Quotessence
Home / Authors / Swami Dhyan Giten

Swami Dhyan Giten Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

Famous Swami Dhyan Giten Quotes

“Start trusting yourself is the first lesson and the fundamental lesson on the spiritual journey. Trust is only possible if you first trust yourself. The most fundamental lesson has to happen within yourself first. In India, where they have developed the inner science of spirituality for thousands of years, they made a basic condition that one should begin to develop trust in oneself. If you do not trust in yourself, then no other trust is possible. If you trust you are open, receptive, if you are doubting yourself, you are closed. Intuition is basically to develop a trust in yourself. When you trust yourself, you can trust others, you can trust existence. Love and silence are the two ways to develop intuition, to develop trust in yourself. Trust is a prerequisite for love. Start loving yourself, if you do not love yourself, who is then going to love you? To love yourself is the first step to love others.”

“"To be a spiritual teacher you need to develop the skills and the art to convey the truth to others. It is the most difficult art, because something has to be said about something that cannot be said in language, something has to be transmitted which is not transmitable. To be a spiritual teacher needs a particular training, a particular training to convey, a particular training to help, a particular training to advice and counsel, a particular training to create new devices and methods, because every individual and age need something different.”

“Lao Tzu's first paragraph in the book "Tao Te Ching" is that the Tao that can be told is not the absolute Tao. Lao Tzu has his own logic, the logic of paradoxes, the logic of life. To understand Tao, you will have to create eyes. Lao Tzu believes in the unity of opposites, because that is how life is. The Tao can be communicated, but it can only be communicated from heart to heart, from being to being, from love to love, from silence to silence. Truth is always realized in silence. In silence, the truth is realized. You reach to truth through silence. All spiritual books tries to say something that can not be said in the hope that a thirst, a longing, is created in your heart to know the truth. Tao is totality. Life exists through the tension of the opposites, the meeting of the opposites. Lao Tzu says that the opposite poles of life are not really opposites, but complementaries. Thinking is always of opposites. Lao Tzu says: drop the split attitude. Be simple. And when you are simple, you do not choose. Lao Tzu says: be choiceless, let life flow. Enjoy both poles in life, and then your life becomes a symphony of opposites. How to drop the mind: do not choose. If you do not choose, the mind drops. Live life as it comes - float. Float with life. Enjoy the moment in its totality, It is to live as part of the whole, to live as part of existence. If you become silent and empty, everything will come on it's own accord. When you live without any desire for power, position, fame or success, the whole existence pours down into your emptiness.”

“Meditation is the way to be with ourselves and to learn to accept our own aloneness. In aloneness, I experiment with being consciously alone as a door to be egoless. In conscious aloneness, the ego can not function. In aloneness, you are not. I have always been comfortable with my own aloneness as an inner source of love, joy, truth, silence and wholeness. When we depend on other people, it becomes a bondage - instead of a freedom. I took this sunday as a meditation to be consciously alone, and to accept all feelings of pain, of not being loved and the fear of being nobody that would come up during the meditation. This meditation goes up and down during the day: at certain moments, I can totally accept my aloneness. It feels fine to accept that I am alone and that I am nobody. At other moments, I feel the pain of not being loved, when the meditation brings up how dependence on other people is a barrier to totally accept my aloneness. I take a coffee at a restaurant. I am the only person that sits alone in the restaurant, while the other guests are couples and families eating sunday dinner. It brings up painful feelings of not being loved and wanting to be needed by other people, when I see how much people cling to each other in the couples and the families. Escaping your aloneness through relationships and needing other people's attention through being a teacher, a politician or by being rich or famous, are ways of escaping the pain of aloneness. But then the relationships are not really love. Only when you are capable of being alone, you can really love. When we can be alone, we discover the inner source of love, which is our true nature. When we can be alone, it open the door to be one with the Whole.”

“The Art of Living is to be yourself. It is to be true to yourself. The Art of Living is learning to live with love, awareness and truth. Meditation is the way to learn The Art of Living. Being is you. To discover your being is the beginning of life. You can live in two ways: 1. Ego - effort and desire and 2.Being - no-effort, being in a let go with existence. Religion is The Art of Living. Five keys to The Art of Living: 1. Be life-affirmative. Life is synonymous with God. Live with reverence, great respect and gratitude for life. Feel thankful and prayerful. 2. Make life an heartful, aesthetic experience. Become more sensitive, sensuous and creative - and you will become more spiritual. 3.Experience life in all possible ways. Experience all dualities and polarities of life: good/bad, bitter/sweet, summer/winter, happiness/sadness and life/death. Do not be afraid of experience, because the more experiences you have, the more spiritually mature you become. 4. Live in the present. Forget the past and the future - this moment is the only reality. This moment has to become your whole love, life and death. 5.Live courageously. Do not become too result-oriented, because result-oriented people miss life. Do not think of goals, because goals are in the future - and life is in the moment, in the here and now.”

