“Leave God alone. Speak for yourself. You do not know God. He is only what you think of Him. Is he apart from you? He is that Pure Consciousness in which all ideas are formed. You are that Consciousness.”

“Let what comes come. Let what goes go. See what remains.”

- Both quotes from Talks with Ramana Maharshi

“The Kingdom of God is Within You.”

- Luke 17:21; see also: Matthew 3:2 & Mark 1:15

“Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Cosmic Consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?”

- from A Brief History of Everything, p. 42-43

“We have many arts: the art of painting ... the art of engineering, the art of communication - there are many, many arts. But for most of us, and probably for the rest of the world too, we have never asked this question: the art of living. ... [It] is the greatest art, and the most important art, greater than any other, greater than the art of governments, the art of communication, in spite of all that we have never enquired very deeply what is the art of living our daily life, which requires such subtlety, sensitivity, and a great deal of freedom. Because without freedom you cannot find out what is the art of living. The art of living isn't a method, a system, or ask another how to find the art of living, but requires considerable intellectual activity, and also a deep abiding honesty. Very few of us are honest. It is getting worse and worse in the world. We are not honest people. We say one thing, do another, we talk about philosophy, god, all the theories that the ancient Indians have invented, and we are rather good at all that kind of stuff, but the word, the description, the explanation, is not the deed, the action. And that's why there is a great deal of dishonesty. And to enquire into the art of living there must be a fundamental, unshakeable, immutable honesty. Honesty which is not corruptible, which doesn't adjust itself to environment, to demands, to various forms of challenges. It requires a great integrity to find out because we are dealing with a very, very complex problem.”

- The Art of Living & Dying

“It is never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true.”

- Swami Sri Yukteswar as quoted by Paramahansa Yogananda in Autobiography of a Yogi

Distinguishing the folk or ethnic accent from the elementary idea - Numerous locations. See, for example, this and this.

“If we may trust the reports of the mystics - and they are reports given with a strange accent of certainty and good faith - they have succeeded where ... others have failed, in establishing immediate communication between the spirit of man, entangled as they declare amongst material things, and that “only Reality,” that immaterial and final Being, which some philosophers call the Absolute, and most theologians call God. This, they say - and here many who are not mystics agree with tme - is the hidden Truth which is the object of man’s craving; the only satisfying goal of his quest. Hence, they should claim from us the same attention that we give to other explorers of countries in which we are not competent to adventure ourselves; for the mystics are the pioneers of the spiritual world, and we have no right to deny validity to their discoveries, merely because we lack the opportunity or the courage necessary to those who would prosecute such explorations for themselves.”

- from Mysticism: A Study in Man’s Spiritual Consciousness, p. 4

“Philosophia Perennis - the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing - the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being - the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.”

- from The Perennial Philosophy introduction

“Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet-
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.”

- The Higher Pantheism

“The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.“

- from the collected Sermons of Meister Eckhart, Sermon IV

"Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.” - from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice (paraphrased in ep. 2)