Mysticism Quotes - Page 18

• Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.

  Joseph Conrad

  Love Is, Feelings, Literature

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad’s Sea Tales - Premium Collection: An Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, A Smile of Fortune, Typhoon and more: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.1118, e-artnow

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• Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Educational, Angel

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.60, Routledge

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• I started studying mythology, just on my own. Joseph Campbell, mysticism.

  Antoine Fuqua

  Study, Mythology, My Own

  Interview with Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. July 9, 2004.

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• Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.

  Sam Harris

  Spiritual, Atheist, Self

  "On Spiritual Truths" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 16, 2011.

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• I read all of Rider Haggard's books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I'm delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that's exactly what I am.

  Wilbur Smith

  Book, Adventure, Romance

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• No word in our language - not even "Socialism" - has been employed more loosely than "Mysticism." The history of the word begins in close connexion with the Greek mysteries. A mystic is one who has been, or is being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about which he must keep his mouth shut.

  William Ralph Inge

  Greek, Mouths, Esoteric

  "Christian Mysticism: The Bampton Lectures". Book by William Ralph Inge, Lecture I, www.gutenberg.org. 1899.

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• Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Delight, Deliverance, Embrace

  Rabindranath Tagore (2011). “The Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore”, p.23, Tuttle Publishing

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• Who wants to be stuck in being religious and being spiritual either? That's not freedom. You've just exchanged handcuffs for leg irons - which doesn't mean that you should avoid enlightenment.

  Frederick Lenz

  Spiritual, Religious, Mean

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• I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating wide-spread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel an inadequacy in classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Real, Fall, Thinking

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Every word, every image used for God is a distortion more than a description.

  Anthony de Mello

  Used, Description, Distortion

  Anthony De Mello (2012). “One Minute Wisdom”, p.124, Image

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• Mysticism is the study of power, its use, and its abuse. At every moment you are getting stronger or you are growing weaker. At every moment your attention field is increasing or decreasing.

  Frederick Lenz

  Abuse, Stronger, Attention

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• Some god or Weltgeist has been making a movie out of us for the past six thousand years, and now we have turned a corner on the movie set of reality and have discovered the boards propping up the two-dimensional monuments of human history. The movement of humanism has reached its limit, and now at that limit it is breaking apart into the opposites of mechanism and mysticism and moving along the circumference of a vast new sphere of posthuman thought.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Moving, Past, Reality

  William Irwin Thompson (1980). “Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture”, HarperCollins

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• We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I learned from this exercise was not to begin a sentence with "And." When I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with "And," I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves at that time was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible.

  Stephen Hawking

  Kings, Symbolism, Taught

  "My Brief History". Book by Stephen Hawking, September 10, 2013.

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• A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science. With modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search.

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

  Powerful, Past, Ethos

  "My Dearest Daughter: A letter from the Death Cell". Book by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, p. 15, 2007.

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• Personal power is a feeling that everybody is looking for called satisfaction. It is different from enlightenment, but you need personal power to become enlightened. Personal power is not the end of the process.

  Frederick Lenz

  Feelings, Enlightenment, Different

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• My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

  Oliver Sacks

  Gratitude, Feelings, Wonder

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• When I play sports, when I dance, when I teach mysticism, I cannot explain, even to myself, how I do what I do.

  Frederick Lenz

  Sports, Play, Rama

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• As a dialectical teacher, I have had many lives where I have taught Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism. I teach in many different modalites. But the theme that unites them - is love.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Buddhism, Different

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• You can increase your capacity to absorb the mystical kundalini. I have 3 or 4 students who are on the path of mysticism, they can absorb more of it.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Path, Rama

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• He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.

  George Orwell

  Brother, Couple, Moving

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.219, Arcturus Publishing

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• Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Water, Insane, Devil

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• Capitalism, gaudy and greedy, has been inherent in western aesthetics from ancient Egypt on. It is the mysticism and glamour of things , which take on a personality of their own. As an economic system, it is in the Darwinian line of Sade, not Rousseau.

  Camille Paglia

  Egypt, Personality, Lines

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Spiritual, Health, Medicine

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851). “The Scarlet Letter”, p.166

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• The school of awareness is the school of mysticism. Mysticism is the experience of eternity, of that which lies beyond the physical phenomenal experience.

  Frederick Lenz

  Lying, School, Awareness

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• Religious mysticism is intellectual garbage. It’s a vestige of the old superstitious Dark Ages when nobody knew anything...It is one of those delusions that isn’t called insane only because there are so many people involved.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Religious, Dark, People

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