William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor who is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. He’s often called England’s national poet and “The Bard of Avon”. Shakespeare’s works include comedies, tragedies, and historical pieces, written in both poetry and prose. His four major tragedies are Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. Wikipedia.org
A photograph of Idries Shah. Source: Kashfi’s Children Organization
“Our heads are filled with ‘knowledge’, a knowledge that in some areas pre-empts our seeing anything at all.”
~ Idries Shah
Idries Shah, also known as Idris Shah, Indries Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Afghan author, thinker and teacher in the Sufi tradition. Shah wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies. Wikipedia
“In everyone there is something of his fellow man. Hence, ‘love your neighbor’ – for he is really you yourself.”
~ Rabbi Moses Cordovero
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero was a central figure in the historical development of Kabbalah, leader of a mystical school in the Ottoman Empire in 16th-century Safed, located in the modern State of Israel. He is known by the acronym Ramak.
Each man carries the vestiges of his birth–the slime and eggshells of his primeval past–with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us–experiments of the depths–strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.”
Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-Swiss poet and novelist, and winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature. His interest in Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions, combined with his involvement with Jungian analysis, helped shape his literary work. Wikipedia
“You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what you do not need”
~ Nisargadatta
Nisargadatta Maharaj was an Indian guru of nonduality, belonging to the Inchagiri Sampradaya, a lineage of teachers from the Navnath Sampradaya. Wikipedia
“The Bible must be shaken upside down before it will yield all its secrets. The priests have censored and clipped and mangled: they give us a celibate Jesus born of a virgin without the slightest ‘stain’ of sexual contact, which is blasphemes nonsense.”
–William Blake
William Blake was a British poet, painter, printmaker, and engraver. A visionary artist and nonconformist, Blake expressed his radical views on society, politics, and religion through his poetry, paintings, watercolors, and illuminated books. His work often hid criticism within complex mythology to avoid persecution from the British government. Wikipedia.org
“We together are realizing each other’s liberation once we find the social and political path to spread this collective awareness sufficiently across social space, then the loving world to which we aspire will begin to be born.” [1]
–Peter Gabel
Peter Gabel was an American law academic and associate editor of Tikkun, a bi-monthly Jewish critique of politics, culture, and society. He wrote a number of articles for the magazine on subjects ranging from the original intent of the framers of the Constitution to the creationism/evolution controversy. Wikipedia
