· Become a True Optimist

Control Everything

Vedanta philosophy……………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, must necessity increase the other. There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms………….It does not say that this world is all evil or all good. It says that our evil is of no less value than our good, and our good of no more value than our evil. They are bound together……………but beyond and behind all these manifestations, the Vedanta finds out that Unity. It says, “Give up what is evil and give up what is good”. What remains then? Behind good and evil stands something which is yours, the real you……………and it is that which is manifesting itself as good and bad. Know that first, and then and then alone you will be true optimist, and not before; for then you will be able to control everything. Control these manifestations and you will be at liberty to manifest the real “you”. First be master of yourself.

· All the misery we have is of our own choosing; such is our nature. The old Chinaman, who having been kept in prison for sixty years was released on the coronation of a new emperor, exclaimed, when he came out, that he could not live; he must go back to his horrible dungeon among the rats and mice; he could not bear the light. So he asked them to kill him or send him back to the prison, and he was sent back. Exactly similar is the condition of all men. We run headlong after all sorts of misery, and are unwilling to be freed from them. Everyday we run after pleasure, and before we reach it, we find it is gone, it has slipped through our fingers. Still we do not cease from our mean pursuit, but on and on we go, blinded fools that we are.

· Mind you, the great benefit in this life is struggle. It is through that we pass. If there is any road to Heaven, it is through Hell. Through Hell to Heaven is always the way. When the soul has wrestled with circumstance and has met death, a thousand times death on the way, but nothing daunted, has struggled forward again and again and yet again-------------then the soul comes out as a giant and laughs at the ideal he has been struggling for, because he finds how much greater is he that the ideal.

· It is through the feelings that the highest secrets are reached.

· He who has realised the Atman becomes the storehouse of great power.

· Believe in the omnipotent power of love……………Have you love? You are omnipotent. Are you perfectly unselfish? If so, you are irresistible. It is character that pays everywhere.

· I have experienced even in my insignificant life that good motives, sincerity and infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessed of these virtues can destroy the dark design of millions of hypocrites and brutes.

· All truth in the universe will manifest in your heart, if you are sufficiently pure.

· You are the Pure One; awake and arise. O mighty one, this sleep does not become you.

· Desire nothing except God. This world is good so far as it helps one to go to the higher world.

· Cut the bondage of all worldly affections; go beyond laziness and all care as to what becomes of you.

· My boys, when death is inevitable, is it not better to die like heroes than as stocks and stones? And what is the use of living a day or two more in this transitory world? It is better to wear out than to rust out---------------- specially for the sake of doing the least good to others.

· You have to realize truth and work it out for yourself according to your own nature.

· My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.

· What’s the Goal of work?

That purity which is the goal of work is realisable only through doing good to others.

· What can be a greater giver of peace than renunciation?

· Truth can never come to us as long as we are selfish.

· My duty is to find the ideal, the goal………

Be not in despair; the way is very difficult, like walking on the edge of a razor; yet despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal.

· You must take off your mind from lust and lucre, must discriminate always between the real and the unreal--------------must settle down into the mood of bodiless ness with the brooding thought that you are not this body, and must always have the realisation that you are the all-pervading Atman.

· Stand aside, and freely let these frictions come. You feel the frictions only when you are outside of it simply as a witness and as a student, you will be able to see that there are millions and millions of channels in which God is manifesting Himself as Love.

· God is love, and only he who has known God as love can be a teacher of godliness and God to man.

· What I want--------------what’s my need

What you want is character, strengthening of the will.

· Awake and arise, O mighty one, this sleep does not become you. Awake and arise, it does not befit you. Think not that you are weak and miserable. Almighty, arise and awake, and manifest your own nature.

· Ask, therefore, nothing in return; but the more you give, the more will come to you.

· Arise, arise once more, for nothing can be done without renunciation.

· You must be Rishis yourselves.

· The voice of the majority is wrong, seeing that they govern and make the sad state of the world…………..The national laws at best are the embodied will of a majority of the nation---------------always a state of things wished for, not actually existing.

First of all, try to understand this: Does man make laws, or do laws make man? Does man make money, or does money make man? Does man make name and fame, or name and fame make man? Be a man first, my friend, and you will see how all those things and the rest will follow of themselves after you. Give up that hateful malice, that doglike bickering and barking at one another, and take your stand on good purpose, right means, righteous courage, and be brave.

· The vast majority of persons are groping through this dark life without any ideal at all. If a man with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the man without an ideal makes fifty thousand…………….To the vast majority of mankind, the body is everything; the body is all the universe to them; bodily enjoyment is their all in all. This demon of the worship of the body and of the things of the body has entered into us all. We may indulge in tall talk and take very high flights, but we are like vultures all the same; our mind is directed to the piece of carrion down below.

· May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls--------------and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship.

· We ought not to hate anyone. This world will always continue to be a mixture of good and evil. Our duty is to sympathies with the weak and to love even the wrongdoer. The world is a grand moral gymnasium wherein we have all to take exercise so as to become stronger and stronger spiritually.

· Brave, bold men, these are what we want. What we want is vigour in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all mystery. There is no mystery in religion. Mystery mongering and superstition are always signs of weakness.

· Be spiritual and realize Truth for yourself.

· Stand and die in your own strength; if there is any sin in the world, it is weakness, avoid all weakness, for weakness is sin, weakness is death.

· Get up, and put your shoulders to the wheel-------------how long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise, where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? They, too, come into existence, decay and die.

· WHAT MAKES YOU WEEP, MY FRIEND? IN YOU IS ALL POWER. SUMMON UP YOUR ALL-POWERFUL NATURE, O MIGHTY ONE, AND THIS WHOLE UNIVERSE WILL LAY AT YOUR FEET. It is the Self alone that predominates, and not matter.

· WORSHIP EVERYTHING AS GOD---------------EVERY FORM IS HIS TEMPLE. ALL ELSE IS DELUSION.

· Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment, universality.

· Ninety per cent of human brutes you see are dead, are ghosts-----------------for none lives, my boys, but he who loves. Feel, my children, feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant, the down-trodden, feel till the heart stops and the brain reels and you think you will go mad-------------then pour the soul out at the feet of the Lord and then will come power, help and indomitable energy…………..Be not afraid, my children. Look not up in that attitude of fear towards that infinite vault as if it would crush you. Wait! In a few hours more the whole of it will be under your feet. Wait, money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning. It is love that pays; it is character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties.

· Who loves all beings, without distinction,

He indeed is worshiping best his God.

· The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.

· It is the worker who is attached to the results that grumbles abut the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached worker all duties are equally good, and form efficient instrument with which selfishness and sensuality may be killed, and the freedom of the soul secured.

· Know truth for yourself.

· Think that the whole work is upon your shoulders.

· Happiness and misery are only in the senses, they cannot touch our real Self.

· And, above all, if the pride of spirituality enters into you, woe unto you. It is the most awful bondage that ever existed.

· Ay, forget first the love for gold, and name and fame, for this trumpery world of ours. Then, only then, you will understand the love of……………… (God), too holy to be attained without giving up everything, too sacred to be understood until the soul has become perfectly pure. People with ideas of sex, and of money, and of fame, bubbling up every minute in the heart, daring to criticise.

· Never forget the glory of human nature.

· Be strong and have………….Shradha, and everything else is bound to follow.

· All power is within you, you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak………………You can do anything and everything, without even the guidance of any one. All power is there. Stand up and express the divinity within you……………Arise, awake, sleep no more. Within each of you there is the power to remove all wants and all miseries. Believe in this, and that power will be manifested.

· The watchword of all well-being, of all moral good, is not ‘I’ but ‘Thou’. Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is a soul or not, who cares if there is an unchangeable or not? Here is the world, and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt. Forget yourselves; this is the first lesson to be learnt, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are an agnostic or a Vedantist or a Christian or a Mohammedan.

· The majesty of the soul comes forth only when a man is wounded to his depths.

· When you give life, you will have life.

· Both attachment and detachment perfectly developed make a man great and happy.

· Never turn back to see the result of what you have done.

· Let the fruits take care of themselves.

· Leave the fruits alone.

· Receive no gifts.

· Perfect love, the heart never reacting, this is what builds character.

· Be not ruffled by vain arguments. Come to your own realisation. You alone can do it.

· Oneness is the secret of everything.

· Do not give up the world; live in the world, imbibe its influences as much as you can; but if it be for your own enjoyment’s sake, work not at all.

· Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance; the difference between soul and soul is due to the difference in density of these layers of clouds.

· Nothing will be able to resist truth and love and sincerity. Are you sincere? Unselfish even unto death? -----------------and loving? Then fear not, not even death. Onward, my lads!

· Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing, proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.’ That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourselves.