Shaking the Web of Interrelatedness
“There is a mystical truth in the saying about the ‘web of interrelatedness’: When a leaf falls to the earth, the universe is shaken. Just so, when one writes a single word, the universe is shaken.”
–William Samuel (American Writer, Spiritual Seeker, Mystic and Teacher, 1924-1996)
The Great Chain of Being
“Everything is bound up with everything else in a pattern both absolute and universal. We are links in the great chain of being, in which the hierarchy of the human body parallels the hierarchies of the nature, the state, the cosmos.”
–Jean Houston (American Scholar, Researcher and Author on Human Potentialities, 1937-)
Web of Life
“I saw that each life form is connected to the others as in a web.”
–Carlos Warter (Chilean-born Psychiatrist, Author and Lecturer, 1950-)
Structured by Growth
“From the smallest individual detail to the vastest aggregations, our living universe (in common with our inorganic universe) has a structure, and this structure can owe its nature only to a phenomenon of growth.”
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Priest, Mystic, Paleontologist and Author, 1881-1955)
“The Divine Milieu (Perennial Classics)” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
Universal Brotherhood
“The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.”
–Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer, 1835-1910)
“Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World” (Mark Twain)
A Mystic Bond
“Of a truth, men are mystically united: a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.”
–Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian and Essayist, 1795-1881)
“On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” (Thomas Carlyle)
Interlocking and Interdependent Communication Patterns
“There are millions of interlocking and interdependent communication patterns among all the physical forms of the Earth, and with training human beings can perceive and understand those patterns of communication. It is part of our species’ purpose to do so.”
–Stephen Harrod Buhner (American Poet, Writer, Ecologist and Psychotherapist, 1952-)
“One Spirit, Many Peoples: A Manifesto for Earth Spirituality” (Stephen Harrod Buhner)
Like a Single Cell
“What is (the earth) most like?…..It is most like a single cell.”
–Lewis Thomas (American Physician, Writer and Educator, 1913-1993)
“Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher” (Lewis Thomas)
After a Near-Death Experience
“Through the years, people have related, oh, five hundred or six hundred near-death experiences to me. When people come back out of that experience of light, they’ll often say that they have a sense that everything is interconnected. In some way that’s hard to put into words, we’re all the same. We all share one mind. And it doesn’t stop with people, it has to do, too, with trees and plants and living things.”
–Joan Borysenko (American Psychologist, Writer, Mystic and Speaker, 1945-)
Experiencing the Web of Life
“Our presence here (in space), outside the domain of the home planet, was not rooted in an accident of nature or in the capricious political whim of a technological civilization. It was rather an extension of the same universal process that evolved our molecules. And what I felt was an extraordinary personal connectedness with it. I experienced what has been described as an ecstasy of unity. I not only SAW the connectedness, I FELT it and experienced it sentiently. I was overwhelmed with the sensation of physically and mentally extending out into the cosmos.”
–Edgar Mitchell (American Scientist, Apollo 14 Astronaut and Founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1930-)
