Internal and External Nature

Dual Nature of Things

The Vedanta philosophy is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. 

It voices both these views and takes things as they are. 

It admits that this world is a mixture of good and evil, happiness and misery, and that to increase the one, one must of necessity increase the other. 

There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms. The great secret revealed by this analysis is that good and bad are not two cut-and-dried, separate existences. There is not one thing in this world of ours which you can label as good and good alone, and there is not one thing in the universe which you can label as bad and bad alone. 

The very same phenomenon which is appearing to be good now, may appear to be bad tomorrow. The same thing which is producing misery in one, may produce happiness in another.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Pursuit of Infinite

Different Language Expressions

The difference between the language of the highest philosophers and the utterances of babies is one of degree and not of kind. 
What you call the most correct, systematic, mathematical language of the present time, and the hazy, mystical, mythological languages of the ancients, differ only in degree. 

All of them have a grand idea behind, which is, as it were, struggling to express itself; and often behind these ancient mythologies are nuggets of truth; and often, I am sorry to say, behind the fine, polished phrases of the moderns is arrant trash. 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Greatest Society

Ancient Superstition and Modern Superstition

If people should laugh at religion because most religions declare that men must believe in mythologies taught by such and such a prophet, they ought to laugh more at these moderns. 
In modern times, if a man quotes a Moses or a Buddha or a Christ, he is laughed at; but let him give the name of a Huxley, a Tyndall, or a Darwin, and it is swallowed without salt. "Huxley has said it", that is enough for many. 
We are free from superstitions indeed! 

That was a religious superstition, and this is a scientific superstition; 
only, in and through that superstition came life-giving ideas of spirituality; in and through this modern superstition come lust and greed. 

               - Swami Vivekananda, 
                  Jnana-Yoga, London

"I And My Father Are one"

Christmas Eve

If I, as an Oriental, have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one way left to me, that is, to worship him as God and nothing else. 
Have we no right to worship him in that way, do you mean to say? 
If we bring him down to our own level and simply pay him a little respect as a great man, why should we worship at all? 

Our scriptures say, "These great children of Light, who manifest the Light themselves, who are Light themselves, they, being worshipped, become, as it were, one with us and 
we become one with them."

  - Swami Vivekananda in his sublime talk on 
    ‘Christ, The Messenger’ at Los Angles, California (1900)

Birthright of Human Being

Religion - Real and Living

The power of religion, broadened and purified, is going to penetrate every part of human life. 

So long as religion was in the hands of a chosen few or 

of a body of priests, it was in temples, churches, books, dogmas, ceremonials, forms, and rituals. 

But when we come to the real, spiritual, universal concept, then, and then alone, religion will become real and living; 

it will come into our very nature, live in our every movement, penetrate every pore of our society, and be infinitely more a power for good than it has ever been before.

- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Spirituality is the Strength of Race

Happiness in Spirit only

Happiness is only found in the Spirit. Therefore the highest utility for mankind is to find this happiness in the Spirit. … 

As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate. 
As soon as this idea of separation comes, it opens the door to all mischief and leads to all misery. 

This is the utility that if a very small fractional part of human beings living today can put aside the idea of selfishness, narrowness, and littleness, this earth will become a paradise tomorrow; but with machines and improvements of material knowledge only, it will never be. 
                          
                             - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Renunciation - Basis of Ethics

Love - Motive Power in the Universe

What manifests itself as attraction in the sentient and the insentient, in the particular and in the universal, is the love of God. 

It is the one motive power that is in the universe. 

Under the impetus of that love, Christ gives his life for humanity, Buddha even for an animal, the mother for the child, the husband for the wife. 

It is under the impetus of the same love that men are ready to give up their lives for their country, and strange to say, under the impetus of the same love, the thief steals, the murderer murders. Even in these cases, the spirit is the same, but the manifestation is different. 
This is the one motive power in the universe.

