“When once true adjustment between spirit and matter is secured there is no phase of life which cannot be utilised for the expression of divinity.”
Source: Discourses (1967), Vol. I, Ch. 15 : The Life of the Spirit.
Context: When once true adjustment between spirit and matter is secured there is no phase of life which cannot be utilised for the expression of divinity. No longer is there any need to run away from everyday life and its tangles. The freedom of the spirit, which is sought by avoiding contact with the world and by going to the caves or mountains, is a negative freedom. When such retirement is temporary and is meant to digest worldly experiences and develop detachment it has its own advantages. It gives breathing time in the race of life. But when such retirement is grounded in fear of the world or lack of confidence in the spirit, it is far from helpful towards the attainment of real freedom. Real freedom is essentially positive and must express itself through unhampered dominion of the spirit over matter. This is the true life of the spirit.
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Meher Baba 113
Indian mystic 1894–1969Related quotes
Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 5: Analysis and Physics
Context: All laws are... deduced from experiment; but to enunciate them, a special language is needful... ordinary language is too poor...
This... is one reason why the physicist can not do without mathematics; it furnishes him the only language he can speak. And a well-made language is no indifferent thing;
... the analyst, who pursues a purely esthetic aim, helps create, just by that, a language more fit to satisfy the physicist.
... law springs from experiment, but not immediately. Experiment is individual, the law deduced from it is general; experiment is only approximate, the law is precise...
In a word, to get the law from experiment, it is necessary to generalize... But how generalize?... in this choice what shall guide us?
It can only be analogy.... What has taught us to know the true profound analogies, those the eyes do not see but reason divines?
It is the mathematical spirit, which disdains matter to cling only to pure form.<!--pp.76-77
"On Freedom" (1940), p. 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false
1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)
Context: This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical import. In the first instance it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population. Such an ideal of external liberty can never be fully attained but must be sought unremittingly if scientific thought, and philosophical and creative thinking in general, are to be advanced as far as possible.
As quoted in Willem de Kooning, MOMA Bull, pp. 7, 6
1950's
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. V: Of the Wings of Atalanta
Ibid., p. 100
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Entre mim e a vida há um vidro ténue. por mais nitidamente que eu veja e compreenda a vida, eu não lhe posso tocar.
