Spirit-Matter

"Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.

...

In a concrete sense there is not matter and spirit. All that exists is matter becoming spirit. There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. [...] Life represents the goal of a transformation of great breadth, in the course of which what we call ‘matter’ turns about, furls in on itself, interiorizes the operation covering, so far as we are concerned, the whole history of the earth. The phenomenon of spirit is not therefore a sort of brief flash in the night; it reveals a gradual and systematic passage from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the conscious to the self‑conscious. It is a cosmic change of state."

- Teilhard De Chardin (1881- 1955)

Underlying Manifestations

"Mathematicians are beginning to view order and chaos as two distinct manifestations of an underlying determinism. And neither state exists in isolation. The typical system can exist in a variety of states, some ordered, some chaotic. Instead of two opposed polarities, there is a continuous spectrum. As harmony and discord combine in musical beauty, so order and chaos combine in mathematical (and physical) beauty."

- Ian Stewart (1945 - )

Dancing Dream

"All great truths are only myths that exist momentarily 
in the evolving greater consciousness.
Like individuals, they die, to be
reborn fresh and glorious in
the minds of each new age.
They may bear a resemblance to their forebears,
but each brings with it new features of its own
and seeks to find its place and meaning in
the dancing dream that is the cosmos. "

- David Chethlahe Paladin (1926-1984)
Painting the Dream

Broken Symmetry

"The state of a really big system does not at all have to have the symmetry of the laws which govern it; in fact, it usually has less symmetry. [...] In my own field of many-body physics, we are, perhaps, closer to our fundamental, intensive underpinnings than in any other science in which non-trivial complexities occur, and as a result we have begun to formulate a general theory of just how this shift from quantitative to qualitative differentiation takes place. This formulation called the theory of 'broken symmetry' may be of help in making more generally clear the breakdown of the constructive converse of reductionism."

- Philip W. Anderson (1923 - 2020)

Principial Unity

"All that exists, in whatever mode this may be, necessarily participates in universal principles, and nothing exists except by participation in these principles, which are the eternal and immutable essences contained in the permanent actuality of the Divine Intellect. Consequently, it can be said that all things, however contingent they may be in themselves, express or represent these principles in their own way and according to their order of existence, for otherwise they would be purely and simply nothingness. Thus, from one order to another, all things are linked together and correspond, to come together in total and universal harmony, for harmony is nothing other than the reflection of principial unity in the manifested world."

- René Guénon (1886 - 1951)

Meditative Quiescence

"Knowledge is not an object that you acquire. It’s not a mechanism that somehow you provide to the human mind. It’s actually an epiphanal moment. And I think this is true of the arts, poetry, painting, music, and I would say also to spiritual understanding. [...] Is it possible to be alive, active in the world, and yet have such calm, such kind of inner openness and presence that one can lead a life, at least in part, that is an expression of that quality of meditative quiescence that's on the one hand quite alert and on the other hand, completely at ease, completely at rest. So it’s a little bit like bringing the sleeping life into the day life."

- Arthur Zajonc (1949 - )

Enchanted Spirits

"Emerson said that a library is a magic chamber in which there are many enchanted spirits. They wake when we call them. When the book lies unopened, it is literally, geometrically, a volume, a thing among things. When we open it, when the book surrenders itself to its reader, the aesthetic event occurs. And even for the same reader the same book changes, for the change; we are the river of Heraclitus, who said that the man of yesterday is not the man of today, who will not be the man of tomorrow. We change incessantly, and each reading of a book, each rereading, each memory of that rereading, reinvents the text. The text too is the changing river of Heraclitus."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
Seven Nights

In the Heart of the Spirit

 "In our hearts there burns a fire...
That burns all veils to their root and foundation
When those veils have been burned away
Then the heart will understand completely.
Ancient love will unfold ever-fresh forms
In the heart of the Spirit,
In the core of the heart."

- Rumi (1207 - 1273)