From an excellent profile by Chris Parish in EnglitenNext about Vimala Thakar:
"Intellectually people may aspire to emancipation or enlightenment, but emotionally they love small bondages around them. They go on weaving the network of bondages. They want to belong somewhere emotionally—to the family, to their religion. In the name of security, they create these emotional loyalties and a sense of exclusive belonging, while intellectually, they aspire to absolute freedom, enlightenment. How can the two go together?
“They are incompatible, and yet human beings who become sadhakas, inquirers, live a double life. They are not dishonest—I’m talking about an inner division. They feel satisfied by knowing about liberation, reading about it, imagining it. They feel satisfied about this because the word 'liberation’ has its own intoxication, the emotional feel about the meaning of the word has an intoxication. And they live by that intoxication. But there is no factual content. So this inner division causes the pathetic phenomenon that in the evening of their lives, their hands are empty. They only have the shells of words with them, not the inner substance of liberation.”
On Apr 1, 2009 Dave wrote:
From an excellent profile by Chris Parish in EnglitenNext about Vimala Thakar:
"Intellectually people may aspire to emancipation or enlightenment, but emotionally they love small bondages around them. They go on weaving the network of bondages. They want to belong somewhere emotionally—to the family, to their religion. In the name of security, they create these emotional loyalties and a sense of exclusive belonging, while intellectually, they aspire to absolute freedom, enlightenment. How can the two go together?
“They are incompatible, and yet human beings who become sadhakas, inquirers, live a double life. They are not dishonest—I’m talking about an inner division. They feel satisfied by knowing about liberation, reading about it, imagining it. They feel satisfied about this because the word 'liberation’ has its own intoxication, the emotional feel about the meaning of the word has an intoxication. And they live by that intoxication. But there is no factual content. So this inner division causes the pathetic phenomenon that in the evening of their lives, their hands are empty. They only have the shells of words with them, not the inner substance of liberation.”