Quotations from the Sages
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Quotation

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Action

You are that being, that Awareness, in whose presence actions, perceptions, and thoughts take place. When you say, "I perform action", it is not Awareness that performs any action. It is the eyes which see, the thoughts which move in the mind, all in Awareness, in consciousness.

Swami Dayananda

When you act you are one with the action, it is only afterwards that the ego appropriates the act from which it was absent, and says "I have done this". At the moment of acting there is only acting, without an actor.

Jean Klein

If we face a situation without any intention, free from fear and desire, this openness paves the way for an intuition that will lead to a decision or an action in total harmony with that situation. Such a decision may bring about an apparent change, but this change is not an escape from or an avoidance of the situation; it doesn't originate from the person; it emanates from intelligence.

Francis Lucille

There is no place for effort in reality. It is selfishness, due to self-identification with the body, that is the main problem and the cause of other problems. And selfishness cannot be removed by effort, only by clear insight into its causes and effects. Effort is a sign of conflict between incompatible desires. They should be seen as they are - then only they dissolve. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Human effort consists in creating bondage for oneself, clinging fast to it, and wanting to become free without giving up bondage itself.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Appearance & Reality

If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence. (1)

Meister Eckhart

Attachment

Wherever there is attacment to any body-form there is also suffering. Attachment bears in itself the seed of suffering. Attachment consists in assimilation with the object and assimilation coincides with possession... In this world of fleetingness we can possess something, a form, a relationship etc., only to lose it.

Raphael

Awareness

You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience; you missed it. The floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, not only the floor but YOU would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness.

Osho

So everything is your awareness, everything is you, everything you see, everything you understand. You are the fabric out of which this universe is made. And it is created in this present. It was not created in the past. Everything is created from moment to moment, always new. Like fireworks, this universe is a celebration and you are the spectator contemplating the eternal Fourth of July of your absolute splendour.

Francis Lucille

Attention has no past. Attention has no future. Attention is always in the now. And now is the Life! That thought about Death - 'I know I am going to die one day' - is inattention, that is itself Death. So an ignorant man alterantes between life and death. He is alive but he is dying every moment, by wasting his life force, the now.

V. Ganesan

Beauty

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine... Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful. (1)

Plotinus (Enneads)

Birth and Death

No one is born; no one dies. What is born is only a concept. There is no entity to be freed. Not understanding this fact constitutes the bondage of ignorance; apperception of it is the freedom of truth.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

You have agreed that you will die only because you have accepted from someone that you were born.

Sri Poonja

Body and Mind

You are not in the body, the body is in you! The mind is in you! They happen to you. They are there because you find them interesting.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Desire

What we really desire is not the object, because if it were, its possession would eliminate all desire. What is desired is bliss, Ananda, which exists at all times in myself and everything. The realisation of this bliss was lost to me when I became a separate ego, thereby losing sight of my essential identity with it.

Jean Klein

What is the use of knowing that desire leads to suffering if you go on desiring?

Raphael

In reality things are done to you, not by you. Your desire just happens to you along with its fulfilment or non-fulfilment. You can change neither. You may believe that you exert yourself, strive and struggle. Again, it all merely happens, including the fruits of the work. Neither is by you and for you. All is in the picture exposed on the cinema screen, nothing in the light, including what you take yourself to be, the person. You are the light only. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

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. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Ego

To ask the mind to kill itself is like making the thief the policeman. He will go with you and pretend to catch the thief, but nothing will be gained. So you must turn inward and see where the mind rises from, and then it will cease to exist.

Ramana Maharshi

I would define the ego as a concept originating from the "I am" experience, pure being without attributes, the absolute certitude we have that we exist. When I conceptualize this experience, I name it "I" or "I am". There is nothing wrong with the pure concept "I am". The ego comes in the moment I say "I am this or that". The "this or that" superimposes a limitation onto something that, up until now, was limitless.

Francis Lucille

The ego is eagerly looking for concepts, affections, and instincts because it must compensate for its non-absoluteness and non-reality; it has to fight its caducity (literally - the infirmity of old age). It attaches itself to objects because it hopes to find in things-events its perpetuity and its happiness.

Raphael

Each soul runs from poverty and destruction. How sad! It is running away from happiness and joy. No one can triumph before being destroyed. O Beloved! Reconcile me with destruction.

Jalaluddin Rumi

The very first step in understanding is in giving up the false concept of 'I' as a separate entity. It is also the last step. (5)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Enlightenment

If you have the choice between enlightenment and a million dollars, take the million dollars! Because if you get the million dollars, there will be somebody there to enjoy the million dollars; but if you get enlightenment there's no one there to enjoy the enlightenment.

Ramesh Balsekar

No one is enlightened. Any experience of understanding happens to a me, and no me can ever be enlightened. All experiences are in phenomenality.

Wayne Liquorman

If we talk of knowing the Self, there must be two Selves, one a knowing Self, another the Self which is known, and the process of knowing. The state we call realisation is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything. If one is realised, he is that which alone is and which alone has always been.

Ramana Maharshi

Moksha is not freedom for the individual. It is freedom from individuality. (2)

T. M. P. Mahadevan

Realisation is our nature. It is nothing new to be gained. What is new cannot be eternal. Therefore there is no need for doubting whether one could lose or gain the Self. (5)

Ramana Maharshi

Perfect awakening is possible here and now for every human being regardless of background, practice or personal circumstances. You are already free! (5)

Sri Poonjaji

(Enlightenment is) The spontaneous cognition to be prior to "Nothing and All". Entirely unprepared, in spite of and not because of the search for cognition. It is the revelation of the "Eternal Now". The absence of the "me", and thus the absence of all concepts, of separation or union, birth and death, God and world, coming and going, etc. (5)

Karl Renz

Faith

Faith, no doubt, is a great and mighty ally to the seeker; but blind faith, born from fear and thriving in ignorance is a chain of slavery.

Swami Chinmayananda

Fate and Free Will

All the activities that the body performs are predetermined. The only freedom you have is to choose not to identify with the body that is performing the actions.

Sri Poonjaji

Everyone of these body-mind mechanisms is an instrument through which Totality functions. It is this Totality that is operative. It is this Consciousness that infuses these body-mind mechanisms. It is Consciousness that has designed each of these body-mind mechanisms in such a way that its natural reaction, in the moment, is to choose in a certain way. And because that body-mind mechanism has been given this sense of personal doership, it says, "I'm choosing." But the choice is a function of the nature of the organism.

Wayne Liquorman

The question of free will versus predetermination is really not free will versus, or free will against, predetermination. The free will is part of this predetermination. You consider free will as something you have as a result of a certain thought. But that thought occurring, leading to what you think is your free will is part of the totality of functioning. So it is really a misconception to consider free will as opposed to predetermination.

Ramesh Balsekar

Human beings actually have no more independence or autonomy in living their lives than do the characters in a dream. Neither do they have anything to do with the creation of the dream or anything in it. They are simply being lived along with everything else in this living dream of the manifested universe. The entire dream is unreal. Only the dreamer is real, and that is Consciousness itself. (3)

Ramesh Balsekar

All the activities that the body performs are predetermined. The only freedom you have is to choose not to identify with the body that is performing the actions.

Sri Poonja

Fear

Every time you look into the face of fear, it disappears but if you keep looking to the shadow, it grows and grows.

Satyananda

Fear is always in relation to the known, not the unknown.

Krishnamurti

Freedom

It is bondage when the mind desires or grieves at anything, rejects or accepts anything, feels happy or angry at anything. Liberation is attained when the mind does not desire or grieve or reject or accept or feel happy or angry. It is bondage when the mind is attached to any sense experience. It is liberation when the mind is detached from all sense experiences. When there is no 'I', there is liberation; when there is 'I', there is bondage. Considering thus, easily refrain from accepting or rejecting anything.

Astavakra Samhita

Moksha is not 'Freedom from action' but 'Freedom in action'.

Swami Chinmayananda

You are free once you understand that your bondage is of your own making and you cease forging the chains that bind you

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom....Our thoughts, our words and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves.

Vivekananda

God

Be aware, the one who stands still, in his stillness finds God. The man who runs after God never attains to him because the running is of the mind, and that highest spiritual element can never be obtained by the mind.

Osho

Good and Evil

Relatively, what causes suffering is wrong; what alleviates it is right. Absolutely, what brings you back to reality is right, and what dims reality is wrong. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Guilt

All responsibility and guilt are imaginary concepts based upon the mistaken notion that a sentient being has independent existence, autonomy and choice of action.

Ramesh Balsekar

Happiness

Happiness is not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realised through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it.

Alan Watts

You do not acquire happiness. Your nature is happiness. Bliss is not newly acquired. All that is done is to remove unhappiness.

Ramana Maharshi

The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.

Swami Chinmayananda

The particular event-thing giving you happiness and well being did not belong to an absolute reality but to a relative, contingent truth. Now do you want fleeting, discontinuous happiness that comes and goes, or do you want to be constant bliss?

Raphael

Ignorance

No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom because he is wise already. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom; for herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself.

Socrates

It is sure to be dark if you close your eyes.

Swami Chinmayananda

Even a learned man must bow before an illiterate Sage. The illiterate man is simply ignorant; the learned man is learnedly ignorant; the Sage is also ignorant, because there is nothing for him to know.

Ramana Maharshi

To acquire knowledge should not be our first aim, but rather to rid ourselves of ignorance—which is false-knowledge.

