A Test of Purpose
“Here is a test to see if your mission on earth is finished. If you are alive, it isn’t.”
–Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount Saint Albans, Baron of Verulam (English Lawyer, Statesman, Philosopher and, from 1618-1621, Lord Chancellor of England, 1561-1626)
Stretching and Exercise
I think that most of us have been told that it is really important to stretch before we hit the gym, and do it again after we have finished. It is said to improve performance as well as reducing the risk of injury and post-exercise stiffness. It is one of those things that has just entered mass consciousness.
However a new study using the Cochrane database shows that stretching before or after exercise has little or no effect on muscle soreness between half a day and three days later.
Two researchers identified 10 relevant trials, each of which involved between 10 and 30 people. Nine of the studies had been carried out in laboratory situations and people stretched for everything from 40 seconds to 10 minutes.
The investigators used a 100-point scale to assess stiffness after exercise. The results showed that the effects of stretching were extremely small. Stretching reduced soreness by less than 1 point on the 100-point scale. The size of the effect was similar if stretching was performed before or after activity.
The authors point out that there is still a need to see whether stretching can have an effect on people in the community who have reduced levels of flexibility.
“A great man can bend and stretch.”
–Chinese proverb
“The simple exercise of stretching helps to counter the congestions, compressions, and adhesions which obstruct the flow of the vital force through the spinal column with its sixty-two branching nerves and thus to regain energy. This truth of the need of spine-loosening movement is instinctively known by every dog and cat, every lion and tiger, for they apply it immediately after awakening from sleep. The back, the legs, and even paws are bent and stretched and even rolled by them in this natural exercise.”
–Paul Brunton (a.k.a. Raphael Hurst, English Philosopher, Traveler, Spiritual Teacher and Author, 1898-1981)
“Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.”
–Robert Benchley (American Writer, Actor and Critic, 1899-1945)
Sri Chinmoy Has Moved On
I just heard that Sri Chinmoy has died, or as many would say, entered Maha Samadhi.
I was never one of his followers, but I was impressed by some of the things that he achieved in his efforts to ground spirituality in the “external” world.
He was born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in a small village named Shakpura in what is now Bangladesh. At the age of 12, after the death of his parents, entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India.
He spent the next 20 years there engaged in spiritual practices, including meditation, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs.
He moved to New York City in 1964 to work as a clerk at the Indian Consulate, and to teach Western spiritual seekers.
He used some unorthodox methods: he spread his philosophy through his own way of life, exercising and creating art and music. He drew attention by breaking weight lifting records and stunts like power-lifting pickup trucks and public figures like Muhammad Ali and Sting.
He claimed to sleep for only 90 minutes a day and when he was not traveling to perform in concerts and spread his message, spent the rest of the time meditating, playing music, exercising and making art.
Sri Chinmoy drew upon Hindu principles to advocate a spiritual path to God through love and devotion, prayer and meditation. But he was one of the first to publicize the idea that meditation does not necessarily mean sitting quietly. Instead he recommended that his disciples develop their spirituality by transcending seemingly impossible physical challenges.
At one time or other he was the guru of many people including Carl Lewis, Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Roberta Flack and Clarence Clemons.
As with so many teachers, there were plenty of allegations of impropriety, but I have never seen any credible evidence to support them.
Many years ago he wrote his own epitaph:
“Before the final curtain goes down
On my life,
I shall say to my Mother-Earth,
“My gratitude-heart is all for you,
All for you.”
Here are some of my favorite poems and quotations that he wrote over the years. I do hope that you find some of them as helpful, enlightening and inspirational as I have.
“You hate someone whom you really wish to love, but whom you cannot love. Perhaps he himself prevents you. That is a disguised form of love.”
“Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness.”
“If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.”
“By hating that person, you have lost something very sweet in yourself.”
“Be universal in your love. You will see the universe to be the picture of your own being.”
“If we call ourselves children of God, then others are also children of God.”
“Love is the only wealth that man absolutely needs.
Love is the only wealth that God precisely is.”
“You can only hate someone whom you have the capacity to love, because if you are really indifferent, you cannot even get up the enough energy to hate him.”
“Whether you accept or reject it, God’s Love for you is permanent.”
“Let us not worry
About the future.
Let us only do the right thing
Today,
At this moment,
Here and now.
Let the future take care of itself.”
“There comes a time in the seeker’s life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved.”
“Listen to the inner light;
It will guide you.
Listen to the inner Peace;
It will feed you.
Listen to the inner Love;
It will transform you,
It will divinize you,
It will immortalize you.”
“Love is not a thing to understand.
Love is not a thing to feel.
Love is not a thing to give and receive.
Love is a thing only to become
And eternally be.
“I shall love the whole world,
But I shall control
Only myself.
“The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his Beloved.”
“Complete and total perfection will come about only when we feel that our perfection is no perfections as long as the rest of humanity remains imperfect.”
“He who loves, never grows old. God it a shining example.”
“The very nature of kindness
Is to spread.
If you are kind to others,
Today they will be kind to you,
And tomorrow to somebody else.”
“When we have
A childlike state of mind,
It becomes extremely easy to find God
Here, there and everywhere.”
“Of all the medicines
In the inner life,
A smile is by far
The best medicine.”
“Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. Why does meditation help us overcome fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, it is because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. When we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the Infinite Vast, then everything there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves?”
“For a genuine seeker,
The inner world
Is infinitely more real
Than the outer world.”
“My Lord does not want to know what I have done for Him. He just wants to know how I am. If he hears from me that I am happy, then he himself becomes exceedingly happy. In unmistakable terms He tells me that my happiness is His real and only Satisfaction.”
“Today I must dive deep within
And know what I come
To this earth-stage for.”
“Smile, smile, smile
At your mind
As often as possible.
Your smiling will considerably reduce
Your mind’s tearing tension.”
“Your self-transcendence-goal
Is not something
That you have to achieve.
It was already given to you long ago
By your Beloved Supreme.
You have only to believe it.
You have only to receive it.”
“You follow
Your heart’s love.
Your life’s happiness
Will follow you.”
“God’s foremost treasure on earth
Is my ever-blossoming
Gratitude-heart.”
“Yes, I can!
I certainly can!
I can have
A gratitude-flower-heart
That shall remain open
At all hours.”
“If you give God your heart’s
Dearest treasure, surrender,
Then God will grant you
His Vision’s Dearest treasure, peace.
“Instead of telling the world
What it is supposed to do,
Why don’t you immediately do it yourself ?
In this way, I assure you,
Your happiness will be surprisingly multiplied.”
“Once you have established
Your inner contact
With your inner Pilot,
Your life’s transformation-victory
Will not remain a far cry.”
“O kindle the fire of happiness!
Therein I shall see
The door of friendliness,
The room of greatness
And the palace of goodness.
I shall see, I shall see.”
“If your Lord Supreme requests you to do something, rest assured he has already given you the capacity – even more than necessary – long before you actually need it.”
“If you are already an awakened soul,
Then you must realize
That God has already given you
A supreme task to perform:
He wants you to work
For His Vision’s world-blossoms.”
“My service to humanity
Is my real opportunity
To prove my genuine love
For God and God alone.”
“Enthusiasm
Rules his inner world.
Determination
Rules his outer world.
Therefore
Happiness has become
His real name.”
“Of all the gifts
You have offered to God,
Your happiness-gift
He treasures most.”
“If you want to remain always happy,
Always perfect and always fulfilled,
Then always keep inside your heart
A pocketful of sweet dreams.”
“To my extreme happiness,
My Lord has come to tell me
That from now on
I must stand apart from my actions,
Divine and undivine.
He alone is the Doer;
I am a mere observer.”
“Be in love with your heart-life.
There, only there,
Is the flood of happiness.”
“God loves only one philosophy,
And that is the Do-it-here-now philosophy.”
“Every morning and evening I am
Determined to sing and dance
On the highest peak
Of my sun-flooded
Aspiration-mountain.”
“At last
He is healed of his self-doubt.
Now what is happening ?
He is awakening
To his souls ecstasy-sun.”
“Every second a seeker can start over,
For his life’s mistakes
Are initial drafts
And not the final version.
“We must see that God operates not only in us but in others as well. God also operates in our so-called enemies. But these are not our real enemies. Our real enemies are doubt, fear, anxiety and worry. When we do not cry to perfect others, but only try to perfect our own lives, then we will have joy.”
“A sincere seeker knows what his goal is: the highest Truth. He will not delay his journey. In the spiritual life we aspire for the highest Truth, for God, and for nothing else.”
“Precious and spacious
The aspiring heart has to remain
Always.”
“I am not even six feet tall. Yet I am praying to the Absolute Supreme to reach His infinite Height, which is far beyond even my imagination’s flight. For me to long to grow into that Height — is this not a miracle?”
“I am mortal. My thoughts, my deeds, my experiences — everything that I have and everything that I am — represent mortality. Yet despite everything that I have and everything that I am, I am longing for Immortality. Is this not a miracle?”
“There is only one immediate question:
Where is God?
The immediate answer is:
God is where
My heart’s love-breath is.”
“Ingratitude is as old
As man himself.
Gratitude is a child
Of yesterday.”
“The supreme secrets of a peaceful life:
Expect not; just give.
Delegate not; just start and continue.
Retire not; just aspire for
self-transcendence.”
“In the spiritual life the easiest way to conquer ego is to offer gratitude to God for five minutes daily. If you cannot offer gratitude for five minutes, then utter it for one minute. Offer your gratitude to God. Then you will feel that inside you a sweet, fragrant and beautiful flower is growing. That is the flower of humility.”
“In our spiritual life very often we get fascinating experiences and then we don’t want to aspire anymore. It is true that experiences can give us encouragement, but very often when we get too many experiences we enter into the vital world. Suppose you are walking along a street toward your goal. If you see beautiful trees, ponds and flowers alongside the street, what happens? The scenery is so beautiful that you take a rest. You say, “Let me stay here and enjoy this,” and then you stop and enjoy it. But your destination remains a far cry.”
“The problem with fault-finding
Is that he who finds fault with others
Is in no way a happy person
Even after he has successfully
Accomplished his task.”
“True inner joy is self-created
It does not rely on any outer circumstances
A river is flowing in and through you carrying the message of joy.
This divine joy is the sole purpose of life.”