- Swami Vivekananda, 
Talk in New York

Ideal in Some Form

Love, Lover, and Beloved Are One

We always begin as dualists. God is a separate Being, and I am a separate being. 
Love comes between, and man begins to approach God, and God, as it were, begins to approach man. 
Man takes up all the various relationships of life, as father, mother, friend, or lover; and the last point is reached when he becomes one with the object of worship. 

"I am you, and you are I; and worshipping you, I worship myself; and in worshipping myself, I worship you." 
There we find the highest culmination of that with which man begins. … … 

That God who at first was a Being somewhere, became resolved, as it were, into Infinite Love. 
Man himself was also transformed. He was approaching God, he was throwing off the vain desires, of which he was full before. 
With desires vanished selfishness, and, at the apex, he found that Love, Lover, and Beloved were One. 

                                     - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

First Steps of Religion

Religion - The Manifestation of Vast Organism called Humanity

We should get beyond the prattle of men who think that religion is merely a mass of frothy words, that 
it is only a system of doctrines; 
to whom religion is only a little intellectual assent or dissent; to whom religion is believing in certain words which their own priests tell them; 
to whom religion is something which their forefathers believed; 
to whom religion is a certain form of ideas and superstitions to which they cling because they are their national superstitions. 

We should get beyond all these and look at humanity as one vast organism, slowly coming towards light -- a wonderful plant, slowly unfolding itself to that wonderful truth which is called God -- and the first gyrations, the first motions, towards this are always through matter and through ritual. 

                                - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Man Circle, God Circle !

Common Points in All Religions

… we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the worship of God -- 
forms or symbols, names, God-men. 
All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other. 
One says, "My name is the only name; my form is the only form; and my God-men are the only God-men in the world; yours are simply myths." … … 

This idea is not limited to any religion, nation, or class of persons; people are always thinking that the only right thing to be done by others is what they themselves are doing. 

And it is here that the study of different religions helps us. 
It shows us that the same thoughts that we have been calling ours, and ours alone, were present hundreds of years ago in others, and sometimes even in a better form of expression than our own.

                  - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

All Exists Because of Reality

Holy Mother Tithi Puja

You have not yet understood the wonderful significance of Mother's life — none of you. But gradually you will know. Without Shakti (Power) there is no regeneration for the world. Why is it that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all countries? — Because Shakti is held in dishonour there. Mother has been born to revive that wonderful Shakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more will Gârgis and Maitreyis be born into the world.
   - Swami Vivekananda to Swami Shivananda in a Letter

Many Sciences Originated From India

There is no end to the power a man can obtain. This is the peculiarity of the Indian mind, that when anything interests it, it gets absorbed in it and other things are neglected. 

You know how many sciences had their origin in India. Mathematics began there. You are even today counting 1, 2, 3, etc. to zero, after Sanskrit figures, and you all know that algebra also originated in India, and that gravitation was known to the Indian thousands of years before Newton was born.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

God in Good and Evil

It is not so easy to be good. What are you but mere machines until you are free? 

Should you be proud because you are good? Certainly not. 

You are good because you cannot help it. 

Another is bad because he cannot help it. If you were in his position, who knows what you would have been. 

The woman in the street, or the thief in the jail, is the Christ that is being sacrificed that you may be a good man. 

Such is the law of balance. 

All the thieves and the murderers, all the unjust, the weakest, the wickedest, the devils, they are all my Christ! 

I owe a worship to the God Christ and to the demon Christ! That is my doctrine, I cannot help it. 

My salutation goes to the feet of the good, the saintly, and to the feet of the wicked and the devilish!

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Adding Lies to Misery

Superdivine Power

Secret of Success - Unselfishness

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, then, is this: the man who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish man, is the most successful. 

It seems to be a paradox. 

Do we not know that every man who is unselfish in life gets cheated, gets hurt? 
Apparently, yes. 
"Christ was unselfish, and yet he was crucified." 

True, but we know that his unselfishness is the reason, 
the cause of a great victory -- the crowning of millions upon millions of lives with the blessings of true success.

           - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Desires Bring Misery

Reserve the Power of Detachment

Born Idolaters

We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. 

So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshiping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater. 

