This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The body is the soul's instrument, and the soul is God's instrument.
In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable. The existence of thought is as fundamental as for instance, the physiochemical equilibria of blood serum. The sepration of eh qualitative from the quantitative grew still wider when Descartes created the dualism of the body and soul. Then, the manifestations of the mind became inexplicable. The material was definitely isolated from the spiritual. Organic structures and physiological mechanisms assumed a far greater reality than thought, pleasure, sorrow and beauty. This error switched civilization to the road which led science to triumph and man to degradation.
Beauty | Body | Civilization | Error | Existence | Important | Man | Mind | Organic | Pleasure | Reality | Science | Sorrow | Soul | Thought | Thought |
The body is that portion of nature with which each moment of human experience intimately cooperates. There is an inflow and outflow of factors between the bodily actuality and the human experience, so that each shares in the existence of the other. The human body provides our closest experience of the interplay of actualities in nature.
Body | Existence | Experience | Nature |
There is a unity of the body with the environment, as well as a unity of the body and soul into one person.
If thinking is perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.
Character | Mind | Object | Sense | Soul | Thinking | Thought |
When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter.
Happiness... must be some form of contemplation. But, being a man, one will also need external prosperity; for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and must have food and other attention. Still, we must not think that the man who is to be happy will need many things or great things... for self-sufficiency and action do not involve excess, and we do noble acts without ruling earth and sea.
Action | Attention | Body | Contemplation | Earth | Excess | Happy | Man | Nature | Need | Prosperity | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Self-sufficiency | Will | Think |
Soul is actuality in the sense in which knowledge is so, for the presence of the soul is compatible both with sleep and with waking, and waking is analogous to the exercise of knowledge… the soul is the first actualization of a natural body potentially having life.
On realizing one’s true Self one does not change into a different being but simply realizes that one is not a being at all but simply “Being”; one attains freedom from identification with this or any other body-mind complex. The speeding arrow of karma may hit the body, but one is not the body. The body is subject to karma but the pure being of one’s Self is not... A Realized Man sees repercussions that could be called destiny overtaking the body that he occupies, but it does not occur to him that they concern him, and therefore he feels no emotion towards them. His body is subject to destiny, but he is not.
The most potent force in the world is an idea which, when organized into a body of concepts, becomes a culture and way of life. Concepts are psychological lenses focusing our experiences. Our physical eyes bring their reports but our conceptual lenses interpret them. If we would “know ourselves” it is a paramount necessity that we should examine critically and impartially our conceptual heritage and endeavor to discover why we accept or reject it.
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 |
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
Words are the shell, meditation the kernel. Words are the body of prayer, and meditation its spirit.
Body | Meditation | Prayer | Spirit | Words |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
This [Self] is never born, nor does It die, nor after once having been, does it go into non-being. This [Self] is unborn, eternal, changeless, ancient. It is never destroyed even when the body is destroyed.
The infinite distance between body and mind is a symbol of the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity; for charity is supernatural.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Perhaps the most powerful solvent of the pre-scientific outlook has been the first law of motion, which the world owes to Galileo, though to some extent he was anticipated by Leonardo da Vinci. The first law of motion says that a body which is moving will go on moving in the same direction with the same velocity until something stops it.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
[Soul] It is not born, it does not die; having been, it will never not be; unborn, enduring, constant, and primordial, it is not killed when the body is killed.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
It is not born, nor does it ever die, nor come not to be. Unborn, eternal, everlasting, this ancient one [soul] is not slain when the body is slain.