From ‘Living with the Himalayan Masters’ by Swami Rama

Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose, a prominent Indian scientist, analysed the Ganges water and concluded: “There seems to be no other river water like this anywhere in the world. Its mineral qualities have powers to cure many diseases.”



He muttered the Sanskrit verse “During that which is night to others, the enlightened one keeps awake.” Then he explained: “The finest hours are the hours of night, but very few know how to utilize their worth and silence. Three categories of people remain awake at night: the yogi, the bhogi [sensualist], and the rogi [sick person].”

From ‘Quest beyond Religion’ by Dr I. M. Singh

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport”
- The Earl of Gloucerster in Shakepeare’s King Lear



Every man thinks God is on his side.
The rich and powerful know that he is.
- Jean Anouilh (1910-87), French dramatist



If God did not exist,
it would be necessary to invent Him.
- Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer



In the real dark night of the soul
It is always three o-clock in the morning.
-Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American novelist



When being asked by Napoleon why he had made no mention
of God in his book about the universe, Mecanique celeste,
French mathematician and astronomer,
Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827),
replied: “I have no need for that hypothesis.”



Hell is other people.
- Jean-Paul Sartre, (1005-80), French philosopher



Mark Twain once said:
Man is the religious animal; he is the only religious animal.
He is the only animal that has true religion – several of them,
He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and
cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.



The Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479 CE) once said:
If a lie is repeated ten times it becomes a truth.
And time will embroider the truth.



Once the great philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if after dying he was brought to God and asked why he had not been a believer. Russell replied, “I would say, not enough evidence God, not enough.”



….Mahatma Gandhi…once said to a young Christian priest who was preaching to him:
A rose does not preach
It simply spreads its fragrance.
The fragrance is the sermon.



The first commandment in the Hebrew Book of Old Testament says:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Because I am a jealous God.



To become a popular religion, it is only
necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
- Dean Ing (1860-1954), British Churchman.



Christianity has made of death a terror which
was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan.
- The Failure of Christianity,
By Marie Louise de la Ramme (1839-1908), British novelist



Had I been present at the creation
I would have given some useful hints
for the better ordering of the universe
- Alfonso Wise (c. 1221 - 84), King of Castile and Leon



Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) …..
Religion is the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity, and
it is destined to disappear when human beings learn to face
reality as it is resisting the tendency to edit to suit our fantasies.



The most savage controversies are those
about matters as to which there is no
good evidence either way.
- Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), British philosopher



Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grace.- Longfellow.

From ‘To the Frontier’ by Geoffrey Moorhouse

When the doors of the plane were opened, warmth wafted in; and with it came the familiar first intoxicant of the East, the penetrating odour of aviation fuel and hot earth, with a trace of decay which tantalizes because it can be either animal or vegetable, or a compound of both.



To the Pathans, who have sometimes come here from their mountain fastnesses to the north, Baluchistan is ‘the dump where Allah pitched all the rubbish left over from creation’. The Baluch themselves have regarded it without such contempt, but more wryly. In their homelands, they say, “If you see a cow you have found water, if you see a donkey you have found a camp, if you see a camel you are lost.”



In Pukhtu, the language of the Pathans, the word for the son of your father’s brother is tarboor; which is also the word for your enemy.



……..shops selling nothing but brass and copper utensils …..where a shopkeeper discouraged business by his piety. He was absorbed in the Koran every time I passed him, holding the book in both hands and bobbing his head rhythmically forward in the same religious oblivion that seizes Orthodox Jews at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.



She had bronze hair cascading from a wide-brimmed straw hat which was laden with artificial cherries and other fruits, and she wore the kind of diaphanous dress that needs foundation garments if it is to be respectable.