The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)
Context: The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul, and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tsu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads.
“We must never forget that spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love. And with love, there are no rules.”
As translated by Alan R. Clarke (1996).
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
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Paulo Coelho 844
Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947Related quotes
This is attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The Joy of Kindness (1993), by Robert J. Furey, p. 138; but it is attributed to G. I. Gurdjieff in Beyond Prophecies and Predictions: Everyone's Guide To The Coming Changes (1993) by Moira Timms, p. 62; neither cite a source. It was widely popularized by Wayne Dyer, who often quotes it in his presentations, crediting it to Chardin, as does Stephen Covey in Living the 7 Habits : Stories of Courage and Inspiration (2000), p. 47. Such statements could be considered paraphrases of Hegel's dictum that matter is spirit fallen into a state of self-otherness. Or any number of thousands of similarly vague quotes by hundreds of predecessors.
Disputed
Variant: We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Variant: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
“Above all, do not forget your duty to love yourself.”
I Think I'll Sit This One Out (1939)
Context: Socialism may be all right when men are fit to be socialists. The way may be hard and slow, but until we take it we shall find that the so-called Socialist state degenerates and Fascism as rapidly as the pacifist with warm hearts to generate into militarists with fevered brows.
Marxism, like fascism and capitalism is materialism. The love of material goods above all others is as animal as of love of war. The love of justice above material goods must save us in the end it saved we may be.
The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 264