Richard G. Petty, MD

Stretching and Exercise

I think that most of us have been told that it is really important to stretch before we hit the gym, and do it again after we have finished. It is said to improve performance as well as reducing the risk of injury and post-exercise stiffness. It is one of those things that has just entered mass consciousness.

However a new study using the Cochrane database shows that stretching before or after exercise has little or no effect on muscle soreness between half a day and three days later.

Two researchers identified 10 relevant trials, each of which involved between 10 and 30 people. Nine of the studies had been carried out in laboratory situations and people stretched for everything from 40 seconds to 10 minutes.

The investigators used a 100-point scale to assess stiffness after exercise. The results showed that the effects of stretching were extremely small. Stretching reduced soreness by less than 1 point on the 100-point scale. The size of the effect was similar if stretching was performed before or after activity. 

The authors point out that there is still a need to see whether stretching can have an effect on people in the community who have reduced levels of flexibility.

“A great man can bend and stretch.”
--Chinese proverb

“The simple exercise of stretching helps to counter the congestions, compressions, and adhesions which obstruct the flow of the vital force through the spinal column with its sixty-two branching nerves and thus to regain energy. This truth of the need of spine-loosening movement is instinctively known by every dog and cat, every lion and tiger, for they apply it immediately after awakening from sleep. The back, the legs, and even paws are bent and stretched and even rolled by them in this natural exercise.”
--Paul Brunton (a.k.a. Raphael Hurst, English Philosopher, Traveler, Spiritual Teacher and Author, 1898-1981)

“Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.”
--Robert Benchley (American Writer, Actor and Critic, 1899-1945)

Sri Chinmoy Has Moved On

I just heard that Sri Chinmoy has died, or as many would say, entered Maha Samadhi.

I was never one of his followers, but I was impressed by some of the things that he achieved in his efforts to ground spirituality in the “external” world.

He was born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in a small village named Shakpura in what is now Bangladesh. At the age of 12, after the death of his parents, entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India.

He spent the next 20 years there engaged in spiritual practices, including meditation, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs.

He moved to New York City in 1964 to work as a clerk at the Indian Consulate, and to teach Western spiritual seekers.

He used some unorthodox methods: he spread his philosophy through his own way of life, exercising and creating art and music. He drew attention by breaking weight lifting records and stunts like power-lifting pickup trucks and public figures like Muhammad Ali and Sting.

He claimed to sleep for only 90 minutes a day and when he was not traveling to perform in concerts and spread his message, spent the rest of the time meditating, playing music, exercising and making art.

Sri Chinmoy drew upon Hindu principles to advocate a spiritual path to God through love and devotion, prayer and meditation. But he was one of the first to publicize the idea that meditation does not necessarily mean sitting quietly. Instead he recommended that his disciples develop their spirituality by transcending seemingly impossible physical challenges.

At one time or other he was the guru of many people including Carl Lewis, Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Roberta Flack and Clarence Clemons.

As with so many teachers, there were plenty of allegations of impropriety, but I have never seen any credible evidence to support them.

Many years ago he wrote his own epitaph:
“Before the final curtain goes down

On my life, 

I shall say to my Mother-Earth,
“My gratitude-heart is all for you, 
All for you.”

Here are some of my favorite poems and quotations that he wrote over the years. I do hope that you find some of them as helpful, enlightening and inspirational as I have.

“You hate someone whom you really wish to love, but whom you cannot love. Perhaps he himself prevents you. That is a disguised form of love.”

“Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness.”

“If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.”

“By hating that person, you have lost something very sweet in yourself.”

“Be universal in your love. You will see the universe to be the picture of your own being.”

“If we call ourselves children of God, then others are also children of God.”

“Love is the only wealth that man absolutely needs.
Love is the only wealth that God precisely is.”

“You can only hate someone whom you have the capacity to love, because if you are really indifferent, you cannot even get up the enough energy to hate him.”

“Whether you accept or reject it, God's Love for you is permanent.”

“Let us not worry
About the future.
Let us only do the right thing
Today,
At this moment,
Here and now.
Let the future take care of itself.”

“There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved.”

“Listen to the inner light;
It will guide you.
Listen to the inner Peace;
It will feed you.
Listen to the inner Love;
It will transform you,
It will divinize you,
It will immortalize you.”

“Love is not a thing to understand.
Love is not a thing to feel.
Love is not a thing to give and receive.
Love is a thing only to become
And eternally be.

“I shall love the whole world,
But I shall control
Only myself.

“The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his Beloved.”

“Complete and total perfection will come about only when we feel that our perfection is no perfections as long as the rest of humanity remains imperfect.”

“He who loves, never grows old. God it a shining example.”

“The very nature of kindness
Is to spread.
If you are kind to others,
Today they will be kind to you,
And tomorrow to somebody else.”

“When we have
A childlike state of mind,
It becomes extremely easy to find God
Here, there and everywhere.”

“Of all the medicines
In the inner life,
A smile is by far
The best medicine.”

“Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. Why does meditation help us overcome fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, it is because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. When we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the Infinite Vast, then everything there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves?”

“For a genuine seeker,
The inner world
Is infinitely more real
Than the outer world.”

“My Lord does not want to know what I have done for Him. He just wants to know how I am. If he hears from me that I am happy, then he himself becomes exceedingly happy. In unmistakable terms He tells me that my happiness is His real and only Satisfaction.”

“Today I must dive deep within
And know what I come
To this earth-stage for.”

“Smile, smile, smile
At your mind
As often as possible.
Your smiling will considerably reduce
Your mind's tearing tension.”

“Your self-transcendence-goal
Is not something
That you have to achieve.
It was already given to you long ago
By your Beloved Supreme.
You have only to believe it.
You have only to receive it.”

“You follow
Your heart's love.
Your life's happiness
Will follow you.”

“God’s foremost treasure on earth
Is my ever-blossoming
Gratitude-heart.”

“Yes, I can!
I certainly can!
I can have
A gratitude-flower-heart
That shall remain open
At all hours.”

“If you give God your heart’s
Dearest treasure, surrender,
Then God will grant you
His Vision’s Dearest treasure, peace.

“Instead of telling the world
What it is supposed to do,
Why don’t you immediately do it yourself ?
In this way, I assure you,
Your happiness will be surprisingly multiplied.”

“Once you have established
Your inner contact
With your inner Pilot,
Your life's transformation-victory
Will not remain a far cry.”

“O kindle the fire of happiness!
Therein I shall see
The door of friendliness,
The room of greatness
And the palace of goodness.
I shall see, I shall see.”

“If your Lord Supreme requests you to do something, rest assured he has already given you the capacity – even more than necessary – long before you actually need it.”

“If you are already an awakened soul,
Then you must realize
That God has already given you
A supreme task to perform:
He wants you to work
For His Vision’s world-blossoms.”

“My service to humanity
Is my real opportunity
To prove my genuine love
For God and God alone.”

“Enthusiasm
Rules his inner world.
Determination
Rules his outer world.
Therefore
Happiness has become
His real name.”

“Of all the gifts
You have offered to God,
Your happiness-gift
He treasures most.”

“If you want to remain always happy,
Always perfect and always fulfilled,
Then always keep inside your heart
A pocketful of sweet dreams.”

“To my extreme happiness,
My Lord has come to tell me
That from now on
I must stand apart from my actions,
Divine and undivine.
He alone is the Doer;
I am a mere observer.”

“Be in love with your heart-life.
There, only there,
Is the flood of happiness.”

“God loves only one philosophy,
And that is the Do-it-here-now philosophy.”

“Every morning and evening I am
Determined to sing and dance
On the highest peak
Of my sun-flooded
Aspiration-mountain.”

“At last
He is healed of his self-doubt.
Now what is happening ?
He is awakening
To his souls ecstasy-sun.”

“Every second a seeker can start over,
For his life’s mistakes
Are initial drafts
And not the final version.

“We must see that God operates not only in us but in others as well. God also operates in our so-called enemies. But these are not our real enemies. Our real enemies are doubt, fear, anxiety and worry. When we do not cry to perfect others, but only try to perfect our own lives, then we will have joy.”

“A sincere seeker knows what his goal is: the highest Truth. He will not delay his journey.  In the spiritual life we aspire for the highest Truth, for God, and for nothing else.”

“Precious and spacious      
The aspiring heart has to remain    
Always.”

“I am not even six feet tall. Yet I am praying to the Absolute Supreme to reach His infinite Height, which is far beyond even my imagination's flight. For me to long to grow into that Height — is this not a miracle?"      

"I am mortal. My thoughts, my deeds, my experiences — everything that I have and everything that I am — represent mortality. Yet despite everything that I have and everything that I am, I am longing for Immortality. Is this not a miracle?”

“There is only one immediate question:      
Where is God?    
The immediate answer is:    
God is where    
My heart's love-breath is.”

“Ingratitude is as old      
As man himself.    
Gratitude is a child    
Of yesterday.”

“The supreme secrets of a peaceful life:      
Expect not; just give.    
Delegate not; just start and continue.    
Retire not; just aspire for    
self-transcendence.”

“In the spiritual life the easiest way to conquer ego is to offer gratitude to God for five minutes daily. If you cannot offer gratitude for five minutes, then utter it for one minute. Offer your gratitude to God. Then you will feel that inside you a sweet, fragrant and beautiful flower is growing. That is the flower of humility.”

“In our spiritual life very often we get fascinating experiences and then we don't want to aspire anymore. It is true that experiences can give us encouragement, but very often when we get too many experiences we enter into the vital world. Suppose you are walking along a street toward your goal. If you see beautiful trees, ponds and flowers alongside the street, what happens? The scenery is so beautiful that you take a rest. You say, "Let me stay here and enjoy this," and then you stop and enjoy it. But your destination remains a far cry.”

“The problem with fault-finding
Is that he who finds fault with others
Is in no way a happy person
Even after he has successfully
Accomplished his task.”

“True inner joy is self-created
It does not rely on any outer circumstances
A river is flowing in and through you carrying the message of joy.
This divine joy is the sole purpose of life.”

“Meditation is not an escape. Meditation is the acceptance of life in its totality, with a view to transforming it for the highest manifestation of the divine Truth here on earth.”

“When we meditate soulfully, devotedly, we have to accept humanity as our very own. We have to know that humanity as it stands is far, far, from perfection, but we are also members of humanity. We have to take it with us. If we are in a position to inspire others, if we are one step ahead, naturally we have the opportunity to serve the divinity in the ones who are following us. We have to transform the face of the world on the strength of our dedication to the divinity in humanity.”

“God-realization, or Siddhi means Self-discovery in the highest sense of the term. One consciously realizes his oneness with God. As long as the seeker remains in ignorance, he will feel that God is somebody else who has infinite Power, while he, the seeker, is the feeblest person on earth. But the moment he realizes God, he comes to know that he and God are absolutely one in both the inner and the outer life. God-realization means one’s identification with one’s absolute highest Self.”

“What we call our joy, God calls our perfection. Each human being has come into the world with the message of perfection. Each human being will one day realize the highest Truth. Each human being is destined to be fulfilled. It is the birthright of our soul.”

“Not one      
But twenty-four self-giving-hours    
Every day I have    
For my use.”

“At the end of all the roads      
There is only a sound-life    
That does everything,    
And a silence-life    
That becomes everything.”

“True spirituality is the acceptance of earth-life. A true seeker is he who accepts life, transforms life and perfects life so that the earth-life can become a conscious instrument of God.”

“When I was an animal I evolved through selfishness.
Now that I am a man my evolution can be achieved only through self-sacrifice.”

“How can one know who his spiritual teacher is?...His heart looks at the spiritual Masters and makes the choice. When the heart sees a spiritual Master, if it is overwhelmed with joy, then there is every probability that that spiritual Master is the right one for the seeker.”

“The joy of a self-giving life      
Can neither be measured    
Nor be expounded.”

“God is not a thing to be achieved, but a thing to be.”

“You may not know,
But it is absolutely true:
With each heartbeat
Your heart is calling: “God, God!” 
You may not hear it,
But God Himself definitely hears
Your heart’s cry.”

“The moment we use the term 'help', a kind of egocentric idea enters into us. If we help someone, that means we are in a superior position. When we help, we feel that we are one step ahead or one step higher than the ones that we are helping. But if we serve someone, then we offer our capacity with humility, on the strength of our loving concern and oneness. So let us use the proper term, 'service'.”

“A moment of
self-giving life
can conquer the sorrows
of many long years.”

“Forgive, you will have happiness.
Forget, you will have satisfaction.
Forgive and forget,
You will have everlasting peace
Within and without.”

“Imagination plays a most significant role in the spiritual life. Suppose you are not having good meditations, but six months ago you had a very good, powerful, high meditation. What you can do is try to imagine that powerful meditation. Then your imagination will become reality. After fifteen minutes or half an hour, you will get a good meditation. Vivekananda was such a great spiritual figure, yet sometimes for six months at a time he did not have a good meditation. What did he do? He used to imagine a time when he did have a good meditation, and inside his imagination was aspiration. So imagination is very good.”

“Our goal is not to have      
A problem-free life.    
But to conquer all the problems
As they appear    
Along our life-road.”

“Let us serve the world soulfully. The pay we will receive for our service will be in the currency of gratitude, God's gratitude, God the only gratitude.”

“Each human being can at once be a fighter and forgiver. When self-doubt tortures him, he must play the role of a fighter. And when his own ignorance humiliates him, he must play the role of a forgiver.”

“A spiritual man should be a normal man, a sound man. God Himself is normal; He is not insane. In order to reach God, a spiritual person has to be divinely practical in his day-to-day activities. Spirituality does not negate the outer life. But we have to know that the outer life does not mean the animal life. The outer life should be the manifestation of the divine life within us.”

“Either by silencing the mind or by opening the heart, today's man can become tomorrow's God, tomorrow's Divinity. And embodied Divinity soon becomes revealed Immortality.”

“If we believe in our own      
Self-transcendence-task    
Then there can be    
No unreachable goal.”

“Love of the limited self, the very limited self, is another name for human love. Love of the entire world is another name for divine love.”

“Silence tells the seeker in us to love, to love himself. It tells us it is wrong to hate ourselves because of our imperfections. When the seeker loves himself, loves the Divine within himself, he eventually realizes the Ultimate Truth."

“Inner silence is not just the absence of thoughts. No! Silence is the blossoming of our indomitable inner will. Silence is our inner wisdom-light. "

“The way to become happy
Is to think
And to feel
That the very best is yet to come.”

“Failure 
Is not falling down.   
Failure   
Is desiring to live
Where I have fallen.”

“There is no greater miracle
Than our conscious efforts
To become good human beings.”

“Meditation is man's self-awakening and God's Self-Offering.
When man's self-awakening and God's Self-Offering meet together
man becomes immortal in the inner world
and God becomes fulfilled in the outer world.”

“You have no idea
How much you do for mankind
When you love God unconditionally
Even for a fleeting moment.”

“My soul reminds me
Again and again
That I am not the doer.
I am only a witness-
God-existence-life.”

“Allow everything else to vanish
Save and except your cherished dreams,
For your cherished dreams
Are treasured sleeplessly
By God Himself.”

“World-harmony
Should be taken
As a world-prayer
On a daily basis.”

“Just start your inner race without waiting to see
Who else is ready to run with you.
When others see you have reached your goal,
They will also be inspired to run.”

“Keep an open heart
To allow the world
Lovingly and faithfully
To come in.”

“Although it is extremely difficult
We must realize
That we came into the world
Not to destroy but to illumine
Our enemies.”

“Human love wants to possess and be possessed by the world. Divine love wants to establish its inseparable oneness with the world and then it wants to divinely enjoy this oneness. Supreme Love transforms human love into divine love and blesses divine love with boundless joy and divine pride."

“Each devoted moment
Prepares a beautiful sunrise
And a fruitful sunset.”

“A genius is he
Who ends rules and regulations.
A genius is he
Who is nothing but a powerful drop
In the ocean of cosmic life-energy.”

“When you consciously use time
To do something Divine,
You enter into timeless Time.

When you are consciously thinking
Of something divine, eternal Life come
And shakes hands with you.”

“The heart of every human being
Can leave behind a legacy
Of world-illumining compassion.”

“To inspire others
Is to be immediately rich
In the inner world.”

"What is joy? It is a bird That we all want to catch. It is the same bird That we all love to see flying.”

“When you talk and God listens, it is Prayer. When you listen and God talks, it is Meditation.”

“The moment you want to make progress is the moment you become an eternal beginner. The dawn is the beginning of a new day: it symbolizes hope, illumination and perfection. Every day the dawn begins its journey in the infinite sun. If you can feel that your whole being - your body, vitality, mind and soul - represents the ever-blossoming dawn, then you will always remain an eternal beginner.”

“Do not allow yourself
To be rued by dark doubts.
Make friends with bright hopes
At every moment
To change your own world
And the world around you.”

“Peace will come when we replace the love of power with the power of love.”

“God hears
The soulful prayers of a seeker
Not only with great readiness
But also with immediate
Oneness.”

“In tomorrow’s world
Many things will enlighten humanity.
But the thing that will enlighten
Humanity’s inner and outer life most
Is the transcendental temple
Of universal silence.”

Albert Ellis, R.I.P.

I just heard that Albert Ellis has passed away at the age of 93.

I think that most people who have ever done a psychology course will have heard of him. He was always controversial and upset a lot of people, particularly in regard to some of his early comments about religion and human sexuality, but he also made some important contributions to psychologyadn , was not afraid of changing is position if he thought tht he was wrong.

In 1955 he developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, and he was considered by many to be the grandfather of cognitive-behavioral therapies.

In 1982 a professional survey of U.S. and Canadian psychologists, declared that he was one of the most influential psychotherapists in history (Carl Rogers placed first in the survey; Sigmund Freud placed third). Ellis founded and was the president and president emeritus of the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute. His 90th birthday party was attended by Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama.

Here are a few of his quotations that I found in my library and database.

“Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.”

“As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.”

“By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.”

“Cognitive behavior therapy and rational emotive behavior therapy are much more popular with the public than they ever were.”

“For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.”

“Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.”

“From the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.”

“I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up.”

“I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.”

“I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression. “

“I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.”

“I hope to die in the saddle seat.”

“I just had a client this week who came to me after 10 years of Freudian therapy. He's in love with his analyst, and she is sort of in love with him.”

“I regret that I've been so busy with clinical work that I haven't been able to spend much time on experiments and outcome studies.”

“I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.”

“I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.”

“I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.”

“I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.”

“I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame.”

“I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.”

“I'll be 87 tomorrow. When I'm in New York, I see as many 70 or more clients per week.”

“I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it-going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.”

“I've lived in sin with the executive director of our institute for 35 years. I was married twice briefly before that.”

“If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.”

“If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.”

“In the old days we used to get more referrals, because people had insurance that paid for therapy. Now they belong to HMOs, and we can only be affiliated with a few HMOs.”

“Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.”

“Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.”

“Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.”

“People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.”

“People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.”

“People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.”

“People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.”

“Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.”

“Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.”

“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

“The psychotics, naturally, don't think straight. Severe personality disorders take much longer to treat than people who are neurotic.”

“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”

“There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.”

“We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.”

“We teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.”

“We're a nonprofit organization, and it usually costs $100 an hour for individual therapy. Participating in a group costs $120 a month.”

“You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.”

“I just got fed up. I was ready to blow up. This country is about enforcing our laws and if we don't, we'll have chaos worse than we already do.”

