Collage on Blaise Pascal

[Guest guest]

Behold: this is our true state. It is this which renders us incapable of knowing

anything for certain or from being absolutely ignorant. We wander in a vast

medium, always uncertain and drifting, pushed by one wind and then another.

Whenever we find a fixed point to attach and fix ourselves to, it shifts and

leaves us and, if we follow it, it slips away from us and flees from us

eternally. Nothing stops for us. This is our natural state, but the one most

contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find a firm seat, and a

final, constant base on which to build a tower which will lift us to the

infinite; but all our foundations crack, and the earth opens up into an abyss.

 

 

 

 

 

Let man contemplate Nature in its entirety, high and majestic; let him expand

his gaze from the lowly objects which surround him. Let him look on this blazing

light, placed like an eternal lamp in order to light up the universe; let him

see that this earth is but a point compared to the vast circle which this star

describes and let him marvel at the fact that this vast orbit itself is merely a

tiny point compared to the stars which roll through the firmament.

 

 

 

 

 

But if our gaze stops there, let the imagination pass beyond this point; it will

grow tired of conceiving of things before nature tires of producing them. The

entire visible world is only an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of

nature. No idea can come close to imagining it. We might inflate our concepts to

the most unimaginable expanses: we only produce atoms in relation to the reality

of things. Nature is an infinite sphere in which the center is everywhere, the

circumference is nowhere. Finally, it is the greatest sensible mark of God's

omnipotence, that our imagination loses itself in that thought.

 

 

 

 

 

We naturally believe that we are more capable of arriving at the center of

things rather than embracing their circumference. The visible extent of the

world surpasses us visibly; but, since we surpass small things, we believe

ourselves capable of possessing them, and yet it requires no less capacity to

reach nothingness as it takes to reach everything; the one is just as infinite

as the other; and it appears to me that anyone who comprehended one of these

extreme principles of things would have also arrived at the knowledge of the

other infinite. The one depends on the other, and the one leads to the other.

These extremities touch each other and reunite by going in opposite directions

and find themselves again in God, and in God alone.

 

 

 

 

 

Let us then know our limits; we are something, and we are not everything; such

existence we have takes from us the knowledge of first principles, which arise

from nothingness; and the smallness of our existence hides infinity from our

view. . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

--Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

 

 

 

 

 

All:One

 

Kip Almazy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Nisargadatta , Kip Almazy <kipalmazy>

wrote:

>

> Behold: this is our true state. It is this which renders us

incapable of knowing anything for certain or from being absolutely

ignorant. We wander in a vast medium, always uncertain and drifting,

pushed by one wind and then another. Whenever we find a fixed point

to attach and fix ourselves to, it shifts and leaves us and, if we

follow it, it slips away from us and flees from us eternally.

Nothing stops for us. This is our natural state, but the one most

contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find a firm

seat, and a final, constant base on which to build a tower which

will lift us to the infinite; but all our foundations crack, and the

earth opens up into an abyss.

 

Odysseus: That constant base is Brahma Loka, or the Self. And that

desire that burns in our hearts is our wish to come back home.