“I want to be two people at once. One runs away.”
“There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed”
“You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.”
“Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.”
“The best cure for one s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.”
“A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.”
“It s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn t understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out. A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.”
“She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”
“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it s hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”
“In the night, I am kept awake by the endless chatter of my inner self. I hear it speak softly of old hurts and fondly of past loves, while its demands and anxieties resound throughout me in multitudes. I could be calm and composed all day long, but the moment it is dark, my mind riots.”
“Some care is needed in using Descartes argument. I think, therefore I am says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.”
“To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place. In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.”
“Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”
“Secrets. Funny how, when you re about to be given something precious, something you ve wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it. Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else s most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don t we all long for this? Yet when it s offered it s frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you ll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what s more frightening than that?”
“This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal.”
“To deal with things knowledge of things is needed. To deal with people, you need insight, sympathy. To deal with yourself, you need nothing. Be what you are--conscious being--and don t stray away from yourself.”
“Markings in dry clay disappear Only when the clay is soft again. Scars upon the self disappear Only when one becomes soft within.”