Hinduism

"Bhakti Yoga became progressively more important for me. Its value can be described with a simple metaphor: knowledge (jnana) is the flame and the mind is the wick, but bhakti is the oil. Without bhakti spiritual knowledge burns out the mind, like a flame does a wick without oil. I discovered that the Vedas are primarily books on Bhakti Yoga, quite contrary to a modern scholarly belief that Bhakti Yoga originated from a later Islamic or Christian influence in medieval India."

"From meditation on difference, one proceeds to meditating on “He am I”. Meditation without a sense of difference is regarded as the most purifying...Once concentration develops, one begins with meditation on froms such as Shiva, Vishnu or the Goddess. This is the basis of Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion."

"The bhakti poets use an elaborate, multi-vocal rhetoric, which requires the taking on, not only of personal voices to suit different emotions and genres, but also the voices of some of the dramatis personae of classical Tamil (Cankam) poetry, such as the lovelorn heroine or her solicitous girlfriend."

"... he [Chaitanya] described bhakti as that state of mind in which one abandons all duties through love of Krishna...one cannot reach the path of love without renouncing all thoughts of oneself."

"One achieves bhakti [love of God] by hearing and chanting about the Supreme Lord's special qualities, even while engaged in the ordinary activities of life in this world."

"The individual soul is forever a servant of the Supersoul and therefore, his reletionship with the Supersoul is to offer service. That is called Bhakti-Yoga or Bhakti-bhaava."

"Bharata Natyam is grounded in bhakti. In fact bhakti is at the center of all the arts of India. Our music and dance are two important offerings to God."

"Raja Yoga stands by itself and is the king science of them all; it is the summation of all the others... Bhakti Yoga is the yoga of the heart; it is the bringing into submission of all the feelings, desires and emotions, to the one beloved, seen and known in the heart. It is the sublimation of all the lower loves and the bringing captive of all longings and desire, to the one longing to know the God of love and the love of God. It was the "kingly" or crowning science of the last rootrace, the Atlantean, just as the science of Raja Yoga is the great science of our Aryan civilization. Bhakti Yoga made its exponent an arhat or led him to the fourth initiation. Raja Yoga makes him an adept and leads him to the portal of the fifth initiation. Both lead to liberation, for the arhat is released from the cycle of rebirth but Raja Yoga liberates him to complete service and freedom to work as a White Magician. Bhakti Yoga is the yoga of the heart, of the astral body."

"It might be of value here if we dealt with the various "yogas" so as to give to the student a clear concept as to their distinctions and thus cultivate his discrimination. The principal yogas are three in number, the various other so-called "yogas" finding their place in one of these three groups: 1. Raja Yoga...the yoga of the mind or will, 2. Bhakti Yoga... the yoga of the heart or the devotee, 3. Karma Yoga.... the yoga of action."

"Bhakti: Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and forced me to belong to him."

"The Alvars being devotees of Vishnu had access to the many temples dedicated to the god. During their visits they composed devotional hymns in praise of Vishnu. These hymns promoted devotion and surrender by glorifying the greatness of Vishnu. Although their hymns are replete with the ideas of the Vedas, their uniqueness lie in the great emphasis on devotion and surrender which are rarely found in the Vedic Mantras or in the highly metaphysical pronouncements within the Upanishads."

"The Vedanta and the Sankhya hold the key to the laws of the mind and thought process which are corelated to the Quantum Field, i.e., the operation and distribution of particles at atomic and molecular levels."

"Absorb yourself in the love of God. Remain unswervingly on the path recognized by the Vedas and other scriptures. When doing any good action, humbly remember God. He is your everything."

"To refer to yourself as God is a delusion, because it can be clearly seen that God is omnipresent and the soul is not; God is all-powerful and the soul's powers are limited; God is the creator and is omniscient, and the soul is ignorant"

"If there are scriptural verses that relate to Advaita or non-dual philosophy, they are secondary, not primary... a soul can attain God realization and liberation only through bhakti."

"...the souls, maya and God are described in the Vedas, therefore these are to be accepted as existences"

"The only means for a soul to be liberated from maya is selfless, whole-hearted devotion to God. The soul is an eternal servant of God. To refer to himself as God is a great sin."

"A soul is an infinitesimal fraction of God, just as a spark is a part of a fire. It remains at one place at a time, whereas God is omnipresent. The soul is ignorant, but God is omniscient and omnipotent. Being a fraction of God, the soul will always remain in existence. The soul could be considered equal to God only with respect to the experience of Divine bliss."

"The world, comprised of the souls and lifeless inert matter, is a part of His being. He is referred to as 'nirgun', without any qualities, but what this indicates is that God is without the 'mayic' qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas. The material creation arose from God, therefore it is not an illusion. Maya is a power of God and established in Him."

"God is one, but with internal differences, represented as the souls and the material creation. God has qualities. He is an ocean of Divine knowledge, bliss, compassion and other unlimited attributes."

"You must always remember that the one central ideal of Vedanta is this oneness. There are no two in anything, no two lives, nor even two different kinds of life for the two worlds."

"We have a place for struggle in the Vedanta, but not for fear. All fears will vanish when you begin to assert your own nature. If you think that you are bound, bound you will remain. If you think you are free, free you will be."

