Mystery of existence

“ The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,—not the material of my every-day existence—but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself. ”

“ That in all this succession of existences and events, there is nothing but what we see, or what we could see, if we had better eyes; that there is no mystery in nature, but that involved in the very existence of all things ”

“ What the Supreme Being is like—how or why He came into existence—where matter or life first came from—or even what the connection is between the creatures of this world and the countless stars and planets which may be other worlds—all this is shrouded in the mystery of mysteries. ”

“ Can any thing be more mysterious than the union of soul and body, unless it be the still greater mystery, which some have professed to believe, that matter can be so organized as to produce the amazing intellectual results which we witness in man? In believing our own existence we believe a mystery as great as any that the Christian religion presents. ”

“ If what I have written should seem to throw any light, however faint, upon the problem of the Mystery of Existence in whose solution some of the profoundest intellects of the world are at present engaged, my labor will have been worth the while. ”

“ And it is, after all, as good a way as any of solving the problem of existence to approach near enough to the things that have appeared to us from a distance to be beautiful and mysterious, to be able to satisfy ourselves that they have neither mystery nor beauty. ”

“ In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly, and I know not what such an Association as yours intends nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness. ”

“ No finite mind can fathom the mysteries of life, of death, of sleep, of the beginning, the end, of eternity, of the real nature of the soul and of God, how He came into existence; nor, indeed, shall we ever comprehend in all their fullness the simplest phenomena around us. ”

“ As to the mysteries of revelation and inspiration, why, I meet mysteries, turn which way I will. Man, earth, time, eternity, God, are all inscrutable mysteries My own soul is a mystery unto itself, and so long as I am impotent to fathom its depths, how shall I hope to unfold the secrets of the universe? ”

“ In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But Self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. ”

“ That wonderful essence, the Soul of man, rises above all finite knowledge. Its wonders and powers will never, probably, be understood until when, in a future state of existence, the grandest of all mysteries shall be explained. ”

“ There was existence, perhaps, inert unconscious existence waiting to become suddenly aware of itself, aware of its parts and its difference from other things. Well, existence struggling, dreaming of self-knowledge, found in a wriggling, oozing spot of protoplasm—that's the start of it all. ”

“ We must see further than finite forms to gain the true sense of existence. And where shall we look to rest the gaze in the unsearchable realm of Mind? Let us look where we would walk, act as we would act in the possession of all power to create our own destiny. ”

“ You, in your folly, suppose that you have individuality, a separate existence; this is maya, illusion—God alone exists. You imagine that you see forms, and touch material bodies; this is illusion—they do not exist. But one thing exists ”

“ Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. ”

“ I felt the utter insignificance of what we name existence, and I perceived too behind it that which it conceals from us—the real Life, illimitable, unfathomable, the element of our true being, with its eternal possibilities of misery or joy. ”

“ The veil of the covering that is over the nations of the earth has beclouded their understandings, so that they are in thick darkness. This our experience teaches us—that when any uninspired person or persons (who pretend to) step beyond organized nature, which is visible to the natural eyes, there is a mystery—the hidden mystery—the deep and unsearchable mystery of creation.
We can see the natural man, we can behold our face in the glass; but can we tell what manner of person we are? ”

“ When we make this statement we should try to realize what existence in the truth must necessarily mean, how it must feel to be in the consciousness of the spirit of such an existence, and what a life must hold in store that is permanently established on the very heights of that existence. ”

“ What is new borrows importance from the infinite possibilities of the unknown. The secret of life, the great key to all the baffling mysteries of human existence, is still just beyond the bound of human endeavor, and there is always a tingling sense that whatever is fresh may have touched the longed-for solution to the riddle of existence. ”

“ Why talk of Being? What Being in itself is, may well remain unknowable. But what is consistent with the existence of facts, you experience whenever you observe just such wretchedly irrational facts as these. Whatever they mean, they involve not fulfilment, but defeat, of purpose. And that is what you yourself experience whenever you lose what is dear, and face the insoluble mysteries of experience. ”

“ At such times we prophecy and become familiar with events, persons, principles, and things yet unborn in time and space;—we have receded behind the wall of consciousness, and bathed for a time in the sea of mystery, every billow and wavelet of which constitutes a destiny. For that all things that are yet to be, at this moment exist as monads and uncarnated thoughts in the Mind of Minds, there cannot be a shadow of doubt; nether can there be one that man has been, still is, and hereafter will be, intromitted to this sacred labyrinth of knowledge, under certain conditions yet unknown to us. ”

“ When we are cognizant of limitations of time and sense, of physical conditions, of anything finite or even of ourselves as something other than deity or mind or universal reality or as some finite limitation of it we are in an imperfect state of mind or of character. Therefore, freeing ourselves from these notions or delusion and understanding the unity, infinity and identity of reality, ourselves included, is the highest blessedness, the greatest good, the end of existence. ”

