“Death is not the opposite of life but of birth - life is a continuous realm out of which we are born; that (as Plato says) we can dimly remember during our existence; and to which we return when we die - to that totality of life compared to which mortal existence seems but a dreamlike fragment.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“Each of us is an individual manifestation of the collective world-soul … we are also and paradoxically contained by the world-soul, like droplets in the ocean.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“Soul is what turns ordinary events into experiences; what imparts to the passing moment depth, connection, and resonance … The effect is unmistakable: an experience of stillness in our heads and, in our hearts, a fullness … Soul is what is transmitted and received in the experience that we call love.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“However much we wish the soul’s path to be straight, upward, and ascending, it is more likely to be meandering, full of regressions, downward turns, and backward glances.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“We are constantly distilling our selves out of ourselves like fountains that gush from underground wellsprings, flash briefly in the sun, and return to their source.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“Ideologies can only ever hope to change our lifestyles; it takes soul to change our lives.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“We are more like a many-faceted whole, and it is our task in the course of a lifetime to realize each facet of our selves - a journey that is more likely to be downward, circular, and labyrinthine than upward, onward, and straight.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“The task of the human soul is simply to return from its exile in our shadowy, less-than-real material world to an ecstatic union with the One Source of all reality.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“The way of soul, we notice, is downward rather than the upward flight of the mystic.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul
“Our waking consciousness, so contained within our heads, so ego-centered, so floodlighted, makes the dream seem dim and ill-defined. It naturally flees from the light and from a consciousness that would grab it, badger it for subliminal messages, interpret it, handcuff it, and interrogate it for its secret. If, however, we were to cultivate a more daimonic consciousness, we could slide more easily into dreams, adapt to them, changing shape if necessary, and so return to wakefulness with full memory of our otherworldly sojourn. We might even learn to let the dream surface while we are awake, for dreaming goes on all the time - it is nothing other than soul’s imagining.”
Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul