Browse The Living Book

The mystics of all traditions speak one and the same language: the language of religious experience. Brother David Steindle-Rast (1926)

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time; it is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. Crowfoot, Chief Of The Siksika First Nation (1830)

The boundless sea has absorbed the river and its limited waters. Now the river shares in all that the sea has. The sea carries the river along; the river cannot carry itself along. The river has become one with the sea. No, the river does not have all the qualities of the sea, but it is, nonetheless, in the sea. Jeanne Guyon (1647)

When you know that you are eternal you can play your true role in time. When you know you are divine you can become completely human. When you know you are one with God you are free to become absolutely yourself, individual and holy and my child. Dr. Maurice Nicoll (1884)

When the ocean surges,
don't let me just hear it.
Let it splash inside my chest!
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars, and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. W. J. Turner (1889)

Allah possesses a drink which is reserved for his intimate friends. When they drink they become intoxicated, when they become intoxicated they become joyful, when they become joyful they become sweet, when they become sweet they begin to melt, when they begin to melt they become free, when they become free they seek, when they seek they find, when they find they arrive, when they arrive they join, and when they join, there is no difference between them and their Beloved. Ali Ibn Abu Talib (596)

Know to what extent the Creator has honored you above all the rest of creation. The sky is not an image of God, nor is the moon, nor the sun, nor the beauty of the stars, nor anything of what can be seen in creation. You alone have been made the image of the Reality that transcends all understanding, the likeness of imperishable beauty, the imprint of true divinity, the recipient of beatitude, the seal of the true light. When you turn to him you become that which he is himself . . . There is nothing so great among beings that it can be compared with your greatness. God is able to measure the whole heaven with his span. The earth and the sea are enclosed in the hollow of his hand. And although he is so great and holds all creation in the palm of his hand, you are able to hold him, he dwells in you and moves within you without constraint, for he has said, 'I will live and move among them'. Gregory Of Nissa (395 B.C.E.)

The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same. Meister Eckhart (1260)

Real "I" is the Messiah, for whom the creature is waiting. Georges Gurdjieff (1866)

An individual drop can be merged with the ocean, and still remain meaningful. He has found his "place." Fariduddin Attar (1120)

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes but everybody who looks at it sees something different. Rabbi Harold Kushner (1935)

The central urge in every atom, to return to its divine source and origin. Walt Whitman (1819)

Whoever knows himself knows God. Muhammed (570)

The infinite seeks the intimate presence of the finite, the finite to disappear in the infinite. I do not know whose scheme this is, that the bound should be on a search for freedom, freedom asking to be housed in the bound. Rabindranath Tagore (1861)

As one beholds through a small window
A single green leaf, a small patch of the vast blue sky,
So I began to perceive Thee, in the beginning of
All things.
As the leaf faded and withered, the patch covered as with a
Dark cloud,
So didst Thou fade and vanish,
But to be reborn again,
As the single green leaf, as the small patch of the blue sky.

For many lives have I seen the bleak winter and the
Green spring.
Prisoned in my little room,
I could not behold the entire tree nor the whole sky.
I swore there was no tree nor the vast sky --
That was the truth.

Through time and destruction
My window grew large.
I beheld,
Now,
A branch with many leaves,
And a greater patch of the blue, with many clouds.
I forgot the single green leaf, the small patch of the vast blue.
I swore there was no tree, nor the immense sky --
That was the truth.

Weary of this prison,
This small cell,
I raged at my window.
With bleeding fingers
I tore away brick after brick, I beheld,
Now,
The entire tree, its great trunk,
Its many branches, and its thousand leaves,
And an immense part of the sky.
I swore there was no other tree, no other part to the sky --
That was the truth.

This prison no longer holds me,
I flew away through the window,
O friend,
I behold every tree and the vast expanse of the limitless sky.
Though I live in every single leaf and in every small
Patch of the vast blue sky,
Though I live in every prison, looking out through every
small casement,
Liberated am I.
Lo! not a thing shall bind me --
This is the truth.
J. Krishnamurti (1895)

Humanity was free from the beginning. For God is freedom and humanity was made in the image of God. Irenaeus Of Lyons (115)

The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance. And when the light reveals itself fully and unites with him and draws him into itself, so that he finds himself alone in a sea of light, then he is emptied of all knowledge and immersed in absolute unknowing. Symeon, The Younger (949)

The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough. Thomas Carlyle (1795)

In the presence of greater meaning all lesser meanings that fill our ordinary mind full to the brim, shrink to their true proportions, and cease to steal from us. For in the presence of greater meaning we are redeemed from everything small and trivial and absurd. Dr. Maurice Nicoll (1884)

Like the monist I plunge into the all-inclusive One; But the one is so perfect that as it receives me and I lose myself in it, I can find in it the ultimate perfection of my own individuality. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881)

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. Carl Jung (1875)

For most people, even for educated and thinking people, the chief obstacle in the way of acquiring self-consciousness consists in the fact that they think they possess it, that is that they already possess self-consciousness and everything connected with it; individuality in the sense of a permanent and unchangeable "I," will, ability to do, and so on. It is evident that a man will not be interested if you tell him that he can acquire by long and difficult work something which, in his opinion, he already has. On the contrary he will think either that you are mad or that you want to deceive him with a view to personal gain. P. D. Ouspensky (1878)

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man. William Blake (1757)

"Don't look for God," the Master said.
"Just look--and all will be revealed."

"But how is one to look?"

"Each time you look at anything, see
only what is there and nothing else."

The disciples were bewildered, so the
Master made it simpler: "For instance: when
you look at the moon, see the moon and
nothing else."

"What else could one see except the moon
when one looks at the moon?"

"A hungry person could see a ball of
cheese. A lover, the face of his beloved."
Anthony De Mello (1931)