Hanuman Jayanti

Little I Never Existed!

… man, after this vain search after various gods outside himself, completes the circle, and 
comes back to the point from which he started -- the human soul, and 
he finds that the God whom he was searching in hill and dale, whom he was seeking in every brook, in every temple, in churches and heavens, that God whom he was even imagining as sitting in heaven and ruling the world, 
is his own Self. 

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

           - Swami Vivekananda, 
                 Jnana-Yoga, US

Thought is Powerful Than Matter

Souls From Animal Bodies

People in this country think it too horrible that man should come up from an 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 man alone has a soul, and the animals none. 

I have seen men worse than animals.

The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms, migrating from one to another, according to the Samskaras or impressions, but it is only in the highest form as man that it attains to freedom.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Fear in Duality

Condemn None

Condemn none; if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so.

If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brother, and let them go their own way. 

Dragging down and condemning is not the way to work.

Never is work accomplished in that way. 

We spend our energies in condemning others. 

Criticism and condemnation is a vain way of spending our energies, for in the long run we come to learn that all are seeing the same thing, are more or less approaching the same ideal, and that most of our differences are merely differences of expression.

- Swami Vivekananda, 

   Practical Vedanta I, London

Rama Navami

I Salute My Self

Do Not Injure

The Advaitist or the qualified Advaitist does not say that dualism is wrong; it is a right view, but a lower one. 

It is on the way to truth; therefore let everybody work out his own vision of this universe, according to his own ideas. 

Injure none, deny the position of none; take man where he stands and, if you can, lend him a helping hand and put him on a higher platform, but do not injure and do not destroy. All will come to truth in the long run. 

"When all the desires of the heart will be vanquished, then this very mortal will become immortal"-- then the very man will become God.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Calm Mind Works Better

Vast Mass of Superstition

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 men 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.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

None But 'I'

Religion Without Devil

There are people in this country who, if I told them there was no such being as the devil, will think all religion is gone. Many people have said to me, how can there be religion without a devil? 

How can there be religion without someone to direct us? How can we live without being ruled by somebody? 

We like to be so treated, because we have become used to it. We are not happy until we feel we have been reprimanded by somebody every day. 
The same superstition! 

                - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

One Unit Existence

First Test of True Teaching

Vain Imaginations

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

We are looking upon this one Existence in different forms and creating all these images upon It. To the being who has limited himself to the condition of man, It appears as the world of man. To the being who is on a higher plane of existence, It may seem like heaven.

There is but one Soul in the universe, not two. It neither comes nor goes. It is neither born, nor dies, nor reincarnates. How can It die? Where can It go? 
All these heavens, all these earths, and all these places are vain imaginations of the mind. They do not exist, never existed in the past, and never will exist in the future.
        - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Theme of Vedanta

Back to Equilibrium

To go back to Brahman from which we have been projected is the great struggle of life. 
Whether people know it or not does not matter. 

In the universe, whatever we see of motion, or struggles in mineral or plants or animals is an effort to come back to the centre and be at rest. 
There was an equilibrium, and that has been destroyed; and all parts and atoms and molecules are struggling to find their lost equilibrium again. 

In this struggle they are combining and re-forming, giving rise to all the wonderful phenomena of nature. All struggles and competitions in animal life, plant life, and everywhere else, all social struggles and wars are but expressions of that eternal struggle to get back to that equilibrium.

            - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga

Foolish Puppies

You are the Creator of Your Own Destiny

… blame none for your own faults, stand upon your own feet, and take the whole responsibility upon yourselves. 

Say, "This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone." 

That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by some one else I shall never be able to destroy. 

Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. 

Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, 

and know that you are the creator of your own destiny.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York

Manifestation of Divine Bliss

Dualism for Majority

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.

All the religions of Europe and Western Asia are dualistic; they have to be. The ordinary man cannot think of anything which is not concrete. He naturally likes to cling to that which his intellect can grasp. That is to say, he can only conceive of higher spiritual ideas by bringing them down to his own level. He can only grasp abstract thoughts by making them concrete. 

This is the religion of the masses all over the world. They believe in a God who is entirely separate from them, a great king, a high, mighty monarch, as it were.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Thing Beyond Body and Mind

Where is Fate?

Where is fate, and who is fate? 
We reap what we sow. 
We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise. 

The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind? 

Is it the fault of the merciful Father, whose wind of mercy is blowing without ceasing, day and night, whose mercy knows no decay, is it His fault that some of us are happy and some unhappy? 

                - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York

Self Through Body and Mind

No Birth No Death

You are everywhere in this universe. 

How is it then that I am born and I am going to die, and all that? 

That is the talk of ignorance, hallucination of the brain. 

You were neither born, nor will you die. You have had neither birth, nor will have rebirth, nor life, nor incarnation, nor anything. What do you mean by coming and going? All shallow nonsense. You are everywhere. … …

In reality you are neither going nor coming, you are not being born, nor going to be reborn; you are infinite, ever-present, beyond all causation, and ever-free. Such a question is out of place, it is arrant nonsense. 

How could there be mortality when there was no birth?

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Alpha and Omega of Vedanta Philosophy

Fullness of Heart

"This Atman is first to be heard of." 

Hear day and night that you are that Soul. 

Repeat it to yourselves day and night till it enters into your very veins, till it tingles in every drop of blood, till it is in your flesh and bone. 

Let the whole body be full of that one ideal, 

"I am the birthless, the deathless, the blissful, the omniscient, the omnipotent, ever-glorious Soul." 

Think on it day and night; think on it till it becomes part and parcel of your life. 

Meditate upon it, and out of that will come work. 

"Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and 

out of the fullness of the heart the hand worketh also.

- Swami Vivekananda, 

Practical Vedanta I, London

Vedanta - Not Just About Beyond

Chaitanya

Chaitanya, represented the mad love of the Gopis. 

Himself a Brahmin, born of one of the most rationalistic families of the day, himself a professor of logic fighting and gaining a word-victory -- for, this he had learnt from his childhood as the highest ideal of life and yet through the mercy of some sage the whole life of that man became changed; 
he gave up his fight, his quarrels, his professorship of logic and became one of the greatest teachers of Bhakti the world has ever known -- mad Chaitanya. 

His Bhakti rolled over the whole land of Bengal, bringing solace to every one. 

- Swami Vivekananda, Address at Madras, 
         Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Cosmic Intelligence Evolved

The beginning was, therefore, intelligence. 
At the beginning that intelligence becomes involved, 
and in the end that intelligence gets evolved. 

The sum total of the intelligence displayed in the universe must, therefore, be the involved universal intelligence unfolding itself. 

This universal intelligence is what we call God. 

Call it by any other name, it is absolutely certain that in the beginning there is that Infinite cosmic intelligence. 
This cosmic intelligence gets involved, and it manifests, evolves itself, until it becomes the perfect man, 
the "Christ-man," the "Buddha-man." 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York