Stages

There is a stage in the beginning, when you identify yourself with the body, when you are still having the body-consciousness. At that stage, you have the feeling you are different from the reality or God, and then it is, you think of yourself as a devotee of God or as a servant or lover of God. This is the first stage. The second stage is when you think of yourself as a spark of the divine fire or a ray from the divine Sun. Even then there is still that sense of difference and the body-consciousness. The third stage will come when all such difference ceases to exist, and you realise that the Self alone exists.

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

...from 'Day by Day with Bhagavan', 24-11-46

Buddha

As you can walk
through a busy marketplace
and not touch or speak
to a single person,
in the same way you can
move through this mind field
and yet not get entangled
with any thought activity.
Such a one moves
without trace
and is called a Buddha.

~ Mooji

Self knowledge

‘I am not the body. I am Brahman which is manifest as the Self. In me who am the plenary Reality,* the world consisting of bodies, etc., is a mere appearance, like the blue of the sky’. He who has realized the truth thus is a jivanmukta. Yet, so long as his mind has not been resolved, there may arise some misery for him because of relation to objects on account of prarabdha (karma which has begun to fructify and whose result is the present body), and as the movement of mind has not ceased there will not be also the experience of bliss. The experience of Self is possible only for the mind that has become subtle and unmoving as a result of prolonged meditation. He who is thus endowed with a mind that has become subtle, and who has the experience of the Self is called a jivanmukta. It is the state of jivanmukti that is referred to as the attributeless Brahman and as the Turiya.

(From 'Self-enquiry': 40)

*If there is prolonged meditation that the worlds are an appearance in me, who am the plenary Reality, where can ignorance stand? — 'Kaivalya Navaneetha'

Jivanmukti

He who is thus endowed with a mind that has become subtle, and who has the experience of the Self is called a jivanmukta. It is the state of jivanmukti that is referred to as the attributeless Brahman and as the Turiya. When even the subtle mind gets resolved, and experience of self ceases, and when one is immersed in the ocean of bliss and has become one with it without any differentiated existence, one is called a videhamukta. It is the state of videhamukti that is referred to as the transcendent attributeless Brahman and as the transcendent Turiya. This is the final goal. Because of the grades in misery and happiness, the released ones, the jivanmuktas and videhamuktas, may be spoken of as belonging to four categories — Brahmavid, Brahmavara, Brahmavariya and Brahmavarishtha. But these distinctions are from the standpoint of the others who look at them; in reality, however, there are no distinctions in release gained through jnana.

(From 'Self-enquiry': 40)

Reality

Reality pulls you toward Itself, and illusion pulls you toward itself. If you let go the pull of Reality, you get drowned in the ocean of illusion. If you lean toward both, you get crushed. So let go the pull of illusion through love and become One with Reality.

~ Meher Baba

Vigyan bhairava Tantra

Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity.

Vigyan bhairava Tantra

If you are looking into the emptiness, there is nothing to be reflected – or only the blue infinite sky. If it is reflected, if you feel the blue infinite sky within, you will become serene, you will find serenity. That is there. And if really you can conceive of emptiness – where sky, blue, everything disappears: just at emptiness – inside also emptiness will be reflected. And in emptiness, how can you be worried, how can you be tense?

In emptiness, how can the mind function? It stops; it disappears. In the disappearance of the mind – the mind that is tense, worried, filled with thoughts that are relevant, irrelevant – in that disappearance of the mind, THE SERENITY.

Explained by Osho..