#mystic

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#exhilaration #grace #inspiration #mysticism #nature

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#faith #freedom #laughter #mysticism #religion

I've always been a big fan of science fiction and of the worlds of the spiritual and the mystic. ↗

— Dan Aykroyd

#been #big #big fan #fan #fiction

I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know. ↗

— Jean Houston

#accounts #artists #athletes #beings #believe

Scotsmen are metaphisical and emotional, they are sceptical and mystical, they are romantic and ironic, they are cruel and tender, and full of mirth and despair. ↗

— William Dunbar

#despair #emotional #full #ironic #mirth

The relationship between a Russian and a bottle of vodka is almost mystical. ↗

— Richard Owen

#between #bottle #mystical #relationship #russian

When you view your world exclusively through the lens of science, your prescription will never be strong enough. ↗

— Jay Nichols

#awe #creativity #left-brain #mysticism #quantum-physics

Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman... Which is probably the same thing! ↗

— Apostolos Doxiadis

#death #logic #madmen #mystics #war

In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive. ↗

— Evelyn Underhill

#experience

What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion, but a way of life which produces, as in the mystics, an ecstatic awareness of the whole of life, that it is in this way that poetry becomes the greatest truth, by intensification, condensation of experience. While poetry is considered by most as illusion or delusion, it is the only reality, the moment when we are completely alive. ↗

— Anais Nin

#mystics #passion #poetry #truth #experience