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 "Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: 'Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recreation.' And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality." Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Carl Jung (edited by Aniela Jaffe))

2 "Represent Unity by a circle; at the Present Moment, outside Time, a scission occurs and forms two streams: one goes to the left, away from the other, which goes to the right; each runs on a half of the circle, the Chinese Yin and Yang. On the opposite side, the antagonists rediscover each other and unite. The circle, or cycle, has never ceased to be, the scission has broken nothing…..This absurdity is the Truth." R. A. Schwaller deLubicz, 'Nature Word', Lindisfarne Nature Word (R. A. Schwaller deLubicz)

3 "God fashioned the sphere of light round himself. 'God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere'(cf. St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, 5). The point symbolizes light and fire, also the Godhead in so far as light is an 'image of God' or an 'exemplar of the Deity.' This spherical light modelled on the point is also the shining or illuminating body that dwells in the heart of man." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

4 "Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were…. and so it is in everything where Power moves." Black Elk, Native American elder A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

5 "The emergence of the mandala in the spiritual and artistic imagination of various pioneering figures of our century anticipates a new consciousness that can contain these opposites simultaneously." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy' Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)

6 "Nothing is excluded from the circle of wholeness." Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions (Frances Vaughan, Ph.D.)

7 "In early Christian remains, the circle frequently appears as a serpent with its tail in its mouth." Violet Shelley, 'Symbols and the Self' Symbols, Guiding Lights Along the Journey of Life (Kathleen R. Prata)

8 "The mandala is, above all, a map of the cosmos. It is the whole universe in its essential plan, in its process of emanation and of reabsorption…..the universe not only in its inert spatial expanse, but as temporal revolution and both as a vital process which develops from an essential principle and rotates round a central axis." G. Tucci Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

9 "The eye is the first circle, the horizon which it forms is the second: and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American essayist and poet A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

10 "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)

11 "Although 'wholeness' seems at first sight to be nothing but an abstract idea, it is nevertheless empirical in so far as it is anticipated by the psyche in the form of spontaneous or autonomous symbols. These are the quaternity or mandala symbols, which occur not only in the dreams of modern people who have never heard of them, but are widely disseminated in the historical records of many peoples and many epochs. Their significance as symbols of unity and totality is amply confirmed by history as well as by empirical psychology. What at first looks like an abstract idea stands in reality for something that exists and can be experienced, that demonstrates its a priori presence spontaneously." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

12 "The Mandala is a module exhibiting principles of organicity: interrelationship of parts, interdependence of systems, resonance and synchronicity." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

13 "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)

14 "Thirty-three centuries ago, Ikhnaton, the pharaoh of Egypt, described the universe as a giant egg, a great cell of being in which he conceived the nucleus as the source of that creative force which he acknowledged as the life energy of God." The Human Aura (Kuthumi and Djwal Kul)

15 "Deity and the cosmos may be likened to a circle or sphere whose circumference is nowhere – hence boundless – but those center is everywhere. And each monad is such a divine, immortal, preexistent center." Editors Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors)

16 "All this, then, was the plan of the everlasting god for the god who was going to be. According to this plan he made the body of the world smooth and uniform, everywhere equidistant from its center, a body whole and complete, with complete bodies for its parts. And in the centre he set the soul and caused it to extend throughout the whole body, and he further wrapped the body round with soul on the outside. So he established one world alone." Plato, 'Timaeus' Collected Works (Carl Jung)

17 "I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place." Rufus Jones A Hidden Wholeness, The Journey Toward An Undivided Life (Parker J. Palmer)

18 "You might think of the mandala as reflecting back to us the harmony and beauty of our nonmaterial reality." Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)

19 "The world and its inhabitants are integral facets of one Mandala." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

20 "The shape of the world exists everlastingly in the knowledge of the true Love which is God: constantly circling, wonderful for human nature, and such that it is not consumed by age and cannot be increased by anything new….in its workings the Godhead is like a wheel, a whole." Hildegard of Bingen, Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)

21 "Never during its pilgrimage is the spirit of man completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman – the self-luminous abiding point, boundless as the sky, indivisible, absolute, the only reality." Huston Smith, 'Karma, Rebirth and Freewill' Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors)

22 "A mandala represents the whole, unified field of consciousness." The Unfolding Self: Varieties of Transformative Experience (Ralph Metzner)

23 "Circular motifs…point to our original wholeness – they are without beginning and end, self-contained and eternal." Journey Into Consciousness: The Chakras, Tantra and Jungian Psychology (Charles Breaux)

24 "Sacred consciousness, of which the Mandala is a structural model, conforms to the Hermetic statement, 'God is an intelligent sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.'" Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

25 "I think the Native Americans have it right when they say, 'Life is a circle'." Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. Angels: The Mysterious Messengers (Rex Hauck, editor)

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite