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Quote by Robert N. Bellah

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Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

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Robert N. Bellah

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“Most people have their own unique way of looking at life, and the way they look at life keeps on 'changing.' It cannot be like 'a fixed concept' that they desperately want to hold on to. Rather,it is flowing and changing like a fluid like water and not solid like a stone. A stone is a solid, inanimate object, but the way people look at everything and the way they think in their minds is fluid, like a liquid that takes the shape of the container that it finds itself in. This 'changing' happens according to the circumstances that they encounter in their everyday lives, the situations that they find themselves in, and the people that they interact with on a day-to-day basis.If they meet and interact with the same people and find themselves in similar situations, then their philosophy solidifies into a solid, inanimate object. On the other hand, if they meet new people and find themselves in new situations, then their thoughts change and the way they look at life too changes. If you can understand the psychology of a person, then you can understand them better. I feel grateful to the people I have met in life who have changed my way of looking at life. ~ Avijeet Das”

“Most people have their own unique way of looking at life, and the way they look at life keeps on 'changing.' It cannot be like 'a fixed concept' that they desperately want to hold on to. Rather, it is flowing and changing like a fluid like water and not solid like a stone. A stone is a solid, inanimate object, but the way people look at everything and the way they think in their minds is fluid, like a liquid that takes the shape of the container that it finds itself in. This 'changing' happens according to the circumstances that they encounter in their everyday lives, the situations that they find themselves in, and the people that they interact with on a day-to-day basis.If they meet and interact with the same people and find themselves in similar situations, then their philosophy solidifies into a solid, inanimate object. On the other hand, if they meet new people and find themselves in new situations, then their thoughts change and the way they look at life too changes. If you can understand the psychology of a person, then you can understand them better. I feel grateful to the people I have met in life who have changed my way of looking at life.”

“Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr C. D. Broad, ‘that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.’ According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages.”