Upanishads Quotes

“As fire, though one, takes the shape of every object which it consumes, so the Self, though one, takes the shape of every object in which it dwells. (The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal, pg. 35)”

“In the religion these words ‘save me’ were created to suppress the truth of the human life. These words ‘save me’, indicates that you are sinner and so you are uttering these words. But see how wonderful the human life is! Yes, I am Universal. Upanishad is saying ‘Amritasya Putrah’ (Sons of Amrita or Immortal self). What a wonderful version! And in that case they are crying ‘save me’! Upanishads created heaven by saying ‘Sons of Immortal self’ and on the contrary they have created hell by uttering the words ‘Save me’.”

“This Self is never born, nor does It die. It did not spring from anything, nor did anything spring from It. This Ancient One is unborn, eternal, everlasting. It is not slain even though the body is slain.”

“Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, “the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad”

“It is said in the Upanishads: ‘I am the Universe.’ If you ask a hundred people as to how they find the world, they are all likely to give different answers. For some, the world is beautiful and the people are good, while for others, the world is extremely bad, and the people are treacherous and sinful. Why the same world is different for different people? It is so, because the outer world is the projection of our inner world. Therefore, the only way to improve the world outside is to improve the world within. While we may not have any control over the outside world, we can change our world within and thus change the world outside.”

“As per the Indian philosophy of the Upanishads, the source of evil is one’s ego-sense –Ahankara—which differentiates oneself from the other selves. A person, who visualizes himself independent of others, tries to guard or please himself at the cost of others. Evil is thus the tendency of a person to live a life that is not ‘in harmony’ with the rest of the world, but ‘in opposition’ to it or at best ‘in indifference’ to it. The good is to discover the unity in the diversity of ‘all selves’ and beings. Once unity in diversity is realized, every being becomes our own self and good deeds follow automatically”

“Blessed are the ones who offer coffee to writers, for they will get all the rewards mentioned in the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.”

“In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.”

“The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life.”