“Meditation is not an escape. Meditation is the acceptance of life in its totality, with a view to transforming it for the highest manifestation of the divine Truth here on earth.”
“When we meditate soulfully, devotedly, we have to accept humanity as our very own. We have to know that humanity as it stands is far, far, from perfection, but we are also members of humanity. We have to take it with us. If we are in a position to inspire others, if we are one step ahead, naturally we have the opportunity to serve the divinity in the ones who are following us. We have to transform the face of the world on the strength of our dedication to the divinity in humanity.”
“God-realization, or Siddhi means Self-discovery in the highest sense of the term. One consciously realizes his oneness with God. As long as the seeker remains in ignorance, he will feel that God is somebody else who has infinite Power, while he, the seeker, is the feeblest person on earth. But the moment he realizes God, he comes to know that he and God are absolutely one in both the inner and the outer life. God-realization means one’s identification with one’s absolute highest Self.”
“What we call our joy, God calls our perfection. Each human being has come into the world with the message of perfection. Each human being will one day realize the highest Truth. Each human being is destined to be fulfilled. It is the birthright of our soul.”
“Not one
But twenty-four self-giving-hours
Every day I have
For my use.”
“At the end of all the roads
There is only a sound-life
That does everything,
And a silence-life
That becomes everything.”
“True spirituality is the acceptance of earth-life. A true seeker is he who accepts life, transforms life and perfects life so that the earth-life can become a conscious instrument of God.”
“When I was an animal I evolved through selfishness.
Now that I am a man my evolution can be achieved only through self-sacrifice.”
“How can one know who his spiritual teacher is?…His heart looks at the spiritual Masters and makes the choice. When the heart sees a spiritual Master, if it is overwhelmed with joy, then there is every probability that that spiritual Master is the right one for the seeker.”
“The joy of a self-giving life
Can neither be measured
Nor be expounded.”
“God is not a thing to be achieved, but a thing to be.”
“You may not know,
But it is absolutely true:
With each heartbeat
Your heart is calling: “God, God!”
You may not hear it,
But God Himself definitely hears
Your heart’s cry.”
“The moment we use the term ‘help’, a kind of egocentric idea enters into us. If we help someone, that means we are in a superior position. When we help, we feel that we are one step ahead or one step higher than the ones that we are helping. But if we serve someone, then we offer our capacity with humility, on the strength of our loving concern and oneness. So let us use the proper term, ‘service’.”
“A moment of
self-giving life
can conquer the sorrows
of many long years.”
“Forgive, you will have happiness.
Forget, you will have satisfaction.
Forgive and forget,
You will have everlasting peace
Within and without.”
“Imagination plays a most significant role in the spiritual life. Suppose you are not having good meditations, but six months ago you had a very good, powerful, high meditation. What you can do is try to imagine that powerful meditation. Then your imagination will become reality. After fifteen minutes or half an hour, you will get a good meditation. Vivekananda was such a great spiritual figure, yet sometimes for six months at a time he did not have a good meditation. What did he do? He used to imagine a time when he did have a good meditation, and inside his imagination was aspiration. So imagination is very good.”
“Our goal is not to have
A problem-free life.
But to conquer all the problems
As they appear
Along our life-road.”
“Let us serve the world soulfully. The pay we will receive for our service will be in the currency of gratitude, God’s gratitude, God the only gratitude.”
“Each human being can at once be a fighter and forgiver. When self-doubt tortures him, he must play the role of a fighter. And when his own ignorance humiliates him, he must play the role of a forgiver.”
“A spiritual man should be a normal man, a sound man. God Himself is normal; He is not insane. In order to reach God, a spiritual person has to be divinely practical in his day-to-day activities. Spirituality does not negate the outer life. But we have to know that the outer life does not mean the animal life. The outer life should be the manifestation of the divine life within us.”
“Either by silencing the mind or by opening the heart, today’s man can become tomorrow’s God, tomorrow’s Divinity. And embodied Divinity soon becomes revealed Immortality.”
“If we believe in our own
Self-transcendence-task
Then there can be
No unreachable goal.”
“Love of the limited self, the very limited self, is another name for human love. Love of the entire world is another name for divine love.”
“Silence tells the seeker in us to love, to love himself. It tells us it is wrong to hate ourselves because of our imperfections. When the seeker loves himself, loves the Divine within himself, he eventually realizes the Ultimate Truth.”
“Inner silence is not just the absence of thoughts. No! Silence is the blossoming of our indomitable inner will. Silence is our inner wisdom-light. “
“The way to become happy
Is to think
And to feel
That the very best is yet to come.”
“Failure
Is not falling down.
Failure
Is desiring to live
Where I have fallen.”
“There is no greater miracle
Than our conscious efforts
To become good human beings.”
“Meditation is man’s self-awakening and God’s Self-Offering.
When man’s self-awakening and God’s Self-Offering meet together
man becomes immortal in the inner world
and God becomes fulfilled in the outer world.”
“You have no idea
How much you do for mankind
When you love God unconditionally
Even for a fleeting moment.”
“My soul reminds me
Again and again
That I am not the doer.
I am only a witness-
God-existence-life.”
“Allow everything else to vanish
Save and except your cherished dreams,
For your cherished dreams
Are treasured sleeplessly
By God Himself.”
