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 "When we are acting from a centered place – the open heart – we can access our own inner wisdom and open to divine healing energy as well." Who Do You Think You Are? The Healing Power of Your Sacred Self (Carlos Warter, M.D., Ph.D.)

2 "Your psyche is spherical, whole and complete. When you are approaching an experience of that wholeness, you begin to notice circles and spheres. The sun and moon are magnificent spherical mandalas, and isn't it a wonderful gift that both by day and by night, the heavens present the symbol of your wholeness to you?....The sphere contains the center point of your cohesive power. It can be used as an imaging device to aid in your movement toward wholeness." Reflections of an Elder Brother: Awakening from the Dream (Mary-Margaret Moore)

3 "A great many traditions trace the creation of the World to a central point from which it is supposed to have spread out in the four cardinal directions." Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities (Mircea Eliade)

4 "Since consciousness has always been described in terms derived from the behavior of light, it is in my view not too much to assume that these multiple luminosities correspond to ..conscious phenomena. If the luminosity appears in monadic form as a single star, sun, or eye, it readily assumes the shape of a mandala and must then be interpreted as the self…The symbols of the self have a uniting character." 'On The Nature of the Psyche', CW 8 Basic Writings of C G Jung (V S DeLasslo, editor)

5 "Traditionally, the center is the most honorable place, known to the Greeks as 'the keep of Zeus.' Protector of hearths and boundaries (centers and circumferences) and the source of moral order, Zeus dispensed judgment from the center." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

6 "I dreamed of a common centre into which all things would drive the most vital roots of their sensibility and energy; a universal Centre, living and benign, that would itself reinforce our desire to do what is right, when we are at a loss to express it, or preserve it, or realize it." Writings in Time of War (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

7 "There is a root or depth in you from whence all these faculties come forth as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of a tree. The depth is called the centre, the fund, or bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the Eternity, I had almost said the infinity of your soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it, or give it any rest, but the infinity of God." William Law (1688-1761), English clergyman, 'The Spirit of Prayer' Mysticism (Evelyn Underhill)

8 "There is but one point in the universe where God communicates with us, and that is the center of our own soul." Archbishop Ullathorne, 'Humility and Patience' (19th century) The Book of Catholic Quotations (John Chapin, Editor)

9 "The life of the Logos abiding in each form is its central, controlling, and directing energy." The Ancient Wisdom (Annie Besant)

10 "Healing comes from the mystery at the center." Spiritual Pilgrims, Carl Jung & Teresa of Avila (John Welch, O. Carm.)

11 "Humanity seems certainly to have reached the stage of its evolution in which it cannot from any viewpoint face the problems presented to it by the growth of its inner energy without defining for itself a center of love and adoration." The Vision of the Past (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

12 "Is not this divine centre, required by the nature of things to justify our activity, precisely He whose influence makes itself positively felt in us by the tendency to greater cohesion, justice and brotherhood?" The Vision of the Past (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

13 "To be integrated, to be made whole, means to be able to maintain contact with one's center." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

14 "From whichever point a Mandala is entered, a path opens that leads to the eternal center." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

15 "On the sense and emotional levels there may be little or no peace, but in the center of the soul there are stability and serenity." Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel - on Prayer' (Thomas Dubay, S.M.)

16 "There was a muddy centre before we breathed. There was a myth before the myth began….Venerable and articulate and complete." Wallace Stevens, American poet Origins of the Sacred (Dudley Young)

17 "Though the principle of the center is One, the patterns, the swirls and eddies of form and process which are generated by and through the center are infinite; and though infinite in number, the centers are essentially one, for each is the same irreducible point, the primary syllable, the word, the Logos, through which all is uttered." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

18 "We are the countless centres of one and the same sphere." Writings in Time of War (Pierre Teilhard deChardin)

19 "Just as the plurality of the human soul's life of imagination, feeling, and will has a focus, a center, around which it orders and orientates itself, so also does the multiplicity of the appearances of the world have ONE center, which orders and holds everything together." Covenant of the Heart, Meditations of a Christian Hermeticist on the Mysteries of Tradition (Valentin Tomberg)

20 "If the life-mass is to be transformed a 'circumambulatio' is necessary, that is, exclusive concentration on the centre, the place of creative change." 'Psychology and Alchemy' Collected Works (Carl Jung)

21 "The sphere is a whole, and hence it underlies the symbolic significance of all those images which partake of this wholeness, from the idea of the mystic 'Centre' to that of the world and eternity, or , more particularly, of the world-soul. In neo-platonic philosophy, the soul is explicitly related to the shape of the sphere, and the substance of the soul is deposited as quintessence around the concentric spheres of the four Elements. The same is true of the primordial man of Plato's Timaeus….Another important association is that of perfection and felicity. The absence of corners and edges is analogous to the absence of inconveniences, difficulties, and obstacles." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

22 "In the Beginning was the Center: the center of the mind of God, the eternal Creator, the Dream of Brahman, the galaxies that swirl beyond the lenses of our great telescopes. In all of these the center is one, and in the center lies eternity." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

23 "The hearth in the home, the altar in the temple, is the hub of the wheel of the earth, the womb of the Universal Mother whose fire is the fire of life." Hero With A Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell)

24 "That Jacob Boehme should obtain a glimpse into the center of nature by means of a sunbeam reflected in a tin platter is understandable." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

25 "Philosophically viewed, the whirling wheel and its ever motionless center can be a potent symbol of the human struggle toward insight and harmony…..Only in the still center of the imperishable Self is true perspective apparently achieved." Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors)

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite