The Search

     This enthusiasm of the Mexican is quite easy for me to understand. Even today, I would go half-way round the world to find a book if I thought it essential to my needs, and I have a feeling of absolute veneration for those few authors who have given me something special. For this reason I can never understand the tepid youth of today who wait for books to given to them and who neither search nor admire. I would go without eating in order to get a book, and I have never liked borrowing books, because I have always wanted them to be absolutely mine so that I could live with them for hours on end.
     As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.
— Miguel Serrano, C.G. Jung & Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships, pp. 3-4.

     It would be rash to expect television to reform. On the contrary, no one should take seriously any news organization that, after announcing the news of even the gravest import, shifts to a commercial featuring talking dogs. Neil Postman says: "I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence, and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville."
— James B. Sibbison, "Assisting the Decline of Literacy: Electronic Kudzu," in Chrysalis, Volume VII, Issue 2, "The Future of Human Nature," p. 97.

"It must take courage to
bear a child these days."

Courage? To receive new life and bring it forth
Into a world long barren from refusing what is new?

Courage? To assist in love's creation
For a world gone mad with hate's destroying?

Rather say it would take courage to live on
Poor for the want of new hopes and aspirations,
Blind in the blaze of new light,
In guilty shame for lack of innocence
To lead the way out of old mistakes.

New worlds do not come
From niggardly measuring of acceptance,
Nor from timid shunning of the unknown,
But from the beginnings
Set formless in the void of secret deeps,
Their substance seen, yet being imperfect,
Only by the One who willed it so.
— Carolyn Blackmer, in Ibid., p. 103.

Unde Malum

TRANSFORMATION: Swedenborg sees the whole purpose of human life as "regeneration," and sees clearly the need for dark passages. "Before anything is brought back into order, it is quite normal for it to be brought first into a kind of confusion, a virtual chaos. In this way, things that fit together badly are severed from each other and when they have been severed, then the Lord arranges them in order."
     Lastly, I would stress Swedenborg's insistence that we will ultimately believe what we want to believe. "We all label as 'good' whatever we feel as pleasant . . . and we label 'true' whatever we therefore perceive as delightful...." In his view, no amount of 'factuality" will convince us unless we want the 'distinguishable oneness" that he sees as our highest good.
— George F. Dole, in a response to John L. Hitchcock's paper "The New Physics and Human Transformation," in Chrysalis, Volume IV, Issue I, "Science and Spirituality, p. 41.

     But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure.
— Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, p. 10.

"There are two kinds of crazy people," Dr. Goldman said. He said this privately, to close friends, and with no intention of being quoted. "There are those whose primative instincts, sexual and aggressive, have been misdirected, blunted, confused or shattered at an early age by environmental and/or biological factors beyond their control. Not many of these people can completely and permanently regain that balance we call 'sanity,' but they can be made to confront the source of their damage, to compensate for it, to reduce their disadvantageous substitutions and to adjust to the degree that they can meet most social requirements without painful difficulty. My satisfaction in life is in assisting these people in their adjustments.
     "But there are other people, people who choose to be crazy in order to cope with what they regard as a crazy world. They have adopted craziness as a lifestyle. I've found that there is nothing I can do for these people because the only way you can get them to give up their craziness is to convince them that the world is actually sane. I must confess that I have found such a conviction almost impossible to support."
— Tom Robbins, Ibid., p. 172.

"Exactly," answered Sissy. "Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.' 'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth. Stabilization to them means order, uniformity, control. And that's a half-witted and potentially genocidal misconception. No matter how thoroughly they control a system, disorder invariably leaks into it. Then the managers panic, rush to plug the leak and endeavor to tighten the controls. Therefore, totalitarianism grows in viciousness and scope. And the blind pity is, rigidity isn't the same as stability at all. True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. As a psychiatrist, wouldn't you say that a stable individual accepts the inevitability of his death? Likewise, a stable culture, government or institution has built into it its own demise. It is open to change, open even to being overthrown. It is open period. Gracefully open. That's stability. That's alive."
— Tom Robbins, Ibid., pp. 208-209.

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry. To the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its magic. To the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace. As its options (no matter how absurd or unlikely) diminish, so do its chances for the future.
— Tom Robbins, Ibid., p. 295.

Looking Deeper

It is the duty of the author of a scientific paper to make the subject matter clear to at least two people, one of whom may be the author.
— Freeman Dyson quote as Fronticepiece to Reality & Empathy by Alex Comfort.

....Oddly enough, the best description of how it might be apprehended comes not from a physicist but from the amateur yogi and occult philosopher P.D. Ouspensky, describing a vision he experienced during an altered state of mind:
     "In trying to describe this strange world in which I saw myself, I must say that it resembled more than anything a world of very complicated mathematical relations . . . in which everything is connected, in which nothing exists separately, and in which at the same time the relations between things have a real existence apart from the things themselves; or possibly 'things' do not exist, and only 'relations' exist." (1930)
     Ouspensky was a very odd fish, and certainly, from the remainder of his book, no great scientific thinker, but here for once his language is strikingly closer than that of the physicists. He is coy about the means used to obtain this vision (they appear to have included smoking pot). Whether he contrived to see this natural implicate or was simply guessing, is a matter of some interest, as we shall see later, but his image, like that of Liebnitz, accurately describes the model which one trend in mathematical physics is attempting to convey.
— Alex Comfort, Reality & Empathy, pp. 19-20.

     Bigotry and credulity are misshapen sisters, and common intellectual prudence counsels against contracting wedlock with either. That paranormal phenomena do not exist is an opinion; that they certainly exist is an overstatement; and that we know a priori that they cannot exist is manifest nonsense. As in the case of other apparent phenomena, the most reasonable position would be that they represent real effects, to be explained until shown to be otherwise. They do not follow from any model of quantum physics, though some of them might prove eventually to have roots in the double take between Boolean logic and wave-function on perception in the brain; and contortions of the theoretical explainers [Rao, 1966] spring from clinging to a Newtonian universe as "real." The specific point on which paranormal phenomena might comment is not the nature of matter or energy, but the epiphenomenal character of mind. The nearest they can come to commenting on physical theory is as very different examples of a "second layer" show-through, analogous to certain postulated examples in physics. Nor, as we shall see, would they necesarily provide a way out of existential anxiety that would be any more flattering to our wish for permanent I-ness than the epiphenomenal model. It might be worse stressing this in order to let some of the grosser pressures out of the subject.
— Alex Comfort, Reality & Empathy, p. 219.

Like dazzled insects skimming the bright airs,
You are back on the road again, the path leading
Vigorously upward, through intelligent and clear spaces.
They don't make rocks like us any more.
And holding on to the thread, fine as a cobweb, but incredibly strong.
Each advances into his own labyrinth.
— John Ashberry, from "Never Seek to Tell Thy Love."

Magic is Alive

     Old friend, you may kneel as you read this, for now I come to the sweet burden of my argument. I did not know what I had to tell you, but now I know. I did not know what I wanted to proclaim, but now I am sure. All my speeches were preface to this, all my exercises but a clearing of my throat. I confess I tortured you but only to draw your attention to this. I betrayed you but only to tap your shoulder. In our kisses and sucks, this, ancient darling, I meant to whisper.
     God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God never died. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled. Though his shrouds were hoisted the naked God did live. Though his words were twisted the naked Magic thrived. Though his death was published round and round the world the heart did not believe. Many hurt men wondered. Many struck men bled. Magic never faltered. Magic always led. Many stones were rolled but God would not lie down. Many wild men lied.  Many fat men listened. Though they offered stones Magic still was fed. Though they locked their coffers God was always served. Magic is afoot. God rules. Alive is afoot. Alive is in command. Many weak men hungered. Many strong men thrived. Though they  boasted solitude God was at their side. Nor the dreamer in his cell, nor the captain on the hill. Magic is alive. Though his death was pardoned round and round the world the heart would not believe. Though the laws were carved in marble they could not shelter men. Though altars built in parliaments thay could not order men. Police arrested Magic and Magic went with them for Magic loves the hungry. But Magic would not tarry. It moves from arm to arm. It would not stay with them. Magic is afoot. It cannot come to harm. It rests in an empty palm. It spawns in an empty mind. But Magic is no instrument. Magic is the end. Many men drove Magic but Magic stayed behind. Many strong men lied. They only passed through Magic and out the other side. Many weak men lied. They came to God in secret and though they left him nourished they would not tell who healed. Though mountains danced before them they said God was dead. Though his shrouds were hoisted the naked God did live. This I mean to whisper to my mind. This I mean to laugh with in my mind. This I mean my mind to serve till service is but Magic moving through the world, and mind itself is Magic coursing through the world, and mind itself is Magic coursing through the flesh, and flesh itself is Magic dancing on a clock, and time itself the Magic Length of God.
— Leonard Cohen, "A Long Letter from F.," in Beautiful Losers, pp.156-158.

Intention to Actuality

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
— Bertrand Russell, in John-Roger & Peter McWilliams, Do It!: Let's Get Off Our Buts, p. 34.

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
— Eric Hoffer, in Ibid., p. 34.

     It is one of the great jokes of existence. When people take the courage to journey into the center of their fear, they find — nothing. It was only many layers of fear, being afraid of itself.

     This realization is either tragic or comic. When people experience this, they are often seen laughing and crying simultaneously — and the unenlightened nearby may fear that they have gone mad.
— John-Roger & Peter McWilliams, Do It!: Let's Get Off Our Buts, p. 35.

Perfections of means and confusion of goals seem — in my opinion — to characterize our age.
— Albert Einstein, in Ibid., p. 146.

     Most people let their methods decide their intentions. This is a fundamental mistake in manifestation. Those who look at what they already have before selecting what they want are involved in making do, not doing.

     The reason many people feel bored and unfulfilled is that they spend their lives shuffling and reshuffling the methods they already have. This can be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic — no matter how well it's done, the result is the same. As someone said, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."

     When choosing a dream, look to your heart, not to your "reality." That's why it's called a dream. Make that dream your intention. Commit to it. Act upon that commitment. The methods to fulfill that dream will appear.
— John-Roger & Peter McWilliams, Do It!: Let's Get Off Our Buts, p. 147.

Theoretical physicist Henry Margenau and psychologist Lawrence LeShan search together for a common view of physical reality and beyond. In their book Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky, they write of the artist's task in a manner Blake would share.

     "Art introduces to us new ways of perceiving and reaction to the world. The artist knows that there is no one correct way to perceive. He seeks new and different views of reality, and when he is successful in his search, the culture learns to perceive with his new view. When Picasso was told that his portrait of Gertrude Stein did not look like her, he replied, 'Don't worry. It will.' Similarly, if Ibsen had been told that women did not behave like his heroines, he might well have replied, 'Don't worry. They will.' And seventy-five years later he would have been proven to be correct."

Artist Paul Klee wrote: "The artist does not reproduce the visible; rather he makes things visible."
     The artist makes things visible. The active creative imagination releases a person from the "cavern'd" view and from its accompanying lowest common denominator "ratio" world. Blake knew that the function of true religion and true art is to cause a shift in perception to take place, remarkably expanding one's capacity to enjoy a richer quality of experience. He wrote about what he sees in the morning.

"What," it will be questioned, "When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?" O no no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty."

     This is not simply a matter of concern to an intellectual, a monastic, or an aesthete. It is a matter of the broadest import, touching upon the range of aliveness possible to a person, even a whole culture...
— Roy D. Phillips, "Blake and Freedom," from "Freedom's Roots," Chrysalis, Volume III, Issue 2, pp. 156-157.

Think Change, Change Thought

     A fundamental way in which the ancient science differs from our own is that it was not intended to represent progress, but was regarded more as a compensation. In all traditional histories, such as those of the Chinese and Ancient Greeks already referred to, the remote ancestors were thought of as wiser and more knowledgeable than the present generation because they were able to live more simply, without the elaborate institutions of civilization. Science was seen as the compensation for the lost classic style of the Ancients. Thus its purpose was not to progress but to delay and make up for regression. The old perception is that cultures do not develop gradually through unaided human efforts, but are created at their highest at the start of one of those mysterious cycles of earth-renewal, influx of cosmic energy whatever, which result in the appearance of godlike individuals or culture heroes who establish the new order of the age. From that time entropy takes over and a people's culture begins its long decline. Religion and science are developed with the object of arresting that decline by keeping society in touch with its cultural origins through the perpetuation of customs and rituals. When these become empty forms, when the knowledge and perception behind them are lost, the society is in its period of decadence, and its end comes either by gradual dissolution or catastrophe.
— John Mitchell, from "The Ideal World-View, in The Schumacher Lectures, Satish Kumar (ed.), p. 112.

     Now it is time to sharpen the points already made and, perhaps, in conclusion, to take the matter a little further. The world today is dominated by ideas and forces which are inimical to its survival. The great modern institutions of power, as is the tendency of all human institutions, have gained independent momentum beyond rational human control, and, since any institution is more stupid and stubborn than any of the individuals who comprise it, they cannot go against their own programmes by abolishing themselves or reforming their own destructive characters. It seems that we are in the power of forces which we or our ancestors first set in motion but which have become blind and inhuman, destined to react with each other in swings of ever greater violence until they destroy forever the precarious balance between the interests of civilization and those of nature. In terms of our present mode of reasoning it seems that nothing can avert, or even long delay, the cataclysmic demise of ourselves and our native planet.
— John Mitchell, in Ibid., pp. 117-118.

     The human brain, being so excellent at pattern-making and pattern-using, has rather few methods for escaping from old patterns to reach new ones. We always suppose that more information will cause us to see things differently. This does not often happen, for two reasons. First of all we only look for the  information that the old patterns tell us to look for. Second, we tend to see the new information through the old pattern. That leaves us with accident, mistake, humour and lateral thinking as our tools for changing patterns. The history of science shows how effective accident and mistake have been in stting off new ideas (for example, the invention of the triode valve or Pasteur's development of inoculation). Thinkers have not yet learned to take humour seriously. That leaves lateral thinking as the deliberate methodology for changing patterns.
— Edward de Bono, from "Lateral Thinking," in The Schumacher Lectures, Satish Kumar (ed.), pp. 156-157.

      I took a photograph of my wife, Jill Krementz, for the jacket of a book by her. She set the camera and told me where to stand and how to click it. When the book came out, with my name under the picture, a gallery owner offered me a one-person show of my photographs. It wouldn't have been just a one-person show. It would have been a one-photograph show. Such is celebrity. Eat your heart out.
— Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, pp. 40-41.

Deep Science

     The maps produced by modern materialistic Scientism leave all the questions that really matter unanswered; more than that, they deny the validity of the questions. The situation was desperate enough in my youth half a century ago; it is even worse now because the ever more rigorous application of the scientific method to all subjects and disciplines has destroyed even the last remnants of ancient wisdom — at least in the Western world. It is being loudly proclaimed in the name of scientific objectivity that "values and meanings are nothing but defence mechanisms and reaction formations"; that man is nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism powered by a combustion system which energises computers with prodigious storage facilities for retaining encoded information." Sigmund Freud even assured us that "this alone I know with certainty, namely that men's value judgments are guided absolutely by their desire for happiness, and are therefore merely an attempt to bolster up their illusions by arguments."
     How is anyone to resist the pressure of such statements, made in the name of objective science, unless, like Maurice Nicoll, he suddenly receives "this inner revelation of knowing" that men who say such things, however learned they may be, know nothing about anything that really matters? People are asking for bread and they are being given stones. They beg for advice about what they should do "to be saved," and they are told that the idea of salvation has no intelligible content and is nothing but an infantile neurosis. They long for guidance about how to live as responsible human beings, and they are told that they are machines, like computers, without free will and therefore without responsibility....
— E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 4-5.

     Our minds were made to know, and they "flourish" — no one has said this better than Aristotle — when they work meaningfully at that function. They need not be overweening nor claim omniscience; indeed, one of the important things they can know is their place. But that place exists, and it is not confined to the laboratory. To see, as E.F. Schumacher reminded us shortly before his death, that "only those questions which cannot be answered with 'precision' have any real significance" is the first step toward knowledge about these questions themselves.
     The most unnoticed reason for current skepticism is our assumption that earlier ages were mistaken. If their outlooks were erroneous, it stands to reason that ensuing eras will show ours to be mistaken too; so runs the argument, which is so taken for granted that it is seldom even voiced. But if we could see that our forebears were not mistaken — they just erred in details, but not in their basic surmises, which were so much alike that in Forgotten Truths I referred to them as "the human unanimity" — a major impediment to confidence in our global understandings would be to separate the reliability of our knowledge from questions of omniscience, to counter the suspicion that if we cannot know everything, what we do know must be tainted. I need not know the position of San Francisco relative to everything in the universe, much less what space and position finally mean, to be certain that, given the present position of our planet's poles, it lies predominantly west of Syracuse....
— Huston Smith, from "Beyond the Modern Western Mind-set," in Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, p. 150.

