Diane Ackerman Quotes

When I look at my life, I see that I wanted to be free of the physical plane, the psychological plane, and when I got free of those I didn't want to go anywhere near them.

Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.

Every practice at some point will become a hindrance. No practice can ever take you there, to freedom, to liberation. That's important to realize.

How did I gain from not remembering my earthly self? It allowed me to go deep into realms beyond the worldly without having to worry about what I was leaving behind. Throughout my entire time in those worlds, I was a soul with nothing to lose. No places to miss, no people to mourn. I had come from nowhere and had no history, so I fully accepted my circumstances-even the initial murk and mess of the Realm of the Earthworm's-Eye View-with equanimity.

Jnana teaches that the world should be given up, but not on that account to be abandoned. To be in the world but not of it-is the true test of the sannyasin.

Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.

Meditation means getting out of the mind, looking at the mind from the outside. That's exactly the meaning of the word 'ecstasy': to stand out. To stand out of the mind makes you ecstatic, brings bliss to you. And great intelligence is released. When you are identified with the mind you cannot be very intelligent because you become identified with an instrument, you become confined by the instrument and its limitations. And you are unlimited - you are consciousness.

Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself.

'Freedom' means freedom from the mind. Then you are simply in a silence, and in that silence you melt, you merge with the whole. And to melt and merge with the whole is to be holy. Not by fasting, not by torturing, but by becoming one with the whole, one becomes holy.

You must accept the fact that there is no help but self-help. I cannot tell you how to gain freedom since freedom exists within you.

While our sin reaches far, God's grace reaches farther. God came after us not to strip away our freedom but to strip away our slavery to self, that we could become truly free.

The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.

Surrender is the path to freedom through our unique authenticity, where we experience the flow of life not through the narrow lens of the mind, but through the vast refuge of the heart.

It is the witness alone that can work without any desire, without any idea of going to heaven, without any idea of blame, without any idea of praise. The witness alone enjoys, and none else.

Create inner freedom through witnessing. Sannyas is only for the inner freedom. And live out of inner freedom.

[Tibet] never sought any territory. All it wanted is the conquest of the soul, that people should attain a kind of inner sovereignty, inner independence, inner freedom. And inner strength to attain the absolute.

The word 'ecstasy' is beautiful; it simply means 'standing out.' Out of what? Standing out of your ego, your personality, your mind; getting out of the whole structure in which you have lived - not only lived but with which you have become identified. Standing out of all this, just a pure witness, a watcher on the hills - and everything is left deep down in the valley.

You are One with everything. When you are clear about this, your definition of self-interest will change.

I has a dream about reality. It was such a relief to wake up.

A strong human spirit with control over appetites of the flesh is master over emotions and passions and not a slave to them. That kind of freedom is as vital to the spirit as oxygen is to the body! Freedom from self-slavery is true liberation!

Is there a meditation that is not the ego trying to become? Is meditation conscious if every effort implies time?

Until we realise ourselves as the Absolute, we cannot attain to deliverance.

We have names for everything. What if we forgot about those names? And we stopped seeing things as something? What if we just observed things, watched things, without giving them a name, without coming to a conclusion? What do you think would happen? You would transcend everything.

We are what we think.