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11 Oct 2003 @ 16:46, by Bruce Kodish
As grateful as I feel for the internet library facilities of the Pasadena and Los Angeles Public Libraries, there is nothing comparable to wandering among the stacks.
What treasures they contain, especially in the main downtown library of Los Angeles. There on a business-related research mission, I took some time to wander too and found a delight (for me), Mary Everest Boole's The Mathematical Psychology of Gratry and Boole: Translated From the Language of the Higher Calculus Into That Of Elementary Geometry, published in England in 1897. I've already completed my first reading. Here is a short sample of what the book holds:
The Creed of Sanity
By Mary Everest Boole
"Unity is the property of the Infinite, the Absolute, the Eternal. Dividedness is the property of the finite, the phenomenal, the transitory. Every attempt, either to eternalize phenomenal distinctions, or to phenomenalize Eternal Unity is contrary to the true nature of man; and tends towards the destruction of mental health. The great All is a jealous God, and will not suffer His honour to be given to any partial manifestation of good. Every finite or phenomenal good which man invests with attributes belonging only to the Infinite, avenges the majesty of the Unseen Unity by injuring the brain of man.
What force or creative energy is, in its own nature, we do not know; but we know that every mode of it with which we are acquainted works by a pulsation of contrary motions. All forms are evolved by pulsating Force, yet itself is necessarily formless.
Man is the child of this pulsating or alternating Creator; not His mere handiwork, made arbitrarily, unlike Himself; but the outcome of His very thought-processes; and sanity, for us, means thinking as He thinks, so far as we think at all. And He thinks, or, at least, works in an incessant rhythmic pulsation of alternate constructing and sweeping away. Man should imitate this pulsating activity within his own mind; his studies should alternate the formation of definite and contrasted conceptions with the unifying of these conceptions; and his religious exercises should suspend all concrete conceptions in adoration of the inconceivable Unity. If we thus embody the principle of pulsation in our thought-life, it becomes a source of constant power like the movement of our lungs; if we forget it, we waste force at each effort. False religions tend to arrest the natural fading away of things that have served their purpose, whether those things be visible forms or mental conceptions; but the token of the covenant made by Infinite Knowledge with man is the Rainbow, which no man can capture, or embalm, or enshrine; which is made by the breaking up of the one light into many colours, to fade, before long, into the unity of the white light again; and which, when it fades, leaves nowhere in the world a trace of its ever having existed, except on man's heart an impression of spiritual beauty, and in his mind a knowledge of the laws of light.
It is vain that we haste to rise early and late take rest, and devour many carefully compiled text-books; to those who love the Invisible formless, alternate-beating Unity, the knowledge which is power comes even during sleep."
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Category: Articles
2 comments
12 Oct 2003 @ 07:08 by jmarc : The earth, says Ecclesiastes,
abides forever and ministers to every generation: first one, then another which succeeds it. However, even though men are scarcely their own masters, they are brought into life without knowing it by their Maker's will. Before they wish it, they are withdrawn from life; nevertheless, in their excessive vanity, they think that they are her lords and that they who are now born, now dying, rule that which remains continually. -Gregory of Nyssa
All is vanity sayeth the Lord.
13 Oct 2003 @ 23:04 by waalstraat : The scripture, scrolls and bibles,
sure seemed to act as an aid to the coming of his enlightenment for Thomas Merton,althought he eventually appeared to pass though it to working directly on his mind...there are all different paths... and they all eventually feed into the superhighway of the mind...for myself (though far from enlighted) I take the paths of constant effort to stay mindful and walking meditation...bless those who tread different paths with goal of arriving at the same center.... however your point is well taken, and appreciated by me Zen-d......
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