Paramahansa Yogananda: 'Remember the best shelter is In the silence of your soul, The Purpose of Life - circa 1920-25

Paramahansa Yogananda arrived in Boston in 1920, he embarked on a successful transcontinental speaking tour before settling in Los Angeles in 1925.

When you look at your body, when you look at the world, it seems that you are engaged with everything, but you have no time for God, but every night it dissolves your body in the subconscious fear and makes you realise that you are not a man, not a woman, but a piece of consciousness, A reflection of His Consciousness, sleeping in space. Enjoy. The drama of sleep gave me the greatest faith in God. When anybody told me I am made in the image of God I laughed, because I couldn't see in this frail body the image of God, but Master said, in this subconscious mirror of sleep you find that you are infninite. That every night you become the infinitive. You are not man or woman, you are joyous and happy and consicous. For when you wake up you have always know that you were never unconscious in sleep. You exactly know how you sleep, only you are not conscious of your body, but you are conscious of your real self and the nest of your troubles starts with the body.

So all the gifts and kindness that you have given to me, I want to give this gift to you. Remember these two natures in you. The nature as a man, as a human being during the day and the nature as God at night. And I often say we are all gods at night, but we become devils during the day. And if we can be gods during the day, we are gods all the time. And this purpose of life must not be drowned in the various engagements. But matter. We must remember if God says 'I have no time for you and stop sticking in your heart.' All your engagements have to be cancelled immediately. For one of the great sayings in India is — he's the cleverest who finds God. He's the cleverest who gives time to find God. He's the cleverest who finds that Supreme happiness within. And he can who can stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds.

He whose peace, the riches of peace cannot be taken away by all the robbers of circumstances and trials. For in this spiritual family, you all remind me by your actions of one who millions forget, and that's why they suffer.

I remember one day I was in the movies. Movies have one fascination because I see the whole world as movies. I was in the booth and I saw the operator was reading a novel. And I saw this automatic machine was going on and the beam was causing on the screen a terrible horror picture. And I said, 'Lord, how is it?' I have the whole show of the universe in front of me. You are this operator who is thinking of new plays and your nature is throwing this beam in this sky. And I see the hero and the villain are nothing but pictures. Nobody is killed. Many are being killed and shot in this picture but I saw from the booth, it was the light that had created the villain and the light had created the hero. And the voice said, remember, the villain is created so that you don't become the villain, but that you love the hero. If you become the villain, your throat has to be cut.

And now you see that there is no villain, no hero. They are both pictures of my beam. After getting away from the villain and evil or tasting poison honey, taste the honey of goodness and then come into the beam and you'll realise that all this world that you see of terrible wars and troubles, is nothing but a picture show, cosmic motion picture show in the sky, you'll be surprised. You never analysed that as soon as you sleep and dream, you can create a world like this, with people suffering from cancer and disease and wars, and some smiling babies born, old men dying —then when you wake up, you see that all those things were made of your dream consciousness. So remember this is the same, nothing different. And until you find that out, this world is a terrible show. I said to God, as he was talking to me, 'But Lord, look at the audience. They are howling and screeching downstairs at this horror show. I see that it's nothing but pictures and light. Cause I see the invisible beam. There are no murderers in the beam, no heroes, nor villains in the beam, but Lord, what about the audience? They don't know it.

Then the voice said, 'Tell them all to look at my beam within. And they will realise that this show was given to entertain them, not to get mixed up with it.' That's why remember, every night he makes you a God, every night he withdraws you from this movie, cosmic movies, and makes you realise you are the son of God You are made in his image. You cannot be violated or hurt by stones. Nor bombs, nor machine guns, nor atomic bombs. Remember the best shelter is In the silence of your soul.

And if you can develop that silence, nothing in the world, nothing in the world can touch you. And you can say [Hindi] ... 'having which no other gain becomes greater, then you can stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds. Then you are not in any way touched by cold and heat, pleasure and pain. But as soon you are touched by these you are with the movies. So I realise this world with terrible wars and troubles, when I see the injustices, I cannot, I cannot uphold the fire. But when I see that light dancing around me, the picture show, then I take glory into the fire. So remember, on one little piece of thought is the whole universe resting and when we rub up that thought at night, the whole universe stumbles away, You do not realise that the ocean is present in every doubt and that great power of God is present in every heart. And I do hope that in your kindness to me, you remember this that I told you, 'Do not get mixed up with this movie, this terrible movies of God. There's one purpose, to get to the beam. Get away from the villain and villainess action and poison honey of evil. Drink with the hero, the good honey of virtue, then get to the bees. Then you will suddenly realise it was only a show. History has no meaning for me. Where God can divide the past and the present and the present and the future, there is no time, nor space. Everything is happening In your own thought.

If you realise that, you'll realise the infiniteness of God and the love of God.



Carl Sagan: 'Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work', Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (TV) - 1980

first aired 28 September 1980, PBS, USA

'See that star?”

"You mean that bright red one?” his daughter asks in return

"Yes, it might not be there anymore. It might be gone by now, exploded or something. Its light is still crossing space, just reaching our eyes now. But we don't see it as it is, we see it as it was.”

Many people experience a stirring sense of wonder when they first confront this simple truth. Why? why should it be so compelling. The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies means we see everything in the past. Some as they were before the earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.

Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light out in to the surrounding darkness no witness could have known that billions of years later. Some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic molecules would fall together to form a place that we call earth. And surely nobody could have imagined that life would arise, and thinking beings evolve who would one day capture a fraction of that light and would try to puzzle out what sent it on its way.

We can recognize here a shortcoming, in some circumstances serious, in our ability to understand the world. Characteristically, willie-nilly we seem compelled to project our own nature onto nature. Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity. Darwin wrote in his notebook, more humble, and I think truer to consider himself created from animals.

We're johnny-come-latelys; we live in the cosmic boondocks; we emerged from microbes in muck; Apes are our cousins; our thoughts are not entirely our own, and on top of that we're making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves.

The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness and there is nobody to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we are inclined to shut our eyes and pretend that we are safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream. If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?

We long to be here for a purpose. Even though, despite much self-deception, none is evident. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for parents to care for us, to forgive us of our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge of preferable to ignorance. Better, by far, to embrace the harsh reality than a reassuring fable.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Our common sense intuitions can be mistaken. Our preferences don't count. We do not live in a privileged reference frame. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

Related content: Richard Feynman, Cargo Cult speech, Caltech, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself'.

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science.

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Stephen Hawking: 'Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space', Questioning the Universe, TED talk - 2008

February 2008,

This is a TED talk, one of the most popular ever, from TED2008

There is nothing bigger or older than the universe. The questions I would like to talk about are: one, where did we come from? How did the universe come into being? Are we alone in the universe? Is there alien life out there? What is the future of the human race?

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time. Then it was discovered that the universe was expanding. Distant galaxies were moving away from us. This meant they must have been closer together in the past. If we extrapolate back, we find we must have all been on top of each other about 15 billion years ago. This was the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe.

But was there anything before the Big Bang? If not, what created the universe? Why did the universe emerge from the Big Bang the way it did? We used to think that the theory of the universe could be divided into two parts. First, there were the laws like Maxwell's equations and general relativity that determined the evolution of the universe, given its state over all of space at one time. And second, there was no question of the initial state of the universe.

We have made good progress on the first part, and now have the knowledge of the laws of evolution in all but the most extreme conditions. But until recently, we have had little idea about the initial conditions for the universe. However, this division into laws of evolution and initial conditions depends on time and space being separate and distinct. Under extreme conditions, general relativity and quantum theory allow time to behave like another dimension of space. This removes the distinction between time and space, and means the laws of evolution can also determine the initial state. The universe can spontaneously create itself out of nothing.

Moreover, we can calculate a probability that the universe was created in different states. These predictions are in excellent agreement with observations by the WMAP satellite of the cosmic microwave background, which is an imprint of the very early universe. We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.

I now turn to the second big question: are we alone, or is there other life in the universe? We believe that life arose spontaneously on the Earth, so it must be possible for life to appear on other suitable planets, of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy.

But we don't know how life first appeared. We have two pieces of observational evidence on the probability of life appearing. The first is that we have fossils of algae from 3.5 billion years ago. The Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago and was probably too hot for about the first half billion years. So life appeared on Earth within half a billion years of it being possible, which is short compared to the 10-billion-year lifetime of a planet of Earth type. This suggests that the probability of life appearing is reasonably high. If it was very low, one would have expected it to take most of the ten billion years available.

On the other hand, we don't seem to have been visited by aliens. I am discounting the reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos? If there is a government conspiracy to suppress the reports and keep for itself the scientific knowledge the aliens bring, it seems to have been a singularly ineffective policy so far. Furthermore, despite an extensive search by the SETI project, we haven't heard any alien television quiz shows. This probably indicates that there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within a radius of a few hundred light years. Issuing an insurance policy against abduction by aliens seems a pretty safe bet.

This brings me to the last of the big questions: the future of the human race. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.

Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space. The answers to these big questions show that we have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I am in favor of manned -- or should I say, personned -- space flight.

All of my life I have sought to understand the universe and find answers to these questions. I have been very lucky that my disability has not been a serious handicap. Indeed, it has probably given me more time than most people to pursue the quest for knowledge. The ultimate goal is a complete theory of the universe, and we are making good progress. Thank you for listening.

Chris Anderson: Professor, if you had to guess either way, do you now believe that it is more likely than not that we are alone in the Milky Way, as a civilization of our level of intelligence or higher? This answer took seven minutes, and really gave me an insight into the incredible act of generosity this whole talk was for TED.

Stephen Hawking: I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves. The alternative is that civilizations don't last very long, but destroy themselves.

CA: Professor Hawking, thank you for that answer. We will take it as a salutary warning, I think, for the rest of our conference this week. Professor, we really thank you for the extraordinary effort you made to share your questions with us today. Thank you very much indeed.

(Applause)TE