Universe

It was as if the universe itself stretched out its finger to touch me. And in touching me, singling me out, it only heightened my awareness of my own insignificance. That was somehow very comforting. When you confront the absolute indifference of magnitudes and vistas so overwhelming, the swollen ego of your own self-important suffering is diminished. - Joan D. Vinge

Never forget that the universe is a single living organism possessed of one substance and one soul, holding all things suspended in a single consciousness and creating all things with a single purpose that they might work together spinning and weaving and knotting whatever comes to pass. - Marcus Aurelius

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity. - Wernher Von Braun

Food for Thought

Buddhist Quotes

By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one made impure. By oneself only is evil stopped, by oneself is one made pure. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one can purify another.

Just as water cools both good and bad and washes away all impurity and dust, in the same way you should develop thoughts of love to friend and foe alike, and having reached perfection in love, you will attain enlightenment.

No matter how far out on the sea of suffering we’ve sailed, all that is required is to turn toward awakening. It’s never too late, but it takes that turning, and no one can do that for us.

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.

Parable

Student: "Is there anything I can do to make myself Enlightened?"
Teacher: "As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."
Student: "Then what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"
Teacher: "To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."
- Anthony de Mello

Karma

Karma is best expressed in popular phrases like, "what goes around, comes around" and "what you sow, you will reap." Karma has also been referred to as having a "boomerang effect" where the thoughts and actions that you send out into the world turn around and come back at you. In the New Testament, Jesus says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Karma goes a step further and dictates that "What you do unto others will come back to you." I think Jesus and the Hindus really had the same idea. Think about that the next time you want to say or do something nasty to someone else! - Carmen Harra

As no cause remains without its due effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. - H. P. Blavatsky

Mysticism

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter. - Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Father of Quantum Theory

The mysterious powers of the human mind – and man’s amazing psychic powers – operate under universal laws. These laws operate regardless of anyone’s lack of understanding, disbelief, or ignorance. - Unknown

All lives are so profoundly and intricately intertwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. - H.R. White

Although each of us obviously inhabits a separate physical body, the laboratory data from a hundred years of parapsychology research strongly indicate that there is no separation in consciousness. - Russell Targ

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle. - Marcus Aurelius

Never think of any right effort as being fruitless - all right effort bears good fruit, whether we see results or not. - Unknown

Religion

I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. I have seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. - Hospitaller

I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in. - Bertrand Russell

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that it's modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. - H. L. Mencken

Energy Healing

            Disease is simply part of our bodies vibrating out of tune, says pioneering sound therapist Jonathan Goldman. ‘Every organ, bone, tissue and other part of the body has a healthy resonant frequency. When that frequency alters, that part of the body vibrates out of harmony and that is what is termed disease. If it were possible to determine the correct resonant frequency for a healthy organ and then project it into that part which is diseased, the organ should return to its normal frequency and a healing should occur.
            Goldman firmly believes that, by creating sounds that are harmonious with the correct frequency of the healthy organ, we could all learn how to heal ourselves, bringing our bodies back into balance. He, along with other sound researchers, have been focusing most of their attention on the sacred chants of varying traditions, believing that the high-frequency harmonics that most of them share, could be having profound effects on both the mind and body.

The fundamental principle of Energy Medicine is that an underlying energy field generates physical, emotional, and mental behaviours or symptoms. If we change the energy field, the physical, emotional, and mental behaviours will also change. - Dr. John Beaulieu, ND, PHD

The key to getting the very best out of life lies in understanding and working with this energy. - Unknown

Atheism

It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power. - Emma Goldman

Stripped of the opportunities for satire which organised religion cannot help but supply, the case for atheism has very little substance. - Bill Saunders

Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. - Richard Dawkins

On Dharma

Dharma is a Sanskrit word. In Buddhism, it is generally taken to mean the Teachings of The Buddha. There is no equivalent single word translation for dharma in western languages.

