The Yogasara Upanishad Quotes

“All that you can do is to raise the level of sattva. And then when sattva’s level is high, we have to wait one moment, any moment knowledge can dawn there. All that you can do to have sunlight in this room, is to open the curtains and keep the windows open. And when dawn comes, it just dawns. You have the sunlight inside. If you close your curtains, even if it’s midsummer afternoon, you will still find your room dark, because the gunas are cloudy.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Yogasara Upanishad

“Visayasukham duhkhavat parityaajyam. Unless you get this maturity, you cannot move into your center. It needs some maturity from the world, in the world, some amount of saturation, some amount of getting beaten up by situations in life, so that it pushes you to the center. If you are too ambitious all the time, thinking about this and this and this, your mind is hovering around the world, it can never get into the center.   That's why, either a person who is very saturated can go deep in meditation, or a person who has suffered in life can go into meditation. They know what was sorrow, and they can drop things like sorrow. Or they know what was sorrow, and they can take things, this is like sorrow.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Yogasara Upanishad

“5. Sarasyaavartaad iva vrttirantah karanaparinaamah. What are the thoughts? What are the vrittis, the modes, moods? They are like a whirlpool in the lake that is mind. It is the same substance in you, the same energy. You can spend the whole life worrying, grumbling, brooding over things and being miserable, or the same energy could be used to uplift you to unimaginable heights. It is one energy, one wave. That is your mind.   Like a whirlpool, the waves arise within the water. The same water is made into a wave. Thoughts are not some external force coming into you and attacking you. It is part of the consciousness. And how to move about with it, this we will see.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Yogasara Upanishad