Sayings of Swami Vivekananda

1. Ninety-nine percent of mankind work like slaves, and the result is misery; it is all selfish work.

................................If you buy a slave and tie him down in chains and make him work for you, he will work like a drudge, but there will be no love in him. So when we ourselves work for the things of the world as slaves, there can be no love in us, and our work is not true work.

2. If working like slaves results in selfishness and attachment, working as Master of our own mind give rise to the bliss of non-attachment............................

3. The Vedas say the whole world is a mixture of independence and dependence, of freedom and slavery, but through it all shines the soul independent, immortal, pure, perfect, holy.

4. Believe that the soul is immortal, infinite, and all-powerful.

5. Know the Atman alone and give up all other vain words.

6. ONLY THE FOOLS RUSH AFTER SENSE-ENJOYMENTS. It is easy to live in the senses. It is easier to run in the old groove, eating and drinking; but what these modern philosophers want to tell you is to take these comfortable ideas and put the stamp of religion on them. Such a doctrine is dangerous. DEATH LIES IN THE SENSES. LIFE ON THE PLANE OF THE SPIRIT IS THE ONLY LIFE, LIFE ON ANY OTHER PLANE IS MERE DEATH; THE WHOLE OF THIS LIFE CAN BE ONLY DESCRIBED AS A GYMNASIUM. WE MUST GO BEYOND IT TO ENJOY REAL LIFE.

7. Even this world, this body and mind are superstitions; WHAT INFINITE SOULS YOU ARE! And to be tricked by twinkling stars! It is a shameful condition. YOU ARE DIVINITIES; the twinkling stars owe their existence to you.

8. PROCLAIM THE GLORY OF THE ATMAN WITH THE ROAR OF A LION, and impart fearlessness unto all beings by saying “Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached”.

9. IT IS PREFERABLE TO LIVE ON THE GRASS FOR THE SAKE OF DOING GOOD TO OTHERS.

10. HE WHOSE BOOK OF THE HEART HAS BEEN OPENED NEEDS NO OTHER BOOKS.

11. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS WITHIN US. ALL PERFECTION IS THERE ALREADY IN THE SOUL.

12. Ever tell yourself “I AM HE”. These are words that will burn up the dross that is in the mind, words that will bring out THE TREMENDOUS ENERGY WHICH IS WITHIN YOU ALREADY, THE INFINITE POWER WHICH IS SLEEPING IN YOUR HEART.

13. 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.

14. THE OBJECT OF LIFE IS TO LEARN THE LAWS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.

15. Let not a ripple conquer the mind.......................................

BE ‘UNATTACHED’; let things work; let brain-centers work; work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind. Work as if you were a stranger in this land, a sojourner; work incessantly, but do not bind yourselves; bondage is terrible.

16. WE SHALL HAVE TO WORK, GIVING UP ALTOGETHER ALL DESIRE FOR RESULTS. People will call us both good and bad. BUT WE SHALL HAVE TO WORK LIKE LIONS, KEEPING THE IDEAL BEFORE US, without caring whether “the wise ones praise or blame us”.

17. NOT TALKING, THEORISING, ARGUMENTATION BUT REALISATION.

18. ALL KNOWLEDGE AND ALL POWER ARE WITHIN AND NOT WITHOUT.

19. Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will. To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all------------living in the body, but not of it. This rascal ego must be obliterated. Power to help mankind is with the silent ones who only live and love and withdraw their own personality entirely.

20. No power in the universe can withhold from any one anything he really deserves.

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

22. If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true, this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.

23. Down with all sloth, down with all enjoyments here or hereafter.

24. This world is a huge lunatic asylum where all men are mad, some after money, some after women, some after name or fame, and a few after God.

25. The whole secret: ---------

WORK! BE UNATTACHED! THAT IS THE WHOLE SECRET.

26. BE BRAVE AND BE SNCERE; THEN FOLLOW ANY PATH WITH DEVOTION, AND YOU MUST REACH THE WHOLE.

27. The Importance of Being Unattached.

28. Work for them, love them, do good to them, sacrifice a hundred lives, if need be, for them, BUT NEVER BE ATTACHED.

29. Be at peace. Do not disturb yourself. You never were in bondage, you never were virtuous or sinful.

30. EACH MUST VERIFY FOR HIMSELF.

31. DO NOT IDENTIFY YOUSELF WITH ANYTHING. Hold your mind free. All this that you see, the pains and miseries, are but the necessary conditions of this world; poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary; they do not belong to our real nature at all.

32. CONQURE YOURSELF, AND THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS YOURS.

33. Be possessed of Shraddha (faith), or Virya (courage), attain to the knowledge of the Atman, and sacrifice your life for the good of others------------------------ this is my wish and blessing.

34. MAN CANNOT BE SATISFIED BY WEALTH.

35. THE SEEING OF MANY IS THE GREAT SIN OF ALL THE WORLD. SEE ALL AS SELF AND LOVE ALL; LET ALL IDEA OF SEPARETNESS GO.

36. NO PRIVILEGE FOR ANYONE, EQUAL CHANCES FOR ALL; LET EVERYONE BE TAUGHT THAT THE DIVINE IS WITHIN, AND EVERYONE WILL WORK OUT HIS OWN SALVATION.

37. Do not go against anything-----------------------ours is to put the chemicals together, the Lord knows how and when the crystal will form.

38. DO NOT DISTURB, BUT HELP EVERYONE TO GET HIGHER AND HIGHER; INCLUDE ALL HUMANITY.

39. DO NOT RECOGNIZE WICKEDNESS IN OTHERS. WICKEDNESS IS IGNORANCE, WEAKNESS. WHAT IS THE GOOD OF TELLING PEOPLE THEY ARE WEAK? CRITICISM AND DESTRUCTION ARE OF NO AVAIL. WE MUST GIVE THEM SOMETHING HIGHER; TELL THEM OF THEIR OWN GLORIOUS NATURE, THEIR BIRTHRIGHT.

40. INJURE NONE, DENY THE POSITION OF NONE; TAKE MAN WHERE HE STANDS AND, IF YOU CAN, LEND HIM A HELPING HAND AND PUT HIM ON A HIGHER PLATFORM, BUT DO NOT INJURE AND DO NOT DESTROY. ALL WILL COME TO TRUTH IN THE LONG RUN.

41. DO NOT TRY TO DISTURB THE FAITH OF ANY MAN. IF YOU CAN, GIVE HIM SOMETHING BETTER; IF YOU CAN, GET HOLD OF A MAN WHERE HE STANDS AND GIVE HIM A PUSH UPWARDS.

42. Proclaim to the whole world with trumpet voice, “there is no sin in thee, there is no misery in thee; thou art the reservoir of omnipotent power. Arise, awake, and manifest the divinity within!

43. Stand up, men and women, in the spirit, dare to believe in the Truth, dare to practise the Truth! The world requires a few hundred bold men and women. Practise that boldness which dares know the Truth, which dares show the Truth in life, which does not quake before death, nay, welcomes death, makes a man know that he is the Spirit, that, in the whole universe, nothing can kill him. Then you will be free.

· Let us be brave. KNOW THE TRUTH AND PRACTISE THE TRUTH. THE GOAL MAY BE DISTINCT, BUT AWAKE, ARISE, AND STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED.

44. The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature.

45. UNSELFISHNESS IS GOD.

46. TRUTH IS MY GOD.

47. RELIGION IS THE REALISATION OF SPIRIT AS SPIRIT.

48. WHERE THERE IS LOVE, IT IS HE.

49. THIS REALISATION ALONE IS THE SOUL OF RELIGION.

50. ONLY KNOW THE TRUTH AND REALISE IT.

51. WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT, WHETHER WE ARE CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS OF IT, WE ARE ALL WORKING TO GET OUT OF THE DREAM OF THE WORLD.

52. BUT, MIND YOU, THIS IS LIFE’S EXPERIENCE: IF YOU REALLY WANT THE GOOD OF OTHERS, THE WHOLE UNIVERSE MAY STAND AGAINST YOU AND CANNOT HURT YOU. IT MUST CRUMBLE BEFORE YOUR POWER OF THE LORD HIMSELF IN YOU, IF YOU ARE SINCERE AND REALLY UNSELFISH.

· THE KNOWER OF BRAHMAN NEVER SEEKS HIS OWN HAPPINESS. But what is there to prevent him from doing work for the welfare of others? Whatever work he does without attachment for its fruit brings only good to the world----------------------it is all ‘for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many’. Sri Ramakrishna used to say, “They never take a false step.”

53. Let your souls ascend day and night like an “unbroken string” unto the feet of the Beloved whose throne is in your own hearts and let the rest take care of themselves, that is the body and everything else.

54. But if any one preaches in India the Ideal of eating and drinking and making merry, if any one wants to apotheosise the material world into a God, that man is a liar; he has no place in this holy land, the Indian mind does not want to listen to him. Ay, in spite of the sparkle and glitter of Western civilization, in spite of all its polish and its marvelous manifestation of power, standing upon this platform, I tell them to their face that it is all vain. IT IS VANITY OF VANITIES. GOD ALONE LIVES. THE SOUL ALONE LIVES. SPIRITUALITY ALONE LIVES. HOLD ON TO THAT.

55. AS FAR AS WE CAN, WE MUST GIVE UP.

56. THE ONLY POWER

THE ONLY POWER IS IN REALISATION, AND THAT LIES IN OURSELVES AND COMES FROM THINKING.

57. Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes.

58. EARN THAT FIRST, ACQUIRE THAT

This is the message of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world: “Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas or sects, or churches, or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is spirituality; and the more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for good. Earn that first, acquire that, and criticize no one, for all doctrines and creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realization”. Therefore my Master’s message to mankind is, “Be spiritual and realize Truth for yourself.”

59. In my eyes this world is mere play--------------------- and it will always remain as such.

60. All the work you do, is done for your own salvation, is done for your own benefit.

61. What is the purpose of life?

Work, work, for to work only for the good of others is life.

62. You have the right to work, but do not become so degenerate as to look for results.

63. ‘This whole universe is my body; all health, all happiness is mine, because all is in the universe.’

64. Love is the only power that stays by us and increases.

65. Seeing evil we are creating it. What we are, we see outside, for the world is our mirror.

66. If you, my sons, can proclaim this message to the world “Klebyam Ma Sma Gamaha Partha Netatwayupadhate”----------------------- then all this disease, grief, sin, and sorrow will vanish from off the face of the earth in three days. All these ideas of weakness will be nowhere. Now it is everywhere------------------------- this current of the vibration of fear. Reverse the current; bring in the opposite vibration, and behold the magic transformation! Thou art omnipotent------------------------ go, go to the mouth of the cannon, fear not.

