Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
Interpretation
The quote suggests a disconnection between people's beliefs and their true spiritual integrity.
Salman Rushdie highlights a troubling paradox where individuals profess belief in God while grappling with their inner 'demons,' which likely refers to personal struggles, moral failings, or unexamined beliefs. This statement calls into question the authenticity of one's faith and the need for a more profound spiritual introspection in a world where many claim to be guided by their faith yet often fall short of its true values.
In practice
A speaker at a spiritual retreat discussing the struggles of maintaining authentic faith in a material world.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
I am optimistic when I consider the spiritual dimension which the scientist's discipline forces him to ignore.
When you are self-conscious you are in trouble. When you are self-conscious you are really showing symptoms that you don't know who you are. Your very self-consciousness indicates that you have not come home yet.
If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one.
The need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
In North America, the greatest threat to the Jewish people is not the external force of antisemitism, but the internal forces of apathy, inertia and ignorance of our own heritage.
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