Ahira's Hangar

From Sylvanus:Quote:We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
- Einstein

Ok, the last one was kind of off, but I like it. Reminds me of...

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there"
- Yasutani Roshi
And they remind me of all these quotes.Quote:The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own: you are he. -Surak/Diane DuaneQuote:Love thy neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is an illusion that makes you think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself. -Sarvepalli RadhakrishnanQuote:I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. -The BeatlesQuote:All of the craziness and the tension between you and I, it’s based on an illusion. You have to understand it. It’s an illusion of, of separateness, and an illusion that there’s a you and a me, ‘cause it just, it ain’t so. You know? I mean, we’re, we’re like these mushrooms. These seemingly individual outcroppings are all part of the whole. You know, there’s no separateness here. There’s no other. It’s the same with human beings, it’s the same with us. You know what I mean? See, the thing is, we’re really, we’re just one. Part of the same big mushroom, the same big self. You see, what I’m tryin’ to tell you is, I never left ya. Okay? I’m always there. -Joel from Northern ExposureQuote:...vividly conscious of the fact that forming as we do the tiny individual cells of a mighty organism, we share alike the sorrows and misery existing in the world; but debarred from realizing it by the wall of ego segregating each cell from the rest, we feel happy and proud at acquisitions often purchased at our own cost, which we mistakenly believe has been paid by others. -Gopi Krishna in Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man
I don't know if any system of thought thinks along these lines more than Hinduism, and you can find a lot more quotes like these in the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>

One of my favorite Ikkyu quotes of all time

"You me when I think really think about it
are the same"

Well, after explaining my ideas of oneness to a close female friend of mine, she called me a few months later to tell me the great news. She was now a Catholic, thanks to my message. Something having to do with the holy trinity and her place in God's plan. To say that I was a little surprised is an understatement. ________________
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two"<i></i>

!!!!!!!!

I'm sorta stumped about how to reply to that. I'm sure there are Christians who believe the One-ness idea. Easy enough to believe that we are the temple of the Lord, therefore, the same thing resides in all of us. But Catholocism has always struck me as having a much different view of things. ______________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>

Yep, my thoughts, too. But, hey, if she's happy and my ideas help her in some way...

Reminds me, I'll have to dig up my quotes that support Jesus as a Zen master.
________________
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two"<i></i>

Here's two more great quotes. They're from Eknath Easwaran's introductions to his translations of the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. I couldn't recommend these introductions highly enough. Easwaran does a fantastic job of explaining Hindu beliefs, while tying them together with thoughts from various times and parts of the world. (Conversations With God does an even more thorough job of the tying-together. Great book!) Maybe these quotes, relevant to this thread, will pique your curiosity.Quote:What does it mean to say that nothing is separate and God alone is real? Certainly not that the everyday world is an illusion. The illusion is simply that we appear separate; the underlying reality is that all of life is one.Quote:Later philosophers explained maya in surprisingly contemporary terms. The mind, they said, observes the so-called outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consists of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space, and causality because these are the conditions of perception. In a word, the mind looks at unity and sees diversity; it looks at what is timeless and reports transience. And in fact the percepts of its experience are diverse and transient; on this level of experience, separateness is real. Our mistake is in taking this for ultimate reality, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except his dream.

Nowhere has this "mysterious Eastern notion" been formulated more succinctly than in the epigram of Ruysbroeck: "We behold what we are, and we are what we behold." When we look at unity through the instruments of the mind, we see diversity; when the mind is transcended, we enter a higher mode of knowing - turiya, the fourth state of consciousness - in which duality disappears. This does not mean, however, that the phenomenal world is an illusion or unreal. The illusion is the sense of separateness. ______________
Highdrake's mastery of spells and sorcery was not much greater than his pupil's, but he had clear in his mind the idea of something very much greater, the wholeness of knowledge. And that made him a mage.<i></i>