Alpha

“ Beta: Hey, Kappa, do you like Alpha because of that?
Kappa: Come on, I'm serious here.
Delta: You're always serious.
Teacher: So, what about books? Why do we read them?
Are Arts to Teach Us? Beta: Can’t we think about looking at paintings too?
Delta: What about theater?
Gamma: Music?
Kappa: Movies!
Alpha: Fashion shows, heh heh.
Teacher: Actually . . .
Delta: I don’t think it matters!
Alpha: How is that? A book clearly teaches you. You understand it. However, when you listen to music, you can imagine whatever you want!
Beta: Alpha, what have you learned from Tom Sawyer? ”

“ Thou art our Alpha and our Omega, our beginning and our end; the marrow of our bones, the salt of our life, the sap of our branches, the corner-stone of our temple, the rock of our foundation. We are built on thee, and for thee, and with thee. To worship thee should be man's chiefest care, to know thy hidden ways his chosen study. ”

“ He is the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, who at one survey looks upon all the workmanship of His hands; who has the words of eternal life, and holds the hearts of the children of men in His hand, and turns them whithersoever He will, even as the rivers of waters are turned; who commands the earth to perform its revolutions, or stand still, at His pleasure; who has given the sun, the planets, the earths, and far distant systems their orbits, their times, and their seasons; whose commands they all obey. With Him abide the true riches. ”

“ I had been accustomed to think of a séance as an event where people sat waiting in the dark with bated breath. Here we chatted, not exactly gaily, but cheerfully enough.
The only thing that could have induced levity as far as I could see was the mothering tone of Alpha to the communicating spirits. It was she who seemed to possess the spirit of admonition. I had heard of “guiding controls.” With a voice soft, low, persuasive, much as you would use with turbulent-minded children. ”

“ This making the circle for ever meet, this bringing Omega eternally round to Alpha, is, I think, more and more revealing itself as a great central, personal, regulative truth, and is being carried down more than ever into the recesses of physical research, where Nature is fast telling her long-kept secrets: all her tribes speaking, each in their own tongue, the wonderful works of God,—the sea saying ‘It is not in me,’ everything giving up any title to anything like substance, beyond being the result of one Supreme Will. ”

“ You cannot imagine my surprise when I reached Alpha Centaurus and found that it was inhabited by a class of human creatures who were created to live and flourish in fire. Their customs and habits are so strange that I am not capable of giving an intelligent description of them. I know that it is inconceivable to us how life can be developed and sustained in the midst of a burning sun, and I found that these beings in turn could not conceive how life can exist in a cold world like ours. ”

“ The principle of Alpha-ism must be mastered by those who aspire to the second degree, whether on the Borderland or on the Earthly plane. The second and the third degrees have this principle for their corner-stone. In none of the three degrees is it allowable to sow the seed except for the distinct purpose of begetting a child who has been reverently and prudently planned for at just that time. Nor is it ever allowable to waste the seed by throwing it away (and with it the psychic energy) . The second degree launches the initiate upon the perilous waters of sense-gratification. ”

“ In the literature of science I read of marvellously delicate instruments devised to make clear to the intellect the mode of operation of forces invisible to the eye, how Alpha rays, Gamma rays, or the vibrations in metal or plant are measured, and I sigh for some device to aid the intellect in solving difficult problems of psychology. I ask myself how may I ascertain with a precision of knowledge which would convince others whether the figures of vision, imagination or dream are two or three dimensional. ”

“ We can even store up their words and songs and reecho them at will. A strange force is this invisible current of which we are now learning the Alpha. What its ultimate possibilities are, who shall determine? With it the opposing forces of nature are made subservient and the very winds can be made messengers between physical and sentient beings.
We look at the trolley car passing our door and wonder at the power that propels it. Little by little we are opening our souls to the reception of beliefs in the invisible powers of nature. ”

“ Why should we say, "I am too mean a creature ever to reflect so glorious an image"— or "God never intended such a limitless ideal to be reproduced in human beings." In saying such things we expose our ignorance of the whole Law of the Creative Process. We shut our eyes to the fact that the Omega of completion already subsists in the Alpha of conception, and that the Alpha of conception would be nothing but a lying illusion if it was not capable of expression in the Omega of completion. ”

“ But it is not the most satisfactory for the philosopher, because this orientation does not exist. We may assume that this something else is the position or the velocity of some invisible body, and this is what is done by certain persons, who have even called the body Alpha, although we are destined to never know anything about this body except its name. ”

“ In my notebook I find this entry, made while sweeping over Perseus for materials for this article: "The field about Alpha is one of the finest in the sky for an opera-glass. Stars conspicuously ranged in curving lines and streams. A host follows Alpha from the east and south." The picture above will give the reader some notion of the exceeding beauty of this field of stars, and of the singular manner in which they are grouped, as it were, behind their leader. A field-glass increases the beauty of the scene.
The reader will find a starry cluster marked on Map 4 as the "Great Cluster." ”

“ Kappa: Alpha is right. A creator has to be ready . . .
Beta: Actually, yes, you don’t know for sure what happens in the end; it wouldn’t be creation otherwise.
Gamma: But this equally applies to both pictures! You don’t just “take a picture” if you want it to turn out well.
Delta: Thus, there has to be some sort of goal.
Kappa: OK, suppose you know what you want, I mean a picture. . . . OK, you have a goal. . . . You may even have two goals.
Delta: I know. Goal number one—to get something special on film. Goal number two—to make it beautiful.
Alpha: Here we go! ”

“ Two almost indispensable prerequisites for the development of philosophy are the art of writing and something to write upon. It is interesting, therefore, to observe that our word alphabet comes to us, through Latin, from the first two letters in the Greek alphabet—‘alpha’ and ‘beta’—which are themselves in the first place Phoenician words. ”

