When you look at an object, you see one side of it at a time; the nature of vision. When you think about something, you think about it in one context at a time; the nature of thought.
Context determines what your mind thinks just as viewing-angle determines what your eye sees.
Besides being mostly void and bereft of matter, the universe at large is cruel and unfriendly. If the aliens are here, it’s for the conviviality of this one planet.
A: Ah, when creation shows so much beauty, how radiant must be the source!
V: How can anyone today study to become a minister!
A: Your rationalism is as dry as dust.
V: I say that modern man believes in only himself and his biological death.
A: Modern man is a figment of your imagination. Man regards death with horror.
V: Religion for the people. Opium for the aching limb.
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
Chapter 3 – The Chapel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Is it worth while in any individual case to look for the meaning of a dream, supposing that dreams have any meaning at all and that this meaning can be proved?
Dream life amplifies & compensates for the good encountered in previous days, and those aspects of reality that are bad experiences.
Man must part company with the inferior & superficial. The important thing is to remain firm.
Accomplish one’s task – Courage, no matter what happens.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
With a neurophysical/biological computer embedded inside our skulls, we are fields of consciousness transcending time & space. Consciousness is an expression of a cosmic intelligence that permeates the entire universe and all of existence.
The Holotropic Mind by Stanislav Grof
Who but an atheist could think of leaving the world without having first made up his account?
It is then he will find in what mighty stead that heathen goddess, that virtue, which you and all other deists of the age adore, will stand him.
Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding
Avoid at all cost the priorities in your life that aren’t in your top five, because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to form the core of your life, yet seductive enough to distract you from the priorities that matter most.
Oliver Burkeman