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“Pain is really awareness of opposition, just as pleasure is awareness of collaboration.”

“The result of Pain (which is such a mysterious sacrament that I think it deserves a capital letter) is awareness, reaction, adaptability, modification, originality, genius–Epigenesis.”

“It has to be learnt that physical, chemical, scientific, practical, and spiritual activities and aspects of life are all one and identical with the Divine. Man, through his own mental activity, is to learn to know his God, so he no longer needs to believe in Him.”

“The Wisdom states that the later development of man will be from selfish self-consciousness to co-operative group consciousness, and from nationalism to internationalism. On all sides we see the violent signs of struggle going on as these newer qualities are being brought to birth, in the teeth of tremendous opposition from the older forces.”

“[The Initiate] is asked to learn to grasp how the many can exist as the One without loss of identity. He is instructed to believe in a glorious consummation which awaits all life traveling along the Path of Initiation.”

“[Science] is approaching thrillingly near to a blinding realisation of the great Entity himself. When this happens–and nothing can stop it–man’s little mind will have tuned finally, by his own efforts, up to the tempo of the greater Mind. Like a tiny bubble of quicksilver his understanding will rush to join the greater understanding, and the ultimate fusion will have taken place.” [The real Singularity, I think. –m.z.]

–quotes fromThe Initiation of the World by Vera Stanley Alder (first published in 1968)