“ A consecrated silver urn is produced, and into it are thrown little lots about the size of a bean, with letters on them. Two are marked alpha [Footnote: The Greek alphabet runs: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega.] , two beta, two more gamma, and so on, if the competitors run to more than that—two lots always to each letter. A competitor comes up, makes a prayer to Zeus, dips his hand into the urn, and pulls out one lot ”

“ Consequently, Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60°, specimens of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10°. ”

“ Carlstrom said.
“There must be some way to solve this problem,” Eklund said. “After all it was a perfectly natural mistake. We never suspected that Alphax was a physical rather than a biological sciences laboratory. ”

“ The Phi Chapter is by far the best one in the fraternity. It is large and prosperous. For a long time after its foundation it held the third place among the junior societies at Yale. However, after building a chapter hall it prospered, and since the withdrawal of Alpha Delta Phi has been a formidable rival of Psi U. It elects about 45 members annnally. The Zeta Chapter was killed by the decree of the faculty at the time mentioned. ”

“ They have bestowed on us an alphabet as practically effective, and as suited to the capabilities of human vision, as any that could have been devised. This alphabet of ours is like an Englishman's dress—plain and manageable; not very artistically arranged, it may be, nor remarkable for copiousness or flow of outline, but sufficiently elastic and capable of extension. ”

“ The Beta was founded at Yale as a “junior” society, and unlike ΑΔΦ, has never admitted members of other classes. As there was then no rivalry between them, some of Psi Upsilon’s first members were also members of Alpha Delta Phi, a state of things which did not last. In 1872 the chapter built a hall at a cost of about $15,000, and it is permanently established in New Haven. The Sigma early gained the favor of the college government, and it readily escaped the persecutions which many of the fraternity chapters at Brown underwent. ”

“ One side call attention to the undoubted fact that in spite of complete mastery of, say, the Greek alphabet a person is not at all in a position to repeat it readily backwards if he has not specially studied and practiced it in this form. ”

“ These, and other changes both in the Greek and its derived alphabets, were made slowly and almost imperceptibly, "descent [Pg 214] with modification," to apply the Darwinian phrase concerning plants and animals to the scripts of the world, being as much a feature in their history as in that of organisms generally. To complete the parallel, when a certain stage of adaptation is reached, there is, as e.g. in the case of our own alphabet, mainly through the invention of printing, arrest of development. ”

“ He stated his conviction that an alphabet might be formed, and of this alphabet such words as would afford a language capable of giving mathematical precision to all the sciences. "Men may thus acquire," says he, "as it were, a new organ, which would add energy to their moral faculties, as the microscopic lens increases the power of the eye. ”

“ Every system of classification ought to be formed on the principles of the Logical Alphabet. Each superior class should be divided into two inferior classes, distinguished by the possession and non-possession of a single specified difference. Each of these minor classes, again, is divisible by any other quality whatever which can be suggested, and thus every classification logically consists of an infinitely extended series of subaltern genera and species. ”

“ No matter how thoroughly a person may have learned the Greek alphabet, he will never be in a condition to repeat it backwards without further training. But if he chances to set out purposely to learn it backwards, he will probably accomplish this in noticeably shorter time than was the case in the previous learning in the customary order. ”

“ Human beings of distinct visual ideational type or of highly developed motor type will prefer the double alphabet, provided, of course, that the touch system of writing is learned, and this will be especially true if their inner attitude is easily disturbed by interruptions. ”

“ If the pupil has mastered the Figure Alphabet he will proceed with the greatest satisfaction and profit. If he has not mastered it, let him carefully review the foregoing‌ pages of this chapter, and then he can advance with the assurance of meeting no difficulties.
Write the Figure Alphabet from memory. If the pupil has not thoroughly mastered this alphabet, what is required of him? If the pupil must review the foregoing six pages, let him find words himself which spell the figures. Is not such a course much better than merely to read over the examples and illustrations which I give? ”

“ And glancing up to the other suns, one hundred, five hundred, twelve hundred times as large, double, triple, septuple, multiple suns, we shall find power enough to go through the whole alphabet in geometrical ratio; and then in the clustered suns, galaxies, and nebulæ, power enough still unrepresented by single letters to require all combinations of the alphabet of power. ”

“ It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. ”

“ Out of the simple consonants of the alphabet and our eleven vowels and diphthongs all possible syllables of a certain sort were constructed, a vowel sound being placed between two consonants. ”

“ Were I a Circle, you could discern my intestines, but I am a Being composed, as I told you before, of many Circles, the Many in the One, called in this country a Sphere. And, just as the outside of a Cube is a Square, so the outside of a Sphere presents the appearance of a Circle."
Bewildered though I was by my Teacher's enigmatic utterance, I no longer chafed against it, but worshipped him in silent adoration. He continued, with more mildness in his voice: "Distress not yourself if you cannot at first understand the deeper mysteries of Spaceland. By degrees they will dawn upon you. ”

“ We talk of 'ions' and 'electrons'—but we are driven to confess that a Supreme Intelligence has the creation of electrons, and directs them as to the formation of all existing things. To that Mind—to that Intelligence—I submit my soul! ”

“ And now let us revert to the common objective world of classical science, to the world of separate space and time in which molecules, atoms and electrons move and vibrate, and in which other types of realities, such as electromagnetic fields, are present. Let us recall once again that this real objective universe is the world as the scientist must assume it to be if he wishes to co-ordinate the complex of his experiences (reducing in the final analysis to sense impressions) in a simple and consistent manner. ”