Shri Ramakrishna was like the iron cask transformed into a glass cask through which can be seen the inner light as it is.
Gradually, by purity and unselfishness we can make the obscuring medium less and less dense, until at last it becomes as transparent as glass.
The Light Divine within is obscured in most people. It is like a lamp in a cask of iron, no gleam of light can shine through.
In Nirvana you are when you are not. Buddha said, "You are best, you are real, when you are not" — when the little self is gone.
No one will ever know his own Self or God; but we are that own Self, we are God.
All knowledge is of the reflected, as we can only see our face in a mirror.
Neither idealists nor materialists are right; we must take both idea and expression.
Each thought has two parts — the thinking and the word; and we must have both.
The great abstraction of ideas in the world is what we call God.