Best 1021 quotes in «illusion quotes» category

There is a vast difference between sakshibhaav [being a witness; witnessing state] and Gnata-Drashta bhaav [Knower-Seer state]. Some saints may have attained sakshibhaav but they [still] have to make efforts to progress further. Despite sakshibhaav, their illusion [bhranti] has not gone. The ultimate state is the one of Gnata-Drashta.

There is moksha (ultimate liberation) for the one who goes outside the moha (infatuation due to illusion). Moha is a vikalp (belief that ‘I am the body’). End of moha is nirvikalp (free from the wrong belief ‘I am the body’ & with right belief that I am Pure Soul).

There is no fame, no glory, and no power that can never end. In the end, there is oblivion.

There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe. --loc 710 Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Paperback – Sep 5 2006 | Unabridged by Lao Tzu and Stephen Mitchell ISBN-10: 0061142662

There is no illusion in awaken mind, because everything is perceived as impermanent and transient.

There is no spoon.

There is no realization of ‘who am I?’ ‘One’ is trying to remain hidden from his ‘own Self’. He knows all that is of the non-Self. It is a wonder that one remains hidden from his own Self!

There is nothing so cunning as tangled deception. If you wish to seek out the truth, first uncover the lies that surround the illusion...

There is no such thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the world whatsoever. It is just the impurity of the vision. It is indeed illusion [mithyatva]; it is indeed a poisoned vision.

There is nothing which is worth ‘doing’ and any attempt to ‘do’ anything, increases bondage.

There should not be opinion regarding anything. Opinion means you are supporting it. ‘Know’ the wrong as wrong, ‘Know’ right as right. There should not be any attachment (raag) towards the right, and abhorrence (dwesh) towards the wrong. There is no such thing as right or wrong. Right and wrong is a duality, it is illusionary vision, it is a societal belief. God does not see it that way. In God’s view, having a dinner on the table or going to toilet, they are both the same.

There’s no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.

There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.

There is no way out other than ‘staying at the Gnani’s feet’ (being surrendered to the Enlightened one). The vision of the entire world is of infinite ‘mohaniya’ (delusional attachment), and no one can escape from it.

The secret of good magic is another magic.

The same virtues, in the end, the same virtue (love), are required throughout, and fantasy (self) can prevent us from seeing a blade of grass just as it can prevent us from seeing another person. An increasing awareness of 'goods' and the attempt (usually only partially successful) to attend to them purely, without self, brings with it an increasing awareness of the unity and interdependence of the moral world. One-seeking intelligence is the image of faith.

The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself, to see and to respond to the real world in the light of a virtuous consciousness. This is the non-metaphysical meaning of the idea of transcendence to which philosophers have so constantly resorted in their explanations of goodness. 'Good is a transcendent reality' means that virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is. It is an empirical fact about human nature that this attempt cannot be entirely successful.

The sense of a soul and afterlife is an intuitive illusion.

The stranded, walking a fine line between reality and illusion, constantly weaving through disappointment and hope, despite all, never stop dreaming of empathy and good feeling, while craving for attention and endorsement. ("No monsters hide at this point" )

There is really no natural limit to the practice of loving kindness in meditation or in one’s life. It is an ongoing, ever-expanding realization of interconnectedness. It is also its embodiment. When you can love one tree or one flower or one dog or one place, or one person or yourself for one moment, you can find all people, all places, all suffering, all harmony in that one moment. Practicing in this way is not trying to change anything or get anywhere, although it might look like it on the surface. What it is really doing is uncovering what is always present. Love and kindness are here all the time, somewhere, in fact, everywhere. Usually our ability to touch them and be touched by them lies buried below our own fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds, below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we are truly separate and alone. (…). Make sure that you are not trying to help anybody else or the planet. Rather, you are simply holding them in awareness, honoring them, wishing them well, opening to their pain with kindness and compassion and acceptance.

The truth in life often lies buried in places we do not associate with authenticity. Life is more subtle, in this respect, than linear human morality. It goes to work like a painter-copyist, using illusion to depict the truth.

The thing [vastu, eternal element] itself is just one. But a ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ occurs due to illusion, because everyone’s viewpoint is different.

The tragic view is the most cheerful. One sheds a lot of illusions and learns to laugh a lot.

The seething rage that accompanies the truly despondent, effaces the delusional that mock from the safety of their shared illusion.

The unity of Creation occurs when the observer understands that there is only One Observer. That which the observer perceives as separateness is an illusion that derives from the distinct perspective and experience of its infinite senses.

The unity of Creation occurs when the observer understands that there is only One Observer. That which the observer perceives as separateness is an illusion that derives from the distinct perspective and experience of his infinite senses.

The Vitarags (attachment-free enlightened one’s) say, ‘Make whatever intents that are suitable to you. If you get sensual intents towards Me, then do those sensual intents and if you have celibate intents towards Me, do celibate intents and if you get religious intents, do religious intents; if you get reverence-intents, do reverence intents and if you want to curse, then curse me. I confront [challenge] no one.” A person that doesn’t confront goes to Moksha and the person who confronts, resides here [worldly life bondage].

The woman you thought you talked to was like one out of my novels, nothing more than a dream, and illusion I conjured to feel better. That’s all I ever will be, unable to be that woman in real life.

The world, as you see it, is not real. And the way you imagine it—it does not even come close. Certain things seem obvious to you, but they simply do not exist.” “And you, do you not exist?” Sasha couldn’t help herself. “Are you not real?” Portnov removed the scarf from her face. Under his gaze, she blinked confusedly. “I exist,” he said seriously. “But I am not at all what you think.

The world exists because your mind exists. If your mind didn’t exist, there would be no world. As you look at these words, you see them in what appears to be a reality outside of you. What you are really seeing is the image that your mind is creating from the electrical signals being sent to your brain. While they may appear to be outside of you, this is an illusion, they exist within your own mind, and are being projected to appear as if they are outside of you. This apparent reality that is projected by our minds, is maya, and to believe that maya is the ultimate reality is a result of ignorance, or avidya in Sanskrit.

The world if full of illusions that are forced upon one's reality.

The truth is we're all dying, the lie is we're all living.

They sell crap to buy you.

They have already fooled you when they introduce the world to you through classifications of people, manners and behaviors to whether they are good or bad. But good and bad are only perceptions. So what’s good and bad is totally different from one person to another; which makes it so damn clear that there is no such a thing that is completely good or bad about anything in the world ...

Things aren't like this," he kept repeating. "It shouldn't be this way." As if he had access to some other plane of existence, some parallel, "right" universe, and had sensed that our time had somehow been put out of joint. Such was his vehemence that I found myself believing him, believing, for example, in the possibility of that other life in which Vina had never left and we were making our lives together, all three of us, ascending together to the stars. Then he shook his head, and the spell broke. He opened his eyes, grinning ruefully. As if he knew his thoughts had infected mine. As if he knew his power. "Better get on with it," he said. "Make do with what there is.

Things are often not what they seem. And then, sometimes they are. The trick is to learn what is real.

This attitude finds a late but still abundantly clear expression in the conventions of the classical court theatre, in which the actor, quite regardless of the demands of stage deception, addresses the audience directly, apostrophizes it, as it were, with every word and gesture, and not only avoids ‘turning his back’ on the audience but emphasizes by every possible means that the whole proceeding is a pure fiction, an entertainment conducted in accordance with previously agreed rules. The naturalistic theatre forms the transition to the absolute opposite of this ‘frontal’ art, namely the film, which, with its mobilization of the audience, leading them to the events instead of leading and presenting the events to them, and attempting to represent the action in such a way as to suggest that the actors have been caught red-handed, by chance and by surprise, reduces the fictions and conventions of the theatre to a minimum. With its robust illusionism, its forthright and indiscreet directness, its violent attack on the audience, it expresses a democratic conception of art, held by liberal, anti-authoritarian societies, just as clearly as the whole of the courtly and aristocratic art—by its mere emphasis of the stage, the footlights, the frame and the socle—is the unmistakable expression of a highly artificial, specially commissioned occasion, from which it is obvious that the patron is an initiated connoisseur who does not need to be deceived.

This hinted at something that no one had ever suspected -- that the brain tracks moving things more easily that still things. We have a built-in bias toward detecting action. Why? Because it's probably more critical for animals to spot moving things (predators, prey, falling trees) than static things, which can wait. In fact, our vision is so biased toward movement that we don't technically see stationary objects at all. To see something stationary, our brains have to scribble our eyes subtly over its surface. Experiments have even proven that if you artificially stabilize an image on the retina with a combination of special contact lenses and microelectronics, the image will vanish.

This witnessing consciousness, this formless dimension of yourself, is the awareness in which your experience happens, yet it remains untouched by this experience at all times. It is similar to the background of white on which you are reading these words. This white background allows any and every word to exist within it, yet it is not confined to any of these words. Similarly, your awareness allows any and every form to exist within it, but it is not bound to any of these forms.

Those who look outside can only see an illusion. Those who look inside may see the reality.

This world you think you know? It's hidden... in shards of reality.

Time expands or contracts through the illusions attributed to it.

Time is an excuse to delay.

Time is an illusion that passes way too fast!

Time is, indeed, a strange and wondrous thing. It has no beginning or end, it seems. Time goes on, forward and backward, this way and that. But perspective is an illusion, for we know all things begin somewhere.

Time is but an illusion created by beings with limited perception.

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past.

Time may be a man-made illusion, but it was one that worked at one's inconvenience. When one is urging time to move forward, it will resist and move slowly. When one wants time to go by slower than need be, it goes by on a whim. The only instance where time is at a medium pace is when time isn't even acknowledged at all as an essence to everyday existence.

To believe the control is in your hands when it is in the hands of some other power, is indeed a wrong belief (bhranti, illusion). If one were to understand even this much, he will find a solution. When people begin to understand that the power is in the hands of something else, then the wrong belief [illusion] will go away to a little extent.

To believe the non-Self’s intent as the Self’s intent is indeed an illusion. To believe that ‘I am the doer’; where the doer is someone else is indeed an illusion.