This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The alternative to the illusion of an ego is the Reality of inexhaustible, radiant Being. So long as the appearance of an ego remains, so long does the appearance of free will; in fact they are mutually dependent.
The way of exoteric religion is to progressively replace egoism by submission to the will of God. Its four cardinal demands are faith, love, humility, and good deeds. In so far as they are complied with, they effectively bring a man towards Self-realization, even though he does not consciously envisage this. True, the Goal is not likely to be attained in this lifetime, but in God’s patience a lifetime is very little. Faith strengthens the intuitional conviction of the reality of God or the Self. Humility, its counterpart, weakens the belief in the ego and lessens the importance attached to it. Love strives to surrender the ego to God and its welfare to others. Good deeds deny egoism in practice and are alike the fruit and proof of love and humility.
Belief | Deeds | Ego | Faith | God | Good | Humility | Little | Love | Man | Patience | Practice | Reality | Religion | Self | Self-realization | Submission | Surrender | Will | Deeds | God |
Normal experience at the sensory level is that of dualism; but the deeper our insight penetrates the terms, pantheism or monism lose their significance; for Ultimate Reality embraces everything in a nameless undifferentiated continuum.
Experience | Insight | Reality |
There is an ecclesiastical cliché used in connection with candidates for the ministry. The candidates do not speak of seeking a job but of receiving a “call,” which in their language is from God. It is a euphemistic pleasantry which deceives no one. Nevertheless the conventional phraseology of being “called” is sometimes a psychological reality and represents an inner transformation and the prelude to a life of dedication. It is a pity that the same spirit is not more evident in the field of medicine. The phenomenon of inner urgency which draws us in one direction against rival interests stems from something deeper than a line of reasoning. Rather it is due to the type of person we are. This prompts us to inquire whether there is any purpose or pattern behind our having been born at all.
Dedication | God | Language | Life | Life | Pity | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Spirit |
Minds have forms because, although they are changing streams of consciousness, they exhibit the paradox of unity in diversity which is the characteristic of all wholes. Forms are aspects of consciousness and precede tangible and so-called substantial expression. The universe as a totality, comprising forms and their integration into wholes in infinite diversity, is an expression of Life universal in graded series on various levels. Every particular form-expression “creates” its own time-space. Substance and tangibility have no reality apart from sensory apprehension.
Consciousness | Diversity | Integration | Life | Life | Paradox | Reality | Space | Time | Unity | Universe |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness… It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature – and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give it meaning – and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are of no concern of mine; it is not me or “The Fountainhead” that they will betray: it is their own souls.
Courage | Greatness | Man | Meaning | Reality | Rest | Will | World |
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
If you want to praise, praise God. If you want to blame, blame yourself.
Never talk of yourself. You must either praise yourself, which is vain, or blame yourself, which is small-minded.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
Your sorrow is for nothing. The truly wise mourn neither for the living nor for the dead. There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be... That Reality which pervades the universe is indestructible. No one has power to change the Changeless... Death is certain for the born. Rebirth is certain for the dead. You should not grieve for what is unavoidable.
Change | Death | Future | Mourn | Nothing | Power | Reality | Sorrow | Time | Universe | Wise |
We find that the essence of human society consists in a common self, a life and will, which belong to and are exercised by the society as such, or by the individuals in society as such; it makes no difference which expression we choose. The reality of this common self, in the action of the political whole, receives the name of the ‘general will’.
Action | Life | Life | Reality | Self | Society | Will | Society |
If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.
Censure | Conduct | Convictions | Praise |
Ramana Maharshi, fully Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
You have only to disrealize unreality and Reality will appear.
It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.
Abuse | Censure | Despise | Integrity | Men | Opinion | Praise | Virtue | Virtue |
Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.
There are three kinds of praise - that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
You can be cured in 14 days patients afflicted with melancholia if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone. It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. All that we demand of a human being and the highest praise we can give him, is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage.
Day | Friend | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Marriage | Men | Praise | Think |
Opinion says hot and cold, but the reality is atoms and empty space.