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Some Early Presentations of
Transpersonal Perspectives
The following is a listing of quotations, from quite divergent early sources, that are indicative of various aspects of transpersonal stances and perspectives. The quotations are presented in chronological order (of original publication), and a reference is provided following each quotation.
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I've heard it said there's a window that opens
from one mind to another,
but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch. (p. 10)
Rumi, Jelaluddin. (1984). Open secret (J. Moyne & C. Barks, Trans.). Putney, VT: Threshold.
The following is a listing of quotations, from quite divergent early sources, that are indicative of various aspects of transpersonal stances and perspectives. The quotations are presented in chronological order (of original publication), and a reference is provided following each quotation.
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I've heard it said there's a window that opens
from one mind to another,
but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch. (p. 10)
Rumi, Jelaluddin. (1984). Open secret (J. Moyne & C. Barks, Trans.). Putney, VT: Threshold.
(Original works are from the 13th Century)
The
One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If though wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley (from "Adonais", Stanza 52, pp. 414-415)
Shelley, P. B. (1944). Shelley: Selected poems, essays, and letters (selected and edited by E.
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If though wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley (from "Adonais", Stanza 52, pp. 414-415)
Shelley, P. B. (1944). Shelley: Selected poems, essays, and letters (selected and edited by E.
Barnard). New York: The
Odyssey Press. (Original work written 1821)
The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. (p. 70)
Kafka, Franz. (2006). The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka. New York: Random House.
The heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. (pp. 208-209)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. (1961). The over-soul. In Emerson's essays (pp. 188-211).
Schrödinger, Erwin. (2004). What is life? In What is life? with mind and matter and
Salinger, J. D. (1971). Teddy. In Nine stories (pp. 166-198). New York:
There lay the Overmind, whatever it might be, bearing the same relation to man as man bore to the amoeba. Potentially infinite, beyond mortality, how long had it been absorbing race after race as it spread across the stars? Did it too have desires, did it have goals it sensed dimly yet might never attain? Now it had drawn into its being all that the human race had ever achieved. This was not tragedy, but fulfillment. The billions of transient sparks of consciousness that had made up humanity would flicker no more like fireflies against the night. But they had not lived utterly in vain. (pp. 205-206)
Clarke, Arthur C. (1953). Childhood's end. New York: Ballantine Books.
" . . . the eternal Self needs the limited ego in order to experience itself in outer reality. It can thus, in earthly form, 'pass through the experiences of the three-dimensional world, and by greater awareness take a further step toward realization'. . . ." (p. 171)
"Of course those animals have existed there on the plains for untold ages, but it suddenly dawned on Jung that this was only potential existence until someone gave them 'objective existence' by creatively knowing they were there. This, he wrote, is what the alchemists meant when they said 'What nature leaves imperfect, the [alchemistic] art perfects.' Thus 'the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear' to him, and he knew that man could continue creation, in fact he was even 'indispensable for the completion of creation.' If man does not accept this task, the world is bound to go on 'in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end.' But if people can only realize this vital myth of man, that he is 'indispensible for the completion of creation,' then our troubled age may yet rediscover as much, or even more, meaning in life than it has lost." (p. 172)
"But we can also see here just how important the ego is to the Self, for it was the former that became conscious of the impression, that gave it three-dimensional existence, definite existence, whereas five thousand years are as yesterday to the Self, whose knowledge may indeed even be absolute, without ever registering in the here and now, in this moment, and thus giving it definite or objective existence." (p. 173)
Hannah, Barbara (1991). Jung—his life and work: A biographical memoir. Boston: Shambhala.
Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far
more extensive than he knows--an individuality which can never express itself completely
through any corporeal manifestation. The Self manifests through the organism;
but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always, as it
seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve. (p. 305)
Myers, F. W. H. (1892). The subliminal consciousness: Chapter 1: General characteristics and
Myers, F. W. H. (1892). The subliminal consciousness: Chapter 1: General characteristics and
subliminal messages. Proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research, 7, 298-327.
He saw and knew that the Cosmos
is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal,
that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all
things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation
principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of
every one is in the long run absolutely certain. He claims that he
learned more within the few seconds during which the illumination lasted than
in previous months or even years of study, and that he learned much that no
study could ever have taught. (p. 8)
Bucke, Richard Maurice. (1901). Cosmic consciousness: A study in the evolution of the human
mind. Philadelphia, PA: Innes & Sons. [Bucke is describing his own cosmic consciousness
experience, which had occurred in 1872.]