            When you listen to the Dharma you must open up your heart and compose yourself in the centre. Don't try to accumulate what you hear or make a painstaking effort to retain what you hear through memory. Just let the Dharma flow into your heart as it reveals itself, and keep yourself continuously open to its flow in the present moment. What is ready to be retained will be so, and it will happen of its own accord, not through any determined effort on your part.
            Similarly, when you expound the Dharma, you must not force yourself. It should happen on its own and should flow spontaneously from the present moment and circumstances. People have different levels of receptive ability, and when you're there at that same level it just happens, the Dharma flows. - The Buddha

Humour

Meditation

Meditation will give strength to our purposes. Reason is the strongest when it is most in action. Now meditation stirs up reason into act. Before, it was a standing water, which moves nothing else when itself moves not; but now it is as the speedy stream which bears down all before it. - Henry George Salter

Mind without agitation is meditation. Mind in the present moment is meditation. Mind that has no hesitation, no anticipation is meditation. Mind that has come back home, to the source, is meditation. Mind that becomes no mind is meditation. - Sri Ravi Shankar

Sitting silently, one should experience quietly all that is happening around and do nothing else. You are hearing sounds, listen to them silently; a bird is singing, listen to it silently; the breath is moving in and out, go on watching it silently – nothing else has to be done. - Osho

Spiritual

In an evolutionary context, the goal of the spiritual life is not peace; it’s perpetual development. Evolutionary enlightenment is about the ecstasy that compels us to create the future. And it’s not a future that’s going to unfold by itself while we go back to sleep. It’s a future that we forge the hard way through direct, conscious, intentional engagement with the life-process itself. - Andrew Cohen

What is common to all paths that are spiritual is, of course, the Spirit-breath, life energy, that is why all true paths are essentially one path, because there is only one Spirit, one breath, one life, one energy in the universe. It belongs to none of us and all of us. We all share it. Spiritually does not make up otherworldly; it renders us more fully alive. - Matthew Fox

No piece of evidence – or lack of evidence – can either support or refute faith. Unfortunately, few people realize that. Some people search for proof of spiritual things in the material world. That is foolish and doomed, because nothing material has any bearing on anything spiritual. Spiritual truths can only be learned via spiritual means. - Bob Lonsberry

God

Though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with. - Christopher Hitchens

I don't understand worshipping a god who denigrates women and whose 'true believers' feel it's their right to look down on anyone who doesn't think exactly as they do. - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast

Universe

In the long run, when we get right down to the fundamental stuff of the universe, we'll find that there's nothing there at all – just no-things moving no-place through no-time. - James Blish

It is our station to live within laws that give us being, but offer of themselves no purpose or promise, no triumph as a species. The universe allows us a place in its systematic workings but only cares for the system itself, not us. - Gregory Benford

It may be – I hope it is – redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable. - William Golding

Food for Thought

Buddhism

Excerpts from Buddhist texts.

A man may be an intellectual giant endowed with the power to perceive quickly and express clearly and accurately, but if he pays no attention to his actions and if he is only bent on fulfilling his own longings and inclinations at any cost he is, according to the Buddha, a fool, a man of inferior intelligence and he indeed destroys his own progress here and hereafter. - Unknown

We are the results of what we were. And will be the results of what we are. We must learn to let go of conditions and not try to oppose or resist them. Know your own body, heart, and mind. Be content with little. Don't go and hold on to emotions. - Unknown

Let me not pray to be sheltered form dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom. - Unknown

Prayers

If you just sit around praying, nothing gets done. - Nora Roberts

If you pray for rain long enough, it does eventually fall. If you pray for flood-waters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers. - Steve Allen

It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray. - Aesop

Karma

Karma refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). It is a doctrine and tenet of Buddhism. However, one doesn’t need to be a Buddhist to believe in it. The principle of cause and effect is happening everywhere in everyday life.

The doctrine of Karma, which is the great peculiarity of Buddhism and the main source of its moral excellence, is the complement of the doctrine of Transmigration. It is the teaching of Buddha "that there is no such thing as what is commonly called a soul." I quite agree with him in that "the real man is the net result of his merits and demerits; that a man is what he does, and the character of his acts depends upon his intentions." "All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - James Platt

Mysticism

Universal law always follows a pattern. Everything that moves or grows has a cycle and trend. It is nature’s law that every natural or man-made growing organism grows to maturity, levels off, and dies – unless there is rebirth through new life, new blood, new ideas, or new activity. - Unknown

A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behaviour means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing – a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit. - Ken Wilber

Everything is vibratory in nature. Vibrations impinge on our outer senses, leading to perception and formation of realities. Perceptions and realities help us to understand the physical world about us. Colour, in its pure form as vibration, is an actuality. Colour, as we perceive it, is a reality. - Rosicrucian Digest