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“All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Without external threats and challenges people just fall apart. Imagine a video game where you start with infinite hit points, currency, and weapons. Your video game character would just turn into a complete degenerate who would just mess around out of boredom, the entire society would turn into Grand Theft Auto. Keep in mind the vast majority of people are selfish, dumb, and foolish, especially so without societies that socialize them to be better. Without external pressure, society collapses into degeneracy.”
― Whatifalthist

“While studying the diverse branches of science, the true Sufi sees them as a whole as mere preliminaries; the sole end which he pursues is arrival at the contemplation of the unity of the Divine Essence and the negation of the world and his own self”
― Ibn Sab'in

“If you do not feel for others, you may be the most intellectual giant ever born, but you will be nothing; you are but dry intellect, and you will remain so. [...] Do you not know from the history of the world where the power of the prophets lay? Where was it? In the intellect? Did any of them write a fine book on philosophy, on the most intricate ratiocinations of logic? Not one of them. [...] Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; [...] It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God. Intellect is like limbs without the power of locomotion. It is only when feeling enters and gives them motion that they move and work on others. [...] It is one of the most practical things in Vedantic morality, for it is the teaching of the Vedanta that you are all prophets, and all must be prophets. The book is not the proof of your conduct, but you are the proof of the book. How do you know that a book teaches truth? Because you are truth and feel it. [...] Your godhead is the proof of God Himself. If you are not a prophet, there never has been anything true of God. If you are not God, there never was any God, and never will be.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“When the stored up kamma meets with conditions favourable to its maturation, it awakens from its dormant state and triggers off some effect that brings due compensation for the original action. The ripening may take place in the present life, in the next life, or in some life subsequent to the next. A kamma may ripen by producing rebirth into the next existence, thus determining the basic form of life; or it may ripen in the course of a lifetime, issuing in our varied experiences of happiness and pain, success and failure, progress and decline. But whenever it ripens and in whatever way, the same principle invariably holds: wholesome actions yield favourable results, unwholesome actions yield unfavourable results.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The very fact that we believe ourselves free, means, by the strict application of Occam’s Razor, that we are free. To argue otherwise is to make the insane claim that the real world, for no conceivable reason or purpose, invents illusions. If that were true, we could never know anything at all because absolutely everything could be an illusion. We would be living in the fantasy world created by Descartesâ€� malevolent demon. In rather similar terms, fundamentalist materialists propose that a more rational alternative to the concept of “Godâ€�, which they say explains nothing, is scientific randomness. However, randomness also explains nothing since it operates via miracles happening for no reason, and is even more of a mystery than God!”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“First let us clearly understand the position of monism: As manifested beings we appear to be separate, but our reality is one, and the less we think of ourselves as separate from that One, the better for us. The more we think of ourselves as separate from the Whole, the more miserable we become. From this monistic principle we get at the basis of ethics, and I venture to say that we cannot get any ethics from anywhere else.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The Sufi path is marked by a number of different stages or stations (maqdm/maqdmdt) which the Sufi traveller (sdlik) passes through as he advances on the path. On his way the Sufi also experiences various psychological and emotional states (hdl/ahwdf). [...] The Sufi’s progress along the path is hindered by the machinations of the self (nafs), that is, the ego-self or what is called in the Qur’an the self that incites or exhorts to evil {al-tiafs al-ammdrah bi-al-su). In order to maintain his progress along the path to God the Sufi must be able to control the ego-self by disciplining it, and by continually blaming and abasing it.”
― al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, Three Early Sufi Texts: A Treatise on the Heart, Stations of the Righteous, The Stumblings of Those Aspiring

“This creation is not run by blind forces. It operates according to an intelligent plan. […] It is unreasonable to suppose that this world is just a chance result of different combinations of atoms, with no guiding intelligence behind those atoms. On the contrary, is evident that there is law and order in the universe. Your life, and all life, is governed with mathematical precision by God’s intelligently framed cosmic laws. So by the divine law of action or karma, cause and effect, everything that you do is recorded in your soul. Thus, according to the measure of your work, whatever you accomplish through will power and creativity will be your passport after death to the heavenly regions earned by dutiful souls. And when you reincarnate in this world, you will be born with those mental powers developed by your previous efforts.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, To be Victorious in Life

“Harris expects us to dismiss free will as an illusion, whilst he fails to comprehend that he has generated a much greater mystery, namely, if matter can’t be free, how on earth can it suffer from delusions and illusions that it is free? Why are illusions of free will more scientifically plausible than free will? Where’s the scientific theory for this? There simply isn’t one. Harris has proposed that the “rationalâ€� alternative to free will is collections of atoms subject to mental illness.”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Everything that I do with the consciousness of God becomes meditation. Those who habitually drink can work while they remain under the influence of the alcohol. So, if you are habitually intoxicated with God, you can work without interrupting your inner divine communion.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, To Be Victorious in Life (Self-Realization Fellowship)

“Judgment Day refers to every moment in life when we must decide between doing good deeds and bad deeds. This alone shapes our destiny in the next moment. Judgment Day does not refer to any fictitious event in the calendar of God when people will rise from graves and line up in a queue to be allotted some Heaven or Hell. God does not need to do such shows and employ some prophets as lawyers.”
― Sanjeev Newar, Essence of Vedas: Know the startling facts about “Vedasâ€� â€� a timeless heritage that humanity possesses

“Behind the subconscious mind is the superconscious mind. The power of God within you, the power of limitless control, lies in the superconscious mind. That mind cannot be suggested with failure, but it can be eclipsed by the suggestion of failure. The superconscious mind is the all-knowing intuitive consciousness of the soul. That mind can be tapped in deep concentration and in soul-contact in meditation.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, To Be Victorious in Life (Self-Realization Fellowship)

“I find the whole world at my command. The elements, which seem so mysterious, the scriptures, which seem so contradictory —all things are made clear in the great light of God. In that Light everything is understood and mastered. To gain this wisdom of God is the only purpose for which you were sent here; and if you seek anything else instead, you are going to punish yourself. Find your Self and find God.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, To be Victorious in Life

“Regarding the convenient claim that Judaism avoids the “cultistâ€� tendencies of, for example, the Roman Catholic Church, by not claiming to be “the one and only true faith,â€� thus allegedly allowing followers to leave the religion without penalty:

In the Olam Ha-Ba [i.e., the Messianic Age], the whole world will recognize the Jewish G-d as the only true G-d, and the Jewish religion as the only true religion (Rich, 2001).