“These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the Whole The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego: 1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego. 2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego. 3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean. At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole. It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. You have found the door to God. You have come home.”

“The human heart is a healer, which heals both other people and ourselves. The open heart is like a fountain, which no longer makes any distinction between: I like you - I do not like you.” The open heart does not make any difference between friends and enemies. The open heart is open both for ourselves and for other people. The open heart is unconditional love.”

“The heart of spirituality is silence. Jesus used to leave his disciples and move to a mountain, where he went into silence and prayer. Truth has descended only when someone has become silent within. In those moments of silence one becomes attuned to the whole. Be silent and allow the silence to spread.As the silence spreads, the mind will begin to dissolve. In India a sage is called a muni. Muni means one who has become silent within. And only one who has become silent within has the right to speak, because his words will have some value. Unless you feel that your talking, will be beneficial to somebody, do not talk. When you understand silence, slowly you will become silent wherever you are.”

“The basic teaching of all religions is silence. A silence spread in our inner being, the mind will begin to dissolve. That silence unites you with truth. When a person is ready to dissolve into silence, his ego will disappear, and he will not be separated from existence. A holy person means one who has become silent within. A spiritual teacher is a death, because the ego of the student will dissolve completely. Within the student arises a pure emptiness, and samadhi is born.”

“Meditation is a death, a death of the ego. There will be a rejoicement, a resurrection, but that will be a totally new, fresh original being. It happens in love, music, dance and creativity, that only for a small moment you slip out of your ego, your personality, and come in contact with your inner being, your individuality. But that happens only for a single moment, and then you are back again. In silence and meditation, you disappear. Then even if you resurrect you are a totally different person. You have to learn to live with fresh eyes, with a totally new heart.”

“Truth cannot be conveyed through words. Truth can only be known through silence. When knowing truth, it becomes a responsibility to share it. Through sharing truth, our truth will become deeper. If people are spiritually ripe to listen to truth, it is good. If people are not ripe to listen to truth, it is also good. If people are ready to understand truth, it is good. If they are not ready to understand truth, it is also good. If people are reday to understand silence, it is good. If people are not ready to understand silence, it is also good.”

“God is all that exists. Every stone, flower, tree, animal and human being are on a spiritual journey to recognize their true self, their divine essence. We have been living lives as stones, flowers, trees and animals in order to develop our consciousness. Stones, flowers and animals also have consciousness. The more matter, the less consciousness. The more consciousness, the less matter. God is not a person, God is the underlying thread of consciousness in existence. Real love means to realize that we are one with the other person, one with nature, and one with the trees, the stones, the earth and the blue sky. It means to realize that all of life is God. I was 9 years old when I had my first spiritual awakening, my first glimpse of wholeness with existence. This created a deep thirst and longing in my heart and being to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within, the inner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth, the inner language of silence. Now I notice that this silence is going deeper, and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence. It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with existence. It means to find the whole existence within myself, it means to discover that existence is alive in my own heart and being. The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an ecstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart. It is to realize that the whole existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God. Silence is the inner door to God.”

“Healing is the way of the heart. This book is an invitation to open our heart. Healing is a love affair with life. Healing is pure love. Love is what creates healing. Spiritual healing is to be one with ourselves. And to be one with ourselves is to be in joy. Healing is to develop our inner being. Healing is to discover that which is already perfect within ourselves. It is to rediscover our inner life source. Spiritual healing is to be one with life. We are never really alone, it is our idea of a separate "I" that creates the feeling of being separate from life, from the Whole. In reality there is only one heart, a pulsating Existential heart. Our own heart pulsates in unity with the Existential heartbeats. We are all notes in the Existential music, and without our unique note the music would not be complete. We are all needed in the Whole; we all have our unique fragrance, quality and gifts to contribute to the Whole. More than 30 years ago, I had an individual consultation with a spiritual teacher. I did not have time to sit down before I got the question: "You are interested in healing, are you not?" It was the first time that I encountered the topic that would become my way and deep source of joy in life. This spiritual teacher finished the consultation saying: "You will be a fine healer." The art of healing is the psychology of being, the science of inner transformation. The psychology of being begins where Western psychology ends. It goes beyond Skinner, Freud, Jung, Rogers, Maslow and humanistic psychology. The psychology of being is the psychology of consciousness, a psychology for inner transformation. It is not basically a question of psychology, it is a question of being. The psychology of being begins where we are, and take us to everything that we can be. The underlying theme the psychology of being is meditation - but not meditation as a static technique - but as the capacity to BE with ourselves and others in a quality of watchful awareness, acceptance and realization. The art of being is a search beyond the personality. It a search beyond the thoughts, the emotions and the learned attitudes of the personality, to the inner being, to the depth within, which is hidden in ourselves. The inner being is a deep acceptance of ourselves as we are; the inner being is to be available to life. The inner being is to be in unity with life. This book is an invitation to meet the inner being, our inner source of love, joy, acceptance, humor, intuition, understanding, wisdom, truth, silence and creativity.”

“Only by going through the fire of love, one becomes a heart. It is the fire of love that creates the soul. Not having a heart is what makes life meaningless, but millions of people live without a heart. The heart is the spiritual centre of our being. It is only the heart that can bring joy to our life.”

“MEDITATION & DEVOTION Most of our life issues and psychological problems occur from a lack of love and devotion. We are searching for love outside of ourselves. We are seeking to be loved, rather than to give love. A criteria of spiritual maturity is when we begin to give love, rather than to ask for love. Through developing love and devotion, we learn to love all beings. We develop our inner being, the meditative quality within, the inner source of love and truth, the divine source inside ourselves, through which we can let love flow through us, not only to benefit ourselves, but for the good of all.”

“Jesus was a man of love, of immense compassion. He loved this earth, the people, the threes, because that is the way to love God. God is life. Jesus is very life-affirmative. He says total yes to life. When you look into the eyes of each being that you meet, you meet God. Everybody is an incarnation of God - the threes, the flowers, the rocks, the animals, the people and the mountains. Love the people, love the threes, love the animals - and through the love you meet God. All are brothers here, because God is one. The threes, the flowers, the birds and the rocks are all your brothers, because they all come from the one source. if you are not reconciled with the world, you cannot pray to God. Prayer is only possible when you are in harmony with existence. The whole existence is your brother. The first step for prayer is to be reconciled with your brother. And your brother means all beings. Jesus is a celebration of being, a celebration of life. If you deny life, you deny God. If you say no to life, you say no to God, because God is life. To understand Jesus, you have to understand that life is God. If you say yes to life, you will feel a prayer arising in your heart, a yes arising in your being. The ego is a no to life, the ego is a separation from life. The inner being is a yes to life. The inner being is a deep yes and acceptance of life. Saying yes bridges you with the whole. It makes you a part of the whole. Saying yes will make you more and more spiritual. Jesus whole message is yes. The word "amen" means yes. You will never meet God, you will meet human beings, animals, stones and threes. You can love God through other human beings, through threes, through stones and through animals. And when you have learnt to love God through all his forms - then only love changes into prayer.”

