.

.

God is the ground of reality…

• The absolute is unconditioned reality which is either the spiritual ground of all being or the whole of things considered as a spiritual unity. L. S. Sprigge
• Brahman is the eternal, unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being and everything beyond in this Universe. Harold Koenig
• At the center of the Christian faith is the affirmation that there is a God in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality. A Being of infinite love and boundless power, God is the creator, sustainer, and conserver of values….In contrast to the ethical relativism of [totalitarianism], Christianity sets forth a system of absolute moral values and affirms that God has placed within the very structure of this universe certain moral principles that are fixed and immutable. Martin Luther

.

…the ultimate reality…

• Man is an appearance, God is a reality. Kedar Joshi
• To argue with reality is to argue with God. Byron Katie
• Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it! Edward Abbey
• Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God. Tom Stoppard
• Reality makes no sense at all, except possibly from God’s point of view. Lori Singer
• If God is God, he is the God of reality and facts and science and history. Eric Metaxas
• Any path to knowledge is a path to God-or Reality, whichever word one prefers to use. Arthur C. Clarke
• Religion is a more or less organized way of remembering that every ministry points to a higher reality. Lawrence Kushner
• Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being… ultimate reality is what we call God. S. Thomas
• I am telling you that your perception of ultimate reality is more limited than you thought, and that Truth is more unlimited than you can imagine. Neale Donald Walsch
• To me, God is the basic Reality of the universe. God is what is. That’s how Moses wrote that God introduced Himself, isn’t it? “I am that I am.” God is. Whatever is, that is God. Michael Gungor
• God can never be close. God can never be close because it would mean that there is some place where God is not. God is infinite. We cannot exist outside of the infinite. Therefore, God is our Reality. Mooji
• Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith. Paul Tillich
• Metaphysical philosophers and theologians focus their attention on such questions as what is real? They have insisted that God is that which is the most real. A very common expression for this claim is that God is ultimate reality. Flora A. Keshgegian
• There is only God. REALITY is God and has never required your belief. This reality no “one” survives. In Ultimate Reality no “one” is saved either – there is simply nothing to save you “from” : you have not emerged from any “other” and there is no place else for “you” to disappear into. Ever. Adi Da
• As I have come to realize that we all live and move and have our being in God, the names of each person, species, creature, and element are superimposed over God’s name. God is reality; God is the source of reality of each of us. Panentheism seeing the world as in God – puts God’s “name” first, but each of our names are included and preserved in their distinctiveness within the divine reality. Sallie McFague
• In its original cosmic sense, the Tao is the ultimate, undefinable reality and as such it is the equivalent of the Hinduist Brahman and the Buddhist Dharmakaya. It differs from these Indian concepts, however, by its intrinsically dynamic quality which, in the Chinese view, is the essence of the universe. The Tao is the cosmic process in which all things are involved; the world is seen as a continuous flow and change. Fritjof Capra

.

…the only reality…

• The only reality is God. There cannot be another and God is love. Linda Stewart
• There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is the reality of God. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• There is only one reality. That reality is God. John G. Lake
• There is no reality but God , says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings. Rumi
• From the Absolute point of view, there is nothing Real except THE ALL. The Kybalion
• What is enquiry into the Truth? It is the firm conviction that the Self is real, and all, other than That, is unreal. Adi Shankara
• God alone is Real, all else is unreal. God alone exists, all else is but only delusion, illusionary, transistory, the vision of Maya in one’s own mind, one’s own imagination, own’s own creation from one’s own power of thought mixed with Maya. Hari K. Gogia
• The Self is the one Reality that always exists, and it is by the light of the Self that all other things are seen. Ramana Maharshi

.

…that which is Absolute

• Absolute: True, right, or the same in all situations and not depending on anything else.  Cambridge Dictionary
• God is the Absolute Idea, a circle that returns upon itself, not a straight line projected indefinitely. Joseph Alexander Leighton
• The Absolute God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe, is impersonal principle. Swami Vivekananda
• Krishna is God, so He’s absolute: His name, His form, prasadam, it’s all Him. George Harrison

.

The world is a manifestation of the one underlying reality that is God

• Everything that you see here, in other words, is a reflection of a higher reality. Frederick Lenz
• A god that does not manifest in reality is indistinguishable from a god that does not exist. Matt Dillahunty
• Underneath the reality in which we live and have our being, another altogether different reality lies concealed. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Under and behind all outward appearances or manifestations, there must always be a Substantial Reality. This is the Law. The Kybalion
• Seeing God as the underlying Reality is the way to solve the problem of being caught up in the delusive distortions of our material experiences. Paramahansa Yogananda
• The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient, to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• The basis of Hinduism is the idea that the multitude of things and events around us are but different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality, called Brahman.  Fritjof Capra
• Non-duality is a general term that covers several – mostly eastern – schools of thought, which point to the single source before and beyond all temporal experiences and apparent diversity. Leo Hartong
• The basis of Krishna’s spiritual instruction, as of all Hinduism, is the idea that the multitude of things and events around us are but different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. Fritjof Capra
• Just as the Atman (Soul) is the reality underlying the conscious powers of an individual, so the Supreme Soul (God) is the eternal quiet underneath the drive and activity of the universe. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
• In the beginning was only Being, One without a second. Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos And entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self. He is the truth; he is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that. The Upanishad
• The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe. The Hindus call it Brahman, the Buddhists Dharmakaya (the Body of Being), or Tathata (Suchness), and the Taoists Tao; each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concepts and defies further description. This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to its very nature to manifest itself in myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves into one another without end. In its phenomenal aspect, the cosmic One is thus intrinsically dynamic, and the apprehension of its dynamic nature is basic to all schools of Eastern mysticism. Fritjof Capra

.

God is the reality and truth of oneness

• Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. Isaac Newton
• Maya conceal from us Brahman, the fundamental oneness of everything and everyone in the universe. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Beyond this illusion, the separateness that is in appearance only, stands the unitive reality of inseparability. Amit Goswami
• From consciousness view there isn’t a multiplicity and diversity of anything, only from the view of finite mind. Rupert Spira
• The every-day perception of reality of the physical world is mistaken. The reality of the world is ‘One Being’: an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole. Parmenides
• God, the Sole Life, is an Absolute Unity; He cannot appear as the separate and diverse manifestations of a creation except under a false or unreal veil. That cosmic illusion is maya. Paramahansa Yogananda
• I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. . . . I know God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone. Mahatma Gandhi
• What exists is now, all at once, one and continuous… Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is. Parmenides
• The universe and every event in it are expressions of a single underlying Being, which is pure awareness, pure intelligence, and pure creativity. Nature is the outward form that consciousness takes as it unfolds in time and space. Deepak Chopra
• Reality is all-encompassing: the absolute nature is one. Although we may feel separate from the original uncreated reality – whether we call it ‘God,’ ‘peak experience,’ or ‘enlightened mind’ – through awareness we can contact this essential part of ourselves. Tarthang Tulku
• Immediate knowledge tells us only that God is, not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, he must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in his relation to these, he is the One Spirit who pervades reality and thought. Hence there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of him and our mediated knowledge of reality. Joseph Alexander Leighton
• Strains of Christian thought, especially those most imbued with Greek philosophical ideas, hold that there is a unity at the heart of reality which is ultimately more real than the multiplicity and differences we all seem to experience in everyday life. The goal of faith then is union, to become one with the one. It is the one that is the most real, most true. The divine is the unity that is ultimate reality. Such ideas permeate not only Christian thought, but other religious traditions as well. For example, Buddhism talks about the veil of illusions that surround us in life. The path to enlightenment involves breaking through to find what is most real, to become one with all. Flora A. Keshgegian

.

God is the reality and truth of love

• The love of God is not only the highest form of love, but also in reality the only love of which all other loves are but shadows. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
• The love of God is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men. Aiden Wilson Tozer

.

God is the reality and truth of here and now

• What is not true does not exist in this moment. Bert McCoy
• The truth is now and here. So it is everywhere. If it is not first found now and here, it will be found nowhere else and at no other time. Atmananda Krishna Menon
• God is discovered within as the ultimate reality that underlies one’s actual existence in the ‘here and now’. David R. Hawkins
• Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the only things that are forever true. A Course in Miracles
• What is not true does not exist in this moment. Bert McCoy
• The truth is now and here. So it is everywhere. If it is not first found now and here, it will be found nowhere else and at no other time. Atmananda Krishna Menon
• All thoughts achieve the same outcome. They take you out of the truth of life, out of the present moment, and into a world of illusion. Leonard Jacobson
• The only truth which is not a concept is the sense of presence, here and now. ‘I am,’ not ‘I am Joe or Jane.’ This impersonal sense of presence in the present moment is the only truth. Ramesh Balsekar

.

God is the reality and truth of consciousness…

• Consciousness is the one absolute reality that is God. Anthony Lambert
• If God is reality, And if reality is consciousness, Then God is consciousness. Deepak Chopra

.

..for consciousness (awareness) is all that we know to be indisputably real and true

• There is ultimately neither duality or non-duality; there’s only awareness. David R. Hawkins
• Behind the illusion of duality and separation, there is only One consciousness. Ziad Masri
• There is essentially nothing in the universe but mind or consciousness . Paramahansa Yogananda
• What is real is the knowing with which experience is known. Give that your attention. Rupert Spira
• The ‘I’-principle or subjective Awareness is the only thing admitted to be existing. Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
• The ultimate goal is to realize that the body, and all else in this universe, is essentially Spirit. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Reality is one solid, seamless, indivisible substance, made out of luminosity, transparency, Knowingness, Beingness. Rupert Spira
• There cannot be an adequate account of any aspect of reality without including a reference to mind or consciousness. William Sweet
• But when you finally discover me, the one naked Truth arisen from within, Absolute Awareness permeates the Universe. Padmasambhava (eighth-century mystic)
• Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. Erwin Schrodinger
• There is only one state, that of consciousness or awareness or existence. The three states of waking, dream and sleep cannot be real. They simply come and go. The real will always exist. Ramana Maharshi
• What is the ultimate nature of reality? The ultimate nature of reality is awareness itself, which is the source from which all things and all being emerge and the very stuff of which they are composed. Peter Wilberg
• All of these qualities of the body, mind, and world are temporary and therefore can’t be considered real in the truest sense. Only the ever-present, unchanging element of our being can be considered real. Rupert Spira
• What is the one absolute reality you can be certain of? You are conscious. You are aware of being aware. How is God generally defined? God is usually defined as the one absolute reality. Is there a chance, therefore, consciousness and God are the same? Anthony Lambert
• The universe is founded in consciousness and guided by it. The final reality is Universal Consciousness. The Supreme Consciousness is Omnipresent. Its evolutionary powers pervade the entire Universe. All processes of Nature are governed by the laws of this Absolute Force. Shriram Sharma
• Make no mistake: whatever I say—whatever its impact—is a concept. It is not the truth. A concept is something that someone may accept and someone may not. The Truth is that which no one can deny. And therefore the only Truth, in phenomenality, is ‘I AM’—the impersonal awareness of being. On this basis, whatever any sage has ever said, whatever any scripture of any religion says is a concept. Ramesh Balsekar
• We started with the concept that the world contains the body, which in turn contains the mind, which in turn contains a little invisible spark of Consciousness, which at best is considered to be a by-product of the world and at worst is overlooked altogether. We end with the understanding that Consciousness is the ever-present Reality of all things and that everything appears within it and as an expression of it. Rupert Spira
• Whatever is taking place in my mind, whatever I may be thinking, believing, feeling, or sensing, the one thing I cannot doubt is consciousness. God, likewise, is often said to be the one absolute truth. God is universal. So is the faculty of consciousness. It is a primary quality of the cosmos, an intimate aspect of all existence. Like God, consciousness is omnipresent. As the familiar saying goes, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Whatever your experience, whatever forms arise in the mind, the sense of “amness” is always present. It has always been present; it will always be present. It never changes. It is eternal and everlasting.  Peter Russell

.

God is our very sense of being (the awareness of being aware)…

• The permanent is beyond all comings and goings. Go to the root of all experience, to the sense of being. Beyond being and not-being lies the immensity of the real.Try and try again. Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

…the ground of all being

• The twentieth-century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, drawing on ancient traditions as well as modern ideas, thought that the essence of God, what is most real, is “being.” For Tillich, God is the “ground of being.” This means that everything that is, has being, or participates in being. Flora A. Keshgegian

.

God is the reality of the mind that imagines the world…

• God is the mind that imagines physical reality. We are each like a cell in that mind. Peter Shepherd
• Since God created the world, He also created reality. Pope Francis
• There cannot be an adequate account of any aspect of reality without including a reference to mind or consciousness. William Sweet

.

