Quotations

The foolish being who lives making even the slightest distinction between the supreme Self and his own self will always be subject to fear.

Swami Muktananda (Hindu guru)

Reality includes both the past and the future, but existence includes only the present and is totally dependent on the reality of past and future universes. Without them there is no existence now.

Fred Alan Wolf (theoretical physicist who writes on quantum physics and consciousness)

Truth comes in full circle
As departing light
From infinite space
Returns to the heart
Still what it was,
Embracing all.

Kathleen Raine (British critic, poet, and independent scholar)

The person who believes in God, then, sees in the fact that right must prevail an experience of what is above humanity, an experience of transcendence, in other words, he experiences the absolute and saving presence of God in that confusion of meaning and nonsense that we call “human existence.”. .

Edward Schillebeeckx (Belgian Roman Catholic theologian)

The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God.

Viktor E. Frankl (Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor)

In moments of weakness and distress, it is good to tread closely in God’s footsteps.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian)

In a sense, the history of man is the story of the struggle between good and evil. All the great religions have recognized a tension at the very core of the universe. Hinduism, for instance, calls this tension a conflict between illusion and reality; Zoroastrianism, a conflict between the god of light and the god of darkness; and traditional Judaism and Christianity, a conflict between God and Satan. Each realizes that in the midst of the upward thrust of goodness there is the downward pull of evil.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement)

Myths are not only mirrors, but corridors of mirrors. When we enter them, they become systems of thought branching towards the outer world and tunnels of enlightenment rooting towards the unconscious soul. We have constructed them to lead us back and forth from dream and vigil and from sensation to experience; and if we willfully abandon them, we will be left, in the full meaning of the word, senseless.

Alberto Manguel (Canadian writer, translator, and editor)

There is, there can be, only a single universal and external truth. Because the Real exists always and can never vanish, the True exists always and can never vanish. No prophet ever reveals it for the first time, no seer discovers it. All only rediscover it. It never changes or evolves; only its form and presentation does that. But before it can manifest in our world, it must find human minds sufficiently prepared to be able to receive it and sufficiently developed to be able to comprehend and teach it.

Paul Brunton (British philosopher, mystic, traveler, and author)

The root-word buddh means to wake up, to know, to understand; and he or she who wakes up and understands is called a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature. When Buddhists say "I take refuge in the Buddha," they are expressing trust in their own capacity of understanding, of becoming awake. The Chinese and Vietnamese say, "I go back and rely on the Buddha in me." Adding "in me" makes it clear that you yourself are the Buddha.

Thich Nhat Hanh (Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet, and peace activist)