Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

 The Self God by

The  Self: you can’t explain it. You can sense its existence through the refined state of your senses, but you can’t explain it. To know it, you have to experience it. And the best you could say about it is that it is the depth of your Being, it’s the very core of you. It is you.

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

 

If you strive to find the Self by using your mind, you will strive and strive in vain, because the mind cannot give you Truth; a lie cannot give you the truth. A lie can only entangle you in a web of deceit. But if you sensitize yourself, awaken your true, fine, beautiful qualities that all of you have, then you become a channel, a chalice in which your Effulgent Being will begin to shine.

 You will first think that a light is shining within you. You will seek to find that light. You will seek to hold it, like you cherish and hold a beautiful gem. You will later find that the light that you found within you is in every pore, every cell of your being.

 You will later find that that light permeates every atom of the universe. And you will later find that you are that light and what it permeates is the unreal illusion created by the mind.

Sri Sivananda

 

Again, as you leave external form and dive into that light which you become, you realize beyond realization a knowing deeper than thinking, a knowing deeper than understanding, a knowing which is the very, very depth of your being. You realize immortality, that you are immortal—this body but a shell, when it fades; this mind but an encasement, when it fades. Even in their fading there is no reality.

Sivananda

 

The sun does not shine there nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings, much less this fire. After Him, when He shines, everything shines, by His light all this is illumined.

Katha Upanishad 1.3

 

The self) without sound, without touch and without form, undecaying, is likewise, without taste, eternal, without smell, without beginning, without end, beyond the great, abiding, by discerning that, one is freed from the face of death.

Sri Ramakrishna

 

  As long as you live inside the house of maya, as long as there exists the cloud of maya, you do not see the effect of the Sun of Knowledge. Come outside the house of maya, give up 'woman and gold', and then the Sun of Knowledge will destroy ignorance. A lens cannot burn paper inside the house. If you stand outside, then the rays of the sun fall on the lens and the paper burns. Again, the lens cannot burn the paper if there is a cloud. The paper burns when the cloud disappears.

Assorted

 

"The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self. Man's real nature is happiness."

  ~ Ramana Maharshi

"You must choose between your attachments and happiness.

 ~ Adyashanti

"Pleasure depends on things, happiness does not."   ~ Nisargadatta

Sri Aurobindo

 

The Shastras use the same word for man and the one divine and universal Being — Purusha — as if to lay stress upon the oneness of humanity with God. Nara and Narayana are the eternal couple, who, though they are two, are one, eternally different, eternally the same. 

Sivananda

 

“Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance.”

absolute bliss Bhagavad-Gita

 

the light of lights That is beyond darkness; It is knowledge, the object of knowledge and that which is to be attained through knowledge.

It is seated in the hearts of all... For I am the foundation of Brahman, Of the Immortal and the Imperishable, And of everlasting virtue, And of absolute bliss.54

Brian A. Bain, BA

 

The "real seat of Vishnu," then, dawns on man "as the form of light."6 Brahman is seen as the light of an endless sphere.7 The "Brahman-OM" is "the highest light, the foundation and sovereign lord of all...."8 Brahma is light, says the Maitri Upanishad, and the mystic symbol OM is "a leader, brilliant, sleepless, ageless [and] deathless...."9 Brahma, "the limitless One," is that "shining form which gives heat in yonder sun.... Unending are the rays of him."10 Brahman is "self-shining," "self-luminous," and "shines by his own brightness." As He shines "does everything else shine after."11 As we find in the Brahmarahasya Upanishad

Brian A. Bain, BA

Guru Nanak

 

No one can comprehend the Creator, who is beyond human grasp, immeasurable. The soul is deluded by maya, drugged by untruth. Ruined by the demands of greed (such a person) repents eternally, but he who serves the One knows Him, and his cycle of birth and death comes to an end....

For Nanak

 

"all gladness and emancipation is in hearing the divine melody within." The guru thus "intoxicated" with the divine sounds "relinquishes all other music." When one attains to God, then "within one rings the blissful unstruck melody."

TURYA

 

If you ask what that is, it is called Turiya, which means the fourth state. Why is this name used? This name is proper because it seems to say the three states of your experience – waking, dream and deep sleep – are foreign to you and your true state is the fourth, which is different from these three. Should the three states – waking, dream and deep sleep – be taken to form one long dream, the fourth state represents the waking from this dream. Thus it is more withdrawn than deep sleep, also more wakeful than the waking state. Therefore your true state is that fourth one which is distinguished from the waking, dream and deep sleep states. You are That only.

The Adi Granth

 

The Adi Granth makes frequent reference to the human encounter with a Divine Light: "God, being Truth, is the one Light of all." God "shines out in His own splendour." Moreover, "His brightness shineth forth" with "the blaze of the splendour dazzling like the sun."

Guru Nanak added more on this issue in other writings. For Nanak, God is "the light of all light." The light of God "illumines land and seas." God is "the embodiment of light; the lamps of the sun and moon and all their light emanate from Him...." God is "pure light"... the "ever pure light." This "all-wise Being of light sits on the throne eternal." God's light is "infinite," and God Himself "is immaculate and all light."

The Adi Granth also makes it clear that this Divine Light can be found within one's self: "the Eternal Light indwells in the human mind, and the human mind is the emanation of that light." Further, "the best light is the Light of God in the heart." Ultimately, the Sikh aspirant wishes to be immersed in the Divine light, as was Guru Nanak: "as waves blend with water, so my light is blended with the Lord's Light."