Volume III

The sense universe is, as it were, only one portion, one bit of that infinite spiritual universe projected into the plane of sense consciousness.

. . .

There is but one Infinite Being in the universe, and that Being appears as you and as I; but this appearance of divisions is after all a delusion. ...I am That, and you are That. Not parts of It, but the whole of It.

. . .

This body is not I; it must go.

. . .

The wave is the same thing as the water, the effect is the cause in another form.

. . .

As long as you are in the network of time, space, and causation, to say you are free is nonsense, because in the network all is under rigorous law, sequence, and consequence. Every thought that you think is caused, every feeling has been caused; to say that the will is free is sheer nonsense.

. . .

The idea of God and the ideas of brute and of...[humans]...are within this Maya, and as such are equally hallucinations; all of them are dreams. But you must take care not to argue like some extraordinary...[people]...of whom we hear at the present time. They say the idea of God is a delusion, but the idea of the world is true. Both ideas stand or fall by the same logic. [That person]...alone has the right to be an atheist who denies this world, as well as the other. The same argument is for both. The same mass of delusion extends from God to the lowest animal, from a blade of grass to the Creator. They stand or fall by the same logic. The same person who sees falsity in the idea of God ought also to see it in the idea of...[their]...own body or...[their]...own mind. When God vanishes, then also vanish the body and mind; and when both vanish, that which is the Real Existence remains for ever.

. . .

Deny that there is any life at all, because life is only another name for death. Deny that you are a living being. Who cares for life? Life is one of these hallucinations, and death is its counterpart.

. . .

When a...[person]...is ignorant, ...[they]...want to go to heaven or some place, and all...[their]...life...[they have]...been thinking and thinking of this; and when this earth-dream vanishes, ...[they]...see this world as a heaven with Devas and angels flying about, and all such things. If a...[person]...all...[their]...life desires to meet...[their]...forefathers, ...[they get]...them all from Adam downwards, because...[they]...create them. If a...[person]...is still more ignorant and has always been frightened by fanatics with ideas of hell, with all sorts of punishments, when...[they]...die, ...[they]...will see this very world as hell. All that is meant by dying or being born is simply changes in the plane of vision.

. . .

Who cares if disease comes or death in the most horrible form? I am not the body.

. . .

Ramanuja says in his Shri Bhashya, quoting and ancient Acharya, i.e. a great teacher: "From Brahma to a clump of grass, all things that live in the world are slaves of birth and death caused by Karma; therefore they cannot be helpful as objects of meditation, because they are all in ignorance and subject to change."

. . .

Show us one, but one gigantic spiritual genius growing out of all this dry dust of ignorance and fanaticism; and if you cannot, close your mouths, open the windows of your hearts to the clear light of truth, and sit like children at the feet of those who know what they are talking about - the sages of India.

. . .

This quickening impulse cannot be derived from books. ...We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spiritually. It is not true that a high order of intellectual development always goes hand in hand with a proportionate development of the spiritual side in...[us]. In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyse the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the utmost it is only our intellect that derives profit from such books by such studies, and not our inner spirit. This inadequacy of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and living of a truly spiritual life, we find ourselves so awfully deficient.

. . .

...whenever we are tempted to complain of our search after the truth that we desire so much, proving vain, instead of so complaining, our first duty ought to be to look into our own souls and find whether the craving in the heart is real. Then in the vast majority of cases it would be discovered that we were not fit for receiving the truth, that there was no real thirst...

. . .

...there must be continuous struggle, a constant fight, and unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt and the victory is achieved. It is not a question of one or two days, or years, or of lives; the struggle may have to go one for hundreds of lifetimes.

. . .

If, for instance, the buffaloes want to worship God, they will, in keeping with their own nature, see...[God]...as a huge buffalo; if a fish wants to worship God, it will have to form an idea of...[God]...as a big fish; and...[we have]...to think of...[God]...as...[a human]. And these various conceptions are not due to morbidly active imagination. [We]..., the buffalo; and the fish all may be supposed to represent so many different vessels, so to say. All these vessels go to the sea of God to get filled with water, each according to its own shape and capacity; in...[us]...the water takes the shape of...[a human]...in the buffalo, the shape of a buffalo, and in the fish, the shape of a fish. In each of these vessels there is the same water of the sea of God. When...[we]...see...[God]...[we]...see...[God]...as...[human]..., and the animals...must see...[God]...as animal, each according to its own ideal.

. . .

You are so easy of approach; it is my misfortune that I cannot love You.

. . .

To restrain the Indriyas (organs) from going toward the objects of the senses, to control them and bring them under the guidance of the will, is the very central virtue in religious culture.

. . .

...external practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity.

. . .

Why should our body be saved, say, from the tiger? Why may we not give it over to the tiger? The tiger will thereby be pleased, and that is not altogether so very far from self-sacrifice and worship.

. . .

The whole universe is...a writing of the Infinite in the language of the finite.

. . .

