Therefore, best of friends, setting all else completely aside, let us strive with all our powers to satisfy God first, without which it is impossible for anything to satisfy us, for us to satisfy others, or for us to satisfy ourselves in any way at all.

~ Marsilio Ficino

If only all might be hushed, sense impressions, the soul itself, all imagery, all symbols, all things transient, then we might hear the very voice of the eternal, and if that experience were prolonged, we would indeed enter into the joy of our Lord.

~ St Augustine

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

~ Romans 12, 2

There is nothing but water in the holy pools.
I know, I have been swimming in them.
All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can't say a word
I know, I have been crying out to them.
The sacred Books of the east are nothing but words.
I looked through their covers one day sideways.
What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through.
If you have not lived through something it is not true.

~ Kabir

First, lay down your head
then one by one
let go of all distractions.
Embrace the light and let it guide you
beyond the winds of desire.
There you will find a spring and
nourished by its sweet waters
like a tree you will bear fruit forever.

~ Rumi
[Hidden Music - Translated by Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi]

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

~ Thomas Merton

It is well known and admitted that only with the help of the mind can the mind be
killed. But instead of setting about saying there is a mind, and I want to kill it, you
begin to seek the source of the mind, and you find the mind does not exist at all. The
Mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes
itself the Self.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

All doubts will cease only when the doubter and his source has been found. There is no
use removing doubts one by one. If we clear one doubt, another doubt will arise and there
will be no end of doubts. But if, by seeking the source of the doubter, the doubter is found to
be really non-existent, then all doubts will cease.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

I went everywhere with longing
in my eyes, until here
in my own house

I felt truth
filling my eyes.

~ Lalla

Any clever man may sometimes see the truth in flashes; any scientific man may put some aspect of the truth into technical words; yet all this hardly deserves the name of philosophy so long as the heart remains unabashed, and we continue to live like animals lost in the stream of our impressions, not only in the public routine and necessary cares of life, but even in our silent thoughts and affections.

~ George Santayana
[Ultimate Religion - 1932]

On the surface of the mental lake there are waves, your normal thought forms. Below the thought forms, you have the subconscious mind, which has its own color and dirt. And, at the very bottom of the water, you have the old sediment, which you call the samskaras, or the vasanas, which you have brought from several incarnations. The Yoga practices help to still the waves of the water and make it crystal clear so that you can get a clear vision of the Self: Tada drastuh svarupe avasthanam (Yoga Sutras, 1.3). If the mental lake is made still and clean, then you can see the Self, or the Atman, because there’s nothing to color it, there’s nothing to distort the vision, and you understand what it is—it shines in its own real glory.

~ Swami Satchidānanda

Awareness cleaned my mind
to a polished mirroring.

The presence came near, and I knew
that That was everything,
and I nothing.

~ Lalla

Cease practice based
On intellectual understanding,
Pursuing words and
Following after speech.
Learn the backward
Step that turns
Your light inward
To illuminate within.
Body and mind of themselves
Will drop away
And your original face will be manifest.

~ Dogen

The realized man is awake in the light of the Self, while the ignorant is awake in the light of the senses. The realized man is awake in the light of absolute bliss, the ignorant in the light of relative joys of a perishable nature.

~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
[Commentary on Bhagavad Gita, Ch2, V69]

Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.

~ Thomas Merton

The whole truth of life is that there is nothing substantial to bind the never-changing to the ever-changing sphere of life.

~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
[Commentary on Bhagavad Gita, Ch2, V15]

As the same sun appears as different when shining on different media, such as water and oil, so the same omnipresent Being, shining through different nervous systems, appears as different and forms the spirit, the subjective aspect of man's personality. When the nervous system is pure, Being reflects more and the spirit is more powerful, the mind more effective. When the nervous system is at its purest, then the Being reflects in all its fullness, and the inner individuality of the spirit gains the level of unlimited eternal Being. Thus it is clear that in its essential nature the spirit is undying and omnipresent. This explains the universality of individuality.

~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
[Commentary on Bhagavad Gita, Ch2, V17]

Mostly as a result of meditation, but sometimes during an unexpected glimpse, a mystical experience of an unusual kind may develop.  He feels transparent to the Overself; its light passes into and through him.  He then finds that his ordinary condition was as if a thick wall surrounded him, devoid of windows and topped by a thick roof, a condition of imprisonment in limitation and ordinariness.  But now the walls turn to glass their density is miraculously gone, he is not only open to the light streaming in but lets it pass on, irradiating the world around.

~ Paul Brunton 
[Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself; Chapter 6: Experiencing a Glimpse; # 166]

"If asleep awaken the mind; if distracted calm it; if neither asleep or distracted do not disturb it."

~ Devikalottara, Verse 39

The ruinous abdication by philosophy of its rightful domain is the consequence of the oblivion of philosophers to a great insight first beheld clearly by Socrates and re-affirmed by Kant as by no other philosopher. Science, concerned solely and exclusively with objective existents, cannot give answers to questions about meanings and values. Only ideas engendered by the mind and to be found nowhere but in the mind (Socrates), only the pure transcendental forms supplied by reason (Kant), can secure the ideals and values and put us in touch with the realities that constitute our moral and spiritual life. Twenty-four centuries after Socrates, two centuries after Kant, we badly need to re-learn the lesson.

