Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda is one of the greatest figures in the world of religious and philosophical thought. He is one of the first to bring the eternal ideas and concepts of the East (namely the Vedanta and the advaitic interpretation of it) over to the West. In 1893 he made his way to The Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and there made a great impression, expounding upon the doctrines of universality and acceptance that run throughout the Hindu religion. He subsequently toured for various years, lecturing, writing, and giving many discourses - academic and otherwise - along the way. The majority (if not entirety) of this work of his (along with various articles published about him in the newspapers of the day) were published in eight volumes and distributed for the education and benefit of a wider audience.

I spent the better part of a year reading The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda - as the collection is entitled - and, along the way, took note of various things mentioned that simply struck a chord with me. After the completion of the "Works", I typed out the quotes for my own perusal and edification. While doing this, however, I realized that I may not be the only individual that would potentially benefit from going through a sampling of some of Swami Vivekananda's thoughts and sayings. That is why I am posting the entirety of the quotes on this site.

I do not pretend in the least that this is any sort of exhaustive study of Vivekananda's views. Far from it indeed. Again, it is simply some of the things that I - with admited bias - happened to make note of. The reader will find various repetitions, as some of the quotes are from lectures that, while at times given months (if not years) apart, discussed certain central themes the more important points of which beared reiterating. As well, and barring where absolutely necessary, the text has been degendered.

I certainly hope that the readers here find as much benefit from these words and teachings as I myself have already, and will most certainly continue to have in the future.

Volume I

...how is it that I do not remember anything of my past life? This can be easily explained. I am now speaking English. It is not my mother tongue, in fact no words of my mother tongue are now present in my consciousness; but let me try to bring them up, and they rush in. That shows that consciousness is only the surface of the mental ocean, and within its depths are stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle, they would come up and you would be conscious even of your past life

. . . .

Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep...

. . . 

Thou art ...[That which]...beareth the burdens of the universe; help me bear the little burden of this life.

. . . 

The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising - not in believing, but in being and becoming.

. . . 

As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus Chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all others could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfil its services in discovering one energy of which all the others are but manifestations, and the science of religion become perfect when it would discover...[That which]...is the one life in a universe of death, ...[That which] is the constant basis of an ever-changing world.

. . .

If you really want to judge...character, look not at...[one's]...great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch...[one]...do...[their]...most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great...[person]

. . . . 

[Those]...of mighty will the world has produced have all been tremendous workers - gigantic souls, with wills powerful enough to overturn worlds, wills they got by persistent work, through ages, and ages. Such a gigantic will as that of a Buddha or a Jesus could not be obtained in one life, for we know who their fathers were. It is not known that their fathers ever spoke a word for the good of...[humanity]. Millions and millions of carpenters...had...[come and] gone; millions are still living. Millions and millions of petty kings like Buddha's father had been in the world. If it was only a case of hereditary transmission, how do you account for this petty prince, who was not, perhaps, obeyed by his own servants, producing this son, whom half a world worships? How do you explain the gulf between the carpenter and his son, whom millions of human beings worships as God? It cannot be solved by the theory of heredity. The gigantic will which Buddha and Jesus threw over the world, whence did it come? Whence came this accumulation of power? It must have been there through ages and ages, continually growing bigger and bigger, until it burst on society in a Buddha or a Jesus, even rolling down to the present day. 

 . . . 

 No one can get anything unless...[they]...earn it. This is an eternal law. We may sometimes think it is not so, but in the long run we become convinced of it. [One]...may struggle all...[their]...life for riches; [they]...may cheat thousands, but...[they]...find at last that...[they]...did not deserve to become rich, and...[their]...life becomes a trouble and nuisance to...[them]. We may go on accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but only what we earn is really ours. A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to. 

 . . . 

The majority of us cannot see beyond a few years, just as some animals cannot see beyond a few steps. Just a little narrow circle - that is our world. We have not the patience to look beyond, and thus become immoral and wicked. This is our weakness, our powerlessness. 

 . . . 

To the...[one]...who has begun to hate...[themselves]...the gate to degeneration has already opened... 

 . . . 

[They]...who think...of another woman besides...[their spouse]...if [they]...touch...[them]...even with...[their]...mind - that...[person]...goes to a dark hell. 

 . . . 

Until there is spiritual strength...even physical needs cannot be well satisfied. 

. . . 

There was once a little village, and in it there dwelt a poor Brahmin with his wife, his son, and his son's wife. They were very poor and lived on small gifts made to them for preaching and teaching. There came in that land a three years' famine, and the poor Brahmin suffered more than ever. At last when the family had starved for days, the father brought home one morning a little barley flour, which he had been fortunate enough to obtain, and he divided it into four parts, one for each member of the family. They prepared it for their meal, and just as they were about to eat, there was a knock at the door. The father opened it, and there stood a guest. Now in India a guest is a sacred person; he is as a god for the time being, and must be treated as such. So the poor Brahmin said, 'Come in, sir' you are welcome.' He set before the guest his own portion of the food which the guest quickly ate and said, 'Oh, sir, you have killed me. I have been starving for ten days, and this little bit has but increased my hunger.' Then the wife said to her husband, 'Give him my share,' but the husband said, 'Not so.' The wife however insisted, saying, 'Here is a poor man, and it is our duty as householders to see that he is fed, and it is my duty as a wife to give him my portion, seeing that you have no more to offer him.' Then she gave her share to the guest, which he ate, and said he was still burning with hunger. So the son said, 'Take my portion also; it is the duty of a son to help his father to fulfil his obligations.' The guest ate that but remained still unsatisfied; so the son's wife gave him her portion also. That was sufficient, and the guest departed, blessing them. That night those four people died of starvation. 

. . . 

Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continuous friction otherwise. 

. . . 

The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually. 

. . . 

We cannot breathe or live without injuring others, and every bit of food we eat is taken away from another's mouth. Our very lives are crowding out other lives. 

. . . 

...the bigot does not know that his own end and aim in life is exactly the same as that of those from whom he differs. 

. . . One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then...[they]... are God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if...[they are]...selfish, ...[they are]...intensely merged in the world. 

. . . 

First kill your self and then take the whole world as yourself. 

. . . 

 "...Thou hast created this sun for me and this moon for me." as if the Lord has had nothing else to do than to create everything for these babies. Do not teach your children such nonsense. Then again, there are people who are foolish in another way: they teach us that all these animals were created for us to kill and eat, and that this universe is for the enjoyment of...[humans]. That is all foolishness. A tiger may say, "[Humans were]...created for me," and pray, "O Lord, how wicked are these...[people]...who do not come and place themselves before me to be eaten; they are breaking Your law." 

. . . 

In the external world the idea of law is the same as in the internal - the expectation that a particular phenomenon will be followed by another, and that the series will repeat itself. Really speaking, therefore, law does not exist in nature. Practically it is an error to say that gravitation exists in the earth, or that there is any law existing objectively anywhere in nature. Law is the method, the manner in which our mind grasps a series of phenomena; it is all in the mind. Certain phenomena, happening one after another or together, and followed by the conviction of the regularity of their recurrence - thus enabling our minds to grasp the method of the whole series - constitute what we call law. 

. . . 

This universe is only a part of the infinite existence, thrown into a peculiar mould, composed of space, time, and causation. 

. . . 

 ...there cannot be any such thing as free will - the very words are a contradiction, because will is what we know, and everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation....But that which has become converted into the will, which was not the will before, but which, when it fell into this mould of sapce, time, and causation, became converted into the human will, is free; and when this will gets out of this mould of space, time, and causation, it will be free again. From freedom it comes, and becomes moulded into this bondage, and it gets out and goes back to freedom again. 

. . . 

When...[one]...says that...[they]...will have again and again this same thing which...[they are]...having now, or, as I sometimes put it, when...[one]...asks for a comfortable religion, you may know that...[they have]...become so degenerate that...[they]...cannot think of anything higher than what...[they are]...now. 

. . . 

...real religion begins where this little universe ends. 

. . . 

Until we give up the thirst after life, the strong attachment to this our transient conditioned existence, we have no hope of catching even a glimpse of that infinite freedom beyond. It stands to reason then that there is only one way to attain to that freedom which is the goal of all the noblest aspirations of...[humanity]...and that is by giving up this little life. 

. . . 

The greatest...[humans]...in the world have passed away unknown. The Buddhas and the Christs that we know are but second-rate heroes in comparison with the greatest...[humans]...of whom the world knows nothing. Hundreds of these unknown heroes have lived in every country working silently. Silently they live and silently they pass away; and in time their thoughts find expression in Buddhas or Christs, and it is these latter that become known to us. 

. . . 

If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. 

. . . 

[they]...who...[do]...good work even in order to get to heaven bind...[themselves]...down. 

. . .
Since the dawn of history, various extraordinary phenomena have been recorded as happening amongst human beings. Witnesses are not wanting in modern times to attest to the fact of such events, even in societies living under the full...[light]...of modern science. The vast mass of such evidence is unreliable, as coming from ignorant, superstitious or fraudulent persons. In many instances the so-called miracles are imitations. But what do they imitate? It is not the sign of a candid and scientific mind to throw overboard anything without proper investigation. Surface scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence. They are, therefore, more culpable than those who think that their prayers are answered by a being, or beings, above the clouds, or than those who believe that their petitions will make such beings change the course of the universe. The latter have the excuse of ignorance, or at least of a defective education, which has taught them dependence upon such beings, a dependence which has become a part of their degenerate nature. The former have no such excuse. 

. . . 

What right has...[one]...to say...[that they have]...a soul if...[they do]...not feel it, or that there is a God if...[they do]...not see...[It]? If there is a God we must see...[It]...if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise it is better not to believe. It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite. 

. . . 

If you want to become an astronomer and sit down and cry "Astronomy! Astronomy!" it will never come to you. The same with chemistry. A certain method must be followed. You must go to the laboratory, take different substances, mix them up, compound them, experiment with them, and out of that will come a knowledge of chemistry. If you want to b e an astronomer, you must go to an observatory, take a telescope, study the stars and planets, and then you will become an astronomer. 

. . . 

From our childhood upwards we have been taught only to pay attention to things external, but never to things internal; hence most of us have nearly lost the faculty of observing the internal mechanism. To turn the mind, as it were, inside, stop it from going outside, and then to concentrate all its powers, and throw them upon the mind itself, in order that it may know its own nature, analyse itself, is very hard work. 

. . . 

...in the study of this Raja-Yoga no faith or belief is necessary. believe nothing until you find it out for yourself... 

. . . 

You must practice at least twice every day, and the best times are toward the morning and the evening. When night passes into day, and day into night, a state of relative calmness ensues. The early morning and the early evening are the two periods of calmness. Your body will have a like tendency to become calm at those times. We should take advantage of that natural condition and begin then to practice. Make it a rule not to eat until you have practiced; if you do this, the sheer force of hunger will break your laziness. 

. . . 

Just as in a rushing stream there may be millions of whirlpools, the water in each of which is different every moment, turning round and round for a few seconds, and then passing out, replaced by a fresh quantity, so the whole universe is one constantly changing mass of matter, in which all forms of existence are so many whirlpools. 

. . . 

The most obvious manifestation of this Prana in the human body is the motion of the lungs. If that stops, as a rule all the other manifestations of force in the body will immediately stop. But there are persons who can train themselves in such a manner that the body will live on, even when this motion has stopped. There are some persons who can bury themselves for days, and yet live without breathing. 

. . . 

If it be true that the departed spirits exist, only we cannot see them, it is quite probable that there may be hundreds and millions of them about us we can neither see, feel, nor touch. We may be continually passing and repassing through their bodies, and they do not see or feel us. It is a circle within a circle, universe within universe. We have five senses, and we represent Prana in a certain state of vibration. All beings in the same state of vibration will see one another, but if there are beings who represent Prana in a higher state of vibration, they will not be seen. We may increase the intensity of a light until we cannot see it at all, but there may be beings with eyes so powerful that they can see such light. Again, if its vibrations are very low, we do not see a light, but there are animals that may see it, as cats and owls. Our range of vision is only one plane of the vibrations of this Prana. 

. . . 

Think of the universe as an ocean of ether, consisting of layer after layer of varying degrees of vibration under the action of Prana; away from the centre the vibrations are less, nearer to it they become quicker and quicker; one order of vibration makes one place. Then suppose these ranges of vibrations are cut into planes, so many millions of miles one set of vibration, and then so many millions of miles another still higher set of vibration, and so on. It is, therefore, probable, that those who live on that plane of a certain state of vibration will have the power of recognising one another, but will not reconise those above them. Yet, just as by the telescope and the microscope we can increase the scope of our vision, similarly we can by Yoga bring ourselves to the state of vibration of another plane, and thus enable ourselves to see what is going on there. Suppose this room is full of beings whom we do not see. They represent Prana in a certain state of vibration while we represent another. Suppose they represent a quick one, and we the opposite. Prana is the material of which they are composed, as well as we. All are parts of the same ocean of Prana, they differ only in their rate of vibration. If I can bring myself to the quick vibration, this plane will immediately change for me: I shall not see you any more; you vanish and they appear. Some of you, perhaps, know this to be true. 

. . . 

I have already spoken of the Ida and Pingala currents, flowing through either side of the spinal column, and also of the Sushumna, the passage through the centre of the spinal cord. These three are present in every animal; whatever being has a spinal column has these three lines of action. 

. . . 

...the control of the centres which is established in a hypnotic patient or the patient of faith-healing, by the operator, for a time, is reprehensible, because it leads to ultimate ruin. It is not really controlling the brain centres by the power of one's own will, but is, as it were, stunning the patient's mind for a time by sudden blows which another's will delivers to it. It is not checking by means of reins and muscular strength the mad career of a fiery team, but rather by asking another to deliver heavy blows on the heads of the horses, to stun them for a time into gentleness. At each one of these processes the...[one]...operated upon loses a part of...[their]...mental energies, till at last, the mind, instead of gaining the power of perfect control, becomes a shapeless, powerless mass, and the only goal of the patient is the lunatic asylum. Every attempt at control which is not voluntary, not with the controller's own mind, is not only disastrous, but it defeats the end. The goal of each soul is freedom, mastery - freedom from the slavery of matter and thought, mastery of external and internal nature. Instead of leading toward that, every will-current from another, in whatever from it comes, either as direct control of organs, or as forcing to control them while under a morbid condition, only rivets one link more to the already existing heavy chain of bondage of past thought, past superstitions. 

. . . 

...avoid everyone, however great and good...[they]...might be, who asks you to believe blindly. All over the world there have been dancing and jumping and howling sects, who spread like infection when they begin to sing and dance and preach; they also are a sort of hypnotists. They exercise a singular control for the time being over sensitive persons, alas, often in the long run, to degenerate whole races. Ay, it is healthier for the individual or the race to remain wicked than be made apparently good by such morbid extraneous control. One's heart sinks to think of the amount of injury done to humanity by such irresponsible yet well-meaning religious fanatics. 

. . . 

Take one thing up and do it, and see the end of it, and before you have seen the end, do not give it up. ...[They]...who can become mad with an idea...[they]...alone see light. 

. . . 

...give up, once for all, this nibbling at things. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking machines. 

. . . 

Practice hard; whether you live or die does not matter. 

. . . 

To those who are full of Tamas, ignorant and dull - those whose minds never get fixed on any idea, who only crave for something to amuse them - religion and philosophy are simply objects of entertainment. These are the unpersevereing. 

. . . 

"I will drink the ocean," says the persevering soul, "at my will mountains will crumble up" 

. . . 

When I eat food, I do it consciously; when I assimilate it, I do it unconsciously. When the food is manufactured into blood, it is done unconsciously. When out of the blood all the different parts of my body are strengthened, it is done unconsciously. And yet it is I who am doing all this; there cannot be twenty people in this one body. How do I know that I do it, and nobody else? It may be urged that my business is only in eating and assimilating the food, and that strengthening the body by the food is done for me by somebody else. That cannot be, because it can be demonstrated that almost every action of which we are now unconscious can be brought up to the plane of our control. None of us here can control the heart; it goes on its own way. But by practice...[there are people who]...can bring even the heart under control, until it will just beat at will, slowly, or quickly, or almost stop. Nearly every part of the body can be brought under control. What does this show? That the functions which are beneath consciousness are also performed by us, only we are doing it unconsciously. 

. . . 

To get any reason out of the mass of incongruity we call human life, we have to transcend our reason, but we must do it scientifically, slowly, by regular practice, and we must cast off all superstition. 

. . . 

When you hear..[one]...say, "I am inspired," and then talk irrationally, reject it. Why? Because these three states - instinct, reason, and superconsciousness, or the unconscious, conscious, and superconscious states - belong to one and the same mind. There are not three minds in one...[person]...but one state of it develops into the others. Instinct develops into reason, and reason into the transcendental consciousness; therefore, not one of the states contradicts the others. Real inspiration never contradicts reason, but fulfills it. 

. . . 

We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth, until we experience it ourselves. You cannot hope to make...[someone]...a surgeon by simply giving...[them]...a few books. You cannot satisfy my curiosity to see a country by showing me a map; I must have actual experience. Maps can only create curiosity in us to get more perfect knowledge. Beyond that, they have no value whatever. Clinging to books only degenerates the human mind. Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare...[humans]...call God infinite, and yet try to compress...[God]...within the covers of a little book. Millions of people have been killed because they did not believe what the books said, because they would not see all the knowledge of God within the covers of a book. 

. . . 

Different powers will come to the Yogi, and if...[they]...yield to the temptations of any one of these, the road to...[their]...further progress will be barred. 

. . . 

Samadhi is the property of every human being - nay, every animal. From the lowest animal to the highest angel, some time or other, each one will have to come to that state, and then, and then alone, will real religion begin for...[them]. 

. . . 

There is no difference now between us and those who have no religion, because we have no experience. 

. . . 

...the Yogi finds...[themselves]...and the whole universe as God. 

. . . 

...[humanity's]...present state is a degeneration. 

. . . 

Every soul must disintegrate to become God. 

. . . 

Is it by committing suicide that we get out of this state? Not at all. That will be making it worse. Torturing ourselves, or condemning the world, is not the way to get out. We have to pass through the Slough of Despond, and the sooner we are through, the better. 

. . . 

There are much higher states of existence beyond reasoning. It is really beyond the intellect that the first state of religious life is to be found. When you step beyond thought and intellect and all reasoning, then you have made the first step towards God; and that is the beginning of life. What is commonly called life is but an embryo state. 

. . . 

...there is the state called Sattva, serenity, calmness, in which the waves cease, and the water of the mind-lake becomes clear. It is not inactive, but rather intensely active. It is the greatest manifestation of power to be calm. It is easy to be active. Let the reins go, and the horses will run away with you. Anyone can do that, but...[they]...who can stop the plunging horses is the strong...[one]. Which requires the greater strength, letting go or restraining? The calm...[person]...is not the...[one]...who is dull. You must not mistake Sattva for dullness or laziness. The calm...[person]...is the one who has control over the mind waves. Activity is the manifestation of inferior strength, calmness of the superior. 

. . . 

The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits; all the bad habits that have left their impressions are to be controlled by good habits. 

. . . 

Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character. 

. . . 

There is no liberation in getting powers. It is a worldly search after enjoyments, and there is no enjoyment in this life...The possession of what are called occult powers is only intensifying the world, and in the end, intensifying suffering. 

. . . 

[One]...may attain to all powers, and yet fall again. There is no safeguard until the soul goes beyond nature. It is very difficult to do so, although the method seems easy. The method is to meditate on the mind itself, and whenever thought comes, to strike it down, allowing no thought to come into the mind, thus making it an entire vacuum. When we can really do this, that very moment we shall attain liberation. 

. . . 

...[they]...neither came nor went, it was nature which was moving, and that movement was reflected upon the soul. The form of the light reflected by the glass upon the wall moves, and the wall foolishly thinks it is moving. So with all of us; it is the Chitta constantly moving making itself into various forms, and we think that we are these various forms. All these delusions will vanish. When that free Soul will command - not pray or beg, but command - then whatever It desires will be immediately fulfilled; whatever It wants It will be able to do. According to the Sankhya philosophy, there is no God. It says that there can be no God in this universe, because if there were one...[It]...must be a soul, and a soul must be either bound or free. How can the soul that is bound by nature, or controlled by nature create? It is itself a slave. 

. . . 

The gods in the Indian systems of philosophy represent certain high offices which are filled successively by various souls. But none of them is perfect. 

. . .

 Molecular vibration never ceases. When this universe is destroyed, all the massive vibrations disappear; the sun, moon, stars, and earth, melt down; but the vibrations remain in the atoms. Each atom performs the same function as the big worlds do. 

. . . 

"One moment of company with the holy makes a ship to cross this ocean of life." 

. . .

Avoid evil company, because the scars of old wounds are in you, and evil company is just the thing that is necessary to call them out. 

. . . 

Some days or weeks when you are practising, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall. 

. . . 

Repetition of Om and self-surrender to the Lord will strengthen the mind, and bring fresh energy. 

. . . 

Yoga changes the body. As you go on practising, your body changes; it is not the same body that you had before the practice. That is very rational, and can be explained, because every new thought that we have must make, as it were, a new channel through the brain, and that explains the tremendous conservatism of human nature. Human nature likes to run through the ruts that are already there, because it is easy. If we think, just for example's sake, that the mind is like a needle, and the brain substance a soft lump before it, then each thought that we have makes a street, as it were, in the brain, and this street would close up, but for the grey matter which comes and makes a lining to keep it separate. If there were no grey matter, there would be no memory, because memory means going over these old streets, retracing a thought as it were. Now perhaps you have marked that when one talks on subjects in which one takes a few ideas that are similar to everyone, and combines and recombines them, it is easy to follow because these channels are present in everyone's brain, and it is only necessary to refer to them. But whenever a new subject comes, new channels have to be made, so it is not understood readily. And that is why the brain (it is the brain, and not the people themselves) refuses unconsciously to be acted upon by new ideas. It resists. The Prana is trying to make new channels, and the brain will not allow it. This is the secret of conservatism. The fewer channels there have been in the brain, and the less the needle of the Prana has made these passages, the more conservative will be the brain, the more it will struggle against new thoughts. The more thoughtful the...[person]...the more complicated will be the streets in...[their]...brain, and the more easily...[they]...will take to new ideas, and understand them. So with every fresh idea, we make a new impression in the brain, cut new channels through the brain-stuff, and that is why we find that in the practice of Yoga (it being an entirely new set of thoughts and motives) there is so much physical resistance at first. That is why we find that the part of religion which deals with the world-side of nature is so widely accepted, while the other part, the philosophy, or the psychology, which deals with the inner nature...is so frequently neglected. We must remember the definition of this world of ours; it is only the Infinite Existence projected into the plane of consciousness. A little of the Infinite is projected into consciousness, and that we call our world. 

. . . 

...the scriptures cannot take us to realisation. We can read all the Vedas, and yet will not realize anything, but when we practise their teachings, then we attain to that state which realises what the scriptures say... 

. . .

 Realisation is real religion, all the rest is only preperation - hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion. 

. . . 

Study. What is meant by study in this case? No study of novels or story books, but study of those works which teach the liberation of the Soul. 

. . . 

Most of us make our minds like spoilt children, allowing them to do whatever they want. Therefore it is necessary that Kriya-yoga should be constantly practised, in order to gain control of the mind, and bring it into subjection. The obstructions to Yoga arise from lack of control, and cause us pain. They can only be removed by denying the mind, and holding it in check... 

. . . 

...the most curios part of it is, that, in Western countries, the idea that this clinging to life indicates a possibility of future life applies only to...[humans]...but does not include animals. 

. . . 

...so far as we know, all the cases which we now regard as automatic are degenerated reason. In the language of the Yogi, instinct is involved reason. 

. . . 

The Yogis hold that...[those]...who are able to acquire a tremendous power of good Samskaras do not have to die, but, even in this life, can change their bodies into god-bodies. There are several such cases mentioned by the Yogis in their book. [They]...change the very material of their bodies; they re-arrange the molecules in such a fashion that they have no more sickness, and what we call death does not come to them. 

. . . 

Similarly, we can send electricity to any part of the world, but we have to send it by means of wires. Nature can send a vast mass of electricity without any wires at all. Why cannot we do the same? We can send mental electricity. What we call mind is very much the same as electricity. It is clear that this nerve fluid has some amount of electricity, because it is polarised, and it answers all electrical directions. We can only send our electricity through these nerve channels. Why not send the mental electricity without this aid? The Yogis say it is perfectly possible and practicable, and that when you can do that, you will work all over the universe. You will be able to work with any body anywhere, without the help of the nervous system. 

. . . 

It is only by giving up this world that the other comes... 

. . . 

There is a story that the king of the gods, Indra, once became a pig, wallowing in mire; he had a she-pig and a lot of baby pigs, and was very happy. Then some of the gods saw his plight, and came to him, and told him, "You are the king of the gods, you have all the gods under your command. Why are you here?" But Indra said, "Never mind; I am all right here; I do not care for heaven, while I have this sow and these little pigs." The poor gods were at their wits' end. After a time they decided to slay all the pigs one after another. When all were dead, Indra began to weep and mourn. Then the gods ripped his pig-body open and he came out of it, and began to laugh, when he realised what a hideous dream he had had... 

. . . 

...[Experience]...leads, step by step, to that state where all things become small, and the Purusha so great that the whole universe seems as a drop in the ocean and falls off by its own nothingness. 

. . . 

We do not all see it, but we all throw out these Tanmatras, just as a flower continuously sends out fine particles which enable us to smell it. Every day of our lives we throw out a mass of good or evil, and everywhere we go the atmosphere is full of these materials. That is how there came to the human mind, unconsciously, the idea of building temples and churches. Why should...[one]...build churches in which to worship God? Why not worship...[God]...anywhere? Even if...[we]...did not know the reason,...[we]...found that the place where people worshipped God became full of good Tanmatras. Every day people go there, and the more they go the holier they get, and the holier that place becomes. If...[anyone]...who has not much Sattva in...[them]...goes there, the place will influence...[them]...and arouse...[their]...Sattva quality. Here, therefore, is the significance of all temples and holy places, but you must remember that their holiness depends on holy people congregating there. The difficulty...is that...[we]...forget the original meaning, and put the cart before the horse. It was...[people that]...made these places holy, and then the effect became the cause and made...[people themselves]...holy. If the wicked only were to go there, it would become as bad as any other place. It is not the building, but the people that make a church, and that is what we always forget. That is why sages and holy persons, who have much of this Sattva quality, can send it out and exert a tremendous influence day and night on their surroundings. [One]...may become so pure that...[their]...purity will become tangible. Whosoever comes in contact with...[them]...becomes pure. . . . If you say that the idea of freedom is a delusion, I shall say that the idea of bondage is also a delusion. . . . ...we are bound so far as intelligence goes...we are free so far as the soul is concerned. . . . ...nature has no purpose in view, except to free the Purusha. . . . It is only a fiction to say that I have one body, you another, and the sun another. The whole universe is one ocean of matter, and you are the name of a little particle, and I of another, and the sun of another. We know that this matter is continuously changing. What is forming the sun one day, the next day may form the matter of our bodies. . . . Now comes the practical knowledge. What we have just been speaking about is much higher. It is away above our heads, but it is the ideal. It is first necessary to obtain physical and mental control. Then the realisation will become steady in that ideal. . . . If I tell a lie, or cause another to tell one, or approve of another doing so, it is equally sinful. If it is a very mild lie, still it is a lie. Every vicious thought will rebound, every thought of hatred which you may have thought, in a cave even, is stored up, and will one day come back to you with tremendous power in the form of some misery here. If you project hatred and jealousy, they will rebound on you with compound interest. No power can avert them; when once you have put them in motion, you will have to bear them. . . . The result of mortification is bringing powers to the organs and the body, by destroying the impurity. . . . A Yogi standing in the midst of this room can apparently vanish. . . . When a Yogi has attained to this Samyama and wants strength...[they]...make a Samyama on the strength of the elephant and gets it. Infinite energy is at the disposal of everyone if...[they]...only know how to get it. . . . The Yogi can enter a dead body and make it get up and move, even while...[they themselves are]...working in another body. Or...[they]...can enter a living body and hold that...[person's]...mind and organs in check, and for the time being act through the body of that...[person]. . . . By conquering the current called Udana the Yogi does not sink in water or in swamps...[they]...can walk on thorns ect., and can die at will. Udana is the name of the nerve current that governs the lungs and all the upper parts of the body, and when...[one]...is master of it...[they become]...light in weight. [They do]...not sink in water; [they]...can walk on thorns and sword blades, and stand in fire, and can depart this life whenever...[they]...like. . . . What are all these powers? Simply manifestations. They are no better than dreams. Even omnipotence is a dream. It depends on the mind. So long as there is a mind it can be understood, but the goal is beyond even the mind. . . . We are living in the midst of such a mass of miracles, day and night, that we do not think anything of them. . . . You will find...[people]...with their hands up all their lives, until their hands wither and die. [Some]...keep standing, day and night, until their feet swell, and if they live, the legs become so stiff in this position that they can no more bend them, but have to stand all their lives. . . . If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature. Then...[one]...attains the powers which are...[theirs]...already. Those we call wicked become saints, as soon as the bar is broken and nature rushes in. It is nature that is driving us toward perfection, and eventually she will bring everyone there. . . . The two causes of evolution advanced by the moderns, viz...selection and survival of the fittest, are inadequate. . . . The result of this theory is to furnish every oppressor with an argument to calm the qualms of conscience. . . . Even when all competition has ceased, this perfect nature behind will make us go forward until everyone has become perfect. Therefore there is no reason to believe that competition is necessary to progress. . . . All the scriptures sing the glory...of the soul, and then, in the same breath, they preach Karma. A good deed brings such result, and a bad deed such another, but if the soul can be acted upon by a good or a bad deed, the soul amounts to nothing. Bad deeds put a bar to the manifestation of the nature of the Purusha; good deeds take the obstacles off, and the glory of the Purusha becomes manifest. The Purusha itself is never changed. Whatever you do never destroys your own glory, your own nature, because the soul cannot be acted upon by anything, only a veil is spread before it, hiding its perfection. . . . Suppose I have made the three kinds of Karma, good, bad, and mixed, and suppose I die and become a god in heaven. The desires in a god body are not the same as the desires in a human body; the god body neither eats nor drinks. What becomes of my past unworked Karmas which produce as their effect the desire to eat and drink? Where would these Karmas go when I become a god? The answer is that desires can only manifest themselves in proper environments. Only those desires will come out for which the environment is fitted; the rest will remain stored up. In this life we have many godly desires, many human desires, many animal desires. If I take a god body, only the good desires will come up, because for them the environments are suitable. And if I take an animal body, only the animal desires will come up, and the good desires will wait. What does this show? That by means of environment we can check these desires. Only that Karma which is suited to and fitted for the environments will come out. This shows that the power of environment is the great check to control even Karma itself. [If this be true, then we have as many types of Karma to work off, it seems, as bodies (i.e. gross body, finer body, etc), and each type of karma can only be worked out in its respective body. Therefore it would seem to stand to reason that the complete working through of, say, one's karma in the, for example, human form - through all the millenia after millenia of human lives - only represents ONE sliver of all the potential Karma that one may have to work out.] . . . There is consecutiveness in desires, even though separated by species, space, and time, there being identification of memory and impressions. Experiences becoming fine become impression; impressions revivified become memory. The word memory here includes unconscious co-ordination of past experiences, reduced to impressions, with present conscious action. In each body, the group of impressions acquired in a similar body only becomes the cause of action in that body. The experiences of a dissimilar body are held in abeyance. Each body acts as if it were a descendant of a series of bodies of that species only thus, consecutiveness of desires is not to be broken. . . . . . ...a train is in motion, and a carriage is moving alongside it. It is possible to find the motion of both these to a certain extent. But still something else is necessary. Motion can only be perceived when there is something else which is not moving. But when two or three things are relatively moving, we first perceive the motion of the faster one, and then that of the slower ones. How is the mind to perceive: It is also in a flux. Therefore another thing is necessary which moves more slowly, then you must get to something in which the motion is still slower, and so on, and you will find no end. Therefore logic compels you to stop somewhere. You must complete the series by knowing something which never changes. . . . Closely connected with these ideas is the doctrine - which was universal before the Europeans mutilated it - the doctrine of reincarnation. Some of you may have heard of and ignored it. This idea of reincarnation runs parallel with the other doctrine of the eternity of the...soul. Nothing which ends at one point can be without a beginning and nothing that begins at one point can be without an end. We cannot believe in such a monstrous impossibility as the beginning of the...soul. The doctrine of reincarnation asserts the freedom of the soul. Suppose there was an absolute beginning. Then the whole burden of this impurity in...[humans]...falls upon God. The all-merciful...responsible for the sins of the world! If sin comes in this way, why should one suffer more than another? Why such partiality, if it comes from an all-merciful God? Why are millions trampled underfoot? Why do people starve who never did anything to cause it? Who is responsible? If they had no hand in it, surely, God would be responsible. Therefore the better explanation is that one is responsible for the result. And if I can bring misery, I can also stop it. It necessarily follows that we are free. There is no such thing as fate. There is nothing to compel us. What we have done, that we can undo. To one argument in connection with this doctrine I will ask your patient attention, as it is a little intricate. We gain all our knowledge through experience; that is the only way. What we call experiences are on the plane of consciousness. For illustration: [One]...plays a tune on a piano...[they]...place each finger on each key consciously. [They]...then play a tune without having to pay special attention to each particular key. Similarly, we find in regard to ourselves that our tendencies are the result of past conscious actions. A child is born with certain tendencies. Whence do they come? No child is born with a tabula rasa - with a clean, blank page - of a mind. The page has been written on previously. The old Greek and Egyptian philosophers taught that no child came with a vacant mind. Each child comes with a hundred tendencies generated by past conscious actions. It did not acquire these in this life, and we are bound to admit that it must have had them in past lives. The rankest materialist has to admit that these tendencies are the result of past actions, only they add that these tendencies come through heredity. Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents come down to us through this law of heredity. Now if heredity alone explains this, there is no necessity of believing in the soul at all, because body explains everything. We need not go into the different arguments and discussions on materialism and spiritualism. So far the way is clear for those who believe in an individual soul. We see that to come to a reasonable conclusion we must admit that we have had past lives. This is the belief of the great philosophers and sages of the past and of modern times. Such a doctrine was believed in among the Jews. Jesus Christ believed in it. He says in the Bible, "Before Abraham was, I am." And in another place it is said, "This is Elias who is said to have come." All the different religions which grew among different nations under varying circumstances and conditions had their origin in Asia, and the Asiatics understand them well. When they came out from the motherland, they got mixed up with errors. The most profound and noble ideas of Christianity were never understood in Europe, because the ideas and images used by the writers of the Bible were foreign to it. Take for illustration the pictures of the Madonna. Every artist paints...[their]...Madonna according to...[their]...own pre-conceived ideas. I have been seeing hundreds of pictures of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, and he is made to sit at a table. Now, Christ never sat at a table; he squatted with others, and they had a bowl in which they dipped bread - not the kind of bread you eat today. It is hard for any nation to understand the unfamiliar customs of other people. How much more difficult was it for Europeans to understand the Jewish customs after centuries of changes and accretions from Greek, Roman, and other sources? Through all the myths and mythologies by which it is surrounded it is no wonder that the people get very little of the beautiful religion of Jesus, and no wonder that they have made of it a modern shopkeeping religion. . . . [I realise]...in...[my]...soul that...[I am]...God [Itself], only a lower expression of...[It]. All that is real in me is...[God]; all that is real in...[God]...is I. . . . [One]...may be the greatest philosopher in the world, but a child in religion. . . . ...the apparent contradictions and perplexities in every religion mark but different stages of growth. . . . [One]...may believe in all the churches in the world...[they]...may baptise...[themselves]...in all the rivers of the earth, still if...[they have]...no perception of God, I would class...[them]...with the rankest atheist. And...[one]...may have never entered a church or mosque, nor performed any ceremony, but if...[they]...feel God within...[themselves]...and...[are]...thereby lifted above the vanities of the world, that...[person]...is a holy...[person], a saint, call...[them]...what you will. As soon as...[one]...stands up and says...[they are]...right or...[their]...church is right, and all others are wrong...[they]...are...[ themselves]...all wrong. . . . "...until your religion makes you realise God, it is useless. [They]...who only study books for religion reminds one of the fable of the ass which carried a heavy load of sugar on its back, but did not know the sweetness of it." . . . Q. A man in the audience said, "If ministers stop preaching hell-fire, they will have no control over the people." A. They had better lose it then. The...[one]...who is frightened into religion has no religion at all. . . . I look upon miracles as the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of truth. When the disciples of Buddha told him of a...[person]...who had performed a so-called miracle - had taken a bowl from a great height without touching it - and showed him the bowl, he took it and crushed it under his feet and told him never to build their faith on miracles, but to look for truth in everlasting principles. . . . ...this immortal and perfect soul must be the same in the highest God as well as in the humblest...[person]...the difference between them being only in the degree in which the soul manifests itself. . . . How is it, then, that every child is born with an experience that cannot be accounted for by hereditary transmition? How is it that one is born of good parents, receives a good education and becomes a good...[person]...while another comes from besotted parents and ends on the gallows? How do you explain this inequality without implicating God? Why should a merciful...[God]...set...[Its]...child in such conditions which must bring forth misery? It is no explanation to say God will make amends later on - God has no blood-money. . . . I take upon myself the blame for the misery of this existence, and say I will unmake the evil I have done in another existence. . . . ...we are flying like hunted hares from all that is terrible, and like them, hiding our heads and thinking we are safe. ...the whole world is flying from everything terrible. . . . That is a lesson for all life - face the terrible, face it boldly. ...the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them. ...Cowards never win victories. We have to fight fear and troubles and ignorance if we expect them to flee before us. What is death? What are terrors? Do you not see the Lord's face in them? Fly from evil and terror and misery, and they will follow you. Face them, they will flee. . . . It is difficult, all very difficult. I say to myself, "This moment I will take refuge in Thee, O Lord. Unto Thy love I will sacrifice all, and on Thine altar I will place all that is good and virtuous. My sins, my sorrows, my actions, good and evil, I will offer unto Thee; do Thou take them and I will never forget." One moment I say, "Thy will be done," and the next moment something comes to try me and I spring up in a rage. . . . Life is infinite, one chapter of which is, "Thy will be done," and unless we realise all the chapters we cannot realise the whole. "Thy will be done" - every moment the traitor mind rebels against it... . . . Wherever you see the most humanitarian ideas fall into the hands of the multitude, the first result, you may notice, is degradation. . . . We have to learn yet that all religions, under whatever name they may be called, either Hindu, Buddhist, Mohammedan, or Christian, have the same God, and...[they]...who deride any one of these derides...[their]...own God. . . . Just as every picture, being composed of successive impulses of light, must be united on something stationary to form a whole, so all the ideas in the mind must be gathered and projected on something that is stationary - relatively to the body and mind - that is, on what is called the Soul or Purusha or Atman. . . . If there were only one existence throughout, how could it be that I am one, and you are one, and so forth? We are all one, and the cause of evil is the perception of duality. As soon as I begin to feel that I am separate from this universe, then first come fear, and then comes misery. . . . In the lowest worm, as well as in the highest human being, the same divine nature is present. ...Behind everything the same divinity is existing, and out of this comes the basis of morality. . . . We must always hold ourselves ready, even to give up our lives for the lowest beings. When...[one]...has become ready even to give up...[their]...life for a little insect...[they have]...reached the perfection which the Advaitist wants to attain... . . . There are, of course, a number of people who seem to acquiesce in the so-called popular faith, but we also know for certain that they do not think. Their idea of belief may be better translated to "not-thinking-carelessness". . . . The whole universe is simply an ocean of matter, of which you and I are like little whirlpools. Masses of matter are coming into each whirlpool, taking the whirlpool form, and coming out as matter again. The matter that is in my body may have been in yours a few years ago, or in the sun, or may have been the matter in a plant, and so on, in a continuous state of flux. . . . The whole of our lives is one; we are one, even in thought. . . . To...[the]...proud...it is told: You are the same as that little worm there; think not that you are something enormously different from it; you are the same. . . . You are one with this universe. [They] who say...[they are]...different from others, even by a hair's breadth, immediately become miserable. . . . You and I are little bits, little points little channels, little expressions, all living inside of that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss. The difference between...[one person and another]...between angels and...[humans]...between...[humans]...and animals and plants, between plants and...[rocks]...is not in kind, because everyone from the highest angel to the lowest particle of matter is but an expression of that one infinite ocean, and the difference is only in degree. ...You and I are both outlets of the same channel, and that is God...You are of the nature of God by your birthright; so am I. You may be an angel of purity, and I may be the blackest of demons. Nevertheless, my birthright is that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss. So is yours. You have manifested yourself more today. Wait; I will manifest myself more yet, for I have it all within me. . . . ...matter is...God perceived by the five sense; that God as perceived through the intellect is mind; and when the spirit sees, ...[God]...is seen as spirit. . . . Something was outside which my senses brought to me, and to which my mind contributed something else, and the combination of these two is the chair. That which existed eternally, independent of the senses and of the intellect, was the Lord...[Itself]. Upon...[God]...the senses are painting chairs, and tables, and rooms, houses, and worlds, and moons, and suns, and stars, and everything else. How is it , then, that we all see this same chair, that we are all alike painting these various things on the Lord, on this Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss? It need not be that all paint the same way, but those who paint the same way are on the same plane of existence and therefore they see one another's painting as well as one another. There may be millions of beings between you and me who do not paint the Lord in the same way, and them and their paintings we do not see. . . . Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. . . . That "I am" is the same in the murderer as in the saint, the same in the rich as in the poor, the same in the man as in the woman, the same in...[humans]...as in animals. From the lowest amoeba to the highest angel, ...[God]...resides in every soul, and eternally declares, "I am...[That], I am...[That]." . . . To...[everyone]...this is taught: Thou art one with this Universal Being, and, as such, every soul that exists is your soul; and every body that exists is your body; ...I am the universe; this universe is my body. I am the Infinite, only I am not conscious of it now; but I am struggling to get this consciousness of the Infinite... . . . The fine body...is a material but transparent body, made of very fine particles, so fine that no microscope can see...[it]. ...[It]...is...material, only very fine matter... It is not that...[one]...has a fine and also a gross body; it is the one body only, the part which endures longer is the fine body, and that which dissolves sooner is the gross. Just as I can cut this nail any number of times, so millions of times I can shed this gross body, but the fine body will remain. . . . Just as kings change here, so the gods, the Devas, also have to die. In heaven they will all die. . . . It is a significant fact that as the human population is increasing, the animal population is decreasing. The animal souls are all becoming...[human]. So many species of animals have become...[human]...already. Where else have they gone? . . . If you say there is a God who is an infinite Being, and a soul which is also infinite, and a nature which is also infinite, you can go on multiplying infinites without limit which is simply absurd; you smash all logic. . . . ...when these other people say that God is the soul, and the universe is the body, and the body is changing, but God is changeless, the non-dualists say, all this is nonsense. ...If this God has become this universe, you and all these things are God. Certainly. This book is God, everything is God. My body is God, and my mind, and my soul is God. ....."This universe does not exist at all; it is all illusion. The whole of this universe, these Devas, gods, angels, and all the other beings born and dying, all this infinite number of souls coming up and going down, are all dreams." ...As the one sun, reflected on various pieces of water, appears to be many, and millions of globules of water reflect so many millions of suns, and in each globule will be a perfect image of the sun, yet there is only one sun, so are all these Jivas but reflections in different minds. These different minds are like so many different globules, reflecting this one Being. God is being reflected in all these different Jivas. ...You, as body, mind, or soul, are a dream, but what you really are, is Existence, Knowledge, Bliss. You are the God of this universe. You are the Advaitist. So all these births and rebirths, coming and going are the figments of Maya. You are infinite. ...The sun, the moon, and the whole universe are but drops in your transcendent nature. . . . So long as the dream that you are body exists, you are bound to see yourself as being born and dying; but as soon as that dream vanishes, so will the dream that there is a universe vanish. That very thing which we now see as the universe will appear to us as God (Absolute), and that very God who has so long been external will appear to be internal, as our own Self. . . . Now comes Uparati which consists in not thinking of things of the senses. Most of our time is spent in thinking about sense-objects, things which we have seen, or we have heard, which we shall see or shall hear, things which we have eaten, or are eating, or shall eat, places where we have lived, and so on. We think of them or talk of them most of our time. One who wishes to be a Vedantin must give up this habit. . . . The mind can be conquered only by slow and steady practice. . . . ...you and I who are born slaves to nature, money and wealth, wives and children, are always chasing a wisp of straw, a mere chimera, and are going through an innumerable round of lives without obtaining what we seek. ...the world is going on, society goes on, and we, blinded slaves, have to pay for it without knowing. Study your own lives, and find how little of happiness there is in them, and how little in truth you have gained in the course of this wild-goose chase of the world. . . . The majority of people are just like a flock of sheep. If the leading sheep falls into a ditch, all the rest follow and break their necks. . . . [They are]...a slave to a bit of bread, to a breath of air; a slave to dress, a slave to patriotism, to country, to name, and to fame. [They are]...thus in the midst of slavery and the real...[person]...has become buried within, through...[their]...bondage. What you call...[human]...is a slave. . . . Really we do not develop our souls at all. What can develop the perfect? We simply take the evil off; and the soul manifests itself in its pristine purity, its natural, innate freedom. Now begins the inquiry: Why is this discipline so necessary? Because religion is not attained through the ears, nor through the eyes, nor yet through the brain. No scriptures can make us religious. We may study all the books in the world, yet may not understand a word of religion or of God. We may talk all our lives and yet may not be the better for it; we may be the most intellectual people the world ever saw, and yet we may not come to God at all. . . . Bondages will fall off by themselves, and we shall be buoyed up beyond this plane of sense-perception to which we are tied down, and then we shall see, and hear, and feel things which...[humans]...in the three ordinary states (viz walking, dream, and sleep) neither feel, nor see, nor hear. Then we shall speak a strange language, as it were, and the world will not understand us, because it does not know anything but the senses. . . . In speaking of the soul, to say that...[the human]...is superior to the animal or the plant, has no meaning; the whole universe is one. . . . Dying, and being born, reincarnation, and going to heaven, cannot be for the soul. These are different appearances, different mirages, different dreams. If...[one]...who is dreaming of this world now dreams of wicked thoughts and wicked deeds, after a certain time the thought of that very dream will produce the next dream. [They]...will dream that...[they are]...in a horrible place; and so on from dream to dream. But the time will come when the whole of this dream will vanish. To everyone of us there must come a time when the whole universe will be found to have been a mere dream, when we shall find that the soul is infinitely better than its surroundings. In this struggle through what we call our environments, there will come a time when we shall find that these environments were almost zero in comparison with the power of the soul. It is only a question of time, and time is nothing in the Infinite. It is a drop in the ocean. . . . "[They]...who look upon the learned Brahmin, upon the cow, the elephant, the dog, or the outcast with the same eye...[they]...indeed...[are]...the sage, and the wise..." . . . When the soul wants to depend upon nothing, not even upon life, that is the height of philosophy... . . . There is a great deal of similarity between the lives of Jesus and Krishna. A discussion is going on as to which borrowed of the other. There was the tyrannical king in both places. Both were born in a manger. The parents were bound in both cases. Both were saved by angels. In both cases all the boys born that year were killed. The childhood is the same. ...Again, in the end, both were killed. Krishna was killed by accident; he took the man who killed him to heaven. Christ was killed, and blessed the robber and took him to heaven. . . . If...[humans]...and...animals are manifestations of God, these teachers of...[humanity]...are leaders, are Gurus. . . . The vast mass of...[humanity]...are never thinkers. Even if they try to think, the [effect of the] vast mass of superstitions on them is terrible. The moment they weaken, one blow comes, and the backbone breaks into twenty pieces. They can only be moved by lures and threats. They can never move of their own accord. They must be frightened, horrified, or terrorised, and they are your slaves for ever. They have nothing else to do but to pay and obey. Everything else is done by the priest. ...How much easier religion becomes. You see, you have nothing to do. Go home and sit quietly. Somebody is doing the whole thing for you. Poor, poor animals. . . . You may have a hundred thousand [urges competing] at the same time. You may repress [them], but the moment the spring rebounds, the whole things is there again. . . . ...the Upanishads condemn all rituals, especially those that involve the killing of animals. They declare those all nonsense. . . . I do not see how you people here believe in the Bible whenever you say about [it], "How wonderful those words are, how right and how good!" Because, if you believe in the Bible as the word of God, you have no right to judge at all. The moment you judge, you think you are higher than the Bible. [Then] what is the use of the Bible to you? . . . All priests are not strong. If the people say, "Preach two thousand gods," the priests will do it. They are the servants of the congregation who pay them. God does not pay them. So blame yourselves before blaming the priests. You can only get the government and the religion and the priesthood you deserve, and no better. . . . Buddha's activity was on one plane, the plane of teaching. He could not keep his wife and child and become a teacher at the same time. Krishna preached in the midst of the battlefield. "[They]...who...[are]...in the midst of intense activity find...[themselves]...in the greatest calmness, and in the greatest peace finds intense activity, that is the greatest [Yogi as well as the wisest [person]]." . . . Many a time comes when we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation. There is no merit in the renunciation of the beggar. ...We know how often in our lives through laziness and cowardice we give up the battle and try to hypnotise our minds into the belief that we are brave. . . . Death means only a change of garment. What of it? ...You gain nothing by becoming cowards. ...Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune. You have cried to all the gods in the world. Has misery ceased? The masses in India cry to sixty million gods, and still die like dogs. Where are the gods? ...The gods come to help you when you have succeeded. So what is the use? Die game. . . . Our ideas are burial grounds. When we leave the body we are bound by thousands of elements to those [ideas]. Who can work without any attachment? That is the real question. Such a...[one]...is the same whether...[their]...work succeeds or fails. [Their]...heart does not give one false beat even if...[their]...whole life-work is burnt to ashes in a moment. "This is the sage who always works for work's sake without caring for the results. Thus...[they go]...beyond the pain of birth and death.Thus...[they become]...free." Then...[they]...see that this attachment is all delusion. The Self can never be attached. ...Then...[they]...go beyond all the scriptures and philosophies. If the mind is deluded and pulled into a whirlpool by books and scriptures, what is the good of all these scriptures? One says this, another says that. What book shall you take? Stand alone! See the glory of your own soul, and see that you will have to work. Then you will become...[one]...of firm will. . . . People want to eat and drink and have children, and then they die a dog's death. ...They are always awake for the senses. Even their religion is just for that. They invent a God to help them, to give them more women, more money, more children - never a God to help them become more godlike. . . . [They who stop their]...activities and at the same time...[are]...still thinking about them attain to nothing; ...[they]...only become a hypocrite. . . . ...religion means realisation, nothing else. It does not matter whether one approaches the destination in a carriage with four horses, in an electric car, or rolling on the ground. The goal is the same. For the [Christians] the problem is how to escape the wrath of the terrible God. For the Indians it is how to become what they really are, to regain their lost Selfhood. . . . You may be the greatest philosopher, but as long as you have the idea that you are the body, you are no better than the little worm crawling under your foot. . . . Two thousand years ago...[someone]...saw God. Moses saw God in a burning bush. Does what Moses did when he saw God save you? No...[one's]...seeing God can help you the least bit except that it may excite you and urge you to do the same thing. That is the whole value of the ancients' examples. Nothing more. [Just] signposts on the way. No...[one's]...eating can satisfy another.... No...[one's]...seeing God can save another.... You have to see God yourself. . . . Our minds are not new minds. ...In modern times we all know that every child brings...[with them]...all the past, not only of humanity, but of the plant life. . . . If you want to be religious, enter not the gate of any organised religions. They do a hundred times more evil than good, because they stop the growth of each one's individual development. Study everything, but keep your own seat firm. ...The moment they try to put their noose on you, get your neck out and go somewhere else. ...Enter not the door of any organised religion. [Religion] is only between you and your God... . . . The world is not as bad as you think. It is we fools who have made it evil. We manufacture our own goals and demons, and then...we cannot get rid of them. We put our hands before our eyes and cry: "Somebody give us light." Fools! Take your hands from your eyes! . . . Reading books cannot do that. The ass can be burdened with the whole library; that does not make him learned at all. . . . Stand up and die game. ...Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to the world. Be strong. ...You talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid. It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it. There is salvation only for the brave. "None but the brave deserves the fair." None but the bravest deserves salvation. Whose hell? Whose torture? Whose sin? Whose weakness? Whose death? Whose disease? You believe in God. If you do, believe in the real God. "Thou art the man, thou the woman, thou the young man walking in the strength of youth, ...thou the old man tottering with his stick." Thou art weakness. Thou art fear. Thou art heaven, and Thou art hell. Thou art the serpent that would sting. Come thou as fear! Come thou as death! Come thou as misery! . . . Be not an imitation of Jesus, but be Jesus. You are quite as great as Jesus, Buddha, or anybody else. . . . The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. . . . We do not want to think; we want others to think for us. The messengers fulfil their mission. They ask to be up and doing. A hundred years later we cling to the message and go to sleep. . . [Religion] is not a doctrine, [not] a rule. It is a process. That is all. [Doctrines and rules] are all for exercise. By that exercise we get strong and at last break the bonds and become free. Doctrine is of no use except for gymnastics. ...Through exercise the soul becomes perfect. . . . Thoughts can be guided and controlled. ...[The Yogis of India] practised to see how far the thoughts can be guided and controlled. By dint of hard work, thoughts may be silenced altogether. If thoughts were [the real...person], as soon as thought ceases, ...[we]...ought to die. Thought ceases in meditation; even the mind's elements are quite quiet. Blood circulation stops. ...[breath]...stops, but...[we are]...not dead. If thought were...[the real person]...the whole thing ought to go, but they find it does not go. That is practical [proof]. They came to the conclusion that even mind and thought were not the real...[person]. . . . You are the One; there are no two. God was your own reflection cast upon the screen of Maya. . . . Do you see how you are seeing God all the time? As you unfold yourself, the reflection grows [clearer]. . . . Do not say "God". Do not say "Thou". Say "I". The language of [dualism] says, "God, Thou, my Father." The language of [non-dualism] says, "Dearer unto me than I am myself. I would have no name for Thee. The nearest I can use is I. "God is true. The universe is a dream. ...I know that I am worshipping only myself. ...Vanish nature from me, vanish [these] gods; vanish worship; ...vanish superstitions, for I know myself. I am the Infinite." . . . Go on saying, "I am free". Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, "I am bound." Dehypnotise the whole thing. . . . This is the religion of -non-dualism] philosophy. [It is] difficult. Struggle on. Down with all superstitions. Neither teachers nor scriptures nor gods [exist]. Down with temples, with priests, with gods, with incarnations, with God..[Itself]. I am all the God that ever existed. . . . All religious superstitions are vain imaginations. . . . You may reason it out and understand it intellectually, but there is a long way between intellectual understanding and the practical realisation of it. Between the plan of the building and the building itself there is quite a long distance. . . . The Personal God is only the sum total of all, and yet it is an individual by itself, just as you are the individual body of which each cell is an individual part itself. . . . (Speaking of the powers of Yogis which he has seen.) [Once I observed...]...[someone]...bringing out fruits and flowers, etc. [out of nowhere]. . . . [The thoughts, the senses] should be all my servants, not my masters. Then only is it possible that evils will vanish. . . . Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education]. . . . By great struggle we get a certain power of concentration, the power of attachment of the mind to certain things. But then there is not the power of detachment. I would give half my life to take my mind off that object. I cannot. It is the power of concentration and attachment as well as the power of detachment [that we must develop]. . . . [Raja-Yoga] proposes no faith, no belief, no God. . . . The greatest difficulty is what? We talk and theorise. The vast majority of...[humanity]...must deal with things that are concrete. For the dull people cannot see all the highest philosophy. Thus it ends. You may be graduates [in] all sciences in the world, ...but if you have not realised, you must become a baby and learn. ...If you give them things in the abstract and infinite, they get lost. Give them things [to do,] a little at a time. [Tell them,] "you take [in] so many breaths, you do this." They go on, [they] understand it, and find pleasure in it. These are the kindergartens of religion. That is why breathing exercises will be so beneficial. I beg you all not to be merely curious. Practise a few days, and if you do not find any benefit, then come an curse me. . . . You must know what you are, and it is done. The dream vanishes. This you [and others] are dreaming here. When they die, they go to [the] heaven [of their dream]. They live in that dream, and [when it ends], they take a nice body [here], and they are good people.... [The wise...say,] "All these [desires] have vanished from me. This time I will not go through all this paraphernalia." [They try]...to get knowledge and struggle hard, and...[they]...see what a dream, what a nightmare this is - [this dreaming], and working up heavens and worlds and worse. . . . I have been studying [Yoga] all my life and have made very little progress yet. But I have got enough [result] to believe that this is the only true way. The day will come when I will be master of myself. If not in this life, [in another...]. I will struggle and never let go. . . . ...what makes the difference between one...[person]...and another? It is their past. The habits make one...a genius and another...a fool. You may have the power of the past and can succeed in five minutes. . . . These Western countries are full of the most degraded beings in the shape of teachers who teach men and women that if they are chaste they will be hurt. . . . Nothing is gained except by sacrifice. . . . It is much easier to do anything upon the external plane, but the greatest conqueror in the world finds...[themselves]...a mere child when...[they try]...to control...[their]...own mind.

Volume II

We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life. We are being worked upon by other minds, and we are always struggling to work on other minds. We want to enjoy the pleasures of life; and they eat into our vitals. We want to get everything from nature, but we find in the long run that nature takes everything from us - depletes us, and casts us aside.

. . .

The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery.

. . .

Give what you have to give; it will come back to you - but do not think of that now, it will come back multiplied a thousandfold - but the attention must not be on that.

. . .

I know the difficulties. Tremendous they are, and ninety percent of us become discouraged and lose heart, and in our turn, often become pessimists and cease to believe in sincerity, love, and all that is grand and noble. So, we find...[people]...who in the freshness of their lives have been forgiving, kind, simple, and guileless, become in old age lying masks.... Their minds are a mass of intricacy. There may be a good deal of external policy, possibly. They are not hot-headed, they do not speak, but it would be better for them to do so; their hearts are dead and, therefore, they do not speak. They do not curse, nor become angry; but it would be better for them to be able to be angry, a thousand times better, to be able to curse. They cannot. There is death in the heart, for cold hands have seized upon it, and it can no more act, even to utter a curse, even to use a harsh word.

. . .

We may be cut to pieces, torn asunder, yet our hearts must grow nobler and nobler all the time.

. . .

We get only that for which we are fitted. Let us give up our pride and understand this, that never is misery undeserved. There never has been a blow undeserved; there never has been an evil for which I did not pave the way with my own hands.

. . .

We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." ...But why should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that.
We only get what we deserve. It is a lie when we say, the world is bad and we are good. It can never be so. It is a terrible lie we tell ourselves.

. . .

All over the world there has been the belief in the supernatural throughout the ages. All of us have heard of extraordinary happenings, and many of us have had some personal experience of them. I would rather introduce the subject by telling you certain facts which have come within my own experience. I once heard of a man who, if any one went to him with questions in him mind, would answer them immediately; and I was also informed that he foretold events. I was curious and went to see him with a few friends. We each had something in our minds to ask, and, to avoid mistakes, we wrote down our questions and put them in our pockets. As soon as the man saw one of us, he repeated our questions and gave the answers to them. Then he wrote something on paper, which he folded up, asked me to sign on the back, and said, "Don't look at it; put it in your pocket and keep it there till I ask for it again." And so on to each one of us. He next told us about some events that would happen to us in the future. Then he said, "Now, think of a word or a sentence, from any language you like." I thought of a long sentence from Sanskrit, a language of which he was entirely ignorant. "Now, take out the paper from your pocket," he said. The Sanskrit sentence was written there! He had written it an hour before with the remark, "In confirmation of what I have written, this man will think of this sentence." It was correct. Another of us who had been given a similar paper which he had signed and placed in his pocket, was also asked to think, of a sentence. He thought of a sentence in Arabic, which it was still less possible for the man to know; it was some passage from the Koran. And my friend found this written down on the paper.
Another of us was a physician. He thought of a sentence from a German medical book. It was written on his paper.
Several days later I went to this man again, thinking possibly I had been deluded somehow before I took other friends, and on this occasion also he came out wonderfully triumphant.
Another time I was in the city of Hyderabad in India, and I was told of a Brahmin there who could produce numbers of things from where, nobody knew. This man was in business there; he was a respectable gentleman. And I asked him to show me his tricks. It so happened that this man had a fever, and in India there is a general belief that if a holy...[person]...puts his hand on a sick...[one, they]...would be well. This Brahmin came to me and said, "Sir, put your hand on my head, so that my fever may be cured." I said, "Very good; but you show me your tricks." He promised. I put my hand on his head as desired, and later he came to fulfil his promise. He had only a strip of cloth about his loins, we took off everything else from him. I had a blanket which I gave him to wrap round himself, because it was cold, and made him sit in a corner. Twenty-five paris of eyes were looking at him. And he said, "Now, look, write down anything you want." We all wrote down names of fruits that never grew in that country, bunches of grapes, oranges, and so on. And we gave him those bits of paper. And there came from under his blanket, bushels of grapes, and oranges, and so forth, so much that if all that fruit was weighed, it would have been twice as heavy as the man. He asked us to eat the fruit. Some of us objected, thinking it was hypnotism; but the man began eating himself - so we all ate. It was all right.
He ended by producing a mass of roses. Each flower was perfect, with dew-drops on petals, not one crushed, not one injured. And masses of them! When I asked the man for an explanation, he said, "It is all sleight of hand."
. . .