“Prayer and Meditation Matthew 14 AND HE WENT UP INTO THE MOUNTAIN APART TO PRAY This was always the practice of Jesus when he would move into the masses, the crowd, afterwards he would go alone into deep prayer and meditation. Why did he do this? If you have been meditating, you will understand. You will understand that once you start meditating, a very fragile and delicate quality of consciousness is born in you. A flower of the unknown, of the beyond, starts opening, which is delicate. And whenever you move into the crowd, you lose something. Whenever you come back from the crowd, you come back lesser than you had gone. Something has been lost, some contact has been lost. The crowd pulls you down, it has a gravitation of it's own. You may not feel it if you live on the same plane of consciousness. Then there is no problem, then you have nothing to lose. In fact, when you live in the crowd, on the same plane, alone you feel very uneasy. When you are with people, you feel good and happy. But alone, you feel sad, your aloneness is not aloneness. It is loneliness, you miss the other. You do not find yourself in the aloneness, you simply miss the other. When you are alone, you are not alone, beacuse you are not there. Only the desire to be with others is there - that is what loneliness is. Always remember the distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Aloneness is a peak experience - loneliness is a valley. Aloneness has light in it, loneliness is dark. Loneliness is when you desire others; aloneness is when you enjoy yourself. When Jesus would move into the masses, into the crowd, he would tell his disciples to got to the other shore of the lake, and he would move into total aloneness. Not even the disciples were allowed to be with him. This was a constant practice with him. Whenever you go into the crowd, you are infected by it. You need a higher altitude to purify yourself, you need to be alone so that you can become fresh again. You need to be alone with yourself, so that you become together again. You need to be alone, so that you become centered and rooted in yourself again. Whenever you move with others, they push you off centre. AND WHEN THE EVENING WAS COME, HE WAS THERE ALONE Nothing is said about his prayer in the Bible, just the word "prayer". Before God or before existence, you simply need to be vulnerable - that is prayer. You are no to say something. So when you go into prayer, don't start saying something. It will all be desires, demands and deep complaints to God. And prayer with complaints is no prayer, a prayer with deep gratitude is prayer. There is no need to say something, you can just be silent. Hence nothing is said about what Jesus did in his aloneness. It simply says "apart to pray". He went apart, he became alone. That is what prayer is, to be alone, where the other is not felt, where the other is not standing between you and existence. When God's breeze can pass througn you, unhindered. It is a cleansing experience. It revejunates your spirit. To be with God simply means to be alone. You can miss the point, if you start thinking about God, then you are not alone. If you start talking to God, then in imagination you have created the other. And then you God is a projection, it will be a projection of your father. A prayer is not to say something. It is to be silent, open, available. And there is no need to believe in God, because that too is a projection. The only need is to be alone, to be capable of being alone - and immediately you are with God. Whenever you are alone, you are with God.”

“It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.”

“When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would ”disappear into the silence”. I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened.”

“Life is to be lived, loved and experienced, because it is only at the innermost core that you will feel the presence of God. When you live, love and experience life, you come close to the creative energy of existence. You have to be creative yourself. That is the only way to start participating in God's creation. It is only through mediation that you become a servant of God, the divine. The moment you know the godliness of existence you naturally become a servant of God. It is not something imposed on you from the outside. It comes out of your love for existence and from your wish to make the world more beautiful.”

“Man is born as a seed, but most people die as seeds. They never find the right soil to grow and reach their potential. They never find a gardener. They take themselves for granted. They think that whatsoever they are that is the end, but this is not the end. It is only the beginning. But most people live in this way. They never search for their potential. They never become explorers of their inner world. The seed can become a tree. The tree will dance in the wind, in the rain and in the sun. Birds will make their nest in it. People will rest underneath its shade. And when a tree has beauty, form, flowers and joy there is great contentment in the very being of the tree.  It has fulfilled its mission from seed to become a tree. The same experience happens to man when his seed becomes bliss. His seed has reached its potential, because bliss is the highest state of consciousness. He may live on the earth, but he is no more part of the earth. He belongs to the beyond. He may still be in the body, but he is no more the body. He is a buddha. He is pure awareness. Now he knows his immortality. Now he knows that he was never born and he will never die. Bodies come and go, but the innermost core remains. Knowing this all fear disappears. For the first time you start experiencing life at its highest level. At the deepest core of his being, there is only joy.”

“Man can either exist as an island isolated from existence, thinking himself separate from existence, or man can live in harmony with existence. The first way is the way of the ego. It is like trying to swim upstream in opposition to the stream of life. You may succeed for a while, but sooner or later you will become tired and exhausted. The river is not fighting you. It is just your own idea of being separated that has created the whole problem. You tried to fight with life, and you got defeated. The river is not responsible. If you had taken a different approach to life, if you had accepted to go with the river of life, there would have been no fight, no struggle, no frustration and no defeat. You would not have felt that existence was against you. You would not have felt that existence is your enemy. Going with the river, floating with the river, you would have felt that the river was giving you strength. That is the way of the religious person. The first way, the way of the ego, is the way of the irreligious person. The second way, the way of the heart is to be in harmony with existence. And the moment that you let go and merge with existence, God becomes your strength. Then there is great rejoicement in your heart. Then each moment becomes a joy without any fight, without any struggle. That is the joy of being religious.”

“Love and trust are different expressions of the same phenomenon.Love is the beginning of trust, and trust is the culmination of love.  Then you can trust yourself, you can trust others and you can trust life. Trust happens in the heart. When the heart begins to resonate in a deepharmony with the whole, there is a meeting. That meeting is trust, and that is not possible without love. In the school of love, you learn the art of trust. Both love and trust have  dissapeared from the world.  Love exists no more. trust exists no more. Love and trust are immensly beutiful. It is through love and trust that you will find the harmony with the whole.”