…while the world is a dream arising in this mind

• In the Absolute sense, there is only timeless awareness. There is no control, no choice, and no cause and effect. Everything is happening spontaneously and involuntarily in presence. There are no separate people doing anything. From that perspective, it is seen that the relative arises as a dream of thought in the Absolute. Time arises from timelessness. Form arises from formlessness. The dream of a separate self arises from Oneness. Scott Kiloby

.

Even we ourselves are only real when seen in relation to the reality that is God

• Our self (Soul) is maya (an illusion) where it is merely individual and finite, where it considers its separateness as absolute; it is satyam (truth) where it recognizes its essence in the universal and infinite, in the Supreme Self, in paramatman (God). This is what Christ means when he says, “Before Abraham was, I am” (i.e. before Abraham was God, who is the same that is in my soul – I am That.) Rabindranath Tagore
• Objective reality is that which exists even when no one observes. Donald Hoffman

.

The reality that is God is not separate from who we are

• The truth of nonduality—that the many is the One and that the One is ultimately who we always are. Andrew Cohen
• The Truth is we are all one. Oneness. It’s not a tiny me in an vast universe, but the universe all in me. Adyashanti
• The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me That I can no longer call myself A man, a woman, an angel, Or even pure Soul. Hafez
• The illumined man knows this truth of life. For him the universe is his garment And the Lord not separate from himself. The Upanishad
• We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed. Rabindranath Tagore
• When the bubble of ignorance bursts the self realizes its oneness with the indivisible Self. Words that proceed from the Source of Truth have real meaning. But when men speak these words as their own, the words become meaningless. Meher Baba
• Know Him as both particularized and unparticularized, and be established in Truth. Be in a state of unity if you wish, or be in a state of separation if you wish; if the Totality reveals Itself to you, you will attain the crown of victory. Ibn ‘Arabi
• When I stood in my first cause, I ‘then had no ‘God,’ and then I was my own cause. I wanted nothing, I longed for nothing, for I was empty Being and the only truth in which I rejoiced was in the knowledge of my Self. Then it was my Self I wanted and nothing else. What I wanted I was, and what I was I wanted and so I stood empty of God and everything. Meister Eckhart

.

.

God is truth

• God is truth and light his shadow. Plato
• Truth – is as old as God. Emily Dickinson
• God is Truth, Truth is God. Mahatma Gandhi
• God is the absolute truth. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• I am the Truth! Monsoor al-Halaj  (Tenth-century Sufi mystic)
• Though God may be Love, God is Truth above all. Mahatma Gandhi
• Satyagraha is search for Truth, and God is Truth. Mahatma Gandhi
• To love God passionately is to love truth passionately. John Piper
• God alone is true; God alone is great; alone is God. Edouard Rene de Laboulaye
• To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. Mahatma Gandhi
• My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth Mahatma Gandhi
• To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. Mahatma Gandhi
• To me Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except the way of nonviolence. Mahatma Gandhi
• In fact, it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth. Mahatma Gandhi
• I worship the God that is Truth or Truth which is God through the service of these millions. Mahatma Gandhi
• God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, life, Truth, Love. Mary Baker Eddy
• God is Light, not darkness. God is Love, not hate. God is truth, not untruth. God alone is great. Mahatma Gandhi
• God is truth and is to be worshiped, not because it’s convenient, makes us feel good, or is therapeutic. Charles Colson
• God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology. Hilda Phoebe Hudson
• The seeker of God is the real lover of vidya, unchangeable truth; all else is avidya, relative knowledge. Paramahansa Yogananda
• If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. Mahatma Gandhi
• For me the Voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or the still small Voice mean one and the same thing. Mahatma Gandhi
• If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. Mahatma Gandhi
• God is Truth. There is no incompatibility between science and religion. Both are seeking the same truth. Science shows that God exists. Derek Barton
• The concepts of truth may differ. But all admit and respect truth. That truth I call God. For sometime I was saying, “God is Truth,” but that did not satisfy me. So now I say, “Truth is God.” Mahatma Gandhi
• I believe in a spiritual world – not as anything separate from this world – but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God. Rabindranath Tagore
• There is only one God and that is the cosmic heart of the universe – whatever you choose to call him or her. The heart within us is what connects us to God (the heart of the universe). This super basic concept is preached in all religions. God is TRUTH and LIGHT. Only through your conscience do you connect to him. Suzy Kassem
• God is beyond definition. But according to one’s own vision or receptivity, one will define God in one’s own way. Some will say that God is all Love. Others will say that God is all Power. Each one will see God according to his own necessity, his own receptivity and, finally, according to the way God wants him to see the ultimate Truth. Sri Chinmoy
• Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they are the laws of Truth. But seek this only because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is all in all in a very literal sense.  All being is in Him who is all Being.  You are therefore in Him since your being is His.  A Course in Miracles
• To me, God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality: God is fearlessness. God is the source of Light and Life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience… He is a personal God to those who need His personal presence. He is embodied to those who need His touch. He is the purest essence. He simply is to those who have faith. He is all things to all men. Mahatma Gandhi
• The difference between the truth of God and revelation is very simple. Truth is where God’s been. Revelation is where God is. Truth is God’s tracks. It’s His trail, His path, but it leads to what? It leads to Him. Perhaps the masses of people are happy to know where God’s been, but true God chasers are not content just to study God’s trail, His truths; they want to know Him. They want to know where He is and what He’s doing right now. Tommy Tenney

.

…absolute truth

• God is the absolute truth. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• There is only one absolute truth; all the rest are semi-facts spawned from the artefacts of limited perception and positionally. David R. Hawkins
• The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knowledge. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• We have had philosophies, we have ideologies, we have so many kinds of enterprises but despite that there are so many differences and the differences are having larger and larger gaps. If it is the truth, it has to be the truth for everyone. Everyone has to say: “This is The Truth”. But it has to be the Absolute Truth. If it is not the Absolute Truth than what we believe into is not the reality. And this is the main reason why everything in the name of God, Divinity, everything has failed so far because it is not substantiated by reality. Nirmala Srivastava

.

To know God, one must love truth

• We are either in the process of resisting God’s truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth. Charles Stanley
• To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him. Saint Basil
• The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth. Buckminster Fuller
• I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. Mahatma Gandhi
• The more we read God’s truths and let truth fill our minds, the less time we’ll spend contemplating untruths. Lysa TerKeurst

.

God alone knows truth

• God alone knows absolute Truth. Mahatma Gandhi
• Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God’s attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray. Mahatma Gandhi

.

.

