Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"The function of comparative religion is to discern this essential Truth, this Divine Mystery beyond speech and thought forms of each religious tradition…In each tradition the one divine Reality, the one eternal Truth, is present, hidden under symbols, symbols of word and gesture, of ritual and dance and song, of poetry and music, art and architecture." Bede Griffiths, 'Return to the Centre' A Parliament of Souls, In Search of Global Spirituality (Michael Tobias, Jane Morrison, Bettina Gray, editors)

2		"A survey of the great religions of the world shows that they hold in common many religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas." Annie Besant, 'The Ancient Wisdom', Theosophical Publishing House 1983, p. 2 The Ancient Wisdom (Annie Besant)

3		"It is striking to note the remarkable similarity in the ideas of the Object of Devotion as expressed by the great mystics in all religions." editors The Choice Is Always Ours (Dorothy B. Phillips, Chief Editor)

4		"It can be ascertained with reasonable certainty from the literary records of the past that at least the universal human facts were felt and thought about in very much the same way at all times. Were this not so, all intelligent historiography and all understanding of historical texts would be impossible. Naturally there are differences,…but these differences are mostly on the surface only and lose their significance the more deeply one penetrates into the meaning of the fundamental motifs." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

5		"In nearly all traditions, sacred psychology assumes that the deepest yearning in every human soul is to return to its spiritual source, there to experience communion and even union with the Beloved." The Search for the Beloved (Jean Houston)

6		"Behind the veil of all mystical allegories of ancient doctrines [teachings], behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings…in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same." Eliphas Levi (1810-1875) Revelations: The Wisdom of the Ages (Paul Roland)

7		"Frazer, in his monumental 'Golden Bough', gives us a vast amount of material from which it becomes clear that what Aldous Huxley later labelled 'the Perennial Philosophy' is basically the same everywhere in the world. This philosophy becomes highly colored with local and racial ideas, but the root is the same in Polynesia or Christendom, in ancient Egypt and in modern days." The Transforming Mind (Laurence and Phoebe Bendit)

8		"The perennial philosophy first arose in matriarchy, and thus cannot be charged with inherent sexism; it arose in illiterate peoples, and thus is not logocentric; and it first flourished in what are now Second and Third world countries – it is hardly Eurocentric. Furthermore, it offers what 'politically correct' thought cannot: an integrative vision that, while allowing each expression its own free space, points to a better state of affairs, namely, the supreme Identity. It thus has inherent in it a genuine liberal agenda: increasing freedom on both an individual and societal level." Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (Ken Wilber)

9		"Behind the symbols and languages of the world's manifold religions lies a common pattern of pointers to ultimate truth." Theosophy, A Modern Expression of the Wisdom of the Ages (Robert Ellwood)

10		"In man's long earthly evolution of thousands of years, he has had countless religious and spiritual experiences. They are hidden in the recesses of his soul so that he responds consciously or subconsciously to spiritual truths." The Flowering Tree (Gladys V. Jones)

11		"I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul." Robert G. Ingersoll, 'Life of Robert G. Ingersoll' Macmillan Dictionary of Religious Quotations (Margaret Pepper, editor)

12		"The testimony of the mystics of all time is so vast that it now in itself constitutes a body of proven facts and cannot be gainsaid." The Labours of Hercules (Alice A. Bailey)

13		"All creative scientists know that the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover the laws of truth." J. C. Bose, Indian physicist and botanist Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda)

14		"It sounds glib when I put it into words – but the truth is that absolute perfection reigns. In addition to being glib, it sounds dogmatic when I say it that categorically, but please understand that I see myself as basically a transmitter, reporting what the intellectual and spiritual giants of the past pretty much attest to in unison." The Way Things Are (Huston Smith, edited by Phil Cousineau)

15		"All [mystics] have the same message about that very thing which no soul can utter; the immediate experience of God." The Soul Afire, Revelations of the Mystics (H. A. Reinhold, editor)

16		"Creativity is built into the very fabric of the Kosmos. This creativity – Eros is one of its many names – drives the emergence of ever higher and ever wider holons, a drive that shows up, in the interior domains, as an expansion of identity (and morals and consciousness) from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. And the proof of that seqence is found, not by staring at the physical organism and its environment, but by looking into the subjective and intersubjective domains. But humanity has ALREADY done that very carefully for at least several thousand years." Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Ken Wilber)

17		"My heart has become capable of every form: It is a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for Christian monks…and the pilgrim's Ka'ba, and the tablets of the Torah, and the Book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love; whatever way love's camel takes, that is my religion, my faith." Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), Spanish Sufi philosopher The Essential Mystics (Andrew Harvey)

18		“Spiritual truths come from the same place in us where there is only one of us. The Sutras and Bibles of all the ages meet and are summarized in the archetypal oracular wisdom of our linked souls, and no accidents or ravages of history can dispossess us of our heritage. Each of us is a holograph of the entirety of revelation.” Mary Within (David Richo)

19		"There always has been…the way of Gnosis, an acquaintance with, or knowledge of, the God within." Omens of Millennium (Harold Bloom)

20		"All the great teachers have said: As you make your way through the mists of uncertainty, trust that the combined wisdom of your heart and mind will lead you to the truth." Making Peace With God, A Practical Guide (Harold Bloomfield, M.D. & Philip Goldberg, Ph.D.)

21		"The work of all the spiritual teachers blends together….each adding another aspect to the whole of man and his part in this world's evolution." Healing Through Colour (Theo Gimbel)

22		"Teaching is not a matter of something being placed in one person by another, but is a question of eliciting something that is already present, although only implicitly and latently, at hidden depths of the individual's mind." Ira Progoff (b. 1921), 'The Symbolic and the Real' Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors)

23		"The principle of that wisdom which is revealed to all [is] that we should know and praise God through His creation and that by means of the visible world we should understand whence we came, what we are, for what purpose we were made and where we are going." St. Maximos the Confessor, 'Second Century on Theology' The Philokalia, volume 2 (various authors, compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain)

24		"All [masters] live today even as they did then, in the days of what you call your past. And all the masters and all the messengers – Buddha, Abraham, Baha'u'liah, Jesus, Krishna, Moses, Muhammad, and all the others – love you today as they did then, and invite you today as they did then to accept and embrace the wonder and the glory of Who You Are." Tomorrow's God, Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge (Neale Donald Walsch)

25		"We need the courage as well as the inclination to consult, and profit from, the wisdom traditions of mankind." E. F. Schumacher The Quotable Spirit (Peter Lorie and Manuela D Mascetti, editors)