Quotes & Sayings About Incarnations

When they say that, 'God takes avatar (reincarnates)' is incorrect. He is known as an avatari when last two or three incarnations (before Moksha) remain. God does not have the ability at all to do karma! Man does not have that ability either. It is due to illusion that he feels 'I did it'! — Dada Bhagwan

It takes a long time-many incarnations of right action, good company, help of the guru, self-awakening, wisdom, and meditation-for man to regain his soul consciousness of immortality. To reach this state of Self-realization, each man must practice meditation to transfer his consciousness from the limited body to the unlimited sphere of joy felt in meditation. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Why do you keep saying incarnations like I'm some kind of god?" It wasn't a great question, but the real questions were so big that Kylar didn't even know how ask them.
"You are worshipped in a few remote areas where your master wasn't very careful about showing the full extent of his powers."
"What?! — Brent Weeks

The question 'Why poetry?' isn't asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: "What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that's unutterable?" You can't generalize very usefully about poetry; you can't reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can't successfully answer the question of "Why poetry?," can't reduce it in the way I think you can't, then maybe that's the strongest evidence that poetry's doing its job; it's creating an essential need and then satisfying it. — Richard Ford

Every city is a ghost.
New buildings rise upon the bones of the old so that each shiny steel bean, each tower of brick carries within it the memories of what has gone before, an architectural haunting. Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of these former incarnations in the awkward angle of a street or filigreed gate, an old oak door peeking out from a new facade, the plaque commemorating the spot that was once a battleground, which became a saloon and is now a park. — Libba Bray

This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations. — Karl Marx

seekers of free video, too. In the past year, a program called Popcorn Time has become the kinder, gentler face of piracy online, taming BitTorrent to make it far more userfriendly and less obviously sketchy. Free incarnations for PCs, phones, and tablets look pretty much like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Instant Video, except with vastly deeper catalogs — Anonymous

There is no man," [the painter Elstir] began, "however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man - so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise - unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded. . . We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."
Marcel Proust
Within a Budding Grove (translated by C. Scott Moncrieff) — Marcel Proust

If one becomes enlightened, as I did in past incarnations, we leave the structural universes behind. We don't even have past incarnations because the form that had those incarnations has dissolved into the clear light of reality. — Frederick Lenz

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway ... We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking ... The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. — Richard Rohr

If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness. — Neal Stephenson

The samskaras that were developed in previous incarnations are usually hidden by the temporary amnesia of infancy and by the transient personality. — Frederick Lenz

Even with revivals, I don't really pay attention to previous incarnations. I always just go with the script and with the director and am willing to treat it as brand new. — Kate Baldwin

You see that who you are isn't moving in time. Time is describing the incarnations, the packing changes. — Ram Dass

...Our challenge as Christians is not to try to convert people around us to our way of belief but to love them, to be ourselves living incarnations of what we believe, to live what we believe and to love what we believe. — John Main

Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one ... Let's take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted. (132) — Stephen Levine

Whatever you have learned in your previous incarnations is retained within your causal body, your multi-lifetime body of energy that lives from one incarnation to another. — Frederick Lenz

Thousands and thousands of incarnations and nothing to show for it. You must choose whether to follow the path of love or the path of attachment. — Frederick Lenz

As incarnations go by, the atom gets more complex. That is, your being, the part of you that reincarnates from lifetime to lifetime, the aggregate, grows thicker and denser. — Frederick Lenz

We're being trained through our incarnations
trained to seek love, trained to seek light, trained to see the grace in suffering. — Ram Dass

A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations — Milan Kundera

A race or nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type ... The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation [leading to] an ideal future. — Rudolf Steiner

Parvati has wrathful incarnations surely,
As Durga, Kali, Shitala Devi, Tara, Chandi,
She has benevolent forms like Katyayani,
Kamalatmika, Bhuvaneshwari, Lalita, Gauri.
Parvati as the Goddess of Power does be,
Who source of all forms and of all beings be,
In Her all the power but exists undoubtedly,
And She who the destroys all fear clearly be.
The apparent contradiction that Parvati be,
The fair one, Gauri, and the dark one, Kali,
Suggests the placid wife, can change fully,
To her primal chaotic nature as powerful Kali. — Munindra Misra

In its heyday, the car was an expression of technical flair and design genius: the original Mini, the Beetle, the 2CV, and the Fiat 500 were all, in their various ways, inspired incarnations of functionality. — Martin Jacques

Teach me to take all grace / And spring it into blades of act, / Grow spears and sheaves of charity, / While each new instant, (new eternity) / Flowering with clean and individual circumstance, / Speaks me the whisper of [God's] consecrating Spirit. / Then will obedience bring forth new Incarnations / Shining to God with the features of [the Lord's] Christ. — Thomas Merton

We are incarnations of our creator — Bangambiki Habyarimana

This is my own experience. I have many memories of earlier times in which I was trained. When I was 18 years old I "awoke" in one moment, changing from a rebellious teenager into a seeker and teacher carrying esoteric knowledge that I had brought with me from earlier incarnations. Many Indigo Souls I have met are similar. These incarnations have provided particular training so that you could be of service at this unique juncture in history. — Ritama Davidson

I'd seen Sage bleed. I'd made Sage bleed. Not that it hurt him any; he healed so quickly ... In smaller doses it has incredible healing powers. Ben's voice rang out in my head. I remembered he said that earlier, about ... the Elixir of Life.The crackpot, completely bogus, absolutely insane Elixir of Life.Did it actually exist? Had Sage had some? Enough to keep him alive, young, and speed-healing for the last five hundred years?And if so, had he used that time to find one woman, again and again in different incarnations, to love her ... or destroy her? — Hilary Duff

Many Eastern spiritual groups feel that women are not capable of enlightenment. They advise women to have sons and pray to be men in their next incarnations — Frederick Lenz

We've got to be long distance runners on the spiritual path. We want to run as fast as we can, but at the same time realize that if God isn't at the end of that 100 yards, we don't fall flat of exhaustion. We've got to have whatever rhythm it takes to be able to go on for incarnations until we find that state of perfection we've been seeking. — Goswami Kriyananda

Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution. — George Will

I did not care if Ella went to Princeton, if she was exceptionally pretty, if she grew up to marry a rich man, or really if she married at all - there were many incarnations of her I felt confident I could embrace, a hippie or a housewife or a career woman. But what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good luck and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies. Above all, I wanted my daughter to understand that many people were guided by bitterness and that it was best to avoid these individuals - their moods and behavior were a hornet's nest you had no possible reason to do anything other than bypass and ignore. — Curtis Sittenfeld

It's not enough to look for the truth, however a noble journey that might be. [ ... ] You must be able to say "yes" to what you see. [ ... ] He is the yeasayer who could look upon evil, disease and suffering, all the worst incarnations of the Eternal No, and not fall insane. He is the great-souled one who can affirm the truth of the Universe. — David Zindell

None of us asked for this life. I, of all people should know that our paths were chosen for us and we were just along for the ride, doing what was necessary and expected. There were far greater forces at work here. He was playing my heartstrings, which sang a sad melody I felt deep in my soul.
For the first time, I could see him for who and what he was now. Even the worst incarnations of evil could change, and from this point forward, I would try to honor that. He was willing to put his life back in the line of fire to help me, and at the very least, he deserved my respect for that. Maybe even a second chance. — L.J. Kentowski

Let's state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway. — Richard Rohr

a man--venerable, with a white beard, or on a cross, or as a baby, or a sage seated in the full lotus position. Are these not limiting incarnations, temporary housings, of the great energy process? — Timothy Leary

I have voted to legalize recreational incarnations. We should no longer jail people in a body just because they have chosen to incarnate in this dimension for fun. Are you guys with me on this one? — Martijn Benders

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race ... and the hearts of the meanest were humbled. — Rudyard Kipling

In retrospect, the past seems not one existence with a continuous flow of years and events that follow each other in logical sequence, but a life periodically dividing into entirely separate compartments. Change of surroundings, interests, pursuits, has made it seem actually more like different incarnations. — Eleanor Robson Belmont

