"Exoteric religions vary tremendously from each other; but esoteric religions the world over share many similarities. Mysticism or esotericism is, in the broad sense of the word, scientific, and just as you don't have German chemistry versus American chemistry, you don't have Hindu mystical science versus Muslim mystical science. Rather, they are in fundamental agreement as to the nature of the soul, the nature of Spirit, and the nature of their supreme identity, among many other things. This is what scholars mean by 'the transcendental unity of the world's religions' – they mean esoteric religions. Of course, their surface structures vary tremendously, but their deep structures are often identical, reflecting the unanimity of the human spirit and its phenomenologically disclosed laws."
~ Ken Wilber

"The man who makes God his beloved, what more does he want? His heart becomes awakened to all the beauty there is within and without. To him, God is all-in-all; to him, God is everywhere. If he goes to the Christian church or the Jewish synagogue, to Buddhist temple, to the Hindu shrine, or to the Muslim mosque, there is God. In the wilderness, in the forest, in the crowd, everywhere he sees God."
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Go to a different church each Sunday. One Sunday go to the Protestant church, another Sunday go to the Catholic Church, another Sunday go to the Jewish temple, and another Sunday go to the Hindu temple, and so on. Keep on doing this in rotation to show not only your toleration, but to develop your appreciation and understanding. Call all temples, whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other religion, by the common name--"The Temple of Our God."
~ Paramhansa Yogananda

Our happiness comes from calming our sense-driven awareness, nestling it in the divine consciousness instead, the sacred indwelling that resides at the very heart of our existence. Christians, of course, call this “divine indwelling” the paracletus, the ‘helper’ or the spiritus sancti, the ‘Holy Spirit,’ which connects God with Christ and each of us in the triune Divinity…But this is not a purely Christian perspective. Buddhists might speak of this basic concept of internal ‘divinity’ or ‘sacredness’ as tathagata-garbha, or Buddha Nature. Hindus might speak of it as the place where jiva, the ‘limited self’ is united with Atman, the ‘unlimited Self,’ which is none other than Brahman, the ‘ever-expanding’ Divine. Muslim Sufis might call this state of constant awareness of God, zikr-allah, and the intimate presence of God within, ruh-allah. Jews call the ‘divine indwelling,’ Shekhinah, and the ‘spirit of holiness,’ ru’ah ha-kodesh. The Lakota Sioux speak of Wakan-Tanka, the ‘Great Spirit.’ Each of the world’s great spiritual traditions offers us an ultimate source of happiness that is not caused by the material world. Each speaks of an innate capacity we all have for an insight into, or unity with the divine, sacred, or essential nature of existence by whatever name it is called.
~ Interspiritual Meditation: A Seven-Step Process from the World’s Spiritual Traditions, by Edward Bastian

"Third Millennial Spirituality will also be interspiritual and intermystical. It will be an enhanced understanding of the inner life through assimilating the psychological, moral, aesthetic, spiritual and literary treasures of the world's religions. Each tradition will define itself in relation to every other viable tradition of the inner life; each will take into account the totality of the spiritual journey -- all the forms it assumes in human experience....If we are truly inter-mystics, we are open to wisdom where ever we find it.”..."Intermysticism engages other media as integral parts of contemplative practice. It doesn't just depend on books or spiritual reading, but looks to art, music, and movies as a means to nourish contemplative life and the sacred. No matter the culture, music and art are present; they are universal languages of vast sacred potential. Art and music have an enormous and virtually untapped potential to contribute to our spiritual development; they are able to awaken, deepen, and expand the contemplative dimension of human being. Integrating music and art into contemplative practice or making them practices in themselves is another way of allowing spirituality to become more holistic -- to affect the whole person, each one of us in our expanded integrity. Art and music have special qualities that permit us to soar to heights far beyond the range of intellect into intuitive and suprarational experience. In time and with guidance, they can become precious means of accessing mystical dimensions previously little known or experienced."
~ From the Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale

The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation… The zikr of Sufism, shikan-taza of Zen, devekut of Judaism, the Prayer of the Heart, vision quest of shamanism, self-inquiry of Ramana, vipassana of Theravada, chih-kuan of T’ien T’ai,centering prayer —the raja, jnana, hatha, karma, and kundalini yogas—the vast and stunning panoply of the contemplative practices of the world’s great wisdom traditions—the whole point is to re-member, re-collect, and re-discover that which you always already are. Indeed, the soul's duty in this life is to remember. The Buddhist smriti and sati-patthana, the Hindu smara, Plato's recollection, Christ's anamnesis: all of those terms are precisely translated as remembrance… And so, the soul that finally remembers all this, and sees it however vaguely, can only pause to wonder: How could I have forgotten? How could I have renounced that State which is the only Real State.
~ Ken Wilber

I shall go to the mosque of the Muslim; I shall enter the Christian's church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the Buddhist temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and in his Law. I shall go into the forest and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the light which enlightens the heart of everyone. Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may come in the future. Is God's book finished? Or is it still a continuous revelation going on?
~ Swami Vivekananda

Consciousness or Wakefulness starts out identified with the gross waking state. The goal of meditation is to discover pure Emptiness, the void Godhead, Ayin, pure Nothingness or the Plenum/Void—by whatever name—and thus cease identifying with the small, finite, mortal, skin- bounded ego and find instead what the Sufis call the Supreme Identity, or Zen calls our Original Face, or Christians call Christ Consciousness—our True Self and ultimate nondual Spirit that is radically free from an identity to any particular finite thing or event whatsoever—or, put from another angle—is one with absolutely the entire manifest and un-manifest realm, radically One with the All, One with the entire Ground of Being. Being one with everything that arises moment to moment, there is literally nothing outside of us that we could want or desire, nor anything outside us that we could smash into—thus no fear, no anxiety, no angst. As the Upanishads say, “Wherever there is other, there is fear”—but when we are one with All, there is no Other that is not our own True Self, and thus we are liberated, enlightened, free from torment and suffering and Awakened to the ultimate Goodness, Truth, Reality, and Beauty—unborn and undying, unbounded and unlimited, fiercely free and alive, joy- ously One and blissfully All, radiantly infinite and timelessly eternal—a state known variously as Enlightenment, Awakening, moksha (or liberated), metanoia (or transformed), wu (or transparently Open, Free, and Full).
~ Fourth Turning, by Ken Wilber

“Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged.”
~ Rumi

One of the most profound lessons I have learned about the process of education in general, and spiritual development in particular, is the importance of beginning by asking ourselves these questions: “How do I learn?” “How do I know?” “What is my natural learning style?” Once we gain this basic level of self-knowledge, we will be able to discern the best teacher, educational resources and spiritual practices for you. If we don’t begin this way, we are likely to fall away from spiritual pursuits because our spiritual learning style did not match up with the teacher or educational processes we have tried. For example, your spiritual interests might be thwarted because you are kinesthetic learner compelled to sit still with a highly intellectual teacher; or you are a nature lover confined in a room with hours of silent meditation; or you are a mystical learner who is told to memorize lists of religious dogma; or you are an intellectual learner whose teacher requires devotion and prayer without reason. If these are the case, it will be difficult for you to develop a meaningful and sustainable personal spiritual path.
~ Creating Your Spiritual Path, Edward Bastian, PhD.

"Defined by Brother Teasdale in The Mystic Heart, interspirituality is the combined spiritual wisdom amassed across faith traditions and across time. It is that thing that so many of us now practice, the blending of several traditional practices from more than one faith center. Thus I may be as I am, a practicing Catholic (Christian), practice Tai Chi (Chinese), meditate (Hindu) all the while participating in an occasional Native American blessing ceremony." …Interspirituality rests on a vast community of insight and experience available to humanity at all times and in all places. This community embraces the collective wisdom of the human family. Behind this vast community of collective awareness is the one Spirit, inspiring breakthroughs to its realm, opening minds and hearts, transforming attitudes and wills, and encouraging growth in compassion, love, kindness, mercy, and sensitivity. Interspirituality includes the courageous tendency to religious and spiritual creativity, which springs from understanding how much can be gained by venturing out of one’s comfort and familiarity and into other traditions. In a sense, to pursue an intermystical spiritual life is to be a real pioneer of the Spirit. It is not an easy path to travel, because not many maps exist yet, and many people fear losing their way, but it yields rich deposits of wisdom along the way. If we trust, keep moving on, and share our experience with others, while seeking their advice, we will be fine. In fact, uncertainty can lead to even greater spiritual realizations. Without the familiar rituals and beliefs of our tradition to fall back on, we sometimes come closer to realizing the true goals of religion.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2010-09-07). A Monk in the World (p. 175).

Contemplative knowing (from pondering to poetry to meditation) has been described as fundamental to the quest for knowledge and wisdom and complementary to analytic processing. There is a long and rich history of cultivating the contemplative throughout the wisdom traditions. Contemplative practices have included meditation that had endured for thousands of years in Buddhism, various forms of yoga from Hindu traditions, contemplative prayer in Christianity such as that of St. Theresa of Avila or Thomas Merton, radical questioning through dialogue such as that expressed by Plato or the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharishi, metaphysical refection of the Sufi tradition that leads to the deeper intuitive insight of the heart (qalb), or the deep pondering suggested by the Jewish Kabbalah. Each of these practices and many, many more offer an approach to interrupt habitual thought routines and deepen awareness.
~ Tobin Hart: Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom

“...spirituality and religion, often confused, aren’t the same. Spirituality differs from religion in its sense of unconditional value that’s unaffected by circumstances. In spirituality, seen through the heart’s unconditional lens, God is one…Although historically the offspring of spirituality, religion is more focused on whose view of reality is correct. In religion, God isn’t one. This is the antithesis of a prescription for a world that is both good and concerned for the interests and wellbeing of every creature. However, as the millennium turned, a vision of interspirituality was emerging from within the world’s religions. …. those who seeded the vision began talking to each other across continents and oceans, and between traditions and cultures, they discerned that their experience, though hugely diverse, was ultimately much the same. All shared a sense of profound interconnectedness, oneness, and a unity that transcended the boundaries of their theological traditions, cultural backgrounds, and historical narratives.”
~ Kurt Johnson: The Coming Interspiritual Age

The higher transpersonal stages: the psychic, the subtle, the causal, and the nondual-- each of these also has its own worldview and therefore its own type of mysticism, namely, nature mysticism, deity mysticism, formless mysticism, and nondual mysticism. These higher stages are very rare… very difficult accomplishments. .. In the past, they were reached only by a small handful—the lone shaman, the yogi in the cave, the small sanghas and cloisters of the true seekers of wisdom. These deeper or higher states have never been anything near an average or collective mode of awareness… But the essential point is that at these higher or transpersonal stages, the Spirit that was present throughout the entire evolutionary process becomes increasingly conscious of its own condition. It has gone from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious, unfolding more of itself and enfolding more of itself at every stage. Spirit slumbers in nature, begins to awaken in mind, and finally recognizes itself as Spirit in the transpersonal domains—but it is the same Spirit present throughout the entire sequence: the ground, path, and fruition of the whole display.
~ Ken Wilber

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”—John 1:1-3. Aum (Om) of the Vedas became the sacred word Amin of the Moslems, Hum of the Tibetans, and Amen of the Christians (its meaning in Hebrew being sure, faithful). “These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”—Revelations 3:14.
~ From Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda

I am neither Christian nor Jew,
Neither Gaber nor Turk,
I am not of East; I am not of the West,
I am not of the land; Not of the sea;
I belong to the soul of the Beloved,
I have seen that the two are One.
And One I see, and One I know.
One I see, and One I adore,
He is the first, and He is the last;
He is outward, and He is inward too.
~ Rumi, From Vidich, Andrew (2008-08-15). Light Upon Light

The true context of meditation is spiritual life. At their height, the states of consciousness described in the classic sources can lift one out of the small-mindedness bred by daily pursuits as well as transform ordinary awareness. Such transcendental states seem to be the seeds of spiritual life, and they have been experienced by the founders and early followers of every world religion. Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, Jesus' forty-day vigil in the wilderness, Muhammad's desert visions, and Buddha's enlightenment under the Bo Tree all bespeak extraordinary states of consciousness. All too often, religious institutions and theologies outlive the transmission of the original transcendental states that generated them. Without these living experiences, the institutions of religion become pointless, and their theologies appear empty. In my view, the modern crisis of established religions is caused by the scarcity of the personal experience of these transcendental states - the living spirit at the common core of all religions. And that spirit unites the diversity of meditative forms. As an old Zen saying puts it: "From of old there were not two paths. Those who have arrived all walked the same road."
~ Goleman, Daniel (2012-01-25). The Meditative Mind: The Varieties of Meditative Experience

