This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The word Witch carries so many negative connotations that many people wonder why we use the word at all. Yet to reclaim the word Witch is to reclaim our right, as women, to be powerful; as men, to know the feminine within as divine." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL
"Indeed, awakened people seem to function more effectively in everyday life because they act in harmony with what is, rather than in conflict or resistance. At the same time, they see the empty, dreamlike nature of reality—you could say that they awaken out of the illusion of substantiality into the reality of the empty, ungraspable nature of what is. The awakened person is in the world but not of it—or as Walt Whitman put it, in and out of the game." - Stephan Bodian
"We’re not talking about rewards and punishments here when we talk about karma. You’re not a bad boy if you cheat on your taxes or a good girl if you help the old lady across the street. The law of karma doesn’t carry that kind of judgmental baggage; it’s much more practical and down to earth. The point is simple: If you act with ill will, you’ll experience ill will in the future. If you act with love, you’ll experience love in return. Or to continue the metaphor of the seeds: As you sow, so shall you reap." - Stephan Bodian
"As a child I could often feel the pain of others in my heart. It made me angry to be alive in such an anguished world. I couldn't stay open to the suffering I saw around me, or to the pain within. It took me years to allow my heart its vulnerability. The grief had torn me open but I hadn't known what to do with the pain... Grief can have a quality of profound healing because we are forced to a depth of feeling that is usually below the threshold of awareness. Though many of our motivations come from this level of fear, of loss, yet we don't know where these volitions originate. We simply find ourselves lost in action, in anger or fear, pushing away others, grasping at what we imagined to be our safety, constantly guarding our heart. This tearing open of the heart leaves us exposed to that which has caused us and our loved ones the pain of imagined separateness so often before. This experience of discovery that grief leads us to is, for some, like going below ground level to look at the roots of a tree whose branches and twigs, leaves and flowers were all you thought were meaningful. It is the tree of life, of your life." - Stephen Levine
"As both capitalist and communist states -- not to mention the technological world --have evolved under the illusion that men purposefully built them, ideological optimism seeps into every niche of our lives. It is made worse by mass culture which feeds our" - Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey
"The enraged man always appears as the gang-leader of his own self, giving his unconscious the order to pull no punches, his eyes shining with the satisfaction of speaking for the many that he himself is. The more someone has espoused the cause of his own aggression, the more perfectly he represents the repressive principle of society. In this sense more than in any other, perhaps, the proposition is true that the most individual is the most general." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"Most of the world is either asleep or dead. The religious people are, for the most part, asleep. The irreligious are dead. Those who are asleep are divided into two classes, like the Virgins in the parable, waiting for the Bridegroom's coming. The wise have oil in their lamps. That is to say they are detached from themselves and from the cares of the world, and they are full of charity. They are indeed waiting for the Bridegroom, and they desire nothing else but His coming, even though they may fall asleep while waiting for Him to appear. But the others are not only asleep: they are full of other dreams and other desires. Their lamps are empty because they have burned themselves out in the wisdom of the flesh and in their own vanity. When He comes, it is too late for them to buy oil. They light their lamps only after He has gone. So they fall asleep again, with useless lamps, and when they wake up they trim them to investigate, once again, the matters of a dying world." - Thomas Merton
"The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, brother, is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God: but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing you ever found in books or heard in sermons." - Thomas Merton
"A traveler must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing." - Thomas Nashe
"If you have faced pain and disappointment, you not only value your happiness more highly, but you are prepared for unpredictable exigencies." - W. Béran Wolfe
"One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"Am I a space man? Do I belong to a new race on Earth, bred by men from outer space in embraces with Earth women? Are my children offspring of the first interplanetary race? Has the melting-pot of interplanetary society already been created on our planet, as the melting-pot of all Earth nations was established in the U.S. A. 190 years ago?" - Wilhelm Reich
"When you're at peace with your life and in a state of tranquility, you actually send out a vibration of energy that impacts all living creatures, including plants, animals and even babies." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"It is only with total humility, and in absolute stillness of mind that we can know what indeed we are." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"There seems never to have been a time at which sentient beings have not escaped from the dungeon of individuality. In the East liberation was elaborated into a fine art, but it may be doubted whether more people made their escape from solitary confinement outside the organized religions than by means of them. In the West reintegration was sporadic, but in recent years it has become a widespread preoccupation. Unfortunately it’s technical dependence on oriental literature — sometimes translated by scholars whose knowledge of the language was greater than their understanding of the subject — has proved a barrier which rendered full comprehension laborious and exceedingly long. Therefore it appears to be essential that such teaching as may be transmissible shall be given in a modern idiom and in accordance with our own processes of thought. But this presentation can never be given by the discursive method to which we are used for the acquisition of conceptual knowledge, for the understanding required is not conceptual and therefore is not knowledge. This may account for the extraordinary popularity of such works as the Tao Te Ching, and in a lesser degree for that of the Diamond and Heart Sutras and Padma Sambhava ’s Knowing the Mind. For despite the accretion of superfluous verbiage in which the essential doctrine of some of the latter has become embedded, their direct pointing at the truth, instead of explaining it, goes straight to the heart of the matter and allows the mind itself to develop its own vision. An elaborately developed thesis must always defeat its own end where this subject matter is concerned, for only indication could produce this understanding, which requires an intuitional faculty, and it could never be acquired wholesale from without." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"As if in a school for gods, we learn the consequences of thought." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"If we are to appreciate the inner dynamics we don't need to change them or judge them. There is wisdom in each of the dynamics observed. To determine what you think should happen is placing the ego in charge of the show. When the deep beingness seeks a change you will know it. Otherwise the wisdom is to put oneself in accord with the Mystery. This is hard for anyone with degrees of control issues." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"If you try to go into the unconscious with your ordinary awareness and your value system as you have known them to be, you will quickly either be pushed out, or you will stampede out, because you are holding the wrong vehicle to engage the authentic beingness. This is not necessarily the preferential view we often have of spiritually developed people. In fact, if anything, that is a compensation to a lot of hidden material. The art of being present for another individual is an extremely valuable resource when you are working with others or with yourself – how to bring as much of your awareness to experience whoever and whatever the other being is. When we go into the inner universe we have access to all the revelatory material, the psychic material, the intuitive material. When we open all the ranges, see what begins to stir you – it might be in the form of images, voices, sudden knowing, and this is the material you swim in when you connect with someone. Otherwise, you are just looking at surface masks." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"May I suggest that the deepest experience in vulnerability is to completely accept its Suchness as the ego/Ego coming into fuller relationship with the Divine. Thought forms of past, present, and future are simply too ego indulgent in the later stages of life. Variations on this theme are Masochism/Sadism and Pleasers/InyourFaceers. They are legitimate paths unless arrested by the ego too frightened to see what actually lurks under the drive to power." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"Most of us who know silence at the starting stages; know it as just not talking. The mind is going a mile a minute but you are not talking and you are writing notes too. That’s your definition of silence. I’ve had a lot of experience over the years watching people in silence and appreciation and note that each person has to struggle with what it actually means to dissolve out of conceptual layers of the psyche and to find the ability to begin to be quiet enough so that not only are you back into tune with nature but you can dissolve on into deeper and deeper places. To be functionally a vehicle that can hear what is called the wee small voice and/or the music of the spheres and/or Divine council and/or visions." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The Ego is not the primary center of Awareness….the Self is. The Shadow is not the primary center of awareness…the Self is. The ego is the reflecting witness. The unfoldment of a life is driven by the unconscious dynamics between Self...the Shadow…and the Ego. What the ego is aware of is mostly socialization attitudes, biases, preferences, and filtered perceptions. The Self is the only responsible agent for the entire mystery of one’s life. Free will of the Shadow or of the Ego is an illusion generated out of a limited awareness. When witnessing the Divine Play of one’s Life…best not to appropriate any of what is seen, revealed, or experienced as personal." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The Ego is not the source of the Shadow and the Shadow is not the source of Ego. The Shadow does not have to be made conscious to the Ego to effect its Holy Mission. The Ego does not have to be conscious to the Shadow to effect its Holy Mission. Both Ego and Shadow are completely under the egis of the Self. The Shadow modulates…the Ego orients. The unconscious forces that make up the Ego and the Shadow are Transpersonal and Holy. They must not be appropriated by either the Ego or the Shadow and certainly not by the ego….the surface awareness. Shadow formation is never a conscious process nor does it need to be made conscious. It functions best unconsciously….just as the forces of the Ego operate best unconsciously. The Shadow can live through an individual, a family, a clan, a tribe, a community, a nation, and all of Humanity as a function of the intrinsic nature of Temporality/Manifestation/Time/Space. It is a part of Divinity’s (Self’s) Homeostasis or the Holy Love mystery of Balance. It is innate to the Wholeness or Holiness of Self." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The four sacred arts require the leaving aside of the personal psyche and being taken or vastly influenced by the Transcendent process. Information appears and response patterns appear that you know are not your ordinary dynamics. Patriarchy has brought us to consciousness, discernment, differentiation, and it has appreciated what the Feminine cannot appreciate. It provides meaning, purpose, understanding how things work, it provided technology, it is form, structure – it is not to be resented – it is the law. The law is always resented, but, what is the function of the law? It establishes boundaries, and it sets up a demeanor that actually transforms certain very primitive images and contains them in some way. The shadow content of the Masculine is rigidity, tyranny, alienation, indifference to relationships, extreme impersonality. The Feminine is connection, wholeness, nurturing as a primary process, giving substance of itself to create a life, to be involved in the production of feeling and wisdom. Knowledge is an aspect of the Masculine. It´s very important to know the difference between information/knowledge, and wisdom. No matter how much knowledge you have in your life, it will never lead you to wholeness – that requires wisdom, awareness of rhythms and cycles. The Feminine is involved in the creation of time and space, rhythms and movement. If you want to get in touch with and experience time and space, you don’t go to the Masculine psyche, you go to the Feminine. If you want information about time and space, you go to the Masculine side – information, conceptualizations, distinctions, discernment. The shadow of the Feminine involves chaos, destruction, devouring. When either side is devalued, it indicates a defense at an unconscious level because it has power over you. The whole idea of what is Feminine is really quite an adventure at this point in time. It was mistaken for warrior-like qualities – these are all in defense to what is really one of its most powerful attributes: the vulnerability, the chaos, the non-rational. The Women’s movement failed because it was involved with the Feminine, but in reaction, with a masculine kind of energetic, so they masculinized women. To get vulnerable again and discover what these forces are means to let go of collective images, and rediscover them for ourselves." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The key statement about anyone's life is the redemption of the manifestation, through depth understanding that bypasses social conditioning, spiritual materialism, defenses and preferences." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The supposedly solid human body turns out to be an intricate interweaving of energy fields; where disease is not an entity but rather a fixated warp of energy fields; where the experience of Unconditional Love transcends the limitations of personal love; where mortality itself dies-and becomes immortality-and where I accept the Divine nature of all life forms, simultaneously physical and nonphysical, structured and non-structured, existing and not existing in any particular form at any given moment." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"The unconscious is composed of multiple, autonomous personalities. These personalities affect our state of health -- from allergic response to disease states such as diabetes and cancer. He suggests that the unconscious mind is far more extensive and powerful than is generally acknowledged, and that the normal conscious mind cannot hope to control the personalities within. Esoteric rites and initiations, he maintains, were designed to call forth particular personalities from the unconscious at appropriate stages of development." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"Usually pain is not how you imagine." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"What a fool I am… Perhaps it is a fool's experience of life that most approximates Eden...a fool's paradise precluded to the very intelligent. Is Forest Gump's foolish life just one paradisical poem after another, each episode delivering him into Eden after Eden, physically, psychologically and spiritually? Does my anxious educated and socially conditioned thinking, occult my own manifested Edens?" - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"When the personality or ego begins to take charge of dreams and possesses the dynamics ….a mishandling of the Holy Forces occurs. Really…the ego is the witness to the Self/Ego/Shadow development." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
"[Charles Dickens was] the bravest man who ever lived. He fathered ten children before they became tax deductions." - W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
"A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts if any of us is to survive. And our lives will be truly blessed only when the misery of one is genuinely felt to be the misery of all. The force of love is the force of total revolution. It is the unreleased force, unknown and unexplored as a dynamic for change." - Vimala Thakar
"All our emotions and thoughts are conditioned reflexes, reactions." - Vimala Thakar
"Eliminating Reactions - One will have to learn to reduce the area and the duration of reactions seeing the futility and seeing the harmfulness of this constant game of reacting, evaluating, comparing and judging. You reduce your rapport and contact with the past: the memory, the knowing, the conditioning, the motivations, the defenses. If one would be with nature, even half the time that one is with human beings, machines and gadgets, there would be an opportunity to enter into a non-reactional observation, a non-reactional attention. Then the brain would get some rest. When you are with nature: the birds, the lakes, the sunsets, the beautiful moonlight, when you are with the aloneness of the woods - then the comparative evaluating process has no scope. The motivations and defense-mechanisms become absolutely irrelevant andmeaningless when you are with nature. The reactional pattern has no function, and yet there is observation. So the cerebral organ grows into a new faculty of non-reactional sensitivity." - Vimala Thakar
"Enhancement of individual growth and success shall unequivocally lead to national prosperity." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"The universe is an intelligence test" - Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
"Meet me in Cognito, baby. In Cognito, we'll have nothing to hide." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
"A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"We are not alien visitors to this planet, after all but natural residents and relatives of every living entity here. This earth is where we came from and where we'll all end up when we die, and during the interim, it is our home, And there's no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don't at least marginally understand our home." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water." - Elizabeth Gilbert
"Death in Heidegger is an event of freedom, whereas for me the subject seems to reach the limit of the possible in suffering. It finds itself enchained, overwhelmed, and in some way passive. Death is in this sense the limit of idealism." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"We are, I believe, at the moment in grave danger of missing the 'path to perfection'." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
"We do not need to project out own ideas into the economy of nature; they belong there in their own right. Our own ideas are in the economy of nature because we ourselves are in it. Any and every one of the things which a man does intelligently is done with a purpose and to a certain end which is the final cause why he does itÂ… Through man, who is part and parcel of nature, purposiveness most certainly is part and parcel of nature. In what sense is it arbitrary, knowing from within that where there is organization there always is a purpose, to conclude that there is a purpose wherever there is organization?" - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
"Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise." - Eugen Herrigel