I have a preference for aphorisms. I like aphorisms as I feel a single line can contain more wisdom in it than an entire book. I thought I would write down some of the lines I have coined (or stolen) over the years.
Contents
Book I
Book I (2022)
Practical
- If you want to know the true nature of someone, don’t give them adversity, give them power.
- The more things change the more they stay the same.
- When suffering: don’t find fault, find a remedy.
- Those who have an abundance will receive more; those who have little will have even what little they have taken away. This applies most to money but also to many other human affairs. Always remember this hard principle.
- An exercise: think of the things you are grateful for and list them.
- No one values health till it’s lost.
- The ancients said, “character is destiny.”
- You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
- In youth, one is healthy but has no money: in old age, one is wealthy but loses health.
- Money flows uphill, adversity rolls down.
Wisdom
- Man must seek wisdom above all else.
- Wisdom is the most elusive of the virtues.
- Wisdom is gained first by listening: taking in much from many sources; distilling it, filtering it, and coming to truth.
- The most neglected power is discernment. Discern the true from the false, the sincere from the insincere. Cultivate this. Then, associate with the wise and noble teachers, and you will make progress.
- People need to have a little devil in them. The ones you should worry about are those without. It means they bury it. They are all the more dangerous, because the devil is always there; when it comes out, it will be all the worse.
- Experience teaches us that the cruel competitive harshness of nature is true: but so, too, is the kind morality that humans and some animals aspire for. The intersection of these two forces is what gives life its dynamism.
- There is a line of Ben Franklin I have remembered after many years. He wrote, “[Cultivate] humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”
- God plays a cruel game on women. In youth they are spoiled with attention, but are immature. When they age, they become serious enough to use this gift, but then lose it.
- Women’s conflict with men is intended to drive men to self-awareness. As long as a man lacks self-awareness, his relationships will be destroyed. When he acquires self-awareness, he will be able to order not only his own life, but everyone else’s. This is the path to tranquility.
- Partiality is the sin of a dog: to love one and hate another. It is the way of nature. It is the job of the master to discipline the dog to see all as one.
Spiritual
- What vanity human life is. We are fools, seeking wealth and power that have no value.
- I had a memory for many years which I thought was of a piece of lost media. I realize now it must have been a dream. It was a memory of three birds. Two male birds were fighting over a large-breasted female bird. The dream was a long sequence about their fighting and violence and injuries, all over courting the large-breasted female bird. I realize now the meaning. It was a prescription about the vanity of sexuality, materialism, and human affairs.
- Plato divided humans into metals: the bronze (concerned with money, food, and sex), the silver (concerned with honor, power, and glory), and the gold (concerned with wisdom, virtue, and transcendence).
- Plato is the supreme philosopher, as his teaching brings us to the transcendent.
- Plato did not say everything openly; his true teaching must be unpacked.
- Plato said the world is organized according to universal principles: justice, truth, and good. Study the particular to study the universal.
- I was pondering this idea: matter is neither created nor destroyed. If this applies to physical matter, what, then, does it mean for spiritual matter?
- I was pondering this idea: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If this applies to the physical, how would it apply to the moral? Does every pleasure create a debt? Does every suffering require a pleasure?
- Search and find; with no seeking there is no finding.
- I have spoken to some who act as though they speak with authority on spiritual matters. If they sought knowledge on physics, they would consult a physicist; on history, a historian. But experts on the spiritual are all the rarer.
- Christ was right when he said one must “lose to find, and die to live.” One cannot find the lover searching by day at his convenience: one must search at night and in a fever.
- You must go down to go up.
- The male is stable like the sun; the female is changing like the moon.
- The female must become male and the male female.
- If there is no quest, there will be no grail.
- To give to another with no expectation of getting something in return is a powerful act. It is transformative. Do not neglect charity. It is why Christ said to the rich man, “give away all you have and follow me, then you will have treasure in paradise.”
- The human condition brings poverty. The question is: how to deal with it? If there is spirit, the struggle against poverty builds it. It is the most noble path; there is no other way.
- Poverty is the best teacher.
- It is true that like attracts like. Seek friends who are wise to become wise; seek the noble to become noble. Expect to associate with the same company in the end.
- There is a quote of Whitman I have remembered after many years. Whitman wrote once, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I am vast, I contain multitudes.”
- Know a tree by its fruit. The good bear good fruit; the evil, evil.
- I woke up from my dream yesterday holding the thought “beauty will save the world.” My dream-mind found it meaningful so I kept repeating it, over and over, so my awake mind would hear it.
- The world is for the living. Engage with them, and know the dead through them. The dead are the living: and the dead are not far.
- This human world is a hell-plane, one of the most radical of all worlds. Only a fool would try to prolong his time here.
- People try to prolong life, but the longer you live, the more you lose a sense of who you are.
- The human condition: man enters babbling, and leaves the same.
- It is a joy to forget. It is a joy to remember. And it is a joy to forget.
- Soon I will forget who I am. As will you. Then we will become something else, or someone else.
- Every man living is sentenced to death. It is why life should be used in the preparation for death.
- Philosophy is the preparation for death. Fools who define it otherwise are not philosophers.
- Old age, sickness, and death are the divine messengers. They should rouse us to action. But how indolent we are. The medievals called it “acedia,” spiritual negligence and sloth.
- The human animal requires beauty. Beauty is an expression of the higher idea: the source from whence matter and individuality derive.
- When asked why he went around barefoot Socrates replied, “the earth is like truth… one must touch it directly. The feet must grasp the earth.”
The divine
- It seems all logic shows we are One that has divided itself into Many. What a wonder of wonders this illusion is.
- Examine the world carefully. Just as there are four seasons, repeating in a cycle, so, too, humans cycle through birth, youth, old age, and death.
- What does it mean to be outside of time? A second is a millennium, a millennium a second. An eternity is contained in a moment, a moment in eternity. To emerge from this would be like what?
- God loves the damaged, forgotten, and broken.
- God loves drunks and fools.
- The wise should appear foolish to please God.
- Truly, the joy of two lovers is the closest most will get to the divine.
- Examine the world. There is money: but the pursuit of money as the highest end leads to despair. There is sex: but the pursuit of it as the highest end leads to despair. These facts suggest transcendence – supreme truth and beauty – are the ultimate principles. Nature itself demonstrates a divine order.
- Some say human civilization is always advancing. Others say that it goes in a circle: that in each age we solve some problems, but in doing so create new ones. There is truth to both points of view.
- In reverie find the gods; forget the self; become all.
- All philosophers are friends.
- When the just suffer and complain you should aid them. When the unjust suffer and complain (because they are fools) you should ignore them. They are reaping the results of their actions. If you assist them you are in fact being unjust.
- In Dante’s Inferno, those who deny the existence of the soul are placed in fiery tombs of their own making.
- Remember Virgil’s Lesson. Those in hell deserve to be there.
- Everything vibrates. Everything hums.
- Not all knowledge is equal. There is too little time to study everything. Seek higher knowledges. They will be the ark that will let you survive the flood.
- There is something I learned from Socrates (and the Oracle before him). “Know thyself.” It is a powerful thing. Self-knowledge is the beginning and the end of religion.
- In the end it’s all you. I’m you. The universe is you. All the people you interact with are actually you. You made the universe so you could experience it. You separated from me so you could experience separation and interact with someone else. Enlightenment is realizing All is actually One. It’s a beautiful thing.
- Doesn’t a doctor cut open the body before he repairs it? So, too, in the science of the soul, one must be injured before one can heal.
- Women are pulled in two directions. One toward individuation; another toward objectification. A healthy psyche reconciles both. Pathology arises when one chooses one and denies the other: but the antipole can never be escaped.
- We need to forget. If we remembered everything we would remember we were God and the game would end. Thus the creation of forgetting.
- Only one thing can reconcile Jefferson with Hamilton and that is Washington.
- Liberty, justice, and wisdom for all.
- It is easy to tear down statues - hard to build them.
- The world is run by fools.
- The past is never far. Your nature is the inheritance of all your past choices and knowledges.
- A religion that teaches that “man can conquer death.” To have the symbol right in front of you your whole lifetime, but never see it.
- What made Dante great? First, his affection for Beatrice he maintained throughout his life (which perfected him in love). Beatrice was not only a person - but also an idea. Second, his self-education. Do not assume the schools will teach you what is important. The most important things you must learn on your own. Third and most importantly, his exile. Dante’s exile and times of trouble made him into a mighty one. Hardship teaches lessons that cannot be learned elsewhere. Learn from Dante’s exile: do not reject fate. Your fate will teach you.
- Friends of justice are friends of mine.
- Prejudice against the prejudiced is also a form of prejudice.
- The wakers and the sleepers. Most will sleep - some will wake.
- We are all thoughts in the mind of God.
- Man does not learn through knowledge alone. Loss, failure, rejection - these are teachers too.
