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Quote by Cliff James

“Look, see: the universe does nothing. Victim or monster, there is no one to help.  God is dead. We should have tried to do our best without him.”

Quote by Cliff James

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Life As A Kite

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Cliff James

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“The central teaching of mysticism is that Everything is One, whereas from the side of rationalism the universe is Multiple. The essence of the mystical tradition is not a particular philosophical system, but the simple realization that the soul of any individual/existence is identified with the Absolute. A special feature of the mysticism is the elimination of discriminations, i.e. the One and the Multiple are identical.On the other hand, in rationalism the One and the Multiple differ substantially. Mysticism aims at the Emptiness of Zero, whereas rationalism aims at the identification with the Infinite of Everything. Based on the ontology resulting from modern physics the One is also the Multiple and the Multiplicity is also a Module, also the Void and the Everything are complementary aspects of a single and indivisible reality. This means that mysticism and rationalism are the two sides of a Cosmic Thought, which isexpressed through consciousness. We could say that this consciousness is the rhythm that coordinates any opposite”

“The yogi tends to work inwardly, focusing on the body, whereas the magus directs the will outwardly upon the objects of the greater world. This apparent distinction is misleading, since inner world and outer world have no dividing boundary, but are an indivisible universe perceived by a single human mind. The ultimate goal is similar in both practices-to master the personal universe and yoke it to the higher aspirations.”

“As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the childhood of our species (when our ancestors gazed a little idly at the stars), among the Ionian scientists of ancient Greece, and in our own age, we have been transfixed by this question: Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night. Since Aristarchus, every step in our quest has moved us farther from center stage in the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still alive today. There are those who secretly deplore these great discoveries, who consider every step a demotion, who in their heart of hearts still pine for a universe whose center, focus and fulcrum is the Earth. But if we are to deal with the Cosmos we must first understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process, contravened. Understanding where we live is an essential precondition for improving the neighborhood. Knowing what other neighborhoods are like also helps. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.”

“I had six or seven close friends, most of whom I’m still in touch with. We used to have long discussions and arguments about everything from radio-controlled models to religion, and from parapsychology to physics. One of the things we talked about was the origin of the universe and whether it required a God to create it and set it going. I had heard that light from distant galaxies was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum and this was supposed to indicate that the universe was expanding. (A shift to the blue would have meant it was contracting.) But I was sure there must be some other reason for the red shift. Maybe light got tired, and more red, on its way to us. An essentially unchanging and everlasting universe seemed so much more natural. It was only after about two years of Ph.D. research that I realized I had been wrong.”

“The Multiplicity and the Unity are one and the same thing, a thing that is both many and one at the same time. The waves, and the currents underwater, make up the ocean. The ocean is the underlying basis for every wave. Neither the ocean, nor the waves, can be understood in isolation from each other.”