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		"Humanity returns by a sort of circulatory movement to its first beginning, being united by the work of the Incarnation to the very origin of all things." Thomas Aquinas, 'A Compendium of Theology', I, 201 Sheer Joy, Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality (Matthew Fox)

2		“Caesarius of Heisterbach says that the soul has a ‘spherical nature.’” Collected Works (Carl Jung)

3		"The whole world is a circle. All of these circular images reflect the psyche, so there may be some relationship between these architectural designs and the actual structuring of our spiritual functions….the circle represents totality. Everything within the circle is one thing, which is encircled, enframed. That would be the spatial aspect. But the temporal aspect of the circle is that you leave, go somewhere, and always come back. God is the alpha and the omega, the source and the end. The circle suggests immediately a completed totality, whether in time or in space." The Power of Myth (Joseph Campbell)

4		"The Mandala has appeared throughout man's history as a universal and essential symbol of integration, harmony, and transformation. It gives form to the most primordial intuition of the nature of reality, an intuition that inheres in each of us, giving us life." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

5		"Mandalas are birth-places, vessels of birth in the most literal sense, lotus-flowers in which a Buddha comes to life." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

6		"Mandalas…are produced spontaneously, without external influence, even by children and adults who have never come into contact with any such ideas….The mandala symbolizes, by its central point, the ultimate unity of all archetypes as well as the multiplicity of the phemonenal world, and is therefore the empirical equivalent of the metaphysical concept of a 'unus mundus' [one world]." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

7		"The circle with the point in the centre is symbolic of the perfected man. He is rounded out; he is inclusive both vertically (soul contact) and horizontally (human relationship)." The Rays and The Initiations (Alice A. Bailey)

8		"In 1918-1919 Jung sketched a circular drawing in his notebook every morning. These mandalas gave him insight into the development of his personality, a sense of the meanings growing in him. 'My mandalas', he wrote, 'were cryptograms concerning the state of the self which were presented to me anew each day. In them I saw the self – that is, my whole being – actively at work.' ('Memories, Dreams, Reflections')" Spiritual Pilgrims, Carl Jung & Teresa of Avila (John Welch, O. Carm.)

9		"Man is a transition, an agent of transformation as well as the material to be transformed. This transformative operation can occur only through the focusing power of some new symbol or image of the whole process in which man now finds himself involved. In its universality, the Mandala provides at least the base structure for such a symbol." Mandala (Jose and Miriam Arguelles)

10		"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)

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

12		"Mandalas have been used by many cultures to represent the creation of the universe. Carl Jung has theorized that mandalas represent centering, the unification of parts of the psyche." Seeing With the Mind's Eye (Mike Samuels, M.D. and Nancy Samuels)

13		"The animate world is the larger circle, man is the smaller circle. He is the microcosm. Consequently, everything without is within, everything above is below. Between all things in the larger and smaller circles reigns 'correspondence'." Collected Works (Carl Jung)

14		"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)

15		"The unconscious can be reached and expressed only by symbols, and art, myth, dream, and fantasy, with their symbolic propensities, are effective psychopomps, leading the mind to an anamnesis of the origins of psychic life. The result of this anamnesis (an 'unforgetting' or rediscovery) is, on the one hand, an accession to power and vitality resultant from this integration. On the other hand, the mind experiences a perception of something akin to essential form and divinity at the heart of the creation and begins to sense an underlying acausal pattern of continuous creation. The two aspects coalesce in spontaneous images, often taking the form of a mandala and emphasizing a unifying centrality surrounded by a symmetrical quaternary or circular structure suggesting a microcosmic-macrocosmic identity between creature and the cosmic creation." The Strong Eye of Shamanism, A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness (Robert E. Ryan, Ph.D.)

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

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

18		"The circle (or sphere) is a symbol of the Self. It expresses the totality of the psyche in all its aspects, including the relationship between man and the whole of nature. Whether the symbol of the circle appears in primitive sun worship or modern religion, in myths or dreams, in the mandalas drawn by Tibetan monks, in the ground plans of cities, or in the spherical concepts of early astronomers, it always points to the single most vital aspect of life – its ultimate wholeness." Aniela Jaffe, 'Symbolism in the Visual Arts' Man and His Symbols (Carl Jung)

19		"The hidden potential within the single fertilized cell from which the entire structure of a human arises is a mirror in miniature of the creation." The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D.)

20		"Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round." Black Elk (1863-1950), Native American elder A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art & Science (Michael S. Schneider)

21		"A certain circulation appears in love because it is from good and toward good and that circling agrees with the divine eternity of love, since circular motion alone can be perpetual." Thomas Aquinas, DDN, n. 450, p. 148 Sheer Joy, Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality (Matthew Fox)

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

23		"Well, there is something magical about a circle. For one thing, geometrically it encompasses more space than any other shape. But this is just a mathematical beginning. The circle is also profoundly symbolic, for a circle travels without leave-taking. So it combines journeying with returning. It's powerful in bringing the two together." The Way Things Are (Huston Smith, edited by Phil Cousineau)

24		"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)

25		"Both as a principle of unity and a model of the cosmos, the sphere represents the ultimate undivided, undifferentiated whole." Keith Chritchlow, 'Twelve Criteria for Sacred Architecture' Homage to Pythagoras, Rediscovering Sacred Science (Christopher Bamford, editor)