Advaita Quotes

One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.

You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.

With me, illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you - that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind, there is no hope for you.

Your greatest awakening comes, when you are aware about your infinite nature.

Live simply. Deepest joy is like a flower....beautiful in essence.

Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, 'Thy will be done.' We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go.

Within each of us is a light, awake, encoded in the fibers of our existence. Divine ecstasy is the totality of this marvelous creation experienced in the hearts of humanity

There is neither creation nor destruction, neither destiny nor free will, neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth.

I am Not, but the Universe is my Self.

The highest goal of spirituality is Self-realization, but what does that mean? It means to feel your Self as a living reality in this moment, and there is always only this moment. (10)

There is no God separate from you, no God higher than you, the real 'you'. All the gods are little beings to you, all the ideas of God and Father in heaven are but your own reflection. God Himself is your image. 'God created man after His own image.' That is wrong. Man creates God after his own image. That is right. Throughout the universe we are creating gods after our own image. We create the god and fall down at his feet and worship him; and when this dream comes, we love it!

Does a man who is acting on the stage in a female part forget that he is a man? Similarly, we too must play our parts on the stage of life, but we must not identify ourselves with those parts.

Om is the things, Om is the ingredient, Om is the container and the content of this universe.

Don’t be a storehouse of memories. Leave past, future and even present thoughts behind. Be a witness to life unfolding by itself. Be free of all attachments, fears and concerns by keeping your mind inside your own heart. Rest in being. Like this, your life is always fresh and imbued with pure joy and timeless presence. Be happy, wise and free.

Once you begin to recognise the divine gifts in life, you come to see that there are so many. Your life is abundant.

Live by the light of your own heart... but make sure this heart is silent and empty.

Om is that God of love. Like a loving mother Om cleans us of our clutters collected through many incarnations.

We shall suffer as long as our thoughts and actions are prompted by desires and fears.

You do not need any preacher or prophet to learn about God. The teaching is spread on the trees and the mountains, on the stars and the river, on the Sun and the moon. The ultimate teaching is written in your heart. You just need to wake up and see.

The world is a collection of objects. That which perceives the objects Cannot itself be an object. You are That.

It does not matter what comes up. What matters is who you are, the one perceiving it.

Do what you believe in and believe in what you do. All else is a waste of energy and time.

Each pleasure is wrapped in pain. You soon discover that you cannot have one without the other … Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances … Real happiness flows from within.

The room was filled with Hundreds of devotees When Chow Ling asked: Why are you worshipping the teapot Instead of drinking the tea?

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting that, truly, by losing all you gain all.

How does the personality come into being? By memory. By identifying the present with the past and projecting it into the future. Think of yourself as momentary, without past and future, and your personality dissolves.

The very desire to live is the messenger of death, as the longing to be happy is the outline of sorrow. The world is an ocean of pain and fear, anxiety and despair. Pleasures are like the fishes, few and swift, coming rarely, quickly gone.

Om was there in the existence, when no religion was formed or founded. It will be there in the existence, if all the religions are demolished.

The sage sees only the Self. The person sees lots of persons. One sees from wholeness, one sees from fragmentation. Both are you.

Forget your past experiences and achievements and stand naked, exposed to the winds and rains of life, and you will have a chance.

Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognize it.

Having read all the shastras and well grounded in them, they grow conceited that they are all knowing, accomplished and worthy of respect; filled with love and hate they presume themselves respectable; they are only packasses esteemed for carrying heavy loads over long distances in difficult and tortuous ways.

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.

You do not need to go to any temple or church to worship God. The whole existence is God’s temple. Your own body is the temple of God. Your own heart is the shrine. You do not need to subscribe to any religion to experience God. The only religion you need to experience God is love, kindness and respect to all beings.

If you take people to be what they think themselves to be, you will only hurt them as they hurt themselves so grievously all the time. But if you see them as they are in reality, it will do them enormous good.

Just as honey is not the sweetness The words of Wu Hsin are not The truth. However, time spent with these words is like The aftermath of rain. In due course a sprouting of Understanding will occur and Will bear fruit at a pace Outside of one’s control.

Persons desiring to know what love is might benefit more if they were able to understand what love is not.

There is no such thing as a dog

Your rest is not rest. You are resting so that you can work. You are working so that you can rest. You are caught up in a circle.

When the world does not hold and bind you, it becomes an abode of joy and beauty. You can be happy in the world only when you are free of it.

There is a vastness beyond the farthest reaches of the mind. That vastness is my home; that vastness is myself. And that vastness is also love.

It is earnestness that will take you through, not cleverness - your own or another’s.

Spirituality destroys the ego. Religion strengthens it.

Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency.

The world is full of contradictions; hence your search for harmony and peace. These you cannot find in the world, for the world is the child of chaos. To find order you must search within.

