Spiritual Teachers

"I consider that goodness of being and doing constitute the rock-bottom of one’s life. By goodness I mean the capacity to feel with others and to live and feel as others do, and be in a position to act so that no one is hurt by the act. (What Life Has Taught Me)"

"The misery and suffering that abound everywhere, reveal clearly that you have wantonly rejected the lessons of life. Foolish man! Your repeated, wanton neglect to learn the lessons of centuries has wrecked your boasted civilisation upon the rocks of hatred and greed."

"Stand not a beggar before the door of science seeking power that kills more than heals."

"Seek within. All power dwells in you, infinite power for good. Realise your real nature and be perennially happy and peaceful."

"Life on the earth is a school of Wisdom and Realisation of the Self. God is the unseen Teacher who through His great sons, through Nature herself, teaches man the secret and source of the attainment of Life Immortal. Thus, life abounds in lessons. He who heeds them, heeds towards freedom and Light; he who neglects, dooms himself: in darkness in which the world to-day is steeped."

"Milk, barley, wheat, cereals, butter, cheese, tomatoes, honey, dates, fruits, almonds, and sugar-candy are all Sattvic food-stuffs. They render the mind pure and calm and play a very important part in the practices of spiritual aspirants, in the mental development of the student, and in the personality- power of the leaders of mankind."

"Fish, eggs, meat, salt, chillies, and asafoetida are Rajasic food-stuffs; they excite passion and make the mind restless, unsteady, and uncontrollable."

"The lessons of life has ever been “Hatred is not overcome by hatred, by love alone is hatred conquered." Spiritual wealth alone is the true treasure, the wealth of the whole world is but vanity."

"Beef, wine, garlic, onions, and tobacco are Tamasic food-stuffs. They exercise a very unwholesome influence on the human mind and fill it with emotions of anger, darkness, and inertia."

"Be Good, Do Good. Do thou always without attachment perform action which should be done, for by performing action without attachment, man reaches the Supreme."

"Until and unless Self-realisation is attained, Knowledge-Absolute is gained, there is ever the ebb and flow, the constant see-saw between the animal and the man in every human being. The beast or the brute is never completely absent or overcome except through a final Divinisation of the individual. As long as there is the human, side by side there will be the animal also, now the one having the upper hand, now the other."

"The diseases we suffer from the births we get here on earth are all products of actions done by us in previous times. Every action has its reaction and no action goes unrewarded in a suitable manner. Evil actions do not go without their bitter effects upon the doer. Here are given some of the many pitiable conditions of life which man has to live in due to his careless sinful deeds."

"Strive to attain the supreme Reality” is the bold declaration of Sri Sankara. Yet you have made the material world alone the only solid reality. This treacherous mirage is luring humanity to its destruction. Stop this downward plunge."

"For prayers and meditation, you can have any comfortable position. You must select a fine pose in which you can sit for a long time comfortably. The only condition is that your neck and back should be erect. Close your eyes, breathe in and out very slowly and mentally repeat the Mantra OM OM OM and think of the divine qualities of the Lord. Now you will enter into silent meditation. You will enjoy great peace and acquire inner spiritual strength. (Avoid Extremes in Yoga)"

"Those men or women who abuse innocent poor servants, and coolies who are rather to be pitied and helped for their miserable condition, fall into a hell where they are severely thrashed and forced to embrace a burning image of iron like unto a man or woman. Those who abuse their marriage beds are given a similar punishment."

"Yoga does not consist in sitting cross-legged for six hours or stopping the beatings of the heart or getting oneself buried underneath the ground for a week or a month. These are all physical feats only. (What Is Actual Yoga)"

"Yoga is the science that teaches you the method of uniting the individual will with the Cosmic Will. Yoga transmutes the unregenerate nature and increases energy, vitality, vigour, and bestows longevity and a high standard of health. Try to increase the power of concentration. Japa will help you to have a one-pointed mind. (What Is Actual Yoga)"

"Fear is a great enemy of man. It is the enemy of his progress. It disturbs his peace and harmony. It sucks or saps his vitality and energy. It drains the nervous system of its reserve of energy. It produces weakness."

"God himself has made it possible for you to live without the dark place and the pains that rush out and flood out and take you over. Your choice of wanting to see and work is essential to you if you want to get rid of your feeling of emptiness, of futility. You've lied to yourself and said, 'I know what to do to get rid of the pain.' You've never gotten rid of the pain and that's evidence of self-deceit. You have to stop playing cruel tricks on yourself. So stop. Now."

"Bitterness is the outcome of a wrong mental movement - the attempt to force external events to conform to internal fantasy. The cure is to see fantasy as fantasy, which will reveal it as neither necessary nor rewarding."

"We burden ourselves with useless ideas which we carelessly take as facts. Instead of letting reality come as a new surprise, we insist that it conform to our habitual concepts, and thus, we spoil everything."

"People fight to preserve their frozen beliefs and then complain of the cold!"

"Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by."

"No man is really interested in getting what he craves. He is really interested in being at peace with himself, but dosen't know how."

"Try to see what attitudes rule your day, then ask what kind of a day you usually have."

"If we choose the easy way, by letting another think for us, we must eventually tread the hard way. If we select the hard way, by insisting upon our own mental integrity, we eventually come to the easy way."

"Why do you permit a mere word to stand in your way? Forget the word "difficult" and take your next step."

"If we will repeatedly suffer the humiliation of admitting that we really do not know what we're talking about, eventually we will."

"The most marvelous experience of life is to transform life according to reality, not imagination."

"The real prize is never delivered by memory or by imagination, but by something above them."

"Constantly ask yourself, 'What level is above this one?' This makes things different. Take personal problems for example. Problems are not solved by choosing between this and that. The very need to choose indicates misunderstanding. Problems are solved by outgrowing both this and that."

"Honestly face your inner poverty as a means of discovering your inner wealth."

"Trying to command life without studying one's own mind is like trying to play the piano without studying music."

"All heartache is caused by wrong viewpoints."

"A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness."

"The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable - when lived in fully - of destroying forever every past mistake and regret."

"Everyone has imaginary ideas of himself as being this or that sort of person. And you can be sure that the images are highly complimentary! But since they are purely imaginary, they are highly sensitive to assault by reality."

"What a dawning appears to the man or woman who earnestly inquires, 'Who is living my life for me?' Am I really thinking for myself or am I unknowingly projecting acquired ideas which may be all wrong?"

"The less life in a person, the more he will try to live off your life."

"Human opinions are formed by accident and hardened by repetition. We cling to acquired opinions only because they give the illusion of being wise opinions. This creates division and hostility between people."

"Astonishingly, if you will have absolutely nothing to do with suffering, suffering will have nothing to do with you."

"Remember that an answer to a difficulty resides at a higher level than our usual thinking, so seek this loftier level."

"The only way you're going to have a good relationship with anyone is to have a good relationship with yourself."

"The only activities of true value are those which aim at inner transformation."

"Ask spiritual questions with intense integrity, and inspiring answers will surely arrive."

"The need to impress others causes half the world's woes. Don't add to them. Be real, not impressive."

"It is not a disaster to discover that you are not the person you assumed you were. To the contrary, it is the beginning of the end of disaster. Experiment: How you feel if you were neither a success or failure in life? How would you feel if you were neither popular nor unwanted?"

"A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction. He does not really seek happiness, rather he seeks for a condition which matches his personal idea regarding the nature of happiness. But happiness is not a mere idea, for one idea will always have competition from another idea. The is why the unhappy man chases for ever from one attraction to another. Happiness will come when he stops chasing, that is, when he stops thinking that an idea about happiness is the same as happiness. A man enjoying the sunshine does so without analysing it."

"You are not really bothered by what others think of you. You are bothered by what you think of yourself."

"You are not your cluster of memorized ideas about yourself. Awareness of this dissolves both the cluster and the belief that others can control you. If you have a self-image of being a desirable person, others can control you by flattering it, but can they control if you have no such image?"