Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"My heart has become capable of every form: It is a pasture for gazelles and a monastery for Christian monks…and the pilgrim's Ka'ba, and the tablets of the Torah, and the Book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love; whatever way love's camel takes, that is my religion, my faith." Ibn Arabi (1165-1240), Spanish Sufi philosopher The Essential Mystics (Andrew Harvey)

2		"On the higher levels of consciousness and being, in the Communion of Saints, there is but One religion, one way to unite with the spiritual Self and with Ultimate Reality, both within and without." Divine Light and Love (Peter Roche deCoppens)

3		"The true doctrine is impacted in the imperishable center of man's nature." The Ocean of Theosophy (William Q. Judge)

4		"We hopefully look forward…to an age of understanding and adaptation that will be able to synthesize and make use of all that is good and noble in all the traditions of the past. If the world is to survive and if civilization is to endure or rather perhaps weather its present crisis and recover its dimension of wisdom, we must hope for a new world culture that takes account of all civilized philosophies." Mystics and Zen Masters (Thomas Merton)

5		"All symbolist traditions, both western and oriental, spring from one common source." A Dictionary of Symbols (J. E. Cirlot)

6		"Creativity is built into the very fabric of the Kosmos. This creativity – Eros is one of its many names – drives the emergence of ever higher and ever wider holons, a drive that shows up, in the interior domains, as an expansion of identity (and morals and consciousness) from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. And the proof of that seqence is found, not by staring at the physical organism and its environment, but by looking into the subjective and intersubjective domains. But humanity has ALREADY done that very carefully for at least several thousand years." Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Ken Wilber)

7		"Harvard theologian John Chirban's conclusion: 'Although each saint describes his own experience (often in his own unique way), basic parallels emerge as one compares the stages of the saints with one another. This sameness confirms the catholicity of their experience….' – and the catholicity (or universal applicability) of the basic waves of consciousness themselves, which are similarly reflected in these numerous cross-cultural sources. Whether one is looking at Saint Teresa, Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi, Lady Tsogyal, Saint Dionysius, Patanjali, Hazrat Inayat Kahn, or Mahamudra, one is again struck by the broadly similar morphogenetic field or developmental space over which their stages migrate." Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy (Ken Wilber)

8		"Behind all the successive revelations of divinity down the ages is to found one significant purpose; all of them are and will prove themselves to be aspects of the Great Revelation." The Rays and The Initiations (Alice A. Bailey)

9		"We need to find the link between our traditions and our present experience of life. Nowness, or the magic of the present moment, is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present." Shambhala (Chogyam Trungpa)

10		"The perennial philosophy repeatedly declares that the realization of our essential oneness is not reserved for a select few. Because the Self is common to everyone, we all have the potential to be aware of our real inner natures." The Global Brain, Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness (Peter Russell)

11		"More and more, as we study and collate all the available evidence, this fact – this law – is borne in on us: that the general movement of human consciousness, when it obeys its innate tendency to transcendence, is always the same. There is only one road from Appearance to Reality." Mysticism (Evelyn Underhill)

12		"'That Which Is', says St. Augustine; 'The One', 'The Supplier of true Life', says Plotinus; 'the energitic Word', says St. Bernard; 'Eternal Light', says Dante; 'the Abyss', says Ruysbroeck; 'Pure Love', says St. Catherine of Genoa – poor symbols of Perfection at the best. But, through and by these oblique utterances, they give us the assurance that the Object of their discovery is one with the object of our quest." Mysticism (Evelyn Underhill)

13		"The principle of that wisdom which is revealed to all [is] that we should know and praise God through His creation and that by means of the visible world we should understand whence we came, what we are, for what purpose we were made and where we are going." St. Maximos the Confessor, 'Second Century on Theology' The Philokalia, volume 2 (various authors, compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain)

14		"The time-tested scriptures of the world are one in essence." Autobiography of a Yogi (Paramahansa Yogananda)

