Volume VI

When one worm lives in this universe, how can I die? For my life is in the life of that worm.

. . .

[Spiritual principles]...are as much the property of the lowest of the low, as they are the property of the Buddha, and as much the property of the smallest worm that crawls as of the Christ, because they are universal principles.

. . .

And for you to become religious means that you will start without any religion, work your way up and realise things, see things for yourself; and when you have done that, then and then alone, you have religion. Before that you are no better than atheists, or worse, because the atheist is sincere - ...[they]...stand up and say, "I do not know about these things" - while those others do not know but go about the world, saying, "We are very religious people."

. . .

From the highest to the lowest and most wicked...[person]...in the greatest of human beings and the lowest of crawling worms under our feet, is the soul, pure and perfect, infinite and ever blessed. ...Through all beings exists the same pure and perfect soul.

. . .

Now that which we call matter and mind are one and the same substance. The only difference is in the degree of vibration. Mind at a very low rate of vibration is what is known as matter. Matter at a high rate of vibration is what is known as mind.

. . .

With every action I assert I am free, and yet every action proves that I am bound.

. . .

Every cell in your body has a soul conscious of the cell. It is a separate entity. It has a little will of its own, a little sphere of action of its own. All [cells] combined make up an individual. [In the same way,] the Personal God of the universe is made up of all these [many individuals].

. . .

[One]...may have read all the libraries in the world and may not be religious at all, and another, who cannot perhaps write...[their]...own name, senses religion and realises it.

. . .

All my life I am repeating what...[so and so and so and so]...said, and never say anything myself. What glory is it that you know what...[anyone]...said twenty-five years ago and what...[someone else]...said five years ago? Tell me what you have to say.

. . .

...there is no value in learning. You are all mistaken in learning. The only value of knowledge is in the strengthening, the disciplining, of the mind. By all this eternal swallowing it is a wonder that we are not all dyspeptics. Let us stop, and burn all the books, and get hold of ourselves and think. You all talk [about] and get distracted over losing your "individuality". You are losing it every moment of your lives by this eternal swallowing. If any one of you believes that I teach, I will be sorry. I will only be too glad if I can excite in you the power of thinking for yourselves. ...My ambition is to talk to men and women, not to sheep.

. . .

Thank God, this is a dream. Thank God, for it will vanish. Thank God, there is death, glorious death, because it ends all this delusion, this dream, this fleshiness, this anguish.

. . .

I believe that if a man and a woman can really love, [they can acquire] all the powers the Yogis claim to have, for love itself is God.

. . .

Is not your husband God, your child God? If you can love your wife, you have all the religion in the world. You have the whole secret of religion and Yoga in you.

. . .

[If there is love], philosophy becomes poetry, psychology become [mysticism], and work the most delicious thing in creation.

. . .

There is one whose name is infinite Love. That is the only definition of God. Do not care if this...universe is destroyed.

. . .

What shall we do with power? Thank God if you can get rid of the power that you have.

. . .

[...In] the first moment of intense love the whole world seems in tune with your own heart. Every bird in the universe sings your love; the flowers bloom for you. It is infinite, eternal love itself that [human] love comes from.

. . .

[God] as [our] father, mother, friend, child - [are conceived in order to strengthen devotion in us and make us feel nearer and dearer to God]. ...In the husband, the woman has the father, the friend, the child. In the wife, the husband has mother, daughter, and something else.

. . .

Like the water drop on the sand of the river bank on a summer day, even so is this life and all its relations.

. . .

Law exists so long as we are ignorant.

. . .

The passage of time makes no mark whatever on the dial of eternity.

. . .

...the spirit...is an emanation of the Eternal Being and had no more a beginning than God...[Itself]. Innumerable have been and will be its manifestations in its passage from one personality to another, subject to the great law of spiritual evolution, until it reaches perfection, where there is no more change.

. . .

Evolution is in nature, not in the soul - evolution of nature, manifestation of the soul.

. . .

...we must be free from death; and to be free from death, we must be free from life. Life is but a dream of death. ...The idea of the continuity of life is foolish. We can never get rid of death until we get rid of life.

. . .

The material universe is the result of...[our]...limited consciousness.... When...[we]...become conscious of...[our]...divinity, all matter, all nature, as we know it, will cease to exist.

. . .