"The Vedanta recognises no sin, it only recognises error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta, is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that. Every time you think in that way, you, as it were, rivet one more link in the chain that binds you down, you add one more layer of hypnotism on to your own soul. Therefore, whosoever thinks he is weak is wrong, whosoever thinks he is impure is wrong, and is throwing a bad thought into the world. This we must always bear in mind that in the Vedanta there is no attempt at reconciling the present life — the hypnotised life, this false life which we have assumed — with the ideal; but this false life must go, and the real life which is always existing must manifest itself, must shine out. No man becomes purer and purer, it is a matter of greater manifestation. The veil drops away, and the native purity of the soul begins to manifest itself. Everything is ours already — infinite purity, freedom, love, and power."

"The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality."

"Man, therefore, according to the Vedanta philosophy, is the greatest being that is in the universe, and this world of work the best place in it, because only herein is the greatest and the best chance for him to become perfect. Angels or gods, whatever you may call them, have all to become men, if they want to become perfect. This is the great centre, the wonderful poise, and the wonderful opportunity — this human life."

"In our country there is only this religion of Vedanta. Compared with the Western civilisation, it may be said, we have hardly got anything else. But by the preaching of this universal religion of Vedanta, a religion which gives equal rights to acquire spirituality to men of all creeds and all paths of religious practice, the civilised West would come to know what a wonderful degree of spirituality once developed in India and how that is still existing."

"He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong."

"According to the Vedanta, when a man has arrived at that perception, he has become free, and he is the only man who is fit to live in this world.["

"Now I will tell you my discovery. All of religion is contained in the Vedanta, that is, in the three stages of the Vedanta philosophy, the Dvaita, Vishishtâdvaita and Advaita; one comes after the other. These are the three stages of spiritual growth in man. Each one is necessary. This is the essential of religion: the Vedanta, applied to the various ethnic customs and creeds of India, is Hinduism. The first stage, i.e. Dvaita, applied to the ideas of the ethnic groups of Europe, is Christianity; as applied to the Semitic groups, Mohammedanism. The Advaita, as applied in its Yoga-perception form, is Buddhism etc. Now by religion is meant the Vedanta; the applications must vary according to the different needs, surroundings, and other circumstances of different nations. You will find that although the philosophy is the same, the Shâktas, Shaivas, etc. apply it each to their own special cult and forms. Now, in your journal write article after article on these three systems, showing their harmony as one following after the other, and at the same time keeping off the ceremonial forms altogether. That is, preach the philosophy, the spiritual part, and let people suit it to their own forms. I wish to write a book on this subject, therefore I wanted the three Bhashyas; but only one volume of the Ramanuja (Bhashya) has reached me as yet."

"You may speak of the scriptures, of philosophy, of Vedanta; but you will not find God in any of those. You will never succeed in realizing God unless your soul becomes restless for Him. ~"

"Ramakrishna attained god consciousness through Vedanta, the philosophy that has evolved from the teachings of the Vedas, a collection of ancient Indian scriptures,that are the world’s oldest religious writings. According to Vedas, ultimate reality is all pervading, uncreated, self-luminous eternal spirit, the final cause of the universe, the power behind all tangible forces, and the consciousness that animates all conscious beings."

"Vedanta is a philosophy taught by the Vedas, the most ancient scriptures of India. Its basic teaching is that our real nature is divine. God, the underlying reality, exists in every being. Religion is therefore a search for self-knowledge, a search for the God within. We should not think of ourselves as needing to be SAVED. We are never LOST. At worst we are living in ignorance of our true nature. Find God. That is the only purpose in life."

"Knowledge appears as the grace of God. In the higher knowledge, since the atman is in reality not an object, the cause of its knowledge is not further explicable. In spite of this, religious practice recognizes certain means by which knowledge of the atman may be promoted."

"The fundamental idea of the Vedanta system, as most tersely expressed in the words of the Veda, "That art thou" (tat tvam asi), and "I am Brahman"(aham brahma asmi) is the identity of Brahman and the soul. This means that idea of Brahman, that is, the eternal principle of all being, the power which creates all worlds, sustains them and again absorbs them, is identical with the Atman, the self, or the soul ; namely, with that in us which, when we judge rightly, we acknowledge as our own self, as our inner and true essence. This soul in each one of us is not a part of Brahman nor an emanation from him, but it is, fully and entirely, the eternal indivisible Brahman itself."

"On the tree of Indian wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy."

"Vedanta is the most impressive metaphysics the human mind has conceived."

"The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being."

"He wise man who, by means of concentration on the Self, realizes that ancient, effulgent One, who is hard to be seen, unmanifest, hidden, and who dwells in the buddhi and rests in the body — he, indeed, leaves joy and sorrow far behind."

"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of Vedanta."

"The correct meaning of the statement “The Vedas are beginningless and eternal” is that the law or truth revealed by them is permanent and changeless."

"Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans appears like a feeble Promethear spark [before the Vedanta]."

"Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves."

"The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on super imposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One."

"The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe."

"Learn some things from those who know; Watch some things from those who do; Learn other things by self experience."

"Truth leads one to glory now and forever. In this world truth and falsehood are found confusedly mixed yet it is truth alone that triumphs here and hereafter."

"Worship without a symbol, a garden without a source of water, and the household affairs of one without a woman, all these are doomed to fail."

"From woman comes the new life on earth and woman is the source of all prosperity here and hereafter."

"One who walks a hundred feet in a cool breeze after his meal and one who sleeps on his left side will never need a physician."

"A fool boasts about what little he knows. A wise man keeps quiet about what he knows and is safe."