Peter Kingsley Quotes

We have the strange idea in the West that civilizations just happen: that they come into existence as a hit and miss affair and that we bumble along, creating and inventing and making it better.

But this is not how things are done at all.

Civilizations never just happen. They are brought into existence quite consciously, with unbelievable compassion and determination, from another world. Then the job of people experienced in ecstasy is to prepare the soil for them; carefully sow and plant them; care for them; watch them grow.

In our unconsciousness we take credit where no credit is due, oblivious to the real source of everything we pretend is ours - the sacred origin not just of religion but also of everything else, of science and technology, education and law, of medicine, logic, architecture, ordinary daily life, the cry of longing, the excruciating ache of the awakening love for wisdom.

If we really face our sadness, we find it speaks with the voice of our deepest longing. And if we face it a little longer we find that
it teaches us the way to attain what we long for.

For thousands of years it has been understood that, just as civilizations have to come to an end, there can even be times of global extinctions. But always there are people who know how to gather the essence of life and hold it safely, protect it and nurture it until the next seeding.

[G]radually, skillfully, [Parmenides] conjures up the image of us humans as stuck at this place where the road divides - unable to decide between the two paths, incapable even of seeing what the choice involves, just dithering in the space in between.