Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Awareness

"We have invented exercise, recreation, pleasure, amusement,and the rest. But recreation, pleasure, amusement, fun and all the rest are poor substitutes for joy; and joy, I am convinced, has its roots in something from which civilization tends to cut us off. Some awareness of the world outside of man must exist if one is to experience the happiness and solace which some of us find in an awareness of nature and in our love for her manifestations." - Joseph Wood Krutch

"Civilized man has been more ruthlessly wasteful and grasping in his attitude toward the natural world than has served even his most material best interests. Possibly - as some hope - a mere enlightened selfishness will save it in time. Even if we should learn just in the nick of time not to destroy what is necessary for our own preservation, the mere determination to survive is not sufficient to save very much of the variety and beauty of the natural world. They can e preserved only if man feels the necessity of sharing the earth with at least some of his fellow creatures to be a privilege rather han an irritation. And he is not likely to feel that without something more than intellectual curiosity - that something more you may call love, fellow-feeling, or reverence for life. Without reverence or love the increasing awareness of what the science of ecology teaches us can come to be no more than a shrewder exploitation of what it would be better to admire, to enjoy, and to share in." - Joseph Wood Krutch

"An integral approach acknowledges that all views have a degree of truth, but some views are more true than others, more evolved, more developed, more adequate. And so let's get that part out of the way right now: homophobia in any form, as far as I can tell, stems from a lower level of human development — but it is a level, it exists, and one has to make room in one's awareness for those lower levels as well, just as one has to include third grade in any school curriculum. " - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II

"At every single moment, there is a spontaneous awareness of whatever happens to be present and that simple, spontaneous, effortless awareness is ever-present Spirit itself. Even if you think you don't see it, that very awareness is it. And thus, the ultimate state of consciousness -- intrinsic Spirit itself -- is not hard to reach but impossible to avoid." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II

"The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II

"Meditation, then, is not so much a part of this or that particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all humankind--an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II

"In the 21st century, I believe the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profound awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion." - Kofi Annan, fully Kofi Atta Annan

"On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

"Because there is a larger awareness that transcends time and space, an awareness is available after death." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

"An average human looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or fragrance, and talks without thinking." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

"Everyone experiences fear. Yet it would take very little right thinking to realize why fear occurs. Few appreciate the real power of the mind, and no one remains fully aware of it all the time. However, if you hope to spare yourself from fear there are some things you must realize, and realize fully. The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it. You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them. This may allay awareness of the guilt, but at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent. If you believe that what you think is ineffectual you may cease to be afraid of it, but you are hardly likely to respect it. There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level." - A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM

"The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

"We catch on to the truth and technique of expectation in those rare moments when we are stirred by an awareness of a guidance seemingly higher and greater than our own, when for a little while we are taken over by a force and an intelligence above and beyond those commonly felt. Confident and free, filled with wonder and ready acceptance, we permit ourselves to be taken over by our unquestioning self." - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach

"I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience." - Martin Buber

"Thus I define religion as the awareness – accompanied by the emotions and determined by them – of dependence from something, defined by the tradition, which at the given stage of cultural evolution of man exceeds his cognitive capabilities; this awareness then causes in man, under the action of emotions and tradition, volitive states leading to an endeavor to change somehow the supposed dependence or at least perform some influence on what the man of given cultural stage considers to be the cause of the dependence." - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck

"There is nothing but God. He is the only Reality, and we all are one in the indivisible Oneness of this absolute Reality. When the One who has realized God says, “I am God. You are God, and we are all one,” and also awakens this feeling of Oneness in his illusion-bound selves, then the question of the lowly and the great, the poor and the rich, the humble and the modest, the good and the bad, simply vanishes. It is his false awareness of duality that misleads man into making illusory distinctions and filing them into separate categories." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani

"God is eternally free. To realize God is to attain liberation from the bondage of illusion. The greater the strife and the more intensified the struggle to attain liberation, the more the shackles of illusion are felt, because this very action brings greater awareness of the illusion, which then becomes all the more impressive and realistic. All actions, whether good or bad, just or unjust, charitable or uncharitable, are responsible in making the bond of illusion firmer and tighter. The goal is to achieve perfect inaction, which does not mean merely inactivity. When the self is absent, one achieves inaction in one's every action." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani

"You, my Eternal Friend, witness now that I forgive anyone who hurt or upset me or who offended me…May no one be punished because of me. May no one suffer from karmic consequences for hurting or upsetting me. Help me, Eternal Friend, to keep from offending You and others. Help me to be thoughtful and not commit outrage by doing what is evil in Your eyes. Whatever sins I have committed, blot out, please, in Your abundant kindness, and spare me suffering or harm. Help me become aware of the ways I may have unintentionally or intentionally hurt others, and please give me guidance and strength to rectify those hurts and to develop the sensitivity to not continue acting in a hurtful way. Let me forgive others, let me forgive myself, but also let me change in ways that make it easy for me to avoid paths of hurtfulness to others. I seek peace, let me BE peace. I seek justice, let me be just. I seek a world of kindness, let me be kind. I seek a world of generosity, let me be generous with all that I have. I seek a world of sharing, let me share all that I have. I seek a world of giving, let me be giving to all around me. I seek a world of love, let me be loving beyond all reason, beyond all normal expectation, beyond all societal frameworks that tell me how much love is “normal,” beyond all fear that giving too much love will leave me with too little. And let me be open and sensitive to all the love that is already coming to me, the love of people I know, the love that is part of the human condition, the accumulated love of past generations that flows through and is embodied in the language, music, recipes, technology, literature, religions, agriculture, and family heritages that have been passed on to me and to us. Let me pass that love on to the next generations in an even fuller and more explicit way. Source of goodness and love in the universe, let me be alive to all the goodness that surrounds me. And let that awareness of the goodness and love of the universe be my shield and protector. Hear the words of my mouth and may the meditations of my heart find acceptance before You, Eternal Friend, who protects and frees me so that I may fully engage in the work of Tikkun – the healing and transformation of the world social and economic order, the planet, and myself." - Michael Lerner

"The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning." - Mircea Eliade

"The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning." - Mircea Eliade

"I begin by asking people to lie on their backs (after the same principle of reducing gravity) and learn to scan themselves. That is, they examine attentively the contact of their bodies with the floor and gradually learn to detect considerable differences – points where the contact is feeble or non-existent and others where it is full and distinct. This training develops awareness of the location of muscles producing weak contact through permanent excessive tension, thus holding parts of the body up off the floor. Some improvement in tension reduction can be achieved through muscular awareness alone, but beyond that no improvement will be carried over into normal live unless people increase their awareness of the skeleton and its orientation." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais

"Through awareness we can learn to move with astonishing lightness and freedom-at almost any age-and thereby improve our living circumstances, not only physically...but emotionally, intellectually and spiritually." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais

"Self-knowledge through awareness is the goal of reeducation. As we become aware of what we are doing in fact, and not what we say or think we are doing, the way to improvement is wide open to us." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais

"The Root of all religious observance and spiritual practice is for us to be constantly aware of God. It should make us realize that we were created for the singular purpose of consciously experiencing the Creator. Observance and practice should help us see that the only reason we were brought into the world is to use our spiritual powers to overcome our material attachments and limiting urges, and surrender ourselves to the Infinite One. Religious observance and spiritual practice should direct our [wills, thoughts, feelings, words and] actions toward attaining this awareness so that we do not stray from it." - Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal

"God made the world for the delight of human beings-- if we could see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we've waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us -- you just can't resist Him. I believe there's no such thing as luck in life, it's God's love, it's His." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL

"Focus the place of worshp in your qalb, your inner heart. First you have to put your intention on Him in your qalb, then bring that intention to your memory which should be the focal point of attention. That focus must slip through feeling and feeling should become awareness of it. Understand what prayer is through that awareness which must flow through your blood and body; they must be associated with the Zikr, and as awareness exists in the blood, intellect must also function there. Iman, faith, certitude and determination, should be at work within the pointedness of intellect, and that prayer must function on the pointedness of iman in the three worlds, awaal, the time of creation, dunya, this world, and akhirah, the hereafter, because everything exists within man. This prayer should radiate through the tissues, the nerves, the marrow, through intention; focus your needs, this Zikr should flow through tissues, nerves, veins, blood, the body. When it does, that is prayer, that is devotion. Establish this thought, establish this intention, the Zikr must function like the pulse of blood in your arteries." - Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

"An individual should hold an awareness of God and His love All the time. He should not separate his consciousness from the Divine while he journeys on the way, nor when he lies down nor when he rises up." - Nahmanides, aka Rabbi Moses ben Naḥman Girondi, Bonastruc ça Porta and by his acronym RaMBaN NULL

" It's not just that you raise your level of awareness in regard to some problem, but you sustain the level of awareness over time... isn't so much that an awareness heals, but it is sustained awareness that heals" - Nathaniel Branden

"Each of us A cell of awareness / Imperfect and incomplete / Genetic blends / With uncertain ends / On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet." - Neil Peart

