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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

You cannot be alive, for you are life itself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What refuses to die cannot be reborn.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I cried when I was born and I shall die laughing.

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

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.

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.

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.

Leave alone your desires and fears and give your entire attention to the subject, to he who is behind the experience of desire and fear. Ask: who desires? Let each desire bring you back to yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience. It is the choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to deceive yourself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy.

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.

The goal of a truly spiritual practice is, not the realization of unity with everything, but the realization of the fact that you are everything.

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

When the shadow is seen to be only a shadow, you stop following it. You turn around and discover the sun which was there all the time - behind your back!

Matter is the shape, mind is the name. Together they make the world. Pervading and transcending is Reality, pure being/awareness/bliss, your very essence.

It does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace.

Pain and pleasure are the crests and valleys of the waves in the ocean of bliss. Deep down there is utter fullness.

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.

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.

Since time immemorial the dust of events has been covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that you could see only memories. Brush off the dust before it has time to settle; this will lay bare the old layers, until the true nature of your mind is discovered… Dispassion, detachment, freedom from desire and fear, from all self-concern, mere awareness - free from memory and expectation - this is the state of mind in which discovery can happen. After all, liberation is but the freedom to discover.

Know yourself as beyond space and time - in contact with them only at the point of here and now, otherwise all-pervading and all-containing, unapproachable, unassailable, invulnerable - you will be afraid no longer. Know yourself as you are - against fear there is no other remedy.

In Whom is the Universe, Who is in the Universe, Who is the Universe; in Whom is the Soul, Who is in the Soul, Who is the Soul of Man; knowing Him—and therefore the Universe—as our Self, alone extinguishes all fear, brings an end to misery and leads to Infinite Freedom- UDDHAV TO GOPIS

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.

In Whom is the Universe, Who is in the Universe, Who is the Universe; in Whom is the Soul, Who is in the Soul, Who is the Soul of Man; knowing Him—and therefore the Universe—as our Self, alone extinguishes all fear, brings an end to misery and leads to Infinite Freedom.Therefore Sorrow not for Krishna he is you and you he-Uddhav to Gopis

Exactly as the shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the “I am the body” idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the person appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose, according to the pattern of destiny.

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.

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)

You love yourself and you want yourself to be secure and happy. Don’t be ashamed of it; don’t deny it. It is natural and good to love oneself. Only, you should know exactly what it is that you love. It is not the body that you love, it is Life: perceiving, feeling, thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that Life you love, which is you, which is all. Realize it in its totality, beyond all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it, for the greater contains the smaller. Therefore find yourself, for in finding that you find all. Everybody is glad to be. But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by dwelling in your mind on “I am,” “I know,” “I love” - with the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.