Metaphysical Angst

"There are people ... who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos."

- José Saramago (1922 - 2010)

Essential Unity of the World

"We try to realize the

essential unity of the world

with the conscious soul of man;

we learn to perceive

the unity held together

by the one Eternal Spirit,

whose power creates the earth,

the sky, and the stars,

and at the same time

irradiates our mind."

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

Science and Art

"Science and art sometimes

can touch one another,

like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle

which is our human life,

and that contact may be

made across the borderline

between the two

respective domains."

- M. C. Escher (1898 - 1972)

Structure of Reality

"The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."

- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

 

There Are No Boundaries

"That all opposites—such as mass and energy, subject and object, life and death—are so much each other that they are perfectly inseparable, still strikes most of us as hard to believe. But this is only because we accept as real the boundary line between the opposites. It is, recall, the boundaries themselves which create the seeming existence of separate opposites. To put it plainly, to say that 'ultimate reality is a unity of opposites' is actually to say that in ultimate reality there are no boundaries. Anywhere."

- Ken Wilber (1949 - )

No Boundary: Eastern and Western
Approaches to Personal Growth

Delight of the Senses

"Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. By thy might, there return into us treasures that we had abandoned. By thy grace, there are released in us all the dried-up runnels of our heart. Of the riches that exist in the world, thou art the rarest and also the most delicate - thou so pure within the bowels of the earth! A man may die of thirst lying beside a magnesian spring. He may die within reach of a salt lake. He may die though he hold in his hand a jug of dew, if it be inhabited by evil salts. For thou, water, art a proud divinity, allowing no alteration, no foreignness in thy being. And the joy that thou spreadest is an infinitely simple joy."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944)

Wind, Sand and Stars

Experiencing Eternity

"When you realize that eternity

is right here now,

that it is within your possibility

to experience the eternity of

your own truth and being,

then you grasp the following:

That which you are

was never born

and will never die."

- Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1987)

Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor