All Quotes By Tag: Religion
“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.”
“Thus the ancient Jews believed that if they suffered from drought, or if King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Judaea and exiled its people, surely these were divine punishments for their own sins. And if King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish exiles to return home and rebuild Jerusalem, God in his mercy must have heard their remorseful prayers. The Bible doesn’t recognise the possibility that perhaps the drought resulted from a volcanic eruption in the Philippines, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded in pursuit of Babylonian commercial interests and that King Cyrus had his own political reasons to favour the Jews. The Bible accordingly shows no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology, the Babylonian economy or the Persian political system.”
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“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.”
“The show moved along captivatingly. In the same way that the Hare Krishna sect was glorified, suddenly so was Yoga. Yoga! Alarm bells rang in my mind. The Yoga I had seen in India was intense, arduous and serious — a discipline taught by avowed spiritual masters who prepared their disciples for death. So why did ‘Hair’s’ hero in the song ‘Donna’ go to India to see the Yoga light? Why was it associated with drugs and reincarnation and presented as such a sweet, new spiritual experience?”
“Now I look back and realize the devastating impact that Hair’s message had on my thinking, religious outlook, attitudes and morality.”
“Hair represented the foundational ideas that prepared us and our world for the principles that underlie today’s most influential mindset — New Age thinking.”
“I became deeply committed to the New Age agenda, although I must admit I did not understand the spiritual implications. I merely longed for self-improvement and hungered after some kind of peace and love.”
“My life experiences had taught me more about India and its religious ramifications than any of my enlightened friends would have dared guess. And in my recollection, nothing to be found along the streets of Calcutta, Bombay or Madras promised a better life to anyone.”
“So, in accepting the New Age teachings in the 1960s, had I somehow accepted the very religion that had frightened me so much as a child?”
“I’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about myth and religion. I’ve also spent time with things like The Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and Carl Sagan’s book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark; but while I was reading them, I was thinking, “Yes, yes, yes; but don’t you need to maintain a core of solid, rock-hard belief to be an atheist in this world?” [Laughter.] I think what I really like is the idea of belief itself.”
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