This is a curated selection of Swami Sarvapriyananda quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Swami Sarvapriyananda’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Quotes on Spirituality & Advaita Vedanta
- Quotes on Appearances & Reality
- Quotes on Subject & Object
- Quotes on Mind & Witness
25 Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Advaita Vedanta, Reality, Self, & More
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Spirituality & Advaita Vedanta
“There are two broad approaches to spiritual life: 1) One is a ‘that’-centered approach, God-centered, and 2) the other is a ‘thou’, inquiring to the self. 1) Search for God … and 2) what/who am I?” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The God-centered religions/mentality is likely to be devotional: worship oriented, likely to be dualistic, likely to be temple/church/mosque oriented, likely to be ritualistic. In contrast, you will find the self-inquiry based religions tend to be: more monastic in nature, more of an inquiry, more intellectual, meditative rather than devotional, more meditation hall oriented rather than temple oriented.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The great disadvantage of a God-centered approach, especially in today’s world, is that the God-centered approach starts with—and proceeds with for a long time—faith. Belief. If you start with questioning and skepticism, it’s very difficult to follow the God-centered approach.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Notice how much effort is put forth in trying to convince others and yourself God exists. In contrast, nowhere you will find any effort put forward to prove that I exist. Nobody really doubts his or her own existence. If you doubt, then who is the one doubting? That one exists … The advantage of the thou-centered approach is that there’s no doubt that I exist. But the problem is this: I exist, but my existence is a miserable existence.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“What does Vedanta do? That thou art. It brings these two together. The great insight of Advaita Vedanta is: what you reach through the God-centered approach (that) and what you reach through the self-inquiry approach (thou) is the same reality. By bringing them together, Atman is Brahman. That thou art. The realization is: that indubitable, undoubtable, personal existence is also the infinitude of God. The unproblematic, infinite nature of God, and the undoubted, certain nature of yourselves are combined. So, you have a certain, undoubted, infinite existence. That is what you come upon in Advaitic realization.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You can describe Advaita Vedanta in one sentence: Tat Tvam Asi (That Thou Art) … ‘That’ meaning that which is worshipped as God, the reality behind this universe. ‘Thou’ meaning you the individual. You and that are the same thing … We investigate these two polarities … The analysis into who am I or what am I, and an analysis into what is God. Then you come to a synthesis: seeing that what is the reality beyond God and beyond individual.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita Vedanta’s stunning breakthrough was that this ultimate nature of things—sat chit ananda—is you … Our real nature is this sat chit ananda … Tat Tvam Asi (That Thou Art) … Once we realize this, once we come to know it and we see it as a living reality, at the deepest level all our problems are solved.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Appearances & Reality
“The world is an appearance … You are real. But, you are real as the Absolute.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The essence of the teaching is that you are the ultimate reality, and if you would know yourself as that, then all your problems would be solved. You’ll be able to overcome all the sufferings of life … There is no greater adventure in human life, no greater challenge in human life, no greater purpose or goal in human life, than to know this and to realize it in our life.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“There is an absolute reality, this world is an appearance of that reality, and you are that absolute reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“This entire world, body, mind, this person, and all other persons are all appearances in Me, the one consciousness.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“When you know yourself truly as you are, you will know the reality … Our reality is the ultimate reality. God is our own reality. You are Brahman. This is the ultimate reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“This very consciousness that you have right now, this awareness itself, is the absolute reality … This very self, this Self itself, is the absolute reality.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Subject & Object
“Advaita is entirely philosophically-based on reason and most importantly on our common shared experience. Advaita does not demand of you any kind of belief, it does not demand of you any kind of extraordinary mystical experience, it just demands of you that you are conscious and then look at the structure of our conscious experience—a subject and an object.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita says take your experience seriously. In consciousness, everything is experienced … Whatever you experience is an object; that which experiences is a subject. In the beginning, we make a division between the subject and object. We take it seriously, and we investigate. The subject is seen to be consciousness. A negative definition of consciousness is ‘that to which objects appear’. An object is anything that is experienced … ‘anything that objects to my consciousness.'” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“When we make this division that whatever you experience is an object, very soon we begin to see that the things we experience in the world ‘out there’ are objects but then our body is an object too … And, even more stunning, mind is an object—thoughts, feelings, emotions. Clearly objects come in two varieties: one is a publicly shared (what you can see around you), and one is the first-person private set of objects (memories, thoughts, pleasure, pain, the very personality itself).” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita Vedanta makes a clear distinction between mind and consciousness on the basis that mind is something that appears to consciousness. Therefore, consciousness is just that which illumines all objects … First-person experience is what consciousness does … From Advaita’s perspective, the definition of experience is ‘consciousness plus object.'” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Advaita says the entire universe is an object, known and unknown, appearing in consciousness—not distinct from consciousness, not constituting a countable second to consciousness. It’s not actually a second entity apart from consciousness, just as waves are not a countable second apart from water … All the universe, known and unknown, is nothing but consciousness appearing to itself as its own objects, and therefore not two, non-dual.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“Your existence is not dependent on what you are attached to … You are unattached. You are the illuminer. You are real … That which illumines is not affected by which it illumines. The object illumined does not affect the light … The appearance cannot affect the reality … That which is an appearance cannot affect that which is real.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
Swami Sarvapriyananda Quotes on Mind & Witness
“You are ever the witness, never the witnessed; ever the subject, never an object.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“‘I feel that I am trapped in the mind.’ What notices this feeling of being trapped in the mind? Is that one trapped in the mind? … That one is not trapped in the mind. Never was.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“I am the mind, right? No, not really. How many times the mind has woken up in the morning, how many times the mind dreamt, how many times the mind slept—and you are the witness of all of them.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You are the one which is free of happiness and sadness. You are the one which is the witness of happiness and sadness—witness of their arrival, witness of their stay, witness of their departure.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“The good and the bad, the elevating and the demeaning, float past you in the stream of the mind. You are the consciousness sitting on the banks of the river of the mind watching.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
“You are the witness of all your thoughts, and you are the witness of the absence of your thoughts too.” — Swami Sarvapriyananda
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