Quotes on Self Realization

As long as we place millions of Indians at the canter of our thought process, as long as we think of their welfare, their future, their opportunities for self realization we are on the right track. For India can grow, prosper, flourish only if they grow, prosper, flourish. We cannot grow by any esoteric strategies. Our purchasing power, our economic strength, our marketplace all depends on the prosperity of our people.

It looks as if there were a single ultimate goal for mankind, a far goal toward which all persons strive. This is called variously by different authors self-actualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy, creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that person can be.

There is no greater mystery than this, that we keep _x000D_ seeking reality though in fact we are reality. We _x000D_ think that there is something hiding reality and that _x000D_ this must be destroyed before reality is gained. _x000D_ How ridiculous! A day will dawn when you will laugh _x000D_ ... at all your past efforts. That which will be the day _x000D_ you laugh is also here and now.

The state of self-realization, as we call it, is not attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far away, but simply being that which you always are and which you always have been.

Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.

A job is a vocation only if someone else calls you to do it for them rather than for yourself. And so our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests. Thinking of work mainly as a means of self-fulfillment and self-realization slowly crushes a person.

Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections.

Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.

Skepticism? Yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours.

The 'I' casts off the illusion of the 'I' and yet remains 'I'. Such is the paradox of Self-realization. The Realized do not see any paradox in it. Consider the case of the worshipper. He approaches God and prays to be absorbed in Him. He then surrenders himself in faith and by concentration. And what remains afterwards? In the place of the original 'I', self-surrender leaves a residuum of God in which the 'I' is lost. That is the highest form of devotion or surrender and the peak of detachment.

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.

Self-realization and self-fulfilment are the sine qua non for human existence.

A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.