CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Tao [Way] that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;
The Named is the mother of all things.
Therefore let there always be non-being, so we may see their subtlety,
And let there always be being, so we may see their outcome.
The two are the same,
But after they are produced, they have different names.
They both may be called deep and profound.
Deeper and more profound,
The door of all subtleties!
........
The spirit of the valley never dies.
It is called the subtle and profound female.
The gate of the subtle and profound female
Is the root of Heaven and Earth.
It is continuous, and seems to be always existing.
Use it and you will never wear it out.
........
One may know the world without going out of doors.
One may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the windows.
The further one goes, the less one knows.
Therefore the sage knows without going about,
Understands without seeing,
And accomplishes without any action.
........
The Way of Heaven has no favorites.
It is always with the good man.
........
The Way of Heaven is to benefit others and not to injure.

Lao-tzu
The Way of Lao-tzu

Without recognizing the ordinances of Heaven, it is impossible to be a superior man.

Confucius
The Confucian Analects

I would win my way to the coast,
apple-bearing Hesperian coast
of which the minstrels sing,
where the Lord of the Ocean
denies the voyager further sailing,
and fixes the solemn limit of Heaven
which giant Atlas upholds.
There the streams flow with ambrosia
by Zeus's bed of love,
and holy Earth, the giver of life,
yields to the gods rich blessedness.

Euripides
Hippolytus [428 b.c.]

Sincerity is the way of Heaven.

Mencius
Works, bk.IV,1:12.2

When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil.

Mencius
Works, bk.VI,2:15.2

Before heaven and earth had taken form all was vague and amorphous. Therefore it was called the Great Beginning. The Great Beginning produced emptiness and emptiness produced the universe. . . . The combined essences of heaven and earth became the yin and yang, the concentrated essences of the yin and yang became the four seasons, and the scattered essences of the four seasons became the myriad creatures of the world.

Huai-nan Tzu
Treatise

No ascent is too steep for mortals. Heaven itself we seek in our folly.

Horace
Odes, bk.I [23 b.c.], odeiii,l. 37

Who could know heaven save by heaven's gift and discover God save one who shares himself in the divine?

Marcus Manilius
Astronomica, bk.II, l. 115

Heaven is like an egg, and the earth is like the yolk of the egg.

Chang Heng
Saying

Jesus saith, Ye ask who are those that draw us to the kingdom, if the kingdom is in Heaven? . . . The fowls of the air, and all beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea, these are they which draw you, and the kingdom of Heaven is within you.

The Sayings of Jesus
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri,
PartIV [1904], no. 654,
New Sayings of Jesus, second saying

Not so much as the weight of an ant in earth or heaven escapes from the Lord, neither is aught smaller than that, or greater, but is clearly written in God's book.

The Koran

Then we went to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations.

The Primary Chronicle
Annal for the year 987:
Vladimir's Christianization of Russia

What canst thou see elsewhere which thou canst not see here? Behold the heaven and the earth and all the elements; for of these are all things created.

Thomas a Kempis
Imitation of Christ [c. 1420], bk.I, ch.20

When all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that is not Heaven.

Christopher Marlowe
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus [1604], sc.v

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 1-3

He [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

Genesis Chapter 28, Verse 12

Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.

Chronicles Chapter 29, Verse 11

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

Psalms Chapter 139, Verse 7-10

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
.....Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

St. Matthew Chapter 5, Verse 3-11

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

St. Matthew Chapter 7, Verse 21

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

St. Matthew Chapter 18, Verse 3

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.

St. Matthew Chapter 19, Verse 21

By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Colossians Chapter 1, Verse 16-17

I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation, Chapter 21, Verse 1-2

Let the woman into Paradise, she'll bring her cow along.

Anonymous, Russian

Long is the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

John Milton

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.

John Milton

What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?

John Milton

The planets in their stations list'ning stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung,
Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in
The great Creator from his work returned
Magnificent, his six days' work, a world.

John Milton
Paradise Lost [1667], bk.VII,l. 563

Paradise is where I am.

Voltaire Francois Marie Arouet
Le Mondain [1736]

"Pass in, pass in," the angels say,
"In to the upper doors,
Nor count compartments of the floors,
But mount to paradise
By the stairway of surprise."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
.....
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy gray eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Edgar Allan Poe
To One in Paradise

When man tries to imagine Paradise on earth, the immediate result is a very respectable Hell.

Paul Claudel

Dear God, let it be with these donkeys that I come,
And let it be that angels lead us in peace
To leafy streams where cherries tremble in air,
Sleek as the laughing flesh of girls; and there
In that haven of souls let it be that, leaning above
Your divine waters, I shall resemble these donkeys,
Whose humble and sweet poverty will appear
Clear in the clearness of your eternal love.

Richard Purdy Wilbur
Francis Jammes: A Prayer to Go to Paradise with the Donkeys [1956]

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.

Joni Mitchell
Big Yellow Taxi [1969]

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow and reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Garden of Proserpine [1866],st. 2

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.

William James
The Principles of Psychology [1890], ch.4

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, And their going from us to be utter destruction: but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

The Holy Bible, The Apocrypha
The Wisdom of Solomon Chapter 3, Verse 1-5

Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

The Holy Bible, The New Testament
First Corinthians Chapter 15, Verse 51-53

Lead me from the unreal to the real!
Lead me from darkness to light!
Lead me from death to immortality!

The Upanishads
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad,1.3.28

The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

William Wordsworth
Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood [1807],st. 2

The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journal, July 1855

Despair and suicide are the result of certain fatal situations for those who have no faith in immortality, its joys and sorrows.

Gerard de Nerval
Le Recircve et la Vie, II

Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.

Charles Robert Darwin
From Life and Letters of Charles Darwin [1887],
edited by Francis Darwin

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
The Brothers Karamazov [1879-1880],
bk.II, ch. 6

My life closed twice before its close-
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson
No. 1732 [n.d.]

Immortality is not a gift,
Immortality is an achievement;
And only those who strive mightily
Shall possess it.

Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology [1915].
The Village Atheist

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita [1955],last paragraph

Aristotle explicitly assures us that man, insofar as he is a natural being and belongs to the species of mankind, possesses immortality; through the recurrent cycle of life, nature assures the same kind of being-forever to things that are born and die as to things that are and do not change.

Hannah Arendt
Between Past and Future [1961], ch. 2

The immortal Gods alone have neither age nor death!
All other things almighty Time disquiets.

Sophocles
Oedipus at Colonus
[406 b.c.],l. 607

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

Plato
Dialogues, Symposium, sec.212

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

Plato
The Republic, bk.X,608-D

I have
Immortal longings in me.

William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra [1606-1607],Act: V, Scene: ii, Line: 282

Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily.

Sir Thomas Browne
Religio Medici [1642], pt.I, sec.45

Awake my soul! stretch every nerve,
And press with vigor on;
A heavenly race demands thy zeal,
And an immortal crown.

Philip Doddridge
Hymns [1755]. Zeal and Vigor in the Christian Race, st. 1

All men desire to be immortal.

Theodore Parker
A Sermon on the Immortal Life [September 20, 1846]

O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence.

George Eliot

And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath-O Father!-chiefly known to me by Thy rod-mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing; I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?

Herman Melville
Moby-Dick [1851], ch.9

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
No. 72, That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection,
last lines

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.

Richard Jefferies
The Story of My Heart [1883]

My spirit is too weak-mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

John Keats
Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats,
edited by Richard Monckton Milnes [1848]
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

The general theory of evolution . . . assumes that in nature there is a great, unital, continuous and everlasting process of development, and that all natural phenomena without exception, from the motion of the celestial bodies and the fall of the rolling stone up to the growth of the plant and the consciousness of man, are subject to the same great law of causation-that they are ultimately to be reduced to atomic mechanics.

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel
Freie Wissenschaft und Freie Lehre [1878]

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make-leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone-we all dwell in a house of one room-the world with the firmament for its roof-and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.

John Muir
John of the Mountains [1938]

Chapter Fourteen

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