“Ecstasy is the accurate term for the intensity of consciousness that occurs in the creative act.”

This personal freedom to think and feel and speak authentically and to be conscious of so doing is the quality that distinguishes us as human.

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one’s death.

Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. … One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him.

The mature person becomes able to differentiate feelings into as many nuances, strong and passionate experiences, or delicate and sensitive ones, as in the different passages of music in a symphony. Unfortunately, many of us have feelings limited like notes in a bugle call.

The creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them.

There is nobody who totally lacks the courage to change.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

Therapy isn’t curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human.

Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.

It is an old and ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way; and we grasp more fiercely at research, statistics, and technical aids in sex when we have lost the values and meaning of love.

To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.

There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever.

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them.

What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?

When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.

I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.

The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.

Attempting to understand consciousness with your mind, is like trying to illuminate the sun with a candle.

All the ups and downs are grace in different wrappings, sent to refine consciousness. Say thanks to them all.

Simply performing devotional activities will not impart devotion to others but our consciousness should be absorbed.

We should be in harmony with our own consciousness; our mind, body, and soul should be one in interest and in purpose. And in that unified condition, we can actually express that natural innate love that we have found in our own life in everything we do in the world.

When you advance in Krishna Consciousness it is more difficult to tolerate being honored than to tolerate being dishonored.

The worst tragedy is that this uncontrolled mind steals our consciousness away from Krishna and that is the beginning, the essence of all suffering.