Self Quotes

Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.

~ Tom Bissell

Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent even reading, the cerebral cortex typically rests. Meanwhile, deeper and more ancient brain structures seem to be activated--the subcortical zones. People who live busy, noisy lives are rarely granted access to these areas. Silence, it appears, is not the opposite of sound. It is another world altogether, literally offering a deeper level of thought, a journey to the bedrock of the self.

~ Michael Finkel

If you will read and listen, you will admit a multiplicity of voices and points of view, consider them with some humility, allow them gracious entrance however strident or discordant some of them may sound, then you will grow and change, and each of these voices will become a constituent part of who you become, an atom of growing being. It is literature and only literature than can do this.

~ Rick Gekoski

...begged them as we read our literary texts, only to listen. To wrench open - it takes an effort of will - the portcullis to their teenage hearts for just a couple of hours once a week, to humbly admit another, and better - a Yeats or Shakespeare, a Crazy Jane or Hamlet - and to welcome them, to allow for those tiny spots of time some vibration in the jelly of being, that makes, once it has settled, a subtle new mould... Otherwise, I would observe tartly...you are merely going to become a product of your family, the few friends you might make and the few lovers you may garner...nothing more than a function of your upbringing - a type. Whereas, if you will only read, and listen, you will admit a multiplicity of voices and points of view, consider them with some humility, allow them gracious entrance however strident or discordant some of them may sound, then you will grow and change, and each of these voices will become a constituent part of who you become, an atom of growing being. It is literature and only literature than can do this.

~ Rick Gekoski

By reading books, you lose your old self and you find your new self! To read is to travel from self to another self!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

As the new year began, [Patricia Highsmith] felt completely paralysed, incapable of reading or picking up the phone. 'I can feel my grip loosening on my self,' she wrote. 'It is like strength failing in the hand that holds me above an abyss.' She wished there was a more awful-sounding word for what she was feeling than simply 'depression'. She wanted to die, she said, but then realised that the best course of action would be to endure the wretchedness until it passed. Her wish was, 'Not to die, but not to exist, simply, until this is over'.

~ Andrew Wilson

There are so many works of the mind, so much humanity, that to disburden ourselves of ourselves is an understandable temptation. Open a book and a voice speaks. A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader's store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood. As with scientific hypotheses, even failure is meaningful, a test of the boundaries of credibility. So many voices, so many worlds, we can weary of them. If there were only one human query to be heard in the universe, and it was only the sort of thing we were always inclined to wonder about--Where did all this come from? or, Why could we never refrain from war?--we would hear in it a beauty that would overwhelm us. So frail a sound, so brave, so deeply inflected by the burden of thought, that we would ask, Whose voice is this? We would feel a barely tolerable loneliness, hers and ours. And if there were another hearer, not one of us, how starkly that hearer would apprehend what we are and were.

~ Marilynne Robinson

The best self is a beautiful spirit.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Worldly life means [state of continuous] agitation and uneasiness. What makes one like it, it is a wonder in itself!

~ Dada Bhagwan

When can it be said that one has entered into spirituality? Spirituality begins from the moment one gets the slight impression ‘I am somewhat different from this [the body?]’ And when dehadhyas, the belief of ‘I am the body, the relative self’, goes away; that is when spirituality is complete.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Here’, I am a disciple just as you are. The one you see is not ‘Dada Bhagwan’; it is ‘A. M. Patel’, a Patidaar from the town of Bhadran. The one sitting within is ‘Dada Bhagwan’. ‘I’ myself make everyone do jai jai kar of Dada Bhagwan [sing praise of Dada Bhagwan]. Therefore, ‘I’ too am a devotee, as are you.

~ Dada Bhagwan

You yourself are indeed Bhagwan [God], but the qualities of God have not yet manifested.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Everything in the world has a life span and We (the Self) are without a life span, so how can the two correlate? To make association with those with a life span (mortal), we too have to become one with a life span. And that has created all this fiasco.

~ Dada Bhagwan

People have unlatched the energies of the worldly self (jiv shakti), but they have not unlatched the energies of Real Self (shiv shakti).

~ Dada Bhagwan

To become God (Khuda) one does not need weapons. One needs to recognize his [True] Self (Khud). The one who knows one’s own Self (khud), is God (khuda).

~ Dada Bhagwan

In this era, there are all kinds of prakrutis (personality of the relative self), so how can it work without adjusting?

~ Dada Bhagwan

There is no need to slander the nimit (one who is instrumental), it is only necessary to distance yourself from that nimit.

~ Dada Bhagwan

How is power of speech (vacchanbud) attained? It is when, not a single word is uttered to make fun of others; when not a single word is uttered for wrong selfish motives, material self-gain; when speech has not been misused; when speech has not been used to gain recognition or importance from others - that is when one's power of speech is attained.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Man (human life form) is a 'second-hand' quality of the absolute supreme Self (Parmatma, Lord). Man is close to the Lord [absolute supreme Self].

~ Dada Bhagwan

Ambalal Muljibhai’ (Dada’s relative self) is under the control of worldly interactions, and ‘we’ (The Gnani Purush) are in the control of nischaya (realm of the Self). Worldly interaction should not be scorned at, at all.

~ Dada Bhagwan

One becomes Parmatma (absolute supreme self) if he comes into the True Self even for a fraction of time.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Misery will not come to the one who does not deceive his own Self. Miseries arise because one deceives one’s own Self.

~ Dada Bhagwan

If the inner [intent] is not spoilt, it means “Our Own Self” did not spoilt. That which has become spoilt on the outside will burn in the funeral pyre; whether it improves or not.

~ Dada Bhagwan

I’ is your own Self, only this much is to be ‘realized’!

~ Dada Bhagwan

I’ means the Self and ‘my’ means what belongs to the self. All that is ‘my’ is acquisition [parigrah]. You should keep [only] whatever acquisition you are able to carry.

~ Dada Bhagwan

All which is regarded as ‘my’, belongs to the non-Self. ‘I’ is the Self and ‘my’ is of the non-Self; it is pudgal, the body-complex. There is nothing wrong with saying ‘this is mine’ in the worldly interactions, but the ‘I’, ‘who am I?’, must be decided from within.

~ Dada Bhagwan

If you make an inner-intent to remain steady in a completely unsteady atmosphere, you will be able to remain steady. This is because steadiness is indeed the quality of your own Self-form. So then, what do You have do with what is unsteady?

~ Dada Bhagwan

Not knowing one’s real Self is the greatest of maya (deceit; illusion). Once this ignorance is removed, the illusion departs.

~ Dada Bhagwan

What is the goal of a human being? An Indian person can truly achieve a state of the Absolute Supreme Self [Parmatma, the Lord]. To achieve one’s own Absolute Supreme Self state is the ultimate goal!

~ Dada Bhagwan

The absence of inner intent for kashays is the same as the inner intent of the absolute Self (Parmatma). If one’s kashays are gone, then he becomes the ‘owner’ of the whole universe.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Where there is (consideration for) merit karma and demerit karma, true religion is indeed not present there. There is no merit or demerit karma in true religion. True religion is where merit and demerit karma are considered worthy of abandonment and that which is worthy of acceptance is one’s Self-form.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Unfolding of karmic effect is self-resulting (swaparinami). Therefore, whatever the unfolding karmic effect does is correct. Do not be obstinate there. The unfolding of karmic effect indeed means that it has come before you to give the result. Why not stop interfering in it?

~ Dada Bhagwan

Good karmas are an illusion and bad karmas are also an illusion. Despite this, I am not telling you to stop doing good karma. Going from bad to good is a good thing. However, in spite of doing good; the illusion doesn’t go away. True religion begins after the illusion has gone away.

~ Dada Bhagwan

One whose faith (nishtha) is set in God, he is known as Brahma-nishtha (settled in the Self).

~ Dada Bhagwan

When Self (Khuda) is realized, egoism (Aap-khudi) goes away.

~ Dada Bhagwan

Unless the Self is known, the power of the Self (swasatta) cannot arise.

~ Dada Bhagwan

The ‘knowledge’ (gnan) that was resulting into ‘the things to be known’ (gneya), when that ‘knowledge’ results in the ‘Knower’ (gnata), this is known as Self-Realization [Atma Gnan].

~ Dada Bhagwan

Our people believe in God, don’t they? And they also do secretive acts, don’t they? How can you keep a secret from God [the absolute supreme self within us] that knows all your actions? If you want to realize God, then you cannot do secret acts.

~ Dada Bhagwan

As the Self [Pure Soul], one never dies; it is only the beliefs that die.

~ Dada Bhagwan

The [true] intellectual is he who does not let harm done to others and nor let any harm done to even one's own self.

~ Dada Bhagwan