The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore, if you want to discover nature's nakedness, you must destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there your soul must stay.

~ Meister Eckhart

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

~ Sogyal Rinpoche

[The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying]

When all the Buddhas manifest themselves in the world, they proclaim nothing but the One Mind.

~ Huang-Po

A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious understanding; and by this understanding you will awaken to the truth.

~ Huang-Po

The philosophic outlook rises above all sectarian controversy. It finds its
own position not only by appreciating and synthesizing what is solidly based
in the rival sects but also by capping them all with the keystone of
nonduality.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 1: Toward Defining
Philosophy > # 471]

Pass beyond form, escape from names!
Flee titles and names toward meaning!

~ Rumi

Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own....Stand still, be quiet.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

In the strictest sense, we cannot actually think about life and reality at all, because this would have to include thinking about thinking, thinking about thinking about thinking, and so *ad infinitum*. One can only attempt a rational, descriptive philosophy of the universe on the assumption that one is totally separate from it. But if you and your thoughts are part of this universe, you cannot stand outside them to describe them. This is why all philosophical and theological systems must ultimately fall apart. To 'know' reality you cannot stand outside and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it.

~ Alan Watts

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

~ Voltaire

Whoever wants the "I" to yield up its mysterious and tremendous secret must stop it from looking perpetually in the mirror, must stop the little ego's fascination with its own image.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks> Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 2: I-thought: 17]

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.

~ Swami Vivekananda

Comfort is no test of truth. Truth is often far from being comfortable.

~ Swami Vivekananda

Like everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong. The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free.

~ Nisargadatta

Take someone who doesn't keep score,
who's not looking to be richer,
or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: He's free.

~ Rumi

Everything is new now for me.
My mind is new, the moon, the sun.
The whole world looks rinsed with water,
washed in the rain of I am That.
Lalla leaps and dances inside the energy
that creates and sustains the universe.

~ Lalla

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 1: What Am I? > # 2]

God has revealed to me that only the Paramatman, whom the Vedas describe as the Pure Soul, is as immutable as Mount Sumeru, unattached, and beyond pain and pleasure. There is much confusion in this world of His maya. One can by no means say that 'this' will come after 'that' or 'this' will produce 'that'.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

Prayer can draw in grace by a spiritual attunement of one's being in the intensity of feeling, which is the motive power behind prayer. Feelings that rise from the deepest recesses of one's heart can produce immediate results, because of their proximity to reality.

~ Swami Krishnananda

We do not know how much we have done before and how much we have to suffer to undo those deeds but the karmic law knows it. Sometimes, to us, it may seem to be terrible suffering; still, we should accept and undergo that suffering. There is no intention to destroy a person by giving him or her more hardship. The intention is to purify the person, so the suffering and the hardship come according to the capacity of the individual. If you face it with all courage, even the suffering becomes very mild. It is up to you. In fact, pain becomes stronger or milder according to how one faces it.

~ Swami Satchidananda

Look for the mysterious in life. Wherever you look – in the white clouds, in the stars in the night, in the flowers, in a flowing river – wherever you look, look for the mystery. And whenever you find that a mystery is there, meditate on it. Meditation means: dissolve yourself before that mystery, annihilate yourself before that mystery, disperse yourself before that mystery. Be no more, and let the mystery be so total that you are absorbed in it. And suddenly a new door opens, a new perception is achieved.

~ Osho

Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!

~ Swami Vivekananda

But in the beginning it is bitter if all your belief systems are taken away from you. The fear and anxiety which you have been suppressing for millennia, which is there, very alive, will surface immediately. No God can destroy it, only the search for truth and the experience of truth – not a belief – is capable of healing all your wounds, of making you a whole being. And the whole person is the holy person to me.

~ Osho

He recognized with absolute certainty the empty fragility of even the noblest theorizings as compared with the definitive plenitude of the smallest fact grasped in its total, concrete reality.

~ Teilhard de Chardin

My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am', it may look too simple, even crude.

~ Nisargadatta

I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.