“The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.”

“Tolerance is anathema to devout divinity-centered religionists."

“Anyway, devout religionists are frequently attracted to and bound to their piety largely because it presumably offers them holier-than-thouness and one-up-man-ship over non-religionists."

Enlightenment

Regular readers will know that I have been collecting wise words from around the globe for many years, and I now have almost 40,000 of them broken down into more than 500 topics. It has taken years not just to collect them, but to try to check the sources and wording. But if you find errors, please let me know!

Here are 23 of my favorites comments about enlightenment.

I do hope that you find them as useful and inspiring as I have.



“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”   
--Carl G. Jung (Swiss Psychologist and Psychiatrist, 1875-1961)

“Be a lamp unto your own feet; do not seek outside yourself.”   
--Buddha (a.k.a. “The Awakened”, a.k.a. Siddhartha Gautama, Indian Religious Figure and Founder of Buddhism, c.563 B.C.E. – c.483 B.C.E.)

“When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.”   
--Sri Ramakrishna (a.k.a. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Indian Hindu Mystic and Promoter of Universal Religion, 1836-1886)

“We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term.  But how can one realize or make real that which alone is real? All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal. All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this. When we stop regarding the unreal as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.”   
--Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)

“We attain enlightenment when we love truth for the sake of truth, and not for the sake of self-promotion or worldly gain.”   
--Emanuel Swedenborg (Swedish Scientist, Mystic and Philosopher, 1688-1772)

“Once and for all, dedicate yourself to the service of a high ideal, to the coming of the kingdom of God, and do not be concerned with what will become of you. This ideal will bring you everything."
--Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Bulgarian Spiritual Master, 1900-1986)

“The holy instant is the recognition that all minds are in communication. Every thought you would keep hidden shuts off communication.”
--A Course in Miracles (Book of Spiritual Principles Scribed by Dr. Helen Schucman between 1965 and 1975, and First Published in 1976)

“If you are enlightened, you are not free, as some people say, but you are freedom itself. Not like a bird in the sky, but like the sky itself.”
--Wolter A. Keers (Dutch Advaita Teacher and Editor, 1923-1985)

“The reason why so few people find enlightenment is because they have free will and punish themselves by making wrong choices. Constantly, enlightenment is being offered to them, but they refuse to accept it. Therefore they refuse to accept it. Therefore they are being taught problems that are set before them, since they refuse to make choices voluntarily.”
--“Peace Pilgrim” (a.k.a. Mildred Norman, American Peace Activist, 1908-1981)

“All the riches of this world are too less a price for a single word which enlightens the soul.”    
--Hazrat Inayat Khan (Founder of the Sufi Order of the West, 1882-1927)

“To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the enlightened mind the whole world sparkles and burns”   
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, 1803-1882)

“Enlightenment must come little by little, otherwise it would overwhelm.”   
--Idries Shah (Afghan-born Sufi Philosopher and Writer, 1924-1996)

“Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.”   
--Bhagavad Gita (Ancient and Sacred Sanskrit Poem Incorporated into the Mahabharata)

“If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.”
--Jeremy Taylor (English Anglican Clergyman, Writer and Bishop, 1613-1667)

“The great beacon light God sets in all, the conscience of each bosom.”
--Robert Browning (English Poet, 1812-1889)

“God reveals himself unfailingly to the thoughtful seeker.”
--Honoré de Balzac (French Novelist, 1799-1850)

“There is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that the one realizes it, while the other is kept in ignorance of it.”
--Hui-Neng (a.k.a. Daikan Eno, Chinese Chan Monk, A.D. 638-713)

“You may have expected that enlightenment would come Zap! Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "ah ha" experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds...”   
--Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert, American Spiritual Teacher, Author and Lecturer, 1931-)

“God realization does not begin in a cave high atop the Himalayas. It begins in the pots and pans of the kitchen. Treat all your tasks, however small, as opportunities to see God and serve him.”
Sri Swami Sivananda (Indian Physician and Spiritual Teacher, 1887-1963)

“Enlightenment is not an attainment: it is a realization. When you wake up, everything changes and nothing changes. If a blind man realizes that he can see, has the world changed?”   
--Dan Millman (American Writer, Philosopher and Former World Class Trampolinist, 1947-)

“Enlightenment is the highest good. Once you have it, nobody can take it away from you.”   
--Siddharameshwar Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1888-1936)

“Is enlightenment really possible for the average person? Yes. Big Yes. Enlightenment is very possible for the ordinary individual. Actually it is easier than for some one who thinks that they are special.... whenever someone is ordinary, simple, innocent and natural, that is enlightenment.”   
--Sri Sri Ravishankar (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Founder of the Art of Living Foundation and the International Association for Human Values, 1956-)

The Horse, The Farmer and Silver Linings

I was talking to someone who has recently had a series of apparent mishaps in his life. And yet every one of them has so far turned out to have a silver lining,

I made the point to him that if we do indeed live in a meaningful, purposeful Universe, then we also have to accept that we cannot always see the reasons why thing happen. Certainly some things may happen “by chance,” but most events that involve conscious thought cannot be explained away as “chance” or “coincidence.”

It reminded me of a story that has been told and retold around the world in different forms since the dawning of time. I like this version from China:

“There was a wise old farmer whose horse ran away. All the neighbors came to commiserate and say, “That’s bad.”

But the farmer said, “Perhaps.”

Then the next day, the horse came back with a whole herd of wild horses, and the neighbors all said, “That’s good.”

And the old farmer said, “Perhaps.”

The very next day the farmer’s son broke his leg trying to tame one of the wild horses and the neighbors said, “That’s bad.”

And the old farmer said, “Perhaps.”

Just after the son broke his leg, the army came through and drafted all the young men and took them off to war. But they left the farmer’s son because his leg was broken.

All the neighbors said, “That’s good” to which the wise old farmer simply said, “Perhaps.”

“But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.”
--Paulo Coelho (Brazilian Writer, 1947-)

“Every human life had its pattern that had to be worked out slowly to its ultimate conclusion.”
--Irving Stone (American Writer, 1903-1989)

“Man has come here with a definite purpose. Life is not meant merely for eating drinking and procreating.”
--Sri Swami Sivananda (Indian Physician and Spiritual Teacher, 1887-1963)

“There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
--Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Swiss-born American Psychologist, 1926-2004)

“You cannot discover the purpose of life by asking someone else - the only way you'll ever get the right answer is by asking yourself.”
--Terri Guillemets (American Writer, 1973-)

“You have a purpose only as long as you are not complete; until then, completeness, perfection, is the purpose. But when you are complete in yourself, fully integrated within and without, then you enjoy the Universe; you do not labor at it.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, 1897-1981)

So It Goes

Like most young people, I did a load of menial jobs to pay my way through school. For one of them I spent a summer working as a hospital porter: I was the guy who pushed the wheelchairs around. There I met an interesting man who first introduced me to the works of Kurt Vonnegut, and by the end of the summer I had read all his books.

I just heard that Kurt passed away yesterday at the age of 84. He had an interesting life. He was captured by German troops in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge and he spent the rest of the war imprisoned in a Dresden slaughterhouse. On the night of 13 February 1945, Allied bombing raids flattened the city, creating a firestorm that killed an estimated 35,000 civilians in two hours. Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners survived because they were being kept in a cold meat locker three stories below the ground. When they emerged, there was nothing was left of the city. Vonnegut referred to his experiences of Dresden in several of his novels, most notably Slaughterhouse-Five that came out in 1967.

He often discussed his own mood disorder and a suicide attempt in the mid 1980s. His son, Mark Vonnegut is now a pediatrician, but his book Eden Express is an amazing account of his own descent into a mental illness that was described as schizophrenia, but from his description was far more likely to have been bipolar disorder.

They both survived, and for years now I have had all psychiatric trainees read Eden Express.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Kurt Vonnegut.

• “1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.”
• “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
• “All of us were stuck to the surface of a ball incidentally. The planet was ball-shaped. Nobody knew why we didn’t fall off, even though everybody pretended to kind of understand it.”
• “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”
• “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
• “Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”
• “Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
• “Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.”
• “During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American foot soldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.”
• “He adapted to what there was to adapt to.”
• “(He) told us about one of Plato’s dialogues, in which an old man is asked how it felt not to be excited by sex anymore. The old man replies that it was like being allowed to dismount from a wild horse.”
• “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
• “Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.”
• “How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
• “Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.”
• “I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.”
• “I can have oodles of charm when I want to.”
• “I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.”
• “I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
• “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
• “I'm suing a cigarette company because on the package they promised to kill me, and yet here I am.”
• “I’ve got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it . . .”
• “If somebody says, 'I love you,' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that
• which the pistol-holder requires? 'I love you, too.'”
• “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
• “It is harder to be unhappy when you are eating.”
• “Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”
• “Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
• “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it.  If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”
• “. . . life, by definition, is never still.”
• “Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
• “Love is where you find it.”
• “Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.”
• “Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
• “. . . most of the world’s ills can be traced to the fact that Man’s knowledge of himself has not kept pace with his knowledge of the physical world.”
• “Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both present and past.”
• “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.”
• “One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”
• “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!”
• “Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.”
• “The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.”
• “The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration.”
• “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.”
• “. . . there is this feeling that I have a destiny far away from the shallow and preposterous posing that is our life . . .”
• “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
• “. . . uncritical love is the only real treasure.”
• “We all missed a lot. We’d all do well to start again, preferably with kindergarten.”
• “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
• “We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
• “Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”
• “What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.”

Great Mistakes

It is often amazing to see how many confident predictions never turned out to be correct. This is particularly important as we are building up the evidence base to support Integrated Medicine. In Healing, Meaning and Purpose I discuss some observations that nobody could understand until new theoretical models had been created.