In Ch'an Buddhism, the “position” of Absolute Subjectivity, that is, the “state” of knowing Reality non-dually, is called the “Host” position, as opposed to the “Guest” position of knowing reality through objective concepts. The man centered in the Host position is what in Taoism is called the “Superior Man,” and Rinzai calls it “The True Man of no Rank (wu-i).” But this is not man, as in Mr. John Doe, but Man (jen), the Divine Son, the second person of the Trinity, al-insan al-Kamil, Pneuma, ruarch adonai, Nous, the Absolute Knower common in and to us all, the Atman, Purusa, Adam-Kadmon, Divine Man, Universal Man, Nietzche's Superman, of no rank because nothing can be predicated of it, as when Shelley sings in Prometheus Unbound:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread,
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed. . . .
~ Wilber, Ken (2012-12-19). The Spectrum of Consciousness

Remembering what we are grateful for is the key to a life of gratitude…In the realm of spiritual practice and psychology, this remembrance usually takes the form of an invocation. This has a very practical purpose: to immediately connect us with the highest spiritual value, God, the Ultimate Reality (Am Sof, Shunyata, Brahman, Allah, etc.), and to bring to mind the spiritual prophets, saints, and exemplars (Moses, Buddha, Shankara, Muhammad, etc.), and the sacred qualities (receptiveness, non-attachment, equanimity, compassion, etc.) that we would like to emulate and actualize in our own lives. These are the objects of our most profound gratitude, and we appreciate them as the sources and models of our own spiritual development. Of course, this needn’t be a blind or ignorant gratitude, but one that is based on profound reflection and insight. After all, how do these sacred values, exemplars, and qualities help us? We should be able to answer those questions. The more conscious we make our gratitude, the deeper it will seat itself in our daily lives.
~ Edward Bastian: InterSpiritual Meditation: A Seven-Step Process from the World's Spiritual Traditions

The icons and iconography developed by the world’s religions depict idealized forms of the highest manifestations of spiritual consciousness. When they depict the human form, it is often an idealized expression of beauty in a particular culture. But the message is not about external beauty. Rather, this idealized beauty is symbolic of virtue and the mastery of internal mental and emotional qualities. This is the message of most (though not all) anthropomorphic (human formed) iconography. So as you look at icons of the Madonna, Moses, Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, or Krishna, try to remember what qualities these depictions are meant to express. Or if you are looking at modern photos of Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, or Abraham Lincoln, you should remember what they stand for in your own heart and mind. For me, the anthropomorphic image that works best is that of a great bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, who is depicted with both masculine and feminine characteristics, and often with a tear dropping from her eye upon hearing the suffering cries of innumerable beings in our world.
~ Edward Bastian: InterSpiritual Meditation: A Seven-Step Process from the World's Spiritual Traditions

Of course, not all icons are anthropomorphic, and not all religious traditions are encouraging of these. Nevertheless, the ideal may be just as powerfully expressed through other symbolic forms. Consider the Cross, expressing the great sacrifice of Jesus, or the profoundly beautiful Arabic calligraphy which says, Bismillah, er-Rahman, er-Rahim, ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.’ This calligraphic representation is not only a reminder to Muslims of God’s presence, but also that “God is beautiful and loves beauty.” The mandalas (circular graphic depictions of sacred cosmologies, attributes of God, and spiritual practices) found across cultures throughout history are another expression of our spiritual ideals. For the mandala often shows the ideal arrangement of symbolic spiritual qualities within the circle of our lives. Spiritual ideals can also be expressed through sound, movement, and particular gestures. In Tibetan Buddhism, for example, tantric practices enable all aspects of our psychophysical being to be methodically transformed through mantras (chants of sacred syllables), mudras (symbolic hand gestures), and ritual acts, in addition to the use of visual imagery. In Christianity, the Eucharist (the sacrament of consuming the transformed bread and wine) employs what might be described as a tantric-like method for enabling devotees to take-in and embody the qualities of Christ, and perhaps even to attain or become one with Christ Consciousness. Whatever means you use for bringing the ideal into your consciousness (and keeping it there), it is important to do it regularly, with clear and sacred intention. Use the form that suits you best, or which is in accord with your spiritual tradition, for these will always be most affective for you personally.
~ Edward Bastian: InterSpiritual Meditation: A Seven-Step Process from the World's Spiritual Traditions

“Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.”
~ Bede Griffiths

Passionately committed to a synthetic approach in understanding reality, Bede conceived of a collaboration among science, mysticism, and faith, and this was a synthesis he discerned from his contemplative awareness and his study of mysticism (particularly Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Sufi) in concert with his deep faith. He often spoke of this synthesis, which represented a common ground discovered in the convergence of insight of these three activities in the heart of the one reality and truth they share in consciousness. The fruit of his insight, reflection, and experience on this movement into synthesis and common ground among these powerful realms of knowing became his masterpiece, A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism, and Christian Faith...Bede’s vision was essentially an approach based on an integrative insight: that reality is one, and so all forms of knowing must somehow converge on the one truth, the oneness of reality itself in consciousness.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

Creation is in need of redemption, along with the human being, and the Incarnation functions as the cosmic event that triggers this transformation of the human and everything into spiritual being, or spirit itself. Incarnation, creation, God, and humanity are all closely linked, but the Incarnation is the key to uniting them in the Spirit. The human being, as icon or image of God, as spirit, is the term of Creation, and the task of Redemption is essentially one of spiritual transformation. In his notion of humanity, Bede follows the Pauline doctrine of the person as a composite, a unity of body, soul, and spirit, which is consonant with the Hindu doctrine of the three worlds. Bede incorporated into his theological anthropology this notion that there are three levels of reality. The first two are the material cosmos of multiplicity and the psychological realm of psyche or soul, the place of the unconscious and the collective history of not only the cosmos but of every human life as well. The person is transformed at the end into spirit, the third realm, just as Christ’s body and consciousness were transformed at the Resurrection and the Ascension. The entire universe is sharing in the spiritual transformation begun at the Resurrection, a cosmic event. In a very real sense, in Bede’s theological understanding, the Incarnation is the summit of the evolutionary process, unveiling the goal of the process as Spirit.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

In principle, your transcendent Self is of one nature with God (however you might wish to conceive it). For it is finally, ultimately, profoundly, God alone who looks through your eyes, listens with your ears, and speaks with your tongue. How else could St. Clement maintain that he who knows himself knows God? This, then, is the message of the saints, sages, and mystics, whether Amerindian, Taoist, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, or Christian: At the bottom of your soul is the soul of humanity itself, but a divine, transcendent soul, leading from bondage to liberation, from dream to awakening, from time to eternity, from death to immortality.
~ Wilber, Ken (2012-09-10). Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (p. 131).