~ Nisargadatta

All dependence on another is futile, for what others can give others will take away. Only what is your own at the start will remain your own in the end. Accept no guidance but from within, and even then sift out all memories for they will mislead you. Even if you are quite ignorant of the ways and the means, keep quiet and look within; guidance is sure to come. You are never left without knowing what your next step should be. The trouble is that you may shirk it. The Guru is there for giving you courage because of his experience and success. But only what you discover through your own awareness, your own effort, will be of permanent use to you. Remember, nothing you perceive is your own. Nothing of value can come to you from outside; it is only your own feeling and understanding that are relevant and revealing. Words, heard or read, will only create images in your mind, but you are not a mental image. You are the power of perception and action behind and beyond the image.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

[I am That - Chapter 98]

The ego totally ceases to exist and is fully absorbed into the Overself only in special, temporary, and trance-like states. At all other times, and certainly at all ordinary active and everyday times, it continues to exist.The failure to learn and understand this important point always causes much confusion in mystical circles. The state arrived at in deep meditation is one thing; the state returned to after such meditation is another. The ego vanishes in one but reappears in the other. But there are certain after-effects of this experience upon it which bring about by degrees a shift in its relation to the Overself. It submits, obeys, expresses, and reflects the Overself.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 8: The Ego > Chapter 1: What Am I? > # 213]

Make no mistake about it--enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's see through the facade of pretense. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagine to be true.

~ Adyashanti

Whoever has dealings with others cannot afford to ignore the double nature
of human nature. Failure to recognize it leads to confusing consequences.
Looking neither for the good alone nor for the bad alone, but remaining
emotionally detached during such an act of recognition, is a philosophical
attribute. He who possesses it may hold no illusion about the mixed motives
in others and yet still practise goodwill toward them. This must be so, for
the primal source of all Goodness inspires him daily and constantly to hold
to this practice.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 13: Human Experience > Chapter 2: Living in The World >
# 408]

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

~ Francis Bacon

The internal suffering of the person who does not reciprocate the criticism and abuse hurled at him burns down the abuser taking away all the latter's merit.

~ Mahabharata

[Adiparva 87.7]

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away.

~ Dag Hammarskjold

Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.

~ Dag Hammarskjold

Dharma protects those who protect it.

~ Mahabharata

[Vana Parva 313.128]

there comes a time
when you have to let go
all the words
all the teaching
and trust the infinite

~ Billy Doyle

We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young -- not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age -- and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.

~ Krishnamurti

What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

~ Sri Aurobindo

And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

~ John Milton

Do not try to keep quiet, do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Don't be restless about being quiet, miserable about being happy.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

For whoever seeks God in some special way,
will gain the way and lose God who is hidden in the way.
But whoever seeks God without any special way,
finds Him as He really is...He is Life itself.

~ Meister Eckhart

Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.

~ Teilhard de Chardin

So many things which once had distressed or revolted him — the speeches and pronouncements of the learned, their assertions and their prohibitions, their refusal to allow the universe to move — all seemed to him now merely ridiculous, non-existent, compared with the majestic reality, the flood of energy, which now revealed itself to him: omnipresent, unalterable in its truth, relentless in its development, untouchable in its serenity, maternal and unfailing in its protectiveness.

~ Teilhard de Chardin

The world’s ways are mysterious. There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not able to see this now. Time will reveal it. Be Patient.

~ Swami Sivananda

All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.

~ Frank Herbert

Symbols endure when their meaning is lost.

~ Frank Herbert

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

~ Frank Herbert

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

~ Frank Herbert

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Taking no theoretical position, not committed to any beliefs, not wearing any labels, not putting himself in any categories, the philosophical student starts his search for truth in intellectual freedom and ends it in personal inner freedom. He is then what he is.

~ Paul Brunton

A little thinking may incline the mind toward atheism, but greatness of study brings the mind back again to God.

~ Francis Bacon

All I can say is "I am", all else is inference. But the inference has become a habit. Destroy all habits of thinking and sleeping. The sense "I am" is a manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, Reality or by any other name. The "I am" is in the world but it is the key which can open the door out of the world.

~ Nisargadatta

When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, "To know one's self." And what was easy, "To advise another."

~ Diogenes Laertius

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.

~ Thomas Paine

Too late I came to you, O beauty both so ancient and so fresh, too late I came to love you. And behold, you were within me and I was out of myself, and there I was searching for you.

~ St Augustine

Experience, however sublime, is not the real thing. By its very nature it comes and goes. Self-realization is not an acquisition. It is more of the nature of understanding. Once arrived at, it cannot be lost.

~ Nisargadatta

We grow through investigation, and to investigate we need experience. We tend to repeat what we have not understood. If we are sensitive and intelligent, we need not suffer. Pain is a call for attention and the penalty of carelessness. Intelligent and compassionate action is the only remedy.

~ Nisargadatta

You are the truth
from foot to brow.
Now, what else
would you like to know?

~ Rumi

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

~ Emerson

What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

The feeling, 'I am He', is not wholesome. A man who entertains such an idea, while looking on his body as the Self, causes himself great harm. He cannot go forward in spiritual life; he drags himself down. He deceives himself as well as others. He cannot understand his own state of mind.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

Integrity has no need of rules.

~ Albert Camus

Sit on the summit of a thousand mountains without leaving the crossroads.

~ The Secret of the Golden Flower

Whatever is contrary to the Tao will not last long.

~ Lao Tzu

Mind can know only that which is of the same nature as itself, namely, thought.

~ Paul Brunton

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.

~ Alan Watts

Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.

~ Leonardo da Vinci

Possessing much knowledge is like having a thousand foot fishing line with a hook, but the fish is always an inch beyond the hook.

~ Zen Proverb

Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.

~ Zen Proverb

Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw yourself from them.

~ Zen Proverb

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

~ Dogen

When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much.

~ Fen-Yang

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.

~ Walter Kaufmann

In controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

~ Buddha

There are many standing at the door, but those who are alone will enter the bridal suite.

~ Jesus

[The Gospel of Thomas]

Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

~ Jesus

[The Gospel of Thomas]

This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero!

~ Swami Sivananda

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

~ Emerson

He then learns that in going down into the secrets
of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds.

~ Emerson

The divine Friend of all creatures conceals His friendliness in the mask of an enemy till He has made us ready for the highest heavens; then, as in Kurukshetra, the terrible form of the Master of strife, suffering and destruction is withdrawn and the sweet face, the tender arm, the oft-clasped body of Krishna shine out on the shaken soul and purified eyes of his eternal comrade and playmate.

~ Sri Aurobindo

Love of man, love of woman, love of things, love of thy neighbour, love of thy country, love of animlas, love of humanity are all the love of God reflected in these living images. So love and grow mighty to enjoy all, to help all and to love for ever.

~ Sri Aurobindo

When I had the dividing reason, I shrank from many things; after I had lost it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellant, but I could no longer find them.

~ Sri Aurobindo

The differences between human beings still remain after illumination. The variations which make each one a unique specimen and the individual that he is, still continue to exist. But the Oneness behind human beings powerfully counterbalances.

~ Paul Brunton

He is beginning to master wisdom when he tries to learn how not to try.

~ Paul Brunton

You need not to push life about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, which is the dying now to the now. For living is dying without death life cannot be.

~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Why is it that so many people are so unaware of their own higher existence? The answer is that their faculty of awareness itself is that spiritual existence. Whatever they know, people know through the consciousness within them. That in them which knows anything is their divine element. The power of knowing--whether it be a thought that is known, a complex of thoughts such as memories, a thing such as a landscape--is a divine power for it derives from the higher self which they possess.

~ Paul Brunton

Outwardly go with the flow, while inwardly keeping your true nature. Then your eyes and ears will not be dazzled, and your thoughts will not be confused, while the secret within you will expand greatly to roam in the realms of absolute parity.

~ Huainan-tzi

Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence.

~ Meister Eckhart

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.

~ Thomas Merton

It is all the mind can do – discover the unreal
as unreal. The problem is only mental. Abandon
false ideas, that is all. There is no need of true
ideas. There aren't any.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The excessive joy and throbbing ecstasy of which the annals of mysticism so often speak belong mostly to the novice and intermediate. The truly advanced man experiences quite the contrary, which is a deep sadness, although it never shakes his unalterable serenity. This is because the first two are primarily preoccupied with their personal feelings whereas the third has also brought compassion for all mankind within the orbit of his outlook.

~ Paul Brunton

The eventual trend of evolution is through and away from personality, as we now know it. We shall find ourselves afresh in a higher individuality, the soul. To achieve this, the lower characteristics have slowly to be shed. In this sense, we do die to the earthly self and are born again in the higher self. That is the only real death awaiting us.

~ Paul Brunton

Ram Tzu knows this...

No one
In the whole history of argument
Has ever been right.

~ Ram Tzu

Life is no place
For idle speculation.
No one has ever learned
From the mistakes of others.

A lie cloaked in truth
Is still a lie.
If it makes sense to you
You're in real trouble.

You always look for God
In high places…
Guess again.

~ Ram Tzu

There is a desert
I long to be walking,
a wide emptiness,
peace beyond any
understanding of it.

~ Rumi

The surest sign of spiritual progress is a total lack of concern about progress. There is an utter absence of anxiety about anything like liberation and a sort of hollowness in one's being, a kind of looseness and involuntary surrender to whatever might happen.

~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

The mind can have dealings only with kindred objects formed from its own
substance, that is, with thoughts, ideas. Therefore when it knows material
objects they must really be ideas.

~ Paul Brunton

When the intellect, bewildered by the multiplicity of holy scripts, stands unperturbed in blissful contemplation of the Infinite, then hast thou attained Spirituality.

~ Bhagavad Gita

[Trans. Purohit Swami Ch2, V2]

Since cleverness is your pride
and fills you with wind,
become a simpleton so that
your heart may remain healthy.
Not a simpleton warped by buffoonery,
but one distraught and bewildered in God.

~ Rumi

The great scholars of the age split hairs
in all the sciences.
They have gained total knowledge and
complete mastery of things
that have nothing to do with them.
But that which is important and
closer to him than anything else,
namely his own self,
this your great scholar does not know.

~ Rumi

Never try to be a guide, stay a mere disciple.
To guide others is only an obstacle on the way.

~ Rumi

You are my face: no wonder I don't see You:
such closeness is a mystifying veil.
You are my reason: it's no wonder I don't see You,
because of all this perplexity of thought.
You are nearer to me than my jugular vein.

~ Rumi

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

~ Gandhi

There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul. Those things which speed us up and harden us are going to get in the way of the soul.

~ Rowan Williams

There is an essential clash somewhere. It is to do with the functional view of human beings. What are humans for? The Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu, the Sikh, would say that we are for the glory of God; so that God's light may be reflected and God's love diffused. It is never just about how we fit into the cogs of society, or about economic production. The more our education system is dominated by functionalism, skills, productivity, and the more our whole society is determined by that kind of mythology, the harder it is for the religious voice to be heard. There is a real abrasion between lots of the forms of modernity and religion.

~ Rowan Williams

This world is a bridge, pass over quickly and build no house upon it.

~ Shaykh Isa (Jesus)


[Inscription on a bridge in Lahore dating back to Mogul times]

So, Ananda, you must be lamps unto yourselves. Rely on yourselves, and do not rely on external help. Hold firm to the truth as a lamp and a refuge, and do not look for refuge to anything besides yourselves. A brother becomes his own lamp and refuge by continually looking on his body, feelings, perceptions, moods, and ideas in such a manner that he conquers the cravings and depressions of ordinary men and is always strenuous, self-possessed, and collected in mind. Whoever among my disciples does this, either now or when I am dead, if he is anxious to learn, will reach the summit...

~ Buddha

[Digha Nikaya ii.99-100, Mahaparinibbana Suttanta

Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.

Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the earth.
This is primal union.

He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.

~Lao-tzu

One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"
"No", answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No", Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?"
asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake", Buddha replied.

The Master was always teaching that guilt is an evil emotion to be avoided like the very devil -- all guilt. "But are we not to hate our sins?" a disciple said one day. "When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself."

~ Anthony de Mello

O seeker,
These thoughts have such power over you.
From nothing you become sad.
From nothing you become happy.

You are burning in the flames
but I will not let you out
until you are fully baked,
fully wise and fully yourself.

~ Rumi

If he is not too proud to begin at the point where he finds himself rather than at some point where he once was or would now like to be, if he is willing to advance one step at a time, he may realize his goal far more quickly than the less humble and more pretentious man is likely to realize it.

~ Paul Brunton

Zen ... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

~ Alan Watts

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

~ Alan Watts

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

~ Alan Watts

Yoga is the restraint of the modifications of the mind.
Then there is abiding in the seer's own form.

~ The Yoga Sutras

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

~ Elbert Hubbard

After you have rejected what was to be rejected and accepted what was to be accepted, then only acceptance remains hollow. At the end you'll say, "What's this acceptance for even? I don't need it". Then you'll arrive at "Who am I?".

