Perfect Brilliant Stillness Quotes

“Consciousness is all there is, flowing, streaming through these instruments in a manner which, in accordance with the perfect unfolding of totality, is perceived as discreet individual entities autonomously performing actions, but in truth this is not the case. There is no individual, no entity, no separate self here to do anything or to be anything, awakened or enlightened included.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“Whoever brought me here
will have to take me home.” – Rumi”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“It may be helpful to let go of the idea that God has somehow screwed up and needs your help and involvement, or that of the sage, to set things right. What is, cannot but be the perfect unfolding in Consciousness. And if an adjustment is needed to maintain the cosmic balance, some ‘one,’ perhaps ‘you,’ will be irresistibly motivated to perform an action which will serve that purpose. And that too will be the perfect unfolding. Just don’t take it personally.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“This Presence is what streams or flows, to use the image, through the mind/body apparatus, animating it, rendering it conscious; so conscious that it actually thinks, as most others like it also think, that it is an individual autonomous entity, a separate being which is conscious. But it is not. That is the illusion. There are no separate beings. There is nobody home.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“The flute does not know music: it does not know ‘G’ from ‘B flat;’ it does not know tempo or emphasis, and cannot make music come out of itself: it’s just a hollow bamboo stick with holes in it! It is the musician who has the knowledge and the skill and the intention and the dexterity, and whose breath blows through the instrument and whose fingers manipulate the openings so that beautiful music flows out. When the music is ended, no one congratulates the wooden stick on the music it made: it is the musician who is applauded and thanked for this beautiful gift of music.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“There is an agreed upon, consensus reality which almost the entire human race shares. The world has been around a long time; it is ancient. Into this world, you are born as an individual; you grow, learn, experience life, and die. There is some disagreement concerning what happens after that, except that for everyone else, life will go on – until they also die. Everybody thinks they know this – or some local variation of this. But in fact when you were ‘born’ you did not know this. You learned this. Everyone else learned it too and so it is an almost universally shared idea. But everybody believing something doesn’t make it true.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.” – Rumi WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE TO KNOW, absolutely know beyond any doubt, that everything really is all right, that there is no reason to fear. That there is no need to feel despair or loss or uncertainty. That all the pain and hurt and evil we have seen truly is only an illusion, and that the most beautiful things we have experienced are only a glimpse, a small taste, of what is truly ‘real,’ and truly ours. That everything is all right; that everything is perfect as it is; that all is well. This is what I see, and what I know.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness

“visionaries and such ‘raving’ are at the foundation of most of the world’s great religious and philosophical traditions. Few of these traditions still explicitly claim such ideas as part of their overt teachings or practices, but a little research reveals that they were there at the beginning, in the ideas or experience or vision of the person around whom the tradition formed or in its foundational writings. Which again is an inaccurate statement, since again the idea that there was a ‘person’ as an individual entity whose individual ideas or experience were the beginning of a tradition is itself part of the illusion. So you can see that there is something of a communication problem here.”
― David Carse, Perfect Brilliant Stillness