When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection.

To begin with, it seems like an effort to keep returning to the welcoming presence, but at some point it is so natural that it seems to require an effort to leave it. It feels like home. We no longer feel that we need to be entertained.

Your kindness is only for the half. The compassion that will flow from deep inside you will be for everyone: rich-poor, deer-lion, wise-unwise because they all are caught in the trap that you will have escaped.

It [realization of Oneness] means being constantly open to the possibility that we are like two flowers looking at each other from two different branches of the same tree, so that if we were to go deep enough inside to the trunk, we would realize that we are one. Just being open to this possibility will have a profound effect on your relationships and on your experience of the world.

I have described the discovery of Atman and Brahman – God immanent and God transcendent – as separate, but there is no real distinction. In the climax of meditation, the sages discovered unity: the same indivisible reality without and within. It was advaita, “not two.

Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind is like trying to illuminate the sun with a candle.

Merely assuaging fears and satisfying desires will not remove this sense of emptiness you are trying to escape from; only self-knowledge can help you.

Don’t try to reform yourself; just see the futility of all change. The changeful keeps on changing while the changeless is waiting.

Our only hope is to stop, to look, to understand, and to get out of the traps of memory. For memory feeds imagination and imagination generates desire and fear.

If one desires clear sight One cannot place one’s trust in reflections. The way in is The only way out.

You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait to improve others until we have seen ourselves as we are - and have changed.

I am’ itself is God. The seeking itself is God. In seeking you discover that you are neither the body nor mind, and the love of the self in you is for the self in all. The two are one. The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me, apparently two, really one, seek unity and that is love.

The universe looks different from different angles. Everyone is right from their perspective. If you say, 'No. Some are right. Others are wrong , then you are also right. There is no absolute right or wrong. Absolute is just silence of nothingness.

Who can count how many lives we have tasted? Look at the stars. How old are they? And a star is not even sentient. You are sentient. How can you be less in age than a star? You don’t know at all. What you do know is that right now you exist and are here. All take this for granted. However, what should be known is what you are here as. And if what you are here as is clear, who knows this? You want to learn about so many things, but about yourself, you are not sure.

You imagine a didgeridoo vibrating on your stomach will heal all your bullshit. So we fancy all this stuff, but the Truth we don’t give a second glance—it’s far too simple and effortless for your complex mind.

When you touch river Ganga in Rishikesh, you also touch the ocean to which the river is connected. Because the distinction between the river and ocean is just in your mind. You also touch the vapours rising from ocean, You touch clouds, rains, earth, mountains, You touch eternity. You touch God. Remove the distinctions, clean the mind. God is right here, right now.

The experience of being empty, uncluttered by memories and expectations; it is like the happiness of open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy for doing things, for discovery, for adventure.

God, the world seen through the glasses of my limited understanding no longer interests me. I surrender my questions, my answers, my theories, my opinions, my beliefs. Fill me with awe. Overwhelm me with your wonders.

The moment you know your real being, you are afraid of nothing. Death gives freedom and power. To be free in the world, you must die to the world. Then the universe is your own; it becomes your body, an expression and a tool. The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

Don’t worry about anything in this world and your eyes shine bright again. Your heart becomes open, clear and pure. Trust. As you move, Grace goes ahead of you. Even before you take your first step, she is there with you and walks with you along the way. Therefore, lay down your arms. Lay down all your techniques and your efforts so that you may discover the effortless silence. Know that the whole universe is supporting your awakening. Neither doubt nor fear. All is well. Take rest. Find and feel your Heart again.

When the highest Chakra opens, you will find yourself sitting on the lotus of nothingness. The entire world will seem like mud upon which the lotus blooms. The mud is neither bad nor good. If you think it’s bad, you are still attached to it; you are still swimming into it. True detachment is the only way to slowly move upward from one Chakra to another.

What would the doctors do if there were no patients? What would politicians do if there were no social problems? What would humanitarians do if there were no inhumanity? The opposite sides that seem to be fighting each other actually depend on each other, define each other, thrive with each other.

Meditation brings Nirvana, and Nirvana brings Buddhahood.

Freedom is the freedom of one’s idea of oneself.

What is in the world cannot save the world; if you really care to help the world, you must step out of it.

You cannot be alive, for you are life itself.

The mind & body are not separate entities. The gross form of the mind is the body & the subtle form of the body is the mind. The practice of asana integrates & harmonizes the two. Both the body & the mind harbor tensions or knots. Every mental knot has a corresponding physical, muscular knot & vice versa. The aim of asana is to release these knots. Asana release mental tensions by dealing with them on the physical level, acting somato-psychically, through the body to the mind.

A rich man exploits the poor and then donates some money to a temple. Then temple helps the poor. These are circles of life. If you try to break them, you will end up becoming a part of them. Have compassion for everyone involved in the circles, including yourself. This is the only way to be free from them.

Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go of everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go of everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realizing that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.

Our minds are just waves on the ocean of consciousness. As waves, they come and go. As ocean, they are infinite and eternal. Know yourself as the ocean of being, the womb of all existence.

Meditation has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense…. Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried along by the wind—to be choicelessly aware of all that is part of meditation.

nature. Take courage. Being free is neither difficult nor distant. I know it has often been conceived, perceived and presented to be rare, remote and difficult, but all that is delusion—a great seeming. I don’t know why awakening happens in one heart so completely and in another there is some delay or postponement. I am not deeply concerned about this. But I know that the voice that calls you is true, and where you are being called to is real and true. Heaven is inside your own heart. This is why I am here. I

In Advaita Vedanta, and in many other ancient wisdom traditions, the world is said to be an illusion. This illusion is commonly referred to as maya, a Sanskrit name which refers to the apparent, or objective reality which is superimposed on the ultimate reality in order to generate the phenomena of what we call the material world. Maya is the magic by which we create duality—by which we create two worlds from one. This creation is an illusory creation—it is not real—it is an imaginary manifestation of the one Universal Consciousness, appearing as all of the various phenomena in objective reality. Maya is God’s, or Consciousness’s, creative power of emptying or reflecting itself into all things and thus creating all things—the power of subjectivity to take on objective appearance.

Q: No purposeful action is then possible? M: All I say is that consciousness contains all. In consciousness all is possible. You can have causes if you want them, in your world. Another may be content with a single cause — God’s will. The root cause is one: the sense ‘I am’.

Don’t try to create some kind of shape for your life as if you are shearing it with a pair of clippers. Don’t prune down your own life into the shape you think it should be. Don’t be a bonsai, be a mighty oak.

Draw some dashes on a paper. Now mentally try to create a line by joining two of more dashes. Did you do it? Where is the line you just created? It’s in your mind. It has no existence except in your mind. The relationship between you and the line you just created is same as the relationship between the supreme soul (Paramaatma) and soul. The souls have no separate existence.

The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The “I am” is the door. Stay at it until it opens … It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me, the world is a home, not a prison.

In the great mirror of consciousness, images arise and disappear and only memory gives them continuity. And memory is material - destructible, perishable, transient. On such flimsy foundations we build a sense of personal existence - vague, intermittent, dreamlike. This vague persuasion, “I am so-and-so,” obscures the changeless state of pure awareness and makes us believe that we are born to suffer and to die.

It is this clash between desire and fear that causes anger, which is the great destroyer of sanity in life. When pain is accepted for what it is, a lesson and a warning, and deeply looked into and heeded, the separation between pain and pleasure breaks down, and both become experience - painful when resisted, joyful when accepted.

At a place, I heard the river talking to the banks, “I have travelled so far, how far to go before I reach the ocean? Please guide.” The banks were silent. But there was an answer in the silence, “From the origin to the end, you are a single unit, 0 River! Stop identifying yourself as water. You, the river, are already in touch with the ocean.

To be a living being is not the ultimate state; there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor non-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror; it becomes a part of living.

What problems can there be which the mind did not create? Life and death do not create problems; pains and pleasures come and go, experienced and forgotten. It is memory and anticipation that create problems of attainment or avoidance, colored by like and dislike. Truth and love are man’s real nature, and mind and heart are the means of its expression.

When you say “Don’t judge”, you are judging those who judge. To say “Be Silent” to yourself, you have to break your silence. The thought of “being thoughtless” is there even when you are thoughtless. Spiritual truths can’t be practiced at mind level. You have to discover something deeper than the mind which is already non-judgemental, silent and thoughtless, Jo

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or “Bible” of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called “mystical experiences” in every religion are true. He should have known better.

How do gods help so many people at the same time? Because they don’t have to do anything except being who they are. You have to tune yourself to get their help. Dance like Shiva to allow His energy to flow through you. Rest like Vishnu for receiving His energy, be creative like Brahma, be playful like Krishna, be egoless like Hanuman and so on. If you keep worrying, only demonic energies will flow through you.

I've always felt that there was something pathetic in the founders of religion who made it a condition of salvation that you should believe in them. It's as though they needed your faith to have faith in themselves. They remind you of those old pagan gods who grew wan and faint if they were not sustained by the burnt offerings of the devout. Advaita doesn't ask you to take anything on trust; it asks only that you should have a passionate craving to know Reality; it states that you can experience God as surely as you can experience joy or pain. And there are men in India today—hundreds of them for all I know—who have the certitude that they have done so. I found something wonderfully satisfying in the notion that you can attain Reality by knowledge. In later ages the sages of India in recognition of human infirmity admitted that salvation may be won by the way of love and the way of works, but they never denied that the noblest way, though they hardest, is the way of knowledge, for its instrument is the most precious faculty of man, his reason.

