The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you will have for their fulfillment. Desire the good of all and the universe will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure, you must earn it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

Plato located the soul of man in the head; Christ located it in the heart.

~ St Jerome

Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth.

~ Evelyn Underhill

Each moment contains a hundred messages
from God: To every cry of "Oh Lord," He
answers a hundred times, "I am here."

~ Rumi

Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.

~ Rollo May

"Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?”

The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.

~ Hermann Hesse (The Glass Bead Game)

Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Self-righteous morality is not a means for experiencing higher consciousness. Higher consciousness, spontaneously leads to moral and ethical behavior.

~ Deepak Chopra

All desires are bad, but some are worse than others.
Pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble.
Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from
desire will not set you free. Nothing can set you
free, because you are free. See yourself with
desireless clarity, that is all.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

The only offering you can make to God
is your increasing awareness.

~ Lalla

All that we read and think does not get assimilated into the feeling of the heart. That is why a post-graduate scholar who is dead is not reborn with the same amount of knowledge. That which has gone deep into the heart becomes a part of our life. The rest is only a wind that blows over the surface of our minds.

~ Swami Krishnananda

Narayana and Nara meditate together and are inseparables; which means that God and man coalesce in every action and form a union in which karma becomes Karma Yoga, and that spiritual meditation is not merely a human effort but involves Divine interference. Though we may lift our arms to touch a magnetic field, when once we raise it near it is pulled by the force of the field, and here our effort ceases and we are under the influence of another power altogether.

~ Swami Krishnananda

You are alone with your God, and there is no one around you. This is the truth. Rest your mind on this, and attain peace.

~ Swami Krishnananda

When we get irritated or annoyed in the midst of work, for any reason, it is to be taken as a caution that our personality has entered into it, and the ‘unselfishness’ of the work has been adulterated with that undesirable and vitiating factor, the ego. When the work is ‘not mine’, there is no reason for internal disturbance.

~ Swami Krishnananda

If you want it [realization], it will come. There is no qualification necessary, except wanting it. That is the only qualification. If it is not wanted, it will not come. It comes when it is wanted, but wanted wholly, not a little.

~ Swami Krishnananda

Truth is the capacity to visualise things as they are in themselves, and untruth is that which obstructs this vision.

~ Swami Krishnananda

To attach oneself to a guru, an avatar, one religion, one creed, is to see the stars only. To put one's faith in the Infinite Being and in its presence within the heart, is to see the vast empty sky itself. The stars will come and go, will disintegrate and vanish, but the sky remains.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 28: The Alone > Chapter 2: Our Relation To the Absolute> # 104]

When we are empty of ego we, too, can carry on in calm acceptance of life's varying events. When we cease making prejudicial distinctions - gentle or harsh, beautiful or ugly, good or bad - a peaceful stillness will permeate our mind. If there is no ego, there is no agitation.

~ Master Han Shan

Although the pure truth has never been stated, nevertheless it has never been lost. Its existence does not depend upon human statement but upon human sensitivity. In this it is unlike all other knowledge.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 5: The Philosopher ># 191]