The spiritual life, in its fullest sense, as I’ve observed it in my own life, is a mystical process. It begins when we accept the invitation to live our lives from the deep wells of wisdom, from the depth of transformative or mystical consciousness. This is not an easy matter; it takes commitment and discipline that will span the rest of our earthly sojourn. The mystical process encompasses several crucial factors of growth, which are continually working together. These include prayer or spiritual practice, living the virtues, compassionate action in all aspects of life, and the work of integration, which involves cleansing the unconscious of its seeds of selfish desire and intention. As a Christian, I am also aware that grace plays a decisive role in the process, and as St. Augustine understood, we cannot even desire God, or embrace the spiritual journey, unless divine grace inspires us. Prayer and spiritual practice are synonymous in my personal understanding; both are forms of each other.

~ Teasdale, Wayne (2010-09-07). A Monk in the World

Accompanying our efforts, and the contribution of grace in our mystical development, must be a total commitment to following the guidance of the virtues, like faith, hope, love, patience, gentleness, courage, generosity, and joy. These extend the divine life within us to those around us, and their practice has lasting effects on others and on us. They become transformative habits placing us on the path to perfection, which is always a path and never a destination reached in this life. The peace, calm, joy, love, and the Divine Presence, which are so available during contemplative meditation, can find expression in our practice of the virtues as well, and the virtues make our ordinary life consistent with our inner, transformative experience.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2010-09-07). A Monk in the World

While the great religions, in their respective beliefs and practices, have been isolated from one another, at their core they share a deeper dimension. This is the common ground that interspirituality explores: the dimension of mysticism across traditions. Interspirituality is based on the existential, innate interdependence of all beings, the essential interconnectedness of all reality. As do all sentient beings, the religions have a profound inner connection with one another and, ultimately, depend on one another for survival. As the collapse of barriers has accelerated in recent years, we have witnessed what futurist Linda Grof calls a boundary meltdown. Boundary meltdown doesn’t mean the loss of identity among the traditions but rather the freedom to experiment in our search for a spiritual path. It means that religions are no longer cultures set apart, but open systems conversing with the world and with one another either directly or through the agency of the interfaith movement.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2010-09-07). A Monk in the World

The practice of the virtues also means the practice of mercy, compassion, kindness, sensitivity, and love in our daily encounters with others. It requires that these virtues be more than deeply held attitudes, more than theoretical guides of behavior, but integral actions, guiding how our behavior takes shape in the real world. They take root in our identity, our character, and our being as we move through this distracted culture in search of integration with the ultimate mystery. We can discern the reality of such integral practice of the virtues in figures like Mother Teresa, Mairead Maguire, Thomas Keating, the Dalai Lama, and Desmond Tutu. But it is also evident in millions of other people who are unknown, yet just as heroic, in their practical virtue.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2010-09-07). A Monk in the World

In tandem with praying and upholding the virtues is the arduous work of inner transformation that comes through the self-knowledge that surfaces for us in prayer. Contemplation always exposes our hidden motivations in our unconscious memory of our early life or even of more recent experiences, it gives us lucid realizations of our inner states, and it grants us sobering self-knowledge. We realize the need to cleanse ourselves of the seeds of selfishness and negativity and to permit the unconscious to integrate with our deepest intention for God and love. This process takes time and requires that we actively participate by renewing our intention and attention. If the unconscious remains unintegrated with our spiritual lives because these seeds continue to grow into our conscious experience, then we have a divided heart, a will desiring God but other goods as well. We cannot have it both ways. When Jesus said, “You cannot serve two masters,” he didn’t mean that we can’t desire other things but that we shouldn’t prefer them to God. To become integrated, we need to pull out these unconscious roots and surrender them to the higher order of divine love. When we do, the unconscious is united with the conscious and the superconscious — the Divine — and they all work together for our complete transformation.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2010-09-07). A Monk in the World

A spiritual interdependence also exists between and among the world's religions. This interdependence is more subtle, though the actual impact of traditions on each other is clearly discernable in history, particularly where cultural contiguity exists. Hinduism has directly influenced the rise of Buddhism, for example. Jainism, in its teaching of ahimsa, or nonharming, has influenced both Buddhism and Hinduism. Christianity would hardly be possible without Judaism, and Islam is inconceivable without these predecessors. Sikhism developed in North India in the sixteenth century as a reaction to Islamic persecution, but its religious life, beliefs, rituals, and spirituality were shaped by both Hindu and Muslim forms. Similarly, Confucianism and Taoism in China mutually influenced each other; and Taoism had a deep impact on Chan Buddhism, which became Zen in Japan. These are just a few examples. Endless studies demonstrate the impact of earlier, lesser-known traditions and myths on the development and doctrines of the historical faiths. The impact of myths and these other traditions on the biblical tradition alone is staggering.
~ Wayne Teasdale. The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions

This spiritual interdependence is often indirect and thus not dearly seen. But it is nonetheless real. Monasticism in the West, for instance, which arose in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era in the deserts of Sinai, Palestine, and Syria, no doubt was affected by the rishis, the forest sages of Indian antiquity, and their monastic heirs, the sannyasis or renunciates. It is well known that Buddhist and Hindu monastic communities existed in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first century before Christ.
~ Wayne Teasdale. The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions

Father Bede realized that this same activity of assimilation with regard to Eastern wisdom needed to be a goal of the Church in our age. It was a constant theme in his public discourses, homilies, lectures, interviews, conversations, writings, and letters. He would make this point to every audience because he grasped so well its importance as the task of our age. He knew that interspirituality was the work we have to be about, the way that would advance the reconciliation of divided cultures, political systems, economic structures, and faiths. He pursued this vision within the Catholic Church and perceived the importance of the Church’s contribution to this bridge-building effort. One reason he emphasized this activity as a leadership role the Church must assume is her history, and her genius for assimilation and experimentation. This vision has now become a dominant movement in the third millennium and is really here to stay, putting down roots in world culture. Bede was fond of saying, “We are entering a new age,” and it can now be said that we have entered this new age, and it is the Interspiritual Age. In many ways, his works are all interspiritual, spanning two or more traditions, especially the Hindu and Buddhist, uniting them to the Christian, and so to the Jewish and Muslim as well.~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought Father Bede’s interspiritual bridge between Hinduism and Christianity became, first of all, his very disciplined meditation practice, and meditation is a contemplative activity that is capable of bringing all the religions together in their common depth dimension.

~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

On so many occasions in his long and fruitful life, Bede Griffiths had announced the dawning of a new age, which was not the popular notion of the New Age movement but really the opening to an integral humanism that brought together all the religions/spiritualities, science, and mysticism with the concern for the earth and the indigenous wisdom traditions, in a new vision of a reconciled humanity, where community and its gifts of sharing are the focus. Bedeji, as the sage of this new age, granted us, like Gandhi before him, an example of a concrete embodiment of engaged holiness and spirituality, heralding in the Interspiritual Age, in the sense above, and becoming in the process an intermystical as well as Christian saint. The impact of this gentle prophetic figure will be felt throughout the course of the third millennium and far beyond.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

Interspirituality is the activity and process of exploring other traditions in more than an academic sense. It presupposes an intense personal interest in these other forms of faith and spirituality. Such a level of interest reflects a commitment that affects one’s spiritual life itself. In the West, and other parts of the world, there is a growing movement of interspirituality. This movement in India, especially among Christians in relation to Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Sufism, is more than a casual interest or fascination; it is a substantial and mature commitment to a careful process of assimilation.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

At Shantivanam, Bede integrated sacred readings, prayers, poems, and songs from other traditions in the spiritual life of his community. Sanskrit and Tamil were part of the daily worship in the ashram. Readings from the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the poets Kabir and Rumi, and the Dhammapada, and other Buddhist suttas would be celebrated along with Christian readings, prayers, and hymns. Bede was naturally interspiritual in a vision of prayer and contemplative experience that drew on a discerned universal tradition underlying spiritual life and practice. This tradition is neither intentional nor systematic, but includes all manifestations of spirituality that arise from the dimension of depth in human experience that is found everywhere. As an interspiritual visionary, Father Bede found nourishment in this universal tradition of mysticism.
~ Teasdale, Wayne (2012-10-31). Bede Griffiths: An Introduction to His Interspiritual Thought

When one looks with what the early French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery referred to as "the eyes of the heart," one's vision is tempered with understanding, love, and compassion for one's fellow creatures. One sees the absolute value, which we might refer to as divinity, of everything. In other words, one looks beyond categories—deeper than labels such as Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, black, white, gay, straight. Saints, sages, and heroes across the centuries have always understood that seeing with the eyes of the heart allows the greatest potential for understanding, thereby fostering unity consciousness.
~ Kurt Johnson (The Coming Interspiritual Age)

Reality is ultimately a nondual union of emptiness and form, with form being innately subject to development over time.
~ Ken Wilber

A person’s deepest drive—the major drive of which all others are derivative—is the drive to actualize the entire Great Nest through the vehicle of one’s own being, so that one becomes, in full realization, a vehicle of Spirit shining radiantly into the world, as the entire world. We are all the sons and daughters of a Godhead that is the Goal and Ground of every gesture in the Kosmos, and we will not rest until our own Original Face greets us with each dawn.
~ Ken Wilber

This is the message . . . of the saints, sages, and mystics, whether Amerindian, Taoist, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, or Christian. At the bottom of your soul is the soul of humanity itself, but a divine, transcendent soul, leading from bondage to liberation, from enchantment to awakening, from time to eternity, from death to immortality.
~ Ken Wilber Third Millennial Spirituality will also be inter-spiritual and inter-mystical.

It will be an enhanced understanding of the inner life through assimilating the psychological, moral, aesthetic, spiritual and literary treasures of the world's religions. Each tradition will define itself in relation to every other viable tradition of the inner life; each will take into account the totality of the spiritual journey -- all the forms it assumes in human experience....If we are truly inter-mystics, we are open to wisdom where ever we find it. Inter-mysticism engages other media as integral parts of contemplative practice. It doesn't just depend on books or spiritual reading, but looks to art, music, and movies as a means to nourish contemplative life and the sacred. No matter the culture, music and art are present; they are universal languages of vast sacred potential. Art and music have an enormous and virtually untapped potential to contribute to our spiritual development; they are able to awaken, deepen, and expand the contemplative dimension of human being. Integrating music and art into contemplative practice or making them practices in themselves is another way of allowing spirituality to become more holistic -- to affect the whole person, each one of us in our expanded integrity. Art and music have special qualities that permit us to soar to heights far beyond the range of intellect into intuitive and supra-rational experience. In time and with guidance, they can become precious means of accessing mystical dimensions previously little known or experienced.
~ Brother Wayne Teasdale

Whether we’re talking about mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology or psychology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, history, and classics, knowledge in each discipline advances along a continuum between the hypothetical and the tested and confirmed. The humanities are part and parcel of the knowledge the human species has acquired about itself over the centuries, together with the social sciences and the natural sciences.~ Aldama, Frederick Luis: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts Indeed, it is the development of knowledge in the humanities that has allowed many fields to become real scientific disciplines and to become separate scientific endeavors, distinct from the humanities as still embryonic forms of future disciplines. By the end of the Middle Ages and from the Renaissance onward, many fields studied by Aristotle became independent sciences. The same thing happened with the domains included in the humanities. The number and the nature (contents) of those domains changed over the centuries and gave birth to new fields of humanities and to the so-called social sciences, along with a certain number of natural sciences.
~ Aldama, Frederick Luis: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts

In our many activities we are reshaping the world that exists independent of our creating; in turn, this transformed world shapes us and our subsequent activities. This takes place in a one world— a supersystem composed of interconnected systems of various kinds (physical, cultural, social, biological, and so on) that possess their own peculiar properties and laws. Given that this world is one, as the different tributaries of knowledge gain force and depth they necessarily move with increasing momentum toward one main stream.
~ Aldama, Frederick Luis: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts

This oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond.
~ Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation, 1964)

In Eastern cultures, sages move fluidly and confidently in the paradoxical domain without any trace of self-consciousness or distress. They know from experience that paradox and contradiction are inevitable when we enter the space of unconditioned awareness, and they welcome paradox because it points to the reality that cannot be captured by our thoughts. In nondual practice, paradoxes arise within our thought-stream in two ways. First, when we try to describe unconditioned awareness with accuracy and precision, we are often led to use statements that contain internal contradictions. The more rigor and clarity we bring to our descriptions, the more we are compelled to use paradoxical formulations. Second, when we speak from within an experience of unconditioned awareness about unconditioned awareness, paradoxes can flow forth as joyful and exuberant expressions of mental energy that is usually trapped by the need to appear sane and sensible. An engagement with these paradoxes and absurdities can produce an explosion of hilarity and laughter that shatters the seriousness with which we usually take ourselves and our practices. They also let us experience unconditioned awareness as a highly discerning and dynamic state of consciousness. If we let go of our need for conceptual consistency, these paradoxical thought-forms can act as a springboard to unconditioned awareness, especially for people who are familiar with the unconditioned.
~ Fenner Ph.D., Peter (2007-07-01). Radiant Mind

"There is one major exception to the common absolutist trend in religion. Paradoxically, it is mysticism. Precisely because the mystics claim that absolute spirit cannot be put into words, concepts, or doctrines of any sort whatsoever, mysticism has no dogmas, no formalism that is claimed to be the best or only way to describe reality. Quite the contrary, most mystics consistently maintain that reality is greater than any description or method that we might try to use to capture it, and that it is in fact our very compulsion to conceptualize and categorize reality that gets us into difficulties in the first place. One of the worst mistakes we can make, according to Buddhism, is called drsta in Sanskrit; it means dogmatic beliefs."
~ Ken Wilber

The mystics historically have been the most tolerant of peoples. Because they saw that "They call Spirit many who is really one," they tended to be exceptionally tolerant of diverse religious beliefs, since no particular religion could ever hope to embrace the whole. Ramakrishna, for example, described the world's great religious traditions as so many fingers on one hand. I think this is why the more esoteric of mystical religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, Sufism) historically tended to avoid war, whereas the more dogmatic or exoteric religions (aspects of Christianity, Islam, scientism) historically have been very warlike and aggressive. Buddhism, for example, in its 2500-year history has initiated not one war, a remarkable example considering the provocative atmosphere of its birth.
~ Ken Wilber

Another reason that mysticism is notoriously nondogmatic is that it relies for its validation on direct experience. In fact, its methods are, in the strictest sense of the word, experimental. One is not given a set of ready-made beliefs but a set of open-ended instructions. Mysticism is much more like, say, judo, than it is Bible school. I think this is why historically, in both East and West mysticism tended to ally itself with empirical science against scholastic religion, since both mysticism and science relied on direct experience and evidence instead of dogmatic proclamations.
~ Ken Wilber

Zealots come in all flavors. There are scientistic zealots and fanatics (Nazi doctors, for example) just as there are religious fanatics. But mystics historically rarely have been either; as a rule they have so undercut dogmatic conceptualization that there is no doctrine or dogma left to get fanatic about.
~ Ken Wilber

The world's great mystics have included not only the obvious religious teachers—Christ, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, Lao-tzu, Padmasambhava, Hui Neng, Milarepa, al- Hallaj, Shankara, and so on—but also many of the world's greatest philosophers, scientists, psychologists, and artists. Philosophers and psychologists with strong mystical elements include Plato, Socrates, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Berkeley, Emerson, Thoreau, Eckhart, Husserl, Heidegger, Augustine, Kierkegaard, Jung, Maslow, and William James—to give the shortest possible list. And scientists who have explicitly defined themselves as having mystical or transcendental concerns include Newton, Kepler, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, de Broglie, Planck, Pauli, Eddington—and those are just the physicists.
~ Ken Wilber

Strict transpersonalists, for example, Shankara, Nagarjuna, or Eckhart maintain that you cannot strictly say that the absolute either exists or does not exist, since both of those are dualistic or dogmatic conceptualizations, and reality is shunya or drsta ("free of dogma") or nirguna ("unqualifiable"). They most certainly do not think reality can be put into any doctrine, no matter how elaborate. As Zen says, all doctrines—including its own—are at best fingers pointing to the moon, and the important point is not to confuse the two.
~ Ken Wilber

“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“Twenty-five hundred years ago it took an exceptional individual like Diogenes to exclaim, ‘I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.’ Today we must all be struggling to make those words our own.”
~ Huston Smith, The Illustrated World’s Religions: A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions

All authentic religion originates with mystical experience, be it the experience of Jesus, of the Buddha, or Mohammed, of the seers and prophets of the Upanishads.
~ William Johnston, The Inner Eye of Love (1978)

"A lot of us don’t see ourselves in our bookshelves, our libraries, or our bookstores. Our bookshelves tend to be disproportionately white and disproportionately male and do not represent who we are in this country or who we are becoming. Long histories of bias, racism, and exclusion created and perpetuate these dismal inequalities. And none of this will change unless we work actively, mindfully, and collectively to dismantle the often-obscure structures of power that exist both within us and without. Our bookshelves need to look like the future and not the past; they should be brimming with writers of color, women of color writers, indigenous writers, immigrant writers, women writers, LGBTQIA writers. If the Law of the Old Bookshelf was cruel exclusion, the Law of the New Bookshelf should be Radical Joyous Inclusion. This is what we mean when we say “decolonize our bookshelves.” The only thing decolonizing seeks to exclude are the forces, systems and habits that have excluded so many of us for so long—forces, systems and habits that continue to have too much power in this world, and in our hearts."
~ Junot Díaz

