Swami Ashokananda

“Forget that anyone is bad, that anyone is inferior. You have to go beyond the person’s behavior. The real person is God, peeping through the eyes. This is the highest ideal.

Never think another person to be weak or imperfect. Behind his form lies the ever effulgent Being, the Strength of all strength, the Wisdom of all wisdom.

Imagine God in the heart of all beings.

Every single being that exists is an inexhaustible mine of beauty and love.

Everything brings the message of God; from everywhere comes the touch of my Beloved.”

- Swami Ashokananda

Swami Ashokananda

In samadhi, no activity takes place in the body. You would not breathe, your heart would not beat, there would be no pulse, unless you have given a part of your consciousness and mind to these functions. Of course, if you have done that, it means that you have not given your whole mind and consciousness to God. And if you do not give your whole mind and consciousness to God, how can you expect to have the full vision of God? You can’t. It is said that the mind is finite. But when the mind becomes absolutely and totally concentrated on God, then the mind becomes infinite. And it is only then that the vision of God becomes reflected in the mind, and being so reflected it destroys the mind because the mind is no longer necessary.

So the spirit of man, which is different from the mind, becomes one with the other spirit, which is called God. Other spirit? Because it appears so to us in ignorance. In truth, the spirit of man is God. So, that is how full and complete knowledge of God is attained, and that state has been called, technically in our books, nirvikalpa samadhi. Samadhi means complete contemplation and meditation, and nirvikalpa means that in which there is no other thought. When there is no other thought, when there is no perception of any other thing, but only of God and God alone, then it is considered the mind has reached that desired condition.

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.