....vast energies are directed to the study of animals in the hope that this will contribute to the understanding of human beings. This is like studying physics in the hope of learning biology. Since higher forms contain the lower, something about the higher can indeed be learned from studying the lower — everything, in fact, except what makes it higher. To think of human beings as "naked apes" bespeaks an entire approach, one that turns its back on man's distinctive essence. It is as if it were suddenly to occur to dogs that they might get further if they thought of themselves as "barking cabbages."
     The situation invites such satire, which in this instance is drawn from E.F. Schumacher's A Guide for the Perplexed. In that book the author arranges Aristotle's "four kingdoms" in an inverted pyramid that reads from the bottom up as follows:

human: matter + life + consciousness + SELF-AWARENESS
           animal: matter + life + CONSCIOUSNESS
                       plant: matter + LIFE
                              MATTER

The capitalized words with which each line ends denote the different substances or powers I have spoken of. All of these save matter are invisible — no one has ever seen life or consciousness or self-awareness — and are therefore beyond the range of science, yet it is obviously in these higher registers that our lives are lived.  Or better, as all our thoughts, emotions, feelings, imaginations, reveries. dreams, fantasies are woven of life, consciousness, and self-awareness, this latter triumverate is what we essentially are. And they are what values are as well, we can add to get us back to the point with which this section is basically concerned. I have conceded along the way that science's inability to deal with values does not prove that a value-competent epistemology is possible. But we shall never know whether it is or not until we accord life, consciousness, and self-awareness autonomous status, meaning by this, epistemologically, that they must be understood in their own right, as having their own properties and principles which instruments tailored to other things cannot probe; and ontologically, that they do not depend on the physical bodies that sometimes "house" them. If this ontological point sounds radical in saying right out loud that there are things that are not only invisible but without material components entirely, it at least brings into the open how far post-modern ontology is removed from where it needs to be. For until the value domain is respected in the way that science respects nature, deeming it worthy of infinite attention, it is naive to think that values will show us their deep laws. And — this final point is the one that current value discussions have yet to take into account, as President Muller's otherwise admirable statement illustrates — this full respect will not be forthcoming until the value domain (which to physical eyes, remember, is invisible) is accorded autonomy on a par with that of nature.
— Huston Smith, from "Checkpoints," in Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, p. 166.

Consider This

     All the needed correctives can be had, of course, by our proper response to the cultural priests dispensing the commodities of salvation. Or, if none of this suffices our particular bent of mind, then we should cook up some healing salves of our own to peddle and not stand around complaining.
     The great accusers: governments, businesses, Pentagons, CIA's, churches, schools, jails have always been with us in some guise, and may always be. These things are culture and they are self-perpetuating. For every young person trying to "drop out," a dozen thoroughly programmed, well-acculturated students quietly go ahead training to sustain the system. The dropout makes news, but he makes no changes and he has nowhere to go.
     Though they change vestments with ease, the cultural priests have never changed functionally, nor can they. Our contemporary culture is maintained, however, by convincing you that you can change things. Our culture convinces you that you can "throw out the rascals in Washington," or wherever, or the robber barons or the egghead liberals, and by your energy help redress the wrongs. Our culture survives by keeping you filled with the hope for change and the notion that everything can be changed.
     A person is considered "normal" or properly aculturated when fear and guilt are his norm, and buffers to such "natural conditions" are his life pursuit. Most people who fault culture are convinced that great remedial changes are in the offing. This always means better buffers for all. These activities leave the central issue carefully untouched and spin the merry-go-round even faster.
     That we are left only with our intellect as "protection" against a hostile cosmos, and that our intellect is a semantic creation, with semantics subordinate and supportive of the cultural process, brings us full circle.
     This circular definition of reality can be summed up as the death concept. Every accusation of guilt is a threat of death in some guise: death of one's self-image; hopes of fulfillment; sexual prowess; attractiveness; security; ease; comfort; health and on it goes.
     Literal death is threatened indirectly. The war makers threaten death at the hands of the current enemy unless we properly prime the death machines with our energies and money; the disease makers threaten, in fact guarantee, death from every latest death fad, should the counteractions not be sought (regardless of staggering cost), the lawmakers promise more penalties and stuff the overstuffed prisons; the scientists assure us of death, not just of our life but of all life. If the big bang must be abandoned, there is the New Black Hole. Or as a last resort, though dull, there is always the second law of thermodynamics to fall back on, to get everything and everybody in the end. Insurance companies remind us of our death in the form of the worst fate for those left behind should we fail to apportion those companies their fair share of our energies and toil. The preachers remind us of our death and the fate of our elusive souls should we be the spiritual equivalents of high-school dropouts....
— Joseph Chilton Pearse, Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg, pp. 104-105.

There is knowledge of the way through walking in it.
— Emanuel Swedenborg

     A related idea in Swedenborg is that of influx. All things exist by divine influx: "Every created thing . . . is a recipient of God," that is, "an image of God in a mirror." It is important to note that the divine influx, or divine life, is received according to the capacity of the recipient and thus presents infinite variety. This, however, should not be construed as pantheism, for "the created universe is not God, but is from God; and since it is from God, there is in it an image of Him like the image of a person in a mirror, wherein indeed the person appears, but still there is nothing of the person in it."
— Roberts Avens, "The Concept of the Soul Protected," in Crysalis, Winter 1985, p. 65.

Still Knowledge Runs Deep

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.
— Simone Weil, Simone Weil: A Life, in Journey of Awakening: A Meditator's Guidebook, Ram Dass, p. 10.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.
— Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in Ibid., p. 11.

All wordly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births, in death.
— Milarepa, in Ibid., p. 18.

The happiness of solitude is not found in retreats. It may be had even in busy centres. Happiness is not to be sought in solitude or in busy centres. It is in the self.
— Sri Ramana Maharshi, in Ibid., p. 36.

The result is not the point; it is the effort to improve ourselves that is valuable. There is no end to this practice.
— Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in Ibid., p. 200.

To endure is the disposition of the sage.
— The I Ching, in Ibid., p. 200.

     Obsessing about ourselves is not enough Buber notes, "You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way — it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In that time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven."
— Sheldon Kopp, All God's Children Are Lost, But Only a Few Can Play the Piano, p. 32.

If we interpret dreams as our unconscious expression of yesterday's conflicts, we may learn more about how our problems began. However, if we learn to experience these nocturnal images as our soul's observations about today's crises, they can guide us to the place where tomorrow's personal growth will take us.
— Sheldon Kopp, Ibid., pp. 54-55.

Pointedness

Here is the critical point. In negotiations we will get ourselves in terrible difficulty if we allow ourselves to believe we can ever manage or control numerical results, other people's actions or the flow of time. Because we cannot manage these things, in our frustration and despair we will fall into need, lose hope, and our integrity will be impaired. For this reason the moves in Ring 1 and throughout The Five Rings focus on our own actions and behavior over which we have some large measure of control. By asserting ourselves here we gain some incremental margin of influence over the uncertain and destabilizing forces of life.
— Julian Gresser, Piloting Through Chaos, p. 35.

"I have no parents. I make heaven and earth my parents.
I have no home. I make awareness my home.
I have no life or death. I make breath tides my life and death.
I have no divine power. I make integrity my divine power.
I have no means. I make understanding my means.
I have no body. I make endurance my body.
I have no eyes. I make lightning flash my eyes.
I have no ears. I make sensibility my ears.
I have no limbs. I make promptness my limbs.
I have no strategy. I make unshadowed-by-thought my strategy.
I have no designs. I make opportunity my designs.
I have no miracles. I make right action my miracles.
I have no principles. I make adaptability my principle.
I have no tactics. I make emptiness/fullness my tactics.
I have no friends. I make you, mind, my friend(s).
I have no enemy. I make carelessness my enemy.
I have no armor. I make compassion my armor.
I have no castle. I make heaven/earth my castle.
I have no sword. I make absence of self my sword."
— 14th century samurai, in Ibid., p. 57.

If we can extract the deepest insights from Shakespeare, we can do the same with Goethe, the Bible, the Baghavad Gita, Leonardo da Vinci, Lincoln. Gandhi, and all the great figures of history, living and dead, and from literature, the epic heroes, the wisest people, and they can all, by means of the computer, become our friends and teachers! If we had the financial means we could construct for every country its Wisdom Genome — the core of its contribution of wisdom to humanity — to be updated continuously and made available, as a birthright, for everyone.
— Julian Gresser, Ibid., p. 140.

