2nd June 2023- The nearer death approaches, the more does the power of original thinking wane, the more is there the attempt to bury one or two rotten ideas under a heap of flowers and scents.
5th June 2023- As pleasure and pain pass before the soul, they leave upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called a person’s “character.” If you take the character of any person it is really but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of the person’s mind. You will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character. Good and evil have an equal share in molding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness.
6th June 2023- Say, “it is my nature,” never say, “It is my duty”-to do anything whatever.
7th June 2023- When I was in America I had certain wonderful powers developed in me. By looking into people’s eye I could fathom in a trice the contents of their minds. The workings of everybody’s mind would be potent to me, like a fruit on the palm of one’s hand. To some I used to give out these things, and of those to whom I communicated these, many would become my disciples; whereas those who came to mix with me with some ulterior motive would not, on coming across this power of mine, even venture into my presence any more.
9th June 2023- Spiritual path is purity. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In that one sentence is the gist of all religions. If you have learnt that, you have known all that has been said in the past and all that is possible to say in the future; you need not look into anything else, for you have all that is necessary in that one sentence; it could save the world, were all others scriptures lost.
12th June 2023- It can be demonstrated that almost every action of which we are now unconscious can be brought up to the plane of consciousness. The heart is beating apparently without our control. None of us here can control the heart; it goes on its own way. But by practice people can bring even the heart under control, until it will just beat at will, slowly, or quickly, or almost stop. Nearly every part of the body can be brought under control.
13th June 2023- According to Vedanta, we must allow the infinite variation in religious thought, and not try to bring everybody to the same opinion, because the goal is the same. As a Vedantist says in his poetical language, “As so many rivers, having their source in different mountains, roll down, crooked or straight, and at last come into the ocean- so, all these various creeds and religions, taking their start from different standpoints and running through crooked or straight courses, at last come unto Thee.”
15th June 2023- In studying the great characters the world has produced, I dare say, in the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out the inner fire more than praise.
17th June 2023- A vision of God, a glimpse of the beyond never comes until the soul is pure. Therefore in the teacher of spirituality, purity is the one thing indispensible; we must see first what he is, and then what he says. Not so with intellectual teachers; there we care more for what he says that what he is. With the teacher of religion, we must first and foremost see what he is, and then alone comes the value of the words, because he is the transmitter. What will he transmit, if he has not that spiritual power in him?
19th June 2023- Hindus spend their lives with the name of the Ganga on their lips, they die immersed in the waters of the Ganga, people from far off places take away Ganga water with them, keep it carefully in copper vessels, and sip drops of it on holy occasions. … The Gita and the sacred waters of the Ganga constitute the Hinduism of the Hindus.
20th June 2023- This ancient philosophy called Vedanta has, through its influence, directly inspired Buddhism, the first missionary religion of the world, and indirectly, it has also influenced Christianity, through the Alexandrians, the Gnostics, and the European philosophers of the middle ages. And later, influencing German thought, it has produced almost a revolution in the regions of philosophy and psychology. Yet all this mass of influence has been given to the world almost unperceived.
21st June 2023- There are two planes in which the human mind works. First is the conscious plane, in which all work is always accompanied with the feeling of egoism. Next comes the unconscious plane, where all work is unaccompanied by the feeling of egoism. That part of mind-work which is unaccompanied with the feeling of egoism is unconscious work, and that part which is accompanied with the feeling of egoism is conscious work. In lower animals this unconscious work is called instinct. In higher animals, and in the highest of all animals, the human being, what is called conscious.
23rd June 2023- “Truth alone triumphs, not untruth.” Stand upon Truth, and you have got God.
26th June 2023- When I began lecturing in Chicago and other cities, I had to deliver every week some twelve or fifteen or even more lectures at times. This excessive strain on the body and mind would exhaust me to a degree. I seemed to run short of subjects for lectures and was anxious where to find new topics for the morrow’s lecture. New thoughts seemed altogether scarce.
One day, after the lecture, I lay thinking of what means to adopt next. The thought induced a sort of slumber, and in that state I heard as if somebody standing by me was lecturing- many new ideas and new veins of thought, which I had scarcelt heard or thought of in my life. On awaking I remembered them and reproduced them in my lecture.
I cannot enumerate how often this phenomenon took place. Many, many days did I hear such lectures while lying in bed. Sometimes the lecture would be delivered in such a loud voice that the inmates of adjacent rooms would hear the sound and ask me the next day, “With whom, Swamiji, were you talking so loudly last night?” I used to avoid the question somehow. Ah, it was a wonderful phenomenon.
26th June 2023- There is neither existence nor non-existence, all is Atman. Shake off all ideas of relativity; shake off all superstitions; let caste and birth and Devas and all else vanish, why talk of being and becoming? Give up talking of dualism and Advaita. When were you two, that you talk of two or one? … Talk not of Yoga to make you pure, you are pure by your very nature. None can teach you.
29th June 2023- In my opinion, a race must first cultivate a great respect for motherhood, through the sanctification and inviolability of marriage, before it can attain to the ideal of perfect chastity.
29th June 2023- Last time I went to the West, I also took a little of Ganga water with me, fearing it might be needed, and whenever opportunities occurred, I used to drink a few drops of it. And every time I drank, in the midst of the stream of humanity, amid that bustle of civilization, that hurry of frenzied footsteps of millions of men and women in the West, the mind at once became calm and still, as it were.
30th June 2023- There is a higher place above which the mind can work. It can go beyond consciousness. Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness, and which also is not accompanied with the feeling of egoism. The feeling of egoism is only on the middle plane. When the mind is above or below that line, there is no feeling of “I”, and yet the mind works. When the mind goes beyond this line of self-consciousness, it is called Samadhi or superconsciousness.