A Quote by Huston Smith

The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits

Huston Smith

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Altered Altered States Goal Life Life Is Spiritual Spiritual Life States Traits

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Huston Smith
American - Theologian
May 31, 1919 - December 30, 2016

When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.

Huston Smith

the heart of religion is not altered states but altered traits of character. For me, then, the test of a substance's religious worth or validity is not what kind of far-out experience it can produce, but is the life improved by its use? That's the test. Now, on that score, if you remove the "religious cocoon," the experiences don't seem to have much in the way of discernible, traceable effects.

Huston Smith

Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within.

Phyllis Bottome

To pass from estrangement from God to be a son of God is the basic fact of conversion. That altered relationship with God gives you an altered relationship with yourself, with your brother man, with nature, with the universe.

E. Stanley Jones

To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday's science fiction is today's fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man's environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.

Theodore Kaczynski

Emotional and physical states can be altered by changing the breathing pattern.

Wilhelm Reich

Often what is nearest is hardest of all to see - try asking a fish to define water. Distance opens a door to revelation. When the first great distances of space were conquered by technology, a camera altered the human perspective on the Earth as radically as Galileo did when he proved the sun was the center of the universe. The ecology movement was born from a photographically altered consciousness.

Vicki Goldberg

No one in human history has given as much thought to the interweaving of altered states of consciousness and religion as I have.

Huston Smith

What I don't like in movies dealing with the illustration of altered states of consciousness is that usually you see the guy from the outside.

Gaspar Noe

Sometimes," Jem said, "our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It's those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered-- that is when we feel the greatest pain. I can tell you, though, from experience, you grow accustomed to it. You learn to live your new life, and you can't imagine, or even really remember, how things were before.

Cassandra Clare

Every time we pray our horizon is altered, our attitude to things is altered, not sometimes but every time, and the amazing thing is that we don't pray more.

Oswald Chambers

When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed.

Margaret Mead

When love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered.

D. H. Lawrence

We experimented and we experienced many altered states of awareness. We used the power plants. I did that for a year or two.

Frederick Lenz

To stop thought, you have to go above it. We are collecting energy. When it is freed, it is like a flood and the water will rise and we are in altered states of attention.

Frederick Lenz

Certain drugs provide brief excursions into altered states of consciousness. The problem is that the perceptions and understandings that come from these experiences don't tend to last.

Frederick Lenz

A Quote by Huston Smith

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