"It is necessary, then, for us to firmly set in mind that we are birthless beings, that we have never “come into being” or been “created.” Rather, we are co-eternal with God, the Essence of our existence. We never came into being, nor shall we ever cease to be. When we understand that our consciousness is somehow a wave of the Infinite Consciousness that is God, that we are irrevocably a part of God’s infinite Light and Life, it will have a transforming effect on us."
"You are the Self, the infinite being, the pure, unchanging consciousness, which pervades everything. Your nature is bliss and your glory is without stain. Because you identify yourself with the ego, you are tied to birth and death. Your bondage has no other cause."
Jesus, who said: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God,” had learned this well in India. For the next verse of the Katha Upanishad tells us: “By the purified mind alone is the indivisible Brahman to be attained. Brahman alone is–nothing else is. He who sees the manifold universe, and not the one reality, goes evermore from death to death.”
Ideas and thoughts are bondage; and their coming to an end is liberation. Therefore, be free of them and do whatever has to be done spontaneously. (III:111)
"The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness."
A little consideration of what takes place around us every day would show us, that a higher law than that of our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary, and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple, spontaneous action are we strong.
A person experiences life as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness. – Albert Einstein
Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. – H. P. Blavatsky
“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” wrote Saint Paul. Patanjali speaks of the process of kriya yoga, the yoga of purification, consisting of austerity (tapasya), self-study, and devoting the life to God. Yama, Saint Paul, Patanjali, and Krishna all tell us the same thing: “Become a yogi.”
“Bodies are said to die, but That which possesses the body is eternal. It cannot be limited, or destroyed. …Some say this Atman is slain, and others call It the slayer: they know nothing. How can It slay or who shall slay It? Know this Atman unborn, undying, never ceasing, never beginning, deathless, birthless, unchanging for ever. How can It die the death of the body? Knowing It birthless, knowing It deathless, knowing It endless, for ever unchanging, dream not you do the deed of the killer….”
"I am not the mind, intellect, thought, or ego;Not hearing, not tasting, not smelling, not seeing;I am not the elements–ether, earth, fire, air: I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit! I am neither Prana, nor the five vital airs; Nor the seven components of the gross body; Nor the subtle bodies; nor organs of action: I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit! I have no aversion, clinging, greed, delusion; No envy or pride, and no duty or purpose; I have no desire, and I have no freedom: I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit! I have no merit or sin, nor pleasure or pain; No mantra, pilgrimage, Veda or sacrifice; Not enjoying, enjoyable, or enjoyer: I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit! I have no death or fear, no distinction of caste; Neither father, nor mother, nor do I have birth; No friend or relation, guru or disciple: I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit! I am without attributes; I am without form; I am all-pervading, I am omnipresent; By senses untouched, neither free, nor knowable: I am the form of Conscious Bliss: I am Spirit!"
For a knower of Om is translated into that world, having been transmuted into Brahman through Om. It is no wonder, then, that the Mundaka Upanishad says about Om: “Dismiss other utterances. This is the bridge to immortality.”
“The Self, whose symbol is OM, is the omniscient Lord. He is not born. He does not die. He is neither cause nor effect. This Ancient One is unborn, imperishable, eternal: though the body be destroyed, he is not killed.”
Om is supreme, being Itself the Supreme. But Yama has made this seemingly obvious comment to convey the fact that Om is the supreme means to the realization of the Supreme. There is nothing higher than Om, nor is there any means of spiritual cultivation higher than Om. That is why Patanjali simply said: “Its repetition and meditation is the way.”
“Shake off this fever of ignorance. Stop hoping for worldly rewards. Fix your mind on the Atman. Be free from the sense of ego,” counsels Krishna. “You dream you are the doer, you dream that action is done, you dream that action bears fruit. It is your ignorance, it is the world’s delusion that gives you these dreams.” “Seek this knowledge and comprehend clearly why you should seek it: such, it is said, are the roots of true wisdom: ignorance, merely, is all that denies them.” “When men have thrown off their ignorance, they are free from pride and delusion. They have conquered the evil of worldly attachment. They live in constant union with the Atman. All craving has left them. They are no longer at the mercy of opposing sense-reactions. Thus they reach that state which is beyond all change.”
THERE is one Infinite Eternal, Changeless Existence, the All. From That all comes forth ; to That all returns. "One only, without a second."* That includes within Itself all that ever has been, is, and can be. As a wave rises in the ocean, a universe rises in the All. As the wave sinks again into the ocean, a universe sinks again into the All, As the ocean is water, and the wave a form or manifestation of the water, so is there one Existence, and the universe is a form, or manifestation, of the Existence. " All this verily (is) Brahman."
SANATANA DHARMA. PART I. BASIC HINDU RELIGIOUS IDEAS.
Adi Shankaracharya - Vivekachudamani 447. Through the realisation of one’s identity with Brahman, all the accumulated actions of a hundred crore of cycles come to nought, like the actions of dream-state on awakening.
“For when a man’s heart has reached fulfillment through knowledge and personal experience of the truth of Brahman, he is never again moved by the things of the senses. Earth, stone and gold seem all alike to one who has mastered his senses. Such a yogi is said to have achieved union with Brahman. Then he knows that infinite happiness which can be realized by the purified heart but is beyond the grasp of the senses. He stands firm in this realization. Because of it, he can never again wander from the inmost truth of his being.”
“For when a man’s heart has reached fulfillment through knowledge and personal experience of the truth of Brahman, he is never again moved by the things of the senses. Earth, stone and gold seem all alike to one who has mastered his senses. Such a yogi is said to have achieved union with Brahman. Then he knows that infinite happiness which can be realized by the purified heart but is beyond the grasp of the senses. He stands firm in this realization. Because of it, he can never again wander from the inmost truth of his being.”
“Kashmir Shaivism does not postulate a God sitting on high and casting out a universe. Instead, Consciousness Itself opens and manifests in precisely the same way that your dream world is manifested. The outer world is withdrawn when universal Consciousness returns within, just as when you go to sleep at night the outer world disappears as you go within. To get to the pure space of Shiva, we have to go inside ourselves and find it there. The thing that stops us, that makes the process hard, is the veil, maya. We get pulled to the outer, to the material part of creation. The senses get intoxicated by objects and pull us away from focus on the Self. The pull of the world is so strong, the outer is so overwhelming: this is the power of maya.”
“The key to dissolving the mind can be found in turning one’s attention away from all external objects, no longer accepting any sense of objectivity as real. This means regarding body, mind, ego and all of our thoughts as external to our real nature; which is indeed the fact. Consciousness can never be limited to an object, quality or condition that we observe. It is the seer of all. We learn to negate all thoughts as different from our true nature. All our thoughts and the mind itself are outside of us and do not belong to us or abide in any unchangeable state or condition. Recognizing this gives rise to the highest detachment; and then we no longer crave anything from the outer world. We regard body and mind to be like our clothes and do not see them as constituting our enduring nature.”
Where there's an ego there is purpose. And when there is no sense of "I" there is no purpose.
Life is purposeless.
There's only beauty in living in the eternal.
If you believe you are the individual "I" you are isolated from your surroundings, and this isolation brings feelings of insecurity, fear and anxiety. Then you look for goals. You worry and anticipate.
Life doesn't need a reason to be. That is it's beauty.
Purusha of the size of a thumb, the inner Self, is ever seated in the heart of all living beings. One should, with steadiness, separate Him from one’s own body as stalk from the Munja grass. One should know Him as pure and immortal; one should know Him as pure and immortal. 2-III-18. Nachiketas then, having acquired this knowledge imparted by Death, as also the instructions on Yoga in entirety, attained Brahman having become dispassionate and deathless. So does become any one else also who knows the inner Self thus.
It is affirmed over and over in the upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita that perfect realization and liberation is possible even here in the world. This is one of the glories of Sanatana Dharma. It does not hold out some vague “bye and bye” hope to be realized only after death–a sure trait of fraudulent religion. The truth of the Eternal Religion–including Yoga–can be proven at every moment of our life, just as advances in science, especially in physics and astronomy, reveal the truths intuited by the sages of India thousands of years ago.
Swami Nikhilananda
True knowledge is a!ways accompanied by a direct personal 'ex perience.' To know Atman is to realize that the Self of man is Pure Consciousness. To know Brahman is to be- come Brahman. Therefore intellectual understanding of Vedanta must be followed by actual transformation of life
Being outside of time and space the self is both everywhere and nowhere–depending on one’s point of reference. One thing is definite: the self cannot be separated from to any degree and is always present in the fullest measure. This being so, we need not seek the self, but only realize it. We are always seeing, touching, and living in the self, yet we do not recognize it, just as fish have no perception of water because of its intimate and integral connection with them. The self is even more immediate to us than is water to the fish.
In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.
42. Atman is not purified by the six methods of Yoga. Absence of the mind makes It no clearer. The teachings of a Guru reveal It not. It is all purity, in Itself, by Itself.
47. Pure, pure thou art, without a body, unrelated to the mind, beyond maya; why art thou ashamed to declare: ”I am Atman, the supreme Reality”?
The Vedantins do not say that the world is unreal. That is a misunderstanding. If they did, what would be the meaning of the Vedantic text: ‘All this is Brahman’? They only mean that the world is unreal as world but real as Self. If you regard the world as non-self, it is not real. Everything, whether you call it illusion (Maya) or Divine Play (Lila) or Energy (Shakti) must be within the Self and not apart from it.
(cont'd)and sets forth the ideal of Freedom through the realization of man's
identity with the Absolute only for those rare souls who, in the course of
their spiritual evolution, have understood the utter inadequacy and
transiency of life — life not only on this earth but on another plane of
time and space governed by the law of causation. On the other hand,
for the vast majority’ of men who still cling to the false idea of indi-
viduality, Vedanta assures rebirth on earth or elsewhere through its
theory of reincarnation. - No religion except Hinduism and Buddhism be-
lieves in the existence of the individual soul both before birth and after
death. As long as one desires individuality one will be born with I-con-
sciousness. Vedanta also suggests that if one wishes to enjoy material
happmess, one should not renounce one’s duties, but devote oneself to
the cultivation of righteousness (dharma), economic security (artha), and
sensuous pleasures (k a ma). After going through all these experiences a
man will realize that true Liberation (moksha) is attained only when he
is free from desire, attachment, and ego. The world is full of relative
good and evil only to him who is still a victim of ignorance and regards
it as existing in time and space and governed by the law of causation
But to the knower of Truth the world is Brahman and therefore the em-
bodiment of Bliss. 
Thoughts are just ripples in the mind. When the mind is quiet, it reflects reality. When it is motionless through and through, it dissolves, and only reality remains.
"Beyond the genius is the mystic. The mystic is one who has attained cosmic consciousness by a complete severance of the seats of consciousness and sensation. He is then almost totally unaware of his body and is totally aware of the Light of God centering him. Omniscience comes to him in that timeless blinding flash of light which is characteristic of a complete severance. This experience was described in the illumination of St. Paul. Every timeless flash of intense inspiration which comes to any man is a partial illumination, for inspiration is the manner in which new knowledge comes to man from the cosmos."
Walter Russell
"God's omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence are centered in the consciousness of every man; but few there are who know of the Oneness of their Self-Soul with the Universal Self-Soul. Man requires many millennia to begin to be aware of that. Each cycle of man brings him nearer to his awareness of his Oneness with the Light of his S elf- Source"
Thought is absent in seeing things intuitively… When you perceive directly, there is no thinking… When you think you understand, you don’t… You do not think that you are alive, you know that you are alive…
The Meaning of Divinity
Clearly, what I mean by Divinity is a somewhat that is quite impersonal. Yet, this somewhat can be directly Realized by the function of Introception. When so Realized, it is found to be quite the most intimate of all thi…ngs. It is the fulfillment of all the deep yearnings of the human heart and it illumines the mind with a Light that is far more brilliant than any light of the intellect, operating either in its purity or in relation to experience.
"I turn within... I am not turning up to the sky - I am not turning anywhere outside of my own being - I am not looking around for holy temples or holy teachers or holy books. I am turning within.
This one question “What do I know for certain?" is tremendously powerful. When you look deeply into this question, it actually destroys your world. It destroys your whole sense of self, and it's meant to. You come to see that everything you think you know about yourself, everything you think you know about the world, is based on assumptions, beliefs, and opinions, things you believe because you were taught or told that they were true. Until we start to see these false perceptions for what they really are, consciousness will be imprisoned within the dream state.
The divine manifestation is ubiquitous, only our eyes are not open to it. Awe is what moves us forward.
