The search for wisdom is a great challenge; to act on wisdom is an even greater challenge. To accept that you are spiritual in essence, that you are an eternal spark of life force, is to open the door on a whole new life.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda (Founder of Science of Identity Foundation)
According to the ancient Vedic texts and the great spiritual teachers of meditation, the most important reason for beginning the practice of meditation is the desire for self-realization—to understand who you really are. What is your real essence? What is your real purpose in life? What is your relationship with God? This is so important. Nothing is more important than knowing who you are. If you don't know who you are, how are you going to know what is your purpose in life? How do you know what to do? How do you know what your normal or natural function should be?
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
Who are you? You are the child of the Supreme Being; the life particle; an eternal spirit soul. Understanding this truth is the beginning of self-realization.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
It is a fact that no matter how much sense gratification a person gets, he will never be satisfied. Material food, material things, material sense gratification cannot satisfy the spirit soul within the body. Just as the body needs material food, so the spirit soul needs spiritual food.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
I am a child of God—spiritual in essence. This means that I need spiritual food, spiritual happiness. I can't be satisfied by material wealth, fame, power, etc. What is going to make me really happy? What is that spiritual food that I need? My connection with the Supreme Soul. Union with the Supreme Soul.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
Everyone is suffering. Yet a fool, despite the fact that he keeps getting his teeth kicked in, never thinks twice about the whole thing. An intelligent person sees he is suffering and wants to know why. He thus becomes motivated to seek a solution to the problems of life. He seeks liberation. That is the beginning of spiritual life.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
Removal of fear and anguish from the heart creates the experience of real freedom. Just as the suffering caused by ignorance can never be described adequately, neither can the joy born out of wisdom.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
We are all relatives, all sparks of God. Some of us are in brown bodies, some white, some black, some yellow, some male, some female, some old, some young, some animal, some human, etc.; but we are the souls within these bodies. Our bodies may be white, Christian, American, etc., but these are not our true identities. We are not Muslim, Hindu, Russian, or Chinese. We are spirit souls—relatives in the truest sense—for we all have the same Father/Mother/Friend—the Supreme Soul.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
This world and everything in it is the property or the energy of the Supreme Energetic. But unfortunately most of us have forgotten the connection between ourselves, the world and the Lord. We falsely identify ourselves with the material body we temporarily live in, and due to our identifying with matter, we seek fulfillment in the material world. Thus, we falsely lay claim to God’s property and endlessly compete to exploit each other and the environment. This continuous exploitation makes our hearts harder and harder and it is thus a great rarity for a person in this world to feel real love and compassion. Therefore, kindness is rare, friendship is rare, honesty is rare, and simplicity is rare and happiness and humility are rare. But fear is not rare, nor is international, interracial, interfaith, and intersexual warfare. But bitterness is of no necessity. There can be a new society. But the outer can change only by changing the inner. The nature of our place of residence is determined by the nature of our mentality or consciousness. Thus, our destiny is in our own hands.
—Jagad Guru
If you are not the gross physical body and you are not the mind, then who are you? What is your essence? You are the spirit soul, a spark of the Supreme Spirit Soul. Your essence is spirit—not matter.
—Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda (Founder of Science of Identity Foundation)
Know that which pervades the entire body is indestructible. No one is able to destroy the imperishable soul. Only the material body of the indestructible, immeasurable, and eternal living entity is subject to destruction.
—Bhagavad-gita 2.17
This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can be neither burned nor dried. He is everlasting, all-pervading, unchangeable, inconceivable, immovable, and eternally the same.
—Bhagavad-gita 2.24
A person who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desires—that enter like rivers into the ocean which is ever being filled but is always still—can alone achieve peace, and not the man who strives to satisfy such desires.
—Bhagavad-gita 2.70
A person who neither rejoices upon achieving something pleasant nor laments upon obtaining something unpleasant, who is self-intelligent, unbewildered, and who knows the science of God, is to be understood as already situated in Transcendence.
—Bhagavad-gita 5.20
A man must elevate himself by his own mind, not degrade himself. The mind is the friend of the conditioned soul, and his enemy as well. For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his very mind will be the greatest enemy.
—Bhagavad-gita 6.5-6
The living entities are never equal to God, but as parts and parcels of the Lord they are eternally His servitors. As long as the living entities are situated normally as His servitors they are happy; otherwise they are always unhappy. That is the Vedic conclusion.
—Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad
A saintly person should learn from the mountain how to devote all his efforts to the service of others and how to make the welfare of others the sole reason for his existence. Similarly, as the disciple of the tree, he should learn how to dedicate himself to others.
—Uddhava Gita 1.38
Just as fire, which burns and illuminates, is different from firewood, which is to be burned to give illumination, the knower within the body is different from the material body, which is illuminated by the consciousness of the soul. Thus the spirit soul and the body possess different characteristics because they are separate entities.
—Uddhava Gita 4.8
