Self Enquiry Quotes

“An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.”
― Byron Katie

“God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays "hide" and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself! But that's the whole fun of it-just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But- when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will WAKE UP, stop pretending, and REMEMBER that we are all one single Self- the God who is all that there is and who lives forever and ever.
You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards and play again, and so it goes with the world.”
― Alan Watts, A. Book

“The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion.”
― Byron Katie

“You are already that which you seek”
― Ramana Maharshi

“This solitude that you can acquire and should cultivate, this opportunity for contemplation of which you should take advantage, will be useful to you only insofar as you can substitute for those questions posed by the student for the teacher, questions posed by yourself for yourself.
- Advice to a Graduation”
― Glenn Gould, The Analog Sea Review: Number Three

“Spiritual enlightenment includes the realization that there is no ‘there’ to go to, and no one to go.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We are, not aware, but awareness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Society mainly uses the concept of self to chain man’s thoughts and behaviour to a pole called ‘I’.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“All that I know is that I am.

I can know that the self is not me, because I can inquire into it, deconstruct it until it seems to dissolve, or just leave it alone, and yet I still exist. The body is not me, because it appears, changes, and eventually ceases to exist. Consciousness, too, is heir to movement and impermanence, and I am not solely that either. What remains when all else is removed is the silence that is a still, infinite, boundless, permanent, un-cancellable nothingness from which all springs.
And this Absoluteness never changes. 

I can only say that I am this.”
― Vic Shayne, 13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering

“The subjective experience is an incalculable, immeasurable personal experience of what it is like to be alive, to exist. It is the feeling of knowing that one exists, no matter how unexplainable or unprovable. This continues to be a thorn in the side of scientists, because science demands proof for everything, yet even the most skeptical scientist knows that he has the subjective experience of knowing what it is like to say, 'I am.”
― Vic Shayne, The Self is a Belief: The idea that causes suffering

“All we can really do is nothing but be aware. In fact, we are nothing but awareness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Thinking’ is in almost all cases a euphemism for ‘self-storytelling’.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, P for Pessimism: A Collection of Funny yet Profound Aphorisms

“You have not yet reaped the sweetest fruits of meditation, if you still do not meditate only to meditate.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“At first, meditation reveals to you, and then reminds you … every second, that among the body, the mind, and the awareness you are the third.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You do not think. You are thought … and therefore a thought.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana