Tat Tvam Asi Quotes

Tat tvam asi: “Thou art That.” Atman is Brahman: the Self in each person is not different from the Godhead.

Tat tvam asi.

Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as 'I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world'. Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely 'some day': now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

Every human creates his own imagined version of the world, and of himself. Every human is therefore Brahma, creator of his own aham. Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahma. Tat tvam asi, so are you. We knot our imagination with fear to create aham. Tapasya and yagna are two tools that can help us unknot the mind, outgrow fear and discover atma, our true self.

In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, “Thou art that,” which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened.

In the ancient Indian Upanishads, the answer to the question “Who am I?” is “Tat tvam asi.” This succinct Sanskrit sentence means literally: “Thou art That,” or “You are Godhead.” It suggests that we are not namarupa—name and form (body/ego), but that our deepest identity is with a divine spark in our innermost being (Atman) that is ultimately identical with the supreme universal principle (Brahman). And Hinduism is not the only religion that has made this discovery. The revelation concerning the identity of the individual with the divine is the ultimate secret that lies at the mystical core of all great spiritual traditions. The name for this principle could thus be the Tao, Buddha, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Great Spirit, Sila, and many others.

As the Hindu sages who fashioned the Akashic concept realized, there are aspects of the human mind that are unlimited in space, therefore omnipresent, and that are also boundless in time, therefore eternal and immortal. Omnipresence and eternality are qualities that have always been attributed to the Divine—thus the Hindu aphorism Tat tvam asi, “Thou art that,” which affirms that we share qualities with the Godhead or the Absolute, however named.

I am I.” “Tat tvam asi.

It is not easy for students to realize that to ask, as they often do, whether God exists and is merciful, just, good, or wrathful, is simply to project anthropomorphic concepts into a sphere to which they do not pertain. As the Upaniṣads declare: 'There, words do not reach.' Such queries fall short of the question. And yet—as the student must also understand—although that mystery is regarded in the Orient as transcendent of all thought and naming, it is also to be recognized as the reality of one’s own being and mystery. That which is transcendent is also immanent. And the ultimate function of Oriental myths, philosophies, and social forms, therefore, is to guide the individual to an actual experience of his identity with that; tat tvam asi ('Thou art that') is the ultimate word in this connection. By contrast, in the Western sphere—in terms of the orthodox traditions, at any rate, in which our students have been raised—God is a person, the person who has created this world. God and his creation are not of the same substance. Ontologically, they are separate and apart. We, therefore, do not find in the religions of the West, as we do in those of the East, mythologies and cult disciplines devoted to the yielding of an experience of one’s identity with divinity. That, in fact, is heresy. Our myths and religions are concerned, rather, with establishing and maintaining an experience of relationship—and this is quite a different affair. Hence it is, that though the same mythological images can appear in a Western context and an Eastern, it will always be with a totally different sense. This point I regard as fundamental.

Every human creates his own imagined version of the world, and of himself. Every human is therefore Brahma, creator of his own aham.Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahma. Tat tvam asi, so are you.

The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other - he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy - but it would be the only strictly correct method. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The call to love beyond our own flesh and blood is ancient. It echoes down to us on the lips of indigenous leaders, spiritual teachers, and social reformers through the centuries. Guru Nanak called us to see no stranger, Buddha to practice unending compassion, Abraham to open our tent to all, Jesus to love our neighbors, Muhammad to take in the orphan, Mirabai to love without limit... It is the ancient Sanskrit truth that we can look upon anyone or anything and say: Tat tvam asi, 'I am that.' It is the African philosophy: Ubantu, 'I am because you are.' It is the Mayan precept: In La'Kech, 'You are my other me.

So there are two ways of seeing this world. One is maya, the grand illusion. You want nothing to do with this. This is what creates problems. This appears to create animosity, sorrow. But then there is the real world. The world of the Self. The world of Bliss. The world of total joy, unalloyed peace and happiness. This is what you really are. This is your real nature, your swarupa. You have always been this and you will always be this. Forget about the past. Do not worry about the future. Have total faith, total joy, in yourself. Only when you can understand yourself as All Pervading Consciousness can you possibly understand that all the universe is an emanation of your mind. Everything that you see comes out of you. You are the Creator. You are the God. You are the Avatar, the Atman. All the Gods that you've heard of, the Buddha, Krishna, Jehovah, Allah, they're all you. You are That. You are nothing else but That. You've always been That. Tat Tvam Asi. This is you.

The Indian conception teaches liberation from the opposites, by which are to be understood every sort of affective state and emotional tie to the object. Liberation follows the withdrawal of libido from all contents, resulting in a state of complete introversion. This psychological process is, very characteristically, known as tapas, a term which can best be rendered as “self-brooding.” This expression clearly pictures the state of meditation without content, in which the libido is supplied to one’s own self somewhat in the manner of incubating heat. As a result of the complete detachment of all affective ties to the object, there is necessarily formed in the inner self an equivalent of objective reality, or a complete identity of inside and outside, which is technically described as tat tvam asi (that art thou). The fusion of the self with its relations to the object produces the identity of the self (atman) with the essence of the world (i.e., with the relations of subject to object), so that the identity of the inner with the outer atman is cognized. The concept of brahman differs only slightly from that of atman, for in brahman the idea of the self is not explicitly given; it is, as it were, a general indefinable state of identity between inside and outside.

Unity consciousness is ,,,the source of our intuitive wisdom. Because we are one, we have the ability to tune in to everyone and everything instantaneously. We are like an antenna, capable of receiving all information but only listening to a very narrow range. When we quiet our minds, we can tap into the genius of existence because it is the very core of our being. Nature communicates with us; it is always reciprocating because Tat tvam asi—“We are it.” This is what intuitive wisdom is: tuning in and allowing our right brains to glean the whole story, not just the select details the left brain wants to analyze and rationalize about. It is the big- picture view that lies at the heart of all things.

God and Goddess. Purusha and Prakriti. Observer and observation. Subject and object. That’s what it is. Not this, not that; this too, that too. That’s who we are. Tat tvam asi.

What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin. One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit. (28 January 1956)

6-Brahmacharya significa “disciplina hacia el Ser”, normalmente mal traducida como “celibato”. Llevar adelante una disciplina dirigida al Ser, al Todo significa encauzar, tal como los rayos de sol al pasar por la lente de aumento de una lupa se concentran en la superficie en que se proyectan quemando con intensidad lo que se encuentre en ese punto. Así el brahmacharya permite que el joven aplique toda su energía en la profundización de las grandes verdades (mahavakyas), como por ejemplo: tat tvam asi (tu eres Aquello), ayam atma brahma (el ser es el Ser), prajñanam brahma  (la sabiduría es el Ser), aham brahmasmi (yo soy el Ser), las cuales medita con profundidad, así como también estudia los veda y aprende su recitación.

