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)