"You cannot drop anything if there is a desire to gain something else; then that desire is again desire for happiness, pleasure. Be aware of the fact that both are one; pleasure and pain are one. Your interpretation differs, but the thing is always the same. This awareness of the fact becomes the dropping, the turning. And the soul, for the first time, realizes that it has never been identified with any object at all; it is the subjectivity." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Life cannot grow without challenges; and pains, miseries, sufferings bring challenges. You cannot become aware without suffering. Suffering evokes awareness in you." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"One can be angry only if he is unaware. Try to be angry and aware together and you will find it impossible. Either you will be aware, then anger will not be found, or you will be angry and awareness will have disappeared." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Unstained by objective clinging, unspoilt by the grasping mind, sustaining the naked and empty awareness is the wisdom mind of all the buddhas! Do not investigate phenomena: investigate the mind. If you investigate the mind, you'll know the one thing which resolves all. If you don't investigate the mind, you can know everything but be forever stuck on one." - Padmasamabhava, "The Lotus-Born", aka Guru Rinpoche "Precious Guru" or Lopon Rinpoche or Padum in Tibet NULL

"Now when the bardo of dying dawns upon me, I will abandon all grasping, yearning, and attachment, Enter undistracted into clear awareness of the teaching, And eject my consciousness into the space of unborn Rig-pa; As I leave this compound body of flesh and blood I will know it to be a transitory illusion." - Padmasamabhava, "The Lotus-Born", aka Guru Rinpoche "Precious Guru" or Lopon Rinpoche or Padum in Tibet NULL

"Purification, self-inquiry, and surrender to God are the practices that lead to Unity. These practices cultivate awareness and remove the afflictions that obstruct Realization of Truth." - Patañjali NULL

"The identification of pure awareness with the mind and the creations of the mind cause the apprehension of both an objective world and a perceiver of it." - Patañjali NULL

"When the mind withdraws attention from sense experience, the senses receive no impressions from sense objects, and awareness rests in its essential nature." - Patañjali NULL

"All are waves on the same, one ocean, composed, as ocean water is, of the same substance: Spirit. Some of the waves are higher then others. Some waves don't even want to distance themselves from the ocean. All waves, no matter how high, are in essence one and the same. The difference between the Guru and the disciples, then, lies only in their respective closeness to the ocean: in how conscious each one is of his essential reality. The greater the sense of ego, the taller the wave, and the greater, in consequence, the ignorance. The greater one's awareness of the ocean as one's soul reality, the smaller the wave, and also the less his sense of having a separate individuality." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"The awareness of our own strength makes us modest." - Paul Cézanne

"To seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure is to avoid reality, the reality of other beings and the reality of ourselves. But only the fulfillment of what we really are can give us joy. Joy is nothing else than the awareness of our being fulfilled in our true being, in our personal center. And this fulfillment is possible only if we unite ourselves with what others really are. It is reality that gives joy and reality alone." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich

"An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely… And one has to understand that being brave is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear. Death frees from the fear of dying… Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning. " - Paulo Coelho

"Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness with God." - Peace Pilgrim, born Mildred Lisette Norman Ryder

"We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are - heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"When we start out on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are - heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"The birth of the de-centered self can be profoundly disorienting, it is transcendental and often involves a heightened sense of awareness and connection. The analytical localized self can find it fragile, frightening and impossible to grasp... There is a sense of being present to what is seeking to emerge, with intentionality. If you follow your nature enough, if you follow your nature as it moves, if you follow so far that you really let go, then you find that you’re actually the original being, the original way of being. The original being knows things and acts, does things in its own [intuitive?] way. It actually has a great intention to be itself, and it will do so if you just let it." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"The difference between a healthy group or organization and an unhealthy one lies in its members’ awareness and ability to acknowledge their felt needs to conform." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"The characteristics that keep kids from using drugs are hard to quantify but not to understand. Children who truly grasp that they have a choice to make in the matter are more likely to make a responsible one. So are children with high self-esteem. Most influential of all is the optimism and awareness that comes from knowing their parents are interested and involved in their lives." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." - Albert Einstein

"We evolute toward ever lesser brain comprehension lags — ergo, toward ever diminishing error; ergo, ever diminishing misunderstandings; ergo, ever diminishing fear, and its brain-lagging painful errors of objectivity; wherefore we approach eternal instantaneity of absolute and total comprehension. The eternal instantaneity of no lag at all. However, we have now learned from our generalizations of the great complexity of the interactions of principles as we are disembarrassed of our local, exclusively physical chemistry of information-sensing devices — that what is approached is eternal and instant awareness of absolute reality of all that ever existed. All the great metaphysical integrity of all the individuals, which is potential and inherent in the complex interactions of generalized principles, will always and only coexist eternally." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller