Love Theory of Everything

LOVE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

To my loved ones, known: Lisa, Allison, Michael, Christopher, Anne, John, Lillian, Abe, Edith, Marvin, David, Marsha, Dillon, Daniel… Emily, Tyler, Tristan, Anita, Bob… Bob, Ray, Roger, Jay… and, unknown.

As everything, for him, was an article of faith, nothing, to his mind, was difficult to understand: the Great Flood had covered the entire world; before, men had the misfortune of living a thousand years; God conversed with them; Noah had taken one hundred years to build the ark; while the earth, suspended in air, stood firmly at the center of the universe that God had created out of nothingness. When I said to him, and proved to him, that the existence of nothingness was absurd, he cut me short, calling me silly. Giocomo Casanova

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 9 Chapter 1—What Is Important? ...... 21 Attraction (+) ...... 26 Submission (−) ...... 39 Connection (=) ...... 39 Three Levels of Love ...... 63 Chapter 2—How Is Reality? ...... 67 Physical (∞) ...... 68 Mental (Ø) ...... 76 Transcendental (1) ...... 76 Three Aspects of Love ...... 121 Chapter 3—Why Is Everything?...... 131 The Absolute (↑) ...... 132 The Relative (∂) ...... 154 The Whole (∆) ...... 176 Three Respects of Love ...... 189 Epilogue ...... 194 Index ...... 199

Introduction

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. Stephen Hawking

(Why This Book Exists) Love Theory of Everything was created to share discoveries after years of research and reflection in the search for truth. Reading, collecting, organizing, summarizing, and writing this information has resulted in this book. It is the author’s hope that family and friends will find this book of use in their personal search and life journey, but this book is for anyone who might benefit from it. Maybe others can expand these ideas in other useful and insightful ways. Most of us have stopped and thought about the big questions: What is the meaning of life? What is the ultimate reality of the universe? How should we live? Why is there something rather than nothing? Is there a god? Is one of the

9 religions more right than others? What happens after we die? What is …? How …? Why …? Unfortunately, the answers aren’t easy. It’s not that the answers are hard to find. It’s the very opposite: the answers are everywhere. The answers are diverse … and conflicting. Generally, the answers are often too complicated, and even worse yet, too vague. Many attempts at answering the important questions are just plain fanatical, odd, and clearly have problems. There are other problems. Language is one of them. Say the word god to different people and notice the diversity of reactions. You get everything from angelic respect, to dismissal and sometimes utter indignation. Worse yet, say the word religion to people. Maybe the biggest problem is apathy. People are too busy, and don’t have time for deep questions. There’s more pressing issues. There’s more enjoyable things to do. There’s something more important. Many times it’s life’s traditions that are the culprit. People learned about that in Sunday school, in college, or from their family. Before there is insight there is knowledge, before knowledge, there are beliefs. Beliefs come from answers, and the answers can be significant if the right questions are asked. Questions are the first step to insight. (How This Book Helps) In the search for answers to life’s greatest questions, philosophy, science, and religion provide a comprehensive perspective. Perspective is particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view. While each provides valuable insight into the great questions, individually they are incomplete. Combined, the three perspectives give us a better understanding. With understanding, we experience awareness of a deeper insight, a spirituality that helps us find true meaning, and purpose in our lives. Take your time in reading Love Theory of Everything . Even though the book is short, it is filled with many thought-provoking quotes, and summaries that can benefit you. Ponder, question, and add your own insight. Be open to exploring, and broadening your own perspective. Broad perspective leads to deeper understanding. Understanding leads to tolerance and respect. Tolerance and respect are key to peace of mind, success, and happiness.

(What This Book Is)

Sometimes a change in perspective is all it takes to see the light. Dan Brown

A theory of everything should account for more than physics. It should include everything, including life, consciousness, and all ultimate realities. Love Theory of Everything answers questions about these, and other important subjects. It breaks down the big picture into fundamental relationships that answer the big questions. Understanding how quantum mechanics and gravity-relativity are related would be a monumental scientific achievement greater than E=mc 2, but understanding everything from a philosophical, religious, and scientific standpoint would be the apex. Love Theory of Everything is a most ambitious project. It asks the greatest questions, consults the greatest minds, receives the greatest answers, forms the greatest conclusion, and shares it. Love Theory of Everything explores three seminal relationships: Three Levels of Love, Three Aspects of Love, and Three Respects of Love. Each answers fundamental questions concerning an overall theory of everything. Many of us are either gifted or cursed (possibly both) with the need to understand the big picture. No doubt, this becomes more common with age. Life’s extreme events, positive and negative, cause us to contemplate the big picture and our place in it. The transitions of life: birth and death, marriage and divorce, changes in residence and employment, success and failure in relationships, finances, and health, concerning not only ourselves, but those around us, lead us to question. They have with all us to some degree. Before exploring Love Theory of Everything , consider the story of the Blind Students and the Elephant: Long ago, a small circus visited a school for unfortunate children. Before the performance, the school arranged for six blind students to meet the elephant. The students were very excited. Each of them only had a vague idea about the creature. One by one, the children were led to the elephant. Each of them touched the animal and was amazed by its quality. After the circus, the children compared their experiences. Their discussions quickly became disagreements. Each of the

11 students argued the elephant was different, like a spear, snake, flying carpet, pillar, wall, and rope. All of the students were convinced their description was best. Any description that did not match theirs was wrong in their mind. Compromise was not an option, as their words became heated. A teacher heard the commotion and intervened. After learning the problem, the teacher explained to the students they only touched part of the elephant. As it turned out, all of them were right, not just one, but none of them knew the big picture. Eventually, the children understood, stopped arguing, and peace returned.

As the Blind Students and the Elephant story shows, truth can be elusive with a limited perspective. Only after combining a broad range of perspectives can we approach truth. Love Theory of Everything best fits a cross range of all major perspectives: philosophical, scientific, and religious and a consensus of the wisest minds from all disciplines worldwide and throughout history. Answers are organized according to ten perspectives: academic philosophy, life, and traditional love for philosophy, physics, mathematics, and psychology for science, Abrahamic, Eastern, and natural religions for religion, plus an overall spiritual summary view. The diverse quotes are from some of the greatest minds who ever lived, which combined, form basic overall concepts. Summary charts of these perspectives are at the end of each chapter. They show at least a billion different ways to tell the same story of everything. All major perspectives, across the world throughout history from the wisest minds are consulted, including Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Plato, John Lennon, Gandhi, Jesus, Muhammad, Gautama Buddha, Rumi, Alan Watts, Chief Joseph, Mother Teresa, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Confucius, Martin Luther King Jr, Thomas Jefferson, Dalia Lama XIV, Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Helen Keller, Bob Marley, John Wesley, Richard Feynman, Voltaire, Leo Tolstoy, Susan B. Anthony, William Shakespeare, Abraham

Lincoln, John Paul II, Carl Jung, Ayn Rand, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, and Charles Darwin.

In philosophy, we are thinking as we search for answers, and practice what we believe. In science, we also are searching, but are acting as we test to acquire knowledge. Religion, like science, goes beyond thinking, and is acting, but also is practicing, and thanking. Philosophy is the study of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning. Philosophy includes academic, life, and love. Academic philosophy includes axiology, metaphysics, and epistemology. Philosophy of life involves the realities of human existence. Philosophy of love concerns the nature of love through personal relationships.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. Henry David Thoreau Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom. Marcus T. Cicero

Wisdom without love is like having lungs but no air to breathe. Do not seek wisdom in order to acquire knowledge but in order to live and love more fully. Adyashanti Philosophy is the product of wonder. Alfred North Whitehead The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy. Voltaire The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it. Alfred North Whitehead The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man. Marquis de Sade How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do. Arthur Schopenhauer A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. Ludwig Wittgenstein Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I'll tell you their philosophy of life. Dale Carnegie Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. Socrates Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating! Iris Murdoch

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher. H. L. Mencken Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love. Karl Marx To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher. Blaise Pascal The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer. George Bernard Shaw The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. Bertrand Russell The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Karl Marx The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. —The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question. Ludwig Wittgenstein Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know. Bertrand Russell

Science is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Science includes physics, mathematics, and psychology. Physics is the branch of science concerned with the fundamental properties of matter and forces of energy. Mathematics is the study of abstract, numerical, and logical measurement. Psychology is the study of the mind, consciousness, and behavior.

Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more. Albert Einstein

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being … Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues. Richard Dawkins Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the Universe. Galileo Galilei The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite. Richard Dawkins At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. Carl Sagan A discovery in science, or a new theory, even when it appears most unitary and most all-embracing, deals with some immediate element of novelty or paradox within the framework of far vaster, unanalyzed, unarticulated reserves of knowledge, experience, faith, and presupposition. Our progress is narrow; it takes a vast world unchallenged and for granted. This is one reason why, however great the novelty or scope of new discovery, we neither can, nor need, rebuild the house of the mind very rapidly. This is one reason why science, for all its revolutions, is conservative. This is why we will have to accept the fact that no one of us really will ever know very much. This is why we shall have to find comfort in the fact that, taken together, we know more and more. J. Robert Oppenheimer As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. Albert Einstein I find it [science] analytical, pretentious and superficial—largely because it does not address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox—in other words, —all the things I love the most. Luis Buñuel

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it. Richard Feynman

Religion is a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. Religion includes Abrahamic, Eastern, and natural. Abrahamic religions believe in one supreme god and have origins in the biblical Abraham. Abrahamic religions include Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Eastern religions shift away from worshipping a supreme god, opting instead to focus on dharma, or ethical beliefs harmonized with all of nature. Eastern religions include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Natural religions are religions that are highly symbolic or mythological. These religions include primitive and folk or tribal- based beliefs, like the traditions of the Native Americans, and pre-Christian European paganism. Neo-paganism includes Wicca, and some elements of New Age traditions, which, in turn, may include elements of Neoplatonism. Non- affiliated, modern syncretic and other belief-systems, including non-religious are also included in this group.

Religion is love; in no case is it logic. Beatrice Potter Webb Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life. Paul Tillich Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy. George Gurdjieff Too many intellectuals look down on religion and think it will go away. God is not going to go away. There are far more religious people in the world today than when I was born. Charles Hartshorne All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree... Albert Einstein

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad. Thomas Paine There is really nothing more to say except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. Toni Morrison Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy. Lady Mary Wortle Montagu If the only thing wrong with Moses is that he's not yours; if the only thing wrong with Jesus is that he's not yours; if the only thing wrong with mosques, Lent, chanting, Mecca, Buddha, confession, or reincarnation is that they're not yours— well, maybe the problem is you. Mitch Albom Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice. Karen Armstrong The right answer is seldom as important as the right question. Kip Thorne Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it. J. D. Stroube Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. Dr. Seuss There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Zora Neale Hurston

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope? Immanuel Kant Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning. Albert Einstein When I reach for the edge of the Universe I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery there are times when, at least for now, one must be content to love the questions themselves. Neil deGrasse Tyson He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. Friedrich Nietzsche He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions . Confucius The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Laozi

The big questions, parts of a theory of everything, include life, death, God, soul, afterlife, universe, mind, reason, spirituality, evil, and the unknown. These are answered by an understanding of value, nature, and cause. Love Theory of Everything is centered upon three questions and answers regarding these most fundamental relationships. These questions, covered in the following chapters, are: What is important? How is reality? Why is everything? Love Theory of Everything answers of quotes, definitions, and concepts. Interdimensional quotes crossing the boundaries between philosophy, science and religion underscore an overall spirituality.

A comprehensive view of love is the answer to our greatest mysteries: the illusive Theory of Everything. While traditionally seen as just an emotion, or an evolutionary instinct, love is the ultimate paradox: the ultimate truth hiding in plain view as our ultimate concern and our ultimate secret. It is the answer to everything hidden in plain sight of everything we do all the time, and everywhere. It is the truth we know, but don’t know we know. The greatest secret of the universe is the greatest cliché: love is everything. Ask the big questions. Accumulate all the wisdom possible. Discard the conflict. Share the truth. The greater the perspective the clearer the truth. Subscribe to all the greatest wisdom from every time and every place. Love is blind. If you do not see, then look some more. How to read … music, straight through and/or random … Love Theory of Everything is not the answer to every question, but it does answer, in Chapter 1 , What is important?

Chapter 1—What Is Important?

What is important? What is of value? How should we live?

There is nothing better or more necessary than love. St. John of the Cross

What is Love ?

Love—A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (ahdictionary.com)

According to Wikipedia, love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection ("I love my mother") to pleasure ("I loved that meal"). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment. It can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions

21 towards other humans, one's self or animals. Non-Western traditions have also distinguished variants or symbioses of these states; words like storge, philia, eros, and agape each describe a unique "concept" of love. Love has additional religious or spiritual meaning—notably in Abrahamic religions. This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts. Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species. Drawing from a consensus of the major English dictionaries love is a noun (and corresponding verb,) that is commonly defined, as follows: • A strong, deep and positive emotion of affection or compassion for another, often arising from kinship or close friendship. • A strong and deep romantic or sexual desire or attachment to another, or the corresponding passionate activity between them. • An extreme liking, attachment to, or pleasure in something. • A feeling of reverent devotion or adoration toward God or a god; the benevolent concern of God for mankind; an overall feeling of care and mercy towards people or living beings in general. Types of Love Of the major textbook definitions of love, three specific types are common. First, love is an attraction to something of value for oneself, the second and third parts of the preceding definition. Examples include the deep appreciation of the beauty of a rose, a sexual attraction, and the desire to go to heaven. Second, love is a deep and positive regard and concern for another person, the first part of the definition above. The treatment of a friend as family, and raising children the best you can, are examples. Third, love is a deep and positive overall awareness the sacred, the fourth part of the definition. Often considered profound, or spiritual, this type of love can be experienced in moments of solitude and meditation, or during times of significant sensation or emotion. Ancient Greek and Roman languages used several words to describe different aspects of love. Eros is a passionate, intense desire for something or someone. It is the creative, often sexual desire of lovers, or for objects of interest and pleasure. Ludus is play, playfulness, game, or sport. It has the appearance of

Eros or love, but is deficient due to lack of concern for others, considered as mere opponents. Mania is an excessively intense enthusiasm, interest, or desire. It also appears as Eros, but is deficient due to being overly concerned for oneself, and lacking of others. Philia is the care and concern for the well-being of another person or persons, including kinship and friendship. Storge is natural or instinctual affection, as between parents and children. It appears as Philia, but is deficient due to biological and sociological instincts, and evolution. Pragma is practical service. It appears as love, but is deficient because the concern for another is less of a priority than economic or social concerns. Agape is the paternal love of God for man and of man for God but is extended to include a brotherly love for all humanity, love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature. Spiritual, community. Xenia is hospitality to strangers. Appearance of Agape, but deficient due to motive of societal pressures, or base concern for others. Ataraxia is calmness or peace of mind; emotional tranquility. Appearance of Agape, but deficient due to lack of awareness of connection; a benefit of love, i.e. calmness, peace, and equanimity. There are many different theories that attempt to explain what love is, and what function it serves, according to Wikipedia. It would be very difficult to explain love to a hypothetical person who had not himself or herself experienced love or being loved. In fact, to such a person love would appear to be quite strange if not outright irrational behavior. Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of love there are: psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider love to be very healthy behavior; there are evolutionary theories that hold that love is part of the process of natural selection; there are spiritual theories that may, for instance consider love to be a gift from God; there are also theories that consider love to be an unexplainable mystery, very much like a mystical experience. Many theories concern the nature of love. Below are some of the most cited, complete with Wikipedia descriptions.

Color wheel theory of love is an idea created by Canadian psychologist John Alan Lee that describes six styles of love, using several of the Greek words for love. First introduced in his book Colors of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving (1973), Lee defines three primary, three secondary and nine tertiary love styles, describing them in terms of the traditional color wheel. The three primary types are Eros, Ludus and Storge, the three secondary types are Mania, Pragma and Agape.

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions – In 1980 Robert Plutchik constructed a wheel-like diagram of emotions visualizing eight basic emotions, plus eight derivative emotions each composed of two basic ones. Basic emotions: Joy and Sadness, Trust and Disgust, Fear and Anger, Surprise and Anticipation. Human feelings, or results of emotions, and Emotions: Optimism = Anticipation + Joy and Disapproval; Love = Joy + Trust and Remorse; Submission = Trust + Fear and Contempt; Awe = Fear + Surprise and Aggression; Disapproval = Surprise + Sadness and Optimism; Remorse = Sadness + Disgust and Love; Contempt = Disgust + Anger and Submission; Aggressiveness = Anger + Anticipation and Awe. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation in Psychological Review. Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the words physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, self-actualization, and self-transcendence to describe the pattern that human motivations generally pass. Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love – The triangular theory of love is a theory of love developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg. In the context of interpersonal relationships, the three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy component, a passion component, and a decision and commitment component. Intimacy: Which encompasses feelings of attachment, closeness, connectedness, and bondedness. Passion: Which encompasses drives connected to both limerence and sexual attraction. Commitment: Which encompasses, in the short term, the decision to remain with another, and in the long term, plans made with that other. Chapman’s Five Love Languages – The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate is a 1995 book by Gary Chapman. It outlines five ways to express and experience love that Chapman calls "love languages": receiving gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service (devotion), and physical touch. Lewis’ Four Loves – The Four Loves is a book by C. S. Lewis which explores the nature of love from a Christian and philosophical perspective through thought experiments. The book was based on a set of radio talks from 1958, criticized in the US at the time for their frankness about sex. The four loves are Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity.

Lövheim’s Cube of Emotion is a proposed theoretical model aiming at explaining the relationship between the monoamine neurotransmitters and the emotions. The model was proposed in a paper of 2012 by Hugo Lövheim. In the model, the three monoamine neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline form the axes of a coordinate system, and the eight basic emotions, labeled according to the affect theory of Silvan Tomkins, are placed in the eight corners. The origin corresponds to a situation where all three signal substance are low. The eight corners of the cube correspond to the eight possible combinations of low or high level of the three monoamines as shown in the table below. The model hence proposes a direct relation between specific combinations of the levels of the signal substances and certain basic emotions, and merges a categorical and a dimensional view of emotions. One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love. So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, sing it to describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In the same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their lives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion? Alexandra Adornetto

What is important to us? What is important to the universe? What is important overall?

Attraction (+)

All the particles of the world are in love and looking for lovers. Rumi

Attraction is important. Attraction is an energy for oneself that likes, wants, and values the goodness of beauty. A strong and deep romantic or sexual desire or attachment to another, or the corresponding passionate activity between them. An extreme liking, attachment to, or pleasure in something. Eros is a passionate, intense desire for something or someone. It is the creative, often sexual desire of lovers, or for objects of interest and pleasure. Attraction is known through many perspectives. Attraction is the first level of love, and the foundation of everything important, valuable, and essential. Attraction is the creative and passionate love of value: eros, kama, and aesthetics, the addition of good perceptions and wonder for oneself. Attraction is goodness, creativity, and love for oneself. In the beginning was nothing, except the desire for something else. Everything and everyone is conceived in desire. The past and present desire the future. Nature is attracted to change. Time is attracted to the future. Cause is attracted to effect. Particles are attracted through forces. Energy is attracted to energy. Quantum field theory’s particles as excited states of energetic field… Higgs boson and mass… String theory’s vibrating strings… potential energy and change… Relationships… Love as good relationships, creative energy, and positive change… Law of Attraction as like attracts like in New Thought’s power of positive thinking. The Kybalion , and self-help psychology… Non-existence is attracted to existence, and existence is attracted to non- existence. Nothingness is attracted to somethingness. Everything is attracted to something. Want , like , fondness, need, wish, desire, attachment, interest, eros, kama… Everything we like is attraction. Eros and kama involve desires of the body. Desire is the feeling of wanting to have something or wishing that something will happen; or to wish or long for; want.

Energy , creative , addition, excitement, passion , increase, receive, sense, perceptions, experiences, processes, activity, inspires, guides, strengthens, raises, oneself … Love is the energy of attraction. All love is attraction. All love is first love. Everything begins as attraction. True love is always new. Love is happiness. Love is success. Love inspires us to action. Love guides and strengthens us. Love raises us to our highest ideals. Passion is a state of strong sexual desire or love. Addition is the operation of joining something to increase its scope. Excitation is a change raised to a higher energy level. Energy is the capacity for work or vigorous activity. Oneself is one's own self. Perceptions are the processes of sensing something. Value , importance, goodness, essential, worth, usefulness, merit, aesthetics, beauty, art, appreciation, admiration, positivity, happiness, success, pleasure, satisfaction, conditional , fragile, precious, rare… Appreciate the sensational experiences of man and nature. Love is the experience of the good, a pleasure for oneself, the attraction to beauty of the senses. Love for oneself is conditional. Conditional love is fragile—nothing is more precious. Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature, expression, and perception of beauty, as in the fine arts. Axiology is the study of the nature of values and value judgments. Value is worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit. Goodness is the quality of being positive or desirable in nature; not bad. Wonder is a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. Aesthetics

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. Love is the beauty of the soul. St. Augustine What you seek is seeking you. Rumi Beauty awakens the soul to act. Dante Alighieri Art is love. Silvia Hartmann Love is art, not truth. It’s like painting scenery. Lorrie Moore

To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. Arthur Conan Doyle Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love. Rumi Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love. Evelyn Underhill There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty. Joseph Addison The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth. Henry Theodore Tuckerman Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern. Alfred North Whitehead Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal. Dante Alighieri Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. Alfred North Whitehead Beauty is whatever gives joy. Hugh Nibley Things are beautiful if you love them. Jean Anouilh Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy. Anne Frank Every thing is beautiful in its right use. Tadj Abelkader It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Leo Tolstoy Love isn't an emotion or an instinct—it's an art. Mae West

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good; but that which is good is always beautiful. Ninon de L’Enclos Love is the only gold. Alfred Lord Tennyson Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul. George Bancroft Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God. Jean Anouilh Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance. John Ruskin A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Gertrude Stein The rose speaks of love silently, in a language known only to the heart. unknown Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso A room without books is like a body without a soul. Marcus T. Cicero Music is to the soul what words are to the mind. Modest Mouse Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. Plato

Oneself

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. Rumi Let us live for the beauty of our own reality. Tim Robbins

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment— just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!—an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience—or to fake— a sense of self-esteem … Love is our response to our highest values—and can be nothing else. Ayn Rand Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. Marcus Aurelius The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Ernest Hemingway You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. Gautama Buddha Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love. Ayn Rand People who do not love themselves can adore others, because adoration is making someone else big and ourselves small. They can desire others, because desire comes out of a sense of inner incompleteness, which demands to be filled. But they can not love others, because love is an affirmation of the living growing being in all of us. If you don't have it, you can't give it. Andrew Matthews

Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got. Benjamin Hoff Paradoxically, we fail to disclose ourselves to other people because we want so much to be loved. Because we feel that way we present ourselves as someone we think can be loved and accepted, and we conceal whatever would mar that image. Another reason we hide is to protect ourselves from change. . . Still another reason we don't disclose ourselves is that we were never taught how. . . Personal ambitions and economic pressures also give us powerful reasons for concealing what we really are. . . All of us hide behind the iron curtain of our public selves. . . Men hide what prevents them from seeming strong and masculine. . . Disclosure is so important (because) without it we really cannot know ourselves. Or to put it another way, we learn to deceive ourselves while we are trying to deceive others. For example, if I never express my sorrow, my love, my joy, I'll smother those feelings in myself until I almost forget they were once part of me. Sidney Jourard Until you value yourself you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. M. Scott Peck If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem. Richard Bach Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives. Louise L. Hay I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. Rumi

Passion

We only love truly once. It is the first time and succeeding passions are less uncontrolled. La Mecanique du Coeur Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. John Donne Love is the root of all joy and sorrow. Meister Eckhart Loving yourself … does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion. Margot Anand No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness. Mary Wollstonecraft Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable. Henry Ward Beecher The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end. Benjamin Disraeli One is very crazy when in love. Sigmund Freud Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet. William Shakespeare Love is a serious mental disease. Plato When love is not madness, it is not love. Pedro Calderon de la Barca What she had realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst. Stieg Larsson The hottest love has the coldest end. Socrates

Addition

Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviours. Keep your behaviours positive, because your behaviours become your habits. Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny. Mahatma Gandhi The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life. Roy T. Bennett Love is... a positive force of life. Rhonda Byrne In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything…. Mignon McLaughlin

Excitation

Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused. Paulo Coelho Energy can have two dimensions. One is motivated, going somewhere, a goal somewhere, this moment is only a means and the goal is going to be the dimension of activity, goal oriented—then everything is a means, somehow it has to be done and you have to reach the goal, then you will relax. But for this type of energy the goal never comes because this type of energy goes on changing every present moment into a means for something else, into the future. The goal always remains on the horizon. You go on running, but the distance remains the same. No, there is another dimension of energy: that dimension is unmotivated celebration. The goal is here, now; the goal is not somewhere else. In fact, you are the goal. In fact there is no other fulfillment than that of this moment—consider the lilies. When you are the goal and when the goal is not in the future, when there is nothing to be achieved, rather you are just celebrating it, then you have already achieved it, it is there. This is relaxation, unmotivated energy. Osho

You don’t need to provide answers to question like “why were you born?”. Be committed to what excites you and what excites you will provide the answers! Israelmore Ayivor

Perception

Beauty is pleasure to the mind through the senses. Daniella Kessler I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses... If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is, but because I love it, and that’s why I love it, because when you love you never know what you love, or why you love, or what love is. Loving is eternal innocence, and the only innocence is not thinking. Fernando Pessoa Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experience. Jim Morrison

Eros

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. Napoleon Hill Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. William Shakespeare When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love. Socrates How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Albert Einstein

Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination. Immanuel Kant Dancin' in the dark middle of the night. Takin' your heart and holdin' it tight. Emotional touch touchin' my skin, and askin' you to do what you've been doin' all over again. Oh, it's a beautiful thing, don't think I can keep it all in. I just gotta let you know what it is that won't let me go: It's your love. It just does somethin' to me. It sends a shock right through me. I can't get enough, and if you wonder about the spell I'm under. It's your love. Tim McGraw “We can't …" he told me. "I know," I agreed. Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time, I knew there would be no turning back. There were no walls this time. Our bodies wrapped together as he tried to get my coat off, then his shirt, then my shirt. … It really was a lot like when we'd fought out on the quad earlier-that same passion and heat. I think at the end of the day, the instincts that power fighting and sex aren't so different. They all come from an animal side of us. Yet, as more and more clothes came off, it went beyond just animal passion. It was sweet and wonderful at the same time. When I looked into his eyes, I could see without a doubt that he loved me more than anyone else in the world, that I was his salvation, the same way that he was mine. I'd never expected my first time to be in a cabin in the woods, but I realized the place didn't matter. The person did. With someone you loved, you could be anywhere, and it would be incredible. Being in the most luxurious bed in the world wouldn't matter if you were with someone you didn't love. Richelle Mead The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. Mother Teresa The very essence of romance is uncertainty. Oscar Wilde And tell me, when will our eyes meet? When can I touch you? When will this strong yearning end? And when will I hold you again? Barry Manilow Love alone could waken love. Pearl S. Buck

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. Tom Robbins I love you without knowing how or when, or from where. I love you because I know no other way. Tins Matienzo Antonio If I ever wished a wish, dreamed a dream, or sought my fortune—all paths would lead to you. Patty Marshall

Kama

Take the Kama Sutra. How many people have died from the Kama Sutra, as opposed to the bible? Who wins? Frank Zappa So the real meaning of the Kama Sutra, when stripped of everything but its raw essence, is finding contentment within our own natural desires within relationships and creating sustainable, loving relationships with those around us. Matt Caron Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire the primal seed and germ of Spirit, Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent. Rig Veda If variety is sought in all the arts and amusements, such as archery and others, how much more should it be sought after in the art of love. Vatsyayana, Kama Sutra

Awe

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. Mahatma Gandhi If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another. Gautama Buddha The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic that to love others. Vincent Van Gogh

Self-love is not opposed to the love of other people. You cannot really love yourself and do yourself a favor without doing people a favor, and vice versa. Karl A. Menninger To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. William Blake He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals. Benjamin Franklin Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don't claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent. Rumi We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us. Germaine De Stael Love, and you shall be loved. Ralph Waldo Emerson If you wish to be loved; Love! Seneca

Saint Thomas Aquinas cautioned that self-love is akin to the capital vice pride, which he holds as the beginning of all sin, but Jesus’ commandment is to love others as you love yourself. Love is not selfishness. Selfishness is the lack of consideration for, or at the expense of others. Romantic love requires two. It is more fragile in that it is conditional and can be destroyed. That is what makes conditional love special and precious. Being conditional does not make it less meaningful, in a way it makes it more meaningful. Romantic love aspires to be unconditional. Like a rose your smile’s beautiful. You are amazing, wonderful. How I long to be together so completely and forever. —J to L Love yourself to love others. Give something of value. If one does not love oneself, it can be said they are giving nothing of worth, and therefore are 37 incapable of higher love. We can love for oneself or for others. This is the difference between attraction and submission. Once again I find myself lost in the thought of you, my only true love. Earlier, I closed my eyes and prayed for the relief that only sleep would bring. It seems to be the only effective way for me to cope with being away from you, but now I am awake and my heart is filled with despair. Your absence makes my body tense. I am now hopeless in my burning desire for you. How you make me feel, how you make me alive. You are the most amazing woman I have ever known. Everything you are is wonderful. Everything you do is magical. I am in constant awe of you. You make me want. You make me need. You make me admire and adore you. I am totally consumed by you. You are so beautiful. I love everything about you. I never forgot about your smile—even after twenty-some years. Your smile has always had such an extreme excellence about it. It is real and it is innocent. It hints that you are capable of such incredible love. And I love how your amazing eyes confirm that your smile is genuine. I’ve only recently come to realize that this smile is only meant for me—I count this amongst my life’s major accomplishments. If I could choose but one vision to see when I die, it would be your beautiful smile—for it is heaven to me. Every time we’ve been together has been amazing. I love you—and I love loving you. So intimate we are with lifetimes of meaning every time we touch. The look you give me when I stroke your hair away from your face is so inviting. Our lips are deliberate and soft at first and so tender with the love we share. Soon we are overcome by our eagerness, though, and our kisses become powerful. The passion ignites both our bodies into wild flames of pure desire. As I lay here now, writing this letter of love to you, how I wish I could be with you. I imagine myself over you, gently but powerfully making passionate and intimate love to you. We are lost in pure pleasure as our bodies work as one. I know you feel me, so deep and so strong, as you read this! My god, I cannot wait to unite with you again. I hope you are not uncomfortable when I speak of god when I speak of you. Even when I speak of our sexual intimacy, I am comfortable speaking of god, for I consider my relationship with you as sacred. You mean the world to me—you are my everything. I don’t just love you with my body or my mind, I love you with my soul. I never understood what soul mates meant before you. You are everything good, and you bring out the best in me. I’ve come to know god as love; therefore, what we share is god—I’m sure of it! Right now you are hundreds of miles away from me, but I couldn’t be closer to you, my beautiful woman. I can close my eyes and see you. I can even catch a hint of your sweet scent if I inhale and breathe slowly. I am so totally in 38

love with you, and I know you are with me—what a feeling! I cannot wait to hold you in my arms at sunset and enjoy the breeze and ocean’s sounds as we look out past the horizon. The moments we have ahead of us are untold and wonderful. I await you, my dearest love … —J to L Ninety minutes to the north of you a man waits to see you. He is so completely in love with you and he will be that way forever. His heart explodes each and every time he sees your face. He is so attracted to you and he knows you are the most beautiful woman on earth. Your smile gives him life. Your eyes melt his soul. Every curve of your body awakens his senses and stirs in him his deepest desires. He is riveted to your every movement. His heart pounds when you approach him and it dies when you walk away. When he hears your voice he ignores the rest of the world. He holds you in the highest esteem. When he hears you say I love you, he is at his greatest moment. He could not be any higher, nor feel any better. When he hears you lost in pleasure he prays for time to stand still. He lives for your touch—your intimate attention. He would die for you but would rather live together all the days of your lives. His love for you is what every love wants to be: perfect and pure, amazing and selfless, complete and strong. He loves you unconditionally and cannot wait until you are one with him. —J to L

Submission (−)

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. Jean Anouilh

Submission is known through many perspectives. Submission is the limitive love of value: philia, dharma, and ethics, the giving of right and compassionate emotions and sacrifice for others. Submission is the second level of love, and the heart of everything important. Love is best shared. When you love another love for their sake, over your own, else it is love for oneself, disguised. Love is an experience of the right, compassion for others, the submission to virtue. Good behavior and action. Right over wrong; others over oneself. Giving of oneself, emotion, sacrifice… Love is an experience of the right: compassion for others, submission to virtue, affection, care, and concern (solicitude.) Virtues over vices… Have loving interpersonal relationships with family, husband, wife, partner, children and grandchildren, parents and grandparents, brothers, sisters, friends, and others. Love for others is crucial to all higher love. Love is a costly risk, but not loving costs more.

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it. John Lennon Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life. Merle Shan Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. Erica Jong

Ethics is the study of right and wrong social behavior. Virtue is moral excellence and righteousness; goodness. Morality is the quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. Right is conforming with or conformable to justice, law, or morality.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. Confucius Love the sinner and hate the sin. St. Augustine In order to love yourself, you must behave in ways that you admire. Irving Yalom The First Moral Principle (of practical reason): Do good and avoid evil. (Self- evident Metaphysical Principle: The good is that at which all things aim.) classicalhomeschooling.com Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love. Henry David Thoreau Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other. Mark Twain True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason. Alfred North Whitehead Love is not only something you feel, it is something you do. David Wilkerson Action expresses priorities. Mahatma Gandhi When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too. Paulo Coelho Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Martin Luther King, Jr. Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart. Washington Irving

To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil. Muhammad Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. William Shakespeare Lovers alone wear sunlight. E. E. Cummings

Others are different persons or things.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others? Martin Luther King, Jr. Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that. Michael Leunig We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. Thich Nhat Hanh A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved, by others. Wizard of Oz What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things. unknown

Compassion is deep regard for others.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. Dalai Lama, XVI Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. Albert Schweitzer If you want others to be happy practice compassion. If you want to be happy practice compassion. Dalai Lama

Subtraction is the operation of removing something to lessen its quantity.

Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much. Erich Fromm We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without. Immanuel Kant You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. Amy Carmichael

Entropy is the inevitable evolution toward uniform disorder.

Decline is also a form of voluptuousness, just like growth. Autumn is just as sensual as springtime. There is as much greatness in dying as in procreation. Iwan Goll We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. Noah Levine Love doesn't fix things for you; it destroys what is left in the heart. Olivia Lacy “All things that have form eventually decay.” -Orochimaru Masashi Kishimoto

Emotions are the mental states of feeling something.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Helen Keller Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love. George Eliot Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could. Louise Erdrich

Memory is always faulty. Emotions are always true. unknown Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it. Nicholas Sparks

Philia is the loyal friendship with, or loving compassion, and solicitude for others.

To love another person is to see the face of God. Victor Hugo Appreciate those who love you. Help those who need you. Forgive those who hurt you. Forget those who leave you. Abhishek Sureka What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. Aristotle There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. St. Thomas Aquinas All we really have is family. John Marlin Brown Seven Deadly Sins: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Science without humanity. Knowledge without character. Politics without principle. Commerce without morality. Worship without sacrifice. Mahatma Gandhi We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection. Dalai Lama A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you. Elbert Hubbard What was love, really? Flowers, chocolate, and poetry? Or was it something else? Was it being able to finish someone's jokes? Was it having absolute faith that someone was there at your back? Was it knowing someone so well that they instantly understood why you did the things you did—and shared those same beliefs? Richelle Mead

Those that embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing, but their narrow selves. Johann Gottfried Von Herder Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? Abraham Lincoln Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Louis de Bernières Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself—and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to letting a person be what he really is. Jim Morrison Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle. Søren Kierkegaard Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another. George Eliot … the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples were offended] … They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us?" The Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as (I love) her?" Gospel of Philip

Ethiopia didn't just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, 'Would you take my son with you?' He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die. Bono To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. George Orwell Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Charlotte Brontë I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. Jonathan Safran Foer Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope. Josh Billings Love is what is left in a relationship after all the selfishness is taken out. Nick Richardson To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you. Erich Fromm I hope you never look back but you never forget all the ones who love you and the place you left. I hope you always forgive and you never regret and you help somebody every chance you get. Oh, you'd find God's grace in every mistake and always give more than you take, but more than anything, yeah more than anything: My wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to. Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small, you never need to carry more than you can hold. And while you're out there gettin' where you're gettin' to I hope you know somebody loves you and wants the same things too. Yeah, this is my wish. Rascal Flatts

Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul. James Joyce You could say I lost my faith in science and progress. You could say I lost my belief in the holy church. You could say I lost my sense of direction. You could say all of this and worse but If I ever lose my faith in you There'd be nothing left for me to do. Sting Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a For where there is true love, a man is neither out of measure lifted up by prosperity, nor cast down by mishap; whether you give or take away from him, so long as he keeps his beloved, he has a spring of inward peace. Thus, even though thy outward man grieve, or weep downright, that may well be borne, if only thy inner man remain at peace, perfectly content with the will of God. Johannes Tauler The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. Mother Teresa If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? Stephen Levine It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. Friedrich Nietzsche Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Robert A. Heinlein

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. Rainer Maria Rilke

Dharma is right order.

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better. Abraham Lincoln When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always. Mahatma Gandhi Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated. Martin Luther King, Jr. I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life. Ronald Reagan

Sacrifice is the act or tradition of giving or offering something of value as a sign of devotion.

Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else. Mitch Albom The surest test of love consists in suffering for the loved one, and if God suffered so much for love, the pain we suffer for Him becomes as lovable as love itself. Padre Pio Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is no quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr. Henry Suso Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to remain strong, Love can only be perfected in pain. Shams of Tabriz

Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self. Mother Teresa The wound is the place where the Light enters you. Rumi The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for. Bob Marley Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet. Andy Warhol I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. Mother Teresa Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return. Peace Pilgrim Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all. Gilbert K. Chesterton No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater … The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot. Sarah Dessen Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A parent loves unconditionally. The ‘nothingness’ of self is often first experienced when the love of others becomes the priority. It is the first glimpse of the mind of the supreme. If they hate us, hurt us, etc., they are still loved by us. A friend loves… conditional philia aspires to be unconditional. Entropic life, and universe is the inevitability of dissolution into everything.

Connection (=)

Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything. Julia Cameron

Connection is known through many perspectives. Connection is the summative love of value: agape, metta, and metaphysics, the sharing of real and dispassionate ideas and law overall. Connection is the third level of love, and the apex of everything important. Overall love is a connection, not only to others, but to all things, especially the ultimate realities. Connection means being a part of everything. Everything good is good because of the love it contains. Everyone loves on the highest level, yet, it is the most precious of all gems. Love is an experience of the real: overall, dispassionate, and unconditional awareness of the connection of everything. Genealogy and DNA testing help us answer deep questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? It, and reason, shows even though everyone changes, everyone stays connected. Physical science agrees, and shows us not only everyone, but everything was connected as one at and beyond the Big Bang, the beginning of time. Everything was and is one eternally connected. Sometimes it is faint. Sometimes it is grand. Sometimes it is complicated, but it is always there. All love is the highest love. A deeper understanding of all love is within metaphysics and spirituality. Metaphysics is the nature of reality. It is everything, including the universe, its cause, its life, and its destiny. Spirituality is the essential part of metaphysics and religion. Spirituality is our relationship with everything of importance. It’s amazing we can see back in time close to the beginning of the universe or more than 13 billion years ago. Even more amazing is that it all started out as one single, solitary point. It’s beyond amazing, it’s staggering. Then you wonder what threw the switch and your mind just melts.

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There are no random acts … We are all connected … You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind … Mitch Albom I have had my mother's wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the National Geographic tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Europe before crossing to the British Isles. And all of this knowable by an analysis of the cells on the inside of my mouth. Christopher Hitchens The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Chief Seattle Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us. Neil deGrasse Tyson When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. John Muir Over the course of the millennia, all these multitudes of ancestors, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time—to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind? Laurence Overmire Being present is being connected to all things. S. Kelley Harrell

Metaphysics is the study of the fundamentals of reality. Reality is the quality or state of being actual or true; the totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence. Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.

The world is filled with hidden love. Daniella Kessler Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action. Jiddu Krishnamurti If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand. Confucius I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. Byron Katie Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Søren Kierkegaard The true heart of all human beings is the lover of what is. Adyashanti Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives. Brené Brown You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Alan Watts On the backdrop of eternity, time is a relatively new concept. Onwuka Emeka The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. Ralph Waldo Emerson Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is. Richard Feynman

Metaphysics abstracts the mind from the senses, and the poetic faculty must submerge the whole mind in the senses. Metaphysics soars up to universals, and the poetic faculty must plunge deep into particulars. Giambattista Vico I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence? James Thomson Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise. Horace Mann All Know the way, but few actually walk it. Rumi People see the world not as it is, but as they are. Al Lee I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 5 billion years, the expansion of the universe will have progressed to the point where all other galaxies will have receded beyond detection. Indeed, they will be receding faster than the speed of light, so detection will be impossible. Future civilizations will discover science and all its laws, and never know about other galaxies or the cosmic background radiation. They will inevitably come to the wrong conclusion about the universe … We live in a special time, the only time, where we can observationally verify that we live in a special time. Lawrence M. Krauss I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes— and the stars through his soul. Victor Hugo You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one. John Lennon

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way. Paulo Coelho When we shift our awareness or "frequency" from self-consciousness—where fear, impossibility or feelings of separation reside—to cosmic consciousness, which is in total harmony with the universe and where none of those feelings exist, then anything is possible. Rhonda Byrne The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity— in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. Carl Sagan There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Douglas Adams Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. Alan Watts Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are. Vernon Howard

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. Albert Einstein Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds, or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldest walk the world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Overall is that which includes everything; big picture .

Be universal in your love. You will see the universe to be the picture of your own being. Sri Chinmoy Only from the heart can you touch the sky. Rumi If you have it [Love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have. Sir James M. Barrie If you could only love enough, you could be the most powerful person in the world. Emmet Fox

Dispassion is the calm awareness of the overall situation.

Take a deep breath, get present in the moment and ask yourself what is important this very second. Greg McKeown Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Rumi To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders. Laozi Spread the love of God through your life but only use words when necessary. Mother Teresa

Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions. Gerald G. Jampolsky Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt. St. Francis of Assisi A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine. Meher Baba Nothing baffles the schemes of evil people so much as the calm composure of great souls. Gabriel Riqueti Mirabeau

Equality is the quality or state of being the same.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thomas Jefferson The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. Chief Joseph Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish. Albert Einstein Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Abraham Lincoln

Conservation is the preservation and maintenance of a physical quantity through change.

The love we give away is the only love we keep. Elbert Hubbard

Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign. Mark Z. Danielewski To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction. Isaac Newton

Ideas are conceptual thoughts or notions of something.

An idea is salvation by imagination. Frank Lloyd Wright I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language. Werner Heisenberg Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny. Carl Schurz Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. H. L. Mencken

Agape is the loving and calm equality of oneness or overall connection.

For I tell you this: one loving, blind desire for God alone is more valuable in itself, more pleasing to God and to the saints, more beneficial to your own growth, and more helpful to your friends, both living and dead, than anything else you could do. Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing Do all things with love. Og Mandino A mind at peace, a mind centered and not focused on harming others, is stronger than any physical force in the universe. Wayne Dyer To love one person with a private love is poor and miserable: to love all is glorious. Thomas Traherne

When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people? Frank Borman Agape doesn't love somebody because they're worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn't love somebody because they're beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. Rob Bell Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, etc., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good. Baruch Spinoza Be ashamed of your hatred. Give up hatred and be quiet. Sai Baba of Shirdi I believe much trouble would be saved if we opened our hearts more. Chief Joseph When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love. Søren Kierkegaard And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:14 Love to me is a feeling, to have universal love you have to always feel love no matter what. James Dye To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic. Alphonse de Lamartine We loved with a love that was more than love. Edgar Allan Poe

Unending Love I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times … In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain, It's ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time. You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played along side millions of lovers, Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting, the distressful tears of farewell, Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man's days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours— And the songs of every poet past and forever. Rabindranath Tagore The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. Mother Teresa He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. Emily Brontë Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches. William Goldman The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever. Nicholas Sparks

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. Elizabeth Barrett Browning The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along. Rumi Start learning to love God by loving those whom you cannot love. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the more you forget yourself, and when you completely forget yourself, you find God. Meher Baba

Metta is unconditional loving-kindness.

The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love. Stephen Kendrick I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels. And when love comes, there is no question of responsibility. You do things because you enjoy doing them for the person you love. You are not obliging the person, you are not even wanting anything in return, not even gratitude. On the contrary, you are grateful that the person has allowed you to do something for him. It was your joy, sheer joy. Love knows nothing of responsibility. It does many things, it is very creative; it shares all that it has, but it is not a responsibility, remember. Responsibility is an ugly word in comparison to love. Love is natural. Responsibility is created by the cunning priests, politicians who want to dominate you in the name of God, in the name of the nation, in the name of family, in the name of religion—any fiction will do. But they don't talk about love. On the contrary, they are all against love, because love is unable to be controlled by them. A man of love acts out of his own heart, not according to any moral code. A man of love will not join the army because it is his responsibility to fight for his nation. A man of love will say there are no nations, and there is no question of any fight. Osho

My heart is so small it's almost invisible. How can You place such big sorrows in it? Look, He answered, your eyes are even smaller, yet they behold the world. Rumi Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Martin Luther King, Jr. My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind. Mahatma Gandhi Be the change that you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi

Law is an overall rule of proper conduct.

‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments. Jesus, Matthew 22:36-40 Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment. John Wesley Freedom of Men under Government is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; a Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man: as Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature. John Locke Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Immanuel Kant Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing. Ronald Reagan

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant. H. L. Mencken

The wonders of nature never grow old. What beauty are the stars, the diverse landscapes, and the skies. Understand to nature’s wisdom through her dialects of water: the ocean, the waterways, and the rain and snow. Comprehend her breeze, flora, and sunlight. The connection with nature is a quiet kind of ecstasy. There is no greater ecstasy than the connection of love. Those precious moments of awe and excitement shared: so delicate, so fragile, yet so powerful and bold. All consuming is the passion, so pure the attraction: the body, the mind, the heart, the soul. Nothing is greater than love. Lisa and I were married with our feet in the ocean surf on an evening with distant lightning. We were alone with an 83-year-old minister who had "never done anything like this before." As the distant thunder played, the sea was Lisa's maid of honor, and the stars were my best man. As I wrote to my wife, and shared earlier in Have Faith in Love : My love for you is what every love wants to be: perfect and pure, amazing and selfless, complete and strong. I love you unconditionally and cannot wait until I am one with you.

Three Levels of Love

There are only four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love. Jeremy Levin, Don Juan DeMarco

Combining the perspectives of philosophy, science, and religion gives an interdimensional insight into what is important, the Three Levels of Love. The Three Levels of Love are Attraction, Submission, and Connection. The more we understand love, the more we understand importance. Love begins as attraction, rises to submission, and culminates as connection. Attraction is the foundation. Submission is the heart. Connection is the apex. There is only one importance, love, with different perspectives. Eros creates, Philia destroys, Agape is. Three Levels of Love is comparable to Existentialist Soren Kierkegaard’s Stages of Life: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Religious. Kierkegaard considered these stages as key to elimination of life's problems of boredom, angst, and despair. Soak up the world with every sense. Release oneself in favor of others. Softly know the sacred connection of everything —and carry on. Aesthetics, Ethics, and Metaphysics are levels of academic philosophy. Oneself, Others and Overall are levels of philosophy of life. Passion, Compassion, and Dispassion are levels of philosophy of love. Addition, Subtraction, and Equality are levels of mathematics. Excitation, Entropy, and Conservation are levels of physics. Perceptions, Emotions, and Ideas are levels of psychology. Eros, Philia, and Agape are levels of Abrahamic religion. Kama, Dharma, and Metta are levels of Eastern religion. Awe, Sacrifice, and Law are the levels of natural religion. Attraction, Submission, and Connection are good. Submission, and Connection are right. Connection is real. Attraction is good. Submission is good and right. Connection is good, right, and real. Love for Self, Love for Others, and Love for All Love. Love for Self is the concern of aesthetics, or sensual appreciation of beauty, and aims for personal pleasure. It is Eros, an important base, but life is empty if it exists alone. Love for Others is the concern of ethics, the just interaction with others, or morality. It is Philia,

63 about virtue, duty, responsibility, and benevolent commitment. It is the crucial step. The third and highest love is Love for All Love. It is the metaphysical level of fundamental and supreme realities of spirituality. It is Agape, the apex and the ultimate success. It is what religion aspires to be. The best life makes love the priority and actively loves on all three levels. Which part is most important in the Three Levels of Love? While Connection is at the apex, we cannot to think in terms of best and worst. In life, we cannot reach the apex without the core Submission. Likewise, we cannot reach the core without the foundation of Attraction. When we love on the highest level, we also love others, and ourselves, as well. This is the Paradox of Hierarchy. A fulfilling life loves on every level.

Twice and thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name. John Donne

Love is what is important. Love is the only importance. Smile a little deeper when you experience the beautiful and passionate moments of your life. Open yourself to be touched a little deeper when you express love and compassion for others. Be a little more calm and insightful of the overall connection as you experience everything. The Law of Trichotomy states all numbers are either positive, negative, or the one zero at the heart of all and infinite numbers, or all numbers are either less, equal, or greater in relation to one another. It doesn’t matter what we believe. It doesn’t matter what we know. It doesn’t matter what we think. Only love matters.

Three Levels of Love Attraction, Submission, and Connection Paradox of Hierarchy

It is love alone that gives worth to all things. St. Teresa of Avila

Chapter 2—How Is Reality?

How is reality? What is fundamental? How do we know?

Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than fiction. Thomas Carlyle

Physical (∞)

There is no limit to the power of loving. John Morton

Physical is known through many perspectives. Physical is the creative love of reality: creation, samsara, or cosmology, the infinite universe and harmonious objects and elements of chance. Physical is the first aspect of reality, and the ground of everything real. The physical universe is a paradox of limits and non-limits. On the infinitesimal quantum scale objects, possibly String Theory , are fundamentally discrete and no smaller than Planck units , yet have infinitely no thickness. Behavior of these packages of pure energy are combinations of precise mathematical frequencies, yet exhibit fundamentally uncertain motions or changes, due to the Principle of Uncertainty . This uncertainty corresponds to randomness or chance, which is another reality that is inherent to limitless nature. Matter and light work in the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, where chance and probability are fundamental. In this realm, space and time allow what seems impossible. Nevertheless, time, and time again, quantum mechanics is verified by rigorous scientific experimentation. Chance and infinity are fundamental to the physical universe.

Wave-particle duality is the concept that every elementary particle or quantic entity may be partly described in terms not only of particles, but also of waves. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts "particle" or "wave" to fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects. Wikipedia Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance – instead, a quantum state must be described for the system as a whole. Wikipedia Bell’s Theorem – No physical theory of local hidden variables, i.e. extra dimensions, can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics. Wikipedia

Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. Wikipedia Quantum Field Theory is the theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of subatomic particles in particle physics and quasiparticles in condensed matter physics. The theory treats particles as excited states of the underlying physical field, so these are called field quanta. In quantum field theory, quantum mechanical interactions between particles are described by interaction terms between the corresponding underlying quantum fields. Wikipedia

Infinity used to be confined to religion and theology, not the physical world of science and mathematics. That changed with the advent of calculus and set theory. Calculus is the mathematical study of change, and makes use of the fundamental notions of convergence of infinite sequences and infinite series to a well-defined limit. Set Theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies collections of objects, and its Axiom of Infinity states infinity exists. Today, infinity is an accepted concept in religion, philosophy, and science. Science leads the examination of the physical, but attempts to avoid the realities of infinity and chance. Scientists routinely discard experimental results ending with infinity. To this day, the existence of randomness is in question. Approximately 13.8 billion years ago the universe was a primordial point consisting of everything that now exists, including us. Matter comes from energy or particles of force called bosons, which have the quantum ability of existing at the same exact space with other bosons. Energy equals mass times speed of light squared. Relativity…

Fear not what is not real, never was and never will be. What is real, always was and cannot be destroyed. Vyasa, Bhagavad Gita

Neil Turok and collaborators developed the theory of open inflation. With Stephen Hawking, he later developed the so-called Hawking-Turok instanton solutions which, according to the no-boundary proposal of Hawking and James Hartle, can describe the birth of an inflationary universe. Wikipedia

Cosmology is the study of nature of the universe.

For small creatures like we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. Albert Einstein The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. Galileo Galilei Everyone and everything that shows up in the world of form in this universe originates not from a particle, as quantum physics teaches us, but from an energy field. Wayne Dyer When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. John Muir In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. Terry Pratchett Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive and about 1 percent of the dancing static you see is accounted for by this ancient remnant of the Big Bang. The next time you complain that there is nothing on, remember that you can always watch the birth of the universe. Bill Bryson If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. Carl Sagan

Chance is the random element of a spontaneous and indeterminate cause.

Love is nothing if it is not spontaneous. Meher Baba I don't think we get a choice in who we fall for... I think we just do. Jodi Picoult There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment. Sarah Dessen I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom. Jim Morrison Nothing is accidental in the universe—this is one of my Laws of Physics—except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity. Joyce Carol Oates Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. Rumi

Harmony is the orderly and positive state of relationships without conflict.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe. Marcus Aurelius The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony. Charles Sanders Peirce Harmony is one phase of the law whose spiritual expression is love. James Allen

Infinity is the state of being without limits or boundaries.

Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish. Anne Morrow Lindbergh True love stories never have endings. Richard Bach

Only in the eyes of love you can find infinity. Sorin Cerin Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns it calls me on and on across the universe. John Lennon Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end. Rumi Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. Henry Van Dyke

Quantum concerns individual quanta, the smallest amounts of discrete physical units.

Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think. Werner Heisenberg I am afraid all we can do is to accept the paradox and try to accommodate ourselves to it, as we have done to so many paradoxes lately in modern physical theories. We shall have to get accustomed to the idea that the change of the quantity R, commonly called the 'radius of the universe', and the evolutionary changes of stars and stellar systems are two different processes, going on side by side without any apparent connection between them. After all the 'universe' is an hypothesis, like the atom, and must be allowed the freedom to have properties and to do things which would be contradictory and impossible for a finite material structure. Willem de Sitter String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string. … On the other hand, we don't understand the theory too completely, and because of this fuzziness of spacetime, the very concept of spacetime and spacetime dimensions isn't precisely defined. Edward Witten Every cubic inch of space is a miracle. Walt Whitman

Actual entities—also termed Actual Occasions—are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real.… The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent. Alfred North Whitehead

Objectivity is the state of being real apart from the mind, or an empirical observable phenomenon.

The objective reality is the collection of things that we are sure exist independently of us. Every person is able, in principle, to verify every aspect of the objective reality. Anything that cannot be verified in this way is not part of the objective reality. Joan Vaccaro Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth. Abraham Maslow In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told. Meghan Daum

Creation is the event concerning the beginning of the universe. Process identifies metaphysical reality with change and development.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Moses, Genesis 1:1 Everything that is created in the universe is here already. We are not really creators as much as we are recombiners of everything. Wayne Dyer What, then, is the basis for directed development toward new order? What is the source of directed change or ordered tendencies toward law? Now, it is my contention that Peirce’s discussion of evolutionary love is his answer to this question. Ordered development out of sheer potentiality and spontaneity requires that there be love in the cosmos. Without the principle that love is, there would be nothing operative in the origin and development of the universe which could give it specificity and directed order. Carl H. Hausman

Love is the eternal first breath. Vanna Bonta

Samsara is the cycle of life and suffering.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. Wayne Dyer ‘It is the rub that polishes the jewel,’ Enso Roshi says. ‘Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons.’ T. Scott McLeod Man must have results, real results, in his inner and outer life. I do not mean the results which modern people strive after in their attempts at self-development. These are not results, but only rearrangements of psychic material, a process the Buddhists call 'samsara' and which our Holy Bible calls 'dust'. Jacob Needleman Long is the night for the sleepless. Long is the road for the weary. Long is samsara for the foolish, who have not recognised the true teaching. Gautama Buddha

Elements are the fundamental types of physical objects.

These [elements] never cease changing place continually, now being all united by Love into one, now each borne apart by the hatred engendered of Strife, until they are brought together in the unity of the all, and become subject to it. Empedocles Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain. Sun Tzu, The Art of War There’s no god, it’s the elements that control this world and everything on it. Scott A. Butler Psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. Carl Jung

Whitehead's Process Philosophy, and Charles Hartshorne's extension in theology arrive at the fundamental reality of becoming over being. Process is

74 the belief that dynamic change, not static existence, is the primary quality of everything. Everything is an experience. Process philosophy is becoming over being. Fundamental of change. Change calls into question the basic existence of everything. We are dynamic. Like a river we flow. Our very soul is more verb than noun. We do not exist—we are existing. Every moment is filled with creation. Physical processes are fundamental in the material world. Change is in the vibrations of the small. Change is in the cycles of every cause and effect. Matter is energy, energy is infinite change, and infinite change is the harmony of everything, including us. Ship of Theseus… and existence through change. Consider the river… We have seen beyond the stars. We have probed inside the atoms. We have yet to see the mind.

Mental (Ø)

The fire of mystical love is a burning which destroys all sense of a separate self, until nothing is left but love Itself. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Mental is known through many perspectives. Mental is the limitive love of reality: faith, Sunyata, and epistemology, the empty knowledge of open subjectivity and secret freedom. Mental is the second aspect of love, and the center of everything real. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is fundamental to reality on the large scale. It explains our universe in terms of subjective time and space. The reality of space-time is not set, but relative to differing points of view. The ramifications of Einstein’s discovery reveal alternative paths exist through warped space and variable time. Today, mainstream and even conservative scientists and thinkers believe ideas once universally thought to be absurd. What can we know for sure? Socrates said nothing. Descartes said oneself. Heisenberg said uncertainty. Set Theory rests upon the notion that nothingness is something and makes up everything. A part of every set is the empty set. The Axiom of Empty Set states the empty set exists. The Axiom of Choice states that choice exists. Emptiness and freedom are fundamental in mathematics and reality. Zen Buddhism uses paradoxes to teach fundamental truths that casual observers deem absurd. Zen’s use of koans, short paradoxical anecdotes, and the Ensō, a symbolic art form, help followers free the mind for insight, and enlightenment. In Zen, nothingness or emptiness is not darkness, or absurdity. It is openness, and clarity. Mu is not yes or no, but is void, not applicable, or emptiness. Enlightenment is wisdom, the ability to comprehend truths that are not possible to understand, in full. How do we know anything? Knowledge is well-justified true belief. How do we know if something is well-justified or true? We discover proof, and proof comes in three varieties of argument: regressive, circular, and axiomatic, or Munchhausen’s Trilemma . Regressive arguments are proofs assumed to be never ending. Circular arguments are repetitive proofs that support each other. Axiomatic arguments are fundamental statements of proof assumed self- evident. All truth is faith based upon one of these three arguments. The Gettier Problem shows the need for value in knowledge justification.

Three ideas of reasoning best help us understand truth: Fallibilism , Occam’s razor , and Pragmatism . Fallibilism is the idea we can never be completely sure about anything, but still be justified in holding beliefs not proven false. Occam’s razor states among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions is preferred. Pragmatism is the belief that humanities and sciences are best as tools of practical use, instead of attempts at merely describing reality. These concepts serve as justifications between knowledge and truth, and therefore, wisdom. Truth is more than knowledge and logic, it is wisdom. Wisdom clears a path through ignorance, apathy, tradition, and semantics. Wisdom comes to terms with paradox and faith. Wisdom is insight that uses knowledge, and therefore is beyond knowledge and logic. First stage is knowing the truth, second is not knowing the truth, third is realizing the paradox. Philosophy leads the examination of the mental, but attempts to avoid the realities of nothing and freedom. Many, if not most, philosophers and scientists believe true freedom is an illusion. They also say the same of pure mind or consciousness. Truth is not confined by proof or even logic. Knowledge in science and mathematics rest upon fundamental principles and axioms unconstrained by provability that are sometimes paradoxical and illogical. It is reasonable that philosophical truths, including the theological, are the same. Wisdom is insight of knowledge. Deductive Reasoning : Empirical, or from experience. Specific examples or conclusions are drawn from general propositions. Stronger than inductive but still relies upon (faith) on an initial premise. Examples: Mathematics, Semantics. Inductive Reasoning : Theoretical or anecdotal, independent of experience. General propositions or conclusions are drawn from specific examples. Best case is an extremely strong probability. Examples: Scientific Method, Occam’s razor. Advanced Reasoning : First Principles: A priori justification is self-evident and independent of experience. A posteriori justification makes reference to experience; faith or extreme intuition; paradox; wisdom or practical insight. Examples: Natural Philosophy or Metaphysics, Pragmatism.

Language Semantics deals with the relationship between language and meaning. Language and symbols are not what they represent. They are tools that help us to understand, remember, and communicate ideas. Any specific entity can have different words or symbols. Any specific word or symbol can refer to multiple entities. Take special care to revere not the words or symbol, but the reality represented by them. Beware of the symbols of truth replacing the truth. Beware of what is revealed elsewhere from authority. Paradox may make logic less important in determining the truth, but wisdom and good sense are always in order, as is cautious and careful discernment. Many dismiss matters of faith as less than truth despite the fact that science, mathematics, and other disciplined studies have fundamentally unprovable precepts. The fact that there are several proof theories that establish the truthfulness of truth claims is cause to legitimize faith as a crucial part of reason. Are faith and reason incompatible? No. Just because something cannot be proven doesn’t make it untrue. On the contrary, fundamental truths in science, mathematics, and throughout our accepted knowledge are often not only un-provable and paradoxical, but illogical! Faith can be right or wrong— but so can reason.

Fanaa is the Sufi term for extinction. It means to annihilate the self, while remaining physically alive. Persons having entered this state are said to have no existence outside of, and be in complete unity with, Allah. Fanaa is equivalent to the concept of nirvana in Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism or moksha in Hinduism which also aim for annihilation of the self or mukhti in Sikhism. Wikipedia

While wisdom is insight of knowledge, enlightenment is insight of wisdom. Enlightenment is spiritual wisdom or the state that transcends desire and suffering. Enlightenment is found in understanding the paradox. Paradox places truth above reason, wisdom above knowledge, insight over fact, and faith over logic. Doubt is to wisdom as nothingness is to enlightenment; faith is to reason as paradox is to truth. Awareness and the void are enlightenment.

I think, therefore I am. René Descartes

Thought and being are the same. Parmenides Beneath all this technicality is the feeling that it is indeed "obvious" that the conscious mind cannot work like a computer, even though much of what is involved in mental activity might do so. Roger Penrose All is mind. The Kybalion Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love. Ayn Rand All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become. Gautama Buddha The universe looks more and more like a great thought rather than a great machine. James Hopwood Jeans

Epistemology involves the nature of knowledge, well-justified true belief. Truth is that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. Reason is the capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence. Wisdom is the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight. Awareness is the quality of having knowledge or discernment of something.

A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything. unknown Love is inseparable from knowledge. St. Macarius of Egypt Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known. Leonardo Da Vinci Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self evident. Arthur Schopenhauer When you know better you do better. Maya Angelou

A loving heart is the truest wisdom. Charles Dickens Love truth, but pardon error. Voltaire A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak. Michael Garrett Marino (Knowledge is) justified true belief. Plato Knowledge is love and light and vision. Helen Keller Love is inseparable from knowledge. St. Macarius of Egypt Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. Alfred North Whitehead There's nothing you can know that isn't known. John Lennon The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. Isaac Asimov The solutions all are simple—after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are. Robert M. Pirsig Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again! Lewis Carroll Any fool can know. The point is to understand. Albert Einstein Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Albert Einstein

Confidence is ignorance. If you're feeling cocky, it's because there's something you don't know. Eoin Colfer One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. Joan of Arc Don't be afraid to see what you see. Ronald Reagan If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything. Malcolm X Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe. Christopher Paolini A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. Oscar Wilde Truth is reality. Mary Caroline Richards Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. Walt Whitman Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny. Mahatma Gandhi Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit. Edward R. Murrow One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth. Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time. Benjamin Disraeli

Plato is my friend—Aristotle is my friend—but my greatest friend is truth. Sir Isaac Newton Truth is not determined by majority vote. Doug Gwyn From error to error one discovers the entire truth. Sigmund Freud Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth. Alexander Solzhenitsyn All great truths begin as blasphemies. George Bernard Shaw The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. Gloria Steinem Tell the truth and then run. unknown A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality. St. Thomas Aquinas The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling. Robert M. Pirsig A half truth is a whole lie. unknown There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil. Alfred North Whitehead The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it. Remy De Gourmont The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it. Clarence Darrow The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility. Charles Caleb Colton

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should be treated with caution. J. K. Rowling If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both. Horace Mann To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. John Locke Telling someone the truth is a loving act. Mal Pancoast Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. Winston Churchill Live truth instead of professing it. Elbert Hubbard You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It's very real. It's very strong. Bono For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. Aristotle To reason about love is to lose reason. Boufflers We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities. Henry Bolingbroke If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. Samuel Butler I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist! J. K. Rowling

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. unknown Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to The more you reason the less you create. Raymond Chandler persecute those who do reason. Voltaire To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it. William Hazlitt Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has. Martin Luther Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic. Nicola Abbagnano Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. Rumi The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it. Voltaire I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. Marilyn Monroe They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions. Isaac Asimov Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry. Charles Sanders Peirce

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. Alfred North Whitehead The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard Feynman You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. Will Rogers Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't two negatives make a positive? Andrew Clements Intense feeling too often obscures the truth. Harry S. Truman You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter. Nicholas Sparks The trouble ain’t what folks don’t know, it’s that they know so much that just ain’t so! Josh Billings Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability Werner Heisenberg Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it. Virginia Woolf The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them. Felix Frankfurter

We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. There are only two things in the world: nothing and semantics. Werner Erhard Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Love is not blind—it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. Rabbi J. Gordon Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Oscar Wilde Love is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears; hatred is nothing. Doug Horton In both social and natural sciences, the body of positive knowledge grows by the failure of a tentative hypothesis to predict phenomena the hypothesis professes to explain; by the patching up of that hypothesis until someone suggests a new hypothesis that more elegantly or simply embodies the troublesome phenomena, and so on ad infinitum. In both, experiment is sometimes possible, sometimes not (witness meteorology). In both, no experiment is ever completely controlled, and experience often offers evidence that is the equivalent of controlled experiment. In both, there is no way to have a self-contained closed system or to avoid interaction between the observer and the observed. The Gödel theorem in mathematics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, the self-fulfilling or self-defeating prophecy in the social sciences all exemplify these limitations. Milton Friedman Love doesn't need reason. It speaks from the irrational wisdom of the heart. Deepak Chopra Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. Confucius Wisdom is knowledge which has become a part of one's being. Orison Swett Marden True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us. Socrates It is not from reason that justice springs, but goodness is born of wisdom. Maurice Maeterlinck Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed. Alfred North Whitehead In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool. Rabbi Ben Azai Believe those who are seeking truth, doubt those who find it. Andre Gide Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil—not the strength to choose between the two. John Cheever Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only. Samuel Smiles Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. Jimi Hendrix The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it. Hermann Hesse 87

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof. Walt Whitman Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows. Alfred North Whitehead Understanding the limitations of human beings as well as understanding your own is the beginning of true wisdom. unknown There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must of felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, Wait and Hope. Alexandre Dumas Without wisdom, knowledge is more stupid than ignorance. unknown In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory. Alfred North Whitehead Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. Ludwig Borne Wisdom is found only in truth. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer Douglas Adams

Freedom is the condition of being free from control, and having choices. Free will is the ability or discretion to choose; free choice. Liberty is the right or power to act as one chooses

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. Thomas Jefferson

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were. Kahlil Gibran Love… Force it and it disappears. You cannot will love, nor even control it. You can only guide its expression. It comes or it goes according to those qualities in life that invite it or deny its presence. David Seabury Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Abraham Lincoln Why have philosophers been unable for millennia to see that the common sense view of human freedom is correct? Partly because their logic or language preoccupation makes them say that either determinism or indeterminism is true, and the other must be false. Our physical world includes both… so any intelligible explanation for free will must include both indeterminism and adequate determinism. Robert Doyle The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. We cannot force love. William Hazlitt There is no such thing as part freedom. Nelson Mandela The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. Jim Morrison Love, and do as you will. St. Augustine When I discover who I am, I’ll be free. Ralph Ellison

Openness is the state of being accessible or available. Clarity is clearness of appearance, thought, or style; lucidity.

Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love. John Lennon The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. Laozi Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation. Rumi

Emptiness is the state of having, holding, or containing nothing.

Nothing is part of everything. Dejan Stojanović Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events. George Kubler ...he made himself nothing... St. Paul , Philippians 2:7 I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color—something which exists before all forms and colors appear... No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea. Shunryū Suzuki As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. Socrates

Relativity involves a state of existence or quality that is dependent upon another entity.

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray. Mahatma Gandhi

No man ever steps in the same river twice. Heraclitus If I get a parking ticket, there is always a parallel universe where I didn't. On the other hand, there is yet another universe where my car was stolen. Max Tegmark I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings. Steven Wright No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides. Baruch Spinoza

Subjectivity is a personal experience, feeling, or thought based on an individual’s mind. Consciousness is the quality of having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts. I magination is the ability to form mental images of things that are not present to the senses or not considered to be real.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. Albert Einstein The source of all light is in the eye. Alan Watts What is this mind? Who is hearing these sounds? Do not mistake any state for self-realization, but continue to ask yourself even more intensely—what is it that hears? Bassui Tokushō Consciousness is the biggest mystery. It may be the largest outstanding obstacle in our quest for a scientific understanding of the universe…. We do not just lack a detailed theory; we are entirely in the dark about how consciousness fits into the natural order. David Chalmers ...consciousness is a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment. David Bohm

Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere. Albert Einstein How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate—your brain—that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all. V. S. Ramachandran

Faith is confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. Intuition is the faculty of knowing or understanding something without reasoning or proof.

Faith is taking the first step even though you don’t see the whole staircase. Martin Luther King Jr. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. Erich Fromm Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind it dies. Mahatma Gandhi The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth—the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Emanuel Swedenborg The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand. Rumi Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone. Mahatma Gandhi 92

There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen. Rumi With faith, there are no questions; without faith, there are no answers. Yisroel Meir Kagan Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other. Blaise Pascal Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth … Pope John Paul II Reason is our soul's left hand, faith her right, by these we reach divinity. John Donne Faith is not contrary to reason. Sherwood Eddy Faith is the vision of the heart; it sees God in the dark as well as in the day. unknown Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking. R. Buckminster Fuller Faith is love taking the form of aspiration. William Ellery Channing All that I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen. Ralph Waldo Emerson Eternal life does not begin with death; it begins with faith. Samuel M. Shoemaker Faith lives in honest doubt. Alfred Lord Tennyson You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. Samuel Butler That's the thing about faith. If you don't have it you can't understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Accession Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. Eric Hoffer

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. J. R. R. Tolkien Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that. Daniel Webster Do you know how to digest your food? Do you know how to fill your lungs with air? Do you know how to establish, regulate and direct the metabolism of your body—the assimilation of foodstuff so that it builds muscles, bones and flesh? No, you don't know how consciously, but there is a wisdom within you that does know. Donald Curtis If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. Josh Billings Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. Mother Teresa Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can't always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith. Lauren Kate The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? C. S. Lewis A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. Friedrich Nietzsche

Sunyata is the empty state of the self. Enlightenment is insight or awakening to the true nature of reality, or the full comprehension of a situation; and/or a

94 state in which the individual transcends desire and suffering and attains nirvana.

Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand? Hakuin Ekaku Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born. Wumen Huikai A long time student found a known master, who was busy carrying a large sack. ‘Excuse me sir, please, can you teach me enlightenment?’ asked the seeker. The old man stopped, and with a smile set down his heavy bag down to answer. ‘What is it like to be enlightened?’ the excited student continued. The old man picked up his sack and walked away. unknown An eager young seeker went to a Zen master and said, ‘If I work really hard, how soon can I be enlightened?’ The Zen master studied the man, and said, ‘Ten years.’ ‘No, listen,’ the young man said, ‘I really plan to work hard’—‘Sorry,’ the master said, cutting him off. ‘I misjudged you. Twenty years.’ ‘Wait! You don't understand’—‘Thirty years,’ the master said. unknown Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. Carl Jung One day a young Buddhist on his journey home came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher, “Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?” The teacher ponders for a moment looks up and down the river and yells back, “My son, you are on the other side.” unknown A monk asked Joshu, Has the dog the Buddha nature? Joshu replied, Mu. Wumen Huikai There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung 95

We spend all our time looking for some concept of Truth, but Truth is what is left when we drop all concepts. David Merzel If I could define enlightenment briefly I would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is. Wayne Dyer Enlightenment does not mean one should disappear into the realm of transcendence. To be fixated in the absolute is simply the polar opposite of being fixated in the relative. With the dawning of true enlightenment, there is a tremendous birthing of impersonal Love and wisdom that never fixates in any realm of experience. To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true nonduality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true Emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream. I say, Wake up! Then, your heart will be flooded with a Love that you cannot contain. Adyashanti In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on. Daisetz T. Suzuki According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous. (quoted by Carol Lynn Pearson in Consider the Butterfly) Deepak Chopra As unobtainable, as you have heard, that Enlightenment is, it is in fact within your reach, already waiting within the palm of your hand. Not much stands in your way. Nothing that you could not move in one day. Dave Oshana

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness. Nikos Kazantzakis You need not aspire for or get any new state. Get rid of your present thoughts, that is all. Sai Baba of Shirdi Enlightenment must come little by little-otherwise it would overwhelm. Idries Shah To rid ourselves of our shadows—who we are—we must step into either total light or total darkness. Goodness and evil. Jeremy P. Johnson Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung

Esotericism is special and secretive knowledge and insights available only to limited people.

Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are. Sarah Dessen

As above, so below; as below, so above ... Know thyself and thou shalt know all the mysteries of the gods and the Universe. The Kybalion Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. Ralph Waldo Emerson All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness ... the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives. Dalai Lama XIV Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Rumi

What can we know? We can know we cannot know everything. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle , Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem , and Alfred Tarski’s Undefinability theorem prove not everything can be known by a part of the whole group it belongs. Not everything within a system is known from within the system. A hypothetical machine prints out statements in some language. It need not be a statement-printing machine, as it could be some other technique for taking statements and deciding if they are true. Nevertheless, let us think of it as a machine that prints out statements. Some statements the machine could print and explanations are, as follows. “P=X” means the machine will print “X” “NP=X” means the machine will never print “X” “PR=X” means the machine will print “XX” “NPR=X” means the machine will never print “XX” For example, “NPR=FOO” means that the machine will never print “FOOFOO” and “NP=FOOFOO” means the same. Now, consider the statement “NPR=NPR=”. This statement means the machine will never print “NPR=NPR=”. If the machine prints “NPR=NPR=”, it has printed a false statement. If the machine never prints “NPR=NPR=”, then “NPR=NPR=” is a true statement that the machine never prints. The machine either

98 sometimes prints false statements, or there are true statements that it never prints. This example by Raymond Smullyan shows any system generating only true statements fails to generate some true statements and any system generating every possible true statement must generate some false statements. Everything cannot be known about a system from within that system. This is the point of Gödel's Incompleteness theorem concerning arithmetic, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in physics, and Tarski’s Undefinability theorem concerning all logical systems. A theory of everything must include something beyond knowledge. It must account for transcendence. The mind is the bridge to transcendence. We can imagine logic beyond logic. We can imagine time before time began. We can imagine smaller than the smallest. We can imagine eternal love.

Transcendental (1)

This is what our love is—a sacred pattern of unbroken unity sewn flawlessly invisible inside all other images, thoughts, smells, and sounds. Aberjhani

Transcendental is known through many perspectives. Transcendental is the sumative love of reality: divinity, nirvana, and theology, the unified truth, peaceful mystery and holistic destiny. Transcendental is the third aspect of love, and the summit of everything real. In mathematics, the Axiom of Union states a union of a set is a set, but a universal set is irrational, and transcendental, therefore not allowed. Undefined mathematics relates to transcendence. Everything beyond the system can be termed transcendental. Everything within the system can be termed immanent. Unity is a paradox. It is the fundamental quality of a set, but beyond reason when applied to all sets. Theology is the study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational inquiry into religious questions. Natural Theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology (or revealed religion) which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning. Definitions of Religion 1. The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods; 1.1 A particular system of faith and worship; 1.2 A pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. 1. a. The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe. b. A particular variety of such belief, especially when organized into a system of doctrine and practice. c. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader. Religion leads the examination of the transcendental, but attempts to avoid the realities of unity and destiny. Individual religions have been notorious throughout history for intolerance. People were, and are, judged to be either within a specific religion, or apart from it. All religions may be correct in their base beliefs, just differing in the way they explain the details. There are different paths to the same truth. Religion can be

100 personal, intimate, and uniquely lived and celebrated. If everyone truly understood and lived with love, our lives would serve as our religion. Religion is good where it makes love the priority, not only all the world’s faiths, but the non-religious, as well. There are many paths to the same truth. Relational circumstance, family tradition, and geography are what normally shape most people's views of the sacred. This is faith from authority and is based upon the revelation and faith of others. While I deeply respect my family heritage, and the great theological traditions, and consider them, an essential part of me, my deepest faith, my spirituality, is consistent with reason, and from personal choices I make. Many believe religious organizations are too concerned about money, power, rules, and politics. Religion, while well intended, has been the force behind much non-sacred activity. This has resulted in many people foregoing formal religion in favor of a spiritual, but not necessarily religious, philosophy, or spirituality. No organization or belief has a monopoly on matters of faith. Our daily life is our true religion. Our attitude is our spirituality. Religion is about how we are different. Spirituality is about how we are the same. Religion should not be about what you believe; it should be about how you behave. Philosophy is about what and how you believe. Religion tends to be intolerant. Only intolerance deserves intolerance. Tolerance is an important concept in the ministry of Jesus. He who is without sin cast the first stone. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Jesus’ greatest commandment was not about membership. It was about love. Are you Christian? Then be the very best Christian you can be, and love! Spirituality is love; love is connection; connection is peace and awareness, a paradox. Definitions of Spirituality The quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things. 1. a. The state, quality, or fact of being spiritual. b. A religious belief or manner of pursuing a religious life. 1. the quality or fact of being spiritual. 2. incorporeal or immaterial nature. 3. predominantly spiritual character as shown in thought, life, etc.; spiritual tendency or tone.

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Some experts (Dick Houtman and Stef Aupers, Wikipedia ) suggest that modern spirituality is a blend of humanistic psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions and eastern religions. Spiritual 1. Relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things. 1.1 (Of a person) not concerned with material values or pursuits. 2. Relating to religion or religious belief. 1. Of, relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not material; supernatural. 2. Of, concerned with, or affecting the soul; spiritual growth. 3. Not concerned with material or worldly things. 4. Of or belonging to a religion; sacred; spiritual music. 1. of, relating to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal. 2. of or relating to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature; 3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc. 4. of or relating to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic. 5. characterized by or suggesting predominance of the spirit; ethereal or delicately refined; 6. of or relating to the spirit as the seat of the moral or religious nature. 7. of or relating to sacred things or matters; religious; devotional; sacred. Spirit 1. The nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character; the soul: we seek a harmony between body and spirit. 1.1 The nonphysical part of a person regarded as a person’s true self and as capable of surviving physical death or separation. 1.2 The nonphysical part of a person manifested as an apparition after their death; a ghost. 1.3 A supernatural being. 1. a. A force or principle believed to animate living beings. b. A force or principle believed to animate humans and often to endure after departing from the body of a person at death; the soul. 2. Spirit The Holy Spirit. 3. A supernatural being, as: a. An angel or demon. b. A being inhabiting or embodying a particular place, object, or natural phenomenon. c. A fairy or sprite. 4. a. The part of a human associated with the mind, will, and feelings. b. The essential nature of a person or group. 5. A person as characterized by a stated quality. 6. a. An inclination or tendency of a specified kind. b. A pervasive or essential attitude, quality, or principle. 7. a. An attitude marked by enthusiasm, energy, or courage; troops that fought with spirit. b. spirits A mood or emotional state. c. Strong loyalty or dedication. 8. The actual though unstated sense or significance of something.

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1. the principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul. 2. the incorporeal part of humans. 3. the soul regarded as separating from the body at death. 4. conscious, incorporeal being, as opposed to matter. 5. a supernatural, incorporeal being, especially one inhabiting a place, object, etc., or having a particular character. 6. a fairy, sprite, or elf. 7. an angel or demon. Spirituality needs no organization. The best way to practice spirituality is to make it a part of your daily life. Smaller, more intimate groups are preferred to larger congregations. If you are religious, pray. If you are philosophical, contemplate. If you are spiritual, meditate. Many have found involving the body with the mind, such as yoga, tantra, fasting, or other sensual practices, helps enhance the practice. Worship Rituals involving beautiful and sensual symbolism are a meaningful way to celebrate spiritual values. Take caution to avoid confusing the symbolic objects and actions with the objects they are intended to represent. Love is far greater than any need for worship. A god who needs, wants, or even likes worship is not close to being supreme. God does not care about worship. God cares only about love. When we love, we ‘worship’ perfectly. Love is the ultimate respect. Like any important aspect in one’s life, it’s entirely appropriate to take the time to recognize, appreciate, honor, help others, and teach your fundamental values, but worship is antiquated. God is infinitely beyond any need for worship. Worshipping an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present god is like the cave man believing in the sun god. A truly supreme god does not need nor does not want to be worshipped. A truly supreme god isn’t about recognition, control, power, and coercion. The god of reality is about love and freedom. With spirituality and the afterlife, we cannot know everything, but we can know what is fundamental, important, and why. Realizing love is the answer makes all the complications go away. The highest love incorporates all love and includes an underlying peaceful awareness. Some call it spirituality, while others call it religion, philosophy, or science. At its core, it is called connection, salvation, and liberation. It is being one with the paradox.

The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me? Leo Tolstoy

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The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination? Mahatma Gandhi The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort. Alfred North Whitehead The faith that stands on authority is not faith. Ralph Waldo Emerson I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't. Alfred North Whitehead In Works of Love (1847), Søren Kierkegaard, claimed that Christianity is unique because love is a requirement. Wikipedia Sincerity is the biggest part of selling anything—including the Christian plan of salvation. Billy Graham I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion. Yann Martel If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: Search after truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth … Hinduism is the religion of truth. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known. Mahatma Gandhi There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year. Abraham Joshua Heschel

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The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself. Thich Nhat Hanh The Universalists believe that God is too good to damn, while the Unitarians believe that (humanity) is too good to be damned by God. Thomas Starr King May the warm winds of heaven blow softly upon your house. May the Great Spirit bless all who enter there. May your moccasins make happy tracks in many snows, and may the rainbow always touch your shoulder. Cherokee Blessing We are not evil. We don't harm or seduce people. We are not dangerous. We are ordinary people like you. We have families, jobs, hopes, and dreams. We are not a cult. This religion is not a joke. We are not what you think we are from looking at T.V. We are real. We laugh, we cry. We are serious. We have a sense of humor. You don't have to be afraid of us. We don't want to convert you. And please don't try to convert us. Just give us the same right we give you—to live in peace. We are much more similar to you than you think. Margot Adler What all of these practices have in common, however, is the way in which they integrate different aspects of our human experience – our emotions with our intellect or our minds with our bodies – while also connecting us with others who share similar beliefs. We seek out these experiences, which are special and set us distinctly apart from our mundane and ordinary daily lives. These experiences lift us up out of our narrow selves and give us a glimpse – if only temporary – of another way to view things as a part, however small, of a larger picture. Spiritual and religious practices that help us integrate the body, mind, and spirit, also provide psychological and physical benefits … Spirituality and religion center around matters of ultimate concern that are of more importance than the health of our physical bodies and our day-to-day well-being. Ellen Idler Religion can be both good and bad—it is spirituality that counts. Pat Buckley All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth. Mahatma Gandhi

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I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian. Mahatma Gandhi Don’t try to tear down other people’s religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy its glories. Brigham Young Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. Martin Luther King, Jr. We have what we seek. We don't have to rush after it. It was there all the time, and if we give it time it will make itself known to us. Thomas Merton Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. Carl Sagan Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. Alan Watts

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The new spirituality is that it will produce an experience in human encounters in which we become a living demonstration of the basic spiritual teaching 'We are all one.' Neale Donald Walsch Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul. Mahatma Gandhi I think we're intrinsically spiritual. We're spiritual beings in a physical universe and we are here to make a spiritual contribution. Mark Victor Hansen God has marvelous ways of taking our worst tragedies and turning them into His most glorious triumphs. Joseph Stowell I have a much wider, freer view about spirituality. I feel that people need to pursue it on their own, personally. You know, let it be theirs—a personal relationship with their soul, or their God, or with their church. Peter Jurasik In order to experience everyday spirituality, we need to remember that we are spiritual beings spending some time in a human body. Barbara De Angelis Understanding the physiological and neurological features of spiritual experiences should not be interpreted as an attempt to discredit their reality or explain them away. Rather, it demonstrates their physical existence as a fundamental, shared part of human nature. Spiritual experiences cannot be considered irrational, since we have seen that, given their physiological basis, experiencers' descriptions of them are perfectly rational … All human perceptions of material reality can ultimately be documented as chemical reactions in our neurobiology; all our sensations, thoughts, and memories are ultimately reducible to chemistry, yet we feel no need to deny the existence of the material world; it is not less real because our perceptions of it are biologically based … It is not rational to assume that the spiritual reality of core experiences is any less real than the more scientifically documentable material reality. Sabina Magliocco I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple. Rumi

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We can no more do without spirituality than we can do without food, shelter, or clothing. Ernest Holmes The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress. Sai Baba of Shirdi The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. Søren Kierkegaard Any spirituality can be enhanced with the practice or study of yoga. Christy Turlington If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them. St. John of the Cross Silence is the tunnel through which the soul must travel to spin-off dissonance. Baruch Spinoza Our spiritual attitude is determined by our conception of our relation to infinite spirit. Paul Twitchell I think there's been a big problem between religion, or organized religion, and spirituality. Dave Davies Toleration is the best religion. Victor Hugo There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it. George Bernard Shaw Your daily life is your temple and religion. Kahlil Gibran There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness. Dalai Lama XIV

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Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not. Kurt Gödel Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there. Bonnie Raitt Love is my religion. Ziggy Marley There are as many paths to God as there are souls on Earth. Muhammad When you think yours is the only true path you forever chain yourself to judging others and narrow the vision of God. The road to righteousness and arrogance is a parallel road that can intersect each other several times throughout a person's life. It’s often hard to recognize one road from another. What makes them different is the road to righteousness is paved with the love of humanity. The road to arrogance is paved with the love of self. Shannon L. Alder When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. Abraham Lincoln What we need is to make a renewed attempt to worship the objective of God, not our forefathers' doctrines about him. Charles Hartshorne I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love. Henry Ward Beecher All gods are one. There is no difference between a Hindu and a Muslim. Mosque and temple are the same. Sai Baba of Shirdi The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different. Mahatma Gandhi … the doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself. Robert M. Pirsig

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So no, I’m not too big on religion...and not very fond of politics or economics either...And why should I be? They are the man-created trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about. What mental turmoil and anxiety does any human face that is not related to one of those three? William Paul Young The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature. Alfred North Whitehead Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. Jon Stewart Those who write Christian theologies have often not placed love and its implications at the center of their work. (cites George Newlands as making this point in Newlands' book, Theology of the Love of God.) Thomas Jay Oord A spiritual organization with a hierarchical structure can convey only the consciousness of estrangement, regardless of what teachings or deep inspirations are at its root. The structure itself reinforces the idea that some people are inherently more worthy than others. Starhawk Jerry Landers: I don't even go to any church! God: Neither do I. Oh, God! But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most? Mark Twain Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car. Laurence J. Peter Religion is the last refuge of human savagery. Alfred North Whitehead To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy. William Ralph Inge

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Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts. John Locke The death of dogma is the birth of morality. Immanuel Kant Religion is an illusion, and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses. Sigmund Freud I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony

Destiny is the certain or necessary fate that is already determined. Karma is fate or destiny resulting from one's previous actions.

One love, one heart, one destiny. Bob Marley Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about. Haruki Murakami

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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone— we find it with another. Thomas Merton With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely. William James There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. William Shakespeare I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we are all just floating around accidental like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both happening at the same time. Winston Groom, Forrest Gump

Peace is the state of order without conflict.

It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. Emmet Fox Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. Albert Einstein Souls will be unable to reach perfection who do not strive to be content with having nothing, in a fashion that their natural and spiritual desire is satisfied with emptiness; for this is necessary in order to reach the highest tranquility and peace of spirit. St. John of the Cross The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men. Black Elk

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When love has carried us above and beyond all things, into the Divine Dark, we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. John of Ruysbroeck God loves without limit and this puts a loving person most securely at peace. John of Ruysbroeck We can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace. William James There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. A. J. Muste I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love. Red Cloud Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. Helen Schucman, A Course In Miracles I would like to invite the populace to look within, to a place where they are peaceful and they’re in a peaceful universe. Ram Dass In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace. Ben Hecht

Unity is the state of being united as one.

Peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their oneness with the Universe, when they realize it is really everywhere, it is within each one of us. Black Elk Ultimately, all moments are really one, therefore now is an eternity. David Bohm One universe made up of all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth. Marcus Aurelius

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Singularity is one specific point without size, dimension, or duration that has an infinite relationship value to a variable entity.

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. Terence McKenna “Matter,” Vittoria repeated. “Blossoming out of nothing. An incredible display of subatomic fireworks. A miniature universe springing to life. He proved not only that matter can be created from nothing, but that the Big Bang and Genesis can be explained simply by accepting the presence of an enormous source of energy.” “You mean God?” Kohler demanded. “God, Buddha, The Force, Yahweh, the singularity, the unicity point—call it whatever you like—the result is the same. Science and religion support the same truth—pure energy is the father of creation.” Dan Brown, Angels & Demons You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that has no cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. Stephen Hawking

Mystery is something unknown, not fully understood, or incomprehensible.

Mystics are lovers who are drawn toward a love in which there is no you or me, but only the oneness of love Itself. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Mysticism, then, is the perception of the universe and all of its seemingly disparate entities existing in a unified whole bound together by love. D. J. Moores The supernatural is the natural not yet understood. Elbert Hubbard The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. Oscar Wilde

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead—his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness. Albert Einstein The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. Albert Einstein All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name. Andre Breton A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, Why is there so much suffering? Suzuki Roshi replied, No reason. Shunryū Suzuki Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial. Friedrich Nietzsche Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love. Susan Sontag The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. Albert Einstein Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. Roald Dahl

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There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein The map is not the territory. Alfred Korzybski

Divinity is the ultimate state of being sacred or holy.

Love's greatest gift is its ability to make everything it touches sacred. Barbara De Angelis Here's an example: someone says, Master, please hand me the knife, and he hands them the knife, blade first. Please give me the other end, he says. And the master replies, What would you do with the other end? This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical. When the question is, Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism? Then he replies, There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool. That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle Zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same. Alan Watts To theology ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred. Ludwig Feuerbach Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason. Immanuel Kant

Nirvana is the liberation from the cycle of birth, life, and death.

And it is all one to me Where I am to begin; for I shall return there again. Parmenides If you meet the Buddha, kill him. Linji Yixuan The drop can only become the ocean when it ceases to exist. Osho The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self. Albert Einstein

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When in Love, body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist. Rumi

Holism is belief in all-encompassing ideas that value the whole as greater than the sum of its parts.

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin I know now that there is no one thing that is true—it is all true. Ernest Hemingway Love cures people—both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it. Karl A. Menninger

Broadly defined, mysticism can be found in all religious traditions, from indigenous and folk religions to organized religions like the Abrahamic faiths and Indian religions, and modern spirituality, New Age and New Religious Movements. Abrahamic mysticism includes Christian mysticism, Islamic Sufism, and Jewish Kabbalah. Eastern mysticism includes Hindu Yoga and Tantra, Buddhist Zen, and mystical Taoism. Natural mysticism includes indigenous shamanism, Neopagan Wicca, and Neoplatonic Hermeticism. Since the 1960’s scholars have debated the merits of perennial and constructionist approaches in the scientific research of mystical experiences. The perennial position is now "largely dismissed by scholars," most scholars using a contextual approach, which takes the cultural and historical context into consideration. In terms of background, social constructionism is rooted in "symbolic interactionism" and "phenomenology." Symbolic interactionism is derived from the American philosophy of pragmatism, founded by Charles Sanders Peirce, and William James. Walter T. Stace and common core verses Perennialism. Spiritual love has many styles, but each can be shown in terms of peace, awareness, and connection. Sacrifice, grace, and salvation is Christian. Baqaa, fitra, and fana is Islamic Sufi. Sunyata, samadhi, and nirvana is Buddhist. Atma- jnana, sahaja, and moksha is Hindu. Ein sof, gilgul, and keter is Jewish Kabbalah. Te, wu wei, and pu is Tao. Value, wisdom, and reality is philosophical or secular humanistic. In all cases connection is freedom, which of course, is a paradox.

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A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience in which an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality, an encounter or union with the divine. Such an experience often involves arriving at some knowledge or insight previously unavailable to the subject yet unaccountable or unforeseeable according to the usual conceptual or psychological framework within which the subject has been used to operating. Religious experience generally brings understanding, partial or complete, of issues of a fundamental character that may have been a cause (whether consciously acknowledged or not) of anguish or alienation to the subject for an extended period of time. This may be experienced as a form of healing, enlightenment or conversion. Mysticism arose via Platonism and Neoplatonism; dualistic, maintaining a distinction between the self and the divine, or nondualistic. Wikipedia

Mysticism through reason of paradoxical transcendence, not the supernatural or paranormal. On everything at our best, we remain without words, incomplete, and uncertain. Just as behind the physical is the non-physical, and behind the being, is becoming, behind the immanent is the transcendent. Part of everything must always be something beyond. Any theory of everything must account for this. Walter T. Stace identifies seven common characteristics of mysticism. 1. A unifying vision and perception of the One by the senses and trough many objects; 2. The apprehension of the One as an inner life; 3. The objective and true sense of reality; 4. Feelings of satisfaction, joy, and bliss; 5. A religious element that is a feeling of the holy and sacred; 6. A paradoxical feeling; and 7. Inexpressible feelings. The Hood Mysticism Scale Revised (M-Scale Revised) derives from the Hood Mysticism Scale, created in 1975 by Ralph Hood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. It was designed as an operational measure of Walter Stace's (1960) phenomenologically derived universal core to mysticism. Stace proposed that mysticism consisted of two variations of an experience of unity: extrovertive unity or an experience of unity in diversity, and introvertive unity or the dissolution of self into a contentless unity. Both experiences are associated with interpretations that the experience is noetic, sacred, and positive. Stake also asserted that all mystical experiences are ineffable due to their paradoxical nature.

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Introvertive Mysticism refers to your experience of the dissolution of self into a contentless unity, and has the following three sub dimensions. Ineffability : a high score means your mystical experiences tend to have an indescribable quality. Ego-loss : a high score means your mystical experiences involve your self being lost or dissolved into a wider unity. Time/Space : a high score means your mystical experiences involve the loss of a sense of space and time. Extrovertive Mysticism refers to your experience of unity in diversity, and has the following two sub dimensions. Inner Subjectivity : a high score means your mystical experiences involve an awareness that everything is indestructibly alive. Unity : a high score means that your mystical experiences involve an awareness of unity-in-diversity of all beings. Interpretation refers to the way you interpret your mystical experiences, and has the following three sub dimensions. Positive Affect : a high score means that your mystical experiences are emotionally positive. Sacredness : a high score means that your mystical experiences are sacred and holy. Noetic: a high score means that your mystical experiences are profoundly meaningful, perhaps even having revelatory force. Religious Mysticism The paradox is inevitable as we approach limits in logic and mathematics. All disciplines find the paradox on the path of knowledge and truth. Religion is no exception. Examples of mathematical logic coming to terms with the paradox (below, left to right, respectively) include the Sephirot in Abrahamic Judaism, the Sri Yantra in Eastern Hinduism, and the Flower of Life/Metatron’s Cube in the natural religions of Neopaganism and Neoplatonism.

Mathematics and Mysticism (and Metagapism) Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the Axiom of Choice is fundamental to mathematics. It reconciles logical problems of self-reference, including

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Russell’s Paradox. Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory is an extension of ZFC that includes classes, and therefore a Universal quantifier. Axiom of Extensionality (=) If x and y have the same elements, then x = y. Connection exists. See Hesed and Gevurah . Axiom of Foundation (↑) Every nonempty set has an e-minimal element. (also called Axiom of Regularity) The Absolute exists. See Keter . Axiom of Choice (Ø) Every family of nonempty sets has a choice function. Mental Choice exists. See Binah . Axiom of Pairing (+) For any a and b there exists a set (a,b) that contains exactly a and b. Attraction exists. See Tiferet . Axiom of Union (1) For any x there exists a set that is the union of all elements of x. Transcendental Unity exists. See Chokhmah . Axiom schema of Replacement (−) If p is a function, then for any x there exists a set. Submission exists. See Hod . Axiom of Infinity (∞) There exists an inLinite set. Physical InLinity exists. See Malkuth . Axiom of Power Set (∆) For any x there exists a set of all subsets of x. The Whole exists. See Yesod . Axiom schema of Specification (∂) If p is a property then for any x and p there exists a set that contains all those that have the property p. (also called Axiom of Subsets or Separation or Axiom of Restricted Comprehension) The Relative Parts exist. See Netzach . M-Scale Test The M-Scale Revised test is designed to assess your tendency to mystical experiences. It's important to remember that your score on this survey doesn't say anything bad or good about you as a person! This 32-item instrument yields your M-Score, which is your overall tendency to mystical experiences. The M-Scale Revised also yields three sub scores, one for each of three classically recognized tendencies of mysticism: Introvertive Mysticism, Extrovertive Mysticism, and Interpretation. In the graph below, your score is shown in the 1st bar in each set of bars. The average score for others taking this survey is shown in purple (the 2nd bar). The scores range from 1 (low tendency to mystical experience) to 5 (high tendency to mystical experience).

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My Scores on the Eight Sub dimensions of the M-Scale Revised:

Take this test yourself at ExploringMyReligion.org. Three Aspects of Love

The only reasonable numbers are zero, one and infinity. Bruce MacLennan

Combining the perspectives of philosophy, science, and religion gives an interdimensional insight into how reality is, the Three Aspects of Love. The Three Aspects of Love are Physical, Mental, and Transcendental. The more we understand love, the more we understand reality. The love around us is physical. The love within us is mental. The loved throughout us is transcendental. Physical is the base. Mental is the center. Transcendental is the summit. There is only one reality, love, with different perspectives. Three Aspects of Love is comparable to Pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce's three modes of evolutional possibilities: Anancism, as mechanical necessity, Tychism, as chance or fortuitous variation, and Agapism, as creative love. Peirce envisioned the three differing aspects the same reality with eros-agape love as key. Cosmology, Epistemology, and Theology are aspects of academic philosophy. Chance, Freedom, and Destiny are aspects of philosophy of life. Harmony, Openness, and Peace are aspects of philosophy of love. Infinity, Emptiness, and Unity are aspects of mathematics. Quantum, Relativity, and Singularity are aspects of physics. Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Mystery are aspects of psychology. Creation, Faith and Divinity are aspects of Abrahamic religions. Samsara, Sunyata, and Nirvana are aspects of Eastern religions. Elements, Esotericism, and Holism are aspects of natural religions.

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Physical, Mental, and Transcendental are real. Mental, and Transcendental are true. Transcendental is sacred. Physical is real. Mental is real and true. Transcendental is real, true, and sacred. Love, as reality, truth, and mathematics, is three aspects in one. Love is spontaneous, free, our destiny. Mathematics is chance, choice, and certainty. Love is limitless, openness, oneness. Mathematics is infinity, emptiness, unity. Love is creative, faithful, and sacred. Mathematics is elementary, insightful, and universal. Mathematical paradoxes that help us understand how three different aspects or perspectives can have one reality or truth. Infinity, zero, and one are fundamentally related. Three perspectives with one reality, for example, 0.9… = 0! = 1.

You don’t get to have an opinion on whether .999… is equal to 1, for instance. It is equal to 1. People smarter than us have worked hard to figure this stuff out, and we owe it to them and to the universe to respect what they’ve figured out. John Green

In Set Theory, an empty set is a set with no elements, and is a subset of every set. It is one set, thus it gives rise to the concept of one: { } = 1. Emptiness, and oneness are two perspectives of the primary set, thus gives rise to the concept of two: {{ }, {1}} = 2. Emptiness, oneness, and duality give rise to the concept of three, or the trichotomy, {{ }, {1}, {2}} = 3, and infinitely it continues. The empty product , a multiplicative identity , means that 0! and 0 0 are 1.

Primacy of Emptiness Geometry is the mathematics of shape, size, relative position, and the dimensions of space. Q: How many corners are in a circle? A: There is none, one, and/or infinitely many. A corner is the position at which two lines meet and form an angle, but rounded corners are possible. An angle is the figure formed by two lines diverging from a point. Circles consist of a line or lines that consist of points. Apeirogon is an infinite-sided polygon, or circle. 122

Geometric Corners A singularity is one point, zero-dimensional, nothing in size or duration, with an infinite relationship value to a variable entity. Point make lines, lines make planes, planes make spaces, and spaces make branes. A singular point has no dimension and has an infinite relationship to a variable entity. Infinity, emptiness, and oneness are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is all perspective.

Geometric Dimensions At the core of the Mobius knot is the reality of nothing, bounded by a trinity linking its nothingness to infinity. The illusion of the Mobius is that it has two sides and edges, but of each it has only one.

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Mobius Knot A Fractals is a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation. Fractals have infinite scope, and scale within a finite perimeter. The Koch snowflake progression for the area of the snowflake converges to 8/5 times the area of the original triangle, while the progression for the snowflake's perimeter diverges to infinity. Consequently, it is one finite area bounded by an infinitely long line. Conversely, the Sierpinski triangle has no area, and is one infinite pattern.

Mandelbrot Fractal 124

Koch Snowflake Sierpinski Triangle Calculus is the mathematics of Change, Curves, and Infinities. Calculus shows another relationship of one, zero, and infinity. As one is divided by higher values (lim x ⟶∞ 1/x) variable x decreases and approaches zero , i.e. 1/1=1, 1/2=0.5 …1/10=0.1 …1/100=0.01 …1/1000=0.001 … and as the dividend 1 approaches the divisor ∞ the quotient approaches zero, or generally 1/∞=0. The larger number we divide into 1 the smaller the result. Intuitively, one divided infinitely leaves zero, because there is nothing after an infinity in anything. As one is divided by lower values (lim x ⟶0 1/x) variable x grows and approaches infinity, i.e. 1/1=1, 1/0.5=2 … 1/0.1=10 … 1/0.01=100 … and it approaches infinity, or 1/0= ∞. The smaller we divide into 1 the larger the result. Intuitively, one is divided by zero infinitely, because there is an unlimited amount of nothing in anything. When we multiply the preceding examples, the result approaches 1/ ∞ x 1/0 = 0 x ∞ = 1. The multiplication of reciprocals is always equal. Intuitively, zero and infinity are reciprocals of one, and this means infinity and nothing are balancing parts of anything, and everything.

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Calculus of 1/0/∞ Transcendental numbers have one infinite random order. Pi is …

Love is like pi—natural, irrational, and very important. Lisa Hoffman

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Almost all numbers are transcendental, and therefore, irrational, even though, paradoxically, very few, like π and e, are known. Almost all prime numbers are odd. Almost surely… Finite things exist, but are relatively nothing compared to infinity and everything. Almost nothing, almost something… Mountain, river, and light The mountain is made of rock. Rock is made of elements. Elements are made of molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of sub-atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles are infinitely small, unified points, that have no size or physical dimension. The mountain is made of nothing but energetic spirit.

What are men to rocks and mountains? Jane Austen

The river is made of water. The water moves. The movements flow. The flow changes. One moment it’s there. Next moment it’s not. The river is made of nothing but energetic spirit.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Rainer Maria Rilke

The light is made of nothing but energetic spirit. The spirit cares not if we believe. There’s no time for that. There’s only time for change. There’s only time for mountains, and rivers.

There will always be a door to the light. Shiro Amano

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Beauty Mountain and New River Gorge in West Virginia The Three Aspects of Love is the Paradox of Perspective: The more you view a perspective the more it becomes universal. The more you view a universal the more it becomes a perspective.

Three degrees of love I shall tell thee, for I would that thou mightest win to the highest. The first degree is called Insuperable. The second Inseparable. The third is, Singular. Richard Rolle

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Three Aspects of Love Physical, Mental, and Transcendental Paradox of Perspective

Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent. Rumi

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Chapter 3—Why Is Everything?

Why is everything? What is the reason? Why is there something rather than nothing?

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Stephen Hawking

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The Absolute (↑)

The divine essence itself is love and wisdom. Emanuel Swedenborg

The Absolute is known through many perspectives. The Absolute is the creative love of everything: God, Brahman, and Theism, undefinable quintessence, source of nature, and Great Spirit of supremacy. The Absolute is the first respect of love, and the ground of everything. The Absolute is the source of all love, because The Absolute is all love. There are three main questions about The Absolute: existence, nature, and the problem of evil. Existence of Something We know something exists. To deny something exists requires something to exist! Even a brain in a vat, or someone in the matrix cannot deny something exists. Even if it is an illusion, it is something. We do not need to understand something to know it exists. The Law of Identity is Whatever is, is. The Principle of Identity: If a thing is, it is: if it is not, it is not. Something, anything, and everything, that exists, exists. It is what it is. Something only comes from something. There is something. Something equals something. Something is something no matter what it is. Even if everything is all some grand illusion, it is something. It’s something that is. The potential for something is something. The slightest, unlikeliest, most remote possibility of something is something. Nothingness Why something, rather than nothing? Before we can ask this question, we need to ask another question: What is nothing, or what could nothing be? Ex nihilo nihil fit is Latin for Only nothing comes from nothing . Only nothing can be nothing. The type of nothing from which something can arise is truly something. Nothing never was because something always is. There has never been nothing, only something that has changed . The Law of Non- contradiction : Nothing can both be and not be , (The Principle of Contradiction: One and the same thing, remaining as such, cannot simultaneously both be and not be.) and the Law of Excluded Middle : Everything must either be or not be , means genuine nothingness is not valid, and therefore, an impossibility for everything. Why is there something rather than nothing? Obviously, something

132 is the only option. If there was nothing, truly nothing, then nothing would still be nothing. Anything else invalidates true nothingness. The only way nothing could have been is if nothing is now, and that’s absurd. Nothing is not a choice. Nothing, is, was, and will be impossible. Nothing is not applicable. Nothing cannot exist. Nothing cannot even be imagined, because once it is imagined, it’s something. The idea of nothing is something. Partial nothing is not nothing. Nothing, with the possibility of something, isn’t nothing. Nothing comes from nothing; therefore, something comes from something. Something is always changing because nothing stays as is.

What is called Nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. Leonardo Da Vinci

Existence of Everything We also know something is a part of everything. Something is a part of something. In mathematics, Set Theory says a set itself and the empty set are parts of every set. Parts exist within the whole. Without parts differences cannot exist, change cannot occur, and effect cannot have cause. Something exists, therefore, everything, that exists, exists. Reason for Everything Since inquiring about nothing is absurd, the obvious question then is Why something? The Principle of Sufficient Reason states everything exists for a reason. For every entity, event or proposition, if it exists, occurs or is true, and then there is a sufficient explanation for why it exists, occurs, or is true. Reason exists for everything, known or unknown, knowable or unknowable.

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you. Wayne Dyer

Whether everything had a beginning or has always existed, everything has a reason for existing. Whether the exact nature of everything will be discovered or will always be hidden, everything has a reason. Every thing has a reason. Whether the reason is known, or unknown, knowable, or unknowable, a reason exists, and can be named. The Absolute exists. Whatever the reason, it can be named. The Absolute is the source of everything. The Absolute is not everything, but is the source of everything. The Absolute is 133 the Source. The Absolute is part of everything. The Absolute is everything important. Amid the wonders of the cosmos and the miniscule exists the reasoning for something greater, yet barely comprehendible. Truth is, something exists, and everything exists for a reason. Look around. See, there’s a reason for everything. Science is built upon finding reason in everything. There’s a reason the sun rises. There’s a reason that dog is barking. There’s a reason that car is blue. There’s a reason that girl is smiling, and there’s a reason there’s something rather than nothing. Regardless of what exactly that reason is, that reason can be called god. We don’t know the details, but there’s no denying the reason exists. It’s absurd to believe there’s a reason for everything, but there’s not a reason for it all. There’s no denying the reason exists, whatever we choose to name it, including God.

Eventually all things fall into place. Until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moments, and know EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Albert Schweitzer When a load of bricks, dumped on a corner lot, can arrange themselves into a house; when a handful of springs and screws and wheels, emptied on a desk, can gather themselves into a watch, then and not until then will it seem sensible, to some of us at least, to believe that all these thousands or millions of worlds could have been created, balanced and set to revolving in their separate orbits—all without any directing intelligence at all. Bruce Barton Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything. Abraham Lincoln

The Absolute and Time Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity proves that time and space is variable and dependent upon perspective. Could the universe have an eternal past and future? If so, there’s no need for a creator . No creation but a changing process. When change is considered, there was no creation of reality, only a change of reality. On the other hand, creation is happening at every moment, as new realities exist.

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Before matter, energy, space and time is the ontological reality of the potential for change. Nothing but potential requires choice for change. There is something; therefore, essence is change. Everything is process. Temporal Finitism means an infinite amount of past finite events is not possible. Finite events from an infinite past cannot transverse an infinite time to the present. If some sort of fast forward were possible these events could never move forward. Something has always existed, beginning as a timeless state that changed, and is changing. Time is finite, had a beginning, and did not infinitely exist. In the beginning, before time, space, and even existence, an infinite state, The Absolute Source, changed to a finite event. Everything real is process. There was no creation because it is all creation. Without time there is timelessness. Without space there is singularity. Without existence there is transcendence. The Absolute Source simultaneously is, and isn't, was, and wasn't, will be, and won't be, everywhere, anywhere, somewhere, and nowhere. Love always was, and love always will be. Love is timeless.

Time is an illusion. Albert Einstein

Theism is the belief in God or gods. Cosmogony is a philosophical, religious, or mythical explanation of the origin of the universe. Definitions of God 1. (In Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. 2 (god) (In certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity. 1. God a. A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions. b. The force, effect, or a manifestation or aspect of this being. 2. A being of supernatural powers or attributes, believed in and worshiped by a people, especially a male deity thought to control some part of nature or reality. 1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe. 2. the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute. Does God Exist? If so, would you change your mind if the definition of God were an old man with a white beard standing on a cloud throwing lightning bolts? If

135 not, would it make a difference if the definition of God were equal with the entire natural universe? The nature of the God we are referring to can make a difference. Semantics and Atheism The word theism is like the words god, and religion. Many different meanings exist with some being complementary, and some not. Again, debate the meaning before debating existence or importance. There are subtle, yet crucial differences between words like deity, and entity, among others. Most atheists don’t believe in god because most religious theists make it prohibitive with their problematic notions of god’s nature. Most atheists believe there is something bigger and more important than ourselves, but see the term god as a mythological invention. Many scientists believe in the Laws of Nature as god . When Einstein said he was a deeply religious non-believer he was speaking against the nature of the common view of god, not god’s existence! He could have used the words deeply non-religious believer and meant the same thing. Scientists Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawkins, and even renowned atheists Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger, lose their atheism in the face of pantheism, panentheism, and process theology. Dawkins has issues with personal god and supernatural . Personal doesn’t have to be an old man on a cloud—it can be love. Supernatural doesn’t have to be paranormal ghosts and goblins, it can mean something hidden from nature— i.e., the reason we have the laws of nature. Our ideas of a supreme being’s name, nature, number, and existence are properties of immanence, not transcendence. The last understanding our minds can hope to grasp about transcendence is that it is beyond being and existence. We all believe, disbelieve, and do not know. It all depends exactly on what we mean. Is there a God? The answer is Mu, or yes, or no, or maybe, or not answerable, or not applicable, etc. Before debating the existence of The Absolute clearly understand the nature of the concept of The Absolute that is being considered. The word God means different things to people. Our beliefs, opinions, and faith depend upon different concepts of God. The early Christians were the first atheists because they did not believe in the Roman gods. Outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion , slip in disclaimers for

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Einstein or Spinoza’s god, or other acceptable concepts. Debate the nature before you debate the existence.

To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled—that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist. Simone Weil The knowledge and love of God is the highest good. Baruch Spinoza My title, The God Delusion, does not refer to the God of Einstein and the other enlightened scientists. Richard Dawkins In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who says there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views. Albert Einstein I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind … Albert Einstein Everything and nothing are the same in the Absolute. Dejan Stojanović

We are all atheists. There are concepts of The Absolute or God we disbelieve. We are all believers. There are concepts of The Absolute or God we believe. We are all agnostic. There are concepts of The Absolute or God that we don’t know. Everyone believes in a reality. Everyone has a value system. Whatever one believes is of supreme importance is their god. The ultimate or supreme reality, or fundamental truth, is God. Even the most devout atheist believes in something, even if it’s chaos, or nothing. The purely ineffable is transcendent. Part of everything is unknowable. The unknown is one of the few things we know. Every dream has a dreamer. Every illusion has a reality. Every something has an everything. Free your thoughts about the reason, because a reason is enough. There is a reason for everything. The reason for everything can have a name. Debate the nature, not the existence. Love is the creative reason for the universe. There is something greater than oneself.

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Most notions of God have differing degrees of mythology. Reality requires the atheist to accept a supreme reality, while it requires the theist to reject traditionally held mythological misconceptions of god’s nature. Understanding the real nature of love and god allows atheists to believe. Love can change the atheist to a believer, and a believer into an atheist. It’s simply semantics. Deep down, atheism is the result of rejection of religion, not the supreme. If religion wasn’t what religion is, and the definition of god wasn’t relegated to what is common, atheists would number about 6,000 people in a world of 7 billion or approximately 0.000001%—the same as people who are Satanists.

Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life. And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity. Dalai Lama, XIV A partial list of friendly addresses, for individuals needing support in escaping from religion … The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering. Richard Dawkins Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to other human concerns. Semantics is about the relation of words to reality—the way that speakers commit themselves to a shared understanding of the truth, and the way their thoughts are anchored to things and situations in the world. Steven Pinker When I demonstrate that a particular God is rejected by the data, I am not proving that all conceivable gods do not exist. I am simply showing beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with the specific, hypothesized attributes does not exist. Victor Stenger

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. Richard Dawkins

Long before our ancestors crawled from the water there was a primal connection to our sun, our solar system’s star. The great fireball gives life, as does the water, air, and the soil. Little wonder exists that nature provided man’s first concept of god. Polytheism , the belief that multiple gods exist, fit ancient man’s thought that the important and unexplained in nature was supreme. Polytheism would evolve into elaborate mythologies in Egypt, as half-animal, half-human gods, and in Greece, as superhuman (but all-so-very-human- acting) gods of Mount Olympus.

A small, little-known group of followers of a man named Abraham would begin worshipping one deity, Yahweh, as one supreme god. Judaism would be the birth of the great monotheism that is the roots of Christianity, Islam, and other faiths. Monotheism accounts for more than half of the world’s current religious beliefs and traditions.

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Monotheism is characterized as one god transcendent but involved, while the alternate, deism, is one god transcendent, but uninvolved after creation. Deism was a significant belief of many of America’s founding fathers and is commonly thought of as the clockmaker god who only created and wound his creation.

Poly-, mono-, pan-, panen-, mero-, agape-, panagape-, and metagape-? Pantheism is the belief that god and the universe and/or nature are one in the same. Many classical philosophers and scientists have been categorized as pantheists, as are several Neopaganism movements. Pantheists normally do not believe in transcendental or supernatural aspects of god.

The one thing that a fish can never find is water; and the one thing that man can never find is God. Eric Butterworth

Panentheism , however, sees god as both transcendent and immanent, or all in god. Panentheism believes the universe is a subset of god, thus god is both transcendent and immanent. Philosophers Baruch Spinoza, Charles

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Hartshorne, Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Albert Einstein expressed Panentheistic beliefs.

Merotheism (meros , Greek meaning part ) is the belief that god and the universe are part of each other. Merotheism combines some aspects of monotheism, panentheism, and deism.

The problem with monotheism and deism is that god’s existence is completely separate from the universe. The problem with pantheism and panentheism is god is everything that exists in the universe, and the universe includes evil. Pantheism and panentheism by definition mean god is partially evil. Merotheism solves these problems by showing god and the universe intimately connected, while separating god and evil. Evil is not a part of god. God transcends, is partly immanent, and is voluntarily self-limiting to allow free will. Love isn’t self-centered, even at the supreme

141 scale. Love isn’t power and control. Love gives us freedom. Unfortunately, with free will comes the potential for evil, but love can’t be true love if forced. Merotheism is the belief that God and the universe are parts of each other. God is transcendent, and immanent, but is not everything. God is not evil. God is the opposite of evil, and Merotheism comes to terms with this unlike the traditional theisms. Agapetheism is the belief that god is pure spiritual love. Many have heard and/or read the idea: God is love. Most view this as a metaphor. Agapetheism is the belief that God is literally love. Agapetheism sees love as the only divine, and God as pure love. Love is supreme, not power, force or control. Love means God is real, not myth.

Love is the benevolent concern for more than one’s self. Love isn’t self- centered, even at the supreme scale. God loves more than god’s self; therefore, the universe exists. The universe exists because of love.

I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object. Søren Kierkegaard Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8

Does love exist? Of course it does. Who, deep down, doesn’t believe in love? Love is the supreme virtue, the supreme spirit. Changing the name doesn’t change the existence. God exists. God is love. Love is god.

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Panagapetheism is the belief that all pure love is god. All Love is the real god. God as all true love updates our idea of god to one of truth, while shedding the mythological aspects that cloud our view. Love makes god real and an intimate part of our lives. No view of god is as personal and natural as one that is real. Panagapetheism goes a step further than Agapetheism. Panagapetheism is the belief that God is literally all pure love, combined. God is love, and love is God. Higher love is never self-centered, even on the supreme scale. Nothing is as personal as love. Nothing is as personal as God is. God is everything good.

God is Love and Love is God. Ernest Holmes In its purest and most universal form, love is regarded in the highest conception of God as the essence of divinity. Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia The best way to know God is to love many things. Vincent Van Gogh

Problems of Evil and Omni-ness

There is no god higher than truth. Mahatma Gandhi

What is evil? Evil is the absence of love. Natural evil is suffering in nature. Human evil is sin. Examples of extreme human evil are the holocaust and child abuse. Mythological evil is the devil, hell, and damnation.

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How can love be the answer when there is so much evil, and pain in the world? Theodicy is a vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil. Why is there evil? There is evil because love (good) is a choice. Love cannot exist if it is forced. Love is the ultimate good, highest virtue, and is never coercive. Love requires free will. Supreme will yields to supreme love and free will; therefore, evil becomes possible. There is no alternative to the paradox. To eliminate evil is to eliminate free will, and without free will there is no love. That which isn’t love, isn’t god. Evil, sin, coerciveness, pettiness, cruelty, anger, selfishness, ugliness, jealousy, wrath, controlling, and selfishness are not god- like. Likewise, love doesn’t have to be omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient to be supreme. Love is supreme, not power, knowledge, and presence. Love isn’t about power and control, but is the most powerful aspect of all. God influences without coercion. Love is not everywhere, but is always an option. Utopia through force is contradictory, absurd, and impossible. Free will is part of love. Love and free will are inseparable. Can God create a boulder so big he cannot lift it? Can God create a square circle? Can God be omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience? Are illogical power, presence, and knowledge supreme, or is love? In the end, what you believe is inconsequential. Belief is not important. Only love is.

Father, father, father help us. Send some guidance from above ‘cause people got me questioning, “Where is the love?” Black Eyed Peas I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own—a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Albert Einstein Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves. Joni Eareckson Tada There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless. W. Somerset Maugham There is only one good—knowledge; and only one evil—ignorance. Socrates

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I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. Charles Darwin There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it. Gautama Buddha G-d is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. Baruch Spinoza The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul … Leonard Cohen This is the very worst wickedness that we refuse to acknowledge the passionate evil that is in us. This makes us secret and rotten. D. H. Lawrence The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. Joseph Conrad The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together. Hannah Arendt Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym. Stephen King Nature is not human hearted. Laozi The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears. John Vance Cheney The only way God could impose peace on the world would be to robotize our wills and rob every human being of the power of choice. He has not chosen to do that. He has given every person a free will. John Haggai

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God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices—exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life. Jim Butcher

Metagapetheism is belief that God exists as all pure love combined. Metagapetheism is the belief that God is love, and part of the universe through kenosis.

When god is understood as all love, Merotheism becomes Metagapetheism. Metagapetheism is a monotheistic belief (one god) but incorporates the belief that all love is god, while allowing a place for evil outside of god. Metagapetheism is the belief that God is all pure love combined, and part of the universe, transcendent, and partially immanent. Love is the absolute supreme source. Metagapetheism is Panagapetheism and Merotheism combined. Love and the universe are part of each other, and freedom is a necessary part of love. This is why evil can exist, and why God is not fully immanent. That, which is not love, is not God. There is something greater than the self is. Love is the supreme reality, the absolute source of everything. Love is almost everything, therefore everything. Non-love, including evil, is almost nothing, therefore nothing. Evil is almost nothing. Evil is nothing. Nature of The Absolute Good, altruistic, omnibenevolent, compassionate, forgiving, virtuous, moral, ethical, beautiful, loving, self-limiting, sacrificial, non-coercive, free, connection,

146 immanent, active, living, subjective, personal, suffering, growing, affectionate, giving, living, and humble. Spirit, immaterial, incorporeal, real, right, reality, reason, logical, paradoxical, dualistic, changing, unchanging, wisdom, natural, unique, sentient, wise, intelligent, metaphysical, simplicity, truth, sentience, duality: unchanging and changing, inherent, and growing. Supreme, divine, perfection, holy, provident, transcendent, eternal, infinite, supernatural, significant, the one, oneness, absolute, sovereignty, self- sufficient, and incomprehensible. Higher Love Never Self-Centered Even on the Supreme Scale … God-Love is not self-centered, as love is never self-centered, even on the supreme scale; therefore, creation was assured. The god of reality is not omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscient, but it is omnibenevolent. Kenosis is god’s nature of self-limitation. It is the un-self-centeredness that allowed the universe and free will. Kenosis is the real theodicy, the justification of why there is evil.

Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me. Krishna Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Philip K. Dick People see God every day; they just don't recognize Him. Pearl Bailey Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope. George Santayana You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself. Swami Vivekananda God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper. R. Buckminster Fuller God thinks within geniuses, dreams within poets, and sleeps within the rest of us. Peter Antenberg

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How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God. St. Thomas Aquinas God's nature as love directs god's actions bringing salvation, rather than a causal efficacy. Divine will is directed by divine love. Thomas Jay Oord

Supremacy is the quality or condition of being the ultimate superior.

If I were omnipotent and omnibenevolent I wouldn’t be so damn ineffable. Jo Walton Omnipotence and omniscience are the end of power and knowledge. Dejan Stojanović The river is everywhere. Hermann Hesse The total absence of humor from the My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. Albert Einstein

Source is the entity that is the cause for everything. Reason is the basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction. Causality is t he principle of or relationship between cause and effect; or a causal agency, force, or quality. Aseity is the state or quality of existing in and of oneself, without external cause.

Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. Rumi Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. Albert Einstein An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others. A. W. Tozer

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The Principle of Causality: Every contingent being, even if it exists without beginning, needs an efficient cause and, in the last analysis, and uncreated cause. (Every created being requires a creator.) classicalhomeschooling.com The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason. Hal Borland

Undefinability is the theorem that not all truth is known in a system.

Love is a chemical reaction, But it cannot be fully understood or defined by science. And though a body cannot exist without a soul, It too cannot be fully understood or defined by science. Love is the most powerful form of energy, But science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, But even the most advanced physician Cannot prescribe it as medicine. Suzy Kassem I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. Charles Darwin The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. Rob Bell Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics. It just comes—none knows whence—and cannot explain itself. Mark Twain We know not what God is. God himself doesn't know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being. John Scotus Eriugena That which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop speaking. Peter Rollins

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Laws of Science are statements that describe and predict a range of phenomenon in nature.

The Principle of Being: Being is. We still have to come to terms with the origin of the laws of nature. And the only viable explanation here is the divine Mind. Anthony Flew A new concept of god: “something not very different from the sum total of the physical laws of the universe; that is, gravitation plus quantum mechanics plus grand unified field theories plus a few other things equaled god. And by that all they meant was that here were a set of exquisitely powerful physical principles that seemed to explain a great deal that was otherwise inexplicable about the universe. Laws of nature … that apply not just locally, not just in Glasgow, but far beyond: Edinburgh, Moscow … Mars … the center of the Milky Way, and out by the most distant quarters known. That the same laws of physics apply everywhere is quite remarkable. Certainly that represents a power greater than any of us. Carl Sagan There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings. Mahatma Gandhi An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God. Srinivasa Ramanujan Laws of nature have no physical properties of mass/energy. They are platonic truths in transcendent realm that create and govern the Universe. Deepak Chopra As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. Max Planck

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Nature is the material universe and its environment.

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. Alphonse de Lamartine Who is God? Some theological being? He is so much greater than theology. God is vitality. God is life. God is energy. As you breathe God in, as you visualize His energy, you will be reenergized! Norman Vincent Peale Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables. When you really look for me, you will see me instantly—you will find me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. Kabir God is not so far away. He is not in the heavens above, nor in hell below. He is always near you. Sai Baba of Shirdi

God is the Supreme Being and creator of the universe.

God is infinite. He is beyond the opposites of good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice, birth and death, pleasures and suffering. Such dual aspects do not belong to God. Meher Baba Is there a God? (Everyone) If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation, that He exists. Blaise Pascal God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Empedocles God is the tangential point between zero and infinity. Alfred Jarry

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The universe is God's son. Dejan Stojanović

Brahman is the ultimate underlying reality.

The supreme Lord who pervades all existence, the true Self of all creatures, may be realized through undivided love. Vyasa, Bhagavad Gita That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which one does not think with the mind, that by which, they say, the mind is thought, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. Kena Upanishad The person who perceives Brahman in everything feels everlasting joy. Bhagavad Gita He who works for Me, who loves Me, whose supreme Goal is Me, free from attachment to all things, and with true love for all creation, he, truly, becomes one with Me. Vyasa, Bhagavad Gita

Great Spirit is the principle deity.

A wee child toddling in a wonder world, I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan. Zitkala-Sa We return thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases. We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given to us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to the sun, that has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in Whom is embodied all goodness, and Who directs all things for the good of Her children. Iroquois Prayer

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Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows. Sitting Bull

As a mother gives birth to child, love gave birth to the universe. Love is the creative reason for the universe. We exist as the reality of all pure love. Love is the reason for everything. Love is why there is something rather than nothing. Existence is a gift, and the reason for the gift is love. From the whole came a part, and the whole was part and more. From every source comes result. From every supreme comes the subject. From The Absolute comes The Relative.

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The Relative (∂)

One cannot think of the Absolute without the Relative, or of the Relative without the Absolute. Ramakrishna

The Relative is known through many perspectives. The Relative is the limitive love of everything: soul, anatta, and psychism, incomplete essence, life of individuals and world-soul mereology. The Relative is the second respect of love, and the core of everything. The Relative is the essence of all love, because it is literally love, and of all love. What is our essence? What is the real you? Just as energy is fundamental to matter, consciousness or mind is fundamental to body. Psyche is mind-soul. A person dies and the Universe goes on. The same is true of humanity, all life, and even reality, itself. What’s the difference? Snowflakes … Everyone is an essential part of everything. Afterlife to afterdeath…

Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, as determined by a god, gods, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life. In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Dharmic tradition, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life, rather than through the decision of another being. Wikipedia

The Relative proceeds incompletely from The Absolute, yet is essential. The Universe is relative, as is life, and as is man. All three explanations—eternal life, reincarnation, and nothingness—are descriptions of the same reality. The soul continues without the body, recombines pure with its source, and returns to the nothingness of infinite and eternal peace. The soul is love. Love is a paradox during life, and after without the bounds of spacetime. I used to think that after we die there would be this long stretch of time that we call forever or eternity. However, I realized that was wrong. Time does not exist after we are gone. It is a state of timelessness. Timeless is not just forever in the

154 future, or after we die. It is all time, beyond time, no time. After death, and before life, time and space are meaningless, as are existence and non-existence. Time and space have no standing. After death, it is complete unity, nothing but beautiful oneness. Then it occurred to me, being together, truly one, is not just after we die, it is right now! ...and it is every moment, past, present, future, and beyond. Beyond not only the moments of our lives, but beyond all time, a state of complete unity exists, a state of pure love. Everything was, is, and always will be connected. When were you not to be? When will you not have been? When are you not in the present? Being connected beyond time is not simply forever, it is now, and any time you can possibly imagine. Love also connects us in ways we cannot imagine. There is no absolute death, only relative change. Every moment dies, and every moment is born. Death of an individual, an entire species, everything—it is all the same. All three explanations of the afterlife—eternal life, reincarnation, and nothing—are descriptions of the same reality beyond space and time. Relatively speaking, short, and long lifespans are the same. Both are non- existent compared to the infinite. Furthermore, we cannot change the past, and have no guarantees for the future. We are only in charge of the present. The present is nothing, and it is everything. We are born to die. We die to be born. Everything is manic, frenetic, and chaotic. The Omniverse is accelerating, the hectic world grows exponentially, and the it’s all chaos at the base level. Big Bang to virtual existence, virtual existence to entropic death. What will transpire in the meantime, nuclear war, a cosmic event, or some bio- catastrophe? No bother, it’s all good. Love is supreme, our timeless connection. Soul is love. Love is soul. Every part of God is soul. The soul is how God is immanent. Love is our permanent connection to God, and each other. We are a paradox of one shared soul, and freedom. We are free to create more love, soul, and parts of God. I used to be terrified of death. My grandfather was terminally ill in the hospital across from my high school, yet I never visited him. That fact still haunts me to this day. Years later, my arms were around my grandmother as she struggled with her last breaths. I told her we were with her and everything was going to be okay. She died as I held her tightly and I felt her body lose life. It was the most peaceful

155 moment I ever experienced, and I actually felt joy for her. It was an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual moment for me. I was not afraid anymore. After that experience there has always been a part inside me that personally anticipates that beautiful, peaceful love. One day, years later, I received the phone call every parent dreads. My daughter was in a serious automobile accident. As I raced to her on the interstate, I prepared myself for the news she had died. Once again, I felt an unexpected and profound emotion. She lived, but in the face of that, horrifying time there was a strange overall calm about me. I realized, no matter what, everything was going to be okay. I again remembered I was not afraid anymore. Some leave massive fortunes, worldwide fame, amazing talents, but Mommaw was a perfect example of a loving person—and there’s no greater success in life than that. When it comes to love she had lots of practice: fifty-eight babies, seven children, seventeen grandchildren, thirty-one great grandchildren, three great- great grandchildren, and a devoted wife, sister, aunt, cousin, and daughter. Mommaw was caring. Mommaw was giving. Mommaw was loving, and it wasn’t just with her family. At a time in her life when many people slow down, she didn’t. She loved to help at the senior center, delivered meals to the sick and elderly, she even became the center’s bus driver. She had many friends. Mommaw loved people, and she loved the simple pleasures of life: shopping the farmer’s market, picking blackberries, camping, and fishing. Fortune and fame could have been Mommaw’s too, if the world had learned of her talent: biscuits. She made the very best biscuits in the world. She was the sweetest, most loving mother and grandmother, but she was also strong, living through the Great Depression, caring for their large family. She beat cancer twice. How appropriate for Mommaw to pass here at Easter. Easter, proof that love is more powerful than death. Mommaw was ready. She told me she was. She wasn’t afraid because of her faith, and because of her love. Close your eyes. Everyone here close your eyes. Mommaw gave the best hugs in the world. Close your eyes—she’s hugging you now. We all deeply miss her. We feel sorrow, but don’t feel sorrow for her. She’s feeling wonderful! She’s with Jesus! She’s with Papa, her children, her parents, her brothers and sisters, and she’s with you. And she still loves you very, very much. Definitions of Soul 1. The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. 1.1 A person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity. 1.2 Emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artistic performance. 2. The essence or embodiment of a specified

156 quality. 2.1 An individual person. 2.2 A person regarded with affection or pity. 3. African-American culture or ethnic pride. 3.1 short for soul music. 1. a. A part of humans regarded as immaterial, immortal, separable from the body at death, capable of moral judgment, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state. b. This part of a human when disembodied after death. 2. In Aristotelian philosophy, an animating or vital principle inherent in living things and endowing them in various degrees with the potential to grow and reproduce, to move and respond to stimuli (as in the case of animals), and to think rationally (as in the case of humans). 3. a. A human. b. A person considered as the embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification. c. A person's emotional or moral nature. 4. The central or integral part; the vital core. 5. A sense of emotional strength or spiritual vitality held to derive from black and especially African-American cultural experience, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music. 6. Strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, performer, or artist: a performance that had a lot of soul. 1. the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part. 2. the spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come; 3. the disembodied spirit of a deceased person; 4. the emotional part of human nature; the seat of the feelings or sentiments. 5. a human being; person. 6. high-mindedness; noble warmth of feeling, spirit or courage, etc. 7. the animating principle; the essential element or part of something. Psychism is the belief in a soul. Panpsychism is the idea that everything material has psyche. Panprotopsychism is the belief everything has, at least some rudimentary psyche aspect. Existentialism is the belief that the existence of the free individual with subjective experiences is responsible for their own authenticity and meaning, and exists is in a state of disorientation in the face of an indifferent universe.

Sentient experience, in short, is reality, and what is not this is not real. Feeling, thought, and volition ... are all the material of existence, and there is no other material, actual or even possible. F. H. Bradley

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Consider your own place in the universal oneness of which we are all a part, from which we all arise, and to which we all return. David Fontana

Theopsychism is the belief that the soul is divine. Theopsychism is the belief that the soul is divine, and part of God.

You are within God. God is within you. Peace Pilgrim Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript of a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. Rumi Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. Rumi You are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold. That is how important you are! Eckhart Tolle It is not enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. Do not delude yourself by imagining such a source to be some God outside you. One's source is within oneself. Give yourself up to it. That means that you should seek the source and merge in it. Sai Baba of Shirdi God is but Love, and therefore so am I. Helen Schucman, A Course in Miracles To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely one with this universe. Alan Watts … We are never defeated unless we give up on God. Ronald Reagan the Kingdom of God is inside you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty. Gospel According to Thomas

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Agapsychism is the belief that the soul is love. Agapsychism is the belief that the soul is literally pure love.

To fail to love is not to exist at all. Mark Van Doren I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?' rather he will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?' Mother Teresa For love is immortality. Emily Dickinson To love is to know Me, My innermost nature, The truth that I am. Vyasa, Bhagavad Gita If you want to live die in love. Rumi Every time we fall in love, we ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy or fight someone we tumble straight into the fires of hell. Shams of Tabriz Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love. William Law We are love. Love is the essence of mind, body, and spirit. ... It is love that fuels the body’s capacity to heal and regenerate itself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Dr. Elaine R. Ferguson All true morality, inward and outward, is comprehended in love, for love is the foundation of all the commandments. Meister Eckhart Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is! Anne Frank Love is not an emotion. It is your very existence. Ravi Shankar

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When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men. Rumi The soul is not where it lives, but where it loves. unknown Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. Martin Luther King, Jr. Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being? Igor Stravinsky

Monopsychism is the belief that one soul is shared by all. Monopsychism is the belief that all share the soul.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. Charles Dickens It is by loving and by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another. George McDonald In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two. Erich Fromm

Monotheopsychism is the belief that one divine soul is shared by all. Monotheopsychism is the combination of Theopsychism and Monopsychism. It is the belief that the soul is divine, part of God, and shared by all.

I honor the place in you where the entire universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light, and of peace. I honor the place in you where, if you are in that place of you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. Ram Dass The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time. Marsilio Ficino We are born of love. Love is our mother. Rumi

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All of man’s engagements are guided by a single, intrinsic premise, and the internality dresses within all people. It is what they referred to as “Nature,” whose numeric count is the same as Elokim (God). And this is the truth that the Creator concealed from the philosophers. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lutzato When there enters into it a glow from the Divine, the soul gathers strength, spreads true wings, and, however distracted by its proximate environment, speeds its buoyant way to something greater;… its very nature bears it upwards, lifted by the Giver of that love.… Surely we need not wonder that It possesses the power to draw the soul to Itself, calling it back from every wandering to rest before It. From It came everything; nothing is mightier. Plotinus We are all blessed ones. Heaven is no longer in the clouds. It is right here, all around us, everywhere; we must only open our eyes to see it. Kim Chestney Parting your soup is not a miracle Bruce, it's a magic trick. A single mom who's working two jobs, and still finds time to take her son to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says "no" to drugs and "yes" to an education, that's a miracle. People want me to do everything for them. What they don't realize is THEY have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle. Bruce Almighty If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. Gospel According to Thomas

Metagapsychism is the belief that the soul is love, shared by all, and divine. … is the belief that the Soul is shared, and part of all pure love, therefore divine. Metagapsychism is Agapsychism and Monotheopsychism, combined. It is the belief that the soul is love, shared by all, and divine, as part of God.

The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. It must lose itself in love. By its very nature it must seek God, who is love. Mechthild von Magdeburg Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. Leo Tolstoy 161

As God can only be seen by His own light, so He can only be loved by His own love. Meister Eckhart Love the moment and the energy of the moment will spread beyond all boundaries. Sister Corita Kent Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breaks through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love. Ralph Waldo Emerson Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah's gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth. Bob Marley The soul gives unity to what it looks at with love. Thomas Carlyle What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God. Eleanor Powell The Spirit who is in the body does not grow old and does not die, and no one can ever kill the Spirit who is everlasting. This is the real castle of Brahman wherein dwells all the love of the universe. . . Chandogya Upanishad The purpose of life is soul growth. We are here to become transcendent and to become one with God. There is no more to life than this. In other words, we are here to love. Sara Wiseman What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. Albert Pike The mystical journey may begin with making a relationship with one’s inner light, but the mystic is drawn on a deeper journey toward love’s greatest secret: that within the heart we are one with the divine . Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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God is pleased with nothing but love…. His desire… is the growth of our soul. There is no way in which the soul can grow but in becoming in a manner equal to Him, for this reason only is He pleased with our love. It is the property of love to place him who loves on an equality with the object of his love. Hence the soul, because of its perfect love… signifies equality with Him. St. John of the Cross What love we've given, we'll have forever. What love we fail to give will be lost for all eternity. Leo Buscaglia To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name. Thomas Merton God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. St. John the Apostle, 1 John 4:16

Mereology is the study of parts and the wholes they form.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Helen Keller The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Aristotle All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul . Alexander Pope A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Albert Einstein

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Life is the condition that distinguishes animals, plants, and organisms from inorganic matter; change preceding death; existence.

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice. Richard Dawkins Remember, to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person might not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind. Bob Moorehead Love is all you need. John Lennon Where there is love there is life. Mahatma Gandhi My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognizable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning. Clarice Lispector From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other—above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. Albert Einstein If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. Thomas Merton

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Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life. Leo Buscaglia We live in the world when we love it. Rabindranath Tagore Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can. Dalai Lama One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love. Sophocles There is only one happiness in life—to love and to be loved. George Sand To love and be loved is the great happiness of existence. Sydney Smith Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. Oscar Wilde To love a thing means wanting it to live. Confucius There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. John Lennon In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. Mother Teresa Take away love and our earth is a tomb. Robert Browning

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In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go? Gautama Buddha Life is neither good or evil, it is only a place for good and evil. Marcus Aurelius We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. Richard Dawkins All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on— in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here... Death ends a life, not a relationship. Mitch Albom Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. Gautama Buddha You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life? Rumi Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Leo Tolstoy Love made me. (Inscription over the Gates of Hell) Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy That whosoever passes away from the world does not grieve and lament over his death, but grieves ever over lost opportunities. Rumi Light, Life and Love are like three glow-worms at thy feet: the whole universe of stars, the dewdrops on the grass whereon thou walkest! Aleister Crowley

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Wise are they who have learned these truths: Trouble is temporary. Time is a tonic. Tribulation is a test tube. unknown Everything passes. Everything changes. Just do what you think you should do. Bob Dylan Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value. Mahatma Gandhi Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present. Bil Keane If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself and make a change. Michael Jackson Let us not worry About the future. Let us only do the right thing Today, At this moment, Here and now. Let the future take care of itself. Sri Chinmoy Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. Carl Sandburg No one succeeds without effort … Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance. Sai Baba of Shirdi

Incompleteness is the theorem that mathematics and logic have unsurmountable limits.

We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong. Richard Feynman If the system is consistent, it cannot be complete. The consistency of the axioms cannot be proven within the system. Kurt Gödel

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Just as we will never grasp the full meaning of God, we will never grasp the full meaning of love. Thomas Jay Oord The highest form of spiritual work is the realization of the essence of man.... You never learn the answer; you can only become the answer. Richard Rose I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way. Carl Sandburg Not only does God play dice but … he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. Stephen Hawking Stephen Hawking was originally a believer in the Theory of Everything but, after considering Gödel's Theorem, concluded that one was not obtainable. Wikipedia

Complementarity is a fundamental principle that quantum phenomenon cannot be fully known without multiple measurements or views.

Love is the bridge between you and everything. Rumi The necessity, in atomic physics, of a renewed examination of the foundation for the unambiguous use of elementary physical ideas recalls in some way the situation that led Einstein to his original revision on the basis of all application of space-time concepts which, by its emphasis on the primordial importance of the observational problem, has lent such unity to our world picture. Notwithstanding all novelty of approach, causal description is upheld in relativity theory within any given frame of reference, but in quantum theory the uncontrollable interaction between the objects and the measuring instruments forces us to a renunciation even in such respect. This recognition, however, in no way points to any limitation of the scope of the quantum-mechanical description, and the trend of the whole argumentation presented in the Como lecture was to show that the viewpoint of complementarity may be regarded as a rational generalisation of the very ideal of causality. Niels Bohr

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This being, that becomes; From the arising of this, that arises. This not being, that does not become; From the cessation of this, that ceases. Gautama Buddha Bohr’s principle of complementarity – the heart of the Copenhagen philosophy – implies that quantum phenomena can only be described by pairs of partial, mutually exclusive, or ‘complementary’ perspectives. Though simultaneously inapplicable, both perspectives are necessary for the exhaustive description of phenomena. Mara Beller

Man is any individual person, a human being.

Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us. Guy de Maupassant The true human being … is the meaning of the universe. He is a dancing star. He is the exploding singularity pregnant with infinite possibilities. David Zindell Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man. Immanuel Kant Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived. Dalai Lama, XVI The only thing bigger than God`s great universe is man`s ego. Gary Sevakis Man is something that shall be overcome.... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end. Friedrich Nietzsche We are who we choose to be. Green Goblin 169

In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe. David Bohm You are ninety-eight cents' worth of cosmic star dust floating at the obscure edge of an ordinary galaxy, and yet you are the center of your own world; to friends and family, you may be precious beyond all worth. On one day, humanity seems the apex of all things beautiful, generous, mindful; another day, it seems a stupid beast. K. C. Cole I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three. unknown To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with millet, only one grain will grow. Metrodorus of Chios If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans. James Herriot We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. Stephen Hawking The greatest weakness of most humans are their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're alive. Optimus Prime Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself. Alfred North Whitehead You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. Mahatma Gandhi

Soul is the part that embodies life. Afterlife is life or existence believed to follow death. Eschatology is the branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind; or a belief or doctrine concerning the

170 ultimate or final things. Soteriology is the branch of theology dealing with the nature and means of salvation.

You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. C. S. Lewis All things, in all their aspects, consist exclusively of 'souls', that is, of various kinds of subjects, or units of experiencing, with their qualifications, relations, and groupings, or communities. Charles Hartshorne The illusion is we are only physical. Vanna Bonta He whom love touches not walks in darkness. Plato And the eternal Father said, “And if anyone should ask me what the soul is, I would say: She is another me, made by the union of love. St. Catherine of Siena In a little while this hurt will hurt no more. I'll be home, love. When the night takes a deep breath, and the daylight has no end, if I crawl, if I come crawling home will you be there? Bono God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall. Julian of Norwich Nothing burns in hell but the self.... Anonymous, Theologia Germanica Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. Zora Neale Hurston Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is. Voltaire My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there. Rumi Love is love's reward. John Dryden

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At the bottom we find a power of the soul whose one object is the body to which it is united.… the vegetative soul only acts on its own body. St. Thomas Aquinas Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die. Thomas Carlyle I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it. It's just getting out of one car, and into another. John Lennon But it is the will of God and nature, that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter real life. . . . A man is not completely born until he be dead. Benjamin Franklin Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day. Albert Camus He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife. Douglas Adams I know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before. I laugh at what you call dissolution, and I know the amplitude of time. Walt Whitman Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Rumi I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. Carl Sagan We are punished by our sins, not for them. Elbert Hubbard After your death you will be what you were before your birth. Arthur Schopenhauer Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Henry David Thoreau

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Erich Fromm Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil—coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes. Henry David Thoreau We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end. Benjamin Disraeli In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. J. R. R. Tolkien Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness. Shams of Tabriz Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality. Abraham Lincoln I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as an animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?” Rumi What we call life … is the combination of the Five Aggregates, a combination of physical and mental energies. These are constantly changing; they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Every moment they are born and they die. 'When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.' This, even now during this life time, every moment we are born and die, but we continue. If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or a Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body? Walpola Rahula When you get to the end of all the light you know and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly. Edward Teller

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We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. Thomas Jefferson When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. William Shakespeare , Romeo and Juliet But it's believed the soul can stay on earth for three to forty days after death. It eventually receives temporary judgment that sends it on from this world to heaven or hell-although no one will truly experience either until the actual Judgment Day, when the soul and body are reunited to live out eternity as one. Richelle Mead True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things. Henri B. Stendhal Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love. Rumi Like the twilight in the road up ahead They don't see just where we're goin' All the secrets in the universe whisper in our ears All the years come and go, take us up, always up We may never pass this way again. Seals and Crofts

Anatta is belief that there is no separate soul or self.

When I have sacrificed my angel-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, To Him we shall return. Rumi

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Don't fight darkness. Bring the light, and darkness will disappear. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi I am all orders of being… what is, and what isn’t. Rumi To be or not to be, that is the question— Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep— No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to— ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep … William Shakespeare

World Soul is the connection of all living things.

All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the Mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights to live upon it. Chief Joseph God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. Freeman Dyson Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover. Rabindranath Tagore You are not an ocean in a drop. You are the entire ocean in a drop. Rumi

Love is a gift to all the parts of the whole. The very essence of (Uncle) Gary, and all of us, is love. Gary’s love, his soul, the very link to all good, to god, never dies. As long as you love, Gary will live in your heart. As long as you love, you will live forever, too.

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The Whole (∆)

Ultimately, love is everything. M. Scott Peck

The Whole is known through many perspectives. The Whole is the sumative love of everything: spirit, Tao, system, uncertain completeness, paradoxical community, and the One hypostasis. The Whole is the third respect of love, and the peak of everything. The Whole is all love: actual, and potential. Everything is love, or the need of it. Tautology … An illusion is fake reality. A paradox is fake illusion. The primacy of the paradox is evident. Fundamental topics in science, math, philosophy, logic, religion, and spirituality all inevitably center upon well-known paradoxes. Why does the trichotomy constantly appear in our search of ultimate truths? The paradox always has three perspectives: the absolute, the relative, and the whole. Everything is not only black, and white, but also gray or clear. Rule of three in writing, and the rule of thirds in art composition; hendiatris and tricolon… Bohr's Principle of Complementarity recognizes the fundamental nature of the paradox. It shows that seemingly conflicting and often opposite qualities of reality are unifying and fundamental to the core. When we think deeply about the big questions, we inevitably arrive at a paradox. Great truths wink with paradox. The greater the question is, the greater the paradox. This is true in all disciplines. Would it not be reasonable, then, for the greatest question also to be the greatest paradox? ‘Why everything?’ should be answered by whatever we spend most our time upon, both in thought and in action, and with what we are most familiar. The greatest truth is the greatest paradox because the greatest mystery is the greatest cliché: love. It is said that a poem tells us something we know, but we do not know we know. Love is our ultimate poem. Love is our ultimate paradox. Love is what we most know, but do not know we know. The first stage knows the truth. The second stage does not know the truth. The third stage realizes the paradox. Teleology is the final cause or purpose of everything.

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Metagapism Nature of The Whole: Metagapism is the system of belief that love is most fundamental, literally God, and soul. Metagapism is the belief that love is ultimate truth. Metagapism is what is of value and importance, how reality is, and the ultimate reason why. Metagapism is Metagapetheism combined with Metagapsychism. It is the biggest picture possible: the theory of everything. Metagapism is the belief that love is literally God, all pure love combined, the absolute quintessential yet ineffable source, the one shared Soul, the relative and incomplete yet essential part, and complete and fundamental Spirit, yet paradoxical and uncertain whole. Love is good, right, and the timeless connection with God, each other, and all. Love is spontaneous, free and the destiny of everything. Love is supreme. Love is divine. Love is the ultimate membership. Love is the sacred destiny of everything good. Everything is either Love, or the need of it. In the beginning, before space and time, there was nothing, except Love. In the present, and every moment, there is nothing, except Love. In the end, and beyond, there is nothing, except Love. Love transcends. Love never ends. Love is everything. Metagapism is the belief that love is the ultimate reality, literally god and the one shared soul, and the source, nature and destiny of all. Metagapism is the reason for everything—the only proper answer to Why?

Love is the supreme spirit throughout the universe. God is love. Soul is love. Only love is divine and eternal. Through love we create our meaning of life, our heaven or hell. We are born with love and we pass with varying amounts. Our love is sacred. Our love is our true self. Our love is forever. Love is the answer to the important questions. Wisdom is more than knowledge. Enlightenment is more than wisdom. Faith in Love is justified as 177 any first principle, or axiom. Simple, yet infinitely profound, supremely transcendent, yet intimately immanent, Love is everything. Resolving Evil, Ignorance, and the unknown… Love is almost everything, and non-love is almost nothing, therefore love is everything … Love is real. Love is personal. Love is supreme. Love is peace, freedom, success, meaning, connection, truth, and eternal life. Love gives life meaning, purpose, reason, value, answers, direction, cause, intention, justification, motive, peace, success, direction, hope, faith, love, existence, essence, freedom, divinity, salvation, harmony, consciousness, reality, spirituality, truth, knowledge, oneness, connection, enlightenment, aspiration, inspiration, passion, depth, vision, growth, strength, purity, energy, power, soul, self, nature, paradox, emotion, virtue, spirit, heart, beauty, morality, ethics, transcendence, good, everything, perfection, eternity, joy, compassion, life … Love is the answer. There is something bigger throughout the universe. It is a supreme spirit that also constitutes our souls, therefore, giving us a connectedness. It is the reality of reason. Love always was and will always be. The challenge for us is releasing the barriers, making love the priority, and living the eternal moment. Metagapism, Mathematics and Mysticism Metagapism can show correspondence with mystical representations of mathematics, and overall and specific understandings of mysticism. Metagapism is in mysticism. All 12 main parts of Metagapism are represented in Stace-Hood’s Mysticism: 1=1,3,6.7,11,12; 2=7,10; 3=5,6,8; 4=1,2,4; 5=2,7; 6=2,11; 7=2,9. Metagapism is in Kabbalah’s Sephirot. 1. The Absolute, 2. Transcendence, 3. Mental, 4. (and 5.) Connection, 6. Attraction, 7. Submission, 8. The Relative, 9. The Whole, and 10. Physical. Everything also is at the center. Metagapism is in the Seven Universal Laws of the Kybalion . -- three immutable (absolute and transcendental) laws: Correspondence (connection), Vibration (physical), and All-Is-Mind (mental); and four mutable (relative and physical) laws: Cause-and-effect (absolute and relative), Rhythm (relative and absolute), Gender (attraction and submission), and Polarity (whole). Special law of Attraction is separate. Metagapism is in mathematics… (+, −, =), (∞, Ø, 1), ( ↑, ∂, ∆) Metagapism is in our perspectives. Spirituality = Love: Jewish Kabbalah and Humanism are The Relative, Catholic and Orthodox Christianity is Submission,

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Islamic Sufism is The Absolute, Hindu Tantra and Hermeticism are Attraction, Zen Buddhism is the Mental, Taoism and Neoplatonism are The Whole, Modern Syncretic Spirituality, ad Genealogy are Connection, Neopaganism and physics are the Physical, religion and mathematics are Transcendence. Love is the answer to all the important questions, and like wisdom, unprovable, yet there is no greater truth or reason than love. Love is literal, beyond the figurative and beyond cliché. Love is the ultimate paradox, the biggest secret of the universe, and yet our biggest daily obsession. Love is beauty, art, pleasure, goodness, and virtue. We should love all love, others and self. We should appreciate love and share it. The best life is one that makes love the priority. Love is the true success. Love is meaning and purpose. Love is why we exist. Love is life, freedom, supreme, and the reason for everything. Love is our source, our reality, and our destiny. Love is reality, god, and soul. Love is light, connection, peace, and the way. System is a set of connected things or parts forming a complete whole.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness. Stephen R. Covey I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong. John Lennon Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us. Marianne Williamson

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If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. C. S. Lewis

Hypostasis is the conduit or spirit from which everything exists. Everything is all things or all of a group of things.

Infinite love is the only truth. Everything else is illusion. David Icke ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word—‘Everything’—and everyone will accept this answer as true. Willard Van Orman I trust that everything happens for a reason, even if we are not wise enough to see it. Oprah Winfrey Love is something eternal; the aspect may change but not the essence. Vincent Van Gogh Everything is nothing, with a twist. Kurt Vonnegut It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. Alfred North Whitehead Love in its essence is spiritual fire. Seneca Woven into our lives is the very fire from the stars and genes from sea creatures, and everyone, utterly everyone, is kin in the radiant tapestry of being. Elizabeth A. Johnson With our love, we could save the world. George Harrison The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transform. Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe. Novalis Hardenberg Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God. William Law Life has three rules: Paradox, Humour, and Change. Paradox: Life is a mystery. Don't waste your time trying to figure it out. Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure. Change: Know that nothing stays the same. Dan Millman

Paradox is a seemingly illogical or self-contradictory statement that may prove to be true.

The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever. Craig Ferguson Perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the color of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it. Olive Schreiner The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be. Richard Feynman God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one. Rumi Never forget: we walk on hell, gazing at flowers. Kobayashi Issa The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can’t have it. The minute you don’t want power, you’ll have more than you ever dreamed possible. Ram Dass 181

Knock, And He'll open the door. Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun. Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens. Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything. Rumi A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. Dōgen The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. Niels Bohr Paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think. Søren Kierkegaard The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love. Henry Miller The world is a contradiction, the universe a paradox. Kedar Joshi The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Elie Wiesel Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained. Gene Wolfe The paradoxis really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo. Søren Kierkegaard All generalizations are false, including this one. Albert Einstein

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Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself. T. S. Eliot “You have been to hell, Ketut?” He smiled. Of course he's been there. “What's it like in hell?” “Same like heaven,” he said. He saw my confusion and tried to explain. “Universe is a circle, Liss. … To up, to down all same, at end.” I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below. I asked. “Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?” “Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss.” He laughed … “Same in end, so better to be happy in journey.” I said, “So, if heaven is love, then hell is…” “Love, too,” he said. … Ketut laughed again, “Always so difficult for young people to understand this!” Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being. Madeleine L'Engle How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. Niels Bohr To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox? Tom Robbins Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth. Benjamin Peirce

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Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none. Albert Einstein As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. Henry David Thoreau Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. St. Francis of Assisi The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. Bob Moorehead

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Uncertainty is the principle that there are fundamental limits to measurement precision.

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar. Richard Feynman Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger, a more fantastic kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant. Jorge Luis Borges I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain. René Descartes For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. Charles Bukowski

Theory of Everything is an all-encompassing explanation or description of reality.

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? Stephen Hawking If we find the answer to (why the universe exists, a Theory of Everything,) it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason. For then we would know the mind of God. Stephen Hawking

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Love is everything. It is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world. Ralph Waldo Trine

Community is any group with shared values or interaction.

Light of the world, shine on me. Love is the answer. Shine on us all. Set us free. Love is the answer. Tell me, are we alive or just a dying planet? (What are the chances?) Ask the man in your heart for the answer. And when you feel afraid (Love one another) When you've lost your way (Love one another) And when you're all alone (Love one another) And when you're far from home (Love one another) And when you're down and out (Love one another) And when your hopes run out (Love one another) And when you need a friend (Love one another) And when you're near the end (Love!) (We've got to love, We've got to love one another) Todd Rundgren Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies, all of which are in one universe among perhaps an infinite number of universes all nestled within a grand cosmic multiverse, is provincially insular and anthropocentrically blinkered. Which is more likely? That the universe was designed just for us, or that we see the universe as having been designed just for us? Michael Shermer Only through love can we obtain communion with God. Albert Schweitzer

Spirit is any non-physical or immaterial entity.

Love is that burning fire which devours everything and shall never, never cease in all the endless ages to come. Hadewijch

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Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit. Gilbert K. Chesterton You do not need to work to become spiritual. You are spiritual; you need only to remember that fact. Spirit is within you. God is within you. Julia Cameron

Tao is the active and ineffable 'way' of all.

The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name. Laozi The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method? Confucius A monk asked his master to express Zen on paper so that he would have something tangible to study. At first the master refused, saying, Since it is right in front of your face why should I try to capture it with brush and ink? Still the monk continued to plead with the master for something concrete. The master drew a circle on a piece of paper and added this inscription: Thinking about this and understanding it is second best; not thinking about it and understanding it is third best. The master did not say what is first best. unknown Love—Embracing Tao, you become embraced. Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn. Clearing your vision, you become clear. Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial. Opening your heart, you become accepted. Accepting the World, you embrace Tao. Bearing and nurturing, Creating but not owning, Giving without demanding, Controlling without authority, This is love. Laozi

The One is the first principle of reality beyond even being.

It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God, in regulating the rest from the beginning of things, should have regard to itself. Gottfried Leibniz The thing about chaos, is that while it disturbs us, it too, forces our hearts to roar in a way we secretly find magnificent. Christopher Poindexter 187

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. Meister Eckhart

Beautiful Day, The Unforgettable Fire, All I Want Is You; Bad, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Electrical Storm; With or Without You, New Year’s Day, MLK; Ordinary Love; Every Breaking Wave, In God’s Country, Stay (Faraway, So Close!); I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, City of Blinding Lights, October; Pride (In the Name of Love), One, Moment of Surrender;Ultraviolet (Light My Way); Gloria, Magnificent, If God Will Send His Angels; In A Little While, Red Hill Mining Town, One Tree Hill; Walk On, Song for Someone, 40; Where the Streets Have No Name.

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Three Respects of Love

Your first love has no beginning or end. Your first love is not your first love, and it is not your last. It is just love. It is one with everything. Thich Nhat Hanh

Combining the perspectives of philosophy, science, and religion gives an interdimensional insight into why everything is, the Three Respects of Love. The Three Respects of Love are The Absolute, The Relative, and The Whole. The more we understand love, the more we understand everything. Love is absolute. Love is relative. Love is whole. The Absolute is the ground. The Relative is the core. The Whole is the peak. There is only one reason, love, with different perspectives. Three Respects of Love is comparable to Idealist Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s dialectic of Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. Fichte considered dialectical reasoning the key to evolving thought: beginning with a thesis, we consider its negation, the antithesis, and resolve the conflict by a reconciling with a new synthesis. Theism, Psychism, and System are respects of academic philosophy. Supremacy, Mereology, and Hypostasis are respects of philosophy of life. Source, Life, and Paradox are respects of philosophy of love. Undefinability, Incompleteness, and Uncertainty are respects of mathematics. Laws of Science, Complementarity and the Theory of Everything are respects of physics. Nature, Man, and Community are respects of psychology. God, Soul, and Spirit are respects of Abrahamic religions. Brahman, Anatta, and Tao are respects of Eastern religions. The Great Spirit, World Soul, and The One are respects of natural religions. The Absolute, The Relative, and The Whole are sacred. The Relative, and The Whole are precious. The Whole is all. The Absolute is sacred. The Relative is sacred, and precious. The Whole is sacred, precious, and all. This is the Paradox of the Ultimate: Love loves.