What love shakes the whole nature of...[humanity]...what love runs through every atom of...[one's]...being - makes...[one]...mad, makes...[one]...forget...[their]...own nature, transforms...[you]..., makes...[one]...either a God or a demon - as the love between man and woman?

. . .

...the love which is in you, if it is given to any human being, will sooner or later bring pain and sorrow as the result.

. . .

God is the one goal of all our passions and emotions.

. . .

[Human], O...[human]..., you speak of divine love and at the same time are able to attend to all the vanities of this world - are you sincere?

. . .

The word Hindu, by which it is the fashion nowadays to style ourselves, has lost all its meaning, for this word merely meant those who lived on the other side of the river Indus (in Sanskrit, Sindhu). This name was murdered into Hindu by the ancient Persians, and all people living on the other side of the river Sindhu were called by them Hindus. Thus this word has come down to us; and during the Mohammedan rule we took up the word ourselves.

. . .

The difference is not in the soul, but in the manifestation. Between me and the smallest animal, the difference is only in manifestation, but as a principle...[that tiny animal]...is the same as I am, ...[they]...are my...[kin]...[they have]...the same soul as I have.

. . .

Even in the highest of heavens...you are slave...

. . .

What we call happiness and good here are but particles of that eternal Bliss. And this eternal Bliss is our goal.

. . .

In the Vedas it is not the word "He" that is used, but "It", for "He" would make an invidious distinction, as if God were a man. "It", the impersonal, is used, and this impersonal "It" is preached.

. . .

Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master.

. . .

This world is a delusion of two days. The present life is of five minutes. ...This continent is illumined with brave and gigantic minds and intelligences which even think of this so-called infinite universe as only a mud-puddle; beyond and still beyond they go.

. . .

In other countries great priests try to trace their descent to some king, but here the greatest kings would trace their descent to some ancient priest.

. . .

The Western world is governed by a handful of Shylocks. All those things that you hear about - constitutional government, freedom, liberty, and parliaments - are but jokes.

. . .

The worst, most demoniacal...[person]...has some virtues which the greatest saint has not; and the lowest worm may have certain things which the highest...[person]...does not.

. . .

...inside that little crawling worm is lodged infinite power, and knowledge, and purity - the infinite divinity of God...[Itself].

. . .

You have not to think that you were brought into the world without your choice and left in this most horrible place, but to know that you have yourself manufactured your body bit by bit just as you are doing it this very moment.

. . .

No bacilli can attack the human frame until it is degraded and degenerated by vice, bad food, privation, and exposure; the healthy...[human]...passes scatheless through masses of poisonous bacilli.

. . .

I do not know whether I shall succeed or not, but it is a great thing to take up a grand ideal in life and then give up one's whole life to it. For what otherwise is the value of life, this vegetating, little, low life of...[ours]? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

. . .

...all your power is finite, and ...life itself is oftentimes an evil...

. . .

...those who train themselves to live on the least and control themselves well will in the end gain the battle, and...those who run after enjoyment and luxury, however vigorous they may seem for the moment, will have to die and become annihilated.

. . .

...you and I, the sun, moon, and stars are but little waves or wavelets in the midst of an infinite ocean of matter...

. . .

One ounce of practice is worth twenty thousands tons of big talk.

. . .

...all life is evil. No breath can be breathed without killing some one else...

. . .

That intense faith in another world, that intense hatred for this world, that intense power of renunciation, that intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal soul, is in you.

. . .

Love opens the most impossible gates; love is the gate to all the secrets of the universe.

. . .

You speak of matter, the whole universe as one mass, one ocean of matter, in which you and I, the sun and the moon, and everything else are but the names of different little whirlpools and nothing more.

. . .

I am a fisherman, you are the philosopher, but I have the same God in me as you have in you.

. . .

Religion is not in books, nor in theories, nor in dogmas, nor in talking, not even in reasoning. It is being and becoming.

. . .

Ours is the religion of which Buddhism with all its greatness is a rebel child, and of which Christianity is a very patchy imitation.

. . .

...love must conquer hatred, hatred cannot conquer itself...

. . .

I would rather see every one of you rank atheists than superstitious fools.

. . .

Until the body is in a state to admit the germs, until the body is degraded to a lower vitality so that the germs may enter and thrive and multiply, there is no power in any germ in the world to produce a disease in the body.

. . .

In India...the poorer the...[person]...the better...[they are]...in point of morality...

. . .

...even in the lowest worm that crawls under your feet, all the eightfold Yogi's powers are already existing.

. . .

If...[someone]...day and night thinks...[they]...are miserable, low, and nothing, nothing...[they]...become. ...if you say "I am not", think that you are not, and day and night meditate upon the fact that you are nothing, ay, nothing shall you be.

. . .

...if purity has not been the nature of the soul, it can never attain purity afterwards, for anything that was not perfect by nature, even if it attained to perfection, that perfection would go away. If impurity is...[our]...nature...then...[we]...will have to remain impure, even though...[we]...may be pure for five minutes. The time will come when this purity will wash out, pass away, and the old natural impurity will have its sway once more.