The fact that self-transcendence is even possible indicates that Consciousness exceeds our biological and mental-psychological conditioning. If self-transcendence is so natural to our being, why does it appear to be so difficult? The simple answer is that our conditioning to identify not with our true Self but any number of substitute identities is extraordinarily strong and requires a powerful sustained effort on our part to be overcome. We must dismantle our misidentifications as we become progressively aware of them, not merely once but over and over again until this new habit of discernment (viveka) is firmly established. Then, regardless of the circumstance, we can remain in a witnessing disposition instead of losing ourselves in our habit patterns. The discovery of the Self as the witness (sākshin) of all mental contents—whatever the level or state of consciousness—is a most important event in our life as spiritual practitioners. This witnessing is not merely an intellectual activity, for the intellect is transcended in the process of witnessing. Rather it is a tentative or, when the process has fulfilled itself, the actual and permanent recovery of our Self-Identity. The Yoga of witnessing is buddhi-yoga, the yogic path of wisdom through which we perceive our habitual and therefore binding (karmic) patterns of thought and behavior. The term buddhi stems from the same verbal root (budh) as bodha meaning “enlightenment/awakening” and buddha (awakened). Thus when wisdom dawns in us, our sense of identity shifts from the body and mind and the external world to the witnessing Self. To the degree that this shift has occurred within us we are free. This inner freedom from our karmic conditioning coincides with our realization of undiluted happiness or bliss (ānanda), which, like Being and Consciousness is a hallmark of the transcendental Self. Self-realization is the end of all suffering (duhkha). This is the highest human objective. We are not born to suffer. Suffering is merely a function of our spiritual ignorance (avidyā), which occludes our innermost identity, the ātman. When we have realized the ātman, the body, the mind, and the world at large cease to be objects for us. We recognize them as our very Self. Then our Self-vision (ātma-darshana) encircles everything. We realize ourselves as the ultimate essence and foundation of all beings and things. Yet we no longer fix on particular beings and things—i.e., on a particular body, mind, or world—as demarcating us. We see through all eyes, we hear through all ears, breathe through every breathing being in the universe, illuminate every single mind, shine in every star, and also are spread out infinitely in the interstices between galaxies and even between the infinite universes that constitute the cells of our space-transcending, time-transcending Being-Consciousness (sac-cid). Tat tvam asi!4 That art thou!

Para el advaita vedānta, las tres secciones de la Gītā representan las tres palabras de la gran sentencia o mahāvākya: tat tvam asi («tú eres eso»). Así, la primera sección que abarca los seis primeros capítulos se refiere al tvam («tú»), la segunda al tat («eso») y la tercera al asi («eres»); es decir, a la relación que se da entre el tú y el eso. Los primeros seis capítulos se ocupan, pues, del Tú, es decir, del ātman, y también del hombre de conocimiento, el practicante de yoga, en pos de conocer tanto el ātman inmortal, como el tat, el Eso, el brahman absoluto que, según la Gītā, se manifiesta como un Dios personal: Kṛṣṇa. Los seis capítulos siguientes, del séptimo al duodécimo, se ocuparan justamente del Eso, del Dios absoluto, al mismo tiempo remoto y personal, omnipotente e inmanente. Si en el primer sexteto se describe la inmortalidad del alma y la importancia de la práctica del yoga, tanto del yoga del conocimiento como del karma yoga, el segundo sexteto se ocupará del yoga de la devoción o bhakti yoga, que es el medio natural para alcanzar al Dios personal, Kṛṣṇa.

Please don’t become a Christian, don’t become a Hindu. You are a christ. Why become a Christian? Christhood is your nature. Christhood has nothing to do with Jesus; it is as much yours as Jesus’. Christhood is a state of choiceless awareness. So please don’t start thinking in terms of desire: “I would like to become true.” Now this is the way to become untrue. Drop this desire, just be, don’t try to become. Becoming is becoming untrue; being is truth. See the difference: becoming is in the future, it has a goal, being is herenow; it is not a goal, it is already the case. So whosoever you are, just be that, don’t try to become anything else. You have been taught ideals, goals – become! Always you have been forced to become something. My whole teaching is: whatsoever, whosoever you are, that’s beautiful. It is more than enough, just be that. Stop becoming and be! Now naturally when you ask, “I would like to become true, but what is it and how is it?”… Once you start thinking in terms of becoming, then certainly you want to know what the goal is. “What is it, what is this truth that I want to become?” And then naturally, when goal comes there, how also comes: how to attain it? Then the whole technology, methodology… I am saying you are that. The mystic in the Upanishad says: “Tat-tvam-asi: Thou art that.” Already you are that, it is not a question of becoming. God is not somewhere in the future; God is just now, this very moment, within you, without you, everywhere, because only God is, nothing else exists. All that exists is divine.

Madhusū́dana reinterpreta aquí la distinción original del vedānta, cualificado en un no dualismo más comprometido al introducir el mahāvākya ‘tat tvam asi’ como eje estructural de la Gītā y al mismo tiempo respeta la propuesta original al conceder una gran importancia a la devoción, ausente en las formas más antiguas del no dualismo vedántico. Veamos ahora la formulación original de esta triple distinción en palabras de Yāmunācārya: En el tratado de la Gītā se habla de Nārāyaṇa, el brahman supremo, que solo puede ser alcanzado mediante una devoción que surge de la práctica del propio dharma, el conocimiento y el desapego. En el primer sexteto se recomienda la vía del conocimiento y de la acción, practicadas con esmero con el objeto del yoga, para conseguir la experiencia de uno mismo (ātmānubhūti). En el sexteto central se habla del yoga de la devoción, que se logra con el conocimiento y la acción, y que proporciona el conocimiento preciso de la esencia del Señor. En la última sección, subordinada a las dos anteriores, se discute la materia primera, el espíritu, la manifestación material y el Señor del Universo. GAS, 1-4.

I don’t pray to god since I know that he is in me and experiencing the whole with me, so why prompt him a second time concerning my problems, fears and dreams. I believe that He is the great dramatist who had scripted my life and even my conscious thoughts. I am just an actor diligently following his script. Therefore, if I voice against God, it’s because he himself authored it. Even He penned what I needed to think of. I believe in tat tvam asi, which means that art thou. I believe that God is in me and in everyone who is untiringly working for a more significant design.

Question : HOW TO SACRIFICE THE EGO? Osho : IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE EGO CANNOT BE SACRIFICED because the ego exists not. The ego is just all idea: it has no substance in it. The ego is a kind of absence. Because you don't know yourself, hence the ego.The ego is like darkness; darkness has no positive existence of its own; it is simply the absence of light. You cannot fight with darkness, or can you? You cannot throw darkness out of the room; you cannot take it out, you cannot take it in. If you put the light on, there is no darkness; if you put the light off, there is darkness. Darkness is only the absence of light -- so is ego: absence of self-knowledge. You cannot sacrifice it. It has been told to you again and again: "Sacrifice your ego" -- and the statement is patently absurd, because something that does not exist cannot be sacrificed. And if you try to sacrifice it, something which is not there in the first place at all, you will be creating a new ego -- the ego of the humble, the ego of the egoless, the ego of the person who thinks he has sacrificed his ego. It will be a new kind of darkness again. No, I don't say to you: Sacrifice the ego. On the contrary, I say: Try to see where the ego is. Look DEEP into it; try to locate it, where it exists, whether it exists at all or not. Before one can sacrifice anything one must be certain about its existence. But don't be against it from the very beginning. If you are against it, you cannot look deep into it. There is no need to be against anything. The ego is your experience -- maybe it is just apparent, but it is still your experience. Your whole life moves around the phenomenon of the ego. It may be a dream. But to you it is so true. There is no need to be against it. Dive deep into it, go into it. Going into it means bringing awareness into your house, bringing light into darkness. Be alert, watchful. Watch the ways of the ego, how it functions, how it manages at all. And you will be surprised: the deeper you go into it, the less it is found. And when you have penetrated to the very core of your being, you will find something totally different which is not ego, which is egolessness. It is self, supreme self -- it is God. You have disappeared as a separate entity; you are no more an island, now you are part of the whole. In that experience of being one with the whole, the ego is sacrificed, but that is only a way of speaking, a metaphor. Don't take it literally. Try to understand the ego. Analyse it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. And don't be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks that he has no ego. Rather, follow a totally different path: meditate on the phenomenon of ego, enquire what it is. And as the enquiry deepens, the ego disappears. Enquiring into the ego you will come to the self. And remember: the self has nothing to do with the ego, because the self has nothing to do with you at all. The self is always the supreme self: AHAM BRAHMASMI! At that point, you (the ego) are not, only God is: Tat-tvam-asi -- thou art that. At that point, there is no distinction between thou and that. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean and has become the ocean itself. But no sacrifice -- the non-substantial cannot be sacrificed, it can only be understood. And in the very understanding is the disappearing. And this disappearance is beautiful, because it does not leave any traces behind, no scars, no wounds.