Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the "founding of the world": where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence. For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. Mircea Eliade
A single wheel impels the whole machine Matter and spirit; yea, that simple law, Pervading nature, which our Newton saw...
Did not the same strong mainspring urge and guide Our hearts to meet in love's eternal bond?...
Happy, O happy - I have found thee-I Have out of millions found thee, and embraced; Thou, out of millions, mine!...
Do I not find within thy radiant eyes Fairer reflections of all joys most fair? In thee I marvel at myself - the dyes Of lovely earth seem lovelier painted there, And in the bright looks of the friend is given
We are dead groups of matter when we hate; But when we love we are as gods!- Unto The gentle fetters yearning, through each state And shade of being multiform, and through All countless spirits (save of all the sire)- Moves, breathes, and blends, the one divine desire.
everywhere we seek Union and bond - till in one sea sublime Of love be merged all measure and all time!...
Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller's message of freedom and love of the great spiritual potential that humans are capable of attaining can be felt in all of his works.
Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go Playing the lute and dancing andalmost Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.
All sing in a minor key Of victorious love and the opportune life, They do not seem to believe in their happiness And their song mingles with the moonlight,
With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful, That sets the birds dreaming in the trees And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy, The tall slender fountains among marble statues.
Clair de Lune (Moonlight) - Claude Debussy & Paul Verlaine from Suite Bergamasque
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? by Mary Oliver
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives? tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy, to let you in! Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass! Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left - fields everywhere invite you into them. And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk! To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is the mystery, which is death as well as life, and not be afraid!...Mary Oliver
Some Further Words... I would like to die in love as I was born,.. And just as tenderly to be known are the affections that make a woman and a man their household and their homeland one...These affections are leaving the world like the colors of extinct birds, like the songs of a dead language.
Think of the genius of the animals, every one truly what it is: gnat, fox, minnow, swallow, each made of light and luminous within itself. They know (better than we do) how to live in the places where they live. And so I would like to be a true human being, dear reader-a choice not altogether possible now. But this is what I'm for, the side I'm on. And this is what you should expect of me, as I expect it of myself, though for ealization we may wait a thousand or a million years. Wendell Berry
Some Further Words by Wendell Berry
Concerto De Aranjuez Adagio - Joaquin Rodrigo
Edvard Grieg - Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 (written by the 24-year-old composer in 1868)
Like to golden birds perched on the selfsame tree, intimate friends, ego and self dwell in the same body. The former eats the sweet and sour fruits of the tree of life, while the latter looks on in detachment. As long as we think we are the ego, we feel attached and fall into sorrow. But realize that you are the Self, the Lord of life, and you will be freed from sorrow. When you realize that you are the Self, supreme source of light, supreme source of love, you transcend the duality of life and enter into the unitive state. Mundaka Upanishad
Real Knowledge does not consist in the mastery of cartloads of mere verbiage, but in the immediate experience of the Self. Without this Self-Knowledge, it is futile to try to know anything else. Man's knowledge of an object is clouded by the ignorance that shrouds his own Self. Intellect itself is a finite and frail instrument and one amongst the transient objects in this evanescent world. But the emergence in the aspirants' mind of such a query is itself the signal that the heart-strands that bound him to Samsara have got loosened, and that with the sword of Jnana, he can easily cut them asunder. Like the gushing waters of a mountain torrent when the obstructing dam is broken, Divine Wisdom floods the heart of the aspirant: he knows. He realizes that in essence he is that Knowledge Itself That is the Supreme Knowledge in which the distinction between knowledge, the knower and the known vanishes. And, that is the reason why the Upanishad alludes to It with a series of negations.
Infinite Minds - Mundaka Upanishad
Baaba Maal - Tindo Quando
Life and times of Farley Mowat, Canadian writer and naturalist. Truth in Farley Mowat view was an imaginative construct that illuminated a universal reality. “I didn’t like the human goddamn race. I had seen enough of its real naked horror... callous government, which had corrupted their (Inuit ) traditional lifestyle, abused them sexually and morally and then abandoned them.
Whenever your children do something wrong, have them memorize a poem and recite it for the family before dinner as a punishment. Scott Griffin (founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize)
Verdi - La Forza del Destino - Pace, pace, mio Dio! (Peace, O mighty Father, give me peace!) But who is approaching? Who dares to profane the sacred place?
Alain Lefèvre - Comme En Famille
Ernesto Lecuona Malaguena from the Suite Andalucia
“Unlike the inventions of science, which are valuable only until another invention serves the purpose better, the inventions of art, being experiences of emotional and intellectual nature, are, as such, valid for all time. And unlike discoveries, which are confined by the fixed limits of human perception, or advanced in a different manner by scientific instruments and knowledge, the collaboration between imagination and art instrument can still, after all these centuries, result in marvelous new art inventions" Maya Deren
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2
Every generation has its own way of telling the story of a tortured soul redeemed by the love of a virtuous woman. Though altered by social morays and technology, the human condition is the same. "The Flying Dutchman” was cursed to wander eternity alone until finding his true love, Senta. Richard Wagner's operatic drama of the high seas sets the stage for the ultimate test of true love.
At what point does commitment to a decision become stubbornness? “I call it reckless integrity, that’s what Locke has. He believes he’s doing the right thing, the honourable thing." Every time we answer the phone: “You see who it is, and you become whatever part of you is the part that deals with that – the boss, the parent, the spouse, the friend. And then the next call comes in, and you’re a different person.” Steven Knight
IDA: a film about two women who can either be trapped by their past or break free from it. It is about identity, loss and survival. "I felt we are both inside and outside her. We could touch some things, some feelings, but her character was so closed and restricted in the same time that I could feel it all almost evaporating." Pawel Pawlikowski
