John Francis Quotes

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

I aspire only to silence.

Contemplation and wisdom are highest achievements and man is not totally at home with them.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.

With renunciation life begins.

I wanted to share the experience of how yoga and meditation have transformed my life, how they have enabled me to observe who I am, first in my body, and then emotionally, and on to a kind of spiritual path.

Every few months, I would take off to the U.S., which had people wondering why I went away so often. My trips were always to meet my spiritual guru, Maaji, who is based in the U.S. I would always come back with clear mind and sure footing.

Meditation is the straight flight of the mind to the Kingdom of Heaven present in the heart of everyone.

Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .

For now she need not think of anybody. She coud be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.

Religion has only one answer and that answer is meditation. And meditation means how to empty yourself.

Meditation is like the cloak of the good thief. You find a corner or somewhere where you can actually entertain your own self and your own soul, and understand what your work [is] here.

What you are looking for is within you Fall silent a moment and contemplate what that means... You lack nothing.

Sometimes I long for a convent cell, with the sublime wisdom of centuries set out on bookshelves all along the wall and a view across the cornfields--there must be cornfields and they must wave in the breeze--and there I would immerse myself in the wisdom of the ages and in myself. Then I might perhaps find peace and clarity. But that would be no great feat. It is right here, in this very place, in the here and the now, that I must find them.

Simplicity is that grace which frees the soul from all unnecessary reflections upon itself.

The only way you will ever awaken is through silence, not through analyzation of facts. Not by sorting out good and bad, but through simple silence, letting go. Letting go of all thoughts, all the hurts, all the dogmas and concepts. Letting go of these things daily.

We must relearn to be alone.

Embrace silence since meditation is the only way to truly come to know your Source.

The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace.

I like the idea of going to one of those retreats where you don't speak - like, silence for five days.

Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.

Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones cause it to go astray.

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth—who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage.

Speaking as somebody who's been in the drug scene, it's not something you can go on and on doing, you know. It's like drink, or anything, you've got to come to terms with it. You know, like too much food, or too much anything. You've got to get out of it. You're left with yourself all the time, whatever you do--you know, meditation, drugs or anything. But you've got to get down to your own god and your own temple in your head.