One example is the observation that the orbit of Mercury around the Sun appears to be irregular. Astronomers spent years trying to find a theoretical planet called Vulcan that was supposed to explain the observations. It doesn't exist. But it was not until 1905 that Einstein explained the apparent irregularities: light was being bent by the gravitational field of the Sun.

Here are a few examples of the great and the wise pontificating about the future and getting it dead wrong. Worth remembering the next time somebody says that homeopathy or acupuncture are "impossible," so any research data should be rejected out of hand!


360 B.C.E. “The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls. You will give your disciples not truth but the semblance of truth: they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.”
--Plato (Athenian Philosopher, 428-348 B.C.E.)

A.D. 79 “I am amazed, O Wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.”
--Graffiti in Pompeii

A.D. 100 “Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments.”
--Julius Sextus Frontinus (Roman Governor of Britain, Author of a work on the Aqueducts of Rome, A.D.35-A.D.103)

1486 “So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value.”
--Report of a Committee to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain concerning Columbus’ proposal

1530 “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain."
Martin Luther (German Priest and Scholar, 1483-1546)

1800 “What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (Corsican-born French Military Strategist, General and, from 1804-1814, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821) When told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat.

1807 “I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones fell from the sky.”
Thomas Jefferson (American Writer, Philosopher, Politician and, from 1801-1809, 3rd President of the United States, 1743-1826) On hearing an eyewitness report of falling meteorites.

1819 “Artificial lighting drives out fear of the dark, which keeps the weak from sinning.”
--Kölnische Zeitung

1825 “What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?”
--Quarterly Review

1830 “Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
--Dionysius Lardner (Irish Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, 1793-1859)

1839 “The abolishment (sic) of pain in surgery is a chimera. It is absurd to go on seeking it... knife & pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of patients.”
--Alfred Velpeau (French Surgeon, 1795-1867)

1842 “I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged ... and I was assured by other senators after he left the room that they had no confidence in it.”
--John Smith (American Politician and United States Senator for Indiana) After witnessing a demonstration of Samuel Morses’s telegraph.

1830 “Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as "railroads" ... As you may well know, Mr. President, "railroad" carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by "engines" which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.”
--Martin Van Buren (American Politician, Governor of New York and, from 1837-1841, 8th President of the United States, 1782-1862

1844 “There does not appear the slightest probability that, under any circumstances, Hong Kong will ever become a place of trade.”
--Robert Montgomery Martin (English Civil Servant and British Colonial Treasurer, 1800-1868)

1864 “No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free.”
--King William I of Prussia (Prussian Aristocrat, Soldier and, from 1713 to 1740, King of Prussia, 1688-1740) On hearing of the invention of trains/

1865 “Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.”
--The Boston Post

1872 “Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.”
--Pierre Pachet (French Professor of Physiology at Toulouse)   

1872 “It’s a great invention but who would want to use it anyway?”
--Rutherford B. Hayes (American Politician, and, from 1877-1881, 19th President of the United States) After a demonstration of Alexander Bell’s telephone

1873 “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.”
--Sir John Eric Erichsen (Danish-born British Surgeon and Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1818-1896)

1876 This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
--Western Union Memo

1878 “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”
--Sir William Henry Preece (Welsh Electrical Engineer and Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, 1834-1913)

1878 “When the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it & no more be heard of.”
--Erasmus Wilson (English Physician and Philanthropist, 1809-1884)

1880 Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress.”
--Sir William Siemens (German-born British Engineer and Inventor, 1823-1883), on Edison's announcement of a successful light bulb.

1888 “We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.”
--Simon Newcomb (Canadian-born American Astronomer, 1835-1909)

1889 "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.”
--Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)

1893 “Criminals will be prevented from propagating their kind. This will take the place of capital punishment. And after a few generations, this will do away with crime, since no criminals will be born.”
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox (American Poet and Journalist, 1850-1919)

1893 “All marriages will be happy in the 1990’s, because the law will put to death any man or woman who marries without the proper physical, mental and financial qualifications.”
--John Habberton (American Writer, 1842-1921)

1893 “By 1993 longevity will be so improved that 150 years will be no unusual age to reach.”
--Thomas De Witt Talmage (American Clergyman and Preacher, 1832-1902)

1894 “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented by new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals”
--Albert Michelson (German-born American Physicist and, in 1907, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1852-1931)

1895 “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
--Lord Kelvin (a.k.a. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, English Physicist and President of the Royal Society, 1824-1907)

1895 "It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the airplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.”
--Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)

1899 "Everything that can be invented, has been invented.”
--Charles Duell American Commissioner of the United States Office of Patents (This one is almost certainly a myth: Duell’s report actually talks about the ever-increasing number of new inventions!)

1899 “The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”
--Literary Digest

1900 “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
-- Lord Kelvin (a.k.a. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, English Physicist and President of the Royal Society, 1824-1907) {The same gentleman who said that "heavier than air machines" were impossible. Perhaps he then gave up on making predictions....}

1906 "The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.”
--Simon Newcomb (Canadian-born American Astronomer, 1835-1909)

1921 “Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.”
--New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary work on rockets.

1927 "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
--H M Warner (American Founder of Warner Brothers, 1881-1958)   

1928 “There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo.”
--Robert Millikan (American Physicist, who, in 1923, Won the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1868-1953)

1929 “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
--Irving Fisher (American Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1867-1947)

1931 “In my lifetime, there will be no epidemics. There will be no incurable diseases.”
--Norman Bel Geddes (American Designer, 1893-1958)

1932 “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
-- Albert Einstein (German-born American Physicist and, in 1921, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1879-1955

1933 “The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.”
-- Ernest Rutherford, First Baron Rutherford of Nelson (New Zealand-born British Physicist and, in 1908, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1871-1937

1936 “The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.”
--Richard van der Riet Woolley, British Astronomer and Astronomer Royal, 1906-1986)

1937 "I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and the general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”
--Alan Turing (English Mathematician, 1912-1954)

1939 "The problem with television is that the people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen: the average American family hasn't time for it.”
--The New York Times

1939 "Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
Sir Winston Churchill (English Statesman, British Prime Minister, 1940-1945 and 1951-1955, and, in 1953, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1874-1965)

1943 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
--Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (American Businessman and Founder of International Business Machines, 1874-1956)

1946 “[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
--Darryl F. Zanuck (American Writer and Director, 1902-1979)   

1949 "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.”
--Popular Mechanics Magazine

1949 “It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.”
--John von Neumann (Hungarian-born American Mathematician who contributed to Quantum Mechanics and Game Theory, 1903-1957

1953 “If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.”
--Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect, 1867-1959)

1954 “If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.”
-- W.C. Heuper (American Scientist and Director of the National Cancer Institute)

1959 “Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”
--Arthur Summerfield (American Politician and, from 1953-1961, United States Postmaster General)

1962 “We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
--Decca Recording Company in a letter rejecting the Beatles
   
1968 “What the hell is [a microprocessor] good for?”
--Robert Lloyd of IBM's Advanced Computing Systems Division

1970 “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.”
--Marvin Minsky (American Scientist and Philosopher in the Field of Artificial Intelligence, 1927-)

1970 “If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.”
--Spencer Silver (American Chemist and Inventor, 1941-) Speaking about the work that led to the adhesives for 3M "Post-It" Notepads.

1977 “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
--Ken Olsen (American Engineer and President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1926-)

1981 “640K of memory ought to be enough for anybody.”
--Bill Gates (American Computer Genius, Businessman and Co-founder of Microsoft, 1955-)

1983 “No one knows what to do with seven windows at one time.”
--PC Week Magazine

1984 “The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a mouse. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”
--John Dvorak (American Columnist on Technology and Computing)

1995 “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
--Robert Metcalfe (American Technology Pioneer, 1946-)

1995 “To see tomorrow's PC, look at today's Macintosh.”
--BYTE Magazine

As a cheer leader for all things Apple, I just had to put in that last one!


Which leaves me with one more quotation:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
--Arthur C. Clarke (English-born Writer, 1917-) First Law of Science.

Free Thinker's Day

Today is Freethinker’s Day, ostensibly because January 29th is the birthday of Thomas Paine.

Born in Thetford in Norfolk in 1737, he emigrated from England to Philadelphia in 1774 after he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who advised him to seek his fortune in the Americas, and gave him letters of introduction. It was two years later that he published Common Sense, a popular pamphlet that argued for complete American independence from Britain and was an important influence on the American Revolution. This, probably more than any other single publication, paved the way for the Declaration of Independence.

Later that same year in his pamphlet The American Crisis he wrote his famous line, "These are the times that try men's souls."

After the revolution was won, Paine returned to England in 1787, and in 1791 he published The Rights of Man, which opposed the idea of monarchy and defended the French Revolution. The book immediately created a sensation, with at least eight editions being published in 1791, and the work was quickly reprinted in the United States where it was widely distributed by the Jeffersonian societies.

The Rights of Man began as a defense of the French Revolution but it evolved into an analysis of the basic reasons for discontent in European society and suggested that republicanism was a remedy for the evils of arbitrary government, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and war.

He was always a free thinker, and I’ve recently re-read the Rights of Man and been impressed by his writing, even if I don’t agree with all of his conclusions.

Free thinking is what lead to the creation of Integrated Medicine and the discovery that some of the Laws of Life have been evolving and changing over the last few centuries. These discoveries were all the fruits of thinking - and living - "outside the box."

Here are a few of Thomas Paine's quotable quotes:
“A bad cause will never be supported by bad means and bad men.”

“A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal but a real existence, and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of a people constituting a government. It is the body of elements to which you refer, and quote article by article, and contains the principles on which the government shall be established--the form in which it shall be organized--the powers it shall have--the mode of elections--the duration of Congress--and, in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution is to a government, therefore, what the laws made by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made; and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.”

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

“A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.”

“A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

“Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men who can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.”

“Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.”

“All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.”

“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man”

“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”

“Civilization, or that which is so called, has operated two ways to make one part of society more affluent and the other part more wretched than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.”

“Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.”

“He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.”

“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

“I believe that a man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.”

“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and row brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”

“It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.”

“It is necessary to the happiness of a man that he be mentally faithful to himself.”

“Man must go back to nature for information.”

“Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

“Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.”

“My country is the world, and my religion to do good.”

“My mind is my own church.”

“Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.”

“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”

“Tears may soothe the wounds they cannot heal.”

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

“The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together; and it is only in the last push that one or the other takes the lead.”

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”

“The sublime and ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step below the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.”

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

“There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.”

“These are the times that try men's souls.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

“Though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.”

“Time makes more converts than reason.”

“'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.”

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

“We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.”

“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

“What we obtain too cheap we esteem too little; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”

“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”

The Best Things In Life Aren't Things

I was sorry to hear this morning that Art Buchwald has just passed away at the age of 81, having defied the odds for a year after entering a hospice.

I've enjoyed his columns for years, and the title of this post is one of my most favorite Buchwald-isms. And it sums up a lot of his work. Hidden beneath the satire and humor there was always a wise, pithy and unsightful comment.

Just think about that for a moment, "The best things in life aren't things." He's right isn't he, and how often do we all forget it?

Here are a few from my collection that I hope you will like.

Farewell Art.

_______________________

“A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.”

“And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried:  "Look at this Godawful mess."

“I don't know what's coming next and neither does anyone else. It's something that we do have to face but the thing is that a lot of people don't want to face it. And there's denial. If somebody says it, like me, everybody feels a little better that they can discuss it.”

“I don't know whether it's normal or not, but sex has always been something I take seriously. I would put it higher than tennis on my list of constructive things to do.”

“I worship the quicksand he walks in.”

“People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him.”

“The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.”

“We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.”

“Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.”

Martin Luther King Day

In the United States, today is Martin Luther King day, and we are hearing numerous glowing tributes as well as commentary about what still needs to be done.

I was only a child when Dr. King was assassinated and living thousands of miles away in a part of the country and a school that was largely color blind, I knew little of the terrible discrimination which was still a fact of life in the United States. And in some places still is.

But what I remember was the extraordinary oratory that still sends chills down my spine.

His insights and his statements are timeless, and like Mahatma Gandhi before him, he was more than a social reformer, he was a World Teacher.

When we are hearing Truth, it can usually be applied in more than one setting: many of Dr. King’s principles about harmony, brotherhood and equality can also be applied in to the health and harmony of the body and our interpersonal relationships.

This is a good day to ponder on what he said, and here are a few quotations from my collection. I hope that you will find some of them as inspirational as I have.

“A lie cannot live.”

“A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."

“A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

“A right delayed is a right denied.”

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law."

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

“Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.”

“Don’t hate, it’s too big a burden to bear”

“Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.”

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

“Every man is someone because he is a child of God.”

“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."

“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.”

“Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.”

“Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“Goodness defeated is stronger than evil triumphant”

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”

“Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

“He (Jesus) knew that the old eye-for-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with aggressive love.”

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted”

"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good."

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

“I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

“I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream; a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.”

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

"I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law."

“If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

"If man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.”

"If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”

“If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."

"If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, "There lived a great people - a black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”

“Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

“Lives begin to end the day we become silent on the things that matter.”

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“My faith in man is, at bottom, a faith in God.”

“My place is in the sunshine of opportunity.”

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."

“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

“Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

“Oh, the worst of tragedies is not to die young, but to live until
I am seventy-five and yet not ever truly to have lived.”

"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”

“One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

“Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to celebrate like never before, my own power, my own ability to get myself to do whatever is necessary."

"Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think."

“Real peace is not the absence of conflict, it is the presence of justice.”

"Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control."

"Seeing is not always believing."

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

"So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

"The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.”

“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.”

“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”

“The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility."

“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

“The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”

“The old law about an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

"The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.”

"The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.”

“The strong man is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back.”

“The time is always right to do what is right.”

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

"There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.”

"Through our scientific genius, we have made this world a neighborhood; now through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood."

"We are not makers of history. We are made by history."

"We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobile rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.”

"We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”

"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

“We must use time creatively and forever realize that the time is ripe to do what's right."

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. "

"We will speed the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing ...Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last.”

“What does not destroy me, makes me strong.” (Paraphrasing Nietzsche)

“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”

"....when we let it ring from every village, and every hamlet, from every state and every city , we will be able to speed up the day when all of god children...will be able to join hands and sing in the words of that old Negro spiritual, 'free at last! free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”

"Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

"Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.”

Albert Schweitzer

Today is the birthday of Albert Schweitzer who was born in  Kaysersberg, Alsace-Lorraine, Germany. It is one of those parts of the world that has often changed hands and is now in Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France.

He was a remarkable man: as a youngster he was a famous organist and was highly interested in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, whom he regarded as a religious mystic.

He decided that after the age of 30 he would dedicate himself to the service of humanity and became both a theologian and physician. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of "reverence for life" expressed in many ways but most famously in founding and sustaining the Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon, west central Africa.

I have heard some people be very critical of Schweitzer, describing him as patronizing toward Africa. I don't think that is right. If you look at his actions and his writings, it is clear that he had an extraordinary compassion and vision.

Here are a few of his writings from my own collection. I hope that you find some of them as inspirational as I have.


“A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

“A heavy guilt rests upon us for what the whites of all nations have done to the colored peoples. When we do good to them, it is not benevolence it is atonement.”

“A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.”

“A man does not have to be an angel to be a saint.”

"All the kindness which a man puts out into the world
works on the heart and thoughts of mankind.”

“All work that is worth anything is done in faith.”

“An idea is, in the end, always stronger than circumstances.”

“Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of their way, but must accept their lot calmly, even if people roll a few stones upon it.”

“As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.”

“As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.”

“At that point in life where your talent meets the needs of the world, that is where God wants you to be.”

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

“Be faithful to your love and you will be recompensed beyond measure.”

“Because I have confidence in the power of Truth and of the spirit, I believe in the future of mankind.”

“By having reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world.”

“Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.”

“Ethical existence is the highest manifestation of spirituality.”

“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.”

“Every man has to seek his own way to make himself more noble and to realize his own true worth”

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”

“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.”

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

“I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.”

"If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

“In the same way as the tree bears the same fruit year after year, but each time new fruit, all lastingly valuable ideas in thinking must always be reborn.”

“It seemed to me a matter of course that we should all take our share of the burden of pain which lies upon the world.”

“Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good.”

“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall.  He will end by destroying the earth.”

“Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.”

“Medicine is not only a science, but also the art of letting our own individuality interact with the individuality of the patient.”

“Natural and super-natural, temporal and eternal - continuums, not absolutes.”

“No ray of sunshine is ever lost,  but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout,  and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith.”

“One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”

“One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.”

“One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.”

“Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.”

“Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life, and that to destroy, to harm, or to hinder life is evil.”

“Success is not the key to happiness; Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

“The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.”

“The first step in the evolution of ethics is an enlargement of the sense of solidarity with other human beings.”

“The greatest discovery of any generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of  mind.” (He is here reiterating something said by the great psychologist and philosopher William James)

“The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret.... It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”

“The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own.”

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

“The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colors and textures that come alive in others.”

“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.”

“There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.”

“There is so much coldness in the world because we are afraid to be as cordial as we really are.”

“To educate yourself for gratitude means to take nothing for granted but to seek out and value the kindness that lies behind the action.”

“Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.”

“Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.”

“We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.”

“Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.”

“Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way.  But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright.  And then you ask yourself in amazement:  Is this really my own life I see before me?”

Cicero’s Six Mistakes of Man

Today is traditionally taken to be the birthday of the great Roman lawyer, political figure, orator and philosopher Cicero, whose full name was Marcus Tullius Cicero. Nobody really knows the exact date of his birth, but for several centuries, January the 3rd it has been.

His life was extraordinarily successful by the standards of the day, and generations of school children learned some basic history and philosophy from him.

We also learned that success is subjective.

Over two thousand years ago he wrote about the “Six Mistakes of Man:”

1. The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others
2. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do

Even after all this time, how much has really changed?

I urge you to think about those six and whether any of them are operating in your life. I often use "The Six" as a jumping off point in therapy or workshops: they often help us to focus on some of our false beliefs and perceptions.

And to celebrate his birthday, here are a few choice Cicero quotations from my own collection.

Enjoy and, perhaps, learn something from them.

“A liar is not believed even though he tells the truth.”

“A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.”

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.

“A youth of sensuality and intemperance delivers over a worn out body to old age.”

“Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.”

“All things are full of God.”

“As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.”

“As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.”

“As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.”

“Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.”

“Before beginning, plan carefully.”

“Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.”

“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.”

“Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.”

“By doubting we come at truth.”

“Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”

“Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.”

“Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.”

“Generosity should never exceed ability.”

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”

“Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.”

“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”

“He who suffers, remembers.”

“If you would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury.”

“In a disturbed mind, as in a body in the same state, health can not exist.”

“In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.”

“In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.”

“Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.”

“It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.”

“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.”

“Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.”

“Many wish not so much to be virtuous, as to seem to be.”

“Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”

“Nature has placed in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.”

“No man is so old as not to think he can live one year more.”

“One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul will ever be destroyed”

“Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.”

“Reason should direct and appetite obey.”

“Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.”

“Superstition is a senseless fear of God.”

“That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.”

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”

“The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.”

“The beginnings of all things are small.”

“The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.”

“The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.”

“The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.”

“The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body.”

“The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.”

“The forehead is the gate of the mind.”

“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil”

“The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.”

“The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.”

“The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.”

“There are gems of thought that are ageless and eternal.”

“There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.”

“There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften”

“There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.”

“Through doubt we arrive at the truth.”

“To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.”

“To the sick, while there is life there is hope.”

“True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.”

“Virtue is its own reward.”

“We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory

“Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine and on that account must necessarily be eternal.”

“When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.”

“Work makes a callus against grief.”

 

Remembering Mahatma Gandhi

On this day in 1869, in the town of Porbandar, Gujurat State, India, a child named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born. His life has been written about in hundreds of books and articles, and nobody can deny that he, and his non-violent resistance, changed the world in the most extraordinary way.

Yet we all still have much more to learn about what he tried to teach.

Starting life as an English-trained lawyer, he read widely, drawing inspiration from such sources as the Bhagavad-Gita, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, and his personal philosophy underwent significant changes.

It was not until later in life that he became known as "Mahatma," or Great Soul.

Not only did he leave a profound political and philosophical legacy, but he left us an extraordinary number of sayings and quotations. Here are a few of of my favorites.

 

_________________________

“A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love, it is the prerogative of the brave”

“A faith gained in strength only when people were willing to lay down their lives for it.”

“A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind, and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free.”

“A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy.”

“A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of majority.”

“A vow is fixed and unalterable determination to do a thing, when such a determination is related to something noble which can only uplift the man who makes the resolve.”

“Action alone is just that does not harm either party to a dispute.”

“Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation."

“An eye for an eye will only serve to make the whole world blind”

“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding”

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

“Both heaven and hell are within us.”

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.”

“Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.”

“God alone is the judge of true greatness because he knows men’s hearts.”

“God answers prayer in His own way, not ours.”

“God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west... keeping the world in chains.  If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” 

“God is not a person...God is the force. He is the essence of life. He is pure and undefiled consciousness. He is eternal. And yet, strangely enough, all are not able to derive either benefit from or shelter in the all-pervading living presence.”

“God turns his back on those who quarrel amongst themselves.”

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

“How can I, who knows the body to be perishable and the soul to be imperishable, mourn over the separation of body from soul?”

“Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory.”

“I am painfully conscious of my imperfections, and therein lies all the strength I possess, because it is a rare thing for a man to know his own limitations.”

“I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity.”

“I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.” 

“I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it.”

“I believe that the sum total of the energy of mankind is not to bring us down but to lift us up, and that is the result of the definite, if unconscious, working of the law of love. The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal.”

“I claim to be no more than an average person with less than average ability. I have not the shadow of doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.”

“I do feel that spiritual progress does demand, at some stage, that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.”

“I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.”

“I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.”

“I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction, and therefore there must be a higher law than that of destruction.”

“I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world.”

“I hope there is no pride in me. I feel I recognize fully my weakness. But my faith in God and His strength and love is unshakable. I am like clay in the Potter's hands. I shall continue to confess blunders each time the people commit them. The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority. I believe in the supreme power of God. I believe in Truth and, therefore, I have no doubt in the future of this country or the future of humanity.”

“I implicitly believe in the truth of the saying that not a blade of grass moves but by His will. He will save it (my life) if He needs it for further service in this body. None can save it against His will.”

“I know of your capacity to do great things, but I have yet to discover your capacity to do little things.”

“I own no enemy on earth. That is my creed.”

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

“If we reach the heart of our own religion, we also reach the heart of other religions.”

“If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.”

“In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all”

“In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.”

“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in an clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.”

“. . . in the midst of death life persists . . .”

“In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that any one else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force.”

“Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.”

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”

“It is knowledge that ultimately gives salvation.”

“It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.”

“It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

“Just think out for yourselves, if a man who was good yesterday has become bad after having come in contact with me, is he responsible that he has deteriorated or am I? ... It is well to take the blame sometimes.”

“Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive, because your words become your behavior.
Keep your behavior positive, because your behavior becomes your habits.
Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your value system.
Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.”

“Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy.”

“Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization.”

“Life is greater than all art.”

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

“Love and exclusive possession can never go together.”

“Love can never express itself by imposing sufferings on others. It can only express itself-suffering, by self-purification.”

“Love is no love which asks for a return.”

“Man’s destined purpose is to conquer old habits, to overcome the evil in him and to restore good to its rightful place.”

“Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe that I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.”

“My life is my message”

“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.”

“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”

“Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat
is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.”

"Nonviolence which is a quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain."

“Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock.”

“Peace will not come out of clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.”

“Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood.”

“Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

“Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

“Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness, peace and repose in our daily acts.”

“Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy”

“Service has no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it”

“Silence is a great help to a seeker after truth. In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth, and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height.”

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

“The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind.”

“The Difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”

“The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit.”

“The future depends on what we do in the present.”

“The golden rule of conduct.. is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always wee Truth in fragment and from different angles of vision.”

“The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.”

“The law of love knows no bounds of space or time.”

“The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world.”

“The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats' teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.”

“The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice.”

“The only devils in this world are those running around in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought.”

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.”

“The pure unadulterated love of one can nullify the hatred of millions.”
“The seven social sins:

1. Knowledge without character,
2. Science without humanity,
3. Wealth without work,
4. Commerce without morality,
5. Politics without principles,
6. Pleasure without conscience,
7. Worship without self-sacrifice.”

“The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”

“The wise are unaffected either by death or life. These are but faces of the same coin.”

“. . . there are chords in every human heart. If we only knew how to strike the right chord, we would bring out the music.”

“There are innumerable definitions of God because his manifestations are innumerable.”

“There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread”

“There are subjects where reason cannot take us far and we have to accept things on faith. Faith then does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason.”

“There comes a time when an individual becomes irresistible and his action becomes all-pervasive in its effects. This comes when he reduces himself to zero.”

“There is a soul force which if we permit it, will flow through us, producing miraculous results”

“There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.” 

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” 

“There is no god higher than truth.”

“There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and anyone who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever”

“Though I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal.”

“To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”

“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowed in prayer.”

“To my mind, I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more
entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”

“To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.”

“True beauty consists of purity of heart.”

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

“Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking.”

“We have no evidence whatsoever that the soul perishes with the body.”

“. . . we have to learn to use that force (love) among all that lives, and in the use of it consists our knowledge of God. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction.”

“We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. The Attainment of freedom, whether for a person, a nation or a world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of nonviolence for each.”

“We must be the change we wish to see.”

“What is faith worth, if it is not translated in to action?”

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”

“When his duty is to face danger and he flees, it is cowardice.”

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS!”


“Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, try the following experiment: Recall the face of the poorest and most helpless person you have ever seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be for any use to him or to her . . . Then you will find your doubts and your self melting away.”

“Where there is love there is life.”

“Wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.”

“Without prayer there is no inward peace.”

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”

“Your capacity to keep your vow will depend on the purity of your life.”

Some Memorable Quotations

Regular readers will know that I often find that quotations can inspire and educate us and can amplify points.

My own quotations database, lovingly crated over many years, contains almost 30,000 entries. Here are some that I think are wonderful, but for which I can find no reliable attribution. The first was said to have been written by a victim of the Holocaust, but I've not been able to confirm that.

If anyone can help with authorship please do let me know, and I'll edit this entry, giving credit where it's due!

I hope that you find these as inspirational as I have.

I believe in the sun, even when it isn't shining.
I believe in love, even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.

In the end, all I have of ultimate value is my word
And His Word.

I choose them carefully.
Yet my beliefs and mistakes abound
In a universe where justice prevails.

Let me be judged by my choices,
Not by the voices of condemnation
Shouting down errors
They cannot see in themselves.

Reality has rules whose breach does not go unnoticed,
Each violation creates a debt that must be paid.
All of life a striving toward this balance,
Frenzied futility, apology, pretense, denial,
And seeking of forgiveness and mercy.

The universe is just and accountable.
We seek formulas
God has the answers.

Let me love and be loved, even when it goes unnoticed,
And if my feelings and beliefs and vain wonderings
Figure into the solution,
Cast them as adornments
To the ledger of mercy and justice.

Along the journey of life
The longest distance is the foot
Between the heart and the head.
Step forward into the separation of powers,
And travel into eternity.

Miracles and Expectations

“I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.”
--William James (American Psychologist and Philosopher, 1842-1910)

There was a very interesting article published in the British Medical Journal in 1983. My old friend Peter Fenwick wrote a very interesting paper on prayer that cited this story.

Christian missionaries had gone to Ethiopia, but were required to leave by the Government in power at the time. They left behind some Gospels. When they returned some years later, they found not only a flourishing church, but also a community of believers amongst whom miracles like those mentioned in the New Testament happened every day. There had been no missionaries to teach them that such things were not supposed to be taken literally. They created miracles because they had never been told that they could not. There were no scientifically trained missionaries to tell them that miracles only occurred in the first century of the Church’s existence, or in special circumstances if a highly trained priest is present.

This sort of case – and there are many others - gets straight to the heart of the role of belief and expectation in our lives. Is there one fixed external reality, and we are no more than puppets dancing on cosmic strings? I’ve heard many people say that. Just recently the Editor of Psychology Today said that he felt that everything in human behavior could be reduced to genes, learning and reflexes. I must respectfully disagree. Free will is not an illusion, and our hopes and expectations have a massive impact on the structure of our lives and our reactions to the events that will come our way.

How many things are you failing to achieve because of fears or negative expectations?

Some people might describe the Ethiopians as unsophisticated. I would not: these good people can teach us something that many of us have forgotten.

Clean up and focus your expectations, ensure the purity of your intentions and see what happens in your life.

I’ve put just a few quotations below. I selected them for this reason: as you look at them, see how many are directly relevant to your life.

Do any of them give you ideas about managing your own life? If not, you may like to have a look at/listen to Healing, Meaning and Purpose or the articles and podcasts that I shall be posting this month.

“Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.”
--Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

“Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in.”
--Willis Harman (American Scientist and Late President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences; 1920-1997)

“It is one of the most common of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.”
C.W. Leadbeater (English Clergyman and Theosophical Writer, 1854-1934)

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
--Arthur C. Clarke (English-born Writer, 1917-)

“Only if you reach the boundary will the boundary recede before you. And if you don't, if you confine your efforts, the boundary will shrink to accommodate itself to your efforts. And you can only expand your capacities by working to the very limit.”
--Hugh Nibley (American Scholar in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1910-2005)

“Know from whence you came. If you know whence you 
came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.”
--James Baldwin (African-American Writer, 1924-1987)

“Give yourself the freedom to explore the possibility of life without limits. Goals are dreams with deadlines, a means to an end but not the ultimate purpose of life.”
--Glynis Nunn (Australian Heptathlete, 1960-)

“Imposing limitations on yourself is cowardly because it protects you from having to try, and perhaps failing.”
--Vladimir Zworykin (Russian-born American Physicist and, in 1923, the inventor of the “Iconoscope:” the first television camera, 1889-1982)

“Divine wisdom is inexhaustible; the limitation is only in the receptive faculty of the form.”
--Henricus Madathanus (German Philosopher, Alchemist and Co-Founder of the Fraternity Rosae Crucis, 1575-1639)

Historical Amnesia

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
--George Santayana (Spanish-born American Philosopher, Humanist and Poet, 1863-1952)

For a long time now I have been convinced that one of the many reasons for the social dislocation in much of the developed world is that we have lost our memory. If we do not remember who we are, what we are, where we came from or where we are going, we are doomed to a life of perplexity and confusion. Have you ever felt that there is something about you, some skill, some knowledge, some hidden fact that is there just beyond the horizon, but that you cannot quite grasp? That feeling can be very disorientating and anxiety provoking.

We need to remember our history, and the insights of the geniuses who came before us will help us to understand and to frame the chaos of our lives.

I was thrilled to read a piece by Richard Stengel, the new Managing Editor of Time magazine, in which he laments the epidemic of historical illiteracy that threatens every aspect of our lives. As he points out, being an American is not based upon ancestry or geography, but an acceptance of the ideas of who we are. A few years ago, a survey of Americans aged 18-49 found that only 10% could name the president who ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. At the time of the study, I was having lunch with a group of faculty at a major Ivy League university, and one of the assembled company  - a very good clinician and researcher – responded to the results by saying, “Who cares who did?” We all need to care for these major events provide a context and a framework for us to understand our place in the world, and who we are as a people and as a nation. As Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd president said: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Historical illiteracy is a threat to democracy and may lead us to repeat mistakes.

I have spent years working on a series of antidotes to this historical amnesia. As one part of this effort, I have developed a database of quotations. Not cute sayings, but insights, comments and revelations that mean something and can transform our lives. As I said in the introduction to my book Words of Power:
“This book has been created over thousands of years and by thousands of minds. You will find here the fruits of many lifetimes of contemplation and study. From the marble halls of ancient Greece, to the steamy ashrams of India; from the sacred groves of the American Natives, and from the medicine huts of Africa right up to the startling insights of mystics and scientists walking amongst us today.”

Knowing what someone said is valuable, but only half of the equation. We are evolving as a species. If you met a persons from a thousand years ago, they might appear quite dull: our thoughts, beliefs and perceptions are also the fruits of the times and places where we live. It is good to know who said something, and essential to know when and where it was said. As in any conversation, the words are only a small part of a communication: context is key.

For many years now, I have strongly suggested that people interested in personal development should spend just a few minutes a day with a classic maxim or quotation.

If you are interested in quotations, I have well over 27,000 in my database, and I would be very happy to post some of them.

Technorati tags: Social dislocation Quotations Memory Historical illiteracy

John Kenneth Galbraith Quotations

You may perhaps have seen the news this weekend of the death of John Galbraith, at the age of 97.

I never met him, but this Canadian-born economist, Harvard professor, public servant and writer has left a rich legacy, which we should celebrate. Many will disagree with some of his political positions and evaluations, but few could deny that he did his best to stimulate civilized debate about important matters.

He was also a master of the insightful and sometimes humorous quotable quotes. We have an  almost totally clean database of over 26,000  quotations (i.e. no duplicates and virtually all sources checked), and here are some of my favorite Galbraith quotations that I hope that you might find interesting, stimulating, and in a few cases amusing. A small memorial to a fine mind and generous soul.

“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

“All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.”

“Any consideration of the life and larger social existence of the modern corporate man begins and also largely ends with the effect of one all-embracing force. That is organization -- the highly structured assemblage of men, and now some women, of which he is a part. It is to this, at the expense of family, friends, sex, recreation and sometimes health and effective control of alcoholic intake, that he is expected to devote his energies.”

“Change comes not from men and women changing their minds, but from the change from one generation to the next.”

“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”

“Every community needs a great many communal services. By rewarding such work with honor and esteem, the very best men can be had for nothing.”

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

“I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.”

“If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.”

“If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.”

“In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”

“In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.” “In economics, the majority is always wrong.”

“In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.”

“It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.”

“Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.”

“Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.”

“More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.”

“Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.”

“One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.”

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.”

“Production only fills a void that it has itself created.”

“The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.”

“The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.”

“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”

“We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action, of the machine we have created to serve us.”

“Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.”

“What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing sensual pleasure and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable nutritional requirement.”

“When people are the least sure, they are often the most dogmatic.”

“Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.”

“You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.”

Technorati tags: John Galbraith, quotations,

Using your Core Values for Rapid Stress Management

“The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.” -- Norman Vincent Peale (American Cleric, Writer and Self-Help Expert, 1898-1993)

As a professional speaker, I often forget that glossophobia - fear of public speaking – is the most common phobia in America today. I have a whole toolkit of techniques that I use for helping people with this problem, but I am always interested in new methods that can work quickly.

A study of 80 UCLA undergraduates published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that taking a few minutes to contemplate your personal values (Click here to take an online assessment of your personal values) in the moments before a tense situation, like making a speech, an examination or a visit to the dentist, can keep stress levels low.

People in the study who affirmed their values before delivering a speech had significantly lower levels of one of the stress hormones – cortisol – than did the control group, and psychological measures also indicated that they were less stressed.

“People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.” --Steven R. Covey (American Author and Businessman, 1932-)

Reaffirming your core values is one of the keys to the development of resilience, and that is what was happening in this study. For anyone who is interested in dealing with fear of public speaking or in developing personal resilience, we shall be putting new articles on my website in the next few days.

“Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.” --Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Spiritual Teacher and, in 1920, Founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship, 1893-1952)

Technorati tags: stress, stress management, core values

Pathological Lying

“To tell a falsehood is like the cut of a saber; for though the wound may heal, the scar of it will remain.” --Saadi (a.k.a. Sa’di or Sadi or Musharrif-uddin, Persian Poet, c. 1213-1292)

If you are a regular reader, you know that I try to examine issues in five basic realms:  physical, psychological, relational (relationships), subtle and spiritual.  In this post, I am going to show you what is so different about our approach to handling problems by using the example of pathological lying.

I want to use this example because you may well have come across people who are pathological liars and I have seen an extraordinary case myself quite recently. Though none comes close to a young woman whom I once tried to help several years ago. To get to the bottom of her problems, I did background research on her that would have made Sherlock Holmes proud, finally marshaling the evidence in several very thick files of information about fabricated life events, relationships with famous people that never happened and false employment and medical records. When I proudly produced the fruits of several weeks’ work, I was greeted with a sly smile, as she said, “Oh those are only the ones where I used six aliases; you haven’t got the records from the other thirty names that I’ve use.” I was crestfallen.

Pathological lying is also called pseudologia fantastica or mythomania. The lies are usually fluent and plausible and the untrue statements and often grandiose and extreme. Particularly in times of heightened emotion, memory is falsified and distorted and events and circumstances misinterpreted.

In a recent case an individual claimed to have already been pre-selected for the United States Olympic team for 2008, despite being only a good average performer and being unknown to the team selectors. The pathological liar usually believes their false answers: as a rule of thumb, deliberate liars know when they are lying, and pathological liars do not always.

Pathological lying may accompany certain types of personality disorder, particularly borderline, histrionic and antisocial types as well as conduct disorder. It is related to the so-called Munchausen’s syndrome in which people mimic real diseases. There was a famous case in the UK of a man who was subjected to all manner of investigations during his many years of wandering from one hospital to another with all manner of fabricated medical conditions. I was once walking past the Emergency Room when a friend asked me to stop by and look at a patient, telling me that there seemed to be something familiar about him. I’ve always had a decent memory, so as soon as saw him I told the patient and my friend that he was last in hospital on November the 7th the year before, I gave him the alias that he had then used and that he had claimed to be a truck driver from a town in the English Midlands. The patient immediately left the hospital. A shame: it would have been good to know why he did it.

Sometimes people make things up when there is a defect in their ability to reason or judge: it may happen in schizophrenia, as well as a condition called Korsakov’s psychosis that can happen in severe chronic alcoholism and malnutrition. We sometimes still see it in people suffering from older people suffering from cerebral syphilis and in people with AIDS-related dementia. Another related problem is of confabulation in which people with amnesia make up false memories to cover the gaps in their memory.

Physical

There has been recent data from a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. The team from the University of Southern California team studied 49 people and found those known to be pathological liars had up to 26% more white matter than others with antisocial personality disorder who were not liars and healthy volunteers. In general, white matter transmits information and grey matter processes it. Having more white matter in the prefrontal cortex may aid lying. This study could help research into areas such as people who feign illness. There is also something else: the findings are in line with previous studies that have shown that children with autism are less capable of lying than other children. Some studies of the brain in individuals with autism show that they have more grey matter than white matter: the opposite pattern to the liars in this study.

This neurological study gets back to the problem of understanding how much of a person’s behavior is under voluntary control and how much is innate. Some distinguished psychiatrists are already suggesting that this supports the notion that pathological lying is a separate psychiatric entity. I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time before this data is introduced by the defense in a criminal case. But is that the end of the question? No, because we also need to consider the other four aspects or domains of a person.