The reality that is God cannot be known as a mind object

• God is not an objective correlative reality. Frederick Lenz
• Our minds are the filter through which we perceive reality. Deepak Chopra
• When we wear orange sunglasses it’s impossible to see the white snow. The mind is the sunglasses.  Rupert Spira
• To transcend the limitations of the mind, it’s necessary to dethrone it from its tyranny as sole arbiter of reality. David R. Hawkins
• God is a reality of spirit He cannot be conceived as an object, not even as the very highest object. God is not to be found in the world of objects. Nikolai Berdyaev
• The Reality is never seen; and hence that which is seen is unreal, and its has no real independent existence of itself, but is dependent upon the Real for its existence. Paramahansa Yogananda

.

We view reality through the filter of the mind…

• Our minds are the filter through which we perceive reality. Deepak Chopra
• When we wear orange sunglasses it’s impossible to see the white snow. The mind is the sunglasses.  Rupert Spira
• To transcend the limitations of the mind, it’s necessary to dethrone it from its tyranny as sole arbiter of reality. David R. Hawkins
• Mind and senses do not know reality. It filters it and makes it appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects. Rupert Spira
• The Reality is never seen; and hence that which is seen is unreal, and its has no real independent existence of itself, but is dependent upon the Real for its existence. Paramahansa Yogananda
• The mind covers up reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• All we know of reality is known through a limited mind, superimposing its limits on what it knows. Time and space are limitations of the mind through which reality is known. Mind perceives consciousness through its limitations. Time and space are what the mind does. Time is eternity perceived through the mind.  Space is infinity perceived through the mind.  Rupert Spira

.

…through a filter of concepts and projections…

• We’re experiencing this moment through a filter of concepts. We’re living in our ideas. We’re telling ourselves a story about who we are and what life is, and we’re confusing this story with reality. But the story is not reality. Reality is the mystery of existence that exists before all of our ideas about reality. Tim Freke
• The mind is contaminated by emotions, feelings, prejudices, blind spots, denials, projections, paranoias, phobias, fears, regrets, guilts, worries, anxiety, and the fearsome specters of poverty, old age, sickness, death, failure, rejection, loss, and disaster. In addition to all the foregoing, the mind has also been innocently and erroneously programmed by endless propaganda, political slogans, religious and social dogmas, and continual distortions of facts, not to mention falsifications, errors, misjudgments, and misinformation. David R. Hawkins
• The mind actually deals in presumptions, appearances, perceived events, nonprovable conclusions, and mentations that it misidentifies as reality. No such reality as that constructed by the mind actually exists. David R. Hawkins

.

..and the truth is that the mind never actually experiences reality directly…

• The mind can provide no reliable knowledge of reality. Rupert Spira
• Truth is nothing but a formulated perception of experienced reality. J. Vanier
• Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it. David Eagleman
• Your consciousness is actually experiencing your mental model of reality, not reality itself. Michael A. Singer
• Mind is limited in its view. Nothing the mind knows is absolutely true.  Nothing it knows is reliable.  Rupert Spira
• The knowledge gained is of phenomena, not of the reality of things or of the foundations of existence. Sri Aurobindo
• No one can claim to know what is “really” real as long as the brain is their window on the universe. Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos
• Perception is like painting a scenery – no matter how beautifully you paint, it will still be a painting of the scenery, not the scenery itself. Abhijit Naskar
• We’re trapped on this very thin slice of perception … But even at that slice of reality that we call home, we’re not seeing most of what’s going on. David Eagleman
• The mind has an inherent defect in that it operates via perception itself, which automatically dissociates reality into duality and creates the spurious pseudo reality of the seeming polarity of the opposites. David R. Hawkins

.

…never experiences that which is beyond the perception of our limited senses

• Our reality depends on what our biology is up to. David Eagleman
• There are realities existing apart from our sense perceptions. Max Planck
• The perception of reality is something that is constructed by the human mind based on its own needs and knacks. Abhijit Naskar
• The reality we perceive through the senses is very limited. Our senses can only perceive a tiny band of the spectrum of vibrating energies within which we exist like fish in the sea. In our day-to-day, sense-revealed existence, we are mostly blind. We cannot sensorily perceive the sea of energy interpenetrating our physical bodies that connects us to everything. Joseph Selbie

.

The mind only ever experiences an illusory world…

• Reality is a construct of our neurons. Abhijit Naskar
• Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality. Anil Seth
• We’re all hallucinating all the time including right now except when we all agree on these hallucinations, we call that reality. Anil Seth
• The mind creates time and space and takes its own creations for reality. All is here and now, but we do not see it. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• What if I told you that the world around you, with its rich colors, textures, sounds, and scents is an illusion, a show put on for you by your brain? If you could perceive reality as it is, you would be shocked by its colorless, odorless, tasteless silence. Outside your brain, there is just energy and matter. David Eagleman

.

….an illusory world of separate objects and selves…

• The real maya is the separateness. Feeling and thinking that we are really separate from the whole is the illusion. Amit Goswami
• Maya divides the united consciousness so that the object is seen as other than the self and then as split up into the multitudinous objects of the universe. Paramahansa Yogananda
• The phenomenal world operates under maya, the law of duality or oppositional states; it is thus an unreal world that veils the truth of the Divine Oneness and Unchangeableness. Man in his mortal aspect dreams of dualities and contrasts—life and death, health and disease, happiness and sorrow; but when he awakens in soul consciousness all dualities disappear and he knows himself as the eternal and blissful Spirit. Paramahansa Yogananda
• The very beginning of creation gave rise to the law of duality—light and darkness, good and evil— the law of relativity necessary to divide the One into the many. By the storm of vibration, God’s thoughts of multiplicity brought forth the waves of manifestation: His lila, or divine play. Paramahansa Yogananda

.

…a world that is not ultimately real independent of the reality that is God

• Brahman is real and the world is unreal. Paramahansa Yogananda
• We take that which is unreal to be real and that which is real to be unreal. Rupert Spira
• Anything that has a beginning and an ending must be, in a sense, unreal and untrue. The Kybalion
• God is the only Reality; all creation or separate existence is maya or illusion. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized. Adi Shankara
• The soul’s consciousness is veiled or narrowed. The wholeness is veiled in order that the part or specific may be experienced. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Maya is the mass hypnosis of God by which He makes every human being believe in the same illusory “reality” of creation as perceived by the senses. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Truth is objective because God exists outside ourselves; it is universal because God is above all; it is constant because God is eternal. Absolute truth is absolute because it originates from the original. Josh McDowell
• There is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it–from snowflakes to maple trees to falling stars and spinning electrons–are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time. Michael Talbot
• Spirit first gave rise to a Magic Delusion, Maya, the cosmic Magical Measurer, which produces the illusion of dividing a portion of the Indivisible Infinite into separate finite objects, even as a calm ocean becomes distorted into individual waves on its surface by the action of a storm. All creation is nothing but Spirit, seemingly and temporarily diversified by Spirit’s creative vibratory activity. Paramahansa Yogananda

.

