Sense-Perceptions

Now, no one denies that our senses, as long as they are normal, are the most trustworthy guides we have, and the facts they gather in for us form the very foundation of the structure of human knowledge. 

But if they mean that all human knowledge is only sense-perception and nothing but that, we deny it. 

If by physical sciences are meant systems of knowledge which are entirely based and built upon sense-perception, and nothing but that, we contend that such a science never existed nor will ever exist. 
Nor will any system of knowledge, built upon sense-perception alone, ever be a science. 

                           - Swami Vivekananda, 
                            found in an unfinished article  

Kingdom of Heaven

Soul of our souls

… to your children I quote these passages from the Vedas --
 
        "The four Vedas, sciences, languages, philosophy, 
                   and all other learnings are only ornamental. 
          The real learning, the true knowledge is that which
                   enables us to reach Him who is 
                                     unchangeable in His love."

"How real, how tangible, how visible is He 
                         through whom the skin touches, 
               the eyes see, and the world gets its reality!"

           "Hearing Him nothing remains to be heard,
         Seeing Him nothing remains to be seen,
         Attaining Him nothing remains to be attained."

     "He is the eye of our eyes, the ear of our ears, 
                                                              the Soul of our souls."

                               - Swami Vivekananda, 
                                 in a Letter to Prof. John H Wright

Religion is Realization

Let Shyama Dance There

Break the harp! Forward, with the ocean's cry!

            Drink tears, pledge even life -- let the body fall.

            Awake, O hero! Shake off thy vain dreams,

            Death stands at thy head -- does fear become thee?

            A load of misery, true though it is --

            This Becoming* -- know this to be thy God!

            His temple -- the Shmashan**  among corpses

            And funeral pyres; unending battle --

            That verily is His sacred worship;

            Constant defeat -- let that not unnerve thee;

            Shattered be little self, hope, name, and fame;

            Set up a pyre of them and make thy heart

            A burning-ground.

                                And let Shyama***  dance there.

     *  The wheel of constant birth and death, hence the world.

   **  The cremation-ground.

  ***  The Dark One, Kali.

                           - Swami Vivekananda, 
                             from ‘And Let Shyama Dance There’ 
                                                                   - poem in Bengali

Progressive Religious Growth

Example of Holy Sadhus for Householders

It is because the householders still give a few morsels of food to the Sadhus that they are yet able to keep their foothold on the path of progress. 
The Sannyasins are not idle. 
They are really the fountain-head of all activity. 
The householders see lofty ideals carried into practice in the lives of the Sadhus and accept from them such noble ideas; and this it is that has up till now enabled them to fight their battle of life from the sphere of Karma. 

The example of holy Sadhus makes them work out holy ideas in life and imbibe real energy for work. The Sannyasins inspire the householders in all noble causes by embodying in their lives the highest principle of giving up everything for the sake of God and the good of the world, and as a return the householders give them a few doles of food. 

                 - Swami Vivekananda, 
                   Conversations and Dialogues, 
                  recorded by Sharat Chandra Chakravarty  

Liberation of All

Emphatic Testimony of Sages

Only for the infinitesimal portion of the universe, which comes into sense-perception, are we able to find a reason; never can we give the reason for any fundamental principle. 

Giving a reason for a thing is simply to classify it and put it in a pigeon-hole of the mind. When we meet a new fact, we at once strive to put it in some existing category and the attempt to do this is to reason. When we succeed in placing the fact, it gives a certain amount of satisfaction, but we can never go beyond the physical plane in this classification. 

That man can transcend the limits of the senses is the emphatic testimony of all past ages. The Upanishads told 5,000 years ago that the realisation of God could never be had through the senses. So far, modern agnosticism agrees, but the Vedas go further than the negative side and assert in the plainest terms that man can and does transcend this sense-bound, frozen universe. 

He can, as it were, find a hole in the ice, through which he can pass and reach the whole ocean of life. Only by so transcending the world of sense, can he reach his true Self and realise what he really is.  

- Swami Vivekananda, 

Discourses on Jnana-Yoga, US

Thought, Name and Form

Inheritance of Forefathers

Theme of Advaitism

"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." 
That is the theme of Advaitism. 
A few words more. 

Herein lies, we find, the explanation of the essence of things. 
We have seen how here alone we can take a firm stand against all the onrush of logic and scientific knowledge. 
Here at last reason has a firm foundation, and, at the same time, the Indian Vedantist does not curse the preceding steps; he looks back and he blesses them, and he knows that they were true, only wrongly perceived, and wrongly stated. 

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

Witness Alone Enjoys

Vedas - Eternal Laws in Every Soul

Tyranny of the Protestant Bible

The Church tries to fit Christ into it, not the Church into Christ; so only those writings were preserved that suited the purpose in hand. 
Thus the books are not to be depended upon and 
book-worship is the worst kind of idolatry to bind our feet.

All has to conform to the book -- science, religion, philosophy; it is the most horrible tyranny, this tyranny of the Protestant Bible. 
Every man in Christian countries has a huge cathedral on his head and on top of that a book, and yet man lives and grows! 
Does not this prove that man is God? 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                       Inspired Talks  

Me and Mine - a Superstition

Feeling the World as God

The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; 
the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. 
While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; 
but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God. 

This should be our thought towards everyone and everything -- parents, children, husbands, wives, friends, and enemies. 
Think how it would change the whole universe for us if we could consciously fill it with God! See nothing but God! 
All sorrow, all struggle, all pain would be for ever lost to us!  

