This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Is there a spiritual reality, inconceivable to us today, which corresponds in history to the physical reality which Einstein discovered and which led to the atomic bomb? Einstein discovered a law of physical change: the way to convert a single particle of matter into enormous physical energy. Might there not also be, as Gandhi suggested, an equally incredible and [as yet] undiscovered law of spiritual change, whereby a single person or small community of persons could be converted into an enormous spiritual energy capable of transforming a society and a world?
Atomic bomb | Change | Energy | History | Law | Reality | Society | World | Society |
If we ask what literature is about, we have to answer that it is about the mystery of the human heart and its passage through time.
Heart | Literature | Mystery | Time |
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
Art | Beauty | Existence | Experience | Fear | Good | Knowledge | Man | Mystery | Reason | Religion | Science | Sense | Wonder | Art |
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.
Art | Experience | Fear | Good | Mystery | Religion | Science | Wonder | Art |
I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence - as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Eternity | Existence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mystery | Nature | Reason | Sense | Understand |
No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the world. After the departed darkness the shadows remain.
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Happiness or misfortune are prescribed by law of Heaven, but their source comes from ourselves.
Heaven | Law | Misfortune | Misfortune |
It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. There need be no unqualified evils. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.
Law | Learning | Lesson | Misfortune | Need | Time | Tragedy |