I began to practice 'meditation', sitting cross-legged for hours, staring straight in front of me. The result was a sudden and total transformation of my inner-being. There was a sense of freedom from my personality -- from the being called Colin Wilson who was born in Leicester in 1931. I felt that 'he' was a series of responses and reactions, of ambitions and frustrations. But after half an hour of staring straight in front of me, of concentrating my attention 'at the root of my eyebrows', I felt in control of his responses and frustrations. This control brought such a sense of exhilaration and satisfaction that I often sneaked away from other people to spend just five minutes sitting cross-legged; when I was working as a labourer on a building site, I would find a quiet spot and, while the others were having a smoke, would sit in a position that could quickly be changed to an ordinary sitting posture if someone came by . . .
Colin WilsonRelated topics
attention born begin building came colin control exhilaration felt find five freedom front half having hour hours position posture practice quiet result root sense series sit sitting site smoke spend spot staring straight sudden transformation while working others someone LeicesterRelated quotes
I think I've gone through quite an ordinary series of steps in life. I began as most children began, with God and Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny all being about the same thing. Then I went through the things that I think sensitive people go through, wrestling with the thoughts of Jesus-did he shit? Did he screw? I began to dare to believe that God wasn't some white beard. I began to look upon the miseries of the human race and to think God was not as simple as my mother said. As nearly as I can concentrate on the question today, I believe I am God; certainly you are, I think we intelligent beings on this planet are all a piece of God, are becoming God. In some sort of cyclical non-time thing we have to become God, so that we can end up creating ourselves, so that we can be in the first place. ... My own feeling is that relation to God as a person is a petty, superstitious approach to the All, the infinite.
Gene Roddenberry
Most motor-cars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and petrol and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday. Smoke comes out of the back of them and horn-squawks out of the front, and they have white lights like big eyes in front, and red lights behind. And that is about that - just motor-cars, tin boxes on wheels for running about in.
But some motorcars - mine, for instance, and perhaps yours - are different. If you get to like them and understand them, if you are kind to them and don't scratch their paint and bang their doors, if you fill them up and pump them up when they need it, of you keep them clean and polish and out the rain and snow as much as possible, you will find, you MAY find, that they become almost like persons - MORE than just ordinary persons - MAGICAL PERSONS!!!
Ian Fleming
If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of £10,000 then living there would be five men of £50,000, that London would be twice as large and twice as populous, and that nevertheless the rate of mortality would have diminished to one half of what it then was, that the post-office would bring more into the exchequer than the excise and customs had brought in together under Charles II, that stage coaches would run from London to York in 24 hours, that men would be in the habit of sailing without wind, and would be beginning to ride without horses, our ancestors would have given as much credit to the prediction as they gave to Gulliver's Travels.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
I have just returned from a visit to Germany. ... I have now seen the famous German leader and also something of the great change he has effected. Whatever one may think of his methods - and they are certainly not those of a Parliamentary country - there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook.
One man has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will, and a dauntless heart. He is the national Leader. He is also securing them against that constant dread of starvation which is one of the most poignant memories of the last years of the war and the first years of the Peace. The establishment of a German hegemony in Europe which was the aim and dream of the old prewar militarism, is not even on the horizon of Nazism.
David Lloyd George
It is really to be lamented that after a public servant has passed a life in important and faithful services, after having given the most plenary satisfaction in every station, it should yet be in the power of every individual to disturb his quiet, by arraigning him in a gazette and by obliging him to act as if he needed a defence, an obligation imposed on him by unthinking minds which never give themselves the trouble of seeking a reflection unless it be presented to them. However it is a part of the price we pay for our liberty, which cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. To the loss of time, of labour, of money, then, must be added that of quiet, to which those must offer themselves who are capable of serving the public, and all this is better than European bondage. Your quiet may have suffered for a moment on this occasion, but you have the strongest of all supports that of the public esteem.
Thomas Jefferson