Like the practice of breath control, meditation on the forms of God, repetition of mantras, food restrictions, etc., are but aids for rendering the mind quiescent.
Ramana MaharshiRead
Calmness is the criterion of spiritual progress. Plunge the purified mind into the Heart. Then the work is over.
Interpretation
Calmness indicates spiritual growth, and a focused mind leads to fulfillment.
This quote by Ramana Maharshi emphasizes that achieving calmness is a sign of spiritual development. By directing a purified mind towards deeper understanding and connection with the inner self, one can reach a state of completion in their spiritual endeavors, suggesting that true peace comes from within.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a meditation retreat to inspire participants.
Like the practice of breath control, meditation on the forms of God, repetition of mantras, food restrictions, etc., are but aids for rendering the mind quiescent.
Think of God; attachments will gradually drop away. If you wait till all desires disappear before starting your devotion and prayer, you will have to wait for a very long time indeed.
The mind of one meditating on a single object becomes one-pointed. And one-pointedness of mind leads to abidance in the self. Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness.
You need not aspire for or get any new state. Get rid of your present thoughts, that is all.
Realisation is not acquisition of anything new nor is it a new faculty. It is only removal of all camouflage
Bliss is a thing which is always there and is not something which comes and goes. That which comes and goes is a creation of the mind.
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there.
Unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.
God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world.
Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.
I think of life as an inn where I have to stay until the abyss coach arrives. I don't know where it will take me, for I know nothing.
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