Evolution Quotes - page 52
The restoration of our world-view can come only as a result of inexorably truth-loving and recklessly courageous thought. Such thinking alone is mature enough to learn by experience how the rational, when it thinks itself out to a conclusion, passes necessarily over into the non-rational. World- and life-affirmation and ethics are non-rational. They are not justified by any corresponding knowledge of the nature of the world, but are the disposition in which, through the inner compulsion of our will-to-live, we determine our relation to the world.
What the activity of this disposition of ours means in the evolution of the world, we do not know. Nor can we regulate this activity from outside; we must leave entirely to each individual its shaping and its extension. From every point of view, then, world- and life-affirmation and ethics are non-rational, and we must have the courage to admit it.
Albert Schweitzer
Europeans, since the days when they began to believe in "progress" and in "evolution," that is to say since a little more than a century ago, profess to see a sign of inferiority in this absence of change, whereas for our part, we look upon it as a balanced condition which Western civilization has failed to achieve.
René Guénon
If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history's biggest fools. But that is not our intention now - it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow's trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest. ... What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.
Wernher von Braun
In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense - not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.
Peter Kropotkin
The theory of biological evolution is based on the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Yet cooperation is common between members of the same species and even between members of different species. Before about 1960, accounts of the evolutionary process largely dismissed cooperative phenomena as not requiring special attention. This dismissal followed from a misreading of theory that assigned most adaptation to selection at the level of populations or whole species. As a result of such misreading, cooperation was always considered adaptive. Recent reviews of the evolutionary process, however, have shown no sound basis for viewing selection as being based upon benefits to whole groups. Quite the contrary. At the level of a species or a population, the processes of selection are weak. The original individualistic emphasis of Darwin's theory is more valid.
Robert Axelrod
What would happen to us if we could truly sympathize with others, feel with them, suffer for them? The fact that human anguish, fear, and suffering melt away with the death of the individual, that nothing remains of the ascents, the declines, the orgasms, and the agonies, is a praiseworthy gift of evolution, which made us like the animals. If from every unfortunate, from every victim, there remained even a single atom of his feelings, if thus grew the inheritance of the generations, if even a spark could pass from man to man, the world would be full of raw, bowel-torn howling.
Stanisław Lem
An understanding between Washington and Beijing is the essential prerequisite for the denuclearization of Korea. By an ironic evolution, China at this point may have an even greater interest than the U.S. in forestalling the nuclearization of Asia. Beijing runs the risk of deteriorating relations with America if it gets blamed for insufficient pressure on Pyongyang. Since denuclearization requires sustained cooperation, it cannot be achieved by economic pressure. It requires a corollary U.S.-Chinese understanding on the aftermath, specifically about North Korea's political evolution and deployment restraints on its territory.
Henry Kissinger
Men will learn and understand the subtle laws which govern their lives: the basic law of life, the Law of Karma, of Cause and Effect, which controls the destiny of all; the related Law of Rebirth, which makes possible the journey of the Soul in matter; the Law of Harmlessness, which governs right relationship, and the great Law of Sacrifice by which all evolution proceeds. Through an understanding of these laws, men will come to resemble their Mentors, their Elder Brothers, and to demonstrate the Divinity shared by all. They will hearken to the teaching of the Wise Ones and, step by step, inherit their Birthright. Men are born to become Gods and nought can change that destiny; the timing, only, lies in men's hands. Soon the world will know that the One for Whom men wait is now among us.
Benjamin Creme
This group of perfected men is known by many names: the Masters of Wisdom and the Lords of Compassion, the Great White Brotherhood, the Society of Illumined Minds, the Spiritual or Esoteric Hierarchy, the Guides and Elder Brothers of Humanity.... They have beneficently overseen the evolution of humanity for countless millennia.
Benjamin Creme
Since mankind has, for the most part, rejected the rule of Law, it has experienced a series of disasters which it has interpreted as 'acts of God'. These 'acts of men' bear little resemblance to the planned evolution of this Earth. When men realize this, they will make a concerted effort to readjust their thinking and actions, and thus set to rights the 'Rule of Law'. Gradually, the rhythm of the Law will impose itself on life and a new harmony and greater equilibrium will result.
Benjamin Creme
Transmission Meditation is really a combination of two yogas: Karma Yoga, the yoga of service, and Laya Yoga, the yoga of the chakras, the energies. This is the true yoga of the coming age. By taking part in Transmission Meditation, your evolution is propelled forward at an extraordinary rate, because of the potency of the spiritual energies sent through the chakras. The energies galvanize and activate the chakras as they pass through them. The Masters register the point in evolution of any individual by looking at the state of the chakras.
Benjamin Creme
The Master DK wrote (through Alice A. Bailey) about a specialized form of Laya Yoga which will be the yoga of the New Age. Laya Yoga is the yoga of energies, of the centres. This specialized form of Laya Yoga is indeed already known. It is called Transmission Meditation... a fusion of two yogas: Laya Yoga, the yoga of energies, and Karma Yoga, the yoga of Service. It combines precisely the two most potent forms of evolution. Nothing moves a man or woman so quickly along the path of evolution than being engaged powerfully, potently, in some form of service. That is Karma Yoga. It is the lever of the evolutionary process. The other equally important leverage is meditation.
Benjamin Creme
The Technology of Light will meet all our energy needs in the 21st century. It will need no huge budgets to maintain because it will be devised and controlled by intellectuals who do not look for billions of pounds of profits to satisfy them... Once built, the technology will last for 2,500 years, 'until the next cycle of evolution.'
Benjamin Creme
Creme states that Mars is bustling with nine billion people; typical Martians would look like smaller-sized humans. Overall, Mars is spiritually on a par with Earth but technologically tremendously superior because they did not make the many "mistakes” humankind did... Creme divides Martians into three categories of spiritual evolution: those who are like gods to us; those of lesser but still remarkable spiritual progress; and those of very low spiritual quality.
Benjamin Creme
Everything which the ego is able to unfold within itself must give birth to love. The all-embracing archetype of love is set forth in the revelation of... the Christ Mystery. Through Him the germ of love is planted in the innermost core of the human being; and from this starting-point it must flow through the whole of evolution. Just as the wisdom previously formed manifests in the forces of the earthly sense-world, in the "elementary forces” of to-day, so love itself will manifest in the future, in all phenomena, as the new "elementary force.”.
Rudolf Steiner
The finding that there is a substantial genetic component to our behavior should not surprise us; indeed, it would be far more surprising if this were not the case. We are products of evolution: among our ancestors, natural selection indubitably exerted a strong influence over all traits that have figured in our survival.
James D. Watson
After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human thought... in promoting an evolution doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system... but his constant dread of persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The execution of Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of his career he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had seen his own works condemned by university after university under the direction of theologians and placed upon the Roman Index. ...Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by theological oppression.
René Descartes