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Three Respects of Love The Absolute, The Relative, and The Whole Paradox of The Ultimate

Love is a flame that burns everything other than itself. It is the destruction of all that is false and the fulfillment of all that is true. Adyashanti

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The Whole (continued) Love is God-Soul. This is everything, the big secret. What if it wasn’t? No matter what the question or perspective there are Creative, Limitive, and Summative dimensions to Metagapism. Attraction, Physical, and The Absolute are Creative. Submission, Mental, and The Relative are Limitive. Connection, Transcendence, and The Whole are Summative. Creation is the spark, Limitation is the flame, and Summation is the ember. Love is the fire, and non- love is the ash. Almost everything is fire, and almost nothing is ash, therefore everything is fire, and ash is non-existent. Love is the reason for everything. Love is why everything is. The Absolute is the initial spark. The Relative is the temporary fire. The Whole is the flawed ember. Everything burns in love, actual and potential. Love Theory of Everything covers more than physics. It accounts for life, consciousness, and the ultimate realities. It answers the fundamental questions of philosophy, science, and religion, each an invaluable source of essential wisdom. Love Theory of Everything is inclusive, thus, universal. It answers Hawking’s question of what breathes fire into the equations. It is a most comprehensive view of love, and everything. Theory of Everything: the paradox of combining comprehensiveness, finality, and non-circularity (Munchhausen Trilemma) with Incompleteness, Undefinability, and Uncertainty; as well as, Quantum Theory with Theories of Relativity (physical TOE.) The Universal Set does not exist. There is no everything —it is more than everything. Future discovery of extra dimensions should explain many paradoxes across all knowledge perspectives. Live in the present moment. The past and future is now: one, nothing without limit. The average human lifespan compared to the age of the universe is the same as comparing a blink of an eye to that human lifespan. Relatively speaking, short and long lifespans are the same. Both are non-existent compared to the infinite that’s ahead. Furthermore, we cannot change the past, and have no guarantees for the future. We are only in charge of the present. The present is nothing— and it is everything.

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Live in the present moment. The future is now. It is never too late to love in the present moment. You cannot fail. The present is for love. It is as simple as that. Have faith in Love. Love is one clear limitless Source attracted and submitted to the Soul, and connected as Whole. [Love (♡) is (=) one (1) clear (Ø) limitless ( ∞) Source (↑) attracted (+) and submitted ( −) to the Soul (∂) and connected (=) as Whole (∆)] thus, ♡ = (1 = Ø = ∞) = (↑ (+ − ∂) = ∆)

* ⟶ ∑ ≈ ʘ ≡ P S R M

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Epilogue

If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together… there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart … I'll always be with you. A. A. Milne

When we think of God and Soul as pure love, everything makes sense. I don't know any more than you know, it’s just that I know why. We cannot know everything, but we can know what is most important. Love is greater than any one perspective. Love is all that is important, and therefore love is everything. Judgement Day story…

The trouble is, you think you have time. Gautama Buddha

Have faith in love. Think and do the best you can, passionately appreciate what you have, compassionately care for others, give what you can, and calmly be

195 aware of your true self, an essential and timeless part of everything connected. Create all the love you can, and increase your divine connection. Life is short, but love never, ever ends. Do not fear nothingness. So called nothingness is pure unity with God and everyone you love. Only love is eternal. Everything else fades away. Smile at the paradox, no, laugh, laugh with watery eyes! …and always remember to not worry, everything is going to be okay. ♡

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Don't worry… it will be alright. Rudolph Valentino

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Index

1 Corinthians 13 Beecher, Henry Ward 32, Carlyle, Thomas 67, 162, 4-8a ...... 47 109 172 1 John 4 Bell, Rob ...... 58, 149 Carmichael, Amy ...... 43 8 142 Bernières, Louis de ... 45 Carnegie, Dale ...... 14 Abbagnano, Nicola ... 84 Billings, Josh .. 46, 85, 94 Carroll, Lewis ...... 80 Abelkader, Tadj ...... 28 Black Eyed Peas ...... 144 Casanova, Giocomo .... 6 Aberjhani ...... 100 Bohm, David 91, 113, 170 Catherine of Siena, St. 171 Adams, Douglas .. 54, 88, Bohr, Niels ...... 182, 183 Century Dictionary and 172 Bolingbroke, Henry .. 83 Cyclopedia ...... 143 Addison, Joseph ...... 28 Bono ...... 46, 83, 171 Cerin, Sorin ...... 72 Adler, Margot ...... 105 Bonta, Vanna .....74, 171 Chalmers, David ...... 91 Adler, Shannon L. ... 109 Borges, Jorge Luis ... 185 Chandler, Raymond .. 84 Adornetto, Alexandra 25 Borland, Hal ...... 149 Chandogya Upanishad 162 Adyashanti ...... 14, 96 Borman, Frank ...... 58 Channing, William Ellery Albom, Mitch 18, 48, 51, Borne, Ludwig ...... 88 ...... 93 166 Boufflers ...... 83 Cheever, John ...... 87 Alighieri, Dante .. 27, 28, Breton, Andre ...... 115 Cherokee Blessing .. 105 166 Brontë, Charlotte ..... 46 Chesterton, Gilbert K. 49, Allen, James ...... 71 Brontë, Emily ...... 59 187 Anand, Margot ...... 32 Brown, Brené ...... 52 Chestney, Kim ...... 161 Angelou, Maya ...... 79 Brown, Dan ...... 11 Chief Joseph ..... 58, 175 Anouilh, Jean . 28, 29, 40 Brown, John Marlin .. 44 Chief Seattle ...... 51 Antenberg, Peter .... 147 Browning, Elizabeth Chopra, Deepak . 86, 96, Anthony, Susan B. .. 111 Barrett ...... 60 150 Antonio, Tins Matienzo 36 Browning, Robert ... 165 Churchill, Winston .... 83 Aquinas, Thomas, St. 44, Bruce Almighty ...... 161 Cicero, Marcus T. 13, 29 82, 148, 172 Bryson, Bill ...... 70 Clarence Darrow ...... 82 Arendt, Hannah ...... 145 Buck, Pearl S...... 35 classicalhomeschooling.co Aristotle ... 16, 44, 82, 83 Buckley, Pat ...... 105 m ...... 41, 149 Armstrong, Karen ..... 18 Buddha, Gautama 30, 36, Clements, Andrew .... 85 Asimov, Isaac ...... 80, 84 74, 79, 145, 166 Cloud of Unknowing, The Assisi, St. Francis of 184 Bukowski, Charles .. 185 ...... 57 Augustine, St...... 27, 89 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G. Coelho, Paulo ..... 41, 54 Aurelius, Marcus 30, 71, ...... 81 Cohen, Leonard ...... 145 113, 166 Buñuel, Luis ...... 16 Cole, K. C...... 170 Ayivor, Israelmore .... 34 Buscaglia, Leo ..163, 165 Colfer, Eoin ...... 81 Azai, Rabbi Ben ...... 87 Butcher, Jim ...... 146 Colossians 3 Baba, Meher . 56, 60, 71, Butler, Samuel .....83, 93 14 58 151 Butterworth, Eric .... 140 Colton, Charles Caleb 82 Bach, Richard ...... 31, 71 Byrne, Rhonda ...... 54 Conan Doyle, Arthur . 28 Bailey, Pearl ...... 147 Calderon, Pedro de la Confucius 19, 41, 52, 87, Bancroft, George ...... 29 Barca ...... 32 165, 187 Barrie, Sir James M. . 55 Cameron, Julia ...50, 187 Conrad, Joseph ...... 145 Barton, Bruce ...... 134 Camus, Albert ...... 172 Covey, Stephen R. .. 179

199

Crowley, Aleister .... 166 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 37, Graham, Billy ...... 104 Cummings, E. E...... 42 52, 55, 93, 98, 104, Green Goblin ...... 169 Curtis, Donald ...... 94 141, 162 Green, John ...... 122 Da Vinci, Leonardo 79, 133 Empedocles ...... 74, 151 Groom, Winston ..... 112 Dahl, Roald ...... 115 Erdrich, Louise ...... 43 Gurdjieff, George ...... 17 Dalai Lama, XIV .. 44, 98, Erhard, Werner ...... 86 Gwyn, Doug ...... 82 108, 138, 165, 169 Eriugena, John Scotus 149 Hadewijch ...... 186 Darwin, Charles 145, 149 Ferguson, Craig ...... 181 Haggai, John ...... 145 Dass, Ram ...... 113, 160 Ferguson, Elaine R., Dr. Hansen, Mark Victor 107 Daum, Meghan ...... 73 ...... 159 Hardenberg, Novalis 181 Davies, Victor ...... 108 Feuerbach, Ludwig . 116 Harrell, S. Kelley ...... 51 Dawkins, Richard 16, 136, Feynman, Richard 17, 52, Harrison, George .... 180 137, 138, 139, 164, 166 85, 167, 181, 185 Hartle, James ...... 70 De Angelis, Barbara 107, Ficino, Marsilio ...... 160 Hartmann, Silvia ...... 27 116 Fitzgerald, F. Scott .. 184 Hartshorne, Charles 17, De Gourmont, Remy 82 Flew, Anthony ...... 150 74, 109, 141, 171 De Sitter, Willem ...... 72 Foer, Jonathan Safran 46 Hausman, Carl H...... 73 Descartes, René . 78, 185 Fontana, David ...... 158 Hawking, Stephen 9, 70, Dessen, Sarah 49, 71, 97 Fox, Emmet ...... 55, 112 114, 131, 168, 170, 185 Dick, Philip K...... 147 Francis of Assisi, St. .. 56 Hay, Louise L...... 31 Dickens, Charles 80, 160 Frank, Anne ...... 28, 159 Hazlitt, William ... 84, 89 Dickinson, Emily ..... 159 Frankfurter, Felix ...... 85 Hecht, Ben ...... 113 Disraeli, Benjamin 32, 81, Franklin, Benjamin 37, 172 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm 173 Freud, Sigmund ..32, 82, Friedrich ...... 31 Dōgen ...... 182 111 Heinlein, Robert A. ... 47 Donne, John ...... 93 Friedman, Milton ..... 86 Heisenberg, Werner 72, 85 Doyle, Robert ...... 89 Fromm, Erich 43, 46, 92, Hemingway, Ernest . 30, Dr. Seuss ...... 18 160, 173 117 Dryden, John ...... 171 Fuller, R. Buckminster 93, Hendrix, Jimi ...... 87 Dumas, Alexandre .... 88 147 Heraclitus ...... 91 Dye, James ...... 58 Galilei, Galileo .....16, 70 Herriot, James ...... 170 Dyer, Wayne . 57, 70, 73, Gandhi, Mahatma 33, 36, Heschel, Abraham Joshua 74, 96, 133 41, 44, 48, 61, 81, 90, ...... 104 Dylan, Bob ...... 167 92, 104, 105, 106, 107, Hesse, Hermann ...... 87 Eddy, Sherwood ...... 93 109, 143, 150, 164, Hoff, Benjamin ...... 31 Einstein, Albert 15, 16, 17, 167, 170 Hoffer, Eric ...... 93 19, 34, 55, 70, 76, 80, Gibran, Kahlil ...... 108 Hoffman, Lisa ...... 126 91, 92, 94, 112, 115, Gide, Andre ...... 87 Holmes, Ernest 108, 143 116, 135, 137, 141, Gilbert, Elizabeth .... 183 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 144, 148, 163, 164, Gödel, Kurt ...... 109, 167 Jr...... 86 182, 184 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Hood, Ralph ...... 118 Ekaka, Hakuin ...... 95 Von ...... 50, 88 Horton, Doug ...... 86 Eliot, George ...... 43, 45 Goldman, William .... 59 Howard, Vernon ...... 54 Eliot, T. S...... 183 Gordon, J, Rabbi ...... 86 Hubbard, Elbert . 57, 83, Ellison, Ralph ...... 89 Gospel According to 114, 172 Emeka, Onwuka ...... 52 Thomas ...... 158, 161 Hugo, Victor . 44, 53, 108 Gospel of Philip ...... 45 Huikai, Wumen ...... 95

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Hurston, Zora Neale 18, King, Martin Luther, Jr. 41, Malcolm X ...... 81 171 42, 48, 53, 60, 61, 89, Mandela, Nelson ...... 89 Icke, David ...... 180 92, 106, 160 Mandino, Og ...... 57 Idler, Ellen ...... 105 King, Stephen ...... 145 Manilow, Barry ...... 35 Inge, William Ralph 110 King, Thomas Starr . 105 Mann, Horace ..... 53, 83 Iroquois Prayer ...... 152 Kishimoto, Masashi .. 43 Marden, Orison Swett 87 Irving, Washington ... 41 Korzybski, Alfred .... 173 Marino, Michael Garrett Issa, Kobayashi ...... 181 Krauss, Lawrence M. 53 ...... 80 Jackson, Michael .... 167 Krishna ...... 147 Marley, Bob ...... 49, 162 James, William 112, 117 Krishnamurti, Jiddu . 52, Marley, Ziggy ...... 109 Jampolsky, Gerald G. 56 180 Marshall, Patty ...... 36 Jarry, Alfred ...... 151 Kubler, George ...... 90 Martel, Yann ...... 104 Jeans, James Hopwood 79 Kybalion, The ...... 79, 98 Marx, Karl ...... 15 Jefferson, Thomas 56, 88, L’Enclos, Ninon de .... 29 Maslow, Abraham .... 24 174 Lamartine, Alphonse de Matthews, Andrew .. 30 Jesus 18, 37, 61, 98, 101, ...... 58, 151 Maugham, W. Somerset 106, 156, 179 Laozi 19, 55, 90, 145, 187 ...... 144 Joan of Arc ...... 81 Larsson, Stieg ...... 32 Maupassant, Guy de 169 John of the Cross, St. 21, Law, William ....159, 181 McDonald, George . 160 108, 112, 163 Lawrence, D. H...... 145 McGraw, Tim ...... 35 John Paul II, Pope ..... 93 Lee, Al ...... 53 McKenna, Terence .. 114 John the Apostle, St. 163 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm McKeown, Greg ...... 55 Johnson, Elizabeth A. 180 ...... 46 McLaughlin, Mignon . 33 Johnson, Jeremy P. ... 97 L'Engle, Madeleine . 183 McLeod, T. Scott ...... 74 Jong, Erica ...... 40 Lennon, John 40, 53, 72, Mead, Richelle 35, 44, 174 Joshi, Kedar ...... 182 80, 90, 164, 165, 172, Mecanique du Coeur, La Jourard, Sidney ...... 31 179 ...... 31 Joyce, James ...... 47 Leunig, Michael ...... 42 Mechthild von Julian of Norwich ... 171 Levin, Jeremy ...... 63 Magdeburg ...... 154 Jung, Carl ...... 74, 95, 97 Levine, Stephen ...... 47 Meister Eckhart 32, 159, Jurasik, Peter ...... 107 Lewis, C. S. . 94, 171, 180 162, 188 Kabir ...... 151 Lincoln, Abraham 45, 48, Mencken, H. L. 15, 57, 62 Kagan, Yisroel Meir .. 93 89, 109, 134, 173 Menninger, Karl A. 37, 117 Kant, Immanuel 19, 35, 43, Lindbergh, Anne Morrow Merton, Thomas 106, 112, 61, 111, 116, 169 ...... 71 163, 164 Kate, Lauren ...... 94 Lispector, Clarice .... 164 Merzel, David ...... 96 Katie, Byron ...... 52 Locke, John .. 61, 83, 111 Metrodorus of Chios 170 Kazantzakis, Nikos .... 97 Lövheim, Hugo ...... 25 Miller, Henry ...... 182 Keane, Bil ...... 167 Luther, Martin ...... 84 Milne, A. A...... 195 Keller, Helen 43, 80, 163 Lutzato, Rabbi Moshe Mirabeau, Gabriel Riqueti Kendrick, Stephen .... 60 Chaim ...... 161 ...... 56 Kent, Sister Corita .. 162 Macarius of Egypt, St. 79, Modest Mouse ...... 29 Kessler, Daniella .. 34, 52 80 Monroe, Marilyn ...... 84 Kierkegaard, Søren 45, 52, Maeterlinck, Maurice 87 Montagu, Lady Mary 58, 104, 108, 142, 182 Magliocco, Sabina .. 107 Wortle ...... 18 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Moore, Lorrie ...... 27 ...... 175 Moorehead, Bob 164, 184

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Moores, D. J...... 114 Picasso, Pablo ...... 29 Sai Baba of Shirdi 58, 97, Morrison, Jim 34, 45, 71, Picoult, Jodi ...... 71 108, 109, 151, 158, 167 89 Pike, Albert ...... 162 Sand, George ...... 165 Morrison, Toni ...... 18 Pinker, Steven ...... 138 Sandburg, Carl 167, 168 Morton, John ...... 68 Pirsig, Robert M. 80, 82, Santayana, George . 147 Moses ...... 18, 73 109 Schopenhauer, Arthur 14, Mother Teresa 35, 49, 55, Planck, Max ...... 150 79, 172 59, 94, 159, 165 Plato . 29, 32, 57, 80, 82, Schreiner, Olive ...... 181 Mozart, Wolfgang 171 Schucman, Helen 113, 158 Amadeus ...... 86 Plotinus ...... 161 Schurz, Carl ...... 57 Muhammad ...... 42, 109 Plutchik, Robert ...... 24 Schweitzer, Albert . 134, Muir, John ...... 51, 70 Poe, Edgar Allan ...... 58 186 Murakami, Haruki .. 111 Powell, Eleanor ...... 162 Seabury, David ...... 89 Murdoch, Iris ...... 14 Pratchett, Terry ...... 70 Seals and Crofts ...... 174 Murrow, Edward R. .. 81 Rahula, Walpola ..... 173 Seneca ...... 37, 180 Muste, A. J...... 113 Raitt, Bonnie ...... 109 Sevakis, Gary ...... 169 Needleman, Jacob .... 74 Ram Dass ...... 181 Shah, Idries ...... 97 Newton, Sir Isaac ..... 82 Ramachandran, V. S. 92 Shakespeare, William 32, Nhat Hanh, Thich 42, 105 Ramanujan, Srinivasa 150 34, 42, 112, 175 Nibley, Hugh ...... 28 Rand, Ayn ...... 30, 79 Shams of Tabriz 48, 159, Nietzsche, Friedrich 19, 47, Rascal Flatts ...... 46 173 94, 115, 169 Reagan, Ronald 48, 62, 81, Shan, Merle ...... 40 Oates, Joyce Carol .... 71 158 Shankar, Ravi ...... 159 Oh, God! ...... 110 Red Cloud ...... 113 Shaw, George Bernard 15, Oord, Thomas Jay .. 110, Richards, Mary Caroline 81 82, 85, 108 148, 168 Richardson, Nick ...... 46 Shermer, Michael ... 186 Oppenheimer, J. Robert 16 Rilke, Rainer Maria 19, 48 Shoemaker, Samuel M. 93 Optimus Prime ...... 170 Robbins, Tom ....36, 183 Smiles, Samuel ...... 87 Orwell, George ...... 46 Rogers, Will ...... 85 Smith, Sydney ...... 165 Oshana, Dave ...... 96 Rolle, Richard ...... 128 Smullyan, Raymond . 99 Osho ...... 33, 60, 116 Rollins, Peter ...... 149 Socrates 14, 32, 76, 87, 90, Padre Pio ...... 48 Rose, Richard ...... 168 98, 144 Paine, Thomas ...... 18 Rowling, J. K...... 83 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Pancoast, Mal ...... 83 Rumi 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 37, ...... 82 Paolini, Christopher . 81 49, 53, 55, 60, 61, 71, Sophocles ...... 165 Parmenides ...... 79, 116 72, 84, 90, 92, 98, 107, Sparks, Nicholas 44, 59, 85 Pascal, Blaise 15, 93, 151 117, 129, 148, 158, Spinoza, Baruch . 58, 91, Paul, St...... 90 159, 160, 166, 169, 108, 137, 140, 145 Peace Pilgrim ..... 49, 158 171, 172, 173, 174, Sri Chinmoy ...... 55, 167 Peale, Norman Vincent 175, 181, 182 Stace, Walter T. 117, 118 ...... 151 Ruskin, John ...... 29 Star Trek ...... 93 Peck, M. Scott .... 31, 176 Russell, Bertrand ...... 15 Starhawk ...... 110 Peirce, Benjamin .... 183 Ruysbroeck, John of 113 Steinem, Gloria ...... 82 Peirce, Charles Sanders 71, Sade, Marquis de ..... 14 Stendhal, Henri B. .. 174 84, 117 Sagan, Carl 16, 54, 70, 106, Stenger, Victor 136, 138 Penrose, Roger ...... 79 136, 150, 172 Sternberg, Robert J. . 24 Peter, Laurence J. ... 110 Stewart, Jon ...... 110

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Sting ...... 47 Truman, Harry S...... 85 Webster, Daniel ...... 94 Stojanović, Dejan 90, 137, Tuckerman, Henry Weil, Simone ...... 137 152 Theodore ...... 28 Wesley, John ...... 61 Stowell, Joseph ...... 107 Turlington, Christy .. 108 West, Mae ...... 28 Stravinsky, Igor ...... 160 Turok, Neil ...... 70 Whitehead, Alfred North Stroube, J. D...... 18 Twain, Mark 41, 86, 110, 14, 28, 41, 73, 80, 82, Sureka, Abhishek ...... 44 149 85, 87, 88, 104, 110, Suso, Henry ...... 48 Twitchell, Paul ...... 108 170, 180 Suzuki, Daisetz T...... 96 Tyson, Neil deGrasse 19, Whitman, Walt 72, 81, 88, Suzuki, Shunryū . 90, 115 51 172 Swedenborg, Emanuel 92, unknown 29, 42, 44, 79, Wikipedia . 78, 104, 118, 132 82, 84, 88, 93, 95, 160, 154, 168 Tada, Joni Eareckson 144 167, 187 Wilde, Oscar . 35, 81, 86, Tagore, Rabindranath59, Valentino, Rudolph 197 114, 165, 184 165 Van Doren, Mark .... 159 Wilkerson, David ...... 41 Tarski, Alfred ...... 98 Van Dyke, Henry ...... 72 Williamson, Marianne 97, Tauler, Johannes ...... 47 Van Gogh, Vincent ... 36, 179 Tegmark, Max ...... 91 143, 180 Winfrey, Oprah ...... 180 Teilhard de Chardin, Van Orman, Willard 180 Wiseman, Sara ...... 162 Pierre ...... 117 Vance Cheney, John 145 Witten, Edward ...... 72 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 29, Vatsyayana ...... 36 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 14, 93 Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn 15 Teresa of Avila, St. ... 65 ...... 76, 114, 162 Wizard of Oz ...... 42 Thomson, James ...... 53 Vico, Giambattista .... 53 Wolfe, Gene ...... 182 Thoreau, Henry David 13, Vivekananda, Swami 147 Wollstonecraft, Mary 32 41, 172, 173, 184 Voltaire .. 14, 80, 84, 171 Woolf, Virginia ...... 85 Thorne, Kip ...... 18 Von Herder, Johann Wright, Frank Lloyd .. 57 Tillich, Paul ...... 17 Gottfried ...... 45 Wright, Steven ...... 91 Tokushō, Bassui ...... 91 Vonnegut, Kurt ...... 180 Yixuan, Linji ...... 116 Tolkien, J. R. R...... 94 Vyasa ...... 69, 152, 159 Young, Brigham ...... 106 Tolle, Eckhart ...... 158 Walsch, Neale Donald 107 Young, William Paul 110 Tolstoy, Leo 28, 161, 166 Warhol, Andy ...... 49 Zitkala-Sa ...... 152 Tozer, A. W...... 148 Watts, Alan ... 52, 54, 91, Traherne, Thomas .... 57 106, 116, 158 Trine, Ralph Waldo 186 Webb, Beatrice Potter 17

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