Sri Ramana Maharshi

“It is false to speak of realisation. What is there to realise? The real is as it is always. We are not creating anything new or achieving something which we did not have before. The illustration given in books is this. We dig a well and create a huge pit. The space in the pit or well has not been created by us. We have just removed the earth which was filling the space there. The space was there then and is also there now. Similarly we have simply to throw out all the age-long samskaras [innate tendencies] which are inside us. When all of them have been given up, the Self will shine alone.”

Swami Ashokananda

One proof that man is by nature immortal is that he cannot think of himself as a dead person. 

If he does so, he finds he is watching himself as a dead man. That’s all he can do. He can never consider the extinction of his own being. In considering that, he transcends that extinction, he lives beyond it.

There is something in man that refuses to be considered a mortal being, or a limited being. 

Endless, endless desires are the proof that his being is endless. Only he manifests it in a wrong way and an obscure way. That is what I would say. No, you cannot give up the idea that you are that eternal and infinite being. You cannot. It is haunting you. 

Only you are trying to realize it in a wrong way, and therefore you come to misery. You have taken a wrong path, and that path is full of difficulties and dangers. If you have taken the right path, you will at once realize that your true nature is divine. You will at once realize it. This is the idea.

Swami Chidananda

After generations of investigations and after having raised their consciousness to a very subtle level, the Vedic Rishis came to the Truth through direct experience. They declared that beneath this mortal body seen by the world of man is an immortal spirit unseen by the world of man. And that Eternal in the non-eternal body, that Imperishable in the perishable body is actually part of a vast, infinite, eternal, beginningless, endless, cosmic Spirit. 

Timeless, beginningless and endless. It exists. It does not exist as an inert piece. It is Consciousness. Very much aware that it exists. It knows—I exist. So it is conscious existence. Existence is Sat, Consciousness is Chit. So it is Sat Chit.

Self-realisation is the goal of life because in that state there are no sorrows. Once you discover that you are the infinite, imperishable, eternal reality—you are liberated from all sorrow. In that state, there is only pure and permanent bliss and joy. Isn’t that the goal of each and every one of us?