Great Throughts Treasury

"Ethical life and service are an aid, but they are not an end in themselves. The end is to be one with God."

"The breeze of God’s grace is blowing continually. You have to set your sail to catch that breeze."

"Never humble yourself before anyone but God."

"The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not."

"What is the highest ideal, the goal of our life? According to our great philosopher Kapila, it is the cessation of misery, of suffering. This answer seems to indicate a negative state, but in reality behind that cessation of misery appears a positive state, Joy, which can be experienced. It is the essence of being. Why is it then that we don't all feel it spontaneously? Shankara answers: “Only the ignorant do not feel it.” What then is this ignorance? According to Patanjali it is the sense of ego that gives birth to suffering; by constantly making false identifications, we identify the Self with the non-Self, thereby indirectly producing feelings of attachment and aversion, and suffering ensues. This way of clinging to the physical life alters the quality of consciousness"