Perfect people don't exist. And perfect people, if they existed, would be very boring. It is imperfection that keeps life interesting.

Religion is the one and sole interest of the people of India.

Through its imperialist system Britain brought about untold suffering of millions of people. And this is an historical fact. To be able to admit this would increase the respect, you know, which we have for British institutions.

Even stupid people have a role to play in your life. They make you wiser and more patient.

Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally.

Religious activity is religious play. People are busy with religious play constantly. But spirituality is free from religious play, dogmatic views, fanatical ideas, and misunderstandings.

By an increase in anger, warfare arises. By an increase of greed, famine arises. By an increase of stupidity, pestilence arises. Because these three calamities occur, the people's earthly desires grow all the more intense, and their false views thrive and multiply.

Wisdom is rooted in watching with affection the way people grow.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive—that you can touch the miracle of being alive—then that is a kind of enlightenment. Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive.

Even if I am with a million people, I am always alone. I do not see people as people. I see them as myself.

Two kinds of greedy people never get satisfied; the seeker of knowledge and the seeker of this world.

I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can't have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind.

Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of the people at large.

If we want to follow the path of true auspiciousness, we should give up the countless opinions of people and only hear the words of the realised soul.

Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbolic terms and abstruse allusions, which emanate from the revealers of God's holy cause, hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world; that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the perishable and barren soil.

Faced with today's problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility. Escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape.

We have picked up people full of worms from the streets, cared for them and let them die in peace and love. When they are brought to our home, they feel they are in their own homes, with their own families. Now, I am trying to open a house for AIDS victims here (in Delhi). The people are dying because of it.

Trying to do good to people without God's help is no easier than making the sun shine at midnight. You discover that you've got to abandon all your own preferences, your own bright ideas, and guide souls along the road our Lord has marked out for them. You mustn't coerce them into some path of your own choosing.

When people came to Christ accusing a person of doing wrong, the Master could not think of anything else but forgiveness. For he did not see in the wrongdoer what the others saw. To distinguish between right and wrong is not the work of an ordinary mind, and the curious thing is that the more ignorant a person is, the more ready he is to do so.

Make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected to other human beings as well as to the whole. See yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.

If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him - to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.

Why shouldn't you strengthen your own vibrations through fellowship with people seeking Self-realization, and by group meditation with them? This practice will fortify your own spiritual convictions you will find that many seemingly insuperable barriers in your life will crumble and dissolve in the waters of meditation. Your devotion and love for God will commingle with the devotion and love of others. Divine bliss will radiate from you, helping all persons you meet.

See the possibility that people and things can change at any time and don't hold on to judgements.