67. We are ever free if we would believe it, only have faith enough. YOU ARE THE SOUL, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute. Everything in time, space, and causation is bound. The soul is beyond all time, all space, all causation. That which is bound is nature, not the soul. Therefore, proclaim your freedom and be what you are-------------------- ever free, ever blessed.

68. BLESSED ARE THEY WHOSE BODIES GET DESTROYED IN THE SERVICE OF OTHERS.

69. THE ENJOYMENT THAT YOU ARE SEEKING IS ONLY IN THE PEACE; AND PEACE, IN THE RENUNCIATION OF PHYSICAL PLEASURE.

70. NEVER SAY “MINE”. WHENEVER WE SAY A THING IS “MINE”, MISERY WILL IMMEDIATELY COME.

71. THE PERFECT LIFE WOULD BE A WONDERFUL HARMONY BETWEEN DOING AND SUFFERING.

72. THE ONLY MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH SPIRITUAL FORCE CAN BE TRANSMITTED IS LOVE.

73. ALL ETHICS, ALL HUMAN ACTION AND ALL HUMAN THOUGHT, HANG UPON THIS ONE IDEA OF UNSELFISHNESS.

74. WHEN A MAN IS PERFECT HE SEES PERFECTION IN OTHERS.

75. In talking of the soul, to say that man is superior to the animal or the plant, has no meaning; the whole universe is one.

In plants the obstacle to soul-manifestation is very great; in animals a little less; and in man still less; in cultured, spiritual men still less; and in perfect men, it has vanished altogether. ALL OUR STRUGGLES, EXERCISES, PAINS, PLEASURES, TEARS, AND SMILES, ALL THAT WE DO AND THINK TEND TOWARDS THAT GOAL, THE TEARING UP OF THE SCREEN, MAKING THE WHOLE BIGGER, THINKING THE LAYERS THAT REMAIN BETWEEN THE MANIFESTATION AND THE REALITY BEHIND.

76. SACRIFICE OF EVERYTHING FOR THE GOOD OF OTHERS IS REAL.

77. The man who is perfectly moral has nothing more to do; he is free.

78. UNTO HIM COMES EVERYTHING WHO DOES NOT CARE FOR ANYTHING.

79. Don’t worry in the least; heaven or hell, or Bhakti or Mukti--------------------- don’t care for anything, but go, my boy, and spread the name of the Lord from door to door.

80. SEEK NO HELP FROM HIGH OR LOW, FROM ABOVE OR BELOW. DESIRE NOTHING--------------------------- AND LOOK UPON THIS VANISHING PANORAMA AS A WITNESS AND LET IT PASS.

81. BECOME PERFECTLY UNSELFISH, READY TO GIVE UP YOUR LIFE EVEN FOR AN ANT.

82. Look not for the truth in any religion; IT IS HERE IN THE HUMAN SOUL, THE MIRACLE OF ALL MIRACLES-------------------------- IN THE HUMAN SOUL, THE EMPORIUM OF ALL KNOWLEDGE, THE MINE OF ALL EXISTENCE------------------------ seek here.

83. MEN ARE MORE VALUABLE THAN ALL THE WEALTH OF THE WORLD.

84. REALLY The Ultimate……………….

WE MAY TALK AND REASON ALL OUR LIVES, BUT WE SHALL NOT UNDERSTAND A WORD OF TRUTH, UNTILL WE EXPERIENCE IT OURSELVES.

85. The Most Joyful Thing in the World

The Best

RELIGION SHOULD BE THE MOST JOYFUL THING IN THE WORLD, BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST.

86. The two phases of this distinction in life are-------------------- first, that the man who knows the real Self, will not be affected by anything; secondly that that man alone can do good to the world.

87. The (life) is a battlefield, fight your way out.

88. Everybody should know that there is no salvation except through the conquering of desires.

89. THE HAPPIEST IS THE MAN WHO IS NOT AT ALL SELFISH.

90. Spiritual knowledge is the only thing that can destroy our miseries for ever.

91. There is only one purpose in the whole of life--------------------EDUCATION.

92. WE ARE WHAT OUR THOUGHTS HAVE MADE US, SO TAKE CARE OF WHAT YOU THINK.

93. When a man realizes he gives up everything.

94. You have everything, nay, you are everything.

95. About doctrines and so forth I have to say only this, that if anyone accepts Paramahamsa Deva as Avatara etc., it is all right; if one doesn’t do so, it is just the same. The truth about it is that in point of character, Paramahamsa Deva beats all previous record, and as regards teaching he was more liberal, more original and more progressive than all his predecessors. In other words, the older Teachers were rather one-sided, while the teaching of this new Incarnation or Teacher is that the best point of yoga, devotion, knowledge and work must be combined now so as to form a new society. ………………….The older ones were no doubt good, but this is the new religion of this age, -------------------the synthesis of yoga, knowledge, devotion and work-------------------------the propagation of knowledge and devotion to all, down to the very lowest, without distinction of age or sex. The previous incarnations were all right, but they have been synthesized in the person of Ramakrishna. For the ordinary man and the beginner steady devotion (Nishta) to an ideal is of paramount importance. That is to say, teach them that all great personalities should be duly honoured, but homage should be paid now to Ramakrishna. There can be no vigour without steady devotion. Without it one cannot preach with the intensity of a Mahavira (Hanuman). Besides, the previous ones have become rather old. Now we have a new India, with its new God, new religion and new Vedas. When, O Lord, shall our land be free from this eternal dwelling upon the past? Well, a little bigotry also is a necessity. But we must harbour no antagonistic feelings towards others.
96. When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the little being.
97. Why weepest thou, brother? There is neither death nor disease for thee. Why weepest thou, brother? There is neither misery nor misfortune for thee. Why weepest thou, brother? Neither change nor death was predicted of thee. THOU ART EXISTENCE ABSOLUTE…………….. Be your own self.
98. Love all alike.
99. ALL powers and ALL purity and ALL greatness---------------EVERY THING IS IN THE SOUL.
100. When a man realises he gives up everything.
101. Feel that you are great and you become great.
102. BEAR ALL EVIL AND MISERY WITHOUT ONE MURMUR OF HURT, WITHOUT ONE THOUGHT OF UNHAPPINESS, RESISTANCE, REMEDY, OR RETALIATION.
103. Doing is very great, but that comes from thinking……………….. Fill the brain therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals; place them day and night before you; and out of that will come great work.
104. Perish in the struggle to be holy; a thousand times welcome death.
105. OUR GOAL IS UNSELFISHNESS.
106. Activity always means resistance.
107. Love for love’s sake. Because, it is the only law of life.
108. Love makes no distinction between man and man.
109. Come out if you can of this network of foolishness they call this world. Then I will call you indeed brave and free.
110. UNCHASTE IMAGINATION IS AS BAD AS UNCHASTE ACTION.
111. This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself.
112. This world is a huge lunatic asylum where all men are mad, some after money, some after women, some after name or fame, and a few after God.
113. TALK NOT ABOUT IMPURITY, BUT SAY THAT WE ARE PURE.
114. Give as the rose gives perfume, because it is its own nature, utterly unconscious of giving.
115. I would rather go to a hundred thousand hells “doing good to others (silently) like the spring.”
116. Have faith in man, whether he appears to be an angel or the very devil himself.
117. It is the ideal that has made us what we are, and will make us what we are going to be.
118. We are all of us struggling towards knowledge.
119. The good live for others alone. The wise man should sacrifice himself for others. I can secure my own good only by doing your good. There is no other way, none whatsoever.
120. There is only one ideal in morality unselfishness.
121. Hold your mind free. All this that you see, the pains and miseries, are but the necessary conditions of this world; poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary, they do not belong to our real nature at all.
122. Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is any sin, this is the only sin----------------------to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
123. Hold fast to the real Self, think only pure thoughts…
124. Go on thinking holy thoughts continuously, that is the only way to suppress base impressions.
125. Love everyone as your own self………
126. Hold your life a sacrifice for the welfare of others; and if you choose the life of renunciation, do not even look at beauty and money and power.
127. Desire nothing for yourself. Do all for others. This is to live and move and have your being in God.
128. The power of suffering is infinitely greater than the power of doing; the power of love is infinitely of greater potency than the power of hatred.
129. The idea that the goal is far off, far beyond nature, attracting us all towards it, has to be brought nearer and nearer, without degrading or degenerating it. The God of heaven becomes the God in nature, and the God in nature becomes the God who is nature, and the God who is nature becomes the God within this temple of the body, and the God dwelling in the temple of the body at last becomes the temple itself, becomes the soul and man--------------and there it reaches the last words it can teach…………………..Nature never has power over you. Like a frightened child you were dreaming that it was throttling you, and the release from this fear is the goal: not only to see it intellectually, but to perceive it, actualize it, much more definitely than we perceive this world. Then we shall know that we are free, and then alone, will all difficulties vanish, then will all the perplexities of heart be smoothed away, all crookedness made straight, then will vanish the delusion of manifoldness and nature; and Maya, instead of being a horrible, hopeless dream, as it is now, will become beautiful, and the earth instead of being a prison-house, will become our play-ground; and even dangers and difficulties, even all sufferings, will become defied and show us their real nature, will show us that behind everything, as the substance of everything He is standing, and that He is the one real Self.
130. Root out selfishness, and everything that makes you selfish.
131. No man can hate another and live.
132. To be unselfish, perfectly selfless, is salvation itself; for the man within dies, and God alone remains.
133. Man should hunger for one thing alone, the spirit, because spirit alone exists.
134. We are what our thoughts have made us, so take care of what you think.
135. He who chooses perfection becomes pure.
136. Kindness and love can buy you the whole world; lectures and books and philosophy-------------all stand lower than these.
137. Past, present, and future knowledge, all exists in all of us.
138. Strive after that Rishihood, stop not till you have attained the goal, and the whole world will of itself bow at your feet!
139. Say, “I am the Spirit! Nothing external can touch me”. When evil thoughts arise, repeat that, give that sledge-hammer blow on their heads, “I am the Spirit! I am the Witness, the Ever-Blessed! I have no reason to do, no reason to suffer, I have finished with everything, I am the witness. I am in my picture gallery---------this universe is my museum, I am looking at these successive paintings. They are all beautiful. Whether good or evil. I see the marvelous skill, but it is all one. Infinite flames of the great Painter! ”
140. If you are pure, if you are strong, you, one man, are equal to the whole world.
141. Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds, and do not remember your good deeds, be azad (free). The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo, the effect must come, face it; but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to the Lord; give all, both good and bad. Do not keep the good and give only the bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.
142. He who is the servant of all is the true master. He never becomes a leader, in whose love there is a consideration of high or low. He whose love knows no end, and never stops to consider high or low, has the whole world lying at his feet.
143. Life on the plane of the spirit is the only life, life on any other plane is mere death.
144. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God and God Himself; a pure and a strong Will is omnipotent.

145. 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.

146. 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.

147. 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.

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

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

150. 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.

151. 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.

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

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

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

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

156. 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.

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

158. 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.

159. What’s the Goal of work?

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

160. What can be a greater giver of peace than renunciation?

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

162. 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.

163. 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.

164. 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.

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

166. What I want--------------what’s my need

What you want is character, strengthening of the will.

167. 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.

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

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

170. You must be Rishis yourselves.

171. 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.

172. 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.

173. 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.

174. 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.

175. 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.

176. Be spiritual and realize Truth for yourself.

177. 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.

178. 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.

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

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

181. 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.

182. Who loves all beings, without distinction,

He indeed is worshiping best his God.

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

184. 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.

185. Know truth for yourself.

186. Think that the whole work is upon your shoulders.

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

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

189. 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.

190. Never forget the glory of human nature.

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

192. 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.

193. 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.

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

195. When you give life, you will have life.

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

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

198. Let the fruits take care of themselves.

199. Leave the fruits alone.

200. Receive no gifts.

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

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

203. Oneness is the secret of everything.

204. 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.

205. 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.

206. 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!

207. 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.

208. ‘Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.’ Be of good cheer and believe that we are selected by the Lord to do great things, and we will do them.

209. Do not fly away from the wheels of the world-machine, but stand inside it and learn the secret of work. Through proper work done inside, it is also possible to come out.

210. Can anything be done unless everybody exerts himself to his utmost? ‘It is the man of action, lion-heart that the Goddess of Wealth resorts to; No need of looking behind. Forward! We want infinite energy, infinite zeal, infinite courage, and infinite patience, then only will great things be achieved.’

211. Let people say whatever they like stick to your own convictions, and rest assured, the world will be at your feet. They say, ‘Have faith in this fellow or that fellow,’ but I say, ‘Have faith in yourself first,’ that’s the way. Have faith in yourself-------------------All power is in you--------------------be conscious and bring it out. Say, ‘I can do everything.’ “Even the poison of a snake is powerless, if you can firmly deny it.”

212. Come, do something heroic. Brother, what if you do not attain mukti, what if you suffer damnation a few times? Is the saying untrue : ‘There are some saints who, full of holiness in thought, word, and deed, please the whole world by their numerous beneficent acts, and who develop their own hearts by magnifying an atom of virtue in others as if it were as great as a mountain?’

213. Lay down your comforts, your pleasures, your names, fame or position, nay your lives, and make a bridge of human chains over which millions will cross this ocean of life.

214. The only way of getting our divine nature manifested is by helping others to do the same. If there is inequality in nature, still there must be equal chance for all--------------or if greater for some and for some less-----------------the weaker should be given more chance than the strong. In other words, a Brahmana is not so much in need of education as a Chandala. If the son of a Brahmana needs one teacher, that of a Chandala needs ten. For greater help must be given to him whom nature has not endowed with an acute intellect from birth. It is a madman who carries coals to Newcastle. The poor, the downtrodden, the ignorant------------------let these be your God.

215. All the misery of the world is caused by the slavery to the senses.

216. Do not criticize others, for all doctrines and all dogmas are good; but show them by your lives that religion is no matter of books and beliefs, but of spiritual realization.

Only those who have seen it will understand this; but such spirituality can be given to others, even though they be unconscious of the gift.

Only those who have attained to this power are amongst the great teachers of mankind. They are the powers of light.

217. Can you not see the tide of death and materialism that is rolling over these Western lands? Can you not see the power of lust and unholiness, that is eating into the very vitals of society? Believe me, you will not arrest these things by talk, or by movements of agitation for reform; but by renunciation, by standing up, in the midst of decay and death, as mountains of righteousness. Talk not, but let the power of purity, the power of chastity, the power of renunciation, emanate from every pore of your body. Let it strike those who are struggling day and night for gold, that even in the midst of such a state of things, there can be one to whom wealth counts for nothing. Put away lust and wealth. Sacrifice yourselves.

What is Renunciation?

But who is it that will do this? Not the worn-out or the old, bruised and battered by society, but the Earth’s freshest and best, the strong, the young, the beautiful. Lay down your lives. Make yourselves servants of humanity. Be living sermons. This, and not talk, is renunciation.

218. The Secret of Spirituality

Men and women of today! If there be among you any pure, fresh flower, let it be laid on the alter of God. If there are among you any who, being young, do not desire to return into the world, let them give up! Let them renounce! This is the one secret of spirituality, renunciation. Dare to do this. Be brave enough to do it. Such great sacrifices are necessary.

219. Life is short, but the soul is immortal and eternal, and one thing being certain death, let us therefore take up a great ideal and give up our whole life to it. Let this be our determination.

220. Let the heart be opened first, and all else will follow of itself.

221. Give up for ever the desire for name and fame and power.

222. Hold yourself in readiness, i.e., be pure and holy, and love for love’s sake.

223. Within you lies indomitable power.

224. Only freedom can produce true morality.

225. It is culture of the heart that we want.

226. A handful of strong men knowing that Self and living in Its light would revolutionise the world.

227. There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.

228. It is a great thing to take up a grand ideal in life and then give up one’s life to it. For what otherwise is the value of life, this vegetating, little, low life of man?

229. Loving the world and doing it good will all come easily then; we have to obtain this power only by loving God first; otherwise it is no joke to do good to the world. ‘Everything is His and He is my Lover; I love Him’, says the Bhakta (devotee). In this way everything becomes sacred to the Bhakta, because all things are His. All are His children, His body, His manifestation. How then may we hurt anyone? How then may we not love any one? With the love of God will come, as a sure effect, the love of every one in the universe.

230. Such is the power of love. When a man has forgotten himself altogether, and does not feel that anything belongs to him, then he acquires the state of Tadiyata; everything is sacred to him, because it belongs to the Beloved. Even in regard to earthly love, the lover thinks that everything belonging to his beloved is sacred and so dear to him. He loves even a piece of cloth belonging to his darling of his heart. In the same way, when a person loves the Lord, the whole universe becomes dear to him, because it is all His.

231. Do not destroy. Iconoclastic reformers do no good to the world. Break not, pull not anything down, but build. Help, if you can; if you can not, fold your hands and stand by and see things go on. Do not injure, if you cannot render help. Say not a word against any man’s convictions so far as they are sincere.

232. What you want, you create.

233. Let us be brave. Know the truth and practice the truth. The goal may be distant, but awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached.

234. Let us be at peace, perfect peace, with ourselves, and give up our whole body and mind and everything as an eternal sacrifice unto the Lord.

235. The one great lesson I was taught is that life is misery, nothing but misery.

236. Do not injure another. Love everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring my self; in loving another, I am loving myself.

237. There is no higher virtue than charity. The lowest man is he whose hand draws in receiving; and he is the highest man whose hand goes out in giving. The hand was made to give always. Give the last bit of bread you have, even if you are starving. You will be perfect, you will become God.

238. God is love.

239. Set yourselves wholly to the service of others.

240. Go to hell yourself to buy salvation for others.

241. Man is divine.

242. Great is the tenacity with which man clings to the senses.

243. This life comes and goes------------wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!

244. A man must desire nothing else but the truth, and truth for truth’s sake.

245. Teach yourselves, teach every one his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes.

246. Let name and fame and money go; they are a terrible bondage.

247. Give up all self, as egotism; get out of anger, lust, give all to God. Blame none if evil comes.

248. Stand upon the Self, then only can we truly love the world. Take a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world. It is but baby’s play, and we know that, so cannot be disturbed by it. If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame. All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent, but within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free, it is bliss. The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are. The pleasure of the Self is what the world calls religion.

249. Life is too short to be spent in talking about frauds and cranks.

250. Everybody should know that there is no salvation except through the conquering of desires.

251. Think of nothing but liberation.

252. The Guru-Bhakta will conquer the world------------this is the one evidence of history.

253. I shall work incessantly until I die; and even after death I shall work for the good of the world. Truth is infinitely more weighty than untruth; so is goodness. If you possess these, they will make their way by sheer gravity.

254. Stop not to look for name, or fame, or any such nonsense. Throw self overboard and work.

255. None can teach you; none can make a spiritual man of you.

256. It is ignorance that makes us hate each other, it is through ignorance that we do not know and do not love each other.

257. The man who realises, “I am He”, though clad in rags, is happy.

258. Everything will come right if you are pure and sincere.

259. The worldly-minded never come to their senses, even though they suffer and have terrible experiences. Camels are very fond of thorny shrubs. The more they eat of them, the more do their mouths bleed, yet they do not refrain from making them their food.

260. It is that eternal love, unruffled equanimity under all circumstances, and perfect freedom from jealousy or animosity that will tell. That will tell, nothing else.

261. All human knowledge proceeds out of experience; we cannot know anything except by experience.

262. Holding the body upright, sacrifice the organs of sense in the mind.

263. Man begins to struggle and fight against nature. He makes many mistakes, he suffers. But eventually, he conquers nature and realizes his freedom. When he is free, nature becomes his slave.

264. Truth is the nature of all souls.

265. This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself.

266. We are here to know the truth, not for enjoyment.

267. We are all of us struggling towards knowledge.

268. Be at peace.

269. Isn’t it man that makes money? Where did you ever hear of money making man? If you can make your thoughts and words perfectly at one, if you can, I say, make yourself one in speech and action, money will pour in at your feet of itself, like water.

270. Life is ever expanding, contradiction 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.

271. If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be. Behold! Our ideal is the spirit. That alone exists. Nothing else exists, and like Him we live for ever.

272. Stand sane and motiveless.

273. Renounce and be happy.

274. Face facts as facts.

275. Speak out the truth boldly.

276. ‘Drinking the cup of desire, the world becomes mad’. Day and night never come together, so desire and the Lord can never come together.

277. To him who has nothing in the universe the Lord comes.

278. Remain pure always.

279. Preach the highest truths.

280. A Sannyasi cannot belong to any religion.

281. Never forget that a man is made great and perfect as much by his faults as by his virtues.

282. Do not want this world.

283. You are everywhere.

284. You and I are one.

285. No desire for the world!

286. Expect nothing in return.

287. Always talk and hear and reason about this Atman.

288. Be the servant of all.

289. This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.

290. Do not search for God in obscure places, for God is there in front of you in millions forms. He who loves creation is serving God…………….Throw away the paraphernalia of worship! Go out and worship man, for God has appeared in the form of man, and to worship man is to serve man and to serve is to toil and labour.

291. Help thyself out by thyself. None else can help thee, friend. For thou alone art thy greatest enemy, thou alone art thy greatest friend.

292. If you know that you are positively other than your body, you have then none to fight with or struggle against; you are dead to all ideas of selfishness.

293. He who chooses enjoyment misses his true end.

294. You have to realise truth and work it out for yourself according to your own nature.

295. Practical Advaitism, which looks upon and behaves to all mankind as one’s own soul.

296. Do not talk religion.

297. Preach the highest truths.

298. Be true to your mission.

299. Remain pure always.

300. Become a dynamo of spirituality.

301. Do not want this world.

302. Do not despair!

303. Learn obedience first.

304. Keep to the ideal.

305. Control the senses.

306. Work to lift people!

307. Save yourself by yourself.

308. Only grandeur appreciates grandeur.

309. Speak out the truth boldly.

310. Make men first.

311. Avoid jealousy and selfishness.

312. Avoid weakness and slavery.

313. No desire for the world!

314. We must not hurt others.

315. Renounce and be happy.

316. Seek not, and that is God.

317. Truth must triumph.

318. Speak of this Atman to all.

319. Be bold and fear not.

320. Off with laziness.

321. Stand sane and motiveless.

322. If you have, then give.

323. Love them that hate you.

324. Do not be proud.

325. Dream no more!

326. Don’t despond in the least.

327. Work in harmony.

328. Feel first for the world.

329. Desire makes slaves of us.

330. Work on with a heart.

331. Always hold on to the highest.

332. Struggle, still I say.

333. Work on with all energy.

334. Nothing in excess.

335. Assert everything that is God.

336. Cherish positive thoughts.

337. Truth is God.

338. Know truth for yourself.

339. Nothing can resist truth.

340. Beget no evil.

341. Beware of falsehood.

342. Injure no living creature.

343. Be the servant of all.

344. Let not the fire die out.

345. Never say man is weak.

346. Go on working.

347. No one is greater.

348. Have thou no home.

349. Off with laziness.

350. Think away everything.

351. We must reason.

352. He is all.

353. God does not reason.

354. Man is divine.

355. Idleness won’t do.

356. Everywhere is He.

357. Unselfishness is God.

358. We must love all.

359. Be jealous of none.

360. See that God alone is true.

361. Renounce and give up.

362. Be moral. Be brave.

363. We must become thinkers.

364. Think of Him, speak of Him.

365. Be a heart-whole man.

366. Work to lift people.

367. Reason helps inspiration.

368. Bring truth out.

369. Have patience and work.

370. Love never fails.

371. Struggle on!

372. Goodness is strength.

373. Love is its own end.

374. Love questions not.

375. Renounce everything.

376. You must be as free as the air, and as obedient as the plant and the dog.

377. Do not try to disturb the faith of any man. If you can, give him something better; if you can, get hold of a man where he stands and give him a push upwards.

378. True progress is slow but sure.

379. What we are, we see out side, for the world is our mirror.

380. Every moment is a new chance.

381. He alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

382. Know that talking ill of others in private is a sin, you must wholly avoid it. Many things may occur to the mind, but it gradually makes a mountain of a mole-hill, if you try to express them. Everything ends, if you forgive and forget.

383. Do not try to lead your brethren, but serve them. The brutal mania for leading has sunk many a great ship in the waters of life.

384. Every man must know, and every man is mad for love.

385. We must not look down with contempt on others. All of us are going towards the same goal. The difference between the weakness and strength is one of degree; the difference between virtue and vice is one of degree; the difference between heaven and hell is one of degree; the difference between life and death is one of degree; all difference in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

386. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs.

387. Whatever you do let that be your worship for the time-being.

388. Hold yourself as a witness and go on working.

389. Only know the truth and realise it.

390. Control your senses.

391. Freedom is the one goal of all nature, sentient or insentient; and consciously or unconsciously, everything is struggling towards that goal.

392. Always be a witness. Learn never to react.

393. Every man must know, and every man is mad for love.

394. Inactivity should be avoided by all means. Activity always means resistance. Resist all evils, mental and physical; and when you have succeeded in resisting, then will calmness come.

395. Love all things only through and for the Self.

396. Be one with the universe, be one with Him.

397. “Not I, but thou”----------say it, feel it, live it.

398. See God in everything and everywhere.

399. The seeing of many is the great sin of all the world. See all as Self and love all; let all idea of separateness go.

400. The god in you is the god in all. If you have not known this, you have known nothing. How can there be difference? It is all one. Every being is the temple of the most high; if you can see that, good, if not, spirituality has yet to come to you.

401. If we enjoy everything in the Self, and as the Self, no misery or reaction will come.

402. Seeing difference is the cause of all misery, and ignorance is the cause of seeing difference.

403. Happiness belongs to him who knows this oneness, who knows he is one with this universe.

404. Come out into the universe of light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love.

405. Love is simply an expression of this infinite unity.

406. Love binds, love makes for that oneness.

407. You are one with the universe.

408. We must have faith in ourselves; we must become world-movers, for everything is in us.

409. Have faith that you are all born to do great things!

410. Truth always triumphs.

411. Think of all you want to speak but do not speak all you think.

412. There is no limit to man’s power, the power of words and the power of mind.

413. The infinite future is before you…………..

414. Help, if you can; but do not destroy.

415. The spirit will triumph in the long run.

416. Whatever others think or do, lower not your standard of purity, morality and love.

417. What we think we become.

418. We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything, and man must do everything.

419. Tolerance only--------------we preach and perform.

420. Be intensely sincere.

421. He who wants, gets.

422. Seek for the highest, aim at that highest and you shall reach the highest.

423. Every great achievement is done slowly.

424. Stick to truth and we shall succeed, may be slowly, but surely.

425. The calmer we are the less disturbed our nerves, the more shall we love and the better will our work be.

426. This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. Great things can be done by great sacrifice only.

427. Whatever you believe, that you will be.

428. We are bound by the senses; they play upon us, make fools of us all the time.

429. Bring about the golden days when every man will be a worshiper, and the reality in every man will be the object of worship.

430. Life is short: Give it up to a Great cause. Arise! awake! and stop not till the goal is reached.

431. This world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt.

432. Even the least thing well done brings marvelous results.

433. He who gives up the little self for the world will find the whole universe his.

434. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. Children finding glass beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with calm complacency; see good and evil as the same, both are merely ‘God’s play’; enjoy all.

435. There is one thing which is the world and another which is God; and this distinction is very true.

436. Be eternally faithful to the cause of truth, humanity, and people at hand.

437. First form character, first earn spirituality and results will come of themselves.

438. Throw the ideas broadcast, and let the result take care of itself.

439. The whole world is full of the Lord. Open your eyes and see Him.

440. Turn thy gaze inward, where resides the Paramatman.

441. Spirituality is the true basis of all our activities in life.

442. Give up and know that success will follow, even if you never see it.

443. Death for the cause is our goal, not success.

444. Always try to get absorbed in the eternal present Atman.

445. Consciously or unconsciously, we are all striving for perfection.

446. Heart speaks unto heart better than any language of the mouth.

447. Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear”.

448. Enjoyment lies not in physical development, but in the culture of the mind and the intellect.

449. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will.

450. Purest soul dispels ignorance, fear and weakness.

451. Fearlessness is the teat of truth. Unselfishness is the test of religion.

452. Be a man-------------This is the new gospel. What the world needs most is men of character, men of indomitable will-power.

453. Look upon every man, woman and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve. Service is worship.

454. There is no difference between the secular and the spiritual. EACH ONE IS MOVING TOWARDS FREEDOM. Each action is a step towards the absolute.

455. Each soul is potentially divine. Infinite power and infinite possibilities are within each individual. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal.

456. Know it for certain that everything will be spoiled if delayed.

457. Who cares for name? Off with it! If in the attempt to carry morsels of food to starving mouths, name and possession and all be doomed even------------------thrice blessed art thou!

458. It is the culture of the heart, really, and not that of the intellect that will lessen the misery of the world.

459. Consciously or unconsciously, every man is trying to unfold that divinity.

460. Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live upto his own highest ideal, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the truth.

461. Go on! Do not look back if you think you have done something that is not right. Now, do you believe you could be what you are today if you had not made those mistakes before?.............

462. Misery comes because we think we are finite-------------we are little beings.

463. Love never fails, today or tomorrow or ages after, truth will conquer! Love shall win the victory.

464. Bless men, when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing you; they can only hurt themselves. Go where people hate you, let them thrash the ego out of you and you will get nearer to the Lord. Like the mother-monkey, we hug our ‘baby’, the world, as long as we can, but at last when we are driven to put it under our feet and step on it then we are ready to come to God. Blessed it is to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

465. The perfect life would be a wonderful harmony between doing and suffering.

466. Do not be anxious, do not be in a hurry. Slow, persistent and silent work does everything.

467. Seek no praise, no reward, for anything you do.

468. Go on saying, “I am free”.

469. Men are more valuable then all the wealth of this world.

470. Be selfless.

471. Bow down to nothing but to your own higher self.

472. Be brave, be brave! Man dies but once.

473. Only know the truth and realise it.

474. Do not give up anything! Things will give you up.

475. Each human being stands for the divine.

476. None is great and none is small.

477. Off with laziness.

478. Be bold and fear not.

479. Do not fight with people; do not antagonize anyone.

480. “Give up”, says the Veda, “Give up”.

481. Renounce everything.

482. Renounce and give up.

483. Be pure and be good; be pure and love everyone.

484. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself.

485. Give up desire.

486. Do not drag others down to where you are.

487. “Be practical”.

