Quotes About Transcendence

colors—that we could transcend the old logic, that we

Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss.

Most accounts of mystical experiences... insist that the Other in the encounter appears to be living or alive, as in living God. But is it alive in any biological sense? Does it eat and metabolize? Does it reproduce - an option that monotheism would seem to foreclose?

It's not only "my work"—forgive the pompous phrase—that I bequeath to my survivors but all the mental and sensual pleasures that come with being a living human: sitting in the spring sunshine, feeling the warmth of friends, solving a difficult equation. All that will go on without me. I am content, in the time that remains, to be a transient cell in the larger human super-being.

Holding his icy hands, she slid for a moment into the outer fringes of the healing trance and whispered to him by his inner name. But it was as if she called at the head of a descending trail along which he had long since passed—there was no answer.

south, moving slowly. It looked something like a huge blue-gray shower curtain being drawn along by the hand of God. You could just barely see through it, enough to make

One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires.

America has always needed such transcendental notions to bind together its citizens, who have come from different cultures all over the world. And Americans are then driven to prove the universality of these ideas, and so their validity, by aggressively converting other cultures. In a religious context, this behavior would be recognized as missionary in its origins and effect.

Jews also believed that divinities could become human and humans could become divine.

A human being (say, a great ruler or warrior or holy person) could be made divine

The end of time will not bring a salvation of the flesh; it will bring a deliverance from the flesh.

humans sometimes could be elevated to the ranks of those gods.

Proceed from earth! Proceed to heaven! Proceed!" Apollonius was being told, in other words, to ascend to the realm of the gods.

Not a wind, not even a high, exactly, but an elevation. A sense that you had gone beyond yourself and could go farther still.

Some moments are beyond imagination.

you should not seek transcendence as a means of escapism. Remember van Eeden's demon-dreams. You must first be willing to deal with whatever problems you may find on your personal level.

To go beyond the ego's model of the world, the lucid dreamer must relinquish control of the dream—surrender—to something beyond the ego.

Pure prayer begins at the threshold of silence. It says nothing, asks for nothing. It is a kind of listening. The deeper the listening, the less we listen for, until silence itself becomes the voice of God.

Desire and aspiration are two different things. The idea that you want to achieve something in Zen meditation is basically selfish. 'I want to get enlightened' means 'I want to get enlightened.' But aspiration is not for myself, it is not a merely individual desire, it transcends the idea of self. It is desire without attachment. If enlightenment comes, good. If enlightenment does not come, good. Actually, this is enlightenment.

The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn't think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day's work.

Not until Gilgamesh gives up on transcendence can he realize how beautiful his city is; only then, freed from his restless heart, can he fully return to the place he started out from. Suppose that the city is this moment: things as they are, without any meaning added. When the mind gives up on its quest for control, order, and meaning, it finds that it has come home, to reality, where it has always been. What it has -- what it is -- in this very moment is everything it ever wanted.

Nothing has a greater, longer lasting impression upon another person than the awareness that someone has transcended suffering, has transcended circumstance, and is embodying and expressing a value that inspires and ennobles and lifts life.

The more we are able to draw upon our right brain capacity, the more fully we will be able to visualize, to synthesize, to transcend time and present circumstances, to project a holistic picture of what we want to do and to be in life.

white, vaporous