This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Is there any doctrine of immortality that can say anything more simple yet definitive about man’s fate after death? He has come from God and returns to God. From the very beginning, man is bound up with God; and this bond continues to exist, unaffected by death which befalls the body only. God’s creation of man’s spirit, then, must be understood as a principle whose consequence is immortality.
Beginning | Body | Death | Doctrine | Fate | God | Immortality | Man | Spirit | Fate | God |
The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now.
Attention | Body | Despair | Law | Life | Life | People | Present | Time |
The liturgy does not say “I” but “We,”… The liturgy is not celebrated by the individual, but by the body of the faithful.
Body | Individual |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
Entitlement as an emotional/psychological position stems from unresolved infantile, narcissistic egocentricity.
Position |
Alister Hardy, fully Sir Alister Clavering Hardy
The very fact that one can conceive [a]… possible solution may save one from being in the pessimistic position of imagining that there can be no possible purpose in the process at all. Such a defeatist loss of all sense of meaning… is one of the tragic outcomes of the materialism of today.
Materialism | Meaning | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Loss |
Zen meditation does not mean sitting and thinking. On the contrary, it means acting with as little thought as possible. The fencing master trained his pupil to guard against every attack with the same immediate, instinctive rapidity with which our eyelid closes over our eye when something threatens it. His work is aimed at breaking down the wall between thought and act, at completely fusing body and senses and mind so that they might all work together rapidly and effortlessly.
Body | Little | Means | Meditation | Mind | Thinking | Thought | Work | Zen | Thought |
The soul needs a physical body here… but when… the body is no longer an adequate instrument through which the soul may function, it lays the present body aside and continues to function through a more subtle one.
Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
Conscience | Cowardice | Position | Question | Right | Safe | Time |
Prayer is a way of increasing our sensitivity to the spiritual aspects of life. From this point of view, it is very much like exercise. A man’s muscles become responsive by training... The soul is stretched and enlarged by prayer just as the body is stretched and enlarged by physical exercise... Prayer is a way of aspiration. It is a way of lifting ourselves, of getting a higher look, of transcending self. For when a man looks at life only from inside himself, or only from within the walls of his home, or profession, seeing the world as though it were all in terms of his special interests, then he is “too full of himself to have any room for God.” But in prayer, he... relates his own little life and his own little needs and life of humanity. He lifts himself up by prayer, and achieves a high spiritual stature.
Aspiration | Body | God | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Man | Prayer | Self | Soul | Training | World |
Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God’s eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likeness of material things. Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself.
Body | Eternity | God | Intuition | Language | Light | Obscurity | Obscurity | Reality | Soul | Theology | Truth | God |
T. B. Maston, fully Thomas Buford Maston
Segregation in the church violates something that is basic in the nature of the church. How can a church exclude from “the church of God” those who are children of God? How can it, as “the body of Christ,” withhold the privilege of worship from those who have been brought into union with Christ.
Body | Children | Church | God | Nature | Worship | Privilege |
Piet Mondrian, fully Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian
The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.
Position |
John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?
Age | Circumstances | Faith | Parents | Position | Religion | Rights | World |