Keepers of the Kalachakra Quotes

“Do you know the difference between mythology and history?’ asked Brahmananda. The lady expressed herself in a shrug. ‘Mythology is a set of lies that people rarely believe,’ Brahmananda said and paused. ‘And history?’ ‘A set of lies that people have agreed to believe.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“agree, I have no evidence, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“We refer to quantum physics as science and Vedanta as philosophy, but they are one and the same. From Aristotle all the way to the nineteenth century, the term “natural philosophy”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“There’s a touch of belief within every doubter and a touch of doubt within every believer”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“I am convinced that the world’s liberals are to blame for the rise of conservatives. Liberals were meant to uphold values such as freedom of speech, gender equality, free choice in worship and freedom of sexual orientation. But they looked the other way when it came to Islamic societies that stoned and genitally mutilated their women, killed homosexuals, permitted wife beating, enforced the hijab, allowed marriage of minor girls, killed apostates and instituted laws against blasphemy. It was these double standards of liberals that made ordinary people look for solutions from the right.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Pakistan was created in 1947, Hindus were 15 per cent of the population but were less than 2 per cent by 1998. In Bangladesh of 1931, Hindus were around 30 per cent of the population but are less than 10 per cent today.’ ‘Yes,’ said Thakur. ‘Contrast that with the Muslim population of India that was less than 10 per cent in 1951 and grew to over 14 per cent by 2011. Secularism is the only way to allow people to flourish.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Mythology is a set of lies that people rarely believe,’ Brahmananda said and paused. ‘And history?’ ‘A set of lies that people have agreed to believe.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Do you know that there are twenty-four letters in the Gayatri Mantra and 24,000 shlokas in Valmiki’s Ramayana? The first letter of every thousandth shloka from Valmiki’s Ramayana, when put together, miraculously results in the Gayatri Mantra. Mathematics yet again. It’s all around you!”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“The distance between Earth and the sun is one hundred and eight times the sun’s diameter. The distance between Earth and the moon is one hundred and eight times the moon’s diameter. The diameter of the sun is one hundred and eight times Earth’s diameter.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Reality cannot be explained by words, because it lies beyond the realms of the senses and the intellect,’ said the monk. ‘It can only be intuitively experienced. When the rational mind is quietened, the intuitive mind awakes.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“history and politics are stories that have multiple endings. People choose whichever ending works better for their sensibilities. The novelist, George Santayana, had famously said that history is a pack of lies about events that never happened, told by people who weren’t there. So where lies the ultimate truth?”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Our Earth is 4,600 million years old,’ he told his audience. ‘Now let us imagine that those 4,600 million years are like the life of a forty-six-year-old woman. Each year of this woman’s life represents 100 million years of Earth’s existence.’ Some members of the audience tittered. No one had ever explained it like that to them before. ‘By that arithmetic, animals appeared only during the last six years of this woman’s life,’ said the monk. ‘And it was only a week ago that some apes began to take on human qualities. And taking it from there, it was just four hours ago that our own species, we homo sapiens, learned to hunt, gather and cultivate.’ He smiled at the range of gob-smacked expressions. ‘Isn’t that amazing? But the one fact that should shock you is—’ The audience waited to hear more startling facts from Brahmananda. ‘—that we started maintaining some semblance of historical records only during the last ten minutes,’ he said. ‘In that sense, our written record of history is pathetic and we only have scattered records for the last ten minutes of the forty-six years that Earth has been around.’ A”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Learn to live with yourself. It can be terrifying.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“have no evidence, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra

“Victor Hugo famously said, “Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?” Both the telescope and the microscope help peer into exactly the same phenomena—bundles of energy in constant motion. Taking that idea further, what if we could find behaviour patterns of planets that mimic the behaviour patterns of subatomic particles? What if the “outside” and the “inside” are identical?”
― Ashwin Sanghi, Keepers of the Kalachakra