Vedic Philosophy Quotes

“Śrīla Guru Mahārāj once gave a lecture in the library of Dhanbad before a gathering of many highly qualified paṇḍits and wealthy persons. He started his lecture with this verse. He explained that people think religion is found in books and that those books are written in particular languages, but
that religion does not actually come from books or languages: religion is communicated through the transcendental language of heart transaction.

All religion presented in scriptures is first revealed in the hearts of ṛṣis, munis, and sādhus. After it appears in their hearts it is transmitted forward from heart to heart, and it later may take the form of books. So what can we say about religion? How much can we understand it? It is a matter of the heart. How can we feel the beauty and understand the glory of religion if our hearts are presently as filthy as a dustbin? Because our hearts are impure we must try to understand religion from a clean-hearted sādhu. (p. 42)”
― Bhakti Sundar Govinda, Revealed Truth

“Spirituality is not about 'the doings' but 'the living'. Once chosen, one ought to follow it 24x7 endlessly to be spiritual.”
― Mahayogi Buddh Puri

“Spirituality is not about rituals but purport. And without that, no path would take you anywhere.”
― Mahayogi Buddh Puri

“Spirit is a subtle force, somewhat like electricity. One cannot confine or attach it to any object. Accordingly, spirituality is about transcending every limit: caste or creed or country or anything else.”
― Mahayogi Buddh Puri

“In Vedic traditions, Aum/Om is believed to be the primordial sound wave.”
― Ujjwal Arora, Healing Sole to Soul

“The Vedic scriptures declaire that the physical world operates under one fundamental law of maya [=illusion]. [...]

Physical science, then, cannot formulate laws outside of maya: the very fabric and structure of creation. Nature herself is maya. [...]

Those who cling to the cosmic illusion must accept its essential law of polarity: flow and ebb, rise and fall, pleasure and pain. [...]

Delusive maya in man manifests itself as avidya, ignorance. Maya or avidya can never be destroyed through intellectual convinction or analysis, but solely through attaining the interior state of nirbikalpa samadhi. [...]

To remove the veil of maya is to uncover the secret of creation.”
― Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

“In the world above this, and also in that below this, there are regions of great gloom and darkness. Know, O king, that those are regions where the senses of men are exceedingly afflicted. Oh, let not any of those places to thine. Carefully listening to these words, if thou canst act according to them, thou wilt obtain great fame in this world of men, and fear will not be thine here or hereafter. O Bharata, the soul is spoken of as a river; religious merit constitutes its sacred baths; truth, its water; self-control, its banks; kindness, its waves. He that is righteous purifieth himself by a bath therein, for the soul is sacred, and the absence of desire is the highest merit. O king, life is a river whose waters are the five senses, and whose crocodiles and sharks are desire and anger. Making self-control thy raft, cross thou its eddies which are represented by repeated births! Worshipping and gratifying friends that are eminent in wisdom, virtue, learning, and years, he that asketh their advice about what he should do and should not do, is never misled. One should restrain one's lust and stomach by patience; one's hands and feet by one's eyes; one's eyes and ears by one's mind; and one's mind and words by one's acts. That Brahmana who never omitteth to perform his ablutions, who always weareth his sacred thread, who always attendeth to the study of the Vedas, who always avoideth food that is unclean, who telleth the truth and performeth acts in honour of his preceptor, never falleth off from the region of Brahma.”
― Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Mahabharata