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of [humankind].
~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) http://www.sacred-texts.com/

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
~ Nikola Tesla

The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless confusion of Nature. To the ordinary man who lives upon his own waking surface, ignorant of the self's depths and vastness behind the veil, his psychological existence is fairly simple...For our real self is not the individual mental being, that is only a figure, an appearance; our real self is cosmic, infinite, it is one with all existence and the inhabitants of all existence. The self behind our mind, life, and body is the same as the self behind the mind, life and body of all our fellow-beings, and if we come to possess it, we shall naturally, when we turn to look out again upon them, tend to become one with them in the common basis of our consciousness.
~ Sri Aurobindo

We are the guardians of His Beauty.
We are the protectors
Of the Sun.
There is only one reason
We have followed God into this world:
To encourage laughter, freedom, dance
And love.
Let a noble cry inside of you speak to me
Saying,
“Hafiz, Don't just sit there on the moon tonight
Doing nothing -
Help unfurl my heart into the Friend's Mind,
Help, Old Man, to heal my wounded wings!"
We are the companions of His Beauty
We are the guardians
Of Truth.
Every man, plant and creature in Existence,
Every woman, child, vein and note
Is a servant of our Beloved -
A harbinger of joy,
The harbinger of
Light.
~ Hafiz - "The Subject Tonight is Love"

The subtle level is the realm of deity mysticism. This is a world-space of deities, light, bliss, love and sounds. The subtle level has deep structures that are universal and cross-cultural. But its surface forms are molded by the individual and his or her culture, society, and religious background. A person having a subtle-level illumination (as in a near-death experience) may experience it in different ways. A Christian may see it as Christ or an angel, a Buddhist as a bliss body of Buddha, and a Jungian as the archetypal Self. The Jungian archetypes are, for the most part, magic and mythic, and not subtle level. The subtle archetypes are Light, Bliss, Sound and Consciousness. These are the Faces of the Divine, and are experienced as such.
~ Ken Wilber

Looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quite, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul.
~ Ken Wilber

In Ch'an Buddhism, the “position” of Absolute Subjectivity, that is, the “state” of knowing Reality non-dually, is called the “Host” position, as opposed to the “Guest” position of knowing reality through objective concepts. The man centered in the Host position is what in Taoism is called the “Superior Man,” and Rinzai calls it “The True Man of no Rank (wu-i).” But this is not man, as in Mr. John Doe, but Man (jen), the Divine Son, the second person of the Trinity, al-insan al-Kamil [of Islam], Pneuma, ruarch adonai, Nous, the Absolute Knower common in and to us all, the Atman, Purusa, Adam-Kadmon, Divine Man, Universal Man, Nietzsche's Superman, of no rank because nothing can be predicated of it, as when Shelley sings in Prometheus Unbound:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread,
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed. . . .
~ Wilber, Ken (2012-12-19). The Spectrum of Consciousness

You are the person who has to decide.
Whether you'll do it or toss it aside;
You are the person who makes up your mind.
Whether you'll lead or will linger behind.
Whether you'll try for the goal that's afar.
Or just be contented to stay where you are.
~ Edgar A. Guest, 1881-1959

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.
~ Dr. Seuss (1990) - “Oh, the Places You'll Go!”

Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice.
We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1926

The power of conscious choice is your profit earning capital. Pay attention! Watch over that moment of power.
~ Jalaluddin Rumi, 1207-1273 ~ “The Reins of Free Will,” Mathnawi III, 3299

Know to choose well. Most of life depends thereon. It needs good taste and correct judgment, for which neither intellect nor study suffices.
~ Baltasar Gracián y Morales, 1601-1685

I think that our power of conscious origination is where free will comes in… We are continually choosing between the good and the less good, whether aware of it or not.
~ Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
~ Khalil Gibran, 1883-1931

We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.
~ Thornton Wilder, 1897-1975

If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance for you to contribute to making a better world. That’s your choice.
~ Noam Chomsky, 1928

Highly proactive people recognize their “response-ability” – the ability to choose their response. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
~ Stephen Covey, 1932

By the Enlightenment of the East I simply mean any genuine spiritual experience, whether of East or West. It is simply that the Eastern traditions have demonstrated, on balance, a somewhat more widespread reliance on a deep science of the interior, made most famous in Gautama Buddha's enlightenment under the Bodhi tree around the sixth century B.C.E. But any direct spiritual realization—East or West, North or South—conforming to the tenets of deep science could just as well serve as an example (Plotinus, Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, al-Hallaj, St. Teresa, Boehme, Rumi, St. Augustine, Origen, Hildegard, Baal Shem Tov, Dame Julian, etc.). This spiritual Enlightenment is, by the virtually unanimous consensus of the higher sciences, the summum bonum of the Good life. And yet, by the tenets of the Enlightenment of the West, which must also be preserved, the state cannot in any way advocate or legislate in favor of this spiritual Enlightenment. The state must stay out of the business of publicly legislating the Good life, which belongs to the private sphere of each individual's own choice.
~ Ken Wilber

To be true, I must fully accept that at this moment, I can only be what I am . . . no more, no less; however, with the inevitable passing of each moment of time, I will gradually, but surely change . . . to become more or less, better or worse, stronger or weaker. My choice is the direction of change: it is mine alone. The only true competition is this rivalry with my changing self. It is the very basis of the grand eternal plan.
~ C. Smith Sumner

With constant witnessing consciousness, there is no desire to change anything that arises: you simply and innocently Witness it. It's a choiceless awareness, mirror-like awareness, which equally and impartially reflects whatever arises. So you remain conscious during the dream state, witnessing it, not changing it.
~ Ken Wilber

Out of every crisis comes the choice to be reborn, to reconceive ourselves as individuals, to choose the kind of change that will help us grow and fulfill ourselves more completely.
~ Nena O'Neill

At some point early in our lives, we decide just how conscious we wish to be. We establish a threshold of awareness. We choose how stark a truth we are willing to admit into consciousness, how readily we will examine contradictions in our lives and beliefs, how deeply we wish to penetrate. Our brains can censor what we see and hear, we can filter reality to suit our level of courage. At every crossroads we make the choice again for greater or lesser awareness.
~ Marilyn Ferguson, 1938

