Theologians From India

"Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future."

"As many colors of the rainbow are an outcome of one pure light, the many religions of the world are an expression of one divine source."

"Most of the time you are thinking about life, not living life."

"Spirituality does not mean going away from life. Spirituality means becoming alive in the fullest possible way so you are not just alive on the surface, you are alive to the core."

"Whenever you say, "I do not know something," you are flexible. Whenever you think, "I know it," you become rigid. This rigidity is not just attitude; it percolates into every aspect of your life. This rigidity is also the cause of an enormous amount of suffering in the world."

"How Human beings are, that is how the society will be. So, creating human beings who are flexible and willing to look at everything rather than being stuck in their ideas and opinions definitely makes for a different kind of society. And the very energy that such human being carry will influence everything around them."

"Even if I erase all your memory, still you will be here. Yes? Your family will disappear, your status will disappear, your business will disappear, everything that you own in the world will disappear. But still you are here. So beyond all the things that you identify yourself with, still there is something called as 'you'. That 'you' is not subject to what you accumulate from outside. But unfortunately that 'you' has been so much covered, so much crowded with other things that you never allowed yourself to look at that. You always thought that what you are identified with is much more important than who you really are. Now if your focus shifts, then the other dimension can start opening up for you."

"Faith is not something that you can cultivate. If it happens to you, it happens, if it doesn't happen to you it doesn't happen, that's all. Does it mean to say - "I have to just sit and wait and someday it will fall upon me?" No, it is just that if you understand the fundamentals of living here, in this existence, you will see, for anything to happen, you must create the right kind of situation."

"God will not lift a little finger for you, please know, because whatever he has to do, he has done it. His work is not pending. He has done a fantastic job over the creation, isn’t it? He has done a fantastic job. There is nothing to complain. He has put himself into you; beyond that he cannot do anything... Everything that you need now has been given. So, it is your turn to play the game now. Match has started, coach cannot interfere now."

"Enlightenment never happens. It is there; it is always there. The sadhana that you do is just to see it is there. You are not doing sadhana to construct divinity within you. All you will construct is only ego."

"All along, you've been shaping your destiny unconsciously. But you can also work on it consciously. If you make the effort to access your core and realise that everything is your responsibility, and shift your focus inside you, then you can rewrite your destiny."

"Our life energies are the most basic and the most powerful aspect of human beings. Though most people are unaware of it, whichever way our energies play, that’s the way our bodies and our minds and our emotions play. So, once we get the energies—the fundamentals—moving in one direction, we can make sure that our bodies, emotions, and minds are also moving in that direction. -Sadhguru"

"The word ‘yoga’ literally means ‘union’. When you experience everything as one in your consciousness, then you are in yoga. -Sadhguru"

"When you destroy the walls of falsehood that you have built, everything becomes one. Only when you merge with the existence, you are free. As long as you and the existence are separated there is no such thing as freedom. -Sadhguru"

"Hata yoga is a way of working with the body, disciplining the body, purifying the body, preparing the body for higher levels of energy. All of us are alive; all of us are human beings, sitting here. But all of us do not experience life to the same intensity because our energy levels are not the same. Our pranic energies are not the same. Different people experience life in different levels of intensity. -Sadhguru"

"What you call as creation is just (energy). Everything is the same energy. The rock is the same energy. God is also the same energy. This is gross; that is subtle. As you make it more and more subtle, beyond a certain level of subtleness, you call it “Divine.” Below a certain level of grossness, you call it animal; further below that you call it inanimate. It is all the same energy. -Sadhguru"

"Constantly all around us, one substance is being made into another. This transition and this transformation is happening all the time. If you make mud into food, that's called agriculture. If you make food into a human being, this is called digestion. If you make a human being into mud again, we call this cremation. If you transform the physical into the non-physical, that's called consecration. Why the need to transform the physical into non-physical? Because that's your longing. When you say ‘I want to walk the spiritual path’ what you're saying is, ‘I want to touch something which is non-physical.'–Sadhguru, Mahima Consecration, USA, Nov 7, 2008"

"Just sitting silently for a few minutes within the sphere of Dhyanalinga is enough to make even those unaware of meditation experience a state of deep meditativeness. - Sadhguru (on the Dhyanalinga meditation shrine at Isha Yoga Centre, India)"

