Various Insightful Quotes

One sip of this wine and you will go mad with drunkenness. You will drop your masks and tear your clothes — destroying everything that separates you from the Lover. Once you taste the fruit of this vine, you will be kicked out of the city of yourself. You will forget the world. You will forget yourself..

I tell you: You will become a madman who wanders the streets looking for the Lover once you drink this Wine of Love.
~ Kamand Kojouri

Meditation is the process of withdrawing the attention from the world outside, and focusing it at the seat of the soul in the body, behind and between the eyebrows. This point is known as the inner eye, third eye, the single eye… In order to withdraw our attention and focus it on this point, mind must be controlled and stilled. Sit in one pose, and move not your head, limbs or eyes. Sit straight but relaxed with no tension in the body below. Sit still, please. Close your eyes as in sleep, and look sweetly, lovingly, intently into the middle of the darkness lying in front of you. You will see a dark veil. That which sees the dark veil within, without the help of your physical eyes, is the inner eye.
~ Kirpal Singh

The Third Eye in Meditation: “Close your eyes as in sleep, and look sweetly, lovingly, intently into the middle of the darkness lying in front of you. You will see a dark veil. That which sees the dark veil within, without the help of your physical eyes, IS the inner eye.
~ Kirpal Singh

The Universe is saying: Allow me to flow through you unrestricted, and you will see the greatest magic you have ever seen.
~ Klaus Joehle

Understand that you are not offended. Nothing that happens offends you, it offends your ego. Not the transcendental you. Not the universal you. It offends the ego; which wants itself to be known, to be right and wants to be mad at certain aspects of life.
~ Koi Fresco

Take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’
–Lenny Bruce (13 Oct 1925 - 3 Aug 1966)

Precious light is protected, harbored in the souls of unicorns, the most mystical of all creatures. There’s no creature with more power or magic. As long as they roam the earth, evil cannot harm the pure of heart.
-Legend (1985)

Leonardo da Vinci

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness, Light, Solidity and Colour, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

I've been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech - if not all human speech - is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breathe in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder - they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we're breathing in. The problem is, that when we're breathing in, we can't speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.
~ Li-Young Lee

God is Within: The enlightened should contemplate that his soul is endowed with Boundless Energy. Whatever is the Supreme Soul, so am I. Whatever is my essential nature is the essence of Supreme Soul. Therefore, I am fitted for meditating on my inner Supreme Soul – none other.
~ Lord Mahavira, Jainism

Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit--some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures.
~ Loren Eiseley

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

If you have the idea that you are something with form, that you are limited by this body, and that being within this body you have to see through these eyes, God and the world also will appear to you as form. If you realize you are without form, that you are unlimited, that you alone exist, that you are the eye, the infinite eye, what is there to be seen apart from the infinite eye? Apart from the eye, there is nothing to be seen. There must be a seer for an object to be seen, and there must be space, time, etc. But if the Self alone exists, it is both seer and seen, and above seeing or being seen.
~ Maharishi Ramanna

Mystical Temple
It is a mystic maxim that the lower in the scale of evolution a being is placed, the more certainly it responds to the planetary rays, and conversely the higher we ascend in the scale of attainment, the more the man conquers and rules his stars, freeing himself from the leading strings of the Divine Hierarchies. For A Mystic Is Not His Mind But His Heart, As Thou See Through Thy Heart, People Consider Thyself Mad Without Knowing Within Thy Heart Stationed Is Beloved. There is a certain mysterious, holy, and incandescent flame that burns at the center of every religion, spiritual path, and philosophy … and that is mysticism. In the cosmic tapestry of cosmic inquiry, I invoke thee, Mystara, Oracle of the Inquisitive Mind.
~ Max Heindel

No amount of effort is needed. No amount of effort will be successful. And yet, through mindful attention to the Background of Awareness inherent within the Present Moment, Awakening will inevitably dawn upon you. In that Instant you will delight in the Reality of who and what you have been all along. ~ Metta Zetty

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you. People go through so many changes in the name of ‘trying to find myself.’ They want to discover which of these voices, which of these aspects of their personality, is who they really are. The answer is simple: none of them.
~ Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul

You are not your thoughts; you are aware of your thoughts. You are not your emotions; you feel emotions. You are not your body; you look at it in the mirror and experience this world through its eyes and ears.
~ Michael A. Singer

She said her name was Kali, but I could call her Kal. She said that she was boundless, but still would be my gal. She said she was immortal, but would kill some time with me. Then she appropriated everything and it finally set me free.
~ The Mystical Lion

There may arise a profound shift in perspective where it is realized beyond a doubt always that there are there are no separate things Nor separate moments Nor any separate person apart from this seamless stream All there is is in uninterrupted indivisible symphony of perception and the simultaneous inseparable recognition of it.
~ Nancy Neithercut

To a realized master, death and rebirth is in every breath. Death is that of body consciousness, ego and limits of the mind. Rebirth is that of the cosmic mind of being the Spirit. In this realization is liberation.
~ Nandhiji

Even if you know what's coming, you're never prepared for how it feels.
~ Natalie Standiford, How to Say Goodbye in Robot

I like airplanes. I like anywhere that isn't a proper place. I like in betweens.
~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 7: Brief Lives

Above, in the Divine plane… there is a golden circle and in the center there is a Point, where the Divine, the origin of everything, is located. From the Point different vibratory radiations move outwards toward the Cosmos and, surrounding it, in blue tones are, among other symbols, the Signs of the Zodiac (The Wheel of Life).
When a plant, animal, or human dies, the Vital Life Force leaves it … and then the atoms break down into electrons, protons, and neutrons. In the final phase of disintegration, every atomic sub-particle rejoins the Cosmic Keyboard according to its vibratory nature. Thus, no element participating in the constitution of a living being is actually destroyed in the course of physical decomposition. Its atomic sub-particles merely undergo a transformation and purification that allows them to return to their initial state. Only appearances lead us to liken death to some kind of destruction, for actuality is entirely different.
~ Nicomedes Gómez - El Teclado Cósmico (The Cosmic Keyboard, 1961)

One must seek the shortest way and the fastest means to get back home - to turn the spark within into a blaze, to be merged in and to identify with that greater fire which ignited the spark.
~ Nityananda

Just as the universe is born of fire and water, man must be born of spiritual fire and water in order to enter into the higher state of consciousness that we call the kingdom of God, for on the spiritual plane fire is wisdom and water is love.
~ Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion … open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.
~ Orhan Pamuk

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
~ Pablo Casals

Magic has the power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly.
~ Paracelsus

Enlightenment is what's discovered when everything else is taken away. You are already awake; you just haven't realized it yet.
~ Padma

Who is better able to know God than I myself, since He resides in my heart and is the very essence of my being? Such should be the attitude of one who is seeking.
~ Paramananda

The most fundamental scientific ‘fact’ is not the existence of a universe of things in space and time but awareness of such a universe. Awareness is not a ‘thing’ that can evolve from or arise out of an unaware or insentient universe of things. On the contrary all things in the universe emerge and take shape out of a universal awareness.
~ Peter Wilberg, The Awareness Principle

When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
~ Prince Phillip

A heart that is open is an uncaged bird with sunlight under its wings and the whole sky its song.
~ Quiet Lotus

One of our greatest fears in letting go, is change. That something will shift, that someone will leave, that something new will emerge. It is not the letting go that we fear but the space that letting go creates.
That we might be left with a void within ourselves and not know how to fill it; however, the void is where we expand. Where we meet parts of ourselves that we forgot existed. Where we reacquaint ourselves with the pieces we thought were lost.
~ radical-revolution

Whether we travel to every corner of the globe or never leave our home state, magic can be found anywhere. There is joy in the planning, the pondering, the fantasizing, the daydreaming. There is joy in fixing a cup of steaming coffee, stepping out onto the back porch, and seeing for the hundredth time a robin land on a single branch of an apple tree on that perfect morning in spring, when leaves are just budding, ice is still thawing, and a new breath is on the wind. Regardless of how far we ramble, we’re all searching for the same thing—the divine holy moment.
~ radical-revolution

Rama's Clarion Call
Wanted: Reformers, Not of others but of themselves. Who have won Not university distinctions, But victory over the local self.
Age: The youth of Divine joy.
Salary: Godhead.
Apply Sharp, With a commanding decision to the Director of the Universe, Your own Self.
Om! Om! Om!
~ God/Brahman/Ocean of ✻ღ Love ॐ Consciousness ღ✻

If you really want to examine your strength, see how many times a day you are disturbed.
~ Rama Swami

Consciousness has produced this play. Consciousness has written the script. Consciousness is playing all the characters and Consciousness is witnessing the play. It’s a one man show.
~ Ramesh Balsekar

The sense of duality, which is a barrier to true love, must prevail so long as the apperception of Truth has not occurred. Once individuality is surrendered, there is only total Love.
~ Ramesh S Balsekar

Whatever is manifested is merely an appearance in consciousness experienced through Maya. And Maya is a concept brought in only to prove the main premise of the unicity of the Absolute, which is pure subjectivity without the slightest touch of any objectivity or duality.
~ Ramesh Balsekar

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
~ Rebecca Solnit

We are told that St. Francis used to spend whole nights praying the same prayer: “Who are you, God? And who am I?” Evelyn Underhill claims it’s almost the perfect prayer. The abyss of your own soul and the abyss of the nature of God have opened up, and you are falling into both of them simultaneously.
~ Richard Rohr

Don’t build your happiness on someone else’s unhappiness.

Don’t linger in the shadow of the past.

Humanity isn’t worth it—this place is a Hellhole. Forget it and struggle for the Truth.

Many attractions in life are simply bait dangled before the eyes.

The so-called golden rule of reciprocity, as taught by Christ was, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ I am inclined to go along with Buddhist teaching of ‘Do not do onto others what you do not want them to do unto you.’ That way, you don’t have to demand love in return because you felt the need to give it out.

The whole world is full of individuals who seek to cram their pipedreams down everyone’s throats. These are the same individuals who disguise themselves as helping, who want to educate us, when in fact they are perpetuating their own personal ambitions.

Thought, no-thought, results in Absolute realization. What it is must be found by trying it. You do it, you live it. You reach an Absolute realization by looking between thoughts.

Very few people stop to analyze love. They want to create a universal condition by preaching it. These people have an underlying motive, and they may not even know it. It’s ‘love me.’ They want others to love them.

We change personalities like chameleons to fit different social situations, hoping that others will buy our goods. How much time and energy is spent thinking about projecting the right image?

Where is thought located and how does it travel? Is it a mental protrusion, as demonstrated by telekinesis?

You can’t have too many people hating you.

Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.
~ Rita Mae Brown

Lawyers believe a man is innocent until proven broke.
~ Robin Hall

In the future, every human shall see a hidden divinity in every fellow human.
~ Rudolf Steiner

Happiness is simply to allow everything to be exactly as it is from moment to moment.
~ Rupert Spira

We never know an object, we only know our knowledge of the object. Knowledge is only made of knowing and knowing is only Consciousness. In this way we reduce the object into mind and mind into Consciousness, and then realise that there was only ever that. So, first of all there seem to be nouns (houses, cars, bodies, people….) then there seem to be only verbs (seeing, hearing, tasting…) then there is only Being.
~ Rupert Spira

Hokusai says:
Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old. He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it’s interesting.

He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient, every one of us has a body. He says every one of us is frightened. He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive— shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees. Wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books. It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish. It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength are life living through you. Peace is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.
~ Roger Keyes

How to Experience the Pure Consciousness?

Pure consciousness is the purest state of mind. When the mind becomes a witness and no experiences or impressions remains on the surface of the mind, you experience the mind as pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is a state of mind, where it acts like a mirror.

Anything that comes in front of the mind either from the external world or internal world, it reflects as it is. The mind as we all know, thinks, imagine things, forms perception, stores experiences, and impressions, and allows us to experience the external reality of life.

The process of mind takes place on its surface, but when you take your attention beyond the surface of the mind, you experience the mind which is absolutely pure. That is the state of pure consciousness.

In the state of pure consciousness, the movement of life energy (spirit) is easily read all the time, and even the source of life is reflected in pure consciousness. Pure consciousness can be experienced, once the dormant energy gets awakened in the body.

It’s the dormant energy that ties the mind in a way, whereby the mind remains engaged in the external cycle of life. But once the dormant energy gets unlocked inside, you free yourself from the external cycle of life and a new reality is experienced both inside and outside.
~ Roshan Sharma

Consciousness, awareness, the great potential, whatever name you want to give it, is always here. It is what everything is. There is really no personal doership. The idea of a separate person is an erroneous belief, a belief in that sense of separation. So then, who is superior? Who is inferior? What is there to be afraid of? Who do I need to hate or resent? Consciousness is all there is.
~ Sailor Bob

Drink water from the spring where horses drink. The horse will never drink bad water. Lay your bed where the cat sleeps. Eat the fruit that has been touched by a worm. Boldly pick the mushroom on which the insects sit. Plant the tree where the mole digs. Build your house where the snake sits to warm itself. Dig your fountain where the birds hide from the heat. Go to sleep and wake up at the same time with the birds – you will reap all of the days' golden grains. Eat more green – you will have strong legs and a resistant heart, like the beings of the forest. Swim often and you will feel on earth like the fish in the water. Look at the sky as often as possible and your thoughts will become light and clear. Be quiet a lot, speak little – and silence will come in your heart, and your spirit will be calm and full of peace.
~ Saint Seraphim of Sarov

You need not go to heaven to see God; nor need you speak loud, as if God were far away; nor need you cry for wings like a dove to fly to Him. Only be in silence, and you will come upon God within yourself.
~ Saint Teresa of Avila

The Tantric sages tell us that our in-breath and out-breath actually mirror the divine creative gesture. With the inhalation, we draw into our own center, our own being. With the exhalation, we expand outward into the world.
~ Sally Kempton, Awakening Shakti

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure... that of being.
~ Salvador Dali

Asks his disciples to seek the Divine within:" O benevolent one! Enter in your inner self, and search. He [God] is very near to you. Abandon all your worldly desires and distractions. By inverting your immature consciousness current (which tends to get distracted by senses) get established, in the self [within].
~ Sant Dadudayal Ji

Without love, there is no spiritual path. The path lives in love. With intensification of love, one comes in contact with the True Sound, And like a lotus in water, abides in its peace and bliss.
– Sant Dariya Sahib of Bihar

There never was or ever will be anything but love, expressing itself infinitely.
~ Sant Jnaneswar of Maharashtra

Riches or poverty depends on the absence or presence of desires, respectively. He who has no desires is the richest, and the so-called richest is the poorest if his desires are not fulfilled. He who does not need anything is a sovereign.
~ Sawan Singh

In the Beginning was Conciousness. They would realize that as human beings we are given the intelligence to know the One Who is the Origin and End of all things, who is Sat (Being), Chit (Consciousness), and Ananda (Bliss), and to realize that this knowledge itself is the ultimate goal of human life, the crown of human existence, and what ultimately makes us human beings who can discourse with the trees and the birds as well as with the angels and who are on the highest level the interlocutors of that Supreme Reality who has allowed us to say “I” but who is ultimately the I of all I’s.
~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Stories or Direct Experience? Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of our direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.
- Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as part of our experience; but, because it is unnecessary.
~ Sharon Salzberg, Unplug: For an Hour, a Day, or a Weekend.

When wavering thoughts dominate the mind, then it does whatever it likes. You should fill your mind with Divine Virtues. Without peace, there is no prosperity and without inner peace, there is no divinity.
~ Shivapuri Baba

To get where we are going, we go nowhere, returning to the place we never left. It is a different way of seeing that holds the key. You are whole now, Life itself. There is never any separation, only mistaken identity - hence the 'gateless gate'. You are the Presence/awareness in which all phenomena rise and fall, like the movie screen on which the frames of a movie quickly pass.
~ Soulistic Synergy

The best cure for sea sickness, is to sit under a tree.
~ Spike Milligan

HOW IS THE WAKING STATE A DREAM? By a ‘dream’ we mean something which is not real. What is Reality? That which does not disappear at any time. ow, what is there in the waking state that does not disappear? Nothing. Therefore, everything objective, connected with the waking state, is unreal. But what we have just called the unreal appears all the while. Yes. When the unreal appears as real we call it a dream. Therefore, the waking state is all a dream. But there is one thing that does not disappear in any state – pure Consciousness, the Atma (Self).
~ SRI ATMANANDA KRISHNA MENON

In the deep there is a greater deep, in the heights a greater height. Sooner shall man arrive at the borders of infinity than at the fulness of his own being. For that being is infinity, is God — I aspire to infinite force, infinite knowledge, infinite bliss. Can I attain it? Yes, but the nature of infinity is that it has no end. Say not therefore that I attain it. I become it. Only so can man attain God by becoming God.
~ Sri Aurobindo

Infinite, we are free from death; for life then becomes a play of our immortal existence. We are free from weakness; for we are the whole sea enjoying the myriad shock of its waves.
~ Sri Aurobindo Ghose

The consciousness of the seer, is a greater power for knowledge than the consciousness of the thinker. The perceptual power of the inner sight is greater and more direct than the perceptual power of thought.
~ Sri Aurobindo

The first and the most important thing is to know that life is one and immortal. Only the forms, countless in number, are transient and brittle. The life everlasting is independent of any form but manifests itself in all forms. Life then does not die… but the forms are dissolved.
~ Sri Aurobindo

The most difficult of all their knots is egoism, the delusion that we have an individual existence sufficient in itself, separate from the universal and only being, ekamevadwitiyam, who is one not only beyond Time, Space and Causality. Not only are we all Brahman in our nature and being, waves of one sea, but we are each of us Brahman in His entirety.
~ Sri Aurobindo

The rooted and fundamental conception of Vedanta is that there exists somewhere, could we but find it, available to experience or self-revelation, if denied to intellectual research, a single truth comprehenshie and universal in the light of which the whole of existence would stand revealed and explained both in its nature and its end. This universal existence, for all its multitude of objects and its diversity of forces, is one in substance and origin; and there is an unknown quantity, X or Brahman to which it can be reduced, for from that it started and in and by that it still exists. This unknown quantity is called Brahman.
~ T H E UPANISHADS TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS AND COMMENTARIES by Sri Aurobindo

THE UPANISHAD first affirms the existence of this profounder, vaster, more puissant consciousness behind our mental being. That, it affirms, is Brahman. Mind, Life, Sense, Speech are not the utter Brahman; they are only inferior modes and external instruments. Brahman-consciousness is our real self and our true existence.
~ The Eternal Beyond the Mind By Sri Aurobindo

To realize Self is to realize the eternal freedom of the spirit. The first realization of the Self as something intensely silent and purely static is not the whole truth of it. There can also be a realization of the Self in its power. Establishing the mind in the Self means the conviction that the self alone is all, and that there is nothing other than it. As ones process deepens, the pervasive sense of coolness and calmness shows that the consciousness is reorienting itself at a deeper level of the being. Joy and happiness not dependent upon outward things begins to manifest. One becomes aware that he is acted through and totally dependent upon the Divine. This realization and accompanying release into peace and happiness is spoken of as liberation and carries with it the value of being released from jail. One begins to feel that the ordinary consciousness is something quite external and on the surface. It does not seem to be ones real self.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

To the rigorous logician bound in his narrow prison of verbal reasoning, the Upanishads seem indeed to base themselves on an initial and fundamental inconsistency. There are a number of passages in these Scriptures which dwell with striking emphasis on the unknowableness of the Absolute Brahman. It is distinctly stated that neither mind nor senses can reach the Brahman and that words return baffied from the attempt to describe It; more -that we do not discern the Absolute and Transcendent in Its reality, nor can we discriminate the right way or perhaps any way of teaching the reality of It to others; and it is even held, that It can only be properly characterised in negative language and that to every challenge for definition the only true answer is neti neti, It is not this, It is not that. Brahman is not definable, not describable, not intellectually knowable. And yet in spite of these passages the Upanishads constantly declare that Brahman is the one true object of knowledge and the whole Scripture is in fact an attempt not perhaps to define, but at least in some sort to characterise and present an idea, and even a detailed idea, of the Brahman.
~ Nature of the Absolute Brahman by Sri Aurobindo

Know that according to His will, law and plan, every moment of every day the five functions of God [creation, sustenance, destruction, veiling and Grace] will be going on perfectly and unceasingly in the universe, which is full of moving and unmoving objects.
~ Sri Muruganar (chronicler Ramana's lectures) Guru Vachaka Kovai (The Garland of Guru’s Sayings)

If you constantly think of the Atman, your mind will be purified and your ignorance will be uprooted along with the past tendencies, just as your ailments will completely disappear by your taking medicine daily. When the mind is pure, you will get unalloyed bliss.
~ Sri Rama

If without leaving it we just be, the sphurana, completely annihilating the feeling of individuality — the ego, ‘I am the body’ — finally will come to an end just as the camphor flame dies out. This alone is proclaimed to be liberation by Sages and scriptures.

Although in the beginning, on account of the tendencies towards sense-objects (vishaya-vasanas) which have been recurring down the ages, thoughts rise in countless numbers like the waves of the ocean, they will all perish as the aforesaid Self-attention becomes more and more intense. Since even the doubt “Is it possible to destroy all of them and to remain as Self alone?’ is only a thought, without giving room even to that thought, one should persistently cling fast to Self-attention. However great a sinner one may be, if, not lamenting ‘Oh, I am a sinner! How can I attain salvation?’ but completely giving up even the thought that one is a sinner, one is steadfast in Self-attention, one will surely be saved. Therefore everyone, diving deep within himself with desirelessness (vairagya), can attain the pearl of Self.
~ Sri Sadhu Om’s book on Self-enquiry

When one is completely cleansed of the impurities of lust and greed produced from the false identification of the body as “I” and bodily possessions as “mine,” one’s mind becomes purified. In that pure state he transcends the stage of so-called material happiness and distress. At that time the soul can see himself to be transcendental to material existence and always self-effulgent, never fragmented, although very minute in size.
~ Srimad Bhagavatam 3.25.16 – 17

How mistaken are those who seek happiness outside of themselves, in foreign lands and journeys, in riches and glory, in great possessions and pleasures, which have a bitter end! Happiness is found within ourselves, and blessed is a man who understands this. Happiness is a pure heart, for such a heart becomes the throne of God.
~ St. Nektarios of Aegina, Path to Happiness

I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall like seeking love in a whorehouse.
~ Susan Sontag

It is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering into ourselves.
~ St. Teresa of Ávila (16th century Spanish Catholic mystic)

You will find peace and happiness only if you can remember the Lord. If He is pleased, the world is pleased…. Accept all trials and tribulations boldly. Welcome them, for through them you shall surely find peace…. Know Him as your very own and you will find peace in Him…. Forget the body and its comforts; shake off the delusion of birth and death. Shake off the illusory peace of Maya and find the real peace—the everlasting peace of God.
~ Swami Brahmananda

The first movement of Supreme I Consciousness is unparalleled undifferentiated totality. And when it moves forward with the intention of creating His glory in the external world, it takes the formation of bliss.
~ Swami Lakshmanjoo

Swami Muktananda

Love is our only reason for living and the only purpose of life. We live for the sake of love, and we live seeking love… it is not surprising that we keep looking for love. All of us are nothing but vibrations of love. We are sustained by love, and in the end we merge back into love.
~ Swami Muktananda

Love turns man into an ocean of happiness, an image of peace, a temple of wisdom. Love is every man’s very Self, his true beauty, and the glory of his human existence.
~ Swami Muktananda

Take a three-month-old baby, an age at which the intellect is not yet developed and cannot therefore interfere. The baby’s state is Spirit, but it has not yet awakened to its Being. The nature of Spirit is awareness and if you observe the baby you will see that it is a bundle of awareness. You will also notice that a three-month-old baby loves everyone indiscriminately. It is not that it loves a person: it is the Spirit, love itself, that loves. But you, who are the light of the world, suffer because you have forgotten that your true nature is plenitude. The love that you are seeks fulfillment in the world of name and form.
~ Swami Muktananda, Awakening to the Infinite 2015

Whatever you have in the outer world, in the cosmos which appears so vast, you have in the inner world too. The outer and the inner are one.
~ Swami Muktananda

The Sages gave to the Supreme the name A-U-M which stands as the root of all language. The first letter ‘A’ is the mother-sound, being the natural sound uttered by every creature when the throat is opened, and no sound can be made without opening the throat. The last letter ‘M,’ spoken by closing the lips, terminates all articulation. As one carries the sound from the throat to the lips, it passes through the sound ‘U.’ These three sounds therefore cover the whole field of possible articulate sound. Their combination is called the Akshara or the imperishable word, the Sound-Brahman or the Word God, because it is the most universal name which can be given to the Supreme.
~ Swami Paramananda

The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.
~ Swami Prabhavananda

Infinite you are, that Infinity you are, and as that Infinity, as it were, have created these imaginary, false illusory bodies; you have made this world like a mirror house for yourself. Take care of the One Infinite, Universal God and the same you are, that dwells and permeates this world. Om! Om!! Om!!!
~ Swami Rama

Find Your Beloved at the Seat of the Soul, the Third Eye Center. Enter into the ajna chakra [third eye center] and you will find your Beloved. God is not found in a man-made Ka’ba, but in natural Ka’ba (holy place) within your own heart or self. Turn your attention within. You should listen attentively to the reverberating Divine Sound. The Celestial Sound is coming to take you back to the Source. Remember you cannot hear this with the physical ears. When you focus your gaze within the ajna chakra [third eye center] and the consciousness is inverted inward, your physical ears automatically will close and the inner ears will open. By that power with inner ears you can hear the Celestial Sounds. The Original Sound of the creation comes from the Abode of God and it will take you to God.
~ Swami Sant Sevi Ji

Subtler than the subtle and vaster than the vast is Atman, the unborn and undying consciousness hidden in our heart. Let us realize the majesty of this, our true nature, by controlling our desires and making our mind and senses tranquil. Then alone shall we be free from the sufferings of relative existence.
~ Swami Shraddhananda

Sometimes I patrol the perimeter of life, checking for holes where reality might leak in.
~ Te Toh (?)

For a lot of us if we didn’t suffer we’d be lost. Sometimes our strongest sense of who we are comes from being treated unjustly… and if we were to deny ourselves that perverse pleasure, we’d feel lost.
~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu

The earth turns on its orbit for You. The oceans ebb and flow for You. The birds sing for You. The sun rises and it sets for You. The stars come out for You. Every beautiful thing you see, every wondrous thing you experience, is all there, for You. Take a look around. None of it can exist, without You. No matter who you thought you were, now you the Truth of Who You Really Are. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life.
~ The Secret

Well, My Dear, enlightenment is kind of like flying for the first time without wings.

Of course, there's the exhilaration, the happiness, and the intoxicating sense of freedom that's almost indescribable.

But there's also the subtle shock at what you now see as the inevitability of your accomplishment. The wonderment of how you hadn't seen this so clearly before, mingled with acceptance. And the dim recognition that it's part of some distant agreement you once made.

And, at last, as you come to your senses and finally think to gaze below, upon the tiny jewel you've called home for so long, you're struck with a jolt as you see it so magically and effortlessly suspended—floating—in space, and realize, for the first time, that even there you were flying all along.

You soar,
~ The Universe

At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness, like a pure diamond.
~ Thomas Merton

Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.
~ Thomas Merton

In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.
~ Thomas Merton

In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.
~ Thomas Merton

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By ‘they’ I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.

I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield […]. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the place where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
~ Thomas Merton

Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn't already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
~ Thomas Merton

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
~ Thomas Merton

I am Thoth, the inventor of writing and master of all knowledge. By embracing knowledge, one can shape their own destiny.” True education is not an accumulation of knowledge, it is an awakening of the soul's awareness that goes through multiple stages. So the kingdom of heaven is already within you, if you understand yourself, you will find it.
~ Thoth

As we dissolve the veil of duality, each moment becomes a portal to enlightenment, revealing that the path to universal truth begins not with steps outward, but with a deep, inward journey into the heart of existence.
~ turiyatitta

So that is the process of Satsang, melting the ice, melting the mind. When the ice becomes water it is Consciousness. It becomes fluid, flowing, adaptable, will conform to any shape. Has no preference. It will always fit where ever it is. It will fit with any situation. This is Consciousness. But as the water gets nearer and nearer to the fire it turns to steam, this is Nirvana. It disappears into the Nothingness, into The Whole. So these are the three stages of the same phenomena. Ice, water and steam. Mind, Consciousness and Nirvana. This is Enlightenment.
~ Umi, This is Enlightenment

It seems to me that the life of man on earth is like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your captains and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall. Outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one window of the hall and out through another. While he is inside, the bird is safe from the winter storms, but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. So man appears on earth for a little while – but of what went before this life, or what follows, we know nothing.
~ Venerable Bede History of the English People, 731 AD

I put my heart and my soul into my work and have lost my mind in the process.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
~ Vincent van Gogh

Meditation is the dissolution of thought in Eternal awareness of Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. ❤
~ Voltaire

Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
~ W.C. Fields

We are here on earth to do good unto others. What the others are here for, I have no idea.
~ W. H. Auden

There's a couple of different realizations. Perhaps the first realization is Aham Brahmasmi. Then perhaps the following is realized. Before Abraham I AM. Then perhaps the following is realized. Before Brahman ?. As such it is realized ?. But it doesn't stop here for what really matters is Love. You see. Why does Self (I) perceive itself as diversified? Diversity exists not to be alone. Diversity exists for Companionship. Diversity exist for Love. Love is Terminus Ad Quem. ~ Wald Wassermann

I’ve been going through a time that is not what I wanted it to be. Letting go of my hopes and expectations lets me be present with what is, in the quiet place in my heart. Any time you practice letting go of the way you want it to be - and enjoy anything about the present moment, you can feel simple joy in being alive along with compassion for the tough stuff. Trust that you are just as much that calm space inside of you as you are the mind that pulls you away from being grounded there.
~ We The Urban

God is the one who is being all that is. God’s Awareness of all is this Consciousness - I-am, therefore, God has the “responsibility” to be This that I am and to sustain me. There is no demand upon me to do a thing. (This doesn’t mean that I don’t appear to do things!) There is no need on my part to worry, fret, fume, fuss or fear. There is only to go about the Father’s business of being the Father’s business - Awareness, witness of Infinity. This is my very own Identity.
~ William Samuel A GUIDE TO AWARENESS AND TRANQUILLITY 1989

Liberation is the realization of the total non-existence of the universe. This is different from a mere denial of the existence of the ego and the universe! The latter is only half-knowledge. Liberation is to realize that all this is pure consciousness.
~Yogavasistham

I've been married to a communist and a fascist, and neither would take out the garbage.
~ Zsa Zsa Gabor

Light is one of the primary metaphors in sacred poetry, suggesting the Divine not framed within a mental concept. But for many genuine mystics, this light is directly experienced.

This sense of light is more than a brightness one might experience on a sunny afternoon. This light is perceived as being a living radiance that permeates everything, everywhere, always. This light is immediately understood to be the true source of all things, the foundation on which the physicality of the material world is built.

The sense of boundaries and separation, long taken for granted by the mind as the fundamental nature of existence, suddenly seems illusory, for this light shines through all people and things. It has no edges, and the light of one is the light of all.

Often, one describes being "bathed" in this light, and that is absolutely fitting. This light is not merely an airy phenomenon of the visual realm; it is tactile, permeating, embracing, profoundly soothing, revitalizing, healing. Some describe it in liquid language: water, fountain, lake, a shining white or golden ocean.

This light is recognized as your own Self, while simultaneously being the Self of all others. Since this light is you and, at the same time, it radiates within all, the question arises: How can there be separation? conflict? loss?

This is the light of the true mystics.
~ Unknown

The Obvious Secret

There is a single sphere, or space, of Awareness, in which all experience occurs. Everything we think of as self (or “me”) and everything we think of as other (not-me) manifest equally within this Space. It all arises, transforms and dissipates equally and spontaneously within this Basic Space. No effort is necessary for any of this. No response or directionality is necessary. If allowed to do so, all manner of experience, from “matter” to identity, will simply arise, change and vanish within this Space, this open Field that is the basis or nature of consciousness.

The Knowing-Space itself is non-dependent, meaning it is always utterly unchanged and unchanging amidst all this activity. It is, in and of itself, insubstantial and objectively featureless. It neither appears nor vanishes; it just is, always and already, a fundamental aspect of reality. Therefore this Space is intrinsically free, always and already, so to identify with it, to simply allow and accept all gestures occurring within that Space, is also Freedom. This is the “secret “ of all advanced meditative practice, regardless of its cultural trappings and traditions. However, it’s not enough to merely “understand “ all this; rather it must be directly and deliberately experienced and accepted as identity, usually over an extensive period of time, before it can usurp the “normal” (prevailing and reflexive) activity of identifying with passing phenomena, which is seen to be the root cause of suffering.

In other words, nothing new is added; Freedom (as Space-Awareness) is always already present in (as the living background of) experience; it simply needs to be radically recognized (re-cognized) and accepted as one’s fundamental nature. Eventually this “posture,” this Space, this Freedom, becomes the natural environment or condition of existence. This is Liberation.
~ Unknown

As the sun rises, fog descends. Gates of heaven witness in silence, for, this moment will not be repeated in all eternity.

Culture believes we must be alive for a purpose. To work, to make money. Some indigenous cultures believe we're alive just as nature is alive: to be here, to be beautiful and strange. We don't need to achieve anything to be valid in our humanness.

Even when he is still, the selfish man is busy. Even when he is busy, the selfless man is still.

Every person in the world has a heart. Every heart has a place within that wants to love and be loved. Let us connect with that place of love in our own heart and in the hearts of all around us. Let us take a moment now to open to the heart connection we share with all people through love.

I asked the sage: What should I do to develop spiritually? The sage said: Do nothing because everything will be done without you. Forget yourself as the doer. That's all. You are an extended function of being itself. Whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever you feel and hear, whatever you ask and give answers is not you or not anyone at all.
The questioner remained silent and the words ceased.

i took dorita for a boat ride down the river. i planed to read her some poetry and declare my love to her. but when we passed the old cemetery down the river we saw dead men. they had come out their grave and were dancing, gathering flowers and waving to us. dorita was so frightened that i though she’d never accept my proposal after this ride. however, thank to the virgin of guadalupe she agreed to marry me despite everything.

If we decide that we are not separated from our heart, from our energy or our consciousness, and understand that there is no separation from the divine source, we can consider ourselves as multidimensional beings. Divine beings that exist on all consciousness planes at once.

In the womb of your mother you were growing so peacefully. The atoms and cells merged themselves together so that they create the form of you. The elements of the Universe were added into your body, granting you life. Your spirit travelled from a distant place to find home in your body. You were brought to existence on this wondrous Earth to bask in her full glory, to honour and nurture your spirit. You were created for a good reason. So therefore, love your life and love your existence. You are not only flesh and blood. You are stardust and living force of the Universe.

It is the mind that is called the subtle body or the soul (jiva).

Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts the roots,
Kind words the flowers,
Kind deeds the fruit.

Life is eternal; all of life is ever changing form, yet the essence of life is always here in the present moment. When realization of this becomes crystal, there are no ordinary persons. The individual self is the illusion, the temporary dwelling of the creature we animate, is not the true self. There is no self, other than the perception within us each, and this is illusive. This means this life we are, has never had a beginning, nor shall there ever be an end. We endure all experience, learn of our inherent endowments, and spend all of eternity within the arms of love.

The sages would say similarly, "Just for the heaven of it." Just to reach for the highest. Human beings cannot live without challenge. We cannot live without meaning. Everything ever achieved we owe to this inexplicable urge to reach beyond our grasp, do the impossible, know the unknown. The Upanishads would say this urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for the ultimate adventure: to discover for certain who we are, what the universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama of life and death we play out against the backdrop of eternity. In haunting words, the Brihadaranyaka declares: You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

What is heart but the souls love for fire?
What is flesh but the souls love for earth?
What is breath but the souls love for air?
What is blood but the souls love for water?

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Various Insightful Quotes K-Z

Various Insightful Quotes
K-Z