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		"Natural magnetism…will draw the pilgrim irresistibly along the road from the Many to the One."

2		"The manifestation of the Eternal Light is renewed without interruption in the hiddenness of the spirit."

3		"All mystical thinkers agree in declaring that there is a mutual attraction between the Spark of the Soul, the free divine germ in man, and the Fount from which it came forth."

4		"Love flings open a door, in order that the larger Life may rush in, and it and the soul be one thing."

5		"The quest of the Absolute is no long journey, but a realization of something which is implicit in the self and in the universe."

6		"Nothing is to be seen but a ground which rests upon itself, everywhere one Being, one Life."

7		"The Power of God exceeds and fills all." St. Angela of Foligno

8		"The beauty, the majesty, the divinity of the living World of Becoming holds in its meshes every living thing."

9		"This meaning, this secret plan of Creation, flames out, had we eyes to see, from every department of existence."

10		"The rippling tide of love flows secretly from God into the soul, and draws it mightily back into its source." Mechthild of Magdeburg

11		"Symbols form the rallying-points about which are gathered a whole group of ideas and intuitions. Their presence – sometimes the sudden thought of them – will be enough, in psychological language, to provoke a discharge of energy along some particular path: that is to say, to stir to life all those ideas and intuitions which belong to the self's consciousness of the Absolute, to concentrate vitality on them, and introduce the self into that world of perception of which they are, as it were, the material keys."

12		"Every visible and invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God." Erigena

13		"The object of the mystic's contemplation is always some aspect of the Infinite Life: of God, the one Reality."

14		"The simple vision of pure love, which is marvellously penetrating, does not stop at the outer husk of creation: it penetrates to the divinity which is hidden within." Malaval, 'De l'Oraison Ordinaire'

15		"There is – must be – contact in an intelligible where between every individual self and the Supreme Self, the Ultimate."

16		"Hints of a marvellous truth, a unity whose note is ineffable peace, shine in created things."

17		"'That Which Is', says St. Augustine; 'The One', 'The Supplier of true Life', says Plotinus; 'the energitic Word', says St. Bernard; 'Eternal Light', says Dante; 'the Abyss', says Ruysbroeck; 'Pure Love', says St. Catherine of Genoa – poor symbols of Perfection at the best. But, through and by these oblique utterances, they give us the assurance that the Object of their discovery is one with the object of our quest."

18		"To say that God is Infinite is to say that He may be apprehended and described in an infinity of ways. That Circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, may be approached from every angle with a certainty of being found."

19		"The end and object of 'inward alchemy' will be the raising of the whole self to the condition in which conscious and permanent union with the Absolute takes place."

20		"Divine Love, immanent in the soul, spurs on that soul to union with the transcendent and Absolute Light – at once the source, the goal, the life of created things."

21		"Under the spur of love life draws near to Life."

22		"Divine Love flows out of the soul and draws her out of herself into the unnamed Being, into her first source, which is God alone."

23		"Everywhere one Being, one Life – this is the goal of activity; the final state of equilibrium towards which the self is moving, or rather struggling, in the dimness and anguish of the Dark Night….The Dark Night is therefore an aspect or incident of the transition from multiplicity to Unity; of that mergence and union of the soul with the Absolute which is the whole object of the mystical evolution of man."

24		"More and more, as we study and collate all the available evidence, this fact – this law – is borne in on us: that the general movement of human consciousness, when it obeys its innate tendency to transcendence, is always the same. There is only one road from Appearance to Reality."

25		"This universe is free, self-creative. The divine action floods it: no part is more removed from the Godhead than any other part."