Sublime

Devipuram—“The Goddess’s Abode”—the temple complex that Guruji had spent more than three decades building up from almost nothing in the rural wilds of eastern India.

Sufi teacher Idries Shah

In the fourth samādhi, even that ānanda is not there but just awareness of individuality. You contemplate the “I-ness.”

Advaita means ‘non-duality’. Used to describe Shankara’s perspective on vedanta, it indicates the inseparability of the salt and the water in the story about Shvetaketu. To Shankara, in the 9th century ce, ultimate reality and the self were identical, and his task was to explain why people failed to realize this.

The ideal of the Upanishads is to live in the world in full awareness of life’s unity, giving and enjoying, participating in others’ sorrows and joys, but never unaware even for a moment that the world comes from God and returns to God.