~ D. R. Khashaba

[http://khashaba.blogspot.com]

Seduced by the spectacular theoretical and practical successes of the objective sciences into thinking that the methods and criteria of those sciences were the only means to truth, philosophers sought to apply those same methods and criteria to questions relating to the meaning of life and the values that give meaning to life. Philosophy, especially the Analytical species prevalent in the English-speaking world, was broken up into specialized disciplines and fragmented into particular problems, all swayed and impregnated by scientism, reductionism, and relativism. All questions of meaning and value were consigned to the rubbish heap of 'metaphysical nonsense'.

~ D. R. Khashaba ]

[http://khashaba.blogspot.com]

Unless you make tremendous efforts, you will not be convinced that effort will take you nowhere. The self is so self-confident that unless it is totally discouraged it will not give up. Mere verbal conviction is not enough. Hard facts alone can show the absolute nothingness of the self-image.

~ Sri Nisargadatta

Vain, boastful talk repels acts of kindness and tears the branch of
mercy from the trunk of the tree. Speak honestly or else be silent,
and then behold grace and delight in it.

~ Rumi

To describe the ego as "little" and the personality as "petty" is to look at it from outside, where it is lost among such a multitude of others; but to look at it from within the man himself is to find it vastly important, dominating his consciousness, a giant holding him down. It is there, and after all the verbal analyses which reduce it to nothing, its presence reasserts itself.

~ Paul Brunton

It is the presence of the physical ego in the wakeful state that paralyses all spiritual awareness therein. It is the absence of the personal and physical ego in the deep sleep state that paralyses all material awareness therein, too. By keeping it out and yet keeping in wakefulness, the transcendental consciousness is able to provide the requisite condition for an unbroken spiritual awareness that is not only superior to the three states but continues its own existence behind theirs.

~ Paul Brunton

It is only through silent awareness that our physical and mental nature can change. This change is completely spontaneous. If we make an effort to change we do no more than shift our attention from one level, from one thing, to another. We remain in a vicious circle. This only transfers energy from one point to another. It still leaves us oscillating between suffering and pleasure, each leading inevitably back to the other. Only living stillness, stillness without someone trying to be still, is capable of undoing the conditioning our biologoical, emotional and psychological nature has undergone. There is no controller, no selector, no personality making choices. In choiceless living the situation is given the freedom to unfold. You do not grasp one aspect over another for there is nobody to grasp. When you understand something and live it without being stuck to the formulation, what you have understood dissolves in your openness. In this silence change takes place of its own accord, the problem is resolved and duality ends. You are left in your glory where no one has understood and nothing has been understood.

~ Jean Klein "I Am"

Although the aspirant has now awakened to his witness-self, found his"soul," and thus lifted himself far above the mass of mankind, he has not yet accomplished the full task set him by life. A further effort still awaits his hand. He has yet to realize that the witness-self is only a part of the All-self. So his next task is to discover that he is not merely the witness of the rest of existence but essentially of one stuff with it. He has, in short, by further meditations to realize his oneness with the entire universe in its real being. He must now meditate on his witness-self as being in its essence the infinite All. Thus the ultramystic exercises are graded into two stages, the second being more advanced than the first. The banishment of thoughts reveals the inner self whereas the reinstatement of thoughts without losing the newly gained consciousness reveals the All-inclusive universal self. The second feat is the harder.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 23: Advanced Contemplation > Chapter 6: AdvancedMeditation > # 88]

nāyamātmā pravacanena labhyo
na medhayā na bahunā śrutena
yamevaisha vrņute tena labhyas
tasyaisha ātmā vivrņute tanūm svām

This Self is not attained through much exposition or acquisitive knowledge. Nor by fixing meaning in memory through the power of the mind. Neither through much hearing or repetition alone. Indeed, that Self which the seeker longs for, by that is the Self attained. Then that seeker’s own Self reveals its own nature openly, with greater eloquence than words. This Self excels in describing itself.

~ Kaţha Upanişad 1.2.23

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One who knows and knows he knows is a wise man, Follow Him
One who knows and knows not he knows is asleep, Awaken him
One who knows not and knows he knows not is a child, Teach him
One who knows not and knows not he knows not is a Fool, Avoid him

~ Confucius (Analects)

Even if a particular doctrine is set forth in Buddha's scriptures, one must examine to determine whether or not it is damaged by reasoning. If there is damage by way of reasoning, it is not suitable to assert the literal reading of the passage.

~ The Dalai Lama (A Policy of Kindness)

A thing becomes an illusion only when its reality becomes inferior to a higher reality that has already been found. Until then, it is still a reality. Only the sage has the strict right to call this world an illusion. If anyone else does so, such talk is mere babble.

~ Paul Brunton

[Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 2: The Cosmosof Change > #43]

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