The Contextual Nature of Religion

Not believing in God because of religion is like not believing in freedom because of politics. I don’t know how the entire discussion about the existence of God got monopolized by the world’s religious institutions. For sure, there is no doubt that many of the teachings within Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam can offer powerful […]

via The Contextual Nature of Religion — The Passionate Why

This is a post from my other blog, but it is probably more pertinent to this one. Read and let me know what you think!

A Passionate Plea from Mooji

10 Beautiful Quotes To Quiet Your Mind

“Can the perceiver itself be perceived?”

– Mooji

 

“Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own….Stand still, be quiet.”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

“What you are looking for, is where you are looking from.”

– St Francis of Assissi

 

“It’s one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? If you think long enough about that it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep?”

– Alan Watts

 

“God, or your essential nature, is not something. Not content. Not form.”

– Eckhart Tolle

 

“Once we admit our existence, how is it that we do not know the self?”

– Ramana Maharshi

 

“Care about what others think and you will always be their prisoner.”

– Lao Tzu

 

“There’s no sunlight in my brain, whose interior remains as dark as a limestone cavern no matter how bright it is outside.”

– Deepak Chopra

 

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

– Buddha

 

“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.”

– Rumi

Now it’s your turn! Please add any quotes in the comment section that always help to quiet your mind.

Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization

“Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your Self Realization. You are not to expect an explosion, for the explosion has already happened – at the moment when you were born, when you realized yourself as Being-Knowing-Feeling. There is only one mistake you are making: you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner. What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside, you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche. That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right! You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

“The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live.”

“The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live.”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

On Vigilance and Being Present

In the video below Gautam Sachdeva ends with some excellent advice originally stated by Nisargadatta Maharaj. He says to read the Bhagavad Gita from the point of Krishna.

After hearing that I thought, perhaps I could read “I Am That” from the perspective of Nisargadatta himself. So I picked up the book, turned to a random chapter and started reading.

Whenever Nisargadatta would be responding to a questioner I would read as if his wisdom were coming from me. I didn’t have to think about the words, or totally understand them, I just had to act as if they were spontaneously arising in me. Actually, that’s probably how they came to him anyways.

To my amazement it had a profound impact. The words he spoke came from such depth that by simply saying them, without polluting them with my thoughts or analysis, I was taken on a wonderful ride. It was as if new levels of consciousness were revealed to me.

Please watch the video below and heed his advice!

The sense ‘I Am’ is like a door which swings one way into the manifestation and the other way into infinity.

This is an excellent short video posted by Mooji during his recent trip to London. Enjoy!

Be still and know this eternal Truth: Consciousness – true Love – is the Supreme Force

Below is a link to wonderful poem by Gautam Sachdeva called “The World’s Best Astrologer”. Gautam is a former student of guru Ramesh Balsekar who was himself a student of Nisargadatta Maharaj. Through his YouTube channel here Gautam explains many of Ramesh’s most important teachings with extreme clarity. It is definitely worth your time. Enjoy the poem below.

The World’s Best Astrologer

A Collection of Quotes for These Troubled Times

“If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such change cannot be imposed; it must come from within. Those who abhor war must get war out of their system. Without peaceful people how can you have peace in the world? As long as people are as they are, the world must be as it is”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

-Gandhi

 

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

– Ramana Maharshi

 

“When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity– what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.”

“Once you have conceptualized a person, violence becomes almost inevitable. This is because you are not seeing them as a human being anymore. It becomes impossible for you to have any kind of empathy with another individual who does not fit into your collective mind structure.”

– Eckhart Tolle

 

“There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”

– Albert Camus

 

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

-Albert Einstein

 

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

-Martin Luther King

It is not the theory that matters, but the way it is being tested

An excerpt from I Am That:

Questioner: There are so many theories about the nature of man and universe. The creation theory, the illusion theory, the dream theory — any number of them. Which is true?

Maharaj: All are true, all are false. You can pick up whichever you like best.

Q:   You seem to favour the dream theory.

M:  These are all ways of putting words together. Some favour one way, some favour another. Theories are neither right nor wrong. They are attempts at explaining the inexplicable. It is not the theory that matters, but the way it is being tested. It is the testing of the theory that makes it fruitful. Experiment with any theory you like — if you are truly earnest and honest, the attainment of reality will be yours. As a living being you are caught in an untenable and painful situation and you are seeking a way out. You are being offered several plans of your prison, none quite true. But they all are of some value, only if you are in dead earnest. It is the earnestness that liberates and not the theory