Quotes about Phenomena

All phenomena are only tricks of the mind
I see nothing to fear in inner space
All this is nothing but clear light's natural radiance
There is no reason to react
Since all activity is my ornamentation
I should remain in mute meditative absorption

We declare that love is the cause of the existence of all
phenomena and that the absence of love is the cause of
disintegration or non-existence.

Nothing in the matter-of-fact or finite order of experience is directly or obviously grounded in actual authoritative principles; phenomena do not permit us to see through them to their infinite preconditions, and certainly not even to comprehend or conceptualize what kinds of things those preconditions may be. It is only through holistic and variably stressed principles that we can see the formation or architectonics of finite realities, in accordance with those lawful and ordering forces. There is no empirical path to principles, no psychological route to values or ultimate duties or essential character: hundreds of millions of human beings may despair of not having "salvation" who do not and cannot ever comprehend what the issue even is, i.e. the onslaught of the finite order that threatens to make our ambiguously finite/infinite spirit into just another finite particle within the finite world. We have to be always carrying out our self-education dialectically, with one eye on each domain, the finite and the infinite, each of which demands its own peculiar modus of intelligence and insight from us.

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.

Reverie is commonly classified among the phenomena of psychic detente. It is lived out in a relaxed time which has no linking force. Since it functions with inattention, it is often without memory. It is a flight from out of the real that does not always find a consistent unreal world.

However, given the ancient witness to contemplative knowing and the great abundance of evidence for psi phenomena, many sources of which I cite in subsequent chapters, it is a great mistake to exclude such things from our accounts of human nature.  That is why many, if not most, great thinkers since antiquity have given paranormal events and mystical truth claims a central place in their philosophies.