~ Swami Amar Jyoti

The question "Who am I?" is not really meant to get an answer, the question "Who am I?" is meant to dissolve the questioner.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Water says to the dirty one, "Come here."
The dirty one says, "But I am so ashamed."
Water says, "How will you be made clean without me."

~ Rumi

[Mathnawi II, 1366-7]

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

~ Hermann Hesse

Realise deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.

~ Eckhart Tolle

To know is not to demonstrate or explain. It is to enter into the vision.

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

~ Hermann Hesse

The truth is lived, not taught.

~ Hermann Hesse

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

~ Hermann Hesse

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

~ Hermann Hesse

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamour for, a leader.

~ Hermann Hesse

I've lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.

~ Rumi

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

~ Kahlil Gibran

True discipline is really just self-remembering; no forcing or fighting is necessary.

~ Charles Eisenstein

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.

~ C S Lewis

If Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times and not in thee thyself; then art thou lost eternally.

~ Angelus Silesius

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world."

~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn't very much.

~ Eckhart Tolle

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.

~ Gandhi

Investigate what is and not what pleases.

~ Goethe

On the exoteric level the traditions are irreconcilable. On the esoteric, experiential level of the heart reigns an eloquent, reverential silence.

~ Frederick Frank

How do I listen to others? As if everyone were my Master speaking to me his cherished last words.

~ Hafiz

Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

~ Hermann Hesse

He should not be discouraged because others have gone ahead on the path more
quickly than he, any more than he should be gratified because some have gone
ahead more slowly than he, for the fact is that the goal he seeks is already
within his grasp. He is the Overself that he seeks to unite with, and the
time it seems to take to realize this is itself an illusion of the mind. Let
him, therefore, go forward at his own rate and within the limits of his own
strength, leaving the result in the hands of God.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 5: Self-Development > # 267]

Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by
making Mind the object of our attention, not only does
the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of
its own accord but its steady unchanging character
itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing
thoughts.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 7: Contemplative Stillness > # 10]

One must be willing to stand alone—in the unknown, with no reference to the
known or the past or any of one’s conditioning. One must stand where no one
has stood before in complete nakedness, innocence, and humility. One must
stand in that dark light, in that groundless embrace, unwavering and true to
the reality beyond all self—not just for a moment, but forever without end.
For then that which is sacred, undivided, and whole is born within
consciousness and begins to express itself.

~ Adyashanti

We should come to know that there is more reality and sacredness in a blade of grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about reality.

~ Adyashanti

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

~ Rumi

Doubt transports you to the truth. Who does not doubt fails to inquire. Who does not inquire fails to gain insight. Without insight, you remain blind and perplexed.

~ Al-Ghazali, Sufi master (1058-1111)

The solution to your problem is to see who has it.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

The unawakened ego submits passively to the lower influences which come to
it out of the shadows of its own long past and to the sense-stirring
suggestions which come to it out of the surroundings in which it moves. But
when it has found and surrendered to the Overself in the heart, this blind,
mechanical responsiveness comes to an end and an aroused, enlightened, fully
aware, inner rulership replaces it.

~ Paul Brunton

The main thing is that you stop telling lies to yourself. The one who lies to himself and believes his own lies comes to a point where he can distinguish no truth either within himself or around him, and thus enters into a state of disrespect towards himself and others. Respecting no one, he loves no one, and to amuse and divert himself in the absence of love he gives himself up to his passions and to vulgar delights and becomes a complete animal in his vices, and all of it from perpetual lying to other people and himself.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Understanding and love are values that transcend all dogma.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Thought is absent in seeing things intuitively. When you perceive directly, there is no thinking. When you think you understand, you don't. You do not think that you are alive, you know that you are alive.

~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

Do not struggle. Go with the flow of things, and you will find yourself at one with the mysterious unity of the Universe.

~ Chuang Tzu

There is no single path to enlightenment. Yoga has no monopoly. Life itself is the great enlightener. I met a man once who, after the shock of hearing his wife tell him that she had ceased to love him, that she had for some time had a secret lover, and that she requested a divorce so as to be able to marry him, felt a collapse of all his hitherto confidently held values and beliefs. For some days he was so affected that he could not eat. But his mind by then had become so extraordinarily lucid concerning these matters and himself, that he experienced moments of truth. Through them he came into a great peace and understanding, an inner change. What was the morning sun which awakened him? He did no yogic exercises, entered no churches, was too intent on his worldly business to read spiritual books. This brings me back to the theme: do not submit to the pressure of those who say there is only a single way to salvation (the way they follow or teach) do not let the mind be trammelled or narrowed. The truth is that the ways are many, are spread out in all directions, are individual.

