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Entheogens are not to be lightly trifled with... However, if taken with the right attitude and in the proper setting, psychoactive drugs may produce religious experiences. ...it is far less clear that they can produce religious lives.

Huston Smith

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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Clear
Drugs
Religious
Setting
Less
Experiences
Lives
Drug
Psychoactive
May
However
Trifled
Right
Produce
Lightly
Attitude
Settings
Taken
Proper

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Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.
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I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
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Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.
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It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.
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In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
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We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed.
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As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
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Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
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The faith I was born into formed me.
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In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
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We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one is the other.
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
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'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.
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Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.
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...the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action.
Huston Smith
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As known unknowns become known unknown unknowns proliferate the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
Huston Smith
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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
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In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.
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At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.
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I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.
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