"This is an attempt to create a space that will witness mystical dimensions that have never been witnessed in this part of the world. -Sadhguru (on Isha Institute of Inner Sciences, McMinnville, TN USA)"

"Affluence has not brought misery... Having a lot of money in your pocket is good, isn't it? If it enters your head it becomes misery because that's not its place. It should be in your pocket. If it's in your pocket, there are many wonderful things you can do in the world. It is a means, and it is a tremendous empowerment. -Sadhguru"

"A leader is someone who takes a chance on the destiny of a large mass of people. He's a leader because he is capable of organizing and directing situations to the desired goal. But that only happens if a leader has some mastery over himself. -Sadhguru"

"Right now, the bane of the world is just that human beings are working with limited individualistic ambition. Instead of working with ambition, if people work for a deeper vision of life for themselves and for everything around them, there is no need to scale anything down. -Sadhguru"

"Our lives become beautiful not because we are perfect. Our lives become beautiful because we put our heart into what we are doing. -Sadhguru"

"Why are you stingy about your desires? Why don't you be magnanimous? Why don't you be infinite in your desires? It is not just about 'I want to be well.' I want you to be really greedy about your ambition and desire and say: ‘I want the whole existence to be well. I want all life to be well. -Sadhguru"

"This project is not just aimed at improving the economic conditions of people... It is a way of inspiring a human being to stand up for himself, to raise the human spirit. -Sadhguru (on Action for Rural Rejuvenation rural relief program)"

"Trees and humans are in an intimate relationship. What they exhale, we inhale, what we exhale they inhale. This is a constant relationship that nobody can afford to break or live without. -Sadhguru (on Project GreenHands mass tree planting initiative)"

"The basic purpose of life and the basic purpose of education is to enhance one’s boundaries of perception. I don’t want the children to just survive after ten years of schooling here. They must blossom and flower wherever they go. -Sadhguru (on Isha Vidhya rural education project)"

"If you are wired to your memory, repetitions will happen and redundancy will come; but if you are paying attention, that changes your ability to look at things"

"So for a leader, it is very important that he is in the best of emotions within himself all the time because everything that he does, affects so many people. So there, our (India's) leadership has not worked at all, especially in the last five years. When leaders are insecure, leaders are fearful. He will then do what is good for him only. Only when he is joyful, when his experience of life is not affected by what's happening around him, he will do what is needed. We want leaders who will do what is needed, not what they need."

"Without the necessary energy, being aware is extremely difficult."

"Prejudice is poison, fed to us from an early age by our families, religions and societies."

"There is no need to aspire to greatness. If you go beyond concerns of 'what about me,' you will anyway be a great human being."

"Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” Yoga is about experiencing it."

"Success will come easy once you function at your full potential."

"The important thing is not that people love you but that you are loving."

"The best thing you can do for your family, your children, society, and the world around you is to enhance yourself."

"Life is about Consciousness – not concerns, compulsions, or conflict. May the coming months bring the profoundness of human existence that leads to a blissful life."

"If somebody is hurting and it does not hurt you at all, that means you have forsaken your humanity."

"When people live together without understanding each other, their survival instinct turns everything into a fight."

"Education should not be about molding children the way you want them, but about supporting their natural longing to know and blossom."

"When you are able to create yourself the way you want, you can craft your Destiny the way you want as well."

"Genius is not individual. Genius is that dimension of life which is the source of creation which is there in a seed form in every human being. Whether we will create the atmosphere to unlock that or we will keep it supressed, is what the parents can do or not do. Please in some way let their (chidren) genius unfold."

"Vasudev has been one of the pioneers of "environment spiritualism." At present, he is leading a massive plantation campaign - Project GreenHands in Tamil Nadu. The plantation drive had started two years ago and since then there has been a gigantic increase in the green cover in Tamil Nadu."

"The Isha Foundation set up by yogi Jaggi Vasudev in Coimbatore in 1992 aims to plant 114 million trees in Tamil Nadu by 2010. In 2006, the Foundation entered the Guinness Book of World Records by planting 852,587 saplings in 6,284 locations across Tamil Nadu in one day The foundation, which has 250,000 volunteers across 150 centres, also conducts Isha yoga programmes that are popular across the globe."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."