Meher Baba:

"The Soul's apparent imprisonment becomes so suffocatingly unbearable that it - by the Master's grace - literally tears itself free; and the feeling of exultation is as powerful as was its feeling of suffocation. The experience of both imprisonment and release is of Illusion; but the experience of the final Freedom is of Reality. The emancipated Soul then experiences continuously and eternally its own infinite freedom. The world exists only as long as the Soul experiences bondage; when the Soul realizes itself as Reality the world vanishes - for it never was. And the Soul experiences itself as being Infinite & Eternal."

--The Everything and the Nothing

Shankara:

"You can't deprive yourself of your Self."

"Talk as much philosophy as you please, worship as many gods as you like, observe all ceremonies, sing devoted praises to any number of divine beings -- liberation never comes, even at the end of a hundred aeons, without the realization of the Oneness of Self."

--Crest Jewel of Discrimination

Sri Aurobindo:

"There is a Power within that knows beyond our knowings; we are greater than our thoughts, and sometimes earth reveals that vision here. To live, to love are signs of infinite things, love is a glory from eternity's spheres. Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights that steal his name and shape and ecstasy, He is still the Godhead by which all can change. A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff.

...I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him."

-- Savitri

Ramana Maharshi:

"The sense of 'I' pertains to the person, the body and brain. When a man knows his true Self for the first time something else arises from the depths of his being and takes possession of him. That something is behind the mind; it is infinite, divine, eternal. Some people call it the Kingdom of Heaven, others call it the Soul and others again Nirvana and Hindus call it Liberation; you may give it what name you wish. When this happens a man has not really lost himself; rather he has found himself.

Unless and until a man embarks on this quest of the true Self, doubt and uncertainty will follow his footsteps through life. The greatest kings and statesmen try to rule others when in their heart of hearts they know that they cannot rule themselves. Yet the greatest power is at the command of the man who has penetrated to his inmost depth.... What is the use of knowing about everything else when you do not yet know who you are? Men avoid this inquiry into the true Self, but what else is there so worthy to be undertaken?"

--Ramana Maharshi and The Path of Self-knowledge

Mother Aurobindo:

What is this creation after all?...Separateness, and then meanness and cruelty - the thirst to harm - and then suffering; and then illness, decay and death, destruction. All that is part of the same thing. And what I experienced was the UNREALITY of those things, as if we were trapped in an unreal falsehood, and everything vanishes when we get out of it, it DOESN'T EXIST, it isn't! That's what is frightening! That all those things which are so real, so concrete, so frightening for us do not exist. That...we are simply trapped in a falsehood.

Why? How? What? Never, ever, not once in all its life, had this body felt such total and profound pain as it did that day, OH!...Then, at the end of it bliss: And everything vanished. As if all that, all those awful things, didn't exist. From the fool who kills himself to put an "end" to his life - that's the most foolish of all - to Nirvana (which gives the impression you can escape), all that is worthless. They are at different levels, but they are worthless.

And after that, just when you feel you are stuck in hell forever, suddenly...suddenly, a state of consciousness in which everything is light, splendor, beauty, happiness, kindness...It is impossible to express. "Here I am", it comes, then zap! Gone. Is that it? Is that the key?...I don't know.

But Salvation is physical, not mental in the least, but PHYSICAL. I mean it isn't found in flight: it's HERE. And it isn't veiled or hidden or anything: it's HERE. What is it in the whole that prevents us from living "that", and why? I don't know. It's here. It is HERE. And all the rest, including death and all that, simply become a falsehood, meaning something that DOES NOT EXIST.
...But one can't get out all alone.

--Mind of the Cells