. . .

...there is no salvation for...[us]...until...[we see]...God, realise...[our]...own soul.

. . .

An ass in a lion's skin never makes a lion.

. . .

The ordinary...[human]...cannot do without a personal God to worship; if...[they do]...not worship a God in nature, ...[they have]...to worship either a God in the shape of a wife, or a child, or a father, or a friend, or a teacher, or somebody else.

. . .

...the mind is matter, only finer.

. . .

...supposing we represent...[real existence]...by...[the letter "y"]..., what we really know is...["y"]...plus mind, and this mind-element is so great that it has covered the whole of that...["y"]...which has remained unknown and unknowable throughout; and, therefore, if there is...[a reality]..., it is always unknown and unknowable. What we know of it is as it is moulded, formed, fashioned by our own mind. So with the internal world. The same applies to our own soul, the Atman. In order to know the Atman we shall have to know It through the mind; and, therefore, what little we know of this Atman is simply the Atman plus the mind. That is to say, the Atman covered over, fashioned and moulded by the mind...

. . .

...the bodies of the different animals are really one; ...from the lowest worm to the highest and the most saintly...[being]...it is but one. ...every soul is infinite. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the noblest and greatest saints, all have this infinite power, infinite purity, and infinite everything.

. . .

The Vedas are in the soul of the ant, in the soul of the god.

. . .

...what may have been matter in the sun has just now become matter in you, and will go out and become matter in the plants; then where is your individuality, Mr. So-and-so?

, , ,

Everything, the whole universe, is such a false attempt. This infinite Atman is, as it were, trying to see...[God's]...own face, and all, from the lowest animals to the highest of gods, are like so many mirrors to reflect...[God]...in, and...[God]...is taking up still others, finding them insufficient...

. . .

Thou art the woman, thou the man, thou art the boy, and the girl as well, thou the old man supporting thyself on a stick, thou art all in all in the universe.

. . .

The same God whom the ignorant...saw outside nature, the same whom the little-knowing...saw as interpenetrating the universe, and the same whom the sage realises as...[their]...own Self, as the whole universe itself - all are One and the same Being, the same entity seen from different standpoints, seen through different glasses of Maya, perceived by different minds.

. . .

...they learn from somebody - the Lord knows from whom - that Advaita makes people immoral, because if we are all one and all God, what need of morality will there be at all? In the first place, that is the argument of the brute, who can only be kept down by the whip. If you are such brutes, commit suicide rather than pass from human beings who have to be kept down by the whip. If the whip is taken away, you will all be demons. You ought all to be killed if such is the case. There is no help for you; you must always be living under this whip and rod, and there is no salvation, no escape for you.

. . .

Give up this little life of yours. What matters it if you die of starvation - you and I and thousands like us... What matters it if this little life goes? Everyone has to die.

. . .

"Renunciation"...I shall characterise...as "the love of death". ...Let all our actions - eating, drinking, and everything that we do - tend toward the sacrifice of our self.

. . .

The true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman's heart.

. . .

...you must be strong and inflexible and you must also possess obedience.

. . .

...innumerable individual souls, having taken body after body again and again, go round and round in the wheel of birth and death according to their respective Karmas; ...this Samsara, this ever-changing existence, is full of misery, and as such, it is nothing, nothing but unreal...

. . .

Now this great Emperor Asoka built hospitals for...[people]...and for animals. The inscriptions show they are ordering hospitals, building hospitals for...[people]...and for animals. That is to say, when an animal gets old, if I am poor and cannot keep it any longer, I do not shoot it down for mercy. These hospitals are maintained by public charity. The coasting traders pay so much upon every hundredweight they sell, and all that goes to the hospital; so nobody is touched. If you have a cow that is old - anything - and do not want to keep it, send it to the hospital; they keep it, even down to rats and mice and anything you send. Only, our ladies try to kill these animals sometimes, you know. They go in large numbers to see them and they bring all sorts of cakes; the animals should be as much under the protection of the government as...[we]. Why should animals be allowed to be killed? [There] is no reason. But he says, before prohibiting the killing of animals for food even, [people] must be provided with all sorts of vegetables. So he sent and collected all kinds of vegetables and planted them in India; and then, as soon as these were introduced, the order was; henceforth, whosoever kills an animal will be punished. A government is to a government; the animals must be protected also. What business...[have we]...to kill a cow, a goat, or any other animal for food?

. . .

...if for one evil thou returnest another, thou curest not the first evil, but only add one evil more to the world.

. . .

...doctrines and dogmas do not mean anything; what you are is what matters. If you talk all the best philosophies the world ever produced, [but] if you are a fool in your behaviour, they do not count...

. . .

...there is but one existence and one thing real, and that is God.

. . .

...be sincere; and if you are sincere...you are sure to be brought to the goal. None will be left. Your heart, which contains all truth, will unfold itself chapter after chapter, till you know the last truth, that "I and...[God]...are one". And what is salvation? To live with God. Where? Anywhere. Here this moment.