ZITATE

Zitate

 

Nisargadatta Maharaj

quoted from: ‘I am That’, ‘The ultimate medicine’ & ‘The nectar of immortality’

“You need not know to be, but you must be to know.
“To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not.”
“The whole object of the spiritual search or quest is to understand the concept as a concept, the false as the false.”
 “Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not – body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that – nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand, that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being. 
“When anyone tells you to do some sadhana, with what can you do sadhana of any kind? It can only be this life force. The only instrument one has to do sadhana with is the life force. This life force, instead of viewing it merely as an instrument, has to be treated – mentally accepted – as the highest principle in the world: that is God, Paramatman, Ishwara or whatever you want to call it. So that when this life force is pleased, it gets purified and merges with the light of the atman.” 
“These two entities are available to you, the vital force and the knowledge ‘I am’, the consciousness. They appear without any effort; they are there. Now, in order to be one with Ishwara, to understand the non-duality, you must worship the vital force. Then that knowledge, which is in seed form, slowly grows. And the seeker becomes full of knowledge; in the process he transcends that and the ultimate state is achieved. 
 “This vital breath has five aspects and is called pancha-prana. It is the motive force for all activities. When the five-aspected vital force is there, then only this quality of beingness is there, which is called guna. This beingness at present is your nature – you are that only. So worship that principle. That quality, the touch of ‘I-am-ness’ or consciousness, is something like the sweetness of the sugarcane.” 
 “If I raise the life force to a godly status and treat it as such, then that life principle will unfold itself and give me the necessary spiritual knowledge.”
” Q: Somehow I feel responsible for what happens around me. M: You are responsible only for what you can change. All you can change is your attitude. There lies your responsibility.” 
“Instead of changing things on the outside, why not bring about a change within by removing your wrong identities?”
 “M: You know the world spontaneously without any effort or have you put in an effort to know that the world is? V: I don’t know if I put in any effort, but it is a mental creation, a reaffirmation of my own image of the world. M: Whether you have put in an effort to know that the world exist or you just know that the world is – that is the question. Knowledge of the Self is also like that.”
 
“Q; As long as the mind operates, causation is a valid law. M: Like everything mental, the so-called law of causation contradicts itself. No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is.”



 

Vimala Thakar

quoted from: ‘Totality in essence’ – ‘Blossoms of friendship’ – ‘Talks in Australia’

“Everyday life is the only opportunity to live; and living means relating to that which is.”
“In the human relationship is our opportunity to set ourselves free of the authority of the mind, authority of knowledge and to relax in the innocence of intelligence.”
“Be concerned with the honesty, the integrity and the intensity of your own enquiry, correlate it with all the life and leave the rest to life itself. ”
“What we do is, we claim to be sadhakas for some time of the day and claim to be ordinary people for some other times of the day; this inner contradiction must come to an end.”
”So when a person relates the inquiry to his total life, or rather relates his whole way of living to that inquiry, then a very significant change becomes noticeable.”
”A motiveless inquiry has no utility. Therefore it cannot be exploited. It is the arrogance of the self, the me, the I, the ego, going out to acquire something in the name of liberation, satori or mediation, that gets exploited.”
”That is why I use the term ‘inner order’. Inner order is the result of your spontaneous action out of understanding; discipline is something that you force upon yourself because the intellect accepts an idea. The intellect accepts an idea, the brain forces it upon the physical structure and so there is resistance and irritation and friction, and you have a sense of being imprisoned in the discipline. You feel as if you are a prisoner out of your own mind, of your own brain, of your own intellect.”
”As long as man does not get acquainted with the invisible cerebral organ, as long as he does not understand the mechanism of mind, it is nearly impossible to arrive at the state of meditation.”
“Knowing the relative field of utility of the mind and brain; using it precisely and accurately in that field and letting it alone when we know that it cannot proceed any further, is the proper way.” 
“Suffering does not invade you, you inflict it upon yourselves, you create it. Mind is the creator of suffering and the source of ‘dukham’. The ending of suffering is the beginning of meditation.” 
”Movement and energy are the properties of matter. Life is is-ness without any movement whatsoever.” 
“That is why this non-mental, non-cerebral enquiry taking place in the cessation of mental movement, taking place in the relaxation of the total being, taking place in the dimension of silence not conducted by the individual, but brought about by silence, is urgently needed today.”



 

Miscellaneous

“Wandering thoughts and attachments are not within our basic nature; therefore they can be discarded.”

– Chinese Buddhist Master Chin Kung –


“The final task in the spiritual quest is to resolve this ultimate distinction; that between the goal and the path, between the goal and him who is moving towards it.”

– Sw. Abishiktananda; ‘Guru & disciple’ –


“Life energy works in contradictions. Life exists as a dialectic; it is not simple movement. It is not flowing like a river, it is dialectical. With each move life creates its own opposite and through the struggle with the opposite, it moves forward. With each movement, the thesis creates the antithesis.

– Osho –


“To the Yogi, body, breath, nerves, mind, prana, and the universe are all part of a continuum, and he does not set up artificial distinctions between them.”

– Swami Rama –


“In Hatha-Yoga for instance, you begin with the bowels and continue to the brain and beyond. …Every form of Yoga insists on purity of the body as a prior condition of superconsciousness. Every form of Yoga! The books on the subject published in the west slur over this important matter. They make concessions to the sloth of their readers, whose mental as well as physical attitude is well symbolized by the chocolate-coated pill they swallow to work, while they sleep. Not so the gurus of the ganges, who insist that there must be activity within and without – not only awareness of spirit and an eager mind, but a lively skin and a clean bloodstream – before you are worthed to stand in the temple of the undistracted mind.”

– F. Yeats-Brown 1937 –



Ode to Theos Bernard:

“ To understand correctly Hindu philosophy, it is paramount that the basis of all the schools is the same. Together they form a gradual interpretation of the ultimate reality. Each school is based on the same metaphysical doctrine, while discussing some particular aspect of the whole…. All systems of hindu philosophy are in complete agreement that the purpose of philosophy is the extinction of sorrow and suffering and that the method is by the acquisition of knowledge of the true nature of things which aims to free man from the bondage of ignorance which all teachers agree is the cause of human suffering…. It is not for the discovery, but for the understanding of Truth. There are said to be three stages by which the student can arrive at this realization of the nature of things. They are: (1) Faith; (2) Understanding; and (3) Realization. The first stage is that of accepting the laws of nature as taught by the great minds of the past. In the next stage, through the process of analysis, the student arrives at a rational and logical conviction; however, reasoning and speculation about transcendental principles can never lead to more than probability, for there can never be certainty in reason as a means of discovering transcendental truths. At best, reasoning is merely a means of understanding the principles of nature and it is the purpose of philosophy to guide and aid the reasoning of the student. The last stage enables the individual actually to become one with the Ultimate Reality. This is accomplished through the practice of Yoga.”

– Theos Bernard; ‘Hindu Philosophy’, p.7 & 14,15; Jaico Publishing House –