“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions … are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”

- Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor; p. 3

“Who is God? I can think of no better answer than, He who is. Nothing is more appropriate to the eternity which God is. If you call God good, or great, or blessed, or wise, or anything else of this sort, it is included in these words, namely, He is.”

“Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time. And not only time but temporalities, not only temporal things but temporal affections; not only temporal affections but the very taint and smell of time.”

God as “the power of life itself” comes from the following passage:
“Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called "God." As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.”

- A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose; 2006, p. 198

“The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

- The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, p. 49

“It seems as if man could never escape from himself, and yet, when shut in to the monotony of his own sphere, he is overwhelmed with a sense of emptiness. The only remedy here is radically to alter the conception of man himself, to distinguish within him the narrower and the larger life, the life that is straitened and finite and can never transcend itself, and an infinite life through which he enjoys communion with the immensity and the truth of the universe. Can man rise to this spiritual level? On the possibility of his doing so rests all our hope of supplying any meaning or value to life.”

- The Meaning and Value of Life (1908), p. 81

“The Infinite is ultimate Reality, and is beyond all conceptualizations and experiences. It is the ultimate ground of all being, all existence, all dimensions, and all perceptions. It is transcendent of all categories, all descriptions, all imaginings. It is beyond ego, self, presence, being (and non- being), and oneness, but it is not other than these either. Neither conceivable nor experience-able, the Infinite knows itself through a simple intuitive regard it has for itself in every aspect of itself. Thus the only thing that realizes the Infinite is the Infinite. And only such realization brings an end to the mind’s restless search for God, Truth, and meaning.”

- The Way of Liberation, p. 14; (2012)

“There is nothing but the One in relationship with itself.”

- My Secret is Silence, p. 59; (2003)

“There are no dialogues in the world. It is all a divine monologue. For in reality there are not two. There is only the single reality in its appearance as many.”

- Vaster than Sky, Greater than Space: What You Are Before You Became (2016)

“Behold but One in all things. It is the second that leads you astray.”

- encountered in The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, p. 10; (1945)

“God is the Unconditioned, the Wholly Other for whom we have no words, and whom all our poor symbols insult. To see Him is to enter the Darkness, the ‘Cloud of Unknowing,’ and ‘know only that we know nought.’”

- Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, p. 337; (1955)

“Celebrating what we hope for together is better than fighting over what we believe separately.”

- Ladder to the Light: An Indigenous Elder's Meditations on Hope and Courage, p. 96; (2021)

“What is Bliss but your own Being. You are not apart from Being which is the same as Bliss. You are now thinking that you are the mind or the body which are both changing and transient. But you are unchanging and eternal. That is what you should know.”

“There is no greater mystery than the following: Ourselves being the Reality, we seek to gain reality. We think there is something hiding our Reality, and that it must be destroyed before the Reality is gained. That is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.”

- Both quotes from Talks with Ramana Maharshi,
the first from p. 504; the second from pgs. 101-102

“The person is merely the result of a misunderstanding. In reality, there is no such thing. Feelings, thoughts and actions race before the watcher in endless succession, leaving traces in the brain and creating an illusion of continuity. A reflection of the watcher in the mind creates the sense of ‘I’ and the person acquires an apparently independent existence. In reality there is no person, only the watcher identifying himself with the ‘I’ and the ‘mine.’ The teacher tells the watcher you are not this, there is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of ‘I am’, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream. ‘I am this, I am that’ is dream, while pure ‘I am’ has the stamp of reality on it. You have tasted so many things - all came to naught. Only the sense ‘I am’ persisted - unchanged. Stay with the changeless among the changeful until you are able to go beyond.”

“M: The source of the self is simple and single, but its gifts are infinite. Only do not take the gifts for the source. Realize yourself as the source and not as the river; that is all.
D: I am the river too.
M: Of course you are. As an ‘I Am,’ you are the river, flowing between the banks of the body. But you are also the source and the ocean and the clouds in the sky. Wherever there is life and consciousness, you are. Smaller than the smallest, bigger than the biggest, you are, while all else appears.”

- Both quotes from I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj;
the first from Dialogue 71 (p. 375); and the second from Dialogue 80 (p. 442)

“A Saint is a sinner who never gave up.”

- as quoted by his devotee, Kriyananda, in The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda by Kriyananda, chapter 7

“All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible.”

- The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind, translated by John Blofeld, p. 29; (1958)

“[God is] an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

- The Book of the 24 Philosophers; Aphorism #2: Unknown/disputed authorship
Online HERE.
To learn more about the wide use of this beautiful metaphor, see THIS curious essay by the celebrated author Borges

Tat Tvam Asi
(Thou Art That)

- from the sixth chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad

“What was said to the rose that made it open was said to me here in my chest.”

- Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks; multiple locations including Rumi: The Book of Love, p. 15; (2003)

“Be Still, and know that I am God.”

- Psalms 46:10