Sacred Union
“To man and to atom, to star-cloud and to earth, to sun and to snow crystal, to mountain and to worm, to sage and to fool, to saint and to sinner, God, to whom size and number offer no obstacle, gives eternal and inescapable union with his very Self.”
–Alan W. Watts (English-born American Philosopher, Writer, Speaker and Expert in Comparative Religion, 1915-1973)
Behold the Spirit, A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion
There Is No Separation
“There is no separation between you and me, between you and any other person…we all ‘inter-are.’ As my friend Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, ‘All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, 1926-)
Energy Consciousness
“A transcendent energy consciousness informs the whole world and informs you.”
–Joseph Campbell (American Writer, Editor and Mythologist, 1904-1987)
The Universal Flux of Events and Processes
“Indeed, to some extent it has always been necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, if we tried to deal with the whole of reality at once, we would be swamped.
However when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man’s notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives, i.e. in his world-view then man ceases to regard the resultant divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and this world as actually constituted of separately existing fragments. What is needed is a relativistic theory, to give up altogether the notion that the world is constituted of basic objects or building blocks.
Rather one has to view the world in terms of universal flux of events and processes.”
–David Bohm (American-born Theoretical Physicist and Philosopher, 1917-1992)
Holons
As a young student I was very taken with Arthur Koestler’s concept of “Holons:” processes or things that are both individual and part of a greater whole.
Here Ken Wilber talks about them in more detail:
“A holon is a whole that is part of other wholes. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, a whole molecule is part of a whole cell, a whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so on…. The universe is fundamentally composed of holons, wholes that are parts of other wholes.”
–Ken Wilber (American Philosopher, 1949-)
Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
Plato’s Permanent Principle
“Plato’s cardinal idea was that there existed a permanent principle of unity beneath the forms, changes, and other phenomena of the universe.”
–Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Russian Author, Translator and Founder of the Theosophical Society, 1831-1891)
“Isis Unveiled (Volumes 1 and 2)” (Helena Petrovna Blavatsky)
The Whole in Every Part
“Every discernible part or process is a sort of microcosm or hologram. That is to say, the whole is expressed in or implied by every part, as is the brain in each one of its cells.”
–Alan W. Watts (English-born American Philosopher, Writer, Speaker and Expert in Comparative Religion, 1915-1973)
“Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion” (Alan W. Watts)
The Holographic Universe
“Classical science has always viewed the state of a system as a whole as merely the result of interaction of its parts. However, the quantum potential stood this view on its ear and indicated that the behavior of parts is actually organized by the whole.”
–Michael Talbot (American Writer, Intellectual and Proponent of the Holographic Model of Reality, 1953-1992)
“The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality” (Michael Talbot)
Finding the Underground Stream of Life
“We are each like a well that has its source in a common underground stream which supplies all. The deeper down the well I go, the closer I come to the source which puts me in contact with all other life.”
–John Welch, O. Carm (American Carmelite Priest and Professor at the Washington Theological Union)
Evolution By Opening Your Heart and Mind
“Evolving is about being able to enlarge the sphere of your concerns and activities with each day that comes. But what do we find? Humans are concerned above all with their personal interests and slightly with those of their family and their country, all of which leads to so many misunderstandings.
Many people will say there is no greater ideal than to work for one’s country. This is not so, because their country does not represent the whole. If everyone set to work solely for their country, it would inevitably lead to conflicts with other countries. When you concentrate exclusively on a part of the whole, you necessarily enter into conflict with other parts of the whole. World peace would require people to see things from the broadest, most universal perspective.
In order to evolve, you have to continually expand your point of view, open your heart to an increasing number of creatures and use all your will to make the universal family a reality.”
–Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Bulgarian Spiritual Master, 1900-1986)