     As science has grown in power and prestige over the past century, too many philosophers have served as science's public relations agents. This trend can be traced to such thinkers as Charles Sanders Pierce, an American who founded the philosophy of pragmatism but could not keep a job or a wife and died penniless and miserable in 1914. Pierce offered this difinition of absolute truth: it is whatever scientists say it is when they come to the end of their labors.
     Much philosophy since Pierce has merely elaborated on his view. The dominant philosophy in Europe early this century was logical positivism, which asserted that we can only know that something is true if it can be logically or empirically demonstrated. The positivists upheld mathematics and science as the supreme sources of truth. Popper, Kuhn, and Feyerbend — each in his own way and for his own reasons — sought to counter this fawning attitude toward science. These philosophers realized that in an age when science is ascendant, the highest calling of philosophy should be to serve as the negative capability of science, to infuse scientists with doubt. Only thus can the human quest for knowledge remain open-ended, potentially infinite; only thus can we remain awestruck before the mystery of the cosmos....
— John Horgan, The End of Science, p. 33.

Clear Focus

     Knowledge and love are both indefinitely extensible; therefore, however good a life may be, a better life can be imagined. Neither love without knowledge nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. In the Middle Ages, when pestilence appeared in the country, holy men advised the population to assemble in churches and pray for deliverance; the result was that the infection spread with extraordinary rapidity among the crowded masses of supplicants. This was an example of love without knowledge. The late war afforded an example of knowledge without love. In each case, the result was death on a large scale.
     Although both love and knowledge are necessary, love is in a sense more fundamental, since it will lead intelligent people to seek knowledge, in order to find out how to benefit those whom they love. But if people are not intelligent, they will be content to believe what they have been told and may do harm in spite of the most genuine benevolence....
— Bertrand Russell, "What I Believe," in Why I Am Not a Christian, pp. 56-57.

To proceed we need at least a working definition. It is a reflection of the enormous mystery of the subject that we do not have a generally accepted definition of evil. Yet in our hearts I think we all have some understanding of its nature. For the moment I can do no better than to heed my son, who, with the characteristic vision of eight-year-olds, explained simply, "Why, daddy, evil is 'live' spelled backward." Evil is in opposition to life. It is that which opposes the life force. It has, in short, to do with killing. Specifically, it has to do with murder — namely, unnecessary killing, killing that is not required for biological survival.
     Let us not forget this. There are who have written about evil so intellectually that it comes out sounding abstract to the point of irrelevancy. Murder is not abstract....
     When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is also that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life — particularly human life — such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head. Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others — to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredictability and originality, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.
     Evil, then, for the moment, is that force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.
— M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, pp. 42-43.

....Those who fully experience depression, doubt, confusion, and despair may be infinitely more healthy than those who are generally certain, complacent, and self-satisfied. The denial of suffering is, in fact, a better definition of illness than its acceptance.
     The evil deny the suffering of their quilt — the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection — by casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. They cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society.
     In reality, we exist not merely as individuals but as social creatures who are integral component parts of a larger organism called society....
— M. Scott Peck, Ibid., pp. 123-124.

     The point is that God does not punish. To create us in His image, God gave us free will. To have done otherwise would have been to make us puppets or hollow mannequins. Yet to give us free will God had to forswear the use of force against us. We do not have free will when there is a gun pointed at our back. It is not necessarily that God lacks the power to destroy us, to punish us, but that in His love for us He has painfully and terribly chosen never to use it. In agony He must stand by and let us be. He intervenes only to help, never to hurt. The Christian God is a God of restraint. Having forsworn the use of power against us, if we refuse His help, He has no recourse but, weeping, to watch us punish ourselves.
— M. Scott Peck, Ibid., p. 204.

It's Greek to Me

Knowledge is not intelligence.
— Herakleitos, Herakleitos and Diogenes, "Herakleitos," #6, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 12.

Change alone is unchanging.
— Herakleitos, Ibid., #23, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 15.

History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man's power in the world.
— Herakleitos, Ibid., #24, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 15.

The most beautiful order of the world is still a random gathering of things insignificant in themselves.
— Herakleitos, Ibid., #40, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 18.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?
— Diogenes, Herakleitos and Diogenes, "Diogenes," #10, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 40.

A. I am Alexander the Great.
B. I am Diogenes, the dog.
A. The dog?
B. I muzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite louts.
A. What can I do for you?
B. Stand out of my light.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #30, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 44.

I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #35, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 44.

Reason or a halter.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #45, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 46.

Beg a cup of wine from Plato and he will send you a whole jar. He does not give as he was asked, nor answer as he is questioned.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #48, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 47.

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but in his face.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #56, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 48.

Beggars get handouts before philosophers because people have some idea of what it's like to be blind and lame.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #93, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 54.

Give up philosophy because I'm an old man? It's at the end of a race that you break into a burst of speed.
— Diogenes, Ibid., "Diogenes," #124, Guy Davenport (tr.), p. 59.

Why Try?

     Yes, I had supped alone, feasting on divine verities that can never die. Would not my own soul grow lean and small if I disdained those who were hungry for what I had taken freely out of the seemingly impenetrable silence of the sky?
     Could one rest with the mere recovery of these truths for oneself? There are other people in this populous world, and among them a few who might welcome such thoughts as I could give them.
     The world of fact has little sympathy with the man who stands aloof and keeps his soul free for visions in which it does not share. And the world is right. We who are seers and mystics have to draw the last crystal drop of water from out the well of vision, but with that begins our duty, stern and strict, of offering the unfamiliar drink to the first wayfarer thirsty enough to accept it. Not for ourselves alone, but for all alike does Neptune cast his magic trident over the deep places of the soul and show us his glamorous pictures therein.
     If the privilege of sitting at the feet of forgotten but none the less potent gods is indeed high, then the travail of carrying their message to an unheeding yet suffering people is just as high, just as noble. Perhaps no man's mind is so clothed in ugliness that a few faint gleams of hidden beauty do not trouble him now and again and cause him to raise his head a little towards the stars, sometimes in wonder at the ceaseless harmony of the spheres....
— Paul Brunton, from "With a Wise Man from the East," in The Secret Path, pp. 22-23.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
— Marcel Proust, in Life 101: Everything We Wished We had Learned About Life in School — But Didn't, John-Roger & Peter McWilliams, p. 6.

     As John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out, "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
     Firmness of mind, to a point, is a good thing. It keeps us from being wishy-washy, swayed by every new bit of information that comes our way. Carried beyond a certain point, however, the mind becomes closed to any new information from any source.
— John-Rogers & Peter McWilliams, Ibid., p. 31.

First he conceived from the depth of his being a something, neither mind nor matter, but rich in potentiality. . . . It was a medium in which the one and the many demanded to be most subtly dependent upon one another; in which all parts and all characters must pervade and be pervaded by all other parts and all other characters; in which each thing must seemingly be but an influence in all other things; and yet the whole must be no other than the sum of all its parts, and each part an all-pervading determination of the whole. It was a cosmical substance in which any individual spirit must be, mysteriously, at once an absolute self and a mere fragment of the whole.
— Olaf Stapleton, Star Maker, quoted in Synchronicity: Science, Myth, and the Trickster, Allan Combs & Mark Holland, p. 10.

When I consider the short extent of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space that I fill or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces unknown to me and which know me not, I am terrified and astounded to find myself here and there. For there is no reason why it should be here, not there, why now rather than at another time.
— Blaise Pascal.

The Why of Work

     Why these things now? Well, who is notable for making plans anymore? Who feels like the hero of an epic? These are tunes for the end of time, for those in an information age who are sick of data. The future has narrowed, become so small a tunnel that no one feels like crawling into it. It's not that people don't have attention spans. They just don't believe in the future, and they're tired of information. Ask the kids: anything worth doing isn't worth doing for long.
— Charles Baxter, from Afterwords, "The Tradition," in Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories, Robert Shapard/James Thomas, p. 229.

It is better to be silent and be considered a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
***
Yea also, when he that is a fool walketh by the way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to every one that he is a fool. Ecclesiastes 10:3.
***
William Penn, leader of the early American colonists who eventually named their state of Pennsylvania in his honor, gave these rules regarding conversation:
     "Avoid company where it is not profitable or necessary, and in those occasions, speak little, and last.
     "Silence is wisdom where speaking is folly, and always safe.
     "Some are foolish as to interrupt and anticipate those that speak instead of hearing and thinking before they answer, which is uncivil, as well as silly.
     "If thou thinkest twice before thou speakest once, thou wilt speak twice the better for it.
     "Better to say nothing than not to the purpose. And to speak pertinently, consider both what is fit, and when it is fit, to speak.
     "In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory or an unjust interest; and endeavor to gain, rather than to expose, thy antagonist."
— God's Little Devotion Book, Honor Books, Inc., pp. 18-19.

