CONTINUITY

Related States & Conditions | Syntonic | Dystonic

Man decays, his corpse becomes dust and all his relatives die. But a book causes him to be remembered … Better is a book than a well-built house … or a stela in a temple.
Book of Songs
in Kemet and the African Worldview , Maulana Karenga & Jacob Carruthers, eds., 1986

I did not find the world desolate when I entered it. My fathers planted for me before I arrived, so I plant for those who come after me.
Talmud
Jewish Sacred Text

Some groups increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.
Lucretius
c. 95-55 BCE, Roman Poet
De Rerum Natura

In the unfolding of the sequence of created things, those that follow always fit perfectly with those that have preceded; for this sequence is not just a list of separate events tied together by necessity, but has a rational continuity. Since all created things are joined together in harmony, so all phenomena coming into existence show not just succession but a wonderful organic connection.
Marcus Aurelius
121-180, Roman Emperor, Stoic Philosopher
The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius , Mark Forstater, tr., 2000

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever.
The Bible
c. 367 CE, Christian Sacred Text
Ecclesiastes 1:4-5

Since the springhead is timeless,
its branches refresh.
Since neither can cease,
what is the cause of your sorrow?
Think of the soul as source
and created things as springs.
While the source exists,
the springs continually flow.
Empty your head of grief
and drink from the stream.
Don't think of it failing –
this water is endless.
Rumi
1207-1273, Afghani-Turkish Sufi Mystic, Poet
"This Body Is a Rose," The Pocket Rumi Reader , Kabir Helminski, ed., 2001

That all things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.
Francis Bacon
1561-1626, English Philosopher, Essayist, Politician
Thoughts on the Nature of Things , 1604

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822, English Romantic, Poet, Dramatist, Essayist

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.
Herbert Spencer
1820-1903, English Philosopher, Journalist

How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the World!
Emily Dickinson
1830-1886, American Poet
"There Came a Wind," c. 1883

The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
John Muir
1838-1914, Scottish/American Naturalist, Explorer

Out of the sighs of one generation are kneaded the hopes of the next.
Joaquim Machado de Assis
1839-1908, Brazilian Writer, Poet
Education of a Stuffed Shirt

But the body is part of the external world, continuous with it. In fact, it is just as much part of nature as anything else there is – a river, or a mountain, or a cloud. Also, if we are fussily exact, we cannot define where a body begins and where external nature ends.
A. N. Whitehead
1861-1947, English Mathematician, Philosopher
Modes of Thought , 1938

Everything exists through eternity, and will exist through eternity. Only the movement is in succeeding waves and hollows, going back to fine forms, and coming out in gross manifestations. This involution and evolution is going on throughout the whole of nature.
Vivekananda
1863-1902, Indian Guru, Writer
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 1984-1987 , 2:208

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.
W. E. B. Dubois
1868-1963, African-American Sociologist, Writer, Political Activist
"Last Message to the World," 1957

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.
Robert Frost
1874-1963, American Poet

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away – an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.
Car Jung
1875-1961, Swiss Psychologist, Theorist
Memories, Dreams, Reflections , Richard & Clara Winston, trs., 1961

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
Charles Kettering
1876-1958, American Engineer, Inventor

I, who am thinking, have always existed, but not in myself or within the limits of my own personality – and not by an impersonal existence or life either (for without personality there is no thought, and there must have been thought there, since it is now in me); therefore, I have always existed by a suprapersonal existence or life.
Jacques Maritain
1882-1973, French Philosopher
Approaches to God , 1954

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Kahlil Gibran
1883-1931, Lebanese Poet, Mystic, Painter
The Prophet , 1923

Life never stops. The torment of men will be eternal, unless the function of creating and acting and changing, living intensely through each day, be considered an eternal joy.
Le Corbusier
1881-1965, French-Swiss Architect, Designer, Planner
When the Cathedrals Were White

Act as if you were going to live forever and cast your plan way ahead. If your contributions have been vital, there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.
Walter Gropius
1888-1869, German/American Architect, Educator
in The New York Times , 1969

Life … is really a dream, and we human beings are like travelers floating down the eternal river of time, embarking at a certain point and disembarking again at another point in order to make room for others waiting below the river to come aboard.
Lin Yutang
1895-1976, Chinese Writer, Dramatist, Translator
The Importance of Living , 1937

The soul, this mysterious entity who is wholly non-existent to many people and whose quest is a chimera to most people, will eventually prove to be the only one who remains when all others pass away.
Paul Brunton
1898-1981, English Writer, Journalist
The Spiritual Crisis of Man , 1970

Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
1899-1977, Russian/American Writer, Poet, Translator, Critic
Pale Fire

We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1906-, American Aviatrix, Poet, Writer
Gift from the Sea , 1955

We should know that the defeat of the moment is not the defeat of eternity … Life will not perish with us; humanity will not die when we die … We can live only with the resolve to make our best contribution to whatever culture shall survive and to live for the triumph of men whom we shall never know, in ages we shall never experience. This is also maturity – spiritual maturity. Even as we are heirs of martyrs, saints and heroes who lived and died for us and in their death gave birth to our world of conflict, so are we the ancestors of an unpredictable, creative, demanding human society yet in the womb of time.
Joshua Liebman
1907-1948, American Rabbi, Writer
Hope for Man , 1966

Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas
1914-53, Welsh Poet, Writer, Radio Dramatist
in Julia Cameron, Transitions: Prayers and Declarations for a Changing Life , 1999

Life is a continuation. Instead of singing "Happy Birthday," we can sing "Happy Continuation." Even the day of our mother's death is a day of continuation; she continues in many other forms … If you know how to touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, she will always be there with you. If you touch your hand, your face, or your hair, and look very deeply, you can see that she is there in you, smiling.
Thich Nhat Hanh
1926-, Vietnamese Buddhist Master, Poet, Writer, Activist
Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living , 1992

If you look deeply in the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.
Hanh
Present Moment, Wonderful Moment: Mindfulness Verses for Daily Living , 1990

Just as the life that pulses in our bodies goes back to the beginnings of the Earth, so too does that heartbeat carry the pulse of those that come after. By the power of our imagination we can sense the future generations breathing with the rhythm of our own breath or feel them hovering like a cloud of witnesses. Sometimes I fancy that if I were able to turn my head suddenly, I would glimpse them over my shoulder.
Joanna Macy
1929-, American Writer
in The Way Ahead: A Visionary Perspective for the New Millennium , Eddie & Debbie Shapiro, eds., 1992

A man of destiny knows that beyond this hill lies another and another. The journey is never complete.
F. W. De Klerk
1936-, South African President

Like a dying star that in its explosive end scatters the material needed for the evolution of life, the supernova of the esoteric and occult we are witnessing is both an end and a beginning.
William Irwin Thompson
1938-, American Writer, Educator

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God, or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget; that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love, and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before.
Alice Walker
1944-, African-American Writer, Poet, Essayist
"In These Dissenting Times," Revolutionary Petunias , 1970

Life only appears to begin with birth and end with death. The flow of life is in fact continuous and eternal, birth and death are merely transformations.
Susan Taylor
1946-, African-American Editor, Writer
Lessons in Living

This particular life you're living in is a little flicker in the eternal, continual existence … Just like the dream is an interruption in your waking activity, this life is an interruption in your eternal activity. This is just an interruption, a punctuation point in the continuum … you're now asleep in this lifetime and when you wake up you're in the other one.
Deepak Chopra
1947-, Indian/American Physician, Writer
in A&U , 2001 April

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Wisdom for The Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing, © 2004