(Quantum Non-locality)

This mind is a part of the universal mind. Each mind is connected with every other mind. And each mind, wherever it is located, is in actual communication with the whole world.
Have you ever noticed the phenomenon that is called thought-transference? [Someone]...here is thinking something, and that thought is manifested in somebody else, in some other place. With preparations - not by chance - [one person]...wants to send a thought to another mind at a distance, and this other mind knows that a thought is coming, and...[they]...receive it exactly as it is sent out. Distance makes no difference. The thought goes and reaches the other...[person]...and...[they]...understand it. If your mind were an isolated something here, and my mind were an isolated something there, and there were no connection between the two, how would it be possible for my thought to reach you? In the ordinary cases, it is not my thought that is reaching you direct; but my thought has got to be dissolved into ethereal vibrations and those ethereal vibrations go into your brain, and they have to be resolved again into your own thoughts. Here is a dissolution of thought, and there is a resolution of thought. It is a roundabout process. But in telepathy, there is no such thing; it is direct.
This shows that there is a continuity of mind, as the Yogis call it. There mind is universal. Your mind, my mind, all these little minds, are fragments of that universal mind, little waves in the ocean; and on account of this continuity, we can convey our thoughts directly to one another.

. . .

...there are no such realities as a physical world, a mental world, a spiritual world. Whatever is, is one. Let us say, it is a sort of tapering existence; the thickest part is here, it tapers and becomes finer and finer. The finest is what we call spirit; the grossest, the body. And just as it is here in microcosm, it is exactly the same in the macrocosm. The universe of ours is exactly like that; it is the gross external thickness, and it tapers into something finer and finer until it becomes God.

. . .

I can see only at a distance of so many feet. But I have seen a...[person]...close...[their]...eyes and see what is happening in another room. If you say you do not believe it, perhaps in three weeks that...[person]...can make you do the same. It can be taught to anybody. Some persons, in five minutes even, can be made to read what is happening in another...[person's]...mind. These facts can be demonstrated.

. . .

...gravitation was known to the Indians thousands of years before Newton was born.

. . .

...as with every other science it is very difficult to make any great achievement, so also with this, nay much more. Yet most people think that these powers can be easily gained. How many are the years you take to make a fortune? Think of that. First, how many years do you take to learn electrical science or engineering? And then you have to work all the rest of your life.
Again, most of the other sciences deal with things that do not move, that are fixed. You can analyse the chair, the chair does not fly from you. But this science deals with the mind, which moves all the time; the moment you want to study it, it slips. Now the mind is in one mood, the next moment, perhaps, it is different, changing, changing all the time. In the midst of all this change it has to be studied, understood, grasped, and controlled. How much more difficult, then, is this science. It requires rigorous training. People ask me why I do not give them practical training. People ask me why I do not give them practical lessons. Why, it is no joke. I stand upon this platform talking to you and you go home and find no benefit. Nor do I. Then you say, "It is all bosh." It is because you wanted to make a bosh of it. I know very little of this science, but the little that I gained I worked for thirty years of my life, and for six years I have been telling people the little that I know. It took me thirty years to learn it; thirty years of hard struggle. Sometimes I worked whole nights; sometimes I lived in places where there was hardly a sound, hardly a breath; sometimes I had to live in caves. Think of that. And yet I know little or nothing; I have barely touched the hem of the garment of this science.

. . .

...a sect is started to teach that if...[one]...stands on one leg for twelve years, day and night, ...[they]...will get salvation - there will be hundreds ready to stand on one leg. All the suffering will be quietly borne. There are people who keep their arms upraised for years to gain religious merit. I have seen hundreds of them. And, mind you, they are not always ignorant fools, but are...[people]...who will astonish you with the depth and breadth of their intellect.

. . .

Often I think that my judgment and my criticism do not proceed from any dislike of torture, but from sheer cowardice - because I cannot do it - I dare not do it.

. . .

I do not know, but some day we may wake up and find that the mere worm has something which balances...[humanity].

. . .

Even in such a science as mathematics, the vast majority of its theories are only working hyphotheses. With the advent of greater knowledge they will be thrown away.

. . .

You will be astonished to hear that they have no churches, no Common Prayers, or anything of the kind; but they, every day, still practise the breathings and try to concentrate the mind; and that is the chief part of their devotion.

. . .

[Each one of us]...is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but...[whose]...centre is located in one spot; and God is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose centre is everywhere. [God]...works through all hands, sees through all eyes,walks on all feet, breathes through all bodies, lives in all life, speaks through every mouth, and thinks through every brain.

. . .

Temples or churches, books or forms, are simply the kindergarten of religion, to make the spiritual child strong enough to take higher steps; ...Religion is not in doctrines, in dogmas, nor in intellectual argumentation; it is being and becoming, it is realisation.

. . .

Religion to them is a mere mass of frothy words, to be written in books. Each one hurries to write a big book, to make it as massive as possible, stealing...[their]...materials from every book...[they]...can lay...[their]...hands upon, and never acknowledging...[their]...indebtedness. Then...[they launch]...this book upon the world, adding to the disturbance that is already existing there.

. . .

Just as a piece of iron, which had been covered with the dust of centuries, might be lying near a magnet all the time, and yet not be attracted by it, but as soon as the dust is cleared away, the iron is drawn by the magnet; so, when the human soul, covered with the dust of ages, impurities, wickednesses, and sins, after many births, becomes purified enough by these forms and ceremonies, by doing good to others, loving other beings, its natural spiritual attraction comes, it wakes up and struggles toward God.

. . .

I am you, and you are I; and worshipping you, I worship myself; and in worshipping myself, I worship you.

. . .

Ethics itself is not the end, but the means to the end.

. . .

Society did not exist ages ago, possibly will not exist ages hence. Most probably it is one of the passing stages through which we are going towards a higher evolution, and any law that is derived from society alone cannot be eternal, cannot cover the whole ground of..[our]...nature.

. . .

Well has it been said that the masses admire the lion that kills a thousand lambs, never for a moment thinking that it is death to the lambs.

. . .

...apart from the solid facts and truths that we may learn from religion, apart from the comforts that we may gain from it, religion, as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have. This pursuit of the Infinite, this struggle to grasp the Infinite, this effort to get beyond the limitations of the senses - out of matter, as it were - and to evolve the spiritual...[self]... - this striving day and night to make the Infinite one with our being - this struggle itself is the grandest and most glorious that...[we]...can make.

. . .

Those moments alone we live when our lives are in the universe, in others; and living this little life is death, simply death, and that is why the fear of death comes.

. . .

To stop death, we shall have to stop life also.

. . .

Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies.

. . .

...the first death-sign of a nation has been unchastity... When that has entered, the end of the race is in sight.

. . .

...in this life, with all its miseries and sorrows, its joys and smiles and tears, one thing is certain, that all things are rushing toward their goal, and it is only a question of time when you and I, and plants and animals, and every particle of life that exists must reach the Infinite Ocean of Perfection, must attain to Freedom, to God.

. . .

The idea grows and grows until the Vedantist finds that...[this God]...who...[they]...thought was standing outside, is...[their very self]...and is in reality within. [They themselves are]...the one who is free, but who through limitation thought...[they]...were bound.

. . .

Unhappiness is the fate of those who are content to live in this world, born as they are.

. . .

We perceive at once that the idea of some Being who is eternally loving us - eternally unselfish and almighty, ruling this universe - could not satisfy. "Where is the just, merciful God?" asked the philosopher. Does...[God]...not see millions and millions of...[Its]...children perish, in the form of...[humans]...and animals; for who can live one moment here without killing others? Can you draw a breath without destroying thousands of lives? You live, because millions die. Every moment of your life, every breath that you breathe, is death to thousands; every movement that you make is death to millions. Every morsel that you eat is death to millions. Why should they die? There is an old sophism that they are very low existences. Supposing they are - which is questionable, for who knows whether the ant is greater than the...[human]..., or the...[human]...than the ant - who can prove one way or the other? Apart from that question, even taking it for granted that these are very low beings, still why should they die? If they are low, they have more reason to live. Why not? Because they live more in the senses, they feel pleasure and pain a thousandfold more than you or I can do. Which of us eats a dinner with the same gusto as a dog or wolf? None, because our energies are not in the senses; they are in the intellect, in the spirit. But in animals, their whole soul is in the senses, and they become mad and enjoy things which we human beings never dream of, and the pain is commensurate with the pleasure. Pleasure and pain are meted out in equal measure. If the pleasure felt by animals is so much keener than that felt by...[the human]..., it follows that the animals' sense of pain is as keen, if not kenner than...[ours]. So the fact is, the pain and misery...[we]...feel in dying is intensified a thousandfold in animals, and yet we kill them without troubling ourselves about their misery.

. . .

"Trailing clouds of glory we come," says the poet. Not all of us come as trailing clouds of glory however; some of us come as trailing black fogs; there can be no question about that. But every one of us comes into this world to fight, as on a battlefield. We come here weeping, to fight our way, as well as we can, and to make a path for ourselves through this infinite ocean of life; forward we go, having long ages behind us and an immense expanse beyond. So on we go, till death comes and takes us off the field - victorious or defeated, we do not know. And this is Maya.
Hope is dominant in the heart of childhood. The whole world is a golden vision to the opening eyes of the child; ...[they]...think...[their]...will is supreme. As...[they]...move onward, at every step nature stands as an adamantine wall, barring...[their]...future progress. [They]...may hurl...[themselves]...against it again and again, striving to break through. The further...[they]...go, the further recedes the ideal, till death comes, and there is release, perhaps. And this is Maya.
[A person]...of science rises, ...[they are]...thirsting after knowledge. No sacrifice is too great, no struggle too hopeless for...[them]. [They]...move onward discovering secret after secret of nature, searching out the secrets from her innermost heart, and what for? What is it all for? Why should we give...[this person]...glory? Why should...[they]...acquire fame? Does not nature do infinitely more than any human being can do? - and nature is dull, insentient. Why should it be glory to imitate the dull, the insentient? Nature can hurl a thunderbolt of any magnitude to any distance. If a...[person]...can do one small part as much, we praise...[them]...and laud...[them]...to the skies. Why? Why should we praise...[them]...for imitating nature, imitating death, imitating dullness, imitating insentience? The force of gravitation can pull to pieces the biggest mass that ever existed; yet it is insentient. What glory is there in imitating the insentient? Yet we are all struggling after that. And this is maya.
The senses drag the human soul out. [We are]...seeking for pleasure and for happiness where it can never be found. For countless ages we are all taught that this is futile and vain, there is no happiness here. But we cannot learn; it is impossible for us to do so, except through our own experiences. We try them, and a blow comes. Do we learn then? Not even then. Like moths hurling themselves against the flame, we are hurling ourselves again and again into sense-pleasures, hoping to find satisfaction there. We return again and again with freshened energy; thus we go on, till crippled and cheated we die. And this is Maya.
.....With every breath, with every pulsation of the heart, with every one of our movements, we think we are free, and the very same moment we are shown that we are not. Bound slaves, nature's bond-slaves, in body, in mind, in all our thoughts, in all our feelings. And this is Maya.
There was never a mother who did not think her child was a born genius, the most extraordinary child that was ever born; she dotes upon her child. Her whole soul is in the child. The child grows up, perhaps becomes a drunkard, a brute, ill-treats the mother, and the more...[they]...ill-treat her, the more her love increases. The world lauds it as the unselfish love of the mother, little dreaming that the mother is a born slave, she cannot help it. She would a thousand times rather throw off the burden, but she cannot. So she covers it with a mass of flowers, which she calls wonderful love. And this is Maya.

. . .

We cannot hide a carrion with roses; it is impossible. It would not avail long; for soon the roses would fade, and the carrion would be worse than ever before.

. . .

...practical...[people]...tell us, "Don't bother your heads about such nonsense as religion and metaphysics. Live here; this is a very bad world indeed, but make the best of it." Which put in plain language means, live a hypocritical, lying life, a life of continuous fraud, covering all sores in the best way you can. Go on putting patch after patch, until everything is lost, and you are a mass of patchwork. This is what is called practical life. ...Religion begins with a tremendous dissatisfaction with the present state of things, with our lives, and a hatred, an intense hatred, for this patching up of life, an unbounded disgust for fraud and lies.

. . .

The God of heaven becomes the God in nature, and the God in nature becomes the God who is nature, and the God who is nature becomes the God within this temple of the body, and the God dwelling in the temple of the body at last becomes the temple itself, become the soul and...[the person themselves]... . and there it reaches the last words it can teach.

. . .

We have to understand this, and impress it on our minds, that what we call causation begins after, if we may be permitted to say so, the degeneration of the Absolute into the phenomenal, and not before...

. . .

A God known is no more God.

. . .

God is more than known. This chair is known, but God is intensely more than that, because in and through...[God]...we have to know this chair itself. [God]...is the Witness, the eternal Witness of all knowledge. Whatever we know we have to know, in and through...[God]. [God]...is the Essence of our own Self.

. . .

...there is a wave on the ocean. The wave is the same as the ocean certainly, and yet we know it is a wave, and as such different from the ocean. What makes this difference? The name and the form; that is, the idea in the mind and the form. Now, can we think of a wave-form as something separate from the ocean? Certainly not. It is always associated with the ocean idea. If the wave subsides, the form vanishes in a moment, and yet the form was not a delusion. So long as the wave existed the form was there, and you were bound to see the form. This is Maya.
The whole of this universe, therefore, is, as it were, a peculiar form; the Absolute is that ocean while you and I, and suns and stars, and everything else are various waves of that ocean.

. . .

...these dualists win the popular favour by appealing to the vanity of the uneducated.

. . .

If...[someone]...plunges headlong into foolish luxuries of the world without knowing the truth, ...[they have]...missed...[their]...footing, ...[they]...cannot reach the goal. And if...[someone]...curses the world, goes into a forest, mortifies...[their]...flesh, and kills...[themselves]...little by little by starvation, makes...[their]...heart a barren waste, kills out all feelings, and becomes harsh, stern, and dried-up, that...[person]...also has missed the way. These are the two extremes, the two mistakes at either end. Both have lost the way, both have missed the goal.

. . .

We are dying of thirst sitting on the banks of the mightiest river. We are dying of hunger sitting near heaps of food.

. . .

If...[someone]...with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the...[person]...without an ideal makes fifty thousand. Therefore, it is better to have an ideal. And this ideal we must hear about as much as we can, till it enters into our hearts, into our brains, into our very veins, until it tingles in every drop of our blood and permeates every pore in our body. We must meditate upon it.

. . .

Fill the mind with the highest thoughts, hear them day after day, think them month after month. Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes...never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more. The ideal...is to see God in everything. But if you cannot see...[God]...in everything, see...[God]...in one thing, in that thing which you like best, and then see...[God]...in another. So on you can go. There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.

. . .

We see this universe as human beings, and our God is our human explanation of the universe.
Suppose a cow were philosophical and had religion, it would have a cow universe, and a cow solution of the problem, and it would not be possible that it should see our God. Suppose cats became philosophers, they would see a cat universe and have a cat solution of the problem of the universe, and a cat ruling it.

. . .

Our senses are limited, very limited indeed; and within these limitations exists what we call our universe...

. . .

...99.9 percent of those who attack religion have never analysed their minds, have never struggled to get at the facts. So their arguments do not have any weight against religion, any more than the words of a blind man who cries out, "You are all fools who believe in the sun," would effect us.

. . .

Only the...[person]...who has actually perceived God and soul has religion. There is no real difference between the highest ecclesiastical giant who can talk by the volume, and the lowest, most ignorant materialist. We are all atheists; let us confess it. Mere intellectual assent does not make us religious.

. . .

We are all atheists, and yet we try to fight the...[person]...who admits it. We are all in the dark; religion is to us a mere intellectual assent, a mere talk, a mere nothing. We often consider a...[person]...religious who can talk well. But this is not religion. "Wonderful methods of joining words, rhetorical powers, and explaining texts of the books in various ways - these are only for the enjoyment of the learned, and not religion." Religion comes when that actual realisation in our own souls begins. That will be the dawn of religion; and then alone we shall be moral. Now we are not much more moral than the animals. We are only held down by the whips of society. If society said today, "I will not punish you if you steal", we should just make a rush for each other's property. It is the policeman that makes us moral. It is social opinion that makes us moral, and really we are little better than animals. We understand how much this is so in the secret of our own hearts. So let us not be hypocrites.

. . .

If we had a heaven like that desired by those to whom sense-enjoyment is the very end of existence, then we would not progress. That would be the most terrible curse we could pronounce on the soul. Is that all we can come to? A little weeping and dancing, and then to die like a dog. What a curse you pronounce on the head of humanity when you long for these things.

. . .

The difference between...all things in the whole creation, is not in kind but only in degree.

. . .

This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Reality.

. . .

...the higher the ideal you have in the brain, the greater is your enjoyment, and the more profound your misery.

. . .

...this nature, infinite as you may think it, is only finite, a drop in the ocean, and your Soul is the ocean.

. . .

This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine...

. . .

...says the Upanishad..."As the sun is the cause of the eyesight of every being, yet is not made defective by the defect in any eye, even so the Self of all is not affected by the miseries of the body, or by any misery that is around you."

. . .

[You are]...only apparently a person, but in reality...[are]...the Impersonal Being.

. . .

The difference in knowledge between the lowest worm that crawls under our feet and the highest genius that the world may produce is only one of degree, and not of kind.

. . .

Weakness is the one cause of suffering. We become miserable because we are weak. We lie, steal, kill, and commit other crimes, because we are weak. We suffer because we are weak. We die because we are weak.

. . .

It is all very well to say, "I am the Pure, the Blessed," but I cannot show it always in my life. That is true; the ideal is always very hard. Every child that is born sees the sky overhead very far away, but is that any reason why we should not look towards the sky? Would it mend matters to go towards superstition? If we cannot get nectar, would it mend matters for us to drink poison? Would it be any help for us, because we cannot realise the truth immediately, to go into darkness and yield to weakness and superstition?

. . .

Nothing makes us work so well at our best and highest as when all the responsibility is thrown upon ourselves.

. . .

Everything that you see, feel, or hear, the whole universe, is...[God's]...creation, or to be a little more accurate, is...[God's]...projection; or to be still more accurate, is the Lord...[Itself]. It is...[God]...who is working as force in the body. [God]...is the speech that is uttered, ...[God]...is the...[person]...who is talking. [God]...is the audience that is here. [God]...is the light that enables me to see your faces. It is all...[God].

. . .

If you are going to exist in eternity hereafter, it must be that you have existed through eternity in the past; it cannot be otherwise. I will try to answer a few objections that are generally brought against the theory. Although many of you will think they are very silly objections, still we have to answer them, for sometimes we find that the most thoughtful...[people]...are ready to advance the silliest ideas. Well has it been said that there never was an idea so absurd that it did not find philosophers to defend it. The first objection is, why do we not remember our past? Do we remember all our past in this life? How many of you remember what you did when you were babies? None of you remember your early childhood, and if upon memory depends your existence, then this argument proves that you did not exist as babies, because you do not remember your babyhood. It is simply unmitigated nonsense to say that our existence depends on our remembering it. Why should we remember the past? That brain is gone, broken into pieces, and a new brain has been manufactured. What has come to this brain is the resultant, the sum total of the impressions acquired in our past, with which the mind has come to inhabit the new body.
I, as I stand here, am the effect, the result, of all the infinite past which is tacked on to me. And why is it necessary for me to remember all the past? ...Although we have seen that it is not necessary for the theory that there shall be the memory of past lives, yet at the same time, we are in a position to assert that there are instances which show that this memory does come, and that each one of us will get back this memory in that life in which...[they]...will become free. Then alone you will find that this world is but a dream...

. . .

...what we now call instinct is degeneration of voluntary actions.

. . .

...what directs the soul when the body dies? The resultant, the sum total of all the works it has done, of the thoughts it has thought. If the resultant is such that it has to manufacture a new body for further experience, it will go to those parents who are ready to supply it with suitable material for that body.

. . .

We human beings are very slow to recognise our own weakness, our own faults, so long as we can lay the blame upon somebody else.

. . .

We are like little puppies, making life-and-death struggles here, and foolishly thinking that even God...[Itself]...will take it as seriously as we do.

. . .

When you find yourselves suffering, blame yourselves, and try to do better.

. . .

The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each word, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever.

. . .

From the lowest protoplasm to the most perfect human being there is really but one life.

. . .

You are everywhere in the universe. ...You are everywhere. Then what is this coming and going? It is the hallucination produced by the change of this fine body which you call the mind. That is going on. Just a little speck of cloud passing before the sky. As it moves on and on, it may create the delusion that the sky moves. ...You are only one; there is only one such Self, and that One Self is you.

. . .

If the suns come down, and the moons crumble into dust, and systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you?

. . .

If...[someone]...cuts your throat, do not say no, for you are cutting your own throat.

. . .

The vast mass of Indian people are dualists. Human nature ordinarily cannot conceive of anything higher. We find that ninety per cent of the population of the earth who believe in any religion are dualists.

. . .

The number of souls that are to be saved, that are to be perfected, is infinite. Some are in plants, some are in the lower animals, some are in...[humans]...some are in gods, but all of them, even the highest gods, are imperfect, are in bondage.

. . .

Now we come to Advaitism, the last and, what we think, the fairest flower of philosophy and religion that any country in any age has produced, where human thought attains its highest expression and even goes beyond the mystery which seems to be impenetrable. ...It is too abstruse, too elevated to be the religion of the masses. ...it is difficult for even the most thoughtful man and woman in any country to understand Advaitism. We have made ourselves so weak; we have made ourselves so low. We may make great claims, but naturally we want to lean on somebody else. We are like little, weak plants, always wanting a support. How many times I have been asked for a "comfortable religion!" Very few...ask for the truth, fewer still dare to learn the truth, and fewest of all dare to follow it in all its practical bearings. It is not their fault; it is all weakness of the brain. Any new thought, especially of a high kind, creates a disturbance, tries to make a new channel, as it were, in the brain matter, and that unhinges the system, throws...[them]...off their balance. They are used to certain surroundings, and have to overcome a huge mass of ancient superstitions, ancestral superstition, class superstition, city superstition, country superstition, and behind all, the vast mass of superstition that is innate in every human being. Yet there are a few brave souls in the world who dare to conceive of truth, who dare to take it up, and who dare to follow it to the end.

. . .

What are you and I and all these things we see? Mere self-hypnotism; there is but one Existence...

. . .

Take away the form of the table, take away the name; what remains is It. The Vedantist does not call It either He or She - these are fictions, delusions of the human brain... People who are under illusion, who have become like animals, see a woman or a man.

. . .

The whole of this universe is one Unity, one Existence, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually.

. . .

...who ever helped any one? None. Wherever you seek a weak...[person]..., a dualist weeping and wailing for help from somewhere above the skies, it is because...[they do]...not know that the skies also are in...[they themselves]. [They]...want help from the skies, and the help comes. We see that it comes; but it comes from within...[themselves]..., and...[they]...mistake it as coming from without.

. . .

None but I was God, and this little I never existed.

. . .

Why is it that every one says, "Do good to others?" Where is the explanation? Why is it that all great...[people]...have preached the...[unity of humanity]...and greater...[still]...the...[unity]...of all lives? Because whether they were conscious of it or not, behind all that, through all their irrational and personal superstitions, was peering forth the eternal light of the Self denying all manifoldness, and asserting that the whole universe is but one.

. . .

You are as much in the sun now as in this earth, as much in England as in America.

. . .

People in this country think it too horrible that...[we humans]...should come up from the animal. Why? What will be the end of these millions of animals? Are they nothing? If we have a soul, so have they, and if they have none, neither have we. It is absurd to say that...[we]...alone...[have]...a soul, and the animals none. I have seen...[people]...much worse than animals.

. . .

In the universe, behind the universal mind, there is a Soul that exists, and it is called God.

. . .

Body is the name of a stream of matter continuously changing. Mind is the name of a stream of consciousness or thought continuously changing.

. . .

As when the sun shines upon millions of globules of water, upon each particle is seen a most perfect representation of the sun, so the one Soul, the one Self, the one Existence of the universe, being reflected on all these numerous globules of varying names and forms, appears to be various.

. . .

...you and I, the sun, the moon, and the stars are but the different names of different spots in the same ocean of matter.... This particle of energy that was in the sun several months ago may be in the human being now; tomorrow it may be in an animal, the day after tomorrow it may be in a plant. ...It is all one unbroken, infinite mass of matter, only differentiated by names and forms. One point is called the sun; another, the moon; another, the stars; another, ...[human]; another, animal; another, plant; and so on. And all these names are fictitious; they have no reality, because the whole is a continuously changing mass of matter.

. . .

...all this childish dream and puerile illusion of birth and death, of heavens and higher heavens and lower worlds, all vanish immediately for the perfect. For the nearly perfect it vanishes after showing them the several scenes up to Brahmaloka. It continues for the ignorant.

. . .

Between you and me there may be millions of beings on different planes of existence. They will never see us, nor we them; we only see those who are in the same state of mind and on the same plane with us. Those musical instruments respond which have the same attunement of vibration, as it were; if the state of vibration, which they call "[human]-vibration" should be changed, no longer would...[people]...be seen here; the whole "[human]-universe" would vanish, and instead of that, other scenery would come before us, perhaps gods and the god-universe, or perhaps, for the wicked..., devils and the diabolic world...

. . .

