The higher dimension of religion has also always been practiced by a relatively few uncommon individuals. Indeed, it was largely the response to the more conventional or superficial aspects of such extraordinary personalities that produced the great cultic movements of exoteric religion among the masses. But such cultic movements are created by and designed for the instruction and social improvement of ordinary people, not men and women of the more highly evolved or awakened type. Therefore, alongside the development of exoteric religions there have always been secret societies and esoteric groups founded on practice of higher personal, moral, and biologically evolutionary disciplines.
Adi DaRelated topics
conventional development dimension esoteric extraordinary few great women improvement instruction men mass moral ordinary people personal practice religion response secret social superficial type higherRelated quotes
I grew up in a mostly Buddhist environment. My father, when very young, was the first American to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He now teaches Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University and is regarded as this country's foremost authority on Buddhism. When the Dalai Lama comes to America, it's my father who is his host. When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however. But Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them.
Uma Thurman
Our situations are arranged by higher agents to allow us to become tired of trying to manipulate the material energy. Due to not being properly appreciative of the beauty of relationship with the Lord, humankind is given a temporary arena in which to act out our desires. This environment is designed to frustrate, disgust, and disappoint us, to make us contemplative and introspective. Ultimately it is meant to drive us away from the temporary world in favor of that which is eternal. This is arranged for us to finally realize that our happiness lies not in dabbling with the material energy but in serving the Lord unconditionally, thus becoming whole again.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami
There is no need in these mathematical days to defend the use of symbolism. It is regarded by many schools of modern thought as the only safe form of language. Wittgenstein treats symbols as something more than conventional signs, and regards them as corresponding in some way to the reality to which they refer. He would probably accept Gurdjieff's dictum that:
Symbols not only transmit knowledge but show the way to it.
Even though other thinkers deny any objective reference to symbols, no one questions that symbolism has a power beyond that of ordinary language. It is different with the language of myth. This is despised by superficial thinkers, but the greatest philosophers have known its value.
John G. Bennett
Even when altruism is allowed (as, for example, in Gary Becker's model of rational allocation), it is assumed that the altruistic actions are undertaken because they promote each person's own interests; there are personal gains to the altruist's own welfare, thanks to sympathy for others. No role is given to any sense of commitment about behaving well or to pursuing some selfless objective. All this leaves out, on the one hand, the evil passions that early theorists of capitalism contrasted with self-interest and, on the other, the social commitments that Kant analyzed in The Critique of Practical Reason and that Adam Smith discussed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Amartya Sen
Neoconservatives believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support. ..."[W]ar" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world.
Francis Fukuyama
