This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We must honor the natural rhythms and cycles in our nature. As I look around me, I see the great tapestry of the universe woven with a magnificent ebb and flow. We are told that the entire cosmos is pulsating like our hearts and like the microcosmic atoms vibrating within us. To feel the rhythm of life is to dance to the greatest symphony of all, and to deny its pulse is to miss the essence of all expression. Life is about changes, rhythms, growth, retreat, activity, rest, unfolding, delving inward. And when the seasons of our life have left us with all the teachings they bear, there is but one lesson that remains, every beyond the effect of passing opposites: There is one unchanging life that breathes in and through us, and in which all seasons humbly come to resolution in seasonless Serenity.
Growth | Honor | Lesson | Life | Life | Nature | Resolution | Rest | Serenity | Universe |
The universe construed solely in terms of efficient causation of purely physical interconnections, presents a sheer, insoluble contradiction.
The riddle of the universe is not so simple. There is the aspect of permanence in which a given type of attainment is endlessly repeated for its own sake; and there is the aspect of transition to other things - it may be of higher worth and it may be of lower worth. Also there are aspects of struggle and of friendly help. But romantic ruthlessness is no nearer to real politics, than is romantic self-abnegation.
Attainment | Politics | Ruthlessness | Self | Struggle | Universe | Worth |
Alice Walker, fully Alice Malsenior Walker
Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.
Universe |
It is a tribute to the strength of the sheer craving for freshness, that change, whose justification lies in aim at the distant ideal, should be promoted by Art which is the adaptation of immediate Appearance for immediate Beauty. Art neglects the safety of the future for the gain of the present. In doing it is apt to render its Beauty thin. But after all, there must be some immediate harvest. The Good of the Universe cannot lie in indefinite postponement.
Appearance | Art | Beauty | Change | Future | Good | Justification | Present | Strength | Universe | Art | Beauty |
The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity.
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because while mind in this sense is impassable, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
Eternal | Individual | Knowing | Knowledge | Mind | Nothing | Object | Present | Sense | Time | Universe |
In the vast tapestry of manifestation, the entire universe issues forth into form. Alternatively, it is re-absorbed into formlessness. Each individual life can be likened to a thread in a tapestry. So, if a person could see the whole chain of his incarnations, some of which, from the point of where he stands, would appear to be causally past and others causally future... There is a two-fold pattern of manifestation. The pure being, which in essence you are, is manifested horizontally and vertically through space and time: horizontally it takes form as all the other beings of your present world, vertically as all the past and future incarnations of your present person. You stand at the intersection of the two patterns.
Future | Individual | Life | Life | Past | Present | Space | Time | Universe | World |
The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible.
Achievement | Action | Anger | Boldness | Distrust | Emotions | Faith | Fear | Guilt | Life | Life | Man | Men | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |
Many have declared the ultimate truth openly: that only the self is, that you are nothing other than the Self, that the universe is a mere manifestation of the Self, without inherent reality, existing only in the Self. This can be understood by the analogy of a dream. The whole dream-world with all its people and events exist only in the mind of the dreamer. Its creation or emergence takes nothing away from him, and its dissolution or reabsorption adds nothing to him; he remains the same before, during, and after. God, the conscious Dreamer of the cosmic dream, is the Self, and no person in the dream has any reality apart from the Self of which he is an expression. By discarding the illusion of otherness, you can realize that identity with the Self which always was, is, and will be, beyond the conditions of life and time. Then, since you are One with the Dreamer, the whole universe, including your life and all others, is your dream and none of the events in it have more than a dream reality. You are set free from hope and desire, fear and frustration, and established in the unchanging Bliss of Pure Being.
Desire | Events | Fear | God | Hope | Illusion | Life | Life | Mind | Nothing | People | Reality | Self | Time | Truth | Universe | Will | World |
I am an infinitesimal and evanescent fragment in this vast universe. True, but it is no less true that this vast universe is an infinitesimal and evanescent appearance within me. What-is is just the same whether manifested in a universe or not. The pure sense of being that I feel just is; it is the same as what-is. To say that there is no “I” is the same as saying that there is nothing else.
Appearance | Nothing | Sense | Universe |