„Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion.“
Source: The Voice of the Silence
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky59
occult writer 1831 - 1891Related quotes
„All illusion comes and goes, but the soul remains unchanged.“
— Meher Baba Indian mystic 1894 - 1969
Message at Nasik (December 1936) <!-- LA p. 157 -->
General sources
Context: All illusion comes and goes, but the soul remains unchanged. What is meant by God-realization is to actually experience this important thing — that the soul is eternal.
„Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.“
— John Milton English epic poet 1608 - 1674
Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 143
„Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.“
— Blaise Cendrars French writer of Swiss origin 1887 - 1961
„Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.“
— Epictetus philosopher from Ancient Greece 50 - 138
Fragment iv.
Fragments
„There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life.“
— Hazrat Inayat Khan Indian Sufi 1882 - 1927
„My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.“
— Henry Vaughan Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet 1621 - 1695
"The Retreat," l. 7 - 19.
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: When yet I had not walk'd above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back, at that short space
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
„It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.“
— Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist 1817 - 1862
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday
„He shows Himself to the soul in the living mirror of her intelligence;
Not as He is in His nature,
But in images and similitudes,
And in the degree in which the illuminated reason can grasp and understand Him.
And the wise reason, enlightened of God, sees clearly
And without error in images of the understanding
All that she has heard of God,
Of faith, of truth, according to her longing.
But that image which is God Himself,
Although it is held before her, she cannot comprehend;
For the eyes of her understanding
Must fail before that Incomparable Light.“
— John Ruysbroeck Flemish mystic 1293 - 1381
The Twelve Beguines
„Eyes so transparent that through them one sees the lucent soul.“
Ils sont si transparents qu'ils laissent voir votre âme.
"À Deux Beaux Yeux", line 12, in Poésies Complètes (Paris: Charpentier, 1845) p. 278; Maturin Murray Ballou (ed.) Notable Thoughts about Women (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882) p. 398.
„It is not politics that can bring true liberty to the soul; that must be achieved, if at all, by philosophy;“
— George Santayana 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism 1863 - 1952
"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
„Here the reason
no less than all separate acts
Must give way,
For our powers become simple in Love;
They are silent
And In the most secret part of the understanding, the simple eye is ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image. The sight of the simple eye is a living mirror bowed down in the Presence of the Father.
And this revelation of the Father
Lifts the soul above the reason
Into the Imageless Nudity.
There the soul is simple, pure, spotless,
Empty of all things;
And it is in this state of perfect emptiness
That the Father manifests His Divine radiance.
To this radiance neither reason nor sense,
Observation nor distinction,
Can attain.
All this must stay below;
For the measureless radiance
Blinds the eyes of the reason,
They cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light.
But above the reason,
In the most secret part of the understanding,
The simple eye is ever open.
It contemplates and gazes at the Light
With a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself:
Eye to eye,
Mirror to mirror,
Image to image.
This threefold act makes us like God,
And unites us to Him;
For the sight of the simple eye is a living mirror,
Which God has made for His image,
And whereon He has impressed it.“
— John Ruysbroeck Flemish mystic 1293 - 1381
A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness
„The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.“
— Wassily Kandinsky Russian painter 1866 - 1944
„Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.“
— George Gordon Byron English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement 1788 - 1824
Stanza 45.
Beppo (1818)
„Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.“
— Virginia Woolf, book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando
„The soul that can speak through the eyes can also kiss with a gaze.“
— Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer Spanish poet 1836 - 1870
„Either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or if at all, after death. For then, and not til then, the soul will be in herself alone and without the body.“
— Socrates classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470 - -399 BC
Plato, Phaedo
„But it is not alone the harmony of music which has such a power over the mind. The harmony of colors, every art and science, has the same power. Even the most common craft, and the most prosaic of all prose, the chase after the dollar, may take possession of a man’s soul and prostrate him in adoration before its idol.“
— Joseph Dietzgen german philosopher 1828 - 1888
Letter 3
Letters on Logic: Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic (1906)
„I knew better than to let you break my heart
The soul you'll never see again won't be showing scars
You still love her I can see it in your eyes
The truth is all that I can hear every time you lie.“
— Demi Lovato American singer, songwriter, actress, and author 1992
Every Time You Lie
Lyrics, Here We Go Again (2009)