“The essence of life is change, he said, and the essence of eternal life is eternal change.”

San Manuel Bueno, Mártir (1933), Prologue

Indian Spirituality and Life (1919)
Context: The fundamental idea of all Indian religion is one common to the highest human thinking everywhere. The supreme truth of all that is is a Being or an existence beyond the mental and physical appearances we contact here. Beyond mind, life and body there is a Spirit and Self containing all that is finite and infinite, surpassing all that is relative, a supreme Absolute, originating and supporting all that is transient, a one Eternal. A one transcendent, universal, original and sempiternal Divinity or divine Essence, Consciousness, Force and Bliss is the fount and continent and inhabitant of things.
Soul, nature, life are only a manifestation or partial phenomenon of this self-aware Eternity and this conscious Eternal.

Source: Our Christ : The Revolt of the Mystical Genius (1921), pp. 165-166
Context: The difference between Christ and the other prophets is threefold:
1. Unlike the other prophets, he has no connection with politics and is not a people's tribune. In the Gospels, we find temporal circumstances only as background, Christ having no relationship to them at all. He kept his thoughts unmuddled by the world — "Get thee behind me, Satan!" — he was and remained truly free of the world.
2. He preaches no religious superficialities whatsoever, nothing at all of worship, nothing of God; he is truly godless.
3. Neither for earth nor heaven does he preach any coming kingdom. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" ( Mt. 6:33 http://bible.cc/matthew/6-33.htm). The kingdom, however, is nothing that is to come; it is here, it is within you ( Lk. 17:21 http://bible.cc/luke/17-21.htm). It is the Spirit of innerness as it is alive in him, the truly blessed man; it is the essence, ever being and never changing. It is also the essence of this our life, not merely an appendix granted it by some other essence, for which we would have to fulfill certain conditions.

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

Michel Henry, C'est moi la Vérité, éd. du Seuil, 1996, p. 291
Books on Religion and Christianity, I am the Truth. Toward a philosophy of Christianity (1996)
Original: (fr) Mais quand donc ce bouleversement émotionnel qui ouvre le vivant à sa propre essence se produit-il et pourquoi ? Nul ne le sait. L’ouverture émotionnelle du vivant à sa propre essence ne peut naître que du vouloir de la vie elle-même, comme cette re-naissance qui lui donne d’éprouver soudain sa naissance éternelle. L’Esprit souffle où il veut.