Imagine you are passing by a roadside gambling stall. There is an operator surrounded by some audience members who are gambling their money and winning. You get interested and place your bet. You lose your money. Later you realize that the operator and the audience were all part of the same gang. Give it a thought: Maybe the things you like and things you dislike are part of the same conspiracy? They are just putting on a show to keep you engaged. You are the only real audience of this show.

Increase and widen your desires until nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means, be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well.

The moments of satisfaction you experience are not in a subject/‌object relationship where you can say “I am free, I am happy.” These moments without thought, dream or representation are our true nature, fullness, which cannot be projected. It is an experience encountered where there is neither somebody experiencing nor a thing experienced. Only this reality is spiritual. All other states, “highs,” whether brought about by techniques, experiences or drugs, even the so often exalted samadhi, are phenomena‌—‌and carry with them traces of objectivity. In other words, as what you are is not a state, it is a waste of time and energy chasing more and more experiences in the hope of coming closer to the non-experience.

Can infinity have parts? What is meant by parts of infinity? If you reason it out, you will find that it is impossible. Infinity cannot be divided, it always remains infinite. If it could be divided, each part would be infinite. And there cannot be two infinites. Suppose there were, one would limit the other, and both would be finite. Infinity can only be one, undivided. Thus the conclusion will be reached that the infinite is one and not many, and that one Infinite Soul is reflecting itself through thousands and thousands of mirrors, appearing as so many different souls. It is the same Infinite Soul, which is the background of the universe, that we call God. The same Infinite Soul also is the background of the human mind which we call the human soul.

You are sitting on a computer in the projector cabin of a unique cinema hall in which the screen is not made up of white cloth. Instead, there is a big transparent room full of white liquid. You click on a movie file on your computer, the projector starts throwing light on the room of white liquid, real characters start emerging from the white liquid. You get attached to the characters. You start feeling their pain and pleasures. That room of white liquid is Space-Time or Maya. You are a soul sitting on the computer. The movie file is Karma-Desires. If you don’t like the movie, you can change it and play a better movie.

Good-bad, hot-cold, high-low, left-right: When you rise above all these pairs, you experience the final pair which seems to encapsulate everything else. Different Yogis call his final pair with different names: Shiva-Shakti, Existence-Nonexistence, Srishti-Shunya, Pure Masculine-Pure Feminine, Being-Nonbeing. You must transcend this final pair too. The desire to cling to one side of this final pair, the desire to always be Shunya or Shiva or Feminine or Nonbeing, stops you from having the absolute experience of Paramatma. You have to realize that Shiva and Shakti are same. Srishti as a whole is Shunya. Pure Masculine is pure Feminine.

Nisargadatta: You can have for the asking all the peace you want. Questioner: I am asking. Nisargadatta: You must ask with an undivided heart and live an integrated life. Questioner: How? Nisargadatta: Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it. Questioner: Surely everybody deserves peace Nisargadatta: Those only deserve it, who don't disturb it. Questioner: In what way do I disturb peace? Nisargadatta: By being a slave to your desires and fears. Questioner: Even when they are justified? Nisargadatta: Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified. Seek a clear mind and a clean heart. All you need is to keep quietly alert, inquiring into the real nature of yourself. This is the only way to peace.

In Banaras, I asked a monk, “To hold onto human character, one must have at least one desire. What is your desire.” He replied, “I have only one desire: Moksha or liberation from mortal bodies.” I said, “You are using the desire to leave the body to hold on to the body. Isn’t that contradiction? Aren’t you stuck in a loop of contradiction?” Recently, I met an old man in Chamundi Hills. He was singing praise of Maa Chamundi. I asked him, “Baba, what is your one desire that you are using to hold onto this body?” He replied, “Desire to sing songs in praise of Maa Chamundi.” I asked, “What about the desire of Moksha? Don’t you want to be free from this bondage?” He replied, “There is just one soul who is free- the Paramatma. I am that.” I said, “But how come you are stuck in this human body?” He said, “Young man! My mortal form is only in your mind. When you let go of your mind, you can meet me as Paramatma - the free soul. Then there is no you and me. There is just Paramatma.

Yogasanas have often been thought of as a form of exercise. They are not exercises, but techniques which place the physical body in positions that cultivate awareness, relaxation, concentration and meditation. Part of this process is the development of good physical health by stretching, massaging and stimulating the pranic channels and internal organs. When yogasanas are performed, respiration and metabolic rates slow down, the consumption of oxygen and the body temperature drop. During exercise, however, the breath and metabolism speed up, oxygen consumption rises, and the body gets hot. In addition, asanas are designed to have specific effects on the glands and internal organs, and to alter electrochemical activity in the nervous system.