James Turrell Quotes

We use the vocabulary of light to describe a spiritual experience.

We take people to the threshold of religion. Our aim is to induce immediate experience that is beyond the odd, beyond the strange, and beyond the weird. It verges on the wholly other.

In a way, light unites the spiritual world and the ephemeral, physical world. People frequently talk about spiritual experiences using the vocabulary of light: Saul on the road to Damascus, near-death experiences, samadhi or the light-filled void of Buddhist enlightenment.

One can see light above the head; that indicates a consciousness outside the body. But that itself is not the Truth-Consciousness or Vijnana. But much light descending from there illumines this consciousness.

The transcendent experience is common to every culture in the world.

What the churches are peddling is high abstraction, and you really have to work yourself up into a lather to be able to accept that as worthy of that kind of attention. The psychedelic subset of society is into an experience, and it's accessible.

There is no loftier mission than to approach the Divinity nearer than other men, and to disseminate the divine rays among mankind.

Don't think that some tomorrow you'll see God's Light. You see it now or err in darkest night.

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.

Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.

All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation.

Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.

The religions that fascinate me and, you know, could possibly tempt me are not the ones that involve faith or belief. They're the ones that offer you the opportunity to know the spirit or deity.

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

Several people feel I have photographed God. May be.

For light I go directly to the Source of light, not to any of the reflections.

I see heaven's glories shine and faith shines equal.

The Gospel of Thomas claims to be the secret sayings of Jesus. There are 114 of them, so it says many things, but the central message is that Jesus is the one who reveals the divine light that brought the universe into being, and that you and I also reveal that light.

I've never heard God speak out loud to me. That's not an experience I have had.

The revealed and mystic literature of mankind bears ample testimony to the fact that religious experience has been too enduring and dominant in the history of mankind to be rejected as mere illusion. There seems to be no reason, then, to accept the normal level of human experience as fact and reject its other levels as mystical and emotional.

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

In this light my spirit suddenly saw through all, and in and by all creatures, even in herbs and grass it knew God, who he is, and how he is, and what his will is: And suddenly in that light my will was set on by a mighty impulse, to describe the being of God.

Who knows but on their sleep may rise Such light as never heaven let through To lighten earth from Paradise?

Only when all images of Earth are hushed and the clamor of the senses be stilled, and the soul has passed beyond thought of self, can the eternal wisdom be revealed to the mystic who seeks that highest communion with the unseen.