Sublime

Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two, my life flows. —NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ

This is repeatedly taught in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad (e.g., in 4.2.4): “About this self, one can only say, ‘Not this, not this.’ It is ungraspable, for it cannot be grasped.” This maxim, based on the Sanskrit neti neti, is a “rule of substitution,” negating any words that might follow. Brahman is therefore “not this” and “not that,” eliminati

the Vedanta philosophy. Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is “underneath” rather than “above” everything, and he

Every meeting you have with these great ones leaves you other than what you were before. They always do something for you. They leave you with a tremendous new revelation. They never leave you the same. And this is the way you can tell whether the meeting is real, or whether it’s just your imagination. It’s difficult, because a great one usually is

Whenever you want to know something, don’t start with data—retire within and concentrate. Seek guidance from within.

Question your thoughts. Question your stories. Question your assumptions. Question your opinions. Question your conclusions. Question them all into utter emptiness, stillness, and joy. The keys to freedom are in your hands. Use them.

What we call ego is simply the mechanism our mind uses to resist life as it is. In that way, ego isn’t a thing as much as it is a verb.

moksha, bodhi, kaivalya, or satori in the Asian religions, which is the wisdom of a transformed consciousness, of liberation from that exclusive identification of oneself with personality which overlays and conceals the basic sensation in the very back of the mind: the sensation of being identical with the universe, which is said to be the “oceanic