Too many laws are a sure sign of death. Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die.
If you study the characteristics of India, you will find that no nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus, and national death is the result.
But the Hindus had one peculiar idea -- they never made any doctrines or dogmas in religion; and the latter has had the greatest growth.
Eternal law cannot be freedom, because to say that the eternal is inside law is to limit it.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Law and Freedom,
Notes from Lectures and Discourses
Disciple: Well, is then all this relative experience not true?
Swamiji: As long as the idea of "I" remains, it is true. And the instant the realisation of "I" as the Atman comes, this world of relative existence becomes false.
What people speak of as sin is the result of weakness -- is but another form of the egoistic idea, "I am the body". When the mind gets steadfast in the truth, "I am the Self", then you go beyond merit and demerit, virtue and vice.
Shri Ramakrishna used to say, "When the 'I' dies, all trouble is at an end."
- Swami Vivekananda,
Conversations and Dialogues,
recorded by Sharat Chandra Chakravarty
Through the slavery of a thousand years, Hindus have at present degenerated. They have forgotten their own self respect.
Every English boy is taught to feel his importance, he thinks that he is a member of a great race, the conquerors of the Earth. The Hindu feels from his boyhood just the reverse that he is born to slave.
We can't become a great nation unless we love our religion and try to respect ourselves, and respect our country men and society. The Hindus of modern times are generally hypocrites. They must rise, and combine the faith in the true Vedic religion, with a knowledge of the political and scientific truths of the Europeans.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Talk at Triplicane Literary Society, Madras,
Report in ‘Madura Mail’ (January 28, 1893)
. . . Vivekananda, the popular Hindu monk, whose physiognomy bore the most striking resemblance to the classic face of the Buddha, denounced our commercial prosperity, our bloody wars, and our religious intolerance, declaring that at such a price the "mild Hindu" would have none of our vaunted civilisation ... ...
"You come," he cried, “with the Bible in one hand and the conqueror's sword in the other--you, with your religion of yesterday, to us, who were taught thousands of years ago by our Rishis precepts as noble and lives as holy as your Christ's. You trample on us and treat us like the dust beneath your feet. You destroy precious life in animals. You are carnivores. You degrade our people with drink. You insult our women. You scorn our religion--in many points like yours, only better, because more humane.
And then you wonder why Christianity makes such slow progress in India. I tell you it is because you are not like your Christ, whom we could honour and reverence.
Do you think, if you came to our doors like him, meek and lowly, with a message of love, living and working and suffering for others, as he did, we should turn a deaf ear?
Oh no! We should receive him and listen to him, and as we have done our own inspired Rishis (teachers)... ...”
- ‘THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS’
By H. R. Haweis, a Report in
‘The Indian Mirror (from The Daily Chronicle)’,
November 28, 1893
Three quarters of the wealth of the world has come out of India, and does even now. The commerce of India has been the turning point, the pivot, of the history of the world.
Whatever nation got it became powerful and civilized. The Greeks got it and became the mighty Greeks; the Romans got it and became the mighty Romans. Even in the days of the Phoenicians it was so.
After the fall of Rome, the Genoese and the Venetians got it. And then the Arabs rose and created a wall between Venice and India; and in the struggle to find a new way there, America was discovered.
That is how America was discovered; and the original people of America were called Indians, or "Injuns", for that reason.
Even the Dutch got it--and the barbarians--and the English and they became the most powerful nation on earth. And the next nation that gets it will immediately be the most powerful.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Class Talk in London, May 7, 1896
Think of all this mass of energy that our nation [India] displays--where does it get it?
In India, they are the producers and you are the enjoyers, no doubt. They produced this--the patient, toiling millions of Hindus under the whip and slavery of everyone. Even the missionaries, who stand up to curse the millions of India, have been fattened upon the work of these millions, and they do not know how it has been done.
Upon their blood the history of the world has been turning since we know history, and will have to turn for thousands of years more. What is the benefit?
It gives that nation strength.
They are, as it were, an example. They must suffer and stand up through all, fighting for the truths of religion--as a signpost, a beacon--to tell unto mankind that it is much higher not to resist, much higher to suffer, that if life be the goal, as even their conquerors will admit, we are the only race that can be called immortal, that can never be killed.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Class Talk in London,
May 7, 1896
To go and say, "Lord, take care of this thing and give me that; Lord, I give you my little prayer and you give me this thing of daily necessity; Lord, cure my headache", and all that -- these are not Bhakti.
They are the lowest states of religion. They are the lowest form of Karma.
If a man uses all his mental energy in seeking to satisfy his body and its wants, show me the difference between him and an animal.
Bhakti is a higher thing, higher than even desiring heaven. The idea of heaven is of a place of intensified enjoyment. How can that be God?
- Swami Vivekananda,
On Bhakti-Yoga,
Notes from Lectures and Discourses
The eternal, the infinite, the omnipresent, the omniscient is a principle, not a person.
You, I, and everyone are but embodiments of that principle, and the more of this infinite principle is embodied in a person, the greater is he, and
all in the end will be the perfect embodiment of that and thus all will be one as they are now essentially.
This is all there is of religion, and the practice is through this feeling of oneness that is love.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Sturges Alberta
from London (May 1896)
The essence of all religions is the annihilation of desire, along with which comes, of a certainty, the annihilation of the will as well, for desire is only the name of a particular mode of the will. … ...
… what we call will is an inferior modification of something higher. Desirelessness means the disappearance of the inferior modification in the form of will and the appearance of that superior state.
That state is beyond the range of mind and intellect.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Mrinalini Bose
from Deoghar (January 1899)
Love never fails, my son; today or tomorrow or ages after, truth will conquer.
Love shall win the victory. Do you love your fellow men?
Where should you go to seek for God -- are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, Gods? Why not worship them first?
Why go to dig a well on the shores of the Ganga? Believe in the omnipotent power of love. Who cares for these tinsel puffs of name?
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Alasinga Perumal
from Washington DC (October 1894)
The (Katha) Upanishad says that Shraddha entered into the heart of Nachiketa.
Even with the word Ekagrata (one-pointedness) we cannot express the whole significance of the word Shraddha. The word Ekagra-Nishtha (one-pointed devotion) conveys, to a certain extent, the meaning of the word Shraddha.
If you meditate on any truth with steadfast devotion and concentration, you will see that the mind is more and more tending onwards to Oneness, i.e. taking you towards the realization of the absolute Existence-knowledge-bliss.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Conversations and Dialogues,
recorded by Sharat Chandra Chakravarty
You must give your body, mind, and speech to "the welfare of the world".
You have read --"मातृदेवो à¤à¤µ, पितृदेवो à¤à¤µ -- look upon your mother as God, look upon your father as God"-- but I say "दरिद्रदेवो à¤à¤µ, मूर्खदेवो à¤à¤µ -- the poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted -- let these be your God."
Know that service to these alone is the highest religion.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Swami Akhandananda
from US (1894)
By the word "Incarnation" are meant those who have attained that Brahmanhood, in other words, the Jivanmuktas -- those who have realized this freedom in this very life.
I do not find any specialty in Incarnations: all beings from Brahma down to a clump of grass will attain to liberation-in-life in course of time, and our duty lies in helping all to reach that state.
This help is called religion; the rest is irreligion.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Swami Ramakrishnananda
from US (1895)
We would do nothing ourselves and would scoff at others who try to do something -- this is the bane that has brought about our downfall as a nation.
Want of sympathy and lack of energy are at the root of all misery, and you must therefore give these two up. Who but the Lord knows what potentialities there are in particular individuals -- let all have opportunities, and leave the rest to the Lord.
It is indeed very difficult to have an equal love for all, but without it there is no Mukti.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Swami Yogananda
from New York (January 1896)
This toy world would not be here, this play could not go on, if we were knowing players.
We must play blindfolded.
Some of us have taken the part of the rogue of the play, some heroic -- never mind, it is all play.
This is the only consolation. There are demons and lions and tigers and what not on the stage, but they are all muzzled. They snap but cannot bite.
The world cannot touch our souls. If you want, even if the body be torn and bleeding, you may enjoy the greatest peace in your mind.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Marie Halboister
from Wimbledon (August 1899)
"उत्तिष्ठत जाग्रत प्राप्य वरान्निबोधत --
arise! Awake! and stop not till the goal is reached."
Life is ever expanding, contraction is death. The self-seeking man who is looking after his personal comforts and leading a lazy life -- there is no room for him even in hell.
He alone is a child of Shri Ramakrishna who is moved to pity for all creatures and exerts himself for them even at the risk of incurring personal damnation, इतरे कृपणा: -- others are vulgar people.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Brother Disciples
from US (1894)
The Vedantist says that a man is neither born nor dies nor goes to heaven, and that reincarnation is really a myth with regard to the soul.
The example is given of a book being turned over. It is the book that evolves, not the man.
Every soul is omnipresent, so where can it come or go? These births and deaths are changes in nature which we are mistaking for changes in us.
Reincarnation is the evolution of nature and the manifestation of the God within.
- Swami Vivekananda,
On the Vedanta Philosophy,
Notes from Lectures and Discourses
People have been cajoled through various stories or superstitions of heavens and hells and Rulers above the sky, towards this one end of self-surrender.
The philosopher does the same knowingly without superstition, by giving up desires.
An objective heaven or millennium therefore has existence only in the fancy -- but a subjective one is already in existence. The musk-deer, after vain search for the cause of the scent of the musk, at last will have to find it in himself.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Mary Hale
from London (November 1896)
I have got such a beautiful edition of Thomas à Kempis.
How I love that old monk. He caught a wonderful glimpse of the "behind the veil"--few ever got such.
My, that is religion. No humbug of the world.
No shilly-shallying, tall talk, conjecture--I presume, I believe, I think.
How I would like to go out of this piece of painted humbug they call the beautiful world with Thomas à Kempis--beyond, beyond, which can only be felt, never expressed.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Mrs. G W Hale
from Annisquam, USA (August 1894)
Q: In what sense is Shri Ramakrishna a part of this awakened Hinduism?
Swamiji: That is not for me to determine, I have never preached personalities. My own life is guided by the enthusiasm of this great soul; but others will decide for themselves how far they share in this attitude.
Inspiration is not filtered out to the world through one channel, however great. Each generation should be inspired afresh. Are we not all God?
- Swami Vivekananda,
Prabuddha Bharata Interview
(September 1898)
The barking of the dog awakens his master to guard against a thief or receive his dearest friend. It does not follow, therefore, that the dog and his master are of the same nature or have any degree of kinship.
The feelings of pleasure or pain similarly awaken the soul to activity, without any kinship at all.
The soul is beyond pain, beyond pleasure, sufficient in its own nature. And no hell can punish it, nor any heaven can bless it.
- Swami Vivekananda,
in a Letter to Mrs G W Hale
from Ridgly Manor (August 1899)
Realise "I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute -- I am He, I am He".
Be glad at birth, be glad at death, rejoice always in the love of God.
Get rid of the bondage of body; we have become slaves to it and learnt to hug our chains and love our slavery; so much so that we long to perpetuate it, and go on with "body" "body" for ever.
Do not cling to the idea of "body", do not look for a future existence in any way like this one; do not love or want the body, even of those dear to us.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Discourses on Jnana-Yoga, US
The influence of Vedanta on European poetry and philosophy is very great. Every good poet is a Vedantin, I find; and
whoever writes some philosophical treatise has to draw upon Vedanta in some shape or other.
Only some of them do not care to admit this indebtedness, and want to establish their complete originality, as Herbert Spencer and others, for instance.
But the majority do openly acknowledge. And how can they help it -- in these days of telegraphs and railways and newspapers?
- Swami Vivekananda,
Memoirs of European Travel
These are the marks of the true Jnana-yogi:
(1) He desires nothing, save to know.
(2) All his senses are under perfect restraint; he suffers everything without murmuring, equally content if his bed be the bare ground under the open sky, or if he is lodged in a king's palace. He shuns no suffering, he stands and bears it -- he has given up all but the Self.
(3) He knows that all but the One is unreal.
(4) He has an intense desire for freedom. With a strong will, he fixes his mind on higher things and so attains to peace.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Discourses on Jnana-Yoga, US
In the animal kingdom instinct prevails; but the more a man advances, the more he manifests rationality.
For this reason, progress in the rational human kingdom cannot be achieved, like that in the animal kingdom, by the destruction of others!
The highest evolution of man is effected through sacrifice alone. A man is great among his fellows in proportion as he can sacrifice for the sake of others, while in the lower strata of the animal kingdom, that animal is the strongest which can kill the greatest number of animals.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Conversations and Dialogues,
recorded by Sharat Chandra Chakravarty