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.
~ Robert Foster Bennett

In any sense in which we can choose what action we shall do, we can choose what motive we shall act from.
~ C. S. Pierce

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment
because I know it is for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions,
persons, situations and conditions.
I let go of my desire for security.
I let go of my desire for approval.
I let go of my desire for control.
I let go of my desire to change any
situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God
and the healing action and grace within.
~ Mary Mrozowski, 1925-1993

Mind is indeed the source of bondage and
also the source of liberation.
To be bound to the things of this world: this is bondage.
To be free from them: this is liberation.
~ Upanishads, c. 1400-c. 800 BCE

The mighty ocean has but one taste,
The taste of salt.
Even so, the true way has
But one savor,
The savor of freedom.
~ Majjhima Nikaya

The Lord is enshrined in the hearts of all.
The Lord is the supreme reality.
Rejoice in him through renunciation.
Covet nothing.
All belongs to the Lord.
Thus working may you live a hundred years.
Thus alone can you work in full freedom.
~ Easwaran, Eknath, God Makes the Rivers to Flow (Essential Easwaran Library) (p. 31).

Emancipation is obtained when one realizes the oneness of his Self with the Universal Self, the Supreme Reality … Knowledge of evolution, life, and dissolution thus leads to complete emancipation from the bonds of maya, delusion. Beholding the self in the Supreme Self, man gains eternal freedom.
~ Sri Yukteswar, 1855-1936

He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves beside.
~ William Cowper, 1731-1800

He only has freedom who ideally loves freedom himself and is glad to extend it to others. He who cares to have slaves must chain himself to them. He who builds walls to cerate exclusion for others, builds walls across his own freedom.
~ Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941

To advance oneself toward freedom – physical, mental, and spiritual – and help others to do so, is the supreme prize of man. Those social rules which stand in the way of the unfoldment of this freedom are injurious, and steps should be taken to destroy them speedily. Those institutions should be encouraged by which men advance in the path of freedom.
~ Vivekananda, 1863-1902

Freedom is the nature of the soul, and for the soul the whole tragedy of life is the absence of that freedom which belongs to its original nature.
~ Hazrat Khan, 1882-1927

Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or ill, he has serene wisdom.
~ Bhagavad Gita

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
~ Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light!
~Hafiz

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful, then, are simply the faces of Spirit as it shines in this world. Spirit seen subjectively is Beauty, and I of Spirit. Spirit seen inter-subjectively is the Good, the We of Spirit. And Spirit seen objectively is the True, the It of Spirit....And whenever we pause, and enter the quiet, and rest in the utter stillness, we can hear that whispering voice calling to us still: never forgot the Good, and never forgot the True, and never forget the Beautiful, for these are the faces of your own deepest Self, freely shown to you.
~ Ken Wilber

Though I personally believe that a deeper truth is self-evident -- namely, that all human beings deserve to be respected and their opportunities to develop their capacities for love, generosity, creativity, beauty, freedom, knowledge, expanding consciousness, solidarity with others, and connection to spirit given as much support as possible -- I don't think there is any thing self-evident about how to apply such a principle in any given historical situation. And so I remain very cautious about those who think there is one and only one right way to apply this or any other ethical or spiritual intuition.
~ Rabbi Michael Lerner

It was never born, it will never die. It never enters that temporal stream. This vast Freedom is the great Unborn, of which the Buddha said: “There is an unborn, an unmade, an uncreate. Were it not for this unborn, unmade, uncreate, there would be no release from the born, the made, the created.” Resting in this vast expanse of Freedom is resting in this great Unborn, this vast Emptiness. And because it is Unborn, it is Undying. It was not created with your body, it will not perish when your body perishes. It’s not that it lives on beyond your body’s death, but rather that it never enters the stream of time in the first place. It doesn’t live on after your body, it lives prior to your body, always. It doesn’t go on in time forever, it is simply prior to the stream of time itself. Space, time, objects—all of those merely parade by. But you are the Witness, the pure Seer that is itself pure Emptiness, pure Freedom, pure Openness, the great Emptiness through which the entire parade passes, never touching you, never tempting you, never hurting you, never consoling you. And because there is this vast Emptiness, this great Unborn, you can indeed gain liberation from the born and the created, from the suffering of space and time and objects, from the mechanism of terror inherent in those fragments, from the vale of tears called samsara.
~Ken Wilber

Various types of meditation often aim for different transpersonal realms. Some aim for psychic experiences, some for the deity mysticism of the subtle realm, some for the formlessness and Freedom of the causal Witness, and some for nondual Unity or One Taste, which we will discuss in a moment. My recommendation is simply to start with the acknowledged teachers in any of the great contemplative traditions. One might start by consulting the works of Father Thomas Keating, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the Dalai Lama, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Bawa Muhaiyadeen, or any of the many widely acknowledged teachers in any of the great lineages. Perhaps later on we can talk about the importance of an integral practice that takes the best of these great traditions and integrates them with the best of psychotherapy, to arrive at an “all-level, all-quadrant” trans-formative practice.
~ Ken Wilber

They have completed their voyage;
they have gone beyond sorrow.
The fetters of life have fallen from them,
and they live in full freedom.
The thoughtful strive always.
They have no fixed abode,
but leave home like swans from their lake.
Like the flight of birds in the sky,
the path of the selfless is hard to follow.
They have no possessions,
but live on alms in a world of freedom.
Like the flight of birds in the sky,
their path is hard to follow.
With their senses under control,
temperate in eating, they know the meaning of freedom.
Even the gods envy the saints,
whose senses obey them like well-trained horses
and who are free from pride.
Patient like the earth, they stand like a threshold.
They are pure like a lake without mud,
and free from the cycle of birth and death.
Wisdom has stilled their minds,
and their thoughts, words, and deeds are filled with peace.
Freed from illusion and from personal ties,
they have renounced the world of appearance to find reality.
Thus have they reached the highest.
They make holy wherever they dwell,
in village or forest, on land or at sea.
With their senses at peace and minds full of joy, they make the forests holy.
~ Easwaran

I Have Learned So Much
I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself
A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
A Buddhist, a Jew.
The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me
That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, an angel,
Or even pure
Soul.
Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me
Of every concept and image
My mind has ever known.
~ Hafiz