Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.
Every individual has the potentiality to become enlightened in the course of this life or later existences
The person who says, 'I'm enlightened' probably isn't.
How can one become enlightened? One can, because one is enlightened - one just has to recognize the fact.
Strictly speaking, "you" cannot become enlightened, because who you take yourself to be is like a ripple in the ocean of consciousness - or a little wave if you're a VIP - and the ripple doesn't become enlightened until it realizes that its ripple-identity is ultimately a misperception, that it is the ocean taking on a fleeting ripple-form.
I always like to see enlightened parents like that; it gives me hope for the future.
I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time.
A teacher will have an initial contact at some point with someone. It happens inwardly first. Before you ever meet an advanced teacher, they have somehow traveled inwardly along the astral planes.
Imagine that every person in the world is enlightened but you. They are all your teachers, each doing just the right things to help you learn perfect patience, perfect wisdom, perfect compassion.
Overcoming fear is a critical factor for anyone who wishes to be really happy, or anyone who wishes to become enlightened
Truly enlightened people never seek to be like others. Rather, they seek to be superior to their former selves.
If I had my choice I'd hang out anywhere. I mean, it doesn't matter. It's all God; it's all the same. There's only nirvana for the enlightened.
Many enlightened persons are never very well known. Many are reclusive. They live in little villages in India or up in the high Himalayas in Tibet. Some have no students at all. Some have a few.
Human beings have illusions. The enlightened don't have illusions. They see things as they are, and in that seeing, they see ecstasy and joy. They see the play of life.
Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.
Success is when the whole gets enlightened. When you become one with the whole, that's the real success. To be one with the whole is the real success. And when that success is achieved, then you really enjoy that growth - that growth of your awareness which makes you one with the whole. That is what you have to know, is to become your whole. You are just a fragment, a segment, a cell. You have to become the whole and that can be done only through this connection.
Success is when the whole gets enlightened. When you become one with the whole, that's the real success.
Systems of religious error have been adopted in times of ignorance. It has been the interest of tyrannical kings, popes, and prelates to maintain these errors. When the clouds of ignorance began to vanish and the people grew more enlightened, there was no other way to keep them in error but to prohibit their altering their religious opinions by severe persecuting laws. In this way persecution became general throughout Europe.
Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference.
Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.