“When there are thoughts, it is distraction: when there are no thoughts, it is meditation.”

Truth burns up all karma and frees you from all births.

Seeing God without seeing the Self, one sees only mental image. Only he who has seen Himself has seen God, since he has lost individuality, and now sees nothing but God.

Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.

Call it by any name, God, Self, the Heart, or the Seat of Consciousness, it is all the same.

The greatest obstacle to enlightenment is getting past your delusion that you are not already enlightened.

The main factor in meditation is to keep the mind active in its own pursuit without taking in external impressions or thinking of other matters.

Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.

All bad qualities centre round the ego. When the ego is gone, Realisation results by itself. There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only.

Without knowing the Knower, all the knowledge that one gathers cannot be valid.

The Self is the one Reality that always exists, and it is by the light of the Self that all other things are seen.

Your duty is to Be, and not to be this or that.

The Self is here and now, it is the only Reality. There is nothing else.

You do not like to suffer yourself. How can you inflict suffering on others?

The entire Universe is condensed in the body, and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the whole Universe.

The normal self is the mind. The mind is with limitations. But pure Consciousness is beyond limitations, and is reached by investigation into the “I.”

Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a fast rotating gyroscope.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

I’m not the distraction in the room.’ ‘oh? And what might be?’ -nora & patch (pg 242)

There’s a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions – like this anti-gay law you alluded to – and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people’s emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.

We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock.

At the end of the day, women are a distraction. Whether you realize it or not.

Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.

The lyrics are not an important thing to me. In fact, it can be a distraction.