Paramahansa Yogananda

"Do not think of yourself as the body,

but as the joyous consciousness

and immortal life behind it."

MT MIND

 

RIBHU GITA

 

Give Priority To Your Meditation (from a Satsang Discourse of Baba Ram Singh Ji)

 THE PATH OF SANT MAT is the path of love and affection. Mahatmas have been explaining that the soul is a form of love and the Master is also a form of love. God Almighty Himself is a form of love. And the Path of going back to God Almighty is also a form of love. But ever since the soul has separated from God Almighty and has got engulfed in the net of Kal and Maya, it has separated from God Almighty and has manifested itself in the form of Kal and Maya here.

So, that same love, which has manifested in the outward pursuits of Kal and Maya here, if we are able to inwardly direct that same love and affection, then we can move within at great speed and velocity.

Therefore, our love and affection have to be prioritized. And, oftentimes, we prioritize all of the other things, all of our mundane activities, and other things. And because we have a love and affection for those things, we prioritize those and we say, “Okay, after we have finished all of those activities, we will sit for meditation.” And then, sometimes we sit for meditation; sometimes we do not sit for meditation. And that’s how our meditation gets affected.

The Gayatri Mantra

 

Meister Eckhart

 “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

ROBERT E. WILKINSON

“To realize Self is to realize the eternal freedom of the spirit. The first realization of the Self as something intensely silent and purely static is not the whole truth of it. There can also be a realization of the Self in its power. Establishing the mind in the Self means the conviction that the self alone is all, and that there is nothing other than it. As ones process deepens, the pervasive sense of coolness and calmness shows that the consciousness is reorienting itself at a deeper level of the being. Joy and happiness not dependent upon outward things begins to manifest. One becomes aware that he is acted through and totally dependent upon the Divine. This realization and accompanying release into peace and happiness is spoken of as liberation and carries with it the value of being released from jail. One begins to feel that the ordinary consciousness is something quite external and on the surface. It does not seem to be ones real self."

THE BUDDHA TAUGHT US THAT DESIRE IS THE CAUSE OF OUR SUFFERING

Our minds are full of desires which cause us to experience a lot of suffering. But most of these desires are unnecessary, meaning that we are also suffering unnecessarily too.

The nature of the Self is Satcitanand - being, awareness and bliss. The Self does not require anything outside of itself for happiness or bliss.

Our desires for external material objects is actually causing us to suffer, and drawing us away from experiencing the inherent Bliss we have within our nature.

Learn to be content and ignore the endless desires arising in the mind. Practice meditation and yoga, sitting quietly abiding in the Self and the inner presence of God.

TILOPA

The darkness of a thousand aeons is powerless to dim the crystal clarity of the sun's heart; and likewise, aeons of samsara have no power to veil the clear light of the mind's essence.

SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI - SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTION, CH. I, § 12

The individual being which identifies its existence with that of the life in the physical body as ‘I’ is called the ego. The Self, which is pure Consciousness, has no ego-sense about it. Neither can the physical body, which is inert in itself, have this ego-sense. Between the two – that is, between the Self or pure Consciousness and the inert physical body – there arises mysteriously the ego-sense or ‘I’ notion, the hybrid which is neither of them, and this flourishes as an individual being. This ego or individual being is at the root of all that is futile and undesirable in life. Therefore it is to be destroyed by any possible means; then That which ever IS alone remains resplendent. This is Liberation or Enlightenment or Self-Realisation

Maligret Phiri

Hinduism is predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages and of divinity cannot be confined to a single sacred book. While others might look to the heavens to find God, the Hindu looks within himself. There is no Hindu pope, no Hindu Vatican, no Hindu catechism, not even a Hindu Sunday. Hinduism does not oblige the adherent to demonstrate his faith by any visible sign. Instead Hinduism offers a smorgasbord of options to the worshiper: of divinities to adore and to pray to, of rituals to observe, of customs and practices to honor, of fasts to keep. Hinduism allows believers to stretch their imaginations to personal notions of the creative Godhead.

BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD

 

"All the joys of the entire cosmos put together would be only a small drop of the bliss of the Supreme Being. Whatever little satisfaction we have, whatever pleasures we have, whatever joys we are experiencing, whatever be the happiness of life - all this is but a reflection, a fractional distorted form, a drop, as it were, from this ocean of the Absolute."