~ Paul Brunton

When we are caught in notions, rituals, and the outer forms of the practice, not only can we not receive and embody the spirit of our tradition, we become an obstacle for the true values of the tradition to be transmitted. We lose sight of the true needs and actual suffering of people, and the teaching and practice, which were intended to relieve suffering, now cause suffering. Narrow, fundamentalist, and dogmatic practices always alienate people, especially those who are suffering. We have to remind ourselves again and again of our original purpose, and the original teachings and intention of Buddha, Jesus, and other great sages and saints.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

You do not have to abandon this world. You do not have to go to Heaven or wait for the future to have refuge. You can take refuge here and now. You only need to dwell deeply in the present moment.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The Buddha was not against God. He was only against notions of God that are mere mental constructions that do not correspond to reality, notions that prevent us from developing ourselves and touching ultimate reality.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The soul is its own witness, yea, the soul
Itself is its own refuge ; grieve thou not,
O man, thy soul, the great internal Witness.

~ Laws of Manu

Do what you can
With what you have
Where you are.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

Let no man imagine that he has no influence.
Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed,
the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.

~ Henry George

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect.
Then be sure of one thing:
The IS has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.

~ Richard Bach

Beauty appears when something is completely and absolutely and openly itself.

~ Deena Metzger

The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours.
Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.
Give up your addictions. There is nothing else to give up.
Stop your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for results
and the freedom of the universe is yours. Be effortless.

~ Nisargadatta

We who are like senseless children
Shrink from suffering,
But love its causes.
We hurt ourselves;
Our pain is self-inflicted!
Why should others
Be the object of our anger?

~ Shantideva

You speak of doing good to the world. Is the world such a small thing? And who are you, pray, to do good to the world? First realise God, see Him by means of spiritual discipline. If He imparts power you can do good to others; otherwise not.

~ Sri Ramakrishna

The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself — whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance — is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality — of what is essentially and ultimately true and real — of spirit as the true and essential being.

~ Hegel

Myth is neither right nor wrong, logical nor contradictory. It has its birth in another sphere where consistency, truth, and reality are measured by other standards. This sphere is intuition and experience. . . . [which] does not mean that myth is ambiguous, equivocal, or deceptive. The incompatibility of contradictory meanings is characteristic of logic and reason, not of intuition and experience. The myth conceals many meanings, the interrelations of which may vary and appear difficult to understand. This is due to the fact that the myth stems from strata of the soul deeper than consciousness and therefore beyond the reach of our thought.

~ Ruth Nanda Anshen

Discard every self-seeking motive
as soon as it is seen and you need
not search for truth; truth will find
you.

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

You are what all happenings happen in. What happens must happen so remain unaffected as peace. Be peaceful and this peace will spread. What rises from peace is peace and what rises from confusion is confusion. So be peace and give this to the universe, it is all you should do. Even thinking "I am peace" disturbs this peace, so just be quiet, be as you are.

~ Papaji

All effort at controlling thoughts, appetites and desires
cannot but strengthen them along with the ego. What-
ever has to go must fall off by itself. All that you are
concerned with, all that you are, is the impersonal
functioning of understanding. So let that understanding
work through witnessing without judgment, knowing that
there is nothing else that you can do.

- Ramesh S. Balsekar

Belief, any belief, is based on the sense of
insecurity. Only when all belief is given
up are you free to know yourself. In self-
discovery what you find is the Truth - that
Truth which is total, self-evident and
which needs no outside support or justi-
fication.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar

One of the monks asked the great teacher
Abba Nistero:
"What should I do for the best in life?"
And the abba answered:
"All works are not equal.
The scripture says that Abraham was hospitable,
and God was with him;
it says Elias loved quiet,
and God was with him;
it says that David was humble,
and God was with him.
So, whatever path you find your soul longs after
in the quest for God,
do that, and always watch over your heart's integrity."

~ The Book of Mystical Chapters