Swami Vivekananda - Spiritual Prophet of Modern Times

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Divine Descent

Sri Ramakrishna about Swami Vivekananda's descent to our sphere of existence:

One day I found that my mind was soaring high in Samadhi along a luminous path. It soon transcended the stellar universe and entered the subtler region of ideas. As it ascended higher and higher I found on both sides of the way ideal forms of gods and goddesses.

The mind then reached the outer limits of that region, where a luminous barrier separated the sphere of relative existence from that of the Absolute. Crossing that barrier, the mind entered the transcendental realm where no corporeal being was visible. Even the gods dared not peep into that sublime realm, but had to be content to keep their seats far below. The next moment I found seven venerable sages seated there in Samadhi. It occurred to me that these sages must have surpassed not only men, but even the gods, in knowledge and holiness, in renunciation and love. Lost in admiration I was reflecting on their greatness, when I saw a portion of that undifferentiated luminous region condense into the form of a divine child. The child came to one of the sages, tenderly clasped his neck with his lovely little arms, and addressing him in a sweet voice attempted to drag his mind down from the state of Samadhi. The magic touch roused the sage from his superconscious state, and he fixed his unmoving, half-open gaze upon that wonderful child. His beaming countenance showed that the child must have been the treasure of his heart. In great joy the strange child said to him, "I am going down. You too must go with me."

The sage remained mute, but his tender look expressed his assent. As he kept gazing on the child, he was again immersed in Samadhi. I was surprised to find that a fragment of the sage's body and mind was descending on earth in the form of an effulgent light. No sooner had I seen Naren than I recognized him to be that sage. [Subsequent inquiry elicited from Shri Ramakrishna the admission that the divine child was none other than himself].

- From 'Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples'

Mahashivaratri - Shiva Incarnate

Whoever knows the longing of a mother that a son should be born to her, enters into the worldof Bhuvaneshwari, the wife of Vishwanath Datta. Though she had been blessed with motherhood at an early age, her first child, a son, and her second, a daughter, had died in their childhood. Her next three children were all daughters--Haramohini (also called Haramoni), Swarnamayi, and another who also died in childhood. So, she longed for a son to carry on the family tradition, to be the link, forged out of the materials of love and suffering, between the past and the future. It has been the practice of Hindu women down the ages to place their wants and complaints before the household Deity, and to practise austerities while waiting to receive the blessings of the Lord.

Thus, as Bhuvaneshwari went about her daily tasks, she prayed silently that her desire might be fulfilled. Now, it was customary in those days--and still is--for one in dire need, or anxious that some special event should come to pass, to make offerings and sacrifices to Shiva in Varanasi. Those who lived a long distance from that holy city could make their offerings through a relative or friend who might be resident there.

Accordingly, Bhuvaneshwari Devi wrote to an old aunt of the Datta family in Varanasi, asking her to make the necessary offerings and prayers to Vireshwar Shiva that a son might be born to her. It was arranged that on Mondays the aunt would offer worship to Vireshwar Shiva, while Bhuvaneshwari would practise special austerities on those same days. It is said that by observing a vow of this sort for one year, one is blessed with a son. Thus Bhuvaneshwari was content to wait in perfect assurance that her prayers would be answered. She spent her days in practising Japa and meditation. She observed fasts and intensified her many other austerities, her whole soul given over to constant recollectedness, her heart fixed in love on the Lord Shiva. Often did her mind go to Varanasi, uniting in thought with the venerable aunt as the latter poured the sacred Ganga water on the symbol of Shiva, or worshipped Him with flowers and Mantras.

One night Bhuvaneshwari had a vivid dream. She had spent the day in the shrine and, as evening deepened into night, she fell asleep. The household was hushed in silence and rest. Then in the highest heavens the hour struck—the time had come for the pious woman to receive the special grace of the Lord. In her dream she saw the Lord Shiva rouse Himself from His meditation and take the form of a male child who was to be her son. She awoke. Could this ocean of light in which she found herself bathed be but a dream?

Shiva! Shiva! Thou fulfillest in various ways the prayers of Thy devotees! From the inmost soul of Bhuvaneshwari a joyous prayer welled up, for she was confident that her long months of supplication were over and that the vision was an announcement that her prayers were to be answered. Her faith was justified; for in due course a son was born to her. The light of the world dawned for the first time upon the future Swami Vivekananda on Monday, January 12, 1863. It was the holy morning hour--33 minutes and 33 seconds after six, a few minutes before sunrise.

- From 'Life of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Disciples'

Swadharma
Every man should take up his own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it. That is a surer way of progress than taking up other men's ideals, which he can never hope to accomplish. For instance, we take a child and at once give him the task of walking twenty miles. Either the little one dies, or one in a thousand crawls the twenty miles, to reach the end exhausted and half - dead. That is like what we generally try to do with the world. All the men and women, in any society, are not of the same mind, capacity, or of the same power to do things; they must have different ideals, and we have no right to sneer at any ideal. Let every one do the best he can for realising his own ideal. Nor is it right that I should be judged by your standard or you by mine. The apple tree should not be judged by the standard of the oak, nor the oak by that of the apple. To judge the apple tree you must take the apple standard, and for the oak, its own standard.
- Swami Vivekananda

We are the 'Unborn' Light
Progression in Maya is a circle that brings you back to the starting point; but you start ignorant
and come to the end with all knowledge. Worship of God, worship of the holy ones, concentration and meditation, and unselfish work, these are the ways of breaking away from Maya's net; but we must first have the strong desire to get free. The flash of light that will illuminate the darkness for us is in us; it is the knowledge that is our nature -- there is no "birthright", we were never born.
All that we have to do is to drive away the clouds that cover it.
- Swami Vivekananda

'My Life's Work'
... to put the Hindu ideas into English and then make out of dry philosophy and intricate mythology and queer startling psychology, a religion which shall be easy, simple, popular, and at
the same time meet the requirements of the highest minds -- is a task only those can understand who have attempted it. The dry, abstract Advaita must become living -- poetic -- in everyday life; out of hopelessly intricate mythology must come concrete moral forms; and out of bewildering Yogi-ism must come the most scientific and practical psychology -- and all this must be put in a form so that a child may grasp it.
That is my life's work.
- Swami Vivekananda

Every Being is Divine
We believe that every being is divine, is God. Every soul is a sun covered over with clouds of ignorance, the difference between soul and soul is owing to the difference in density of these layers of clouds. We believe that this is the conscious or unconscious basis of all religions, and that this is the explanation of the whole history of human progress either in the material, intellectual, or spiritual plane--the same Spirit is manifesting through different planes. We believe that this is the very essence of the Vedas.
- Swami Vivekananda

Ishwara is All-Good

Ishwara is the sum total of individuals; yet He Himself also is an individual in the same way as
the human body is a unit, of which each cell is an individual. Samashti or the Collective is God.
Vyashti or the component is the soul of Jiva. ... ... Jiva, and Ishwara are co - existent beings.
... ... Again, since in all the higher spheres, except on our earth, the amount of good is vastly in
excess of the amount of bad, the sum total or Ishwara may be said to be All - good, Almighty,
and Omniscient.
- Swami Vivekananda

'Nididhyasan'
Brahman is without action, Atman is Brahman, and we are Atman; knowledge like this takes off
all error. It must be heard, apprehended intellectually, and lastly realised. Cogitating is applying reason and establishing this knowledge in ourselves by reason. Realising is making it a part of our lives by constant thinking of it. This constant thought or Dhyana is as oil that pours in one unbroken line from vessel to vessel; Dhyana rolls the mind in this thought day and night and so helps us to attain to liberation. Think always "Soham, Soham"; this is almost as good as liberation. Say it day and night; realisation will come as the result of this continuous cogitation.
This absolute and continuous remembrance of the Lord is what is meant by Bhakti.
- Swami Vivekananda

Not free and Free
Materialism says, the voice of freedom is a delusion. Idealism says, the voice that tells of bondage is delusion. Vedanta says, you are free and not free at the same time -- never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual.
- Swami Vivekananda

Firebrand Analogy
All lives belong to us as leaves to a book; but we are unchanged, the Witness, the Soul, upon
whom the impression is made, as when the impression of a circle is made upon the eyes when
a firebrand is rapidly whirled round and round.
- Swami Vivekananda

One Soul in All
From the highest to the lowest and most wicked man, in the greatest of human beings and the
lowest of crawling worms under our feet, is the soul, pure and perfect, infinite and ever-blessed.
In the worm that soul is manifesting only an infinitesimal part of its power and purity, and in the
greatest man it is manifesting most of it. The difference consists in the degree of manifestation,
but not in the essence. Through all beings exists the same pure and perfect soul.
- Swami Vivekananda

Vedanta-Philosophy of Beyond
In one sense Brahman is known to every human being; he knows, "I am"; but man does not
know himself as he is. We all know we are, but not how we are. All lower explanations are partial truths; but the flower, the essence of the Vedas, is that the Self in each of us is Brahman....
... The highest Vedanta is the philosophy of the Beyond.
- Swami Vivekananda

Cage of flesh and bones!
The Self within is always shining forth resplendent. Turning away from that people say "I", "I",
"I", with their attention held up by this material body, this queer cage of flesh and bones. This is
the root of all weakness. From that habit only, the relative outlook on life has emerged in this world. The absolute Truth lies beyond that duality.
Disciple: Well, is then all this relative experience not true?
Swamiji: As long as the idea of "I" remains, it is true. And the instant the realisation of "I" as the
Atman comes, this world of relative existence becomes false.
- Swami Vivekananda

"A good, happy World"?!
"A good world", "a happy world", and "social progress", are all terms equally intelligible with "hot
ice" or "dark light". If it were good, it would not be the world. The soul foolishly thinks of manifesting the Infinite in finite matter, Intelligence through gross particles; but at last it finds out
its error and tries to escape. This going-back is the beginning of religion, and its method, destruction of self, that is, love. Not love for wife or child or anybody else, but love for everything else except this little self.
- Swami Vivekananda

This Universe is Zero
Say "Soham, Soham" whatever comes. Tell yourself this even in eating, walking, suffering; tell
the mind this incessantly -- that what we see never existed, that there is only "I". Flash - the
dream will break! Think day and night, this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.
- Swami Vivekananda

All is Brahman
God exists, not birth nor death, not pain nor misery, nor murder, nor change, nor good nor evil;
all is Brahman.
- Swami Vivekananda

Relative Knowledge
Relative knowledge is good, because it leads to absolute knowledge; but neither the knowledge
of the senses, nor of the mind, nor even of the Vedas is true, since they are all within the realm
of relative knowledge. First get rid of the delusion, "I am the body", then only can we want real knowledge. Man's knowledge is only a higher degree of brute knowledge.
- Swami Vivekananda

Acharya and Mukta
Anyone and everyone cannot be an Acharya (teacher of mankind); but many may become
Mukta (liberated). The whole world seems like a dream to the liberated, but the Acharya has to
take up his stand between the two states. He must have the knowledge that the world is true, or
else why should he teach? Again, if he has not realised the world as a dream, then he is no
better than an ordinary man, and what could he teach? The Guru has to bear the disciple's burden of sin; and that is the reason why diseases and other ailments appear even in the bodies of powerful Acharyas. But if he be imperfect, they attack his mind also, and he falls. So it is a difficult thing to be an Acharya.
- Swami Vivekananda

Limitless Circle
The soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere (limitless), but whose center is in some body. Death is but a change of center. God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, and whose center is everywhere. When we can get out of the limited center of body, we shall realize God, our true Self.
- Swami Vivekananda

Be Still
Be still, my soul! Be alone! and the Lord is with you. Life is nothing! Death is a delusion! All this
is not, God alone is! Fear not, my soul! Be alone.
- Swami Vivekananda

One Substance
There is a soul which is unchanging, and what we call feelings and perceptions, nay, even the
body, are the very soul, seen from another point of view. We have got into the habit of thinking
that we have bodies and souls and so forth, but really speaking, there is only one. When I think
of myself as the body, I am only a body; it is meaningless to say I am something else. And when
I think of myself as the soul, the body vanishes, and the perception of the body does not remain.
None can get the perception of the Self without his perception of the body having vanished,
none can get perception of the substance without his perception of the qualities having
vanished.
- Swami Vivekananda

Upanishads Out of Yourself
Get Upanishads out of your Own Self. Get rid of the fundamental superstition that we are
obliged to act through the body. We are not. Go into your own room and get the Upanishads out
of your own Self.
- Swami Vivekananda

Beyond Good and Evil
Good is near Truth, but is not yet Truth. After learning not to be disturbed by evil, we have to
learn not to be made happy by good. We must find that we are beyond both evil and good; we
must study their adjustment and see that they are both necessary.
- Swami Vivekananda

God's Mercy
God's mercy goes to all, but is not affected by their wickedness. The sun is not affected by any
disease of our eyes which may make us see it distorted.
- Swami Vivekananda

Sense-Pleasures
Never yet was there a great soul who had not to reject sense-pleasures and enjoyments to
acquire his greatness.
- Swami Vivekananda

Price of Spirituality
The wicked pay the price of the great soul's holiness. Think of that when you see a wicked man.
Just as the poor man's labour pays for the rich man's luxury, so is it in the spiritual world. The
terrible degradation of the masses in India is the price nature pays for the production of great
souls like Mirâ-bâi, Buddha, etc.
- Swami Vivekananda

Theory of Incarnation
The theory of incarnation is the first link in the chain of ideas leading to the recognition of the
oneness of God and man. God appearing first in one human form, then re-appearing at different
times in other human forms, is at last recognized as being in every human form, or in all men.
Monistic is the highest stage, monotheistic is a lower stage.
- Swami Vivekananda

Buddha Paurnima
The relation between Hinduism (by Hinduism, I mean the religion of the Vedas) and what is
called Buddhism at the present day is nearly the same as between Judaism and Christianity.
Jesus Christ was a Jew, and Shakya Muni was a Hindu.
The Jews rejected Jesus Christ, nay, crucified him, and the Hindus have accepted Shakya Muni
as God and worship him. But the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern
Buddhism and what we should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha lies principally in
this: Shakya Muni came to preach nothing new. He also, like Jesus, came to fulfil and not to destroy. Only, in the case of Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the case of Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realise the import of this teachings.

As the Jew did not understand the fulfilment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did not
understand the fulfilment of the truths of the Hindu religion. Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came
not to destroy, but he was the fulfilment, the logical conclusion, the logical development of the
religion of the Hindus.
The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and the spiritual. The spiritual
portion is specially studied by the monks. In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste
and a man from the lowest may become a monk in India, and the two castes become equal. In
religion there is no caste; caste is simply a social institution.
Shakya Muni himself was a monk, and it was his glory that he had the large-heartedness to
bring out the truths from the hidden Vedas and throw them broadcast all over the world. He was
the first being in the world who brought missionarising into practice -- nay, he was the first to
conceive the idea of proselytising. The great glory of the Master lay in his wonderful sympathy
for everybody, especially for the ignorant and the poor. Some of his disciples were Brahmins.
When Buddha was teaching, Sanskrit was no more the spoken language in India.
It was then only in the books of the learned. Some of Buddha's Brahmin disciples wanted to
translate his teachings into Sanskrit, but he distinctly told them, "I am for the poor, for the
people; let me speak in the tongue of the people." And so to this day the great bulk of his
teachings are in the vernacular of that day in India.
-Swami Vivekananda's Talk at Parliament of Religions, Chicago on 26th September, 1893, titled
'Buddhism, The Fulfilment of Hinduism' (Vol I)

Jnana-Yoga Essence
That is what this Jnana-Yoga teaches. It tells man that he is essentially divine. It shows to
mankind the real unity of being, and that each one of us is the Lord God Himself, manifested on
earth. All of us, from the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings to whom we look with wonder and awe -- all are manifestations of the same Lord.
- Swami Vivekananda

Brahman Within
... in whatever way he may progress on the path of spirituality, everyone is unconsciously
awakening Brahman within him. But the means may be different in different cases. Those who
have faith in the Personal God have to undergo spiritual practices holding on to that idea. If
there is sincerity, through that will come the awakening of the lion of Brahman within.
The knowledge of Brahman is the one goal of all beings but the various ideas are the various
paths to it.
- Swami Vivekananda

Shankaracharya Jayanti
Thus, in spite of the preaching of mercy to animals, in spite of the sublime ethical religion, in
spite of the hair-splitting discussions about the existence or non-existence of a permanent soul,
the whole building of Buddhism tumbled down piecemeal; and the ruin was simply hideous. I
have neither the time nor the inclination to describe to you the hideousness that came in the
wake of Buddhism. The most hideous ceremonies, the most horrible, the most obscene books
that human hands ever wrote or the human brain ever conceived, the most bestial forms that
ever passed under the name of religion, have all been the creation of degraded Buddhism.
But India has to live, and the spirit of the Lord descended again. He who declared, "I will come
whenever virtue subsides", came again, and this time the manifestation was in the South, and
up rose that young Brahmin of whom it has been declared that at the age of sixteen he had
completed all his writings; the marvellous boy Shankaracharya arose. The writings of this boy of
sixteen are the wonders of the modern world, and so was the boy. He wanted to bring back the
Indian world to its pristine purity, but think of the amount of the task before him. I have told you a
few points about the state of things that existed in India. All these horrors that you are trying to
reform are the outcome of that reign of degradation.
That was the inheritance which that boy got from the Buddhists, and from that time to this, the
whole work in India is a reconquest of this Buddhistic degradation by the Vedanta. It is still going
on, it is not yet finished. Shankara came, a great philosopher, and showed that the real essence
of Buddhism and that of the Vedanta are not very different, but that the disciples did not
understand the Master and have degraded themselves, denied the existence of the soul and of
God, and have become atheists.
That was what Shankara showed, and all the Buddhists began to come back to the old religion.
- Swami Vivekananda
(Lectures from Colombo to Almora)

Tat Tvam Asi
There is only One Being, One Existence, the ever-blessed, the omnipresent, the omniscient, the
birthless, the deathless. Wherever there are two, there is fear, there is danger, there is conflict,
there is strife. When it is all One, who is there to hate, who is there to struggle with? When it is
all He, with whom can you fight? This explains the true nature of life; this explains the true
nature of being. This is perfection, and this is God.
As long as you see the many, you are under delusion. Therefore know that thou art He; thou art
the God of this universe, "Tat Tvam Asi" (That thou art). All these various ideas that I am a man
or a woman, or sick or healthy, or strong or weak, or that I hate or I love, or have a little power,
are but hallucinations. Away with them!
- Swami Vivekananda