               - Swami Vivekananda, 
                 Discourses on Jnana-Yoga, US

Mental Ocean

Merciful Knife of Surgeon

The tables have been turned, and the Hindu, 
who saw through tears of despair his ancient homestead covered with incendiary fire, ignited by unfriendly hands, 
now sees, when the searchlight of modern thought has dispersed the smoke, 
that his home is the one that is standing in all its strength, and all the rest have either vanished or are building their houses anew after the Hindu plan. 

He has wiped away his tears, and has found that the axe that tried to cut down to the roots the 
ऊर्ध्वमूलमध:शाखमश्वत्थं प्राहुरव्ययम् (Gita, XV.1) 
has proved the merciful knife of the surgeon. 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                     ‘Reply to the Madras Address’     

True Man

Sublimest Science

Advaita Everywhere

Religion Belongs to Supersensuous

This universe of ours, the universe of the senses, the rational, the intellectual, is bounded on both sides by the illimitable, the unknowable, the ever unknown. 
Herein is the search, herein are the inquiries, here are the facts; from this comes the light which is known to the world as religion. 

Essentially, however, religion belongs to the supersensuous and not to the sense plane. 
It is beyond all reasoning, and not on the plane of intellect. 
It is a vision, an inspiration, a plunge into the unknown and unknowable, making the unknowable more than known, for it can never be "known". 

                    - Swami Vivekananda, 
                     Talk at New York  

Grow Out of Sect

You Must See God

Ota-prota Lord

Losing faith in one's self means losing faith in God. 

Do you believe in that infinite, good Providence working in and through you? 

If you believe that this Omnipresent One, the Antaryamin, is present in every atom, is through and through, Ota-prota, as the Sanskrit word goes, penetrating your body, mind and soul, how can you lose heart? 

I may be a little bubble of water, and you may be a mountain-high wave. Never mind! The infinite ocean is the background of me as well as of you. Mine also is that infinite ocean of life, of power, of spirituality, as well as yours.

- Swami Vivekananda, 

  Address at Lahore,

  Lectures From Colombo to Almora

We Can Do Everything

Shraddha

Tantra and Brahmanas

The Tantras, as we have said, represent the Vedic rituals in a modified form; and before any one jumps into the most absurd conclusions about them, I will advise him to read the Tantras in conjunction with the Brahmanas, especially the Adhvaryu portion. 
And most of the Mantras, used in the Tantras, will be found taken verbatim from their Brahmanas. 

As to their influence, apart from the Shrauta and Smarta rituals, all the forms of the rituals in vogue from the Himalayas to the Comorin have been taken from the Tantras, and they direct the worship of the Shakta, or Shaiva, or Vaishnava, and all the others alike. 

                        - Swami Vivekananda, 
                           ‘Reply to the Madras Address’     

Sole and Only Cause of Faults

Ceasing from Sectarianism

If impurity is the nature of man, then man will have to remain impure, even though he 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. 
Therefore, say all our philosophers, good is our nature, perfection is our nature, not imperfection, not impurity -- and we should remember that. … 

We often mistake mere prattle for religious truth, mere intellectual perorations for great spiritual realisation, and then comes sectarianism, then comes fight. 
If we once understand that this realisation is the only religion, we shall look into our own hearts and find how far we are towards realising the truths of religion. 
Then we shall understand that we ourselves are groping in darkness, and are leading others to grope in the same darkness, then we shall cease from sectarianism, quarrel, and fight. 

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

Origin of Self-Deception

Extreme of Achara

This custom of external cleanliness, like all other customs, sometimes turns out to be, in the long run, rather a tyranny or the very reverse of Achara (cleanliness). 

The European says that all bodily matters have to be attended to in private. Well and good. "It is vulgar to spit before other people. To rinse your mouth before others is disgraceful." 
So, for fear of censure, they do not wash their mouth after meals, and the result is that the teeth gradually decay. 
Here is non-observance of cleanliness for fear of society or civilisation. 

With us, it is the other extreme -- to rinse and wash the mouth before all men, or sitting in the street, making a noise as if you were sick -- this is rather tyranny. 
Those things should, no doubt, be done privately and silently, but not to do them for fear of society is also equally wrong. 

                - Swami Vivekananda, 
                  The East and The West 

True Love

Pure Vedantist

Inquire Into Beyond

Why shall we not rest satisfied with eating, drinking, and doing a little good to society? This idea is in the air. 
From the most learned professor to the prattling baby, we are told, "Do good to the world, that is all of religion, and don't bother your head about questions of the beyond." 

So much so is this the case that it has become a truism.

But fortunately we must inquire into the beyond. 
This present, this expressed, is only one part of that unexpressed. The sense universe is, as it were, only one portion, one bit of that infinite spiritual universe projected into the plane of sense consciousness. 

                     - Swami Vivekananda, 
                        Talk at New York  

Every Prophet

Let New India Arise

However much you may parade your descent from Aryan ancestors and sing the glories of ancient India day and night, and however much you may be strutting in the pride of your birth, you, the upper classes of India, do you think you are alive? 
You are but mummies ten thousand years old! … … 

You represent the past tense, with all its varieties of form jumbled into one. That one still seems to see you at the present time, is nothing but a nightmare brought on by indigestion. … … 

You merge yourselves in the void and disappear, and let New India arise in your place. 

Let her arise -- out of the peasants' cottage, grasping the plough; out of the huts of the fisherman, the cobbler, and the sweeper. 
Let her spring from the grocer's shop, from beside the oven of the fritter-seller. 
Let her emanate from the factory, from marts, and from markets. 
Let her emerge from groves and forests, from hills and mountains. 
These common people have suffered oppression for thousands of years -- suffered it without murmur, and as a result have got wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has given them unflinching vitality. 

                         - Swami Vivekananda, 
                           Memoirs of European Travel