Van Morrison Quotes

What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 'Who am I, then?' The one who sees that.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

Direct the glance of apprehension & inquiry to pure consciousness, in its own absolute Being.

You have not known what you are - you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time; What you have done returns already in mockeries; Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return? The mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk.

My sense of identity broke down and was replaced by something that is very hard to put into words. Awareness, Consciousness.

There is no mind to control if you realise the self. The mind having vanished, the self shines forth. In the realised man, the mind may be active or inactive, the self remains for him.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

It's just a constant thing when the mind starts to wake up to itself.

To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.

Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I. Don Juan Matus

The only mistake that we can make as human beings is to be asleep, unaware of ourselves.

Without seeing the origin of light, the true form of one's Self, the ordinary man sees by the mind different things and is deluded.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.

Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.

Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.

Previously, even in Egypt, men had not learned to see straight. They fumbled in the dark, and didn't quite know where they were, or what they were. Like men in a dark room, they only felt their existence surging in the darkness of other creatures. We, however, have learned to see ourselves for what we are, as the sun sees us. The Kodak bears witness.

I'm still trying to find out who Paula Cole is. I always am - and I always will be - my real, inside self, which has no name.