Quotes About Transcendence

Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, and pleasure. But if you had to die now, what would you want?

Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That's the point of this whole thing. That's what cuts through all the 'stuff'. You get lit up. You don't have to know what it means.

The information contained in an English sentence or computer software does not derive from the chemistry of the ink or the physics of magnetism, but from a source extrinsic to physics and chemistry altogether. Indeed, in both cases, the message transcends the properties of the medium. The information in DNA also transcends the properties of its material medium.

The discovery of the fine tuning of the universe, like the discovery of the beginning of the universe itself, represents an effect that requires a cause with specific attributes, including both transcendence and intelligence.

David S. Reynolds. Walt Whitman. Oxford University Press: USA, 2005

For a period of time after this discovery, Gandhi walked many miles each day, repeating the mantra to himself until it began to coordinate itself with the movement of his body and breath. The practice not only calmed him, but brought him into periods of bliss and rapture—and, as he said, "opened the doorway to God." Rama, Rama, Rama. Eventually, the mantra developed a life of its own within him. The mantra began to chant itself, arising spontaneously whenever he needed it.

Abandon all supports," says Krishna to Arjuna in one of his great final teachings. "Cast off your dependency on everything external, Arjuna, and rely on the Self alone." We work first because we have to work. Then because we want to work. Then because we love to work. Then the work simply does us. Difficult at the beginning. Inevitable at the end.

And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again. The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.

Flies struggled from her mouth, only to ignite into brilliant golden sparks. Hundreds of them, thousands of them burst from her into their individual pinprick of fire which then was gone for ever, like the distant implosion of a dying star...

THE OBSERVER AND HIS OBSERVATION, AS WELL AS THE WORLD OBSERVED, APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR TOGETHER. BEYOND IT ALL, THERE IS VOID. THIS VOID IS ONE FOR ALL.

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd. I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. —WALT WHITMAN

Not success. Not growth. Not happiness. The cradle of your love of life … is death.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Death is perfectly safe. (55)

I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)

Remember: life is a breath; soon I will vanish from your sight. The eye that looks will not see me; you may search, but I will be gone. Like a cloud fading in the sky, man dissolves into death. He leaves the whole world behind him and never comes home again.

For art to appear, we have to disappear

time is short and life fleeting and that nothing matters except that which is eternal.

He's still half with usConniving slyly, yet he knows he's goneInto that cellar where they'll never find him,Happy to be alone, his last work done,Word freed from world, into a different wood.

A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.

There's an ancient term, widely used by writers of Celtic spirituality. It talks of 'thin places'; places where the gap between earth and heaven is said to be very narrow; places where you can sense God more strongly than in the mundane monotony of

I have spent most of my life (like most people) avoiding transcendence at all costs, mainly because the shit hurts.

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

While Jesus transcends culture, culture does not change God's word.