488. Do things for others; expand!

489. Be beyond the common worldly motives.

490. Do not disturb your mind by vain arguments.

491. Be beyond both freedom and bondage.

492. Believe in nothing until you know it

493. Do not despair!

494. Believe first in yourself, then in God.

495. Identify yourself only with God.

496. Don’t despond in the least.

497. Do not care what be your lot.

498. Reason out what is true from what is untrue.

499. Realise yourself. That is all there is to do.

500. Hope and do not despair.

501. Purify yourself, and the world is bound to be purified.

502. Never tell yourselves or others that you are weak.

503. Do not talk religion.

504. None will be able to resist sincerity. None will be able to resist love.

505. As far back as the days of the Upanishads, we have thrown the challenge to the world: ‘Not by progeny, not by wealth, but by renunciation alone immortality is reached’. Race after race has taken the challenge up and tried their utmost to solve the world-riddle on the plane of desire. They have all failed in the past-------------the old ones have become extinct under the weight of wickedness and misery, which lust for power and gold brings in its train, and the new ones are tottering to their fall. The question has yet to be decided whether peace will survive or war; whether patience will survive or non-forbearance; whether goodness will survive or wickedness, whether muscle will survive or brain; whether worldliness will survive or spirituality. We have solved our problem ages ago……………Our solution is unworldliness-------------renunciation.

506. From all of you I want this that you must discard for ever self-aggrandisement, faction-mongering, and jealousy. You must be all-forbearing like Mother Earth. If you can achieve this, the world will be at your feet.

507. Take one thing up and do it, and see the end of it, and before you have seen the end, do not give it up.

508. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

509. Great enterprise, boundless courage, tremendous energy, and above all, perfect obedience-----------these are the only traits that lead to individual and national regeneration.

510. Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you------------------no, not even the thunder bolts of heaven-------------------but stand up and work!

511. Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith in God----------------this is the secret of greatness.

512. Let us perfect the means; the end will take care of itself. For the world can be good and pure, only if our lives are good and pure. Therefore, let us purify ourselves. Let us make ourselves perfect.

513. What the world wants is character.

514. Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God; it is certainly a source of great help in enlightening and emancipating the deluded and ignorance-------------encumbered souls of the Buddhas-----------------the bound ones.

515. The brave alone do great things, not the cowards.

516. All healthy social changes are the manifestations of the spiritual forces working within, and if these are strong and well adjusted, society will arrange itself accordingly. Each individual has to work out his own salvation; there is no other way, and so also with nations…………………It is very easy to point out the defects of institutions, all being more or less important, but he is the real benefactor of humanity who helps the individual to overcome his imperfections under whatever institutions he may live. The individuals being raised, the nations and its institutions are bound to rise.

517. Work, work-------------------conquer all by your love!

518. Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep? Let us call and call till the sleeping gods awake, till the god within answers the call. What more is in life? What greater work? The details come to me as I go. I never make plans. Plans grow and work themselves. I only say, awake, awake!

519. Yet have the power to give: give, and there it ends. Learn that the whole life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly.

520. Darkness is less light; evil is less good; impurity is less purity.

521. Go and preach to all: ‘arise, awake, sleep no more; within each of you, there is the power to remove all wants and all miseries. Believe this, and that power will be manifested’. ………………….If you can think that infinite power, infinite knowledge, and indomitable knowledge lie within you, and if you can bring out that power, you also can become like me.

522. Every good thought that we send to the world, without thinking of any return, will be stored up there and break one link in the chain, and make us purer and purer, until we becomes the purest of all mortals.

523. Whatever is weak and corrupt is liable to die-----------------what are we to do with it?

524. Hold on to the ideal. March on! Do not look back upon little mistakes and things. In this battle-field of ours, the dust of mistakes must be raised. Those who are so thin-skinned that they cannot bear the dust, let them get out of the ranks.

525. Stand up and say, I am the Master, the Master of all. We forge the chain, and we alone can break it.

526. Desire nothing; think of God and look for no return. It is the desire less who bring results.

527. Be pure, staunch, and sincere to the very backbone, and everything will be all right.

528. Negative thought weakens. Do you not find that where parents are constantly taxing their sons to read and write, telling them they will never learn anything, and calling them fools and so forth, the latter do actually turn out to be so in many cases?

If you speak kind words to boys and encourage them, they are bound to improve in time. What holds good of children, also holds good of children in the region of higher thoughts.

If you can give them positive ideas, people will grow up to be men and learn to stand on their own legs. In language and literature, in poetry and arts--------------in everything we must point out not the mistakes that people are making in their thoughts and actions, but the way in which they will gradually be able to do these things better. Pointing out mistakes wounds a man’s feelings.

529. Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.

530. Search for enjoyment is vain.

531. So long as you have faith and honesty and devotion, everything will prosper.

532. Ay, let every man and woman and child, without respect of caste or birth, weakness or strength, hear and learn that behind the strong and the weak, behind the high and the low, behind everyone, there is that infinite soul, assuring the infinite possibility and the infinite capacity of all to become great and good.

533. Arise, therefore, come forward, display the play of your superior power within, manifest it, and we are standing with offerings of deepest veneration in hand ready to worship you.

534. Believe in man first. Why start with the belief that man is degraded and degenerated?

535. You never were in bondage, you never were virtuous or sinful.

536. The goal of all nature is freedom, and freedom is to be attained only by perfect unselfishness; every thought, word, or deed that is unselfish takes us towards the goal, and, as such, is called moral.

537. Every religion is an expression, a language to express the same truth, and we must speak to each in his own language.

538. Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you----------------but do not think of that now. It will come back multiplied----------------a thousand fold. But the attention must not be on that. You have the power to give and there it ends.

539. Attma (is) the aim of all.

540. Proclaim the glory of the Atman with the roar of a lion…………….

541. The soul is by its nature pure and perfect, infinite in power and blessed.

542. Do not be jealous of anyone. Look not to the faults of others.

543. Take your stand on good purpose, right means, righteous courage, and be brave.

544. Do not for a moment quail. Everything will come all right. It is will that moves the world.

545. Be bold and fearless and the road will be clear.

546. So long as you are pure, and true to your principles, you will never fail, and blessings will be yours.

547. We are slaves to our own and to everybody else’s mind.

548. Perfect sincerity, holiness, gigantic intellect, and an all conquering will.

549. The more heart you will be able to manifest, the greater will be the victory you achieve.

550. Live in harmony with all. Give up all idea of egoism, and entertain no sectarian views. Useless wrangling is a great sin.

551. Throw overboard all idea of jealousy and egotism, once for all.

552. No cowardice, no sin, no crime, no weakness--------------the rest will come of itself.

553. Be moral. Be brave. Be a heartwhole man. Strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don’t bother your head with religious theories. Only cowards sin, brave men never; no, not even in mind. Try to love anybody and everybody.

554. Arise, ye mighty one, and be strong! Work on and on, struggle on and on!

555. Know it for certain that without steady devotion for the Guru, and unflinching patience and perseverance, nothing is to be achieved.

556. Man must love others because those others are himself.

557. Let there be action without reaction.

558. Please be careful not to become impure even in thought, as also in speech and action; always try to do good to others as far as in you lies.

559. Feel that you are great and you become great.

560. Each must verify for himself.

561. Build your hope on none.

562. We must go to the reality.

563. We get only what we deserve.

564. We reap what we sow.

565. Everything works for the best.

566. Every human being has the power to seek for religion.

567. ……………no sincere worker passes put the field of activity without making himself known and catching at least a few rays of light…………….None 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………………Everything will come all right. Truth must triumph………..

568. You have to teach yourself.

569. ……………..Dare to believe in the truth, dare to practise the truth!

570. Goodness is our nature, perfection is our nature, not imperfection, not impurity.

571. Whatever we do good or evil, the propeller is love.

572. That which is true must be infinite and eternal.

573. Truth always triumphs, and this is true.

574. In the highest love, union is only of the spirit.

575. Our whole life is continuous suffering.

576. Whatever you think, that you will be.

577. Great convictions are the mother of great deeds.

578. There is neither sin nor virtue; there is only ignorance.

579. To whom can you do good, when you see only god? You cannot do good to god.

580. Know that service to these (poor, illiterate, ignorant, and afflicted) alone is the highest religion.

581. If there is any sin in the world, it is weakness.

582. When you know yourself you know all.

583. With the sense of possession comes selfishness, and selfishness brings on misery.

584. Stand up and express the divinity within you.

585. Do not despair, and do not drag the ideal down.

586. In unhappiness, sorrow, death, and desolation, the mother’s child shall always remain fearless.

587. It is criticising each other that is at the root of all mischief. That is the chief factor in breaking down organizations.

588. Let us then be brave and sincere: whatever path we follow with devotion, must take us to freedom.

589. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do?

590. Throw away everything, and go and help others.

591. The only way is love and sympathy.

592. It is the “desireless” who bring great results to pass.

593. Only be sincere; and if you are sincere, you are sure to be brought to the goal.

594. Absolute control nature, and nothing sort of it, must be the goal.

595. Love is always the highest ideal.

596. What power is higher than the power of purity?

597. Never lose faith in yourself, you can do anything in this universe. Never weaken, all power is yours.

598. It is very difficult to superimpose divinity on man, but one is sure to succeed by repeated efforts. God is in every man, whether man knows it or not; your loving devotion is bound to call up the divinity in him.

599. I want each one of my children to be a hundred times greater than I could ever be. Everyone of you must be great------------------must, that is my word.

600. The real help is feeling, love.

601. Be the witness and do not react, only thus can you be happy.

602. A leader must be impersonal.

603. Wait for the time to come. Do not hurry.

604. Nature grinds all of us.

605. Always cultivate the heart.

606. Give up all ‘me and mine’.

607. The goal of mankind is knowledge.

608. The object of life is to learn.

609. It’s all play.

610. Do not look to others for help.

611. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge.

612. Every reaction in the form of hatred or evil is so much loss to the mind; and every evil thought or deed of hatred or any thought of reaction, if it is controlled, will be laid in our favour.

613. Do not let these weakness and failures bind you.

614. Only let me be perfectly pure, perfectly sincere, and perfectly unselfish.

615. Never say, ‘no’, never say, ‘I cannot’, for you are infinite. Even time and space are as nothing compared with your nature. You can do anything and everything, you are almighty.

616. Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thought leads, and dare to carry that out in your life.

617. Be free, hope for nothing from anyone.

618. You are everywhere in the universe.

619. Condemn none; if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so.

620. Good results can be produced only through love, through sympathy.

621. Each one will have to save himself, each one to do his own work.

622. Fill your heart with overflowing compassion and love.

623. ……………..every being is only your self multiplied.

624. God is in everything, where else shall we go to find him?

625. Take care of these two things---------------love of power and jealousy.

626. Each one of us will have to discover.

627. Acceptance, love, toleration for everything sincere and honest------------------but never for hypocrisy.

628. Whenever darkness comes, assert the reality and everything adverse must vanish.

629. Help another because you are in him and he is in you.

630. Everything in the universe is struggling to complete a circle, to return to its source, to return to its only real source, Atman.

The search for happiness is a struggle to find the balance, to restore the equilibrium.

Morality is the struggle of the bound will to get free and is the proof that we have come from perfection.

631. Our solution is renunciation, and love, these are the fittest to survive.

632. ……………behind everyone, there is that infinite soul…………..

633. Resist not evil. Face it! You are higher than evil.

634. The will is stronger than anything else……………..And whatever you do sincerely is good for you. Even the least thing well done brings marvelous results; …………….It depends upon you who have no money; because you are poor, therefore you will work. Because you have nothing, therefore you will be sincere. Because you are sincere, you will be ready to renounce all.

635. What one has done one must suffer.

636. Let things come as they may.

637. Be positive; do not criticise others. Give your message, teach what you have to teach, and there stop.

638. Never fear what will happen of you, depend on no one.

639. Know that you are always free.

640. Life is a series of fights and disillusionments.

641. Keep yourself holy and pure.

642. Love is life and hatred is death.

643. No one is greater; realise you are Brahman.

644. We are bound to bear and forbear.

645. EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION ALONE.

646. There is no happiness higher than what a man obtains by this attitude of non-offensiveness, to all creation.

647. Hate not the most abject sinner, look not to his exterior.

648. Go on loving. If a man is angry, there is no reason why you should be angry; if he degrades himself, that is no reason why you should degrade yourself.

649. The greatest goodness is the highest freedom.

650. A pure heart sees beyond the intellect.

651. There is but one basis of well-being, social, political or spiritual----------to know that I and my brother are one. This is true for all countries and all people.

652. Duty is sweet only through love, and love shines in freedom alone.

653. Make your life a manifestation of will strengthened by renunciation.

654. The first step is not to disturb the mind.

655. Hold fast to the real self, think only pure thoughts, and you will accomplish more than a regiment of mere preachers. Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.

656. Whenever you learn (gain anything) from another man’s words, know that you had the experience in a previous existence, because experience is the only teacher.

657. Self-abnegation is the centre of all morality.

658. There is no power on earth which can be kept long confined within a narrow limit.

659. The highest moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves.

660. Make yourselves decent men!...................Be chaste and pure!.................There is no other way.

661. The goal of each soul is freedom, mastery-freedom from the slavery of matter and thought, mastery of external and internal nature.

662. Let us struggle for higher and better things.

663. What we are now is the result of our past practice.

664. What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with the infinite knowledge.

665. The highest use of life is to hold it at the service of all beings.

666. Bring out through your own exertions what you have, but do not imitate, yet take what is good from others.

667. Every thought that we think, every deed that we do, after a certain time becomes fine, goes into seed form, so to speak, and lives in the fine body in a potential form, and after a time, it emerges again and bears its results. These results condition the life of a man. Thus he moulds his own life. Man is not bound by any other laws excepting those which he makes for himself.

668. Break your chain and be free for ever. What frightens you, what holds you down? Only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you.

669. Within every man, there is an idea; the external man, is only the outward manifestation, the mere language of this idea within.

670. One must be a servant of servants and must accommodate a thousand minds. There must not be a shade of jealousy or selfishness, then you are a leader.

671. Do not injure any being, not injuring any being is virtue, injuring any being is sin.

672. Do not go for glass beads leaving the mine of diamonds! This life is a great chance.

673. The Lord has hidden Himself best and His work is best; so he who hides himself best, accomplishes most.

674. Numbers do not count, nor does wealth or poverty; a handful of men can throw the world off its hinges, provided they are united in thought, word, and deed-----------never forget this conviction. The more opposition there is, the better. Does a river acquire velocity unless there is resistance? The newer and better a thing is the more opposition it will meet with the onset. It is opposition which foretells success.

675. The fragrance of good and great deed spreads as surely as the fragrance of a tree in bloom.

676. Be not disheartened. When good nectar is unattainable, it is no reason why we should eat poison.

677. Deepen your own power of thought and love.

678. The purer the body and mind, the quicker the desired result will be obtained.

679. Whoever thinks that I am little makes a mistake, for the Self is all that exists.

680. Each man is perfect by his nature; prophets have manifested the perfection, but it is potential in us.

681. Truth, purity and unselfishness---------------wherever these are present, there is no power, below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.

682. Through truth everything is attained.

683. If we really want to be blessed, and make others blessed, we must go deeper.

684. The secret of life is not enjoyment, but education through experience.

685. Every man exists, and every man must know, and every man is mad for love.

686. Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it.

687. Spirit speaks unto spirit in silence, and yet in most unmistakable language.

688. To control our passions we have to control them at their very roots; then alone shall we be able to burn out their very seeds.

689. All that man has to do is to take care of three things: good thought, good word, and good deed.

690. The man who is pure and who dares, does all things.

691. Say, day and night, “Come up, my brothers; you are the infinite ocean of purity! Be God! Manifest as God!”

692. Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. Never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times; and if you fail a thousand times make the attempt once more.

693. Work hard. Be holy and pure and the fire will come.

694. Be chaste in thought, word and action.

695. Be a Rishi-----------that is the secret of power.

696. Our best work and our greatest influence is when we are without a thought of self.

697. We need a heart to feel, a brain to conceive, and a strong arm to do the work.

698. The Secret of Everything

Feeling is the soul, the secret of everything.

699. Work on! Hold on! Be brave! Dare anything and everything.

700. Enjoyment, misery, luxury, wealth, power, and poverty, even life itself, are all evanescent.

701. Whatever is truth will remain for ever; whatever not, none can preserve.

702. The struggle itself is the grandest and most glorious that man can make.

703. Purity, patience, and perseverance overcome all obstacles.

704. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.

705. Be pure first, and you will have power.

706. The more I live, the more I become convinced everyday that every human being is divine.

707. Neither numbers nor powers nor wealth nor learning nor eloquence nor anything else will prevail, but purity, living the life, in one word, ANUBHUTI, Realisation.

708. Every moment of this life must be realisation.

709. Light is everywhere visible only in the men of holiness.

710. One idea that I see clear as daylight is that misery is caused by ignorance and nothing else.

711. Not a work will be lost, no struggle vain, though hopes be blighted, powers gone.

712. Persons are but the embodiments, the illustrations of the principles.

713. Cultivate always “faith in yourself”.

714. Continue to exercise your will and it will take you to higher still.

715. Experience is the one teacher, the one eye-opener.

716. We only get what we deserve.

717. Patience and steady work----------this is the only work.

718. The ghosts of past thoughts, past lives hold us down.

719. Realise in your own life this knowledge of Brahman which comprehends all theories and is the rationale of all truths, and preach it to the world.

720. The greater a man has become, the fierier ordeal he has had to pass through.

721. Ignorance is the cause of all this bondage.

722. It is the patient up building of character, the intense struggle to realise the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.

723. What is anywhere must be everywhere.

724. Man has his happiness in his intellect.

725. Happiness is only found in the spirit.

726. Death for the cause is our goal, not success.

727. Let us work without desire for name or fame or rule over the others. Let us be free from the triple bonds of lust, greed of gain, and anger.

728. Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.

729. You work best when you work for others.

730. Every man has in him the potentiality of attaining to perfect saintliness.

731. Man is the highest being in creation, because he attains to freedom.

732. All the heavens and the world are in the person.

733. There is a pleasure in suffering even, when it is for others.

734. Our prophet-soul is the proof of their prophet-soul.

735. What you have inside you is that you see in others.

736. Refer UNSELFISHNESS; LOVE LOVE LOVE; THINKING; LOVE;

737. Do things for others; Expand!

738. As you do good to yourself, so you must do good to others.

739. Set yourselves wholly to the service of others.

740. Each must verify for himself.

741. ………………..let everyone be taught that the divine is within, and everyone will work out his own salvation.

742. All men are pure; all men are good.

743. The true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman’s heart.

744. The calm man is not the man who is dull.

745. No body is ugly, no body is impure.

746. Man cannot be satisfied by wealth.

747. We are the servants of that God who by the ignorant is called MAN. He who pours water at the root, does he not water the whole tree?

748. Set yourselves wholly to the service of others.

749. Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one word----------weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil-doing. It is weakness that is the source of all selfishness. It is weakness that makes men injure others. It is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality.

750. Every step I take in light is mine forever.

751. It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world --------------- that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

752. Seeing difference is the cause of all misery, and ignorance is the cause of seeing difference.

753. Three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great:

(i) Conviction of the powers of goodness.

(ii) Absence of jealousy and suspicion.

(iii) Helping all who are trying to be good and do good.

754. Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward.

755. 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.

756. The power of purity—it is a definite power.

757. They alone live whose lives are in the whole universe. The more we concentrate our lives in limited things, the faster we go towards death. Those moments alone we live when our lives are in the universe, in others; and living this little life is death, simply death, and that is why the fear of death comes.

758. The power is with the silent ones; who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say ‘me’ and ‘mine’; they are only blessed in being instruments. Such men are the makers of Christs and Buddhas, ever living, fully identified with God. Ideal existences asking nothing and not consciously doing anything. They are the real mover, the Jivan-muktas, absolutely selfless, the little personality entirely blown away, ambition non-existent. They are all principles, no personality.

759. If your freedom hurts others, you are not free there; you must not hurt others.

760. I believe in God and I believe in man. I believe in helping the miserable, I believe in going even to hell to serve others.

761. This world for me, not I for the world. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. It is the nature of the brute to remain where he is (not to progress); it is the nature of man to seek good and avoid bad; it is the nature of God to seek neither, but just to be eternally blissful. Let us be gods! Make the heart like an ocean; go beyond all the trifles of the world; be mad with joy even at evil, see the world as a picture and then enjoy its beauty, knowing that nothing affects you. Children finding glass beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with calm complacency; see good and evil as the same, both are merely ‘God’s play’; enjoy all.

762. Practise truthfulness. Twelve years of absolute truthfulness in thought, word, and deed gives a man what he wills.

763. Be true unto death.

764. Obey the Scriptures until you are strong enough to do without them.

765. Man learns as he lives, and experience is the greatest teacher in the world.

766. Learn to form independent judgment.

767. He alone is a child of Sri Ramakrishna who is moved to pity for all creatures and exerts himself for them even at the risk of incurring personal damnation.

