Threshold

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:03:43 -0500
myth, science

Go out one clear starlit night to some open space and look up at the sky, at those millions of worlds over your head. Remember that perhaps on each of them swarm billions of beings, similar to you or perhaps superior to you in their organization. Look at the Milky Way. The earth cannot even be called a grain of sand in this infinity. It dissolves and vanishes, and with it, you. Where are you? And is what you want simply madness?

Before all these worlds ask yourself what are your aims and hopes, your intentions and means of fulfilling them, the demands that may be made upon you and your preparedness to meet them.

-- G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World, p.5

There is much about astronomy which resembles religion, and observatories are surely the finest temples built by Western hands in the last two centuries. But if it is a cult it is one which teaches us to observe and question, and in that it is superior to most religions.

-- Axel Harvey