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Quotable |
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The human mind is not capable of
grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge
library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many
different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written
these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand
the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite
plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which
it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. |
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My religion consists of a humble
admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself
in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and
feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of
a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible
universe, forms my idea of God. Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however,
reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular
scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories
of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of
authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never
left me. There are two ways to live, one is as though nothing
is a miracle. The other is as if everything is. I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand
in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate
senses to appreciate it. Science without religion is lame, religion without
science is blind. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes
the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our
own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life
perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous
structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive and to try
humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence
manifested in Nature. There is no surer way to misread any document than
to read it literally. We have enough religion to make us hate, but not
enough to make us love one another. In three words I can sum up everything I've learned
about life: it goes on. Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention
to this and that, there is another self more really us than I. And
the more you become aware of the unknown self -- if you become aware
of it -- the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with
everything else that is. You are a function of this total galaxy,
bounded by the Milky Way, and this galaxy is a function of all other
galaxies. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with
great telescopes. You look and look, and one day you are going to
wake up and say, "Why, that's me!" And in knowing that,
you know that you never die. You are the eternal thing that comes
and goes, that appears -- now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith,
now as Betty Brown -- and so it goes, forever and ever and ever.
Whether there is an afterlife or not, we must live
as if this is all there is. Our lives, our families, our friends,
our communities (and how we treat others) are more meaningful when
every day, every moment, every relationship and every person counts.
Rather than meaningless forms before an eternal tomorrow, these
entities have value in the here-and-now because of the purpose we
create. A great many people think they are thinking when
they are merely rearranging their prejudices. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Science is not only compatible with spirituality;
it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place
in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when
we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that
soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is
surely spiritual. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow
mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be
known. Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it?
Whence was it born, whence came creation? No one knows whence creation
arose; and whether god has or has not made it. He who surveys it
from the lofty skies, only he knows--or perhaps he knows not. I learnt the lesson on nonviolence from my wife,
when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to
my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering
my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of
myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born
to rule over her. Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful
without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of
it too? As soon as man does not take his existence for
granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought
begins. Reality is not only stranger than we suppose but
stranger than we can suppose. Authentic mysteries are everywhere; we need not
create occult entities. The manufacture of supernatural miracles
is growing in direct proportion to the decline in the sense of wonder.
An actual wolverine is far more miraculous than a nonexistent werewolf. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new lands, but in seeing with new eyes." In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten;
in the human kingdom, define or be defined. "I cannot tell you anything that, in a few
minutes, will tell you how to be rich, but I can tell you how to
feel rich, which is far better, let me tell you firsthand, than
being rich." Read this great
article by the lawyer, writer, actor and economist. Look at everything as though you were seeing it
either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will
be filled with glory. Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe,
and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite
staggering." Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty
is absurd. Astrology may be slightly damaging, but mostly
it is just sad. So sad, that people are ignorant of the true glories
of the stars, and of the stupendous distances and times that separate
them, while they bother with the frivolous inventions of a charlatan
… There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe,
and it has a longer shelf life. An open mind is all very well, but it ought not
to be so open that there's no keeping anything in or out. We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our
little life is rounded with a sleep. The greatest good you can do for another is not
just share your riches, but reveal to them their own. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you mad. The more powerful and original a mind, the more
it will incline towards the religion of solitude. We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew,
in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal
poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic. The highest possible stage in moral culture is
when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts. Forever is composed of nows. There is no end. There is no beginning. There is
only the infinite passion of life. Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean
of non-knowledge. Homo sapiens may be the brainiest species of all,
but we represent only a tiny twig, grown but yesterday on a single
branch of the richly aborescent bush of life. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence
is to kindle a light in the darkness of being. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked
man’s progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity
through the centuries; and if one does not feel in these pulsations
a heavenward striving, one must indeed be deaf to the harmonies
of life. You always have to remember to celebrate, because
that's what charges you up to get through another life storm. Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible
energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation... When you see the Earth from space, you don't see
any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of
the new mythology to come. If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy,
if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move
you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand,
rejoice, for your soul is alive ... Whenever an editor rejects your work....Have sex!
It will make rejection a pure delight. Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great,
unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has
no answer to it. We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion.
The great task in life is to find reality. Myths, after all, contain the greater story that
never was but is always happening...myth is the coded DNA of the
human psyche. Men of broader intellect know that there is no
sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with
strange aeons even Death may die. Man does not see the real world. The real world
is hidden from him by the wall of imagination. No man ever steps in the same river twice, because
it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Most people would rather die than think; in fact,
they do so. Both in thought and in feeling, even though time
be real, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. Compared to the pond of knowledge, our ignorance
remains atlantic. Indeed the horizon of the unknown recedes as
we approach it. That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes
that his wisdom is worthless. Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and
leads us from this world to another. We don't know a millionth of one percent about
anything. What we know is not much; what we do not know is
immense. The recognition that no knowledge can be complete,
no metaphor entire, is itself humanizing. It counteracts fanaticism.
It grants even to adversaries the possibility of partial truth,
and to oneself the possibility of error. The further limits of our being plunge, it seems
to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the
sensible and merely "understandable" world. Name it the
mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. My profession is to watch for and describe all
the divine features which I detect in Nature. The use of natural history is to give us aid in
supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us
language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. The foundations of a person are not in matter but
in spirit. The world is emblematic...the whole of nature is
a metaphor of the mind. I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos. The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for
safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. There are no days in life so memorable as those
which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. The sacred is found boring by many who find the
uncanny fascinating. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things
that escape those who dream only at night. All that we are or seem is but a dream within
a dream. All argument is against it, but all belief is
for it. Without dreams and phantoms, man cannot exist. Beside a dead person is a living ghost. Honor the spirits, but keep your distance from
them. The more enlightened our houses are, the more
their walls ooze ghosts. Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us--that is,
never too far out of the reach of fancy. To the warm imagination, the forms which float
half-veiled in darkness afford a higher delight than the most distinct
scenery the sun can show. Death the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening. Still 'round the corner there may wait, a new
road, or a secret gate. |
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Copyright 2002 - 2010 Sherry Austin
All Rights Reserved