The following set of contrasting remarks has been offered as a character sketch of a good leader. For a personal challenge, as you read through the list, circle the descriptive words you believe most closely identify you!
Self-reliant but not Self-sufficient
Energetic but not Self-seeking
Steadfast but not Stubborn
Tactful but not Timid
Serious but not Sullen
Loyal but not Sectarian
Unmovable but not Stationary
Gentle but not Hypersensitive
Tenderhearted but not Touchy
Conscientious but not a Perfectionist
Disciplined but not Demanding
Generous but not Gullible
Meek but not Weak
Humorous but not Hilarious
Friendly but not Familiar
Holy but not Holier-than-thou
Discerning but not Critical
Progressive but not Pretentious
Authoritative but not Autocratic
....
— Ibid., p. 199.

Laziness and poverty are cousins.
***
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man. Proverbs 24: 33, 34.
***
     One day, a grandfather told his grandchildren about his coming to America. He told of the trains and ship that he took from his home in Eastern Europe. He told of being processed at Ellis Island and how he had gone to a cafeteria in lower Manhattan to get something to eat. There, he sat down at an empty table and waited quite some time for somebody to take his order. Nobody came. Finally, a woman with a tray full of food sat down opposite him and explained to him how a cafeteria works.
     She said, "You start at that end" — pointing toward a stack of trays — "and then go along the food line and pick out what you want. At the other end, they'll tell you how much you have to pay."
     The grandfather reflected a moment and then said, "I soon learned that's how everything works in America. Life's a cafeteria here. You can get anything you want — even very great success — if you are willing to pay the price. But you'll never get what you want if you wait for someone to bring it to you. You have to get up and get it yourself."
     The difference between where you are and where you want to be can often be summed up in one word: work.
— Ibid., pp. 232-233.

Clarity's Not Clear

Because at the point you can comprehend how
incomprehensible it all is,
You're about as smart as you need to be.

Suddenly I burst into song:
"Awe,
sweet mystery of life,
at last I've found thee."

And I felt so good inside
and my heart felt so full,
I decided I would set time aside each day to do
awe-robics.

Because at the moment you are most in awe of all there is
about life that you don't understand,
you are closer to understanding it all
than at any other time.
— Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, from "Trudy," pp. 205-206.

Lines While Walking Home
FROM A PARTY ON CHARLES STREET

Suffer, do you? I think if wounds were art
you'd fill a gallery with scars on plaques,
extractions on a red velvet, rare amputations

stuffed and varnished and set out on mirrors
under magenta lights — then throw a party
for Jesus and Mother and Father and all Charles Street.

As for being a beast — you'll have to move outdoors.
Not conscience but the unconscious
stiffens the stallion to the dancing mare.

And one temptation by Hieronymous Bosch
over the radiator won't qualify,
even with Baudelaire propped on the table

between two coupling boys in terra cotta.
Piddle's no rape, rape's no vocabulary. One family of Sicilians

has more beasts in to breakfast than you to your nightmares.
— John Ciardi, As If: Poems New and Selected, p. 129.

Fine and dandy: but, so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality. If poetry were anything—like dropping an atombomb—which everyone did, anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whatever that anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet's calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you've got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being. I am quite aware that, wherever our socalled civilization has slithered, there's every reward and no punishment for unbeing. But if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about selfstyled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you—nobody else—who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it—and be. If you can't, cheer up and go about other people's business; and do (or undo) till you drop.
— e e cummings, i   six nonlectures, nonlecture two, p. 24.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitbly earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
— e e cummings, i six nonlectures, nonlecture five, p. 91.

We vs. Me

     The second respect in which Jung's notion of archetypes is appropriate here is in the justice it does to their formative powers: they "create" or project forth the terrestrial plane, which is no more than their exterior covering. Several times in this study we have enveighed against reductionism, but let us be clear. Its error does not lie in its attempt to understand one type of reality in terms of another. Virtually all explanation proceeds in this fashion, and explanation is needed, for true reality is never the most obvious; one might almost say that one of the ways truth betrays the fact that it is such is in the care it takes to remain elusive, if one may put the matter paradoxically. The mistake of reductionism — spirit reduced to metamorphosed matter (Darwinism), truth reduced to ideology (Marxism), psyche reduced to sex (Freud: there is no way "to sweeten the sour apple") — lies in its attempt to explain the greater in terms of the less, with the not surprising consequence that the greater is thereby lessened. It is this, at root, that sets us against the modern outlook and turns us back toward tradition where the drift is always the reverse: to explain the lesser by means of the more, a mode of explanation that tends to augment rather than deplete....
— Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth, pp. 41-42.

     Mechanists consider mind to be a part of the body, but this is a mistake. The brain is a part of the body, but mind and brain are not identical. The brain breathes mind like the lung breathes air.
— Houston Smith, Ibid., p. 63.

     If you assume (as they unconsciously do) that there is no such thing as the wisdom of the ages and that there is nothing to be learned from even the mistakes of the past, then perhaps they are right in being happily ignorant of it. But I find it hard to believe that the slate should be wiped quite so clean.
     Presently I found myself thinking, in my old-fashioned way, about Matthew Arnold's classification of his contemporaries, and I think that it requires some modification if it is to be applied this hundred years later. What he called the cultured are perhaps as numerous (which is also as few) as they were in his time. But if I understand aright another of his distinctions, there are fewer Philistines and more Barbarians, i.e., fewer who have rejected culture and chosen vulgarity, more who are simply unaware that culture exists. The values of the Philistine — comfort, money, and power — are consciously held and therefore not wholly unexamined. His thinking may be vulgar and directed toward the achievement of vulgar ends but it is at least thinking of a sort, and the choices are deliberately made. The Barbarian does does not really think or choose at all with his conscious mind. He merely finds himself living in a world of physical sensations, quite unaware that any other existence is possible. I know that we spend millions on schools, that no other nation is so supplied with libraries, that paperbacks proliferate, and that even TV devotes hours to "education." But I have the feeling that a very large number of youths of both sexes are as untouched by all this as though it did not exist.
     In addition to Arnold's categories one must of course extablish a new one either nonexistent or unnamed in Arnold's day: the category of the Alienated. This category includes two subdivisions, into one or the other of which the existentialist and the beatnik are placed. Both have one thing in common with the Philistine because both have rejected "culture" in Arnold's sense, though they often know more about it than his Philistines did. They differ from one another in that the highly intellectual existentialist is depressed while the beatnik has taken only one step away from the fun-oriented society and finds the summum bonum to be not fun but "kicks."
— Joseph Wood Krutch, "Can We Survive the Fun Explosion?", in Edge of Awareness: Twenty-Five Contemporary Essays, Ned Hoopes/Richard Peck (eds.), pp. 73-74.

     God does not protect us against catastrophes. He is neither a lightning rod nor a breakwater. But he comes to our aid in catastrophes. It is in the very midst of the tempest and the misfortune that a wonderful zone of peace, serenity, and joy bursts in upon us before we have helped ourselves. God does not relieve us before we have exhausted our own strength. But when we are at the end of our resources, when everything is going the worst, when everything is taking place as if he did not exist or could not do anything, at this moment he manifests himself, and we begin to know that he has been there all along....
     Your powerlessness, your total misery will make your liberation. You will learn that existence is a gratuitous gift and not an anxious personal industry. And the intensity of the hope which will bloom so simply in your heart will reveal to you the violence with which you had repressed it until then.
— Louis Evely, in Strength for the Soul, Dorothy Mason Fuller (sel. & ed.), pp. 62-63.

     When life puts something up to us we need not react; we can respond. That is different. That takes our spiritual contribution in....
     In our capacity to make that spiritual response to life our freedom lies.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick, in Ibid., p. 69.

     Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
— Rabindranath Tagore, in Ibid., p. 91.

