Recently I was watching the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, whose guest was Jane Goodall, the famed animal rights activist known for her decades long work with chimpanzees.
Jon Stewart praised her for her compassion and warmth and the “reasonable approach” she took to promoting animal rights and the environment. Paraphrasing Dr. Goodall:
It’s awful what extremists and fundamentalists have done; whether you’re conservative, liberal or in the middle, ‘fundamentalists are dangerous.’
It’s what’s wrong with the world today.
She’d been criticized by animal rights activists for not living up to some ideal standard, apparently. Being attacked for enjoying candles on a birthday cake is my definition of fanaticism!
The Ageless Wisdom warns against fanaticism in all forms. When you are obsessed by something, even if it’s a good idea or noble vision, and you hurt or reject someone, you are a slave to that idea.
Fanaticism is when your thoughts become crystallized, and you can no longer advance beyond the original idea. This is why so often fanatics are controlled by the past. Lacking an illumined mind, they resort to outmoded thinking.
Once the mind is enlightened by the light of Intuition it cannot contain any thought forms which are against the principles that enlightenment reveals. Any thought form that does not fit in the harmony of an enlightened mind is rejected automatically. …
A purified mind rejects any false, misleading or degenerated idea or thought and keeps itself in the light.
Torkom Saraydarian, Thought & the Glory of Thinking
Sane people do not like to be slaves to anything or anyone. And when we are controlled by any inner or outer force, we are not masters of our own life.
If you’d like to learn more about Jane Goodall’s recent work, visit Roots & Shoots, engaging the next generation of animal, human and environmental activists, or buy her new book.
