Non Fiction Authors From India

"Fear is bound to disappear when you realize that failure is not something shameful, damaging, destructive, or painful, but something natural."

"The very acceptance of the spiritual life demands enormous courage. This courage is not the courage of a haughty, rough person who will strike others to assert his superiority; it is totally different. This courage is our constant awareness of what we are entering into, of what we are going to become, of what we are going to reveal."

"A true spiritual seeker will have the deepest respect and utmost reverence for all religions. We can treasure all religions and claim them as our very own."

"I feel it is through prayer, meditation, and dedicated service that world peace can take place. Each individual has to try to make others happy, for it is only through happiness that we can have peace."

"In my philosophy everyone, including the poor, sick and aged, belongs to one family — God’s Family. God is at once poor and rich, sick and healthy, young and old, for He exists inside each and every individual. Here on earth we are all God’s children."

"What we need is a life of balance — neither to wallow in the pleasures of wealth nor to lead a life of asceticism, but to embrace a life of simplicity and a heart of purity."

"If we live in our oneness-heart, we will feel the essence of all religions which is the love of God. Forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, brotherhood and the feeling of oneness are the signs of a true religion."

"Either consciously or unconsciously we are searching for the highest Self, which is at once eternal and infinite."

"If you do not find peace inside your own heart, then you will not find it anywhere else on earth."

"There is no human being on earth who does not have the capacity to offer the message of peace to the world at large. But what is needed now is the soulful willingness."

"Alas, why does my mind have to walk through the dust of the past every day?"

"Be kind, be all sympathy, for each and every human being is forced to fight against himself."

"To deliberately criticise another individual may cause an indelible stain on the critic."

"I do not give up, I never give up, for there is nothing in this entire world that is irrevocably unchangeable."

"The waves of hatred-night can easily be dissolved in the sea of oneness-love."

"The world's oldest wisdom: each evil thought infuses the mind, sooner or later, with an unholy fear."

"The very nature of kindness is to spread. If you are kind to others, today they will be kind to you, and tomorrow to somebody else."

"Not the power to conquer others but the power to become one with others is the ultimate power."

"Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment."

"Love the world. Otherwise, you will be forced to carry the heaviest load: your own bitter self."

"If you do the right thing, eventually you will inspire others to do the right thing."

"Don't suffer! O my body, O my vital, O my mind, O my heart, do not suffer. Do not cherish suffering. Don't act like a fool. Don't think that your suffering is going to accelerate your spiritual progress."

"Spirituality tells the seeker not to live in the hoary past, not to live in the remote future, but to live in the immediacy of today, in the eternal Now."

"Nothing can be greater than love. God is great only because He has infinite Love. If we want to define God, we can define Him in millions of ways, but I wish to say that no definition of God can be as adequate as the definition of God as all Love. When we say "God", if fear comes into our mind, then we are millions and billions of miles away from Him. When we repeat the name of God, if love comes to the fore, then our prayer, our concentration, our meditation, our contemplation are genuine."

"Where love is thick, faults are thin. If you really love someone, then it is difficult to find fault with him. His faults seem negligible, for love means oneness."

"First of all, let us try to know what love is. If love means to possess someone or something, then that is not real love, not pure love. If loves means to give oneself, to become one with everything and everyone, then that is real love. Real love is total oneness with the object loved and with the Possessor of love."

"No more my heart shall sob or grieve. My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light. Above the toil of life, my soul is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite."

"Barren of events, rich in pretensions my earthly life. Obscurity my real name. Wholly unto myself I exist. I wrap no soul in my embrace. No mentor worthy of my calibre have I. I am all alone between failure and frustration. I am the red thread between nothingness and Eternity."

"No mind, no form, I only exist; now ceased all will and thought; the final end of [Nature]]'s dance, I am it whom I have sought."

"Laughter is Humanity's mechanism to escape suffering."

"To say that Nature displays intelligence doesn't make you a Christian fundamentalist. Einstein said as much, and a fascinating theory called the anthropic principle has been seriously considered by Stephen Hawking, among others."

"It’s time to rescue "intelligent design" from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward."

"Reagan was on the rise, the anti-war movement had sunk to a low ebb, and the New Age was barely christened when The Aquarian Conspiracy appeared in 1980. Overnight Marilyn Ferguson’s book became famous and sold in the millions. I was a young doctor who had just learned to meditate when I picked up a dog-eared paperback copy at a Catskill spiritual retreat. Ferguson’s message shot through me like electricity: a “benign conspiracy” was bringing about the greatest shift in consciousness in the twentieth century. In one stroke Ferguson unified a movement that seemed like small, isolated outposts on the fringes of respectable society. Ferguson was a uniter and a futurist. By showing feminists what they shared with environmentalists, New Age spiritual seekers with peace activists, her book inspired a movement that didn’t define the future in terms of technology. She was a one-woman movement for hope. She promised every voice in the wilderness that there were a thousand other voices like theirs."

"Most have simply washed their hands of the problem, claiming that the bigotry or bias on Wikipedia is just an unfortunate side-effect that we have to accept. But this is not a trivial unintended consequence of an open source system; bias goes against the very principle of Wikipedia and must be addressed. I have to deal with this bias and misinformation every time a journalist interviews me and references my Wikipedia article. I need to spend the first 30 minutes of interviews to correct all the misleading information from my Wikipedia article... Most of the skeptic editors on my article believe me to be a very dangerous man — and believe that it is Wikipedia’s responsibility to warn the world of how dangerous my ideas are."

"In the case of Chopra, our analysis need not be very profound: he is a spiritual businessman, and will never take a principled stand if it comes in the way of his business success. A soft and conformistic stance gives him easier access to the Western audience, as well as to a large chunk of the Hindu diaspora. The factor “inferiority complex” plays a part too. It makes Hindu Gurus suddenly feel superior when they have exchanged Hindu Dharma for the American mainstream. But mainly it is a pragmatic calculation. They don’t expect most of the kind of people they attract to be very interested in the intricacies of philosophy. Most of them have run away from Christianity, which is not just irrational, it is also demanding, morally and to an extent even intellectually. So they want something that is not too complicated nor too demanding. What they ultimately get is what they had wanted upon entry: an easy, watered-down version of Hindu Dharma."

"At this moment, you are seamlessly flowing with the cosmos. There is no difference between your breathing and the breathing of the rain forest, between your bloodstream and the world’s rivers, between your bones and the chalk cliffs of Dover."

"To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions."

"Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. The past is closed and limited; the future is open and free."

"Buddha didn’t teach that life hurts because of pain; it hurts because the cause of suffering hasn’t been examined."

"Every discord is a harmony not understood. Happiness is a disease, and pain, a medicine."

"There are three kinds of fools in this world, fools proper, educated fools and rich fools. The world persists because of the folly of these fools."

"Truth alone ultimately triumphs and survives. Untruth and swindling prosper like fire in loose grass but this prosperity is only short-lived. Truth prevails slowly but steadily like fire in a huge log of wood and it is not easily extinguished. Human life is very precious but it is very precarious, too. Death is inevitable."

"The one Reality takes manifold names and forms as a result of human ignorance. It is one and the same Thing that a Bhakta calls God, a Jnani calls Brahman, a Shakta calls Shakti, an Atheist calls Nature, a Scientist calls Force or Energy, a Christian calls Father in Heaven, a Mussulman calls Allah, some others call Infinity or Truth and a Vedantin calls Atman or Self. Whatever different names there may be, the fact remains that the Thing is one and the same. The difference is only in names. The Absolute Thing, which is beyond name and form, is birthless, growthless, decayless, deathless, sexless, All-pervading, All-knowing, All-blissful, without beginning, without end, changeless, beyond time, space and causation. The One Thing or the Ocean of Consciousness by Itself is ever the same — One only without a second."

"Love is not lust. The two (love and lust) are poles apart. Love liberates while lust binds."

"Religion is another name for the realization of Truth. It consists in becoming and being one with the Supreme Being. Doctrines and dogmas are only details of a secondary nature."

"The Ultimate Truth is called God. This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions. So, no one sect, no one religion or book can make an absolute claim of It. He who works for It gets It."

"Thought of tomorrow is the cause of much worry and anxiety. Commentary:—The thought of tomorrow such as "Where shall I go? What shall I eat?" etc., brings about planning. This planning and such thoughts rob a man of his peace of mind and make him restless and uneasy. The best thing to do is to depend fully upon God and to avoid planning, i.e., not to live either in the things of the past or of the future and to be indifferent to the things of the present. Contentment alone can give a man peace of mind and happiness."

"There is an inborn tendency to be Free. Every being is struggling to be Free. No one wants bondage. No one wants misery. The very idea of disease and death is appalling to all. Still, a being thinks that it will be happy by sense-pleasures. Can these sense-pleasures make one happy? No. Any amount of sense-pleasures will not make one really happy. Sense-pleasures will bring momentary satisfaction and then make one unhappy. Then comes the question: Where does this real happiness lie? It lies in knowing the True Nature. To know your True Nature, you have to control your mind. In order to control your mind, you have to live a true life. You must be a man of good character. That is why all the Scriptures ask their followers to be good, kind, gentle, noble, charitable, truthful, etc. In fact, moral and ethical codes of good conduct are the starting points of all Religions. They start with moral and ethical codes and end with God-realization or Self-realization."

"Very often people do not seem to understand the difference between control and suppression of an emotion. Say, one has a strong desire to enjoy a certain thing but there is no possibility to fulfil that desire. Here the desire is suppressed. On the other hand a desire for a certain enjoyment comes. The man can easily fulfil that desire, but he knows that the desire is bad for his growth and he discriminates and decides not to have that low desire. Here, it is called control. Suppression is bad and to discriminate, decide and to control an emotion is very good and there is a great need for it in this so-called scientific age."

"The sex-energy is the greatest power of the mind and the body. This is the supreme strength in the human body, embodying all powers and assuming all forms. The mind and the body receive their strength and life from this sex-energy. Instead of allowing this Shakti or energy to become the gross seminal fluid, it is to be conserved, it is to be converted into a form of subtle energy called “Ojas” and thus made a source of spiritual life instead of the cause of physical death. With the extinction of sexual desires, the mind is released of its most powerful bond. Sex-energy moves towards two main directions, viz., one is downward and the other is upward. It takes the downward course in the form of gross sexual enjoyment; but when one tries to observe Brahmacharya (celibacy) in thought, word and deed, it takes the upward course. When the sex-energy always takes the downward course in a person, such a person becomes weak mentally and physically. From such a man or woman we cannot expect anything great and original. Sexual life dissipates the powers of the mind and the body."