Great Throughts Treasury

"Eventually we'll have to confront the fact that world suffering is the result of ill-conceived thoughts taking form through misdirected action. If we're going to survive as a species, we must relinquish - to unprecedented levels, - qualities such as greed, hatred, and delusion. In other words, our very survival depends on accelerated levels of psychological and spiritual maturation."

"Every decision you make stems from what you think you are, and represents the value that you put upon yourself."

"Addiction is the root of greed. Our culture runs largely on greed, in part because we only recognize a limited spectrum of motives. Our culture is not aware of the crucial importance of higher motives, of motives toward social contribution, and self-actualization, and self-transcendence. Our lives are lived in a frantic pursuit of fulfillment, but a fulfillment through substitute gratifications, the material things that our culture emphasizes. The only trouble with substitute gratifications is that you can never get enough of what you do not really need. So we see the sensational, ever-increasing consumerism."

"Emotions of the should be watched, regularly examined, and kept well balanced."

"Most people are grateful because they are happy. Wise people are happy because they're grateful."

"Our thinking and world new will need to become less parochial and more global, less anthropocentric and more bio-centric, less egocentric and more eco-centric. The unit of our concern must now be the entire biosphere rather than solely ourselves, our families, our nation, or even our species."

"Everyone may educate and regulate his imagination so as to come thereby into contacts with spirits, and be taught by them."

"Never let the sun go down upon your anger."

"Our world is, in large part, an expression of fear: fear of loss of our economic situation, fear of violence. Of course, the problem with feat-based motivation is that whatever you are unwilling to experience runs your life. It"

"Shamanism can be defined as a family of traditions whose practitioners focus on voluntarily entering altered states of consciousness in which they experience themselves or their spirit(s) interacting with other entities, often by traveling to other realms, in order to serve their community."

"Truly we are in a race between consciousness and catastrophe."

"The great experiment in consciousness, human evolution, now stands at a precipice of its own making. The same consciousness which struggled for millions of years to ensure human survival is now on the verge of depleting its planet"