Quotes About Existence

The same phenomenon that pointed to a materialist explanation for spiritual and religious belief gave people an experience so powerful it convinced them of the existence of a nonmaterial reality—the very basis of religious belief.

Quantum mechanics holds that matter may not be as innocent of mind as the materialist would have us believe. For example, a subatomic particle can exist simultaneously in multiple locations, is pure possibility, until it is measured—that is, perceived by a mind. Only then and not a moment sooner does it drop into reality as we know it: acquire fixed coordinates in time and space. The implication here is that matter might not exist as such in the absence of a perceiving subject. Needless

Compared with many scientists—or for that matter many spiritual types—Roland Griffiths possesses a large measure of what Keats, referring to Shakespeare, described as "negative capability," the ability to exist amid uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt without reaching for absolutes, whether those of science or spirituality.

And suddenly I realized that the molecules of my body, and the molecules of my spacecraft, the molecules in the body of my partners, were prototyped, manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. [I felt] an overwhelming sense of oneness

Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, once described a spiritually "realized being" as simply a person with "an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything." Faith need not figure.

Some scientists have raised the possibility that consciousness may pervade the universe, suggesting we think of it the same way we do electromagnetism or gravity, as one of the fundamental building blocks of reality.

The existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe.

Unlike these other states of consciousness, ordinary waking consciousness has been optimized by natural selection to best facilitate our everyday survival.

For Huxley, the drug gave him unmediated access to realms of existence usually known only to mystics and a handful of history's great visionary artists. This other world is always present but in ordinary moments is kept from our awareness by the "reducing valve" of everyday waking consciousness, a kind of mental filter that admits only "a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness" we need in order to survive.

D. Laing once said there are three things human beings are afraid of: death, other people, and their own minds. Put me down as two for three.

I know there are other Elton Simpsons out there. But I also know there are Elton Simpsons out there I cannot see.

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

Luck really has nothing to do with human existence, since God is not a random God.

There are three things we have no control over: our birth; our emotions, if we're sincere; and our death.

But if we begin thinking about the world being over 100 million years old, then it's absolutely by chance that you and I are sitting here alive today, while all the others are dead or have never been born.

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

God knows the times I have found myself in absurd situations.

I feel like there's already a written narrative going on everywhere. All the different situations and realities you're in, like words floating by. It's something that I didn't start thinking about until recently, but you can hitch that ride, that narrative that's already been created. You just have to read it and write it down.

When you buy a jacket, you pick the size to ensure it fits. Similarly, we live in a universe in which the amount of dark energy fits our biological make-up. If the amount of dark energy were substantially different from what we've measured, the environmental conditions would be inhospitable to our form of life.

During my early skating years, there were not many ice rinks in Korea, and even the few rinks that existed, most of them were public.

Actors are real. It's a real skill, and it exists, and talent really exists.

Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body's new membrane of existence.

And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.

Does racism exist in this country? Sure. But I think the overwhelming majority of Americans who care about this country do not care about skin color.