We are spirit, spirit that has no form or shape, spirit that is infinite, and not matter. Therefore, anyone who cannot grasp the abstract, who cannot think of himself as he is, except in and through matter, as the body, is an idolater. 

And yet how people fight among themselves, calling one another idolaters! In other words, each says, his idol is right, and the others' are wrong.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Gita Jayanti

Give Willingly

Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly. 

Sooner or later you will have to give up. You come into life to accumulate. With clenched hands, you want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hands open. 

Whether you will it or not, you have to give. The moment you say, "I will not", the blow comes; you are hurt. None is there but will be compelled, in the long run, to give up everything. And the more one struggles against this law, the more miserable one feels. 
It is because we dare not give, because we are not resigned enough to accede to this grand demand of nature, that we are miserable. 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Strength is Life

Power of Attachment and Detachment

We Get What We Deserve

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." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" 

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.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Pay Attention to Means

No Fear in Love of God

… children of God never see in Him a punisher or a rewarder. It is only people who have never tasted of love that fear and quake. 

Cast off all fear -- though these horrible ideas of God as a punisher or rewarder may have their use in savage minds. 

Some men, even the most intellectual, are spiritual savages, and these ideas may help them. But to men who are spiritual, men who are approaching religion, in whom spiritual insight is awakened, such ideas are simply childish, simply foolish. Such men reject all ideas of fear.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Bound by Senses

We are bound by the senses; they play upon us, make fools of us all the time.

Here is a bad odour. It will bring me unhappiness as soon as it touches my nose. I am the slave of my nose. If I am not its slave, I do not care. 

A man curses me. His curses enter my ears and are retained in my mind and body. If I am the master, I shall say: "Let these things go; they are nothing to me. I am not miserable. I do not bother." 

This is the outright, pure, simple, clear-cut truth.

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

The Dream Vanishes

Slaves of Body

The Yogi says you are to go to the root of all this. 
Why is there misery in the world? 
He answers: "It is all our own foolishness, not having proper mastery of our own bodies. That is all." … 

If you can thus get mastery of your body, all the misery of the world will vanish. 
Every hospital is praying that more and more sick people will come there. Every time you think of doing some charity, you think there is some beggar to take your charity. If you say, "O Lord, let the world be full of charitable people!"-- you mean, let the world be full of beggars also. Let the world be full of good works -- let the world be full of misery. 
This is out-and-out slavishness! 

                  - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

One Thing Taken for Another

One thing is taken for another, not as something that does not exist. 

What we see here is body, and we take the Infinite as matter. ...

We are but seeking that Reality. We are never deluded. 

We always know truth, only our reading of truth is mistaken at times. You can perceive only one thing at a time. 

When I see the snake, the rope has vanished entirely. And when I see the rope, the snake has vanished. It must be one thing. ...

- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Die Game!

All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. 
Do not weaken! There is no other way out. ... 
Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. 

Face the truth as it is! If death comes -- that is the worst of our miseries -- let it come! We are determined to die game. 

That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on! 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Mass of Energy

Body-gods!

I Am The Infinite

"I am He. Whatever [my] mind does, I am not touched. 

The sun is not touched by shining on filthy places, I am Existence."

This is the religion of [non-dual] 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 himself! 

I am all the God that ever existed! 
There, stand up philosophers! No fear! 
Speak no more of God and [the] superstition of the world. Truth alone triumphs, and this is true. 

I am the Infinite.

- Swami Vivekananda, 
  Talk in San Francisco

Personal God - Sum-Total

Value of Blows in Life

No Question of Birth and Death

The Real Man, therefore, is one and infinite, the omnipresent Spirit. And the apparent man is only a limitation of that Real Man. … 
The Real Man, the Spirit, being beyond cause and effect, not bound by time and space, must, therefore, be free. He was never bound, and could not be bound. 

The apparent man, the reflection, is limited by time, space, and causation, and is, therefore, bound. Or in the language of some of our philosophers, he appears to be bound, but really is not. 
This is the reality in our souls, this omnipresence, this spiritual nature, this infinity. Every soul is infinite, therefore there is no question of birth and death. 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London