The inner and outer Temple

Where one step is needed we would like to go a hundred steps.
It is for this that the Hindus asked simple worshippers
not to go directly into the temple,
but to go around it a hundred times before entering,
so that they felt that they had walked sufficiently
to be entitled to go in.

Hazrat Inayat Khan



Brahman in the Heart

Om.
There is in this city of Brahman an abode,
the small lotus of the heart; within it is a small akasa (room).
Now what exists within that small akasa,
that is to be sought after,
that is what one should desire to understand.
As far as, verily, this great akasa extends,
so far extends the akasa within the heart.
Both heaven and earth are contained within it,
both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars
– and whatever belongs to him (i.e. the embodied creature)
in this world and whatever does not –
all that is contained within it (i.e. the akasa in the heart).

With the old age of the body,
That (i.e. Brahman), does not age;
with the death of the body, That does not die.
In It all desires are contained.
It is the Self: free from sin,
free from old age, free from death,
free from grief, free from hunger, free from thirst.
Its desires come true, Its thoughts come true.
That Brahman (i.e. the real Self)
and not the body is the real city of Brahman.

Chhandogya-Upanishad