Quotes from David Zindell's "War in Heaven"

Life moved ever outward into infinite possibilities and yet all 
things were perfect and finished in every single moment, their end 
attained.

Always, life supplied life to itself and grew ever vaster and more 
complex. Living things created burrows beneath the snow and 
songs sailing out to the stars; they made lightships and honey, 
pearls and poems and computers that generated entire universes of 
their own kind of life. Life swirled and pulsed and blazed in 
terribly beautiful patterns across the stellar deeps. The sun and the 
moons spun ecstatically with life's wild fire, and the photons 
danced along the rivers of light that streamed from star to star. 
Life, like and infinite flower, opened everywhere out into the 
universe, and into all possible universes, touching all matter, all 
space, all time with its perfect golden petals and sweet fragrance. 
And it all grew deeper and deeper, and brighter and brighter like a 
star swelling to an impossible brilliance that could have no limit or 
end.

Yes, yes, yes.

- Well, it's a cruel universe, isn't it? Sometimes I think it all just 
falls worse and worse.
- No, it is just the opposite. It is the way creation must always be.

He tried to explain that the great changes rippling through his being 
had little to do with mysticism, in the sense of being magical or 
mystifying. "Truly, it is just pure technology, yes? This is what 
technology is: just consciousness reflected upon itself, gaining ever 
more control of itself and creating new forms."

The way for humankind is not back after all. There is no return to 
simplicity this way. No true <I>halla</i>. I used to think of 
<I>halla</i> as a kind of perfect harmony of flowers and sunlight 
and good clean life and death out on the sparkling snow. A perfect 
balance that life might somdeay achieve - without war, without 
disease, without madness, without asteroids and wild stars that can 
annihilate ten thousand species of animals almost overnight. But no. 
The universe is not made this way. True <I>halla</I> is the 
vastening of life. The deepening into new forms and possibilities 
that we call evolution. 

All rules and boundaries must someday be broken. How else can we 
go beyond ourselves? A thallow chick must break out of his egg, 
but this does not mean that the shell is without value.

You must remember that an oak tree is not a  crime against the 
acorn.

- But <I>how</i> is it possible? How could it be possible that 
everything is really all right?
- How could it <i>not</i> be possible?

- ...If you were to ask me who I thought Bardo <I>really</i> is, I 
suppose I should say he's a man who wants to evolve as much as 
any other man.
- Then evolve.

... the gods restrain each other from trying to be as God. And how 
the gods try to find ways of evade each other's restraints.

But the computer was made to simulate whole universes. You 
cannot even dream what blessed simulations are possible. Human 
beings will always need such computing power even as they need 
computers.

And so at last he stood before the universe naked in his soul and 
saw it as it really was. He saw that if consciousness was just the 
flow  of matter within his brain (or the vibrations of atoms within a 
rock), then the consciousness of the universe was just the flow of 
everything: rocks and photons and starfire and blood. And 
everywhere - in the great Grus Cluster of galaxies no less a 
cathedral on a small, ice-bound planet - this flow grew ever more 
complex.
	This infinite organism that was the universe, in all its infinite 
patience and curiosity, brought forth endless new planets and 
peoples and stars blazing with infinite possibilities.


The Wild

Always, man had felt the urge to discover the true image of 
humanity, the shape and substance of what man might someday 
become. This is the secret of life, of human life, the true secret that 
men and women have sought as far back as the howling moonlit 
savannas of Afarique on Old Earth.

On Old Earth there were beautiful tigers who burned with life in the 
forests of the night. And then there were crazed, old, toothless 
tigers who preyed upon human beings. It is possible to completely 
affirm the world that brought forth tigers into life and still say no 
to an individual tiger about to devour your child.

Who programs the programmer?

Ishq Allah maboud 'lillah: I am program, programmer and that 
which is programmed.

Truly, I cannot know what you are.  Conscious or not, aware of your 
own awareness or only a program running a machine. But you are 
only you, yes? This is the marvel. You cannot be other than what 
you are. Isn't this enough?

Ede, of course, as a man, as his original self before he had dared to 
become a god, had deeply felt the logic of the real universe. Like 
any man, he had felt doubt. But he had scorned his fears and 
uncertainty as most ignoble emotions. He was after all Nikolos Daru 
Ede, the founder of what would become man's greatest religion. He 
must always be a man of genius and a vision and, above all, faith. It 
was his genius, as an architect, to find a way to model his mind in 
the programs of what he called his eternal computer. It was his 
vision, as a philosopher, to justify the carking of human 
consciousness from living brain into the cold circuits of a machine. 
And it was his faith, as a prophet, to show other men that they 
could transcend the prison of their bodies and finally conquer 
death.  

May all our thoughts be beautiful.
May all our words be beautiful.
May all our actions be beautiful.
The Yasa of the Sani

There is no matter without form, and no form not dependent upon 
matter.
- saying of the cetics.

For that is the beauty of organization, for that when one reaches out 
to logically arranged data with the proper senses , the flowing 
information pools fall into form and become more like snowflakes, 
frozen waterfalls, crystal mountains.

They played for the sake of play alone, and their only concern was 
the ultimate evolution of their game.