God as Mother
Shaktas worship the Universal Energy as Mother, the sweetest name they know; for the mother
is the highest ideal of womanhood in India. When God is worshipped as "Mother", as Love, the
Hindus call it the "right-handed" way, and it leads to spirituality but never to material prosperity.
When God is worshipped on His terrible side, that is, in the "left-handed" way, it leads usually to
great material prosperity, but rarely to spirituality; and eventually it leads to degeneration and the
obliteration of the race that practises it. Mother is the first manifestation of power and is
considered a higher idea than father. With the name of Mother comes the idea of Shakti, Divine
Energy and Omnipotence, just as the baby believes its mother to be all - powerful, able to do
anything. The Divine Mother is the Kundalini ("coiled up" power) sleeping in us; without
worshipping Her we can never know ourselves. All-merciful, all-powerful, omnipresent are
attributes of Divine Mother. She is the sum total of the energy in the universe. Every
manifestation of power in the universe is "Mother". She is life, She is intelligence, She is Love.
She is in the universe yet separate from it. She is a person and can be seen and known (as Shri
Ramakrishna saw and knew Her). Established in the idea of Mother, we can do anything. She
quickly answers prayer.
She can show Herself to us in any form at any moment. Divine Mother can have form (Rupa)
and name (Nama) or name without form; and as we worship Her in these various aspects we
can rise to pure Being, having neither form nor name.
The sum total of all the cells in an organism is one person; so each soul is like one cell and the
sum of them is God, and beyond that is the Absolute. The sea calm is the Absolute; the same
sea in waves is Divine Mother. She is time, space, and causation. God is Mother and has two
natures, the conditioned and the unconditioned. As the former, She is God, nature, and soul
(man). As the latter, She is unknown and unknowable. Out of the Unconditioned came the
trinity-god, nature, and soul, the triangle of existence. This is the Vishishtadvaitist idea.
A bit of Mother, a drop, was Krishna, another was Buddha, another was Christ. The worship of
even one spark of Mother in our earthly mother leads to greatness. Worship Her if you want love
and wisdom.
- Swami Vivekananda (Inspired Talks)

Pleasure of the Self
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.
- Swami Vivekananda

High Stand
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.
- Swami Vivekananda

Neither Happiness Nor Misery
After every happiness comes misery; they may be far apart or near. The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does one follow the other. What we want is neither happiness nor misery. Both make us forget our true nature; both are chains - one iron, one gold; behind both is the Atman, who knows neither happiness nor misery. These are states and states must ever change; but the nature of the Soul is bliss, peace, unchanging. We have not to get it, we have it; only wash away the dross and see it.
- Swami Vivekananda

Love of God
Give up all evil company, especially at the beginning. Avoid worldly company, that will distract your mind. Give up all "me and mine". To him who has nothing in the universe the Lord comes. Cut the bondage of all worldly affections; go beyond laziness and all care as to what becomes of you. Never turn back to see the result of what you have done. Give all to the Lord and go on and think not of it. The whole soul pours in a continuous current to God; there is no time to seek money, or name, or fame, no time to think of anything but God; then will come into our hearts that infinite, wonderful bliss of Love.
All desires are but beads of glass. Love of God increases every moment and is ever new, to be
known only by feeling it. Love is the easiest of all, it waits for no logic, it is natural. We need no demonstration, no proof. Reasoning is limiting something by our own minds. We throw a net and catch something, and then say that we have demonstrated it; but never, never can we catch God in a net.
- Swami Vivekananda

Between You and God
Let nothing stand between God and your love for Him. Love Him, love Him, love Him; and let
the world say what it will. Love is of three sorts - one demands, but gives nothing: the second is
exchange; and the third is love without thought of return - love like that of the moth for the light.
"Love is higher than work, than Yoga, than knowledge."
- Swami Vivekananda

Scriptures
Obey the scriptures until you are strong enough to do without them; then go beyond them. Books are not an end-all. Verification is the only proof of religious truth. Each must verify for himself; and no teacher who says, "I have seen, but you cannot", is to be trusted, only that one who says, "You can see too". All scriptures, all truths are Vedas in all times, in all countries; because these truths are to be seen, and any one may discover them.
-Swami Vivekananda

Mad for God
My Master used to say, "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. I prefer to be mad after God. God is the philosophers' stone that turns us to gold in an instant; the form remains, but the nature is changed - the human form remains, but no more can we hurt or sin."
- Swami Vivekananda

To BE
We are striving "to be" and nothing more, is no more doing; no "I" ever - just pure crystal, reflecting all, but ever the same, When that state is reached, there is no more doing. the body becomes a mere mechanism, pure without care for it; it cannot become impure; Know you are the Infinite, then fear must die. Say ever, "I and my Father are one."
- Swami Vivekananda

Nishtha
Nishthâ (devotion to one ideal) is the only method for the beginner; but with devotion and
sincerity it will lead to all. Churches, doctrines, forms, are the hedges to protect the tender plant, but they must later be broken down that the plant may become a tree. So the various religions, Bibles, Vedas, dogmas - all are just tubs for the little plant; but it must get out of the tub.
Nishthâ is, in a manner, placing the plant in the tub, shielding the struggling soul in its path.....
- Swami Vivekananda

World is a Play
In our miseries and struggles the world seems to us a very dreadful place. But just as when we
watch two puppies playing and biting we do not concern ourselves at all, realising that it is only
fun and that even a sharp nip now and then will do no actual harm, so all our struggles are but
play in God's eyes. This world is all for play and only amuses God; nothing in it can make God angry.
- Swami Vivekananda

Give without Barter
In the world take always the position of the giver. Give everything and look for no return. Give love, give help, give service, give any little thing you can, but keep out barter. Make no conditions, and none will be imposed. Let us give out of our own bounty, just as God gives to us.
- Swami Vivekananda

To The Fourth of July
[It is well known that Swami Vivekananda's death (or resurrection, as some of us would prefer to
call it!) took place on the 4th of July, 1902. On the 4th of July, 1898, he was travelling with some
American disciples in Kashmir, and as part of a domestic conspiracy for the celebration of the
day-the anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence - he prepared the following
poem, to be read aloud at the early breakfast. The poem itself fell to the keeping of Dhira Mata.]

Behold, the dark clouds melt away,

That gathered thick at night, and hung

So like a gloomy pall above the earth!

Before thy magic touch, the world

Awakes. The birds in chorus sing.

The flowers raise their star - like crowns –

Dew - set, and wave thee welcome fair.

The lakes are opening wide in love

Their hundred thousand lotus - eyes

To welcome thee, with all their depth.

All hail to thee, thou Lord of Light!

A welcome new to thee, today,

O Sun! Today thou sheddest Liberty!

Bethink thee how the world did wait,

And search for thee, through time and clime.

Some gave up home and love of friends,

And went in quest of thee, self- banished,

Through dreary oceans, through primeval forests,

Each step a struggle for their life or death;

Then came the day when work bore fruit,

And worship, love, and sacrifice,

Fulfilled, accepted, and complete.

Then thou, propitious, rose to shed

The light of Freedom on mankind.

Move on, O Lord, in thy resistless path!

Till thy high noon o'erspreads the world.

Till every land reflects thy light,

Till men and women, with uplifted head,

Behold their shackles broken, and
Know, in springing joy, their life renewed!
- Swami Vivekananda

Idols

The result of Buddha's constant inveighing against a personal God was the introduction of idols
into India. In the Vedas they knew them not, because they saw God everywhere, but the reaction against the loss of God as Creator and Friend was to make idols, and Buddha became an idol -- so too with Jesus. The range of idols is from wood and stone to Jesus and Buddha, but we must have idols. Violent attempts at reform always end by retarding reform. Do not say, "You are bad"; say only, "You are good, but be better."
- Swami Vivekananda

Absolute and Manifestation
The Absolute cannot be worshipped, so we must worship a manifestation, such a one as has our nature. Jesus had our nature; he became the Christ; so can we, and so must we. Christ and Buddha were the names of a state to be attained; Jesus and Gautama were the persons to manifest it.
- Swami Vivekananda

Blasphemy in Hindus
Knowledge exists eternally and is co-existent with God. The man who discovers a spiritual law is inspired, and what he brings is revelation; but revelation too is eternal, not to be crystallized as final and then blindly followed. The Hindus have been criticized so many years by their conquerors that they (the Hindus) dare to criticize their religion themselves, and this makes them free. Their foreign rulers struck off their fetters without knowing it. The most religious people of earth, the Hindus have actually no sense of blasphemy; to speak of holy things in any way is to them in itself a sanctification. Nor have they any artificial respect for prophets or books, or for hypocritical piety.
- Swami Vivekananda

Man - The Highest
Man is the highest being that exists, and this is the greatest world. We can have no conception
of God higher than man, so our God is man, and man is God. When we rise and go beyond and
find something higher, we have to jump out of the mind,out of body and the imagination and
leave this world; when we rise to be the Absolute, we are no longer in this world. Man is the
apex of the only world we can ever know. All we know of animals is only by analogy, we judge them by what we do and feel ourselves.
- Swami Vivekananda

Free and Not Free
Materialism says, the voice of freedom is a delusion. Idealism says, the voice that tells of bondage is delusion. Vedanta says, you are free and not free at the same time -- never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual.
- Swami Vivekananda

Subject and Object
According to Shankara, there are two phases of the universe, one is I and the other thou; and they are as contrary as light and darkness, so it goes without saying that neither can be derived from the other. On the subject, the object has been superimposed; the subject is the only reality, the other a mere appearance. The opposite view is untenable. Matter and the external world are but the soul in a certain state; in reality there is only one.
- Swami Vivekananda

Real and Superimposed
All our world comes from truth and untruth coupled together. Samsara (life) is the result of the contradictory forces acting upon us, like the diagonal motion of a ball in a parallelogram of forces.
The world is God and is real, but that is not the world we see; just as we see silver in the mother-of-pearl where it is not. This is what is known as Adhyasa or superimposition, that is, a relative existence dependent upon a real one, as when we recall a scene we have seen; for the time it exists for us, but that existence is not real. Or some say, it is as when we imagine heat in water, which does not belong to it; so really it is something which has been put where it does not belong, "taking the thing for what it is not". We see reality, but distorted by the medium through which we see it.
- Swami Vivekananda

Science and Nescience
You can never know yourself except as objectified. When we mistake one thing for another, we always take the thing before us as the real, never the unseen; thus we mistake the object for the subject. The Atman never becomes the object. Mind is the internal sense, the outer senses are its instruments. In the subject is a trifle of the objectifying power that enables him to know "I am";
but the subject is the object of its own Self, never of the mind or the senses. You can, however, superimpose one idea on another idea, as when we say, "The sky is blue", the sky itself being only an idea. Science and nescience there are, but the Self is never affected by any nescience. Relative
knowledge is good, because it leads to absolute knowledge; but neither the knowledge of the senses, nor of the mind, nor even of the Vedas is true, since they are all within the realm of
relative knowledge. First get rid of the delusion, "I am the body", then only can we want real
knowledge. Man's knowledge is only a higher degree of brute knowledge.
- Swami Vivekananda

Philosophy of the Beyond
In one sense Brahman is known to every human being; he knows, "I am"; but man does not know himself as he is. We all know we are, but not how we are. All lower explanations are partial truths; but the flower, the essence of the Vedas, is that the Self in each of us is Brahman. Every phenomenon is included in birth, growth, and death -- appearance, continuance, and disappearance. Our own realisation is beyond the Vedas, because even they depend upon that. The highest Vedanta is the philosophy of the Beyond.
- Swami Vivekananda

Bring out Brahman
So long as enjoyment is sought, bondage remains. Only imperfection can enjoy, because enjoyment is the fulfilling of desire. The human soul enjoys nature. The underlying reality of nature, soul, and God is Brahman; but It (Brahman) is unseen, until we bring It out. It may be brought out by Pramantha or friction, just as we can produce fire by friction. The body is the lower piece of wood. Om is the pointed piece and Dhyana (meditation) is the friction. When this is used, that light which is the knowledge of Brahman will burst forth in the soul.

-Swami Vivekananda

Realize Brahman
Vedanta is necessary because neither reasoning nor books can show us God. He is only to be realized by superconscious perception, and Vedanta teaches how to attain that. You must get beyond personal God (Ishvara) and reach the Absolute Brahman. God is the perception of every being: He is all there is to he perceived. That which says "I" is Brahman, but although we, day and night, perceive Him; we do not know that we are perceiving Him. As soon as we become aware of this truth, all misery goes; so we must get knowledge of the truth. Reach unity; no more duality will come. But knowledge does not come by sacrifice, but by seeking, worshiping, knowing the Atman.
- Swami Vivekananda

Knowledge and not Pleasure
The goal of mankind is knowledge. That is the one ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. 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.
- Swami Vivekananda in Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Children of Immortal Bliss
Is man a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on the foamy crest of a billow and dashed
down into a yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the mercy of good and bad actions - a
powerless, helpless wreck in an ever-raging, ever-rushing, uncompromising current of cause
and effect; a little moth placed under the wheel of causation which rolls on crushing everything in its way and waits not for the widow's tears or the orphan's cry? The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of Nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? - was the cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of despair. It reached the throne of mercy, and words of hope and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage, and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice proclaimed the glad tidings:
"Hear, ye children of immortal bliss! even ye that reside in higher spheres! I have found the
Ancient One who is beyond all darkness, all delusion: knowing Him alone you shall be saved
from death over again."
"Children of immortal bliss" - what a sweet, what a hopeful name! Allow me to call you, brethren,
by that sweet name - heirs of immortal bliss - yea, the Hindu refuses to call you sinners. Ye are
the Children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth
- sinners! It is a sin to call a man so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions,
and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and
eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of
matter.
- Swami Vivekananda at Parliament of Religions

One Source of Knowledge
Knowledge can never be created, it can only be discovered; and every man who makes a great
discovery is inspired. Only, when it is a spiritual truth he brings, we call him a prophet; and when
it is on the physical plane, we call him a scientific man, and we attribute more importance to the
former, although the source of all truth is one.
- Swami Vivekananda

All-inclusive Hindu Religion
From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.
- Swami Vivekananda at Parliament of Religions

Japa and Ceremonials
Japa is repeating the Holy Name; through this the devotee rises to the Infinite. This boat of sacrifice and ceremonies is very frail, we need more than that to know Brahman, which alone is
freedom. Liberty is nothing more than destruction of ignorance, and that can only go when we
know Brahman. It is not necessary to go through all these ceremonials to reach the meaning of
the Vedanta. Repeating Om is enough.
- Swami Vivekananda

Shravan, Manan, Nididhyasan
Brahman is without action, Atman is Brahman, and we are Atman; knowledge like this takes off
all error. It must be heard, apprehended intellectually, and lastly realised. Cogitating is applying
reason and establishing this knowledge in ourselves by reason. Realising is making it a part of
our lives by constant thinking of it. This constant thought or Dhyana is as oil that pours in one
unbroken line from vessel to vessel; Dhyana rolls the mind in this thought day and night and so
helps us to attain to liberation. Think always "Soham, Soham"; this is almost as good as liberation. Say it day and night; realisation will come as the result of this continuous cogitation. This absolute and continuous remembrance of the Lord is what is meant by Bhakti.
- Swami Vivekananda

Philosophy and Devotion
The path of devotion is natural and pleasant. Philosophy is taking the mountain stream back to
its force. It is a quicker method but very hard. Philosophy says, "Check everything." Devotion
says, "Give up all to the stream, have eternal self-surrender." It is a longer way, but easier and
happier.
- Swami Vivekananda

Religion - the Great Milch Cow!
Religion, the great milch cow, has given many kicks, but never mind, it gives a great deal of milk. The milkman does not mind the kick of the cow which gives much milk. Religion is the greatest child to be born, the great "moon of realisation"; let us feed it and help it grow, and it will become a giant.
- Swami Vivekananda

Utility of Religion
...religion begins where philosophy ends. The "good of the world" will be that what is now
superconscious for us will in ages to come be the conscious for all. Religion is therefore the highest work the world has; and because man has unconsciously felt this, he has clung through all the ages to the idea of religion.
- Swami Vivekananda

We are Infinite
Meditation is the arrow, the whole soul going out to God is the bow, which speeds the arrow to
its mark, the Atman. As finite, we can never express the Infinite, but we are the Infinite. Knowing
this we argue with no one.
- Swami Vivekananda

Seek Highest
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."
- Swami Vivekananda

You are That already!
The Vedas cannot show you Brahman, you are That already; they can only help to take away
the veil that hides the truth from our eyes. The first veil to vanish is ignorance; and when that is
gone, sin goes; next desire ceases, selfishness ends, and all misery disappears. This cessation
of ignorance can only come when I know that God and I are one; in other words, identify
yourself with Atman, not with human limitations. Dis-identify yourself with the body, and all pain
will cease. This is the secret of healing. The universe is a case of hypnotisation; de-hypnotise yourself and cease to suffer.
- Swami Vivekananda

Go beyond Gunas
In order to be free we have to pass through vice to virtue, and then get rid of both. Tamas is to
be conquered by Rajas, both are to be submerged in Sattva; then go beyond the three qualities.
Reach a state where your very breathing is a prayer.
- Swami Vivekananda

Desires are Poisonous
With all powers comes further misery, so kill desire. Getting any desire is like putting a stick into
a nest of hornets. Vairâgya is finding out that desires are but gilded balls of poison.
- Swami Vivekananda

We are Azad!
Fearlessness is not possible as long as we have even God over us; we must be God. What is
disjoined will be for ever disjoined; if you are separate from God, then you can never be one
with Him, and vice versa. If by virtue you are joined to God, when that ceases, disjunction will
come. The junction is eternal, and virtue only helps to remove the veil. We are âzâd (free), we
must realise it. "Whom the Self chooses" means we are the Self and choose ourselves.
- Swami Vivekananda

Neti Neti
Does seeing depend upon our own efforts or does it depend upon something outside? It
depends upon ourselves; our efforts take off the dust, the mirror does not change. There is
neither knower, knowing, nor known. "He who knows that he does not know, knows It." He who
has a theory knows nothing.The idea that we are bound is only an illusion. Religion is not of this world; it is "heart-cleansing", and its effect on this world is secondary. Freedom is inseparable from the nature of the Atman. This is ever pure, ever perfect, ever unchangeable. This Atman you can never know. We can say nothing about the Atman but "not this, not this". "Brahman is that which we can never drive out by any power of mind or imagination." (Shankara).
- Swami Vivekananda

