Quotes from Swami Abhayananda

This "vision" of the Self is described in the Upanishads as Liberation (moksha). It is a freedom, a release, from doubt, from uncertainty, from the fears attending ignorance, forever. All questions are answered; all desires and causes for sorrow are put to rest; for thereafter, a man knows the secret of all existence. All previous notions of limitation and mortality, all darkness of ignorance, is swept away in the all-illuminating light of Truth:

Much later, the illustrious teacher (acharya), Shankara (eighth century C.E.), attempted a reformulation of Advaita (Nondual) Vedanta, and in the process introduced some ideas which are controversial to this day. In many ways, his metaphysical worldview is also remarkably similar to that of Plotinus:

Unlike the conception of Moses, in which God's Spirit, or Soul, had been imparted to man alone, Plotinus regarded Soul as a radiation of God's Spirit imparted to the entire universe,

But Heraclitus' most significant contribution to the thought of subsequent authors of mystical philosophy was his establishment of the word, "Logos," as a term for the immanent presence of God in the world of man's experience.

Purity" suggests a single, uncontaminated, element or quality. "Purity of heart," therefore, is an undeviating regard to God alone, who has become the center and focus of all one's thoughts, words and actions. Only by such purity of heart is the mind of man readied and prepared for the perfect concentration of mind, which is known as contemplation.

while those who presume to teach philosophy without that God-revealed knowledge, however well-meaning their endeavor, succeed, for the most part, in engendering only doubt and confusion in the world.

By concentrated meditation—in other words, by the stilling and focusing of the vibrations of consciousness (chitta vritti nirodha)—the individualized soul is enabled to reverse this process and thus perceive its subtler reality, its Divine origin, its true Self.

Bhagavad Gita, "The Song Of God." It is a philosophical dialogue, written by some illumined sage of the time (and attributed to the legendary sage, Vyasa), which offers the most comprehensive and definitive expression of the Samkhya philosophy ever written.

In the mystical experience, which transcends all religious traditions and cultures and languages, the Christian, the Buddhist, the Muslim, and the Vedantist alike come to the same realization: They realize the oneness of their own soul and God, the Soul of the universe.

Once caught in that Light, once illumined by the Eternal, does a soul will its restoration to embodied selfhood in the artificial multiplicity of samsara? I think not. Yet it re-emerges into that embodied life nonetheless—but with a new perspective: Samsara is now Nirvana. The mundane is now Divine. The mind and intellect are infused with a new awareness: all is bright with Divinity, within and without.

There is now a transparancy to things in this new life—as though one's body and all the objects were but holographic images with no substantial reality.

Material Nondualism, a materialistic worldview in which Spirit (or soul) is rejected, and Matter (or body) is all that is said to exist.

gunas (strands). These correspond to what scientists today would call "positive," "negative," and "neutral" energy-charges. Kapila calls them rajas, tamas, and sattva. They are the three "strands" which, woven together, constitute the fabric of Prakrti;