Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.

I had composed songs, I sang, and played the vina. Practising this music I arrived at a stage where I touched the music of the spheres. Then every soul became a musical note, and all life became music. Inspired by it I spoke to the people, and those who were attracted by my words listened to them instead of listening to my songs.

If you sit down and just keep quiet...you are in the state of Self-Awareness. ..keeping quiet means being without any techniques, effort or intention to meditate...not following the thought stream...not pursuing the senses, no imagination...such an intense Self-focusing comes without any effort...then, by itself...out of nowhere, wisdom and insights come.

One cultivates spaciousness or awareness which allows you to acknowledge the emotions and see them as part of the human condition. Emotions are like subtle thought forms and they all arise in response to something outside yourself. They are all reactions. You cultivate a quietness in yourself that watches these emotions rising and falling and passing away.

A bath in Ganges undoubtedly absolves one of all sins; but what does that avail? They say that the sins perch on trees along the banks of the Ganges. No sooner does the man come back from the holy waters that the old sins jump on his shoulders from the trees. The same old sins take possession of him again. He is hardly out of the waters before they fall upon him.

All the Abrahamic religions are God-centered, theistic religions. And, because this is the only kind of religion that the West has been used to, they find something like Buddhism very confusing. How can you have a religion without God? Whereas in India it’s no problem at all. Buddhism has been there for 2500 years, Jainism even before that … In Buddhism, there is no talk about God. It’s openly agnostic. In Jainism, there is no talk about God.

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.

Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values.

Truth and nonviolence demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be.

The Force which has to be called down from above must be pure and quiet because there are all kinds of forces - it will not do to call them all. And one must have sincerity.

Since the dawn of history, mankind has honoured and respected brave and honest people.

I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?

O Lord, You bless all with Your bountiful blessings.

The business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material

It is man who, through his thoughts and actions, creates turmoil and disintegration in the natural, harmonious unity of the world.

When you stick to the path of Truth and Righteousness, pain and poverty haunt you. But they are only clouds passing through the sky, hiding for a little time, the splendor of the Sun.

Let me insist and emphasise it because I would like all of my sannyasins to be creative in some way. To me, creativity is of tremendous import. An uncreative person is not a religious person at all.

Wherever there is sincerity & talent, people do recognize them. It may take some time but we should have some patience and hold on to our passion.

God is more anxious to bestow his blessings on us than we are to receive them.

Be sincere in your thoughts, be pure in your feelings. You will not have to run after happiness. Happiness will run after you.

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.

Achieving without arrogance, raising without dominion, this is called mystic virtue.

The secret of friendship is expressing kindness with your eyes and through the tone of your voice, not only with words.