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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Mysticism
Evelyn Underhill
This is a classic work in the field of spiritual consciousness studies. Underhill writes of the awakening, purification and training of the self in its ascent of the path which leads to the blessedness of the Unitive life.

1 "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."

2 "The soul of the individual subject is the microcosm of the soul of the world."

3 "This gift of 'sonship', this power of free cooperation in the world process, is man's greatest honour."

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

5 "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'

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

7 "Whoever in Love's city enters, finds but room for One, and but in One-ness, Union." Jalalu'd Din, 'Wisdom of the East Series'

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

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

10 "The spirit of God breathes us out from Himself that we may love."

11 "No transmutation without fire, say the alchemists: No cross, no crown, says the Christian. All the great experts of the spiritual life agree – whatever their creeds, their symbols, their explanations – in describing this stress, tribulation, and loneliness, as an essential part of the way from the Many to the One; bringing the self to the threshold of that completed life which is to be lived in intimate union with Reality."

12 "The spring of the amazing energy which enables the great mystic to rise to freedom and dominate his world, is latent in all of us; an integral part of our humanity."

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

14 "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."

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

16 "The 'sense of God' is not a metaphor. Innumerable declarations prove it to be a consciousness as sharp as that which other men have of colour, heat, or light."

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

18 "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."

19 "Free and conscious cooperation in the great life of the All alone can make personal life worth living."

20 "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."

21 "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."

22 "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'

23 "This One is…not merely the Reality of all that is, but also a living and personal Object of Love."

24 "All…are called to their origin." Rulman Merswin

25 "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."

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite