This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal
God’s purpose in creation was to bestow of His good to another.
All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is the truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together. When the myriad variations in the universal breath can be sensed, the individual techniques of the Art of Peace are born.
Art | Earth | Heaven | Individual | Life | Life | Peace | Principles | Will | Art |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings. But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experiences of the dormant passions lying hidden within me. The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.
Conquest | Devotion | Force | Free will | God | Knowledge | Law | Love | Lying | Man | Nothing | Politics | Praise | Purity | Religion | Salvation | Speech | Spirit | Truth | Will | World | God |
N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday
In the white man's world, language, too -- and the way which the white man thinks of it--has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language -- for the Word itself -- as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word.
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Like this, in truth man is the seed of God, and He is buried within God, and God contains everything necessary for that seed of God to grow into the Tree of God, which is True Man. And when man comes to the point in his life when this truth of him emerges from within him, and if at that time he realizes, understands, accepts, and joins with that truth of him, then God within him will realize that man now knows "who he is", that he is the seed of God, and that man now knows "where he is", that he is within God, and God is within him, within the wisdom within him, like the apple fruit is hidden within the apple tree that is hidden within the apple seed that is buried within the earth. And that man now knows "what is happening", that God is happening, by first allowing True Man to happen, first allowing True Man to be revealed within the Creation of God, first allowing the Tree of God to be revealed from within the Seed of God, so True Man can then reveal God within the Creation of True Man, so the Tree of God can then reveal the Fruit of God from within the Tree of God. And that man now knows, that God contains everything necessary for that seed of God to grow into the Tree of God, into True Man within the Creation of God, and for the Tree of God to bear fruit, to reveal God within the Creation of True Man. Then out of this mutual awareness, God surrenders to man and man surrenders to God, and True Man is revealed within the Creation of God, within the 18,000 universes within this world, and then God is revealed within the Creation of True Man, within the 99 qualities of God in the next world, and in this way revealing the Oneness of God and True Man, which in truth is God and True Man
God | Life | Life | Man | Oneness | Qualities | Time | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Because in truth you have no problems, because in truth you do not exist. Because in truth it is God who exist. Then you will be successful in your life, then your wisdom will reason over your fate, and you will become peaceful in your own ending." And you will become peaceful in God completing what He has already started within you, even before you came to this earth world, which is to reveal True Man within the Creation of God within you, as the Oneness of God and His Creation within you, so True Man can reveal God within the Creation of True Man within you, as the Oneness of True Man and His Creation, and in this way, reveal the "Oneness of God and True Man" within you, which in truth is God and True Man within you.
Earth | God | Man | Oneness | Reason | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |
Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
Confidence | Conscience | Despise | Evolution | Ideas | Important | Law | Position | Science | Will |
Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity. If, then, you called this divine Simplicity infinite Mind, it will be the exemplar of our mind. If you called the divine mind the totality of the truth of things, you will call our mind the totality of the assimilation of things, so that it may be a totality of ideas. In the divine Mind conception is the production of things; in our mind conception is the knowledge of things. If the divine Mind is absolute Being, then its conception is the creation of beings; and conception in the human mind is the assimilation of beings.
Otto Rank, born Otto Rosenfeld
The struggle of the artist against the art-ideology, against the creative impulse and even against his own work also shows itself in his attitude towards success and fame; these two phenomena are but an extension, socially, of the process which began subjectively with the vocation and creation of the personal ego to be an artist. In this entire creative process, which begins with self-nomination as artist and ends in the fame of posterity, two fundamental tendencies — one might almost say, two personalities of the individual — are in continual conflict throughout: one wants to eternalize itself in artistic creation, the other in ordinary life — in brief, immortal man vs. the immortal soul of man.
Ego | Ends | Fame | Impulse | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Phenomena | Soul | Struggle | Success | Wants | Work |
The entire practice of Hatha Yoga is an act of worship, an act of ritual; it is an enactment of the cycle of creation and dissolution, an enactment of the cycle of birth and death. You start with a deep breath, and end with a corpse; you die daily, and thereby you become immortal.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.
Eternal |
Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
The witness is Self, pure awareness, which, though boundless and unchanging, appears to perceive creation through the construct of mind.
Witness |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
May the heads of all countries and races be guided to understand that men of all nations are physically and spiritually one: physically one, be- cause we are the descendants of common parents --- the symbolic Adam and Eve; and spiritually one, because we are the immortal children of our Father, bound by eternal links of brotherhood. Let us pray in our hearts for a League of Souls and a United World. Though we may seem divided by race, creed, color, class, and political prejudices, still, as children of the one God we are able in our souls to feel brotherhood and world unity. May we work for the creation of a United World in which every nation will be a useful part, guided by God through man's enlightened conscience. In our hearts we can all learn to be free from hate and selfishness. Let us pray for harmony among the nations, that they march hand in hand through the gate of a fair new civilization.
Brotherhood | Children | Eternal | God | Men | Nations | Will | Work | World | God | Learn | Understand |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Pranayama is derived fron two Sanskrit words - prana (life) and ayama (control). Pranayama is therefore life control and not "breath control." The broadest meaning of the word prana is force of energy. In this sense, the universe is filled with prana; all creation is a manifestation of force, a play of force. Everything that was, is, or shall be, is nothing but the different modes of expression of the universal force. The universal prana is thus the Para-Prakiti (pure Nature), immanent energy or force which is derived from the infinite Spirit, and which permeates and sustains the universe.
Control | Energy | Force | Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | Play | Universe | Words |