universe

Faith is not knowledge of what the mystery of the universe is, but the conviction that there is a mystery, and that it is greater than us.

In the end, it all comes down to the Blood...

Often I have found myself gazing up at clouds _ yesterday__ seas and tomorrow__ streams _ to think of them as floating on an ultraviolet sea, beyond which is the infinity of space that presents so much wonder and so many questions.

The people through which the Tradition of the Sun spoke were people just like anyone else, and who, one morning or one evening, looked at the world and felt the presence of something greater. They had unwittingly plunged into an unknown sea, and, for the most part, they did not do so again. Everyone, at least once in each incarnation, possessed the secret of the Universe.

Humans are the mystery of the universe.

A mystery of the universe is how it has managed to survive with so much volunteer help.

Look tonight at the stars. Let them overwhelm you in the postures of their bright dance. Face the vastness which they dot like silver bees, and sound with your own brain the mystery, hazarding at the inscrutable plan of things.

We know how ninety-nine percent of the universe works," he told Carter shortly after they met, "and that's the clockworks, that's what we build with. But the other one percent makes the clockworks wind down. That's inertia. No one knows how that works, but it does. It's that one percent mystery that's the way of our maker. Put everything together, energy and inertia, the explicable and the inexplicable, and that's how you and I make our living.

The consequences of seeking popularity is not only the chronic feeling of lonliness, but a desire to hide your face from the eyes of the universe.

The paradox is that without desire, we cannot be successful. When we are striving for desires that will give us what we want and enrich the lives of the people around us directly or indirectly, the Universe works with us to manifest it.

Anything that you could possibly imagine is already out there in another universe. If you are open to it, you can tap into all other realities for knowledge, strength, courage or whatever you need or desire.

This is desire, daughter, the endless piercing that informs the universe throughout eternity,

Look everywhere. There are miracles and curiosities to fascinate and intrigue for many lifetimes:the intricacies of nature and everything in the world and universe around us from the miniscule to the infinite; physical, chemical and biological functionality; consciousness, intelligence and the ability to learn; evolution, and the imperative for life; beauty and other abstract interpretations; language and other forms of communication; how we make our way here and develop social patterns of culture and meaningfulness;how we organise ourselves and others; moral imperatives; the practicalities of survival and all the embellishments we pile on top; thought, beliefs, logic, intuition, ideas; inventing, creating, information, knowledge; emotions, sensations, experience, behaviour.We are each unique individuals arising from a combination of genetic, inherited, and learned information, all of which can be extremely fallible.Things taught to us when we are young are quite deeply ingrained. Obviously some of it (like don__ stick your finger in a wall socket) is very useful,but some of it is only opinion _ an amalgamation of views from people you just happen to have had contact with.A bit later on we have access to lots of other information via books, media, internet etc, but it is important to remember that most of this is still just opinion, and often biased.Even subjects such as history are presented according to the presenter__ or author__ viewpoint, and science is continually changing. Newspapers and TV tend to cover news in the way that is most useful to them (and their funders/advisors), Research is also subject to the decisions of funders and can be distorted by business interests. Pretty much anyone can say what they want on the internet, so our powers of discernment need to be used to a great degree there too.Not one of us can have a completely objective view as we cannot possibly have access to, and filter, all knowledge available, so we must accept that our views are bound to be subjective. Our understanding and responses are all very personal, and our views extremely varied. We tend to make each new thing fit in with the picture we have already started in our heads, but we often have to go back and adjust the picture if we want to be honest about our view of reality as we continually expand it. We are taking in vast amounts of information from others all the time, so need to ensure we are processing that to develop our own true reflection of who we are.

I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, __re you at peace with yourself?_ and he answered, __o, I__ at peace._ It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one.

If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that__n a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.

Because of our fear that we are merely excited matter and the consequent grudge that we hold against the universe, we feel lost and alienated, like a refugee far from home in a universe that cares nothing for us.

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.

All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.