“What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else?”
"Seek for the Road" (1925)
Context: For thousands of years men have striven and suffered and begotten and women have brought forth in pain. A hundred years ago, perhaps, another man sat on this spot; like you he gazed with awe and yearning in his heart at the dying light on the glaciers. Like you he was begotten of man and born of woman. He felt pain and brief joy as you do. Was he someone else? Was it not you yourself? What is this Self of yours? What was the necessary condition for making the thing conceived this time into you, just you and not someone else?
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Erwin Schrödinger 67
Austrian physicist 1887–1961Related quotes
“You don't need someone else's approval to do what you want; just figure it out and do it, damn it!”
Attributed
“You see what power is – holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them.”
Source: The Kitchen God's Wife (1991), p. 387
Erika Jayne interview to E! News https://www.eonline.com/news/1021432/real-housewives-of-beverly-hills-erika-jayne-dishes-on-porn-her-career-and-biggest-fears (2019)
1920s, Truth is a Pathless Land (1929)
Context: Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities, your churches new and old – all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding. I cannot make myself clearer than this. I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying. “This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are. You want to have your own gods – new gods instead of the old, new religions instead of the old, new forms instead of the old – all equally valueless, all barriers, all limitations, all crutches. Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else; and although you have been preparing for me for eighteen years, when I say all these things are unnecessary, when I say that you must put them all away and look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organization?
