Jacob Needleman Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Death is the great equalizer. I've seen that phenomenon many times. I've had people in my classes come to me, men and women over 50 years old, and they say, "I made it, I'm rich. But what the hell is my life for?"

  Jacob Needleman

  Men, Years, Class

  12 Copy quote

• The differences between religions are only differences involving the pathways that lead toward the practice of directly experiencing higher levels of perception and understanding. All religions are paths to a metaphorical mountain-top variously named Wisdom, enlightenment, self-realization, the kingdom of heaven, righteousness, etc. Differences that lead to violence and persecution are based on a corrupted relationship to the teachings and practices of religion.

  Jacob Needleman

  Teaching, Heaven, Understanding

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

• As to how I would guide someone who is confused about the idea of God, I would suggest that he or she begins identifying what one might called "philosophical friends," - people with whom one could seriously examine our thought about God through listening to each other, reading important and useful books together and trying to think for oneself while familiarizing oneself with the ideas of some of the world's great thinkers. Cultivate openness without gullibility and skepticism without cynicism.

  Jacob Needleman

  Confused, Book, Philosophical

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• At the present moment in our culture this yearning for meaning and consciousness, this yearning to give and serve something higher than ourselves, is breaking through the hard crust of our widespread cultural materialism and pseudo-scientific underestimation of what a human being is meant to be together with an equally tragic overestimation of what we human beings are capable of in our present everyday state of being. The intensity of the present confusion about the nature and existence of God is a symptom of this yearning within the whole of our modern culture.

  Jacob Needleman

  Giving, Confusion, Everyday

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

• This "new" idea of God proposes that all the characteristics traditionally attributed to the purely external God are, in an important sense, attributes of this inner force of consciousness. When this inner energy of higher consciousness is experienced, it then becomes clear that such an energy permeates the entire universe. In this way, it is through self-knowledge that the existence of an external God is verified and understood.

  Jacob Needleman

  Important, Energy, Consciousness

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• What is it that makes all of us end each day with the sense that we have not lived our time, but have been lived, used by what we do?

  Jacob Needleman

  Each Day, Used, Ends

  6 Copy quote

• As my personal explorations continued, I experienced this quality of inner reality more and more and could no longer doubt that the meaning of God lay in this direction. At the same time, these undeniable experiences lit up and were in turn illuminated by all the philosophical and historical knowledge I had by then amassed and I began to understand in an entirely new way the teachings of both Judaism and Christianity as well as the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.

  Jacob Needleman

  Teaching, Philosophical, Buddhism

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• Money is like a mirror to our culture. What we see tells us who we are.

  Jacob Needleman

  Mirrors, Culture, Who We Are

  6 Copy quote

• The work of cultivating experiences called "peak experiences" or "mystic moments" or "breakthroughs" until they become more accessible is part of the essential nature of genuine spiritual discipline. These are moments, at the very least, of approaching the experiential verification that there does exist something Higher within and perhaps also outside of ourselves. Moments at the very least of approaching what the religions call God.

  Jacob Needleman

  Spiritual, Discipline, Moments

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• And, as soon as possible, be on the lookout for someone whose whole manner of speaking and being makes, as it were, a "sound" that draws your mind and heart. And then, little by little, try to see if that person can be of real help on the way to genuine self-knowledge and insight about what God is and is not. In this realm, more than any other even, the paradoxical marriage of both openness and scepticism is essential.

  Jacob Needleman

  Real, Heart, Mind

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• In order to teach a course in the history of Western religious thought, I had to do a great deal of research in the writings within the Judaic and Christian traditions and I was astonished to find in those writings philosophical thought of great power and sophistication. These writings completely blew away all my opinions about what I had taken to be the irrationality or immaturity of religious ideas, opinions which were and still are fashionable in many intellectual and literary circles today.

  Jacob Needleman

  Christian, Religious, Philosophical

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

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