🕉️Week 2023-14: Bhagavad Gita - Collected Quotes

"A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return." (Bhagavad Gita)

"All this visible universe comes from my invisible being. All beings have their rest in me, but I have not my rest in them." (Bhagavad Gita)

"Anyone who is steady in his determination for the advanced stage of spiritual realization and can equally tolerate the onslaughts of distress and happiness is certainly a person eligible for liberation." (Bhagavad Gita)

"As a strong wind sweeps away a boat on the water, so the mind dwelling on even one of the senses carries away the intelligence." (Bhagavad Gita)

"But they that spread a feast all for themselves eat sin and drink of sin." (Bhagavad Gita)

"Curving back within myself I create again and again." (Bhagavad Gita)

"For him who has no concentration, there is no tranquility." (Bhagavad Gita)

"For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?" (Bhagavad Gita)

"It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection." (Bhagavad Gita)

"Looking to thine own duty thou shouldst not tremble; for there is nothing more welcome to a Kshattriya (Warrior) than righteous war offered unsought as an open door to heaven." (Bhagavad Gita)

"The happiness which comes from long practice, which leads to the end of suffering, which at first is like poison, but at last like nectar - this kind of happiness arises from the serenity of one's own mind." (Bhagavad Gita)

"The peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul." (Bhagavad Gita)

"The self is the friend of a man who masters himself through the self, but for a man without self-mastery, the self is like an enemy at war." (Bhagavad Gita)

"The soul that moves in the world of senses and yet keeps the senses in harmony ... finds rest in quietness." (Bhagavad Gita)

"There's no wisdom from a man without harmony, and without harmony there is no contemplation. Without contemplation there cannot be peace, and without peace there can be no joy..." (Bhagavad Gita)

"Without self-mastery he has no understanding of inner power; without inner power, he has no peace; and without peace, where is joy?" (Bhagavad Gita)

🕉️Week 2023-10: Upanishads

"Equipped with qualities, a doer of works and creator of their consequences, he reaps the result of his actions; he is the ruler of the life and he moves in his journey according to his own acts: he has idea and ego and is to be known by the qualities of his intelligence and his quality of self. Smaller than the hundredth part of the tip of a hair, the soul of the living being is capable of infinity. Male is he not nor female nor neuter, but is joined to whatever body he takes as his own." (Swetaswatara Upanishad)

"From the non-being to true being, from the darkness to the Light, from death to Immortality." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

"He becomes the Eternal and departs into the Eternal." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

"He fashions one form of things in many ways." (Katha Upanishad)

"He passes in his departure from this world to the physical Self; he passes to the Self of life; he passes to the Self of mind; he passes to the Self of knowledge; he passes to the Self of bliss; he moves through these worlds at will." (Taittiriya Upanishad)

"He strives by these means and has the knowledge: in him this spirit enters into its supreme status. Satisfied in knowledge, having built up their spiritual being, the Wise, in union with the spiritual self, reach the Omnipresent everywhere and enter into the All." (Mundaka Upanishad)

"It is not large, and not minute; not short, not long; without blood, without fat; without shadow, without darkness; without wind, without ether; not adhesive, not tangible; without smell, without taste; without eyes, ears, voice, or mind; without heat, breath, or mouth; without personal or family name; unaging, undying, without fear, immortal, dustless, not un¬ covered or covered; with nothing before, nothing behind, nothing within. It consumes no one, and is consumed by no one. It is the imseen seer, the un¬ heard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, cca. 7th century) 

"Long and narrow is the ancient Path, - I have touched it, I have found it, the Path by which the wise, blowers of the Eternal, attaining to salvation, depart hence to the high world of Paradise." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

"Made certain of the meaning of the highest spiritual knowledge, purified in their being." (Mundrake Upanishad)

"Seven are these worlds in which move the life-forces that are hidden within the secret heart as their dwelling-place seven by seven." (Mundaka Upanishad)

"The Infinite indeed is below, above, behind, before, right and left—it is indeed all this. Now follows the explanation of the Infinite as the I; I am below, I am above, I am behind, before, right and left - I am all this. Next follows the explanation of the Infinite as the Self: Self is below, above, behind, before, right and left - Self is all this. He who sees, perceives, and understands this, loves the Self, delights in the Self, revels in the Self, rejoices in the Self -  he becomes a Svaraj, [an autocrat or self-ruler]; he is lord and master in all the worlds." (Chandogya Upanishad, 8th-6th century)

"The one Godhead secret in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of all, presiding over all action, witness, conscious knower and absolute... the One in control over the many who are passive to Nature, fashions one seed in many ways." (Svetosvatara Upanishad)

"The Swan that settles in the purity... born of the Truth, - itself the Truth, the Vast." (Katha Upanishad)

"The transmigration of life takes place in one’s mind. Let one therefore keep the mind pure, for what a man thinks, so he becomes." (Upanishads)

"There is a birth and growth of the self. According to his action', the embodied being assumes forms successively in many places; many forms gross and subtle he assumes by force of his own qualities of nature..." (Swetaswatara Upanishad)

"There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart." (Chandogya Upanishad)

"They say indeed that the conscious being is made of desire. But of whatsoever desire he comes to be, he comes to be of that will, and of whatever will he comes to be, he does that action, and whatever his action, to (the result of) that he reaches... Adhered to by his Karma he goes in his subtle body to wherever his mind cleaves, then, coming to the end of his Kama, even of whatsoever action he does here, he returns from that world to this world for Karma." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

"This bodiless and immortal Life and Light is the Brahman." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

"This is the eternal Tree with its root above and its branches downward; this is Brahman, the is the Immortal; in it are lodged all the worlds and none goes beyond it. This and That are one." (Katha Upanishad)

"This Self is to be won by the Truth and by an integral knowledge." (Mundaka Upanishad)

"This whole world is filled with beings who are His members." (Swetaswatara Upanishad)

"Thou art man and woman, boy and girl; old and worn thou walkest bent over a staff; thou art the blue bird and the green and the scarleteyed..." (Swetaswatara Upanishad)

"When a blade of grass is cut, the whole universe quivers." (Upanishads)

"When all the desires that cling to the heart Me loosed away from it, then the mortal becomes immortal, even here he possesses the Eternal." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

🕉️Week 2022-49: Sri Aurobindo - Collected Quotes

"Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism." (Sri Aurobindo, "New Lamps for Old", 1893)

"The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing wanting, which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength — strength physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual which is the one inexhaustible and imperishable source of all the others. If we have strength everything else will be added to us easily and naturally." (Sri Aurobindo, "India's Rebirth", 1905)

"A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther."  (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Aphorisms", 1913)

"Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses." (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Aphorisms", 1913)

"Mankind has used two powerful weapons to destroy its own powers and enjoyment, wrong indulgence and wrong abstinence." (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Aphorisms", 1913)

"Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an Idea began to play in divine self-consciousness." (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Glimpses", 1916-17)

"Nothing in the many processes of Nature, whether she deals with men or with things, comes by chance or accident or is really at the mercy of external causes."  (Sri Aurobindo, "The Renaissance in India", 1918)

"Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of Delight; it makes us capable also to bear the utter play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude." (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Aphorisms", 1913)

"The strangest of the soul's experiences is this, that it finds, when it ceases to care for the image and threat of troubles, then the troubles themselves are nowhere to be found in one's neighbourhood. It is then that we hear from behind those unreal clouds God laughing at us." (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Aphorisms", 1913)

"Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal." (Sri Aurobindo, "Thoughts and Glimpses", 1916-17)

"Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive." (Sri Aurobindo, "The Renaissance in India", 1918)

"The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of credal statement, but fruits of the soul's inner experience." (Sri Aurobindo, "Indian Spirituality and Life", 1919)

"All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish."  (Sri Aurobindo, [letter] 1929)

"The way of yoga followed here has a different purpose from others, - for its aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter." (Sri Aurobindo, "Lights on Yoga", 1935)

"Nothing to the supramental sense is really finite; it is founded on a feeling of all in each and of each in all." (Sri Aurobindo, "The Synthesis of Yoga", 1948)

"The material object becomes [...] something different from what we now see, not a separate object on the background or in the environment of the rest of nature but an indivisible part and even in a subtle way an expression of the unity of all that we see." (Sri Aurobindo, "The Synthesis of Yoga", 1948)

 "When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence." (Sri Aurobindo)