TENZIN PALMO

It’s like a dance. And we have to give each being space to dance their dance. Everything is dancing; even the molecules inside the cells are dancing. But we make our lives so heavy. We have these incredibly heavy burdens we carry with us like rocks in a big rucksack. We think that carrying this big heavy rucksack is our security; we think it grounds us. We don’t realize the freedom, the lightness of just dropping it off, letting it go. That doesn’t mean giving up relationships; it doesn’t mean giving up one’s profession, or one’s family,or one’s home. It has nothing to do with that; it’s not an external change. It’s an internal change. It’s a change from holding on tightly to holding very lightly.

RAMAKRISHNA

**The teacher and the disciple repaired to the meditation room near by. Totapuri began to impart to Sri Ramakrishna the great truths of Vedanta.

"Brahman", he said, "is the only Reality, ever pure, ever illumined, ever free, beyond the limits of time, space, and causation. Though apparently divided by names and forms through the inscrutable power of maya, that enchantress who makes the impossible possible, Brahman is really One and undivided. When a seeker merges in the beatitude of samadhi, he does not perceive time and space or name and form, the offspring of maya. Whatever is within the domain of maya is unreal. Give it up. Destroy the prison-house of name and form and rush out of it with the strength of a lion

Dive deep in search of the Self and realize It through samadhi. You will find the world of name and form vanishing into void, and the puny ego dissolving in Brahman-Consciousness. You will realize your identity with Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute." Quoting the Upanishad, Totapuri said: "That knowledge is shallow by which one sees or hears or knows another. What is shallow is worthless and can never give real felicity. But the Knowledge by which one does not see another or hear another or know another, which is beyond duality, is great, and through such Knowledge one attains the Infinite Bliss. How can the mind and senses grasp That which shines in the heart of all as the Eternal Subject?

BRAHMAN by UNKNOWN

 

**While Brahman lies behind the sum total of the objective universe, some human minds boggle at any attempt to explain it with only the tools provided by reason. Brahman is beyond the senses, beyond the mind, beyond intelligence, beyond imagination. Indeed, the highest idea is that Brahman is beyond both existence and non-existence, transcending and including time, causation and space, and thus can never be known in the same material sense as one traditionally 'understands' a given concept or object

(SWAMI SANTSEVI JI)

“The Current of consciousness which is dispersed in the nine gates of the body and the nine senses must be collected at the tenth gate (the sixth chakra, the Third Eye, Bindu, Center between the eyebrows). Therein lies the path for our return.”

RĀHULBHADRA -

Within my body are all the sacred places of the world, and the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make is within my own body

Werner Von Braun

 

“Everything science has taught me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.”

YOGAPEDIA EXPLAINS CONSCIOUSNESS

**Some yogic philosophers, such as Swami Kriyananda, believe that consciousness is the absolute or purest state. Matter is seen as the manifestation of vibrating energy; and that energy itself is seen as the manifestation of Consciousness. In this sense, it is said that consciousness cannot be defined because once it is, it is no longer pure.

Yogic practices, such as mindfulness and meditation, allow practitioners to explore and understand the nature of consciousness through introspection, or examination, of the mind. To better understand consciousness, the practitioner shifts their focus from the things they are aware of to the instrument of their awareness, which is Consciousness itself.

Many yogis believe that the state of individual consciousness is just part of a collective universal Consciousness, like a wave is part of an ocean. In this sense, Consciousness is what connects all beings and things

MADHUDVISA DASA

Thus far, in line with the traditional West­ern approach, we have considered the conscious self and the mind to be synonymous and have distinguished between them and the body. Here we would like to briefly men­tion that in Bhagavad-gita a further dis­tinction is made between the conscious self and the mind. According to the Gita, the mind is composed of subtle material ele­ments that are capable of interacting with the brain. In this conception, the mind is really a part of the material body, and in­deed can be referred to loosely as the subtle body.

*The Bhagavad-gita explains that the conscious self is higher than both the mind and the body because it possesses an im­perishable, nonphysieal nature. When we say that the Supersoul is the link between the conscious self and the body, what we really mean is that the Supersoul is the link between the conscious self and both the subtle and gross material bodies. The inter­action between the Supersoul and the con­scious self is, undoubtedly, difficult to evaluate experimentally, but the two are so intimately connected there is full potential within each person for direct awareness of the Supersoul

osho

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

Eknath Easwaran, The Upanishads: Translations from the Sanskrit

You are neither the body nor in the body — there is no such thing as body. You have grievously misunderstood yourself; to understand rightly — investigate.

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