When the mind is completely still, then all movement ceases. Beneath the substrate of consciousness is that which the sages of Vedanta call the Absolute. While the Absolute cannot be described, it is only known by negation. Remove everything from the equation, and there it is, right here all along.

Because science has given modern society the things of comfort, solutions to important issues (sanitation, electricity, transportation, food production, entertainment, etc.), we have become conditioned to depend upon it for answers to everything. And because of this conditioning, we have come to rely upon science to also provide answers for that which is beyond its capacity to provide.

Consciousness says 'I am,' but it is the self that says 'I am this or that.

The enlightened sages speak of surrender to the guru. This is not to be taken literally as surrender to some personage embodied in a teacher. Instead it means to surrender the belief that you are an individual so that you may embrace what you are as consciousness

A wave on top of the ocean is still the ocean; it is still made of the same substance. Although it seems to be differentiated, it is still the ocean. It cannot move or change course from the entirety of the ocean, nor can it reorder the ocean so that it can do something that the rest of the water is not doing.

The subjective experience is an incalculable, immeasurable personal experience of what it is like to be alive, to exist. It is the feeling of knowing that one exists, no matter how unexplainable or unprovable. This continues to be a thorn in the side of scientists, because science demands proof for everything, yet even the most skeptical scientist knows that he has the subjective experience of knowing what it is like to say, 'I am.

...there is nothing that is truly objective, because all is consciousness, which is an undivided whole. As such, what is termed subjective and objective — the seer and the seen — are fictitious fragments of the whole. Both the seer and the seen are actually perceived aspects of a single consciousness.

The mind and brain enable us to be aware of the thoughts and actions that seem to arise and fall, but they do not create consciousness. They are effects of consciousness. All that comes and goes does so within this soup of consciousness.

The two-sided coin of pain and pleasure keeps the 'I' in force. Most suffering is caused in this unending and troubling cycle, because desire becomes the overriding goal of the self. It wants things, and if it is denied them it becomes angry, frustrated, depressed, violent, sad, anxious, jealous, envious, miserable, boisterous, agitated, divisive, sorrowful, and troublesome. In other words, it is in a conflict that is self-induced and ultimately self- sabotaging.