Wholeness

“ But if we attribute all things to each part, and there is nothing which we do not make all things, how can the summit of being, and that which is most eminently one, contain a wholeness, and an incomprehensible multitude of parts? ”

“ What is needed is to understand its spirit, which the author defines as the spirit of wholeness, the attempt to view the universe as a whole in the midst of shifting appearances and accumulative experiences. ”

“ For it is precisely the wholeness, and not the mere fragmentariness, the presence, and not the mere absence of unity in our consciousness, the relative attainment, and not the mere postponement of our meanings, which, from this point of view, guides us towards a positive view of how the unity of Being is, in the midst of all the varieties, attained. ”

“ By means of such discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty, wholeness, and harmony. To inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but perseverance will at length render it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightful.
“The soul's real world is that which it has built of its thoughts, mental states, and imaginations. If we will, we can turn our backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and Real, and there gain a residence. ”

“ Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a "we"; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which "we" is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling. ”

“ He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord, that centre, that Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Bliss, Eternal Knowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow nor misery, nor discontent is there ... in the centre, the reality, there is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the Stainless, He the Knower, He the Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is giving to everyone what he deserves. ”

“ This something—reason, consciousness, soul, call it what you will—unites us to the world; for everywhere in the world reason is at home, and gradually finds itself; it makes us aware of a great order in which we move; it breaks down the barriers of sense between us and the absolute consciousness, the eternal life—"not ourselves," yet in us and akin to us!—whence, if there is any validity in human logic, that order must spring. ”

“ If, as some affirm, the universe is the dwelling-place of the All Perfect, what reason can be given for the existence, side by side with that All Perfect one, or within him, of a multitude of imperfect images of his Perfection—like you and me? In the presence of One who has all purposes already fulfilled in himself what purpose can be served by our introduction into the scheme of things? ”

“ Is it, in its final and pervading Power, a bad or a good sort of universe that we open our eyes upon, when we begin to exercise our senses? What are its final relations to me, and my final relations to it? Nobody doubts the existence of things and persons, so far as they are revealed to the senses. But what is our implied Common Sense of the final meaning of the Whole? ”

“ And in His Thoughts, which have no opposite, we understand there is one life, and that we share with Him, with all creation, with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a unity of life that cannot separate in death and leave the Source of life from where it came.
We share one life because we have one Source, a Source from which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect. ”

“ Shall we not be infinitely more transported with that almighty wisdom and goodness, which fills the universe, and displays itself in all the parts of the creation, which establisheth the frame of nature, and turneth the mighty wheels of providence, and keepeth the world from disorder and ruin, than with the faint rays of the same perfections which we meet with in our fellow creatures? ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ Into his spiritual sight will come the Principles of the divine Life, and as he approaches them, their incomparable beauty and majestic symmetry will astonish his vision, and gladden his heart with a gladness hitherto unknown. ”

“ This faculty is reason,—the supreme faculty, above sensibility, above understanding. Reason gives the final generalization, the idea of a universe comprehending the infinitude of details presented by the senses, and the worlds of knowledge shaped by the understanding; the idea of a personality embracing the infinite complexities of feeling, and gathering under one dominion the realms of consciousness; the idea of a supreme unity combining in itself both the other ideas; the absolute perfection, the infinite and eternal One, which men describe by the word God. ”

“ But I desire rather to bring out, in a word or two, some of the lessons that may be gathered from this general metaphor of a man's life as a house. And the first that I would suggest is this:—Have you ever thought of your life as being a whole, with a definite moral characteristic stamped upon it? I look upon the men and women that I come across in the world, and I cannot help seeing that a great many of them have never got into their heads the idea that their life is a whole. ”

“ As thou, O Lord, art the first and supreme efficient cause of all things, so thou art equally the last end, especially of rational creatures. I ought, therefore, to withdraw my mind to a distance from creatures, and to place in them no hope, because they very much hinder me from arriving at my happy and last end, for which thou hast created me, who art my true, only, and supreme good. 2. Nothing, therefore, ought to be more my care and study than to be united to thee in vision, love, and joy; because, in this union consists both my highest good, and thy highest glory. ”

“ Down below them, is another question which is included in them all and which sooner or later must be faced by each and every one of us: "Why am I here on earth? Has my life any purpose in the great, everlasting scheme of things? What is that purpose?" ”

“ Thy Life, as alone the finite mind can conceive it, is self-forming, self-manifesting Will:—this Life, clothed to the eye of the mortal with manifold sensuous forms, flows forth through me, and throughout the immeasurable universe of Nature. ”

“ Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence. ”

“ Of what avail is it to investigate what is miscalled material life, which ends, even as it begins, in nameless nothingness? The true sense of being and its eternal perfection should appear now, even as it will hereafter. ”