Holy Mother Tithi Puja
You have not yet understood the wonderful significance of Mother's life — none of you. But
gradually you will know. Without Shakti (Power) there is no regeneration for the world. Why is it that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all countries? — Because Shakti is held in dishonour there. Mother has been born to revive that wonderful Shakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more will Gârgis and Maitreyis be born into the world.
Dear brother, you understand little now, but by degrees you will come to know it all. Hence it is
her Math that I want first.
. . . Without the grace of Shakti nothing is to be accomplished... ...
... First Mother and Mother's daughters, then Father and Father's sons — can you understand
this? . . .
To me, Mother's grace is a hundred thousand times more valuable than Father's. Mother's
grace, Mother's blessings are all paramount to me. . . .
Please pardon me. I am a little bigoted there, as regards Mother.
- Swami Vivekananda to Swami Shivananda in a letter

World is Gymnasium!
Let there be action without reaction; action is pleasant, all misery is reaction. The child puts its
hand in the flame, that is pleasure; but when its system reacts, then comes the pain of burning.
When we can stop that reaction, then we have nothing to fear. Control the brain and do not let it
read the record; be the witness and do not react, only thus can you be happy. The happiest
moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves. Work of your own free will, not
from duty. We have no duty. This world is just a gymnasium in which we play; our life is an
eternal holiday.
- Swami Vivekananda

All Causes are in It
Vedanta and modern science both posit a self-evolving Cause. In Itself are all the causes. Take for example the potter shaping a pot. The potter is the primal cause, the clay the material cause, and the wheel the instrumental cause; but the Atman is all three. Atman is cause and manifestation too. The Vedantist says the universe is not real, it is only apparent. Nature is God seen through nescience. The Pantheists say, God has become nature or this world; the Advaitists affirm that God is appearing as this world, but He is not this world.
- Swami Vivekananda

Mind and Brain
We can only know experience as a mental process, a fact in the mind as well as a mark in the
brain. We cannot push the brain back or forward, but we can the mind; it can stretch over all time -- past, present, and future; and so facts in the mind are eternally preserved. All facts are already
generalized in mind, which is omnipresent.
- Swami Vivekananda

To Youth of India
Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself -- that eternal power is lodged in every soul -- and
you will revive the whole of India. Ay, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas will before long be a component of the many forces that are working to make up every nation in the world. We must enter into the life of every race in India and abroad; we shall have to work to bring this about. Now for that, I want young men. "It is the young, the strong, and healthy, of sharp intellect that will reach the Lord", say the Vedas.
This is the time to decide your future -- while you possess the energy of youth, not when you are
worn out and jaded, but in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work -- this is the time; for the
freshest, the untouched, and unsmelled flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and
such He receives.
Rouse yourselves, therefore, for life is short. There are greater works to be done than aspiring
to become lawyers and picking quarrels and such things.
- Swami Vivekananda

You are Free Already
No law can make you free, you are free. Nothing can give you freedom, if you have it not
already. The Atman is self - illumined. Cause and effect do not reach there, and this disembodiedness is freedom. Beyond what was, or is, or is to be, is Brahman. As an effect, freedom would have no value; it would be a compound, and as such would contain the seeds of bondage. It is the one real factor, not to be attained, but the real nature of the soul.
- Swami Vivekananda

Work and Worship for Advaita
Work and worship ... are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off the bondage and illusion.
They do not give us freedom; but all the same, without effort on our own part we do not open
our eyes and see what we are. Shankara says ... that Advaita-Vedanta is the crowning glory of
the Vedas; but the lower Vedas are also necessary, because they teach work and worship, and
through these many come to the Lord.
Others may come without any help but Advaita. Work and worship lead to the same result as
Advaita.
- Swami Vivekananda

Books and Religion
Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative. To hold to the
books and at the same time open the way to freedom is Shankara's great achievement. But
after all, it is a kind of hair-splitting. Give man first the concrete, then raise him to the highest by
slow degrees. This is the effort of the various religions and explains their existence and why
each is suited to some stage of development. The very books are a part of the ignorance they
help to dispel. Their duty is to drive out the ignorance that has come upon knowledge.
"Truth shall drive out untruth." You are free and cannot be made so.
So long as you have a creed, you have no God.
"He who knows he knows, knows nothing." Who can know the Knower? There are two eternal
facts in existence, God and the universe, the former unchangeable, the latter changeable. The
world exists eternally. Where your mind cannot grasp the amount of change, you call it eternally.
. . .
You see the stone or the bas-relief on it, but not both at once; yet both are one.
- Swami Vivekananda

"I am, I am"
Bodies and minds change; misery, happiness, good and evil come and go; days and years roll
on; life comes and goes; but He dies not.
The same voice, "I am, I am," is eternal, unchangeable. In Him and through Him we know
everything. In Him and through Him we see everything. In Him and through Him we sense, we
think, we live, and we are. And that "I," which we mistake to be a little "I," limited, is not only my
"I," but yours, the "I" of everyone, of the animals, of the angels, of the lowest of the low.
That "I am" is the same in the murderer as in the saint, the same in the rich as in the poor, the
same in man as in woman, the same in man as in animals. From the lowest amoeba to the
highest angel, He resides in every soul, and eternally declares, "I am He, I am He."
When we have understood that voice eternally present there, when we have learnt this lesson,
the whole universe will have expressed its secret.
Nature will have given up her secret to us. Nothing more remains to be known. Thus we find the
truth for which all religions search, that all this knowledge of material sciences is but secondary.
That is the only true knowledge which makes us one with this Universal God of the Universe.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in England

Universe as God
The man who says, here is this world, and there is no (Personal) God, is a fool; because if there
is a world, there will have to be a cause, and that is what is called God. You cannot have an
effect without knowing that there is a cause. God will only vanish when this world vanishes; then
you will become God (Absolute), and this world will be no longer for you.
So long as the dream that you are a body exists, you are bound to see yourself as being born
and dying; but as soon as that dream vanishes, so will the dream vanish that you are being born
and dying, and so will the other dream that there is a universe vanish.
That very thing which we now see as the universe will appear to us as God (Absolute), and that
very God who has so long been external will appear to be internal, as our own Self.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

Mahashivaratri
THE DANCE OF SHIVA
Lo, the God is dancing
-- shiva the all-destroyer and Lord of creation,
The Master of Yoga and the wielder of Pinaka[Trident].
His flaming locks have filled the sky,
Seven worlds play the rhythm
As the trembling earth sways almost to dissolution,
Lo, the Great God Shiva is dancing.
_________________________
SHIVA IN ECSTASY
Shiva is dancing, lost in the ecstasy of Self,
sounding his own cheeks.
His tabor is playing and the garland of
skulls is swinging in rhythm.
The waters of the Ganga are roaring
among his matted locks.
The great trident is vomiting fire, and
the moon on his forehead is fiercely flaming.
_______________________
- Songs by Swami Vivekananda (translated from Bengali)

Heart over Intellect
Intellect has been cultured with the result that hundreds of sciences have been discovered, and
their effect has been that the few have made slaves of the many -- that is all the good that has
been done. Artificial wants have been created; and every poor man, whether he has money or
not, desires to have those wants satisfied, and when he cannot, he struggles, and dies in the
struggle. This is the result.
Through the intellect is not the way to solve the problem of misery, but through the heart. If all
this vast amount of effort had been spent in making men purer, gentler, more forbearing, this
world would have a thousand-fold more happiness than it has today. Always cultivate the heart;
through the heart the Lord speaks, and through the intellect you yourself speak.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

Sri Ramakrishna Tithi Puja
"When the lotus opens, the bees come of their own accord to seek the honey; so let the lotus of
your character be full-blown, and the results will follow." This is a great lesson to learn.
My Master taught me this lesson hundreds of times, yet I often forget it. Few understand the
power of thought. If a man goes into a cave, shuts himself in, and thinks one really great thought
and dies, that thought will penetrate the walls of that cave, vibrate through space, and at last
permeate the whole human race. Such is the power of thought; be in no hurry therefore to give
your thoughts to others. First have something to give. He alone teaches who has something to
give, for teaching is not talking, teaching is not imparting doctrines, it is communicating.
Spirituality can be communicated just as really as I can give you a flower. ...
...Therefore first make character — that is the highest duty you can perform. Know Truth for
yourself, and there will be many to whom you can teach it after wards; they will all come. This
was the attitude of my Master. He criticized no one. For years I lived with that man, but never did
I hear those lips utter one word of condemnation for any sect. He had the same sympathy for all
sects; he had found the harmony between them. A man may be intellectual, or devotional, or
mystic, or active; the various religions represent one or the other of these types. Yet it is
possible to combine all the four in one man, and this is what future humanity is going to do. That
was his idea. He condemned no one, but saw the good in all.
- Swami Vivekananda, 'My Master' delivered in US and England

Karma Yoga Essence
First, we have to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us
anything. It is a great privilege for all of us to be allowed to do anything for the world. In helping
the world we really help ourselves. The second point is that there is a God in this universe. It is
not true that this universe is drifting and stands in need of help from you and me. God is ever
present therein, He is undying and eternally active and infinitely watchful. ...
Thirdly, we ought not to hate anyone. This world will always continue to be a mixture of good
and evil. Our duty is to sympathise 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.
Fourthly, we ought not to be fanatics of any kind, because fanaticism is opposed to love. ... the
calmer we are and the less disturbed our nerves, the more shall we love and the better will our
work be.
- Swami Vivekananda in Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Miracles as per Raja Yoga
Raja-Yoga does not, after the unpardonable manner of some modern scientists, deny the
existence of facts which are difficult to explain; on the other hand,
it gently yet in no uncertain terms tells the superstitious that miracles, and answers to prayers,
and powers of faith, though true as facts, are not rendered comprehensible through the
superstitious explanation of attributing them to the agency of a being, or beings, above the
clouds. It declares that each man is only a conduit for the infinite ocean of knowledge and power that lies behind mankind. It teaches that desires and wants are in man, that the power of supply is also in man; and that wherever and whenever a desire, a want, a prayer has been fulfilled, it was out of this infinite magazine that the supply came, and not from any supernatural being.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Basis of Religion - Direct Experience
In every exact science there is a basis which is common to all humanity, so that we can at once
see the truth or the fallacy of the conclusions drawn therefrom. Now, the question is: Has religion any such basis or not? I shall have to answer the question both in the affirmative and in the negative. Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarrelling with one another. ...
... Nevertheless, there is a basis of universal belief in religion, governing all the different
theories and all the varying ideas of different sects in different countries.
Going to their basis we find that they also are based upon universal experiences.
... ... Thus it is clear that all the religions of the world have been built upon that one universal and
adamantine foundation of all our knowledge – direct experience. The teachers all saw God; they
all saw their own souls, they saw their future, they saw their eternity, and what they saw they
preached.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

How to Work
This world is like a dog's curly tail, and people have been striving to straighten it out for
hundreds of years; but when they let it go, it has curled up again. How could it be otherwise?
One must first know how to work without attachment, then one will not be a fanatic.
When we know that this world is like a dog's curly tail and will never get straightened, we shall
not become fanatics. ...
... When you have avoided fanaticism, then alone will you work well. It is the level-headed man,
the calm man, of good judgment and cool nerves, of great sympathy and love, who does good
work and so does good to himself. The fanatic is foolish and has no sympathy; he can never
straighten the world, nor himself become pure and perfect.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

All are Helped by Nature
It is a weakness to think that anyone is dependent on me, and that I can do good to another.
This belief is the mother of all our attachment, and through this attachment comes all our pain.
We must inform our minds that no one in this universe depends upon us; not one beggar
depends on our charity; not one soul on our kindness; not one living thing on our help.
All are helped on by nature, and will be so helped even though millions of us were not here. The
course of nature will not stop for such as you and me; it is, as already pointed out, only a
blessed privilege to you and to me that we are allowed, in the way of helping others, to educate
ourselves.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)
Need of Symbols
From time to time, there have been reformers in every religion who have stood against all
symbols and rituals. But vain has been their opposition, for so long as man will remain as he is,
the vast majority will always want something concrete to hold on to, something around which, as
it were, to place their ideas, something which will be the center of all the thought-forms in their
minds. ...
... It is vain to preach against the use of symbols, and why should we preach against them?
There is no reason why man should not use symbols. They have them in order to represent the
ideas signified behind them. This universe is a symbol, in and through which we are trying to
grasp the thing signified, which is beyond and behind.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New-York

Don't Contribute to Your Blows!
We get only that for which we are fitted. Let us give up our pride and understand this, that never
is misery undeserved. There never has been a blow undeserved: there never has been an evil
for which I did not pave the way with my own hands. We ought to know that. Analyse yourselves
and you will find that every blow you have received, came to you because you prepared
yourselves for it. You did half, and the external world did the other half: that is how the blow
came. That will sober us down.
At the same time, from this very analysis will come a note of hope, and the note of hope is: "I
have no control of the external world, but that which is in me and nearer unto me, my own world,
is in my control. If the two together are required to make a failure, if the two together are
necessary to give me a blow, I will not contribute the one which is in my keeping; and how then
can the blows come? If I get real control of myself, the blow will never come."
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Generalization from Particular
One peculiarity of the Hindu mind is that it always inquires for the last possible generalization,
leaving the details to be worked out afterwards. The question is raised in the Vedas, "What is
that, knowing which, we shall know everything?" Thus, all books, and all philosophies that have
been written, have been only to prove that by knowing which everything is known. If a man
wants to know this universe bit by bit he must know every individual grain of sand, which means
infinite time; he cannot know all of them. Then how can knowledge be? How is it possible for a
man to be all-knowing through particulars? The Yogis say that behind this particular manifestation there is a generalization. Behind all particular ideas stands a generalized, an abstract principle; grasp it, and you have grasped everything.

- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Karmayogi's Way
Karma-Yoga ... is a system of ethics and religion intended to attain freedom through unselfishness, and by good works. The Karma-Yogi need not believe in any doctrine whatever. He may not believe even in God, may not ask what his soul is, nor think of any metaphysical speculation. He has got his own special aim of realizing selflessness; and he has to work it out himself.
Every moment of his life must be realization, because he has to solve by mere work, without the
help of doctrine or theory, the very same problem to which the Jnani applies his reason and
inspiration and the Bhakta his love.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

And this is Maya
With every breath, every impulse of our heart asks us to be selfish. At the same time, there is
some power beyond us which says that it is unselfishness alone which is good. 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,
without knowing where we are going. ... ...
Then, there is the tremendous fact of death. The whole world is going towards death;
everything dies.
All our progress, our vanities, our reforms, our luxuries, our wealth, our knowledge, have that
one end -- death. That is all that is certain. ... ...
Death is the end of life, of beauty, of wealth, of power, of virtue too. Saints die and sinners die,
kings die and beggars die. They are all going to death, and yet this tremendous clinging on to
life exists. Somehow, we do not know why, we cling to life; we cannot give it up. And this is
Maya.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Give up Fruits of Work
"To work you have the right, but not to the fruits thereof." Man can train himself to know and to
practise that, says the Karma-Yogi. When the idea of doing good becomes a part of his very
being, then he will not seek for any motive outside. Let us do good because it is good to do
good; he who does good work even in order to get to heaven binds himself down, says the
Karma-Yogi. Any work that is done with any the least selfish motive, instead of making us free,
forges one more chain for our feet.
So the only way is to give up all the fruits of work, to be unattached to them. Know that this
world is not we, nor are we this world; that we are really not the body; that we really do not work.
We are the Self, eternally at rest and at peace.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Working without Motive
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 become the purest
of mortals. Yet all this may seem to be rather quixotic and too philosophical, more theoretical than practical. I have read many arguments against the Bhagavad-Gita, and many have said that without motives you cannot work. They have never seen unselfish work except under the influence of fanaticism, and, therefore, they speak in that way.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Shankaracharya Jayanti
In the Upanishads the arguments are often very obscure. By Buddha the moral side of the
philosophy was laid stress upon, and by Shankaracharya, the intellectual side. He worked out,
rationalised, and placed before men the wonderful coherent system of Advaita. ...
... In the old Upanishads we find sublime poetry; their authors were poets. ...
They never preached, nor philosophised, nor wrote. Music came out of their hearts. In Buddha
we had the great, universal heart and universal patience, making religion practical and bringing
it to everyone's door. In Shankaracharya we saw tremendous intellectual power, throwing the
scorching light of reason upon everything. We want today that bright sun of intellectuality joined
with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us
the highest philosophy.
Science and religion will meet and shake hands. Poetry and philosophy will become friends.
This will be the religion of the future, and if we can work it out, we may be sure that it will be for
all times and peoples.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Buddha Purnima
Buddha is the only prophet who said, "I do not care to know your various theories about God.
What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good. And
this will take you to freedom and to whatever truth there is."
He was, in the conduct of his life, absolutely without personal motives; and what man worked
more than he? He is the ideal Karma-Yogi, acting entirely without motive, and the history of
humanity shows him to have been the greatest man ever born; beyond compare the greatest
combination of heart and brain that ever existed, the greatest soul-power that has ever been
manifested. He is the first great reformer the world has seen.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga, New York

Self-Abnegation
Every act of charity, every thought of sympathy, every action of help, every good deed, is taking
so much of self-importance away from our little selves and making us think of ourselves as the
lowest and the least, and, therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Jnana, Bhakti, and Karma -- all come to one point. The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation, where there is no "I", but all is "Thou"; and whether he is conscious or unconscious of it, Karma-yoga leads man to that end.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Law is Causation
When we speak of the universe, we only mean that portion of existence which is limited by our
mind -- the universe of the senses, which we can see, feel, touch, hear, think of, imagine.
This alone is under law; but beyond it existence cannot be subject to law, because causation
does not extend beyond the world of our minds. Anything beyond the range of our mind and our
senses is not bound by the law of causation, as there is no mental association of things in the
region beyond the senses, and no causation without association of ideas. It is only when "being"
or existence gets molded into name and form that it obeys the law of causation, and is said to
be under law; because all law has its essence in causation.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

"I and mine" brings Misery
With the sense of possession comes selfishness, and selfishness brings on misery. Every act of
selfishness or thought of selfishness makes us attached to something, and immediately we are
made slaves. Each wave in the Chitta that says "I and mine" immediately puts a chain round us
and makes us slaves; and the more we say "I and mine", the more slavery grows, the more
misery increases. Therefore Karma-Yoga tells us to enjoy the beauty of all the pictures in the world, but not to identify ourselves with any of them. Never say "mine". Whenever we say a thing is "mine", misery will immediately come.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

'Comfortable Religion'
When a man says that he will have again and again this same thing which he is having now, or,
as I sometimes put it, when he asks for a comfortable religion, you may know that he has
become so degenerate that he cannot think of anything higher than what he is now; he is just
his little present surroundings and nothing more. He has forgotten his infinite nature, and his whole idea is confined to these little joys, and sorrows, and heart-jealousies of the moment.
He thinks that this finite thing is the infinite; and not only so, he will not let this foolishness go.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

