This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.
The message of the Bhagavad Gita is that each human life has but one ultimate end and purpose: to realize the Eternal Self within and thus to know, finally and fully, the joy of union with God, the Divine Ground of Being (Brahman). Whereas such knowledge was traditionally sought in retreat from the world, the Gita, without omitting that option, teaches that it may be attained in the midst of the world through nonattached action in the context of devotion (bhakti) to God.
Action | Devotion | Eternal | God | Joy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Self | World |
Make divine knowledge thy food, compassion thy store-keeper, and the voice which is in every heart the pipe to call to repast.
Compassion | Heart | Knowledge |
In God knowledge is infinite; in others it is only a germ.
He that has more knowledge than judgment is made for another man’s use more than his own.
One of the greatest satisfactions one can ever have, comes from the knowledge that he can do some one thing superlatively well.
The Bible is primarily not man’s vision of God but God’s vision of man. The Bible is not man’s theology but God’s anthropology, dealing with man and what He asks of him rather than with the nature of God. God did not reveal to the prophets eternal mysteries but His knowledge and love of man. It was not the aspiration of Israel to know the Absolute but to ascertain what He asks of man; to commune with His will rather than with His essence.
Absolute | Aspiration | Bible | Eternal | God | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Theology | Vision | Will | Aspiration | God | Bible |
A living experience of God is the crowning knowledge attainable to a human mind.
Experience | God | Knowledge | Mind | God |
The relation of existence to time is characterized by two polar elements: temporality and uninterruptedness. Existence is evanescent and always faces the prospect of annihilation, of being thrown out of the stream of time, yet it also exhibits some degree of permanence as the continuous duration in time. Without an element of constancy there could be no permanence within temporality and no knowledge of reality, since our categories of reason are “mirrors, in which the things are reflected in the light of their constancy… Things perish within time, while time itself is everlasting… The present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, an act of creation.
Beginning | Constancy | Existence | Knowledge | Light | Present | Reality | Reason | Time |
Deity cannot be understood through a knowledge of timeless qualities of goodness and perfection, but only by sensing the living acts of God’s concern and his dynamic attentiveness in relation to man, who is the passionate object of his interest.
Attentiveness | Dynamic | God | Knowledge | Man | Object | Perfection | Qualities |
Red Jacket, aka Sagoyewatha NULL
You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us, as well as you, whey has not the Great Spirit given to tus, and not only to us, but what did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people? Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?
Knowledge | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Right | Spirit | Teach | Understanding | Worship | Understand |