This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. The most powerful ideologies are not those that prevail against all challengers but those that are never challenged because in their ubiquity they appear as nothing more than the unadorned truth.
Nature | Nothing | Opinion | Oppression | Universe |
Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
Neti! Neti! cries the sage of the Upanishads: "No! No! thou art not this; nor art thou that! In other words: you do not belong to the fallen cosmos, as you see it now, you are not necessarily engulfed in this creation; necessarily - that is to say, by virtue of the law of your own being. Now, nature has no true ontological reality; it is, indeed, universal becoming. Every cosmic form, complex and magestic though it may be, ends by disintegrating; the universe itself is periodically reabsorbed by "great dissolutions" (mahapralaya) into the primordial matrix (prakriti).
Art | Ends | Law | Nature | Universe | Virtue | Virtue | Art |
The hearer of myth, regardless of his level of culture, when he is listening to a myth, forgets, as it were, his particular situation and is projected into another world, into another universe which is no longer his poor little universe of every day. . . . The myths are true because they are sacred, because they tell him about sacred beings and events. Consequently, in reciting or listening to a myth, one resumes contact with the sacred and with reality, and in so doing one transcends the profane condition, the "historical situation." In other words one goes beyond the temporal condition and the dull self-sufficiency which is the lot of every human being simply because every human being is "ignorant" — in the sense that he is identifying himself, and Reality, with his own particular situation. And ignorance is, first of all, this false identification of Reality with what each one of us appears to be or to possess.
Ignorance | Listening | Little | Reality | Sacred | Self-sufficiency | Sense | Universe | Words |
All things, material and spiritual, originate from one source and are related as if they were one family. The past, present, and future are all contained in the life force. The universe emerged and developed from one source, and we evolved through the optimal process of unification and harmonization.
Budo is not a means of felling the opponent by force or by lethal weapons. Neither is it intended to lead the world to destruction by arms and other illegitimate means. True Budo calls for bringing the inner energy of the universe in order, protecting the peace of the world , as well as preserving, everything in nature in its right form. If your opponent tries to pull you, let him pull. Don't pull against him; pull in unison with him. Aikido does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term "samurai" is one who serves and adheres to the power of love.
Death | Energy | Force | Meaning | Means | Nature | Peace | Power | Right | Universe | Weapons | World |
Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal
What is the character and general structures of the universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of this universe? How are we related to it? What place do we occupy in it, and what is the kind of conduct that benefits the place we occupy? These questions are common to religion, philosophy, and higher poetry.
One who prevades the great universe is seen by none unless a man knows the unfolding of love.
Consider the ebb and flow of the tide. When waves come to strike the shore, they crest and fall, creating a sound. your breath should follow the same pattern, absorbing the entire universe in your belly with each inhalation. Know that we all have access to four treasures: the energy of the sun and moon, the breath of heaven, the breath of earth, and the ebb and flow of the tide.
The totally awakened warrior can freely utilize all elements contained in heaven and earth. The true warrior learns how to correctly perceive the activity of the universe and how to transform martial techniques into vehicles of purity, goodness, and beauty. A warrior's mind and body must be permeated with enlightened wisdom and deep calm.
Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal
It is the lot of man to share in the deeper aspirations of the universe around him and to share his own destiny as well as that of the universe, now by adjusting himself to its forces, now by putting the whole of his energy to his own ends and purposes. And in this process of progressive change God becomes a co-worker with him, provided man takes the initiative: Verily God will not change the condition of men, till they change what is in themselves. If he does not take the initiative, if he does not evolve the inner richness of his being, if he ceases to feel the inner push of advancing life, then the spirit within him hardens into stone and he is reduced to the level of dead matter.
Change | Destiny | Ends | Energy | God | Man | Spirit | Universe | Will | God |
The Indians, whose theory of time, is not linear like ours – that is, not proceeding consecutively from past to present to future – have always been able to accept, seemingly without anxiety, the notion of an alternately expanding and contracting universe, an idea recently advanced by certain Western scientists. In Hindu cosmology, immutable Brahman, at fixed intervals, draws back into his beginningless, endless Being the whole substance of the living world. There then takes place the long “sleep” of Brahaman from which, in course of countless aeons, there is an awakening, and another universe or “dream” emerges.
Plainly, contemporary Western science’s description of an astronomical universe of such vast magnitude that distances must be measured in terms as abstract as light-years is not new to Hinduism whose wise men, millennia ago, came up with the term kalpa to signify the inconceivable duration of the period elapsing between the beginning and end of a world system.
A man who stepped quarter of a million miles in space to the moon was unable to step length, a few meters of assisted his colleagues are dying of hunger in India and other Ashakhm injustice in Jerusalem, Vietnam .. and America meets Russia to brighten up the moon and fail to meet them in the Security Council. and escape from that soul and to Atbha space universe where the laws of God to rely on accurate it is safe and easy .. A thousand times easier than observing i'tikaaf rights on the same repairs and He should work out .. but at the same time escape from man's first message on the ground... To know himself and He should work out. Thought and religion and science together make man himself... The physical science alone, without faith and without creating not only made from the same arrogant and distorted deformity giant moving between planets and invent a terrible terrible weapons of mass murder by destroying the All, and then destroys himself without knowing it.
Faith | God | Hunger | Injustice | Injustice | Knowing | Man | Murder | Religion | Rights | Safe | Science | Security | Soul | Space | Thought | Time | Universe | Weapons | Work | God | Murder | Thought |
Anachronistic as this labyrinthine mythology may appear to the foreign mind, many of India’s ancient theories about the universe are startlingly modern in scope and worthy of a people who are credited with the invention of the zero, as well as algebra and its application of astronomy and geometry; a people who so carefully observed the heavens that, in the opinion of Monier-Williams, they determined the moon’s synodical revolution much more correctly than the Greeks.
Invention | Opinion | People | Revolution | Theories | Universe |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
The men who have changed the universe have never accomplished it changing officials but always by inspiring the people.
To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.