This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The human being is uniquely graced with the ability to search the soul and reflect, For what purpose am I alive? Does my life have a meaning, a reason? Is there a need for my existence? Will anything on earth be impaired by my disappearance? Would my absence create a vacuum in the world? And if we say that there would be a void and an impairment in the world, and that this means that my life has value beyond its simple existence, is it incumbent upon me to fulfill a purpose in this life? Do I exist that I might build or restore?
Ability | Absence | Earth | Life | Life | Means | Need | Purpose | Purpose | Search | Soul | Will | Value |
Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
Know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,or drown in despair when his days darken.
Beauty | Contemplation | Despair | Earth | Integrity | Life | Life | Love | Man | Organic | Ugly | Wholeness | Will | Beauty | Contemplation |
Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
What is this thing called life? I believe that the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life, only we do not call it so--I speak of the life... makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow from a chemical reaction? I think they were here already, I think the rocks and the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies have their various consciousness, all things are conscious; but the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass to concentrate the heat and make it catch fire...but those and all things have their own awareness, as the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all, like the cells of a man's body making one being, they make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.
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. The particulars count.
Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
Two paths lie before us. One leads to death, the other to life. If we choose the first path--if we numbly refuse to acknowledge the nearness of extinction, all the while increasing our preparations to bring it about--then we in effect become the allies of death….On the other hand, if we reject our doom, and bend our efforts toward survival--if we arouse ourselves to the peril and act to forestall it, making ourselves the allies of life--hen the anesthetic fog will lift…and we will take full and clear possession of life again…and rise up to cleanse the earth of nuclear weapons.
John H. Vincent, fully John Heyl Vincent
We are pilgrims, not settlers; this earth is our inn, not our home.
Earth |
Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.z1b3Ae0CfN
Civilization | Earth |
Joseph H. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz
Man must be a co-worker with God in making this earth a garden.
Civilized man has been more ruthlessly wasteful and grasping in his attitude toward the natural world than has served even his most material best interests. Possibly - as some hope - a mere enlightened selfishness will save it in time. Even if we should learn just in the nick of time not to destroy what is necessary for our own preservation, the mere determination to survive is not sufficient to save very much of the variety and beauty of the natural world. They can e preserved only if man feels the necessity of sharing the earth with at least some of his fellow creatures to be a privilege rather han an irritation. And he is not likely to feel that without something more than intellectual curiosity - that something more you may call love, fellow-feeling, or reverence for life. Without reverence or love the increasing awareness of what the science of ecology teaches us can come to be no more than a shrewder exploitation of what it would be better to admire, to enjoy, and to share in.
Awareness | Beauty | Better | Curiosity | Destroy | Determination | Earth | Hope | Love | Man | Necessity | Reverence | Science | Selfishness | Time | Will | World | Beauty | Awareness | Learn | Privilege |
The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.
By contrition we are made clean, by compassion we are made ready, and by true longing toward God we are made worthy. These are three means, as I understand, whereby that all souls come to heaven: that is to say, that have been sinners in earth and shall be saved: for by these three medicines it behoveth that every soul be healed.
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
Put bluntly, there is an archaic God, a magic God, a mythic God, a mental God, and an integral God. Which God do you believe in? An archaic God sees divinity in any strong instinctual force. A magic God locates divine power in the human ego and its magical capacity to change the animistic world with rituals and spells. A mythic God is located not on this earth but in a heavenly paradise not of this world, entrance to which is gained by living according to the covenants and rules given by this God to his peoples. A mental God is a rational God, a demythologized Ground of Being that underlies all forms of existence. And an integral God is one that embraces all of the above. Which of those Gods is the most important? According to an integral view, all of them, because each "higher" stage actually builds upon and includes the lower, so the lower stages are more fundamental and the higher stages are more significant, but leave out any one of them and you're in trouble. You are, that is, less than integral, less than comprehensive, less than inclusive in your understanding of God.
Capacity | Change | Divinity | Earth | Ego | God | Magic | Paradise | Power | Understanding | World | God |
Chögyam Trungpa, fully Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.
Earth |
Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding
The economy of the future might be called the "spaceman economy," in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything.
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
'What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth — or in heaven — do I mean by "integral"? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: "comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness." Short definition, tall order.
Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding
The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution.