6th September 2023- The senses cheat you day and night. Vedanta found that out ages; modern science is just discovering the same fact. A picture has only length and breadth, and the painter copies nature in her cheating by artificially giving the appearance of depth.
7th September 2023- All the actions that we see in the world, all the movement in human society, all the works that we have around us, are simply the display of thought, and the manifestation of human will.. And this will is caused by character, and character is manufactured by karma. As is karma, so is the manifestation of the will.
8th September 2023- No one can get anything unless he or she earns it. This is an eternal law. We may sometimes think it is not so, but in the long run we become convinced of it… Our karma determines what we deserve and what we assimilate. We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.
12th September 2023- [The dualistic thinking is that:] Nature, God, and soul are eternal existences, as if three lines are running parallel eternally, of which nature and soul comprise the dependent realities, and God the independent Reality. Every soul, like every particle of matter, is perfectly dependent on the will of God.
13th September 2023- The people of mighty will the world has produced have all been tremendous workers- gigantic souls, with wills powerful enough to overturn worlds, wills they got by persistent work, through ages and ages… The gigantic will which Buddha and Jesus threw over the world, whence did it come? Whence came this accumulation of power? It must have been there through ages and ages, continually growing bigger and bigger, until it burst on society in a Buddha or a Jesus, even rolling down to the present day.
14th September 2023- The ordinary experiences of our lives are no less wonderful than any miracles recorded in any sacred books of the world; nor are we any more enlightened as to the cause of these ordinary experiences than of the so-called miracles. But, the miraculous is “extraordinary,” and the everyday experience is “ordinary”. The “extraordinary” startles the mind, the “ordinary” satisfies.
15th September 2023- In the search for unity, some religions could not solve the problem beyond the finding of a duality of causes, one good, the other evil. Others went as far as finding an intelligent personal cause, a few went still further beyond intellect, beyond personality, and found an infinite being.
16th September 2023- Where is the utility of my being unselfish? My utility is to be selfish if utility means the greatest amount of happiness. What is the answer? The utilitarian can never give it.
The answer is that this world is only one drop in an infinite ocean, one link in an infinite chain. Where did those that preached unselfishness, and taught it to the human race, get this idea? We know it is not instinctive; the animals which have instinct, do not know it. Neither it is reason, reason does not know anything about these ideas.
18th September 2023- The time will come when we transcend our human nature and know God as He is. But as long as we are human beings we must worship God in human terms. Talk as we may, try as we may, we cannot see God except as a human being. We may deliver great intellectual speeches, become very great rationalists, and prove that these tales of God are all nonsense, but let us come to practical common sense. What is behind this remarkable intellect? Zero, nothing, simply so much forth.
20th September 2023- Almost all of you have heard of the word “māyā”. Generally, it is used, though incorrectly, to denote delusion, or illusion, or some such thing. But, the theory of māyā forms one of the pillars upon which Vedanta rests. It is therefore necessary that it should be properly understood. I ask a little patience of you, for there is a great danger of its being misunderstood.
21st September 2023- All our ethical theories, all our moral attitudes, all that is good and great in human nature, have been moulded upon answers that have come from beyond the limited circle within which reason operates.
25th September 2023- Alas for the irony of our fate, that in the land of Bhagwan Shuka’s birth, renunciation is looked down upon as madness and sin!
26th September 2023- You must remember that all work is simply to bring out the power of the mind which is already there and to wake up the soul. The power is inside every one of us, so is knowledge. The different works are like blows to bring them out, to cause these giants to wake up.