All we experience in the seemingly objective world “out there” is relative truth

• Truth is relative to your perception. Shaun S. Lott
• Facts are many, but the truth is one. Rabindranath Tagore
• The world contains only relative truths that point to absolute truth
• One’s sanctions for truth and goodness are established largely by individual preferences. Ken Wilber
• The truth is an arbitrary, shifting, culturally relative, and historically molded phenomenon. Ken Wilber
• There is only one absolute truth; all the rest are semi-facts spawned from the artefacts of limited perception and positionally. David R. Hawkins
• On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. Friedrich Nietzsche
• These teachings are only a finger pointing to the Noble wisdom…. They are intended for the consideration and guidance of the discriminating minds of all people, but they are not the Truth itself, which can only be self-realized within one’s own deepest consciousness. Lankavatara Sutra
• Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

.

The world of appearances changes constantly…

• No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. Heraclitus
• Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the centre of things. Giordano Bruno
• In this world of relativity, nothing is exactly the same as it was a moment ago. It is said that one cannot bathe twice in the same stream. Everything in the universe is a stream of relativity that is in perpetual flux. In even inert objects, the constituent atoms are in constant motion, and some decay or change is taking place. Paramahansa Yogananda

.

… while the one reality that experiences the world (God) is changeless

• That which does exist is The Parmenidean One, which is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. Parmenides
• All change is an illusion. Parminedes
• Nothing can exist without motion. Only God is motionless. Paramahansa Yogananda
• We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous. Parminedes
• All experience is necessarily transient. But the ground of all experience is immovable. Nisargadatta Maharaja

.

The reality and truth that is God cannot be known as a concept or thought…

• You can’t think your way to God. Deepak Chopra
• God is that than which a greater cannot be conceived. Anselm
• So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp. Rainer Maria Rilke
• Beware of language, because it is often a great cheat. Peter Mere Latham
• By “God” we understand something than which nothing greater can be thought. St. Anselm
• .. a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive. Ayn Rand
• [God] is the fountainhead of all concepts but He Himself cannot be conceived. Jeffrey Brodd
• There is in the mind no knowledge of God except the knowledge that it does not know Him. St Augustine
• The idea of God, infinity, or spirit stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception. Edgar Allan Poe
• God is more than a projection of human traits, writ large. God is greater than our conception of him. David Layman
• The Master would insist that the final barrier to our attaining God was the word and concept God. Anthony de Mello
• God exists outside of time, and since we are within time, there is no way we will ever totally grasp that concept. Francis Chan
• It is a vanity of the human mind to think it can confine The Infinite within the limitations of words and concepts. Anthony Lambert
• The Buddha is said to have avoided using the term ‘God’ because of the prevalence of misconceptions surrounding it. He wanted to avoid all the limitations that that conceptualization confounds. David R. Hawkins
• A God who fits within the confines of our conception is useless. God cannot be comprehended by man’s conception or logic. God is an eternal being who transcends the framework of man’s limited logic. Sun Myung Moon
• This form of unity wherein God’s knowledge and so on is one with God Himself is beyond the capacity of the mouth to express, beyond the capacity of the ear to hear, and beyond the capacity of the heart of man to apprehend clearly. Maimonides
• I see a pattern, but my imagination cannot picture the maker of that pattern. I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one? Albert Einstein

.

… cannot be grasped by the limited mind…

• The Truth cannot be grasped by the mind. Adyashanti
• The answer can never be found in the mind. Bob Adamson
• Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind. Woody Allen
• The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive. Neale Donald Walsch
• You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ. Woody Allen
• Mind is limited in its view. Nothing the mind knows is absolutely true. Nothing it knows is reliable.  Rupert Spira
• A mature mind is one who understands the impossibility of knowing the ultimate, and with this understanding there is a new dimension: the dimension of being. Rajneesh
• I am telling you that your perception of ultimate reality is more limited than you thought, and that Truth is more unlimited than you can imagine. Neale Donald Walsch
• If you use your mind to study reality, you will understand neither reality nor the mind. If you study reality without using your mind, you will understand both. Bodhidharma
• Truth can come to you only when your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart; not if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Humility is merely the truthful acknowledgment of the actual fact that the ego/mind, by virtue of its structure and design, is intrinsically incapable of being able to differentiate truth from falsehood. David R. Hawkins
• It can be seen that it is futile to try to find truth via the mind. (The benefit of the way of the heart, or Unconditional Love, is that it bypasses many of the traps and quagmires of the so-called mind.) David R. Hawkins
• The mind may accept or deny that you are awareness, but either way it can’t really understand. It cannot comprehend. Thought cannot comprehend what is beyond thought. That’s why we call this a transcendent recognition, a transcendent revelation. Adyashanti Adyashanti
• The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: “All things are intrinsically one.” That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point. Eckhart Tolle

.

…for the absolute truth that is God is beyond thoughts and words

• No philosophy can fully express the truth. Rajneesh
• Truth begins where thought ends. Michael Jeffreys
• Reality is beyond thoughts and words. Eckhart Tolle
• No thought can tell you who you are. Michael Jeffreys
• The truth which can be spoken is not the true truth. Lao Tzu
• Spiritual Awakening is awakening from the dream of thought. Eckhart Tolle
• Reality can only be seen in the absence of thought and belief. Scott Kiloby
• The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the Way. Bodhidharma
• Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Eckhart Tolle
• The treasure I have found cannot be described in words, the mind cannot conceive of it. Shankara
• Trying to find the Truth through words and speech is like putting your head in a bowl of glue. Yuan Wu
• Trying to find the Truth through words and speech is like putting your head in a bowl of glue. Yuan Wu
• Knowing my thoughts are not the Truth helps me to be still, not paying attention to thoughts. Adyashanti
• Jejune and barren speculations may unfold the plicatures of Truth’s garment, but they cannot discover her lovely face. John Smith
• Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth. Friedrich Nietzsche
• I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth. Friedrich Nietzsche
• It is an illusory pursuit to look to concepts and ideas in order to find truth, to find peace, to find that which will liberate us. Adyashanti
• Those who justify themselves do not convince. To know truth one must get rid of knowledge; nothing is more powerful and creative than emptiness. Lao Tzu
• The liberating truth is not static; it is alive. It cannot be put into concepts and be understood by the mind. The truth lies beyond all forms of conceptual fundamentalism. Adyashanti
• You are not who you believe yourself to be. Who you are cannot be devised. Who you are cannot be imagined. Who you are is before, during, and after all thoughts. Stop for a moment and realize who you are. Gangaji
• The more exacting our words, the further from the Truth we stray, which is why poetry is generally more precise about human experience than is prose, and why music can be said to be even more exact. Roger Stephens
• I confess that there is nothing to teach: no religion, no science, no writings which will lead your mind back to Spirit. Today I speak this way, tomorrow that, but always the Path is beyond words and beyond mind. Lao Tzu
• No words, phrases, or sentences are capable of describing or naming the Way, because once it is named, it is a false name and has to be eliminated. Once it is eliminated, only emptiness is left. When the false is abandoned, the true emerges. Henry Chang
• Dogmas–religious, political, scientific–arise out of erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of “I know.” Eckhart Tolle
• Nobody can tell you who you are. It would just be another concept, so it would not change you. Who you are requires no belief. In fact, every belief is an obstacle. It does not even require your realization since you already are who you are. But without realization, who you are does not shine forth into the world. Eckhart Tolle
• I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: How are you? I have a thousand brilliant lies for the question: What is God? If you think that the Truth can be known from words; if you think that the Sun and the Ocean can an pass through that tiny opening called the mouth, someone should start laughing! Someone should start wildly laughing now!  Hafez
• Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing. In fact, you place so little value on experience that when what your experience of God differs from what you’ve heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be just the other way around. Neale Donald Walsch
• Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing. In fact, you place so little value on experience that when what your experience of God differs from what you’ve heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be just the other way around. Neale Donald Walsch

.

The truth is not to be found in this world of apparent objects …

• There is nothing true anywhere, The True is nowhere to be found. If you say you see the True, This seeing is not the true one. When the True is left to itself, There is nothing false in it, for it is Mind itself. When Mind in itself is not liberated from the false, There is nothing true; nowhere is the True to be found. Hui Neng

.

… for truth (God) is the awareness in which our perceptions of the world appear

• Pure Consciousness, which is the Heart, includes all, and nothing is outside or apart from it. That is the ultimate Truth. Ramana Maharshi
• The only thing that is true about thoughts is the awareness in which they are known and with which they are made. Rupert Spira

.

Awareness (the fact we are aware of being aware) is the only indisputably truth

• Make no mistake: whatever I say—whatever its impact—is a concept. It is not the truth. A concept is something that someone may accept and someone may not. The Truth is that which no one can deny. And therefore the only Truth, in phenomenality, is ‘I AM’—the impersonal awareness of being. On this basis, whatever any sage has ever said, whatever any scripture of any religion says is a concept. Ramesh Balsekar

.

Awareness (consciousness) is the ultimate truth and reality that is God

• What is the ultimate truth? There is and can be nothing “outside” awareness. Awareness is Everything. Conversely, Everything is an awareness in it’s own right – unique and individual. Peter Wilberg
• When we try to think of Consciousness, it is like looking into a black hole. It is not even black. The mind simply cannot go there. It cannot go to that objectless place because the mind is itself an object. As the mind tries to turn itself towards Consciousness, it dissolves.  Its dissolution is the revelation of Presence, the revelation of that in which thought dissolves.  The mind does not find Truth. It does not find Reality. It is dissolved in it.  Rupert Spira

.

Awareness and God are synonymous and all that is absolutely true

• The devotee bent on liberation understands that all learning pertaining to the phenomenal worlds is partial, uncertain, relative, and unsatisfying. Realization of God is the only true, permanent, and absolute knowledge. Paramahansa Yogananda
• I believe in a spiritual world – not as anything separate from this world – but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God. Rabindranath Tagore
• What is enquiry into the Truth? It is the firm conviction that the Self is real, and all, other than That, is unreal. Adi Shankara
• Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they are the laws of Truth. But seek this only because you can find nothing else. There is nothing else. God is all in all in a very literal sense.  All being is in Him who is all Being.  You are therefore in Him since your being is His.  A Course in Miracles
• In the beginning was only Being, One without a second. Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos And entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self. He is the truth; he is the Self supreme. You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that. The Upanishad

.

The truth is that all is consciousness (God) and therefore all is one

• The multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. Tim Freke
• “Truth is one,” one hymn proclaims, “though the wise call it by many names.” Eknath Easwaran
• Even by the mind this truth is to be learned: There are not many, but only ONE. The Upanishads
• It is owing to our limitations that a thing appears to us as single and separate when in truth it is not a separate thing at all. Rudolf Steiner
• But in the end spirituality is not about watching the breath. It’s about waking up from the dream of separateness to the truth of unity. Adyashanti
• From within, from the very most interior center of existence and consciousness, the fact of oneness evermore proves to be the overriding truth. Geoffrey Hodson
• What, then, is the heart of the highest truth, The core of knowledge, the wisdom supreme? It is, “I am the Self, the formless One; By my very nature, I am pervading all.” The Avadhuta Gita
• Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, the ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.  Dogen
• The most basic truth of life: One Being is creating all of this – all of these different expressions of life. There’s only one Being here, and not only are you it but everyone else is it. Let that sink in a moment. Gina Lake
• If you hold to multiplicity, you are with the world; and if you hold to the Unity, you are with the Truth …. Our names are but names for God; at the same time our individual selves are His shadow. He is at once our identity and not our identity … Consider! Ibn ‘Arabi
• Unity Consciousness is the experience of the 7 billion plus people on the planet being moved by the same force, which is God. It is the awareness to see what we really are: One Living Being. However, this is a truth that really can’t be explained with words; the minute you say it, it is no longer truth. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• ‘Who am I?’ The answer is ‘I am God’. The body comes and goes, but the Atma is permanent. The body has birth and death, but the spirit does not have any of these. You reach the stage where you say, ‘I am God’, but even there, there is duality, ‘God and I’. That is not the full Truth. When we breathe, the breath makes the sound of ‘So-Hum’, ‘He am I’. There is still the body consciousness, the ‘I’. But in deep sleep, the declaration of ‘He’ and ‘I’ falls away and only ‘0’ and ‘M’ remain, ‘Om’; there is only the One. Sathya Sai Baba

.

.

The realisation of God is the only absolute knowledge

• The devotee bent on liberation understands that all learning pertaining to the phenomenal worlds is partial, uncertain, relative, and unsatisfying. Realization of God is the only true, permanent, and absolute knowledge. Paramahansa Yogananda

.

