Quotes for Today

Some great quotes that I was attracted to, in the preceding weeks:


Just talking spirituality, acting spiritual is no good. Transformation must happen.

                                              -- Sadhguru

The intricate maze of philosophy of different schools is said to clarify matters and reveal the Truth. But in fact, they create confusion where no confusion need exist. Why should confusion be created and then explained away? To understand anything there must be the Self. The Self is obvious. Why not remain as the Self? What need to explain the non-self?

                                              -- Ramana Maharishi

As you may have noticed there's nothing much to understand about being. "Can you explain ‘being' a bit more please? Stillness? I don't understand, can you explain stillness?" No, because there's nothing in it to explain; you can't look at it in a microscope or dissect it. "Aspects of Stillness, PhD." No. Each human needs to find his or her timeless and formless essence identity.
                                            -- Eckhart Tolle

So on that day [of enlightenment], the young strapping man that I was – so full of myself, proud of everything that I was – suddenly cracked, fell apart, dissolved and disappeared. I desperately tried to pick up a few pieces; nothing remained. I couldn’t even keep a souvenir.

                                             -- Sadhguru

Whether or not you are engaged in a lot of "doing" in your life, "being" is primary. If you lose touch with being, you lose yourself in your mind, you lose yourself in doing, and you won't do any good for anybody, really.

                                             -- Eckhart Tolle

A good, simple summary of what is Spirituality

This was Eckhart Tolle's response to a question on "What is the essence of his teaching". For more details on the interview, please visit this link. Or visit www.eckharttolle.com. Or buy the book "The Power of Now".


Echkart Tolle:  The essence, the very foundation, of the teaching is that a different state of consciousness is possible for humans. The state of consciousness that is considered normal and that has been running human history for thousands of years is not the only possible state of consciousness. It's also not the most advanced state possible for humans.

It's nothing new. All the great teachings and teachers have pointed to the fact, since the normal state of consciousness is a state that is extremely deficient, a state that in the ancient teachings has been called suffering. The Buddha called it suffering, Jesus called it a state of sin and illusion, and the Hindus call it a state of illusion.

So, all ancient teachings agree that the normal human state of consciousness is, as I call it, a state of insanity. Anybody can verify this for themselves if they look at human history, 90 percent of which—really, if you look at it objectively—would be called the history of collective insanity, with the enormous amount of suffering inflicted by humans on other humans and on themselves and other species.

The second part of the teaching is that it's possible to enter that state now. Not only is it possible to enter it now, but the only time when you can enter that state of consciousness is in the Now; not needing the future in order to arrive at a projected state of consciousness, but realizing that new state of consciousness one that is free of time.

The main characteristic of the old state of consciousness is that it is dominated by past and future, in other words by time. If you observe the workings of your mind you will see that you're almost never in the present moment. The mind is always engaged in projecting a future, thinking about the future, trying to get to the future or reviving the past.

All ancient teachings agree that the normal human state of consciousness is, as I call it, a state of insanity.

The old state of consciousness is also a state of identification with thought processes. Now what does that mean? To be identified means to derive your sense of self, of who you are from thought movements, to be completely trapped in the mental noise, to have your identity in the mental noise.

Then your whole sense of self is derived from thought, which means an image forms in the head of "who I am," of "that's me," and that image is always ill at ease, even in the people who look very confident. The self image of the Little Me as I call it, a mind-made sense of self or ego, is always ill at ease. This sense of self needs conflict in order to feel that it exists. It cannot tolerate a prolonged period of non-conflict because the Little Me depends for its continuous existence on the feeling of separateness.

It defines itself as "me" and "other," which is not me. So, the more I can be in conflict with the not me the stronger my—ultimately illusory—sense of self becomes. The ego tells you continuously that it wants to get out of conflict. It's looking for happiness, but the ego is constructed in such a way that the state of happiness it says it looks for it cannot afford to find when its very survival depends on conflict.

Pin pricking the mind

Q: If the mind and brain are one, then why is it that when a thought or an urge arises which the brain tells us is ugly, the mind so often goes on with it?

J. Krishnamurti: Actually what takes place? If a pin pricks your arm, the nerves carry the sensation to your brain, the brain translates it as pain, then the mind rebels against the pain, and you take away the pin or otherwise do something about it. But there are some things which the mind goes on with, even though it knows them to be ugly or stupid. It knows how essentially stupid it is to smoke, and yet one goes on smoking. Why? Because it likes the sensations of smoking, and that is all. If the mind were as keenly aware of the stupidity of smoking as it is of the pain of a pinprick, it would stop smoking immediately. But it doesn't want to see it that clearly, because smoking has become a pleasurable habit.

It is the same with greed or violence. If greed were as painful to you as the pinprick in your arm, you would instantly stop being greedy, you wouldn't philosophize about it; and if you were really awake to the full significance of violence, you wouldn't write volumes about non-violence - which is all nonsense, because you don't feel it, you just talk about it. If you eat something which gives you a violent tummy-ache, you don't go on eating it, do you? You put it aside immediately.

Similarly, if you once realized that envy and ambition are poisonous, vicious, cruel, as deadly as the sting of a cobra, you could awaken to them. But, you see, the mind does not want to look at these things too closely; in this area, it has vested interests, and it refuses to admit that ambition, envy, greed, lust are poisonous. Therefore it says, "Let us discuss non-greed, non-violence, let us have ideals" - and in the meantime it carries on with its poisons. So find out for yourself how corrupting, how destructive and poisonous these things are, and you will soon drop them; but if you merely say, "I must not", and go on as before, you are playing the hypocrite. Be one thing or the other, hot or cold.