Marcel Proust Quotes

We are destined not to go back to the level of animals that we've come from but to return to being by going beyond thinking.

History, call it 15,000 or 25,000 years of duration, is the story of an animal, some kind of complex animal, becoming conscious.

The student of mathematics must get rid of all arbitrary thinking and follow purely the demands of thought. In thinking in this way, the laws of the spiritual world flow into him. This regulated thinking leads to the most spiritual truths.

At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

God creates the animals, man creates himself.

Humanity as a whole has already gone through unimaginable suffering, mostly self-inflicted, the culmination of which was the 20th century with its unspeakable horrors. This collective suffering has brought upon a readiness in many human beings for the evolutionary leap that is spiritual awakening.

Think of your work life therefore, not as separate from your spiritual life but as central to your spiritual life. Whatever your business, it is your ministry.

I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to.

From the standpoint of our spiritual development, it might be important for us to realize that we came from an unknown somewhere; we brought with us an attained state of consciousness; and while we are here, we are expanding that consciousness. From some perspectives, it may seem that we are making giant strides, but from the greater overview, our quantity of spiritual knowledge is smaller than Ptolemy's knowledge of astronomy!

All spiritual interests are supported by animal life.

It's commonly assumed that the emergence of language was a key element of the great leap. We of course know very little about the sociopolitical conditions that existed at the time, but there's no scenario I can think of that suggests how a sudden change in these conditions could have led to the emergence of language.

Prayer is to the spiritual life what the beating of the pulse and the drawing of the breath are to the life of the body.

Such growth will move humans into ever-higher energy states, ultimately transforming our bodies into spiritual form and uniting this dimension of existence with the afterlife dimension, ending the cycle of birth and death.

I think we're intrinsically spiritual. We're spiritual beings in a physical universe and we are here to make a spiritual contribution.

A spiritual partnership is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. Nothing like this archetype has existed before because nothing like this was required before in the human experience. And spiritual partnerships can be created in a biological family, they can be created among friends, they can be created in the workplace, they can be created anywhere that two or more individuals are committed to their own spiritual evolution and are striving to relate to each other as equals.

As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains little lower than that of Man.

It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand?

The young of human beings compare so poorly in original efficiency with the young of many of the lower animals, that even the powers needed for physical sustentation have to be acquired under tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with respect to all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral achievements of humanity!

There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

After 32 years as a priest , I think its fair to say that most institutional churches are very limited in addressing higher levels of spiritual consciousness.

Psychogenesis has led to man. Now it effaces itself, relieved or absorbed by another and a higher function-the engendering and subsequent development of the mind, in one word noogenesis. When for the first time in a living creature instinct perceived itself in its own mirror, the whole world took a pace forward.

Physical life is characterized by defensiveness, whereas spiritual life is just the opposite.

For a long time humans probably were in touch on a deeper level with the depths of their being, unconsciously so, the same way an animal or a tree is. Gradually, though, more and more of their identity went into the movement of thought. They identified more and more with the movement of thinking.

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.

The animals of the planet are in desperate peril... Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.