This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
Illness comes from living too small a process or too large a process.
Art | Awareness | Compensation | Experience | Individual | Present | System | Universe | Will | Wrong | Art | Awareness | Value |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
Many people profess unconditional love, and yet below they are still working the mystery of the ego and attempting to compensate inadequacy and powerlessness. Crises are often the first opportunity of coming into wholeness – they are not what we think they are at the level of loss and humiliation. You think there’s nothing left, just a devastation, our eyes are so close to the problem that we can’t see the overview – to me, that’s why we pay attention to dreams, since the dream will reveal the dynamic if we can bring ourselves into accord with it, and we can let go of what we think we need, to move to “What does Life seek from us at this point, and how do we put ourselves into accord with that larger process?
Consciousness | Events | Mind | Reality |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
The Ego is not the primary center of Awareness….the Self is. The Shadow is not the primary center of awareness…the Self is. The ego is the reflecting witness. The unfoldment of a life is driven by the unconscious dynamics between Self...the Shadow…and the Ego. What the ego is aware of is mostly socialization attitudes, biases, preferences, and filtered perceptions. The Self is the only responsible agent for the entire mystery of one’s life. Free will of the Shadow or of the Ego is an illusion generated out of a limited awareness. When witnessing the Divine Play of one’s Life…best not to appropriate any of what is seen, revealed, or experienced as personal.
Consciousness | Deceit | Ego | Force | Guarantee | Life | Life | Little | Love | Soul | Time |
The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages. As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment. Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive. Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either. School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics. Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements. The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla. Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection. But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation. Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.
Consciousness | World |
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Age | Art | Beauty | Consciousness | Culture | Elegance | Evidence | Excitement | Failure | Family | Good | Hate | Health | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Past | People | Politics | Recreation | Reward | Science | Self | Talking | Time | Work | World | Failure | Loss | Art | Beauty |
An organism exists in its environment in only one mode, that of an open system responding to those segments of its environment to which it is genetically programmed to respond or to which it has learned to respond. But a self must be placed in a world. It cannot not be placed. If it chooses by default not to be placed, then its placement is that of not choosing to be placed.
In this case I read on. And on. First with the sinking feeling that it was not bad enough to quit, then with a prickle of interest, then a growing excitement, and finally an incredulity: surely it was not possible that it was so good.
Consciousness | Discovery | Evolution | Knowing | Self | Discovery |
In the sea, Biscayne, there prinks the young emerald, evening star, good light for drunkards, poets, widows, and ladies soon to be married.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under-side of the nostrils is one third of it; the nose from the under-side of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth... Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.
Appearance | Compensation | Desire | Pleasure | Search | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make up the greater part of the danger of a split.
Consciousness | Man | Order |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Marx said that the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat lies between capitalism and communism. The more the proletariat presses the bourgeoisie, the more furiously they will resist. We know what vengeance was wreaked on the workers in France in 1848. And when people charge us with harshness we wonder how they can forget the rudiments of Marxism.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
If the writer of these lines has succeeded in providing some material for clarifying these problems, he may regard his labors as not having been fruitless.
Consciousness | Nature | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
Awakening | Consciousness | Memory | Perception |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.
Betrayal | Consciousness | Familiarity | Force | Fraternity | Life | Life | Order | People | Torture | Parting |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
Compensation | Death | Knowledge |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles.
Consciousness | Poetry | Position | Regard | Universe |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death we're a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then not in dreams but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and it's castle tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.
Consciousness | Habit | Love | Space | Thinking |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless. What on earth can Dorothy Hummerson care for Greece and the Orient with their harems and slaves?
Consciousness | Knowing |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Men appear to prefer to ruin one another's fortunes, and to cut each other's throats over a few miserable villages, than to extend the means of human happiness
Awareness | Consciousness | Eternal | Knowing | Awareness |
A spontaneous cessation of mental activity releases an absolutely new and dynamic energy. Silence increases the sensitivity of the total being. It refreshes the nervous system in an astounding way. As you come out totally replenished when you have had profound and innocent sleep, So do you come out totally renewed when you have had ceased to function through the ego in the hour of silence.
Beginning | Challenge | Consciousness | Effort | Global | Isolation | Luxury | Mind | Question | Self-righteousness | Understanding | Wholeness | Will | Crisis |