This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Brahman is a shoreless ocean. Shakti is the omnipresent, interdependent action of its waves... As long as Her inscrutable Will keeps consciousness manifest through the human form, one is tempted to think that there are two realities - the formless God and these confusing mirror images called the universe. But no, my friend, there are no such twoness whatsoever. There is no super-knowledge separate from or opposed to ordinary ignorance. There is not day as a reality apart from night. There is only wholeness or completeness - beyond night or day, beyond ignorance or knowledge, yet containing both, manifesting both. How to describe this dynamic plenitude? Not with words from any scripture or philosophy. What is simply is!
Action | Consciousness | Day | Dynamic | God | Ignorance | Interdependent | Reality | Scripture | Wholeness | Will | Words | God | Think |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The darkness of the mind is destroyed only when a man stands little apart from. 'woman and gold' and, thus standing apart, practices a little austerity and spiritual discipline. Then only does the cloud of his ego and ignorance vanish. Then only does he attain the Knowledge of God. This 'woman and gold' is the only cloud that hides the Sun of Knowledge.
Darkness | Ego | Ignorance | Knowledge | Little | Man | Mind |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Knowledge leads to unity, but Ignorance to diversity.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Through ignorance man forgets God and speaks always of 'I' and 'mine'. He sinks down and down, entangled in maya (ignorance), deluded by 'woman and gold'. Maya robs him of his knowledge to such an extent that he cannot find the way of escape, though such a way exists.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
When the tail of the tadpole drops off, it can live both in water and on land. When the tail of delusive ignorance drops off from man, he becomes free. He can then live in God and the world equally well.
Our wanton accidents take root, and grow to vaunt themselves God's laws. Possession means to sit astride the world instead of having it astride of you.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architectural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
Art | Freedom | Guarantee | Ignorance | Past | Religion | Wise | Art |
It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine. Telepathy and possession by the spirits of the dead are not ruled out as a matter of principle. There is certainly nothing impossible about abduction by aliens in UFOs. One day it may be happen. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as an explanation of last resort. It is unparsimonious, demanding more than routinely weak evidence before we should believe it. If you hear hooves clip-clopping down a London street, it could be a zebra or even a unicorn, but, before we assume that it's anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence.
Day | Evidence | Hypothesis | Looks | Nothing |
If that gives you offense, I'm sorry. You are probably not stupid, insane or wicked; and ignorance is no crime in a country with strong local traditions of interference in the freedom of biology educators to teach the central theorem of their subject.
If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake.
It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests.
Consider this. If a paranormalist could really give an unequivocal demonstration of telepathy (precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, whatever it is), he would be the discoverer of a totally new principle unknown to physical science. The discoverer of the new energy field that links mind to mind in telepathy, or of the new fundamental force that moves objects around a table top, deserves a Nobel prize and would probably get one. If you are in possession of this revolutionary secret of science, why not prove it and be hailed as the new Newton? Of course, we know the answer. You can't do it. You are a fake.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation.... Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Belief | Danger | Doubt | Ignorance | Lesson | Science | Danger | Learn |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.
History | Hope | Ignorance | Uncertainty |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn
Doubt | Experience | Ignorance |
Although the beauties, riches, honors, sciences, virtues, and perfections of all men living were in the present possession of one, yet somewhat above and beyond all this would still be sought and earnestly thirsted for.
Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
That is a big error. If you think a state of motionless clarity were Zen, you accept ignorance as your slave-master.