Many / One

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Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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Mandala
Jose and Miriam Arguelles
Deals comprehensively with the mandala, as a universal principle, a vision, a way of growth, a ritual technique, and an essential life process.

1 "In one sense, all sacred religious structures partake of the Mandala principle: the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids; the temples of India, Buddhist stupas; Islamic mosques; the pagodas of China and Japan; and the tipis and kivas of North America; in the churches and cathedrals of Christianity."

2 "The world and its inhabitants are integral facets of one Mandala."

3 "The Mandala is infinite, as are the capacities of the individual."

4 "The circle is the original sign, the prime symbol of the nothing and the all; the symbol of heaven and the solar eye, the all-encompassing form beyond and through which man finds and loses himself."

5 "If man has alienated himself from the source, the center within, then it is the purpose of a Mandala ritual for our time to be used as a primal tool for investigating and opening that center, once again granting the individual an identification with the cosmic forces and their source."

6 "The center principle manifests itself through man in the same ways as it does through a flower or a star; in it we may discover our cosmic commonality – our cosmic community."

7 "The basic forces create and sustain each other through the mysterious power of the center. From this center flows the evolution of all phenomena in a symmetrically radiating manner. This is a cosmogenic process, which is beautifully described in the Great Treatise of 'The Book of Changes.'"

8 "Sorrow is only a transition between ignorance and illumination. Underlying even the basest acts and forms is the redeeming flow of an eternally self-transformative energy."

9 "Polarities are but the two extremes perceptible to us of one and the same motion."

10 "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

11 "All cycles of experience are interlinked and are the expression of one immutable law."

12 "The center is the beginning of the Mandala as it is the beginning and origin of all form and of all processes, including the extensions of form into time."

13 "In the present struggle of the planet the mandala presents itself as the seed-symbol of a more harmonized world order….The vision of renewed wholeness and brotherhood slowly spreads and filters through the consciousness of the [human] race."

14 "Universally inherent in man's consciousness, the Mandala has continually appeared in his constructions, rituals and art forms."

15 "As a cosmogenic model, the Mandala is a synchronous, self-renewing whole."

16 "The Vegetative [Living] Universe opens like a flower from the earth's center in which is Eternity." William Blake

17 "This eternal NOW and the realization of one's center are coeval, simultaneous events."

18 "If man can mandalize himself, there will be a resulting deployment of now unused energies within his bio-organic structutre. It is these energies which will be most instrumental in creating a radiant – radiating from multiple centers – planetary sphere."

19 "Sacred living is rooted in the source of wholeness and spreads outward as the flower from the stem."

20 "Like ripples in a pond, each awareness-moment expands out from its own center, containing in its form-pattern the configuration of all phenomena in the universe, material and immaterial."

21 "The Mandala was developed as a reminder of the direct perception of reality."

22 "In the Beginning was the Center: the center of the mind of God, the eternal Creator, the Dream of Brahman, the galaxies that swirl beyond the lenses of our great telescopes. In all of these the center is one, and in the center lies eternity."

23 "The holistic perception of alchemy relates directly to the Mandala. Many alchemical charts take on a Mandala form in revealing the integral interrelationships between the elements and qualities of nature. Alchemy also defines the proceses of consciousness as an on-going state of integral awareness."

24 "Each of us is an individualized being with a particular focalization and center of pure self-awareness; each of us is a creature of energy and light emanating our own creative field."

25 "Through contemplating his very form and the nature of his existence, man has often found a correspondence or series of correspondences to the workings of the cosmos as a whole – the macrocosm….If man conceives of himself as a microcosm, his way of life and community also take on the character of a cosmic order. Inherent in this idea is an intuition of the basic harmony of the universe and of man's desire to realize himself accordingly."

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite