Thursday, January 14, 2016

Simplicity & Beauty


"The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence."

(1902 - 1984)

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Duality and Forgetting


"Where there is a duality, as it were, there one sees another; there one smells another; there one tastes another; there one speaks to another. . . But where everything has become just one's own self, then whereby and whom would one see? Then whereby and whom would one smell? then whereby and whom would one speak? then whereby and whom would one hear? then whereby and whom would one think? then whereby and whom would one touch? then whereby and whom would one understand?"

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (2.4.14)

"My connection with the body and its parts is dissolved. My perceptive organs are discarded. Thus leaving my material form and bidding farewell to my knowledge, I become one with the Great Pervader. This I call sitting and forgetting all things."

(~ 4th century BC)

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Sacred Tree


"The sacred tree,
the sacred stone
are not adored
as stone or tree;
they are worshipped
precisely because
they are hierophanies,
because they show
something that is
no longer stone
or tree but sacred,
the ganz andere
or 'wholly other.'"

Mircea Eliade (1907 - 1986)
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

Monday, January 11, 2016

Emancipation of the Mind


"Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes… Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas."

(1904 - 1948)

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Resonance, Spirit, and Proisvedenie


" …the long Russian word for creation proisvedenie, so different from its shorter counterparts in English, French and German, express for me the whole history and process of creation, lengthy, mysterious, infinitely complex and foreshadowed by divine predestination.

...in many ways art is similar to religion. Its development consists not in new discoveries which invalidate the old truths (as is obviously the case in science). Its development consists in sudden illuminations, similar to lightning, in explosions, which burst in the sky like fireworks… …this illumination shows with blinding light new perspectives, new truths, which are basically nothing but the organic development, the further organic growth of the earlier wisdom.

...the world is full of resonances. It constitutes a cosmos of things exerting a spiritual action. The dead matter is a living spirit."

(1866 - 1944)

Saturday, January 09, 2016

Self, non-Self, and Interconnectedness

"True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There's no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity."

(1926 - )

Friday, January 08, 2016

Ebb & Flow


"The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment."

(1861 - 1941)