Sleeper Awake

     We hear that Word in creation, where this God proclaimed that everything divinely created was good and that male and female had both been created in God's image. That "Word of God" fueled every human movement for justice from the fight to end slavery and segregation to the feminist movement to the peace movement to the gay and lesbian rights movement. That Word of God challenges the prejudice that grows out of our limited knowledge, our tribal identities, our economic systems, and our sexual fears.
     The Bible is the word of God in that it touches universal, timeless themes. The sense of being created for union with God, the sense of being alienated from that union, and the yearning to be restored to that union are in the depths of every human psyshe. Yet here they are external and objectified in the narratives of Scripture. The Bible is the Word of God when it captures in its remembered history archetypal and eternal truths that we can experience, enter, and live, even today.
     All of us know what it means to live in bondage to some power that is beyond our ability to manage and from which we cannot escape.  All of us know the meaning of exodus and deliverance. All of have, in some way, come out of our limiting bondage. We know what it means to wander in the wilderness and finally to arrive at the promised land. We know what it means to be fed on our journey with manna, that heavenly food, to be sustained with water that flows from a rock. We know what it means to receive the law, to yearn for the perfect life, to enter the darkness of death, and to believe that one can walk through even death without fear, for our faith story tells us that one has entered and conquered even death with the power of the love of God. We know what it means to live in a community where there are no boundaries, no barriers, and where everyone can communicate with everyone else without misunderstanding. We know what it means to yearn for a perfect world and to be empowered to work for that perfection until the Kingdom of God shall come.
     These are all biblical themes that enrich our lives. They are themes, however, that cannot be heard, heeded, or entertained until we are free to approach the sacred Scriptures with eyes, ears, and hearts that are not bound in the straitjacket of trying to impose a literal authority that has never been the essential truth of Scripture. The Bible is not literally true in a thousand details. But the Bible does touch the deep wells of truth, and to those deep wells it calls us again and again.
— John Shelby Sprong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, pp. 75-76.

     Religion almost inevitably tries to take our anxiety away from us by claiming that which religion can never deliver — absolute certainty. If religious systems succeed in giving us certainty, they have surely become idolatrous, for the ultimate mystery and wonder of God cannot be reduced to a particular language or captured in the concepts of any human being.  The Christianity that I advocate and follow does not rob me of my humanity by making claims of either inerrancy for Scripture or infallibility for papacy or sacred tradition. My religion does not reduce God to an idol of its own creation. It does not give me certasinty or even security. Rather, in my religious system I meet a God in Jesus who calls me deeper and deeper into my humanity — part of which is a constant quest and journey into truth.
— John Shelby Sprong, Ibid., p. 170.

We are all strong enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
— The Maxims of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, #19, Constantine FitzGibbon (tr.).

There would be few pleasures if there were no self-delusion.
— Ibid., #123.

No man should be praised for his goodness if he lacks the strength to be bad: in such cases goodness is usually only the effect of indolence or impotence of will.
— Ibid., #237.

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.
— Ibid., #276.

Humility is the true touchstone of the Christian virtues: without it we retain all our faults, which are simply concealed through pride that would hide them from others, and often from ourselves.
— Ibid., #358.

Fate never appears so blind as to those whom she passes by.
— Ibid., #391.

One should treat one's fate as one does one's health; enjoy it when it is good, be patient with it when it is poorly, and never attempt any drastic cure save as an ultimate resort.
— Ibid., #392.

In our torments to achieve happiness it is the appearance that we pursue rather than the reality.
— Ibid., #510.

It is far easier to extinguish an initial desire than to gratify all its successors.
— Ibid., #511.

Men should be studied more closely than books.
— Ibid., #521.

Each man criticizes others for those defects which others criticize in him.
— Ibid., #607.

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves?
— Ibid., #617.

We enjoy seeing through others: we do not enjoy it when others see through us.
— Ibid., #622.

The Search Is On

     When I was nineteen and in India, I worked myself into a state where it seemed impossible for me to go on, even for another moment. I did not see how I could survive, either as the particular human "person" named on my passport or as a pure, impersonal spirit. In a moment of overwhelming anguish, I heard some kind of "higher power" break through and advise me in a tough, familiar tone, "You'll get by on your looks, kid." In spite of myself, I had to laugh — though I had a long way to go before I understood what I was laughing about.
     Since I now know that my whole life has been dedicated to the discipline of clear seeking, I can put it in the most easygoing way, inconceivable to me back when I first got that odd, jarring message: Good seeking leads not only to finding, but onward to better and better looking. So the ultimate goal of all seeking is to become more and more good at looking. Whatever we may find through seeking does not end the search, but leads us to become better and better at good looking.
     We all get by on our looks, on how good we look....
— John Lash, The Seeker's Handbook, p. xii.

47. Without Even Going Out the Door

They know the world
without even going out the door.
They see the sky and its pattern
without even looking out the window.
The further out it goes, the less knowledge is;
therefore sages know without going,
name without seeing,
compete without striving.
— From the Tao Te Ching, in The Essential Tao, Thomas Cleary, p. 37.

56. Those Who Know Do Not Say

Those who know do not say;
those who say do not know.
Close the senses,
shut the doors;
blunt the sharpeness,
resolve the complications;
harmonize the light,
assimilate to the world.
This is called mysterious sameness.
It cannot be made familiar,
yet cannot be estranged;
it cannot be profited,
yet cannot be harmed;
it cannot be valued,
yet cannot be demeaned.
Therefore it is precious for the world.
— From the Tao Te Ching, in The Essential Tao, Thomas Cleary, p. 43.

63. Do Nondoing

Do nondoing,
strive for nonstriving,
savor the flavorless,
regard the small as important,
make much of the little,
repay enmity with virtue;
plan for difficulty when it is still easy,
do the great while it is still small.
The most difficult things in the world
must be done while they are easy;
the greatest things in the world
must be done while they are small.
Because of this sages never do great things;
that is why they can fulfill their greatness.
If you agree too easily, you'll be little trusted;
if you take it easy a lot, you'll have a lot of problems.
Therefore it is through difficulty
that sages end up without problems.
— From the Tao Te Ching, in The Essential Tao, Thomas Cleary, p. 48.

     Yen Hui inquired, "May I ask about mental fasting?"
     Confucius replied, "You unify your will: hear with the mind instead of the ears; hear with the energy instead of the mind. Hearing stops at the ears, the mind stops at contact, but energy is that which is empty and responsive to others. The way gathers in emptiness; emptiness is mental fasting."
     Yen Hui said, "The reason I haven't been able to master this is that I consider myself really me. If I could master this, 'I' would not exist. Could that be called emptiness?"
     Confucius answered, "That's all there is to it. I tell you, you can go into that corral without being moved by repute. If you are heard, then speak; if not, then stop. Let there be no dogma, no drastic measures; remain consistent and abide by necessity. Then you'll be close.
     "It is easy to obliterate tracks, hard not to walk on the ground. It is easy to use falsehood in working for people; it is hard to use falsehood in working for Nature.
     "I have heard of flying with wings; I have never heard of flying without wings. I have heard of knowing with knowledge; I have never heard of knowing without knowledge.
     "For those who gaze into space, the empty room produces white light; auspicious signs hover in stillness. But if one does not stay here, that is called galloping even while sitting.
     "If you have your ears and eyes penetrate inwardly, and are detached from conceptual knowledge, then even if ghosts and spirits come after you they will stop; how much the more will people!
     "This is the evolution of myriad beings. This is what Yü and Shun [the sage kings] were rooted on, what Fu Hsi and Chu Chi [prehistoric cultural leaders] practiced all their lives. How much greater is the need of those who have already lost it!"
— From Confucius, in The Essential Tao, Thomas Cleary, p. 87-88.

Considerations

The following quotes are from Napkin Notes: On the Art of Living by Gary Michael Durst, Ph.D., pp. 220-224:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
— Albert Einstein

Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.
— John B. Sheerin

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Without going outside, you may know the whole world. Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven. The farther you go, the less you know.
— Lao Tzu

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one's mind, is the condition of normal man.
— R.D. Laing

I am an optimist. It does not seem much use to be anything else.
— Winston Churchill

Face the simple fact before it becomes involved.
Solve the small problem before it becomes big.
The most involved fact in the world
Could have been faced when it was simple.
The biggest problem in the world
Could have been solved when it was small.

The simple fact that he finds no problem big
Is a sane man's prime achievement.
— Lao Tzu

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
— Epicurus

And only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous: to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.
— Dorothy Thompson

The Universe is not to be narrowed down to the limits of the understanding, which has been man's practice up to now, but the understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered.
— Francis Bacon

The fool who knows he is a fool is that much wiser. The fool who thinks he is wise is a fool indeed.
— Buddha

Inclusive Leveling Up

     Nor does the Vedantist, in expressing his reverence for Allah and Christ, mean quite what orthodox Mohammedans and Christians would like him to mean. Vedanta, as I have said already, offers a philosophical basis to all sects. It can do this precisely because it is fundamentally monistic; because it teaches that there is one Reality and nothing else. "Thou art That." The person is the Atman; the Atman is Brahman. This person in his ignorance, may think that he worships the Creator. Very well: let him think that. It is a necessary stage in spiritual progress. The ultimate truth cannot be apprehanded at once. The Atman must be personified at first, if it is to be loved and realized; otherwise it will remain a mere intellectual abstraction. The true monist never disdains dualism. But it is very hard for the rigid dualist ever to accept monism. St. Ignatius Loyola was dismayed when the vision of his beloved Jesus faded into impersonal, all-embracing Reality.
— Christopher Isherwood, "What Is Vedanta?", in The Wishing Tree, p. 38.

     There is no conflict between true religion and true science, but there is a great deal of bickering between religious dogmatists and scientific pedants. The dogmatist states his case, or rather presents his dogmatic ultimatum. The scientifically trained pedant reminds him, none too patiently, that his assertions cannot be verified by the microscope, the slide rule, or the laboratory experiment. Therefore, he concludes, quite rightly, the dogma is merely another hypothesis. And, he will probably add that hypotheses which are incapable of scientific proof do not interest him, anyway. At this point, a deadlock is reached, and the two men part in mutual annoyance.
— Christopher Isherwood, Ibid., "Hypothesis and Belief," p. 58.

     He opens the drawer of his desk and is confronted with some of the books he is reading at the moment — The Occult World, Life After Death, Atlantis and Lemuria, and many others. They may seem perhaps impractical and even naive, yet they have a strange flavour of truth, the promise of vistas beyond the arid deserts of materialism.
     He decides to set aside his writing for a time, to abandon his ordinary activities and seek some of the ancient cultures. So he embarks on a series of travels through Asia Minor, Greece and Egypt, where perhaps he will discover some real values; which in fact he did, and returned to Russia two years later to resume his writing with renewed impetus.
— J.H. Reyner, Ouspensky: The Unsung Genius, p. 12.

As Gurdjieff's ideas began to take shape in his mind he realised how completely they complemented his own earlier thinking. In many respects they involved a complete reversal of the conventional approach. Most important was the concept that the Universe was a living and evolving structure created by a Supreme or Absolute Intelligence in a succession of increasingly detailed stages of which the physical world is nearly the lowest. Each of these levels has its own intelligence and consciousness, again of descending order, the whole structure being continuously enlivened by energy devolving from the Absolute.
     As a corollary of this concept it is clear that the higher states of consciousness about which people are wont to speculate vaguely are not mere extensions of ordinary awareness but are manifestations of the superior intelligences in the already existing structure and hence, as Ouspensky himself had found in his experiments, are of an entirely different order.
     This cosmological hierarchy, however, was initially discussed only as a background to the more immediately practical aspect of the teaching, which was that man's usual so-called consciousness is an illusion. His behaviour is that of a machine which reacts entirely automatically to the stimulus of life events in accordance with 'programmes', or patterns of associations, which have been built up by education and experience. This the group was told to observe and verify for themselves, for it was an axiom of the system that nothing was to be believed without question. Only when one has established the truth of any statement for oneself can any real understanding develop.
     Finally, there was the clear distinction between the spiritual and temporal parts of a man (or woman). Each has its own reality but they are of a different order. The spiritual part, which is unmanifest, i.e. not evident to the physical senses, originates from a very high level in the Universe, but in the course of its development it has to adapt itself to progressively lower levels of existence until, in the condition which Gurdjieff called Essence, it inhabits a physical body.
— J.H. Reyner, "Meeting With Gurdjieff," in Ouspensky: The Unsung Genius, pp. 40-41.

Thinking About Thinking

     I think much of what we call "intelligence" is our ability to recognize patterns. We recognize similarities (stellar galaxies and water emptying from a bathtub spiral in the same way), sequences (the steps you go through to start a car), processes (how to convert grapes into wine), cycles (the periodic boom and bust of the pork belly market), distributions (the large number of post World War II babies), movements (smoke over an airplane wing in a wind tunnel), shapes (cracks in dried mud usually form 120° angles), tendencies (the influence of anyone who appears on the cover of Time magazine has crested), and probabilities (the 49ers usually win their home games).
— Roger von Oech, A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, p. 34.

     Goethe is the great apologist of the world of appearances. He attributed to what is regarded as the surface of things an interest and a value in which I observe a frankness and a bias that seems to me of the utmost importance.
     He understood that if we perceive an infinity of sensations that are useless in themselves, it is nevertheless from them, ununimportant as they are, that we have extracted, through a curiosity which is entirely gratuitous and an attention which is a pure luxury, the whole of our science and our art. I sometimes think that there exists for some people, as there existed for him, an external life which has an intensity and a depth at least equal to the intensity and depth that we ascribe to the inner darkness and the mysterious discoveries of the ascetics and the Sufis. What a revelation the first painful and marvelous flicker of daylight on the retina must be for the person who was born blind! And what solid progress, progress without any slipping back, he must feel he is gradually making toward the limits of knowledge — the sharpness of forms and of bodies!
     The interior world, on the contrary, is always threatened by a medley of obscure sensations, memories, tensions, unspoken words, where what we wish to observe and to grasp changes and in a sense depraves the act of observation itself.... We can barely conceive or give a hint of what is meant by thinking a thought, and as soon as we reach that second stage, as soon as we try to raise our consciousness to that second power, everything at once becomes blurred....
     Goethe observes, contemplates and — sometimes in the plastic arts — pursues form, in an effort to decipher the motive of whatever it was that drew or modeled the work or object he happens to be examining. The same man who was capable of so much passion, of so much freedom, of all the caprices of feeling and the unexpected creations of the poetic mind, took delight in becoming an observer of inexhaustible patience; he devoted himself to the most meticulous of botonical and anatomical studies, the results of which he described in the simplest and most precise language.
     That is one more proof of the diversity — and what might almost be called the ordinary incompatibility — of gifts which is essential to minds of the highest order.
— Paul Valéry, "Address in Honor of Goethe," in Masters and Friends, pp. 161-162.

....Then we touched the ground with our fingers still clasped and later stood upright and stretched our hands to the sky. This was done seven times to honor the seven directions: north, south, east, west, above, below, and within....
— Marlo Morgan, "My Oath," in Mutant Message Down Under, p. 141.

     I have described all this in detail in order to illustrate an important point: these first instructions given me by the swami had no reference to the cult of any personal God-figure or divine incarnation. The assumptions they contained — that the Reality exists and can be contacted and known — were nondualistic assumptions. Knowledge of the Reality, in this context, means unitive knowledge — i.e. The realization that you, essentially, are the Reality, always were the Reality, and always will be. Where, then does the personal God-figure fit into this philosophy? Is there a place for him at all?
     Yes, there is. The dualistic God — the God-who-is-other-than-I — is an aspect of the Reality but not other than the Reality. Within the world of phenomena — the world of apartness, of this and that, of we and you — the God-who-is-other-than-we is the greatest phenomenon of all. But, with the experience of unitive, nondualistic knowledge, the God-who-is-other-than-I merges into the God-who-is-myself. The divine phenomena are seen to be all aspects of the one central Reality.
     Let me deal with one simple misunderstanding which troubled me, and may trouble my readers. To say "I am God" is at one and the same time the most blasphemous statement you could possibly make, and also the truest. It all depends on what you mean by "I." If you mean, "my ego is God, Christopher Isherwood is God," then you are blaspheming; if you mean "my essential Self is God," then you are speaking the truth. It follows from this that you can never become one with God-who-is-other-than-you — for "God" in this sense is also a projection of the central Reality. If you struggle, through meditation, for unitive knowledge of, let us say, Christ, there are two obstacles between you and its realization. One of them is your own individuality; the other is the individuality of Christ himself. If union is achieved, both these individualities must disappear; otherwise, the Reality within you cannot merge with the Reality within Christ.
     This concept must naturally seem shocking to anyone who has been raised within a purely dualistic attitude to religion. And yet, for the nondualist, the dualist approach to God seems altogether appropriate and, in many cases, preferable. It is  almost impossible for me, in my average unregenerate state, to believe that I am a temple which contains the Reality. All I know of myself is my ego, and that appears to be a pretty squalid temple containing nothing of any value. So it is natural for me to turn toward some other being, one who really acts and speaks and appears as though the Reality were within him. By making a cult of this being — by adoring him and trying to resemble him — I can gradually come to an awareness of the Reality within myself. There you have the whole virtue of the cult.
— Christopher Isherwood, "How I Came to Vedanta," in The Wishing Tree, pp. 23-24.

