All Quotes By Tag: Religion

“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.”

“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.”

“Real religion can only be realized by lion-hearts who have the guts to go against all predominant prejudices of the society, not by sheep of books.”

“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.”

“In addition to social and ethical reforms, Christianity was responsible for important economic and technological innovations. The Catholic Church established medieval Europe’s most sophisticated administrative system, andpioneered the use of archives, catalogues, timetables and other techniques of data processing. The Vatican was the closest thing twelfth-century Europe had to Silicon Valley. The Church established Europe’s first economiccorporations – the monasteries – which for 1,000 years spearheaded the European economy and introduced advanced agricultural and administrative methods. Monasteries were the first institutions to use clocks, and forcenturies they and the cathedral schools were the most important learning centres of Europe, helping to found many of Europe’s first universities, such as Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca.”

“I always felt I was rather too clever for something like a ‘program for living’, certainly one that had any religious overtones. It’s not that I thought that religion was ‘the opiate of the masses’, if it was, I would’ve had some, I loved opium. It’s that I thought it was dumb. Drab, dry, dumb, shouty, hysterical, dumb. Small-town dumb. Foreign dumb.”

“There is no possible way to have a rational discussion with a zealot: It is rather like beating a child that is already hitting itself.”