Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught.

Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.

During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.