means simply a continuing knowledge of reality which is rejected. That it is esoteric not because it cannot be known but because we refuse to recognize it. Therefore it remains a profound secret.”

— Manly P. Hall, Occultist (Unsourced)

Falling in Love with a Shadow

“Thus, suffering is the result of the Immortal Man’s falling in love with His shadow and giving up Reality to dwell in the darkness of illusion…”

-"Hermes Trismegistus" (The Divine Pymander, 2nd Century)

Consciousness and Implicate Order

“Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter … Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven , just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation.”

-David Bohm, American Physicist (Changing Consciousness, 1991)

The World of Imagination

“The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated [i.e. mortal] body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the eternal realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature.”

-William Blake, British Romantic Poet (A Vision of the Last Judgement, 1808)

The Vale of Soul-Making

"Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making". Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say 'Soul making' Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence- There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions-but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms of perception-they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God-How then are Souls to be made? How then arc these sparks which are God to have identity given them-so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? I- low, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because 'I think it a grander system of salvation than the chrystiain religion -or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation-This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years. These three Materials are the Intelligence-the human heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind) and the World or Elemental space suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of forming the Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity. I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive-and yet I think I perceive it-that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible-I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read-I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School-and I will call the Child able to -read, the Soul made from that School and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Minds Bible, it is the Minds expe rience, it is the teat from which the Mind or intelligence sucks its identity. As various as the Lives of Men are-so various become their Souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the Sparks of his own essence-This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity-I am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labour under would vanish before it-there is one which even now Strikes me-the Salvation of Children-In them the Spark or intelligence returns to God without any identity-it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart-or seat of the human Passions-It is pretty generally suspected that the cbr[i]stian scheme has been coppied from the ancient persian and greek Philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and Personages in the same manner as in the he[a]then mythology abstractions are personified-Seriously I think it probable that this System of Soul-making-may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and personal Schemes of Redemption, among the Zoroastrians the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter; so another part must have the palpable and named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ their Oromanes and their Vishnu-If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will but [for put] you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts-I mean, I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances-and what are circumstances?-but touchstones of his heart-? and what are touchstones? but proovings of his heart? and what are proovings of his heart but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul?-and what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings?-An intelligence-without Identity-and how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? And how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances? . . ."

-John Keats, British Romantic Poet (Letters of Keats, 1810)

Everything is Good, Everything is Perfect, Everything is Brahman

"Listen my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this “someday” is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on his way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exits in robber and the dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman."

-Hermann Hesse, German Novelist (Siddharta, 1922)

The Inner World

"This is what fascinates Shaw: this enormous force that ignores our human preferences, our logic and intellect. It fascinates him because to be suddenly gripped by it is to see that human beings are not the accidental products of a mechanical universe — that they are not ‘alone’. As social animals, we live in a narrow but apparently logical world with a well-defined identity and position. But man is the satellite of a double-star; there is also an inner-world that seems to have a completely different set of laws from the rational universe. And in fact, if we judge this 'rational universe’ by its own laws, we see that it is not self-complete and self-explanatory; space must end somewhere, time must have a stop; but the alternative propositions sound equally 'logical’: space is infinite; time has neither beginning nor end. The answer to these paradoxes must be that the outer universe is not self-complete; it is only half a universe. The inner world is the other half. But at present we know very little about this inner world. It is only within the present century that its existence has been clearly recognized by psychology."

-Colin Wilson, British Writer (Bernard Shaw, A Reassessment, 1969)

Letting Go

"You have to let it happen, just like you have to let your self go to sleep. You can’t try to go to sleep. You have to let yourself digest food. You can’t try to digest it. So in the same way you have to let yourself wake up."

-Alan Watts, British Writer (unsourced)

Tolstoy's Krishna

"Do not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me.

Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in the interlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path to which I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths, which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, which thou canst follow and thus run without stumbling.

O ye, who see perplexities over your heads, beneath your feet, and to the right and left of you; you will be an eternal enigma unto yourselves until ye become humble and joyful as children. Then will ye find Me, and having found Me in yourselves, you will rule over worlds, and looking out from the great world within to the little world without, you will bless everything that is, and find all is well with time and with you.

My hand has sowed love everywhere, giving unto all that will receive. Blessings are offered unto all My children, but many times in their blindness they fail to see them. How few there are who gather the gifts which lie in profusion at their feet: how many there are, who, in wilful waywardness, turn their eyes away from them and complain with a wail that they have not that which I have given them; many of them defiantly repudiate not only My gifts, but Me also, Me, the Source of all blessings and the Author of their being.

I tarry awhile from the turmoil and strife of the world. I will beautify and quicken thy life with love and with joy, for the light of the soul is Love. Where Love is, there is contentment and peace, and where there is contentment and peace, there am I, also, in their midst.

Children, do you want to know by what your hearts should be guided? Throw aside your longings and strivings after that which is null and void; get rid of your erroneous thoughts about happiness and wisdom, and your empty and insincere desires. Dispense with these and you will know Love.

Be not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true Being, and then you will have nothing to fear.

Who am I? I am that which thou hast searched for since thy baby eyes gazed wonderingly upon the world, whose horizon hides this real life from thee. I am that which in thy heart thou hast prayed for, demanded as thy birthright, although thou hast not known what it was. I am that which has lain in thy soul for hundreds and thousands of years. Sometimes I lay in thee grieving because thou didst not recognize me; sometimes I raised my head, opened my eyes, and extended my arms calling thee either tenderly and quietly, or strenuously, demanding that thou shouldst rebel against the iron chains which bound thee to the earth.

O ye who sit in bondage and continually seek and pant for freedom, seek only for love. Love is peace in itself and peace which gives complete satisfaction. I am the key that opens the portal to the rarely discovered land where contentment alone is found.

Children, look at the flowers at your feet; do not trample upon them. Look at the love in your midst and do not repudiate it.

Children, look upwards with your beclouded eyes, and a world full of joy and love will disclose itself to you, a rational world made by My wisdom, the only real world. Then you will know what love has done with you, what love has bestowed upon you, what love demands from you."

-Krishna words, as told by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy ("Letter to a Hindoo," 1908)

One Foot in Earth

“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.

Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such as thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not.

It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.”

— GK Chesterton, English Theologian (Orthodoxy, 1908)

Introduction: A Quote Shepard

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know"

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist & Philosopher (Journals, 1841)

Buddha once called a someone who had immense knowledge of scripture with no experience of their own to back it up a "herdsman of another's cattle." Mohammed was perhaps more eloquent, calling such a person an "ass carrying scrolls." I am that ass, and here are my scrolls. I've spent my life reading on the topics of religion, spirituality, and mysticism. Every so often, I would come by something so poignant and sublime that I knew I had to remember it. I started bookmarking, saving, and copy-pasting quotes into email drafts whenever I found them. I wanted to put my collection all into one place, and then I thought to myself, 'why not make it public?' Then I found five dollars. 

So, here we are. I hope you enjoy these quotes as much as I did.

"I quote others only in order the better to express myself." 

-Michel de Montaigne, French Essayist