The True and the Sublime
“In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.”
–Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist and Philosopher, 1817-1862)
You Are Divine
“Man is divine. But he is not aware of his own divinity. He mistakenly thinks he is this little body. but he is not this body. Man is something infinite, immutable, eternal.”
–Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Spiritual Teacher, c.1926-2011)
The Highest Bloom
“The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth.”
–Friedrich von Schelling (German Idealist Philosopher who developed influential theories of the Self, Nature and Art, 1775-1854)
Exercise Your Brain!
“You know you’ve got to exercise your brain just like you muscles.”
–Will Rogers (American Entertainer, 1879-1935)
Both Beastly and Divine
“Man’s nature is made up of four elements, which produce in him four attributes, namely, the beastly, the brutal, the satanic, and the divine. In man there is something of the pig, the dog, the devil, and the saint.”
–Abu-Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (a.k.a. Algazel, Persian Philosopher and Mystic, 1058-1111)
Shaking the World
“Saint Teresa was a great contemplative? Yes, and Saint Teresa is the only woman ever to have reformed an entire Catholic monastic tradition (think about it). Gautama Buddha shook India to its foundations. Rumi, Plotinus, Bodhidharma, Lady Tsogyal, Lao Tzu, Plato, the Baal Shem Tov–these men and women started revolutions in the gross realm that lasted hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years, something neither Marx nor Lenin nor Locke nor Jefferson can yet claim. And they did not do so because they were dead from the neck down. No, they were monumentally, gloriously, divinely big egos, plugged into a deeper psychic, which was plugged straight into God.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949- Revolution)
“One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality” (Ken Wilber)
Where Is The Divine?
“The divine is not something high above us. It is in heaven, it is in earth, it is inside us.”
–Morihei Ueshiba (Japanese Martial Artist and Founder of Aikido, 1883-1969)
Actualizing the Experience of God
“The purpose is to have a ‘real’ experience of Divinity embedded within us, so that we can take up residence in the heart, become a Citizen of Source, merge into an experience of something Eternal, and access Christ / Buddha / Melchizedek / Divine Mother / God Consciousness within us in a deeply revealing real way. It is time to actualize the God Experience that we talk about, teach about, and believe we know about. It is time to study just how far that knowledge goes inside of us.”
–Wistancia Stone (American Psychic and Author)
The Purpose of Practice
“The purpose of every practice — spiritual practice, meditation, breathing techniques, and kriya, all this — is to uncover something that blocks the expression of Divine Love.”
–Sri Sri Ravishankar (Indian Spiritual Teacher and, in 1982, Founder of the Art of Living Foundation and the International Association for Human Values, 1956-)
An Optmistic Philosophy
As far back as I can remember, I have had a close affinity with the work of the Swedish sage Emanuel Swedenborg. There are many reasons why his work may be of real value to you. Here, in a few succinct words, Colin Wilson says something most important:
“The real importance of Swedenborg lies in the doctrines he taught, which are the reverse of the gloom and hell-fire of other breakaway sects. He rejects the notion that Jesus died on the cross to atone for the sin of Adam, declaring that God is neither vindictive nor petty-minded, and that since he is God, he doesn’t need atonement. It is remarkable that this commonsense view had never struck earlier theologians. God is Divine Goodness, and Jesus is Divine Wisdom, and Goodness has to be approached through Wisdom. Whatever one thinks about the extraordinary claims of its founder, it must be acknowledged that there is something very beautiful and healthy about the Swedenborgian religion. Its founder may have not been a great occultist, but he was a great man.”
–Colin Wilson (English Novelist and Writer on Philosophy, Sociology and the Occult, 1931-)
