Quotes about Transcendence

When we feel ourselves to be sole heirs of the universe, when the sea flows in our veins...and the stars are our jewels, when all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power or the drearier forms of pleasure?

The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the current popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old habits for new and less harmful ones.

He had discovered Time and Death and God.

When the phenomenal ego transcends itself, the essential Self is free to realize, in terms of a finite consciousness, the fact of its own eternity, together with the correlative fact that every particular in the world of experience partakes of the timeless and the infinite. This is liberation, this is enlightenment, this is the beatific vision, in which all things are perceived as they are "in themselves" and not in relation to a craving and abhorring ego.

But I don't want comfort; I want god, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

In other words, the highest form of the love of God is an immediate spiritual intuition, by which 'knower, known and knowledge are made one.

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

The life of the spirit is not our life, but the life of God within us.

He lifted his arms to the crystaline, radiant sky. I know myself, he cried, but that is all.

This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimneys and riding smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

In other words, the new understanding imparted by the Bible comes from a source lying beyond our ability to frame questions.

You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments - father, mother, wife, children - everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.