Wei Wu Wei

Love

The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Love, as the word is generally understood, denotes separation, whereas in true non-objective relationship we do not love others, we ARE others. (3)

Ramesh Balsekar

When love has carried us above all things . . . we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold; because our being, without losing anything of its own personality, is united with the Divine Truth.” ... “Man is the meeting-point of various stages of Reality. (1)

Ruysbroeck

Meditation

Transformation cannot be brought about, it can only happen. Indeed, practicing meditation is itself bondage! Transformation presupposes the total absence of any doer practicing anything. (3)

Ramesh Balsekar

Memory

Memory is a false witness, because it was not present at the time of the activity reported as being remembered.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Realised Man

To me nothing ever happens. There is something changeless, motionless, immovable, rock-like, unassailable; a solid mass of pure being-consciousness-bliss. I am never our of it. Nothing can take me out of it, no torture, no calamity.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

In reality only the Ultimate is. The rest is a matter of name and form. And as long as you cling to the idea that only what has a name and shape exists, the Supreme will appear to you non-existing. When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and shapeless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace -immersed in the deep silence of reality.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

I am without any change, without any form, free from all blemish and decay. I am not subject to any disease, I am beyond all comprehension, free from all alternatives and all-pervading. I am without any attribute or activity. I am eternal, ever free and imperishable. I am free from all impurity, I am immovable, unlimited, holy, undecaying and immortal.

Shankara - Aparokshanubhuti

Reality

It (Brahman) is known to him to whom It is unknown; he does not know to whom It is known. It is unknown to those who know well, and known to those who do not know. (2)

Kena Upanishad

That (Atman) moves, That does not move; That is far off, That is very near; That is inside all this, and That is also outside all this. (2)

Isavasya Upanishad

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. (3)

Ramesh Balsekar

All Upanishadic methods try to eliminate you from the Anatma and to establish you in the Atma. But here according to the direct method you are shown that you can never get away either from your own shadow or from your reality. You are only asked to look deep into what you call Anatma, and see beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is nothing but Atma the Reality. (4)

Atmananda Krishna Menon

To the individual soul (ego) everything is outside. To God, everything is inside. To the Sage (j~nAnin) there is neither inside nor outside. He is beyond both.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

When you ask why, when, where etc., in relation to the Reality, you take it for granted that why, when, where etc. are more real than Reality itself. This position is absurd. Therefore no such question can be asked, relating to the Reality.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Reincarnation

Reincarnation implies a reincarnating self. There is no such thing. The bundle of memories and hopes, called the “I”, imagines itself existing everlastingly and creates time to accomodate its false eternity. To be, I need no past or future. All experience is born of imagination; I do not imagine, so no birth or death happens to me. Only those who think themselves born can think themselves re-born. All exists in awareness, and awareness neither dies nor is re-born. It is the changeless reality itself. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Scriptures

Study of the scriptures is fruitless as long as Brahman has not been experienced. And when Brahman has been experienced, it is useless to read the scriptures. (3)

Shankara

Seeking

To go beyond the mind, you must be silent and quiet. Peace and silence, silence and peace - this is the way beyond. Stop asking questions.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Seekers continue to practice all kinds of self-torture without realizing that such ‘spiritual practice’ is a reinforcement of the very ego that prevents them from their natural, free state. (3)

Ramesh Balsekar

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds... To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

Anne Rice

In the gradual approach you are bound to the mind. The mind is under the illusion that if it changes, alters, stops, etc., it will be absorbed in what is beyond it. This misconception leads to the most tragic state in which a truth-seeker can find himself: he has bound himself in his own web, a web of the most subtle duality. (6)

Jean Klein

Only the action of non- action, the practice of non-practice, unmotivated non-volitional functioning, can lead to that recognition or awakening and why any kind of action, practice or intentional procedure is an insurmountable barrier to such awakening. (6)

Wei Wu Wei

Indeed we ARE that which we are looking for, when our seeking ceases....What then prevents us from seeing this simple truth? Nothing but the misconception that 'we' can do something about it. (5)

Ramesh Balsekar

The problem with following a spiritual path is that it can give us the impression that 'we are not there yet'. (5)

Jan Kersschot

And then of course the following question is,"How did you get there? I'll follow your path." Well, I was an alcoholic and a drug addict for nineteen years. That was my path. (5)

Wayne Liquorman

We must distinguish between learning, accumulation of knowledge, and understanding or knowing, the immediate insight into our real nature. Appropriation of facts is necessary when studying a trade, an instrument, a language, and so on. But we cannot acquire what we fundamentally are. We can only recognise it. Recognition is an instantaneous happening. (5)

Jean Klein

If all there is is Consciousness, if there is only Consciousness, then why or for what are you still seeking? Why not live in this understanding, no longer requiring that you wait for all the supposed signs of 'enlightenment' to appear? (5)

