This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
A Oneness of all. An evolution in consciousness of us all that isn
Consciousness | Evolution | Oneness |
A miracle is nothing more or less than this. Anyone who has come into a knowledge of his or her true identity, of his or her oneness with the all-pervading wisdom and power, this makes it possible for laws higher than the ordinary mind knows of to be revealed to this person.
Richard E. Byrd, fully Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr.
I paused to listen to the silence. My breath, crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze gentler than a whisper. The wind vane pointed toward the South Pole. Presently the wind cups ceased their gentle turning as the cold killed the breeze. My frozen breath hung like a cloud overhead. The day was dying, the night was being born-but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence-a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. The conviction came that that rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance-that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of a man's despair and found it groundless. . . . For those who seek it, there is inexhaustible evidence of an all-pervading intelligence. Man is not alone.
Day | Despair | Doubt | Enough | Evidence | Heart | Man | Music | Oneness | Purpose | Purpose |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Thou existest, but hearing of ear cannot reach Thee, or vision of eye, Nor shall the How have sway over Thee, nor the Wherefore and Whence. Thou existest, but for Thyself and for none other with Thee. Thou existest, and before Time began Thou wast, And without place Thou didst abide. Thou existest, and Thy secret is hidden and who shall attain to it? "So deep, so deep, who can discover it?"
Art | Change | Heart | Imagination | Mystery | Oneness | Sin | Will | Wise | Art |
Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání
It unequivocally maintains the principle of equal rights, opportunities, and privileges for men and women, insists on compulsory education, eliminates extremes of poverty and wealth, abolishes the institution of priesthood, prohibits slavery, asceticism, mendicancy, and monasticism, prescribes monogamy, discourages divorce, emphasizes the necessity of strict obedience to one's government, exalts any work performed in the spirit of service to the level of worship, urges either the creation or the selection of a auxiliary international language, and delineates the outlines of those institutions that must establish and perpetuate the general peace of mankind.
Duty | Faith | Harmony | Necessity | Oneness | Prejudice | Progress | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Search | Unity | Wholeness |
Sen T’Sen, aka Seng T'San, Jianzhi Sengcan, Kanchi Sosan, Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen
Trusting In Mind - The Great Way is not difficult, Just don’t pick and choose. If you cut off all likes or dislikes Everything is clear like space. Make the slightest distinction And heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see the truth, Don’t think for or against. Likes and dislikes Are the mind’s disease. Without understanding the deep meaning You cannot still your thoughts. It is clear like space, Nothing missing, nothing extra. If you want something You cannot see things as they are. Outside, don’t get tangled in things. Inside, don’t get lost in emptiness. Be still and become One And all opposites disappear. If you stop moving to become still, This stillness always moves. If you hold on to opposites, How can you know One? If you don’t understand One, This and that cannot function. Denied, the world asserts itself. Pursued, emptiness is lost. The more you think and talk, The more you lose the Way. Cut off all thinking And pass freely anywhere. Return to the root and understand. Chase appearances and lose the source. One moment of enlightenment Illuminates the emptiness before you. Emptiness changing into things Is only our deluded view. Do not seek the truth. Only put down your opinions. Do not live in the world of opposites. Be careful! Never go that way. If you make right and wrong, Your mind is lost in confusion. Two comes from One, But do not cling even to this One. When your mind is undisturbed The ten thousand things are without fault. No fault, no ten thousand things, No disturbance, no mind. No world, no one to see it. No one to see it, no world. This becomes this because of that. That becomes that because of this. If you wish to understand both, See them as originally one emptiness. In emptiness the two are the same, And each holds the ten thousand things. If you no longer see them as different, How can you prefer one to another? The Way is calm and wide, Not easy, not difficult. But small minds get lost. Hurrying, they fall behind. Clinging, they go too far, Sure to take a wrong turn, Just let it be! In the end, Nothing goes, nothing stays. Follow nature and become one with the Way, Free and easy and undisturbed. Tied by your thoughts, you lose the truth, Become heavy, dull, and unwell. Not well, the mind is troubled. Then why hold or reject anything? If you want to get the One Vehicle Do not despise the world of the senses. When you do not despise the six senses, That is already enlightenment. The wise do not act. The ignorant bind themselves. In true Dharma there is no this or that, So why blindly chase your desires? Using mind to stir up the mind Is the original mistake. Peaceful and troubled are only thinking. Enlightenment has no likes or dislikes. All opposites arise From faulty views. Illusions, flowers in the air – Why try to grasp them? Win, lose, right, wrong – Put it all down! If the eye never sleeps, Dreams disappear by themselves. If the mind makes no distinctions, The ten thousand things are one essence. Understand this dark essence And be free from entanglements. See the ten thousand things as equal And you return to your original nature Enlightened beings everywhere All enter this source. This source is beyond time and space. One moment is ten thousand years. Even if you cannot see it, The whole universe is before your eyes. Infinitely small is infinitely large: No boundaries, no differences. Infinitely large is infinitely small: Measurements do not matter here. What is is the same as what is not. What is not is the same as what is. Where it is not like this, Don’t bother staying. One is all, All is one. When you see things like this, You do not worry about being incomplete. Trust and Mind are not two. Not-two is trusting the Mind. Words and speech don’t cut it, Can’t now, never could, won’t ever.
Assertion | Disease | Dreams | Earth | Hate | Heaven | Meaning | Mind | Mystery | Oneness | Present | Reality | Will | Words | World | Worry |
It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this. There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed. This new language of prayer has to come out of something that transcends all our traditions, and comes out of the immediacy of love. Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
Abstract | Enemy | Evil | God | Grace | Justify | Love | Mercy | Nature | Oneness | Reality | Respect | Right | Rights | Understanding | Respect | God |
Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this.
Abstract | Enemy | Evil | God | Grace | Justify | Law | Love | Mercy | Nature | Oneness | Principles | Reality | Respect | Right | Rights | Understanding | Respect | God | Intellect |
W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace
The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when the scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called 'final causes' ... [belief in which] was not the invention of Christianity [but] was basic to the whole of Western civilization, whether in the ancient pagan world or in Christendom, from the time of Socrates to the rise of science in the seventeenth century. ... They did this on the ground that inquiry into purposes is useless for what science aims at: namely, the predication and control of events. ... The conception of purpose in the world was ignored and frowned upon. This, though silent and almost unnoticed, was the greatest revolution in human history, far outweighing in importance any of the political revolutions whose thunder has reverberated through the world. ... The world, according to this new picture, is purposeless, senseless, meaningless. Nature is nothing but matter in motion. The motions of matter are governed not by any purpose, but by blind forces and laws. ... [But] if the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends, money, fame, art, science, and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center. Hence, the dissatisfied, restless, spirit of modern man. ... Along with the ruin of the religious vision there went the ruin of moral principles and indeed of all values. ... If our moral rules do not proceed from something outside us in the nature of the universe--whether we say it is God or simply the universe itself--then they must be our own inventions. Thus it came to be believed that moral rules must be merely an expression of our own likes and dislikes. But likes and dislikes are notoriously variable. What pleases one man, people or culture, displeases another. Therefore, morals are wholly relative.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellow-ly blurred, illusive, lost.
Ecstasy | Enjoyment | Fate | Genius | Gratitude | Magic | Oneness | Sense | Fate |
Keeping the Body and Brain Sensitive, Alert and Sharp - It is necessary to keep the body sensitive, alert and sharp, to feed it and to clothe it correctly, properly; to give it a chance to go through exercises which will mobilize not only the muscles, but also the nerves and be careful that the body does not become sluggish; to feed it correctly - not over- nor under-feeding it; to allow it to have sleep, necessary for its health - not to over- nor under-sleep; not to expose it to too much brooding, worrying, anxiety, which are impotent ways of wasting energy; not entering into excesses of indulgence and not denying and suppressing in the name of austerity, religion or discipline; because the cerebral organ, the brain is woven into this biological structure. It is very important, because in a sluggish body, in a lazy body, you can't have a sharp, sensitive, alert brain, which would voluntarily go into non-action. Self-education is vitally necessary in order to enable the cerebral organ to function in an orderly, quiet way. When there is order, there is a quietness; an orderly person hardly gets excited. It is disorder that leads to excitement, enthusiasm, depression which is the other side of excitement, passivity which is the obverse of enthusiasm. When one has arrived at that orderliness in daily living, in whatever one does, then only one can talk about the brain voluntarily, relinquishing the outgoing and the ingoing movement, relinquishing voluntarily the hold upon the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible, so that the infinite could be.
Compassion | Discovery | Dynamic | Oneness | People | Society | Will | Society | Discovery |
A new challenge awaits us at the beginning of the twenty-first century: to go beyond fragmentation, to go beyond the incompatible sets of values held even by serious-minded people, to mature beyond the self-righteousness of one’s accepted approaches and be open to total living and total revolution. In this era, to become a spiritual inquirer without social consciousness is a luxury that we can ill afford, and to be a social activist without a scientific understanding of the inner workings of the mind is the worst folly. Neither approach in isolation has had any significant success. There is no question now that an inquirer will have to make an effort to be socially conscious or that an activist will have to be persuaded of the moral crisis in the human psyche, the significance of being attentive to the inner life. The challenge awaiting us is to go much deeper as human beings, to abandon superficial prejudices and preferences, to expand understanding to a global scale, integrating the totality of living, and to become aware of the wholeness of which we are a manifestation.
Awareness | Beginning | Individual | Life | Life | Oneness | Religion | Wholeness | Awareness | Understand | Value |
When we come face-to-face with the actualities of human and planetary suffering, what does the powerful moment of truth do to us? Do we retreat into the comforts of theories and defense mechanisms, or are we awakened at the core of our being? Awareness of misery, without defense structures, will naturally lead to action. The heart cannot witness misery without calling the being to action, without activating the force of love. We may not act on a global or national scale; it may be only on a community or neighborhood scale—but act, respond, we must. Social responsibility flowers naturally when we perceive the world without the involvement of the ego-consciousness. When we relate directly to suffering, we are led to understanding and spontaneous action—but when we perceive the world through the ego, we are cut off from direct relationship, from communion that stirs the deepest level of our being.
Action | Awareness | Oneness | Relationship | Sense | Will | Awareness |
Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love. Compassion cannot be cultivated; it derives neither from intellectual conviction nor from emotional reaction. It is simply there when the wholeness of life becomes a fact that is truly lived.
Absolute | Compassion | Life | Life | Nothing | Oneness | Principles | Reality | Will |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Science is a game—but a game with reality, a game with sharpened knives … If a man cuts a picture carefully into 1000 pieces, you solve the puzzle when you reassemble the pieces into a picture; in the success or failure, both your intelligences compete. In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game?ut they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or to deduce. The experiment is the tempered blade which you wield with success against the spirits of darkness—or which defeats you shamefully. The uncertainty is how many of the rules God himself has permanently ordained, and how many apparently are caused by your own mental inertia, while the solution generally becomes possible only through freedom from its limitations.
Oneness |