Spiritual enlightenment is about awakening to the ultimate reality that is God

• Your reality is the mirror that allows your consciousness to experience itself. Tania Kotsos
• Your body is a beautiful tool to anchor consciousness in a deeper sense of reality. Adyashanti
• To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• We are in a dream state. The only way to wake up is to refuse to recognize anything as reality except God. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Awakening is ultimately the journey of an individual toward an understanding of the nature of the Ultimate Reality behind the illusion that we only think is ultimately real. It is the highest calling of man, for the destination is what many call God. Steve Baxter
• The yogi is ever conscious inwardly of the sole Reality, Spirit, and sees maya and avidya — universal and individual delusion— as merely a tenuous web holding together the atomic, magnetic, and spiritual forces that give him a body and mind with which to play a part in the cosmic drama of the Lord’s creation . Paramahansa Yogananda
• Enlightenment is construed as seeing things as they really are rather than as they appear; it is a direct insight into, and discernment of, the nature of reality that is apprehended only by wisdom, which transcends and is prior to the activity of discriminative thought. In this view, delusion is defined as all that is opposed to enlightenment. Hee-Jin Kim

.

The reality that is God can only be known as an inner experience…

• The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive. Neale Donald Walsch
• Would that we might pass beyond the word into the experience. Richard Kellaway
• God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul. Jean Paul Richter
• Enough of these phrases, conceit and metaphors, I want burning, burning, burning. Rumi
• I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences. William James
• One man with a genuine experience with God is worth more than a library full of arguments. Vance Havner
• Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. Thomas Merton
• He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him. Neil Gaiman
• Spirituality is not an abstract idea, a theory, an ideology, or a movement of some kind. It is a personal lived reality. Sandra Schneiders
• True spirituality is not an abstract idea, a theory, an ideology, or a movement of some kind. It is a personal lived reality. Sandra Schneiders
• Spirituality is the conscious movement toward fullness and potentiality in God, is lived day by day in the actual experience of communion with God. Rebecca A. Meier-Rao
• There’s no way a human being can escape his or her human-ness to be able to imagine God. We can talk about how we’ve experienced God, not what or who God is. John Shelby Spong
• Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an experience. What is it that is listening? What is it that is feeling? Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it. Adyashanti
• Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Let us not mock God with metaphor, Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the Faded credulity of earlier ages: Let us walk through the door. John Updike
• Ultimately, awakening awareness is experiential. Alone, offered ‘truth’ is but more words in a world too cluttered with pretentious words. Experiencing ‘truth’ will affect a permanent change in you. G.’s Zaadz
• God is, of course, a terrifying reality. I had thought that I knew all about God, and had Him in a pigeon hole. But I met Him at the corner of a street — He entered my mind with a bang, and nearly burst my head open. Wyndham Lewis
• Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance in enabling you to experience That toward which it points. Eckhart Tolle
• …the mystic is one for whom God is not merely an object of belief, but a living fact experimentally known at first-hand; and mysticism for him becomes, in so far as he responds to its demands, a life based on this conscious communion with God. Evelyn Underhill
• If I accept the fact that a god is absolute and beyond all human experiences, he leaves me cold. I do not affect him, nor does he affect me. But if I know that a god is a powerful impulse in my soul, at once I must concern myself with him, for then he can become important. Carl Jung
• More recently, theologians have suggested that human experience is a source for knowledge of God and that experience is, in fact, foundational even to Scripture and tradition. For these theologians scripture is the accumulated record and accepted, collective version of people’s experiences of God. Flora A. Keshgegian
• You cannot define God. You cannot understand it. You can only dissolve it in. You can only experience it. You can never know it. Whatever knowledge you say you have of God is just cultural nonsense. Experience does not mean you can grasp it.  You can only experience it by dissolving it it. There is no other way. Sadhguru
• Though our tradition insists we cannot contain God in our minds, it also insists we can experience God. And when we do, we experience love. As we come to depend less and less on transient and impermanent images, our religion insists that the essential experience of God is of goodness and love. God is good. We are safe. Doug Hammack
• Knowledge about God is of two kinds, direct and indirect. Indirectly we can read scriptures, listen to sermons, consult authorities, and from these sources build a reasonable case that God exists. But such a God transmits no love to Earth. Therefore nothing substitutes for gyana, which is direct knowledge of the divine. Instead of having thoughts about God, you share God’s own thoughts. Deepak Chopra
• Sometimes I have experienced God in extraordinary ways – in dramatic surprises or soul-expanding insights or unexplainable mystical encounters. More often, I have felt God’s reality in the simple encouragement of a friend, in the gentle inspiration of a sermon, or in the familiar ritual of the Eucharist and I’d be less than honest if I didn’t also say that at times, I’ve found myself in the spiritual doldrums, cast adrift, wondering if the wind would ever blow again. Brian D. McLaren
• But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life; and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in “contemplation” with a big “C,” or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate. Thomas Merton

.

…realised as Truth within…

• Truth can only be experienced. It cannot be described, and it cannot be explained. A Course in Miracles
• The truth indeed has never been preached by the Buddha, seeing that one has to realize it within oneself. Sutralamkara
• Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an experience. What is it that is listening? What is it that is feeling? Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it. Adyashanti
• We should not believe the story that the mind tells us about what and where the body is. We should rely only on the facts of our experience, and that means this current experience. That is the test of Reality, of Truth. Rupert Spira
• Truths are not truths to you unless you realize them within yourself. Without realization, they are just ideas. For spiritual perception, spiritual consciousness, lies not in vague theological ideas, but in the acquisition of Self-realization. Paramahansa Yogananda
• When all mental activity around who you think you are is stopped, there is a crack in the authority of perception, in the structure of the mind. I invite you to enter through that crack. Come in through that opening. When you do, the mind is no longer filled with its latest self- definition. In that moment, there is only silence. And in that silence, it is possible to recognize absolute fulfillment: the truth of who you are. Gangaji

.

…an experience of the heart…

• Do not dissect the love of God, but feel it. Emmet Fox
• It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason. Blaise Pascal
• There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart. Blaise Pascal
• What do you think of God,” the teacher asked. After a pause, the young pupil replied, “He’s not a think, he’s a feel.” Paul Frost
• There are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take one with a heart. Lao Tzu
• Although the intellect is easily fooled, the heart recognizes the truth. Where the intellect is limited, the heart is unlimited; where the intellect is intrigued by the temporary, the heart is only concerned with the permanent. David R. Hawkins
• Earthly things must be known to be loved; Divine things must be loved to be known. Blaise Pascal
• Love is our highest word and the synonym for God. Ralph Waldo Emerson

.