Nathan Gill

Instead of directly seeing what is, the seeker continues to wait for a future event of enlightenment, not admitting that he's already – and always has been – home. He often tries to anticipate what it would be like to reach a final and total understanding in which God and the universe reveal their secrets. In doing so he overlooks the fact that his mind is both part of and appearing in this universe and, thus, is not qualified to comprehend it. (5)

Leo Hartong

Most of us have heard and read more than enough times that we are what we're looking for, but can't deliberately let go of the belief that the holy grail of unity, of enlightenment must be something other, something extraordinary that is hidden but can be discovered given sufficient vigilance, seriousness and dedication. Unfortunately there always seems to be some lack in our commitment, some failing that constantly trips us up and reinforces the idea that we're inadequate and that realisation is only for the very special few. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, nothing is hidden so seeking will never succeed. (5)

Roger Linden

To search for the Seer is to miss the point. To search forever is to miss the point forever. How could you possibly search for that which is right now aware of this page? YOU ARE THAT! You cannot go out looking for that which is theLooker.

Ken Wilber

But there is no place where Spirit is not. Every single location in the entire Kosmos is equally and fully Spirit. Seeking of any sort, movement of any sort, attainment of any sort: all profoundly useless. The Great Search simply reinforces the mistaken assumption that there is some place that Spirit is not, and that I need to get from a space that is lacking to a space that is full. But there is no space lacking, and there is no space more full. Thre is only Spirit.

Ken Wilber

Self

If there were no consciousness there could be no movements in consciousness. The movements, irrespective of whether I call them thoughts, or feelings, or sensory perceptions depend on the fact that I am there first as consciousness in which they can appear. So, for example the belief in a bound and limited 'I' is only possible because I am there first as formless, timeless, witnessing consciousness (Atma) without which no idea of 'I' can appear. This is the origin of Shri Shankara's remark that the appearance of an ego is by itself the best proof of the fact that we are not an ego.

Wolter Keers

Thinking

Thoughts are not necessarily a distraction. Thoughts are arising in this present awareness and dissolving back into it. The silence remains untouched, unstained, immaculate. Thoughts are only a problem if you are preoccupied with them, giving them all your attention, believing in the entity of "me" around which the thoughts swirl.

Catherine Ingram

Life of man is what it is. That which is, is. All the trouble arises by having a conception of it. Mind comes in. It has a conception. All trouble follows. If you are as you are, without a mind and its conceptions about various things, all will be well with you. If you seek the source of the mind, then all questions will be solved.

Ramana Maharshi

Thought must have an object, but Consciousness has none.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Truth

The truth is now and here. So it is everywhere. If it is not first found now and here, it will be found nowhere else and at no other time.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

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

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Make no mistake: whatever I say—whatever its impact—is a concept. It is not the truth. A concept is something that someone may accept and someone may not. The Truth is that which no one can deny. And therefore the only Truth, in phenomenality, is ‘I AM’—the impersonal awareness of being. On this basis, whatever any sage has ever said, whatever any scripture of any religion says is a concept.

Ramesh Balsekar

In talking about the Truth, you (the ego) must cease to talk, and allow it (Truth or the real Self) to talk or express itself in its own language.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Who am I?

Am I the body, senses or mind? No. If I claim to be anything, that must be with me wherever I go. Doing, perceiving, thinking and feeling do not go with me wherever I go. 'Knowing' alone is always with me. So I am knowingness of Consciousness alone. I am that always, and I am free. I can only be that which remains over when the object or active part is separated from the perceiver, perception or percept. (4)

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Nothing matters. What we are talking about here is totally beyond the individual and any sense of behaving - beyond being good, beyond being serious about enlightenment . . . all those things that some people tell you are so important. They are all locked into the idea of there being someone there who is or isn't a certain way. (5)

Tony Parsons

World

You are not of the world, you are not even in the world. The world is not, you alone are. You create the world in your imagination like a dream. As you cannot separate the dream from yourself, so you cannot have an outer world independent of yourself. You are independent, not the world. Don’t be afraid of a world you yourself have created. (3)

Nisargadatta Maharaj

You may believe that this whole universe is a dream and all human beings mere dreamed characters within that dream, but so long as you yourself remain outside that dream and view yourself as an individual separate from it, you cannot approach closer to the Truth. (3)

Ramesh Balsekar

The world, filled with attachments and aversions and the rest, is like a dream: it appears to be real as long as one is ignorant, but becomes unreal when one is awake. (3)

Shankara

Self-forgetfulnes is the cause of the creation of the world, and self-remembrance or withdrawal to the Self is the destruction of the world.

Atmananda Krishna Menon

Acknowledgements:

(1) Sunder Hattangadi

(2) Gummuluru Murthy

(3) Miguel Angel Carrasco

(4) Mark Hovila

(5) Tanya Davis

(6) Vasumitra