Quotes about Space

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become.  But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.

Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets.  His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind.  The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection.

On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound.  Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses.  You see without assistance from the eyes, over distances beyond the visual horizon.  There are moments when existence appears independent even of the mind.  The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values.

For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world.  My body requires no attention.  It's not hungry.  It's neither warm or cold.  It's resigned to being left undisturbed.  Why have I troubled to bring it here?  I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet.  This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels.  It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible.

Then what am I - the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands?  Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation?  There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light.

While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds.  It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.

The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.

A human being is a part of the whole called by us "universe," a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to enhance all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Lying on the roof counting the stars that fill the sky
I wonder if
Someone in the heavens looking back down on me
I'll never know
So much space to believe

Look
Here are we
On this starry night staring into space
And I must say
I feel as small as dust
Lying down here
What point could there be troubling
Head down wondering what will become of me

Time and Space are modes by which we think, and not conditions by which we live

No me in between as I jump in the space of We.

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.

Classical physics rests upon five basic assumptions about the fabric of reality:  reality, locality, causality, and determinism.  These assumptions were postulated to take place within a framework of an absolute fixed space and time.  It was also taken for granted that the mathematical descriptions of physical processes corresponded to the actual behavior of objective events.

            The assumption of reality refers to the idea that the physical world is objectively real.  That means it exists independently of whether anyone is observing it.  The moon is still there even if you aren’t looking at it.  Locality refers to the idea that the only way that objects can be influenced is through direct contact.  Unmediated action at a distance is prohibited, as this is uncomfortably close to the occult suggestion that invisible spirits can cause things to occur, and the occult concepts are anathema to science.

            Causality assumed that the arrow of time points in one direction, and thus that cause → effect sequences are absolutely fixed.  Continuity assumes that there are no discontinuous jumps in nature or in that the fabric of space and time is “smooth.”  Determinism assumes that, as Einstein once quipped, ‘God does not play dice with the universe,’ meaning that things progress in an orderly, predictable way.  We might not be smart enough or know enough to predict everything, but determinism says that in principle we can predict the future completely if we knew all the starting conditions and causal linkages.

Observe the space between your thoughts, then observe the observer.

Some people build a ship, they sail the oceans looking up at the stars and they call it freedom.  I built a ship, I sail the stars looking up at the oceans.  Now that's freedom.

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules, and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

Q: But what about the classical spiritual teaching of "the space between two thoughts"?

A: It is a misunderstanding for there is no detectable space 'between' two thoughts through which one can glimpse the Infinite.  The supposed 'space' is not between the thoughts but prior to the thoughts.

Perception moves at the same rate as does mentalization; therefore, to expect that perception will discern a space between two thoughts is impossible because perception would have to then move faster than 1/10,000th of a second, that is, the perceptive faculty of the mind moves at the same rate as the content of the mind.  Thus, to try to witness the space between two thoughts is like a dog's trying to chase its own tail.  This is why many serious and committed meditators do not reach Enlightenment, even after many years of devoted meditation.  They are simply looking in the wrong place (calibrates as true).

We have indeed been out in space, but some are under the illusion that we have been off Earth. In reality humans have never been off Earth. We have always been on a piece of Earth in space. We survive only as long as we can breathe the air of Earth, drink its waters, and be nourished by its foods. There is no indication that as humans we will ever live anywhere else in the universe. Place, too, is continuously being transformed but only within its own possibilities.

Even as regards Earth we are more committed to history than to geography, more committed to time than to space. History is endless. Place is limited.

The greatest error of science is in relation to space. Science thinks of space either as a void or as an ether through which solids of matter travel. The fact is that space travels with its solids, for each solid is surrounded by a minus zero equal-and-opposite vacuity of the plus zero which we call matter. Matter floats in these insulating spatial counterparts. Positive electricity is accountable for the solids and negative electricity is accountable for the space. All matter comes out of space by the action of positive electricity and is returned to space by the action of negative electricity. White-hot suns come from the blackness of cold space and cold space radiates from hot suns. The matter of space consists of holes surrounded by corpuscular solids, while the matter of solids consists of small
dense cores surrounded by vast tenuous holes of space. The very purpose of the hot suns is to act as crucibles for melting the raw materials which the Creator needs for expressing the idea of the universe. Contrarily, the very purpose of space is to cool the melted matter set out in order that it may become conditioned for the complex expressions of Creation. The two-way interchange between spatial holes and material solids is continuous."

It has often been declared that the human mind could never comprehend God. That statement has been based upon the assumption that the reason we could never comprehend God is that our senses could not detect God.
It is true that we cannot see God but we can KNOW Him. And therein is the essence of New Age thinking. The next hundred years will see as great a spiritual advance in the culture of our civilization as it has seen physically during the past hundred years. That which we cannot see, we can KNOW. We can see the bodies of men but we cannot see man, for the supreme Being within man is invisible. He cannot be seen. He can only be known. For the same reason we cannot see God but we can know Him, and we can know the nature of God by knowing His laws and creative processes.
When we know the nature of God sufficiently to reflect His nature in us, we become God to the extent of our ability to reflect His nature in us. By knowing the secret of Light, we will know the mystery of life and death – of reincarnation, of matter and space, and the relationship of suns to planets.
The more we know the Light, the more we shall realize our purpose in manifesting that Light gloriously. Every moment of life in the Light is a moment glorification in the awareness of our omnipotence in manifesting the Light.
Someone once asked Toscanini’s son: “What was the highest point in your father’s life?” The answer was: “Every point in it is his highest point. He lives gloriously and fully every moment of his life, whether conducting an orchestra or peeling an orange.”
That is what we must do when we fully know the purposefulness of life – live it gloriously by living it ecstatically. We can live it ecstatically only as we know the ecstatic nature of God and become like Him through being continually inspired by communion with Him. To become like Him, we must become aware of our identity with Him. We must know Him as Creator of all that is, and in so doing know ourselves as creator of all that is.

"Do you think that civilization advances because of things written in books? Not a bit of what is written in books ever got there until after the thought of it happened in someone's mind. Someone first had to collect it from space, or recollect it from its electrical pattern to which he (or she) had been attuned. The book is but a record of what has already happened."

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds-and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

All matter/space has some degree of "self" in it, and this self, or anyway some aspect of the personal, is something which infuses all matter/space and everything we know as matter but now think to be mechanical.

All space and matter, organic or inorganic, has some degree of life in it, and matter/space is more alive or less alive according to its structure and arrangement.

Perception without the word, which is without thought, is one of the strangest phenomena. Then the perception is much more acute, not only with the brain, but also with all the senses. Such perception is not the fragmentary perception of the intellect nor the affair of the emotions. It can be called a total perception, and it is part of meditation.

Perception without the perceiver in meditation is to commune with the height and depth of the immense. This perception is entirely different from seeing an object without an observer, because in the perception of meditation there is no object and therefore no experience. can, however, take place when the eyes are open and one is surrounded by objects of every kind. But then these objects have no importance at all. One sees them but there is no process of recognition, which means there is no experiencing.

What meaning has such meditation? There is no meaning; there is no utility. But in that meditation there is a movement of great ecstasy which is not to be confounded with pleasure. It is this ecstasy which gives to the eye, to the brain and to the heart, the quality of innocency. Without seeing life as something totally new, it is a routine, a boredom, a meaningless affair. So meditation is of the greatest importance. It opens the door to the incalculable, to the measureless.

In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man, and in it is all the becoming, the battle of life, the agony and fear. Meditation is the ending of this space, the ending of the me. Then relationship has quite a different meaning, for in that space which is not made by thought, the other does not exist, for you do not exist. Meditation then is not the pursuit of some vision, however sanctified by tradition. Rather it is the endless space where thought cannot enter. To us, the little space made by thought around itself, which is the me,is extremely important, for this is all the mind knows, identifying itself with everything that is in that space.

And the fear of not being is born in that space. But in meditation, when this is understood, the mind can enter into a dimension of space where action is inaction. We do not know what love is, for in the space made by thought around itself as the me, love is the conflict of the me and the not-me. This conflict, this torture, is not love. Thought is the very denial of love, and it cannot enter into that space where the me is not. In that space is the benediction which man seeks and cannot find. He seeks it within the frontiers of thought, and thought destroys the ecstasy of this benediction.

The Master has no mind of her own.
She works with the mind of the people.

She is good to people who are good.
She is also good to people who aren't good.
This is true goodness.

She trusts people who are trustworthy.
She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.
This is true trust.

The Master's mind is like space.
People don't understand her.
They look to her and wait.
She treats them like her own children.

The Master keeps her mind
always at one with the Tao;
that is what gives her her radiance.

The Tao is ungraspable.
How can her mind be at one with it?
Because she doesn't cling to ideas.

The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
How can it make her radiant?
Because she lets it.

Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

If there is only empty space, with no suns nor planets in it, then space loses its substantiality.

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ...and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.