The last time I was in Chile, I was hypnotized by a friend who is studying to be a curandero, a healer, who led me back through several incarnations. It wasn't easy to return to the present, however, since my friend hadn't reached that part of the course, but the experiment was well worth the effort because I discovered that in former lives I was not Genghis Khan, as my mother believes. — Isabel Allende

All incarnations are lived at once, and yet there does seem to be a linear sense of time when you're in the vortex of time and space, when your consciousness is fixated in a body. — Frederick Lenz

The spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally refuse to worship any of the hydras' heads. — J.R.R. Tolkien

During the six years I spent writing my novel 'The Incarnations,' I lived in seven cities in four countries. I moved in and out of 17 different houses and flats in Beijing, Seoul, Colorado, Boston, Leeds, Washington D.C., London and Shenzhen. — Susan Barker

Meditation is the study of making the mind still. As your mind becomes still, a power enters you. This power transmogrifies your mind, it escalates your evolution and you begin to cycle through many incarnations in one lifetime. — Frederick Lenz

The leprous corpse, touch'd by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is chang'd to fragrance, they illumine death
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consum'd before the sheath
By sightless lightning? - the intense atom glows
A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I didn't want a guru or a kung fu master or a spiritual director. I didn't want to become a sorcerer or learn the zen of archery or meditate or align my chakras or uncover mast incarnations ... I was after something else entirely, but it wasn't in the Yellow Pages or anywhere else that I could discover. — Daniel Quinn

It has been my experience as a teacher over the years and incarnations that what really counts are not techniques. What really counts is spirit, love. What really counts is a sense of propriety and dedication. — Frederick Lenz

It is their time for gloom. They will emerge again, because all of life on this earth, in these fleshy incarnations, is contrast. Constant contrast, ups and downs, goods and bads, lights and darks, sweet and sour, hard and soft; through these we learn and experience, and through learning, grow, and through growth, come to make better choices next time, in years to come, in lives to come. They — Joy Perino

annunciations are frequent. incarnations are rare. — Saint Basil

I have been asked many times, Why do you laugh so much and make so many jokes? I become serious sometimes-when I have a stomachache! The Lord is all blissfulness. He is the reality behind all that exists. He is the goodness, the truth in everything. You are His incarnations. That is what is glorious. The nearer you are to Him, the less you will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from Him, the more will long faces come. The more we know of Him, the more misery vanishes. — Swami Vivekananda

You are incarnations of God, all of you. You are incarnations of the Almighty, Omnipresent, Divine Principle. You may laugh at me now, but the time will come when y — Swami Vivekananda

As soon as that little "ba-da-da-dink-dink" at the beginning of "Under the Sea" starts I think to myself: "Here we go! Let's do it!" When I first got the role, I was very intimidated because people have high expectations. But I have nothing to prove only to share. I'll do my best interpretation of what these songs should sound like in their current incarnations and it's quite an honor. — Tituss Burgess

I feel like I've lived numerous lives...and you can explore my incarnations through my works. — Laurel-Rain Snow

I am often asked the question: 'What is your favorite type of food?' Although I always answer Japanese, the real response should be and is pierogi, the delectable Polish dumplings that my mother, Big Martha, made so well in many incarnations: potato, sweet cabbage, blueberry, peach, plum, and apricot. — Martha Stewart

How do you become enlightened? Have fun, meditate, don't take yourself too seriously, brush between incarnations and have a good teacher. — Frederick Lenz

I want to make it perfectly clear that although I believe in the continuity of existence, I do not hold to the simplistic theory that upon death a vaporous ghost containing our soul floats out of our dead body and goes to some cosmic waiting room while a karmic committee tallies up our unfulfilled needs and desires and matches us up with two unsuspecting fools who deserve the hell that we will put them through as much as we deserve the hell they will put us through. I am very confident, however, in the cycles of nature, and I do not see any reason to believe that the same cyclic behavior we observe in the universe around us cannot apply to consciousness and the continuity of our existence. Perhaps, because of the fragile nature of time, we are living all our "incarnations" simultaneously. — Lon Milo DuQuette

If you say that you have accepted defeat, the world will let you go. 'We' have discovered this. Because, we had tried to win over the world and in doing so, we had to go through many incarnations. And in the end, I said that I have acknowledged defeat and settled down. — Dada Bhagwan

A search for justification and the impossibility of justification are recurrent motifs in the philosophy of Sartre. His philosophy is one of the incarnations of problematism and of the ambiguity of contemporary thought (for Man does seem, to the contemporary mind, to be ambiguous). — Jean-Paul Sartre

We encourage people to believe that there is only one identity, one role, one way for them to be, one value for them to fulfill, rather than a host of possible 'incarnations' to be lived in a lifetime. — Sidney Jourard

Charlotte views her younger selves with a certain detachment. They are herself, but other incarnations, innocents going about half-forgotten business. — Penelope Lively

Without doubt, the foremost band for decades has been the One O'Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas. Through its many incarnations and under various leaders, they have demonstrated the highest qualities of musicianship imaginable, plus a willingness to balance their big band tradition with creative exploration. Astounding ensemble work, insightful interpretations of the arrangements, imaginative writing, and above all, a loving attention to musicality ... these people play beautifully. — Gary Burton

Most people who have been enlightened in previous incarnations normally begin to regain their past-life enlightenment around the age of twenty-nine, when their astrological Saturn return takes place. — Frederick Lenz

And others came ... Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

You could go through incarnations forever and never become enlightened, unless of course you do something about it. — Frederick Lenz

Since male and female incarnations are equally necessary for self-knowledge, it is not right to look upon one as being more important than the other. — Meher Baba

I believe that Fairport, in all its incarnations, has almost single-handedly been responsible for and has written the book on the history of the evolution of folk-rock in the UK. Over the years Ashley Hutchings, with his Albion Bands and Richard through his solo work have carried the torch to another level. — Iain Matthews

We have all made mistakes in our many incarnations that have caused us to retrace our spiritual steps. Some have made more mistakes than others. But it's part of the experience to spiritually fall from time to time. — Martin Barbara Moraitis Dimitri

The three principal samskaras have to do with sex, money and power. In all those countless incarnations that one goes through in the religious practice, the avoidance is tremendous. We brand those things as evil. — Frederick Lenz

There is a strain in Marx of the cleric, of the vulgar moralist. He paints the capitalist and the bourgeois as incarnations of evil; it is they who are responsible for the woes of mankind. The dismissal of the individual's responsibility for his own misery is the quintessence of clericalism. — John Carroll

He smiled to himself. Through many centuries and many incarnations, he had learned one universal truth: bitches love them some cushions. — Christopher Moore

In most homes, from what I know of them, even though the woman's place in that particular home might be in the home, still, she is queen of her house. So I like exploring the many different incarnations of women in that country, actually. You find quite a range of these women in this book - each one of them embodies a completely different personality type. And how can you write a book that's only full of men, anyway? I mean, half the population of this world is women. — Anita Rau Badami

Here, then, are some ways we can try to prevent mistakes. We can foster the ability to listen to each other and the freedom to speak our minds. We can create open and transparent environments instead of cultures of secrecy and concealment. And we can permit and encourage everyone, not just a powerful inner circle, to speak up when they see the potential for error.
These measures might be a prescription for identifying and eliminating mistakes, but they sound like something else: a prescription for democracy. That's not an accident. Although we don't normally think of it in these terms, democratic governance represents another method - this time a political rather than an industrial or personal one - for accepting the existence of error and trying to curtail its more dangerous incarnations. — Kathryn Schulz

We know Jesus taught that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to the left. We know that Mohammed was sacked from his village and stoned at Ta'if, but he quietly left for Medina.
If both of these men, beaten, and bloodied-the incarnations of their respective faiths-asked God to forgive their aggressors, then who were today's religious leaders to advocate holy war? — Eliza Griswold

Millions of years ago, in my previous incarnations, I must have been related to swans ... because I can still feel that affinity. — Jean Sibelius

Behind every liberal philanthropist fortune is a huge capitalist score. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can afford now to be liberal - an expensive indulgence - because in their early incarnations they were no-holds-barred capitalists who made lots of enemies conducting business without mercy and in search of pure profit. — Victor Davis Hanson

The way to freedom is through service to others. The way to happiness is through meditation and being in tune with God ... break the barriers of your ego, shed selfishness, free yourself from the consciousness of the body, forget yourself, do away with this prison house of incarnations, melt your heart in all, be one with creation. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Our souls are evolving towards becoming the one. That's what we're doing and we're using our incarnations as teaching devices. — Ram Dass

Once you are enlightened, you don't do wrong things. You don't take to wrong things. Then you start understanding all these prophets, all these great incarnations, you start understanding what they were. Then you understand that all these religions have come out of one Tree of Life, which is spirituality. — Nirmala Srivastava

Death has such great importance in this society that it affects everything. I learned from my guru that death is not the enemy, I see it as another moment. Yet it's the end of an incarnation and means going on to other incarnations. — Ram Dass

The manifest universe is the body of God ... all people are incarnations of the One Spirit. — Ernest Holmes

I may have said that stories can have a multitude of false starts. But now that I think about it, I'm not sure there's any such thing. It's sort of like the best comics - frames burst into one another, and colours bleed between lines, and the richness of a universe is only fully graspable when you understand the prequels and crossovers and spin-offs and stuff. Like the superhero stories that veer through a thousand different incarnations, with no beginning or end. It's possible that this is a rubbish metaphor. My point is, most stories can only start when you place yourself in them.
And I think I'm ready, finally, to draw myself in mine. — Melissa Keil

Thinking that the next person, the next relationship, the next experience will free you - these are foolish thoughts of people who are bound again and again to birth, death and rebrith for thousands and thousands of incarnations. — Frederick Lenz

Most Whores are completely unaware of how important they are to society, and subsequently do not have the opportunity to learn how to be all-compassionate, all-loving, all-giving and all-receiving incarnations of the Goddess. — Inga Muscio

Moorcock's interlinked 'Eternal Champion' series is a constant source of enjoyment. Of its tragic hero incarnations, my favourite is 'Elric of Melnibone,' and the best book has to be 'Stormbringer.' And as for that other sword, Excalibur? Pah! Use it to spread your butter. — Neal Asher

I have that thrill-seeking mentality, so when people want to know why my incarnations keep changing, or why I'll do something different than I did before, it's that same impulse. — Liz Phair

If you've never been to Atlanta, then let me save you a bit of grief. If someone tells you something's on "Peachtree," you must demand that they get more specific. There are probably a dozen incarnations of Peachtree, going in at least that many directions through every part of town. — Cherie Priest

Everything good takes a great amount of effort. Like, things went wrong with 'Prozac Nation' so much, and it went through so many rejections and incarnations, but I felt so much that it needed to exist. But if I hadn't been so persistent and insistent, it wouldn't have happened. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I love women in all their different incarnations. My friends are practically all women. They are much more intelligent than men. — Roberto Cavalli

No one on this earth attains enlightenment anymore without an enlightened master as a guide, unless that person was enlightened in many previous incarnations. — Frederick Lenz

Through incarnations, some beings do go down. That is to say, they forget. The soul falls into an eclipse of itself and there is a downward progression for a time. — Frederick Lenz

There can be no more laying of foundations, any more than there can be other incarnations or crucifixions of Christ or rebaptism. — T.F. Torrance

Leukemia is cancer of the white blood cells - cancer in one of its most explosive, violent incarnations. As one nurse on the wards often liked to remind her patients, with this disease even a paper cut is an emergency. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Fear is the mother of all emotion. Before love, hate, spite, grief, rage, and all the rest, there was fear, and fear gave birth to them all, and ask every combat soldier knows there are as many incarnations and species of fear as the Eskimo language has words for snow. — Ben Fountain

Art is water, and just as humans are always close to water, for reasons of necessity (to drink, to wash, to flush away, to grow) as well as for reasons of pleasure (to play in, to swim in, to relax in front of, to sail upon, to suck on frozen, coloured and sweetened), so humans must always be close to art in all its incarnations, from the frivolous to the essential. Otherwise we dry up. — Yann Martel

Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. — Camille Paglia