Advaita Vedanta Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

What refuses to die cannot be reborn.

The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make your hooks straight and nothing can hold you.

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.

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.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience, “I am the world, the world is myself,” you are free from desire and fear on one hand and become totally responsible for the world on the other.

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’.

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.

Trace your misunderstandings and abandon them, that is all. There is nothing to seek or find, for there is nothing lost. Relax and watch the “I am.” Reality is just behind it. Keep quiet, keep silent; it will emerge or, rather, it will take you in.

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 inquire in yourself, all you desire is desirelessness.

Just as a rope that is not clearly ascertained at dusk is imagined to be such things a snake or a line of water, so likewise the Self is imagined as various objects

What does not exist in the beginning or in the end is also nonexistent in the present.

He who is continually fixed on Om knows no fear anywhere.

The Self, when finite, is Human and when infinite, is God.

When the heart is empty of the “me”, the heart is full of love.

Things outside are just a projection from the DVD playing inside you. The time you invest for knowing your inner self will pay dividends outside.

If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within.

If all cards were same, there would be no game. When you start seeing the one supreme power in everything and everyone, the game of Maya (Space-Time) is over.

Mind can't go inward. It can only go in opposite direction- from pleasure to pain, from chaos to discipline.

Self-realization definitely comes first. The mind cannot go beyond itself by itself. It must explode.

Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind and it will be flooded with light.

In reality, nothing happens. Onto the screen of the mind, destiny forever projects its pictures, memories of former projections, and thus illusion constantly renews itself. The pictures come and go - light intercepted by ignorance. See the light and disregard the picture.

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

The limited is bound to be painful and pleasant in turns. If you seek real happiness, unassailable and unchangeable, you must leave the world with its pains and pleasures behind you.

Your begging bowl may be of pure gold, but as long as you do not know it, you are a pauper. You must know your inner worth and trust it and express it in the daily sacrifice of desire and fear.

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.

When there is total surrender, complete relinquishment of all concern with one’s past, present and future, with one’s physical and spiritual security and standing, a new life dawns, full of love and beauty; then the guru is not important, for the disciple has broken the shell of self-defense. Complete self-surrender is liberation by itself.

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.

To think that you are living life, even though you still haven’t realized nondual awakening, is like thinking that you are eating a mostly sweet, partially bitter—or vice versa—apple, while all you are doing is licking a photocopy of a picture of an apple seed.

Nothingness is the source of everything. But if you want to take an apple out of it, so many other things will come out along with apple: The farmer who produced it, the farm, the seed shop, farmer’s family and ancestors... a whole new universe will come out with apple.

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.

Treat the entire external world - thoughts, things and people - as a single unit, a single person. Her name is Maya. You, the soul, are in a unique relationship with her. For any happy relationship, space is important. So, leave her alone once in a while. In other words, meditate!

A man left home in morning with 1 Rupee. He gambled with it and made millions. Then lost them all. He returned home in evening empty handed. His wife is clueless why loss of just 1 Rupee has drowned his husband in so much depression that he is not speaking a word. This is the illusion or Maya.

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.

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.

Prana is Spandana or vibration. When all this universe shall have resolved back into its primal state, what becomes of this infinite force? Do they think that it becomes extinct? Of course, not. If it became extinct, what would be the cause of the next wave, because the motion is going in wave forms, rising, falling, rising again, falling again?

A cave is formed naturally by interplay of the five elements, and your house is man-made. But what is man? Nothing but an interplay of five elements. Even the thoughts that you consider your own are nothing but fireplay happening in your mind. When you realize this truth, your house will also feel like a cave and your life will become a meditation.

As cloud hides the sun, light of light is hidden in the heart. As soon as cloud of mind is removed, light of light starts shinning.

It is true that the Upanishads have this one theme before them: "कस्मिन्नु भगवो विज्ञाते सर्वमिदं विज्ञातं भवति - What is that knowing which we know everything else?

But creation must be from the very nature of the radiant Self — for what desire can there be for the one has accomplished everything?

Our objective of life is only to survive but to achieve some mental objectives. If not, we have to live like animals and have to face tortures.

Silence went to see the ego, but there were nobody home.

The innermost light, shining peacefully and timelessly in the heart, is the real guru. All others merely show the way.

When you relax, the universe starts to answer questions you never even asked.

You exist because you are a great story which means you are perfect already and always will be no matter what! If anyone tells you different, or makes you feel like you’re not, they’re a liar!

I am Paramatma, the supreme soul Playing the role of a spiritual seeker, I am searching myself. Playing the role of an atheist, I deny my existence. Playing the role of a spiritual activist, I think that I am enlightened and others are ignorant. Playing the role of an ignorant, I want to get enlightened. I am in all the roles. In the role of somebody who will read these words, I will now think why I am playing all these roles?

Suppose there is a wave in the ocean. The wave is distinct from the ocean only in its form and name, and this form and this name cannot have any separate existence from the wave; they exist only with wave. The wave may subside but the same amount of water remains, even if the name and form that were on the wave vanish for ever. So this Maya is what makes the difference between me and you , between all animals and man, between gods and men.

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.

Thus, the unborn alone exists. [27] The birth of what exists only occurs through Brahman’s power of projection, but from the point of view of what is Real it is not truly born. But one who thinks that such birth is real must think that what is already born is born a second time.

Much later, the illustrious teacher (acharya), Shankara (eighth century C.E.), attempted a reformulation of Advaita (Nondual) Vedanta, and in the process introduced some ideas which are controversial to this day. In many ways, his metaphysical worldview is also remarkably similar to that of Plotinus:

I give you "The Human Hymn" for the times when you feel depleted, desolate and defeated. I am the Vedanta, I am the Bible, I am the Quran, I am the God Cell. I am the Torah, I am the Suttas, I am the Hadith, I am Humanitas. I am the Son, I am Jehovah, I am the Qi, I am Bismillah. I am the Vivek, I am the Ananda, I am the Bodhi, I am the Sattva. I am the Sat, I am the Shri, I am Akaal, I am Brahmasmi. I am the Prophet, I am Aminah, I am the Mother, I am the Krishna. I am the Beginning, I am the Anth, I am the Journey, I am Ananth. I am Creation, I am the Ravager, I am Qayamat, I am the Creator.

Everything that you do, amounts to meditation. Whatever you focus on, whatever you concentrate on, whatever you give your energy to, whatever you think about—is ‘meditating’ upon it. Ordinarily, that is not the everyday understanding of meditation, but it’s true. Most people are meditating on their problems.

Every adventure allegorically retelling the same essential truth, which was that we are all so much more than we have been led to believe. We are the random spark in the vacuum and the eternal ripple that spreads infinitely from its serendipitous source. We are all of it. Everything that has been, will be, or ever could be.

Most people are meditating on what they like, or don’t like. Most people are meditating on how to be happy, how to have a better life, how to make more money, how to get sex—so don’t be confused. What you give your attention to, IS your meditation. Formal meditation, the ‘practice’ of meditation, is an antidote for these involuntary meditations that people are always engaging in without realizing it. You get to focus on something different, something perhaps of your choosing.

There's really no reason to come to satsang at all, unless you have an open heart! If you came to satsang with an open heart, Reality will be yours. Not my reality or your reality, but Reality, the Reality, what people call the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. You are already That, but you have so many concepts you cover it up. You have so many feelings and dogmas and attitudes that you cover up the Godliness. So you have to open your heart and let your reality shine through. How do you do this? By keeping silent, by not being judgmental, by leaving the world alone. There will always be something in this world to correct, either in yourself or in your family or in the world or people. You have learned from experience that you cannot do this. The correction is always made within yourself. It is yourself with a small "s" that sees the problem. But if you try to resolve the problem outside of you, it will never be resolved. It's resolving yourself, knowing the Truth, understanding who you are, that brings you peace and realization. (p. 3-4)

Various fascinating psychological elements are involved in the transcendental state of human consciousness. One may lose the ability to distinguish one’s self from the rest of the world in transcendence, but still it is the human brain that constructs that state of mind. Hence, even in that altered state of consciousness one is not totally devoid of one’s beliefs, conjectures, ideas and fantasies. In fact, these ideas fill up the transcendental experience with all kinds of fanatic stories that happen to be unique, based on the person’s inner urges and drives.

Advaita, being the non-dual reality, necessarily points to the essential truth in all religions. Paula Marvelly points out that: 'All religions and faiths contain an esoteric heart, a mystical belief that I AM is in fact synonymous with God.' (Ref. 353) As Gandhi said: 'If the same divinity constitutes the core of all individuals, they cannot but be equal. Further, divinity in one person cannot in any way be unjust to the same divinity in another person.' (Ref. 215) Sayings from the bible such as those of God to Moses ('I am that I am' ) or of Christ ('The kingdom of heaven is within you') express the fundamental truth of Advaita, the non-dual reality of Brahman.

It is the perennial problem of the teacher to be able to judge where the student currently is in his or her understanding and lead them onwards from there. This is why a living 'guru' is really needed, so that questions may be asked and answered face to face. When we read a book, or even listen to a tape recording of a lecture or dialogue, we are receiving only a particular viewpoint, aimed at a student of a particular level. It may resonate or it may not. Even the method of expression is crucial. Whilst one person may appreciate logic and intellectual analysis, another may need sympathetic reassurance and practical guidance. (...) Ultimately, the truth is one and everything else that might be said is only at the level of appearance, using a language that is necessarily objective and dualistic. What is needed is a teacher whose words and style 'click' with our particular mental conditioning. This book aims to present excerpts from traditional and modern teaching in a wide variety of styles, in the hope that something will click.