… an experience that leads to a sense of indisputable knowing beyond the mind

• One can spend endless lifetimes studying all the spiritual and philosophical teachings of the world and merely end up confused and discouraged. Seek to ‘know’, not to ‘know about’. ‘Know’ implies subjective experience; ‘know about’ means to accumulate facts. In the end, all facts disappear, and there are none to be known. David R. Hawkins
• Spiritual realizations arise spontaneously and not as a consequence of thought processes. They arise in awareness as though coming out of intuition. It is a nonlinear process through which one suddenly becomes aware that they just ‘know’. David R. Hawkins
• In the famous Gifford lectures, James described the experience of consciousness itself as rare, unique, indescribable, and “beyond mind”—a thought-free state of Knowingness that’s complete, all-inclusive, with neither need nor want, and beyond the limitation of experiencing the merely individualized, personal self. David R. Hawkins
• All the teachings the sages have expounded are no more than commentaries on the sudden cry… Ah, This! Zen Master Daie
• You use metaphor to make yourself feel at home in the world. You use metaphor to extinguish the unknown. The problem is the unknown is where I want to be. Roni Horn

.

We can experience this reality that is God through being in an expanded state of consciousness…

• And through the opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity. Ken Wilber
• Words and concepts can be signposts to truth but they cannot encapsulate it. For spiritual truth is a state of being; a high state of consciousness in which a direct knowing arises. Truth is a direct experience. Anthony Lambert
• As my consciousness expands, my whole being changes and I vibrate at a higher frequency. Inner truths are perceived. Veils are lifted. I see with new eyes. John Kehoe
• Spiritual evolution occurs as the result of removing obstacles and not actually acquiring anything new. Devotion enables surrender of the mind’s vanities and cherished illusions so that it progressively becomes freer and more open to the light of Truth. David R. Hawkins
• Absolute truth is a state of consciousness that brings about an indisputable knowing beyond the mind. Anthony Lambert
• Wherever there has been expansion in love or progress in well-being, of individuals or numbers, it has been through the perception, realisation, and the practicalisation of the Eternal Truth-the oneness of all beings Swami Vivekananda

.

…by being in a pure state of awareness

• The mind covers up reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness. Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

We can experience the reality that is God through mental stillness

• The mind has to be empty to see clearly. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• When you are willing to stop looking for something in thought, you find everything in silence. Gangaji
• The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
• When the mind is restless, you know very little of reality. When the mind is quiet, you know all reality.  Swami Ashokananda
• The moment you notice silence, stillness arises in you. Thoughts become depersonalised. Before, I thought they were me. Eckhart Tolle
• Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul’s language. Fulton J. Sheen
• The truest communication with God is absolute, total silence; there is not a single word in existence that can convey this communication. Bernadette Roberts
• I will experience stillness when I no longer reference the mind for reality. Not a forced silence but a natural, immense silence. The great silence. Adyashanti
• A mature mind is one who understands the impossibility of knowing the ultimate, and with this understanding there is a new dimension: the dimension of being. Rajneesh
• Truth can come to you only when your mind and heart are simple, clear, and there is love in your heart; not if your heart is filled with the things of the mind. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• The mind covers up reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness. Nisargadatta Maharaj
• Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate. Huang Po
• Why is silence the greatest teacher? Because real truth never speaks. What would be the point? Truth simply is and so does not need to be reminded of this. On the other hand, illusion cannot be convinced for it doesn’t actually exist except as a thought, belief or concept. Michael Jeffreys
• Give yourself some quiet time. Don’t struggle to be quiet – that’s struggle time. Deep seated wisdom – wisdom beyond thought –   arises when we’re quiet.  Don’t try to figure it out.  Let it figure itself out.  Adopt an attitude of curiosity.  Watch your thoughts and feelings.  Ask yourself if it is actually true.  Does it exist beyond your mind? Adyashanti
• When all mental activity around who you think you are is stopped, there is a crack in the authority of perception, in the structure of the mind. I invite you to enter through that crack. Come in through that opening. When you do, the mind is no longer filled with its latest self- definition. In that moment, there is only silence. And in that silence, it is possible to recognize absolute fulfilment: the truth of who you are. Gangaji

.

We can experience the reality that is God by going beyond appearances to essence

• If you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise, if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence. Meister Eckhart

.

We can experience the reality that is God through aloneness

• Aloneness is nearer God, nearer reality. Gwen John
• Finding the Truth is aloneness as all shared beliefs and concepts fall away. Adyashanti

.

Through the experience of God, we realise that the truth that God is, is inseparable from who we are

• Be naked in the splendor of the truth of who you are. Gangaji
• You never find yourself until you face the truth. Pearl Bailey
• Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free. Eckhart Tolle
• When we discover that the truth is already in us, we are all at once our original selves. Dogen
• If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. I am the only real truth I know. Jean Rhys
• Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it. Dogen
• Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles. Reginald French
• The choiceless truth of who you are is revealed to be permanently here permeating everything. Not a thing and not separate from anything. Gangaji
• You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images. A Course In Miracles
• The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time. The very Being that you are is Truth.  Eckhart Tolle
• All of these qualities of the body, mind, and world are temporary and therefore can’t be considered real in the truest sense. Only the ever-present, unchanging element of our being can be considered real. Rupert Spira
• The truth is you really are nothing, but this nothing is full, whole, infinite in everything and everywhere. This nothing is consciousness itself. It is already whole, complete and fulfilled. This is the amazing irony. Gangaji
• On seeing one thing, you see all things. On perceiving an individual’s mind, you perceive all minds. Glimpse one truth, and all truth is present in your vision, for there is nowhere at all that is devoid of the Truth. Huangbo Xiyun
• When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself-and being in touch with it is your natural state, all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness with all life that you sense deep within. This is love. Laws, commandments, rules and regulations are necessary for those who are cut off from who they are, the Truth within. Eckhart Tolle

.

.

Some argue that it is the belief in God that stops us seeing what is real

• I think God is something that people use to avoid reality. I think faith allows people to reject what is right in front of our eyes, which is that thing, this life, this existence, this consciousness, or whatever word you want to use for it, is all we have, and all we’ll ever have. I think people have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard and depressing and brutal if you don’t. James Frey
• God is a fiction invented by people so they do not have to face the reality of their condition. Michel Onfray