- One interesting thing I learned from Christianity was the importance of relationship. With oneself, others, the world. One finds in seeking right relationship with each - one finds a right relationship with God.
- “These things come in twos.” Socrates and Plato, John the Baptist and Christ, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky.
- In life we are bombarded by influences. One of our tasks is to choose our influences - choose the teachers that will have the greatest impact on us. As the years pass, what (or who) is chosen will bear fruit: good or ill, higher or lower.
- It is difficult to choose the right teachers. One must develop discernment.
- There is no religion without mystery. Mystery is religion.
- The remembrance of death is the single most powerful spiritual practice. It destroys malice; eliminates materialism; teaches true religion.
- There are many distractions in life. One is arguing over whether God exists or does not exist. God is unfathomable; transcendent. God is the antipole of the universe: the, by nature, incomprehensible. Cease fighting over foolishness.
- Remember that Christ was sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin; and prior to that taught against the Pharisees. Recall that St. Peter, in Dante’s Paradiso, became incandescent with rage at the state of the church. Beware institutional religion.
- Man is the earth’s steward, though the earth also exists for man.
- In German, the word “Schuld” means both guilt and debt. We know in physics “every action brings an equal and opposite reaction.” In the moral sphere, wrong action brings a debt that must be paid. It can be paid yourself (through penance, the wisest pathway); or (if one refuses responsibility) it will be paid through a storm.
- The Internet is the early version of a human superconsciousness.
- Is all of life a school to teach us self-consciousness?
- What is life? A game? A prison? A school? Perhaps it is all three.
- Man lives in poverty. There is truth everywhere; but men lack the tools needed to receive it.
- Christ and John the Baptist taught this mystery: “metanoia.”
- “What is truth?” asked Pilate. “What is justice?” asks Socrates. Truly these are the two questions that are of value.
- Life is work and rest, Martha and Mary.
- Playing is learning, so let the young play. It is only an issue in adulthood: then the lessons are learned, and excessive play becomes a vice.
- Wisdom and conflict together constitute manhood.
- Names have power. Know a name to know a person.
- The greatest teacher speaks in symbols.
- Few can teach, but just as few can learn.
- Divine wisdom and divine madness; one must descend to ascend.
- Humility is a divine teacher. God gives wisdom only to the humble.
- Da Vinci was wise, and sought the Holy Grail. It is the only end worth pursuing.
- The Lethe. The river of forgetfulness. I wish I could remember what it was…
- We step to the left, then to the right. In one age there is extremism; in another, moderation. So history will continue, the war between the two forces, the yin and the yang.
- The Hindus say “thou shalt not kill” and see the divine in all. Thus they abstain from killing animals and eating their meat. The Christians say “God made the earth for man.” Thus they kill and eat animals for their meat. I believe there is merit to both points of view.
- Nature teaches selfishness. Wisdom reveals its foolishness. Supernature teaches selflessness.
- The selfless realize that help rendered to another is actually help given to oneself. All of life is a school to teach this lesson.
- A world where both destiny and free will exist. Our world.
- Socrates and Plato, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. It seems a pattern that these great figures appear at the peaks of their civilizations.
- Christ, Da Vinci, and Newton all sublimated the sexual power into genius.
- Self-overcoming is a path to immortality. Like what is contrary to you to like. Like who is contrary to you to like.
- The sky broke open and the firmament disappeared. “There is light, light everywhere.”
- When the meridians bear sensation, they do so first in the hands and feet: the same sites as the Holy Wounds.
- In a time when God is dead, what kind of prophet would God send?
- The world advances. Men become fat and rich. Yet they remain unhappy, missing what is most important.
- In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is ignorant, impotent, and full of hate. This is the true nature of these forces.
- Truly there is no act greater than to give one’s life to save another.
- When the training is finished, the yoke is removed. Yet fools act without ever having been under the yoke.
- Do not throw your pearls before swine.
- Every falsehood believed creates a debt to the truth.
- Many forces confine a person in falsehood. Only violence can break one out of it.
- Harshness to oneself but kindness to others is the surest path to perfection.
- Women are intuitive, but the archetype of wisdom remains the sage.
- Cultivate the Seven Heavenly Virtues. This, in itself, will win you a place in paradise.
- Should a just man lay down his arms (because conflict is wrong)? But if he does then only the unjust will have arms; and they will use them to make the world more unjust.
- Only mystery can give man access to what he cannot see, touch, or hold.