15		"It is undeniable that the theologies of all the great nations dovetail together and show that each is a part of one stupendous whole." Isis Unveiled (Helena P. Blavatsky)

16		"However separated from others by time or distance, however intellectualized or primitive, however elaborated or simple their religion or morals, and however wide their differences in important respects, each people is found to have employed and still to be employing certain ideas, symbols and practices in common with every other." The Meaning of Masonry (W. L. Wilmshurst)

17		"A revolution is a 'revolving'. It is a coming full circle. And this is what Life as expressed through Humanity is doing right now. You are on a circle, from the fullness of knowing to the emptiness of forgetfulness to the fullness of knowing again. From Oneness to Separation to Oneness again. From Total Consciousness to Unconsciousness to Total Consciousness again. This movement, this process, is part of the endless Cycle of Life….It is spoken of in your philosophies and revealed in your religions and expressed in all of your cultural stories. It is found in your poems and songs, in your dances and rituals of every kind. It is held in your minds and embraced in your hearts and known in your souls." Tomorrow's God, Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge (Neale Donald Walsch)

18		"All mythology involves a corresponding philosophy; and if there is only one mythology, as there is only one 'perennial philosophy', then that 'the myth is not my own, I had it from my mother' (Euripides) points to a spiritual unity of the human race already predetermined long before the discovery of metals. It may be really true that as Alfred Jeremias said, the various cultures of mankind are no more than the dialects of one and the same spiritual language." Ananda K. Coomaraswamy The Flight of the Wild Gander (Joseph Campbell)

19		"An important point to note about the perennial philosophy is that it is not a philosophy in the Western sense, for it is not an ideology or belief system. Rather, it is based on the experiences of those who have tasted such states. It is not so much a set of ideas to be thought about or debated as an invitation to turn within and discover these truths for oneself." The Global Brain, Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness (Peter Russell)

20		"'In Homer, the whole world is a woof of organic umbilical cords,' writes the modern Greek poet and scholar George Seferis. He is describing a unifying experience of life whose expression is found everywhere in the belief systems of the world's traditional societies." The Way of The Earth, Encounters with Nature in Ancient and Contemporary Thought (T. C. McLuhan)

21		"In man's long earthly evolution of thousands of years, he has had countless religious and spiritual experiences. They are hidden in the recesses of his soul so that he responds consciously or subconsciously to spiritual truths." The Flowering Tree (Gladys V. Jones)

22		"The function of comparative religion is to discern this essential Truth, this Divine Mystery beyond speech and thought forms of each religious tradition…In each tradition the one divine Reality, the one eternal Truth, is present, hidden under symbols, symbols of word and gesture, of ritual and dance and song, of poetry and music, art and architecture." Bede Griffiths, 'Return to the Centre' A Parliament of Souls, In Search of Global Spirituality (Michael Tobias, Jane Morrison, Bettina Gray, editors)

23		“That sages, widely separated geographically and with diverse environments and temperaments, should arrive at the same general conclusions attests the accuracy of their findings.” Lectures on Ancient Philosophy (Manly P. Hall)

24		"The criers of the Mysteries speak again, bidding all people welcome to the House of Light. The great institution of materiality has failed. The false civilization built by humanity has turned, and like the monster of Frankenstein, is destroying its creator. Religion wanders aimlessly in the maze of theological speculation. Science batters itself impotently against the barriers of the unknown. Only transcendental philosophy knows the path. Only the illumined reason can carry the understanding part of humanity upward to the light. Only philosophy can teach us to be born well, to die well, and in perfect measure be born again. Into this band – those who have chosen the life of knowledge, of virtue, and of utility – the philosophers of the ages invite you." The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Manly P. Hall)

25		"Who can study carefully the ancient religious and cosmogonic myths without perceiving that this striking similitude of conceptions, in their esoteric spirit, is the result of no mere coincidence, but manifests a concurrent design? It shows that already in those ages which are shut out from our sight by the impenetrable mist of tradition, human religious thought developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe." Isis Unveiled (Helena P. Blavatsky)