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Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner Quotes

Psychologist

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Famous Ralph Metzner Quotes

“I found that visual and auditory imagery of the elements in nature consistently induced in people's experience the qualities of consciousness associated with the elements in the alchemical and other earth-based traditions: Images and sounds of air and winds, of clouds and winged creatures, triggered associations of the mental realm, the expansive and swiftly changing world of thoughts and ideas, of words and poems and songs. Images and sounds of the water element, of oceans, tides, sea creatures, waves, rivers, springs, lakes, and rain, often released powerful emotions and feeling memories, both positive and negative. Images and sounds of fire energy, such as the sun, lightning, volcanoes, and electrical fields, were associated in people's experience with creativity, imagination, enthusiasm, vision, and intuition. Images and sounds of the earth element, of rocks and mountains, land and forest, plants and minerals, induced associations of kinesthetic and somatic awareness, of sensory contact and pleasure, of solid and substantive form.”

“Once we recognize our inescapable embeddedness in the living, organic ecosystem and our mutual interdependence with all other coexisting species, our sense of separate identity, so strenuously acquired and desperately maintained, recedes more into the background. Instead, the relationships, whether balanced or imbalanced, take the foreground and become the focus of concern. This is the perceptual basis for a new and ancient point of view: it is holistic and inclusive and inevitably accompanied by a sense of wonder and reverence.”