Follow truth wherever it may lead you; carry ideas to their utmost logical conclusions.
Do not be cowardly and hypocritical. You must have a great devotion to your ideal, …
Perish in the struggle to be holy; a thousand times welcome death. Be not disheartened. When good nectar is unattainable, it is no reason why we should eat poison.
There is no escape. This world is as unknown as the other.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Notes taken at Madras (1892-93)
Concentration is the essence of all knowledge; nothing can be done without it. …
The Greeks applied their concentration to the external world, and the result was perfection in art, literature, etc.
The Hindu concentrated on the internal world, upon the unseen realms in the Self, and developed the science of Yoga.
Yoga is controlling the senses, will and mind. The benefit of its study is that we learn to control instead of being controlled.
- Swami Vivekananda,
‘Concentration’,
Notes of Class Talks and Lectures
There are infinite ways of practicing Yoga.
Certain methods have produced successful result with certain men.
But two are of general importance with all:
(1) Reaching the reality by negativing every known experience,
(2) Thinking that you are everything, the whole universe.
The second method, though it leads to the goal sooner than the first, is not the safest one. It is generally attended with great dangers which may lead a man astray and deter him from obtaining his aim.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Notes taken at Madras (1892-93)
Maya is not illusion as it is popularly interpreted.
Maya is real, yet it is not real. It is real in that the Real is behind it and gives it its appearance of reality.
That which is real in Maya is the Reality in and through Maya.
Yet the Reality is never seen; and hence that which is seen is unreal, and it has no real independent existence of itself, but is dependent upon the Real for its existence.
Maya then is a paradox -- real, yet not real, an illusion, yet not an illusion.
- Swami Vivekananda,
‘The Reality and Shadow’,
Notes of Class Talks and Lectures