“World-harmony
Should be taken
As a world-prayer
On a daily basis.”
“Just start your inner race without waiting to see
Who else is ready to run with you.
When others see you have reached your goal,
They will also be inspired to run.”
“Keep an open heart
To allow the world
Lovingly and faithfully
To come in.”
“Although it is extremely difficult
We must realize
That we came into the world
Not to destroy but to illumine
Our enemies.”
“Human love wants to possess and be possessed by the world. Divine love wants to establish its inseparable oneness with the world and then it wants to divinely enjoy this oneness. Supreme Love transforms human love into divine love and blesses divine love with boundless joy and divine pride.”
“Each devoted moment
Prepares a beautiful sunrise
And a fruitful sunset.”
“A genius is he
Who ends rules and regulations.
A genius is he
Who is nothing but a powerful drop
In the ocean of cosmic life-energy.”
“When you consciously use time
To do something Divine,
You enter into timeless Time.
When you are consciously thinking
Of something divine, eternal Life come
And shakes hands with you.”
“The heart of every human being
Can leave behind a legacy
Of world-illumining compassion.”
“To inspire others
Is to be immediately rich
In the inner world.”
“What is joy? It is a bird That we all want to catch. It is the same bird That we all love to see flying.”
“When you talk and God listens, it is Prayer. When you listen and God talks, it is Meditation.”
“The moment you want to make progress is the moment you become an eternal beginner. The dawn is the beginning of a new day: it symbolizes hope, illumination and perfection. Every day the dawn begins its journey in the infinite sun. If you can feel that your whole being – your body, vitality, mind and soul – represents the ever-blossoming dawn, then you will always remain an eternal beginner.”
“Do not allow yourself
To be rued by dark doubts.
Make friends with bright hopes
At every moment
To change your own world
And the world around you.”
“Peace will come when we replace the love of power with the power of love.”
“God hears
The soulful prayers of a seeker
Not only with great readiness
But also with immediate
Oneness.”
“In tomorrow’s world
Many things will enlighten humanity.
But the thing that will enlighten
Humanity’s inner and outer life most
Is the transcendental temple
Of universal silence.”
Albert Ellis, R.I.P.
I just heard that Albert Ellis has passed away at the age of 93.
I think that most people who have ever done a psychology course will have heard of him. He was always controversial and upset a lot of people, particularly in regard to some of his early comments about religion and human sexuality, but he also made some important contributions to psychologyadn , was not afraid of changing is position if he thought tht he was wrong.
In 1955 he developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, and he was considered by many to be the grandfather of cognitive-behavioral therapies.
In 1982 a professional survey of U.S. and Canadian
psychologists, declared that he was one of the most influential psychotherapists in history (Carl Rogers placed first in the survey; Sigmund Freud placed third). Ellis founded and was the president and president emeritus of the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute. His 90th birthday party was attended by Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama.
Here are a few of his quotations that I found in my library and database.
“Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they’re alive and human.”
“As a result of my philosophy, I wasn’t even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn’t hate him. I hated what he was doing.”
“By not caring too much about what people think, I’m able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.”
“Cognitive behavior therapy and rational emotive behavior therapy are much more popular with the public than they ever were.”
“For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.”
“Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.”
“From the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.”
“I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up.”
“I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.”
“I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn’t love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression. “
“I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.”
“I hope to die in the saddle seat.”
“I just had a client this week who came to me after 10 years of Freudian therapy. He’s in love with his analyst, and she is sort of in love with him.”
“I regret that I’ve been so busy with clinical work that I haven’t been able to spend much time on experiments and outcome studies.”
“I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.”
“I think it’s unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that’s the human condition.”
“I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.”
“I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.”
“I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven’t got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame.”
“I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren’t listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.”
“I’ll be 87 tomorrow. When I’m in New York, I see as many 70 or more clients per week.”
“I’m very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it-going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.”
“I’ve lived in sin with the executive director of our institute for 35 years. I was married twice briefly before that.”
“If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.”
“If something is irrational, that means it won’t work. It’s usually unrealistic.”
“In the old days we used to get more referrals, because people had insurance that paid for therapy. Now they belong to HMOs, and we can only be affiliated with a few HMOs.”
“Let’s suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.”
“Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.”
“Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I’ve received over the years.”
“People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they’d much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.”
“People don’t just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.”
“People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.”
“People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.”
“Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.”
“Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it’s conditional.”
“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”
“The psychotics, naturally, don’t think straight. Severe personality disorders take much longer to treat than people who are neurotic.”
“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.”
“We teach people that they upset themselves. We can’t change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.”
“We teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.”
“We’re a nonprofit organization, and it usually costs $100 an hour for individual therapy. Participating in a group costs $120 a month.”
“You largely constructed your depression. It wasn’t given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.”
“I just got fed up. I was ready to blow up. This country is about enforcing our laws and if we don’t, we’ll have chaos worse than we already do.”
“The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.”
“Tolerance is anathema to devout divinity-centered religionists."
“Anyway, devout religionists are frequently attracted to and bound to their piety largely because it presumably offers them holier-than-thouness and one-up-man-ship over non-religionists."
Enlightenment
Regular readers will know that I have been collecting wise words from around the globe for many years, and I now have almost 40,000 of them broken down into more than 500 topics. It has taken years not just to collect them, but to try to check the sources and wording. But if you find errors, please let me know!
Here are 23 of my favorites comments about enlightenment.
I do hope that you find them as useful and inspiring as I have.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
–Carl G. Jung (Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, 1875-1961)
“Be a lamp unto your own feet; do not seek outside yourself.”
–Buddha (a.k.a. “The Awakened”, a.k.a. Siddhartha Gautama, Indian Religious Figure and Founder of Buddhism, c.563 B.C.E. – c.483 B.C.E.)
“When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.”
–Sri Ramakrishna (a.k.a. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Indian Hindu Mystic and Promoter of Universal Religion, 1836-1886)
“We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term. But how can one realize or make real that which alone is real? All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal. All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this. When we stop regarding the unreal as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.”
–Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)
“We attain enlightenment when we love truth for the sake of truth, and not for the sake of self-promotion or worldly gain.”
–Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish Scientist, Mystic and Philosopher, 1688-1772)
“Once and for all, dedicate yourself to the service of a high ideal, to the coming of the kingdom of God, and do not be concerned with what will become of you. This ideal will bring you everything."
–Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Bulgarian Spiritual Master, 1900-1986)
“The holy instant is the recognition that all minds are in communication. Every thought you would keep hidden shuts off communication.”
–A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)
“If you are enlightened, you are not free, as some people say, but you are freedom itself. Not like a bird in the sky, but like the sky itself.”
–Wolter A. Keers (Dutch Advaita Teacher and Editor, 1923-1985)
“The reason why so few people find enlightenment is because they have free will and punish themselves by making wrong choices. Constantly, enlightenment is being offered to them, but they refuse to accept it. Therefore they refuse to accept it. Therefore they are being taught problems that are set before them, since they refuse to make choices voluntarily.”
–“Peace Pilgrim” (a.k.a. Mildred Norman, American Peace Activist, 1908-1981)
“All the riches of this world are too less a price for a single word which enlightens the soul.”
–Hazrat Inayat Khan (Founder of the Sufi Order of the West, 1882-1927)
“To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the enlightened mind the whole world sparkles and burns”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, 1803-1882)
“Enlightenment must come little by little, otherwise it would overwhelm.”
–Idries Shah (Afghan-born Sufi Philosopher and Writer, 1924-1996)
“Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.”
–Bhagavad Gita (Ancient and Sacred Sanskrit Poem Incorporated into the Mahabharata)
“If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.”
–Jeremy Taylor (English Anglican Clergyman, Writer and Bishop, 1613-1667)
“The great beacon light God sets in all, the conscience of each bosom.”
–Robert Browning (English Poet, 1812-1889)
“God reveals himself unfailingly to the thoughtful seeker.”
–Honoré de Balzac (French Novelist, 1799-1850)
“There is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that the one realizes it, while the other is kept in ignorance of it.”
–Hui-Neng (a.k.a. Daikan Eno, Chinese Chan Monk, A.D. 638-713)
“You may have expected that enlightenment would come Zap! Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "ah ha" experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds…”
–Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert, American Spiritual Teacher, Author and Lecturer, 1931-)
“God realization does not begin in a cave high atop the Himalayas. It begins in the pots and pans of the kitchen. Treat all your tasks, however small, as opportunities to see God and serve him.”
Sri Swami Sivananda (Indian Physician and Spiritual Teacher, 1887-1963)
“Enlightenment is not an attainment: it is a realization. When you wake up, everything changes and nothing changes. If a blind man realizes that he can see, has the world changed?”
–Dan Millman (American Writer, Philosopher and Former World Class Trampolinist, 1947-)
“Enlightenment is the highest good. Once you have it, nobody can take it away from you.”
–Siddharameshwar Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1888-1936)
“Is enlightenment really possible for the average person? Yes. Big Yes. Enlightenment is very possible for the ordinary individual. Actually it is easier than for some one who thinks that they are special…. whenever someone is ordinary, simple, innocent and natural, that is enlightenment.”
–Sri Sri Ravishankar (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Founder of the Art of Living Foundation and the International Association for Human Values, 1956-)
The Horse, The Farmer and Silver Linings
I was talking to someone who has recently had a series of apparent mishaps in his life. And yet every one of them has so far turned out to have a silver lining,
I made the point to him that if we do indeed live in a meaningful, purposeful Universe, then we also have to accept that we cannot always see the reasons why thing happen. Certainly some things may happen “by chance,” but most events that involve conscious thought cannot be explained away as “chance” or “coincidence.”
It reminded me of a story that has been told and retold around the world in different forms since the dawning of time. I like this version from China:
“There was a wise old farmer whose horse ran away. All the neighbors came to commiserate and say, “That’s bad.”
But the farmer said, “Perhaps.”
Then the next day, the horse came back with a whole herd of wild horses, and the neighbors all said, “That’s good.”
And the old farmer said, “Perhaps.”
The very next day the farmer’s son broke his leg trying to tame one of the wild horses and the neighbors said, “That’s bad.”
And the old farmer said, “Perhaps.”
Just after the son broke his leg, the army came through and drafted all the young men and took them off to war. But they left the farmer’s son because his leg was broken.
All the neighbors said, “That’s good” to which the wise old farmer simply said, “Perhaps.”
“But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for.”
–Paulo Coelho (Brazilian Writer, 1947-)
“Every human life had its pattern that had to be worked out slowly to its ultimate conclusion.”
–Irving Stone (American Writer, 1903-1989)
“Man has come here with a definite purpose. Life is not meant merely for eating drinking and procreating.”
–Sri Swami Sivananda (Indian Physician and Spiritual Teacher, 1887-1963)
“There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
–Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Swiss-born American Psychologist, 1926-2004)
“You cannot discover the purpose of life by asking someone else – the only way you’ll ever get the right answer is by asking yourself.”
–Terri Guillemets (American Writer, 1973-)
“You have a purpose only as long as you are not complete; until then, completeness, perfection, is the purpose. But when you are complete in yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the Universe; you do not labor at it.”
–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, 1897-1981)
So It Goes
Like most young people, I did a load of menial jobs to pay my way through school. For one of them I spent a summer working as a hospital porter: I was the guy who pushed the wheelchairs around. There I met an interesting man who first introduced me to the works of Kurt Vonnegut, and by the end of the summer I had read all his books.
I just heard that Kurt passed away yesterday at the age of 84. He had an interesting life. He was captured by German troops in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge and he spent the rest of the war imprisoned in a Dresden slaughterhouse. On the night of 13 February 1945, Allied bombing raids flattened the city, creating a firestorm that killed an estimated 35,000 civilians in two hours. Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners survived because they were being kept in a cold meat locker three stories below the ground. When they emerged, there was nothing was left of the city. Vonnegut referred to his experiences of Dresden in several of his novels, most notably Slaughterhouse-Five that came out in 1967.
He often discussed his own mood disorder and a suicide attempt in the mid 1980s. His son, Mark Vonnegut is now a pediatrician, but his book Eden Express is an amazing account of his own descent into a mental illness that was described as schizophrenia, but from his description was far more likely to have been bipolar disorder.
They both survived, and for years now I have had all psychiatric trainees read Eden Express.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Kurt Vonnegut.
- “1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.”
- “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
- “All of us were stuck to the surface of a ball incidentally. The planet was ball-shaped. Nobody knew why we didn’t fall off, even though everybody pretended to kind of understand it.”
- “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
- “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
- “Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”
- “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before… He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
- “Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.”
- “During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American foot soldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.”
- “He adapted to what there was to adapt to.”
- “(He) told us about one of Plato’s dialogues, in which an old man is asked how it felt not to be excited by sex anymore. The old man replies that it was like being allowed to dismount from a wild horse.”
- “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
- “Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.”
- “How nice–to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
- “Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”
- “I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.”
- “I can have oodles of charm when I want to.”
- “I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, ‘The Beatles did’.”
- “I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
- “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”
- “I’m suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am.”
- “I’ve got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it . . .”
- “If somebody says, ‘I love you,’ to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that
- which the pistol-holder requires? ‘I love you, too.’”
- “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
- “It is harder to be unhappy when you are eating.”
- “Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”
- “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
- “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”
- “. . . life, by definition, is never still.”
- “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
- “Love is where you find it.”
- “Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.”
- “Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
- “. . . most of the world’s ills can be traced to the fact that Man’s knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world.”
- “Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both present and past.”
- “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.”
- “One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”
- “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!”
- “Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.”
- “The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.”
- “The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration.”
- “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.”
- “. . . there is this feeling that I have a destiny far away from the shallow and preposterous posing that is our life . . .”
- “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
- “. . . uncritical love is the only real treasure.”
- “We all missed a lot. We’d all do well to start again, preferably with kindergarten.”
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- “We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
- “Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”
- “What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.”
Great Mistakes
It is often amazing to see how many confident predictions never turned out to be correct. This is particularly important as we are building up the evidence base to support Integrated Medicine. In Healing, Meaning and Purpose I discuss some observations that nobody could understand until new theoretical models had been created.
One example is the observation that the orbit of Mercury around the Sun appears to be irregular. Astronomers spent years trying to find a theoretical planet called Vulcan that was supposed to explain the observations. It doesn’t exist. But it was not until 1905 that Einstein explained the apparent irregularities: light was being bent by the gravitational field of the Sun.
Here are a few examples of the great and the wise pontificating about the future and getting it dead wrong. Worth remembering the next time somebody says that homeopathy or acupuncture are "impossible," so any research data should be rejected out of hand!
360 B.C.E. “The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls. You will give your disciples not truth but the semblance of truth: they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.”
–Plato (Athenian Philosopher, 428-348 B.C.E.)
A.D. 79 “I am amazed, O Wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.”
–Graffiti in Pompeii
A.D. 100 “Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments.”
–Julius Sextus Frontinus (Roman Governor of Britain, Author of a work on the Aqueducts of Rome, A.D.35-A.D.103)
1486 “So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value.”
–Report of a Committee to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain concerning Columbus’ proposal
1530 “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain."
Martin Luther (German Priest and Scholar, 1483-1546)
1800 “What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (Corsican-born French Military Strategist, General and, from 1804-1814, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821) When told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat.
1807 “I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky.”
Thomas Jefferson (American Writer, Philosopher, Politician and, from 1801-1809, 3rd President of the United States, 1743-1826) On hearing an eyewitness report of falling meteorites.
1819 “Artificial lighting drives out fear of the dark, which keeps the weak from sinning.”
–Kölnische Zeitung
1825 “What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?”
–Quarterly Review
1830 “Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
–Dionysius Lardner (Irish Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, 1793-1859)
1839 “The abolishment (sic) of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it… knife & pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of patients.”
–Alfred Velpeau (French Surgeon, 1795-1867)
1842 “I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged … and I was assured by other senators after he left the room that they had no confidence in it.”
–John Smith (American Politician and United States Senator for Indiana) After witnessing a demonstration of Samuel Morses’s telegraph.
1830 “Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as "railroads" … As you may well know, Mr. President, "railroad" carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by "engines" which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.”
–Martin Van Buren (American Politician, Governor of New York and, from 1837-1841, 8th President of the United States, 1782-1862
1844 “There does not appear the slightest probability that, under any circumstances, Hong Kong will ever become a place of trade.”
–Robert Montgomery Martin (English Civil Servant and British Colonial Treasurer, 1800-1868)
1864 “No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.”
–King William I of Prussia (Prussian Aristocrat, Soldier and, from 1713 to 1740, King of Prussia, 1688-1740) On hearing of the invention of trains/
1865 “Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”
–The Boston Post
1872 “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.”
–Pierre Pachet (French Professor of Physiology at Toulouse)
1872 “It’s a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?”
–Rutherford B. Hayes (American Politician, and, from 1877-1881, 19th President of the United States) After a demonstration of Alexander Bell’s telepho
ne
1873 “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.”
–Sir John Eric Erichsen (Danish-born British Surgeon and Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1818-1896)
1876 This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
–Western Union Memo
1878 “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”
–Sir William Henry Preece (Welsh Electrical Engineer and Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, 1834-1913)
1878 “When the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it & no more be heard of.”
–Erasmus Wilson (English Physician and Philanthropist, 1809-1884)
1880 Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.”
–Sir William Siemens (German-born British Engineer and Inventor, 1823-1883), on Edison’s announcement of a successful light bulb.
1888 “We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”
–Simon Newcomb (Canadian-born American Astronomer, 1835-1909)
1889 "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.”
–Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)
1893 “Criminals will be prevented from propagating their kind. This will take the place of capital punishment. And after a few generations, this will do away with crime, since no criminals will be born.”
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox (American Poet and Journalist, 1850-1919)
1893 “All marriages will be happy in the 1990’s, because the law will put to death any man or woman who marries without the proper physical, mental and financial qualifications.”
–John Habberton (American Writer, 1842-1921)
1893 “By 1993 longevity will be so improved that 150 years will be no unusual age to reach.”
–Thomas De Witt Talmage (American Clergyman and Preacher, 1832-1902)
1894 “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented by new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals”
–Albert Michelson (German-born American Physicist and, in 1907, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1852-1931)
1895 “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
–Lord Kelvin (a.k.a. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, English Physicist and President of the Royal Society, 1824-1907)
1895 "It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the airplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.”
–Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)
1899 "Everything that can be invented, has been invented.”
–Charles Duell American Commissioner of the United States Office of Patents (This one is almost certainly a myth: Duell’s report actually talks about the ever-increasing number of new inventions!)
1899 “The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”
–Literary Digest
1900 “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
— Lord Kelvin (a.k.a. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, English Physicist and President of the Royal Society, 1824-1907) {The same gentleman who said that "heavier than air machines" were impossible. Perhaps he then gave up on making predictions….}
1906 "The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.”
–Simon Newcomb (Canadian-born American Astronomer, 1835-1909)
1921 “Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
–New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary work on rockets.
1927 "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
–H M Warner (American Founder of Warner Brothers, 1881-1958)
1928 “There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo.”
–Robert Millikan (American Physicist, who, in 1923, Won the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1868-1953)
1929 “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
–Irving Fisher (American Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1867-1947)
1931 “In my lifetime, there will be no epidemics. There will be no incurable diseases.”
–Norman Bel Geddes (American Designer, 1893-1958)
1932 “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It wo
uld mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
— Albert Einstein (German-born American Physicist and, in 1921, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1879-1955
1933 “The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.”
— Ernest Rutherford, First Baron Rutherford of Nelson (New Zealand-born British Physicist and, in 1908, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1871-1937
1936 “The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]…presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author’s insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.”
–Richard van der Riet Woolley, British Astronomer and Astronomer Royal, 1906-1986)
1937 "I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and the general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”
–Alan Turing (English Mathematician, 1912-1954)
1939 "The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen: the average American family hasn’t time for it.”
–The New York Times
1939 "Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
Sir Winston Churchill (English Statesman, British Prime Minister, 1940-1945 and 1951-1955, and, in 1953, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1874-1965)
1943 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
–Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (American Businessman and Founder of International Business Machines, 1874-1956)
1946 “[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
–Darryl F. Zanuck (American Writer and Director, 1902-1979)
1949 "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.”
–Popular Mechanics Magazine
1949 “It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.”
–John von Neumann (Hungarian-born American Mathematician who contributed to Quantum Mechanics and Game Theory, 1903-1957
1953 “If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.”
–Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect, 1867-1959)
1954 “If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.”
— W.C. Heuper (American Scientist and Director of the National Cancer Institute)
1959 “Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”
–Arthur Summerfield (American Politician and, from 1953-1961, United States Postmaster General)
1962 “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
–Decca Recording Company in a letter rejecting the Beatles
1968 “What the hell is [a microprocessor] good for?”
–Robert Lloyd of IBM’s Advanced Computing Systems Division
1970 “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.”
–Marvin Minsky (American Scientist and Philosopher in the Field of Artificial Intelligence, 1927-)
1970 “If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.”
–Spencer Silver (American Chemist and Inventor, 1941-) Speaking about the work that led to the adhesives for 3M "Post-It" Notepads.
1977 “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
–Ken Olsen (American Engineer and President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1926-)
1981 “640K of memory ought to be enough for anybody.”
–Bill Gates (American Computer Genius, Businessman and Co-founder of Microsoft, 1955-)
1983 “No one knows what to do with seven windows at one time.”
–PC Week Magazine
1984 “The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a mouse. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”
–John Dvorak (American Columnist on Technology and Computing)
1995 “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
–Robert Metcalfe (American Technology Pioneer, 1946-)
1995 “To see tomorrow’s PC, look at today’s Macintosh.”
–BYTE Magazine
As a cheer leader for all things Apple, I just had to put in that last one!
Which leaves me with one more quotation:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
–Arthur C. Clarke (English-born Writer, 1917-) First Law of Science.
Free Thinker's Day
Today is Freethinker’s Day, ostensibly because January 29th is the birthday of Thomas Paine.
Born in Thetford in Norfolk in 1737, he emigrated from England to Philadelphia in 1774 after he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who advised him to seek his fortune in the Americas, and gave him letters of introduction. It was two years later that he published Common Sense, a popular pamphlet that argued for complete American independence from Britain and was an important influence on the American Revolution. This, probably more than any other single publication, paved the way for the Declaration of Independence.
Later that same year in his pamphlet The American Crisis he wrote his famous line, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
After the revolution was won, Paine returned to England in 1787, and in 1791 he published The Rights of Man, which opposed the idea of monarchy and defended the French Revolution. The book immediately created a sensation, with at least eight editions being published in 1791, and the work was quickly reprinted in the United States where it was widely distributed by the Jeffersonian societies.
The Rights of Man began as a defense of the French Revolution but it evolved into an analysis of the basic reasons for discontent in European society and suggested that republicanism was a remedy for the evils of arbitrary government, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and war.
He was always a free thinker, and I’ve recently re-read the Rights of Man and been impressed by his writing, even if I don’t agree with all of his conclusions.
Free thinking is what lead to the creation of Integrated Medicine and the discovery that some of the Laws of Life have been evolving and changing over the last few centuries. These discoveries were all the fruits of thinking – and living – “outside the box.”
Here are a few of Thomas Paine’s quotable quotes:
“A bad cause will never be supported by bad means and bad men.”
“A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal but a real existence, and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of a people constituting a government. It is the body of elements to which you refer, and quote article by article, and contains the principles on which the government shall be established–the form in which it shall be organized–the powers it shall have–the mode of elections–the duration of Congress–and, in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution is to a government, therefore, what the laws made by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made; and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.”
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
“A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.”
“A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
“Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men who can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.”
“Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.”
“All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.”
“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man”
“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”
“Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”
“Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.”
“He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
“I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.”
“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and row brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
“It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.”
“It is necessary to the happiness of a man that he be mentally faithful to himself.”
“Man must go back to nature for information.”
“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”
“Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.”
“My country is the world, and my religion to do good.”
“My mind is my own church.”
“Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.”
“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”
“Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.”
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
“The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together; and it is only in the last push that one or the other takes the lead.”
“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”
“The sublime and ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step below the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.”
“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”
“There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.”
“These are the times that try men’s souls.”
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
“Though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.”
“Time makes more converts than reason.”
“’Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
“We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.”
“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
“What we obtain too cheap we esteem too little; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”
“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”
“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”
The Best Things In Life Aren't Things
I was sorry to hear this morning that Art Buchwald has just passed away at the age of 81, having defied the odds for a year after entering a hospice.
I’ve enjoyed his columns for years, and the title of this post is one of my most favorite Buchwald-isms. And it sums up a lot of his work. Hidden beneath the satire and humor there was always a wise, pithy and unsightful comment.
Just think about that for a moment, "The best things in life aren’t things." He’s right isn’t he, and how often do we all forget it?
Here are a few from my collection that I hope you will like.
Farewell Art.
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“A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.”
“And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess."
“I don’t know what’s coming next and neither does anyone else. It’s something that we do have to face but the thing is that a lot of people don’t want to face it. And there’s denial. If somebody says it, like me, everybody feels a little better that they can discuss it.”
“I don’t know whether it’s normal or not, but sex has always been something I take seriously. I would put it higher than tennis on my list of constructive things to do.”
“I worship the quicksand he walks in.”
“People are broad-minded. They’ll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn’t drive, there’s something wrong with him.”
“The buffalo isn’t as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.”
“We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don’t think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.”
“Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.”
