Each individual has to know himself. He has to know himself as the infinite, eternal and immortal Consciousness.

What your consciousness is intensely focused on is what will manifest in your life and in the world around you.

By being with yourself, the 'I am', by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface, and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies.

The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.

So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.

The rishis of old attained the Knowledge of Brahman. One cannot have this so long as there is the slightest trace of worldliness. How hard the rishis laboured ! Early in the morning they would go away from the hermitage, and would spend the whole day in solitude, meditating on Brahman. At night they would return to the hermitage and eat a little fruit or roots. They kept their mind aloof from the objects of sight, hearing, touch, and other things of a worldly nature. Only thus did they realize Brahman as their own inner consciousness.

When the senses are well-controlled and withdrawn from contact with the objects of the world, then sense perceptions no longer create images in the mind. The mind is then trained in one-pointedness. When the mind no longer recalls thought-patterns from the unconscious, a balanced state of mind leads to a higher state of consciousness. A perfect state of serenity established in sattva is the highest state of enlightenment. The practice of meditation and non-attachment are the two keynotes. A very firm conviction is essential for establishing a definite philosophy of life.

Do not think of yourself as the body, but as the joyous consciousness and immortal life behind it.

Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.

Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.

You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into.

The state of least excitation of consciousness is the field of all possibilities.

You should introspect to find your own faults and correct them. Inquire within. Where are you? Are you in soul consciousness, or have you deviated from that?

The whole creation is the dance of one consciousness

This universe which you experience, you are experiencing it in your consciousness. In your consciousness, no universe is born—it appears. No universe is produced. No universe actually evolves. It appears, it is experienced, it disappears.

Maya is so thorough, just like water. If there is one little crack, the water will just find its way immediately to that crack – the problem is our consciousness has so many cracks.

Sometimes consciousness devises an obstacle in order to have the experience of transcending it.

You are not really the waker. You are not really the dreamer. You are not the deep sleeper … Waking, dreaming, and deep sleep keep coming and going throughout our days, but behind it is one common consciousness, one common awareness.

When I say, 'Meditate on the Self' I am asking you to be the Self, not think about it. Be aware of what remains when thoughts stop. Be aware of the consciousness that is the origin of all your thoughts. Be that consciousness.

Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be?

Advaita says the entire universe is an object, known and unknown, appearing in consciousness—not distinct from consciousness, not constituting a countable second to consciousness. It’s not actually a second entity apart from consciousness, just as waves are not a countable second apart from water … All the universe, known and unknown, is nothing but consciousness appearing to itself as its own objects, and therefore not two, non-dual.

He who perceives the Self everywhere never shrinks from anything, because through his higher consciousness he feels united with all life. When a man sees God in all beings and all beings in God, and also God dwelling in his own Soul, how can he hate any living thing? Grief and delusion rest upon a belief in diversity, which leads to competition and all forms of selfishness. With the realization of oneness, the sense of diversity vanishes and the cause of misery is removed.

The teaching of the Yoga-Vasishtha emphasises that when there is perception of an object by the seer or observer, there has to be pre-supposed the existence of a consciousness between the subject and the object. If this conscious connecting link were not to be, there would be no perception of existence. There cannot be a consciousness of relation between two things unless there is a consciousness relating the two terms and yet standing above them. The study of the perceptional situation discloses the fact that the subject and the object are phases of a universal consciousness.