All Quotes By Tag: New-age
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“The theory behind vegetarian eating as the highest form of purity led me to campaign tirelessly for animal rights. Many times I considered animal rights to be more important than human priorities. I didn’t realize until years later that I was developing an attitude towards animals I had rejected growing up in India. Some animals were becoming sacred in my eyes. And I was placing their value well above that of human beings.”
“The same attitude sparked my extreme attempts to protect the environment. Nature was a goddess, part of Mother Earth, to be reverenced and honored. Nature had to be allowed to survive, even at the expense of human needs. In my holistic reasoning, I saw the created as the Creator–I deified nature and man–”
“Without fully realizing it, however, I was actually placing myself in a godlike position of authority.”
“So it was that I justified my morals and ethics. Everything became relative.”
“Although I had become disillusioned with certain aspects of Roman Catholicism, yet I was finding similarities between that religious system and my new-found philosophies. I sought to clear up my own confusions by developing an ecumenical reasoning, accommodating both Christian and Hindu schools of thought. This led to a sense of spiritual superiority for being ‘tolerant’ both of Eastern and Western religions. I welcomed the idea that all paths led to the same God and that all beliefs were equal.”
“The more I attempted to escape through self-consultation, self-help therapies, psychology, psychiatry, and self-analysis, the more frustrated I became.”
“I had erroneously become convinced that I had the power to alter my reality, when in fact it was demonic spirits that were at work in my life.”
“Yoga, a practice that is at the heart of Hindu philosophy and religion, means to yoke. Its goal is to unite man with Brahman, the Hindu concept of ‘God’ or (god-consciousness). Brahman represents everything. It is seen as the all, the absolute. Brahman is both all good and all bad and is the power and the force of the universe–the god of India.”
“Despite our live-for-today philosophy, eventually tomorrow came. Upon returning home, I discovered with dismay that my bank accounts were almost empty.”
“Life was very good to me. Yet I also recall an increasing frequency of deep, inner pain. I remember days of depression. I can still feel the loneliness and the struggle. What was happening? I had every material thing and achieved all the success I could ask for. Yet I felt emotionally bankrupt.”
“Back in the days before CDs, or even cassette recordings, I would spend hours consumed with listening to rhythmic vinyl record albums, unaware that they infiltrated my subconscious with mystical religiosity.”
“Nervously I looked around, but most of the audience joined in. They seemed unaware that they were praying. They didn’t realize they were invoking and praising an Indian deity.”
“Even in Bengal, where I had spent most of my growing years, this sect (which was established there in the fifteenth century A.D.) did not display the sort of fanatic trancelike madness that we witnessed on Oxford Street or on the stage of ‘Hair’.”
“I wondered why Westerners were so enthralled with a religious activity that didn’t incite much enthusiasm even among its own people in India.”