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

SHOW detailed search and navigation | Quotes | References | JoAnn

1		"The universe is likened to a net of glittering gems, wherein each jewel contains the reflections of all other jewels, and its reflection in turn exists in all the other gems: 'one in all, all in one,' or 'unity in diversity, diversity in unity.'"

2		"The unconscious is that immortal sea which brought us hither; intimations of which are given in moments of 'oceanic feeling'; one sea of energy or instinct, embracing all mankind, without distinction of race, language, or culture; and embracing all the generations, past, present, and future, in one mystical body." Norman O. Brown, 'Love's Body', Vintage 1966

3		"The unborn timeless Mind is working in us. The Buddha-mind and our mind are not two." Bankei, quoted in 'Living by Zen' by D. T. Suzuki, Rider, 1972

4		"The Seer, the That in you which knows, in actuality is not separate from what it sees – it IS what it sees, for the Knower sees a thing by being that thing, as St. Thomas Aquinas stated, 'Knowledge comes about in so far as the object known is within the knower.' (Summa Theologica I, q. 59, a. 2)"

5		"Mythological imagery springs from the collective unconscious, the transconscious, and it is therefore not contaminated by merely social conventions, language, logic, or the illusions of any particvular cult or individual. Furthermore, the language of mythology is associative and integrative, and…hence it more clearly and truly reflects the actual physical reality of the seamless coat of the universe, of the mutual interdependence and interpenetration of all things and events."

6		"All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible….Only awake to the One Mind." Master Huang Po, 'The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, trans. John Blofeld

7		"The world as unity of opposites, from the formed towards the forming, is essentially a world from present to present; the moment of the eternal present which is the unity of opposites." Kitaro Nishida, 'Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness', East-West Press 1958

8		"At each moment Nature starts upon a long, long journey and at each moment reaches her end…All is eternally present in her, for she knows neither past nor future. For her the present is eternity." Goethe, 'Fragments on Nature'

9		"Everything you observe is none other than you who are observing it."

10		"We may state as a characteristic of modern science that the scheme of isolable units acting in one-way-causality has proved to be insufficient. Hence the appearance, in all fields of science, of notions like wholeness, holistic, organismic, gestalt, etc., which all signify that in the last resort, we must think in terms of systems of elements in mutual interaction." Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 'General Systems Theory', G. Braziller, 1968

11		"This sensation of being one with the universe is much more common than one might initially suspect, for it is the very foundation of all other sensations."

12		"Just as all of Infinity is completely present at every point of space, so also all of eternity is completely present at every point of time. Thus, from the viewpoint of Eternity, absolutely all time is NOW, just as to the Infinite, all space is HERE."

13		"The real is near, you do not have to search for it;… Truth is in what IS – and that is the beauty of it." J. Krishnamurti, 'The First and Last Freedom', Quest 1954

14		"All temporal succession coincides in one and the same Eternal Now. So there is nothing past or future." Nicolas de Cusa, 'The Vision of God', ch. X

15		"The harmonious cooperation of all beings arose, not from the orders of a superior authority external to themselves, but from the fact that they were all parts in a hierarchy of wholes forming a cosmic pattern, and what they obeyed were the internal dictates of their own natures. Modern science and the philosophy of organism, with its integrative levels, have come back to this wisdom, fortified by new understanding of cosmic, biological, and social evolution." Joseph Needham, 'Science and Civilization in China'

16		"Our experience is contained within the depths of Divine life itself….It is not by discarding the principle of personality that the absolutely Divine One can be attained, but rather by exploring the spiritual depths of the personality which is antinomically united to the One." Nicholas Berdyaev, 'Spirit and Reality', New York 1939

17		"The very root 'layer' of the unconscious is the universe itself. The sun, moon, and stars, the mountains, clouds, and waters, even the cars, planes, and trains: these truly are some of the 'contents' of our base unconscious."

18		"The psyche is a spontaneously self-organizing system."

19		"Non-dual knowledge is the abolition of all particular view points which restrict and distort reality." T. R. V. Murti, 'Central Philosophy of Buddhism'

20		"Actually there is no merging with the Center. We are always merged with the Center. It is rather an understanding of this eternal union now, and not a manufacture of it tomorrow."

21		"Nicholas de Cusa called God the 'coincidence of opposites'. Actually, this is today the way the astro-physicists view the universe – it curves back in on itself like a Mobius strip, and thus has no outside, and having no outside neither does it have an inside, or, one can say its inside is its outside: the coincidence of opposites, the universe as non-dual."

22		"I venture to call it (Mind) indestructible since it has a peculiar time-table, namely Mind is always Now. There is really no before and after for Mind." Erwin Schroedinger, 'What is Life? And Mind and Matter'

23		"There is thus an incessant multiplication of the inexhaustible One and unification of the indefinitely Many. Such are the beginnings and endings of worlds and of individual beings: expanded from a point without position or dimensions and a now without date or duration." Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

24		"Mind itself is intemporal, timeless, eternal."

25		"Moment without duration, point without extension – these are the Golden Mean, and inconceivably Strait Way leading out of time into eternity, from death to immortality." Ananda Coomaraswamy, 'The Bugbear of Literacy'