It is the greatest of all lies that we are mere...[humans]... we are the God of the universe. In worshiping God we have been always worshiping our own hidden Self.

. . .

So is it with this universe. We are all traveling in this mirage of the world day after day, month after month, year after year, not knowing that it is a mirage.

. . .

Until you have attained realisation there is no difference between you and atheists. The atheists are sincere, but the...[one]...who says that...[they]...believe in religion and never attempts to realise it is not sincere.
The next question is to know what comes after realisation. ....."What good will it do to the world?" That old question! In the first place, why should it do good to the world? Is there any reason why it should? What right has any one to ask the question, "What good will it do to the world?" What is meant by that? A baby likes candies. Suppose you are conducting investigations in connection with some subject of electricity and the baby asks you, "Does it buy candies?" "No" you answer. "Then what good will it do?" says the baby. So...[we]...stand up and say, "What good will this do to the world; will it give us money?" "No." "Then what good is there in it?" That is what...[most of us]...mean by doing good to the world.

. . .

Then alone does...[one]...love when...[they]...find that the object of...[their]...love is not a clod of earth, but it is the veritable God...[Itself]. The wife will love the husband the more when she thinks that the husband is God...[Itself]. The husband will love the wife more when he knows that the wife is God...[Itself].

. . .

If one millionth part of the men and women who live in this world simply sit down and for a few minutes say, "You are all God, O ye...[people]...and O ye animals and living beings, you are all the manifestations of the one living Deity." the whole world will be changed in half an hour.

. . .

It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark. ...We who are fools cry that we are weak...

. . .

The Vedanta entirely denies such ideas as that animals are separate from...[humans]...and that they were made and created by God to be used for our food.

. . .

Oneness includes all animals. If...[our]...life is immortal, so also is the animal's. The difference is only in degree and not in kind. The amoeba and I are the same, the difference is only in degree; and from the standpoint of the highest life, all these differences vanish. ...from the standpoint of the highest ideal, the lowest animal and the highest...[human being]... are the same. If you believe there is a God, the animals and the highest creatures must be the same. A God who is partial to...[Its]...children called...[humans]...and cruel to...[Its]...children called...beasts, is worse than a demon. I would rather die a hundred times than worship such a God. My whole life would be a fight with such a God. ...there is no difference, and those who say there is, are irresponsible, heartless people who do know know.

. . .

I myself may not be a very strict vegetarian, but I understand the ideal. When I eat meat I know it is wrong. Even if I am bound to eat it under certain circumstances, I know it is cruel. I must not drag my ideal down to the actual and apologise for my weak conduct in this way. The ideal is not to eat flesh, not to injure any being, for all animals are my...[kin]. If you can think of them as your...[kin]...you have made a little headway toward the...[kinship]...of all souls, not to speak of the...[kinship]...of...[humanity].

. . .

The Infinite has been covered up, as it were, and a little of It is manifested as the I.

. . .

It is through the heart that the Lord is seen, and not through the intellect. The intellect is only the street-cleaner, cleansing the path for us, a secondary worker, the policeman; but the polliceman is not a positive necessity for the workings of society. [The policeman]...is only to stop disturbances, to check wrong-doing, and that is all the work required of the intellect. When you read intellectual books, you think when you have mastered them, "Bless the Lord that I am out of them", because the intellect is blind and cannot move of itself, it has neither hands nor feet. It is feeling that works, that moves with speed infinitely superior to that of electricity or anything else. Do you feel? - that is the question. If you do, you will see the Lord: It is the feeling that you have today that will be intensified, deified, raised to the highest platform, until it feels everything, the oneness in everything, till it feels God in itself and in others. The intellect can never do that. ...Intellect is necessary, for without it we fall into crude errors and make all sorts or mistakes. Intellect checks these; but beyond that, do not try to build anything upon it. It is an inactive, secondary help; the real help is feeling, love.

. . .

Intellect is like limbs without the power of locomotion. It is only when feeling enters and gives them motion that they move and work on others.

. . .

...truth is one thing and comfort is another. There are cases where truth is not comfortable until we reach its climax.

. . .

Suppose I am a very wicked...[person]...doing evil every minute of my life. Still, my whole life here, compared with my eternal life, is nothing. If there be an eternal punishment, it will mean that there is an infinite effect produced by a finite cause, which cannot be. If I do good all my life, I cannot have an infinite heaven; it would be making the same mistake.

. . .

God...is the angel, the...[human], the animal, and yet something more which we cannot see, because impersonality includes all personalities, in the sum total of everything in the universe, and infinitely more besides.

. . .

Where shall we go to find God if we cannot see...[God]...in our own hearts and in every living being?

. . .

...we are beggars, jostled about by every force in nature; and made slaves of by everything in nature; we cry all over the world for help, but help never comes to us; we cry to imaginary beings, and yet it never comes. But still we hope help will come, and thus in weeping, wailing, and hoping, one life is passed, and the same play goes on and on.

. . .

If a king goes mad, and runs about trying to find the king of his country, he will never find him, because he is the king himself.

. . .

Calling God Mother is a higher ideal than calling...[God]...Father.

. . .

...that God for whom you have been searching all over the universe is all the time yourself - yourself not in the personal sense but in the Impersonal.

. . .

...it is better that...[we]...should become atheist by following reason than blindly believing in two hundred millions of gods on the authority of anybody.

. . .

This very universe, as we have seen, is the same Impersonal Being read by our intellect.

. . .

We are in reality that Infinite Being, and our personalities represent so many channels through which this Infinite Reality is manifesting Itself...

. . .

The world with all its enjoyments is a mere mud-puddle.

. . .

...what we call mistakes or evil, we commit because we are weak, and we are weak because we are ignorant.

. . .

We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.

. . .

You only get what you deserve.

. . .

As a man you are separate from the woman; as a human being you are one with the woman. As a man you are separate from the animal, but as living beings, man, woman, animal, and plant are all one; and as existence, you are one with the whole universe. That universal existence is God, the ultimate Unity in the universe.

. . .

...the same thing can be viewed from a hundred different standpoints, and yet be the same thing.

. . .

This world, this universe which our senses feel, or our mind thinks, is but one atom, so to say, of the Infinite, projected on to the plane of consciousness; and within that narrow limit, defined by the network of consciousness, works our reason, and not beyond.

. . .

I want to do work, I want to do good to a human being; and it is ninety to one that that human being whom I have helped will prove ungrateful and go against me...

. . .

Upon the same tree there are two birds, one on the top, the other below. The one on the top is calm, silent, and majestic, immersed in...[its]...own glory; the one on the lower branches, eating sweet and bitter fruits by turns, hopping from branch to branch, is becoming happy and miserable by turns. After a time the lower bird eats an exceptionally bitter fruit and gets disgusted and looks up and sees the other bird, that wondrous one of golden plumage, who eats neither sweet nor bitter fruit, who is neither happy nor miserable, but calm, Self-centered, and sees nothing beyond...[its]...Self. The lower bird longs for this condition but soon forgets it, and again begins to eat the fruits. In a little while...[it]...eats another exceptionally bitter fruit, which makes...[it]...feel miserable, and...[it]...again looks up, and tries to get nearer to the upper bird. Once more...[it]...forgets and after a time...looks up, and so on...[it]...goes again and again, until...[it]...comes very near to the beautiful bird and sees the reflection of light from...[its]...plumage playing around...[its]...own body, and...[the lower bird]...feels a change and seems to melt away; still nearer...[it]...comes, and everything about...[it]...melts away, and at last...[it]...understands this wonderful change. The lower bird was, as it were, only the substantial-looking shadow, the reflection of the higher; ...[the lower bird itself]...was in essence the upper bird all the time. This eating of fruits, sweet and bitter, this lower, little bird, weeping and happy by turns, was the vain chimera, a dream; all along, the real bird was there above, calm and silent, glorious and majestic, beyond grief, beyond sorrow. The upper bird is God, the Lord of this universe; and the lower bird is the human soul, eating the sweet and bitter fruits of this world. Now and then comes a heavy blow to the soul. For a time...[it]...stops the eating and goes toward the unknown God, and a flood of light comes. [It]...thinks that this world is a vain show. Yet again the senses drag...[it]...down, and...[it]...begins as before to eat the sweet and bitter fruits of the world. Again an exceptionally hard blow comes. [The]...heart becomes open again to divine light; thus gradually...[the soul]...approaches God, and as...[it]...gets nearer and nearer...[it]...finds...[its]...old self melting away. When...[it]...has come near enough...[it]...sees that...[it]...is no other than God, and...[it]...exclaims, "[That]...whom I have described to you as the Life of the universe, as present in the atom, and in suns and moons - [That]...is the basis of our own life, the Soul of our soul. Nay, thou art That." ...All of us, from the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings to whom we look up with wonder and awe - all are manifestations of the same Lord.

. . .

...the...[one]...who lives in ignorance and enjoys, is not different from the brute beast. Yet there are many who, though steeped in ignorance, in the pride of their hearts, think that they are great sages and go round and round in many crooked ways, like the blind led by the blind.

. . .

If the speaker is...[one]...who is not highly advanced, then even a hundred times heard, and a hundred times taught, the truth never illumines the soul.

. . .

[They who are]...continuously doing evil deeds, ...[they]...whose mind is not calm, ...[they]...who cannot meditate, ...[they who are]...always disturbed and fickle [ [they]...cannot understand and realise this Atman who has entered the cave of the heart.

. . .

...there is really only one Self, and you, I, and the whole universe are but one, appearing as many.

. . .

This is the one fundamental idea in the Vedas, that our search in the stars, the nebulae, the Milky Way, in the whole of this external universe leads to nothing, never solves the problem of life and death.

. . .

...that Soul which is the universal is you; you are not a part but the whole of It. You are the whole of God. ...If the sun reflects upon millions of globules of water, in each globule is the form, the perfect image of the sun; but they are only images, and the real sun is only one.

. . .

If a thunderbolt falls on my head, it was I who was the thunderbolt, because I am the only existence. If a plague comes, it is I; if a tiger comes, it is I. If death comes, it is I.

. . .

From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived - all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.

. . .

Yajnavalkya...said, "It is not for the sake of the husband that the wife loves the husband, but for the sake of the Atman that she loves the husband, because she loves the Self. None loves the wife for the sake of the wife; but it is because one loves the Self that one loves the wife. ..."

. . .

...it is all One Infinite Being. That is the real individuality, when there is no more division, and no more parts; these little ideas are very low, illusive...

. . .

Infinity cannot be divided, it always remains infinite. If it could be divided, each part would be infinite. And there cannot be two infinites. Suppose there were, one would limit the other, and both would be finite. Infinity can only be one, undivided. Thus the conclusion will be reached that the infinite is one and not many, and that one Infinite Soul is reflecting itself through thousands and thousands of mirrors, appearing as so many different souls.

. . .

This immense book which we call the universe is stretched out before...[us]...so that...[we]...may read.

. . .

...real knowledge is not what we know, not intuition, nor reason, nor instinct. When that degenerates and is confused, we call it intuition; when it degenerates more, we call it reason; and when it degenerates still more, we call it instinct.

. . .

The universe is you yourself, the unbroken you... You are God, you are the angeles, you are the minerals, you are everything.

. . .

As...[one]...appears to the senses is not the same as...[they]...really...[are]. [We]...began to [search] inside of...[ourselves]...and found out that...the same ideal...[we]...[had placed] outside of...[ourselves]...is all the time within; what...[we were]...worshipping outside was...[our]...own real inner nature. The difference between dualism and monism is that when the ideal is outside [of oneself], it is dualism. When God is [sought] within, it is monism.

. . .

You and I are not free. ...You are a slave. You never do anything of your own will because you are forced to do everything. Your only motive for action is some force.

. . .

...you are not separate [from this universe]; [just as your Spirit] is [not] separate from the rest of you. ...Our bodies are simply little whirlpools in the ocean of matter. ...The sun, the moon, the stars, you and I are mere whirlpools. Why did I select [a particular mind as mine? It is] simply a mental whirlpool in the ocean of mind.

. . .

Some people are so afraid of losing their individuality. Wouldn't it be better for the pig to lose...[its]...pig-individuality if...[it]...can become God?

. . .

Whatever we [think] that we become. If you think you are poor sinners you hypnotise yourselves: "I am a miserable, crawling worm." Those who believe in hell are in hell when they die.

. . .

I...believe in a past and a hereafter as necessary to the existence of the present. And if we go on from here, we must go in other forms, and so comes my belief in reincarnation. But I can prove nothing, and any one is welcome to deprive me of the theory of reincarnation provided they will show me something better to replace it. Only up to the present I have found nothing that offers so satisfactory an explanation to me.