- Karma Yoga was meant to purify TFWA for an impure mind. Upasana Yoga: Upasana means the austerity of Being with Self to tranquil the turbulent mind and Yoga means integration and discipline of the personality.
- Inquiry is a risk. It is moving into the unknown. One knows not what is going to happen. One leaves everything that one is acquainted with, is comfortable with, and one moves into the unknown, not even perfectly certain whether there is anything on the other shore, or whether there is another shore even.
- Upasana Yoga consists of various types of meditations to discipline and develop different aspects of our mind. By discipling the mind a Vedantic student conserves and channels their energies towards the pursuit of Moksha. Mental discipline by itself is not enough.
- The whole journey of upasana is opposed to effort and discipline; to become ordinary; it enters a different dimension, continuing practicing for a long time without interruption, till the time it becomes effortless. This has to be remembered. If you interrupt, if you do for some days and then leave for some days, the whole effort is lost. With that you are beginning to experience the divine in matter, that you are beginning to perceive the unmanifest in the manifest, that the formless has begun to be glimpsed shimmering in form.
- It is not a question of doing something. It is not quantitative, it is qualitative – how much you are involved, how deeply you love it, how much you enjoy it – not the goal, not the end, not the result, but the very practice.
- Whatever you do – you cook food, you clean the floor, you chop wood – whatever you do, your awareness and your love is showering. It is worship.
- Nanak says, Nam Smaran – remembering the name, self is enough. You are eating, you are going to sleep, you are taking your bath, and continuously your heart is filled with remembrance. You cannot live without it. And by and by it creates an inner harmony, a music. Your whole being starts falling into harmony. An ecstasy is born, a humming sensation, a sweetness surrounds you. By and by this sweetness becomes your nature.
- Intellectual listening is a kind of deafness. When I say something, you can listen to the word. You have a mind, a library in the mind of all your prejudices, philosophies, ideologies. The word has to go through all those preconceived patterns, and by the time it reaches you it is no more the same. It has changed so many times, passing through the whole process of intellectual listening, that when it comes out, it is absolutely something else.
- The right way is that you do not bring your mind in, and let the divine go into your innermost being without being hindered. Then there will be an understanding. Then there will be a communion, a real listening, because in the very process of listening, you have changed.
- Upasana Yoga means to transcend all mundane acts into worship.