768. Give up the idea that by ruling over others you can do any good to them.

769. If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true, this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.

770. Always look within.

771. Give up your passive attitude.

772. Holiness is the highest and divinest power in earth and in heaven.

773. This hideous world is Maya. Renounce and be happy. Give up the idea of sex and possession. There is no other bond.

774. What is life but growth, i.e., expansion, i.e., love? Therefore all love is life, it is the only law of life, all selfishness is death, and this is true here or hereafter. It is life to do good, it is death not to do good to others.

775. Try to be moral, try to be brave, try to be sympathisng.

776. Throw away everything, even your own salvation, and go and help others.

777. The motive is the measure of your work. What motive can be higher than that you are God, and that the lowest person is also God?

778. Every mouth praising the Lord is my mouth, every eye seeing is my eye.

779. Each action that helps a being manifest its divine nature more and more is good, every action that retards it is evil.

780. You must hold fast and be steady in the search for truth.

781. If one has the colour of the heart, he does not want any external colour.

782. Say “Everything is in me, and I can manifest it at will.”

783. Pure Existence-Knowledge-and –Love is the goal; and Love is God.

784. Do not wait for anybody or anything.

785. You have to realise truth and work it out for yourself according to your own nature.

786. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do?

787. May the Lord ever protect you from illusion and delusion!

788. The test of progress is the amount of renunciation that one has attained.

789. Think of your higher self, not of your lower.

790. Our best work is done, our greatest influence is exerted when we are without thought of self. All great geniuses know this.

791. Live in the midst of the battle of life.

792. Reason out what is true from what is untrue.

793. We must be the masters, and not the slaves of nature; neither body nor mind must be our master, nor must we forget that the body is mine, and not I the body’s.

794. Where is salvation?

Salvation is in work and love.

795. If a man reads but one word of love, he indeed becomes learned.

796. The highest use of life is to hold it at the service of all beings.

797. To advance oneself towards freedom--------------physical, mental, and spiritual----------------and help others to do so, is the supreme prize of man.

798. In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

799. The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

800. You are babies, and babies must submit to be taught. You have not yet drunk of that fountain which makes "reason unreason, mortal immortal, this world a zero, and of human being a God." Come out if you can of this network of foolishness they call this world. Then I will call you indeed brave and free. If you cannot, cheer those that dare dash this false God, society, onto the earth and trample on its unmitigated hypocrisy; if you cannot cheer them, pray, be silent, but do not try to drag them down again into the mire with such false nonsense as compromise and becoming nice and sweet.

Letter to Miss Mary Hale. From New York: February 1, 1895.
Complete Works, 5:72-73.

801. The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.

802. None but men of great renunciation, none but mighty giants among men, have a right to that Love Divine.

803. Above all, beware of compromises. Hold on to your own principles in weal or woe and never adjust them to others’ “fads” through the greed of getting supporters. Your Atman is the support of the universe—whose support do you stand in need of?

804. Our goal is freedom, our goal is unselfishness.

805. All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else.

806. Everything in this world, whether good or bad, belongs to God.

807. Upon ages of struggle a character is built.

808. He who has conquered the internal nature controls the whole universe; it becomes his slave.

809. Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are all the world. Who can help you?

810. All power is within you. You can do anything and everything. Believe in that. Do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. Stand up and express the divinity within you.

811. There is Only One Real Desire

Give up the world---------------this nonsense of the senses. There is only one real desire: to know what is true, to be spiritual.

812. Let the heart be opened first, and all else will follow of itself.

813. The great secret is --------------------absence of jealousy.

814. It is only by doing good to others that one attains to one’s own good, and it is by leading others to Bhakti and Mukti that one attains them oneself.

815. All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and human beings is thus bridged. Thus we find how, by knowing God, we find the kingdom of heaven within us.

816. Take the hands away and there is light; the light exists always for us, the self-effulgent nature of the human soul.

817. A man who does the lower work is not, for that reason only, a lower man than he who does the higher works; a man should not be judged by the nature of his duties, but by the manner in which he does them.

818. Always discriminate--your body, your house, the people and the world are all absolutely unreal like a dream. Always think that the body is only an inert instrument. And the Atman within is your real nature.

819. Whatever is weak and corrupt is liable to die------------------what are we to do with it?

820. What we call powers, secrets of nature, and force, are all within.

821. How freedom is to be attained

The goal of all nature is freedom, and freedom is to be attained only by perfect unselfishness.

822. Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

823. Stand up for God; let the world go.

824. Whether we know it or not, whether we are conscious or unconscious of it, we are all working to get out of the dream of the world.

825. Wealth goes, beauty vanishes, life flies, powers fly---------------but the Lord abideth for ever, love abideth for ever.

826. The Way to Perfection

This is the way to perfection, to strive to be perfect, and to strive to make perfect a few men and women.

827. None can help you; help yourself; work out your own salvation.

828. Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it.

829. The enjoyment that you are seeking is only in peace; and peace, in the renunciation of physical pleasure.

830. One has to be free, and as broad as sky. One has to have a mind that is crystal clear; only then can truth shine in it.

831. Wisdom (Jnana) is the goal of all life.

832. Ours is to do good works in our lives and hold an example before others.

833. There must not be the slightest divergence between one’s words and actions.

834. This race after gold and power is all vanity of vanities.

835. This idea of the body and of the mind must go, must be driven off.

836. Never lose heart. In eating, dressing, or lying, in singing or playing, in enjoyment or disease, always manifest the highest moral courage.

837. Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you “are killed.” Don’t die of fright. Die fighting. Don’t go down till you are knocked down.

838. Only know the truth and realise it.

839. Everywhere is the same God, the All-Love.

840. This is the central idea of the Gita---------------to be calm and steadfast in all circumstances, with one’s body, mind, and soul centered at His hallowed feet!

841. Hatred is a thing which greatly impedes the course of Bhakti; and the man who hates none reaches God.

842. May you be ever possessed of valour!

843. This is the message of Shri Ramakrishna to the modern world: Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas, or sects, or churches, or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man, which is spirituality; and the more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for good. Earn that first, acquire that, and criticise no one, for all doctrines and creeds have some good in them. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words, or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realization. Only those can understand who have felt. Only those who have attained to spirituality can communicate it to others, can be great teachers of Mankind. They alone are the powers of light.

844. The most insidious is the love of fame.

845. Not a work will be lost, no struggle vain, though hopes be blighted, powers gone.

846. It is the greatest manifestation of power to be calm.

847. We are here for freedom, for knowledge.

848. The happiest moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves.

849. Yes, the older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new Gospel. Do even evil like a man! Be wicked, if you must, on a great scale!

850. According to Karma Yoga, the action one has done cannot be destroyed, until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results.

851. Face the truth as it is.

852. You must have strict morality. Deviate an inch from this and you are gone for ever.

853. Be good and have mercy on those who suffer.

854. Beware of everything that is untrue; stick to truth and we shall succeed, may be slowly, but surely.

855. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

856. Each work has to pass through these stages--------------------ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Each man who thinks ahead of his time is sure to be misunderstood.

857. Accept the “beneficial” and discard the “pleasant”.

858. Know it for certain that you are in everything.

859. We are poor, my brothers, we are nobodies; but such have been always the instruments of the Most High.

860. Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.

861. Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!

862. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life. Every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves.

863. This little separate self must die. Then we shall find that we are in the Real, and that Reality is God, and He is our own true nature, and He is always in us and with us. Let us live in Him and stand in Him. It is the only joyful state of existence. Life on the plane of the Spirit is the only life, and let us all try to attain to this realization.

864. Do all without regard to personal result, give up all results to the Lord, then neither good nor evil will affect you.

865. Wait, have patience, everything will come right in time.

866. Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You can not help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege.

867. The Highest way & the only way to………...

It is the life that is the highest and the only way to stir the hearts of people; it carries the personal magnetism.

868. Those who are pure always in body, mind, and speech, who have strong devotion, who discriminate between the real and the unreal, who persevere in meditation and contemplation------------------------------ upon them alone the grace of the Lord descends.

869. Your duty is to go on working, and then everything will follow of itself.

870. Do not seek help from anyone. We are our own help.

871. Morality is the path towards freedom, and immorality leads to bondage.

872. This universe is simply a gymnasium in which the soul is taking exercise; and after these EXERCISE WE BECOME GODS. So the value of everything is to be decided by how far it is a manifestation of God. Civilisation is the manifestation of that divinity in man.

873. What we want is to see the man who is harmoniously developed………………..great in heart, great in mind, (great in deed)………………….We want the man whose heart feels intensely the miseries and sorrows of the world…………………….And (we want) the man who not only can feel but can find the meaning of things, who delves deeply into the heart of nature and understanding. (We want) the man who will not even stop there, (but) who wants to work out (the feeling and meaning by actual deeds). Such a combination of head, heart, and hand is what we want.

874. Now freedom is only possible when no external power can exert any influence, produce any change. Freedom is only possible to the being who is beyond all conditions, all laws, all bondages of cause and effect. In other words, the unchangeable alone can be free and therefore, immortal. This Being, this Atman, this real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable is beyond all conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death.

875. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good………………..Good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise.

876. Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity. Wisdom (Jnana) is the goal of all life. We find that man enjoys his intellect more than an animal enjoys its sense; and we see that man enjoys his spiritual nature even more than his rational nature. So the highest wisdom must be this spiritual knowledge. WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE WILL COME BLISS. All these things of this world are but the shadows, the manifestations in the third or fourth degree of the real Knowledge and Bliss.

877. The men of mighty will the world has produced have all been tremendous workers-------------------gigantic souls, with wills powerful enough to over-turn worlds, wills they got by persistent work, through ages, and ages.

878. There is no sin nor virtue, there is only ignorance.

879. The only test of good things is that they make us strong.

880. Attachment comes only where we expect a return.

881. Any work that is done with any the least selfish motive, instead of making us free, forges one more chain for our feet.

882. After so much austerity, I have understood this as the real truth, God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides that. ‘Who serves Jiva, serves God indeed’.

883. Above all, beware of compromises. I do not mean that you are to get into antagonism with anybody, but you have to hold on to your own principles in weal or woe and never adjust them to others “fads” thought the greed of getting supporters.

