Quotes and Excerpts from Cosmic Conversations
Below are some quotes and selected chapters from the book. Sample chapters are at the bottom of the page.
"..it's possible that our primary role as humans is that of celebration. We have this destiny - and even duty - to become astonished by the universe!"
—Brian Swimme, author of The Universe is a Green Dragon, from Chapter 1
"The emergence of artificial general intelligence will be the next stage of terrestrial macro-evolution. It will be the means by which life will acquire the ability to transcend the limits that biology has placed on our human intelligence."
—James Gardner, author of The Intelligent Universe, from Chapter 4
"We have demonstrated fairly conclusively that through intentionality and volition we have the capacity to influence physical matter with the mind."
—Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, from Chapter 16
"Crisis is vital to evolution for newness to emerge, and failure is important to prevent the repeat of past mistakes. We are currently in the midst of a transition from a system based on power and control to a system that is inherently emergent and creative."
—Barbara Marx Hubbard, from Chapter 13
"You see, birth, life, death, the cycles and rhythms of Nature, the elemental forces of the Universe—these are undeniably real. Like it or not, we humans have always been in an inescapable relationship with a reality that we could neither fully predict nor control."
—Reverend Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution!, from Chapter 7
"In the western worldview we still think that if you can’t see it, then it doesn’t exist. Yet if you think about it, it’s a miracle already that we’re on this planet, hurtling through space at an incredible speed, going around the sun and not falling off…and the whole thing is actually working!"
—Lama Palden, from Chapter 9
"The purpose is to live in balance and harmony. We have always struggled with our human frailties and our human flaws, but we had societies that evolved to not nurture those flaws. It’s a struggle to live that way. It’s not easy."
—Gabriel Horn, from Chapter 10
"We’ve made the assumption that the world ‘out there’ is material in nature. When we drop this assumption, and just accept that it is only mental in nature, then all of physics still absolutely holds true, but it is measuring mental entities rather than physical particles."
—Peter Russell, from Chapter 17
Sample Chapter: Chapter 1: The Creative Cosmos: An Interview with Brian Swimme
Sample Chapter: Chapter 7: The Great Story of Our Time: An Interview with Michael Dowd
Sample Chapter: Chapter 17: Light, Consciousness, and the White Hole in Time: An Interview with Peter Russell