Psychological

Apart from psychotic and organic syndromes, pathological lying may occur in people with very low self-esteem. I have written elsewhere about self-esteem and the data indicating that boosting self-esteem is valueless. What does help is genuine accomplishment from which self-esteem arises. The exception is in those poor souls whose self-esteem seems to be held in a kind of leaky bucket: however much they achieve, they still feel badly about themselves. Though sometimes such people need outside help, in my most recent book I present a number of methods for dealing with the “leaky bucket syndrome.” These involve precise methods for:

• Identifying and working to re-integrate your ego-fears
• Avoiding self-consciousness
• Detaching from the opinions of others
• The practice of gratitude
• Pinpointing and following your True Purpose
• Practicing personal integrity
• Liberating yourself from negative experiences, cognitions and emotions

Relationships

A recent Anglo-Italian study published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour and reported by the BBC has shown that although most people believe that they can spot liars,when in fact, they cannot. It is commonly believed that liars can be detected by body movements and by avoiding eye contact. But the research shows that liars tended to stay still as they were acutely aware their body language might give them away. The popular perception that when people lie they scratch their nose and play with their hair is also not true. These small “nervous” movements are known as “self-adaptor gestures” that are thought to serve to comfort a person feeling vulnerable or exposed. But instead of giving into these urges, liars try very hard to stay still and are just as likely as an honest person to look the questioner in the eye.

But there were some signs of lying:

1. Liars use certain types of hand gestures more in order reinforce the point
2. The use of metaphoric gestures - such as touching the heart to show love and or the holding of hands apart to indicate size - are used 25% more often when people lie
3. Rhythmic gestures such as repeated pointing to emphasize statements are also used more often by liars

People lie in and about relationships all the time, and it can have a dreadfully corrosive effect on a relationship. But I am strongly opposed to the constant chant of “Get real.” Although it is a worthy ultimate goal, simply to kick away someone’s psychological support system – for the lies will have had some causes – without putting anything in their place, can have a devastating effect.

And if the lies are covering any form of infidelity, stop the activity before it is too late.

I am also reminded of the statement once made by Abraham Lincoln: “No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.”

Subtle

How do lies impact the subtle systems of the body? Profoundly. The subtle systems are animated by thought, and if your thoughts are scattered by having to keep track of what you said to whom, or if you are trying to come to terms with the true intent of another person in a relationship, it can drag energy from where it is needed. It is another reason why so many interpersonal difficulties can translate into physical problems. Conversely, working with the subtle systems of the body may help cure people who needlessly lie.

Spiritual

There is a reason why many religious traditions refer to the devil as the Prince of Lies. Lying has always been regarded not just as a moral failing but as a spiritual one as well.

Pathological liars may actually benefit from finding a spiritual orientation. For one thing s certain lying to oneself or lying to others is sure to paralyze any spiritual aspirations.

“This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou can’st not then be false to any man.” {Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii}

--William Shakespeare (English Poet and Dramatist, 1564-1616)

Technorati tags: Lying, personality disorders, psychology

Hyperfocus

“Success isn't magic or hocus-pocus its simply learning how to focus.” --Jack Canfield (American Motivational Speaker, Author and Trainer, 1944-)

We have all been taught the importance of focusing to learn and to get jobs done. But there is also a problem that we call hyperfocus. This phenomenon has been known for centuries; in fact the Athenian Philosopher Socrates had it, and I’m going to put my hand up and admit that I have it too. When I am focused on a task I can easily become oblivious to the world and sit at my desk for many hours at a time without moving. I will not even hear the phone on my desk ring. And I have recently learned the hard way that sitting hunched over a hot computer for hours is not good for the spine. My chiropractor has given me strict instructions to break the spell of hyperfocus every hour and have a good stretch. (Thank you Teresa!). I’ve been giving that advice to other people for years, but doctors are, of course, the worst patients. Now my computer sends me a reminder every hour. Fortunately there can be an upside to hyperfocus, which I shall explain in a moment.

So what is hyperfocus? Interestingly, it is can be a feature of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). People with the disorder may not just exhibit distractibility, but may also have a tendency to focus very intently on things that interest them. The ability of a child to sit for hours playing complex video games does not at all rule out the diagnosis of ADD. I have known many people whose hyperfocus lead them to spend countless hours playing games or surfing the Internet, to the detriment of their relationships.

The real problem in ADD is not a short attention span; it is a poorly regulated attention system. It is thought that attentional problems are related to low levels of dopamine in key regions of the frontal systems of the brain, which is why people with ADD tend to be drawn to activities that provide instant feedback, and may also be part of the explanation for the disastrously high rates of substance abuse and impulsivity in untreated patients. Particularly in young people with ADD, they tend constantly to seek out things that are exciting and entertaining rather than schoolwork and chores.

So what to do about hyperfocus? I shall mention in a moment why, in its place, it can be helpful. But when it is interfering with things that have to get done, or causing other problems, here are some tips:

1. Use you computer’s alarm functions: I use a Macintosh, so I’ve been able to set up some fun distractions that come along once an hour.

2. Alarm watches: set the sound and/or vibration that it will be able to break through your hyperfocus. Experiment to find the decibels needed.

3. You can send yourself regular cell phone messages via email.

4. Most modern cell phones have good alarm functions that you can set to help yourself.

5. Kitchen timers are also very helpful.

Though there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to support it, I have also had some successes with the Bach Flower Essence, Chestnut Bud, in reducing unwanted hyperfocus.

I firmly believe that most problems contain their solution. Therefore I try not to fight hyperfocus, but to harness it. For a child with hyperfocus, learning that is active and physical is far more likely to be successful than book learning. Many entrepreneurs have hyperfocus, because they like working intensely on projects that give them a quick and enjoyable payoff. They often find it difficult to work in corporate America, if they have to work at someone else’s speed and at times laid down by another person.

“Successful minds work like a gimlet, to a single point.” --Christian Nestell Bovée (American Lawyer and Writer, 1820-1904)

Technorati tags: attention, ADD, hyperfocus

Taking the Measure of a Society

“You don’t have to be big to be great.” -- Sholom Aleichem (a.k.a. Solomon Rabinowitz, a.k.a. “The Jewish Mark Twain,” Russian-born American Yiddish Writer, 1859-1916)

How do we really take the measure of a society? How do we decide whether it is compassionate and great? Is it just a subjective, culture-bound opinion? I have faced this question on many occasions when doing interviews and having meetings in which I am advocating for the mentally ill. I have seen are many different criteria for trying to evaluate a society and a country:

1. The way in which a society treats its youngest and oldest citizens;

2. How a society honors its dead;

3. What opportunities it offers to its citizens and for people who come to the country and join the society;

4. How it behaves toward other countries;

5. The leaders it chooses to follow.

All of those are correct. But I would like to suggest that we should expand on those.

For me:  “The true measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members.”

For this is a measure of how far a society has progressed from a dog-eat-dog dominator model toward a more egalitarian partnership model. I have previously described my admiration for the work of Riane Eisler, and in my book and CD program Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I dedicate a whole chapter to ways of applying and expanding on some of her work.

I was once speaking to a Minister of Health in another country, and he expressed the view that providing care for the mentally ill was not the responsibility of government, and that they were simply a drag on the country’s economy. I politely but firmly disagreed, and was able to show him that providing good quality compassionate care for the mentally ill was not just the right thing to do, but it could also have a positive impact on his country’s bottom line. It happened that we were in a Buddhist country and he had a small image of the Buddha in his office, with some incense in front of the statue. At the end of my presentation I used a quotation attributed to the Buddha:

“In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength.”

When I talk about the advantages of an expanded, five dimensional model of thinking about people and their interactions, it is exceedingly practical. Many of the same things that are good for individuals are also good for society as a whole. That seems such an obvious statement, but when you think it through and apply my same principles of personal integration to integrate relationships and to produce an integrated society, the results can be remarkable.

“Compassion is the chief law of human existence.” -- Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian Writer, 1821-1881)

Technorati tags: Riane Eisler, compassion, Buddha, society

A Rainy Day Question

“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”---Susan Ertz (a.k.a. J.R. McCrindle, Anglo-American Novelist, 1894-1985)

I was reminded of this quip while reading some new material about the progress being made in aging research. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis, biologist Shripad Tuljapurkar who holds the Dean and Virginia Morrison Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University highlighted some of the issues surrounding the extension of human life-span. This is something that I have been tracking closely for over twenty years, since it was shown that the cells of people with diabetes mellitus age more quickly when placed in tissue culture, even if they are away from the high glucose of the diabetic environment. There is a link between premature aging and diabetes.

It is widely known in the scientific community that there has been a great deal of progress on aging research, much of it done behind the closed doors of pharmaceutical companies. According to Professor Tuljapurkar between 2010 and 2030, the modal, or most common, age of death will increase by 20 years if anti-aging therapies come into widespread use. This projected increase is based on some sophisticated modeling, and reflects a life-span growth rate that is five times faster than the current rate. If accurate, this would increase the modal age of death in industrialized countries such as the United States from roughly 80 years to 100.

So back to the question: if you suddenly discovered that you were going to have an extra thirty years of healthy life, what would you do with it?

I really do suggest that you start thinking about that. Assuming that you have enough money to live a decent life, what would you do with that extra twenty years? Would you:

1. Enjoy spending more time with younger members of the family?

2. Learn some new skills?

3. Make new friends?

4. Travel?

5. Read those books you always meant to?

6. Become more involved in spiritual pursuits?

7. Find a new way of serving others?

    8. Sit in front of the television?

What plans or aspirations do you have that you want to add to this list?

But then I have another question for you: if your answers included any of the points from 1-7, why not do them right now? What exactly is stopping you from doing all those things today?

Technorati tags: living, dreams, meaning, purpose