Nisargadatta Maharaj about God and Love
Does love act deliberately? Yes and no. Life is love and love is life. What keeps the body together but love? What is desire, but love of…
Meister Eckhart – About Cracking Parables
Meister Eckhart was a German theologian, philosopher, and mystic who lived from the late 13th to early 14th centuries. He shares the following wisdom: About Cracking Parables I have often said: The shell must break and whatever is inside must come forth; for if you want to have the nut, you must first crack the […]
Mahayana Buddhism – The Nature of Emptiness
Mahayana Buddhism – The Nature of Emptiness Prajnaparamitahridaya, “The Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom,” is often considered the best-known and most popular scripture in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. Although its author is unknown, the individual clearly had a deep understanding of Buddhist teachings: Thus, O Sariputa, all things, having the nature …
Lester Levenson – An Insight on Love
Lester Levenson – An Insight on Love A self-made man, Lester Levenson was not particularly spiritual in his early years. A physicist and engineer, he also achieved financial success in the restaurant, lumber, building, oil, and real estate businesses. He lived in New York City, and his life revolved mainly around his relationships with women and his …
John Muir – A Glorious Conversion
John Muir – A Glorious Conversion John Muir, a great naturalist, mystic, and writer who advocated for the preservation of wilderness in the United States, wrote about the way he simultaneously perceived the outer and inner realities both around him and in him, thus expressing the Sacred Tremor, spanda: “We are now in the mountains and …
Jan Van Ruysbroeck – Simple Ineffability
Jan Van Ruysbroeck – Simple Ineffability Flemish mystic Jan Van Ruysbroeck (c. 1293 – 1381) shares this wisdom in the last chapter of The Spiritual Espousals (Translated by A. Wiseman, New York, Paulist Press, 1985): “Here there is a blissful crossing over and a self-transcending immersion into a state of essential bareness … where all the divine names and …
Hadewijch – Overwhelmed by Love
Hadewijch – Overwhelmed by Love From a historical point of view, we do not know much about the 13th century beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp, except the fact that her name designates her birthplace. Fortunately, we have an important testimony of Hadewijch’s historical existence in the words of John of Leuuwen, the cook and disciple of the …
Friedrich Nietzsche – On Inspiration
Friedrich Nietzsche – On Inspiration The nature of inspiration has never been described more forcefully and graphically than by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:“Has anybody, at the end of the nineteenth century, an idea what poets of stronger ages called inspiration? If not, let me describe it. With the smallest residue of superstition within oneself, one would indeed …
Edgar Allen Poe – Between Sleep and Waking
Edgar Allen Poe – Between Sleep and Waking The writer Edgar Allen Poe describes the ineffable state between sleep and waking: “There is, however, a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language… They arise in the soul only at its epochs of …
Dionysius the Areopagite – Seeing God
Dionysius the Areopagite – Seeing God Dionysius the Areopagite lived in the first century A.D. and was the first bishop of Athens. He gives us these inspiring words: We see God not only through knowledge but also through ignorance. Although there is spiritual comprehension of him, understanding, knowledge, contact, sense perception, opinion, concept, naming and …