This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the commandment over the will: for it is a commandment over the reason, belief, and understanding of man, which is the highest part of the mind, and giveth law to the will itself. For there is no power on earth which setteth up a throne or chair of estate in the spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning.
Belief | Earth | Knowledge | Law | Learning | Man | Men | Mind | Power | Reason | Understanding | Will |
All the crimes on earth do not destroy so much of the human race, nor alienate so much property as drunkenness.
Destroy | Earth | Human race | Property | Race |
George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
The sole means now for the savings of the beings on the planet Earth would be to implant into their presences a new organ with such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence and also the tendency to hate others which flows from it - the tendency, namely, which engenders all those mutual relationships existing there, which serve as the chief cause of all their abnormalities unbecoming to three-brained beings and maleficent for them themselves and for the whole Universe.
Attention | Cause | Death | Destroy | Earth | Existence | Hate | Means | Sense | Universe |
The instinct for justice, when equipped with all the resources of technology, is capable of laying waste to the earth itself.
Earth | Instinct | Justice | Technology | Waste |
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us some a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away; of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending, the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time.
Absolute | Beginning | Earth | Nature | Silence | Sound | Time |
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature, were man as unerring in his judgments as nature.
Cause | Earth | Forbearance | Inevitable | Man | Mercy | Nature | Punishment | Race |
The highest order that was ever instituted on earth is the order of faith.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
The earth is a Paradise, the only one we will ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise - it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it.
The money, technology, and human energy now devoted to the military could perform miracles in cleaning up the earth we live on. But the cost of the arms race is not only the enormous waste of resources. There is a psychic cost - the creation of an atmosphere of fear all over the world.
Cost | Earth | Energy | Fear | Miracles | Money | Race | Technology | Waste | World |
Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.
The earth is bathed in music... The drive towards 'synchonicity' and harmony is elemental and universal so it becomes comprehensible that the 'hidden' harmony within ourselves provides us with the strength to find the 'hidden' harmony in the cosmos and universe. The more 'chaotic' and 'atonal' the cluster, the more quickly the harmony develops. Disharmony is a springboard fostering the harmony within ourselves.
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake.
Earth |
All faces resemble each other, yet how easily we see in each uniqueness, individuality, an identity. How deeply we value these differences... Life on earth is a whole, yet it expresses itself in unique time-bound bodies, microscopic or visible, plant or animal, extinct or living. So there can be no one place to be. There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no one way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known.
Earth | Individuality | Life | Life | Love | Practice | Time | Unique | Value |
By anticipation we suffer misery and enjoy happiness before they are in being. We can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity when the heavens and earth shall be no more.
Anticipation | Earth | Eternity | Happiness |