Spiritual Einstein

 

Albert Einstein, renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to theoretical physics, stands as an emblem of scientific genius and intellectual prowess. Yet, beyond the realm of scientific inquiry, Einstein delved into the deeper mysteries of human existence, expressing profound insights into spirituality and the nature of consciousness. While his name is synonymous with the theory of relativity and his role as a Nobel laureate, Einstein's lesser-known contemplations on spirituality provide a fascinating glimpse into the multifaceted dimensions of his intellect.

 

Throughout his life, Einstein grappled with questions that extended beyond the confines of empirical observation, pondering the fundamental nature of reality and humanity's place within it. His exploration of the cosmos was not confined solely to mathematical equations and scientific experiments; it encompassed a profound curiosity about the metaphysical aspects of existence. In his quest for understanding, Einstein exhibited a keen appreciation for the interconnectedness of scientific inquiry and spiritual introspection.

 

In the following quotations, drawn from various letters, interviews, and writings, Einstein's reflections on spirituality shine a light on his philosophical inclinations and his understanding of the human condition. These excerpts unveil a side of Einstein that transcends his scientific laurels, revealing a thinker deeply attuned to the mysteries that lie beyond the grasp of empirical observation. They also serve as a testament to Einstein's enduring legacy as not only a brilliant scientist but also a philosopher whose thoughts continue to inspire us today.

 

I particularly appreciated Eckhart Tolle’s observation “Einstein had an interesting statement when he said, ‘The true value of a human being is determined by the degree to which he or she is free of the self.’ He had some amazing statements. If he had not become a scientist, he would’ve become a spiritual teacher.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Quotes

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What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.

What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.

~ Albert Einstein

 

When Einstein gave lectures at U.S. universities, the recurring question that students asked him most was:

- Do you believe in God?

And he always answered:

- I believe in the God of Spinoza.

Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes.

(Spinoza) : God would say:

Stop praying.

What I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life. I want you to sing, have fun and enjoy everything I've made for you.

Stop going into those dark, cold temples that you built yourself and saying they are my house. My house is in the mountains, in the woods, rivers, lakes, beaches. That's where I live and there I express my love for you.

Stop blaming me for your miserable life; I never told you there was anything wrong with you or that you were a sinner, or that your sexuality was a bad thing. Sex is a gift I have given you and with which you can express your love, your ecstasy, your joy. So don't blame me for everything they made you believe.

Stop reading alleged sacred scriptures that have nothing to do with me. If you can't read me in a sunrise, in a landscape, in the look of your friends, in your son's eyes... ➤ you will find me in no book!

Stop asking me "will you tell me how to do my job?" Stop being so scared of me. I do not judge you or criticize you, nor get angry, or bothered. I am pure love.

Stop asking for forgiveness, there's nothing to forgive. If I made you... I filled you with passions, limitations, pleasures, feelings, needs, inconsistencies... free will. How can I blame you if you respond to something I put in you? How can I punish you for being the way you are, if I'm the one who made you? Do you think I could create a place to burn all my children who behave badly for the rest of eternity? What kind of god would do that?

Respect your peers and don't do what you don't want for yourself. All I ask is that you pay attention in your life, that alertness is your guide.

My beloved, this life is not a test, not a step on the way, not a rehearsal, nor a prelude to paradise. This life is the only thing here and now and it is all you need.

I have set you absolutely free, no prizes or punishments, no sins or virtues, no one carries a marker, no one keeps a record.

You are absolutely free to create in your life. Heaven or hell.

I can't tell you if there's anything after this life but I can give you a tip. Live as if there is not. As if this is your only chance to enjoy, to love, to exist.

So, if there's nothing after, then you will have enjoyed the opportunity I gave you. And if there is, rest assured that I won't ask if you behaved right or wrong, I'll ask. Did you like it? Did you have fun? What did you enjoy the most? What did you learn?...

Stop believing in me; believing is assuming, guessing, imagining. I don't want you to believe in me, I want you to believe in you. I want you to feel me in you when you kiss your beloved, when you tuck in your little girl, when you caress your dog, when you bathe in the sea.

Stop praising me, what kind of egomaniac God do you think I am?

I'm bored being praised. I'm tired of being thanked. Feeling grateful? Prove it by taking care of yourself, your health, your relationships, the world. Express your joy! That's the way to praise me.

Stop complicating things and repeating as a parakeet what you've been taught about me.

What do you need more miracles for? So many explanations?

The only thing for sure is that you are here, that you are alive, that this world is full of wonders.

- Spinoza

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I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.

~ Albert Einstein

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Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. Matter is spirit reduced to point of visibility. There is no matter.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think. 

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Time does not exist – we invented it. Time is what the clock says. The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.

~ Albert Einstein

 

A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

 

When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.

~ Albert Einstein

 

We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.

~ Albert Einstein

 

When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The ancients knew something, which we seem to have forgotten.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.

~ Albert Einstein

 

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike. We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The common idea that I am an atheist is based on a big mistake. Anyone who interprets my scientific theories this way, did not understand them.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will transcend a personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can not help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

~ Albert Einstein

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I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. I claim credit for nothing. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.

What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

~ Albert Einstein

 

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and ...to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.

~Albert Einstein

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. 

One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. 

It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. 

Never lose a holy curiosity.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results. 

~ Albert Einstein

 

I think 99 times and find nothing.

I stop thinking, swim in the silence,

and the truth comes to me.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.

~ Albert Einstein

 

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.

~ Albert Einstein

 

I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. The tree outside is life… The whole of Nature is life… The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Everything is determined…by forces over which we have no control.

It is determined for the insect as well as for the star.

Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust—

we all dance to a mysterious tune,

intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.

~ Albert Einstein

 

What is reality?

What we have called matter is energy (light),

whose vibration has been so lowered

as to be perceptible to the senses.

There is no matter.

~ Albert Einstein

 

I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?

~ Albert Einstein

 

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion.

It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology.

Covering both the natural and the spiritual,

it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience

of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity.

~ Albert Einstein

 

I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: “Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills” accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper.

~ Albert Einstein

 

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.

~ Albert Einstein

 

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.

~ Albert Einstein

 

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavor — property, outward success, luxury — have always seemed to me contemptible.

~ Albert Einstein

 

If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water, or a flower which sends its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or even our own selves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays this melody from an inscrutable distance—whatever name we give him—Creative Force, or God—escapes all book knowledge.

~ Albert Einstein

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