YouSaid · the spoken record

Alan Lightman

lines on the record: 14
first: 2020-05-06
most recent: 2020-05-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The coronavirus has involved the world in a way that even the two world wars of the 20th century did not involve the entire world. It's involving the entire world. And although there is a lot of inequality in the way that we're experiencing the coronavirus, I think there was a British writer named Damien Barr who recently said that we're different boats, but we're in the same storm. We are all participating, experiencing the same storm now. And that unites us. In the last couple of months, there have been a lot of beautiful acts of courage, of invention, of goodwill. It's just everybody in the world is saying, no, we're not going to be defeated by this storm.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think so. For me, my inner self is the part of me that imagines that dreams, that thinks about who I am and what's important to me. And if you think of our whole country, America as a person with an inner self, does it recognize that it has an inner self? Is it giving itself The stillness and the quiet to think about who America is and what's important to America. I think that our inner self is our real freedom. And if America does not recognize its inner self, It doesn't have a real freedom. And if America doesn't have a real freedom, if it cannot listen to that quiet voice of its inner self, then how can it help other countries gain freedom? How can it be part of the harmony of the group of nations? How can it help bring peace if it doesn't recognize its own moments of stillness?”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the pace of life has been increasing since the Industrial Revolution, and some of it has been invisible. The technological advances and economic prosperity have all been increasing the pace of life. And we've just sort of gone along with the wave of prosperity and technology and not realize that we have lost these moments of stillness. We've lost the silences, the privacies, the moments that you had in the cloud, the moment that I had in the boat. I'm hoping that in this period now where a lot of us are forced to slow down. We can develop a new habit of mind, a new way of being in the world, a recognition of the importance of slowing down of stillness.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“do some introspection which we do too little of we've been running around not thinking about what our values are and that takes quiet time to do that”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes, it gives us a greater appreciation of the invisible people that make our lives run. But I think that there might be one or two silver linings to this devastation, and one of them is that it is forcing many of us to slow down. Of course, you have to have a certain amount of privilege to be able to slow down. But I hope that we can become conscious of the frenzy of our normal lifestyle, where most of us run around checking off items on our to-do list, being connected to the grid 24-7. Everything is scheduled up. And we haven't had the time to think about who we are to reflect on what's important to us, to be quiet and still. And I believe that one of the possible benefits of this period we're going through now is that it's forcing some of us to slow down.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People have lost their jobs and we need to celebrate the healthcare workers and the people working in grocery stores that are keeping everything going”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I think there is a silver lining to the virus. And of course, when you say that, you have to first acknowledge the tremendous human suffering that's going on, the billions of people who don't even have clean water to wash their hands.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now that we're talking about transcendent experiences, we should be Yeah, it's a glimpse. It's a glimpse of something. And of course, we don't know what that larger thing is. Einstein said someone asked him whether he was a spiritual person or a believer or something. And he said, I feel like we are children going into a library and we see a lot of books in the library written in different languages. We can't read the books, but we know that somehow they got there, that something produced those books.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's the same thing. And I think all of us have had experiences like this. One of the aspects of the experience you're describing, and I imagine you felt too, is you lose track of your body. You lose track of your ego. Lose track of yourself and you lose track of time. It's a beautiful experience.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are other human experiences that we have, like the one we described lying in the boat looking at the stars that are not reducible by science and that are part of some other world, some other existence. I think that's one of the things that connects us as people.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd like to distinguish between the physical universe, which is the subject of science and what I might call the spiritual universe. And by the spiritual universe, I mean the collection of all of those experiences that we have Tied to something larger than ourselves. I'm not talking about organized religion. I'm talking about this very vital personal experience like the one I had lying in the boat in Maine, looking up at the stars, where we feel connected to things bigger than ourselves. And those are two domains, the scientific and the spiritual, they each had their own region of validity of questions like how old is the earth or what is the cause of climate change, those lie in the physical realm. And they are the realm of science.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just me, just me on the boat After midnight I lay down on the boat and looked up at the sky, and I felt like I was falling into infinity. I felt like I was emerging with the stars, and not only with the stars, I felt like I was merging with the cosmos. It was an incredible feeling. I felt like I was part of something larger than myself. And I've been a scientist all of my life. But I realized that later that that was an experience that was really not reducible by the methods of science, the feeling that I had of being connected to something big.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While I was coming back to an island late at night, it was after midnight, and it was a clear night, and there was no one out on the water. And I turned off the engine of the boat and it got even quieter, and then I turned off the running lights of the boat and it got even darker. And I lay down in the boat. And just looked up at the sky.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The world has gotten more and more interdisciplinary, so we need people that can cross disciplines and talk to each other.”
2020-05-06 · Oprah's Super Soul · Dr. Alan Lightman: How to Lead a Less Hurried Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source