Calmness

"Thus Gotama [Buddha] walked toward the town to gather alms, and the two samanas recognized him solely by the perfection of his repose, by the calmness of his figure, in which there was no trace of seeking, desiring, imitating, or striving, only light and peace."

- Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Siddhartha

Perspectival View

"What prohibits me from treating my perception as an intellectual act is that an intellectual act would grasp the object either as possible or as necessary. But in perception it is 'real'; it is given as the infinite sum of an indefinite series of perspectival views in each of which the object is given but in none of which is it given exhaustively."

- Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 - 1961)

Reciprocal Analogy

"It is imagination that first taught man the moral meaning of color, of contour, of sound, and of scent. In the beginning of the world it created analogy and metaphor. What would be truly surprising would be to find that sound could not suggest colour, that colours could not evoke the idea of a melody, and that sound and colour were unsuitable for the translation of ideas, seeing that things have always found their expression through a system of reciprocal analogy."

- Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)

Everything We See

"Everything we see 

hides another thing,

we always want to see 

what is hidden by what we see."

"Only thought can resemble.

It resembles by

 being what it sees, 

hears, or knows; 

it becomes what 

the world offers it."

- Rene Magritte (1898 - 1967)

Matter into Spirit

"It is not God
who will save us,
it is we who
will save God...

...by battling,
by creating,
and by transmuting
matter into spirit."

- Nikos Kazantzakis (1883 - 1957)

Making the Invisible Visible

"The camera is not only an 

extension of the eye but of the brain.

It can see sharper, farther, 

nearer, slower, faster than the eye.

It can see by invisible light.

It can see in the past, 

present, and future.

Instead of using the camera 

only to reproduce objects, 

 I wanted to use it to make what is 

invisible to the eye — visible. "

- Wynn Bullock (1902 - 1975)

Oneness

"The first peace, which is 

the most important, 

is that which comes within 

the souls of people when

they realize their relationship, 

their oneness,

with the universe and 

all its powers,

and when they realize 

that at the center of the

universe dwells the Great Spirit,

and that this center is 

really everywhere,

it is within each of us."

- Black Elk (1863 - 1950)

Penetrating Matter

“The farther and more deeply

we penetrate into matter,

by means of increasingly

powerful methods,

the more we are confounded by

the interdependence of its parts...

It is impossible to cut into the network,

to isolate a portion without it becoming

frayed and unravelled at all its edges.”

- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955)

World and Self

"To the vast majority of people 

a photograph is an

image of something within 

their direct experience:

a more-or-less factual reality.

It is difficult for them 

to realize that the

photograph can be the source 

of experience, as well as the

reflection of spiritual awareness 

of the world and of self."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

Intellectual Rays

"Many an object is not seen, 

though it falls within our range of visual ray,

because it does not come within the

range of our intellectual ray,

i.e., we are not looking for it.

So, in the largest sense,

we find only the world we look for."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Place

"There is no place at all

that is not looking at you."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

(1875 - 1926)

True Mysticism

"True mysticism is 

active and practical,

not passive and theoretical. 

It is an organic life-process, 

something which the

whole self does; 

not something as to

which its intellect 

holds an opinion."

- William James (1842 - 1910)

Transmuted Symbols

"The physical object, to me, 

is merely a stepping stone

to an inner world where the object,

with the help of the subconscious drives 

and focuses perceptions,

becomes transmuted into 

a symbol whose life is beyond the

life of the objects we know."

- Clarence J. Laughlin (1905 - 1985)

Mysterious Reality

"We know that behind every image revealed there is another image more faithful to reality, and in the back of that image there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image of that absolute, mysterious reality that no one will ever see."

- Michelangelo Antonioni (1912 - 2007)

Soul of Objects

"Nature is not matter only,

she is also spirit.

Spirit seems to be the

 inside of things...

the soul of objects."

- C. G. Jung (1875-1961)

Quiet Mind

"When the mind is

very quiet, 

completely still,

when there is not a movement 

of thought and therefore no experience,

no observer, then that very stillness 

has its own creative understanding.

In that stillness the mind is 

transformed into something else."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

Things Unknown

"There are things known

and there are things unknown,

and in between are

the doors of perception" 

- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Symbolic Universe

"No longer in a merely physical universe,

man lives in a symbolic universe.

Language, myth, art and religion
are parts of this universe.

They are varied threads which
weave the symbolic net,
the tangled web of human experience.

No longer can man confront reality immediately;
he cannot see it, as it were, face to face.
Physical reality seems to recede in proportion
as man's symbolic activity advances.

Instead of dealing with the things
themselves man is in a sense
constantly conversing with himself.

He has so enveloped himself in
linguistic forms, in artistic images,
in mythical symbols or religious rites that he
cannot see or know anything except by
the interposition of this artificial medium."

- Ernst Cassirer
Philosopher (1874 - 1945)