- Is the sky blue? Does the eye see? Does the ear hear? If one can confirm one thing as true, then it confirms the independent existence of truth.
- Why seek lower goods when higher goods are available? It is a question of maturity.
- The parents are the simulacrum of God, split in two. The wise father and the loving mother.
- You learn even from the worst teachers.
- No martyrdom, no crown.
- Do not miss the forest for the trees.
- What animates the body? How does it know to grow taller? To regrow a nerve that is cut? To heal an organ? To repair the skin? Is it not a wonder of wonders?
- What is sex? What is the libido? It is the drive for wholeness. Why the desire for a beautiful partner? It is the search to experience directly – to unite with – the higher idea.
- There are some who come to truth by initiation; others, by accident. Alas, only the former is of value.
Practical
- The lotus grows out of the mud.
- Aristotle said, “All things in moderation.”
- There are natural virtues and supernatural virtues. The Romans and Greeks valued strength, knowledge, and industry. Virtues that give one power over the world. The Christians value humility, meekness, and charity. Virtues that allow one to transcend the world. Both virtues are excellent, though the latter are superior.
- Do not reinvent the wheel. Build on the work of those who came before.
- History bends toward justice.
- Speak freely, like the Greeks and Americans. It is the only way one will come to truth.
- Let the one without sin cast the first stone.
- Beware the mob. The mob killed Christ, the mob killed Socrates, the mob will kill you.
- Marriage is freedom and bondage.
- Abuse of power is weakness.
- Much human suffering is caused by loving what is wrong for us and hating what is right for us.
- If you want to change the world, start by getting a mirror.
Spiritual
- Spiritual reading is a form of meditation.
- Conquer anger with despair, and conquer despair with hope.
- Outward discipline comes first. Begin by disciplining the body. Inward discipline comes second. Discipline the mind. Make it silent.
- If you work with the meridians, start first with the hands and feet.
- Gurdjieff said, “‘Sin’ is anything that is not necessary.” What is necessary?
- “Come you out from among them and be you separate,” says Paul. Expect results only in exile.
- Dante said, there is love deficient, love perverted, and love excessive. Perfection is perfection in love.
- There are figures that have a mysterious genius. Christ and Da Vinci.
- Religious behavior is not religion.
- The initiates choose themselves. They subject themselves to the discipline.
- Humility is the greatest antidote to delusion.
- Know your contradictions and you will know yourself.
- Resenting the happiness of others is a sure path to ugliness and ill health.
- Remember the horror of life and you will find the spiritual path.
Poverty
- If you are anxious over money, think of all the goods in your life that have nothing to do with it. Do you have loving parents? A loving partner? Good health? I have known millionaires who would trade all their wealth for one of these things.
- Siddhartha, Christ, Socrates. The greatest men lived in poverty.
- Wealth hindered Siddhartha. He knew the gods would grant him enlightenment only if he renounced it.
- The rich live in poverty.
- To have everything but to lack the one thing that is of value.
A Sufi parable
- There is a Sufi parable I read once that I would like to share with you.
One day back in the days of Andalusia, a man (a lumberjack) was walking through the forest when he saw the devil. Feeling anger at the sight, the man raised his axe against him and overpowered him. “Now I have you!” he yelled. He brought the devil to the ground. The devil said to him, “Release me, please. Have pity. And see, I will give you these three gold coins.” The man let go. He took the coins and left, and later bought several goods with them.
The next day the man saw the devil in the forest again. The man liked the money he had gotten, and remembered how easy it had been to overpower the devil the day before, so he thought to do the same as he had done on the previous day.
The man confronted the devil again, and brought his axe against him; yet this time the devil caught hold of it, twisted it, and brought the man to the ground. This time the man was at the devil’s mercy.
“I don’t understand,” said the man. “Yesterday I overpowered you so easily. What changed?” The devil replied, “Yesterday you fought me for righteousness’ sake. Today you fought me for three gold coins.”
Theology
- You are always loved and never alone.
- All men are slaves to the divine will. Freedom is found in renouncing self-will and replacing it with the divine will.
- Just as the head needs the body, what would God be without the universe?
- Women alone feel what God does. What it’s like to give birth.
Reincarnation
- You have been everything, everyone. There was one life where a blade cut off your left arm and you bled to death. As I said, it is a joy to forget.
- Doesn’t the negative create its positive?
- Knowledge of the past is knowledge of the future.
Superconsciousness
- Who am I? I am you.
- We are interacting with ourselves.
