Non-Material Existence Quotes

We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them.

The physical is only a small aspect of existence. In this cosmos, not even 1% is physical - the rest is non-physical.

There is knowledge of God and the spiritual nature of man, as well as other types of reality..., that are not reducible to the world dealt with by the so-called "natural" sciences. The idea that knowledge - and, of course, reality - is limited to that world is the single most destructive idea on the stage of life today.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter." And proved it--'t was no matter what he said.

Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and non-interfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal.

Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.

In nature alone are forms. That which is not of nature cannot have any forms, fine or gross. It must be formless.

The familiar material objects may not be all that is real, but they are admirable examples.

God is an intelligible sphere-a sphere known to mind, not to the senses-whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

We avoid sensuousness, only by resorting to simple negation. We come at last to define spirit by saying that it is not matter.