Subhash Kak

“A culture is like a lens through which people construct their world.”

“Once scientists and scholars invest parts of their career in support of a paradigm, it becomes a sort of a self-betrayal to abandon it.”

“Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid.”

“The essence of the Vedas is a narrative on who the experiencing self is. Ordinary science informs us of the relationships between objects and also their transformations. But the Vedas say that this ordinary science leaves out the self who observes these objects.”

“Beauty takes us to a space that is ineffable, a place of secrets.”

“The best paradise is the paradise we are exiled from.”

“What is the chance that one can roll up the sky like a hide?”

“The world is a game of information and paradox.”

“I have so much of desire that desire itself is my fulfillment.”

“People embrace false magical theories in the hope something good will come out of them. In the most extreme of these, good comes out of them only at the end of this life, in paradise.”

“Man is a mimic animal, happiest acting a part, needing a mask to tell the truth.”

“Gods have many faces.”

“The body is like the wife to the spirit. The two must cohabit to create new forms, but their pleasures rarely coincide.”

“When the mind grasps the universe, the senses retreat.”

“History is scraps of evidence joined by the glue of imagination.”

“Ritual is intimately connected with the mask, either in the wearing that hides the true face, or in the adoption of a public face.”

“Modern life alienates us from Nature, even our own.”

“If the heart sorrows over physical loss, the spirit rejoices over hope of understanding.”

“Europe has resurrected its pagan gods.”

“The dance of the peacock attracts not only the peahen but also the human.”

“The clash of civilizations is nothing but a clash of different myths.”

“One is not a single self, although there is some common thread holding together disparate incarnations.”

“If chess is about decisive victory by vanquishing the enemy by taking the fight to the place where the king is located, weiqi is about consolidation of territory.”

“If social media can bring the sense of freedom, it can also bind people into delusional cults.”

“The idea of consciousness requires not only an awareness of things, but also the awareness that one is aware.”

“Since language is linear, whereas the unfolding of the universe takes place in a multitude of dimensions, language is limited in its ability to describe reality.”

“There is nothing as uplifting and inspiring as the Upanishads.”