“ It is the realised perfection of everything good and beautiful on earth; or, in other words, all such goodness and beauty is its partial manifestation. ‘All,’ I say: for the splendour of nature, the love of lovers, every affection and virtue, any good action or just law, the wisdom of philosophy, the creations of art, the truths deformed by superstitious religion,—all are equally operations or appearances of the hidden power. ”

“ Beneath our experience of life which changes there is this great Living Essence. "I am that I am," profoundly, eternally true, self-consistent, with whom is no beginning of experience or purpose, yet controlling, harmonising, yea, originating all in the unfathomable depths of an eternal Will. ”

“ To such souls comes the reward of the unspeakable joy of a perfect understanding of the meaning of life, and the living peace that passeth understanding—through which appears the vital future, ever vigorously progressing towards an increasing, virile goal. ”

“ Temptation, trial, sorrow, pain; hope, fear, self-hatred, love and joy, with ever-renewed and increased aspiration and effort, all variously change and deepen their combinations and qualities, outlook and ideals. But they do not for one moment cease. All things but grow in depth and significance, in variety within unity, in interiority and interpenetration. ”

“ It is just because all meanings, in the end, will prove to be internal meanings, that this which the internal meaning most loves, namely the presence of concrete fulfilment, of life, of pulsating and originative will, of freedom, and of individuality, will prove, for our view, to be of the very essence of the Absolute Meaning of the world. ”

“ No, let our minds rather enlarge their thoughts, and take a nobler range; let them leave all created objects behind, and run, and mount, and fly aloft: and, taking faith to the assistance of reason, fix their eyes, with the utmost intenseness our nature will bear, upon the Creator, the Universal Cause. ”

“ He has placed this world around you,—this world, that you call Matter, glorious in its beauty, teeming with life, life, which, remember, everywhere displays God's finger, but expects your work upon it and multiplies its powers according as your activities are multiplied. ”

“ Who knows how many thousands of men have led such a life, shocking, indeed, to the feelings of worldlings, but in reality devoted to the contemplation of what is above Nature—a life, consequently, exalted and holy? ”

“ The absolute unity and simplicity of this glorious Being is strictly exclusive of any division of perfections. Yet, as human knowledge is not intuitive but discursive, we find it necessary to form and communicate our conceptions, by referring them to distinct and infinite attributes. Such are independence, spirituality, eternity, immutability, power, knowledge, rectitude, and benevolence. ”

“ This universal soul, he calls Reason: it is not mine or thine or his, but we are its; we are its property and men. And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason. ”

“ There are four elements from which all spirits draw their supplies: their Ego or individuality, Nature, God, and the Future All intermingle in millions of ways and offer themselves in a million differences of result: but one truth remains which, like a firm axis, goes through all religions and systems—draw nigh to the Godhead of whom you think! ”

“ On the one hand, our outward existence, our condition, the circumstances which affect us and in which our interests in general are involved, may be brought into harmony with the roots of their interests in ourselves, a harmony which is experienced in the form of happiness and satisfaction. ”

“ And the purposes of things, so far as we can discern them, the nature of our spiritual constitution, the meaning of our circumstances and probation, the resulting tendencies of our experience, all seem to prophesy, not the destruction, but the perfection and perpetuation, of individual being. ”

“ He proclaimed the absolute vitality of nature, the endless change of matter, the mutability and perishability of all individual things in contrast with the eternal Being—the supreme harmony which rules over all. ”

“ The sum and substance of the thought presented in these pages is, you will remember, that the great central fact in human life is the coming into a conscious, vital realization of our oneness with the Infinite Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. ”

“ Through all ages and in all peoples this sense of that which is other than ourselves, from which our highest good comes, towards which our ideals and aspirations strain, the ultimate force of our being, this feeling after the infinite is universal. It is the essential and determinative mark of every religion. ”

“ The world that thus expresses meaning appears, from the absolute point of view, as an unique whole, but as also an unique selected whole, such that neither for the whole nor for any of the parts could any other fact be substituted, without failure in the realization of precisely this totality of determinate meaning. ”

“ To these four sections, the four operations of the soul correspond,—conjecture, faith, understanding, reason. As every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme Good. ”

“ The progress of the whole world is described by Scripture, as in a beautiful poem, wherein one may follow the descent of time, and contemplate the variety, manifoldness, equity, order, righteousness, and beauty of the multitude of divine judgments proceeding from the wisdom of God ruling the world: and as with a poem, so with this ordering of the world, one cannot see its beauty save by considering the whole.... ”

“ In every point of our bodies, and at every moment of our existence, all the energies of Nature meet and unite. Yet, such order rules in the course of these wonderful workings, that harmonious blended action, instead of bewildering confusion, characterizes beings endowed with life. ”

“ Have you suffered, starved, and triumphed grovelled, down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
[27] "Done things" just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things—
Then listen to the wild—it's calling you. ”

“ The more so as the necessary foreignness of the absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of totality, which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of perfection in its train. 'Philosophy,' says a recent american philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is inspiring. ”