The individual . . . is . . . in at least possible touch
with something higher . . . a better part of him, even though it may be but a
most helpless germ. . . . He becomes conscious that this higher part is
conterminous and continuous with a More
of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and
which he can keep in working touch with. (p. 508)
James, William. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1902)
Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes. (p. 515)
James, William. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin. (Original work published 1902)
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and Conanicut and Newport hear each other's foghorns. But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. Our "normal" consciousness is circumscribed for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond leak in, showing the otherwise unverifiable common connection. (pp. 798-799)
James, William. (1977). Final impressions of a psychical researcher. In J. McDermott (Ed.),
James, William. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1902)
Disregarding the over-beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic, we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes. (p. 515)
James, William. (1985). The varieties of religious experience. New York: Penguin. (Original work published 1902)
We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and Conanicut and Newport hear each other's foghorns. But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. Our "normal" consciousness is circumscribed for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond leak in, showing the otherwise unverifiable common connection. (pp. 798-799)
James, William. (1977). Final impressions of a psychical researcher. In J. McDermott (Ed.),
The writings of William James: A
comprehensive edition (pp. 787-799). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
(Original work published in 1909)
For a total gnostic or divine
living would include not only the individual life of the being but the life of
others made one with the individual in a common uniting consciousness. Such a
life must have for its main constituting power a spontaneous and innate, not a
constructed, unity and harmony; this can only come by a greater identity of
being and consciousness between individual and individual unified in their
spiritual substance, feeling themselves to be self and self of one
self-existence, acting in a greater unitarian force
of knowledge, a greater power of the being. There must be an inner and direct
mutual knowledge based upon a consciousness of oneness and identity, a
consciousness of each other's being, thought, feeling, inner and outer
movements, a conscious communication of mind with mind, of heart with heart, a
conscious impact of life upon life, a conscious interchange of forces of being
with forces of being; in any absence or deficiency of these powers and their
intimate light there could not be a real or complete unity or a real and
complete natural fitting of each individual's being, thought, feeling, inner
and outer movements with those of the individuals around him. A growing basis
and structure of conscious unanimism, we might say,
would be the character of this more evolved life. (p. 1079)
Sri Aurobindo. (2000). The life divine. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press. (Original work published
Sri Aurobindo. (2000). The life divine. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press. (Original work published
1914-1919)
Theoretically
there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible
element in oneself and not striving towards it. (p. 69)
The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings. (p. 70)
Kafka, Franz. (2006). The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka. New York: Random House.
(Original work published 1924) Also available, in German, as Aphorisms 69 and 70-71 at
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the
present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in
which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity,
that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made
one with all other; that common heart . . . . We live in succession, in
division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole;
the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is
equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and
whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect
in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle,
the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the
sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining
parts, is the soul. (pp. 189-190)
The heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. (pp. 208-209)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. (1961). The over-soul. In Emerson's essays (pp. 188-211).
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company/Apollo Edition.
(Original work published 1926)
"I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I
figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe
it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit—the human
sperit—the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part
of.' Now I sat there think' it, an' all of a suddent—I knew it. I knew it so
deep down that it was true, and I still know it."(pp. 24-25)
Steinbeck, John. (1972). Grapes of wrath. New York: Bantam Pathfinder.
Steinbeck, John. (1972). Grapes of wrath. New York: Bantam Pathfinder.
(Original work published 1939)
The only possible alternative is simply to keep to the
immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural
is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a
plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced
by a deception (the Indian MAYA); the same illusion is produced in a gallery of
mirrors, and in the same way Gaurisankar and Mt Everest turned out to be the
same peak seen from different valleys. (p. 89)
Schrödinger, Erwin. (2004). What is life? In What is life? with mind and matter and
autobiographical sketches (pp. 1-90).
(Original work published 1944)
I will suggest that [a] ... clue to the paranormal
lies beyond the realm of needs and barriers, indeed that it does not lie inside
of human personality at all, whether in its generic or in its individualized
aspects. I believe, on the contrary, that it is strictly interpersonal; that it
lies in the relations between persons and not in the persons as such. If it be
objected immediately that it must be personal if it is to be interpersonal,
then let me plead that there is all the difference in the world between our
stretching the conception of the personal to the breakingpoint and on the other
hand, our burning all our individualistic bridges behind us, and saying that
the world of interpersonal phenomena is a world which must be faced on its own
terms; pursued in its own right; its laws made clear and recognized to be
essentially different from those laws which apply to individuals. I would plead
for the direct empirical study of the laws of the interpersonal; the functions
of an interpersonal field. I suggest that it is not within the individual
psychic structure, but within certain specific relations between the psychic
structure of one individual and the psychic structure of another that our clue
lies; or if you like, that the phenomena are, so to speak, transpersonal, just
as they are, indeed, trans-spatial and trans-temporal. (pp. 11-12)
Murphy, Gardner. (1949). Psychical research and personality. Proceedings of the Society
Murphy, Gardner. (1949). Psychical research and personality. Proceedings of the Society
for Psychical Research, 49,
1-15.
The true value of a human being is
determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to
liberation from the self.
Einstein, Albert. (1995). Ideas and opinions (3rd ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. (p. 12)
Einstein, Albert. (2006). The world as I see it. Minneapolis, MN: Filiquarian Publishing, LLC. (p. 17)
Originally published in: Einstein, Albert. (1934). Mein Weltbild. Amsterdam: Querido Verlag.
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 feelings 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 embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. (p. 60)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), in a letter dated 1950, quoted in Howard W. Eves,
Einstein, Albert. (1995). Ideas and opinions (3rd ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. (p. 12)
Einstein, Albert. (2006). The world as I see it. Minneapolis, MN: Filiquarian Publishing, LLC. (p. 17)
Originally published in: Einstein, Albert. (1934). Mein Weltbild. Amsterdam: Querido Verlag.
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 feelings 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 embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. (p. 60)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), in a letter dated 1950, quoted in Howard W. Eves,
Mathematical circles adieu: A fourth collection of mathematical stories and anecdotes.
Boston: Prindle,
Weberand Schmidt, 1977.
"I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all that," Teddy said. "It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean." (p. 189)
Salinger, J. D. (1971). Teddy. In Nine stories (pp. 166-198). New York:
Bantam. (Original work published 1953)
Imagine that every man's mind is an island, surrounded by
ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock from
which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the
islands. They would all be part of one continent, but their individuality would
have gone. (p. 176)
There lay the Overmind, whatever it might be, bearing the same relation to man as man bore to the amoeba. Potentially infinite, beyond mortality, how long had it been absorbing race after race as it spread across the stars? Did it too have desires, did it have goals it sensed dimly yet might never attain? Now it had drawn into its being all that the human race had ever achieved. This was not tragedy, but fulfillment. The billions of transient sparks of consciousness that had made up humanity would flicker no more like fireflies against the night. But they had not lived utterly in vain. (pp. 205-206)
Clarke, Arthur C. (1953). Childhood's end. New York: Ballantine Books.
Please excuse all the
"man" and "he" terms that Barbara Hannah uses in the
following quotation. The words within single quotes are Jung's; the rest are
Barbara Hannah's.
" . . . the eternal Self needs the limited ego in order to experience itself in outer reality. It can thus, in earthly form, 'pass through the experiences of the three-dimensional world, and by greater awareness take a further step toward realization'. . . ." (p. 171)
"Of course those animals have existed there on the plains for untold ages, but it suddenly dawned on Jung that this was only potential existence until someone gave them 'objective existence' by creatively knowing they were there. This, he wrote, is what the alchemists meant when they said 'What nature leaves imperfect, the [alchemistic] art perfects.' Thus 'the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear' to him, and he knew that man could continue creation, in fact he was even 'indispensable for the completion of creation.' If man does not accept this task, the world is bound to go on 'in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end.' But if people can only realize this vital myth of man, that he is 'indispensible for the completion of creation,' then our troubled age may yet rediscover as much, or even more, meaning in life than it has lost." (p. 172)
"But we can also see here just how important the ego is to the Self, for it was the former that became conscious of the impression, that gave it three-dimensional existence, definite existence, whereas five thousand years are as yesterday to the Self, whose knowledge may indeed even be absolute, without ever registering in the here and now, in this moment, and thus giving it definite or objective existence." (p. 173)
Hannah, Barbara (1991). Jung—his life and work: A biographical memoir. Boston: Shambhala.
This page contains additional materials relevant to topics mentioned on the Home page of this website.
This new psychology looks
to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate
alphabet . . . and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings
. . . is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below . . . The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. . . .you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour . . . .
~ Sri Aurobindo
. . . is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below . . . The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. . . .you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour . . . .
~ Sri Aurobindo