No Freedom within Universe

To acquire freedom we have to get beyond the limitations of this universe; it cannot be found
here. Perfect equilibrium, or what the Christians call the peace that passeth all understanding, cannot be had in this universe, nor in heaven, nor in any place where our mind and thoughts can go, where the senses can feel, or which the imagination can conceive.
No such place can give us that freedom, because all such places would be within our universe,
and it is limited by space, time, and causation. ...
Until we give up the thirst after life, the strong attachment to this our transient conditioned
existence, we have no hope of catching even a glimpse of that infinite freedom beyond.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Karma-Yoga - Knowledge of the Secret of Work
What is Karma-Yoga? The knowledge of the secret of work. ...
... Karma-Yoga makes a science of work; you learn by it how best to utilise all the workings of
this world. Work is inevitable, it must be so; but we should work to the highest purpose. Karma-Yoga makes us admit that this world is a world of five minutes, that it is a something we have to pass through; and that freedom is not here, but is only to be found beyond. To find the way out of the bondages of the world we have to go through it slowly and surely.
- Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Pranayama - Control of Prana
Just as this whole universe has been generalized in the Vedas into that One Absolute Existence, and he who has grasped that Existence has grasped the whole universe, so all forces have been generalized into this Prana, and he who has grasped the Prana has grasped all the forces of the universe, mental or physical. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his own mind, and all the minds that exist. He who has controlled the Prana has controlled his body, and all the bodies that exist, because the Prana is the generalized manifestation of force.
How to control the Prana is the one idea of Pranayama. All the trainings and exercises in this
regard are for that one end.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Better to be An Outspoken Atheist than a Hypocrite
Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There
has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause, because people never
went to the fountain-head; they were content only to give a mental assent to the customs of their
forefathers, and wanted others to do the same. What right has a man to say he has a soul if he does not feel it, or that there is a God if he does not see Him?
If there is a God we must see Him, if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise it is better not
to believe. It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga, New York

Raja-Yoga Method
The goal of all its [Raja-Yoga's] teaching is how to concentrate the minds, then, how to discover
the innermost recesses of our own minds, then, how to generalize their contents and form our
own conclusions from them. It, therefore, never asks the question what our religion is, whether
we are Deists or Atheists, whether Christians, Jews, or Buddhists.
We are human beings; that is sufficient. Every human being has the right and the power to seek
for religion. Every human being has the right to ask the reason, why, and to have his question
answered by himself, if he only takes the trouble.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Concentrated Mind - Means of Knowledge
The powers of the mind are like rays of light dissipated; when they are concentrated, they
illumine. This is our only means of knowledge. Everyone is using it, both in the external and the internal world; but, for the psychologist, the same minute observation has to be directed to the internal world, which the scientific man directs to the external; and this requires a great deal of practice.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Pranayama - Internal and External Application
You will find that wherever there is any extraordinary display of power, it is the manifestation of
this Prana.
Even the physical sciences can be included in Pranayama. What moves the steam engine?
Prana, acting through the steam. What are all these phenomena of electricity and so forth but
Prana? What is physical science? The science of Pranayama, by external means.
Prana, manifesting itself as mental power, can only be controlled by mental means. That part of
Pranayama which attempts to control the physical manifestations of the Prana by physical
means is called physical science, and that part which tries to control the manifestation of the
Prana as mental force by mental means is called Raja-Yoga.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Beware of Dancing & Jumping Sects
All over the world there have been dancing and jumping and howling sects, who spread like
infection when they begin to sing and dance and preach; they also are a sort of hypnotists. They
exercise a singular control for the time being over sensitive persons, alas! often, in the long run,
to degenerate whole races. Ay, it is healthier for the individual or the race to remain wicked than be made apparently good by such morbid extraneous control. One's heart sinks to think of the amount of injury done to humanity by such irresponsible yet well - meaning religious fanatics. They little know that the minds which attain to sudden spiritual upheaval under their suggestions, with music and prayers, are simply making themselves passive, morbid, and powerless, and opening themselves to any other suggestion, be it ever so evil.
Little do these ignorant, deluded persons dream that whilst they are congratulating themselves
upon their miraculous power to transform human hearts, which power they think was poured
upon them by some Being above the clouds, they are sowing the seeds of future decay, of
crime, of lunacy, and of death. Therefore, beware of everything that take away your freedom.
Know that it is dangerous, and avoid it by all the means in your power.

- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Guru Purnima

In studying books we are sometimes deluded into thinking that thereby we are being spiritually
helped; but if we analyse the effect of the study of books on ourselves, we shall find that at the
utmost it is only our intellect that derives profit from such studies, and not our inner spirit. This
inadequacy of books to quicken spiritual growth is the reason why, although almost every one of
us can speak most wonderfully on spiritual matters, when it comes to action and the living of a
truly spiritual life, we find ourselves so awfully deficient.
To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another soul. The person from whose soul
such impulse comes is called the Guru -- the teacher; and the person to whose soul the impulse
is conveyed is called the Shishya -- the student.
To convey such an impulse to any soul, in the first place, the soul from which it proceeds must
possess the power of transmitting it, as it were to another; and in the second place, the soul to
which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it.
- Swami Vivekananda, Bhakti-Yoga

Individual Religion for Each
... it is good to be born in a church, but it is bad to die there.
It is good to be born a child, but bad to remain a child. Churches, ceremonies, and symbols are
good for children, but when the child is grown, he must burst the church or himself. We must not
remain children for ever. It is like trying to fit one coat to all sizes and growths. I do not
deprecate the existence of sects in the world.
Would to God there were twenty millions more, for the more there are, there will be a greater
field for selection. What I do object to is trying to fit one religion to every case. Though all
religions are essentially the same, they must have the varieties of form produced by dissimilar
circumstances among different nations. We must each have our own individual religion,
individual so far as the externals of it go.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in Hartford, Connecticut

Acceptance and Not Tolerance
Our watchword, then, will be acceptance, and not exclusion.
Not only toleration, for so - called toleration is often blasphemy, and I do not believe in it. I
believe in acceptance. Why should I tolerate? Toleration means that I think that you are wrong
and I am just allowing you to live. Is it not a blasphemy to think that you and I are allowing
others to live? I accept all religions that were in the past, and worship with them all; I worship
God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him. I shall go to the mosque of the
Mohammedan; I shall enter the Christian's church and kneel before the crucifix; I shall enter the
Buddhistic temple, where I shall take refuge in Buddha and in his Law. I shall go into the forest
and sit down in meditation with the Hindu, who is trying to see the Light which enlightens the
heart of every one. Not only shall I do all these, but I shall keep my heart open for all that may
come in the future. Is God's book finished? Or is it still a continuous revelation going on? It is a
marvelous book -- these spiritual revelations of the world. The Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and
all other sacred books are but so many pages, and an infinite number of pages remain yet to be
unfolded. I would leave it open for all of them.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

Spirit Worshiping Spirit
We are physically immortal even, one with the universe. So long as there is one that breathes
throughout the universe, I live in that one. I am not this limited little being, I am the universal. I
am the life of all the sons of the past.
I am the soul of Buddha, of Jesus, of Mohammed. I am the soul of the teachers, and I am all the
robbers that robbed, and all the murderers that were hanged, I am the universal. Stand up then;
this is the highest worship.
You are one with the universe. That only is humility -- not crawling upon all fours and calling
yourself a sinner. That is the highest evolution when this veil of differentiation is torn off. The
highest creed is Oneness. I am so - and - so is a limited idea, not true of the real "I".
I am the universal; stand upon that and ever worship the highest through the highest form, for God is Spirit and should be worshipped in spirit and in truth.

- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in New York

India for Tolerance and Acceptance

I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal
acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am
proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions
and all nations of the earth.
I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites,
who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple
was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has
sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.
- Swami Vivekananda at Parliament of Religions, Chicago

Swami Ramakrishnananda Tithi Puja
'Shashi [Swami Ramakrishnananda] will remain always constant to his spot; his steadfastness is
a great foundation-rock.'
- Swami Vivekananda

Samadhi
Samadhi is the property of every human being -- nay, every animal. From the lowest animal to
the highest angel, some time or other, each one will have to come to that state, and then, and
then alone, will real religion begin for him.
Until then we only struggle towards that stage.
There is no difference now between us and those who have no religion, because we have no
experience. What is concentration good for, save to bring us to this experience?
Each one of the steps to attain Samadhi has been reasoned out, properly adjusted, scientifically
organised, and, when faithfully practised, will surely lead us to the desired end. Then will all
sorrows cease, all miseries vanish; the seeds for actions will be burnt, and the soul will be free
for ever.
- Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Because of Self, All Love Exists
“It is not for the sake of the husband that the wife loves the husband, but for the sake of the
Atman that she loves the husband, because she loves the Self. None loves the wife for the sake
of the wife; but it is because one loves the Self that one loves the wife.
None loves the children for the children; but because one loves the Self, therefore one loves the
children. None loves wealth on account of the wealth; but because one loves the Self, therefore
one loves wealth. None loves the Brahmin for the sake of the Brahmin; but because one loves
the Self, one loves the Brahmin. So, none loves the Kshatriya for the sake of the Kshatriya, but
because one loves the Self.
Neither does any one love the world on account of the world, but because one loves the Self.
None, similarly, loves the gods on account of the gods, but because one loves the Self. None
loves a thing for that thing's sake; but it is for the Self that one loves it. This Self, therefore, is to
be heard, reasoned about, and meditated upon. O my Maitreyi, when that Self has been heard,
when that Self has been seen, when that Self has been realised, then, all this becomes known.”
- Swami Vivekananda, 'Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi' – Class in New York

Tolerance of Hindus
"That which exists is One; sages call It by various names." Tremendous results have followed
from that one verse. Some of you, perhaps, are surprised to think that India is the only country
where there never has been a religious persecution, where never was any man disturbed for his
religious faith. Theists or atheists, monists, dualists, monotheists are there and always live
unmolested. Materialists were allowed to preach from the steps of Brahminical temples, against
the gods, and against God Himself; they went preaching all over the land that the idea of God
was a mere superstition, and that gods, and Vedas, and religion were simply superstitions
invented by the priests for their own benefit, and they were allowed to do this unmolested. ...
... endless examples there are. Before the Mohammedan wave came into India, it was never
known what religious persecution was; the Hindus had only experienced it as made by
foreigners on themselves. And even now it is a patent fact how much Hindus have helped to build Christian churches, and how much readiness there is to help them.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in England

Good and Evil - Different Forms of Superstition
There are no two Gods.
When He is less manifested, it is called darkness, evil; and when He is more manifested, it is
called light. That is all. Good and evil are only a question of degree: more manifested or less
manifested. ... So good and evil are but superstitions, and do not exist.
The difference is only in degree. It is all a manifestation of that Atman; He is being manifested in
everything; only, when the manifestation is very thick we call it evil; and when it is very thin, we
call it good. ...
... Good and evil are different forms of superstition.
They have gone through all sorts of dualistic delusion and all sorts of ideas, and the words have
sunk into the hearts of human beings, terrorising men and women and living there as terrible
tyrants.
... All the hatred with which we hate others is caused by these foolish ideas which we have
imbibed since our childhood -- good and evil. Our judgment of humanity becomes entirely false;
we make this beautiful earth a hell; but as soon as we can give up good and evil [and realise
Atman], it becomes a heaven.
- Swami Vivekananda, 'Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi' – Class in New York

World of False Shadows and Selfishness
If there is one universal truth in all religions, I place it here -- in realising God. Ideals and
methods may differ, but that is the central point. There may be a thousand different radii, but
they all converge to the one centre, and that is the realisation of God: something behind this
world of sense, this world of eternal eating and drinking and talking nonsense, this world of false
shadows and selfishness. There is that beyond all books, beyond all creeds, beyond the vanities of this world, and it is the realisation of God within yourself.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in Hartford, Connecticut

Buddha Came for Fulfillment
... the real difference that we Hindus want to show between modern Buddhism and what we
should understand as the teachings of Lord Buddha lies principally in this: Shakya Muni came to
preach nothing new. He also, like Jesus, came to fulfill and not to destroy. Only, in the case of
Jesus, it was the old people, the Jews, who did not understand him, while in the case of
Buddha, it was his own followers who did not realise the import of his teachings. As the Jew did not understand the fulfillment of the Old Testament, so the Buddhist did not understand the
fulfillment of the truths of the Hindu religion.
Again, I repeat, Shakya Muni came not to destroy, but he was the fulfillment, the logical
conclusion, the logical development of the religion of the Hindus.
- Swami Vivekananda at Parliament of Religions, Chicago

God - Fundamental Element of Human Constitution
The concept of God is a fundamental element in the human constitution. In the Vedanta,
Sat-chit-ananda (Existence - Knowledge - Bliss) is the highest concept of God possible to the
mind. It is the essence of knowledge and is by its nature the essence of bliss. We have been
stifling that inner voice long enough, seeking to follow law and quiet the human nature, but there
is that human instinct to rebel against nature's laws. We may not understand what the meaning
is, but there is that unconscious struggle of the human with the spiritual, of the lower with the
higher mind, and the struggle attempts to preserve one's separate life, what we call our
"individuality".
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in New York

Hinduism and Buddhism
Hinduism cannot live without Buddhism, nor Buddhism without Hinduism. Then realize what the
separation has shown to us, that the Buddhists cannot stand without the brain and philosophy of
the Brahmins, nor the Brahmin without the heart of the Buddhist. This separation between the
Buddhists and the Brahmins is the cause of the downfall of India.
That is why India is populated by three hundred millions of beggars, and that is why India has
been the slave of conquerors for the last thousand years.
Let us then join the wonderful intellect of the Brahmins with the heart, the noble soul, the
wonderful humanising power of the Great Master [Buddha].
- Swami Vivekananda at Parliament of Religions, Chicago

Knowledge is Limitation
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Can we see God? Of course not. Can
we know God? Of course not. If God can be known, He will be God no longer.
Knowledge is limitation.
But I and my Father are one: I find the reality in my soul. These ideas are expressed in some
religions, and in others only hinted. In some they were expatriated.
Christ's teachings are now very little understood in this country. If you will excuse me, I will say
that they have never been very well understood.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in Hartford, Connecticut

India's Gift to the World
India has given to antiquity the earliest scientific physicians, and, according to Sir William
Hunter, she has even contributed to modern medical science by the discovery of various
chemicals and by teaching you how to reform misshapen ears and noses. Even more it has
done in mathematics, for algebra, geometry, astronomy, and the triumph of modern science --
mixed mathematics -- were all invented in India, just so much as the ten numerals, the very
cornerstone of all present civilization, were discovered in India, and are in reality, Sanskrit
words.
In philosophy we are even now head and shoulders above any other nation, as Schopenhauer,
the great German philosopher, has confessed. In music India gave to the world her system of
notation, with the seven cardinal notes and the diatonic scale, all of which we enjoyed as early
as 350 B.C., while it came to Europe only in the eleventh century. In philology, our Sanskrit
language is now universally acknowledged to be the foundation of all European languages,
which, in fact, are nothing but jargonized Sanskrit.
In literature, our epics and poems and dramas rank as high as those of any language; our
'Shakuntala' was summarized by Germany's greatest poet, as 'heaven and earth united'. India
has given to the world the fables of Aesop, which were copied by Aesop from an old Sanskrit
book; it has given the Arabian Nights, yes, even the story of Cinderella and the Bean Stalks. In
manufacture, India was the first to make cotton and dye, it was proficient in all works of jewelry,
and the very word 'sugar', as well as the article itself, is the product of India. Lastly she has
invented the game of chess and the cards and the dice. So great, in fact, was the superiority of
India in every respect, that it drew to her borders the hungry cohorts of Europe, and thereby
indirectly brought about the discovery of America.
And now, what has the world given to India in return for all that? Nothing but vilification and
curse and contempt. The world waded in her children's life-blood, it reduced India to poverty and
her sons and daughters to slavery, and now it adds insult to injury by preaching to her a religion
which can only thrive on the destruction of every other religion. But India is not afraid. It does
not beg for mercy at the hands of any nation. Our only fault is that we cannot fight to conquer;
but we trust in the eternity of truth. India's message to the world is first of all, her blessing; she is
returning good for the evil which is done her, and thus she puts into execution this noble idea,
which had its origin in India. Lastly, India's message is, that calm goodness, patience and
gentleness will ultimately triumph. For where are the Greeks, the one - time masters of the
earth? They are gone. Where are the Romans, at the tramp of whose cohorts the world
trembled? Passed away. Where are the Arabs, who in fifty years had carried their banners from
the Atlantic to the Pacific? and where are the Spaniards, the cruel murderers of millions of men?
Both races are nearly extinct; but thanks to the morality of her children, the kinder race will
never perish, and she will yet see the hour of her triumph.
- Swami Vivekananda at Brooklyn Ethical Association, February 25, 1895

Design Theory
... out of the external world we can only get the idea of an architect, that which is called the
Design Theory. It is not a very logical argument, as we all know; there is something childish
about it, yet it is the only little bit of anything we can know about God from the external world,
that this world required a builder. But this is no explanation of the universe.
... the God that the Design Theory gives is at best only an architect, and a limited architect of
the universe; He is bound and restricted by the materials; He is not independent at all.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in England

One Existence - I am He
Let everything go but that One Existence. "Where one hears another, where one sees another,
that is small; where one does not hear another, where one does not see another, that is Infinite."
That is the highest when the subject and the object become one. When I am the listener and I
am the speaker, when I am the teacher and I am the taught, when I am the creator, and I am the
created -- then alone fear ceases; there is not another to make us afraid.
There is nothing but myself, what can frighten me? This is to be heard day after day. Get rid of
all other thoughts. Everything else must be thrown aside, and this is to be repeated continually,
poured through the ears until it reaches the heart, until every nerve and muscle, every drop of
blood tingles with the idea that I am He, I am He. Even at the gate of death say, "I am He."
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New-York

Bold Thinkers of India
The Hindus were bold, to their great credit be it said, bold thinkers in all their ideas, so bold that
one spark of their thought frightens the so-called bold thinkers of the West.
Well has it been said by Prof. Max Muller about these thinkers that they climbed up to the
heights where their lungs only could breathe, and where those of other beings would have burst.
These brave people followed reason wherever it led them, no matter at what cost, never caring
if all their best superstitions were smashed to pieces, never caring what society would think
about them, or talk about them; but what they thought was right and true, they preached and
they talked.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in England

