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“Asana is about flexibility of the body. Yoga is about flexibility of the mind.”

Paul Toliuszis

“All misery in the world is due to ignorance and false identification of the perishable body with the imperishable spirit (atman).”

Swami Sivananda

“Not all spiritual paths lead to Harmonious Oneness. Indeed, most are detours and distractions, nothing more.”

Lao Tzu

“Only the Liberated can save the world. The blind cannot guide the blind.”

Ramana Maharshi

“Renounce this world and the ways of this world. Make them meaningless to you.”

Jesus

“Be in this world but not of this world.”

Jesus

“Seek you first the kingdom of god, then all shall come unto you.”

Jesus

“What is renunciation? Anyone can renounce things, people, places, or lifestyles. But only a true renounciate renounces interest in his own mind- renounces his ideas, his hopes, his conditioning, his wounds, his defeats, his victories, his past, and his future. Many clothe themselves in the robes of false renunciation, but true renounciates are very rare, and very free.”

Adyashanti

“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

A Course in Miracles

“God does not vibrate. God is.”

Gary Renard

1. All things are impermanent.

2. Conflicting emotions are the root of suffering.

3. All things are illusory and empty.

4. Enlightenment is the nonconceptual realization that 1-3 are true.

The Four Seals of Buddhism

“To try to define God in words, which is a futile yet enjoyable exercise, we might string together several words. How about: absolute perfection of consistency of unconditional awareness?”

Paul Toliuszis

“Yoga means union. Two things yoke together and make one thing. So it is the attempt to reconcile separation or duality. It is the study of Oneness.”

Paul Toliuszis

“Name something that exists outside of Oneness.”

Paul Toliuszis

“If Oneness is true, who is the separate you making all of these decisions?”

Paul Toliuszis

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

Rumi

“The material world is an illusion, albeit a persistent one.”

Albert Einstein

“All things are already perfectly resolved in the unborn.”

The first thought that occurred to a newly awakened/enlightened person

“Non-preference of outcomes is yoga.”

Upanishads

“Moksha is defined as a shift in consciousness whereby one transcends all duality.”

Georg Feuerstein

“Jnana means wisdom or insight into a specific kind of discriminative knowledge.”

Georg Feuerstein

“Jnana yoga is the path to Self realization through the wisdom associated with discerning the Real from the unreal or illusory.”

Georg Feurstein

“Jnana yoga is a straight, but steep path.”

Vedanta-Sara

“All suffering is the result of a split mind.”

A Course in Miracles

“Jnana yoga uses one part of the mind to dismantle or disempower another part of the mind.”

Unknown

“We are all the same in our Right Mind. We are all the same in our wrong mind. And we are all the same in our ability to choose.”

A Course in Miracles

“With ego, you can’t win. With Spirit, you can’t lose.”

Paul Toliuszis

“Krama-Mukti-gradual liberation.”

Upanishads

“Sadyo Mukti-immediate liberation. Those who are capable of radical renunciation in the moment are instantly liberated.”

Upanishads

The thought that kicks you out of Heaven:

Heaven: “This is wonderful. I could stay here forever.”

Hell: “This is not quite perfect.”

Byron Katie

“When you begin to notice your thoughts, one of the first things you’ll see is that you’re never alone. Wherever you go, whomever you’re with, the voice in your head goes with you. You may be asking: “That voice in my head, isn’t it me? Don’t I think my thoughts?” You can answer this for yourself. If the voice in your head is you, who’s the one listening to it?”

Byron Katie

“If you loved your thoughts, you would love to be alone with them. Your most intimate relationship is the one you have with your thoughts. I meet my thoughts the way I would meet my husband or my children: with understanding.”

Byron Katie

“Who would you be without that thought?”

Byron Katie

“…the mind makes an effort. This did not come naturally, did it? It is very, very hard. Some “one” had to make a very hard effort. And those efforts resulted in a certain state of mind. Make any physical experiment or chemical experiment. It is very clear. And this is the same in yoga. Do step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5. Ultimately, if all the earlier steps are done, a specific result must come. But it is all still in phenomenality.

“That is why Maharaj used to say, you may go into Samadhi for 10 minutes, you may go into Samadhi for 10 days, you may go into Samadhi for 10 years, but you must come back where you left. Therefore it has no value.”

Ramesh Balsekar

“It doesn’t matter how profound a vision or how wonderful the kriyas, or the kundalini, or the bliss. No matter how beautiful the spiritual experience is, it is only an experience, and experiences come and go. Freedom is found only in that which does not come and go. If it doesn’t come and go, that means it’s present now. When you have a beautiful spiritual experience and then seem to lose it, ask yourself: What was present then that is still present now? Then, you know where to put all your attention, all of your dedication and all of your heart. Don’t put it anywhere else. You are that permanence which contains all becoming and all be-going.”

Adyashanti

Q: (Seeker) What do you mean by Enlightenment?

A: (Wayne Liquorman) When I talk about Enlightenment, I talk about it very, very specifically, and it’s extremely simple. In humans, around the age of 2 ½ a profound shift occurs in which we change from spontaneous, free-flowing beings, to creatures in which everything is about “Me!” and “Mine!” and how to get what “I” want and think “I” need. It is the moment that the false sense of personal authorship (FSA) starts. It happens to virtually every human being. It is the false sense that “I” , as this body-mind organism, am the source that makes things happen.

It is this false sense of authorship that creates suffering, because the new perception is that “I” am in control of things. Yet there is continuous evidence to the contrary- that “I” am not in control. So a powerful tension is established.

Later, for some people, for whatever reason, that sense of personal authorship permanently dissolves. We can say it dies. That event is called Enlightenment. Over the millennia, people have mystified the hell out of it. Basically, it’s an event that happens in the history of some human organisms.

The reason the event is so interesting to some people is that after Enlightenment, the human organism is no longer suffering. There is Total Acceptance within the organism. There is Total Acceptance because it is “understood” that What Is, Is. There is no longer a separate claiming “me” to become involved with What Is, claiming it as “mine.”

Q: You still get angry or sad. It just doesn’t make you suffer?

A: Exactly! Anger and sadness are simply functions of the human apparatus. Humans are designed to experience a variety of emotions and reactions. Painful experience in itself does not create suffering. What creates suffering is involvement by the False Sense of Authorship in the painful experience. When the separate “me” (FSA) becomes involved in the pain of the moment, it projects the pain into the past or the future, resulting in suffering.

Wayne Liquorman

Death Quotes: While the process of overcoming fear of death (abhinivesha) is inherent in the spiritual process, it is my experience that speaking about death in the asana classroom usually precipitates much fear in the students. It “brings too much up for them.” Most asana practitioners associate spiritual growth with “pleasure” (the undeniable chemical high and vibrational change we get from asana and/or pranayama practice.) Thus, speaking about death in the context of yoga, which is intended to “free” the listener, sometimes triggers “core fear”, which most new students find “painful.” The quotes and authors speak for themselves however, so they are happily given for teachers and students to use as they choose.

Paul Toliuszis

“Materialistic philosophies deny that any immaterial principle -such as soul or spirit- survives the demise of the physical body. This one-dimensional view of human nature is vehemently rejected by ALL SCHOOLS of yoga, including the pragmatic tradition of Buddhism. The grand idea is to “die,” that is, to transcend the ego illusion, while yet alive, so that death comes as no surprise but is comparable to a simple change of clothes.”

Georg Feuerstein, The Shambala Encyclopedia of Yoga

“Awareness of death is the very bedrock of the entire path. Until you have developed this awareness, all other practices are obscured.”

The Dalai Lama

“Without being mindful of death, whatever Dharma practices you take up will be merely superficial.”

Milarepa

“By daily dying I have come to be.”

Theodore Roethke

“Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.”

Sir Francis Bacon

“There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.”

Stanislav Grof