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		"The circular sea with no outlet, which perpetually replenishes itself by means of a spring bubbling up in its centre, is to be found in [the writings of] Nicholas of Cusa as an allegory of God." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

2		"We need to worship in circles again, preferably on the soil of Mother Earth wherever possible. Circles invite all creatures to be part of the grateful event and they allow the humans present to look each other in the eye while rounding and connecting themselves in step with the universe." The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (Matthew Fox)

3		"In the Mind's Eye I see the Infinite Sphere and Its Self-Awareness, two that are One." The Child Within Us Lives!, A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics (William Samuel)

4		"In Aristotle's cosmology, the circular motions of the celestial spheres, and through them all other cycles of natural change, are sustained eternally by the prime mover, which moves all things by the attraction of its perfect being." The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon, vol. 1 (Mortimer J. Adler, editor)

5		"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)

6		"Looking at a circle is like looking into a mirror. We create and respond irresistibly to circles, cylinders, and spheres because we recognize ourselves in them. The message of the shape bypasses our conscious mental circuitry and speaks directly to the quiet intelligence of our deepest being. The circle is a reflection of the world's – and our own – deep perfection, unity, design excellence, wholenes, and divine nature." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

7		"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowhere that this light is not. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well….Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within, and joined to all as surely as all is joined to you." A Course in Miracles (Helen Schucman and William Thetford)

8		"The oldest mandala drawing known to me is a paleolithic 'sun wheel', recently discovered in Rhodesia….Things reaching so far back in human history naturally touch upon the deepest layer of the unconscious and affect the latter where conscious speech shows itself to be quite impotent. Such things cannot be thought up but must grow again from the forgotten depths, if they are to express the deepest insights of consciousness and the loftiest intuitions of the spirit. Coming from these depths they blend together the uniqueness of present-day consciousness with the age-old past of life." C. G. Jung The Secret of the Golden Flower (Richard Wilhelm, translator)

9		"We will see how we are a tribe and a company, in circle after circle rippling out and intersecting. We will see how we are all entering each other – as gifts to each other, mirroring and completing each other: and how we are all unique angles on the centre." Alchemy, The Art of Transformation (Jay Ramsay)

10		"The inner eye of the soul perceives life with the spherical vision of the mind of God." The Human Aura (Kuthumi and Djwal Kul)

11		"The mandals [is] a sacred, mystical symbol of the universe." Breaking the Mind Barrier (Todd Siler)

12		"The mandala is a symbol which combines both the journey and its destination, the ideas of differentiation and the oneness of all things, the 'unus mundus'. Examples still persist from Paleolithic times as, for instance, in Rhodesian rock engravings. Such images, when they occur in modern dreams, are thus spontaneous re-creations of the most basic religious symbol known to humanity." Ariadne's Clue, A Guide to the Symbols of Humankind (Anthony Stevens)

13		"Even a pebble or a tiny insect is gathered up in the sacred hoop." Leonard Crow Dog (Sioux Native American), American Indian Myths and Legends (Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, editors)

14		"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)

15		"In the circle, which comprehends in itself the beginning and the end, we have the figure of true being; and circular motion is the only enduring form of motion. From this Spirit, which is called the Life of the Universe, proceed the life and soul of everything which has soul and life." Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), Italian philosopher and poet, answer at his trial before the Inquisitor in Venice, May 1592, quoted by I. Firth in "Life of Giordano Bruno, Boston 1887, p. 123 Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (Cranston/Head, editors)

16		"The Point within a Circle…is the Divine Spirit indwelling creation and abiding in the nature of man." A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (Arthur Edward Waite)

17		"In nature the One circle gives rise to the Many, in the shapes and orbits of the planets, in the roundness of berries, nests, eyeballs, and the cycles of time." A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

18		"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)

19		"In the circle of life all things are present and connected." Manual for the PeaceMaker (Jean Houston with Margaret Rubin)

20		"In both dreams and religion, the relation of the center to the mandala expresses the relation between the potential and the actual." Michael Flanagin, Ph.D., 'The Mandala in Jungian Psychotherapy' Mandala, Luminous Symbols for Healing (Judith Cornell, Ph.D.)

21		"The mandala…portrays an autonomous psychic fact, characterized by a phenomenology which is always repeating itself and is everywhere the same. It seems to be a sort of atomic nucleus." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

22		"Universally inherent in man's consciousness, the Mandala has continually appeared in his constructions, rituals and art forms." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

23		"Concentric circles, with one circle inside another, represents the cosmos." Symbols, Guiding Lights Along the Journey of Life (Kathleen R. Prata)

24		"As a cosmogenic model, the Mandala is a synchronous, self-renewing whole." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

25		"A mandala [is] an ordering pattern or pattern of order which is either consciously devised or appears spontaneously as a product of unconscious processes." Collected Works (Carl Jung)