There is something in us that keeps us where we find ourselves. I think this is the most awful thing of all.

A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false.

I mean that you always know what results will come from one or another of your actions; but in a strange way you want to do one thing and get the result that could only come from another

We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.

Can one alter one's chief feature?" asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.

To remember oneself means the same thing as to be aware of oneself - I am. It is not a function, not thinking, not feeling; it is a different state of consciousness.

Learn to see it in thyself and thou wilt understand the infinite essence, hidden in all illusory forms. Understand that the world which thou knowest is only one of the aspects of the infinite world, and things and phenomena are merely hieroglyphics of deeper ideas.

Divide in yourself the mechanical from the conscious, see how little there is of the conscious, how seldom it works, and how strong is the mechanical - mechanical attitudes, mechanical intentions, mechanical thoughts, mechanical desires.

Truths that become old become decrepit and unreliable; sometimes they may be kept going artificially for a certain time, but there is no life in them.

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.

A man can be given only what he can use; and he can use only that for which he has sacrificed something.

Love is the eternally burning fire in which humanity & all the world are being purified.

If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.

Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.

Think about death. You do not know how much time remains to you. And remember that if you do not become different, everything will be repeated again, all foolish blunders, all silly mistakes, all loss of time and opportunity - everything will be repeated with the exception of the chance you had this time, because chance never comes in the same form. You will have to look for your chance next time. And in order to do this, you will have to remember many things, and how will you remember then if you do not remember anything now?

You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.

It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought, every mood, every desire, every sensation says "I." And in each case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs to the Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion is expressed by this Whole.

Man is confronted with two obvious facts: The existence of the world in which he lives; and the existence of psychic life in himself.

Ideas by themselves cannot produce change of being; your effort must go in the right direction, and one must correspond to the other.

When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.

The strangest and most fantastic fact about negative emotions is that people actually worship them.