Could one have expected any less, though, given the “chosen groupâ€� complex of the entire tradition? Of course it’s “the one true religionâ€�! How could they be the “Chosen Peopleâ€� if it wasn’t?”
― Geoffrey D. Falk, Stripping the Gurus

“That God for whom you have been
searching all over the universe is all the time yourself.”
― Swami Vivekananda

“however abnormal present conditions may be when considered in themselves, they must nevertheless enter into the general order of things, that order which, according to a Far-Eastern formula, is made up of the sum of all disorders; the present age, however painful and troubled it may be, must also, like all the others, have its allotted place in the complete course of human development, and indeed the very fact of its being predicted by the traditional doctrines is indication enough that it is so.”
― René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

“Between the restless thoughts and God there is a wall; the ordinary person doesn’t try, so he never gets over that wall. But the spiritual fighter goes on. When the mind becomes still, you are in the kingdom of the Infinite. Those who have spent too much time on foolish things remain fruitlessly knocking outside.
Communion with God is the only thing to live for. You will have to come to that
understanding eventually, often after much suffering.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Man's Eternal Quest

“Prophet refers to our own soul. When we resolve to do good things alone, we make it certain that we would have success in life. Thus, we can make the prophecy of our bright future and hence we become Prophets. There is a Prophet in each of us. And there is no Prophet outside us. [...] Satan is the villain in each of us. Let us kill the urge to conduct vices and hence win over Satan. Satan lies inside us; it does not come from outside.”
― Sanjeev Newar, Essence of Vedas: Know the startling facts about “Vedasâ€� â€� a timeless heritage that humanity possesses

“Is the theory that lifeless, mindless atoms (obeying either deterministic laws or probabilistic laws of indeterminism) produce weird, unfathomable, ineffectual, pointless, mental illusions supposed to be more convincing than that we have genuine free will? The whole notion that a world made exclusively of matter, as materialist fundamentalists such as Harris insist, can suffer from illusions, delusions, hallucinations, mental illness, mental breakdowns, mental disorders, is so spectacularly silly that no sane person could ever take it seriously.
Harris, in his pathological determination to rid us of free will, has posited instead a world of delusional atoms in need of psychiatric help! What, do electrons hallucinate? Do protons have delusions of grandeur? Do quarks imagine themselves free? Are 1D-strings narcissistic? If none of these things is true, how on earth does Sam Harris propose that if humans are made of atoms alone, we can suffer from such illusions? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Harris doesn’t offer any evidence at all!”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about free-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone in the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all most vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of subtlety and ingenuity.”
― William James, Pragmatism

“there are people whose minds have ceased to be content with modern negation, and who, feeling the need for something that our own period cannot offer, see the possibility of an escape from the present crisis only in one way: through a return to tradition in one form or another. Unfortunately, such 'traditionalism' is not the same as the real traditional outlook, for it may be no more than a tendency, a more or less vague aspiration presupposing no real knowledge; and it is unfortunately true that, in the mental confusion of our times, this aspiration usually gives rise to fantastic and imaginary conceptions devoid of any serious foundation.”
― René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

“A person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Our definition of an atheist as someone who denies perfection has an immediate corollary; he is also someone who denies meaning. If you think about it, meaning is entirely invested in perfection. We expect a perfect being to know the meaning of existence, and be capable of telling us. We expect a perfect evolutionary process to culminate with we ourselves being perfect and knowing everything. Our pursuit of perfection/God is the meaning of life. To be an atheist
is to reject perfection, hence reject meaning. That’s why we brand all atheists as nihilists. They don’t believe in anything. They don’t believe in meaning. And that makes them no different from machines. They are not living beings, or they refuse to be living beings. They are unquestionably high on the autistic spectrum, and they see themselves and the universe as machines rather than living, evolving organisms, getting more and more perfect.”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“The ruby wine in the golden goblet
Is soul-inspiring, as it were a beautiful pearl.
Welcome is the fire of desire to those inspired with love!
Welcome are the delightful pains of the lords of love!”
― Saadi, Sadi's Scroll of Wisdom

“All scientific theories are required to be “falsifiableâ€� and that ipso facto means that none can be true since Truth, by definition, is unfalsifiable. Equally, all scientific theories are required to be verifiable, but nothing can ever definitively verify any scientific theory, and Truth is not in any case something that requires any synthetic a posteriori verification, only analytic a priori proof â€� the complete opposite!
Science is a pragmatic, instrumental subject. It’s the science of appearances, not the science of ultimate reality, of things as they are in themselves, beyond appearance. Only ontological mathematics can address that noumenal, hidden reality. Science is undeniably good at producing theories that allow us to manipulate the “seen worldâ€�, but it’s just as bad at producing theories that allow us to manipulate the “unseen worldâ€� â€� which is the religious world in which humanity has always been most interested.”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life