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the highest heavens; then, as in Kurukshetra, the terrible form of the Master of strife, suffering and destruction is withdrawn and the sweet face, the tender arm, the oft-clasped body of Krishna shine out on the shaken soul and purified eyes of his eternal comrade and playmate.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