Records of great spiritual...[people]...of the past do us no good whatever except that they urge us onward to do the same, to experience religion ourselves. Whatever Christ or Moses or anybody else did does not help us in the least, except to urge us on.

. . .

Whenever you suppress a thought, it is simply pressed down out of sight, in a coil like a spring, only to spring out again at a moment's notice, with all the pent-up force resulting from the suppression, and do in a few moments what it would have done in a much longer period.

. . .

We read many books, but that does not bring us knowledge. We may read all the Bibles in the world, but that will not give us religion.

. . .

Every hospital is a prayer that more people may come there. What is meant by charity? Charity is not fundamental. It is really helping on the misery of the world, not eradicating it. One looks for name and fame and covers...[their]...efforts to obtain them with the enamel of charity and good works. [They are]...working for...[themselves]...under the pretext of working for others. Every so-called charity is an encouragement of the very evil it claims to operate against.
Men and women go to balls and dance all night in honour of some hospital or other charitable institution, then go home, behave like beasts, and bring devils into the world to fill jails, insane asylums, and hospitals.

. . .

...religious scriptures, though they seem to contain varying and conflicting statements, speak the truth, for they are all descriptions of that one infinite Reality.

. . .

Western philosophers are like vultures soaring high in the sky, but all the while, with their eye fixed on the carrion beneath. They cannot cross the unknown, and they therefore turn back and worship the almighty dollar.

. . .

In comparison with the Infinite, everything is nothing.

. . .

Christ's public life extended only over eighteen months, and for this he had silently been preparing himself for thirty-two years. Mohammed was forty years old before he came out.

. . .

The wicked see in God wickedness. The virtuous see in...[God]...virtue.

. . .

Everything is predestination - and a part of that predestination is that you shall have such feeling - the feeling of freedom.

. . .

The feeling of want is the real prayer, not the words.

. . .

You should cultivate a noble nature by doing your duty. By doing our duty we get rid of the idea of duty; and then and then only we feel everything as done by God. We are but machines in...[God's]...hand. This body is opaque, God is the lamp. Whatever is going out of the body is God's. You do not feel it. You feel "I". This is delusion. You must learn calm submission to the will of God. Duty is the best school for it. This duty is morality. Drill yourself to be thoroughly submissive. Get rid of the "I". No humbuggism. Then you can get rid of the idea of duty. for all is...[God's]. Then you go on naturally, forgiving, forgetting, etc.

. . .

All regulations in eating, practising, etc., are all right so long as they are complementary to a spiritual aspiration but they are not ends in themselves; they are only helps.

. . .

Children are born optimists, but the rest of life is a continuous disillusionment; not one ideal can be fully attained, not one thirst can be quenched.

. . .

Laughter and tears are kin, and there are more tears than laughter in this world.

. . .

...the poor widow retired entirely from the concerns of the world - even from that little she ever had - her soul given entirely to God, and waiting patiently with prayers, fasting, and discipline, for the great deliverer death, to meet in another life, him who was the eternal companion of her joys and sorrows, her partner in the good and evil of the beginningless chain of lives.

. . .

The nearer death approaches, the more does the power of original thinking wane, the more is there the attempt to bury one or two rotten ideas under a heap of flowers and scents.

. . .

...grief itself will appear as happiness when you become used to it by constant suffering.

. . .

...all Gurus are one and are fragments and radiations of God, the Universal Guru.

. . .

I don't think Jnana is a thing like rousing a maiden suddenly from sleep by saying, "Get up, dear girl, your marriage ceremony is waiting for you." as we say*. I am strongly of opinion that very few persons in any Yuga (age) attain Jnana, and therefore we should go on striving and striving even unto death.

* In other words, it is a very slow process, not something sudden and abrupt that leads to immediate and instantaneous realization.

. . .


...the secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice.

. . .

Thou art my father, my mother, my husband, my love, my lord, my God - I want nothing but Three, nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, Thou in me, I in Thee, I am Thee. Thou art me..

. . .

This is a place for action, not enjoyment, and everyone will go home when...[their]...task is done - some earlier, and some later, that is all.

. . .

In wealth is the fear of poverty, in knowledge the fear of ignorance, in beauty the fear of age, in fame the fear of backbiters, in success the fear of jealousy, even in body is the fear of death. Everything in this earth is fraught with fear. [They]...alone...[are]...fearless who...[have]...given up everything.

. . .

...these names, as Hindu, Christian, etc., stand as great bars to all brotherly feelings between...[us]. We must try to break them down first. They have lost all their good powers and now only stand as baneful influences under whose black magic even the best of us behave like demons.

. . .

...all beings from Brahma down to a clump of...[dirt]...will attain to liberation-in-life in course of time.

. . .

Every action that helps a being manifest its divine nature more and more is good, every action that retards it is evil.

. . .

Opportunities will turn even a staunch moralist into a cheat. This is the way of the world.

. . .

...we live in the midst of death in life...

. . .

It is for the sinful that the Lord manifests...[Itself]...specially, not so much for the virtuous.

. . .

I am getting ready to depart to return no more to this hell, this world. Even its religious utility is beginning to pall me. May Mother gather me soon to Herself never to come back any more. These works, and doing good, etc., are just a little exercise to cleanse the mind. I had enough of it. This world will be world ever and always. What we are, so we see it. Who works? Whose work? There is no world. It is God...[Itself]. In delusion we call it world. Neither I nor thou nor you - it is all...[God]...the Lord, all One.

. . .

...perfect life is a contradiction in terms.

. . .

...the world is so little, life so mean a thing, existence so, so servile - that I wonder and smile that human beings, rational souls, should be running after this self - so mean and detestable a prize.
This is the truth. We are caught in a trap, and the sooner one gets out, the better for one.

. . .

Books and learning, Yoga and meditation and illumination - all are but dust compared with love. It is love that gives you the supernatural powers, love that gives you Bhakti, love that gives illumination, and love, again, that leads to emancipation.

. . .

I, too, have determined to work. The body must go, no mistake about that. Why then let it go in idleness? It is better to wear out than to rust out.

. . .

...religions are but the varied expressions of The Religion, which is Oneness.

. . .

...always remember - "Duty is the midday sun whose fierce rays are burning the very vitals of humanity." It is necessary for a time as a discipline; beyond that, it is a morbid dream.

. . .

We in delusion only break ourselves.

. . .

The Mother is our guide and whatever happens or will happen is under Her ordination.

. . .

Ravana got his release in three births by fighting the Lord...[Itself]. It is glorious to fight Mother.

. . .

...it is easier to be reconciled to one's fate as a sacrifice. ...Those that are willing escape a lot of pain. Those who resist are broken into submission and suffer more.

. . .

We are like cattle driven to the slaughter-house - hastily nibbling a bite of grass on the roadside as they are driven along under the whip. And all this is our work, our fear - fear, the beginning of misery, of disease, etc. By being nervous and fearful we injure others. By being so fearful to hurt we hurt more. By trying so much to avoid evil we fall into its jaws.
It does us no good, it leads us on to the very thing we try to avoid - misery.

. . .

[They]...who always speculate as to what await...[them]...in the future, accomplish nothing whatsoever. What you have understood as true and good, just do that at once. What's the good of calculating what may or may not befall in future? The span of life is so, so short - and can anything be accomplished in it if you go on forecasting and computing results? God is the only dispenser of results; leave it to...[God]...to do all that. What have you got to do with it? Don't look that way, but go on working.

. . .

It requires striving through many births to reach perfection.

. . .

Somebody comes to the fullest faith even without seeing or hearing, while somebody else remains plunged in doubt even after witnessing with...[their]...own eyes various extraordinary powers for twelve years.

. . .

"One attains the highest stage after being perfected by the practice of repeated births." (Gita, VI. 45)

. . .

There is no way, none whatsoever, to the solution of the profound mystery of this life except through renunciation. "For...all things on earth are infected with fear, Vairagya (renunciation) alone constitutes fearlessness." (Vairagya-Shatakam).

. . .

[They]...who have the slightest desire for worldly pleasures, even a shred of some such craving, will feel frightened at the thought of the path you are going to tread; so, to give...[themselves]...some consolation...[they go]...about preaching that impossible creed of harmonising Bhoga and Tyaga. That is all the raving of lunatics, the frothings of the demented.... No freedom without renunciation.

. . .

The awakening of real renunciation all at once and the consequent giving up of the world through Sannyasa is something that never happens unless there are strong Samskaras or tendencies, developed from previous birth.

. . .

Markata Sannyasa is the case of...[one]...who is driven out of the world by some of its chastisements such as the death of a relative or the like and then takes to Sannyasa, though in such a case the renouncing spirit does not endure long.