Philip Goldberg > Quotes

“By sacralizing both nature and human flesh, Whitman set the poetic template for what some consider a homegrown Tantra, the stream of Vedic spirituality that sees the divine in the mundane and directs sensory experience toward spiritual realization. “He taught people a way of beholding nature which is itself a form of prayer,” said the author and poet Diane Ackerman. She called Leaves of Grass “a sacred American text about the essential goodness and perfectibility of people, the sanctity of the common man, the holiness of the human body viewed naked and up close, the privilege of democracy, the need to forge one’s own destiny, and the duty of all to discover the world anew, by living in a state of rampant amazement at the endless pocket-size miracles one encounters every day.”16 That is as good a description of an American Tantra as can be imagined. Transcendental”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

“In the 1930s the eminent historian Will Durant wrote, “Perhaps, in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things.”2”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

“Sanatana”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

“Vedanta-Yoga is a kind of empirical science of the inner life; its postulates can be tested in the laboratory of one’s own consciousness”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

“Duvali”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

“Every American who checks the spiritual-but-not-religious box or shuffles off to a meditation retreat is squarely in the Transcendentalist lineage. A surprising number of the people I interviewed, when recalling the origins of their interest in Eastern philosophy, named Emerson or Thoreau as a catalyst.”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

“Do you habitually find fault instead of looking for signs of goodness? Can you transform your disdain into a kinder feeling? Remember, you’ll be doing it not for the other person, but to protect your soul from toxic emotions.”
― Philip Goldberg, Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Calm, Clarity, and Courage

“Only the depth of bliss in meditation is an adequate measure of spiritual development.

The archetypal American seeker: independent, restless, inquisitive, fed up with dogma and superstition, hungry for inner transformation and a taste of the Transcendent; in short, precisely the type of person who was eager to imbibe what ambassadors from the East had to offer.

Customs and mannerisms are nonessentials resulting from certain climatic influences. The real development of man consists of the development of his mind power.

"Self-realization" resonates with the yankee spirit of independence and personal improvement.

- Why the Almighty permits evil, Yogananda asked.
Gandhi responded:
- I am content with the doing of the task in front of me. I do not worry about the why and wherefore of things.
-”
― Philip Goldberg, The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru

“Emerson used India to formulate his philosophy, and India used Emerson to legitimize its ancient wisdom to the modern mind.”
― Philip Goldberg, American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West