“Quietness is the surest sign.”

The Essential Rumi: Quietness

Tr. Coleman Barks

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out to the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

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The Practice of the Presence of God: First Letter

Brother Lawrence

But when we are faithful to keep ourselves in His holy Presence, and set Him always before us, this not only hinders our offending Him, and doing anything that may displease Him, at least willfully, but it also begets in us a holy freedom, and, if I may so speak, a familiarity with GOD, wherewith we ask, and that successfully, the graces we stand in need of.

In fine, by often repeating these acts, they become habitual, and the presence of GOD rendered as it were natural to us.

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The Gospel of Ramakrishna: Chapter II

Ed. Swami Abhedananda

A devotee: Bhagavan, why are we so bound to the world that we cannot see God?

Râmakrishna: The sense of “I” in us is the greatest obstacle in the path of God-vision. It covers the Truth.

When “I” is dead, all troubles cease. If by the mercy of the Lord one realizes “I am a non-doer,” instantly that man becomes emancipated in this life.

This sense of “I” is like a thick cloud. As a small cloud can hide the glorious sun, so this cloud of “I” hides the glory of the Eternal Sun. If the cloud is dispersed by the mercy of a Guru, or spiritual master, the glory of Infinite becomes visible.

When Râma, the Divine Incarnation in a human form, was walking in the forest, Lakshmana (the individual soul), who was at a short distance, could not see Him because Sitâ or Mâyâ, or the sense of “I,” was standing between.

Look at me. I cover my face with this handkerchief and you cannot see me; still my face is there. So God is the nearest of all, but because of the sense of “I” you do not see Him.

The soul in its true nature is absolute Existence, Intelligence and Bliss, but on account of Mâyâ or the sense of “I,” it has forgotten its real Self and has become entangled in the meshes of the various limitations of mind and body.

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Gitanjali: The time that my journey takes

Rabindranath Tagore

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!’

The question and the cry `Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!’

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