Jivanmukti
When a man has become ready even to give up his life for a little insect, he has reached the
perfection which the Advaitist wants to attain; and at that moment when he has become thus
ready, the veil of ignorance falls away from him, and he will feel his own nature. Even in this life,
he will feel that he is one with the universe. For a time, as it were, the whole of this phenomenal
world will disappear for him, and he will realise what he is. But so long as the Karma of this body
remains, he will have to live.
This state, when the veil has vanished and yet the body remains for some time, is what the
Vedantists call the Jivanmukti, the living freedom.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address to Graduate Philosophical Society, Harvard University

Maya - Anirvachaniya
... it is not, the Vedantists say, that there is something as phenomenon and something as
noumenon.
The rope is changed into the snake apparently only; and when the delusion ceases, the snake
vanishes. When one is in ignorance, he sees the phenomenon and does not see God. When he
sees God, this universe vanishes entirely for him. Ignorance or Maya, as it is called, is the cause
of all this phenomenon -- the Absolute, the Unchangeable, being taken as this manifested
universe. This Maya is not absolute zero, nor non-existence.
It is defined as neither existence nor non-existence. It is not existence, because that can be said
only of the Absolute, the Unchangeable, and in this sense, Maya is non-existence.
Again, it cannot be said it is non - existence; for if it were, it could never produce the
phenomenon. So it is something which is neither; and in the Vedanta philosophy it is called
Anirvachaniya or inexpressible.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address to Graduate Philosophical Society, Harvard University

Same Divine Nature in All
According to the Advaita philosophy, then, this differentiation of matter, these phenomena, are,
as it were, for a time, hiding the real nature of man; but the latter really has not been changed at
all. In the lowest worm, as well as in the highest human being, the same divine nature is present.
The worm form is the lower form in which the divinity has been more overshadowed by Maya;
that is the highest form in which it has been least overshadowed. Behind everything the same
divinity is existing, and out of this comes the basis of morality. Do not injure another. Love
everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring
myself; in loving another, I am loving myself.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address to Graduate Philosophical Society, Harvard University

Secular and Spiritual Knowledge
Knowledge of the sciences covers, as it were, only part of our lives, but the knowledge which
religion brings to us is eternal, as infinite as the truth it preaches. Claiming this superiority,
religions have many times looked down, unfortunately, on all secular knowledge, and not only
so, but many times have refused to be justified by the aid of secular knowledge. In
consequence, all the world over there have been fights between secular knowledge and
religious knowledge, the one claiming infallible authority as its guide, refusing to listen to
anything that secular knowledge has to say on the point, the other, with its shining instrument of
reason, wanting to cut to pieces everything religion could bring forward.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in England

Science of Religion
Believing certain things because an organized body of priests tells him to believe, believing
because it is written in certain books, believing because his people like him to believe, the
modern man knows to be impossible for him. There are, of course, a number of people who
seem to acquiesce in the so-called popular faith, but we also know for certain that they do not
think. Their idea of belief may be better translated as "not - thinking - carelessness". ...
... Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science
justifies itself? Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and
knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of Religion? In my opinion this must be so, and
I am also of the opinion that the sooner it is done the better.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in England

11th September, 1893
Swami Vivekananda At the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago
Sisters and Brothers of America,
It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which
you have given us.
I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name
of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people
of all classes and sects.
My thanks, also, to some of the speakers on this platform who, referring to the delegates from
the Orient, have told you that these men from far-off nations may well claim the honour of
bearing to different lands the idea of toleration.
I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal
acceptance.
We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to
belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all
nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest
remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in
which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the
religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I
will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my
earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings:
"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea,
so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they
appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee."
The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a
vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita:
"Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through
paths which in the end lead to me." Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant,
fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth.
They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood,
destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible
demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I
fervently hope
that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death - knell of all
fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings
between persons wending their way to the same goal.
Principle of Generalisation
We have to come to an ultimate generalisation, which not only will be the most universal of all
generalisations, but out of which everything else must come.
It will be of the same nature as the lowest effect; the cause, the highest, the ultimate, the primal
cause, must be the same as the lowest and most distant of its effects, a series of evolutions.
The Brahman of the Vedanta fulfils that condition, because Brahman is the last generalisation to
which we can come. It has no attributes but is Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss -- Absolute.
Existence, we have seen, is the very ultimate generalisation which the human mind can come
to.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in England

Different Readings of the One
This universe, in its various forms, is but the various readings of the same Impersonal. When we
read it with the five senses, we call it the material world. If there be a being with more senses
than five, he will read it as something else. If one of us gets the electrical sense, he will see the
universe as something else again. There are various forms of that same Oneness, of which all
these various ideas of worlds are but various readings, and the Personal God is the highest
reading that can be attained to, of that Impersonal, by the human intellect.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in England

Akasha and Prana
According to Vedanta philosophy, there are two things in nature, one of which they call Akasha,
which is the substance, infinitely fine, and the other they call Prana, which is the force.
Whatever you see, or feel, or hear, as air, earth, or anything, is material -- the product of
Akasha. It goes on and becomes finer and finer, or grosser and grosser, changing under the
action of Prana. Like Akasha, Prana is omnipresent, and interpenetrating everything. Akasha is
like the water, and everything else in the universe is like blocks of ice, made out of that water,
and floating in the water, and Prana is the power that changes this Akasha into all these various
forms.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

What Not to Pray For!
In all sensible religions, they never allow prayers to God; they allow prayers to gods. That is
quite natural. The Roman Catholics pray to the saints; that is quite good. But to pray to God is
senseless. To ask God to give you a breath of air, to send down a shower of rain, to make fruits
grow in your garden, and so on, is quite unnatural.
The saints, however, who were little beings like ourselves, may help us. But to pray to the Ruler
of the Universe, prating every little need of ours, and from our childhood saying, "O Lord, I have
a headache; let it go," is ridiculous. ...
... A fool indeed is he who, resting on the banks of the Ganga, digs a little well for water; a fool
indeed is he who, living near a mine of diamonds, digs for bits of crystal.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in England

All Trying to Manifest the One
One principle ... the Vedanta claims, is to be found in every religion in the world -- that man is
divine, that all this which we see around us is the outcome of that consciousness of the divine.
Everything that is strong, and good, and powerful in human nature is the outcome of that
divinity, and though potential in many, there is no difference between man and man essentially,
all being alike divine. There is, as it were, an infinite ocean behind, and you and I are so many
waves, coming out of that infinite ocean; and each one of us is trying his best to manifest that
infinite outside.
- Swami Vivekananda, Lecture in Boston

You Are the God of This Universe
The non-dualists say, "This universe does not exist at all; it is all illusion. The whole of this
universe, these Devas, gods, angels, and all the other beings born and dying, all this infinite
number of souls coming up and going down, are all dreams." There is no Jiva at all. How can
there be many? It is the one Infinity. As the one sun, reflected on various pieces of water,
appears to be many, and millions of globules of water reflect so many millions of suns, and in
each globule will be a perfect image of the sun, yet there is only one sun, so are all these Jivas
but reflections in different minds. These different minds are like so many different globules,
reflecting this one Being. God is being reflected in all these different Jivas. But a dream cannot
be without a reality, and that reality is that one Infinite Existence. You, as body, mind, or soul,
are a dream, but what you really are, is Existence, Knowledge, Bliss. You are the God of this
universe. You are creating the whole universe and drawing it in. Thus says the Advaitist.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

Steps To Advaita
All people cannot take up this Advaita philosophy; it is hard.
First of all, it is very hard to understand it intellectually.
It requires the sharpest of intellects, a bold understanding.
Secondly, it does not suit the vast majority of people. So there are these three steps [Dvaita,
Vishishtadvaita, and Advaita]. Begin with the first one. Then by thinking of that and
understanding it, the second will open itself. Just as a race advances, so individuals have to
advance. The steps which the human race has taken to reach to the highest pinnacles of
religious thought, every individual will have to take. Only, while the human race took millions of
years to reach from one step to another, individuals may live the whole life of the human race in
a much shorter duration. But each one of us will have to go through these steps.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

We Are Ever-Free
The theory of the Vedanta, therefore, comes to this, that you and I and everything in the
universe are that Absolute, not parts, but the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute, and so
are all others, because the idea of part cannot come into it. These divisions, these limitations,
are only apparent, not in the thing itself. I am complete and perfect, and I was never bound,
boldly preaches the Vedanta. If you think you are bound, bound you will remain; if you know that
you are free, free you are. Thus the end and aim of this philosophy is to let us know that we
have been free always, and shall remain free for ever.
We never change, we never die, and we are never born.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in London

One Who Never Dies
Everything dies; the angels die, men die, animals die, earths die, sun, moon, and stars, all die;
everything undergoes constant change. The mountains of today were the oceans of yesterday
and will be oceans tomorrow. Everything is in a state of flux. The whole universe is a mass of
change. But there is One who never changes, and that is God; and the nearer we get to Him,
the less will be the change for us, the less will nature be able to work on us; and when we reach
Him, and stand with Him, we shall conquer nature, we shall be masters of these phenomena of
nature, and they will have no effect on us.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

India - The Land of Tolerance and Sympathy
एकं सɮͪवĤा बहुधा वदिÛत "That which exists is One; sages call It by various names." Above all
others, my countrymen, this is the one grand truth that we have to teach to the world. Even the
most educated people of other countries turn up their noses at an angle of forty-five degrees
and call our religion idolatry. I have seen that; and they never stopped to think what a mass of
superstition there was in their own heads. It is still so everywhere, this tremendous sectarianism,
the low narrowness of the mind. The thing which a man has is the only thing worth having; the
only life worth living is his little life of dollar-worship and mammon-worship; the only little
possession worth having is his own property, and nothing else. If he can manufacture a little clay
nonsense or invent a machine, that is to be admired beyond the greatest possessions.
That is the case over the whole world in spite of education and learning.
But education has yet to be in the world, and civilization -- civilization has begun nowhere yet.
Ninety-nine decimal nine per cent of the human race are more or less savages even now. We
may read of these things in books, and we hear of toleration in religion and all that, but very little
of it is there yet in the world; take my experience for that. Ninety-nine per cent do not even think
of it. There is tremendous religious persecution yet in every country in which I have been, and
the same old objections are raised against learning anything new. The little toleration that is in
the world, the little sympathy that is yet in the world for religious thought, is practically here in
the land of the Aryas, and nowhere else. It is here that Indians build temples for Mohammedans
and Christians; nowhere else. If you go to other countries and ask Mohammedans or people of
other religions to build a temple for you, see how they will help. They will instead try to break
down your temple and you too if they can. The one great lesson, therefore, that the world wants
most, that the world has yet to learn from India, is the idea not only of toleration, but of
sympathy.
Well has it been said in the Mahimnah-stotra: "As the different rivers, taking their start from
different mountains, running straight or crooked, at last come unto the ocean, so, O Shiva, the
different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear,
crooked or straight, all lead unto Thee." Though they may take various roads, all are on the way.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address at Colombo, Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Kapila's Idea of God
I must here tell you that some of our best psychologists do not believe in God in the sense in
which you believe in Him.
The father of our psychology, Kapila, denies the existence of God. His idea is that a Personal
God is quite unnecessary; nature itself is sufficient to work out the whole of creation. What is
called the Design Theory, he knocked on the head, and said that a more childish theory was
never advanced. But he admits a peculiar kind of God. He says we are all struggling to get free;
and when we become free, we can, as it were, melt away into nature, only to come out at the
beginning of the next cycle and be its ruler. We come out omniscient and omnipotent beings. In
that sense we can be called Gods: you and I and the humblest beings can be Gods in different
cycles. He says such a God will be temporal; but an eternal God, eternally omnipotent and ruler
of the universe, cannot be.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

No Privileges in Vedanta
None can be Vedantists, and at the same time admit of privilege to anyone, either mental,
physical, or spiritual; absolutely no privilege for anyone. The same power is in every man, the
one manifesting more, the other less; the same potentiality is in everyone.
Where is the claim to privilege?
All knowledge is in every soul, even in the most ignorant; he has not manifested it, but, perhaps,
he has not had the opportunity, the environments were not, perhaps, suitable to him. When he
gets the opportunity, he will manifest it.
The idea that one man is born superior to another has no meaning in the Vedanta; that between
two nations one is superior and the other inferior has no meaning whatsoever. Put them in the
same circumstances, and see whether the same intelligence comes out or not. Before that you
have no right to say that one nation is superior to another.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in London

Extremes of Optimism and Pessimism
There are two extremes into which men are running; one is extreme optimism, when everything
is rosy and nice and good; the other, extreme pessimism, when everything seems to be against
them. The majority of men have more or less undeveloped brains.
One in a million we see with a well-developed brain; the rest either have peculiar idiosyncrasies,
or are monomaniacs.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

Time - A Drop in Infinite Ocean
To everyone of us there must come a time when the whole universe will be found to have been
a mere dream, when we shall find that the soul is infinitely better than its surroundings. In this
struggle through what we call our environments, there will come a time when we shall find that
these environments were almost zero in comparison with the power of the soul. It is only a
question of time, and time is nothing in the Infinite. It is a drop in the ocean. We can afford to
wait and be calm.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in London

Heart Takes You Beyond
It is one of the evils of your Western civilization that you are after intellectual education alone,
and take no care of the heart. It only makes men ten times more selfish, and that will be your
destruction. When there is conflict between the heart and the brain, let the heart be followed,
because intellect has only one state, reason, and within that, intellect works, and cannot get
beyond. It is the heart which takes one to the highest plane, which intellect can never reach; it
goes beyond intellect, and reaches to what is called inspiration. Intellect can never become
inspired; only the heart when it is enlightened, becomes inspired.
- Swami Vivekananda, Class-Talk in New York

What is Meant by Vedas
The Vedas are simply words that have the mystical power to produce effects if the sound
intonation is right. If one sound is wrong it will not do. Each one must be perfect.
[Thus] what in other religions is called prayer disappeared and the Vedas became the gods. So
you see the tremendous importance that was attached to the words of the Vedas. These are the
eternal words out of which the whole universe has been produced.
There cannot be any thought without the word. Thus whatever there is in this world is the
manifestation of thought, and thought can only manifest itself through words. This mass of
words by which the unmanifested thought becomes manifest, that is what is meant by the
Vedas.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Irony of Life
Man is guided by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards.
Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to go first. By the time a man is sixty
years of age, he is called out of [the world]. The whole of life is one delusion, and just when you
begin to see things the way they are, you are snatched off.
So long as the stomach went first you were all right. When children's dreams begin to vanish
and you begin to look at things the way they are, the head goes.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Variation Vs Unity
Metaphysics and metaphysical knowledge, religion and religious knowledge, reached their
culmination five thousand years ago, and we are merely reiterating the same truths in different
languages, only enriching them sometimes by the accession of fresh illustrations. So this is the
fight, even today. One side wants us to keep to the phenomenal, to all this variation, and points
out, with great show of argument, that variation has to remain, for when that stops, everything is
gone. What we mean by life has been caused by variation.
The other side, at the same time, valiantly points to unity.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in London

Unity in spite of Variation
The work of ethics has been, and will be in the future, not the destruction of variation and the
establishment of sameness in the external world -- which is impossible for it would bring death
and annihilation -- but to recognize the unity in spite of all these variations, to recognize the God
within, in spite of everything that frightens us, to recognize that infinite strength as the property
of everyone in spite of all apparent weakness, and to recognize the eternal, infinite, essential
purity of the soul in spite of everything to the contrary that appears on the surface. This we have
to recognize.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in London

Ignorance of Masses
The vast mass of mankind are never thinkers. Even if they try to think, the [effect of the] vast
mass of superstitions on them is terrible. The moment they weaken, one blow comes, and the
backbone breaks into twenty pieces. They can only be moved by lures and threats. They can
never move of their own accord. They must be frightened, horrified, or terrorised, and they are
your slaves for ever.
They have nothing else to do but to pay and obey. Everything else is done by the priest. ...
How much easier religion becomes! You see, you have nothing to do. Go home and sit quietly.
Somebody is doing the whole thing for you. Poor, poor animals!
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Perception and Knowledge Depend on Unity
... this sameness, this unity, this perfection -- as we may call it -- is not to be made, it already
exists, and is here. We have only to recognise it, to understand it.
Whether we know it or not, whether we can express it in clear language or not, whether this
perception assumes the force and clearness of a sense-perception or not, it is there. For we are
bound by the logical necessity of our minds to confess that it is there, else, the perception of the
finite would not be. ...
... Knowledge would be impossible without that unity. Without the idea of sameness there would
be neither perception nor knowledge. So both run side by side.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in London

Peaceful Spread of Ideas out of India
Civilisations have arisen in other parts of the world. In ancient times and in modern times, great
ideas have emanated from strong and great races. In ancient and in modern times, wonderful
ideas have been carried forward from one race to another. In ancient and in modern times,
seeds of great truth and power have been cast abroad by the advancing tides of national life;
but mark you, my friends, it has been always with the blast of war trumpets and with the march
of embattled cohorts.
Each idea had to be soaked in a deluge of blood. Each idea had to wade through the blood of
millions of our fellow - beings. Each word of power had to be followed by the groans of millions,
by the wails of orphans, by the tears of widows.
This, in the main, other nations have taught; but India has for thousands of years peacefully
existed. Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist, when Rome was not thought of,
when the very fathers of the modern Europeans lived in the forests and painted themselves
blue. Even earlier, when history has no record, and tradition dares not peer into the gloom of
that intense past, even from then until now, ideas after ideas have marched out from her, but
every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it and peace before it. We, of all nations of
the world, have never been a conquering race, and that blessing is on our head, and therefore
we live.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address at Colombo, Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Lunatics!
We have identified ourselves with our bodies. We are only body, or rather, possessed of a body.
If I am pinched, I cry. All this is nonsense, since I am the soul. All this chain of misery,
imagination, animals, gods, and demons, everything, the whole world -- all this comes from the
identification of ourselves with the body. I am spirit. Why do I jump if you pinch me? ...
Look at the slavery of it. Are you not ashamed? We are religious! We are philosophers! We are
sages! Lord bless us! What are we? Living hells, that is what we are. Lunatics, that is what we
are!
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

World is Neither Good Nor Bad
The Yogi says, religion is practical if you know first why misery exists. All the misery in the world
is in the senses. Is there any ailment in the sun, moon, and stars? The same fire that cooks your
meal burns the child. Is it the fault of the fire? Blessed be the fire! Blessed be this electricity! It
gives light. ...
Where can you lay the blame? Not on the elements. The world is neither good nor bad; the
world is the world. The fire is the fire. If you burn your finger in it, you are a fool. If you [cook
your meal and with it satisfy your hunger,] you are a wise man. That is all the difference.
Circumstances can never be good or bad. Only the individual man can be good or bad. What is
meant by the world being good or bad?
Misery and happiness can only belong to the sensuous individual man.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Unattached Love of God
Suppose a man writes a cheque for a thousand dollars for the poor of New York, and at the
same time, in the same room, another man forges the name of a friend.
The light by which both of them write is the same, but each one will be responsible for the use
he makes of it. It is not the light that is to be praised or blamed.
Unattached, yet shining in everything, is love, the motive power of the universe, without which
the universe would fall to pieces in a moment, and this love is God.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Matter and Force from Mind
Matter cannot be said to cause force nor [can] force [be] the cause of matter. Both are so
[related] that one may disappear in the other.
There must be a third [factor], and that third something is the mind. You cannot produce the
universe from matter, neither from force. Mind is something [which is] neither force nor matter,
yet begetting force and matter all the time. In the long run, mind is begetting all force, and that is
what is meant by the universal mind, the sum total of all minds. Everyone is creating, and [in]
the sum total of all these creations you have the universe -- unity in diversity. It is one and it is
many at the same time.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

No Question of Birth and Death
The Real Man, therefore, is one and infinite, the omnipresent Spirit. And the apparent man is
only a limitation of that Real Man. ...
The Real Man, the Spirit, being beyond cause and effect, not bound by time and space, must,
therefore, be free. He was never bound, and could not be bound.
The apparent man, the reflection, is limited by time, space, and causation, and is, therefore,
bound. Or in the language of some of our philosophers, he appears to be bound, but really is
not. This is the reality in our souls, this omnipresence, this spiritual nature, this infinity. Every soul is infinite, therefore there is no question of birth and death.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

I Am The Infinite
"I am He. Whatever [my] mind does, I am not touched.
The sun is not touched by shining on filthy places, I am Existence."
This is the religion of [non-dual] philosophy. [It is] difficult. Struggle on! Down with all
superstitions! Neither teachers nor scriptures nor gods [exist]. Down with temples, with priests, with gods, with incarnations, with God himself! I am all the God that ever existed!
There, stand up philosophers! No fear! Speak no more of God and [the] superstition of the
world. Truth alone triumphs, and this is true. I am the Infinite.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Die Game!
All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. Do not weaken!
There is no other way out. ...
Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is! If death comes -- that is
the worst of our miseries -- let it come! We are determined to die game.
That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but
you may. Go on!
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

One Thing Taken for Another
One thing is taken for another, not as something that does not exist.
What we see here is body, and we take the Infinite as matter. ...
We are but seeking that Reality. We are never deluded. We always know truth, only our reading
of truth is mistaken at times. You can perceive only one thing at a time.
When I see the snake, the rope has vanished entirely. And when I see the rope, the snake has
vanished. It must be one thing. ...
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Slaves of Body
The Yogi says you are to go to the root of all this. Why is there misery in the world? He answers:
"It is all our own foolishness, not having proper mastery of our own bodies. That is all." ...
If you can thus get mastery of your body, all the misery of the world will vanish. Every hospital is
praying that more and more sick people will come there. Every time you think of doing some
charity, you think there is some beggar to take your charity. If you say, "O Lord, let the world be
full of charitable people!"-- you mean, let the world be full of beggars also. Let the world be full
of good works -- let the world be full of misery. This is out-and-out slavishness!
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

Bound by Senses
We are bound by the senses; they play upon us, make fools of us all the time.Here is a bad
odour. It will bring me unhappiness as soon as it touches my nose. I am the slave of my nose. If
I am not its slave, I do not care. A man curses me. His curses enter my ears and are retained in
my mind and body. If I am the master, I shall say: "Let these things go; they are nothing to me. I
am not miserable. I do not bother." This is the outright, pure, simple, clear-cut truth.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in San Francisco

No Fear in Love of God
... children of God never see in Him a punisher or a rewarder. It is only people who have never
tasted of love that fear and quake. Cast off all fear -- though these horrible ideas of God as a
punisher or rewarder may have their use in savage minds. Some men, even the most
intellectual, are spiritual savages, and these ideas may help them. But to men who are spiritual,
men who are approaching religion, in whom spiritual insight is awakened, such ideas are simply
childish, simply foolish. Such men reject all ideas of fear.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

We Get What We Deserve
We are always standing up to set right other people, and not ourselves. If we are miserable, we
say, "Oh, the world is a devil's world." We curse others and say, "What infatuated fools!" But why
should we be in such a world, if we really are so good? If this is a devil's world, we must be
devils also; why else should we be here? "Oh, the people of the world are so selfish!" True
enough; but why should we be found in that company, if we be better? Just think of that. We
only get what we deserve. It is a lie when we say, the world is bad and we are good. It can never
be so. It is a terrible lie we tell ourselves.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Give Willingly
Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly. Sooner
or later you will have to give up. You come into life to accumulate. With clenched hands, you
want to take. But nature puts a hand on your throat and makes your hands open.
Whether you will it or not, you have to give. The moment you say, "I will not", the blow comes;
you are hurt. None is there but will be compelled, in the long run, to give up everything. And the
more one struggles against this law, the more miserable one feels. It is because we dare not
give, because we are not resigned enough to accede to this grand demand of nature, that we
are miserable.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Born Idolaters
We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get
beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this
universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we
are worshiping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater. We are spirit, spirit that has no
form or shape, spirit that is infinite, and not matter. Therefore, anyone who cannot grasp the
abstract, who cannot think of himself as he is, except in and through matter, as the body, is an
idolater. And yet how people fight among themselves, calling one another idolaters! In other words, each says, his idol is right, and the others' are wrong.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Secret of Success - Unselfishness
The great secret of true success, of true happiness, then, is this: the man who asks for no
return, the perfectly unselfish man, is the most successful. It seems to be a paradox. Do we not
know that every man who is unselfish in life gets cheated, gets hurt?
Apparently, yes. "Christ was unselfish, and yet he was crucified." True, but we know that his
unselfishness is the reason, the cause of a great victory -- the crowning of millions upon millions of lives with the blessings of true success.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

God in Good and Evil
It is not so easy to be good. What are you but mere machines until you are free? Should you be
proud because you are good? Certainly not. You are good because you cannot help it. Another
is bad because he cannot help it. If you were in his position, who knows what you would have been.
The woman in the street, or the thief in the jail, is the Christ that is being sacrificed that you may
be a good man. Such is the law of balance. All the thieves and the murderers, all the unjust, the
weakest, the wickedest, the devils, they are all my Christ!
I owe a worship to the God Christ and to the demon Christ! That is my doctrine, I cannot help it.
My salutation goes to the feet of the good, the saintly, and to the feet of the wicked and the
devilish!
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Many Sciences Originated From India
There is no end to the power a man can obtain. This is the peculiarity of the Indian mind, that
when anything interests it, it gets absorbed in it and other things are neglected. You know how
many sciences had their origin in India. Mathematics began there. You are even today counting
1, 2, 3, etc. to zero, after Sanskrit figures, and you all know that algebra also originated in India,
and that gravitation was known to the Indian thousands of years before Newton was born.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angeles

Holy Mother Tithi Puja
You have not yet understood the wonderful significance of Mother's life — none of you. But
gradually you will know. Without Shakti (Power) there is no regeneration for the world. Why is it
that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all countries? — Because Shakti is
held in dishonour there. Mother has been born to revive that wonderful Shakti in India; and
making her the nucleus, once more will Gârgis and Maitreyis be born into the world.
- Swami Vivekananda to Swami Shivananda in a Letter

Common Points in All Religions
... we find that in almost every religion these are the three primary things which we have in the
worship of God -- forms or symbols, names, God-men.
All religions have these, but you find that they want to fight with each other. One says, "My
name is the only name; my form is the only form; and my God-men are the only God-men in the
world; yours are simply myths." ... ...
This idea is not limited to any religion, nation, or class of persons; people are always thinking
that the only right thing to be done by others is what they themselves are doing. And it is here
that the study of different religions helps us.
It shows us that the same thoughts that we have been calling ours, and ours alone, were
present hundreds of years ago in others, and sometimes even in a better form of expression
than our own.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Religion - The Manifestation of Vast Organism called Humanity
We should get beyond the prattle of men who think that religion is merely a mass of frothy
words, that it is only a system of doctrines; to whom religion is only a little intellectual assent or dissent; to whom religion is believing in certain words which their own priests tell them; to whom religion is something which their forefathers believed; to whom religion is a certain form of ideas and superstitions to which they cling because they are their national superstitions. We should get beyond all these and look at humanity as one vast organism, slowly coming towards light -- a wonderful plant, slowly unfolding itself to that wonderful truth which is called God -- and the first gyrations, the first motions, towards this are always through matter and through ritual.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Love, Lover, and Beloved Are One
We always begin as dualists. God is a separate Being, and I am a separate being. Love comes
between, and man begins to approach God, and God, as it were, begins to approach man. Man
takes up all the various relationships of life, as father, mother, friend, or lover; and the last point
is reached when he becomes one with the object of worship.
"I am you, and you are I; and worshipping you, I worship myself; and in worshipping myself, I
worship you." There we find the highest culmination of that with which man begins. ... ...
That God who at first was a Being somewhere, became resolved, as it were, into Infinite Love.
Man himself was also transformed. He was approaching God, he was throwing off the vain
desires, of which he was full before. With desires vanished selfishness, and, at the apex, he
found that Love, Lover, and Beloved were One.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Love - Motive Power in the Universe
What manifests itself as attraction in the sentient and the insentient, in the particular and in the
universal, is the love of God. It is the one motive power that is in the universe. Under the
impetus of that love, Christ gives his life for humanity, Buddha even for an animal, the mother for
the child, the husband for the wife. It is under the impetus of the same love that men are ready
to give up their lives for their country, and strange to say, under the impetus of the same love,
the thief steals, the murderer murders. Even in these cases, the spirit is the same, but the
manifestation is different. This is the one motive power in the universe.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Happiness in Spirit only
Happiness is only found in the Spirit. Therefore the highest utility for mankind is to find this
happiness in the Spirit. ...
As soon as I think that I am a little body, I want to preserve it, to protect it, to keep it nice, at the
expense of other bodies; then you and I become separate. As soon as this idea of separation
comes, it opens the door to all mischief and leads to all misery. This is the utility that if a very
small fractional part of human beings living today can put aside the idea of selfishness,
narrowness, and littleness, this earth will become a paradise tomorrow; but with machines and
improvements of material knowledge only, it will never be.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Religion - Real and Living
The power of religion, broadened and purified, is going to penetrate every part of human life.
So long as religion was in the hands of a chosen few or of a body of priests, it was in temples, churches, books, dogmas, ceremonials, forms, and rituals.
But when we come to the real, spiritual, universal concept, then, and then alone, religion will
become real and living; it will come into our very nature, live in our every movement, penetrate every pore of our society, and be infinitely more a power for good than it has ever been before.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Christmas Eve
If I, as an Oriental, have to worship Jesus of Nazareth, there is only one way left to me, that is,
to worship him as God and nothing else. Have we no right to worship him in that way, do you
mean to say? If we bring him down to our own level and simply pay him a little respect as a
great man, why should we worship at all?
Our scriptures say, "These great children of Light, who manifest the Light themselves, who are
Light themselves, they, being worshipped, become, as it were, one with us and we become one
with them."
- Swami Vivekananda in his sublime talk on 'Christ, The Messenger' at Los Angles, California
(1900)

Ancient Superstition and Modern Superstition
If people should laugh at religion because most religions declare that men must believe in
mythologies taught by such and such a prophet, they ought to laugh more at these moderns. In
modern times, if a man quotes a Moses or a Buddha or a Christ, he is laughed at; but let him
give the name of a Huxley, a Tyndall, or a Darwin, and it is swallowed without salt. "Huxley has
said it", that is enough for many.
We are free from superstitions indeed! That was a religious superstition, and this is a scientific
superstition; only, in and through that superstition came life-giving ideas of spirituality; in and
through this modern superstition come lust and greed.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Different Language Expressions
The difference between the language of the highest philosophers and the utterances of babies
is one of degree and not of kind. What you call the most correct, systematic, mathematical
language of the present time, and the hazy, mystical, mythological languages of the ancients,
differ only in degree. All of them have a grand idea behind, which is, as it were, struggling to
express itself; and often behind these ancient mythologies are nuggets of truth; and often, I am
sorry to say, behind the fine, polished phrases of the moderns is arrant trash.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Dual Nature of Things
The Vedanta philosophy is neither optimistic nor pessimistic.
It voices both these views and 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, one must of necessity increase the other. There will never be a perfectly good or bad
world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms. The great secret revealed by this
analysis is that good and bad are not two cut-and-dried, separate existences. There is not one
thing in this world of ours which you can label as good and good alone, and there is not one
thing in the universe which you can label as bad and bad alone. The very same phenomenon
which is appearing to be good now, may appear to be bad tomorrow. The same thing which is
producing misery in one, may produce happiness in another.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

First Have Something to Give
My Master taught me this lesson hundreds of times, yet I often forget it. Few understand the
power of thought. If a man goes into a cave, shuts himself in, and thinks one really great thought
and dies, that thought will penetrate the walls of that cave, vibrate through space, and at last
permeate the whole human race. Such is the power of thought; be in no hurry therefore to give
your thoughts to others. First have something to give.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk on 'My Master'

World Has No Absolute Existence
What does the statement of the existence of the world mean, then?
"This world has no existence."
What is meant by that? It means that it has no absolute existence. It exists only in relation to my
mind, to your mind, and to the mind of everyone else. ... ...
It has, therefore, no real existence; it has no unchangeable, immovable, infinite existence.
Nor can it be called non - existence, seeing that it exists, and we have to work in and through it.
It is a mixture of existence and non-existence.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Lord Beyond Maya
We see, then, that beyond this Maya the Vedantic philosophers find something which is not
bound by Maya; and if we can get there, we shall not be bound by Maya. This idea is in some
form or other the common property of all religions. But, with the Vedanta, it is only the beginning
of religion and not the end. The idea of a Personal God, the Ruler and Creator of this universe,
as He has been styled, the Ruler of Maya, or nature, is not the end of these Vedantic ideas; it is
only the beginning. The idea grows and grows until the Vedantist finds that He who, he thought,
was standing outside, is he himself and is in reality within. He is the one who is free, but who
through limitation thought he was bound.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Eternal Play of Light and Darkness
This standing between knowledge and ignorance, this mystic twilight, the mingling of truth and
falsehood -- and where they meet -- no one knows. We are walking in the midst of a dream, half
sleeping, half waking, passing all our lives in a haze; this is the fate of everyone of us. This is
the fate of all sense-knowledge. This is the fate of all philosophy, of all boasted science, of all
boasted human knowledge. This is the universe. ... ...
This eternal play of light and darkness -- indiscriminate, indistinguishable, inseparable -- is
always there. A fact, yet at the same time not a fact; awake and at the same time asleep. This is
a statement of facts, and this is what is called Maya. We are born in this Maya, we live in it, we
think in it, we dream in it. ... ...
everything that is bound by the laws of time, space and causation is within Maya.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Trying to Rise Above Brute Nature
Ideals come into our head far beyond the limit of our sense-ideals, but when we seek to express
them, we cannot do so. On the other hand, we are crushed by the surging mass around us. Yet if I give up all ideality and merely struggle through this world, my existence is that of a brute, and I degenerate and degrade myself. Neither way is happiness. Unhappiness is the fate of those who are content to live in this world, born as they are.
A thousand times greater misery is the fate of those who dare to stand forth for truth and for
higher things and who dare to ask for something higher than mere brute existence here.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Maya of Sense-Pleasures
The senses drag the human soul out. Man is seeking for pleasure and for happiness where it
can never be found. For countless ages we are all taught that this is futile and vain, there is no
happiness here. But we cannot learn; it is impossible for us to do so, except through our own
experiences. We try them, and a blow comes. Do we learn then? Not even then.
Like moths hurling themselves against the flame, we are hurling ourselves again and again into
sense-pleasures, hoping to find satisfaction there. We return again and again with freshened
energy; thus we go on, till crippled and cheated we die. And this is Maya.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Walking on Razor's Edge
Religion begins with a tremendous dissatisfaction with the present state of things, with our lives,
and a hatred, an intense hatred, for this patching up of life, an unbounded disgust for fraud and
lies. He alone can be religious who dares say, as the mighty Buddha once said under the Bo–tree ... ...
"Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a
life of defeat." This is the basis of religion. ...
Those who dare, therefore, to struggle for victory, for truth, for religion, are in the right way; and
that is what the Vedas preach: 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.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

God as Soul and Human Being
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.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Social and Religious Liberty
We, in India, allowed liberty in spiritual matters, and we have a tremendous spiritual power in
religious thought even today. You grant the same liberty in social matters, and so have a
splendid social organisation. We have not given any freedom to the expansion of social matters,
and ours is a cramped society. You have never given any freedom in religious matters but with
fire and sword have enforced your beliefs, and the result is that religion is a stunted,
degenerated growth in the European mind. In India, we have to take the shackles from society;
in Europe, the chains must be taken from the feet of spiritual progress.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Real Giving Up of World
If we understand the giving up of the world in its old, crude sense, then it would come to this:
that we must not work, that we must be idle, sitting like lumps of earth, neither thinking nor doing
anything, but must become fatalists, driven about by every circumstance, ordered about by the
laws of nature, drifting from place to place. That would be the result. But that is not what is
meant. We must work. ... ...
He works, who is not propelled by his own desires, by any selfishness whatsoever. He works,
who has no ulterior motive in view. He works, who has nothing to gain from work.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Happiness and Misery in the World
If the power to satisfy our desire is increasing in arithmetical progression, the power of desire is
increased in geometrical progression. The sum total of happiness and misery in this world is at
least the same throughout. If a wave rises in the ocean it makes a hollow somewhere. If
happiness comes to one man, unhappiness comes to another or, perhaps, to some animal. Men
are increasing in numbers and some animals are decreasing; we are killing them off, and taking
their land; we are taking all means of sustenance from them.
How can we say, then, that happiness is increasing?
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Give Up The Delusion
The whole world is full of the Lord. Open your eyes and see Him. This is what Vedanta teaches. Give up the world which you have conjectured, because your conjecture was based upon a very partial experience, upon very poor reasoning, and upon your own weakness. Give it up; the world we have been thinking of so long, the world to which we have been clinging so long, is a false world of our own creation. Give that up; open your eyes and see that as such it never existed; it was a dream, Maya. What existed was the Lord Himself.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Sense-World God
Suppose we obtain another sense, the whole universe must change for us. Suppose we had a
magnetic sense, it is quite possible that we might then find millions and millions of forces in
existence which we do not now know, and for which we have no present sense or feeling.
Our senses are limited, very limited indeed; and within these limitations exists what we call our
universe; and our God is the solution of that universe, but that cannot be the solution of the
whole problem.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Early Sanskritists
The earliest schools of Sanskritists in Europe entered into the study of Sanskrit with more
imagination than critical ability. They knew a little, expected much from that little, and often tried
to make too much of what little they knew. Then, in those days even, such vagaries as the
estimation of Shakuntala as forming the high watermark of Indian philosophy were not
altogether unknown! These were naturally followed by a reactionary band of superficial critics,
more than real scholars of any kind, who knew little or nothing of Sanskrit, expected nothing
from Sanskrit studies, and ridiculed everything from the East. While criticising the unsound
imaginativeness of the early school to whom everything in Indian literature was rose and musk,
these, in their turn, went into speculations which, to say the least, were equally highly unsound
and indeed very venturesome. And their boldness was very naturally helped by the fact that
these over-hasty and unsympathetic scholars and critics were addressing an audience whose
entire qualification for pronouncing any judgment in the matter was their absolute ignorance of
Sanskrit. What a medley of results from such critical scholarship!
- Swami Vivekananda, 'On Dr Paul Deussen' - Article in Brahmavadin, 1896

