Three Parts of Religion

You are Free Already

No law can make you free, you are free. Nothing can give you freedom, if you have it not already. 
The Atman is self - illumined. Cause and effect do not reach there, and this disembodiedness is freedom. 
Beyond what was, or is, or is to be, is Brahman. 
As an effect, freedom would have no value; it would be a compound, and as such would contain the seeds of bondage. It is the one real factor, not to be attained, but the real nature of the soul.
- Swami Vivekananda

Union of Spiritual Forces

True Religiousness

Nature's Adjustment

Swamiji Tithi Puja

Whom the Self chooses

God not Bound by Books

Producing Mighty Will

To Youth of India

Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself -- that eternal power is lodged in every soul -- and you will revive the whole of India. 

Ay, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas will before long be a component of the many forces that are working to make up every nation in the world. 
We must enter into the life of every race in India and abroad; we shall have to work  to bring this about. 

Now for that, I want young men. "It is the young, the strong, and healthy, of sharp intellect that will reach the Lord", say the Vedas. 

This is the time to decide your future -- while you possess the energy of youth, not when you are worn out and jaded, but in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work -- this is the time; for the freshest, the untouched, and unsmelled flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and such He receives. 

Rouse yourselves, therefore, for life is short. There are greater works to be done than aspiring to become lawyers and picking quarrels and such things. 

           - Swami Vivekananda

Mind and Brain

We can only know experience as a mental process,
a fact in the mind as well as a mark in the brain.
We cannot push the brain back or forward, but we can 
the mind; it can stretch over all time -- 
past, present, and future; and so facts in the mind are eternally preserved. 

 All facts are already generalized in mind, 
which is omnipresent.

                                  - Swami Vivekananda

Know How to Act

All Causes are in It

Vedanta and modern science both posit a self-evolving Cause.
In Itself are all the causes. 
Take for example the potter shaping a pot. 
The potter is the primal cause, the clay the material cause, and the wheel the instrumental cause; but the Atman is all three. 
Atman is cause and manifestation too. 

The Vedantist says the universe is not real, it is only apparent. Nature is God seen through nescience. 
The Pantheists say, God has become nature or this world; 
the Advaitists affirm that God is appearing as this world, 
but He is not this world.

                                    - Swami Vivekananda

Character of a Great Man

Philosophy - Basis of Religion