- You do not know the joy of nonexistence. Enlightenment is the line between existence and nonexistence. It is a beautiful thing. You do not know you are driven to exist. Enlightenment is the freedom to exist and not exist at the same time.
Death
- Is sleep not a death? We sleep and rise, sleep and rise.
- People misunderstand the Resurrection.
- Is immortality an idea? Does the idea exist? If the idea exists, then it exists.
- Embrace the shadow – and remember death – and you will not fear the crow.
- Adam said to God, “I thought God was a friend to man. Who would bring death upon their friend?” God replied, “Who would refuse the call of their friend?”
- Always remember death. Feel what it means with your whole self.
A line from a forgotten poem
- Many years ago I wrote a poem, then discarded it (as no one reads poetry). It is a shame, as I remember it was a good work. It was a poem about transcendence. I remember only the best line from it, which came near the end — “Wings tear through flesh and spread.”
Dreams and the otherworld
- People forget the power of imagination. Imagination in its true form creates. It is only because we are here that it does not do this.
- There are realms of pure imagination. Pure creativity.
- A realm of pure music. A realm of pure emotion. A realm of pure idea.
- A world of pure idea. The otherworld.
- A world as real as this world is. The otherworld.
- The dream world is the spirit world. We venture there every night — and don’t know it.
Hell
- You make your own hell.
- Contrapasso. Every act brings its opposite upon the doer. It is the primary means of education. It is the primary tool of justice.
- Justice created hell.
- Do you want freedom? Then there must be a hell.
- I have seen criminals sentenced to jail for 500 years. As above, so below.
- Injury done to another is actually self-injury.
- In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest level of hell is cold, frozen solid by the denial of love.
- In Dante’s Inferno, the worst sinners are those who betrayed those who loved them. They are frozen under the earth: entombed in prisons of ice, enshrouded in darkness and ignorance. In the divine’s eyes it makes no sense. It is the choice of utter foolishness.
- When among criminals in a jail, one must become hard so as not to be exploited. Yet this state is far from the natural state of man, and in this state joy and the higher goods of humanity cannot be achieved. If you find yourself in this state, you must walk the slow road back to normality. Dissociate from the predators. Like attracts like. Humanity is openness and empathy, warmth and good will.
Heaven
- When Christ harrowed hell, it was the power of infinite love, reverberating, that caused the earthquake.
- We live in a shadow world. The gods live in reality.
- Human sex is a trifle compared to what is enjoyed by the gods.
Myth
- Everything is myth. There is low myth and high myth.
- Conspiracies are a low myth used to explain the world.
A poem in homage to Jalaluddin Rumi
- I took my mind and put it in a jar, put it in a jar, put it in a jar—
I took my “I” and put it in a jar, put it in a jar, put it in a jar—
Then I took took the jar and threw it to the earth, threw it to the earth, threw it to the earth—
The jar shattered and the mind was gone—
The jar shattered and the “I” was gone—
And the “I” became All.
Practical
- Aristotle said, “Virtue is the median between extremes.”
- The smallest dog barks the loudest.
- One problem ends, another begins.
- Do not build your house on sand. Life is more than money and sex. If these are your only gods, in the end you will reap only your ruin.
- You can judge a country by the quality of the men they let rise to the highest levels of leadership.
- Plato knew it all. Then they invented Christianity, to teach Platonism to all.
- Beware of the company you keep.
- Nothing stays buried forever.
- Discipline is love. Do not neglect it for those you are the steward of.
- The word “trauma” comes from the Greek word for an injury, a wound.
- The mother gives life; the father lets the child achieve the higher ideal.
- Privation breeds resentment.
Wisdom
- Wisdom flows like drops of honey from the wise to those who seek wisdom.
- All seek the good as they understand it.
- Speak freely and without fear.
- What value do negative emotions have? Be rid of them.
- Learn what motivates people to understand them.
- There is much to be learned from Patrice O’Neal.
- A fool is someone who willingly chooses what is worst for himself.
- What if I told you you have everything you need already? What would you say?
- Wouldn’t it be ironic if reincarnation proved the truth? When all these millions believe it to be fantasy?
- We should run from celebrity as from a fire.
- The famous today are the forgotten of tomorrow.
- Celebrity can be a useful tool, if used wisely and in small amounts.
- What is happiness? Happiness is health; happiness is achieving your higher ideal.
- What is a narcotic? A temporary escape from the self.
- Taking the hard way leads to ease in the end. Taking the easy way leads to hardship in the end.
- If karma was real, then only a fool would become a criminal.
- A face can tell you a great deal about its owner.
- The sun rises for rich and poor, just and unjust alike.
- In youth, observe your parents carefully. Learn from them and don’t repeat the same mistakes.
- Adultery will not make you happy. You’ll only repeat the same mistakes again.
- All the paths of knowledge lead to one conclusion.
- The word virtue comes from the Latin word “virtus,” to be a man.
- Maturity means being gracious in victory.
Gluttony
- There is no happiness in gluttony: only misery.
- A glutton lacks discipline. Gluttony is a lack of control of the self.
- Sugar is poison. It is why it is metabolized by the liver.
- In Dante’s Inferno, Ciacco, the pig, was met in the Third Circle.
- You are given what you desire most in your heart to possess. The glutton desires food; thus, they receive all the food they want.
- A glutton is someone who chooses an inferior good when superior goods are available.
- How can a glutton claim to have discipline when they lack it over the most fundamental thing they put in their body?
- All the excuses in the world will not postpone the reaper’s toll.
- The glutton is a tragic figure. All the injury they do, they do to themselves.
Transcendence
- The night of the senses is the dawn of the soul.
- The only way to be free of the body is to struggle with it. It is the struggle that elevates the self.
- What a perfect prison the gods have made. If you tell them they are enslaved, they will insist they are free.
- The refinement of the self comes first. Then its extinction.
- Descend deep into self hate and in the cell of your self you will find freedom.
The nature of the self
- Every moment of your life exists simultaneously.
- You had everything you needed within you the entire time.
- It was all you, the whole time. You, interacting with yourself. You, speaking with yourself. You, fighting with yourself.
- All knowledge is simply remembering what has been forgotten.
- I spoke to a partisan who said, “I hate the opposite side.” I laughed. “You mean you hate yourself?” I asked. Because that is what it is.
- In the end, we are all alone. In that way, the solipsists are correct. But it is benign: because, at the same time, we are all One.
- The man and woman, master and slave, murderer and victim, black man and white man, are all One.
- You are All.
- You and I will meet one day, if you wish it.
- Imagine “you and I” looking at each other. It’s actually two mirrors facing each other.
- Technically speaking, “you” cannot become enlightened. It is because it is “you” that is the obstacle to enlightenment.
- If you lose everything you will become everything. It is called the paradox of Poverty. Christ tried to explain it to the disciples, but they did not understand him.
- Where does karma derive from? Karma derives from the true nature of reality. The true nature of reality is that we are all One. Thus, injury done to another is actually injury done to oneself.
- To be social or unsocial is indifferent. Either way you’re spending time with yourself.
- You are Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great, Christ, and Siddhartha. You are the rapist, the pedophile, the murderer, and the burglar. You are Julius Caesar and you are his killers. It is all you.
- Your self is the same as the universal Self.
- Your self is the same as the self in everyone else.
- Do you fear others? You fear yourself.
- Christ said, “love your enemies.” It is a divine formula. But, this maxim has proved too hard for people. So I say, “understand your enemies.” Start here. What Christ said will then happen by itself.
Reincarnation
- Your past you inherit — your memories, you do not.
- You forget, you forget, you forget — until you forget who you are.
Esoteric knowledge
- Nothing is hidden. The initiates make their knowledge available to all. But so long as men lack appreciation they will not be able to tell the one type of knowledge from the other.
Heaven
- The contemplative experiences heaven on earth. It is experienced by no one else.
Justice
- The just will be born among the just.
- Even in times when injustice reigns, it is only a matter of time until justice returns.
Mortality
- Remember the story of Job. Everything can be taken away from you at any time.
- A blow to the head can wipe memory, sleep, intelligence, and emotional self-regulation. Take nothing for granted.
The World of the Forms
- When the gods imagined the Form of man, they imagined Da Vinci.
- Contemplate the Form of justice. Contemplate the Form of wisdom.
Death
- Do not pity the dead. Pity the living. Death is the door to infinity; birth, to limitation.
- We learn through limitation.
- Parmenides said, “Nothing is created or destroyed.” Correct, nothing is created or destroyed.
- There is a direct continuity. You will be surprised when it happens.
- You must prepare. Because when the world is gone all that is left is just you.
America
- I think America is a divine idea. To look on all as equals — as God does.
Paradox
- So similar. Christ and Alexander the Great.
- Alexander said, “I ended war. I conquered the world.”
- Why is there something rather than nothing? Paradox. The negative creates its positive. If there is nonexistence, there is also existence.