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You never identify yourself with the shadows cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in a dream or in your imagination. Therefore you should not identify yourself with this living body either.

Adi Shankara

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Adi Shankara
Philosopher
Adi Sankarachaarya
Sankaracarya
Aryamba antharjanam
Sankara bhagavatpāda
Śankara
Shankara
Śaṅkarācārya
Imagination
Shadows
Living
Identify
Dream
Cast
Body
Casts
Never
Reflection
Shadow
Therefore
Either

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Thus one should know oneself to be of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss[Sat-Chit-Ananda].
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As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, attachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality.
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Space seems broken and diverse because of the many forms in it. Remove the forms and pure space remains. So, too with the Omnipresent Self.
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Just as a stone, a tree, a straw, grain, a mat, a cloth, a pot, and so on, when burned, are reduced to earth (from which they came), so the body and its sense organs, on being burned in the fire of Knowledge, become Knowledge and are absorbed in Brahman, like darkness in the light of the sun.
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Reality can be experienced only with the eye of understanding, not just by a scholar
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All the manifested world of things and beings are projected by imagination upon the substratum which is the Eternal All-pervading Vishnu, whose nature is Existence-Intelligence just as the different ornaments are all made out of the same gold.
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Do not look at anybody in terms of friend or foe, brother or cousin do not fritter away your mental energies in thoughts of friendship or enmity. Seeking the Self everywhere, be amiable and equal-minded towards all, treating all alike.
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From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures.
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