Study Usefulness

How much better it is to have the walls covered with books with which we are establishing friendly relations, than with pictures of passing interest which we have happened to obtain. Eventually pictures may lose their interest, whereas books never lose their fascination.
— Dr. William J. Mayo, Aphorisms of Dr. Charles H. Mayo and Dr. William J. Mayo, #8, p. 47.

It is easy to philosophize; the philosopher is said to be one who bears with equanimity the sufferings of others.
— Dr. William J. Mayo, Ibid., # 89, p. 70.

Half of us are blind, few of us feel, and we are all deaf.
— Sir William Osler, Aphorisms From His Bedside Teachings and Writings, collected by R.B. Bean, M.D., and edited by W.B. Bean, M.D., #8, p. 33.

Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
— Sir William Osler, Ibid., # 105, p. 68.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
— Sir William Osler, Ibid., # 267, p. 126.

                                TWO KINDS OF FAITH
     Why do we say: "Our God and the God of our fathers"?
     There are two kinds of people who believe in God. One believes because he has taken over the faith of his fathers, and his faith is strong. The other has arrived at faith through thinking and studying. The difference between them is this: The advantage of the first is that, no matter what arguments may be brought against it, his faith cannot be shaken; his faith is firm because it was taken over from his fathers. But there is a flaw in it: he has faith only in response to the command of man, and he has acquired it without studying and thinking for himself. The advantage of the second is that, because he found God through much thinking, he has arrived at a faith of his own. But he who unites both kinds of faith is invincible. And so we say, "Our God" with reference to our studies, and "God of our fathers" with an eye to tradition.
     The same interpretation has been given to our saying, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob," and not "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," for this indicates that Isaac and Jacob did not merely take over the tradition of Abraham; they themselves searched for God.
— Martin Buber, Ten Rungs: Collected Hasidic Sayings, pp. 13-14.

                                EVERYWHERE
     God says to man as he said to Moses: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet" — put off the habitual which encloses your foot and you will recognize that the place on which you happen to be standing at this moment is holy ground. For there is no rung of being on which we cannot find the holiness of God everywhere and at all times.
— Martin Buber, Ibid., p. 15.

Inner Journeys

     We can also relate to the sacred through the rediscovery of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a basic human need to connect our lives to places of power. There are places with power because of the way they are: mountain tops, for example, are often places of revelation partly because there is a sense of being up above everything and looking down on it, and partly because they are where the earth reaches up to the heavens. Then there are places which are sacred because of what happened there: where someone has had a vision, some great historical event has taken place, some act of healing, or maybe where some great man or woman has been born or died. The great churches, cathedrals, and temples, and almost certainly places like Stonehenge and Avebury, are located at special places. Such places are like great outdoor temples through which you relate the community to the life of the heavens.
     When pilgrimage was suppressed by the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, this natural way of moving in relation to sacred place was cut off and tourism was invented to replace it. So tourism is a kind of secularized pilgrimage! You still go to the ancient sacred places — the cathedrals, the pyramids, the great henges, the Holy Land — but you no longer go explicitly because you want to connect with the spirit and power of the place. You go there to observe it in some kind of detached way and to take photographs of it to show your friends.
     When tourists enter a sacred place of worship they are slightly embarrassed because they can't really take part otherwise they would not be tourists, they would be pilgrims. When you visit a place as a pilgrim you go with the intention of connecting with the place and you go with some kind of offering. You go there to pray and to seek some vision or blessing. You take back something of the power of the place to share with those around you at home. Most tourists would actually prefer to be pilgrims — they would enjoy it much more!
— Rupert Sheldrake, "Discovering the Sacred," in The Way Ahead: 50 Visions, Eddie and Debbie Shapiro (eds.), pp. 196-197.

Every day people are straying away from church and going back to God.
— Lenny Bruce, in The Little Zen Companion, David Schiller (ed.), p. 20.

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
— Leonard Cohen, in Ibid., p. 26.

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself,
         and all the while
A great wind is bearing me across the sky.
— Ojibwa Saying, in Ibid., p. 43.

In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
— Yun-men, in Ibid., p. 71.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
— Basho, in Ibid., p. 107.

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.
— Paul Valéry, in Ibid., p. 177.

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes — ah, that is where the art resides!
— Arthur Schnabel, in Ibid., p. 179.

Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
— Simone Weil, in Ibid., p. 192.

When a fish swims, it swims on and on, and there is no end to the water. When a bird flies, it flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky. There was never a fish that swam out of the water, or a bird that flew out of the sky. When they need a little water or sky, they use just a little; when they need a lot, they use a lot. Thus they use all of it at every moment, and in every place they have perfect freedom.
— Dogen, in Ibid., p. 216.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
— Shunryu Suzuki, in Ibid., p. 301.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.
— H.L. Mencken, in Ibid., p. 324.

Deep Thought

     The first rule is to seek information. The second rule is to ask the question: But what do I understand here, personally and directly? The third rule is to ask, quite mercilessly, the question: Am I going to take this problem seriously or not? The fourth rule here is an opening to the confidence that something can be done and there is a way through; I have not awakened to it, but it is there. Having convinced oneself that the problem can be solved, one is ready for the fifth rule, the stage of emptiness, to allow the arising of a spontaneous element that is outside of our own control. This vacuity of mind must be combined with clarity on the goal that is desired. Something significant is wanted, not just any ideas — these will come anyhow and it is necessary to deny oneself and refuse to take the second best. Whether this is a sixth rule or whether it is part of the fifth I do not know, but there must be a resolution to accept only the treasure.
     These stages I have been describing are often wonderfully pictured in fairy stories. At the last stage of the hero's search, he must not succumb to temptations drawing him to accept something other than the solution that he has set out for. I can say, speaking from my own experience, that this is a temptation that I very easily fall into. One becomes tired at this stage and various things suggest themselves — interesting ideas — and it is very easy to snatch at what comes along and do something with it. Of course something will happen, but perhaps something very much bigger has been missed.
— John G. Bennett, Creative Thinking, p. 70.

     Many students of metaphysics fall into the vital error of thinking that there are two worlds: a world of limitation and trouble "down here," and another world "somewhere up there." It is probably that they do not always visualize their mistake as clearly as this, but that they do labor under such a delusion is evident from the remarks they often make when off their guard.
     Watch your own phraseology and notice whether you speak as though you thought there were two worlds; if you do, you must hasten to correct that view.
     The truth is that there is one world — God's world — spiritual and perfect now, but that we see it in a limited and distorted way owing to our false beliefs, and this distorted view of the real world is the so-called world of limitation. By practicing the Presence of God wherever distortion shows itself, you will rapidly redeem your own existence and help to liberate the whole race too.
— Emmet Fox, Find and Use Your Inner Power, p. 40.

....In my attempt to answer her, this is what I recognized, and although it wasn't much, it was all the answer I had, and it was honest: I no longer cared whether what I had seen was true. Life as I had looked at it before was not worth living. It was therefore my decision to live as if this new perception was true. And if the question of whether God exists cannot be answered in the terms in which we ask it, yet the improvement in the quality of our life cannot be denied whenever we assume that God does exist, why then delay making that assumption? Why choose to be right instead of happy when there is no way to be right? I choose to make the assumption and not reconsider. A new way of seeing had been given me for a reason, and I would simply trust that.
     For this was not the first time in my life I had looked God in the face. But each time before I had walked away and said, "He is an illusion." Maybe He is, but I no longer care about that. There isn't time for uncertainty. For me He exists. That is the only thing I know. And that is the reason I live.
— Hugh Prather, There is a Place Where You are not Alone, pp. 34-35.

When you find yourself in a battle with life, lose. There are no triumphs over truth.
****
"Rely on yourself" and "Do not rely on yourself alone" are not conflicting ideas. One must rely on what he is, but what he is is not alone.
****
I am not resting in Love's gentle arms while I am questioning how they got there or demanding to know why they would want to support me.
— Hugh Prather, Ibid., pp.39-40.

There are times when the concept of "trying is lying" is not useful to me. Trying can be an easily understandable way of beginning. "You can but try" means, "Do what you can do" or "Begin where you are," or simply, "Begin." The thought that all I need to do is begin focuses my mind on this moment, which is the instant that every choice I will ever make will have to take place. Saying to myself, "All I can do is try," allows me to let go my anxiety over how much needs to be accomplished. I will accomplish what I will acomplish, and anxiety over quantitative goals is not accomplishment.
— Hugh Prather, Ibid., p. 55.