Humankind as Jivanmuktas
A time must come when every man will be as intensely practical in the scientific world as in the
spiritual, and then that Oneness, the harmony of Oneness, will pervade the whole world. The
whole of mankind will become Jivanmuktas -- free whilst living.
We are all struggling towards that one end through our jealousies and hatreds, through our love
and co-operation. A tremendous stream is flowing towards the ocean carrying us all along with
it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long
run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Hidden In Atom
This is the watchword of Vedanta -- realise religion, no talking will do. But it is done with great
difficulty. He has hidden Himself inside the atom, this Ancient One who resides in the inmost recess of every human heart. The sages realised Him through the power of introspection, and got beyond both joy and misery, beyond what we call virtue and vice, beyond good and bad deeds, beyond being and non-being; he who has seen Him has seen the Reality.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Are You Strong?
This is the one question I put to every man, woman, or child, when they are in physical, mental,
or spiritual training. Are you strong? Do you feel strength? -- for I know it is truth alone that gives
strength. I know that truth alone gives life, and nothing but going towards reality will make us strong, and none will reach truth until he is strong. Every system, therefore, which weakens the mind, makes one superstitious, makes one mope, makes one desire all sorts of wild impossibilities,
mysteries, and superstitions, I do not like, because its effect is dangerous.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Verify Yourself
There are certain religious facts which, as in external science, have to be perceived, and upon
them religion will be built. Of course, the extreme claim that you must believe every dogma of a
religion is degrading to the human mind.
The man who asks you to believe everything, degrades himself, and, if you believe, degrades
you too. The sages of the world have only the right to tell us that they have analysed their minds and have found these facts, and if we do the same we shall also believe, and not before. That is all
that there is in religion.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

True Optimist
Wherever there is good, evil follows, but beyond and behind all these manifestations, all these
contradictions, 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, beyond every evil, and beyond every good too, and it is that which is manifesting itself as good and bad. Know that first, and then and then alone you will be a true optimist, and not before; for then you will be able to control everything.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Why Drink Ditch Water!
I do not believe at all that monistic ideas preached to the world would produce immorality and
weakness. On the contrary, I have reason to believe that it is the only remedy there is. If this be the truth, why let people drink ditch water when the stream of life is flowing by?
If this be the truth, that they are all pure, why not at this moment teach it to the whole world?
Why not teach it with the voice of thunder to every man that is born, to saints and sinners, men,
women, and children, to the man on the throne and to the man sweeping the streets?
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Fire in Wood
The people of old knew that fire lived in the flint and in dry wood, but friction was necessary to
call it out. So this fire of freedom and purity is the nature of every soul, and not a quality,
because qualities can be acquired and therefore can be lost. The soul is one with Freedom, and
the soul is one with Existence, and the soul is one with Knowledge. The Sat-chit-ananda --
existence-knowledge-bliss Absolute -- is the nature, the birthright of the Soul, and all the
manifestations that we see are Its expressions, dimly or brightly manifesting Itself.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Mahashivaratri 2018
He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva; and if
he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped
one poor man seeing Shiva in him, without thinking of his caste, or creed, or race, or anything,
with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address at Rameswaram, 'Lectures From Colombo to Almora'

Ignorant World
They grope in darkness who worship this ignorant world, the world that is produced out of
ignorance, thinking of it as Existence, and those who live their whole lives in this world, and
never find anything better or higher, are groping in still greater darkness.
But he who knows the secret of nature, seeing That which is beyond nature through the help of
nature, he crosses death, and through the help of That which is beyond nature, he enjoys
Eternal Bliss.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Power of Expression
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.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Existing Eternally
Sometimes people get frightened at the idea [reincarnation of the soul], and superstition is so
strong that thinking men even believe that they are the outcome of nothing, and then, with the
grandest logic, try to deduce the theory that although they have come out of zero, they will be
eternal ever afterwards. Those that come out of zero will certainly have to go back to zero.
Neither you, nor I nor anyone present, has come out of zero, nor will go back to zero.
We have been existing eternally, and will exist, and there is no power under the sun or above
the sun which can undo your or my existence or send us back to zero.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York

Common Idea in all Religions
One idea seems to be common in all the Indian systems, and I think, in every system in the
world, whether they know it or not, and that is what I should call the divinity of man. There is no one system in the world, no real religion, which does not hold the idea that the human soul,
whatever it be, or whatever its relation to God, is essentially pure and perfect,
whether expressed in the language of mythology, allegory, or philosophy. Its real nature is
blessedness and power, not weakness and misery.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Advaita For All
Not only in this country, but in the land of its very birth, if you tell people this truth, they are
frightened. They say, "This idea is for Sannyasins who give up the world and live in the forests;
for them it is all right. But for us poor householders, we must all have some sort of fear, we must
have ceremonies," and so on.
Dualistic ideas have ruled the world long enough, and this is the result.
Why not make a new experiment? It may take ages for all minds to receive monism, but why not
begin now?
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Cosmic Intelligence Evolved
The beginning was, therefore, intelligence. At the beginning that intelligence becomes involved,
and in the end that intelligence gets evolved. The sum total of the intelligence displayed in the
universe must, therefore, be the involved universal intelligence unfolding itself. This universal
intelligence is what we call God.
Call it by any other name, it is absolutely certain that in the beginning there is that Infinite
cosmic intelligence. This cosmic intelligence gets involved, and it manifests, evolves itself, until
it becomes the perfect man,
the "Christ-man," the "Buddha-man."
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York

Chaitanya
Chaitanya, represented the mad love of the Gopis. Himself a Brahmin, born of one of the most
rationalistic families of the day, himself a professor of logic fighting and gaining a word-victory --
for, this he had learnt from his childhood as the highest ideal of life and yet through the mercy of
some sage the whole life of that man became changed; he gave up his fight, his quarrels, his
professorship of logic and became one of the greatest teachers of Bhakti the world has ever
known -- mad Chaitanya. His Bhakti rolled over the whole land of Bengal, bringing solace to
every one.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address at Madras, Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Fullness of Heart
"This Atman is first to be heard of."
Hear day and night that you are that Soul. Repeat it to yourselves day and night till it enters into
your very veins, till it tingles in every drop of blood, till it is in your flesh and bone. Let the whole
body be full of that one ideal, "I am the birthless, the deathless, the blissful, the omniscient, the
omnipotent, ever-glorious Soul."
Think on it day and night; think on it till it becomes part and parcel of your life. Meditate upon it,
and out of that will come work. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and out of
the fullness of the heart the hand worketh also.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

No Birth No Death
You are everywhere in this universe. How is it then that I am born and I am going to die, and all
that? That is the talk of ignorance, hallucination of the brain. You were neither born, nor will you
die. You have had neither birth, nor will have rebirth, nor life, nor incarnation, nor anything. What
do you mean by coming and going? All shallow nonsense. You are everywhere. ... ...
In reality you are neither going nor coming, you are not being born, nor going to be reborn; you
are infinite, ever-present, beyond all causation, and ever-free. Such a question is out of place, it
is arrant nonsense. How could there be mortality when there was no birth?
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Where is Fate?
Where is fate, and who is fate? We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None
else has the blame, none has the praise. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are
unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not
catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind?
Is it the fault of the merciful Father, whose wind of mercy is blowing without ceasing, day and
night, whose mercy knows no decay, is it His fault that some of us are happy and some
unhappy?
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York

Dualism for Majority
The vast mass of Indian people are dualists. Human nature ordinarily cannot conceive of
anything higher. We find that ninety per cent of the population of the earth who believe in any religion are dualists. All the religions of Europe and Western Asia are dualistic; they have to be. The ordinary man cannot think of anything which is not concrete. He naturally likes to cling to that
which his intellect can grasp. That is to say, he can only conceive of higher spiritual ideas by
bringing them down to his own level. He can only grasp abstract thoughts by making them
concrete. This is the religion of the masses all over the world. They believe in a God who is
entirely separate from them, a great king, a high, mighty monarch, as it were.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

You are the Creator of Your Own Destiny
... blame none for your own faults, stand upon your own feet, and take the whole responsibility
upon yourselves. 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 some one 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.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New-York

Back to Equilibrium
To go back to Brahman from which we have been projected is the great struggle of life. Whether
people know it or not does not matter. In the universe, whatever we see of motion, or struggles
in mineral or plants or animals is an effort to come back to the centre and be at rest. There was
an equilibrium, and that has been destroyed; and all parts and atoms and molecules are
struggling to find their lost equilibrium again.
In this struggle they are combining and re-forming, giving rise to all the wonderful phenomena of
nature. All struggles and competitions in animal life, plant life, and everywhere else, all social
struggles and wars are but expressions of that eternal struggle to get back to that equilibrium.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga

Vain Imaginations
The whole of this universe is one Unity, one Existence, physically, mentally, morally and
spiritually.
We are looking upon this one Existence in different forms and creating all these images upon It.
To the being who has limited himself to the condition of man, It appears as the world of man. To
the being who is on a higher plane of existence, It may seem like heaven. There is but one Soul
in the universe, not two. It neither comes nor goes. It is neither born, nor dies, nor reincarnates.
How can It die? Where can It go?
All these heavens, all these earths, and all these places are vain imaginations of the mind. They
do not exist, never existed in the past, and never will exist in the future.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Religion Without Devil
There are people in this country who, if I told them there was no such being as the devil, will
think all religion is gone. Many people have said to me, how can there be religion without a
devil? How can there be religion without someone to direct us? How can we live without being
ruled by somebody?
We like to be so treated, because we have become used to it. We are not happy until we feel we
have been reprimanded by somebody every day. The same superstition!
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, London

Vast Mass of Superstition
Any new thought, especially of a high kind, creates a disturbance, tries to make a new channel,
as it were, in the brain matter, and that unhinges the system, throws men off their balance. They
are used to certain surroundings, and have to overcome a huge mass of ancient superstitions,
ancestral superstition, class superstition, city superstition, country superstition, and behind all,
the vast mass of superstition that is innate in every human being.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Do Not Injure
The Advaitist or the qualified Advaitist does not say that dualism is wrong; it is a right view, but a
lower one. It is on the way to truth; therefore let everybody work out his own vision of this
universe, according to his own ideas.
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. "When all the desires of the heart will be vanquished, then this
very mortal will become immortal"-- then the very man will become God.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Condemn None
Condemn none; if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so.
If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brother, and let them go their own way. Dragging
down and condemning is not the way to work.
Never is work accomplished in that way. We spend our energies in condemning others. Criticism
and condemnation is a vain way of spending our energies, for in the long run we come to learn
that all are seeing the same thing, are more or less approaching the same ideal, and that most
of our differences are merely differences of expression.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Souls From Animal Bodies
People in this country think it too horrible that man should come up from an animal. Why? What
will be the end of these millions of animals? Are they nothing? If we have a soul, so have they,
and if they have none, neither have we. It is absurd to say that man alone has a soul, and the
animals none.
I have seen men worse than animals. The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms,
migrating from one to another, according to the Samskaras or impressions, but it is only in the
highest form as man that it attains to freedom.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

Little I Never Existed!
... man, after this vain search after various gods outside himself, completes the circle, and
comes back to the point from which he started -- the human soul, and
he finds that the God whom he was searching in hill and dale, whom he was seeking in every
brook, in every temple, in churches and heavens, that God whom he was even imagining as
sitting in heaven and ruling the world,
is his own Self. I am He, and He is I. None but I was God, and this little I never existed.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Jnana-Yoga, US

Three Steps of Indian Philosophy
These are the salient points of the three steps which Indian religious thought has taken in
regard to God. We have seen that it began with the Personal, the extra - cosmic God. It went from the external to the internal cosmic body, God immanent in the universe, and ended in identifying the soul itself with that God, and making one Soul, a unit of all these various manifestations in the
universe. This is the last word of the Vedas. It begins with dualism, goes through a qualified monism and ends in perfect monism.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, US

No More Exclusiveness for Advaita
For various reasons, such as the exclusiveness of the teachers and foreign conquest, those
thoughts were not allowed to spread. Yet they are grand truths; and wherever they have been
working, man has become divine.
... ...and the time is coming when these thoughts will be cast abroad over the whole world.
Instead of living in monasteries, instead of being confined to books of philosophy to be studied
only by the learned, instead of being the exclusive possession of sects and of a few of the
learned, they will all be sown broadcast over the whole world, so that they may become the
common property of the saint and the sinner, of men and women and children, of the learned
and of the ignorant. They will then permeate the atmosphere of the world, and the very air that
we breathe will say with every one of its pulsations, "Thou art That".
And the whole universe with its myriads of suns and moons, through everything that speaks,
with one voice will say, "Thou art That".
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New York

From Lower Truth to Higher Truth
This is one of the great points to be remembered, that those who worship God through ceremonials and forms, however crude we may think them to be, are not in error. It is the journey from truth to truth, from lower truth to higher truth. Darkness is less light; evil is less good; impurity is less purity. It must always be borne in mind that we should see others with eyes of love, with sympathy,
knowing that they are going along the same path that we have trodden. If you are free, you must
know that all will be so sooner or later, and if you are free, how can you see the impermanent? If
you are really pure, how do you see the impure?
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta II, London

Good is Nearer Self than Evil
Though evil and good are both conditioned manifestations of the soul, yet evil is the most
external coating, and good is the nearer coating of the real man, the Self.
And unless a man cuts through the layer of evil he cannot reach the layer of good, and unless
he has passed through both the layers of good and evil he cannot reach the Self. He who
reaches the Self, what remains attached to him? A little Karma, a little bit of the momentum of past life, but it is all good momentum. Until the bad momentum is entirely worked out and past impurities are entirely burnt, it is impossible for any man to see and realise truth.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New York

Free Will?
Man is really free, the real man cannot but be free. It is when he comes into the world of Maya, into name and form, that he becomes bound. Free will is a misnomer. Will can never be free. How can it be? It is only when the real man has become bound that his will comes into existence, and not before. The will of man is bound, but that which is the foundation of that will is eternally free. So, even in the state of bondage which we call human life or god-life, on earth or in heaven, there yet remains to us that recollection of the freedom which is ours by divine right.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New York

Oneness Of Everything
You must always remember that the one central ideal of Vedanta is this oneness. There are no
two in anything, no two lives, nor even two different kinds of life for the two worlds. ... ...
Everything is that One, the difference is in degree and not in kind. The Vedanta entirely denies
such ideas as that animals are separate from men, and that they were made and created by
God to be used for our food. ...
... If man's life is immortal, so also is the animal's. The difference is only in degree and not in
kind. The amoeba and I are the same, the difference is only in degree; and from the standpoint
of the highest life, all these differences vanish.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Essential Goodness
Of this I am certain that not one aspiration, well-guided or ill-guided in my life, has been in vain,
but that I am the resultant of all my past, both good and evil. I have committed many mistakes in
my life; but mark you, I am sure of this that without every one of those mistakes I should not be
what I am today, and so am quite satisfied to have made them. I do not mean that you are to go
home and willfully commit mistakes; do not misunderstand me in that way.
But do not mope because of the mistakes you have committed, but know that in the end all will
come out straight. It cannot be otherwise, because goodness is our nature, purity is our nature,
and that nature can never be destroyed. Our essential nature always remains the same.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta IV, London

Great Hinduism
Here I find a quotation from a speech by Sir Monier Williams, professor of Sanskrit in the Oxford
University. It is very strange as coming from one who every day expects to see the whole of
India converted to Christianity.
"And yet it is a remarkable characteristic of Hinduism that it neither requires nor attempts to
make converts. Nor is it at present by any means decreasing in numbers, nor is it being driven
out of the field by two such proselytizing religions as Mahomedanism [sic] and Christianity. On
the contrary, it is at present rapidly increasing. And far more remarkable than this is that, it is all
receptive, all embracing and all comprehensive. It claims to be the one religion of humanity, of
human nature, of the entire world. It cares not to oppose the progress of Christianity nor of any
other religion. For it has no difficulty in including all other religions within its all embracing arms
and ever widening fold. And in real fact Hinduism has something to offer which is suited to all
minds. Its very strength lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human characters
and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosophical
higher classes. Its practical and concrete side suited to the man of affairs and the man of the
world. Its aesthetic and ceremonial side suited to the man of poetic feeling and imagination. Its
quiescent and contemplative side suited to the man of peace and lover of seclusion.
"Indeed, the Hindus were Spinozists 2,000 years before the birth of Spinoza, Darwinians
centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists centuries before the doctrine of evolution
had been accepted by the Huxleys of our time, and before any word like evolution existed in any
language of the world."
This, as coming from one of the staunchest defenders of Christianity, is wonderful indeed. But
he seems to have got the idea quite correct.
- Swami Vivekananda, in a Letter to Mrs G W Hale from New York (July 1894)

I Am Life Itself
The idea that you are Mr. So-and-so can never be true; it is a day-dream. Know this and be free. This is the Advaita conclusion. "I am neither the body, nor the organs, nor am I the mind;
I am Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss absolute; I am He." This is true knowledge; all reason and
intellect, and everything else is ignorance. Where is knowledge for me, for I am knowledge
itself! Where is life for me, for I am life itself! I am sure I live, for I am life, the One Being, and nothing exists except through me, and in me, and as me. I am manifested through the elements, but I am the free One.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Shankaracharya Jayanti
NIRVANASHATKAM, OR SIX STANZAS ON NIRVANA
(Translation by Swami Vivekananda of a poem by Sri Shankaracharya)
I am neither the mind, nor the intellect,
nor the ego, nor the mind - stuff;
I am neither the body, nor the changes of the body;
I am neither the senses of hearing, taste, smell, or sight,
Nor am I the ether, the earth, the fire, the air;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute,
Bliss Absolute – I am He, I am He. (Shivoham, Shivoham).

I am neither the Prana, nor the five vital airs;
I am neither the materials of the body, nor the five sheaths;
Neither am I the organs of action,
nor object of the senses;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute – I am He, I am He. (Shivoham,
Shivoham).

I have neither aversion nor attachment,
neither greed nor delusion;
Neither egotism nor envy,
neither Dharma nor Moksha;
I am neither desire nor objects of desire;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute – I am He, I am He. (Shivoham,
Shivoham).

I am neither sin nor virtue, neither pleasure nor pain;
Nor temple nor worship, nor pilgrimage nor scriptures,
Neither the act of enjoying, the enjoyable nor the enjoyer;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute – I am He, I am He. (Shivoham,
Shivoham).

I have neither death nor fear of death, nor caste;
Nor was I ever born, nor had I parents, friends, and relations;
I have neither Guru, nor disciple;
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute – I am He, I am He. (Shivoham,
Shivoham).

I am untouched by the senses,
I am neither Mukti nor knowable;
I am without form, without limit, beyond space, beyond time;
I am in everything; I am the basis of the universe; everywhere am I.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute – I am He, I am He. (Shivoham,
Shivoham).

All is Mythology!
These spheres and devils and gods and reincarnations and transmigrations are all mythology;
so also is this human life. The great mistake that men always make is to think that this life alone
is true. They understand it well enough when other things are called mythologies, but are never
willing to admit the same of their own position. The whole thing as it appears is mere mythology,
and the greatest of all lies is that we are bodies, which we never were nor ever can be.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New York

Ramanujacharya Jayanti
Shankara, with his great intellect, I am afraid, had not as great a heart. Ramanuja's heart was greater. He felt for the downtrodden, he sympathised with them. He took up the ceremonies, the
accretions that had gathered, made them pure so far as they could be, and instituted new
ceremonies, new methods of worship, for the people who absolutely required them.
At the same time he opened the door to the highest spiritual worship from the Brahmin to the
Pariah. That was Ramanuja's work.
- Swami Vivekananda, Address at Madras, Lectures From Colombo to Almora

Let Men Think
... it is better that mankind should become atheist by following reason than blindly believe in two
hundred millions of gods on the authority of anybody. What we want is progress, development,
realisation. No theories ever made men higher. No amount of books can help us to become purer. The only power is in realisation, and that lies in ourselves and comes from thinking. Let men think. A clod of earth never thinks; but it remains only a lump of earth. The glory of man is that he is a thinking being. It is the nature of man to think and therein he differs from animals.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta III, London

Harmony of Religions
We have all been hearing from childhood of such things as love, peace, charity, equality, and
universal brotherhood; but they have become to us mere words without meaning, words which
we repeat like parrots, and it has become quite natural for us to do so. We cannot help it. Great
souls, who first felt these great ideas in their hearts, manufactured these words; and at that time
many understood their meaning.
Later on, ignorant people have taken up those words to play with them and made religion a
mere play upon words, and not a thing to be carried into practice. It becomes "my father's
religion", "our nation's religion", "our country's religion", and so forth. It becomes only a phase of
patriotism to profess any religion, and patriotism is always partial. To bring harmony into religion
must always be difficult. Yet we will consider this problem of the harmony of religions.
- Swami Vivekananda, 'The Ideal of a Universal Religion' - talk in Pasadena, California (CW Vol II)

Do You Want Religion?
... man of realisation says, "All this talk in the world about its little religions is but prattle;
realisation is the soul, the very essence of religion." Religion can be realised. Are you ready? Do
you want it? You will get the realisation if you do, and then you will be truly religious. Until you have attained realisation there is no difference between you and atheists. The atheists are sincere, but the man who says that he believes in religion and never attempts to realise it is not sincere.
- Swami Vivekananda, Jnana-Yoga, New York

Renunciation and Spirituality
One moment in infinite time is quite as good as any other moment.
If you believe in a God, you can see Him even now. We think religion begins when you have
realised something. It is not believing in doctrines, nor giving intellectual assent, nor making
declarations. If there is a God, have you seen Him? If you say "no", then what right have you to
believe in Him? If you are in doubt whether there is a God, why do you not struggle to see Him?
Why do you not renounce the world and spend the whole of your life for this one object?
Renunciation and spirituality are the two great ideas of India, and it is because India clings to
these ideas that all her mistakes count for so little.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

Buddha Purnima
Buddha is the only prophet who said, "I do not care to know your various theories about God.
What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul? Do good and be good. And
this will take you to freedom and to whatever truth there is." He was, in the conduct of his life,
absolutely without personal motives; and what man worked more than he? ...
He is the ideal Karma-Yogi, acting entirely without motive, and the history of humanity shows
him to have been the greatest man ever born; beyond compare the greatest combination of
heart and brain that ever existed, the greatest soul-power that has ever been manifested. He is
the first great reformer the world has seen.
- Swami Vivekananda,
Karma-Yoga (Classes in New York)

Intellect and Heart
Intellect is necessary, for without it we fall into crude errors and make all sorts of mistakes.
Intellect checks these; but beyond that, do not try to build anything upon it. It is an inactive,
secondary help; the real help is feeling, love. Do you feel for others? If you do, you are growing
in oneness. If you do not feel for others, you may be the most intellectual giant ever born, but
you will be nothing; you are but dry intellect, and you will remain so. And if you feel, even if you
cannot read any book and do not know any language, you are in the right way. The Lord is
yours.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Two Forces Side by Side
Two forces have been working side by side in parallel lines. The one says "I", the other says
"not I". Their manifestation is not only in man but in animals, not only in animals but in the
smallest worms. ...
... throughout creation these two forces are working side by side; where you find the one, you
find the other too. The one is selfishness, the other is unselfishness. The one is acquisition, the
other is renunciation. The one takes, the other gives. From the lowest to the highest, the whole
universe is the playground of these two forces.
It does not require any demonstration; it is obvious to all.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta IV, London

Practical Ideal
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes
and cry that it is dark. Know that there is no darkness around us. Take the hands away and
there is the light which was from the beginning. Darkness never existed, weakness never
existed. We who are fools cry that we are weak; we who are fools cry that we are impure.
Thus Vedanta not only insists that the ideal is practical, but that it has been so all the time; and
this Ideal, this Reality, is our own nature.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Same God for All
If you believe there is a God, the animals and the highest creatures must be the same. A God
who is partial to his children called men, and cruel to his children called brute beasts, is worse
than a demon. I would rather die a hundred times than worship such a God. My whole life would
be a fight with such a God. But there is no difference, and those who say there is, are
irresponsible, heartless people who do not know.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Greatest Heresy
Your godhead is the proof of God Himself. If you are not a prophet, there never has been
anything true of God. If you are not God, there never was any God, and never will be. This, says
the Vedanta, is the ideal to follow. Every one of us will have to become a prophet, and you are
that already. Only know it. Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest
heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin -- to say that you are weak, or others are
weak.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Universe As One Person
The whole universe is one person; let go the little things. Give up the small for the Infinite, give
up small enjoyments for infinite bliss. It is all yours, for the Impersonal includes the Personal. So
God is Personal and Impersonal at the same time.
And Man, the Infinite, Impersonal Man, is manifesting Himself as person. We the infinite have
limited ourselves, as it were, into small parts. The Vedanta says that Infinity is our true nature; it
will never vanish, it will abide for ever.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta II, London

Wonderful Living God
Thou art all that exists, a wonderful living God who is the only fact in the universe. This seems
to many to be a terrible contradiction to the traditional God who lives behind a veil somewhere
and whom nobody ever sees. The priests only give us an assurance that if we follow them,
listen to their admonitions, and walk in the way they mark out for us -- then when we die, they
will give us a passport to enable us to see the face of God! What are all these heaven ideas but
simply modifications of this nonsensical priestcraft?
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta II, London

Brahman Everywhere
... when the soul has realised that everything is full of the Lord, of Brahman, it will not care
whether it goes to heaven, or hell, or anywhere else; whether it be born again on this earth or in
heaven. These things have ceased to have any meaning to that soul, because every place is the same, every place is the temple of the Lord, every place has become holy and the presence of the
Lord is all that it sees in heaven, or hell, or anywhere else. Neither good nor bad, neither life nor
death -- only the one infinite Brahman exists.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta II, London

Difference of Degree and not Kind
We must not look down with contempt on others. All of us are going towards the same goal.
The difference between 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 differences in this
world are of degree, and not of kind,
because oneness is the secret of everything.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta I, London

Infinite Power
We are in reality that Infinite Being, and our personalities represent so many channels through
which this Infinite Reality is manifesting Itself; and the whole mass of changes which we call
evolution is brought about by the soul trying to manifest more and more of its infinite energy. We
cannot stop anywhere on this side of the Infinite; our power, and blessedness, and wisdom,
cannot but grow into the Infinite. Infinite power and existence and blessedness are ours, and we
have not to acquire them; they are our own, and we have only to manifest them.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta III, London

Personal Preserved in Impersonal
Often the doubt comes to us that if we arrive at the idea of the Impersonal God, the personal will
be destroyed, if we arrive at the idea of the Impersonal man,
the personal will be lost. But the Vedantic idea is not the destruction of the individual, but its real
preservation. We cannot prove the individual by any other means but by referring to the
universal, by proving that this individual is really the universal. If we think of the individual as
separate from everything else in the universe, it cannot stand a minute.
Such a thing never existed.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta III, London

Personal God - Part of Phenomenon
... this universe itself is the absolute, the unchangeable, the noumenon; and the phenomenon
constitutes the reading thereof.
For you will first find that all phenomena are finite. Every phenomenon that we can see, feel, or
think of, is finite, limited by our knowledge, and the Personal God as we conceive of Him is in
fact a phenomenon. The very idea of causation exists only in the phenomenal world, and God
as the cause of this universe must naturally be thought of as limited, and yet He is the same
Impersonal God.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta III, London

Do Not Destroy
I would ask mankind to recognize this maxim, "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 cannot, 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. Secondly, take man where he stands, and from there give him a lift. If it be true that
God is the center of all religions, and that each of us is moving towards Him along one of these
radii, then it is certain that all of us must reach that center.
And at the center, where all the radii meet, all our differences will cease; but until we reach
there, differences there must be. All these radii converge to the same center.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

Instinct, Reason, Inspiration
We find in all beings three sorts of instruments of knowledge.The first is instinct, which you find
most highly developed in animals; this is the lowest instrument of knowledge.What is the second
instrument of knowledge? Reasoning. You find that most highly developed in man. You find a mighty barrier before reason, beyond which reasoning cannot go; yet it always feels impatient to get into the region of the Infinite beyond.This world, this universe which our senses feel, or our mind thinks, is but one atom, so to say, of the Infinite, projected on to the plane of consciousness; and within that narrow limit, defined by the network of consciousness, works our reason, and not beyond. Therefore, there must be some other instrument to take us beyond, and that instrument is called inspiration. So instinct, reason, and inspiration are the three instruments of knowledge. Instinct belongs to animals, reason to man, and inspiration to God-men.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

Truth is Nobody's Property
All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody's property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim
to it. Truth is the nature of all souls. Who can lay any special claim to it? But it has to be made
practical, to be made simple (for the highest truths are always simple), so that it may penetrate
every pore of human society, and become the property of the highest intellects and the
commonest minds, of the man, woman, and child at the same time.
- Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta IV, London

My Ideal of a Perfect Man and Religion
Would to God that all men were so constituted that in their minds all these elements of
philosophy, mysticism, emotion, and of work were equally present in full!
That is the ideal, my ideal of a perfect man. Everyone who has only one or two of these
elements of character, I consider "one-sided"; and this world is almost full of such "one-sided"
men, with knowledge of that one road only in which they move; and anything else is dangerous
and horrible to them.
To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

Walking in Dreams
We seem to be walking in dreams.
Dreams are all right in a dream-mind; but as soon as you want to grasp one of them, it is gone.
Why? Not that it was false, but because it is beyond the power of reason, the power of the
intellect to comprehend it. Everything in this life is so vast that the intellect is nothing in
comparison with it. It refuses to be bound by the laws of the intellect! It laughs at the bondage
the intellect wants to spread around it. And a thousandfold more so is this the case with the
human soul. "We ourselves"-- this is the greatest mystery of the universe.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angles, California

Solid Ground to Stand Upon
This is, therefore, true knowledge; that the Soul of our souls, the Reality that is within us, is That
which is unchangeable, eternal, ever-blessed, ever-free. This is the only solid ground for us to
stand upon. This, then, is the end of all death, the advent of all immortality, the end of all misery.
And he who sees that One among the many, that One unchangeable in the universe of change,
he who sees Him as the Soul of his soul, unto him belongs eternal peace -- unto none else.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angles, California

Impossible Question
... how is it that what is infinite, ever perfect, ever blessed, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute,
has come under these delusions? It is the same questions that has been asked all the world
over. In the vulgar form the question becomes, "How did sin come into this world?" This is the
most vulgar and sensuous form of the question, and the other is the most philosophic form, but
the answer is the same. The same question has been asked in various grades and fashions, but
in its lower forms it finds no solution, because the stories of apples and serpents and women do
not give the explanation. In that state, the question is childish and so is the answer. But the
question has assumed very high proportions now: "How did this illusion come?" And the answer
is as fine.
The answer is that we cannot expect any answer to an impossible question. The very question
is impossible in terms. You have no right to ask that question. Why? What is perfection?
That which is beyond time, space and causation -- that is perfect. Then you ask how the perfect
became imperfect. In logical language the question may be put in this form: "How did that which
is beyond causation become caused?" You contradict yourself.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New-York

Dualism - First View of Religion
We have seen that there is the eternal God, and there is eternal nature. And there is also an
infinite number of eternal souls. This is the first stage in religion, it is called dualism, the stage
when man sees himself and God eternally separate, when God is a separate entity by Himself
and man is a separate entity by himself and nature is a separate entity by itself.
This is dualism, which holds that the subject and the object are opposed to each other in
everything. When man looks at nature, he is the subject and nature the object. He sees the
dualism between subject and object.
When he looks at God, he sees God as the object and himself as the subject. They are entirely
separate. This is the dualism between man and God.
This is generally the first view of religion.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Remedy for all Disease
That is the remedy for all disease, the nectar that cures death.
Here we are in this world, and our nature rebels against it. But let us repeat, "I am It; I am It. I
have no fear, nor doubt, nor death. I have no sex, nor creed, nor colour. What creed can I have?
What sect is there to which I should belong? What sect can hold me? I am in every sect!"
However much the body rebels, however much the mind rebels, in the midst of the uttermost
darkness, in the midst of agonizing tortures, in the uttermost despair, repeat this, once, twice,
thrice, ever more. Light comes gently, slowly, but surely it comes.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Los Angles, California

Akasha and Prana
Prana cannot work alone without the help of Akasha. All that we know in the form of motion,
vibration, or thought is a modification of the Prana, and everything that we know in the shape of
matter, either as form or as resistance, is a modification of the Akasha. The Prana cannot live
alone, or act without a medium; when it is pure Prana, it has the Akasha itself to live in, and
when it changes into forces of nature, say gravitation, or centrifugal force, it must have matter.
You have never seen force without matter or matter without force; what we call force and matter
are simply the gross manifestations of these same things, which, when superfine, are called
Prana and Akasha.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Sankhya Philosophy - First Rational System
Sankhya [philosophy] ... is the basis of the philosophy of the whole world. There is no
philosophy in the world that is not indebted to Kapila. Pythagoras came to India and studied this
philosophy, and that was the beginning of the philosophy of the Greeks. Later, it formed the
Alexandrian school, and still later, the Gnostic. It became divided into two; one part went to
Europe and Alexandria, and the other remained in India; and out of this, the system of Vyasa
was developed. The Sankhya philosophy of Kapila was the first rational system that the world
ever saw. Every metaphysician in the world must pay homage to him. I want to impress on your
mind that we are bound to listen to him as the great father of philosophy.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Sankhya Philosophy
The meditative state is called always the highest state by the Yogi, when it is neither a passive
nor an active state; in it you approach nearest to the Purusha.
The soul has neither pleasure nor pain; it is the witness of everything, the eternal witness of all
work, but it takes no fruits from any work.
As the sun is the cause of sight of every eye, but is not itself affected by any defects in the eye
or as when a crystal has red or blue flowers placed before it, the crystal looks red or blue, and
yet it is neither; so, the soul is neither passive nor active, it is beyond both. The nearest way of
expressing this state of the soul is that it is meditation.
This is Sankhya philosophy.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York

Points about Buddhism
Every one of Buddha's teachings is founded in the Vedanta. He was one of those monks who
wanted to bring out the truths, hidden in those books and in the forest monasteries. I do not
believe that the world is ready for them even now; it still wants those lower religions, which
teach of a personal God. Because of this, the original Buddhism could not hold the popular
mind, until it took up the modifications, which were reflected back from Tibet and the Tartars.
Original Buddhism was not at all nihilistic. It was but an attempt to combat caste and priestcraft;
it was the first in the world to stand as champion of the dumb animals, the first to break down
the caste, standing between man and man.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Brooklyn

March of Humanity
Each religion, as it were, takes up one part of the great universal truth, and spends its whole
force in embodying and typifying that part of the great truth. It is, therefore, addition, not
exclusion. That is the idea. System after system arises, each one embodying a great idea, and
ideals must be added to ideals. And this is the march of humanity. Man never progresses from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lesser truth to higher truth -- but it is never from error to truth.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in Pasadena, California

Real Knowledge and Bliss
... real knowledge is not what we know, not intuition, nor reason, nor instinct. When that
degenerates and is confused, we call it intuition; when is degenerates more, we call it reason; and when it degenerates still more, we call it instinct. That knowledge itself is Vijnana, neither intuition, nor reason nor instinct. The nearest expression for it is all-knowingness. There is no limit to it, no combination in it. That bliss, when it gets clouded over, we call love, attraction for gross bodies or fine bodies, or for ideas. This is only a distorted manifestation of that blessedness.
- Swami Vivekananda, Talk in New York