884. Cut out the word help from your mind. You cannot help; it is blasphemy!

885. If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

886. The ideal of Vedanta is that all wisdom and all purity are in the soul already, dimly expressed or better expressed - that is all the difference. The difference between man and man, and all things in the whole creation, is not in kind but only in degree. The background, the reality, of everyone is that same Eternal, Ever Blessed, Ever Pure, and Ever Perfect One. It is the Atman, the Soul, in the saint and the sinner, in the happy and the miserable, in the beautiful and the ugly, in men and in animals; it is the same throughout. It is the shining One. The difference is caused by the power of expression. In some It is expressed more, in others less, but this difference of expression has no effect upon the Atman.

887. When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world, that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you are not understanding it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.

888. When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.

889. Seek for the highest, aim at that highest and you shall reach the highest.

890. Live in harmony with all. Give up all idea of egoism, and entertain no sectarian views. Useless wrangling is a great sin.

891. If we enjoy everything in the Self, and as the Self, no misery or reaction will come.

892. Spirit speaks unto spirit in silence, and yet in most unmistakable language.

893. The secret of life is not enjoyment, but education through experience.

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

895. Our best work and our greatest influence is when we are without a thought of self.

896. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

897. Kindness and love can buy you the whole world; lectures and books and philosophy-------------all stand lower than these.

898. Root out selfishness, and everything that makes you selfish.

899. Whatever is truth will remain for ever; whatever not, none can preserve.

900. Think of nothing but liberation.

901. Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will. To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all------------living in the body, but not of it. This rascal ego must be obliterated. Power to help mankind is with the silent ones who only live and love and withdraw their own personality entirely.

902. Stand up, men and women, in the spirit, dare to believe in the Truth, dare to practise the Truth! The world requires a few hundred bold men and women. Practise that boldness which dares know the Truth, which dares show the Truth in life, which does not quake before death, nay, welcomes death, makes a man know that he is the Spirit, that, in the whole universe, nothing can kill him. Then you will be free.

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

904. Stand up and say, I am the Master, the Master of all. We forge the chain, and we alone can break it.

905. 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.

906. All healthy social changes are the manifestations of the spiritual forces working within, and if these are strong and well adjusted, society will arrange itself accordingly. Each individual has to work out his own salvation; there is no other way, and so also with nations…………….It is very easy to point out the defects of institutions, all being more or less important, but he is the real benefactor of humanity who helps the individual to overcome his imperfections under whatever institutions he may live. The individuals being raised, the nation and its institution are bound to rise.

Negative thought weakens. Do you not find that where parents are constantly taxing their sons to read and write, telling them they will never learn anything, and calling them fools and so forth, the latter do actually turn out to be so in many cases?

If you speak kind words to boys and encourage them, they are bound to improve in time. What holds good of children, also holds good of children in the region of higher thoughts.

If you can give them positive ideas, people will grow up to be men and learn to stand on their own legs. In language and literature, in poetry and arts--------------in everything we must point out not the mistakes that people are making in their thoughts and actions, but the way in which they will gradually be able to do these things better. Pointing out mistakes wounds a man’s feelings.

907. Each one of us will have to discover.

908. Say, day and night, “Come up, my brothers; you are the infinite ocean of purity! Be God! Manifest as God!”

909. The seeing of many is the great sin of all the world. See all as Self and love all; let all idea of separateness go.

910. This life comes and goes------------wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!

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.

This life comes and goes------------wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!

Life is short: Give it up to a Great cause. Arise! awake! and stop not till the goal is reached.

No amount of ignorance or wrong ideas can put a barrier between the soul and God. Even if there be no God, still hold fast to love. It is better to die seeking a God than as a dog seeking only carrion. Choose the highest ideal and give your life up to that. Death being so certain, it is the highest thing to give up life for a great purpose.

Love will painlessly attain to philosophy; then after knowledge comes Parabhakti (supreme devotion).

Knowledge is critical and makes a great fuss over everything; but Love says ‘God will show His real nature to me’ and accepts all.

911. Break your chain and be free for ever. What frightens you, what holds you down? Only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you.

912. Do not go against anything-----------------------ours is to put the chemicals together, the Lord knows how and when the crystal will form.

913. Arise, therefore, come forward, display the play of your superior power within, manifest it, and we are standing with offerings of deepest veneration in hand ready to worship you.

914. Desire nothing for yourself. Do all for others. This is to live and move and have your being in God.

915. Please be careful not to become impure even in thought, as also in speech and action; always try to do good to others as far as in you lies.

916. Have no idea of proprietorship, possessorship.

917. Let not a ripple conquer the mind.......................................

BE ‘UNATTACHED’; let things work; let brain-centers work; work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind. Work as if you were a stranger in this land, a sojourner; work incessantly, but do not bind yourselves; bondage is terrible.

918. IT IS PREFERABLE TO LIVE ON THE GRASS FOR THE SAKE OF DOING GOOD TO OTHERS.

919. If you are pure, if you are strong, you, one man, are equal to the whole world.

· The Secret of Everything

Feeling is the soul, the secret of everything.

920. Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God; it is certainly a source of great help in enlightening and emancipating the deluded and ignorance-------------encumbered souls of the Buddhas-----------------the bound ones.

921. Arise, ye mighty one, and be strong! Work on and on, struggle on and on!

922. This world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt.

923. Give as the rose gives perfume, because it is its own nature, utterly unconscious of giving.

924. In some oil mills in India, bullocks are used that go round and round to grind the oil-seed. There is a yoke on the bullock's neck. They have a piece of wood protruding from the yoke, and on that is fastened a wisp of straw. The bullock is blindfolded in such a way that it can only look forward, and so it stretches its neck to get at the straw; and in doing so, it pushes the piece of wood out a little further; and it makes another attempt with the same result, and yet another, and so on. It never catches the straw, but goes round and round in the hope of getting it, and in so doing, grinds out the oil. In the same way you and I who are born slaves to nature, money and wealth, wives and children, are always chasing a wisp of straw, a mere chimera, and are going through an innumerable round of lives without obtaining what we seek.

925. No breathing, no physical training of Yoga, nothing is of any use until you reach to the idea, "I am the Witness." Say, when the tyrant hand is on your neck, "I am the Witness! I am the Witness!" Say, "I am the Spirit! Nothing external can touch me." When evil thoughts arise, repeat that, give that sledge-hammer blow on their heads, "I am the Spirit! I am the Witness, the Ever-Blessed! I have no reason to do, no reason to suffer, I have finished with everything, I am the Witness. I am in my picture gallery — this universe is my museum, I am looking at these successive paintings. They are all beautiful. Whether good or evil. I see the marvelous skill, but it is all one. Infinite flames of the Great Painter!" Really speaking, there is naught — neither volition, nor desire. He is all. He — She — the Mother, is playing, and we are like dolls, Her helpers in this play. Here, She puts one now in the garb of a beggar, another moment in the garb of a king, the next moment in the garb of a saint, and again in the garb of a devil. We are putting on different garbs to help the Mother Spirit in Her play.

When the baby is at play, she will not come even if called by her mother. But when she finishes her play, she will rush to her mother, and will have no play. So there come moments in our life, when we feel our play is finished, and we want to rush to the Mother. Then all our toil here will be of no value; men, women, and children — wealth, name, and fame, joys and glories of life — punishments and successes — will be no more, and the whole life will seem like a show. We shall see only the infinite rhythm going on, endless and purposeless, going we do not know where. Only this much shall we say; our play is done.

926. Ask nothing; want nothing in return.

927. Desire nothing for yourself. Do all for others. This is to live and move and have your being in God.

928. Do not desire, for what you desire you get, and with it comes terrible bondage.

929. Go on saying, “I am free.” Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, “I am bound.” Dehypnotize the whole thing.

930. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful.

931. Books are infinite in number, and time is short; therefore the secret of knowledge is to take what is essential.

932. Liberation is only for him who gives up everything for others.

933. What you have inside you is that you see in other.

934. The Highest form of the Worship of God

Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God.

935. If you cannot speak a few encouraging words, speak nothing.

936. 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.

937. What is our duty-----------------and what’s not

Any action that makes us go Godward is a good action, and is our duty; any action that makes us go downward is evil, and is not our duty.

938. Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and it sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.

939. Every child is a born optimist; he dreams golden dreams. In youth he becomes still more optimistic. It is hard for a young man to believe that there is such a thing as death, such a thing as defeat or degradation. Old age comes, and life is a mass of ruins. Dreams have vanished into the air, and the man becomes a pessimist. Thus we go from one extreme to another, buffeted by nature……………..not one ideal can be fully attained, not one thirst can be quenched………………and when latter we get kicked about by society like foot balls…………………we sit in a corner and croak and throw cold water on the enthusiasm of others.

But bold we must be. Hiding facts is not the way to find a remedy. As you all know, a hare hunted by dogs puts its head down and thinks itself safe……………….If we sit down and lament over the imperfection of our bodies and minds, we profit nothing; it is the heroic endeavour to subdue adverse circumstances that carries our spirit upwards.

940. Be not anxious. It is against the big tree that a great wind strikes. “Pocking a fire makes it burn better”; “A snake struck on the head raises its hood”; and so on. When affliction seizes the heart, when the storm of sorrow blows all around, and it seems light will be seen no more, when hope and courage are almost gone, it is then, in the midst of this great spiritual tempest, that the light of the Brahman within gleams. Brought up in the lap of luxury, lying on a bed of roses, and never shedding a tear, who has ever become great, who has ever unfolded the Brahman within? Why do you fear to weep? Weep! Weeping clears the eyes and brings about intuition. Then the vision of diversity-----------------man, animal, tree-------------------slowly melts away and makes room for the infinite realisation of Brahman everywhere and in everything. Then------------------“Verily, seeing the same God equally existent everywhere, he does not injure the self by the self, and so goes to the Supreme Goal.”

941. Mercy is heaven itself; to be good, we have all to be merciful.

942. Think always, “I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How I can do anything evil? Can I ever be fooled like ordinary people with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth?” Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.

943. Don’t think about disaster

If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

944. The more perfect, the less imperfections you see.

945. Religion alone is all that we have and mean to have.

946. Be bold! My children should be brave, above all. Not the least compromise on any account. Preach the highest truths broadcast. Do not fear of losing your respect or of causing unhappy friction. Rest assured that if you serve truth in spite of temptations to forsake it, you will attain a heavenly strength, in the face of which men will quail to speak before you things which you do not believe to be true. People would be convinced of what you would say to them, if you can strictly serve truth for fourteen years continually, without swerving from it.