“ For aught that speculative reason can ever from henceforth show to the contrary, the evolution of all the diverse phenomena of inorganic nature, of life, and of mind, appears to be as necessary and as self-determined as is the being of that mysterious Something which is Everything,—the Entity we must all believe in, which without condition and beyond relation holds its existence in itself. ”

“ This state of error is the mortal dream of Life and Substance in matter, and it is directly opposite to the immortal reality of being. Waking to real Life, mortals find what they have learned from the senses to be reversed in the facts of existence. That which sense deems shadow is found to be substance; and what it deems substance becomes nothingness, when the dreams of the senses vanish, and reality appears. ”

“ Our life is surrounded with mystery, our very world is a speck in boundless space; and not only the period of our own individual life, but that of the whole human race is, as it were, but a moment in the eternity of time. We cannot imagine any origin, nor foresee the conclusion. ”

“ It is, indeed, one of the most mysterious characteristics of our life in this world, that the great Existence which originates and embraces all other Beings, should Himself be so silent and concealed: that there should be need of subtle arguments to prove His existence, and that no argument ever conceived has been found sufficiently cogent to convince all men. ”

“ When we forget this and treat any partial experience as though it were the complete and adequate expression of the whole nature of Reality,—in other words, when we try to apply to existence or the universe as a whole conceptions which are only valid for special aspects of existence,—we shall inevitably find ourselves led to contradictory and absurd results. ”

“ The fragmentary visions, broken snatches, mystic strains, incongruous thoughts, fading gleams, with which imperfectrecollection comes laden from our childish years and our nightly dreams, are referred by self pleasing fancy to some earlier and nobler existence. We solve the mysteries of experience by calling them the veiled vestiges of a bright life departed, pathetic waifs drifted to these intellectual shores over the surge of feeling from the wrecked orb of an anterior existence. ”

“ How does he know anything? There may be another life—who can really prove there isn’t? and when you’ve seen something in the very thick and glow of existence, something more alive than life itself, and, click! ”

“ No intellectual life when man is surrounded by mystery and miracle! When the mysterious forces which bring to birth and life are yet undiscovered; when the earth is teeming with life, and the dumb brown lips of the ridges are breathing mystery! ”

“ This world of feeling is for us the meaning of all existence. The more we plunge ourselves into it, the deeper are the intricacies and mysteries it reveals. At every point underivable and unintelligible in terms of physiological processes, it reveals itself from stage to stage as more deeply and wholly unique in its relations, interactions, and processes, and grows farther and farther beyond the laboured and insufficient schemes and formulas under which science desires to range all psychical phenomena. ”

“ What is the reality of Divinity, or what do we understand by God?
When we consider the world of existence, we find that the essential reality underlying any given phenomenon is unknown. Phenomenal, or created, things are known to us only by their attributes. Man discerns only manifestations, or attributes, of objects, while the identity, or reality, of them remains hidden. ”

“ Which is the most perfect existence, that of a wild beast of the forest who lives and sleeps in the open, without care or thought except for the immediate present, or of a man whose very existence is beset by doubt, jealousies, false gods and forbidden iniquities? ”

“ The mystery of our being, and the mystery of our ceasing to be, acting upon intelligences which are for ever striving to comprehend the enigma of themselves, leads by a natural process to a love for the Ideal. The discovery of those truths which advance the human mind towards that point of knowledge to which all its secret longings tend, should excite a higher feeling than any mere creation of the fancy, how beautiful soever it may be. The [Pg xv] phenomena of Reality are more startling than the phantoms of the Ideal. Truth is stranger than fiction. ”

“ Show not to us non-existence as existent, nor cast the veil of non-existence over the beauty of existence. Make this phenomenal world the mirror to reflect the manifestations of thy beauty, and not a veil to separate and repel us from Thee. Cause these unreal phenomena of the universe to be for us the sources of knowledge and insight, and not the cause of ignorance and blindness. Our alienation and severance from Thy beauty all proceed from ourselves. Deliver us from ourselves, and accord to us intimate knowledge of Thee. ”

“ I call it a mysterious vital power, because all life is a mystery to us. The very thought of life lands us in mystery, in mystery which defies analysis. We know that all the life in us and around us follows certain laws, as we call them, the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of man, each following its own laws after its kind, and that is all we know about it. ”

“ And this relatively external truth which is intended by the finite consciousness, and which is inclusive of all that at any instant this finite consciousness finds present to itself, is a truth whose Being can be neither of the realistic type, nor of the mystical type, nor of the merely valid type of Being, nor of any form except a conscious form, — a form whose existence includes and completes what the finite thinker at any moment undertakes to know. ”

“ As the Spirit unfolds the thought-forms change and then disappear as perception takes the place of limitation by the senses.”
[19] With the almost axiomatic proposition that “our world of life is what we make it” our spirit-surroundings and conditions the result of our states of unfoldment, it became less difficult even when returning to the limitations of human organism to understand the conditions of existence in the “next stage” of personal experience beyond the “transition” misnamed “death.” ”